Up until Sunday’s debate, we heard grumbles that this election is too personality-focused. The beef was that the last few months in political news had been consumed by conflict and drama. “MPs” are “Media…
Prime minister Kevin Rudd and opposition leader Tony Abbott have faced off in the first televised leaders’ debate of the 2013 election campaign. In a debate largely framed by the economic issues, Rudd…
Linda Briskman, Swinburne University of Technology et Scott Poynting, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
It was a foolish moment when prime minister Bob Hawke promised that by 1990 no child in Australia would be living in poverty. After all, what are the solutions to child poverty, to crime, to educational…
Welcome to the first of The Conversation’s Election 2013 podcasts. Each week The Conversation will be sitting down with Australia’s top political minds to discuss all things election as we gear up for…
The shock entry of former Queensland premier Peter Beattie into the federal election campaign as the Labor candidate for Forde was kept a tightly guarded secret - and with good reason. It sends two clear…
“Mr Murdoch is entitled to his own view… he owns 70% of the newspapers in this country.” – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, press conference, 6 August. One of the more spirited discussions of the first week…
It’s been a very long road for those wanting school funding reform. But it looks as though now the government version of the Gonski review is here to stay. Five states and territories are now on board…
If the polls are accurate and Labor is almost at level pegging with the Coalition, it would seem we are in for a repeat of the very close election of 2010. But for various reasons this is not necessarily…
Kevin Rudd has imported three members of US president Barack Obama’s successful 2012 campaign team to advise on Labor’s September 7 re-election efforts. This announcement has already achieved one of the…
It’s an exquisitely portentous cliché, the one that is always trotted out at each Australian election: this is the most important election in a generation, or since World War Two, or the advent of television…
Kevin Rudd has raised new uncertainty over the election timetable by saying his intention is to be in St Petersburg for the G20 and declaring that he has not settled on an election date. The PM had been…
Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd’s so-called “PNG solution” to the asylum seeker issue has attracted much comment from within both Australia and Papua New Guinea. It has also stirred the pot in Indonesia…
“ICAC, SHMY-CAC. My name is Kevin, I’m from Queensland and I’m here to help.” I know it’s not quite what the prime minister would say: I have taken a little licence with his words from 2007. But I think…
Just when you thought being “tough on borders” couldn’t get any more serious, along comes the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders. It’s got all the right elements of a plan: it’s an operation (with…
Now Kevin Rudd has ticked off emissions trading and unveiled his PNG solution on boat arrivals, he’s turning his full attention to trying to neutralise the “debt and deficit” issue. In other words, he’s…
The old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is particularly appropriate when describing the Australian Labor Party at the moment. Upon being returned to the federal parliamentary…
At first glance, the deal between prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Peter O’Neill transferring all Australian-bound asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea appears to deliver many benefits to that small poor country…
It has been almost one month since Kevin Rudd returned to The Lodge. Rudd was charged with the responsibility of making Labor competitive in the upcoming election. But what do his actions since taking…
If prime minister Kevin Rudd’s recent decision to process and then resettle all onshore asylum seekers in PNG is to be considered in any way a “success”, then it raises the question of what constitutes…
Today, a specially convened meeting of the Labor caucus will decide on proposed changes to how the party selects its parliamentary leader. The politics of leadership in Australia have been described as…