Tony Abbott’s responses to Indonesian concerns about spying suggested a weak understanding of president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s different cultural milieu.
EPA/Tanaya Pramudita
The official result in Indonesia’s presidential election contest between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto is still some days away, with both claiming victory. But no matter who the next president is, there…
Even before it was born, the carbon price had plenty of friends – and lots of enemies.
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The Carbon Pricing Mechanism, known to its friends as the carbon price and its critics as the carbon tax, passed away today in Canberra, aged two, after a long battle with slogans. While it won praise…
Public support for change that would enable Tony Abbott’s sister Christine (right) to marry her same-sex partner is much stronger than for ‘axing the tax’, but the PM is selectively deaf to the people’s voice.
AAP/Joe Castro
Disaffection with Australian politics seems visceral and entrenched. An Essential poll in late June found that only 25% of those polled had trust in the federal parliament. Discussing this poll, Michelle…
The B20 and G20 agendas are both focused on economic growth, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to avoid linking climate policy to the agenda.
Aman Sharma/AAP
In a speech delivered at ANU in April last year, then shadow environment minister Greg Hunt looked toward Australia’s host role for the G20 during 2014. Regarding climate policy he said Australia should…
The Palmer United Party, including new Senator Jacqui Lambie, is unlikely to support unpopular but necessary tax reform.
Lukas Coch/AAP
It’s unlikely “The Political Sayings of Malcolm Fraser” is a well-thumbed volume in Tony Abbott’s library. Yet this week, in the wake of the Senate throwing his government’s budget plans into disarray…
It is quite clear that Abbott is a western traditionalist when it comes to his interest in the past.
Dean Lewins/ AAP
Wherever does our prime minister get his technique for historical analysis? Just before last week’s chaotic carbon tax repeal scenes in Canberra, prime minister Tony Abbott offended the People’s Republic…
There have been instances of successful federalism - how do we return to these?
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When our two major levels of government work in partnership, our Federation can function well. The standout period for cooperative federalism was the Hawke/Keating term of government, producing the National…
Not since 1993 has a government managed to arouse such sustained voter antagonism with its budget.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Five weeks after its release, treasurer Joe Hockey’s first federal budget is proving to be a remarkably durable political and media commodity, and not in ways that portend well for the Abbott government…
About 5% of the Tasmanian Wilderness could delisted as a World Heritage area, if an Australian government request wins international approval.
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This week, experts will debate the future of two of Australia’s World Heritage areas, the Tasmanian Wilderness and the Great Barrier Reef, at a meeting in Doha, Qatar. The world will be watching, as it…
Tony Abbott and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper are waving the flag of climate sabotage.
AAP Image/Australian Government
On tour in North America, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has forged an alliance with the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper on climate change. Both champion climate policies that don’t put a price on carbon…
The Abbott government is at risk of sullying its international reputation if it fails to acknowledge the seriousness of climate change as a global issue.
AAP/Yuli Seperi
Tony Abbott will arrive in the US this week for his first face-to-face meeting with US president Barack Obama in Washington since becoming prime minister. It comes at an important time: Australia is to…
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has denied claims he is positioning himself for a tilt at the Liberal leadership.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull has made an extraordinary attack on conservative News Corp writer Andrew Bolt, describing his column today as bordering “on the demented”. Turnbull told reporters that…
Facing wicked problems, can Tony Abbott deliver leadership that is ‘about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, producing useful change’?
AAP/Lukas Coch
Samuel Wilson, Swinburne University of Technology and John Fien, Swinburne University of Technology
Despite our familiarity with – and craving for – leadership, its precise meaning is often elusive and resistant to consensual definition. Partly because of this, actions that are adjudged as exemplary…
There’s been a lot of commentary around Abbott’s wink yesterday, but is a wink really that ambiguous?
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During a radio show yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott winked. In and of itself, this is hardly a newsworthy event. The context of the wink, though, appears to have made all the difference in making…
The two most prolific meanings for wink are those referring to sleep and that thing Tony did.
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Tony Abbott isn’t the first pollie to get into trouble with a wink. He’s now in good company with American Tea Party darling Sarah Palin. Palin’s notorious winks left voters in the 2008 American campaign…
For a while, it was possible that Tony Abbott would be a transformative leader on Indigenous policy, but he has thus far not lived up to that promise.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Despite prime minister Tony Abbott’s apparent passion for Indigenous affairs, last week’s federal budget – his government’s first – shows he has followed a well-trodden political path. This path leads…
The federal budget shows that Tony Abbott is now committed to a strong division of responsibility between the Commonwealth and the states, rather than a more centralised model.
AAP/Alan Porritt
When treasurer Joe Hockey detailed his first budget on Tuesday, the announcement that the states and territories were to be stripped of A$80 billion in federal health and education funding agreed to with…
Successive governments of both sides have failed to answer the fundamental questions of what it is that government should actually do and how it should go about doing it.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first federal budget set out a vision of a smaller, less intrusive role for government. The sentiment can hardly be a surprise; prime minister Tony Abbott has long championed the…
Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget is a clear-headed and deliberate essay in creating a new sort of Australia.
AAP/Lukas Coch
In 2012, then-opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey gave a speech in which he declared that the age of entitlement had to end. But he did not deliver it to a domestic audience. Instead, he went to the…
Treasurer Joe Hockey and finance minister Mathias Cormann face a difficult sell for the Abbott government’s tough first budget.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The Abbott government is hoping an A$11.6 billion infrastructure spending package, combined with a $20 billion medical research fund, will help soften the blow of widespread tightening of health and welfare…