After a fraught few days and a highly emotional debate at Labor’s national conference, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has secured the right to turn back asylum seeker boats if he becomes prime minister…
The man in the deepest ditch on day one of Labor’s national conference was surely the party’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles. With party feeling still red hot about the plan to allow a Labor government…
Ramping up investment in renewable energy would put Australia on a footing with competitors such as China, Germany and California, which are set to reap the economic benefits of this emerging sector.
The ALP national conference has lost its policymaking significance of the past. Instead it has become a reflection of the leader’s standing within the party.
Stephen Parker and Michelle Grattan discuss the ALP national conference, Bill Shorten’s announcement about asylum seeker turnbacks and Labor’s two-party lead in the latest Newspoll.
Bill Shorten has finally formally reversed his position on turning back boats, seeking to remove the one big difference between Labor and the government in their hardline stands on asylum seekers.
If Bill Shorten and his climate spokesman Mark Butler can’t sell Labor’s proposal for Australia to have 50% of its electricity provided by renewable energy by 2030, they should probably vacate the political…
Tony Abbott strode down the parliamentary press gallery corridor towards the welcome bank of cameras. A Labor options paper on carbon pricing had appeared in tabloids, under derogatory headlines.
Labor says it hasn’t yet decided what climate policy to take to the next election, although this week’s leak has bolstered the idea that it will involve carbon pricing – a subject with a long and vexed history for the party.
Tony Abbott’s leadership ratings and his standing as preferred prime minister have improved, but only to the point where he is roughly at level pegging with Bill Shorten.
Bill Shorten’s appearance at the royal commission has not only damaged him but diverted a good deal of attention from the signs of division and tension at senior levels of the Abbott government.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten failed until the last few days to declare that a labour hire company paid for his full-time campaign director in the run-up to his election to parliament in 2007.
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University