Bill Shorten had little practical alternative but to name himself as the person police had been investigating in relation to an alleged rape in the 1980s. The opposition leader told reporters that the…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has identified himself as the senior Labor figure investigated by Victoria Police after an allegation he had raped a young woman in the 1980s. In a claim made last October…
Labor senator John Faulkner does not anticipate that his moves to reform the party’s preselection processes will succeed at this weekend’s NSW State Conference. Faulkner is hoping to have the rules changed…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has taken his battle with prime minister Tony Abbott over climate policy to an international stage, saying the issue should be a priority for the G20 leaders’ meeting in…
Has our political system become so adversarial that it is cannibalising our democracy? It’s a tempting conclusion when we think of the recent and current bitter tone in federal politics and look at how…
The annual federal budget speech is the one required speech of the Australian political calendar. And it goes all the way back to Federation. It’s Australia’s equivalent of the State of the Union address…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten was emphatic in his budget in reply that the Abbott government’s first budget was an “attack” on the Australian way of life. In his speech on the floor of parliament last…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has vowed to oppose funding cuts to hospitals, schools and higher education in his budget in reply speech, threatening more than A$10 billion in budget savings proposed by…
Bill Shorten has clearly taken Tony Abbott as his role model as opposition leader. Shorten’s refrain of “broken promises” and “no more taxes” has an eerie ring of familiarity to it, and risks turning the…
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined his vision for a rejuvenated Labor Party. His speech earlier this week was a call to arms for the reform of federal Labor’s organisational rules. While Shorten’s…
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
“I think it’s more than a tad hypocritical of the Labor Party to be campaigning against what it says are cuts to school funding when Bill Shorten as education minister cut $1.2 billion out of school funding…
Prime minister Tony Abbott said his government would create “the biggest bonfire of regulations in our country’s history” as it moved to cut A$700 million from business compliance costs. Abbott was outlining…
The spectacular story ran for a nanosecond. Kevin Rudd had allegedly done a deal for daughter Jessica to get preselection for the seat he is vacating. It would have been the ultimate Ruddism. Jess immediately…
As the new leader of the Labor opposition, Bill Shorten has a number of issues to deal with that have been left over from the previous three years of Labor government. Working out Labor’s climate change…
New Labor leader Bill Shorten has vowed to continue on the path of party reform, but the latest ALP leadership battle failed to expose all the dangers of the new system. Not only is there the possibility…
In his pitch to Labor’s rank and file for the right to lead the federal parliamentary party, Bill Shorten declared that his aim - should he become prime minister - would be to serve on behalf of: … the…
Australian parliamentary politics has always had a reputation for a certain rough and tumble. In the 1850s, British economist William Stanley Jevons commented on the rowdiness of the proceedings of the…
So the election between two middle-aged, middle class, white men with broadly shared policy agendas is over. In this case, it is not the federal election between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, but the month-long…
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University