The government has made another retreat on its backpacker tax, dropping its proposed rate from 19% to 15% in a deal that will get through the Senate crossbench.
Tensions between Pauline Hanson and her beleaguered One Nation senator Rod Culleton have been on open display this week, raising the question of whether the party will be able to hold it all together.
Pauline Hanson has backed the referral of her Western Australian senator Rod Culleton to the High Court to determine his eligibility to sit in parliament, declaring it a matter of integrity.
The only way the Turnbull government’s announcement of its latest move against boat people makes sense is if it is the belt-and-braces part of a wider plan to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus Island…
Survey findings are typically considered in isolation in the media, with no understanding of context, of what is within and what is beyond the expected.
Those opposed to the building of new mosques don’t recognise their long history here, or potential to support Australian ideals. Mosques are part of our suburban landscape and can help overcome fears about Islam.
The normal rules of political engagement – coherence, consistency, fact, logic, proportion – do not apply to members of the paranoid right like Pauline Hanson.
Politicians and those who wish to preserve the progressive achievements of the past must make their own pivot to a better understanding of the real world concerns of ordinary, hard working folk.
We are witnessing the global rise of populism. Once seen as a fringe phenomenon from another era or only certain parts of the world, populism is a mainstay of politics today across the globe.
The returned Turnbull government can now add arguably one of the most diverse and potentially volatile senates ever to be elected in Australia to its list of political problems.