We get so used to the bonkers shit that goes on in the Australian Senate that it starts to seem unremarkable. Frustrating, exasperating, eye-rolling, but also just the way it is, with its cast of zany characters making illogical, fantastical claims with their publicly funded platforms. So it was...
John Hewson writes the lesson of the recent history of the Liberal Party is that it doesn’t learn from history.
It learnt nothing from the drubbing that Kerryn Phelps gave Dave Sharma in the Wentworth byelection,sparked by the resignation of Malcolm Turnbull. While Sharma did win back the seat in...
Monopolists and rentseekers have been running rings round the democratic fiscal state for decades. It is obvious to everyone that the game is rigged. But we still have a few more rolls of the dice. Let’s use them wisely.
The earliest known version of Monopoly, called The Landlord’s Game, was...
Now that Rupert Murdoch is in his nineties, the question of succession has become unavoidable. His oldest son, Lachlan, would seem to be the heir-apparent, positioned to take charge of a global media empire that is as controversial as it is powerful.
But how much do we really know about...
David Mason was the first person to give advice about a thought bubble program that would become robo-debt. In an email, he called it for what it was: a program with no legal basis that would result in serious reputational harm if it was allowed to go ahead.
His assessment...
Jim Chalmers’ ‘restraint’ budget the first stage of a marathon for the treasurer
Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
Jim Chalmers’ inaugural budget plants its feet as solidly as possible in the shifting sands of difficult and unpredictable international and local conditions.
Chalmers promised the budget would be “workmanlike”, not “flashy”, and he’s kept...
Philip Thalis asserts thatBarangaroo is a symbol of squandered opportunities to make a better Sydney. I was part of the winning team – Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture and Paul Berkemeier Architect – for the 2005-6 international competition for this 22 hectares of publicly...
Gareth Evans writes
It is difficult to conceive of a set of government decisions purportedly aimed at protecting Australia’s national interests that have been more comprehensively destructive of them than those made by successive Coalition governments in the Timor-Leste case. Everything about the initial espionage operation, if reported at all...
Despite the efforts of the media to discredit the independents’ movement, attempting to tag them as “fake independents” and otherwise minimising their coverage, there should be little doubt that many conservative members sitting in what they had thought were “safe” seats are already recognising the strength of the contest.
The...