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The worst government in our history

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...

Reframing tax policy to reset the rules of the monopoly game

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...

Paddy Manning paints a vivid portrait of a man born into a world of enormous wealth and privilege, destined to live out his life...

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...

Robo-debt: Liberals knew it was illegal before it started

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

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...

Barangaroo is rubbish and now its wretched offspring are spawning across Sydney

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...

Lessons from the Bernard Collaery case

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...

Independents versus a broken system

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...

Stage 3 Tax Cuts are a Terrible Idea

In the past 12 months, low-income earners have seen their real wages fall faster than ever before, their mortgage interest rates rise faster than ever before and, here’s the real kicker – their average tax rates actually increase. To be clear, someone working on the minimum wage has seen the...