The American Chief Justice, John Roberts, has complained that judges are being trashed, and has warned that the rule of law is being endangered. (more…)
Jack Waterford
-
Labor stops apologising for its social commitments
Some of the most memorable political speeches made in Australia have been made by politicians who are leaving office. (more…)
-
Dutton defeated in unexciting and uninspiring battlefield scrap
As a journalist, I have watched 21 federal elections and several more with a keen personal interest given that they closely affected my status, future or present, as a draft dodger. (more…)
-
Aussie cardinals in short supply at papal conclave
The election to take place in the Vatican from next week is probably a lot more consequential than the one now taking place in Australia, even if there is a good chance that white smoke will be coming from the chimneys at the Australian Electoral Office earlier than those from the Vatican Apartments. (more…)
-
Crossbench pressure will lift and improve Albo’s game
Now that the danger of a Dutton Government has receded, a good many left-of-centre people would rather that Labor had less than an outright victory. (more…)
-
Federal election: A different type of beauty contest
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is fighting this election as if it were what some of my sisters in journalism would call a dick-measuring competition. (more…)
-
We should walk away — quickly — from Trump’s America
Anthony Albanese must feel that he understands how John Curtin felt after the fall of Singapore. The idea that Winston Churchill “abandoned” Australia to its fate is virtually a dogmatic myth inside Labor, not only part of the cult of Curtin but of Paul Keating, whose version of what occurred has been often repeated. (more…)
-
Will things fall apart? Can the centre hold?
Community independents, including Teals, are expected to do well at the May election. Their capacity to widen the space in the middle ground of politics is a measure of both Labor and Coalition ineptitude. (more…)
-
We can’t unscramble the AUKUS and ANZUS eggs
Before this election is much older, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are going to have to determine where they stand on all the important issues. There’s a substantial chance that both are wrongly positioned and that each might have to face the other way, or perish politically. It’s not for an argument about which vista is best for Australia, alas. It’s for which is best for which leader, and which party. (more…)
-
ANZUS and NATO are kaput and Trump doesn’t care
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have proven too gutless, so far, to speak frankly to Australians about the implications of the imposition of new tariffs by the US, the first of many, to be imposed on Australia. They have expressed some ritual regrets and said it was a poor reward for their sycophantic grovelling over the years. They have not said that the coming election is the perfect time for blunt discussions of what it all means. (more…)
-
Are America’s values our values anymore?
No issue in the forthcoming election is as important as Australia’s international identity and the crisis in the Western alliance about its senior partner, the United States. The alliance is fragmenting and, it appears, President Trump is daring Europe to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression independently. He wants NATO members to double their defence spending so they are no longer freeloading from America’s military spending. Other allies, including Australia, should do so too. At just the same time, he is beginning to wage economic war against most of Europe, Canada, and Australia,by swingeing tariffs, as a punishment, he claims, for stealing American jobs. (more…)
-
The public is slow to believe the best of politicians
Peter Dutton deserves a little sympathy as he indignantly denies any conflict of interest or impropriety over his purchases of banking shares and real estate. Many people always believe the worst of politicians, particularly if there is any suggestion of abuse of position, making money on the side, or personal enrichment. Dutton has pointed to his high ethical standards, to the fact that he has always disclosed changes in his holdings, and to the improbability of his having any advance or inside knowledge of the Rudd Government’s plans about guaranteeing banking savings at a time when he was in opposition. For some, but not all of these reasons, I believe him. But he has been such a nasty accuser over the years that I wouldn’t be surprised if some didn’t. (more…)
-
Silence is golden for a smart independent
Any Teal or independent standing for the House of Representatives at the election would be well advised to keep schtum about their cards in the upcoming poker game. All will depend on the numbers and negotiations with the major parties and each other following the election. Indeed, any one of them who cannot resist the temptation “to come clean with the electorate” on their intentions may be dealing themselves out of any bargaining process. (more…)
-
Teals should hammer unfinished integrity agenda
The Commonwealth minister in charge of electoral matters, Senator Don Farrell is a traditionalist. It was entirely in line with parliamentary traditions that recent “reforms” to electoral laws have been on the nose. Like parliamentarians’ pay rises being smuggled through in bipartisan mutual esteem at the end of late night sessions, changes to the electoral rules always reinforce the impression of impropriety and irregularity in the divvying up of taxpayer loot by Labor and Coalition machine men. Loopholes to get around the rules, particularly about donations. Small players, especially independents, are not allowed to be “in on the joke”. (more…)
-
Yes, let’s have an inquiry into the smelly Dural caravan affair
The Dural caravan affair stinks to high heaven. If I were Anthony Albanese, I would bow, with every appearance of reluctance, to Peter Dutton’s demands for an inquiry. Far from shrouding this inquiry with a cloud of secrecy of the sort so beloved by the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and his department, I would opt for an open inquiry of the NSW ICAC type, if one that permitted the identity of security agents to be suppressed. (more…)
-
Who’s tough enough not to pull the AUKUS trigger?
A time may come when someone must write the history of Labor’s 2025 historic electoral triumph over the Coalition, and the “rope a dope” strategies and tactics which took Opposition leader Peter Dutton in, then spat him out. If it all comes to pass, students of Labor history will note that it was two key figures of the left, Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese himself, who rode AUKUS to victory in the successive AUKUS Cups. (more…)
-
Will public servants become agents of the party rather than the state?
One of the strong points Anthony Albanese made before the last election was that Scott Morrison had virtually abandoned honest government, good government, accountable government and transparent government.
-
Laurel-less Biden limps for the exit. Will Albanese be next?
Joe Biden’s inaction and diffidence has made him a party to Israel’s atrocities. (more…)
-
A clear and present danger to the peace of the world
Donald Trump is still to be sworn in for his second term, but is already confirming that he remains a menace to world peace, security and stability.
-
Steering without a compass or a map
In 1971, Time magazine decided that it might do a friendly cover story on newly installed Liberal prime minister, Billy McMahon, and asked for co-operation from his media office. The office asked that questions be submitted in writing. This was not from mistrust of Time – indeed the office was deeply conscious of what Jane Austen would call the magazine’s condescension in so honouring an Asian backwater. It was from mistrust of Billy, who was capable of almost any media stuff-up.
(more…) -
Whipping up Aboriginal enthusiasm
Here’s a sad prediction for 2025. By the end of next year, more states and territories will have dropped the age of criminal responsibility to 10, and adopted punitive laws based on slogans such as Queensland’s “you do the crime, you do the time” for juvenile as well as adult offenders. The greatest proportion will be Indigenous, of course. (more…)
-
Few voters think they have benefitted much from Labor in government
It goes almost without saying that much of the ordinary economic commentary ahead of the election, whether in the Murdoch media, the Fairfax media and the ABC, as well as among the senior bureaucracy and the business community (including Reserve Bank governors), will proceed on the assumption that any money spent on subsidies, tax breaks and incentives to business will be thoroughly justified as investments in Australian growth and development. Likewise with subsidies to coal, gas and the hydrocarbon industry.
(more…) -
To defeat Dutton, Labor needs inspiration and leadership from its ‘mortal enemy’ – the Greens
Dutton’s nuclear plans provide an opportunity for a campaign Labor could win. But it won’t be won without girding for war. The need for some political alliance is greater given that neither Albanese nor his senior ministers, and the party organisation, have shown themselves up to serious political struggle on climate change. (more…)
-
Albo’s pre-emptive kowtow to an imagined Westminster
The Labor Party would like it to be understood that they would prefer that voters give their second preference to the Liberal Party or the National Party, ahead of any Greens, Independents or members of loose groupings such as the Teals. Elders of the party believe that the two-party system – which they consider to be fundamental to the Australian Westminster system – is otherwise in great danger and could, down the track collapse. Please, especially, do not vote Green. (more…)
-
Distorting elections: Australia’s professional politicians feather their own nests
The ALP is full of legends – of which many old party folk are defiantly proud – of political skullduggery. There have been stuffed ballot boxes, and mysteriously disappearing ones, and forged minutes of branch meetings.
(more…) -
Labor, party of the comfortably housed, needs the Greens
Labor needs the Greens. It seems to calculate that the Greens have no choice about preferencing them. That might once have seemed logical, but it is by no means certain when Labor’s defence policies are anathema to many Greens, when Labor policies on refugees and immigration are indistinguishable from the coalition’s, and when their climate change and environment policies are deliberately constructed to be only a smidgeon more engaged than the opposition’s.
(more…) -
Like Kamala, Albanese doesn’t seem to get it
This was a mood election; It was not a referendum about Kamala Harris. Nor was it a referendum of Donald Trump’s character. (more…)
-
Albanese’s limp self-defence aggravated the damage of Qantas allegations
And the National Anti-Corruption Commission loses its appeal. (more…)
-
Keeping the public in the dark: Is it time to scrap the NACC and start again?
The National Anti-Corruption Commission has recently issued its first substantial, if highly redacted report clearing a former Department of Home Affairs officer of any suspicion of corruption over a million dollars or more of payments from her son, himself a former home affairs officer who had obtained, without an open tender a contract to provide garrison services on Manus Island worth about $600 million. Nothing sus, says the NACC. The payments, the NACC has found, were to help her, and her boyfriend, another senior Home Affairs officer, with the purchase of a small flat and later a big one. (more…)