Mungo MacCallum (Dec’d)

Murphy may have been flawed, but he was a flawed colossus, a Labor hero. Whatever his peccadillos, history has already redeemed him.   (more…)

Turnbull has had a relatively quiet week in the parliamentary break. But whether he continues to appease the right in the Coalition, or reverts to the old Malcolm, he has a more basic problem – people have stopped listening to him. (more…)

Not only has the debt and deficit emergency ballooned and productivity stalled, but the mantra of Jobs and Growth, which Turnbull still insists is not a slogan but an outcome, has signally failed to deliver.   (more…)

From bollocks one week to bollards the next. Malcolm Turnbull’s response to everything that went wrong with the last session of parliament was to ramp up the terrorist threat to install aesthetically pleasing road blocks to deter truck driving terrorist and then disappear into the outback.    (more…)

The good news for Malcolm Turnbull is that his government is not in immediate danger of falling – at least, not any more than usual.   (more…)

It is impossible to imagine Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating or even John Gorton being so cowed by the vengeful has-beens and disgruntled bigots who are now calling the shots in what is laughingly described as the government.  (more…)

The recalcitrants will call it a backdown and it will certainly be a change: but, as John Maynard Keynes memorably said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” But then, for much of his life Keynes was gay. Abetz can and will ignore that kind of dangerous advice.  (more…)

It is time, perhaps past time, to take Bill Shorten seriously. (more…)

We bar dual citizenship from the parliament, but the head of it – the Queen of England one who presides over ceremonial openings when she happens to be in the country, is not only a dual but a multiple citizen herself.   (more…)

The Greeks said it succinctly: the system of tyranny is only as good as the worst man who can become a tyrant. Step forward, Peter Craig Dutton, Master of the Universe.  (more…)

The new Liberal Party Federal President Nick Greiner is aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s doing it the hard way.   (more…)

Just about the last thing Malcolm Turnbull did before leaving Australia last week was to inveigh against his colleagues navel gazing. (more…)

The most remarkable thing our Prime Minister said last week was not his claim that the party founded by Sir Robert Menzies was not Conservative but Liberal – even liberal, a touch progressive.

This has furrowed brows and raised gorges, and not only from the right wing rump and their media claque. But it was at least a matter of debate, and so was duly debated.   (more…)

Malcolm Turnbull was off in Hamburg, schmoozing his fellow leaders in the hope of getting something – anything – done about North Korea, terrorism, trade, Donald Trump – something – anything. (more…)

We can at least talk about it without pretending it isn’t really there.   (more…)

In all, [Tony Abbott’s] program is for a regime which can best charitably be described as a socialist theocracy, somewhat along the lines of Abbott’s mentor, Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria – although the Abbott version would be considerably more totalitarian.   (more…)

Lee Rhiannon is undoubtedly the disrupter, but in a sense the public fracturing of the Greens is largely the fault of her leader, Richard di Natale.   (more…)

Turnbull can chalk up a rare and vitally important win before the winter recess closes in. It came just in time for the longest night of the year; our Prime Minister, if not all his colleagues, will hope that this is a sign that increasing hours of daylight, if not actual sunshine, will follow.  (more…)

You might not have known it, but Australia is in deadly peril. National security is endangered on all fronts, the most obvious indicator the imminent arrival of fleets of boats poised to descend on our sacred shores, ready to wreak havoc and despair among the populace. Terrorism is just the start of it; who can tell what horrors to which the lucky country will be subjugated.   (more…)

Chief Scientists Alan Finkel’s report on energy is not yet dead, buried and cremated, but Abbott and his gang of avid colliers have already left it struggling on life support.  (more…)

The conservatives of the Anglosphere still don’t get it: their elitist prescriptions for both the economy and the society that houses it are simply no longer acceptable. The mob are ready to reject what has been dubbed the political class and are scrabbling for solutions that can embrace more prosperity, and, even more crucially, more equality. There is no sign either May or Turnbull have either the skill or the desire to provide them.   (more…)

Our Prime Minister is obviously not as graceful and elegant as Marceau, nor, unfortunately, as silent: he has spent the last week of parliament repeating the same diatribe in ever-increasing volume in the hope that those few voters who watch question time on television will hear him even when they have reached for the mute button.   (more…)