Mungo MacCallum (Dec’d)

We still don’t know just who or what the new Prime Minister is, but he is determined to tell us whether we like it or not. Our manic leader is seldom lost for words and this is just as well as he appears chronically short of ideas. (more…)

Unlike Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull did not hang around in parliament, which must be a major relief for Scott Morrison – one baleful ex-prime minister glowering from the backbench is more than enough. (more…)

When the world falls apart, when all those carefully plans collapse in smouldering ruins, when the present seems desolate and the future seems hopeless, there is only one recourse: invoke the ghost of Robert Menzies. (more…)

Powerful and sensitive weapons need to be handled with extreme care if they are not to harm the user as well as the intended victim. Ministerial intervention is a powerful and sensitive weapon. (more…)

So this is what Scott Morrison calls his new generation of leadership.

It consists mainly of retreads from the previous ministry, with the absence of one of the very few the voters actually liked – Julie Bishop – and the resurrection of some we had thought we were well rid of.

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Our new, or at least our current, Prime Minister, has a plan to solve the Tony Abbott problem – make him an envoy to his indigenous Australia.

Of course he would prefer to make the man an envoy to outer space, if not beyond; but politics remains the art of the possible. So the idea is to try and get him as far out of sight as is practicable, and hope that he shuts up in the process.

(more…)

Our new, or at least our current, Prime Minister, has a plan to solve the Tony Abbott problem – make him an envoy to his indigenous Australia.

Of course he would prefer to make the man an envoy to outer space, if not beyond; but politics remains the art of the possible. So the idea is to try and get him as far out of sight as is practicable, and hope that he shuts up in the process.

(more…)

A bandaid has been administered to the schism between moderates and rightists but the war will go on unabated.   (more…)

In the end, a vestige of sanity prevailed.

The Liberal lemmings baulked on the brink and decided the final step into the chasm of a Peter Dutton prime ministership was just too crazy, and drew back. At least a bare majority of them did; they were happy to lurch well to the right, but not to launch themselves into the abyss.   (more…)

Neg can be an abbreviation of either negative or negligible, both terms the vociferous critics from left and right have used to denigrate Malcolm Turnbull’s masterwork in progress. (more…)

If Peter Dutton was to be arraigned before an international tribunal for serial abuse of human rights I would cheer. If the charges were upgraded to crimes against humanity I would regard it as a fair cop. But if the court in its wisdom imposed a death sentence I would protest in the streets. My opposition to capital punishment is absolute and unequivocal.   (more…)

Well, what was all that about?  After nearly three months of unremitting angst, barely restrained hysteria and several shitloads of money, we are precisely back to where we started.   (more…)

It would not be fair to blame Greg Hywood alone for the destruction of the Fairfax brand. The rot set in a long time ago, arguably some 30 years before when young Warwick Fairfax decided on his own disastrous takeover bid for the company.  (more…)

At last the fateful day is looming – the interminable campaign for the five by elections no-one wanted (except, of course, the media) is finally coming to a climax. (more…)

It could have been worse. Donald Trump did not try and grab Queen Elizabeth by the pussy – at least as far as we know. But no doubt his critics would say that was only because he was so preoccupied with kissing Vladimir Putin’s arse.   (more…)

Our older readers – the really old ones – may remember The Three Stooges, Larry, Curly and Moe. (more…)

Scott Morrison has inched forward to another interminable episode of tweaking the tax. This time it’s the scales of the returns the states get from the commonwealth’s GST, but, as always, do not hold your breath.   (more…)

I have never personally met Sarah Hanson-Young, and I know absolutely nothing about her sex life.  And the same applies to David Leyonhjelm, in spades. But I do have some acquaintances with Libertarians, and have not always liked what I have seen.   (more…)

Bill Shorten’s decision last week was a real shock – but it was the second decision, not the first, that was the surprising one. (more…)

For even the most masochistic of political tragics, parliamentary question time can be wearing.  A constant screaming match of ever more virulent abuse and insult, it sounds (and sometimes looks) less like a part of the democratic legislative process and more like the final of the big swinging dicks competition, open to all members regardless of allegiance or even gender.   (more…)

John Howard announced that he was running on incentivation – a word that even his colleagues could not comprehend; they thought they were hearing things. (more…)

The Liberals and their allies have always favoured the private over the public, whether in hospitals, health, schools – and broadcasting. The Liberal Council decision to privatise the ABC was neither new nor surprising. It was just more honest than the (private) musings of their parliamentary peers, most of whom would do it like a shot if they thought they could get away with it.   (more…)

Malcolm Turnbull has always regarded John Howard as some sort of political mentor.  But Howard refused to apologise to the stolen generation (more…)

It was, declared The Australian’s resident theologian Greg Sheridan, a pivotal moment in modern Australian history.

Well, modern Australian history begins with white settlement. So was Pope Greg referring to the arrival of the first fleet, perhaps? The end of transportation? The celebration of federation? The landing at Gallipoli? The victory in the Coral Sea?

No, none of the above – something far more important: the ANU’s rejection of the proposed Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. According to Sheridan, the university’s decision means that Western Civilisation itself is now imperilled.   (more…)

Like the leaves of a diseased and dying tree, the One Nation senators continue to fall.  (more…)

We have had enough of Barnaby, and it is obvious that his own colleagues have too. The sooner he retires to his fractured love nest the better.   (more…)