By Mungo MacCallum on the 20th of May 2013
Another first for the ever-unpredictable Tony Abbott. There is, he says, much in the budget that he finds objectionable – in fact, he doesn’t like it much at all. But he’s not going to oppose it – indeed, he’s not even going to try to amend it. Instead, he’s just going to wave it through because there is some undefined budget emergency – one visible only...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 13th of May 2013
For a couple of days there it looked as though Peter Slipper had his sights set on an unlikely quadrella. Had his application to join Clive Palmer’s still-putative United Australia party stuck, it would have meant that he had sat in the House of Representatives as a member of three separate parties, and also as an independent.
Unfortunately he was denied this feat, reportedly because...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 6th of May 2013
As if this election wasn’t mad enough already, both sides have decided to break the cardinal rule of Australian poll politics: No New Taxes.
In fact, not only have both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott declined to make this core promise: each is going into the final months with at least one new tax proudly displayed on the party’s campaign banner.
Of course, they’re not actually...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 30th of April 2013
Local government is in trouble – well, local government is always in trouble, but this time it’s not over charges of corruption or embezzlement; our third tier of government is actually going broke.
A report to the New South Wales Government admits this, but instead of blaming the states for duck-shoving their own responsibilities for things like roads, bridges and other...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 22nd of April 2013
There is not much to look forward to in the next election, still a full 20 weeks away – how will we survive?
But there will be one unique feature about it which may provide some relief. Instead of bidding for our votes with improbable and unrealisable promises of largesse, both major parties will be vying for the position of most responsible economic manager, which will mean donning...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 15th of April 2013
So Julia Gillard has unveiled yet another grand plan, and this time on her chosen ground of education. And obviously the vast increases in spending on schools and students, and particularly the most disadvantaged, should be a vote winner. But as usual, the communication has been flawed, and in the process she has picked two new fights: one with the premiers and one with the universities.
The...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 8th of April 2013
Julia Gillard’s visit to China seems to have gone smoothly enough and her top-level talks at the forum at Boao are even producing concrete results.
The ability to convert Australian dollars directly to Chinese Yuan will be a useful short cut for both importers and exporters, while some of the uncertainties over investment policy are also being laid to rest. And most importantly it is all...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 2nd of April 2013
The cynics who believed that the pseudo spill was a conspiracy between Julia Gillard and Simon Crean to flush out and destroy Kevin Rudd should now think again: Crean was, as always, absolutely straight. His only concern was the welfare of the Labor Party, and his now open criticism of the Gillard government’s handling of superannuation proves it.
It says something about the despair into...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 25th of March 2013
Let me start this piece on a personal note. The day after the tragic farce of the leadership spill, Julia Gillard paid a long-scheduled visit to my home electorate of Richmond in northern New South Wales, so I tagged along.
Richmond is held by Justine Elliott, a Rudd supporter: this gave the local media the opportunity to ask some rather silly questions about whether the region would suffer as a...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 18th of March 2013
As if they didn’t have enough to fear and loathe already, the Liberal Party Tories and their media cheer squad have found a new hate object: the unassuming member for Bendigo, Steve Gibbons. Gibbons’s most recent crime is that last week, when demonstrators from the public gallery called the Prime Minister a bitch and a liar, he tweeted: “Looks like Abbott has contracted out his nasty side to the...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 12th of March 2013
Another week, another disaster for Labor. The whacking in the west was not unexpected – indeed, it was not even as bad as had been feared. At one stage the prediction was for the loss of 12 seats; it now looks a though this will be limited to nine at worst. And with the swing against Labor confined to around 2.5 percent, all the party’s three Western Australian federal members (two of whom are...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 5th of March 2013
When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not, well, you’re Julia Gillard. The premature announcement of the Prime Minister’s expedition into Sydney’s western suburbs was obviously a mistake; it gave the media far too much time to pontificate on the idea that she was just slumming it, engaging in a long pre-election stunt, a belated desperate move to head off Kevin Rudd; and of course there was...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 25th of February 2013
An old Australian saying goes: When do you put in the boot? When somebody’s down. Which no doubt explains the all-Australian attack on our hapless prime minister over issues which should be Labor’s strengths: health and education. Victoria’s Ted Baillieu and Queensland’s Campbell Newman in particular have decided that it’s a good time to distract voter attention from their own shortcomings with a...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 18th of February 2013
With the election contest between the major parties apparently a foregone conclusion, perhaps it’s time for a bit of light relief with a look at the bit players. And no, we’re not referring to the Greens, who seem to have matured into the political equivalent of middle-aged respectability, and pretty dull they have become. Fortunately, they have been replaced at the fringes by a new crop of wild-...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 11th of February 2013
There’s one thing about Tony Abbott’s Liberals: you can always rely on them to provide a healthy dose of nostalgia.When I joined the Australian back in the early days of 1965, one of the first stories I did was about a committee of Sydney businessmen formed to develop the north. This was before Australia sent troops to the Vietnam war, but even then there was a fear that if we didn’t do something...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 5th of February 2013
When Julia Gillard gave seven and a half months’ notice for the 2013 election, the breathless media branded her action as unprecedented, which it was, and as extraordinary, which it certainly wasn’t. After all, what she did was effectively declare the present government to be on a fixed term, with polling day to be on a definite and predictable date – no ambushes, no surprises. This is precisely...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 22nd of January 2013
So Greens leader Christine Milne is unimpressed with Julia Gillard’s bargaining skills.“The Prime Minister is always cited as a great negotiator but I have pointed out that it’s not about whether you get an agreement, it’s about whether the agreement you get actually delivers,” Senator Milne chided recently.She was referring to the Mineral Resources Rent Tax, and she obviously has a point; the...
By Mungo MacCallum on the 15th of January 2013
Thank the powers that be that we have the media to set decent standards. For weeks the pundits of the press have been inveighing against Nicola Roxon’s attempts to set uniform, comprehensive and comprehensible guidelines about what constitutes offensive material, but they certainly know it when they see it, and its name is Jonathan Moylan. Last week Moylan pulled off a prank: he faked a...
