ALP

April 2013

The Morgan Poll - Coalition Lead Cut

By Roy Morgan Research

L-NP 54.5% (down 1%) lead down for third consecutive week over ALP 45.5% (up 1%) Last weekend’s multi-mode Morgan Poll shows support for the L-NP down to 54.5% (down 1% since April 11-14, 2013) cf. ALP 45.5% (up 1%) on a two-party preferred basis. The L-NP primary vote is 44% (down 3.5%) still clearly ahead of the ALP 32.5% (up 0.5%). Among the minor parties Greens support is 10.5

March 2013

The Western Front

By Mungo MacCallum

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

February 2013

The Forgotten People of the West

By Rhys Muldoon

If you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there. -- Old West Proverb So, our Prime Minister is going to spend a few days in Rooty Hill. Has it come to this? The Rooty Hill RSL has, for years, been lobbying to get its own postcode. I suggest 90210. As in Beverly Hills. As in the words of Dylan (Luke Perry): "May the bridges I burn light the way." The ALP has cre

Forty years since ‘It’s Time’

Messages for Gough

By Michael Gurr

The moment comes well into the night. Jonathan Biggins is at the lectern. The satirist isn’t joking as he holds up a walking stick and tells us that it has been found in the Ladies’. Would anyone like to claim it? The occasion is the 40th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s “It’s Time” speech, delivered here in Sydney’s Blacktown Civic Centre on 13

Bill Shorten

Watch This Face

By John van Tiggelen

Shorten’s forebears were union through and through. His late father, Bill senior, was the grandson of union secretaries back in Britain – one with the boilermakers, the other the shipwrights. He was a sailor from Tyneside when he met Shorten’s mother, An

Kevin Rudd

A Coup By Any Other Name

By Rhys Muldoon

They’re putting you through the fire,” I remarked to the prime minister on the first day of winter, 2010. “Is my arse alight?” he replied. It turns out it was. A sitting prime minister was about to be thrown out of office. Not by the public, but by his

The Australian Greens Party

Divided We Fall

By Sally Neighbour

*Nine days after the Christmas drinks in Canberra, a far more toxic atmosphere prevails as the NSW Greens assemble for their bi-monthly meeting of the State Delegates Council (SDC) at the Indigenous Yaama Dhiyaan centre in Darlington. It’s been a tortuous year for the

CanDo? Campbell Newman’s Bid for Queensland

By Nick Bryant

Crestfallen conservatives would have drawn little consolation from the potentially morale-boosting fact that Brisbane City Council is the biggest local government fiefdom in the country, nor from the 617,000 registered voters who make up Australia’s largest

November 2011

Does the Australian Parliamentary Left have a Future?

By Robert Manne

The opinion poll results over the past eight months are as bad for an Australian government as any I can recall. As measured by Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote has been hovering around 30%. Between early July and late October it was consistently in the mid-to-high 20s.

NSW Labor

Comment

By Mark Aarons

Since December, the Keneally government’s political ineptitude has been underscored by its incompetent handling of the unpopular privatisation of NSW’s electricity assets. The day the deal was signed, eight Labor-appointed directors of state-owned electric

Renewable Energy

Comment

By Guy Pearse

Every year the sunburnt country receives enough solar energy from above to meet its current annual energy consumption for 10,000 years. From below, there’s enough geothermal energy for 2.6 million years. An endless and impatient queue of ‘roaring 40s’ we

Kristina Keneally

A Matter of Faith

By Jana Wendt

The office of the premier in the state of despair is occupied by Kristina Kerscher Keneally of Ohio. More improbable than the fact that an American-born woman should become NSW premier is that, from the moment she moved in, the “beyond sullen” citizens liked her. Th

The ALP

No Exit

By Mark Latham

The lingering mood in the federal Labor caucus must be one of puzzlement. In terms of political brevity, direct comparisons with the Rudd government are those of James Scullin (1929–31) and Gough Whitlam (1972–75). But these experiences offer little instruction for understanding recent events. The Scullin government dissolved under the weight of the Grea

GetUp!

Exclamation Politics

By Kathy Marks

Midway through the evening, a short video is projected onto the living-room wall, featuring clips from GetUp!’s election advertisements and plaudits from television personalities such as David Koch (“exactly what we need to keep the so-and-sos honest”). There is a great deal of whooping and cheering, then the organisation’s national director, 24-year-old Simon Sheikh, gets up to speak. “

'Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania's Forests' by Anna Krien

By John Birmingham

Tasmania is another country, sometimes another world. To move beyond the edge of settlement, which largely peters out a short drive from the fairytale towns of Hobart and Launceston, is to pass into an antipodean Middle Earth.As quickly becomes clear in Into t

The Hollowmen

By Mark Aarons

Almost a quarter of a century separates the coup against Hawke from that of ‘Richo’s’ successor, NSW Right faction leader Mark Arbib. But the circumstances and substance of these two political dramas were very different, although Richo did play a small r

Julia Gillard

Comment

By Julia Baird

When Julia Gillard was sworn in as Australia’s first female prime minister, the greatest plaudits and most excited commentary came from those who leapt upon her difference. She wasn’t just a woman, which, frankly, would have been enough: she was a left-leaning woman

Fire Walk with Me

By Paul Barry

The fictional version would have been far more fun: a factory burnt down to claim the insurance, politicians and businessmen cashing in on the scam, a suicidal stockbroker spilling Swiss bank secrets, and a beautiful girl thrown to her death to prevent her from talking. The final act would have seen the villains arrested as a top investigative reporter, played by Russell Crowe, stepped up to colle