Morris Iemma | The Monthly

Troy Bramston’s 'Looking for the Light on the Hill'

New Labor Dreaming

By Maxine McKew

Coming from New South Wales, a state that has made an artform of decapitating leaders, Bramston doesn’t always follow the logic of his own material and is coy about a rudimentary question. Who owns and wields power in the Labor Party? Who makes the decisions? As Senator Faulkner would say, it ain’t the branch members. The machine bosses and union leaders, who operate a seigneurial system

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 electricity corporations resigned in protest; Treasurer Eric Roozendaal replaced them in the dead of night, contravening the spirit of state le

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. They took to her despite the fact that, on the face of it, her promotion after fewer than seven years in the parliament (including just three as minister) was in tune with

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 role in Rudd’s demise, advising Arbib that Rudd was “unelectable”. Arbib was secretary of the N

David Marr’s ‘The Henson Case’

Unsettled

By Sebastian Smee

Beattie’s Babylon

By John Birmingham

Just up from the corner of Vulture and Boundary streets, where the short commercial strip of indie cafés and bars gives way to a remnant cluster of slumping, unrenovated wooden houses and the occasional Whitlam-era unit block, the West End Coffee House looks

Some Velvet Mourning

By Bridget Griffen-Foley

Plenty of the latter, but little of the former sentiment has been expressed, publicly at least, in the weeks following Kerry Packer’s death. Australia’s richest man died during the quietest news period of the year. The tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004, had roused journal