Prime Ministers

Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard in Retirement

Love thy Leader

By George Megalogenis

A curious feature of our political debate is the way it compels former prime ministers to lose their dignity in the endless feedback loop of the legacy war. The Americans, despite their more openly hostile political culture, treat their ex-leaders with sufficient deference to absolve them of the need for after-the-fact combat. When a memoir is written by a Bush, a Clinton or a Carter, no othe

Trixie Gardner

Long in the Tooth

By Paola Totaro

The Baroness Gardner of Parkes, Conservative member of the British House of Lords, waves me through the Peers’ Lobby and with an informal “This way!” called over her shoulder, she presses onward and upward into the Gothic gold and stone splendour of Westminster Palace’s innards. Diminutive, perfectly coiffed, she walks briskly and without the creaky gait characteristic of those in the

Window Dressing: The Mirage of Political Reform

By Lindsay Tanner

Such sentiments are understandable but misguided. The rules that govern how our political system works matter, but the development of policies and legislation tends to be driven by more fundamental forces. When governmental process delivers decisions we don’t like, our natural response is to reach for the rule book. Just as supporters of winning teams tend to whinge a lot less about umpires than the supporters of losing teams, people

Lessons in Leadership and Paul Keating

The Book of Paul

By George Megalogenis

Comparisons between leaders can be unfair to the incumbent because the one with the job has yet to receive the clemency of political nostalgia. But there was something in the interviewer’s voice that betrayed what many of my colleagues who cover federal politics think at the moment: We miss Keating. Jones signed off by telling Keating he wished they had mo

Why One Year After the Election Voters Still Don’t Know Who Gillard Is

Prime Minister, Interrupted

By Annabel Crabb

In Australia, we engage with our political leaders in a way that is very particular to us, and to our democratic model. Compulsory voting obliges us to get involved directly every three years or so. So the kinds of inducements to pay attention that yo

The Gaza Strips

By Christos Tsiolkas

I’m ageing; I’m becoming the old fart I never wished to be. I am succumbing to nostalgia and its lethal evil twin, bitterness. I listen to the radio – or, recently, more often a 30-second grab of a song on iTunes – and I think that popular music just c

Archive This

By Christine Kenneally

“That’s red tape,” said Kate Cumming, a senior project officer at New South Wales State Records, pointing at a 20-centimetre high spool of thin white ribbon. Unravelled, it would run for half a kilometre. “That’s what we use to wrap records up.” The tape sat

Paul Kelly's "The March of Patriots"

The Insider

By Robert Manne

We have known for several years that Paul Kelly was preparing to publish the sequel to The End of Certainty. Last month it finally appeared. There can be no question that The March of Patriots is a brilliant, if deeply flawed, achievement and a work of first-r

Tradition, Truth & Tomorrow

By Galarrwuy Yunupingu

My land is that of the Gumatj clan nation, which is carefully defined, with boundaries and borders set out in the maps of our minds and, today, on djurra, or paper. We have our own laws, repeated in ceremonial song cycles and known to all members of our clan nation. Sun

Comment

By Judith Brett

Last October we were all fixed on the election due by the end of the year. John Howard didn't set the date till mid month, and then he went for the maximum six-week campaign. It was hard to think past 24 November, and hard to imagine what sort of prime ministe

Inside New Zealand’s social laboratory

Not All Black & White

By Craig Sherborne

If you think Australia and New Zealand are peas in a pod, you are mistaken.In social justice, New Zealand has, for most of its modern history, been advancing the lantern into the future's blank mist, where Australia has been hesitant to venture. In indigenous

Comment

By Mungo MacCallum

Comment

By Robert Manne

Comment

By Judith Brett

"There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." But tides also recede. The big question for observers early in this election year is: Has the tide finally turned?Still running John Howard's way are the economy and the resources boom, as well as the momentum of incumbency. But there are also powerful currents pulling the other way, deeper than the surface f

Stephen Frears’ 'The Queen'

A Story of Spin

By Adrian Martin

It's the type of bold mixture we have not seen on a big or small screen since Kennedy Miller's local epic The Dismissal: on the one hand, liberal use of archival news and documentary footage, a torrent of newspaper front pages and headlines; on the other, free

Disconnect in the Fourth Estate

Media Circus

By David Salter

Why we're still more English than American

British Rules

By Gideon Haigh

Bogin, Hopit

By Shane Maloney

In late May wild poppies are brilliant splashes of red on the hillsides of Crete, and fallen mulberries stain the roadsides of the villages. The first of the season’s tourists have already started to crowd the coastal resorts and toast themselves on the beaches. At a small park in Rethymnon, on an everyday Friday morning, a group of elderly Australian men with medals on their chests draw themsel