This Month
Albanese cruises as budget discipline barely rates with voters
“Cuts” is a dirty word during an election campaign. But its increasing resonance underscores a scant regard for the need to address debt and deficit.
How Labor is running rings around the Coalition with base politics
Peter Dutton needs people around him to start getting their hands dirty as the government makes it all about him.
March
Labor’s environmental promise sleeps with the fishes
Labor went to the last election talking big on the environment, but political reality has got in the way.
Dark winter looms without a plan to get the budget in shape
Affordability used to matter once but not so much in the post-COVID era, and the nation seems to have lost its fear of debt and deficit.
As Dutton falters, Labor polishes discarded budget
The government is confident Peter Dutton has started to unravel as it prepares to hand down a budget it initially judged was not in its best interest.
Election date is now caught in the eye of the storm
Cyclone Alfred threatens to inject more uncertainty into a contest, the outcome of which is already impossible to predict.
February
Labor wants to define Dutton before he does it himself
Raising the share allegations is not to resolve them one way or another, but to throw mud on the cusp of an election in the hope people believe the worst.
Trumpet of Patriots a reminder donation laws target not just teals
Those vowing to dismantle the laws in the event of a hung parliament should be careful what they wish for because the billionaire might just change his business model.
Senate will be a problem for Dutton if he wins
Forget the hung parliament, a Coalition government’s biggest obstacle will be the in the upper house.
A growing weight of expectation is not what Dutton needs
A growing public sentiment that the Coalition is a shoo-in to form the next government is in need of a reality check.
January
Peter Dutton is not Donald Trump. He can’t afford to be
The opposition leader’s role in delivering marriage equality should be a reminder that he is not an unyielding arch-conservative, as a growing narrative by his detractors suggests.
Three-year terms keep us stuck in short-term thinking
As campaigning starts earlier each election, politics becomes overtly tactical, the public service enters zombie mode and business watches on frustrated as nothing gets done.
This year’s election gives miners a chance to flex their muscle
With plenty of marginal seats up for grabs, the road to power for both Labor and the Coalition could run through Western Australia, rather than western Sydney.
December 2024
Dutton not match fit after dodging the pack, or so Labor hopes
When the opposition leader has made a foray into policy detail, he’s found himself on the sticky paper.
Albanese looked like he was playing catch-up because he was
This week was not the first time the prime minister’s instincts have been called into question following an inability to get ahead of thorny issues.
Teals aren’t letting the Liberals whitewash them as Greens
Allegra Spender’s push to change the definition of small business complicates the Coalition’s attempts to pigeonhole the independents as lefties.
November 2024
Like Morrison, Albanese’s hoping for a summer of love
Given the confirmation this week by Treasurer Jim Chalmers of a bigger budget deficit this financial year, it would make sense to call a federal election for April 12.
Albanese weighed down abroad by parlous state of world
It hasn’t hurt for the prime minister to witness first hand the changing global forces, more so as countries preposition for Trump’s second coming.
Playing flick the ambassador is an old diplomatic game
If Albanese fails where Turnbull succeeded, and tariffs are imposed, it won’t just be Rudd who will be blamed, but the bloke who gave him the job.
Inflation kills incumbents. Not that Labor needed a reminder
Amid all the fluff, bile and nonsense of the US election campaign, the seminal question was ‘are you better off than you were four years ago?’, and the answer was an emphatic no.