The 2025 contest is coming across as a trifling popularity contest, akin to a state politics campaign with squabbles over competing giveaways, when the issues at stake are historic, consequential and grave.
Voters face a serious choice in perilous times – yet political debate has never been so frivolous.
Across the next five weeks voters will be looking for answers but they are unlikely to get them without the right questions. So, I thought it might be worth listing some crucial queries for the government.
Forget the sexy promises; competence in delivering essential outcomes is what counts.
An adversary that wanted us to be weaker would thrill at the harm we do to ourselves.
If you had to offer one word for Anthony Albanese, it would be weak. Weak on confronting anti-Semitism, weak on standing up to China and weak on taking responsibility for anything. He has become the nation’s spectator in chief – and Peter Dutton needs to take advantage with controlled aggression.
The dystopian picture of an Albanese second act with major roles for Greens and teals may be just the scare campaign the Coalition needs. Yet we have to steel ourselves for the prospect that it could become our lived reality.
Paul Keating rightly called the upper house ‘unrepresentative swill’ and it has become only increasingly unrepresentative as more independents and minor parties wallow in the slops. Now we risk turning the house of government into the same godawful mess.
We shut our borders to China very quickly to help protect us from Covid-19. The virus of Islamist extremism is much more dangerous for our society.
You’d have to toss a coin to decide which has been the most crass and revelatory episode of the week: Bianca Censori at the Grammys or this shabby affair in Federal Court.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/chris-kenny/page/2