ON Christmas Eve, leading political scientist and Harvard professor Samuel Huntington died, aged 81. In 1993, at the ripe age of 66, he wrote a seminal article, “The clash of civilisations?”, for Foreign Affairs, turning it into a book three years later.
RUDD’S delivery has not matched his rhetoric and it doesn’t look likely to match up any better in 2009.
LEARNING from your mistakes is as important in politics as it is in life.
OUTGUNNED and outflanked. That is what has happened to the federal Coalition in the all-important policy area of industrial relations. In the penultimate parliamentary sitting week of the year, Labor introduced its Fair Work Bill, the replacement legislation for Work Choices. The 575-page bill was debated in the House of Representatives before being passed last week without opposition from Coalition MPs.
THIS week the new Liberal Government in Western Australia honoured its election commitment and lifted the former Labor government’s ban on uranium mining.
WHEN the Coalition lost the federal election last November, 480 ministerial staff members suddenly found themselves out of work, as did a large number of electorate officers employed by Liberal marginal-seat backbenchers.
I AM at a loss to understand why it is that most Australians aren’t impressed by the party antics of question time. In the middle of the worst financial crisis in decades, federal parliament descended into a time-wasting debate this week about what constitutes plagiarism.
THE focus on the forthcoming West Australian election has almost exclusively been on the major parties and the agendas each is promoting.
WHEN it comes to being loose with the truth, Kevin Rudd has form.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/peter-van-onselen/page/168