Featured Newspaper Columns
Natalie Locke: Class struggle
When you’re invited to a school reunion, there are basically three ways that you instinctively respond.
Oakes: Abbott's silence speaks volumes
A PICTURE is worth a thousand words. Politicians forget that at their peril.
Capolingua: Roll back spin and roll out beds
WE pay tax. The Government we elect has a responsibility to use that money to provide the country with many essential services.
van Onselen: Politicians you can trust
MODERN politics is so tightly controlled by spin doctors that it is sometimes hard to break through the false facades to see what our pollies really think.
Editorial: Lessons in democracy
THIS week we have been witness to two extremes of political systems at work.
McLeod's fists make mockery of legal action
![liam bartlett](http://web.archive.org./web/20110218103752im_/http://resources1.news.com.au/images/2010/04/23/1225857/498801-liam-bartlett.jpg)
WHEN the law stops being an issue of right and wrong and becomes a tug of war over how deep your pockets are, we should all be worried.
Percy: Popularity contest
If the public want something, our politicians have a duty to deliver it, don’t they?
Editorial: Sympathy rests with Butcher in civil case
MATTHEW Butcher has had less than a fortnight to enjoy living with the comfort he wouldn't have to worry about the case that has dominated his existence for the past three years.
Carmody: Shame of the ugly barracker
I SAT next to an ugly parent the other day and realised in an instant why they are so named.
Penberthy: Slush funds curse
SOMETIMES it is difficult to work out what is going on inside people's brains.
Oakes: Trouble bubbles beneath Abbott
ON the surface, all is hunky-dory in the federal Liberal Party. Tony Abbott calls the shots. Unity is the watchword.
Penberthy: Mandela met evil in force
ASIDE from the vuvuzelas, the one constant at last year's FIFA World Cup was the public clamour for any news on the health of Nelson Mandela and the role he would be able to play in hosting the tournament.
Maiden: Floods ignite the fire
COMBAT Julia is back. And she is prepared to get some "filth and muck" on herself to sell her flood tax.
Editorial: Flood of concern over levy
IT took only a day before Prime Minister Julia Gillard lost her composure in relation to Labor's controversial new flood levy.
Carmody: Hot chick cooks her own goose
JULIA Gillard must be wishing she could go back in time say, about one year.
van Onselen: Debt helps to grow nation
BARELY a day goes by that you don't hear the Opposition whingeing about the amount of debt the Government is building up.
Oakes: PM shows her claws
JULIA Gillard has come out fighting. "Don't patronise me!" she told a talkback jock this week. She's taking no nonsense.
My first Australia Day
![PerthNow reporter Corey Stephenson](http://web.archive.org./web/20110218103752im_/http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2011/01/25/1225994/492347-perthnow-reporter-corey-stephenson.jpg)
So let me get this straight - Australians get a day off just to go out drinking with their mates, have a barbie and enjoy some fireworks?
Tom Percy: Shorter fuses
As kids we were told that patience was a virtue. Well, it used to be, but it’s not much in vogue these days, and it’s in pretty short supply.