Elections

Anthony Albanese for Labor Leader

Anthony Albanese for Labor Leader

I watched the first of three televised “debates” between Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten the other night. They will meet again in Melbourne tomorrow night and appear together on Q&A on Monday night. One of the interesting things about this […]

Mr Abbott and the Culture Wars II: Climate Change and civil society

Mr Abbott and the Culture Wars II: Climate Change and civil society

One argument I made in my earlier post about Mr Abbott’s relaunch of the Culture Wars is that he won’t have noticed that civil society is stronger than it was in the Howard years. It’s not just “clicktivism” – there […]

Not the Shipping News: There was no landslide

Not the Shipping News: There was no landslide

Now that the election counting for the House of Representatives is done and dusted (with Clive Palmer’s 36 vote victory in Fairfax being the last outstanding datum of import; though see the interesting Senate races still undeclared), there’s been a […]

Who passed the Lindsay Test? On Murdoch’s declining empire

Who passed the Lindsay Test? On Murdoch’s declining empire

I probably don’t need to link to any of the multifarious commentators who found the blatant partisanship of the Murdoch tabloids in the campaign offensive and anti-democratic. Generally, I’m eschewing purchasing News Limited titles, but I did take a look […]

Guest post by Miriam Lyons: Pushing Our Luck? I

MB writes: I’ve asked a number of the contributors to our discussion at Avid Reader around the CPD’s Pushing Our Luck to write up some of the themes and thoughts from the night. Second cab off the rank is Miriam Lyons. I’ve extracted the first section […]

The Cathy McGowan Indi model: ripe for harvest?

The Cathy McGowan Indi model

Sophie Mirabella has conceded defeat to Cathy McGowan in the Victorian seat of Indi. At last night’s Centre for Policy Development book launch at Avid Reader in Brisbane (see here), Miriam Lyons remarked that other rural and regional communities, and […]

Electoral systems and gender equity redux

Today’s Age reports that, according to research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union: Women’s representation in parliaments is most likely to increase where there is some sort of system of quotas, an analysis of international elections held last year shows. Whatever the […]