Marius Benson has been a journalist since the dismissal days of the Whitlam government in 1975, and has interviewed every Australian prime minister since John Gorton.
He was the ABC's correspondent in South Africa in the mid-1990s, reporting on the country's first democratic vote and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. He won a Walkley award for his work in Papua New Guinea and spent four years freelancing in Berlin before returning to Australia in 2003 to take up his current position covering federal politics for ABC NewsRadio.
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Two bullets in Sarajevo ended years of peace and launched the 20th century on a path that would make it the bloodiest in human history.
But the Great War was by no means inevitable and the search for a culprit is the wrong one. Starting the war was a tragedy, not a crime.
As the 100-year anniversary of WWI nears it is time to reflect on what lessons can be learnt from the battles of the past.
Topics: world-war-1, history, death, world-politics
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At any one time when you're watching cricket or tennis, you can see up to a dozen corporate logos, on the walls, the ground, the stands.
The players themselves have ads on their chests, heads, arms and feet. Football is worse, with jerseys, particularly in rugby league, now rendered unrecognisable by the blizzard of ads which has hit them.
It doesn't have to be like that. Even in an age when "money doesn't talk, it swears", we don't have to swept away in a tsunami of ads.
Topics: sport, advertising, australian-open
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ACCC chairman Rod Sims extolls the virtues of privatisation, speaking with News Radio's Marius Benson.
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Everyone agrees that Nelson Mandela had greatness, and watching him firsthand you could see the many aspects to that greatness.
His goodness was mixed with a steely determination and shrewd political instincts. Through decades of jail, he continued to be the leader for black South Africa.
It was his great achievement that there was no war. Without his leadership there could have been a very different result as the irresistible force of black South Africa met the immoveable object of the apartheid regime.
Topics: world-politics
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In the past couple of weeks the world has seen what looks like a definite change in Iran's position on its nuclear program, with Teheran offering a range of concessions in return for an easing of Western sanctions.
But Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said President Obama was wrong to declare Iran's move to be an important first step.
As the story was breaking I interviewed Mark Regev, Prime Minister Netanyahu's long-serving spokesman. I put to him what seems an obvious question, but one that is almost never asked of Israel.
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, foreign-affairs, international-law
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Marius Benson interviews Minister for Small Business Bruce Billson about the new code of conduct governing the commercial relationship between supermarkets and their suppliers.
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Through the swirling mists of the long, long election campaign the hazy outline of an Abbott government began to take shape this week.
Tony Abbott's positions on parental leave and industrial relations are revealing. He is not for small government, he is happy to wade into the market and spend and he is not going to be setting the pace on workplace reform.
And both issues show how serious Abbott is about winning elections.
Topics: federal-elections, government-and-politics, elections, federal-government, abbott-tony
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Labor's backbench has for the past two weeks looked like a ministry in exile, and the frontbench looks like a shadow ministry in waiting.
Those leading figures who aren't writing accounts of how they should govern next time around are busy with budget preparations. But there is little hope of any turnaround from that.
Any deficit will be bad news for Labor and a very simple headline to write. Labor made so much of returning to the black it is now hoist with its own petard.
Topics: alp, federal-government, budget
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Together in that pool of bright light, the PM looks at you directly during the conversation. I'm glad to look down at notes to break what could feel like a staring competition.
Topics: federal-government, gillard-julia
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Politics is a singularly complicated business, but if Marius Benson's maths is correct, Rudd doesn't have the momentum to overtake Gillard and Abbott is heading for the stratosphere.
Topics: federal-government, federal-parliament
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A newly released biography of Gough Whitlam suggests it was the Queen who gave Sir John Kerr the confidence to sack the prime minister.
Topics: history, federal-government, government-and-politics, community-and-society
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Looking around the world and at recent history the benefits of defence spending are not universally demonstrated.
Topics: defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, defence-industry, government-and-politics, federal-government, world-politics
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On the second anniversary of Julia Gillard's ascendancy, some people find moral lessons in the Prime Minister's tale.
For the religiously minded, it might illustrate "original sin"; for the more broadly spiritual, "karma". In this reading, the PM's journey is a parable illustrating what happens when you do the wrong thing to begin with.
But if you're looking for moral tales, you should not be looking to politics. This is not a world where good and evil fight it out and justice wins in the end.
Topics: gillard-julia, federal-government
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The Gillard Government, on its long road to seeming destruction, has rewritten the political rule book and undermined some of the most cherished platitudes of politics watchers.
Topics: government-and-politics, alp, federal-government, gillard-julia
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After being sacked two years ago and then executed again just two months back, would Kevin Rudd still take the top job? Of course he would.
Topics: gillard-julia, rudd-kevin, federal-government, alp
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With an election not due until the end of next year, you cannot say Labor can't win. What you can say is that there is no apparent way, no imaginable way they can win.
The argument against writing off the Labor Government now is that anything can happen between now and an election.
Well, what can happen, what can change?
Topics: gillard-julia, federal-government, alp
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The political past always looks tidier than the present, because we know how it turned out and we know we all survived.
The habitual misrepresentation in public life to praise the past, the more distant the better, simply belittles the present.
But the past is not entitled to represent itself as a better world, above criticism and entitled to deliver self-satisfied lectures to the present on its shortcomings.
Topics: government-and-politics, history, federal-government
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At the end of Labor's fortnight of carnage much has changed, some truths have been made public.
But some aspects of the new order just don't make sense - Kevin Rudd on the backbench, the resignation of Senator Mark Arbib.
That 'clear air' that Labor hungers for remains as cloudy as a Sydney summer's day.
Topics: rudd-kevin, gillard-julia, political-parties, alp, federal-government, government-and-politics
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Peter Slipper's term as Speaker is already shaping up as one of the most genuinely diverting cameos in Australia's parliamentary history.
Without a friend and without a future in parliament beyond the next election, Mr Speaker looks determined to be noticed during his limited tenure.
In the first active days in his post he has revived traditions not seen for decades and seems hell bent on positioning the Canberra version of the Westminster system somewhere between Charles I and Louis XIV.
Topics: federal-government, government-and-politics, federal-parliament, parliament
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The political year is ending; what lies on the horizon for the new year?
Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, parliament, federal-parliament
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The news this week of the establishment of a permanent US marine presence on Australian soil was something the Government wanted to give maximum exposure.
Topics: foreign-affairs, government-and-politics, federal-government, world-politics
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With the prospect of Tony Abbott becoming prime minister by November 2013 at the latest growing stronger, the fight is on for the heart and soul of the Abbott government.
So what sort of government would Tony Abbott lead?
The central uncertainty over an Abbott government stems from the nature of the leader. He is a man made up of islands of intense conviction set in seas of policy indifference.
Topics: abbott-tony, federal-government, government-and-politics
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Why did seven police officers carry out a drug inspection at a suburban Sydney pub on Friday night?
It may have been a targeted police action aimed at intercepting a criminal or stopping a crime. But it didn't look like that.
It looked more like a fishing expedition.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, crime, police, drug-offences
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The climate change debate has dragged the world of science and its white-coated inhabitants out of the lab and into the klieg light of political debate.
Suddenly scientific evaluation is just opinion, the scientific method just one way of understanding the physical world.
Well that is not right. There is one and only one way to understand the physical universe, that is through science, by applying the scientific method.
Topics: science-and-technology, climate-change
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The current asylum seeker/boat arrival debate has had the political moral compass spinning like a gyroscope.
Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, parliament, federal-parliament, australia
