Abbott has to perform well as prime minister next year, not just to preserve his leadership and give the Coalition a chance of re-election but also to restore public faith in the political class and Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy. The year 2015 has to see a restoration of political stability in the national interest. […]
05 Nov
What Podemos’s present success reveals is the breakdown, the crisis or the collapse (choose the term you prefer) of the Spanish party system. Because in reality the Transition regime is sinking like the Titanic and Podemos is merely the iceberg that caused this. So as soon as the cock crowed on 25-M, all the captains […]
01 Nov
In the latest post at her personal blog, An Integral State, Left Flank’s ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS challenges Naomi Klein’s celebrated “shock doctrine” thesis of neoliberal transformation by looking at the Whitlam dismissal and the Fraser government’s failure to drive through neoliberal reform. But despite these concurrent ‘shocks’ — the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression […]
14 Sep
![[Graphic: Newcastle Herald]](http://web.archive.org./web/20150219100057im_/http://left-flank.org/files/2014/09/Liberals-ICAC-156x156.jpg)
It’s been enjoyable indeed to watch the humiliation of both sides of NSW politics on the ICAC witness stand. But, unlike Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald — or the Greens, who have been pushing the idea for some time — I don’t think a federal ICAC would either solve the problem of “political […]
08 Sep
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Left Flank’s ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS has launched a new website for her own work, An Integral State: Notes on Marx & Gramsci. The latest post is her paper from the roundtable on Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin’s Deutscher Prize winning book The Making of Global Capitalism, at the Historical Materialism Australasia conference last weekend in Sydney. […]
05 Mar
Tad and I have an article on the state of the unions in the wake of the Qantas job cuts, which has been stirring up some discussion, at The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free section. Here’s a little preview, and feel free to comment below: It is no coincidence that the problems started during the Accord […]
05 Dec
With the Unions NSW-led High Court challenge to Barry O’Farrell’s donations laws awaiting a decision, a flurry of articles and commentary emerged in the press and social media recently, with several Greens activists defending the laws, and unionists, including Greens member and Fire Brigade Employees’ Union Secretary, Jim Casey, attacking them. Also coming out against […]
23 Sep
By MARC NEWMAN This article continues the analysis of Labor’s crisis — especially in terms of its meaning for trade unions and social movements — begun here. Despite the defeat of the ALP, the election was not a crushing victory for the conservatives. Fewer seats fell than expected, and some of the LNP gains in the lower […]
18 Sep
In the first of two posts on the modern crisis of Australian Laborism, MARC NEWMAN looks at the roots of the ALP’s problems in its embrace of neoliberalism in the 1980s. *** Labor’s voter base remained stable for the bulk of the 20th century, through numerous changes in political circumstances. It only dipped below a 40 […]
06 Sep
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My long-form essay on the trajectory of the Greens since 2010 is now up at Overland Journal‘s website, and will be in the print edition due out next week. No comments option at Overland, so feel free to comment below. The rise of the Greens represented a historic realignment of the Left of Australian politics, […]
29 Dec
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