Stopping the boats is not enough to save Syrian refugees
By the numbers
Anyone near the internet over the past two days would have seen the shocking photographs of the corpse of a three-year-old boy washed ashore in a Turkish resort town. The boy was...
The treasurer needs to find some new solutions for our slowing economy
Hockeynomics
“There is no risk of recession in Australia,” Joe Hockey told Channel Nine yesterday, again demonstrating his penchant for making unnecessarily definitive economic statements that...
The Abbott government has no intention of cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions
Dishonesty is the worst policy
The Coalition is on the verge of announcing its long-term target for emissions reduction: 26–28% by 2030.
The logic behind this target shouldn’t be misinterpreted. It’s not to...
Editor’s Note August 2015
The asylum-seeker issue reared its head again this week, following the ALP’s policy reversal on turnbacks and revelations that Australia returned a boatload of Vietnamese asylum...
Editor’s Note July 2015
Was anyone seriously suggesting that we didn’t already have sufficient laws to deal with terrorism? No. The citizenship issue is about national identity, and the right to dictate...
The 2015 budget has come and gone, but where is Joe Hockey's National Conversation?
Best laid plans
Treasurer Joe Hockey wanted a National Conversation. Launching the Intergenerational Report at the start of March, he warned that government spending was on an unsustainable...
Editor’s Note June 2015
The Greens have changed leaders and “the Tasmanian era is over”, as Amanda Lohrey writes.
The transition from Christine Milne to Richard Di Natale was a smooth one, and for all...
George Brandis’ arts money grab will not win him many friends
Champagne government
Arts Minister George Brandis has never been popular in the arts community, nor has his government. His position as Attorney-General and arts minister has often put him in a...
Sometimes you don’t need a Senate inquiry to work out what’s going on
The blindingly obvious
A Senate inquiry into abuse at the Nauru detention centre began today. Submissions have already revealed disturbing accounts of sexual assault and squalid living conditions. This...
The government’s cuts to parental leave and aggressive rhetoric risk alienating half the population
Lady problems
The budget battle lines have been drawn, and the government again finds itself on shaky ground.
Annabel Crabb encapsulated its problem in three words – its budget rhetoric...
Last night’s budget does little but put problems off for another year
Kicking the can down the road
If last year’s budget laid out what the government wanted, but failed, to achieve, what was this?
Putting aside the rhetoric and just looking at the numbers, the second Hockey...
Editor’s Note May 2015
When the Monthly’s publisher, Morry Schwartz, launched the magazine in 2005, he insisted that its success would rest on the quality of its writing.
The Monthly isn’t pitted...
Editor’s Note April 2015
When Julie Bishop rolled her eyes while seated behind Treasurer Joe Hockey in parliament last Monday, she was expressing several things at once. The first was that she was not at...
A lawless hellhole
The Moss review into allegations of the sexual abuse of asylum seekers on Nauru was released, in redacted form, within hours of the announcement of the death of former prime...
Editor’s Note March 2015
While the nation remains captivated by the inordinate dysfunction of the Coalition, it is perhaps unsurprising that Labor has avoided scrutiny. An attacking Opposition is barely...
Tony Abbott and the Coalition government face a tough 2015
Year of the dog
At the height of the resources boom, Australia’s economy exceeded all expectations. At such times, as Ross Garnaut put it, “poor policy looks good enough, and ordinary policy...
Editor’s Note February 2015
The nation’s politicians are back at work, but they don’t look very refreshed. Tony Abbott seems to have left his brain on holiday, his government looks mired in the same policy...
What senior government “sources” really think of each other
Breaking ranks
At the end of November, News Corp’s Samantha Maiden reported via a source that Joe Hockey had gone “off his tits” after the PM’s office briefed journalists that the GP co-payment...
