The view from Billinudgel
There is an old joke that if you leave three Green politicians alone in a room for an hour, when you get back you will find two new party leaders arguing with a Tibetan monk.
For many years the Greens were just not taken seriously: tree huggers, fairies in the bottom of the garden, single-issue nutters. They
In the end, it was a simple case of overkill. Labor was gaining traction over the coalition’s refusal to release its full costings, and Kevin Rudd knew it.
So when the shadow Treasurer finally released a partial list of his planned savings, it looked like a chance too good to miss. Rudd was ahead on points,
Last week was a good one for Coalition backdowns.
First there was Malcolm Turnbull, admitting that if he becomes minister not only will what has already been rolled out of the National Broadband Network be preserved in its present form; so will work in progress, and indeed much of what is still in the planning
It says something about the nature of modern Australian politics that when the Labor veteran Martin Ferguson announced his imminent retirement, his own leader Julia Gillard was clearly less upset than was Liberal leader Tony Abbott.
And in fact the two men had a lot in common: many of their values were shaped by
