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  Politics through the looking glass
  The inversion of Australian democracy.

  In the Autumn issue of Meanjin.

  

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• From the archives

  The last six years have shown that what asylum seekers have more to be concerned about is an insecure, out of control political class that targets the most vulnerable to make itself look in command.

  - Sovereignty

  “We will decide” was a phoney bit of Australian unilateralism made possible at a time of that phoney bit of US unilateralism, the War on Terror.

  - The New Regionalism

  How do you change racial provisions in the Constitution when the entire infrastructure of land rights is based on it?

  - Caught in a racial trap

  Politics is becoming more cyclical, but only because the nature of politics is changing from what it was in the 20th century.

  - The problem of the “political cycle”

• Essay and Book reviews

  Latham is articulating a search for a new relationship of politics to society, based not on its representation, but on intervention on a degraded basis. You have been warned.

  Not Dead Yet by Mark Latham

  In reality under this complaint about the media lurks a political argument that is highly revealing about the mindset of the political class today.

  Sideshow by Lindsay Tanner

  Here is someone working for the ABC, from a Labor background as Hawke’s press secretary, who has written about the rise and fall of a Labor Prime Minister with all the distortions and omissions worthy of the most disingenuous right wing hack.

  The Party Thieves by Barrie Cassidy

  The most bizarre defence of the two party system comes over what for Megalogenis is the most personal – immigration.

  Trivial Pursuit by George Megalogenis

  Can Australian politics be that insubstantial?

  Confessions of a Faceless Man by Paul Howes
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After some initial excitement even Dennis Shanahan appeared last week to be starting to have his doubts on Costello’s imminent return to the leadership and that maybe The Australian’s world historical mission to shape Australian politics is going to have to wait for another day.

What seems to be one enduring legacy of the Howard era has been the decline in political commentary in this country.

For The Age’s Michelle Grattan, the government’s minority in the Senate is a political problem because it is a barrier to the government implementing its program.

What exactly was that program again?

Listening to Germaine Greer discuss her essay ‘On Rage’ last night on Lateline, it became clear why it is always so hard these days to follow what she is saying. She desperately gets into contortions trying to make humdrum mainstream views sound radical.

If there is one thing that distinguishes Rudd, and infuriates the media and clearly annoys the old Labor luminaries, is his refusal to create such a political agenda from thin air.

Despite The Australian’s attempts to make it seem like an unstoppable momentum is building, did one of their journalists let the cat out of the bag?

The campaign by The Australian to have Costello installed as the Liberal leader makes sense from many different viewpoints – except Costello’s.

• 

• Key Posts of the Winter

  What we have here is the national security issue turned upside down.

  - The hole in the middle of national security

  The cave-in by the left was not because the left position’s in terms of numbers was weak, but because the leader was weak and the left leadership had to go all out to ensure that he wasn’t embarrassed.

  - Unity is death

  The first thing that should be dismissed is the idea that MPs should have a conscience vote on this, or any other issue. It’s rubbish.

  - Equality

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