Whatever happened to the Asylum Seeker debate?

Monday, 10 June 2013   Key posts, State of the parties   18 comments 

The problem that both parties now face is that having raised the asylum seeker “problem” for internal party reasons, the external conditions for solving it are no more favourable than they were in 2007-2008.

Review: Mark Latham’s Not Dead Yet

Monday, 29 April 2013   Key posts, State of the parties   26 comments 

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.

The phoney problem of policy

Monday, 4 March 2013   Key posts, State of the parties, Tactics   15 comments 

What is more important is that Gillard and Labor, detached as they (like the Coalition) are, can be seen to relate to someone in society.

The phoney problem of ideology

Monday, 25 February 2013   Key posts, State of the parties   19 comments 

It is the loss of that social base that Labor is struggling to adapt to, not some problem of ideology.

The day the Gillard government died

Monday, 9 July 2012   Key posts, State of the parties   17 comments 

Making an enemy of a party on which your supporters agree on practically every issue is at best an empty gesture and at worst will make the Greens the anti-establishment party they clearly crave but don’t deserve.

The problem of the “political cycle”

Sunday, 8 April 2012   Key posts, Media analysis, State of the parties   31 comments 

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

It’s a political crisis, not a problem of media ethics

Monday, 19 March 2012   Key posts, Media analysis, State of the parties   12 comments 

Some journalists might at least make at least some effort to keep the hypocrisy under check.

Caught in a racial trap

Thursday, 26 January 2012   Key posts, The Australian state   68 comments 

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

What a political crisis looks like – 2011 edition

Tuesday, 30 August 2011   Key posts, State of the parties   9 comments 

This Parliament has an in-built disconnect with the electorate that is no more likely to be resolved at the next election as it was at the last.

The dead hand of the party rises – an update

Friday, 1 July 2011   Key posts, Political figures, State of the parties   6 comments 

This upside-down thinking of social reality is symptomatic of a political party in decline.

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