Unity is death

Monday, 27 July 2015   State of the parties   4 comments 

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.

What a technocracy looks like

Friday, 30 May 2014   State and federal politics   4 comments 

The age of technocracy has passed and the age of anti-politics is now well and truly upon us.

The ties that bind

Tuesday, 22 April 2014   State of the parties   14 comments 

This is moving towards something new: cutting any overt links to social groups and special interests and formalising the detachment of the political system from voters that is already there.

Politics of the void

Monday, 20 January 2014   State of the parties   21 comments 

There is a tendency to see the Abbott government as an aberration much as there was to see the Rudd-Gillard period as an aberration. It is not. This is it.

The year Australian politics imploded

Sunday, 29 December 2013   State of the parties   30 comments 

2013 could be summed up as the year when neither Labor under Rudd, nor the Coalition under Abbott proved capable of filling the gap left by the exhaustion of Labor’s historical project under Gillard.

Disillusionment

Tuesday, 24 December 2013   State of the parties, Tactics   25 comments 

If the left’s last hope is disruption from the Liberal right, so Abbott is helped by the phoney polarities of the left. The pas de deux continues.

Rudd

Thursday, 14 November 2013   Political figures   32 comments 

Rudd’s departure does not mean the Australian political system will be any less vulnerable to an anti-political attack either from within or without. It’s just that it is unlikely next time it will be done with such panache.

Unity – an update

Monday, 14 October 2013   Political figures, State of the parties   15 comments 

Into a vacuum could step somebody that has never made a point of standing for anything (or behind anyone) in particular. From that angle, Labor might have just found its best candidate.

Unity

Tuesday, 17 September 2013   State of the parties   6 comments 

The will for unity merely reflects the reality of Labor today after the historic left-right battles and the more recent battles between the reformers and the power brokers have run their course.

Relief

Monday, 9 September 2013   State of the parties   22 comments 

The end of that tension in Labor is because Rudd’s failure has meant there is now no one in Labor who can turn an attack on the party’s existing power structures into an electoral asset.

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