Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent. A director of the National Press Club, he regularly appears on the ABC's Insiders, Sky News Agenda, and Ten's Meet the Press. He has reported from Canberra under three prime ministers and several opposition leaders.
Kevin Rudd learned by telephone that he would not be nominated to run for the top job at the United Nations despite requesting a face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and flying to Sydney for that purpose.
Turnbull was given a face-saver or a hospital handpass, depending on how you spin it.
A culture of racism, brutality, and official cover-up in the Northern Territory's discredited juvenile justice system will be centrally examined by a royal commission formally established on Thursday by the federal government.
Malcolm Turnbull's new Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has signalled a declining role for coal in Australia's energy mix in the future, in a marked change from the aggressively pro-coal stance of the Abbott government.
The Turnbull government will resist calls to keep the Northern Territory government away from the design and conduct of its proposed royal commission into human rights abuses within that jurisdiction's juvenile justice system, when it settles terms of reference at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Malcolm Turnbull's newly reappointed Indigenous Affairs Minister has admitted he merely assumed a culture of brutality and cover-up in Northern Territory's youth detention facilities was being dealt with and that he did not view or even ask about CCTV pictures because it did not pique his interest.
Nobody can accuse Malcolm Turnbull of sitting on his hands once the vision of shocking systemic abuses, including Abu Graib-style torture, in the youth correctional system of the Northern Territory, were broadcast on the ABC's Four Corners program.
And so, after a tremulous, difficult birth, the Turnbull government begins anew, for the first time under its own electoral steam.
Imagine if this news had come out before polling day?
Bill Shorten has signalled an intention to make his highly effective campaign approach, a permanent feature of this term of opposition, beefing up his office with the appointment of the respected Andrew Thomas as his new chief of staff.
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