![Winston Churchill had it right when he said democracy was the worst system of government except for every other.](/web/20160914204307im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/j/y/3/m/5/image.related.wideLandscape.460x259.grbnrf.png/1473330860284.jpg)
It's our democracy, we should stand up for it
Political activism is not retweeting a petition about the live cattle trade while watching an episode of The Bachelor.
Political activism is not retweeting a petition about the live cattle trade while watching an episode of The Bachelor.
Bill Shorten presented himself as a champion of reform but how could he be taken seriously if he was seen to condone Sam Dastyari's bewildering stupidity?
A proposal designed to delay and divide is doing exactly that. And conservatives are loving it.
Mathias Cormann, when he offered up his "wibble wobble, jelly on a plate" line on Monday, surely had a hotter verse from that annoying nursery rhyme on the tip of his tongue.
A blatant act of collusion between the two biggest political parties in Australia will fall apart.
The new voting system was supposed to prevent senators being elected on very small percentages of the primary vote. So did Hercules Turnbull clean out the unrepresentative swill in the Augean stables? No.
David Leyonhjelm is a boorish, supercilious know-all with the empathy of a besser block. And that new Hansonite conspiracy theorist from Queensland? He's an absurdist fringe-dweller and fellow hate-speech apologist. It's wacky and wackier. Neither of these self-promoting misanthropes would have the first idea about entrenched discrimination. Yet both are experts.You may disagree with this harsh critique and probably think it unbecoming of a serious media outlet. But offensive to them, it is not. And that's the point.
Our biggest banks move fast. Either that, or they collude. At 2.37 pm on Tuesday within minutes of the Reserve Bank cutting its cash rate to an all-time low, the Commonwealth Bank announced a completely different way of responding. Instead of passing on some of all of the cut, it would only pass on half and hand some of the rest out to customers as higher term deposit rates.
In the green-marbled hall of the United Nations, the diplomats will know next to nothing about the dusty barnyard brawls of Australian politics.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
This is what Duncan Lewis, the head of ASIO, told Fairfax Media late last year about Islamist extremism's connection to the broader faith: "This is not about the religion other than the fact that it is being hijacked by ne'er-do-wells."
Election 2016 was like a soccer match where the overwhelming favourites found themselves stuck at one-all at half-time, still tied after 90 minutes but then squeaked out of jail with a couple of quick goals in extra time.
The Liberals may well be an election-winning machine, but it is a machine with a remarkable inability to elect women.
After acting like a sook on election night, Malcolm Turnbull reemerged this week as someone more like a statesman or an Indigenous elder.
And so, after a tremulous, difficult birth, the Turnbull government begins anew, for the first time under its own electoral steam.
What if budgets, and candidates for office, told the truth?
The plain fact is that the mainstream politicians have forfeited our trust and lost our respect.
The case for keeping the terms of the Coalition agreement between the Liberals and Nationals secret has evaporated.
What the Liberals was wrong and it backfired. Voters don't like seeing serious issues being used as a club for personal attacks.
More than 400,000 Australians chose to vote for One Nation in the Senate.
Most of what passes for political analysis, particularly the spin coming from the main parties, is facile.
Whether Turnbull lasts as leader, and whether his term is a standard three-year stint, is largely in his hands.
On July 2 the Australian Electoral Commission held the nation's eighth Senate general election and it has revived Malcolm Mackerras' hope for Australian democracy.
It wasn't just Malcolm Turnbull's Liberals who had a near-death experience in the days after July 2.
Whenever neither side of politics secures a majority, people assume the Governor-General will be the arbiter.
There's one group of Australians who show far more trust in public institutions than everyone else. Here's why.
Much talked-up pledge to generate 'jobs and growth' was a scheme to cut company tax plus a lot of fancy packaging.
When the other side is using a sledgehammer on you, you have to pull one out and start swinging yourself, Malcolm Turnbull was told.
Let's rewind the clock. It's the Tuesday before polling day and Tony Nutt, Malcolm Turnbull's campaign director, rings his Labor counterpart with an offer George Wright could not refuse: a final leaders' debate on prime time TV.
So Bill Shorten thinks this government will not last and that Australians will be back at the polls within 12 months.
Save articles for later.
Subscribe for unlimited access to news. Login to save articles.
Return to the homepage by clicking on the site logo.