Pauline Hanson's howlers in a speech off-key
Pauline Hanson's first speech as a senator is maddeningly thick with selective statistics, wild assertions and untested claims, but a handful of howlers stand out.
Election 2016: Comment & Analysis
Retrospective? Pull the other one, but it's a win for PM
Limiting the amount anyone could contribute out of their own money into tax-advantaged super on top of employer contributions was never retrospective, but those who thought it was can relax. The government is imposing a limit by another means.
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.
Dastyari had to go, now the rules have to change
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?
Face it: there will be no free vote of marriage equality
A proposal designed to delay and divide is doing exactly that. And conservatives are loving it.
Mathias Cormann wobbles short of a sizzling insult to Bill Shorten
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.
How the big parties feathered their Senate nests
A blatant act of collusion between the two biggest political parties in Australia will fall apart.
Voting and counting votes needs to be made easier
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.
Free-speech fundamentalists break free of good conscience
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.
Banks respond to the Reserve Bank rate cut as one
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.
Roughshod rules in PM's decision to block Rudd
In the green-marbled hall of the United Nations, the diplomats will know next to nothing about the dusty barnyard brawls of Australian politics.
Clinton says Trump is encouraging Russian espionage
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
Christensen's hasty Islam slurs help no one
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."
Twists and turn in 2016 vote count
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.
Women Liberals low priority
The Liberals may well be an election-winning machine, but it is a machine with a remarkable inability to elect women.
Malcolm Turnbull should listen to Indigenous Australians
After acting like a sook on election night, Malcolm Turnbull reemerged this week as someone more like a statesman or an Indigenous elder.
Liberals place all their hopes in Turnbull
And so, after a tremulous, difficult birth, the Turnbull government begins anew, for the first time under its own electoral steam.
Three simple tweaks to stop our leaders shortchanging us
What if budgets, and candidates for office, told the truth?
Turnbull must switch to a budget for all
The plain fact is that the mainstream politicians have forfeited our trust and lost our respect.
Joyce's secrecy should ring alarm bells
The case for keeping the terms of the Coalition agreement between the Liberals and Nationals secret has evaporated.
Aly's election proves smears don't work
What the Liberals was wrong and it backfired. Voters don't like seeing serious issues being used as a club for personal attacks.
We need one nation, just not Pauline Hanson's nightmare vision
More than 400,000 Australians chose to vote for One Nation in the Senate.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on borrowed time
Most of what passes for political analysis, particularly the spin coming from the main parties, is facile.
PM must contend with how to govern
Whether Turnbull lasts as leader, and whether his term is a standard three-year stint, is largely in his hands.
Time for third Single Transferable Vote system: Mackerras
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.
Time this country pulled together
It wasn't just Malcolm Turnbull's Liberals who had a near-death experience in the days after July 2.
Governors-general and minority governments
Whenever neither side of politics secures a majority, people assume the Governor-General will be the arbiter.
The trust gap that is feeding political instability
There's one group of Australians who show far more trust in public institutions than everyone else. Here's why.
Man with no plan, just a lot of flimflam
Much talked-up pledge to generate 'jobs and growth' was a scheme to cut company tax plus a lot of fancy packaging.
Turnbull must learn his lesson this time
When the other side is using a sledgehammer on you, you have to pull one out and start swinging yourself, Malcolm Turnbull was told.