Federal Politics

Mark Kenny

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.

The ripples of Donald Trump's victory are challenging long-established norms of western politics.

We've fallen from the audacity of hope to the audacity of grope

How many votes do you reckon Kevin Rudd lost when it was revealed he had gone into a seedy New York strip club known as Scores in a drunken manhattan bar crawl? Or what about Donald J Trump? How many do you imagine he lost from the notorious bus tape where he was recorded boasting of preying on and sexually assaulting women?

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaking at the NSW Liberal Party State Council meeting in October.

Slowly but unsurely, Turnbull picks his way forward

A handful of wins towards the end of the year have rescued the Turnbull government from the near certainty of a difficult summer, but progress must be maintained if the government is to recover its balance and make something of 2017.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

Playing to prejudices does politicians no credit

The initial shock of Donald Trump's election win has already given way to a second-wave effect in Australia, with policymakers adjusting their stances, toughening their rhetoric, playing to prejudices once discredited.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

Foreign worker row: PM hits out at Shorten's 'rank opportunism'

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused opposition leader Bill Shorten of hypocrisy on a breathtaking scale as the issue of foreign workers taking Australian jobs threatened to become a defining argument that could last all the way to the next election.