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Mark Kenny

Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's national affairs editor. 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.

Malcolm Turnbull and  Bill Shorten sweep water from a cyclone-damaged store in Bowen, Queensland.

Is it any wonder politicians are on the nose?

In a barely noticed respite from last week's hyper-partisan squabbling, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten actually agreed on a couple of things. It is an enduring curiosity that such moments tend to escape attention.

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?