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SMH Editorials

Dial T for a thorough Trumping

Donald Trump's aggressive phone call to Malcolm Turnbull reflects the dangerous unpredictability he has brought to the ...

Canberra will need to plan for the US President's known unknown approach to trade, security and America's allies. Unfortunately, there's no planning for any unknown unknowns that Mr Trump and his swamp-draining team might have in mind.

Turnbull's donations delay feeds voter distrust, demands reform

Malcolm Turnbull waited seven months to reveal his donation because that's what the law allows. But it's a bad law.

Now Malcolm Turnbull's actions have revealed the stupidity of the donations rules, he will have no choice but to change them – unless, of course, the vested interests on both sides decide they'd rather do nothing substantial for fear of losing their own source of funding.

'I am not a political animal'

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set out his 2017 agenda on Wednesday.

Malcolm Turnbull tried to claim outsider status but offered more of the conventional rhetoric and policies that almost cost him office last July.

Prejudice trumps principle in US immigration ban

People protest at Indianapolis International Airport against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily ...

The executive order which bans nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for the next three months is unprincipled, from a man whose principles are hard to discern. In the war against terror it is also, to borrow the mild language of the playing field, an own goal.

Unity from a complex past

Young Girl Guides at the Australia Day flag ceremony at Parliament House.

Lachlan Macquarie's name is everywhere: Sydney has Macquarie Street, Place, Fields, Lighthouse,  University and Shopping Centre – and more besides; NSW has Port, Lake, Mount, River and Pass, as well as a brace of towns he founded – the Macquarie towns.

Big pharma should have to come clean

Almost daily there are new cures as a result of pharmaceutical companies' research, or new ways to relieve painful or ...

Everyone with an email address has received them - messages publicising a petition that seeks government recognition in some form for a medical condition; recognition of the condition itself, or for a particular treatment, or a Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme subsidy for a new drug.

Will Trump be different as President?

President-elect Donald Trump has signalled disdain for the political and legal systems that are  supposed to keep him in ...

Once the gravity of the office and its responsibilities sinks in, a humbled Trump will modify both his speech and his behaviour, this theory goes. Such optimism is needed. But is it justified?

Get the lead out, in every sense

Sun-Herald editorial.

The founding myth of suburbia is that each landholding is a farm in miniature: a house on a plot of land, however small, in which a family may grow food.

Euthanasia debate must respect all views

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Euthanasia is once again up for debate. The subject can arise for families anywhere, whenever relatives watch someone they care for suffer a lingering, painful death. Surely some means can be devised, the thinking goes, to shorten this suffering by earlier termination of life.

MPs' expenses: how hard to fix is it really?

Health Minister Sussan Ley: forced to stand aside pending an inquiry into her travel expense claims.

Our readers are having trouble understanding why setting clear rules around politicians' work expenses is such an insurmountable task for the Parliament. It's so hard to get the guidelines right, apparently, that every few months we must have a fresh scandal about MPs making spurious claims on the taxpayer's purse.

Computer bites government: PM's Centrelink debacle

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For the Turnbull government these days, ineptitude comes in many forms, success in few. One of the latest examples is the decision to let Centrelink's computers loose on Australia's least wealthy and most vulnerable citizens in the weeks before Christmas.

Trump and the post-truth world

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A fortnight before Donald Trump's inauguration the President-elect has already begun to exercise his power, revealing to the world what sort of leader he might prove to be. He has given us some cause for hope and more for concern.