Canberra is full of political delusions, but Turnbull's is the biggest
All eyes will be on the WA state election next Saturday to see how Labor polls.
All eyes will be on the WA state election next Saturday to see how Labor polls.
The Ad Hoc Ways and Means Committee at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is suffering the vapours as it attempts to wrangle 113 Very Important Diplomats, 113 cross-the-world business-class return flights, 113 hotel suites, an unknown number of splendid dining occasions, cigars, champagne, cognac and, naturally, limousines on demand, into a paltry $1.1 million.
A week in Parliament House, Canberra, has similarities these days with a tennis match involving Nick Kyrgios or Bernard Tomic.
Hardly a week goes by without the publication of some well-thought-out, evidence-based paper recommending solutions to some of Australia's pressing economic and social problems – tax, education, health, defence, energy and so on.
Feminism is not a handy tool to be inflated and deflated on request.
Whether Barnaby Joyce or Pauline Hanson is the wiser statesman, the better politician or the more intelligent citizen is a moot question upon which few could hold a certain opinion, for now at least.
Discrediting a person has never been easier, prosecuting an idea has never been harder.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
  Malcolm Turnbull needs to change tack if he is to have any prospect of neutralising the debate on Sunday penalty rates in the retail and hospitality industries, let alone winning it – and change tack fast.
Barnaby Joyce's push for bureaucrats to go to the bush is motivated by fear of One Nation.
The Liberals always, eventually, drift away from the sensible centre.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
There is no arguing with the proposition that Malcolm Turnbull has the tougher task on the Fair Work Commission's ruling to cut Sunday penalty rates.
The PM would do well to concede, even if it only in private, that there's more to his problem than Tony Abbott's sniping.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
Malcolm Turnbull needs to find a solution to his Tony Abbott problem as Coalition MPs sweat on the next negative development in this toxic rivalry.
All of a sudden, Labor went quiet on Friday, right when it was gearing up to hammer Malcolm Turnbull over slashed penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers.
Australia's economy is held back because wages are too low, not too high.
Any decision to increase Australia's commitment now, must imbibe the lessons of the last decade and a half.
There is an important discussion to be had about the penalty rates decision, but our politicians appear incapable of engaging in it, much less leading it.
Could it be possible that Centrelink is sometimes unfairly castigated?
Civil war has broken out in the federal parliamentary Liberal Party, and more importantly, within the government of Australia.
If the Liberal Party were a schoolyard - and really, it is, isn't it? - there'd be excitable kids rushing about yelling that oldest of rallying cries: "fight, fight, fight".
I attended a country show a couple of weeks ago.
Your personally curated news with six things you need to know before you get going.
After laying siege to the Australian labour fortress of weekend penalty rates over decades, employers have finally loosened a few bricks and clambered over the wall.
That people still hold hostile attitudes towards working parents, and particularly working mothers, is baffling.
Low wage growth is what the Coalition wanted. Within weeks of being sworn in as employment minister in 2013 Eric Abetz warned "weak-kneed employers" not to cave in to unreasonable demands.
The hurly-burly of the 2016 election campaign, as seen through the eyes of Fairfax reporters and photographers.
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