I have an article in The Conversation about Kevin Rudd’s legacy. In the next Overland I will have a longer article on Rudd and Gillard. I don’t find Rudd particularly interesting. Even his parliamentary supporters such as Richard Marles can only tell us he was a nice bloke, at least some of the time. The […]
The rural independents and their electorates
One argument made by conservative commentators in the aftermath of the inconclusive 2010 Australian election is that the three rural independents should support the Coalition because a majority of voters in their electorates support the Coalition as demonstrated by the Senate vote.
The election for Americans
Wrote below for US site The Monkey Cage:
Will the election campaign make any difference?
Election campaigns attract fascinated attention. In fact I doubt the election campaign will make much difference either way, before it started the likely outcome was a narrow Labor victory. The evidence is that American presidential election campaigns made little difference as Brendan Nyhan noted just after Obama’s victory:
Election (and after) predictions
Just go on the record. Some may call this a history-making campign, but I expect that this will be a campaign that will inspire low levels of interest and enthusiasm compared to 2007, Julia Gillard notwithstanding (see my recent article here and my earlier one here) Tony Abbott has done exceptionally well so far, he […]
British lessons for Labor
Some interesting observations from The Independent’s Steve Richards on British Labour’s excessive caution and centralisation of leadership. that seem very relevant to the ALP. First referring to hopeful suggestions from the new British government about prison reform as part of a general evaluation of New Labour’s ‘reformism’:
Capitalist confidence and electability from Lang to Rudd and Obama
The recent debate about the Resources Super Profits Tax revives an old argument about whether or not capitalists have a veto power over governments due to the alleged linkage between business investment, economic activity and the likelihood of re-election. Critics of capitalism once favoured this argument (and conservatives opposed it) but now with the demise […]
Is Julia Gillard the new Maurice Iemma?
Whilst away read Chris Bellamy’s excellent Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War, it tells a story that makes teaching about Kokoda seem a trivial waste of time and as an epic of human suffering puts politics in perspective. But back to Australian politics, Julia Gillard: always puzzled by the cult around her […]
Kevin Rudd and the media
It is curious to observe why Kevin Rudd is receiving such hostility from conservative journalists combined with the promotion of Julia Gillard as an alternative leader. After all Julia Gillard is perhaps an archetypal example of the modern Labor Party (what I call the third Labor party after the first populist and utopian party of […]
1984 and 2010 Hawke and Rudd
A Labor government that replaced a controversial and polarising conservative administration loses ground at its first election to the surprise of observers who expected an easy victory and Labor loses votes to its left from voters disillusioned with its record in government. It happened in 1984 will it happen again?