Whatever happened to the Asylum Seeker debate?
Monday, 10 June 2013 Key posts, State of the parties 18 comments
The problem that both parties now face is that having raised the asylum seeker “problem” for internal party reasons, the external conditions for solving it are no more favourable than they were in 2007-2008.
Review: Mark Latham’s Not Dead Yet
Monday, 29 April 2013 Key posts, State of the parties 26 comments
Latham is articulating a search for a new relationship of politics to society, based not on its representation, but on intervention on a degraded basis. You have been warned.
The phoney problem of policy
Monday, 4 March 2013 Key posts, State of the parties, Tactics 15 comments
What is more important is that Gillard and Labor, detached as they (like the Coalition) are, can be seen to relate to someone in society.
The phoney problem of ideology
Monday, 25 February 2013 Key posts, State of the parties 19 comments
It is the loss of that social base that Labor is struggling to adapt to, not some problem of ideology.
The day the Gillard government died
Monday, 9 July 2012 Key posts, State of the parties 17 comments
Making an enemy of a party on which your supporters agree on practically every issue is at best an empty gesture and at worst will make the Greens the anti-establishment party they clearly crave but don’t deserve.
The problem of the “political cycle”
Sunday, 8 April 2012 Key posts, Media analysis, State of the parties 31 comments
Politics is becoming more cyclical, but only because the nature of politics is changing from what it was in the 20th century.
It’s a political crisis, not a problem of media ethics
Monday, 19 March 2012 Key posts, Media analysis, State of the parties 12 comments
Some journalists might at least make at least some effort to keep the hypocrisy under check.
Caught in a racial trap
Thursday, 26 January 2012 Key posts, The Australian state 68 comments
How do you change racial provisions in the Constitution when the entire infrastructure of land rights is based on it?
What a political crisis looks like – 2011 edition
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 Key posts, State of the parties 9 comments
This Parliament has an in-built disconnect with the electorate that is no more likely to be resolved at the next election as it was at the last.
The dead hand of the party rises – an update
Friday, 1 July 2011 Key posts, Political figures, State of the parties 6 comments
This upside-down thinking of social reality is symptomatic of a political party in decline.