The year Australian politics imploded
Sunday, 29 December 2013 State of the parties 30 comments
2013 could be summed up as the year when neither Labor under Rudd, nor the Coalition under Abbott proved capable of filling the gap left by the exhaustion of Labor’s historical project under Gillard.
Disillusionment
Tuesday, 24 December 2013 State of the parties, Tactics 25 comments
If the left’s last hope is disruption from the Liberal right, so Abbott is helped by the phoney polarities of the left. The pas de deux continues.
Relief
Monday, 9 September 2013 State of the parties 22 comments
The end of that tension in Labor is because Rudd’s failure has meant there is now no one in Labor who can turn an attack on the party’s existing power structures into an electoral asset.
An incomplete revolution – an update
Friday, 6 September 2013 State of the parties, Tactics 11 comments
Rudd’s problem was that he did not clarify why he was distinct from the party that had dumped him and the institutions that had blocked his return, which would have given the “New Way” slogan any meaning.
AdWatch: Labor’s negative ads
Sunday, 25 August 2013 Tactics 4 comments
The debate showed how much Rudd, rather than maintain the aura of incumbency he so well established when he returned, has needed to take up the negativity himself. Shouldn’t the ads be doing that?
Momentum
Monday, 19 August 2013 State of the parties, Tactics 12 comments
In failing to make its anti-political attack on the Coalition, Labor is seeing it rebound and they being the “political” operators.
Caught in Howard’s “neoliberal” trap
Wednesday, 7 August 2013 Tactics 14 comments
Could it be that the RBA had more influence over election timing than Sussex St?
Running on empty
Monday, 5 August 2013 Tactics 11 comments
The common theme running through the message is a new way economic policy is being viewed, namely that government is not responsible for the state of the economy, rather just for protecting the electorate from the worst of it.
Realignment
Tuesday, 30 July 2013 State of the parties 14 comments
The political agenda we see now are the leftovers from a time when the major parties represented clear social bases in the electorate which they no longer do.
Preparing for war
Sunday, 24 March 2013 State of the parties, Tactics 42 comments
You think it’s about Rudd v Gillard? You ain’t seen nothing yet.