Minimum-wage earners face brunt of bracket creep
There's a strong case for increasing the lower income-tax thresholds, despite the costs.
Is our discriminatory marriage law unconstitutional?
If there is no marriage equality, there should be no marriage law at all.
Utopian moments are not hard to find in real life
Unfortunately the downsizing that threatens many workers doesn't extend to human resources sections.
Celebrity news is not real journalism
What's in the public interest isn't always what the public's interested in.
Back to the future as old climate battlelines re-emerge
After a decade of feckless negation, the last thing this country can afford is more of the same.
A plague on both your houses: Parliament gets a new fence
Parliament House is getting a new fence. Not that you'd know about it.
You need to be in Canberra to comprehend the lunacy of politics in 2017
The world has been stood on its head here in Canberra.
Marriage campaign's strange dynamics
The push for votes seems stuck in first gear and threatened by apathy.
'Pool fence' shuts out nothing except equality
Damaging this important part of our built heritage seems utterly shameless.
The government has this MP right where it wants him in the coal debate
Joel Fitzgibbon, in Malcolm Turnbull's estimation, is emblematic of Labor's dilemma.
Who owns your information?
Governments must legislate to stop our intimate personal details being sold for gain.
The hidden (a)gender: Australia's egalitarian myth
Following his first challenge to Bob Hawke in 1991, Paul Keating famously said "there is something very healthy in public life about snatching it. There's a legitimacy about it, and I wanted to legitimise it".
Prime minister's beer and baby outrage - fake news at its finest
It was easy news, if not exactly news based on fact. It all began on Saturday, when the Prime Minister went to see the Sydney Swans play, and posted on social media a photo of himself cuddling his baby granddaughter, planting a kiss atop her sweet head.
Fairfax-Ipsos poll: Voters desperate for different political story
The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader picture themselves as the stars in a movie, antagonists locked in a titanic struggle, and today's poll gives the people's verdict on the fight: the people would prefer a different movie.
We now know the economy is not what's dragging the Coalition down in the polls
Whatever is holding Malcolm Turnbull and his government behind in the polls so consistently, it doesn't seem to be their handling of the economy.
Politicians aren't all that students see in Canberra
Some of the favourite activities for children at our national intuitions are oversubscribed.
In the contradictions business
The right has been all over the shop on energy policy for decades.
Little to be proud of over history of Timor Leste agreement
The dispute undermined Australia's claim to be an upstanding member of the international community.
High Court could surprise us with section 44 ruling
When the High Court interprets the constitution, expect the unexpected.
Government by reptile fund
If the Parliament abdicates its rights, why should the High Court care?
Australia's language tests, from Gaelic to Dutton
Peter Dutton is the latest Australian official to find himself accused of cack-handedness in the deployment of a language test to keep unwanted immigrants at bay.
Malcolm Turnbull catches a break - now he must grab it
Bizarre, bespoke, benighted. The postal survey may well be all these things, but it is also legal.
Crackdowns are for ordinary Australians not for pollies
As your regular, every day, garden-variety human is being forced to hop through more and more hoops to successfully interact with the government, standards appear to be as relaxed as ever for MPs.
ACT's third seat is a big political prize
Canberra has attracted excellent preselection candidates in the past. Hopefully, we'll avoid party hacks.
Funding the postal plebiscite a blunt challenge to Parliament
Of all the various arguments against the postal survey, the best is that it represents the government's deliberate circumnavigation of the Parliament.
Coal fight casts a pall over Turnbull's clean energy reforms
Australia's energy grid remains messy, ad hoc, stridently politicised and subject to an uncertain outlook.
We're stuck in our own Utopia
Our static, outdated, parliamentary democracy is no longer working.
Balance all but invisible as the public square becomes dysfunctionally shouty
The parliamentary citizenship frenzy gripping Canberra in recent weeks suddenly feels a bit anti-climactic.
Citizenship saga: the onus of proof, politically at least, has shifted
Tony Abbott's dare and Bill Shorten's capitulation will now make it impossible for any MP suspected of dual citizenship issues to withhold their documentation.
Killer crocs and Cleopatra rescue a wearisome Parliament
These are alarming times, what with the Korean Peninsula on the brink of war. Only Bob Katter could summon a more apocalyptic vision.
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Campaign highlights - and lowlights
The hurly-burly of the 2016 election campaign, as seen through the eyes of Fairfax reporters and photographers.