Leadership instability over nothing
Saturday, 30 June 2018 Political figures, State of the parties 5 comments
Here’s a question: what program will Labor run to the next election on? If the answer it that it’s too early to tell, they’ll reveal their hand closer to the time, don’t want to make themselves a target etc. etc. etc then here’s another: what program did they run on at the last one? If […]
Borrowed time
Monday, 5 February 2018 State and federal politics 4 comments
The result of the SSM postal vote was a hammer blow to the Australian right.
Unity is death
Monday, 27 July 2015 State of the parties 4 comments
The cave-in by the left was not because the left position’s in terms of numbers was weak, but because the leader was weak and the left leadership had to go all out to ensure that he wasn’t embarrassed.
What a technocracy looks like
Friday, 30 May 2014 State and federal politics 4 comments
The age of technocracy has passed and the age of anti-politics is now well and truly upon us.
The ties that bind
Tuesday, 22 April 2014 State of the parties 14 comments
This is moving towards something new: cutting any overt links to social groups and special interests and formalising the detachment of the political system from voters that is already there.
Politics of the void
Monday, 20 January 2014 State of the parties 21 comments
There is a tendency to see the Abbott government as an aberration much as there was to see the Rudd-Gillard period as an aberration. It is not. This is it.
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.
Rudd
Thursday, 14 November 2013 Political figures 32 comments
Rudd’s departure does not mean the Australian political system will be any less vulnerable to an anti-political attack either from within or without. It’s just that it is unlikely next time it will be done with such panache.
Unity – an update
Monday, 14 October 2013 Political figures, State of the parties 15 comments
Into a vacuum could step somebody that has never made a point of standing for anything (or behind anyone) in particular. From that angle, Labor might have just found its best candidate.
