Sean Kelly
Sean Kelly is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and a former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard
Opinion
Deliver us from the Delta blues
We are all now having properly to face the fact that we don’t know what stage of this pandemic we are up to.
- by Sean Kelly
Latest
Opinion
Appeals to self interest aren’t getting the world vaccinated, let’s try something new
The problem with thinking that selfish arguments can encourage people to act selflessly is that we can always find ways to be still more selfish.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Managing COVID politics: it’s as clear as mud
The Prime Minister will need the agility of the virus if he is to get the politics of COVID right.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Journalist Janet Malcolm didn’t shy away from judgment
New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm recognised that many professions are indefensible and indispensable at once.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Photograph of Biloela sisters shows power of an image over words
The photograph of a five-year-old comforting her crying younger sister in a hospital bed spread around Australia - perhaps because of what it was missing.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Scott Morrison’s the man for optimistic narratives but one day Australia will need hard truths
A conversation about what risk the nation is prepared to live with is coming but can this government do it with the honesty and complexity required?
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Morrison sidelines Albanese with audacious one-liner
The most important thing to understand about contemporary politics is that it is a battle for attention. And winning it is a three-step process.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Scott Morrison and the precarious politics of self-laid booby traps
Labor has laid them, but so is Scott Morrison laying the traps that may one day snare him.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Federal election hinges on timing, not policy
The Liberal Party wants us to cast our votes in the pandemic age. Labor needs us to do so with that era behind us.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Little has gone right for the Morrison government, but it’s not clear much has gone badly wrong
The political dynamic is fuzzy and there’s no certainty that any of the government’s missteps are having an impact on voters.
- by Sean Kelly
Opinion
Scotty from the suburbs: PM harnesses national identity
Scott Morrison fought an election not on beliefs, but on who he was. No politician in Australia has wielded their identity as effectively as Morrison has.
- by Sean Kelly