The impact of a Trump presidency is basically unknown. No serious candidate in the post-second world war period has been so unclear in their attitude to foreign policy.
- Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University
It is possible that the major US political parties will nominate a candidate for president who even six months ago was widely perceived as too far outside the mainstream to be electorally viable.
The generation who grew up during the Cold War and came to age through the unrest of Vietnam and the civil rights movement still dominate American politics.
Malcolm Turnbull comes without the two obsessions that dogged Tony Abbott’s leadership: his preoccupation with the previous Labor government and his stake in the culture wars.
So far, Tony Abbott has failed to position himself as anything more than an opposition leader who has been given power and is unsure what to do with it.
The Labor Party’s future depends on its ability to steer its vision for a more progressive Australia through the twin obstacles of public suspicion and the still-powerful party oligarchies.
Opponents of same-sex marriage have turned the debate into one that is about far more than just extending the term “marriage” to already existing long-term relationships.
For more than a century there has been tension between the ideas that our sexuality is essential, and the idea that we have the potential to act out a far greater range of sexual desires and identities than we do in practice.
For most of us stamps have become infrequent objects of daily life but they continue to be produced, and collected by devotees – so what do they say about us as a nation?
Whenever an Australian government runs into trouble we hear calls for a clearer narrative. The latest contribution comes in a thoughtful article from Waleed Aly. Aly points to the similar undermining of…
Bill Shorten, who seemed so impressive as a union leader and minister, is shaping up as the least inspiring opposition leader since Alexander Downer. In foreign affairs, Shorten’s fear of repeating Mark…
Opera Australia (OA) has dealt with what was becoming a significant boycott threat by sacking the Georgian soprano Tamar Iveri. The company had planned to bring her to Australia to perform the role of…
Bill Shorten has clearly taken Tony Abbott as his role model as opposition leader. Shorten’s refrain of “broken promises” and “no more taxes” has an eerie ring of familiarity to it, and risks turning the…
It was the ultimate irony. On this week’s Q&A, host Tony Jones issued an apology on behalf of both Indigenous academic Marcia Langton and the ABC for Langton implying on the previous week’s program…
Last weekend columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams published a piece in The Australian lamenting what he called the “coca-colonial cringe”: Like you I measure my life with American movies, music and…
Suddenly, it seems the Right faction of the Australian Labor Party has embraced gay causes - or as we now say, LGBTI ones. On the campaign trail for the party leadership, Bill Shorten floated the idea…
Over the weekend, the Labor Party seemed to embark on a media tantrum around their failure to recapture the seat of Melbourne from the Greens’ Adam Bandt. The local Victorian state member for Brunswick…
Welcome to the fifth of The Conversation’s Election 2013 podcasts. Each week The Conversation will be sitting down with Australia’s top political minds to discuss all things election as we gear up for…
If the polls are accurate and Labor is almost at level pegging with the Coalition, it would seem we are in for a repeat of the very close election of 2010. But for various reasons this is not necessarily…
The morning Julia Gillard was deposed as Australia’s prime minister many of the British newspapers carried a picture of her knitting a present for the future heir to the British (and presumably) Australian…
Yes, Tony Abbott is right. There is something unattractive about a university allowing public meetings at which attendees are segregated by sex. But hang on a moment: is this not the normal arrangement…
Among all the self-serving tattle from disgruntled cabinet ministers who felt impelled to resign last week, surely the stupidest was the attack on Julia Gillard supposedly promoting “class warfare”. The…
It is ironic that just as our politics become increasingly presidential, so too do the two contending party leaders become increasingly unpopular. Indeed, both parties increasingly campaign as if the choice…
Dennis Altman I’m going to start by quoting you when you say, talking about your career as a journalist, particularly a radio and television journalist, that “there was plenty of robust exchanges but my…
The Rudd government came to power in 2007 with the reforming zeal of Gough Whitlam’s team more than three decades before, but was ultimately betrayed by a self-serving and brutal ALP machine according…
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