UPDATE: Later the Indonesian Foreign Minister presented a more hard line view on tow-backs. Tony Abbott has got a useful break from Indonesia over his controversial turn-back-the-boats plan, with Foreign…
- Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
As today’s Nielsen poll shows Labor and Coalition 50-50 on the two-party vote, Kevin Rudd is doing what has been expected – he’s narrowing the policy gap between himself and Tony Abbott over carbon pricing…
The federal government expects Victoria to sign up to the Better Schools funding plan next week, and has extended the deadline for negotiations with outstanding states on the package. Victoria and Queensland…
It is so Kevin. A couple of weeks back into the prime ministership, a million things to do – and Rudd’s nipping off to Papua New Guinea. Just wanted to see the regional neighbours, he explained when asked…
Kevin Rudd has set out a “national competitiveness agenda” for Australia and said the nation must lift its annual productivity growth rate to 2% or better. Addressing the National Press Club, the Prime…
Kevin Rudd today will paint Tony Abbott as “Captain Negative”, unwilling to do the hard work needed to develop policies to change the country and guilty of talking Australia down. Appearing at the National…
The government this week is inching forward in its battle to get sign ups to its Better Schools plan – aka Gonski – but it still needs support from Victoria and the Catholics for the great leap that would…
Kevin Rudd has said he wants a referendum within two years of the election to recognise Australia’s Indigenous people in the constitution - and told Tony Abbott to get his act together on the issue. Both…
Every now and then a politician gets caught on the sticky paper. That’s where Tony Abbott was today, and he didn’t cope well. It was always going to be a dog of a morning, with Newspoll showing the vote…
South Australian Independent senator Nick Xenophon is adopting a bargain basement approach to fund raising – donate more than $1500 and you’ll get a partial, or even a full, refund. Xenophon has had a…
Tony Abbott is streets behind Kevin Rudd as preferred PM – tomorrow’s Newspoll has him trailing 22 points - and now findings comparing their personal qualities tell us why. Essential Research has shown…
Kevin Rudd is nothing if not brazen. Less than a fortnight after rolling Julia Gillard he has proposed an historic change that would prevent such a putsch in the future. His radical plan – one of the most…
In yet another iteration of asylum seeker policy, the government now says that people who destroy their documentation will be sent to the back of the processing queue. This is distinguished from the opposition…
With Tony Abbott lagging as preferred PM against Kevin Rudd, Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has cast the election as a contest between a presidential pitch and “a traditional cabinet-based, consultative…
Bill Shorten didn’t ask for the Education portfolio but when Kevin Rudd added it to his Workplace Relations job it was familiar territory. Shorten’s mother Ann, who has a PhD in history, is co-author of…
Julia Gillard said Tony Abbott was a misogynist. Now Kevin Rudd suggests he’s a political coward. Prodding his opponent again to debate him, Rudd said it was time Abbott demonstrated he had “a bit of ticker…
Kevin Rudd has moved to try to neutralise the big negative that NSW Labor corruption is expected to be in that state at the federal election. His message to voters appalled by what’s come out at the Independent…
If Labor goes into opposition, or even if it stays in government, next term is going to be seen as a time for renewal. A swag of former frontbenchers are quitting their seats, and some of those electorates…
Kevin Rudd has chosen a senior Treasury official, Jim Murphy, to be his new chief of staff. Rudd worked with Murphy, a deputy secretary whose job will concentrate on policy development and economic advice…
The tough debate looming within the government is between those urging Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to make an early dash to the polls and the “let’s just govern a while” school. The political hard heads…
Tony Abbott has given the government an excuse to ditch the proposed referendum to recognise local government in the constitution, if it wants to. Abbott today advised Australians who did not understand…
Kevin Rudd’s reshuffle has an air of unreality. The new ministry comes so close to the election that it is an interim government, able to promise much but with limited capacity to deliver, before the voters…
Bill Shorten will take over the Education portfolio, with its challenge of securing the Gonski school funding reforms, and Tony Burke gets the poison chalice of Immigration, in Kevin Rudd’s extensive reshuffle…
Kevin Rudd will take a kitbag of goodies to Indonesia this week as he seeks more help from that county to curb the boat flow. The secondhand C-130 Hercules planes that Indonesia was going to buy at “mates…
Kevin Rudd is a one-time diplomat and a former foreign minister. He knows the significance of precise wording. So his line today about Tony Abbott and Indonesia was startling. Answering a question at his…
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