If the 2018 election, which produced the so-called Danslide, was a disaster for the Liberals, this election amounts to a catastrophe.
- Vice-Chancellor's professorial fellow, Monash University
Now that Labor has won and the Liberal Party has been severely wounded, its enemies will be baying for blood, so a first order of business will be to make Australian voters glad they elected them.
On the relatively rare occasions Labor has won victory from opposition, it has done so with a strong reform agenda. So far, Albanese is taking a big – and risky – departure from that.
Malcolm Turnbull’s immediate blaming of Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign for the Coalition’s poor performance at the polls goes in fact to his real problem: he’s not a very talented politician.
After two Coalition government budgets heavy on ideology, this one is a quieter, don’t-frighten-the-horses document paving the way for the election.
Five months into his prime ministership, it is difficult to know what Malcolm Turnbull really stands for, and his government risks paralysis as a result.
Joe Hockey’s first budget was a declaration of ideological belief. The second is about political survival and depends on breathing life back into the economy – the ideological urgency can wait.
In just a year, the Abbott government has gone from a radical nation-changing budget to promising a ‘dull’ one. Are we to believe the ideological zeal is gone, or has the survival instinct kicked in?
When it comes to producing a comprehensive, far-reaching policy regime – a coherent vision for Australia’s society and economy and how to turn it into reality – the government is only getting started.
Malcolm Fraser’s record in public life was remarkable, ensuring he’d be remembered not only for his role in The Dismissal, but for how far apart he and the party he once led came to be.
If a single speech is regarded as a make-or-break event for an Australian prime minister, then that prime minister faces an uncomfortable future. That’s because the “make” part is a fraud. Tony Abbott…
Anyone in search of a prime example of the dictum that a functioning democracy is nothing short of a minor miracle need look no further than the state of Victoria. In the past 15 years, what has been the…
A few days ago in a tutorial on political leadership, a student asked me, given my past professional contact with Tony Abbott, if the prime minister has what it takes to be a long-term success in the job…
In today’s politics, few governments are ever safe. Even freshly minted administrations now age at an incredible speed. The most casual observer will know how much trouble the Abbott government finds itself…
Five weeks after its release, treasurer Joe Hockey’s first federal budget is proving to be a remarkably durable political and media commodity, and not in ways that portend well for the Abbott government…
In 2012, then-opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey gave a speech in which he declared that the age of entitlement had to end. But he did not deliver it to a domestic audience. Instead, he went to the…
For every opposition, the prospect of taking office – attaining politics’ ultimate prize, often after years of hard grind – can be relied upon to drown out the little noises of self-doubt and self-criticism…
As Paul Keating told Julia Gillard not so long ago, every prime minister is carried out of the job in a box. His fatalistic advice was meant to be comforting, indicating that the party room or the public…
Not so long ago, Tony Abbott looked washed up. In 2007, while other ministers wanted to replace John Howard as the captain of the Coalition’s sinking ship, Abbott stood resolutely by his political hero…
It’s an exquisitely portentous cliché, the one that is always trotted out at each Australian election: this is the most important election in a generation, or since World War Two, or the advent of television…
In the middle of the 2012 winter, an influential supporter of Julia Gillard laid out for me the intricacies of the Labor caucus’ power structures, the labour movement’s web of personal antagonisms and…
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