Was this Bill Shorten’s worst week?
Bill Shorten just made his worst mistake since he became opposition leader. Without consulting his shadow cabinet or party room, he has committed Labor to a policy which it cannot deliver — and which...
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Cheaper electricity and lower emissions: so near and yet so far
Blueprints to reform Australia’s woeful electricity system are coming in so fast they blur into each other. And they’re coming because, after such a long debate, we are nearing the moment of decision....
View ArticleForty years on, a sense of history gives way to alarm
China’s first forty years of pro-market growth have been spectacular by any count, but they are ending badly. The country’s biggest customer, the United States, has mounted a trade war that tramples on...
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What it means to lose the political centre
Malcolm Turnbull tells us every day how much he dislikes lies in politics, so we wouldn’t want to suggest that the PM is lying about this. Let’s be charitable and assume that he just doesn’t know what...
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On the National Energy Guarantee, it’s Libs versus Libs (and Nats)
The design of the National Energy Guarantee is extraordinarily complex. Its merits are in dispute. But the politics is simple. The government wants a deal the Coalition can unite behind — one so...
View ArticleA party too divided to rule
The Liberal Party is in crisis. The risk is that whoever emerges as its leader — and maybe that will be neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Peter Dutton — could take over a party and a government too divided...
View ArticleLet the voters decide
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln was speaking of the division between free states and slave states within the American union in 1858. But his words are true for the...
View ArticleTurnbullism without Turnbull?
The Liberals were in a dilemma. Should they choose the leader with the best chance of winning an election? Should they choose the leader with the best chance of uniting the party? Or should they choose...
View ArticleThe surge before the storm?
Australia’s latest economic report card from the Bureau of Statistics surprised everyone. We were expecting it to report that growth was slowing. Instead, it says growth is accelerating — indeed, as...
View ArticleIndonesian democracy’s gathering clouds
At a time when democracy seems to be in retreat around the world, Indonesia is its standout success. Since President Suharto was overthrown in 1998, the world’s fourth most populous country has...
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Is Victoria reverting to type?
Oppositions have won nine of the last thirteen state elections in Australia. In Victoria, a government has not been re-elected since 2006. But barring some life-changing revelation in coming days, the...
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Washed up in the wash-up
The Victorian election gave Labor a landslide win. Apart from Steve Bracks’s demolition job in 2002, it was the worst defeat the Victorian Liberals and Nationals have suffered in sixty-five years....
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Final reckoning: nine views of Victoria’s election
The Victorian election result has already been discussed widely from many viewpoints. Another Labor landslide in an election the Coalition thought winnable not long ago, many see it as advance notice...
View ArticleWhy the banks should be more like Bunnings
Kenneth Hayne has ended his task as royal commissioner with impressive restraint. Confronted by an appalling culture of exploitation of customers by banks and other financial institutions, laid bare in...
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Twilight of the Liberals?
The Liberal Party could be reduced to holding just seven seats in Melbourne if the federal election sees Victorians vote as they did at last November’s state election. Transposing the state vote to...
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It’s not where we are, it’s where we’re heading
In just six months to December 2018, says the Bureau of Statistics, Australia added 176,000 jobs. Unemployment shrank by 36,000, from 5.4 to 5.1 per cent of the workforce. The growth in full-time jobs...
View ArticleEnding the franchise to exploit your franchisees
When royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne delivered his report on the misdeeds of the banks, it was all over the papers, TV and radio bulletins, and dominated public debate. Yet when a parliamentary...
View ArticleRaking through the embers of Labor’s loss
Suppose NSW voters had gone to the polls a week earlier: before the leaders’ debate, and before the Liberals released a video of Labor leader Michael Daley making some clumsy and potentially offensive...
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Not the real budget?
As architecture, Josh Frydenberg has designed a pretty good budget. It injects some stimulus into an economy that needs it, focuses new spending in areas that matter, rejects the temptation to provide...
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Over the top with Scott
Let’s start with the worst danger zone. If the punters have got it right, the Coalition is on track to lose nine seats in Queensland alone on 18 May. If that happens, it doesn’t matter what happens...
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