The year recently ended revealed that the authoritarian impulse is never very far from the surface. It may lay dormant for a time but it never goes away. Here in…
Australian democracy faces a crisis of representation. People feel alienated from our politics and our institutions. Donkey votes are up, minor parties’ votes are up, and the major parties are riven by internal dissent. In…
Australia has some of the harshest border restrictions on the planet: stringent arrival caps, two-week hotel quarantine and prevention of citizens leaving the country without special exemptions. These restrictions have…
The year is 2021. Kissing has been banned. Social interactions of any kind are subject to state permission. Daily government announcements inform the citizenry of acceptable travel limits. In some…
Yesterday’s Victorian budget was on-form for the Andrews’ government: it mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and now it is mishandling the economic recovery from the deepest recession in 100 years. And the contempt for democratic norms the…
It was 13 years ago last week Kevin Rudd as the then-Labor opposition leader announced ‘This sort of reckless spending must stop’. He said it at the launch of the ALP campaign…
It is revealing that in attempting to demonstrate that the ABC is not biased against the views of mainstream Australians, ABC board member Joseph Gersh, writing in The Australian on Tuesday,…
COVID-19 has consumed the public’s attention for almost six months, but the economic crisis caused by devastating lockdowns has started to shed light on a nefarious threat to the Australian way of life. Across a…
Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus’s comment yesterday that Joel Fitzgibbon’s opinions on climate change represented the views of “only a handful” of people within the Labor Party is precisely…
Kevin Rudd’s claim that the Murdoch media is a “cancer on democracy” is gaslighting the Australian people. Last week a Rudd-initiated petition was submitted to the House of Representatives calling for a Royal Commission…
A few days ago Alexander Downer wrote on these pages that if he were American he would have voted for Donald Trump – but through gritted teeth. My view is different from…
It’s election season on Australian university campuses. So you want to be elected as a student representative at your university’s student association or guild? Are you willing to abandon all shame and self-respect for a…
