A Brief History of the Near Future
Australia will go to a federal election sometime over the next twelve months. If asked last year, my gut would have inclined to an early election, say around August ’21, particularly …
Read MoreTag: Labor Party
Tinfoil and trouble
The more I look at Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd these days, the more I think that ancient Greeks were right, at least for some: the afterlife is indeed a …
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Hammered and sickled
Be careful what you put on your office walls – or at least where you take your photographs: A small icon associated with communism on the wall of an ACT …
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Election in the time of a pandemic
Today, the state of Queensland went to the polls to vote in local government elections and two state by-elections. It has been a rather unprecedented exercise of democracy at a …
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“ALP: Thought Crimes Unit” – what to expect in season 7
Big changes are in store for the ACTU/ABC/Fairfax’s hit TV drama “ALP: Thought Crimes Unit”. The last season, already thought by the viewers to have been the most disappointing so …
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The Libs have a problem with the trendy vote too
It has been said for the past decade or two that the parliamentary Labour Party is finding it increasingly difficult to hold together the two major poles of its base: …
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Not our government
It’s pretty much a hard political law that when the right loses an election they tend to blame themselves (“it was the infighting – the bloody moderates/conservatives [delete as appropriate] …
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The autumn of our minor discontent: or 24 thoughts about the election
(Cover pic idea shamelessly stolen from Iowahawk, who captions it “Australian election summary”) 1. I was wrong about this election. I’m somewhat comforted by knowing that so was everyone else. …
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Bob was all our uncle
It is rather melancholy that Bob Hawke died only two days before most likely seeing his beloved Labor Party returning to power after six years in opposition. The consolation is …
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Is Tim Soutphommasane an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in drag?
At “The Sydney Morning Herald”, the former race discrimination commissioner Tim Sensitive-About-His-Name sings the praises of one of the new leaders of the opposition to “Orange Man Bad”, “She Guevara” Alexandra …
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Three reasons the Liberal Party is heading for the slaughter
Try as I might I can’t imagine any possible, even unlikely, scenario where the Coalition government in Canberra manages to get returned in the widely expected May 2019 general election. To …
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The Incumbent Preservation Society
The leaders on the way out (I was going to write “outgoing” but it would have been confusing because in one sense they are not) like to leave these sorts …
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The Unbearable Lightness of Anne Aly
A few days ago in Melbourne, a Somali-born Islamist Khalif Shire Ali set his car alight and stabbed three people, one of them fatally, on a busy CBD street before being …
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China’s Trojan roads and information highways
It would help greatly if more people conceptualised the relations between China and the Western world as a kind of a cold war. Of course, God forbid that it …
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Obama doesn’t heart Abbott
George W Bush was lucky – during his two terms in the White House he got to deal with one – and good one – Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. …
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Crisis of the 21st Century
In a long and often bloody and tumultuous history of the Roman Empire, there are few periods like what has become known among scholars as the Crisis of the Third …
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No Jews Allowed
Some tight policing of the borders by an alert member of parliament: The first Muslim MP in the NSW parliament has sparked a row overnight, refusing entry to a respected …
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