Labor pains
Did you feel that rumbling? A deep, faint trembling is suggesting deep shifts are taking place in the tectonic plates — not prompted by volcanoes in Iceland or sinkholes in Guatemala, but rather a re-alignment in the ranks of the federal ALP that has prompted serious questions about Kevin Rudd’s long-term future.
Never had it so good
One of the consolations of studying history is the perspective it provides on one’s own troubles.
Hollow man budget
Any doubt that an election is in the offing was dispelled by Wayne Swan’s budget this week.
Sail on
Any way you look at it, it was a remarkable achievement.
Your lying eyes
Everybody tells lies, and anyone who says they don’t is a lying liar.
Catherine the not so Great
The dangerous thing about thin ice is that one never knows just how thin it is until it cracks.
A new great big tax
And so the great Rudd juggernaut has come shuddering to a halt.
Like the US, we should revere our former leaders
Adam Connolly on the unlikely friendship between ex-PMs Bob Hawke and John Howard
Politicians’ affairs
Whoever coined the phrase ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’ did not know the half of it.
Fair play
Has everyone finished hyperventilating about the Melbourne Storm busting the National Rugby League salary cap? Good.
Spoilt for choice
Local readers who have travelled to the US or the UK, or even watched the seemingly endless stream of reality cooking shows those countries export, are aware that Australians pay far too much for their food and drink.
Bulk billing
This page is not known for being shy about its opinion of Malcolm Turnbull — or anyone else for that matter.
Our insular and parochial media
Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, later as farce.
Two cheers for Julia
Whatever purpose unions may have served in an earlier age, in 21st century Australia they have well and truly passed their use-by date.
In defence of Barnaby
The Queensland maverick upsets sophisticates because he is a popular outsider who helped kill the ETS, says Christian Kerr
Good riddance
The kind words came thick and fast in the hours and days after Malcolm Turnbull announced his departure from federal Parliament this week.
Follow the leader
As physical feats go, it is hard for most of us to contemplate, much less sign up for, an endurance test such as the iron man triathlon Tony Abbott recently completed in just under 14 hours.
Reverse course
Kevin Rudd likes to tell anyone who will listen that when it comes to evidence-based policy, he’s its number one fan.
Libs lose a conservative warrior
These columns frequently attack political figures for their regular blunders and policy flip-flops.
As the worm turns
It is hard to decide which is a more depressing prospect: that healthcare spending threatens to become the issue that, if not controlled, will over time come to eat the economies not just of Australia but those of the rest of the Western world; or that debates over national health policies can be won or lost over electronic ‘worms’ directed by hand-picked focus groups.
An authentic Aunt
The obvious thing to say about ‘The Authentic Mr Abbott’ on Four Corners this week is that it revealed more about the ABC’s internal, incestuous and self-reinforcing culture than it did about the alternative prime minister.
Over-stimulated
As Australia enters its 19th year of uninterrupted economic growth, the rest of the world is surely looking on with envy: compared with countries from the US to Iceland to the UK to Greece, we have escaped all but the most relatively marginal effects of the global economic downturn.
Say it ain’t so, Tony
If you squint really hard and tilt your head to one side, you can kind of, sort of, just barely see how Tony Abbott’s one-man launch of a new Coalition maternity leave policy might have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Auntie’s climate debate
Mobiles, jumbo jets and the internet have still not killed off the tyranny of distance — at least not at ABC headquarters.
Building the Eating Revolution
It is not often in this hyper-regulated age that Australians are given more, rather than less, choice about what they are allowed to use to fuel their bodies.
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