Tag: Australian politics

VIEW FROM THE HILL: When a prime minister has diminished authority, people don’t bother so much with the niceties.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: There is a serious chance the Morrison government will be further destabilised by the recriminations flowing from this result. It is likely to deepen the divide in Liberal ranks between those who appear hell-bent on remaking the party in their own conservative self-image regardless of electoral consequences.

VIEW FROM THE HILL: A shot was fired across Scott Morrison’s bows to remind him of the challenge of managing a now-hung parliament.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten says Australia’s Pacific neighbours want partners for infrastructure projects – “and as prime minister, I intend to make sure they look to Australia first."

OPINION: There is still great public sentiment and a sense of loss in relation to the knifing of Malcolm Turnbull, despite his disappointing political paralysis on so many issues, writes TESS LAWRENCE.

The expected loss of Wentworth throws the Coalition into minority government. While the government currently has pledges of confidence from some crossbenchers, they would be in a strong position to demand concessions in a hung parliament.

Scott Morrison and foreign affairs minister Marise Payne made a series of major announcements in relation to Israel at a Tuesday news conference.

Selling became their focus of attention. Too often it became their sole focus of attention. Products and services multiplied. Banks searched for their “share of the customer’s wallet”.

Michelle Guthrie has been criticised for not standing up for the organisation sufficiently, and for her lack of journalistic experience.

OPINION & ANALYSIS / MICHELLE GRATTAN: All week, the Liberals struggled to answer the key question: why was Turnbull deposed? The Wentworth outcome could produce another round in the war over gender representation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has abandoned the plan to raise the pension age to 70.

O'Dwyer said she’d had "conversations with many members of parliament, both male and female, and it is clear to me that people were subjected to threats and intimidation. And bullying."

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Prime Minister Scott Morrison will need to rely heavily on the experience of his new foreign minister, Marise Payne, and deputy leader, Josh Frydenberg. There is hard work to be done, and little time to do it.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Scott Morrison has been described as relentless, ambitious, and hard-line, although these labels only give us some clues to his personal politics, and ultimately his political agenda.

Morrison has ahead of him the immense challenge of uniting a fractured party. A lot will depend on whether the conservatives undermine him or accept their rout quietly.

WHO WILL BE PM? Legal experts suggest Peter Dutton could be ineligible under the constitution’s section 44 provision on pecuniary interests. Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop join race for prime ministership.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Enough. Most Australian voters surely care less about who is running the country than they do about making sure our country is still a habitable place to live in the future.

With the Liberals in free fall over the leadership crisis and Peter Dutton admitting he is shaping up for another tilt at Malcolm Turnbull, it was yet another blow to a reeling government.

The government has shelved any move to implement the 26% reduction in emissions because it cannot get the numbers to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: An appallingly racist diatribe, by a senator who not one in a thousand Australians would have heard of, on Wednesday brought almost all the parliament together to reassert some core values of Australia’s policy.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: As he tries to deliver on energy and in other key areas, the prime minister's party enemies and critics will be encouraged in their attacks following Saturday's results.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Here’s what you need to know about the five electorates up for grabs and, with a federal election likely in the first half of 2019, what’s at stake for Turnbull and Shorten.

The outcomes in Longman and Braddon this weekend are vital for Shorten, who would face very serious leadership instability if he lost both seats. Turnbull claims “Labor should be streets ahead”.

Senator Dean Smith advocates broad view on Australia's population while Tony Abbott presses for big cut to immigration and Pauline Hanson makes lower migrant intake a signature pitch.

Former Labor leader appeals to voters not to reward Shorten’s dishonesty. “Don’t vote Labor”, he says, but instead support “minor parties and independents to shake up the system and put some honest politics back into Canberra.”

Announcing the retreat after failing to secure support from cross-benchers including Pauline Hanson, Mathias Cormann reaffirmed that the government remained committed to the cuts, and cast the July 28 byelections as a referendum on them.

The advertisement says: “Why is former banker Malcolm Turnbull so keen to give big business a tax cut instead of properly funding our schools and hospitals?

OPINION & ANALYSIS: The climate message seems to be reaching the Australian people. But will it get to those we’ve elected to represent us?

Speaking at his news conference, Turnbull said: “The survivors that I’ve met and the personal stories that have been told to me have given me but a small insight into the betrayal you experienced at the hands of the people and institutions who were supposed to protect and care for ...

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton says things are "not too far off" from being finalised.

In the pre-recorded interview aired on Sunday night, during which Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion sometimes disagreed, Campion accused conservatives “within the parliament” of pressing her to have an abortion.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said with inequality rising, reinvestment in public services should be the priority.

Post-budget opinion will soon be tested on the ground in five byelections, four of them caused by the citizenship crisis.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Timing tricks help politicians avoid dealing with the substance of their policies. That isn’t going to change any time soon.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: If the budget bombed it would be disastrous for the Turnbull government. But it is hard to see that happening, given the revenue circumstances and the election-focused measures.

The damning report, released on Monday, says the decline is widespread and “equivalent to a generation of Australian school children falling short of their full learning potential”.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Malcolm Turnbull defended refusing for so long to set up a royal commission, although he said commentators were correct in saying that “politically we would have been better off setting one up earlier”.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: If Malcolm Turnbull is to draw any comfort from a self-inflicted wound, he might consider the history of leaders who have endured bad polling and prevailed.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: The dubious politics of the Games and the gratuitous fawning over Australia’s place in the “Commonwealth” is only part of the broader scheme of the reasons for hosting the games.

Super Saturday had positive spin-offs for both federal leaders, but substantially more for Bill Shorten than Malcolm Turnbull.

Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has directed his department to explore whether South African farmers can be accepted into Australia through refugee, humanitarian or other visas.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: The term “gun lobby” seems to be applied to anything from large industry groups through to an individual writing a letter to the editor. Nevertheless, it instantly evokes frightening imagery of America’s National Rifle Association (NRA).

OPINION & ANALYSIS: The “frustration” the Coalition feels is less because of any Labor moralising and more because the government is killing itself with its own mistakes.

With deputy PM Barnaby Joyce on leave, dug in and defiant, feedback coming from the party’s grassroots is that he should step down as Nationals leader, while support is eroding in the officialdom of the party.

The plunge in relations between the two leaders following the revelation of Joyce's affair with a former staffer is now threatening Coalition unity, with uncertainty about how the situation will play out.

Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce is said to be very aware of the hurt in the party and the fact that he has to work to mend the political damage caused as a result of his affair with former staffer Vikki Campion, who is expecting his child.

Lamb, who holds the marginal Queensland seat of Longman, took steps to renounce her British citizenship but the UK authorities required her parents’ marriage certificate, which she did not produce.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: In contemporary Australia, identities are often complex, and citizenship entitlements may be multiple and overlapping.

Labor's David Feeney, whose position was referred to the High Court late last year, confirmed on Thursday that he still could not produce the paperwork to demonstrate he had renounced British citizenship.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: As it becomes ever more entangled in battles over the meaning of our history, Australia Day will find it difficult to carry a “successful” national day’s normal civic burden of fostering common belonging and social cohesion.