Tag: politics

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Australia's immigration department doesn't keep a record of the number of people applying for asylum at airports. This means there is no oversight over the treatment of those seeking protection.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, releasing Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s three-volume report which excoriates the financial sector, said the government would be “taking action” on all 76 recommendations.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: With the clear majority voting against a no-deal Brexit, the ticking clock works in the prime minister’s favour.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: As this Australia Day has approached, the prime minister has ramped up the nationalistic and culture war rhetoric in general, and accompanied it with some controversial actions.

OPINION AND ANALYSIS: The weekend rally on St Kilda beach, organised by far-right activist Neil Erikson, reminds us nationalism is the territory of fringe groups who hold bigoted views, particularly towards people who aren’t “white”.

Amy, almost two decades younger than Broad who is 43, was quoted in New Idea as claiming he was not fit to represent Australia.

Scott Morrison this week produced his own bill and suggested both sides give their parliamentarians a conscience vote.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: While concerns about the level of immigration have increased, there is continued endorsement of the view that Australia is an immigrant nation, that immigration benefits the country and that it will continue to play an important role in the years ahead.

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.

ANALYSIS; Even though the set piece theatre is about community building and cooperation, the reality is that China and the US have irreconcilable visions for the region and its future. The only question is how much they are willing to pay to prevail in the contest for Asia’s future.

ANALYSIS: Theresa May has managed to push her deal through this most recent hurdle by getting cabinet approval. However, getting parliamentary support promises to be a far more traumatic and quite possibly unachievable task.

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.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: The prudent thing for Theresa May to do at this late stage would be to place all the realistically available options on the table and hold a free vote in parliament.

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.

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: If Trump’s troll travels here later this year, it throws open a challenge for Australian artists to greet the man and his Baby with thoughtful, artistically sophisticated responses that provoke considered debate rather than superficially regurgitating popular opinion.

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.”

When US President Donald Trump visits the UK next week he’ll be met by protesters and a huge inflatable of himself looking like a big baby soaring over Big Ben.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Just as republicans can enjoy the spectacle of a royal wedding without abandoning the idea of an Australian head of state, we need to remind ourselves that Trump is, literally, not our president.

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?

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.

OPINION & ANALYSIS: Could it be that the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump in 2016 diminished the soft power of the UK and US?

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: Brexit is putting greater onus on Australia’s European ties, which will no longer be viewed through London’s prism. This may turn out to be a benefit to Australia of Britain’s Brexit debacle.

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”.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are to do with its illegality. However, legalisation of cannabis is relatively recent in most jurisdictions so the long-term benefits or problems of legalisation are not yet known.

Australia's Minister of Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, is not backing down from his offer to offer white South African farmers "refugee" or "humanitarian" status in the country.