The recent breakdown in the Labor-Greens relationship over the issues of voting reform and an alleged preference deal with the Liberal Party has highlighted the fact that it was electoral necessity, rather than ideology and values, which kept the two parties working together.

If our recent political debacle lends itself to analysis beyond Australia’s political choices being pretty dire, it may as well be two pet theories of mine. The first is pretty simple and goes like this: it isn’t enough to diss the other guy. You have to have policies, principles, and, above all, a plan for […]

Saturday evening. 21 August 2010. The function room in the Victoria Hotel is hot. Crammed in are hundreds of people. At the rear, journalists circle around television cameras. They care little for the buzzing green-clad crowd: their focus is elsewhere. They scribble notes, look at the floor. It is artificially bright in this little area: […]

My favourite cafe, where I spent the election morning, is fortunately located in Nimbin, where I live. There are many reasons to like it; it’s super-relaxed, humble, has great food, is the only cafe I know that can make decent tea, has good reading material, drawing materials, children are regarded as real people, and so […]

Although it is reasonable to expect any election campaign to focus predominantly on domestic issues, it is nevertheless somewhat disappointing that matters of foreign policy have been put on the backburner in this unfulfilling 2010 Labor/Liberal contest. Aside, that is, from the essentially meaningless Tony Abbott mantra ‘turning back the boats,’ and both sides affirming […]

What I can say is, after all my whining, all my shunning and head-in-hands dismay, something’s caught my eye, snared my attention, caused me to contemplate – even with some degree of intrigue – the Federal Election. It’s not just the winning and losing – although that holds its own nail-biting attributions – it’s what’s […]

The Greens are the only major party to publish an arts policy for the 2010 election. Neither the ALP nor the Coalition websites provide even a bullet point on arts policy. It doesn’t rate as an issue. This is both and good and a bad thing. It’s good because there is no suggestion that the […]

In an article in the latest edition of The Monthly, former Iemma staffer Mark Aarons says this of Labor Right backroom artists Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar: Enter Arbib and Bitar and their focus groups. Their technique involves targeting the least politically committed voters in key marginal seats. Swing voters of this kind care most […]

Sunday: the Liberal Party ‘launched’ their election campaign and everybody watched on in complete apathy because their election campaign has been going since November 2007 and we’re sick of it already. I’m willing to bet the Labor Party’s campaign launch (scheduled for 16 August) will be just as much of a faff-filled non-event. I want […]

It’s time to decide Australia. It’s time to stand up and grasp the rope of democracy – woven from the fabric of thousands of Anzac souls – and swing between apathy and outrage, determination and despair, boldness and boredom. It’s possible to swing between Julia and Tony as well, although the association of ‘Tony Abbott’ […]

When my daughter turned 17, the government sent her a birthday card and an enrolment-to-vote form, in preparation for the big 18: voting age. Six months later, this ‘gift from the government’ has been unearthed in an office reorganise. This morning, I gave it to her and she threw it on the bench. ‘They’re all […]

GetUp! has a new ad about Tony Abbott and his archaism:

When standing on the right-hand side of the political spectrum with both of our major parties discussing the nuances of a boatpeople initiative, it should be remembered that most of us are, or are descended from, boatpeople. Any offshore processing centre is 220 years too late. So, bringing the debate into the present I’m left […]

Last month I attended an Australian citizenship ceremony in the town hall in the suburb I grew up in. After 50 years of living in Australia, my mum decided that she wanted to become an Australian citizen. There was no financial incentive – she would be eligible for the pension should she need it one […]

When I was about ten years old there was a television ad that featured a woman in a fur coat and beret rushing through the streets of Paris to meet her lover for an instant coffee. She wore fabulous red lipstick and the soundtrack was Piaf. After one viewing Punky Brewster was knocked off her […]

What’s Right? The future of conservatism in Australia Waleed Aly Black Inc. Malcolm Fraser has officially resigned his membership of the Liberal Party, believing that the party has moved too far to the right, claiming it is no longer a liberal party, but a conservative party. Waleed Aly might disagree. In the latest Quarterly Essay, […]