Is Eric Abetz or Mark Latham the spectre of WorkChoices?
To get a good handle on how the election is playing, your best best is to watch the first ten minutes or so of any commercial news channel (though Nine and Seven have a bigger footprint than Ten). Tony Abbott [...]
The significance of Malcolm Turnbull
There are at least two possible frames for understanding the significance of Malcolm Turnbull’s departure from politics. The first is the quotidian political view. His going, and the manner thereof, does or does not help Tony Abbott. In the land [...]
The Coalition on economic management
Whether or not it’s a coincidence that the first of Tony Abbott’s ‘headland speeches’ was on economic policy and was delivered the day after Newspoll showed the Coalition falling behind Labor on economic management, I don’t know. But, given that [...]
Costello piles on
Peter Costello’s written a bit of a spray about Tony Abbott’s parental leave scheme in The Age. Actually quite an amusing read. I don’t know if The Great Pretender’s distaste will have that much impact in the Coalition ranks, but [...]
Higgins by-election (and Bradfield by-election)
Tomorrow sees voters in Peter Costello’s old seat of Higgins (and Brendan Nelson’s seat of Bradfield) go to the polls. Labor is not running in either by-election. That seemed like an arguably justifiable decision at the time nominations closed, but [...]
Hockey the new Costello, Howard has lunch, Andrews deals himself back in
Developments yesterday and today in the Liberal leadership spill should only reinforce the belief that Malcolm Turnbull’s survival as leader would be the Liberal party’s only sane option. Joe Hockey went to lunch with John Howard, didn’t reply to any [...]
Keating on Costello (… and everything else)
Paul Keating hasn’t been reticent lately about letting people know what he thinks … though, perhaps he never was. PJK has been in the news decrying the artistic establishment for neglecting Geoffrey Tozer, pondering cities and dubbing Canberra “a great [...]
Clive Hamilton and Higgins
The Greens are running Clive Hamilton in Higgins. As Andrew Norton observes, Hamilton criticising seems to be a politically ecumenical practice in the blogosphere. Guy Rundle puts a contrary view. I’m by no means enamoured of some of the ideas [...]
Turnbull, Hockey or Abbott?
It looks rather like the Liberals are going with the Gadarene swine option. If Joe Hockey becomes leader, then no doubt it will be characterised as a “save the furniture” tactic. But how persuasive is a party that will have [...]
Legacy wars
It was the political debate of last week, and we missed it. But that’s ok – so did most of the rest of the population, I would imagine. The columns of The Australian were full of the ‘legacy wars’ – [...]
Propositions on the Liberal right week of FAIL
By Mark Bahnisch on November 26, 2009
Let’s sum up a few things about the CPRS/leadership shenanigans: (a) It’s been intriguing to see the focus of political discussion narrow to the Parliamentary dramatics. Journalists – and one suspects, many Liberal MPs – appear to have completely lost [...]
Posted in By-elections, Climate change, Howardia, Media, Politics, Polls | Tagged By-elections, Climate change, commentariat, cprs, ets, Higgins, Higgins by-election, Industrial Relations, journos, Kevin Andrews, leadership spill, Liberal base, liberal leadership, Liberal right, Malcolm Turnbull, Newspoll, Peter Costello, Ryan, spill, Tony Abbott, Wentworth, WorkChoices, workplace relations | 122 Responses