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Paul Bongiorno
politics December 12, 2025
Explaining Labor’s travel scandal
About once a decade, travel expenses and politicians’ access to entitlements crash their way into the headlines, usually to the discomfort of a government as the opposition ratchets up pressure for a ministerial scalp. The latest uproar was sparked...
economy December 5, 2025
Anthony Albanese’s official honeymoon ends this weekend, but his honeymoon with the electorate is continuing, according to the latest opinion polls, boosted by his opponents’ disarray and the government’s significant wins since the May election...
politics November 28, 2025
Inside Murray Watt’s environmental deal
Parliament’s last sitting week for the year was an intense guessing game, as Environment Minister Murray Watt haggled with competing sides on how best to reform Australia’s environment laws. Watt had put everything on the line politically, creating...
politics November 21, 2025
Albanese caught in a Türkiye shoot
The politics of climate and the environment is just as messy at the United Nations summit in Belém, Brazil, as it is in Canberra and the Australian states. The fate of the planet is running a poor second to vested interests and crude personal power...
environment November 14, 2025
The political cost of keeping the lights on
There was a timely warning from Labor’s national president on the day the party, and the country, was remembering not only our war dead but also the convulsions caused by the ousting of the Whitlam government. Fifty years on from the Dismissal, the...
politics November 7, 2025
An Australian coup: Reflecting on Whitlam’s dismissal
It is not true that Australia has never experienced a revolution. Fifty years ago, the nation saw a bloodless coup where the underpinning conventions of our parliamentary democracy were overthrown. The outrage of the Dismissal established dangerous...
politics October 31, 2025
Sussan Ley and the joy of division
There are concerns in the opposition and the government that Sussan Ley’s “weird” attack on the T-shirt Anthony Albanese wore when he returned from the United States says more about her lack of authority in a divided party room than her ability to...
politics October 24, 2025
Albanese’s White House success
Not for a very long time has a single meeting between a prime minister and an American president been such a pivotal event for a government and its opponents. Anthony Albanese emerged from his rushed trip to Washington, DC, with his credibility in...
economy October 17, 2025
Chalmers retreats on super reforms
Soon after Labor’s thumping election win, Jim Chalmers was assuring doubters he would not be “changing policies we took to the election”. Within three months, however, that determination was undercut by Anthony Albanese quietly telling the treasurer...
politics October 3, 2025
Anthony Albanese’s seat at the periodic table
Just after sunrise on Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese landed back in Sydney after a trip that positioned Australia exactly where he wanted it to be in international affairs. He managed to show himself as a champion of...
politics September 26, 2025
Albanese’s New York risks pay off
Frank Sinatra once sang that if you can make it in New York, you can “make it anywhere”. It could well be the anthem for Anthony Albanese’s assertive trip this week, putting his stamp on Australia’s sovereignty at the apex world forum of the United...
