Chris Wallace

“Albanese is a transactional politician who is good at planes, trains and automobiles – not unimportant things – and he won an election and will perhaps win another. However, he is unable to satisfy Australia’s yearning for better government…”

“As he banged on about culture war issues this week, Dutton was speaking to the converted. Neither at his soft launch nor since has he given a concrete reason for anyone who didn’t vote for the Coalition last election to vote for it this time.”

“Irrespective of the election outcome, Australia’s major parties would do well to study the dynamics of the Pat Cummins-led cricket team … Unselfish, inclusive leadership is the foundation of that really good side … It’s about …”

“Canberra is a small city. Forget six degrees of separation. If you’re not actually living across the road from the prime minister, you could well be next door to his chief of staff, married to his press sec, playing golf with his departmental head, …”

“American hedge fund Starboard Value rallied fellow News Corp shareholders on Monday to ‘collapse the Company’s dual-class share structure’, which gives the Murdoch family 41 per cent of the voting rights despite owning only 14 per cent …”

“If the government takes a cue from what worked this week, and extends it to land clear messages on the things that matter most in election campaigns – jobs, wages, tax and cost of living – it could just make retaining majority government possible.”

“Albanese’s declaration ... that ‘the government is not for turning’ on the CFMEU clean-out evoked the defining quote of the late British Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher. He has gone from fighting Tories to quoting …”

“Dutton is a master of the malign narrative. Under his leadership, enough fear-based narrative trips and twists weave through immigration policy and administration to keep journalists in train and Labor on the defensive.”

The battle between a cricket giant and a start-up over the multimillion-dollar cricket ball market reflects the anti-competitive state of the Australian economy.

“If the Liberals fail to win Dunkley, the rational case for Peter Dutton continuing as leader essentially evaporates. Dutton’s obvious successor was glimpsed in the surface fleet announcement this week: opposition defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie.”

The civil case brought by former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold has probed the extensive communications between The Australian and the head of the inquiry into his handling of the Bruce Lehrmann trial.

“Just when everyone had pretty much given up on Albanese being willing to do something big, he did, transforming a regressive $21 billion tax handout into progressive economic and social policy.”

“Dutton is testing, and pushing out, the boundaries of acceptable public discourse as part of a new configuration in Australian politics, of which the ‘No’ campaign was the harbinger. There’ll be more of it. Much more.”

“For Labor to build real political momentum in an incredibly tough year, the prime minister needs to be with his treasurer the way Bob Hawke was with the younger Paul Keating in the 1980s.”

The criminal trial of David McBride has come to an abrupt end, as a serious blow to his defence led him to plead guilty to three charges, raising concerns about the implications for future whistleblowers.

“Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong got the fruits for Australia from 18 months of serious, grown-up diplomatic work together on the critically important Australia–China relationship. This is a credit to Albanese and Wong personally and …”

“Labor Party national conferences – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has seen a few. He’s been going to them all his life. His attendance at this week’s three-day conference in Brisbane, which concludes today, will be as familiar as putting …”

“It wasn’t so much the exuberance of the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures in Arnhem Land that set the tone of federal politics this week, as the troubling economic data on the evening news.”

“The very low bar of not losing the Fadden byelection the previous week, and the evident polling success of the aggressive, colonial-tinged ‘No’ team in the Voice campaign, has buoyed Peter Dutton’s Coalition.”

“In any other context, the Albanese government could have expected to be wedged between national security and social security this week – with a debate on spending priorities and its willingness to do so much in one area and so little in another.”

Thirty years ago Paul Keating was photographed for an iconic cover of the Australian edition of Rolling Stone magazine. Photojournalist Lorrie Graham and others present recall the shoot.

“The federal government response to crime rates in Alice Springs dominated federal politics this week. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a better-late-than-never visit. His sombre expression contemplating the conditions there was a reminder of just …”

“If there’s one thing Australians want in January, it’s not to be bothered. The Albanese government is doing its best to oblige.”

“As surely as Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has blown up the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Dutton rose from the political dead this week, challenging the Albanese government to detail its Voice proposal so Australians …”

“There are so many issues in the ‘big and hard’ basket that Labor can’t afford to spend political capital on unforced fumbles like this week’s decision on inbound Chinese travellers.”

Is the ABC biased or merely a pawn in the culture wars? This week’s senate estimates highlights the broadcaster’s dilemma as senior journalists came under fire from the Coalition.

“The big uptick in one metric in Australia was obvious this week. Political productivity in Canberra is booming. So many issues were substantively pursued by the Albanese government, on so many fronts, it was hard to keep up.”

“The Albanese government spent the past week coming to grips with theory versus reality in government. The vast gap between the budget handed down by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the media’s reporting of it is still being processed by government MPs. Labor’s …”

Politics is once again dictating Covid-19 settings, as national cabinet dumps mandatory isolation and paid pandemic leave.

“National cabinet met virtually this week with the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, in attendance. Kelly was absent from the previous meeting, on August 31, which cut mandated Covid-19 isolation from seven to five days – a decision not supported by …”

The gender pay gap is alive and well and ‘tax bludgers’ are thriving in Australia, as the latest figures show scores of millionaires paid nothing on their income.

“It was the drum that alerted them to the political event unfolding on the grass between the old and new parliament buildings early on Saturday afternoon. A ‘freedom movement’ rally was under way. A hundred people gathered around a flatbed …”

“The de-ScoMofication of Australia on the world stage took a leap forward this week as the Albanese government consolidated its international relations edge over an enfeebled opposition in a series of high-level meetings in Europe.”

“The savage, reckless, wantonly negligent public health policy of the federal government that is supposed to protect us – and above all, make sure people in places like Kooyong and Higgins never face the horror of queues and half-empty supermarket shelves …”

“If you think a day is a long time in politics, try a week. This one started with Scott Morrison showing off his massive barramundi. It finished with Australia’s uncontrolled Omicron outbreak likely finishing off his government’s chance of …”

“This time next year Australia will be well into the Albanese government’s first term or the Morrison government’s third. If you had to bet your house on it now, which would you predict?”

“Against this alarming backdrop, one significant question is being asked about the Albanese opposition: Is it capable of winning the election that’s due some time in the next year? ”

For years Susan Ryan fought to get the Sex Discrimination Act passed. Three decades later, the battle continues with a push to bring politicians and judges under the law.

“Remember this quiet week. It is the origin moment of the biggest test of national character Australia has faced in 50 years. Some may have sensed it, others deduced it. But before 2020 arrives, anyone with contemporary historical perspective will know, …”

“This amount of ridicule this early in a prime ministership is unprecedented and probably irreversible. Even Billy McMahon fared better in his ill-fated 21-month-long prime ministership before falling to Labor’s Gough Whitlam. Has any prime minister …”

“Survey the score or more biographies of Murdoch and something becomes perceptible in his core that makes him at some elemental level weirdly like Trump’s psychological twin. This creeping realisation transforms one’s understanding of Murdoch’s Fox …”

“There is a moral case for moving Malcolm Turnbull on. If principles of right and wrong mean anything, using one standard to unseat a rival and another to hold on to the job you stole from him while failing to meet that standard yourself is hypocrisy on …”

It is 16 months since Turnbull became prime minister. In that time, he hasn’t achieved gravitas, has not built authority, and has so far failed to prosecute a substantial political or policy argument of any kind.

By masterminding a preference strategy favouring the Greens in five key seats, the Coalition aims to divide and rule the progressive side of politics.

“Lucy standing at Turnbull’s side now is the biggest bull point for the likely success of a prime ministership that is, as are they all, hostage to the temperament of the protagonist.”

“The conclusion has become inescapable that Hockey is either too thick for the job or too arrogant to get any perspective on his poor performance and fix it.”

“Taxpayers are being set up to pay, literally, for Abbott’s lack of skill or sophistication to manage anything beyond government by diktat. ”

“It is not hard to identify those who cross the line from journalist to polemicist in exchange for being put, as Paul Keating used to call it, on the story “drip”.”

“Sovereign risk from poor national government is on the verge of becoming the greatest risk Australia faces today ... Who wants to back a country that can’t run itself properly?”

“Honestly, does anyone see Loughnane bowling into the PMO and getting the staffer most accountable for the prime minister’s performance, namely his spouse, sacked?”

What led to the grim-faced stumbles of one of the government’s key leaders? An examination of the treasurer’s plunge in popularity.