comment
politics
environment December 13, 2025
ANALYSIS: “We need better local gas pricing For Australia, that means doing something hitherto unthought of: telling multinationals that the cost of doing business here is to provide better prices for Australians. These firms can then make up the difference through their export price.”
politics December 13, 2025
Before reflecting on the peaks and troughs of Australian politics in this tumultuous year, I want to emphasise the significantly more challenging environment, both globally and domestically. The challenges have largely arisen from Donald Trump...
environment December 13, 2025
ANALYSIS: “We need better local gas pricing For Australia, that means doing something hitherto unthought of: telling multinationals that the cost of doing business here is to provide better prices for Australians. These firms can then make up the difference through their export price.”
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 29, 2025
Coalition puts internal politics above all else
Two thoughts come rushing to mind as I attempt to follow the ridiculous and irresponsible machinations of the two opposition parties over Australia’s climate targets, especially net zero by 2050. The first is the scornful philosophy of Humpty Dumpty...
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...
rural November 8, 2025
What is the purpose of Barnaby Joyce?
Barnaby Joyce has always talked a story about himself bigger than the brim on his Hopalong Cassidy hat. He is a one-man plot line, but his achievements for the people he professes to represent are slim to infinitesimal. Even Joyce’s former campaign...
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...
