With the Unions NSW-led High Court challenge to Barry O’Farrell’s donations laws awaiting a decision, a flurry of articles and commentary emerged in the press and social media recently, with several Greens activists defending the laws, and unionists, including Greens member and Fire Brigade Employees’ Union Secretary, Jim Casey, attacking them. Also coming out against […]
11 Sep
Comments Off on Caught up in Labor’s crisis: The Greens in 2013
My post-election analysis, including the contradictions of the Greens vote, went up at the Overland website on Tuesday. Lots of good discussion and debate in the comments, also. The Greens’ entry into the alliance was made possible because it took advantage of the rejection of both major parties in 2010, but with the ALP in […]
06 Sep
Comments Off on The Left, the Greens and the crisis (from Overland)
My long-form essay on the trajectory of the Greens since 2010 is now up at Overland Journal‘s website, and will be in the print edition due out next week. No comments option at Overland, so feel free to comment below. The rise of the Greens represented a historic realignment of the Left of Australian politics, […]
15 Aug
My latest for The Guardian went up yesterday, in which I look at why Abbott made his big announcement about putting the Greens last on HTVs when it seems to give him zero advantage over Labor. Abbott is the leader the Liberals installed to reinvigorate their core support base, a mixture of right-wing social conservatives […]
20 Jul
Some moments have “turning point” written all over them. So it was when Liz and I started Left Flank three years and two weeks ago, when we highlighted a speech by Julia Gillard justifying her “lurch to the Right” on border security, and compared her language with that of John Howard — defending Hansonism — from 1996. […]
10 Jul
Today at The Guardian I have a piece on the Greens’ strategic dilemmas after cosying up so close to the Gillard government. With the political class loathed by many ordinary voters, it should be no surprise the Greens have suffered politically and in the polls from their association with Gillard and the “old Labour” project […]
01 May
Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo. Thanks to Mark Bahnisch for convincing me to return to this subject. I have to confess that I couldn’t bring myself to watch Monday’s Four Corners on the scandal of Australia’s “offshore” asylum seeker processing regime. I’m on the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition email list and read horrifying stories from Manus […]
17 Apr
Bloody Bob Brown. I have a relatively quiet weekend planned and he goes and retires. Here’s the other article I was asked to write on the subject, for yesterday’s The Drum Opinion, looking at things in terms of the prospects for the party itself. I reproduce it below for your commenting pleasure away from the, […]
05 Dec
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