Now also cross-posted to ABC’s The Drum website. The last fortnight saw the release of two significant contributions to the post federal election debate on the state of official politics, and more specifically its intimate connection with the fortunes of the Australian Labor Party. The first, the new Quarterly Essay by George Megalogenis of The Australian, is a detailed attempt […]
30 Nov
The Victorian Liberals’ victory came as unsurprising to me, and not just for the reasons outlined by the ever-perceptive Peter Brent. There has been voter crankiness against state and federal Labor governments that reflects the exhaustion of the party’s attempt to use technocratic managerialism as a substitute for traditional social democratic politics. As Left Flank has pointed out, this […]
16 Nov
Me in today’s The Drum Unleashed on the ABC website, where I look at the collapse of the Greens’ strategy to secure Liberal Party preferences in some key inner-Melbourne seats. Just why is a Left party playing these games? Since 2006 the ALP has hammered the fact the Greens are willing to do deals with the Liberals, a line […]
25 Oct
[Continued from the last post] The erosion of the ALP’s long grip on the working class vote in NSW has been spectacular, reflecting the long-term processes that Left Flank has repeatedly drawn attention to. Yet it can still rely on a significant party organisation, and even more so the active endorsement (or at least passive […]
23 Oct
It is now received wisdom that the NSW branch of the ALP is responsible for everything that is wrong with Labor politics in Australia. Even smug Victorian state ministers have felt comfortable parroting this line publicly. In particular, the argument goes, the NSW Right are a bunch of unaccountable thugs who singlehandedly destroyed what should […]
16 Oct
In March 2009 I was the lead NSW delegate to the Australian Greens’ National Council in Perth when I experienced a curious fact of climate politics. Our state party put a proposal that the Senators pull back from having emissions trading as the key plank of climate policy, a position Christine Milne had enshrined in […]
26 Sep
That new paradigm thingy didn’t last long, now, did it? At least not the world of “kinder, gentler” politics that Tony Abbott was promising. Nor the ability of rural Independent MPs to rise above the fray of deal-making and remain untainted by “old-style” party politics. Nor, of course, the dream of politicians finding more “consensus” […]
21 Sep
Comments Off on We will decide which people we will kill, and the circumstances under which we kill them*
While John Paul Young’s euphoric pop-disco classic “Love Is In The Air” could’ve been the theme song for the Greens’ election night success, it seems that the Liberals and the right-wing media have latched onto Bob Brown’s push to allow the territories to legalise euthanasia as a reason to suggest the party would prefer the […]
11 Sep
THE uncomfortable irony surely has not been lost on the Gillard government: the Labor Party, which is so weakened that large segments of its own electoral base are simply marching away, holds on to office only because four men who have never been part of the ALP have decided to give it a bare parliamentary […]
02 Sep
If we are indeed going to witness the return of the state, and enhanced need for security and resources that only a government can provide, then we should be paying greater attention to the things that states can do. —Tony Judt, Ill Fares The Land, 2010, p198 Australia must tackle climate change and that reducing […]
07 Dec
Comments Off on Michael Costa, George Megalogenis & the strange death of ‘reform’ politics