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 […]
27 Jun
In Capital, Karl Marx elucidates the inner workings of the capitalist mode of production by making certain assumptions about the behaviour of real people. He describes capitalists as mere “personifications” of capital and other social relations. But these assumptions are just that: assumptions for the sake of clarifying underlying social processes without having factors like […]
18 Jun
Comments Off on Behind ALP crisis, elephant in room is Abbott’s weakness
Continuing my analysis of the Right of Australian politics, my first op-ed for The Guardian’s new Australian website is up today, and can be found here. The lack of enthusiasm for the conservatives was borne out in a remarkable poll of 24 marginal seats in March. It found a two-party preferred voting intention of 59.4% for the Coalition, […]
10 Apr
If there’s one thing the entire Australian Left agrees on right now it’s that “Thatcherism was a very bad thing”. But beyond that, it may be appropriate to ask what exactly it is that people think was a bad thing. The answer to that question rests on one’s interpretation of what exactly was going on […]
15 Feb
In a considered piece at ABC’s The Drum on Thursday, Jonathan Green highlighted a phenomenon that seems to overwhelm Australian politics — the inability of simple facts about the Gillard Government’s performance to overcome the stench of crisis hanging over it. He is correct to point out “that in assuming that the mere facts of its […]
13 Mar
Comments Off on Is the ALP’s condition terminal? A crisis of social democracy
My latest piece for ABC’s The Drum was published yesterday. Here is the original text for your reading pleasure. Comments most welcome, and I will try to respond. A flurry of excitement gripped federal politics in the last fortnight — from Kevin Rudd’s failed challenge for the Labor leadership to the parachuting of Bob Carr into […]
14 Apr
Comments Off on The ETS and CPRS: Neoliberalism by any other name
A most curious thing happened that continues to shape mainstream political debate in this country. In the lead-up to the 2007 election Kevin Rudd campaigned strongly on winning a mandate for taking real action on climate change, skewering the inaction of the Howard Government as proof that it had failed on the “greatest moral challenge” […]
03 Feb
Comments Off on The Egyptian revolution: Liberal democracy as the enemy of freedom
In February 2003 I was part of the 400,000-strong rally in Sydney opposing the impending US-British-Australian invasion of Iraq. It seemed for a moment that we were going to disrupt the plans of the self-styled Coalition Of The Willing by sheer force of numbers, part of probably the largest coordinated protest in Australian and world […]
21 Nov
It was difficult to know how to approach Paul Howes’ Confessions Of A Faceless Man, his public “diary” of the 2010 election campaign. Was it to be a tell-all insider’s account delivering anecdotes that journalistic efforts would miss? Was it to be a re-evaluation of the problems the first-term federal government got itself into, a thoughtful […]
20 Jul
29 Comments