Nobody planted Pauline Hanson. The miners wrote her song a decade before she sang it. Thirty years on, they have bought her a plane.
Category: australian-politics
One Nation, Three Shareholders
The fraud charge against One Nation’s founders was quashed. The real offence was perfectly legal: a party built so that the people who paid for it would never own it.
Nobody Planted Pauline
The ballot paper that put Pauline Hanson in Parliament was an accident. What grew around her was not.
Putting the boot into a new leader: the monstering of David Shoebridge
Four days as Greens leader: choked up on 7.30, tagged an ecopopulist, accused of prejudice, charged with snobbery. That’s not a gaffe cycle. It’s a method.
Australia’s West Bank Abdication: The Comfort of Complicity
Twelve nations put a price on Israel’s illegal settlements. Canberra sat at the table for months, then remembered it had a Security Council seat to win.
The Appropriate Time
Twelve countries signed a statement on trade with Israeli settlements. Australia was very much part of the process. The early part.
Labor’s National Conference: A Triumph of Unity
Bryan Dawe interviews a senior Labor figure about the smoothest national conference in decades — three days, one open debate, and not a face in the room. A tribute in the spirit of Clarke and Dawe.
A Word From the Commission: A Clarke and Dawe Tribute
The Commission has found serious and possibly systemic corruption in the community infrastructure grants. It will not be investigating. It will be developing a PowerPoint. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe.
Mid-Winter Ball
“Were they promises?” “They were statements.” “Promises?” “Statements.” “Is there a difference?”
The Prime Minister explains housing policy, the Australian dream, and why he’ll be at the Mid-Winter Ball.
Anthony Norman Albanese crossed Parramatta Road the way other people cross a street: with the calm and conviction of someone who has rehearsed the gesture for television. He came from a housing commission island ringed by depots and the click-clack of Catholic rosary beads, black as anthracite and polished to a gloss by the unrelenting petitions of the poor but faithful. He was, as the campaign line put it, a son of a single mum. It was also an opening line with longer ambitions.
