IN political terms, the stakes in the aftermath of the 2010 election have rarely, if ever, been higher. The disunited Australian Labor Party must salvage something from the wreckage of the election after its disastrous campaign left Julia Gillard a damaged leader with her political future resting on her capacity to form government.
The machine men that installed Gillard into the leadership are also sweating on the outcome given that their present, and in some cases aspiring, political careers are hanging in the balance.
Bill Shorten is positioning himself for Gillard’s inevitable …

The hiatus in federal politics since the election last weekend says a lot about the state of the two-party system in Australia.
Clearly, it’s in a state of flux.
As of last weekend, there are now three major parties in Australian politics and that will not change for many years to come. The Greens will be a part of government in Australia for the foreseeable future, as the Liberal Democrats are in England and so will the issues that they represent. Many pundits are saying that this will destabilise good government, but …

BOB Katter, independent member for the vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy, is a man of high principle and many contradictions.

Most present-day Australians do not remember that his father, Bob Katter Sr, the MP for Kennedy from 1966 to 1990, was originally a member of the Labor Party until the great Labor split in the 1950s, after which Katter Sr joined the Country Party.
Similarly, most people do not realise that Bob …

WHILE gossip and other personal distractions have marred this federal election campaign, none of the three main parties has put forward a convincing policy regarding significant national infrastructure projects.
Kevin Rudd’s failure to deliver on a national emissions scheme and the failed insulation scheme seem to have given both sides of politics performance anxiety.
With our roads increasingly clogging up with semitrailers, a new national rail scheme should have been proposed at this election. Australia’s rail system is little better than that of many Third World countries, and while state governments are …