Is our democracy up for grabs?

            by  ROSS FITZGERALD

   Is it possible to buy your way into the federal parliament? It seems that we are about to find out via restored rich-lister Clive Palmer’s absolutely unprecedented multi-million dollar advertising barrage for a return to the parliament he so ignominiously exited just three years ago.

Exactly how much MPs and political parties spend in order to help get themselves elected is quite hard to pin down. There are the spending returns that registered parties are required to lodge with the Australian Electoral Commission that …

by ROSS FITZGERALD

There’s been another death of a young woman caused by consum­ption of illicit drugs at a music event, this time in western Sydney.

Yet despite some impassioned opposition, including letters to this newspaper, the debate about pill testing in Australia appears to have reached a tipping point.

It now seems more a matter of when rather than if trials will commence across the country. Indeed the family of the 19-year-old woman who died on Saturday have come out begging NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to allow a pill testing trial.

Every year …

The government can use the opposition’s tax agenda as an election-winning plank

 BY ROSS FITZGERALD

The Coalition has done its best to make itself unelectable. But voters don’t just ask whether the government deserves to lose, they also ask if the opposition deserves to win — and a good look at the Labor Party’s policies should make it even less electable than today’s government.

The Liberal Party needs voters to be thinking about their immediate economic self-interest rather than whether or not Malcolm Turnbull should still be prime minister.

The challenge for Scott Morrison …

Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and, yes, Julie Bishop are among the most talented, experienced and energetic Coalition MPs. Yet, for different reasons, they are seen by some as among the most divisive. Nonetheless, if Scott Morrison is to have any chance of winning next year’s federal election, he should bring them into his cabinet; or, if not, offer them each an influential position outside of federal parliament.

The political reality for the Prime Minister is that they should be in or out.

In relation to Abbott, Joyce and Bishop, Morrison — who obviously …