THE Keneally government’s March poll will most likely add to the ALP’s national troubles.
IN recent years Labor’s much-vaunted marginal seats campaigning skills have lost their lustre. The results speak for themselves.
Labor lost six seats to the Country Liberals in the August 2008 Northern Territory election; a net loss of 10 lower house seats to the Liberals in the August 2008 election in Western Australia; 11 seats to the Liberal National Party in the March 2009 Queensland election; and a net loss of …

Julia Gillard during the debate over the NBN bill in parliament this week. Picture: Ray Strange Source: The Australian

Julia Gillard has not learned from her predecessor’s flawed approach to big issues

ACCORDING to some political observers, Julia Gillard’s spirited defence of the National Broadband Network in the last sitting week of federal parliament was evidence she was regaining her shattered confidence after the recent election.
Or, as some put it, …

We should support Clover Moore’s attempt to reduce opening hours of problem pubs and clubs
IN recent weeks, Sydney mayor Clover Moore has publicly taken on Kristina Keneally’s NSW Labor government and the liquor industry calling for some restrictions on trading hours to clamp down on alcohol-fuelled violence.
As Moore rightly argues, a liquor licence should be regarded as a privilege, not a right. That’s why she is attempting to wind back the opening hours of badly run premises where patrons are not safe, …

ECONOMIST John Kenneth Galbraith once said: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”
If this test were to be applied to the leadership of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, both would fall far short of greatness.
At least Rudd started well, identifying climate change as the “great moral challenge of our age” and working tirelessly to introduce an emissions trading scheme to …

THIS brilliantly conceived and elegantly constructed biography of militant politician Percival Stanley Brookfield provides a unique insight into radical politics in Australia, and in Broken Hill and Sydney in particular, during a period of revolutionary politics and industrial militancy, especially around the time of the great Russian revolutions of March and October 1917.
As the extremist representative of the miners and other workers of Broken Hill from 1917 to 1921, Lancashire-born Brookfield is regarded as the most radical class warrior and anti-politician elected to an Australian parliament. For much of his …

Peter Garrett’s new job is a reflection of the government’s precarious position, not his abilities

THE release of the Australian National Audit Office report into the home insulation scheme last week revealed departmental bungling and flawed governance and the minister responsible, Peter Garrett, should have done the honourable thing and fallen on his sword.
Meanwhile the Labor government seems unrepentant and has suggested this disaster was not its fault but the fault of the Department of the Environment. But with insufficient resources and inadequate measures in place …

THIS is an utterly fascinating book. At one level, the story of the murder of 21 Australian nurses on Radji Beach, Banka Island, on the morning of February 16, 1942, is a minor part of the much wider story of Australians in the Pacific war.
But at another, deeper, level it is a compelling tale of what happened to scores of young women after the dramatically unexpected fall of Singapore to the Japanese. It is also a powerful counter-factual history of what might have been had things been different.
Among hundreds of …

THE extraordinary revelations at the Fitzgerald inquiry between 1987 and 1989 shattered the public’s confidence in the Queensland police force, destroyed the then National Party state government, and led to the election of the first Queensland Labor government in 32 years.
The head of the inquiry, Tony Fitzgerald, identified widespread police and political corruption and the use of selected leaks to manipulate journalists and makers of public opinion, along with other matters of significant malfeasance.
As Fitzgerald said in his report: “The media is able to be used by politicians, police officers …

Source: The Australian

PEOPLE are wondering whether Julia Gillard is up to the challenge and what the past three months have been all about.

The media coverage of Rudd’s first trip overseas as Foreign Minister rivals the breathless reporting of his travels as prime minister.
But the fascination with Rudd is more a reflection of the policy paralysis gripping Gillard back home than anything Rudd is likely to achieve overseas. …

Her political inheritance was replete with riches but the Queensland Premier has squandered it
ANNA Bligh is only surviving as Queensland Premier because there is no one else willing to lead the ALP into near certain defeat at the next state election due in 2012. The Bligh government is a political disaster lurching from one terrible poll result to the next.
There is no doubt the poor standing of the Bligh government was a significant contributing factor to the ALP’s poor showing in the federal election. Based on a post-redistribution assessment, the …

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 …