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Keywords: Politician

  • AUSTRALIA

    The contrasting gospels of Morrison and Shorten

    • Barry Gittins
    • 13 August 2019
    6 Comments

    In Jensen's take, while Shorten expresses honest doubt and cites Christ's golden rule, care of his Jesuit educators, Morrison indulges in a marathon of spiritual self-indulgence. Morrison masterfully works right-wing media outlets, or is worked by them, with Alan Jones leading the PM through a radio interview 'like Simpson led his donkey'.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    'Career' Brexiteers fail the Edmund Burke test

    • Max Atkinson
    • 02 August 2019
    17 Comments

    Now that the UK is in the final phase of leaving the Union we should ask, before the bell tolls, how much this misadventure — or folie de grandeur — was due to politicians putting their interests above those of the nation, ignoring democratic theory and long-settled constitutional practice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal Ministers maintain the status quo

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 19 June 2019
    8 Comments

    It's long fascinated me that it tends to be the conservative side of politics that has delivered many of our Indigenous political firsts. Perhaps it's simply because Indigenous conservatives are, by virtue of their politics, no real threat to the status quo. Our Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt is a case in point.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Voters are awake to politics' game of yawns

    • Alana Schetzer
    • 14 June 2019
    6 Comments

    It's obvious — so clearly obvious — when politicians are avoiding being genuine and simply don't want to answer a question. It's tiresome. It's boring. And people are tired of politicians assuming they can't tell the difference between an honest answer and a slogan or 'blame game'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hawkie, for whom I'd have faced cannon fire

    • Moira Rayner
    • 19 May 2019
    2 Comments

    I told one of my fiercely right-wing Kiwi uncles that if Bob Hawke were elected leader of the ALP I'd follow him through cannon-fire, and surprisingly won his (grudging) respect. For he was a man's man, and so was my then hero.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A new narrative after Christchurch & Colombo

    • Justin Glyn
    • 26 April 2019
    10 Comments

    No security measures will ever be able to suppress inclinations to hatred or violence which grow in the depths of the human heart. And yet there is a difference between Colombo and Christchurch which might be worth exploring. Paradoxically, the most useful things that governments can do are those which are least often tried.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beware the election campaign hobgoblins

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 11 April 2019
    7 Comments

    The American writer H. L. Mencken said the aim of politics is 'to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary'. Over the years there have been many hobgoblins of varying sizes and shapes, and this election campaign promsies to be no different.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Budget 2019-20 and the way forward for welfare

    • Joe Zabar
    • 08 April 2019
    6 Comments

    A proposal to take decisions around welfare payments out of politicians' hands is the best way forward. If the major parties are going to put supporting the most vulnerable in the 'too hard' basket, let an independent commission determine the rates at which various welfare payments can allow people to live a dignified life.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Addressing the woman drought in politics

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 29 March 2019
    3 Comments

    Headlines celebrating Gladys Berejiklian as the first female elected as Premier of NSW exemplify how far we have come and still have to go with women in politics. That women are held to a different, higher standard than men is evident in all facets of society, but in the political sphere it is a test of worthiness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election year fear and loathing

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 February 2019
    6 Comments

    It looks certain that over the next three months before the federal election fear will dominate Australian public conversation. Even if we deplore the appeal to fear, it is worth reflecting on why politicians indulge in it, under what conditions it is successful, and how it is best responded to.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Navigating the post-Medivac ugliness

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 15 February 2019
    16 Comments

    Having failed to prevent tinkering to the border protection regime, the Morrison government returned to the well Australian politicians have drawn upon when faced with electoral crisis. Mathias Cormann was no less crude in adopting a mode that speaks wonders to the desperation of a government awaiting its electoral deliverance.

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  • CARTOON

    Political football

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 12 February 2019
    1 Comment

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