When this blog started almost twenty years ago, Josh Frydenberg was an ambitious political staffer challenging for Liberal preselection against the sitting MP for Kooyong, Petro Georgiou. Today, Josh Frydenberg is trying to undermine both the federal MP for Kooyong and the preselected Liberal candidate for Kooyong - who for the first time in almost 80 years are not the same person - and Josh is neither of them.
I don't need to know about that bit.
- Gladys Berejiklian to Daryl Maguire
An earlier version of this post focused on the fact that the budget was announced last week, and right now there are compromises and horse-trading underway to get it passed into law, and that any member of the federal parliamentary press gallery worth their salt should be onto this and what it might mean for our country in these uncertain times.
When one major party is in government in Australia, the most significant figure of the opposing party is usually the opposition leader.
One of the most important pieces on media criticism in recent times is Richard Cooke's NewsCorp: Democracy's greatest threat. Read it if you haven't, see you when you get back.
I look to the future it makes me cry
But it seems too real to tell you whyFreed from the century
With nothing but memory, memoryAnd I just hope that you can forgive us
But everything must goAnd if you need an explanation
Then everything must go- Manic Street Preachers Everything must go
Michaelia Cash has overreached herself in politics, and has nowhere to go but down.
Conservatives within the Coalition should be enjoying their moment of triumph. They have negated a supposedly progressive Prime Minister and tethered him to the unpopular and disastrous policies of his conservative predecessor. They have cast off all but two of those pesky state governments, with their namby-pamby health and education and human services, and have command of the high ground of the federal government.
After writing the post below I had a good laugh at Katharine Murphy's effort and was reinforced in my respect for Asher Wolf when she posted this Twitter thread, with a fraction of the resources available to Murphy and the press gallery.
The fact that Barnaby Joyce had impregnated a former staffer and NewsCorp journalist was widely known before the New England byelection on 2 December last year. It has been ridiculous, and a bit sad, watching traditional media justify itself in relation to this story.
Fucking inconvenientLet's remind ourselves of the political situation in late 2017.
There was a time when to be the best male Australian tennis player was to be the best at that sport, to be able to beat any man in the world anywhere in the world. Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, and John Newcombe, along with supporting players like Ken Emmerson or Tony Roche, dominated the sport as it transitioned from an amateur era to a professional one.