The hamster dies, but the wheel still spins
The first Democrat-free Senate in thirty years starts on Tuesday. The last-ever leader of the Democrats, the hapless Lynn Allison, tried to do both a fond farewell and a phoenix-like determination to rise again - and failed at both, as you might expect.
Had Allison been defeated in 2001 she wouldn't have undermined Stott Despoja, her party's last
Waking the dead
Many tears have been shed, mostly of the crocodile variety, for a political constituency that has been determinedly abandoned: liberals.
First, wily old careerists like Philip Ruddock and Robert Hill abandoned liberals and liberalism. Then, the Democrats sold out for a mess of, um, whatever it was Meg Lees got in exchange for the GST, or whatever it was Natasha Stott Despoja
No guts or glory at the coffee club
This article shows that reforming the Liberal Party requires strength, determination and vision that is currently lacking in that organisation. The NSW Libs now have no chance of holding their ground in the 2009/10 Federal election, let alone advancing their position. They will not win the 2011 State election either. I would have liked to see not only Iemma
Henderson's intellectual poverty
Gerard Henderson is blaming a range of organisations for intellectual failure within the Liberal Party, without examining the anti-intellectual culture within the party itself. So long as this happens, the problem he identifies cannot be solved.
The problems with Buswell or Nelson are not in the individuals themselves, but in the collective decisions that these
All very well for some
There is a case to be made for Peter Costello to write his memoirs in his own time on his own equipment, and he will have to answer to the voters of Higgins for how well he does that. His leader failed to make that case, and also made it harder to present a case for government:
"I mean, for goodness sake, Peter Costello has served Australia in public life for 18 years.
"
The embarrassment of political riches
Since late last year, Australia has a Federal Labor government and Labor governments in all the states and territories. I expected they'd have achieved more by now than they have.
Responsibilities for health haven't been sorted out. The revenues of Medicare have not been linked more directly to hospitals and other health measures. It's a basic tenet of
Old enough to know better
This piece by Alan Ramsey was absolute rubbish. It doesn't matter how many days or weeks a political leader/party wins (how many days/weeks did Howard "win"over the last term of government, and why should anyone care?).
We've been missing the point. Brendan Nelson has been a lot smarter politically than ever we thought him capable of ... Nelson has surprised us.
If you
In the short term
When (If?) wondering what the Liberals are up to, never mind Brendan Nelson. He is the symptom of a wider malaise, not the cause and definitely not the cure.
The Budget handed down last week was the sort of muddle you'd expect from the middle of a third term from an exhausted government. It was the opposite of a bold declaration of intent, and no momentum can be created from
Stoop to conquer
What the Liberals need to do federally is to ditch aspects of Howard's intellectual and moral inertia while preserving above all else his reputation for economic competence.
The question of leadership is, who can best do this?
The current leader, Brendan Nelson, is not the man to shake up anyone or anything. Once the patient is stabilised and able to sign out of hospital, the
Bloody battle
Dennis Shanahan made himself a laughing stock last year when, in the face of consistent polling showing that the Howard government could not win, insisted that they could and would do so. Now, as the contrarian of the press gallery, the man who zigs while others zag, Shanahan has taken on Brendan Nelson as his pet project. This is all very well, until you see that this "political
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