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. If that's not the case, the most significant figure in the opposing party (and hence the biggest threat to the prime minister and the incumbent government) is almost always another member of the opposition in federal parliament: there's a challenge, the most powerful member of the opposition becomes opposition leader and takes on the prime minister.
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.Pearls before swineAs someone who has been critical of journalists myself, I applaud the line about the gravitron (rather than the gravitas) of The Good Murdoch Journalist.
Regular readers can take comfort in my poor record of prognostication, but for the longest time I had assumed that the NSW election would have something for everyone: a nail-biter, with the Libs losing a few marginals, the Nats losing one or two seats to the Greens and/or ShooFiFa, but basically the government would be returned for its inevitable final term (because the tensions between Liberal moderates and conservatives, now relatively mild, will only intensify as the spoils of office contr
I look to the future it makes me cryBut it seems too real to tell you whyFreed from the centuryWith nothing but memory, memoryAnd I just hope that you can forgive usBut everything must goAnd if you need an explanationThen 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.
We search for leaders on our hands and knees- Richard Clapton Best years of our lives
The Senate established a select committee to investigate the future of public interest journalism. Its terms of reference are here.
Following on from yesterday on Bernardi's political bottom-feeding:What becomes of the broken-heartedBernardi has some capacity to make inroads into the Coalition, particularly the Liberal Party, but only after the Turnbull government has gone. Nobody, not even George Christensen, wants to do to the extant government what Jack Beasley or Vince Gair did to Labor back in the day.