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This is a struggle over the dead soul of the Labor party.

This upside-down thinking of social reality is symptomatic of a political party in decline.

The media are making this into a major drama, but it may not be, at least in the way they say.

Can Australian politics be that insubstantial?

Australian politics in 2011 centres around one question: can Gillard shrug off the backers that put her into power?

Karl Bitar says that Howard’s agenda has little relevance to the electorate today. He should know.

How did this man become electable?

While the faction brokers may have got rid of their number one enemy, things are not back as they were.

The problem for Fraser is not that the Liberals are moving to the right as such but that there is no real basis for them doing so.

The media have been talking about Gillard taking over the leadership as though it would sort out Labor’s electoral problems. Of course, there has not been a single poll that backs that view.

Earlier posts →

• 

• Key Posts of the Spring

  Racial/cultural separation, or whatever you want to call it, remains embedded as ever in the centre of our body politic.

  - Culture war bores collide

  This was the real NSW disease, not changing leaders, but it no longer having any electoral rationale.

  - Too late for the NSW disease

  This is a struggle over the dead soul of the Labor party.

  - Rudd, the anti-politics campaigner – Reprise?

• Essay and Book reviews

  In reality under this complaint about the media lurks a political argument that is highly revealing about the mindset of the political class today.

  Sideshow by Lindsay Tanner

  Here is someone working for the ABC, from a Labor background as Hawke’s press secretary, who has written about the rise and fall of a Labor Prime Minister with all the distortions and omissions worthy of the most disingenuous right wing hack.

  The Party Thieves by Barrie Cassidy

  The most bizarre defence of the two party system comes over what for Megalogenis is the most personal – immigration.

  Trivial Pursuit by George Megalogenis

  Can Australian politics be that insubstantial?

  Confessions of a Faceless Man by Paul Howes

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