What a farce looks like
Saturday, 28 January 2012 The Australian state 13 comments
All we needed was a Canberra farce and we have all we need to know.
Caught in a racial trap
Thursday, 26 January 2012 The Australian state 48 comments
How do you change racial provisions in the Constitution when the entire infrastructure of land rights is based on it?
Culture war bores collide
Tuesday, 4 October 2011 The Australian state 55 comments
Racial/cultural separation, or whatever you want to call it, remains embedded as ever in the centre of our body politic
Walking straight into it
Friday, 2 September 2011 The Australian state 8 comments
Commentators are dismayed at Gillard’s ‘outrageous’ attacks on the High Court, but what is really striking is how mild it is.
A vacuum is not ‘democracy’
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 The Australian state 28 comments
The independents cannot solve the problem of legitimacy that affects both the major parties and underpins the election result.
Illegitimate
Monday, 23 August 2010 State of the parties, The Australian state 13 comments
It is likely that whichever party forms government with the independents, they will use those independents as a cover for not being able to implement a program that they never had in the first place.
Let’s all forget 2007 – ALP edition
Wednesday, 7 July 2010 Tactics, The Australian state 28 comments
Gillard claims to want to move away from political correctness on asylum seekers, but in fact her entire approach to the issue shares the assumption of the politically correct left; namely that concerns about it are such a powerful inflammatory force in the electorate that it must be indulged and made a big deal of.
The slow death of the state(s)
Friday, 5 March 2010 State and federal politics, Tactics, The Australian state 11 comments
Even before the 2007 election, Rudd was using health as a basis for his anti-political agenda.
Rights and wrongs
Tuesday, 1 September 2009 The Australian state 10 comments
While the right and left have argued over the nature of the punishment, what we have seen with the intervention is a denial of a basic right in front of the law to be judged whether to receive the punishment in the first place.
Peace dividend
Friday, 5 June 2009 The Australian state 4 comments
Drift is one thing, but loss of control over the state apparatus is something else.
