News has come through that Jack Evans, a pivotal person in the founding and development of the Australian Democrats, has died at the age of 80. It is always dangerous to single individuals out, but Jack Evans and Sid Spindler, alongside Don Chipp, were amongst the most crucial people in getting the Democrats established and functional.  Sadly all three [...]

Some of the commentary about the impacts of social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc can tend to be a breathless and overblown. However, it is true that it is changing the nature and scope for broader public participation in public and political debates.  But a lot depends on how much existing power structures [...]

It’s hard to know for sure just quite what roles it playing, how accurate it is or what impact it will have, but the literally thousands of Twitter posts pouring forth in the aftermath of the Iran election is quite extraordinary to watch. When I first signed on to Twitter over a year ago, I [...]

The National Human Rights Consultations, launched by the federal government late last year and chaired by Father Frank Brennan, is finally coming to the end of its public consultation phase, with general public submissions closing on 15 June. There will obviously be a lot of interest in the contents of the report flowing out of [...]

It’s probably redundant to express bafflement at Steve Fielding’s actions in the Senate, so instead I’ll state that I’m flabbergasted at the Family First Senator’s decision this week to block an attempt to restore some transparency to political donations in Australia.  It’s hard to see how Australian families benefit from enabling the wealthy to keep [...]

Federal Parliament resumes this week, starting on Tuesday.  The Senate sits for three days before going next week into Additional Estimates Committee hearings. Once again, the Senate sitting days are fairly light on this year – just  fifty-two days.  This is supplemented by sixteen days of Estimates Committee hearings and plenty of other Committee inquiries, [...]

A couple of years ago I wrote about the Italian experiment in allowing expats to vote as part of a specific off-shore constituency.  It was perhaps unfortunate (although not surprising given Italy’s post-war electoral history) that the first time this experiment was tried, the expat representatives held the balance of power in the country’s Senate and [...]

There has been a lot of publicity and justifiable disappointment about the decision by the voters of California to narrowly support – 52 per cent to 48 per cent – a proposal to change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in that state. But the result which really astonished [...]

Post-election political posturing in its own way can be as important as pre-election political posturing, but given that the voters have just spoken, maintaining some connection with reality is probably a bit more important. Which made me somewhat surprised to see these comments from ACT Labor Leader Jon Stanhope: ”We have won this election. The [...]

The by-elections in New South Wales turned out much as expected. Thumping swings against Labor, but still only enough for them to lose one seat, while the Nationals’ discomfort also continued with their failure to stop Port Macquarie staying in the hands of an Independent. Cabramatta was always likely to stay Labor, given the 29 [...]