April, 2010

America’s “tea party” movement claimed its first big scalp with the announcement overnight that Florida’s governor Charlie Crist is giving up his attempt to win the Republican nomination for the US Senate, and will contest the November Senate election as an independent. Crist, governor since 2007, has been trailing his conservative challenger Marc Rubio by [...]

There was a Press Club lunch yesterday that received minimal coverage. It put the Minister for the Status of Women, Tanya Plibersek against Sharman Stone, her Opposition equivalent on the election issues for women. While there is no specific women’s vote, there are more women voters than men, and there are too many issues that [...]

A proposal to establish an independent commission to control Federal election debates has been sunk by the Rudd Government, which has changed its stance on the timing of debates. In an email sent to the Press Gallery this afternoon, Gallery president Phillip Hudson advised that negotiations between the Press Gallery board and the Government had [...]

Factional forces in the ACT Labor Party are in disarray today after a Left-Right deal to split the safe Federal seats of Canberra and Fraser was defeated by party members who ignored the deal to preselect Andrew Leigh and Gai Brodtmann. The factions had negotiated an agreement to pick Tanya Plibersek staffer Mary Wood for [...]

The loss of 200 plus promised child care centres is the latest example of both a broken election promise and government misuse of data to justify bad policy making. The justification for cutting the funding is claims that region wide vacancy data show that there is no need for Commonwealth capital funding for the new [...]

A somewhat despairing member of the audience on last night’s Q&A asked Scott Morrison whether the Coalition could stop goading the government on asylum seekers. This, she saw, was the only way that the issue would stop being used as vote bait exercise by both parties. My last piece on the election suggested that polls [...]

In breaking news this evening, Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim has turned down the offer of a seat in premier David Bartlett’s new cabinet. You can read Bartlett’s letter of offer here, although unfortunately we don’t know what portfolio was on the table. He probably doesn’t want my advice, but it seems to me McKim [...]

Phil Coorey has a great scoop this morning about the NSW Liberal Party’s concerns about Wentworth following Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to not contest the seat at the next election. Wentworth sits on a margin of 3.9% but a lot of that is Turnbull’s popular support from green-minded voters who were happy to support Turnbull in [...]

I’ve never met or spoken with Nick Sowden, who has achieved the sort of overnight notoriety that probably leaves Simon Fuller pleased someone else has taken his mantle of Scapegoat of the Twitterverse. His tweets, not merely about President Obama, but about Premier Keneally, were the decidedly unpleasant outpourings of a sick mind. Which, Sowden [...]

Ah Planet Janet Albrechtsen. What colour is the sky on that distant land? Today’s column is a long screed against victimhood. Been raped? Sexually abused as a child? Made you kinda depressed and a bit fucked up? Forget professional advice based on real cases. Instead take your queue from Lisabeth Salander, the fictional heroine of [...]