Government agrees to national anti-corruption body – with strict limits
Dec 16, 2018 12:57 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The government has given in to pressure to set a new Commonwealth Integrity Commission but its operation would be strictly circumscribed, without the ability to hold public hearings into allegations of corruption against...
Brexit rooted more in elite politics than mass resentment
Dec 16, 2018 12:53 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Thirty months after the British voted to exit the European Union, or the EU, nobody knows where Brexit will end up. Champions of the exit hoped to free themselves from the EUs constraints especially requirements for...
No coups occurred in 2018. Will next year be so stable?
Dec 16, 2018 12:50 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The past year may have felt politically tumultuous, between Saudi Arabias brazen killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, the resurgence of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and Donald Trumps unorthodox approach...
Monday's MYEFO will look good, but it will set the budget up for awful trouble down the track
Dec 15, 2018 17:34 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
An appallingly perfect storm is brewing for the federal budget: a government with much more income than expected a federal election due within months a government well behind in the...
Morrison’s health handout is bad policy (but might be good politics)
Dec 15, 2018 16:31 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The A$1.25 billion Community Health and Hospitals Program Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced this week should be awarded a big policy fail. The move sets back Commonwealth-state relations by decades and its...
The John Birch Society is still influencing American politics, 60 years after its founding
Dec 10, 2018 02:47 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The retired candy entrepreneur Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society 60 years ago to push back against what he perceived as a growing American welfare state modeled on communism and the federal governments push to...
Hokey-pokey politics as the government is shaken all about
Dec 08, 2018 17:43 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
In the topsy turvy Liberal universe, just when the right is trying to tighten its grip on the throat of the party, the government is haring off to the left, with this weeks legislation to allow it to break up recalcitrant...
South Africa’s plan to move away from coal: 8 steps to make it succeed
Germany lowers voting age to 16 for the European elections
IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects