Calls for general elections are often made by political parties when things are going well for them. That’s no secret. True to form, opposition leader Tony Abbott has made several appeals to prime minister…
Labor starts this week still reeling from the “no show” leadership spill and its aftermath. Labor’s electorally disastrous polls are likely to get even worse following those events. Are there any ways…
In an election year, perhaps the only thing more inevitable than the major parties’ verbal jousting is the media’s obsession with marginal seats – that handful of bellwether electorates that can supposedly…
The announcement that Prime Minister Julia Gillard would spend a week in the western suburbs of Sydney was greeted with mild amusement by some, and became the base of jokes about “beige rooms” for others…
It is ironic that just as our politics become increasingly presidential, so too do the two contending party leaders become increasingly unpopular. Indeed, both parties increasingly campaign as if the choice…
The Coalition has promised that if it takes government in September, it will get rid of the price on carbon emissions established by the Australian Labor Party. In its place, the party will implement a…
The battle for the seat of Melbourne at this year’s federal election will be nothing short of a bruising affair. Melbourne is of enormous symbolic importance to both Labor and the Green Party. For Labor…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the federal election will be held in mid-September. So, what will happen to the ambitious program of health reform that the Labor government is in the process…
There was a time when health policy involved intense ideological conflict along partisan lines. In the 1940s, the Chifley government fought all the way to a constitutional referendum to introduce subsidies…
Last week, prime minister Julia Gillard told the Australian public they’d be able to tell the difference between campaigning and governing during this election year. Over the following days, which saw…
The forthcoming Australian election will be a critical one for the environment. The most urgent issue is climate change. We are already seeing the social, economic and environmental impacts of about one…
One of the largest political graveyards is that occupied by former opposition leaders such as Mark Latham who promise in their first interviews to come out fighting. They excite their party base but alienate…
The business community was effectively sidelined at the last federal election, and they felt somewhat miffed about it. Business associations were caught flat-footed at the suddenness of Julia Gillard’s…
We have 226 days until the election, and are hearing lots of pious statements about having time for some serious policy debate. But we should use this time to move the policy debates well beyond what the…
It was a big day in political circles yesterday, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard announcing an election date and launching her priorities for the nation. Among the hubbub that followed, an important…
Following the prime minister’s surprise announcement of a federal election for September 14, attention will inevitably fall on the role Labor’s key electoral reforms may play in the coming contest. Alongside…
Julia Gillard has now confirmed what everyone already knew: there will be an election sometime in August or September this year. We now know the precise date: September 14. That is also the Jewish Day…
Julia Gillard is an Australian political pioneer in many ways. She was the first female prime minister, she led the first minority government in the post-war period and recently moved to appoint the first…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the date of the 2013 election, with Australia to go to the ballot box on September 14. Ms Gillard today told the National Press Club the move would give certainty…