Politics

The mere spectacle of the leader who took the party from opposition to government sitting on the backbench puts up in neon lights failure and division.

Abbott and his acolytes have seized on the vacuum created by the government’s protracted consideration of its tax plans to wage a proxy war on Turnbull.

It’s certain that all of the new money for defence will come at some cost to other areas of government spending. The question we all should be asking is just why this is all necessary.

In parliament Turnbull gave weight to Labor’s taunts that he was ‘rattled’. Gone was the equilibrium and humour in evidence since he grabbed the nation’s top job.

Everyone, in his mind, traces a course of the history of the hellish life on this island, from before the riot in February, a period prisoners call ‘The Great Famine’, to the murder of Reza Barati.

Turnbull is about winning a mandate in his own right. The time for bravery is year one after an election victory, providing you haven’t done a Tony Abbott and ruled out everything you want or need to do.

The possibility of corruption exists wherever a dishonest public official has power or authority to grant benefits ... And dishonesty is a common human flaw.

Tinkering with Medicare, or at least appearing to, is almost as dangerous for a conservative government as wanting to raise the GST.

People who have read the TPP document in the search for safeguards have been disappointed to find that the term ‘climate change’ does not appear once.

The longer the GST option is left hanging, the more ingrained becomes the perception that the conservatives really, really want to do it.