Comment

Clearly, it is time for all nations that value democracy to stand up strongly in support of Ukraine and against United States President Donald Trump. Europe needs to call him out and to give NATO some real backbone.

The Murdoch media has developed a destructive obsession with the ABC that is gaining momentum in the lead-up to this year’s election. It seems every masthead and its journalists and all Sky News hosts are under instruction to find some way to attack the ABC, to weave this element into their stories and programs whenever they can.

Almost two years ago, Catherine Holmes wrote to the attorney-general asking for a one-week extension on the reporting deadline for the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

The prime minister’s performance in this campaign is crucial. Labor cannot afford a repeat of 2022, where the best days of the election were the ones when the Labor leader was isolating with Covid-19 and Jason Clare and other frontbenchers filled the void.

As David Attenborough once noted with characteristic clarity, humanity is ‘totally dependent’ on the natural world. In a straightforward hierarchy, all human activity is contingent on the continued functioning of the ecological foundations of life.

With the establishment of the NACC, Australians were promised a new era of transparency and accountability. That work is not done and we must continue the work to deliver that promise. The first step is removing the overreach of the exceptional circumstances test.

Don Farrell is a political animal. By some counts, he controls the preselection of every seat in South Australia. He’s a right-winger, a product of the conservative shoppies union. In 2012 he beat Penny Wong for the top spot on the Senate ticket, although he switched with her when he realised the grubbiness of his overreach.

Race is a briar patch and, if we remember our Uncle Remus stories, once you’re in the thickets you can’t get out. The Sam Kerr case has proved that. First of all, it breaks what I have found to be one of my more useful rules in life: simple things make the most sense.

Pinned on some office walls around the parliament is a list of cut-off dates for calling the election, allowing for the statutory 33 days of any campaign. The current favoured view among the self-appointed pundits is that the prime minister will call the poll in the second week of March for an election on April 12. The latest the election can be held is May 17. You can’t blame politicians and their staffers for playing this guessing game. All their necks are on the line.

Donald Trump is not one of a kind. Along with Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, he is just the latest in a long line of ruthless egotists who have risen to power. To varying degrees, the world’s four most powerful men lack empathy. That’s a clue not only to their ascent to power but to the fact that all four are obscenely rich.