is a professor at the University of Canberra’s faculty of business, government and law and the author of Political Lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers.
Madeleine King’s press release is a little shorter than this editorial. For her, there is not much to explain. The announcement of a new gas field licence and the further opening of the country’s coast for marine drilling is simple enough. The logic is obvious.
A few days before Anzac Day, David Malouf died. Malouf was an elegant man of Australian letters. He wrote into the soft spaces. An Australian of Lebanese and British heritage, he peered into our soul with an outsider’s eye and a tender heart.
I am anticipating this Tuesday’s budget particularly keenly, as the treasurer has flagged a “productivity package”, alongside tax and spending reforms, to improve the country’s long-term prosperity and budget position. It’s action that our economy sorely needs.
One has to feel for Chalmers. Not since the global financial crisis in 2008 has a budget’s framing been so difficult, so great is the energy price shock on the Australian and world economies. Could this end up being as bad as the GFC? Could it be even worse?
Australia’s capacity to secure an edge in technological innovation, and to capitalise on it, will be fundamental to our growth and competitiveness in an extraordinarily unpredictable and challenging future.
The range of contemporary missiles and drones has increased the amount of an enemy’s territory that a military must control if sailing through a strait is to be done without the risk of harm. Warships are not useful in this situation – it takes a large land force.
A win for One Nation would give the party a significant boost, helping to build on its already considerable momentum ... Barnaby Joyce would have a companion in the chamber, serving notice to the Coalition and Labor that the threat One Nation poses is no longer so remote.
Thirteen years ago, on a Thursday in early March, Adam Giles became the first Indigenous person to lead an Australian government. Then a member of the Country Liberal Party, he was sworn in as chief minister of the Northern Territory.