Politics

As the Liberal Party dirt unit that helped win the NSW election opens up about tactics, key players are moving to the federal campaign.

A recent coroner’s report into the deaths by suicide of Indigenous children and young people in remote WA, linked to intergenerational trauma and racism, mirrors the findings of a 2008 inquiry. With little achieved in the interim years, experts claim the government is not only misdiagnosing the problem but is also unable to come up with productive solutions.

The federal government claims it lacks the constitutional power to fund advocacy activity, although it refuses to release its advice and legal experts uniformly reject the assertion.

As the government and opposition make sense of the NSW election result, it is clear the federal poll will be a contest between an unpopular leader and an unknown one.

Mark Latham’s success in the NSW election buoyed One Nation, but the exposé of its bid for donations from the US National Rifle Association may have shot the party in the foot in the run-up to the federal poll.

Privacy fears surround Victoria’s new DNA laws, which would allow police to take samples from suspects before they are charged with any crime.

Scott Morrison’s words following the Christchurch massacre were sensitive and well chosen, but how can they be read as ingenuous when they follow on from almost two decades of his party deliberately cultivating disunity and fear?

With NSW facing the possibility of a hung parliament, fear grows that the state’s gun laws – already eroded by two decades of deal-making with the Shooters party – will be further traded away.

Following the killing of 50 Muslims by an Australian terrorist, local security agencies face questions of whether they overlooked the threat posed by white extremists.

With just a week to go until the NSW election, the major parties are campaigning hard to woo voters. But it’s the micro-parties that may end up deciding who will govern.