Comment

This time next year Australia will be well into the Albanese government’s first term or the Morrison government’s third. If you had to bet your house on it now, which would you predict?

Some in the Coalition act as if we can wait until, say, 2049 to then move towards net zero 2050, but all evidence suggests policy adjustments have to be front-end loaded if goals are to be achieved.

Thirty-five thousand feet above the Rocky Mountains on his way home from Washington, DC, Scott Morrison indicated he had learnt little from the greatest miscalculations of his prime ministership, the ones about holidays and family.

The first impacts of the abuse showed up soon after the first assaults. Almost overnight my optimism vanished. I began to withdraw and isolate from both family and friends. My grades began to tank. I stopped sleeping and I suddenly couldn’t engage with things I loved.

A fundamental weakness of our democracy relates to the funding of election campaigns and other financial support of governments, parties and individual members of parliament. This needs to be a fully transparent and accountable process.

Scott Morrison’s plans to make the looming election as much about keeping Australia safe from a Chinese threat as anything else have begun to take serious water.

A tendency towards ‘strong policing’ has a long history in NSW. From the late 18th century, policing was carried out – often vigilante-style – by many different agencies for differing purposes and according to differing rules.

It’s taken a long time but the concept of the ‘greater good’ – the sense of a shared destiny, of shared interests, collective purpose, a common future – is finally returning to our politics. Largely this is the result of the need to build community support for lockdowns, various other restrictions on our lifestyle and for vaccinations in response to the Delta strain of Covid-19.

The fictional Stone Age family of largely unremembered animated children’s film The Croods is the prime minister’s latest inspiration for a nation exhausted by lockdowns and living in fear of the Delta strain of Covid-19.

It was a Saturday when I found out Kate was gone. I was about to pick up the phone to call her, because I had not heard from her during the week … I knew something was wrong, but my mind tried to minimise the weight of any worry. Kate was and will always be the strongest woman I know.