Or is it more a case of the declining left? Jennifer Curtin looks at the evidence from Saturday's poll The National government’s triumphant win on Saturday, and Labour’s corresponding loss, has broken at least three records, and the pundits are still counting. First, National has won sufficient seats to govern in its own right, a...

There’s a case for encouraging popular but defeated MPs to throw their hats back into the ring The Rudd government lost seventeen House of Representatives seats to the opposition in 2013, and it’s mostly those electorates, now held by the Abbott government, that Labor will have its closest eye on next time. Not surprisingly, they...

Private secretary, chief of staff, enforcer? A look at the role of the prime minister’s most influential gatekeeper In the wall of prime minister Bob Hawke’s office in the old Parliament House there was a tiny hole, about the size of a thumbnail. It was not a design flaw or a listening device snuck in...

The essay revists the 1994 eruption of the Rabaul volcano, which led to the destruction of the town of Rabaul and of numerous villages on the Gazelle Peninsula, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The 1994 catastrophe was significant on account of its sheer size. But it was also remarkable because it caused relatively few...

Christopher Pyne says there is no alternative to his deregulatory reforms. The evidence suggests otherwise. In the late 1980s, Labor education minister John Dawkins oversaw radical reforms to Australian higher education, including institutional mergers to create a “unified national system,” the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, or HECS, and competitive research funding through...