A lot happened in poltics over the past fortnight. But not much happened in Newspoll. TODAY’s Newspoll, conducted between last Thursday evening and Sunday and published in the Australian, has the primary vote virtually identical to a fortnight ago: the Coalition sits on 36 per cent (unchanged), Labor on 35 (minus 1), One Nation on...

Anyone following the news on climate policy might well incline to despair. Not only is the Turnbull government continuing to promote the idea that coal is the energy source of the future as well as the past, but many of its backbenchers also think that the best alternative is nuclear power. Of course, in the...

LAST week was not a great one for nativist populism. Coming off the high of Brexit and Trump, fellow travellers across the globe have been angling for their own successes, but these are proving elusive. In two distinct disappointments, Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, or PVV, polled poorly in the Dutch general election, and the...

AUSTRALIA’s shocking homelessness statistics – one in every 200 people homeless at any one time, and a staggering one in eight without a home at some point in their lives – are a reminder that the homeless are not just the people we see on the streets. Around 7000 individuals might be sleeping rough on...

Sally McManus, the new secretary of the ACTU, has copped a caning for asserting on ABC TV’s 7.30 that it is legitimate to break the law in some circumstances. The example she gave was of trade unionists laying down tools at an unsafe worksite, and thus facing prosecution for engaging in illegal strike action. Her...