Judges take a risk when they step outside the courtroom to play the role of royal commissioner, writes Janet Ransley.

By-elections sometimes reflect important political trends, and sometimes they don’t. So why are we watching Canning so closely? It was Saturday 26 March 1988, and Coalition supporters were cock-a-hoop. Just a week earlier twelve years of NSW Labor government had been swept away, big time, and now the federal electorate of Port Adelaide had swung...

Nick Xenophon is breathing down the Coalition’s neck in his home state. In a tight federal election, the implications could be significant, writes Clem Macintyre.

His leadership again under threat, the prime minister is locked in a potentially terminal embrace with his party’s right There aren’t many votes – either way – in same-sex marriage. A negligible number of people would change their after-preferences support for a major party solely on this issue. Yes, the fact that we lag behind...

There’s more to Labor’s new policy on refugees and asylum seekers than we learnt from most media reports Labor’s national conference. With the focus on factional battles and the most contentious of the proposed changes, key elements of what could be a viable policy were largely overlooked, writes Arja Keski-Nummi.