What do the draft recommendations of the competition policy review mean for health policy and services? THE DRAFT report of the federal government’s competition policy review, released this week for public consultation, is a massive opus, intimidating to all but insiders and the cognoscenti. In its chapter on human services, the review panel, headed by...

The Federal Government's competition review is disastrously wrong about education THE SUPPORT for more competition in schooling expressed this week by the Harper review of competition policy is so facile, and cast at such a high level of abstraction and in tones of faux reasonableness, that it can only be regarded as mischievous. Schooling makes...

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...