Opposing changes to the GST is unlikely to benefit Labor’s election prospects Barely a year into the new government, the GST is finally, officially, back on the table, with prime minister Tony Abbott calling for a “mature debate” rather than the usual political “screaming match” about a possible broadening or raising of the tax. Abbott...

A Labor think tank has given a timely warning about the seductive appeal of triumphs past Last month in London, Michael Cooney, executive director of the Labor Party’s main think tank, the Chifley Research Centre, called for an end to what he termed “nostalgia for the new.” In a speech called “ In the Shadow...

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...

When “Howard’s battlers” defected from Labor in 1996, political commentators shifted their focus to Sydney’s western suburbs. But what if the whole idea was founded on a misreading of the data? The spectre of a major political party “losing its base” is popular in political commentary. It’s usually applied to the Labor Party, but in...

What happens when you add a hypothetical to a hypothetical? Why does the Australian media publish opinion polls week-in, week-out, all year, every year, no matter how far away the next election is? And why are they studied, discussed and obsessed over…? Read the full article