Brian Costar and Jennifer Curtin look at the motivations, role and significance of Australian independent MPs.

Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim is pushing for a written agreement in return for party support. In Inside Story, Brian Costar and Jennifer Curtin look at the precedents FROM THE mid-1980s, with the growing number and influence of independent and small-party MPs in Australian parliaments, an important new ingredient emerged in state and territory politics...

With four elections in twelve months it’s likely that allegations about electoral fraud will surge in 2010. In Inside Story Brian Costar looks at two court cases that exposed a striking lack of evidence behind the claims UNLIKE THEIR counterparts in the United States, Australian courts play only an occasional and limited role in federal...

Lawrence Springborg has a glimpse of the summit, but the polls suggest he won't get there this time, writes Brian Costar.

JUST OVER a century ago Australia’s two non-Labor political parties - Alfred Deakin’s Liberals and George Reid’s Anti-Socialists - merged to form the Fusion Party. The new party was dominated by economic conservatives and suffered a heavy electoral defeat at the hands of the young Labor Party the following year. Nearly one hundred years later...