The Committee to consider an independent parliamentary entitlements system was established by the then Prime Minister, the Hon Tony Abbott MP, on 2 August 2015. The review announcement noted the rules governing the system lacked clarity and transparency and acknowledged that some parliamentary travel had been ‘inside entitlement but outside community expectations’. A simple, effective...

The Australian Electoral Commission’s latest political finance figures show how closely entwined are government and the development industry

Why do parties have so much trouble learning from past successes and failures? ELECTION postmortems are a ritual of grieving – a necessary safety valve to contain the damage and internal recrimination that might otherwise break out after a devastating and unexpected election loss. After ceding power to Labor’s Daniel Andrews in late 2014, the...

What unites the group of Liberals who want to steer the party away from its roots? BACK in the early 1980s, a seemingly invincible Neville Wran strung together a series of Labor victories in New South Wales that left the Liberal Party teetering on the edge of irrelevance. The federal Coalition’s election loss in 1983...

Leadership coups have become an increasingly common feature of Australian politics, but the electoral results aren’t always encouraging, writes Rodney Tiffen.