David Marr
Can do better: the UN verdict, yet again, on discrimination in the land of the fair go
David Marr EVERY five years, Australia is birched by the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
You call this a party? Revellers without a cause for celebration
David Marr By any measure the party was awful, like a dance on a Harbour ferry where the band is bad and escape impossible.
When invoking work is just the job for a desperate leader
David Marr HERE is how they think these days in the Labor Party: cram a few hundred party faithful into a low, dark room at the Brisbane Convention Centre, hammer them with everything they'd heard before, and...
The bustling politician who mastered everything but people
David Marr KEVIN RUDD'S rise to power was a peculiar triumph over the party's opposition. Caucus didn't like him but the public did.
Last hurrah with a liberal dose of passion
David Marr PHILIP RUDDOCK'S time will come one day, though God knows when. At 67, the scourge of refugees sat stony-faced as Petro Georgiou, 62, made his farewell to Parliament.
War of words throws up a mine of information, little sense
David Marr The very, very rich are different. They don't have to make sense.
Vitriol in front of the doors, parties behind closed ones
David Marr Frost lay on the ground. Hot air balloons hung in the sky. At 7.50am in the national capital, Eric Abetz was doing the doors.
On with the show nobody's come to see
David Marr ''PHO-NEY!'' yelled the government benches in perfect harmony as Tony Abbott came to the despatch box. The daily brawl was under way.
Outdated Seven fails on public interest
David Marr Let's not pretend otherwise: we've all found the David Campbell story gripping. What else has this town been talking about since Channel Seven put its grainy footage to air but the sex life and...
Silent sound of air sucked out of the debate
David Marr IN THE dog-eat-dog world of amateur debating, those who trash their own convictions score top marks.
A dream Labor speech from the vanquished
David Marr Under the Flag: FIFTEEN words in we knew what sort of speech this would be. "Generations" is a great big Malcolm Turnbull word. Churchillian.
Laughter sounds the dog whistle for a silky terrier
David Marr The Australian National Kennel Council (Mission Statement: "To promote excellence in breeding, showing, trialling, obedience and other canine related activities...
Disbelieving fans put faith in the lord
David Marr What an Australian scene - a scrubbed, white crowd hanging off a viscount's every word. Rank was everything at the Press Club.
Cruising before a bruising: Abbott pumped up for title fight
David Marr As the Speaker began to pray, Tony Abbott's eyes raked the galleries. A fair crowd had turned out for the most promoted stoush since Danny Green faced the once-great Roy Jones jnr for the...
Indifferent land keeps desperate people waiting
David Marr "No matter how much I shook her she did not wake up." Eight years ago this weekend Ali Reza Irfani returned to his room in the makeshift detention centre on Christmas Island to find his wife had...
Rudd's policy belies the brutal honesty of Christmas Island's names
David Marr Christmas Island is a place of brutally honest names. Above the settlement on a mountain of petrified bird shit called Phosphate Hill is a cluster of tin huts that once housed construction workers.
Raised from the ashes
David Marr It was meant to stir, and stir it did. David Marr revisits The National Times - a masthead about to be reborn.
