Politics
The MPs giving Labor a lesson
Lenore Taylor Labor is saving the election post mortems until it knows whether its government is dead or just resting. In the meantime, the Greens and the independents are doing a quite reasonable job of saving Labor from its own ineptitude.
Snapping at heels of civil liberty
CHRIS BERG It was obviously a tactical error for Paul Hogan to tell the Australian Taxation Office to "come and get me, you bastards".
Recent history will give Gillard no comfort for what lies ahead
ANNE SUMMERS As Julia Gillard tries to put in place a minority government, she must be hoping she can avoid the fate of two other prominent female political leaders: Kim Campbell in Canada and Tzipi Livni in Israel.
A chance to reform NSW Labor's worst gambling habits
PETER HARTCHER Already, the new power of independents in Federal Parliament seems set to achieve one useful reform - encouraging some self-restraint on poker machine gambling.
A relationship in need of a rethink
Michael Wesley In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, there doesn't seem to be anyone willing to challenge the assertion this will be the Asian century. We seem to be content to predict that Asian societies will become more wealthy and powerful and leave it at that, not bothering to think through what the implications of this might be.
It's dark, I've upset my bagman and I'm down to my undies
MIKE CARLTON Dear Premier [fill in name here].
The state that's gone to the dogs
Chris Henning Scene: The cabinet room, Parliament House, Macquarie Street. Ministers drift in for the weekly cabinet meeting - Carmel Tebbutt, Eric Roozendaal, Verity Firth, Frank Sartor. The Premier, Kristina Keneally, enters, accompanied by two public servants, one carrying five flat cardboard boxes, and the other leading two small dogs.
Praise be to Bob Katter, for he has shown us the way
Rick Feneley Bourgeois cretins will never get the genius of the neo-dadaist* artist formally known as Bob Katter. Dwell for a moment on his abstract masterpieces, Turning the Rivers Inland and Turning Back the Barbarians' Bananas. Consider these against his precocious adventure of 1964 when, with fellow students, he pelted the Beatles with eggs in Brisbane. He was the egg man.**
Governing on trust
SHAUN CARNEY Momentum is going Labor's way, but a deal is not about momentum. It's about who the independents can most count on.
Bedevilled by the Tasmanian syndrome
Martin Flanagan Having won Hasluck for the Liberal Party, Ken Wyatt copped 50 abusive phone calls and emails from supporters who didn't know he was indigenous when they supported him.
Gays waiting hopefully at the altar
Ryan Heath 9:23am Was it a good or bad election for the nation's million or so gays and lesbians? The start could hardly have been worse but things started to look up when Greens' vocal 'equal love' campaign was rewarded with a record vote.
Too much consensus, not too little
Waleed Aly Rob Oakeshott's appeal for a new era of "consensus politics" is surely the feel-good catchphrase of the moment.
Cause for optimism after near-recession we really did have to have
JESSICA IRVINE I have obtained a copy of the ''red book'', the highly classified briefing document prepared by Treasury for an incoming Labor government (it prepares two - a red one for Labor and a blue one for the Coalition).
Abbott digs himself a hole
MICHELLE GRATTAN It was Tony Abbott's very bad day. The belated costings of his election policies came back to bite him. Then Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie not only declared for Labor but revealed that Abbott had offered him $1 billion for a new Hobart hospital, which Wilkie rejected in favour of taking much less from Julia Gillard.
In the blogosphere, accountability is so last century
PAOLA TOTARO The photograph is hardly tabloid fodder: two men dressed in T-shirts and jeans, smiling broadly behind hip sunglasses as they walk in a park on a rare sunny day in London.
Hospital sting leaves Coalition nursing wounds
TONY WRIGHT As Andrew Wilkie stood in a parliamentary courtyard declaring he was a Julia man, it was very nearly possible to hear Tony Abbott banging his head on the wall of his office.
Anything goes in scramble for power
Michelle Grattan The 'whatever it takes' flavour of this desperate battle between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott is evident in the Opposition Leader's offer of $1 billion for the Royal Hobart Hospital.
From Canberra outsider to centre stage
KATHARINE MURPHY Andrew Wilkie surprised his friend John Valder when he signed up yesterday with Julia Gillard. Wilkie yesterday ended a long and tortuous journey, from Canberra outsider to would-be king maker.
Coalition had a less-than-awesome foursome
Peter Martin The Coalition made four kinds of mistakes in its costings, according to Treasury: the inexcusable, the inexplicable, those resulting from a failure to comprehend the nature of the process, and some understandable errors.
In a game of being on target with figures Abbott shoots himself in foot
Lenore Taylor TONY ABBOTT has been poked in the eye by his own budget costings and his eagerness to spend - the same costings that, when the Coalition added them up, helped him successfully flay Labor for profligacy and waste during the election campaign.
Doubt clouds Labor gain
PETER HARTCHER Julia Gillard won a vital advantage yesterday and is tantalisingly close to power, but any outcome is still possible as the reels keeping spinning on the poker machine of Australian democracy. Gillard is now only two votes short of a majority in the 150-member House
Peter Hartcher
Darkness clouds ALP gain
PETER HARTCHER JULIA GILLARD won a vital advantage yesterday and is tantalisingly close to power, but any outcome is still possible as the reels keeping spinning on the poker machine of Australian democracy.
Goanna Tracks
Political parallel universes
THE GOANNA Why are we waiting? Independents baiting Parties remonstrating Why are we waiting Greens celebrating Coalition agitating Democracy re-arranging Why are we waiting? So bloody long . . . Why are we waiting so bloody long . . .
A chance to balance the ledger
Cassandra Goldie If there is one positive aspect to the uncertainty surrounding Australia's next federal government, it is the attention finally being paid to matters of real national significance. Not which political party controls the Parliament, but what policies should be pursued and for whose benefit.
Finally, an Afghan debate
DANIEL FLITTON Oakeshott wants democracy, but we need to be realistic about what can be achieved.
MP's explosive exit designed to blow Brumby to pieces
PAUL AUSTIN Craig Langdon was on a long, long drive - from Melbourne to Darwin and back via Broken Hill, with his personal and professional lives in turmoil - when he resolved to write himself into Victorian Labor infamy.
Obama shifts focus from Iraq to the battle at home
Simon Mann WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has marked the end of America's combat role in Iraq by signalling the US has no intention of relinquishing its leadership in world affairs, despite the sacrifices it has made during one of its longest wars.
Brown the winner in hard-ball game
MICHELLE GRATTAN This might be a very 'old paradigm' view of things, but Bob Brown seems to have had a comprehensive win over Julia Gillard.
Dysfunctional, corrupt and rotten, the end is finally nigh for Labor
Sean Nicholls AN INQUIRY into the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, a corruption finding against a NSW Maritime lawyer and, to top it off, the resignation of a cabinet minister who admitted accessing adult and gambling websites on his parliamentary computer.
Greens deal takes the heat out of Abbott's return fire
Lenore Taylor Tony Abbott had to rewrite his script yesterday. The agreement between Labor and those the Coalition likes to describe as ''extreme greens'' was in fact so mild the Opposition Leader had to change his lines.
