The gold standard?

Bob Hawke remains the longest serving and most successful Labor Prime Minister but a new book explores whether the Hawke government was really the ‘gold standard’ for reform?

Progressive or what?

To what extent are “progressive ideas” being translated into beneficial and lasting social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes?

Markets on the front line

Markets are the frontlines of strategic competition and the foundation of Australia’s national power. We must therefore engage them with greater strategic clarity, sharper statecraft, and a stronger sense of national purpose.

Move fast and break government

The “prototyping” approach to product making in Silicon Valley, in which products are rushed out and amended on the fly rather than properly tested, has spread to the government sphere with potentially catastrophic consequences.

One Nation 2.0

The dramatic success of One Nation in the South Australian election is better calculated by its seismic effect on the right of politics across the country, rather than the paltry number of seats won outright.

The South Australian earthquake

Peter Malinauskas’s Labor government won a second term with a landslide win in the South Australian state election but the bigger story was the eclipse of the Liberal Party and a powerful surge by One Nation.

What does One Nation want?

The leaders of One Nation are seldom interviewed on the nation’s news and current affairs programmes, which may play to its advantage with a public tired of politics, so what does the party actually believe?

Learning the lessons from “robodebt”

If we want to avoid another Robodebt, the government needs to look at broader reform on automated government decision-making and measures to strengthen the public service.

The Milky Bar kid

Kevin Rudd was seen as a breath of fresh air after replacing the long serving John Howard as Australia’s Prime Minister in 2007 but leadership battles with Julia Gillard and a failure to embrace radical reform doomed his premiership to failure.

This is my truth, now tell me yours

British Labour icon Nye Bevan popularised Friedrich Nietzsche’s phrase “This is my truth, now tell me yours” 80 years ago, but the challenge remains as aposite as ever.

Post mortem

The Liberal’s effort to bury their own election review has predictably backfired, with the Streisand effect ensuring the scathing report has received even more publicity than its publication would have done.

How One Nation took the nation

Long disdained or ignored by the mainstream media, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party is now threatening Labor as well as eclipsing the Liberals as public concern over mass immigration grows.