If opinion polls are to believed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is near-unassailable. But that’s what polls said about Bill Shorten and Hillary Clinton too. But for the closest parallel to Ardern, New Zealanders should look across the ditch of sea and time, to former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin
In contrast to certain other governments which seem hell-bent on shutting down the resources sector, the Morrison government is pressuring energy companies to put their foot on the gas. Paradoxically, despite an abundance of known gas reserves, Australia is experiencing a local shortage. Partly that is because of the
It’s unsurprising that Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White keeps yapping at Jacinda Ardern’s heels. As I wrote some time back, both women are “young, inexperienced socialists”, both banking on moribund incumbents and an arcane electoral system to grease the skids of office. Like Ardern, White is fixated on
When the Democrats lost an election that their media camp-followers had assured them they had in the bag, they turned their fury outward. Reeling from a similarly unexpected (to them) loss, the Australian Labor Party is turning its rage inward. The party and the labour movement, in general, are
New leader Anthony Albanese is driving Labor’s clown car over its first mine after detonating a bunfight with the militant CFMEU and its controversial leader, John Setka. Not since the days of Norm Gallagher has a ratbag union leader posed such a headache for the Labor leadership. “Big Norm”
Patriot Realm by John W Yes, against all predictions, Scott Morrison pulled off the impossible. He won the election. People who had a hunch he might win, and placed bets, cleaned up. The odds were good … bookmakers were certain he could not win. One bookmaker paid out before the election,
For more than a year, right up until election night in May, it was widely assumed that Australia was destined for a Labor government. The UK is in much the same unenviable position: the conservatives are wracked by division, cursed with a weak leader and seemingly determined to be at
As Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion details, the infiltration into Australia by the Chinese communist regime proceeds apace at every level. Chinese nationals studying on Australian campuses are spied on and threatened. Academics are pressured to make their content conform to Beijing’s views. Politicians at the highest levels of
Well, well, well, there’s a whole lotta backflippin’ goin’ on over boats. Whaleoil has already reported on Labour’s “significant change in policy”, suddenly flipping from touting for asylum seekers detained on Manus and Nauru to be sent to New Zealand, to allocating tens of millions of dollars to
Leftist women are utterly devoted to gender quotas mostly, it seems because so many of them would struggle on merit. Australian Labor’s Kristina Kenneally is the perfect example of the Quota Queen elevated far beyond her abilities. Kristina Keneally’s political career has been a running saga of gender
One of the Coalition’s big policy platforms in the recent election was energy reliability and price. “Electricity Bill” was a slogan that struck at the heart of Labor’s Big Green plans regarding renewable energy and electric cars. On the contrary, the Coalition – led by a prime minister who
Chris Bowen played no small part in Labor’s devastating election loss, but he is also one of the few Labor politicians who seem capable of taking a long, hard look that the party’s lurch to the far-left. Labor’s policy platform was Corbynism-lite, tax’n’spend,
Looking back over our history, Australia’s most successful prime ministers have been those with the “common touch”. Patricians have rarely enjoyed political longevity. Although often overlooked today, Joe Lyons is regarded as one of the most genuinely popular men to hold the office of prime minister, whose death caused
As things stand, it seems almost certain that Anthony Albanese will take over the leadership of the Australian Labor Party when Bill Shorten is finally shown the door and goes home to count his millions. This is hardly surprising: there were strong rumours that a challenge by Albanese was only
The McCarthyite strategy of trawling social media accounts in search of something, anything, that can be remotely pinned on a politician or candidate continues unabated. At the moment, the game is paying off handsomely for all sides, as column inches are dedicated to self-rigtheous outrage and sniffy indignation, and
What seemed just a month ago to be an assured Labor victory in the 2019 Australian election looks to be going right down to the wire. Indicating just how desperate the race is going to be is that the fight has suddenly got very, very dirty even by Australian standards.
