When the Ruddbot was at his zenith it was a different world. Those were the days before the GFC, or in its near aftermath, when we still hadn’t realised that the party wasn’t going to go on forever. As reported in Business Spectator, a Boston Consulting Group report finds that Australians are increasingly likely to […]

I have a confession. My car is salary packaged. And I don’t feel guilty about that. But now I have a government telling me that this is a tax loophole that needs to be closed. Since Paul Keating introduced fringe benefits taxes it has been perfectly legal to salary sacrifice for a company car, and […]

We can tell whether Labor’s change to its rules to make Kevin Rudd leader for the term of his political life is a projection of Rudd’s naked self-interest, or a genuine attempt at reform, by applying a simple test. Rudd is only one of 8 elected parliamentary Labor leaders. So if it’s an historically democratic move for […]

Kevin Rudd’s deal with PNG depends on the assumption that it will stop the flow of immigrants within a month or two. Papua has no interest in becoming “Nuginistan” to allow its former colonial master to escape it’s refugee “problem”, so there has to be a limit to how many refugees it will take. I […]

Another year slides by, perhaps teaching me patience. A few steps forward, along with slow progress towards distant goals. Like the landscaping. As I spend more time here, the people are what pull me. Along with the solitude are developing friendships that provide balance and a feeling of belonging. It sometimes feels like I am […]

The gnattering (sic) Nabobs of negativity (enlisted in the cause of the politics of positivity of course) are at it again – manufacturing reasons to bash Tony Abbott. They must be desperate. Yesterday Abbott said that an ETS “[Is] a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one“. Not his best line, […]

In my youth, I was enthusiastic about the idea of taking parliamentary leadership out the hands of parliamentarians. As president of the Young Liberals in Queensland, I proposed – unsuccessfully – to have a series of “primaries” to elect the parliamentary leader. It was at a time when the Liberal Party was in crisis. Alexander […]

A quick follow-up to my previous post. Kevin Rudd’s announcement today of a push for a “productivity pact” shows he knows he really should grow the pie, but simply has no idea how to do it, which confirms that new Kevin is old Kevin and not much different from real Julia. Last time Rudd was […]

At the Press Club today Kevin Rudd will pay homage to Clint Eastwood’s Republican Convention “oration on an empty chair”, by debating Tony Abbott on the economy without Abbott actually being their. I guess he will do a selfie of this performance to post to Instagram along with his homage of yesterday to Norman Gunston. […]

Morgan has Labor at 54.5% to the Coalitions 45.5% and Newspoll has it 50/50 two-party preferred. That confirms our polling of last week where the positions of the parties had returned to where they were in October 2010. The results, averaging these two polls, would be somewhere around a 52.5% Labor victory. It could be a bit lower […]