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Mungo MacCallum

Mungo MacCallum has been writing about politics for most of the last forty years and still thinks it matters. This is his 17th federal election.

Mungo: A world class exhibition of weaselling

12/11/2007 12:00:00 AM 6

Last week’s interest rate rise effectively destroyed our Dear Leader’s credibility. The whole of his 2004 campaign was exposed as a lie and his continuing claims of superior economic management revealed as fraudulent, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: Garrett, Abbott and a week of blunders

5/11/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

Tony Abbott only made one mistake last week: he got out of bed. The string of blunders that flowed from this indiscretion kept the punters amused for a solid couple of days and were far harder to gloss over than Garrett’s jocularity, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: The Libs are all about the individual, ask Malcolm

29/10/2007 12:00:00 AM 3

As we all know, the Liberal Party is all about the individual. The idea is to maximise personal freedom at all times. It’s all nonsense, of course: but it’s what the Libs claim to believe. So why are they so annoyed with Malcolm Turnbull when he simply follows the logic and tries to take care of number one?

Mungo: By polling day the debate will be a distant memory

22/10/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

Labor supporters are understandably chuffed by the not so great debate, so they might as well enjoy it while they can; when people go to the polls in 30 days time it will be at best a distant memory and at worst totally forgotten, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: first fibs from Dear Leader

15/10/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

“Like me or loathe me,” he told a numbed press conference, “people know what I stand for.” But we don’t; not any more, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: Garrett abandons utopia for results

8/10/2007 12:00:00 AM 2

You have to feel sorry for Peter Garrett. He’s had a pretty rough time since he joined the Labor Party more that three years ago, and it all came to a head last week., writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: He who procrastinates is lost. Just saying

1/10/2007 12:00:00 AM 1

By continuing to procrastinate about calling the election, John Howard has left us in an ongoing political limbo, presumably in the Micawberish hope that sooner or later something will turn up.

Mungo: Labor mishandled the dirt and smear campaign

24/09/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

Let’s not be silly about this. While it may not be clear who was the source of the revelation about Kevin Rudd’s heart surgery, there can be no doubt at all about its purpose, which was to damage Rudd, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: Liberal leadership a monstrous hybrid

17/09/2007 12:00:00 AM 1

So at last the line it is drawn, the curse it is cast… John Howard and Peter Costello are to be merged into a two-headed monster. Every Tasmanian expectant mother’s worst nightmare – a dicephalous teratoid.

Mungo: Howard's history lesson rings hollow

11/09/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

John Howard continues to insist that the conditions for a change of government in Australia have not been met in 2007, but his attempt to invoke history fails as dismally as everything else he has tried in the last year.

Mungo: APEC's conga line of flashers

10/09/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

The enduring image of APEC will be the Saturday night footage of 21 heads of government in their colour-coded Drizabones, waving sheepishly with one hand while trying to conceal their unwanted Akubras with the other. It was a picture fraught with embarrassment, and so it should have been, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo: whose side are you on Kevin?

3/09/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are pretty happy about their long-awaited industrial relations policy and the initial reaction to it. No-one else likes it very much except a few of their fellow Labor politicians, and in private even these have their doubts, writes Mungo.

Mungo MacCallum: at least Kevin kept his pants on

20/08/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

My immediate take on the great Kevin Rudd stripclub scandal is the same as Peter Beattie’s: it is unlikely to do the uptight opposition leader any harm at all.

The Mungo-meter: Bias can be a matter of judgement

27/06/2007 12:00:00 AM 0

There are those journalists who pick sides from birth and never change, whatever the circumstances. For reasons of temperament, heredity or because the Pope tells them, they remain rusted on to one side or the other.

Menzies, Fairfax and that affair: Mungo MacCallum replies

3/11/2006 12:00:00 AM 0

The story of Robert Menzies' affair with Elizabeth Fairfax was told by politicians, staffers, journalists and commonwealth car drivers. I never heard it denied, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Mungo MacCallum v Gerard Henderson

28/10/2005 11:55:00 AM 0

Mungo MacCallum on the proud tradition of parliament punch ups

19/10/2005 1:00:00 PM 0


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Classic Crikey

Budget night: a triumph of rite over truth

9/05/2007 12:00:00 AM
Guy Rundle writes:

So it is that every year, our shaman gather in Canberra. Like priests before a ritual they are sealed off from the profane world in a special retreat (‘the lock-up’) and bonded together in a sacred pact, which sets them off as a distinct group against the rest of their people.