36 Results

There’s no bigger shattering of journalistic hubris than the annual scrum outside the budget lock-up.

Australia’s anointed political commentariat have been desperate to drain as much analytical mileage from the state election results as possible.

From Shanahan to Grattan, Australia’s pundits have turned into “commentariat-bots”, says Mark Bahnisch, constructing a political narrative based on their own random musings instead of hard data.

Howard didn’t like Costello? They lied about kids overboard? Noel Pearson helping the conservatives? They neglected to check whether the attack on Iraq was legal? Paul Kelly’s new book isn’t exactly shocking.

Warning: this cartoon may contain traces of Peter Costello…

Budget Lockup - No Entry!

Before it gets too firmly entrenched as conventional wisdom, it’s worth querying the idea that the election campaign, and particularly the anti-union theme, was a miserable failure for the Coalition, writes Charles Richardson.

It sounds hopelessly naive, but whatever happened to simple, unadorned honesty? When did that become a political negative?

The gap between the views of the top brass at The Australian and its readers continues to be marked with the paper still searching desperately for the best possible light to shine on the Coalition campaign while Labor is the clear choice of the consumers of those very same stories.

Women who own property have been able to vote in South Australia since 1861 and all women since 1894. All Australian women have been able to vote in federal elections since 1902. Canberra, however, is blokesville – as last night’s debate showed, writes Christian Kerr.

The view from the nation’s papers this morning.

After the polls and the destabilisation of the last week, the Coalition kept its nerve. Now the battle lines are changing – the “presidential” campaign is finished. A second front has opened and the portrayal will be of the team for the 21st century, writes David Flint.

One thing at least emerges from the Liberal Party’s very public trauma of the last few days - that a federal leadership change is now pretty clearly in the party’s short-term interest.

Papers are full of APEC stories this morning as you would expect but there’s nothing really newsworthy in any of them outside the arrest of the ABC comedians.

Another day on which to join the dots to get the picture on how Canberra works, and once again to ask the question: can the Gallery actually get a story without having to rely on noxious drip feeds?