New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

It's a by-election the Liberal Party should have won, but didn't. Eden-Monaro. Despite all the resources put into the campaign, the Government nudged the margin by just 0.45% – not much and certainly not the massive swing and "brutal lesson to Labor" the New Corporation reported with glowing headlines in their local versions of Pravda and The North Korea Times. For all the glowing support provided...

McCarthyism was that awful US syndrome from the 1950s, where the mention of ‘communism’ was like a combination of the bubonic plague, 1918 virus and COVID-19. It was a virus we thought the world might have rid itself of, but it's alive and well in 2020. It's no longer the Soviet Union causing all the trouble, but the Chinese Government, and the conservatives have a problem with them. And the polit...

The Prime Minister supported radical anti-vaxer/5G/anti-lockdown/Bill Gates protests, saying people have a right to express themselves, but wanted to lockdown the Black Lives Matter and deaths in custody rallies. It’s an obvious duplicity but no one in the media pointed out this discrepancy. Perhaps it's a case where for the Prime Minister – and many in the media – black lives don't really matter...

There have been many comparisons made between Scott Morrison and Bob Hawke recently, but Morrison is no Bob Hawke. The Accord was totally different from Morrison’s plans, dubbed "Accord 2.0" by the friendly media. But media management is what the Liberal–National Government does best and at the onset of a recession, what do we get? A HomeBuilder plan that virtually no-one can access, and does very...

The Australian economy is falling into a heap, and what better way to provide a cushion to the economy than to start a fruitless diplomatic stoush with China, our largest trading partner. Fresh from celebrating Scott Morrison’s unlikely election victory anniversary, the media championed Australia’s push for a ‘weapons inspectors’ inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 (well, that's not correct, it w...

Schools have become the new battleground for the Morrison Government and they've started a huge brawl with the Victoria Premier, Daniel Andrews. Morrison and his entourage of Chief Medical Officers are using flimsy evidence to push schools to fully reopen, even though there's international evidence that suggests it's best to go slow and show the abundance of caution that has, so far, been lacking...

Just because there's a coronavirus crisis, we can't assume a government will act in the best interests of its people. Trust in governments and authority is at a low level, so why would the public have trust in a Tracing App, when all it's going to do is soak up personal data the government can then on-sell to third parties? No thanks. And especially after the debacles of the 2016 Census, the Centr...

Forget The Dismissal, forget Fine Cotton, the Hilton Bombing and even the Offset Alpine fire. The Ruby Princess is shaping up to be one of the biggest scandals in Australian history. And all under the noses of the NSW and Australian Governments. Sports games are not being played at the moment, but gosh, politicians are fantastic at playing the blame game. And it's an ugly spectacle seeing NSW Heal...

The coronavirus crisis is likely to be with us for some time to come and governments have been doing their best to manage the crisis, but it seems some countries are doing better than others. The Morrison government has been dragging its feet, on the economic and health fronts, and it seems that it’s directing its actions based on ideological pursuits, rather than putting that all aside, and worki...

Everyone is talking about the coronavirus but, unlike most of the media and most of the government, we'll leave the medical debate to the medical fraternity and discuss the politics and economics of the crisis instead. And it is going to cause a recession in Australia and a wide range of problems for the Liberal–National Government. But stimulus is also occupying a great amount of space and, at lo...

Another year, another round of political corruption to deal with. Scott Morrison claimed "a miracle" caused him to win the 2019 election but, as with most claims of divine intervention, that old human frailty of vice and corruption proved to be the real answer. The Liberal–National Government had a cash splash fund of almost $500 million dollars to throw at marginal and Coalition-held seats – fund...

The climate change debate is heating up to a temperature even hotter than the NSW bushfires. Just as the Prime Minister has decided to take a holiday somewhere in the Pacific and instructing the media not to report that he was actually on leave. To their shame, many in media acceded to the Prime Minister's wish: so much for the Your Right To Know campaign. What a facade. People are angry about cli...

Democracy fell down a few rungs when Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, used forged documents to attack an opponent. Did he know they were forged? Did he forge the documents himself? Answers to these questions need to be provided. Why has public trust in the political processes dived so dramatically since 2013? Hint: That's when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, but are there other factors contributi...

Scott Morrison has been to Washington and back, and a State Dinner was held in his honour. While grandstanding and hurling insults at China might not be the best way to protect a $40 billion per year export market, there must be wiser heads within the government providing advice, and they certainly would know what they are doing. Wouldn't they? There was much talk about the entourage at the US Sta...

There's a disaster facing the Australian economy and, unfortunately, the best the Liberal–National Government can do is blame the Labor Party – even though they haven't been in office since 2013 – or blame the Reserve Bank of Australia, or talk about the Sea of Tranquility which, according to the planetary atlas, is somewhere near the dark side of the moon. Why is Josh Frydenberg talking up the fi...

We are very impressed to hear there is a new part of the political lexicon: unfunded empathy. It's the bureaucratic way of saying: "get %$knF!!" and we are just wondering how many focus groups were needed to test this one, because it's an absolute beauty. It helped to dismiss calls for a raise in Newstart spontaneously and, simultaneously, protects the Coalition’s golden $7 billion Budget surplus....

Democracy is being held hostage by the adversarial nature of party politics. The people deserve better and a democracy upgrade is long overdue. Is democracy broken? Do we need a blueprint for change? If it's broken, how do we fix it? Kim Wingerei is an author and political commentator, and discusses his book with the co-host of New Politics, David Lewis. Why Democracy Is Broken: A Blueprint for Ch...

Surprised by their surprise 2019 election victory, the Liberal-National Party is searching for an agenda to implement over the next term of Parliament, and trying to convince the public it's all about religious freedom, industrial relations, cutting red tape, green tape, and every other colour of tape. The only problem is that this is as surprising as their surprise election victory. These are iss...

Apologies if our 2019 Election Wrap-Up special episode is late but we had to wait until every postal vote had been received and counted, and see if there was any sign of a late swing. Of which, there was none. The Liberal–National Party has been returned to government for a third consecutive term and we really cannot think of a more undeserving government. But, that's democracy in action: the elec...

It's the final week of Election 2019 and Labor is still in the best position to win the election. We're not saying anything controversial here: Labor has been ahead in the polls for almost three years, the Liberal–National Party is divided and has been an omnishamble in government, and is lacking meaningful policy offerings to the public. And if it's not the polls, have a look at the betting marke...

Contrary to most perceptions from the media about a ‘boring’ campaign, we think the 2019 election is one of the most exciting ever. Why? Because it's a ‘change’ election, where there's a possibility that it could realign conservative parties forever and, if Labor wins, create the conditions for future governments to be more adventurous in policy development. But silly media can't see beyond their...

The 2019 election is on, but to look forward, we always need to look back, and we go far back into the archives to look at the events of elections from 1992 and 1993. But that's over 25 years ago: are age-old events from history still relevant today? Of course! The similarities between UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1992 and Bill Shorten in 2019 are striking. Like Shorten, Kinnock had been ahead...

Conventional wisdom suggests there are two types of Budgets: one that's in surplus, and one that's in deficit. But there's also the Budget type that is totally political, and we've got a feeling Josh Frydenberg's first (and probably final) Budget is in the realm of smoke and mirrors. Anyway, we'll let you know in September 2020 if it was truly a surplus Budget – that's when we'll actually find out...

The NSW Election is all over, and the Coalition Government has been returned for a third term. But is it the landslide victory the mainstream media is claiming? No, of course not: they only just scraped in by one seat, and the National Party lost seats to the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party. Labor also fared poorly, crashing in the final week with a bit of casual racism, and they will commence...

There is so much corruption and unethical behaviour by this federal Government that it's hard to know where to begin: Helloworld, Paladin, Parakeelia, Ministers refusing to provide evidence to the Australian Federal Police… it's not a good look. But there's more: government Ministers are resigning and retiring, with rumours of more to follow. It's hard to shake the perception that the ship is sink...