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Whatever happens now there will be no election until March 2013 at the earliest. This means the Gillard Labor Government will go almost full term despite relentless pressure from the Opposition, a hung parliament and a raft of controversies. But survival is not the same as victory. It has come at a cost.
The emphasis on the relationship between Tony Abbott and women is fuelled by opinion polls that consistently show that he is less popular with women voters. However, undue concentration on the role of gender in shaping voter choice serves to downplay other very interesting variations.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ's paper 'Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings' presented at the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Australians Against Capital Punishment Dinner, Red Hill, Brisbane, 12 October 2012, Commemorating the 10th World Day Against the Death Penalty.
The passage of time has shown that it has not made a great deal of difference whether the ALP leader was Gillard or Rudd. In all likelihood, it doesn't really matter who leads Labor to the 2013 election. What is more important is that they are able to demonstrate good policy achievement.
A Herald/Neilsen poll this week showed that Rudd leads Gillard by 62 per cent to 32 per cent. But that figure is distorted by the overwhelming pro-Rudd preference of Coalition voters, who prefer Rudd to Gillard by 71 per cent to 19 per cent. The motivation behind this preference is not immediately clear.
Tomorrow, Labor will be swept from office in Queensland. The resounding defeat is not easy to explain. While there have been many policy debacles and scandals under Labor, the Queensland government has not resembled the shame of its New South Wales counterpart prior to its defeat last year.
Google's personalised search aims to supply us with content that reflects our interests. The problem is that, exposed only to the views of those like us, our position is reinforced and may tend to the extreme as we become unsympathetic to alternative perspectives.
Many Australian politicians who should know better give the people and the media exactly what they want: rancorous confrontations and barbed insults. The 'tough' way in which Australian politics is played corrodes civility and potentially erodes our democracy.
Former federal treasurer Peter Costello has revealed his fears that Tony Abbott's education in the collectivist principles of Catholic Social Teaching will frustrate the Coalition's ambitions for free market reform of workplace laws.
I'm not worried about Gillard's abysmal rating in polls. I'm not convinced anyone but journalists and backbiters have any real desire to roll her. There is no obvious alternative to Gillard as Labor leader, but there is an obvious need for a party which stands for something.
Though Gillard's leadership has started to come under pressure, no one in Labor will want to overthrow her until the carbon pricing laws package is securely in place. This means no challenge before the first half of 2012. Only then, if opinion polls keep trending down, may Gillard be vulnerable.
Political rallies are on the rise. That is a good thing. The ones that should really make governments take notice are those that contain not just rusted on party supporters, but people who really are considering changing their vote from the Gillard-Abbott election in 2010.
61-72 out of 115 results.