Gerard Henderson

Former Australian Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating applaud Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at last weekend’s Labor election campaign launch. Picture: AAP More than a decade ago a man pressed the security intercom at my Phillip Street office in Sydney and asked to see me. I received the message on the second [...]

It’s the tale of two stories, from a left-of-centre perspective. The May issue of The Monthly came out on Wednesday. Its lead comment piece is by La Trobe University emeritus professor Judith Brett and titled “Self-interest groups: The Liberal Party has little left but appeals to the hip pocket”. Brett begins by asserting that “this election campaign [...]

Isaac Butterfield was, until now, a little heard of stand-up comedian — until he included Holocaust material in his gig at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this month. According to a report in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, a Jewish woman emailed Butterworth complaining about some of his material. He replied: “If you can’t stand the heat, get [...]

A half-century ago, among the Left intelligentsia it was fashionable to predict the end of Anzac Day. Perhaps most memorably in Eric Bogle’s song And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Bogle’s lyrics, written in the voice of an alienated, wounded World War I veteran, has the Digger observing “the young people ask, what are they marching [...]

A funny thing happened on the way to reporting the Ipsos poll in Nine’s newspapers on Monday. The phone poll found that, following the federal budget, support for the political parties was as follows: Labor 34 per cent, Coalition 37 per cent, Greens 13 per cent and others 16 per cent. The two-party-preferred vote (the [...]

Last week, Bill Shorten said a Labor government “will fix the law so that the Fair Work Commission has the tools to deliver a living wage for Australia’s low-paid workers”. On Tuesday in the budget, Josh Frydenberg delivered money to workers without involving Australia’s centralised industrial relations system. PwC’s Federal Budget Insights made this point [...]

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in Bondi earlier this month. Picture: Damian Shaw Since the end of World War II, only six prime ministers have ­attained the position after defeating an incumbent government at an election. On the Coalition side, Robert Menzies (1949), Malcolm Fraser (1975), John Howard (1996) and Tony Abbott (2013). And on [...]

It was one of the more naive propositions from a journalist so far this year. On Tuesday, ABC TV 7.30 presenter Leigh Sales interviewed Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on border protection. The specific focus was on the Labor/Greens/independent bill that passed the House of Representatives, concerning medical evacuations of refugees and asylum-seekers currently on Manus Island [...]