On Election Day It's Not Just the Politicians' Careers that Crash,Their Cars Do Too

Election days are always tense occasions - there is so much riding on the outcome. But it’s not just the election result that can be disastrous - politicians are more likely to have car accidents on polling day. To my knowledge a disproportionate number of car accidents - some of them very serious - have occurred on polling day.

On NSW election day 1988 for instance, Wal Murray, the Leader of the NSW Nationals was being driven through his electorate of Moree in the [...]

Gillard has a good-news story but is failing to communicate it

This op-ed originally appeared in today's Australian.

One of my favourite films is Cool Hand Luke. In it Paul Newman plays a prisoner who refuses to submit to the brutal regime imposed by the prison's governor.

In one scene Luke is in a chain gang. His guard tells him that [...]

Poor planning has doomed Labor's media reform

This article was originally posted on The Drum.

Time and again Federal Labor loses the day because it fails to make a case for its reforms. When this happens it is left looking disorganised and weak.

The latest example of this failure to formulate a plan and execute a strategy is the furore over Stephen Conroy's proposal for media regulation.

The Public Interest [...]

2013 WA Elections: History Repeats Itself for First Term Barnett Government

Last Saturday's election in Western Australia saw Labor beaten soundly. It follows the defeat of Labor governments in Queensland, Victoria, NSW and the Northern Territory since 2010. The difference was that in those jurisdictions Labor governments were defeated after lengthy terms in government. In Saturday's WA election, however, the Liberal government of Colin Barnett was a first term administration. It won the 2008 election by a slim margin, with a 2.6% swing and winning 24 seats to [...]

Global Warming: Let's Leave it to the Climate Scientists not the Climate Fundamentalists

Back in the 1925 in the town of Dayton, Tennessee, a young science teacher named John Scopes was charged with the offence of teaching the theory of evolution in a secondary school. In doing so he had committed an offence against a law enacted by the creationists who controlled the Tennessee legislature.

The subsequent prosecution, popularly known as the "Scopes Monkey Trial", highlighted the clash between scientific inquiry and [...]