Kevin Rudd’s new book, On Xi Jinping, explores the ideology and worldview of Chinese president Xi Jinping, more formally known as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and state chairman of ...

In the wake of Joe Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 and the abortive Trump insurrection that followed, one important fact stood out for Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio. Republicans ...

With almost half the world’s population voting in national or Europe-wide elections during 2024, Time magazine declared it “the ultimate election year.” Now it’s almost over we can stand back and try ...

Will the next federal election, due by May next year, result in a hung parliament? Everyone seems to think so. The opinion poll ingredients — low major-party primary support; two-party-preferred ...

“Meritocracy” is one of the great taken-for-granteds of our times. When the Productivity Commission looked at social mobility rates recently it reported in tones of relief and pleasure that we’re ...

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s song, “The Folks Who Live on the Hill,” contains the lines: “Our verandah will command a view of meadows green, / The sort of view that seems to want to be seen.” ...

Should we have seen it coming? With the benefit of hindsight, Donald Trump’s victory seems to have been inevitable, and the excitement of journalists reporting a closely contested presidential ...

If song lyrics were treated as poetry, Taylor Swift would be the most popular poet in history. She even invokes the romantic image of the poète maudit — the cursed poet; the poet who is mad, bad and ...

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime is one of those “in retrospect it was inevitable but no one saw it coming” moments. Exactly where it leaves Syria is still unclear, so it is also one of those ...

Peter Dutton’s declaration that he will not stand next to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags turns the arc of Australian history off the path it seemed to be on thirty years ago. Then, in ...

Two narratives compete about public administration. One is captured by Georgetown University’s Dan Honig in his new book, Mission Driven Bureaucrats. It assumes government can make a positive ...