Andrew Probyn

El Nino may be good for Labor

Shhhh! Don’t mention the war. As the great heatwave struck the US, knocking off thousands of temperature records, Bob Henson, a meteorologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, was asked this week whether any of this could ...
July 6, 12:29 pm
Credibility sinking on all fronts

Humiliated by the people smugglers, wrenched between the practical necessity for draconian deterrents and the instinct to show humanity, Labor is now being tortured by its lack of credibility and consistency on border protection.Of the many fine spe...
June 29, 1:22 pm
Asylum policy stand-off costing lives

Tony Abbott and the Federal Opposition must get out of the way and allow the Gillard Government to enact a policy that the experts say will have the best deterrent effect on people smugglers.To do anything else is ugly political cynicism and against...
June 23, 3:02 am
Toxic taxes haunt two leaders

At the G20 in Mexico this week, Australia’s miracle economy emboldened Julia Gillard to lecture the Europeans on how it’s done. At the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development, the Prime Minister will be feted for having overseen ...
June 22, 1:48 pm
Why Porter didn't want to wait

As one Liberal mover and shaker put it, the “insider, rock solid understanding” upon which everyone was operating was that Christian Porter would have become premier about halfway through the next term of government.That a terrifically ambitious pol...
June 15, 11:33 am
Economy's traction inaction

It is 20 years since Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign strategist James Carville hung up a sign in the Little Rock headquarters with the words “The economy, stupid”. Now a mainstay in Western political strategy, Mr Carville’s words remind players...
June 8, 10:55 am
How Roy Hill became millstone

The armchair political generals regularly criticise Julia Gillard’s Government for being more interested in spin than substance.Pursue good policy and the politics looks after itself, is the advice commonly proffered.But if there’s a lesson in the p...
June 1, 11:54 am
Thomson inquiry in contempt

Down in the bowels of Parliament there are remnant reminders of how seriously it takes punishment. In the southern end of the basement there were once two detention rooms, each 8.5sqm — one for females and one for male detainees.At the other end of ...
May 25, 12:31 pm
Abbott brings out Libs' Dr No

If there’s a pointed stick that has consistently done great harm to the Labor Government, it’s the one inscribed with the words debt and deficit.Ever since Kevin Rudd assented to the advice from then Treasury secretary Ken Henry to shovel cash out t...
May 18, 3:36 pm
PM juggles in tough times

For once, Julia Gillard’s administration got its politics about right. If only her Government’s Budget Day repositioning of its battlements could be seen through the squalor and grubbiness of the hung Parliament.Ripping money from the rich and shove...
May 11, 12:33 pm
Budget show PM's last chance

When the Prime Minister’s press secretary texted senior journalists on Wednesday night, telling them the boss would be doing something early the next morning, it occasioned mild panic.Such is the weird, febrile atmosphere in Canberra at the moment t...
May 4, 12:26 pm
Slippery dilemma for Abbott

Consider how precarious the 43rd Parliament has become. Key crossbenchers are insisting Peter Slipper clears himself of all allegations of impropriety before he returns to the House of Representatives as Speaker.That means Mr Slipper could expect to...
April 27, 12:49 pm
Still budgeting for a surplus

Since becoming Greens leader a week ago, Christine Milne has been echoing the view of some economists that the Gillard Government would wreak massive damage to parts of the country by sticking slavishly to its ambition to return the Budget to surplu...
April 20, 12:26 pm
Truth is WA does not always do things better

One admirable characteristic of the West Australian attitude is that those on the Indian Ocean side of the Nullarbor very often reckon they can do better than those over east.It’s as if West Australians have learned to compensate for their relative ...
April 13, 11:08 am
Queensland Labor rout a headache for Gillard

After the weekend’s Queensland Labor massacre, imagine what we would have been hearing from within the ALP caucus if Kevin Rudd were still foreign minister.There would be calls for an urgent recall of the Labor caucus, perhaps as early as next week,...
March 30, 12:34 pm
Super guarantee rise not new

Sometimes in the world of economics and politics you could be forgiven for thinking you had fallen into the movie Groundhog Day.Do you remember the picture featuring weatherman Bill Murray who repeats the same day in a winter-bound town until he red...
March 27, 9:37 am
Dirty secret could dig a hole

Someone in BHP Billiton has been a little bit indiscreet. This person told a senior Liberal that BHP does not expect to pay any of the Government's mining tax in the first few years."We won't be paying it any time soon," was what the Liberal MP this...
March 23, 8:05 am
Johnson fumbles sick cop case

Police Minister Rob Johnson is a character who polarises opinion in WA. He is secretly ridiculed by his own Liberal colleagues, savaged in media commentary and pilloried in Parliament by the Opposition.Some of his comments, his occasional eccentrici...
March 21, 9:00 pm
Beazley tax gaffe haunts Libs

Kim Beazley got himself into a real pickle in 2005 when, at Wayne Swan's silly suggestion, he opposed tax cuts proposed by Peter Costello. Back then we were still in the days of enormous bounty, when treasurers didn't get out of bed unless numbers h...
March 15, 9:00 pm
Abbott's numbers don't add up

To do it once could be put down to a momentary lapse but for Andrew Robb to do it again suggests there's something else afoot. A month ago, the shadow finance minister caused a stir within his own ranks when he baulked at committing a future coaliti...
March 8, 9:00 pm