Writer
Jack Waterford
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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Does Albo even deserve to win?
Not since Alaska has the US won a nation so cheaply. Continue reading »
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Distorting elections: Australia’s professional politicians feather their own nests
The ALP is full of legends – of which many old party folk are defiantly proud – of political skullduggery. There have been stuffed ballot boxes, and mysteriously disappearing ones, and forged minutes of branch meetings. Continue reading »
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Labor, party of the comfortably housed, needs the Greens
Labor needs the Greens. It seems to calculate that the Greens have no choice about preferencing them. That might once have seemed logical, but it is by no means certain when Labor’s defence policies are anathema to many Greens, when Labor policies on refugees and immigration are indistinguishable from the coalition’s, and when their climate Continue reading »
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Like Kamala, Albanese doesn’t seem to get it
This was a mood election; It was not a referendum about Kamala Harris. Nor was it a referendum of Donald Trump’s character. Continue reading »
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Albanese’s limp self-defence aggravated the damage of Qantas allegations
And the National Anti-Corruption Commission loses its appeal. Continue reading »
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Keeping the public in the dark: Is it time to scrap the NACC and start again?
The National Anti-Corruption Commission has recently issued its first substantial, if highly redacted report clearing a former Department of Home Affairs officer of any suspicion of corruption over a million dollars or more of payments from her son, himself a former home affairs officer who had obtained, without an open tender a contract to provide Continue reading »
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ACT Labor holds on, but are wheels coming off the Albanese re-election campaign?
Albanese once said his purpose in life was to “fight Tories.” In government he has done little more than surrender to them. Continue reading »
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ACT’s Barr will struggle to overcome belief he has been in power too long
This ACT election is not an election about policies. Nor, by itself, about significant changes to the style of government. Continue reading »
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Australia poised to enter another US-led Middle East war
With less than two months to go, voters may go to the American polls while their nation is at war. If they do, there is a significant chance that Australia will be dragged in, and in accordance with imperial tradition be sent to fight in the Middle East. Continue reading »
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If we can’t have vision, let’s have boldness and strength of purpose
One should never feel sympathy for a politician caught in a rule-in rule-out game. Perhaps the period should be after the eighth word, but there is something spectacularly dumb about foreclosing on policy options even when they are not under active contemplation, narrowing the range of debate and allowing its terms to be set by Continue reading »
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Public Service Commission is an enemy of the public and the public interest
Irony does not seem to be the strong point of the Public Service Commissioner, Gordon de Brouwer. During the very moments while explaining why Kathryn Campbell had failed her public service ethics examinations, he was committing much the same sort of sin. This was when he was unconvincingly explaining why he could not, should not, Continue reading »
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Kamala still facing electoral college hurdles
Kamala Harris was, to my mind, a clear winner of the first debate between herself and Donald Trump. As things stand, however, I reckon that Trump must be still regarded as the favourite to win a majority of the state electoral college votes, and thus become the next president. I hope I am wrong, but Continue reading »
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It’s now too late for Labor to fix its re-election problems
This week I was practising my argument about a feeling that Albanese Labor has by now left it too late to retrieve its position before the next federal election is due. This was after it was revealed that the economy is on life support and that Labor’s best argument about being a superior economic manager Continue reading »
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Stewards should have an early look at this roughie racehorse
We can all be grateful that the acting auditor general Rona Mellor has decided to take at least a sideways glance into Commonwealth speculation, alongside a similar bet by the probably outgoing Queensland government, in an American horse in the great quantum computing race. I know nothing to say that there is anything intrinsically dodgy Continue reading »
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Labor on the AUKUS battleground
One of Lyndon Johnson’s sage pieces of political advice was that one should never get into a piss fight with a skunk. Kamala Harris should take note. But so should Anthony Albanese, who is inadequately equipped for an argument over AUKUS and the submarine deal with his predecessor Paul Keating. Continue reading »
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Labor makes industry by embracing its gambling mates
History has too stately a progress to be the guide to tactics. But those who make history that does not fit logically into a pattern of principle, consistency and good judgment are doomed to stumble in the short term and earn the contempt of its core followers. Continue reading »
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Albo may struggle to enthuse his followers
I do not expect that there would be an outbreak of existential angst, despair, or deep public sullenness, even among committed Labor voters, if Anthony Albanese were to fail to win the next election. Continue reading »
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Slogans masquerading as policies – the Dutton playbook?
I don’t expect that Donald Trump, presidential candidate, or Trump, elected president, gives a toss whether Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton is prime minister of Australia after the next Australian election. Continue reading »
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Kamala is still the underdog
The withdrawal of Joe Biden and the selection of Kamala Harris has transformed the presidential election of November. It will now be argued on different issues and on different battlegrounds, not all of former president Donald Trump’s choosing. His planned strategy has been much weakened and try as he might he will have difficulty in Continue reading »
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Martyrdom transforms Trump
Anyone watching the Australian diplomats at the Republican national convention would have quickly seen the backslapping, the warm handshakes with the republican tree people and the Australian understanding that, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be elected president in November. Our diplomats, and those with whom they have intercourse, can read the signs as Continue reading »
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Albo’s envoys will entrench religious and political divisions for generations
Albanese’s advisers must have been smoking something when they decided that Australia should have envoys against antisemitism and Islamophobia. Continue reading »
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Trump is the old man most likely to win the US election
For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without Continue reading »
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APS reform bus runs out of solar power
Andrew Podger, former Public Service Commissioner and advocate for reforms that take account of recent failures in public administration, is circulating a paper on priorities for change. About thirty former senior public servants, most with senior Order of Australia postnominals, have endorsed, without necessarily adopting each specific suggestion, his paper as a basis for a Continue reading »
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Payman becomes symbol for discontent with Labor
The strategic and tactical geniuses inside the prime minister’s office and the man they serve may take time to appreciate how comprehensively they have mismanaged popular discontent about Labor’s passive support for Israel during the war against the Palestinians of the past eight months. Instead, they are deluding themselves about being politically outplayed by a Continue reading »
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Beware: corrupt conduct is not always criminal
Last week, Anthony Albanese was reckoned by some to have caused a political coup by luring a former NSW Liberal Treasurer, Matt Kean out of NSW politics and into a Commonwealth position as chair of the climate change authority. Strictly, this might rate as a patronage job, rather than one controlled by public service Act Continue reading »
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Nuclear vibrations pose more threat to Albo than Dutton
If Labor permits the next election to be a referendum about nuclear power, there’s a very good chance that Peter Dutton would win handsomely. For one thing it will be on ground of the Opposition’s choosing. For another, it would not be a poll about nuclear power for very long, but an open-ended referendum about Continue reading »
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Only shame can make integrity guardians do their duty
A predisposition to secrecy still handicaps integrity in Australian government. Continue reading »
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Corruption commission has yet to prove its worth
It hasn’t even finished its first year of operations, but those who were hoping for big things from the National Anti-Corruption Commission and its chair, Justice Paul Brereton would be wise to temper mightily their hopes and expectations of what it might achieve. Continue reading »
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Canberra bureaucrats commissioning NT houses unfit for purpose
Labor’s $4 billion for Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory is set for failure unless it incorporates Aboriginal expertise. Continue reading »
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Our quality of life under threat from the meanness of politicians
Why do politicians and businesspeople of this nation continually pretend that the nation is on the ropes? The average income of most citizens and the average wealth has, in real terms, never been higher. Yet this is a nation which has heavily cut back on foreign aid and has been disinvesting in real terms in Continue reading »
