Paul Begley
Paul Begley has worked in public affairs roles for three decades, the most recent being 18 years as general manager of government and media relations with the Australian HR Institute.
Recent articles by Paul Begley
20 March 2025
The MAGA answer to DEI is a return to the golden days of exclusion
When the New York Times reported on a tense Cabinet meeting in the White House, it became clear that one of the few members to take on the DOGE boss, Elon Musk, was Sean Duffy, Trump’s new transportation secretary. Although a number of cabinet secretaries were neither accustomed to nor happy with the scorched-earth approach to government efficiency that Musk’s fresh-faced goons were undertaking, they were reluctant to speak openly against Musk.
27 February 2025
Albanese’s golden moments: If only he hadn’t let them pass him by
Police in Victoria last week arrested a woman over unprovoked attacks against two Muslim women wearing hijabs in a northern suburbs shopping centre near Epping.
9 February 2025
‘Before, during and after’: Deception at the heart of Australia’s anti-corruption commission
In two month’s time, 10 years would have passed since the Robodebt scheme was introduced into Australia via a flawed cabinet submission in April 2015 and the federal budget of that year. Robodebt was described in a 2023 BBC article as a “costly failure of public administration” within which “extensive, devastating and continuing” wrongdoing was perpetrated on Australian citizens.
25 January 2025
Has Albanese finally snuffed out the light on the hill?
Although Australian elections are not marked by turnout issues as they are in the US where voting is discretionary, there are lessons for Anthony Albanese in Donald Trump’s election victory.
15 January 2025
Is Australia’s anti-corruption watchdog corrupt?
It was mid-morning on a day in 2009. I was about to be put under for a medical procedure that required a general anaesthetic. From previous experience I recall that anaesthetists assigned to my medical procedures engaged me in light conversation.
9 January 2025
Peter Dutton: not a monster?
When Peter Dutton was voted into the leadership of the Liberal Party by his federal colleagues in 2022, they did so on the understanding that he was the pre-eminent hard man so revered by the hard men who now prevail in the party of Robert Menzies.
18 December 2024
A Trumpian Dutton will use Howard’s legacy to march into office, and Albanese will let him
The coming month of January 2025 is shaping up as Australia Day month. The Coalition has signalled it will be making heavy weather of the weeks leading up to and following Sunday, 26 January. The hubbub will likely focus on Australian flags and an intense determination to stand by the 26th as the day in January sanctified by tradition as the one when the nation contemplates the glories of our history and the impact we make on the world beyond our land of beauty, rich and rare.
13 November 2024
Whatever Dutton wants, Albanese makes sure he gets
The Albanese Government’s obsessive enthusiasm for matching Coalition and News Corp demands with policy responses was on show twice last week. On both occasions it was enshrined in legislation, the first on immigration detention and the other on laws to restrict social media access.
2 November 2024
Albanese’s refusal to heed warnings about Australia’s media is now swamping his re-election chances
Some events of recent weeks have been a reminder of the phenomenon the ancient Greeks called hubris. The Greeks thought of hubris as a character flaw in a leader that led to delusional overconfidence and complacency that blinds a leader and results in a tragic fall.
30 September 2024
Dutton is unacceptable, but Labor under Albanese doesn’t deserve to be re-elected
Increasing numbers of political observers are arriving at the view that Anthony Albanese appears to be doing everything possible to assist Peter Dutton to look strong and visionary compared to his own hesitancy and timidity. Lost for an explanation, Jack Waterford wondered on these pages whether the Albanese strategy might be “part of some divinely appointed mission to save the two-party system”.
24 September 2024
Albanese’s social media gesture confirms the primacy of bipartisanship
The New York Times published an article last week by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and pollster Will Johnson. Haidt has spent many years researching how smartphones and social media affect the lives and mental health of the generation which has been using them since the cradle; i.e. American Gen Z-ers.
31 August 2024
Dutton’s Trumpian certainties are swamping Albanese’s dithering
One full day during the Republican National Convention in the US last month was devoted entirely to the issue of crime. Under the title Make America Safe Again, it referenced a make-believe crime wave engulfing American cities.
20 August 2024
Albanese’s impotence gives Dutton undue credit
One of the first things Tony Abbott did soon after becoming Prime Minister of Australia in 2013 was to abandon the fibre-to-the-premises model that had been the hallmark of the previous Rudd Government’s National Broadband Network rollout. Shortage of labour and supplies had bedevilled the rollout under Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, but it promised a world-class high-speed broadband network that would greatly improve workplace productivity and make Australian businesses internationally competitive.
30 July 2024
Anthony Albanese: the weak link in the Albanese Government
Following the federal Cabinet reshuffle announced by Anthony Albanese on Sunday, the media focus was on him moving Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.
24 July 2024
Peter Dutton: Australia’s uncomplicated Trumper
When a divine entity allegedly intervened to save Donald Trump from a gunshot pellet that grazed his ear at a rally in Pittsburgh on Saturday 13 July, it was not the first time the former president had taken an interest in political assassinations.
10 July 2024
Why does Albanese pander to his enemies and neglect his friends?
Before leaving the Labor Party, Senator Fatima Payman made it clear she did not sign up to a Labor Government whose caucus had not itself signed up to the Labor Party platform which required a recognition of the state of Palestine and a two-party solution to the Middle East’s endless malaise. She made that discovery after the events of 7 October 2023, spoke up accordingly, and crossed a personal Rubicon in the Senate by voting for a Greens’ motion calling for recognition.
4 July 2024
Peter Dutton: Australia’s MAGA rock star
Last month New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks interviewed self-described MAGA (Make America Great Again) War Room street fighter Steve Bannon about the rise of right-wing populism. Among the takeaways were Bannon’s view that the MAGA movement is moving further and faster to the right than Donald Trump, that the battles they’re fighting are essentially ‘unrestricted narrative warfare’ in the media and that a central tool for fighting the war is listening for the ‘signal’, not the ‘noise’.
28 June 2024
Will whatever got Albanese elected get him re-elected?
Watching Peter Dutton deliver his nuclear power announcement at a press conference on June 19 was a reminder of two things. The first was a recent observation by former Victorian Liberal Party strategist Tony Barry that the Coalition commitment to nuclear energy “is the longest suicide note in Australia’s political history”. The second reminder is its contrast with the ‘small target’ strategy that Labor adopted when contesting the 2022 election.
14 June 2024
Why does Anthony Albanese persist in trying to appease News Corp and the Coalition?
It is pitiful to think that a Labor Government elected in its own right two years ago might be running scared of a depleted Opposition party and its public relations arm, News Corp, but that is what appears to have been happening on a number of fronts.
4 June 2024
Can Scott Morrison be trusted in America?
Try to imagine for a moment a time not long past when Scott Morrison was Australian Prime Minister and Joe Hockey was the Australian Ambassador to the United States. A former Labor Party leader - say Paul Keating, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd or Bill Shorten - has written a book for an American audience and wants Ambassador Hockey to graciously host the book’s launch at the embassy in Washington DC. Guests include Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
22 May 2024
Are Albanese and Rowland afraid of Murdoch or are they in his pocket?
Knowing with any degree of certainty what motivates the behaviour and decision making of political leaders whose skill set is focused on creating public perceptions, is problematic. Accordingly, it’s prudent to look less at what they say and more at what they do or don’t do. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland are two such people.
18 May 2024
Winning some, losing more: the price conservatives pay to “double down”
Doubling down is a term used to describe a high-risk manoeuvre that blackjack players make when they decide to double their potential losses to receive just one card from the deck. In conservative politics it’s a move typically made to send a signal to political associates and supporters that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, all is well.
7 May 2024
Why has there been no credible media narrative justifying AUKUS?
Many members of the Albanese Government, including Anthony Albanese himself, recall the problem that presented itself when Julia Gillard took the reins as Prime Minister in 2010 without a credible narrative as to why she accepted the job, other than to say the government under Kevin Rudd had lost its way. It was well known in government circles that Rudd was micromanaging key departments and doing it badly, but Gillard was reluctant to call that spade a spade. Accordingly, NewsCorp filled the vacuum with poison, helped along by James Ashby and a few associated shysters.
20 April 2024
Dutton plays to his base while Albanese neglects his
Next month marks two years since the Albanese Government came to power on 22 May 2022, leaving just one year remaining for his government to implement its agenda. At this critical time, significant numbers of Labor Party members and supporters have found themselves thinking of his government in power as Liberal-lite.
9 April 2024
The Lehrmann defamation case, journalist values and the MEAA Code of Ethics
During the early 1990s, I once asked an experienced media adviser with whom I worked and admired what his thoughts were on the Australian Journalists Association (now the MEAA) Code of Ethics. His answer was that the code amounts to a point of departure in the way that journalists practise.
24 March 2024
Is Peter Dutton or News Corp leading the Coalition?
With the 2024 football season in its infancy, the official Twitter (X) account of ABC News posted a story about Scott Morrison handing back his Number 1 membership ticket to the Cronulla Sharks Rugby League Club. The opening line of the post was The former PM is a longtime public supporter of the Sharks.