John Roskam’s Opinion Newsletter
IPA Senior Fellow John Roskam explains the good, bad and ugly of Australian politics in his weekly opinion newsletter, One & Free.
Teaching to hate not love.
When adults tell children to make Greta Thunberg their role model. I don't get to choose the headline for my column in The Australian Financial Review. On Thursday mornings, once a fortnight, I email my 700 words into the AFR, and then in the afternoon, I go online to see the headline. Nearly always the headline is better [...]
Predictions about the future are hard.
Thoughts on the Coalition disaster. After my Australian Financial Review column appeared on the weekend, I got a text from a friend saying he'd read it, found it interesting, but I was being melodramatic. He said the condition of the Liberal Party wasn't as bad as I'd made out. This is what I wrote - you can judge [...]
At St Columba College on Election Day
Thoughts on the Coalition disaster. I spent last Saturday on the polling booth at St Columba College in Andrews Farm in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. I was handing out How To Vote cards for my colleague at the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild who was the Liberal candidate for the seat of Spence. Before the weekend's [...]
Only a few more days to go.
And it's staggering what the media finds staggering. This time next week, Australians could be suffering a bad case of buyer's remorse. Maybe the Coalition could still win and miracles do happen. In 2019, Scott Morrison said on election night he had 'always believed in miracles'. But two miracle wins for the Coalition in three elections might be [...]
The election campaign as ‘a trifling popularity contest…
with squabbles over competing giveaways'. I have no intention today of repeating Mr Howard's irresponsible spending spree… Unlike Mr Howard, I don't stand before you with a bag full of irresponsible promises that could put upward pressure on inflation. Today, I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop. That's why the commitments [...]
Not winning in a landslide.
Peter Dutton's first week of the election campaign. I can't understand it. Labor is just so bad. Why aren't we 10 points up and heading for a landslide? That's the first line of my AFR column this week. It's word-for-word what a long-time Liberal Party member asked me a few weeks ago, and I've heard dozens of variations [...]
