SPECIAL FROM GREG BARNS. HOBART, AUSTRALIA, 11 MAY 2022. On May 21 Australians go to the polls in a general election. After what will be a dull contest, light on big ideas and competing visions, the choice will be between another term for the conservative Liberal National Party coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison […]

SPECIAL FROM GREG BARNS. HOBART, MELBOURNE, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 14 JULY 2020. The 11th of November 1975 is a date etched into the collective mind of the Australian body politic. It was the day that the Queen’s representative, Governor General John Kerr, dismissed the elected Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and commissioned Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser to […]

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS. Australians used to laugh at Latin American nations like Argentina and Ecuador, which in recent decades turned over their leaders with astonishing regularity. But now the boot is well and truly on the other foot. Today saw the demise of Australia’s fifth Prime Minister in 11 years. The Liberal […]

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS AND ANNA TALBOT. This past Tuesday Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stood in front of world leaders and claimed his government’s refugee policy was the best in the world. But many people in Australia will tell you that Mr Turnbull’s boasting was misplaced. Australia’s policy is based on deterrence, […]

REPORT FROM GREG BARNS IN AUSTRALIA. Stephen Harper might feel a little lonelier today.  With the election of Malcolm Turnbull as Australia’s 29th Prime Minister –  after a late night Liberal Party room vote on Monday (September 14, 2015) – Mr Harper loses an ideological soul mate in Tony Abbott, the man Mr Turnbull replaces. From […]

From Greg Barns, National Campaign Director for the Wikileaks Party’s 2013 Australian federal election campaign: Tom Flanagan, Stephen Harper’s old ideological chum, once said of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that he wouldn’t mind if Mr Assange were assassinated.  “I think Obama should put out a contract or use a drone or something. I wouldn’t feel […]

It’s no secret that Stephen Harper likes to swap notes, and speeches, with his Australian counterparts in the conservative Liberal Party.  Mr. Harper  once shamelessly plagiarized a speech about the war in Iraq from the man he fairly swooned over, former Australia Prime Minister John Howard.  It seems that Mr. Harper and/or his advisers have […]

Unlike their Canadian counterparts, Australian voters are not enamoured of minority governments at the federal level.  Until 17 days ago that is.  That’s when the Labor Party Prime Minister and the Liberal Party Opposition Leader both claimed they should form the next government because both ended up with 73 seats in the 150-seat national parliament.  […]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to think of himself as a northern hemisphere variant of former Australian prime minister, John Howard. Harper plays his politics tough, loves nothing better than burying his opponents, and has adopted from Howard the habit of dividing Canadian society into those who are ordinary’ or mainstream’ and those who are […]

On June 11, 2008 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal “apology to former students of Indian residential schools.” And when you factor the $1.9 billion compensation fund in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement of 2006 into the picture, Mr. Harper’s ostensibly right-wing government has made the ostensibly left-wing Australian Prime Minister Kevin […]