It’s a fair call to speculate on alternatives to the leadership but your bias towards Gillard and her ‘faceless men’ in the ALP is more obvious every week. Sooner or later someone is going to blink - my tip is Rudd will be sold a dummy about his level...

It’s defective because for cyclical reasons beyond their control they nearly always end up on the scrap heap. One minute they are a minister, dripping with authority. Then the last snapshot the public has of them is of a hapless, carping loser. ...

Reserve Bank's decision to leave the cash rate unchanged provides us with some welcome relief from the ritualised bank-bashing by politicians. When did bank-bashing become a favourite political sport? Certainly, Peter Costello, as treasurer, was a keen...

It's the numbers that matter in politics. In the absence of good numbers, aspiring leaders fall back on psychology. History suggests it offers no sure path to the leadership. Quite the opposite. Peter Costello was a bit like the dorky guy at the school...

Advertisement: Story continues below "We have got to look at the ridiculous notion that super is there to take pressure off the age pension,'' one panel member, Richard Denniss, of the Australia Institute, said. "Peter Costello and John Howard loosened...

The review did, however, consult with John Howard, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer and Lindsay Tanner, all of whom had left politics before the review commenced. The same weird logic crops up in what would, even from the point of view of anyone...