No Crap App: w/b 15 Dec 2014

Pope, Canb Times, 20 Dec 2014

Sydney siege

• Monica Attard: Was this our greatest fear?
• Paul Kelly: Probe into possible role of policy failures in the Martin Place tragedy
• Jacqueline Maley: Let there be no doubt: Monis was a terrorist
• Tony Walker: Lone wolves with Facebook friends
• James Brown: Fighting a siege mentality

Budget

• Greg Jericho: Coalition’s previous budget rhetoric has come back to haunt them
• Lenore Taylor: Australia, we have a budget problem, and the ‘solutions’ are underwhelming
• Paul Kelly: Update reveals daunting challenge for a debased political culture
• Michael Gordon: Julie Bishop and the empathy deficit
• David Crowe: Political class stumbles on how to fix our broken budget
• Ross Gittins: Has the Lucky Country lost its ardour and ambition?
• Peter Brent: Why greatness will probably elude Joe

Abbott, Credlin, reshuffle

• Jane Gilmore: Leadership: Hitting the reset button
• Niki Savva: It’s the best and worst of times
• Geoff Kitney: Can Tony Abbott hang on to his leadership?

2014 in review

• Lenore Taylor: Politics in 2014: the Coalition dished out slogans, and its sentence is clear
• Laura Tingle: Exhausted government is searching for alibis

Other thinkiness

• Martin McKenzie-Murray: The year that was: seeking meaning inside a vacuum

By request, my posts for the week:

• Does the ministry ‘stability’ border on stagnation?
• Why the PM’s Peta Problem is not going away
• MYEFO: Why we should care
• Julie Bishop for PM? Unlikely
• 2014: The Year that was (best viewed on tablet)

No Crap App: w/b 28 Jul 2014

Cathy Wilcox, 28 Jul 2014

MH17

• Ben Eltham: All Australian eyes on Ukraine, but what’s our goal again?
• Jim Middleton: Military victory trumps MH17 investigation for Kiev
• Piping Shrike: Disaster politics
• Martin McKenzie-Murray: Relations in the firing line in wake of MH17

Budget

• Phil Coorey: Joe Hockey on a mission to sell budget to MPs 
• Peter Hartcher: Tony Abbott’s Coalition making the same mistakes as Labor
• Cade Lucas: Abbott, Abetz, Tasmania and the logic that wasn’t
• Greg Jericho: Sorting fact from fiction in dole policy
• Michael Cooney: Don’t be distracted: it’s all about the budget
• Troy Henderson: Trust me (I hate you)

ALP

• Laura Tingle: Shorten coy on party reform
• Brett Evans: The winter of Senator Faulkner’s discontent

Gaza

• Tony Walker: Israel’s inconvenient truth – Hamas must be dealt with
• Tim Robertson: Palestine and the Saturday paper
• Aicha Marhfour: Hashtags won’t save Palestine in war of words and clicks
• Waleed Aly: MH17, Gaza and the value of human life
• Lin Taylor: Compassion fatigue: how much is too much bad news

Palmer

• Laurie Oakes: Clive Palmer’s not big on comity as his latest push for an inquiry shows
• Sophie Morris: Nationals urge tougher tactics as Clive Palmer plays the centre

Media

• Jonathan Holes: Press Council’s new rules makes writers face facts

Other thinkiness

• Tim Dunlop: Feeding our egalitarian nation to the sharks
• Jonathan Green: The slick, glib world of tabloid politics

And my posts for the week

• The vexed issue called ‘leadership’
• Unions – 1, Shorten – 0
• In praise of public art
• Is Julie Bishop Australia’s most underrated politician?

No Crap App: w/b 29 Apr 2013

Rowe, AFR 3 May 2013

Policy

• Dominic Kelly: A big fat yes? Or will Tony Abbott leave the IPA crying at the altar?
• Alan Kholer: Too many benefits are costing the country
• GrogsGamut / Greg Jericho: Labor in a budget quagmire of its own making
• Tim Colebatch: Before we tackle the budget, let’s clarify a few points
• Jack Waterford: Bad news being wasted
• Ben Eltham: Disability levy serves the common good
• Jonathan Green: Braving risky politics for a lasting legacy
• Dennis Atkins: Voters’ desire to feel secure a fundamental requirement
• Laura Tingle [$]: Forget the wedges, focus on the results
• Tad Tietze: The ALP and the politics of anti-immigration (both kinds)

Media

• Rob Ashton: Why I reject your comments
• Martin McKenzie-Murray: Truth lies mangled in wake of Boston bombings

Longer read

• Piping Shrike: Review – Mark Latham’s ‘Not Dead Yet’
• Michael Gawenda: It’s the story that counts. And it’s the writer who owns the story
• Kate McClymont: Where angels fear to tread
• Martin McKenzie-Murray: How not to write a column

Thank you again for visiting and supporting No Crap App. If you’d like to make a small donation, you can do so by clicking here:

No Crap App: w/b 4 Feb 2013

Lobbecke, Aust 7 Feb 2013

Policy

• Ben Eltham: Costings battle part of the process
• GrogsGamut / Greg Jericho: Life (and policy) is complicated
• Matt Cowgill: Housing policy – it’s all connected
• Peter Martin: Labor finally sights the super monster
• Dennis Atkins: Gillard focuses on unfinished business in a long poll run
• Paul Kelly: Labor’s conflict – how to fund its vision without wrecking the economy

Politics

• Michael Gawenda: Why Gillard’s contest will be surreal
• Phil Coorey [$]: Abbott follows Howard by the book
• Chris Berg: If it looks and smells like a campaign, then it’s a campaign
• Jack Waterford: Will we really remember them?
• Martin McKenzie-Murray: Politicians and journalists in lockstep on march of idiocy
• David Crowe: PM’s inner circle of trust
• Laura Tingle [$]: The longest suicide note in political history
• Peter van Onselen: The plan – softly, softly, catchee voter

Polls

• Peter Brent: Can’t take a trick
• Pollytics: Updated pollytrend
• Essential: Majority don’t believe Abbott will deliver a surplus
• Roy Morgan: Australians believe economic and financial issues are the biggest problems facing Australia

Media

• Michael Gawenda [listen]: Narratives that just won’t go away

Michelle Grattan

• Mark Baker: A warrior and a worrier, the woman who broke the mould
• Andrew Elder: The impact of Michelle Grattan
• Martin McKenzie-Murray: Goodbye, Grattan

Thank you again for visiting and supporting No Crap App. If you’d like to make a small donation, you can do so by clicking here:

No Crap App:w/b 11 Jun 2012

Lobbecke, The Punch 15 Jun 2012

The week that was…

After the excitement of last week’s unexpectedly positive economic news, this week political writers returned to pondering the community’s distinct unwillingness to be heartened by them.

Colebatch remained pessimistic, Grog gave an insightful retrospective of the economy 40 years ago compared with today, and Pollytics updated his seminal work on the Great Unhinging. Poss also produced a great piece on the internal inconsistency that bedevils community opinion.

Kelly said it was time to lower the public’s expectations, while Grattan pointed out that trust had a lot to do with their unhappiness and Dunlop explained that it should be attributed to their lack of civic engagement and sense of powerlessness.

Kenny and Elder kept the light firmly fixed on Abbott’s negative campaign, while a small war broke out over blogging versus journalism.

Economy

• Tim Colebatch: Green lights, but prepare to break
• GrogsGamut / Greg Jericho: Then and now – looking back at the economy
• George Megalogenis: Lift in tax free-threshold poses new problems for working women

Community sentiment

• Pollytics: The Great Unhinging Revisited and What Australians believe
• Paul Kelly: Government must lower our great expectations
• Michelle Grattan: The glass of public trust in politics is nowhere near half full
• Tim Dunlop: Little surprise we’re an ‘angry nation’

Abbott’s negativism

• Mark Kenny: The Opposition wants you to be afraid. Be very afraid.

Blogging vs journalism

• Martin McKenzie-Murray: Democracy running on low ink
• Bernard Keane: Bloggers and investigative journalists

Sunday addition

• Crispin Hull: Jobs the price of keeping Fairfax afloat