Sean Kelly
Brisbane Times
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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Past articles by Sean:
Twitter, Trump, Xi ... Is democracy safe yet?
It’s easy to be seduced by recent events, but the forces lined up against democracy are strong. → Read More
No room for the poor in ‘small target’ politics
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ budget tells us a lot about who is at the centre of Australian political debate – and who isn’t. → Read More
After labouring the point, Albanese finally gets his story straight
In this age of too many vague political words, can clear and specific beliefs still reach people? → Read More
Writing a book about Scott Morrison: ‘the fact he seemed boring wasn’t an obstacle’
Looking closely at how Scott Morrison has succeeded – and the ways in which he has failed – can tell us a lot about politics, and journalism, and Australians → Read More
Locking in a bleak few months
The more honest our leaders are with us during this time of yo-yo-ing lockdowns, the better it will be for them in the long run. → Read More
Australia is not an island when it comes to the forces that fostered Trump
Our island status cannot protect us from hatred, fantasy or inflammatory rhetoric. We all need to be on guard. → Read More
While Scott Morrison stays true to form, China is setting itself up for the future
It looks like we won't be getting a reform budget next month after all. → Read More
Say it like you mean it
It is possible, in these seeming end-times, to develop a sense of nostalgia for the formal, boring language of politics as it was once practised, not that long ago. → Read More
For both the Coalition and Labor, long-range troubles have come into view
Some extraordinary things have been said over the past 24 hours. → Read More
A case of mistaken identity
The problem with voting, goes the old joke, is that you always end up with a politician. My guess is that that sums up how most voters are feeling right now. Newspoll’s approval ratings for the two leaders, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten, show that both men have been below zero – the point at which more voters disapprove than approve – since March last year. In fact, since April last year,… → Read More
Dastyari leaves parliament
The fall of Sam Dastyari is a story that deserves several thousand words, and no doubt it will get them over the next few days. There are three parts to that tale. → Read More
Labor seems divided over the Dastyari affair
For this senator, the future looks – at best – complicated. → Read More
A victory for equality
YES!!! … is that all there is to say today? Well, perhaps just one thing should be added. There will be a lot of talk about this vote being parliament at its best. Don’t buy it. This victory has precious little to do with the parliament, and everything to do with the voters of Australia, the LGBTQI people who have fought so hard for it, and those who have led the campaign for equality over… → Read More
Politicians have embarrassed themselves with the citizenship mess
Today is unlikely to be remembered as a particularly bleak day in the annals of Australian politics. Oh, but it was. Only last week there were congratulations galore as the Senate passed the marriage bill. It was, we were told, parliament at its best. Well, today was parliament at its worst. → Read More
Suddenly it’s the Opposition leader under pressure
There has been, in the past 24 hours, an interesting reversal. It’s been widely noted that Malcolm Turnbull has, for some weeks now, been desperately desiring the year to end. Right at this moment, however, it may be Bill Shorten who is wishing the final days of parliament away, dreaming of the minute MPs up stumps and clear out for Christmas. → Read More
That sinking feeling
When you work in politics, there is a particular feeling that sometimes comes over you. It’s highly unpleasant, and it is brought on by a very specific situation. It arrives when, somehow, you have managed to travel so far along a certain road that by the time you realise it was indubitably the wrong one to take, there is no going back. You wish you could retrace your steps, but that option… → Read More
The Qld result confirms things we already knew
So, yes, the Queensland election result is interesting, it really is, but it’s interesting in quite a boring way. Despite all the talk of votes spraying everywhere, psephologists having enough for umpteen PhDs, and shock results – all of which are fair observations – when you get down to it the main take-outs are confirmation of things we knew already. → Read More
Form follows function
Explaining the point of the PM’s floated income tax cuts, Paul Kelly wrote [$] in the Australian: “The bigger play from Turnbull to both his party and the public is that a functioning government can win the economic debate against Labor, a stance that remains his last best hope.” → Read More
Risky business
Desperate and transparently self-serving political manoeuvres are not always the wrong strategy. Yes, you’ll get called out on them by your opponents. You’ll endure a bad media cycle or two, because journalists – with fair reason – hate them. But of course the strategists know this in advance; it’s just the price they are willing to pay for avoiding what they’ve decided is an even worse… → Read More
It will take decades to know whether the NT Royal Commission into youth detention achieves anything
The report of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory is, first and foremost, a condemnation of this country’s continuing failure to care for, or about, its Indigenous population. Of the 1020 children and young people in out-of-home care in the NT, 89 per cent are Aboriginal [$]. → Read More