The Latest Articles by Michelle Grattan

Opposition Senate leader and former senior minister in the Coalition government Simon Birmingham has announced he will quit parliament. Birmingham, one of the few remaining moderates in the Liberals’ ranks, is shadow foreign minister. Now , aged 50, he’s defecting to a (yet to be announced) commercial job.

An attempt by the Liberals to insert a potential legal time bomb into the electoral reform legislation and a Labor proposal that would give the ACTU a generous donation cap were main reasons an expected bipartisan deal on the bill imploded at the last moment this week.

The just-ended COP-29 in Baku, and the election of Donald Trump, have put the global response to climate change in the spotlight. Meanwhile back home, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen this week reported Australia is on track to meet its 2030 target to reduce emissions as part of the Paris…

In the chaotic dying days of 2024’s final parliamentary sitting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reverted to a role he played in Julia Gillard’s government.

Opposition leader in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, has announced he will retire from parliament at the election, to take up a “new, commercially oriented” career.

This year will set a record for the addition of renewables to the grid, according to figures to be released on Thursday by the Clean Energy Regulator.

Wednesday saw an ugly incident that brought shame on the Senate. It was shocking – full of provocation, accusations of racism, and what was described by Senate president Sue Lines as “physically threatening behaviour”.

Australia is on track to reach the Albanese government’s 43% emissions reduction target by 2030, according to the most recent analysis by the Climate Change department.

Big tech platforms won’t be able to compel people to provide digital ID or government-issued identification documents such as a passport, when verifying age for social media accounts.

Next month’s update of the federal budget will forecast a bigger deficit for 2024-25 than was predicted in the May budget, according to the Deloitte Access Economics’ Budget Monitor, released on Tuesday.

The government has stared down the Greens over its Help to Buy and Build to Rent housing legislation, with the minor party announcing late Monday it will “wave through” the legislation in the Senate this week.