Rowan Dean

Tony Abbott survives Liberal Party spill motion

From our UK edition

Tony Abbott is not dead yet. He has survived a spill motion this morning by the narrowest of margins (61 – 39). Had the vote got into the forties it would have been extremely difficult for Mr Abbott not to hold a leadership ballot, in which case Malcolm Turnbull would have challenged and almost certainly

Is Twitter about to claim its first prime ministerial scalp?

From our UK edition

Within the next three hours, the seventeen-month reign of Australia’s conservative PM Tony Abbott may come to a crashing close, terminated not by policy differences but by populism and personality. Could Twitter be about to claim its first prime ministerial scalp? The contrasting characters of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull could not have been more

The Royal Family beats Australia’s dreary political class hands down

From our UK edition

Only a few hours before the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge landed in Sydney for the start of their much-hyped royal Australian visit, Barry O’Farrell, the popular Premier of New South Wales, stunned the nation by resigning. His reason? He couldn’t remember having quaffed a bottle of wine. (No ordinary wine, mind you, but a

Diary Australia – 16th June

From our UK edition

London I always wondered what happened to that ghastly floating Chinese restaurant that used to meander around Sydney Harbour. Now it’s turned up as the new Royal Barge, from whence Elizabeth, Phil and the rest of the blue-fingered bluebloods watch the Jubilee Regatta making its way down the muddy Thames on a freezing winter’s, er,

Diary – 3 September 2011 | 3 September 2011

From our UK edition

The three girls sitting opposite can’t take their eyes off us. Eventually it becomes too much for one of them (the pretty one) and she saunters over and shyly introduces herself. To Mark, of course, not to the rest of us. Mark smiles and shakes her hand, and that’s all it takes for the other