Judith Brett

Nov 2, 2024 | theguardian.com | Judith Brett

What would Robert Menzies think of today’s Liberal party as it celebrates 80 years since its founding in 1944? His first reaction would be pleasure that it was still here.

Sep 11, 2024 | crikey.com.au | Judith Brett

This article is an instalment in a new series, “Peter Dutton is racist”, on Dutton’s history of racism and the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s. In today’s political discourse, “racist” is a pejorative term, an accusation, an insult. No-one, except for a few white supremacists, accepts being labelled a racist, with its terrifying connotations of deadly violence justified by perceived biological differences — slavery, genocide and the Holocaust.

Jul 11, 2024 | crikey.com.au | Judith Brett

This article is an instalment of Where to for real Liberals?, a series on the future of the Liberal Party under Peter Dutton. Contemplating the future of the Liberal Party, institutions matter, especially the electoral system that stands between the voters and parties of government. Since the 2022 election, it has become clear that two distinctive features of Australia’s electoral system — compulsory and preferential voting — are not working in the Liberal Party’s favour.

Jul 4, 2024 | dailybulletin.com.au | La Trobe |Judith Brett

When Robert Menzies was out of office in 1943, in between prime ministerships, he was thinking about the future of non-Labor politics in wartime Australia. He read Edmund Burke’s book Thought on the Present Discontents. In it, Burke included the now-famous definition of a political party as:a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavour the national interest upon some particular principle on which they are all agreed.

Jul 1, 2024 | theconversation.com | Judith Brett

When Robert Menzies was out of office in 1943, in between prime ministerships, he was thinking about the future of non-Labor politics in wartime Australia. He read Edmund Burke’s book Thought on the Present Discontents. In it, Burke included the now-famous definition of a political party as:a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavour the national interest upon some particular principle on which they are all agreed.