Tony Wright

Canberra, Melbourne

Associate Editor and Special Writer at Sydney Morning Herald

Associate Editor and Special Writer at The Age

Associate Editor and Special Writer. The Age Melbourne and Sydney Morning Herald. Wander a bit.

Articles

Well-travelled Pope never made it to Australia - or to his home country

2 days ago | watoday.com.au | Tony Wright

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Well-travelled Pope never made it to Australia - or to his home country

2 days ago | smh.com.au | Tony Wright

By Tony Wright April 22, 2025 — 5.30am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Pope Francis, who travelled to almost 70 countries during his nearly 12 years as pontiff, could always attract an immense crowd, particularly among the poor, the oppressed and the overlooked.
After the election, is it time to farewell the US protection racket?

1 week ago | smh.com.au | Tony Wright

After the election, is it time to farewell the US protection racket? We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later. By Tony Wright April 17, 2025 — 11.30am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Trump-lite dynamite: Did copying the president’s playbook blow up Dutton’s campaign?

1 week ago | smh.com.au | Tony Wright

By Tony Wright April 11, 2025 — 5.30am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. It took Peter Dutton and his colleagues no more than a week into the federal election campaign to discover two of the grim truths of Australian political campaigning. It’s a witless idea to roll yourself in a cock-and-bull political ideology imported across the oceans, and it’s worse to go off half-cocked.
Trump-lite dynamite: Did copying the president’s playbook blow up Dutton’s campaign?

2 weeks ago | ourcommunitynow.com | Tony Wright

Share Howard’s imported version of Thatcherism and Reaganomics boiled down to a plan to radically cut personal income taxes, reduce company tax rates, abolish the capital gains tax and make business entertainment tax-deductible, among other efforts. How the Coalition would pay for all this was unclear and poorly argued. None of it mattered much after Howard’s would-be treasurer, Jim Carlton, launched his grand budget savings plan. It was a fiasco.
Former Liberal MP for Kooyong and ‘conscience of the Liberal Party’ dies at 77

2 weeks ago | smh.com.au | Tony Wright

By Tony Wright April 4, 2025 — 5.27pm, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Petro Georgiou, among the last of the tough-minded small “l” Liberals and a man known among many as the “conscience of the Liberal Party”, has died aged 77. He spent his parliamentary career, from 1994 to 2010, sitting on the backbench, becoming famous for standing up to Liberal prime minister John Howard on human rights.
Former Liberal MP for Kooyong and ‘conscience of the Liberal Party’ dies at 77

2 weeks ago | watoday.com.au | Tony Wright

Among the guests were former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, Victorian Liberal leader of the time Ted Baillieu, former federal Liberal president Tony Staley and federal MP Russell Broadbent, another “small l” liberal who has since quit the party to serve as an independent. Georgiou was born in Corfu, Greece, the eldest of four children, and arrived in Melbourne with his family in 1951. Educated at Melbourne University, he started his career as a senior tutor in politics at La Trobe University.
The park where Anzac Day comes early, beneath Australia’s oldest Lone Pine

2 weeks ago | theage.com.au | Tony Wright

By Tony Wright April 4, 2025 — 11.43am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for laterAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. The crowd gathers early to commemorate Anzac Day beneath Australia’s oldest Lone Pine at Wattle Park, Burwood, in Melbourne’s east.
Oscar Wilde would recognise this trumped-up cynic with his eyes closed

3 weeks ago | watoday.com.au | Tony Wright

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Oscar Wilde would recognise this trumped-up cynic with his eyes closed

3 weeks ago | smh.com.au | Tony Wright

By Tony Wright April 3, 2025 — 7.30pm, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Never has Oscar Wilde’s observation about a cynic been more relevant than during Donald Trump’s bombast on Thursday as he tossed around endless figures – some of them possibly accurate – to justify blowing up the world’s trade system.