Pip Hinman

The furious commentary accusing the federal Labor Party of losing the election because it was “too left” and “tone deaf” to the importance of coal is disputed by those who are closer to the ground, writes Pip Hinman.

They say class politics is dead in egalitarian Australia — but what about election 2019?

If one billionaire can literally buy seats in Queensland and another guy can use his media empire to tear the opposition to shreds, class politics is well and truly alive in this country.

You may remember the joy of spotting a favourite animal or plant at a place you would infrequently visit. When, the next time you visited, they had disappeared, you’d come up with a banal explanation that never included extinction. But now a United Nations report says that unless there is a change in approach, we will lose 1 million species forever.

Whichever major party claims government on May 18, neither can legitimately claim to have a mandate for its dangerously inadequate carbon emission reduction policies, writes Pip Hinman.

With Election Day in sight, there was a palpable sense of relief at an inner west Sydney early voting booth where I had volunteered over the past few weeks. It feels like a long campaign.

About 60 anti-coal seam gas campaigners gathered outside NSW parliament on May 7 to greet newly-elected MPs with a clear message: stop Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project in the state’s north west.

Jock Palfreeman, an Australian serving a 20-year jail sentence in Bulgaria on trumped-up murder charges, has been on a hunger strike since April 21.

There has been little news about Palfreeman because the Bulgarian prison authorities have gone to great lengths to cut off any communication he had with the outside world.

Aspiring PM Bill Shorten’s promise on April 23 to help boost gas companies’ bottom lines is as much about currying political favor with corporate mates as it is perpetuating the fiction that more gas will reduce energy prices, writes Pip Hinman.

School students are right in carrying out mass civil disobedience to put the urgency of stopping dangerous climate change on the political agenda, writes Pip Hinman.

Socialist candidates are campaigning in the May 18 federal elections to put forward solutions to the growing wealth divide and looming environmental crisis.

Steve Dixon, a Queensland Senate candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, may have put it clumsily, but he was right — in politics, money wins the day in Australia, writes Pip Hinman.

NSW Labor lost the March 23 state election with its small-target strategy, its refusal to challenge the privatisation agenda and its sly accommodation to racism.