People learn from failure or from lack of success.

Government will not nominate the former Labor prime minister [Kevin Rudd] to be the UN's next secretary-general.

When politicians offer you something for nothing, or something that sounds too good to be true, it's always worth taking a careful second look.

Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever.

The royal commissions are successful and effective when they have a focused terms of reference and can do the job quickly and report. And then action can be taken.

Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you've got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time.

China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it.