Katharine Murphy
Katharine Murphy is national affairs correspondent at The Age. She has been reporting on federal politics for more than a decade, starting at The Australian Financial Review, where she was Canberra chief of staff from 2001 to 2004, and moving to The Australian as a specialist writer from 2004 to 2006. She joined The Age in 2006. In 2008, she won the Paul Lyneham Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism.
Katharine Murphy
All set for the media tango, politicians versus proprietors
Katharine Murphy All politics is local, goes the maxim. It's a quaint notion in our globalised world, and yet it's still substantially true. Here's a case study to illustrate the point.
Psychological warfare
Katharine Murphy The battle for psychological ascendancy between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott played out in parliament during the week. Katharine Murphy and Chris Hammer review events.
Katharine Murphy
Let's not wait to find who we really are
Katharine Murphy Cobbling together quick solutions is one thing. Long-term is harder.
Labor's asylum gamble
Katharine Murphy The Gillard government is gambling that assessing asylum seekers off shore will neutralise the political debate. Katharine Murphy and Chris Hammer review the week in politics.
Katharine Murphy
Dear pollies, rise above the cheap slogans
Katharine Murphy It's bitterly cold in Canberra; one of those winters so bleak you worry spring will never come.
Katharine Murphy
Will Joyce have Abbott dancing to the bush populist's tune?
Katharine Murphy The foreign investment decision revealed a delicate juggling act.
Hands off farm: Coalition
Katharine Murphy Foreign buyers intent on locking up large chunks of prime Australian farm land will face a tougher road under a federal government led by Tony Abbott.
Quality journalism might need subsidies: Labor MP
Katharine Murphy PUBLIC or private subsidies may be required to sustain quality journalism and to address an emerging information gap in the digital era, according to federal Labor backbencher Andrew Leigh.
Katharine Murphy
Rip off those headphones and let the pollies hear some truths
Katharine Murphy I've been away a couple of weeks, taking the air, reminding myself how easy it is to just tune out politics. Dangerously simple. Just hit mute.
Press is on for media resolution
Katharine Murphy It's been a content-rich week for media watchers. In London, some of Rupert Murdoch's top executives learnt they would face charges stemming from the phone hacking affair.
PM gives a personal spin to her ambition
Katharine Murphy Julia Gillard has pushed back defiantly against her detractors, declaring she will contest the 2013 poll as Labor leader in order to lock in her policy legacy.
The politics of procrastination steals time and hope
Katharine Murphy ORDINARY folks, safely outside the surly faux combat that passes for organised public discourse these days, would be perfectly entitled to conclude this afternoon that national politics is so toxic...
Abbott's Chinese dance
Katharine Murphy Abbott has today raised explicitly the idea that China should embark on political reform.
Katharine Murphy
It's growing hotter in the kitchen
Katharine Murphy Out of the carbon tax, into the boats. That's the next month or so for Gillard Labor. Alternating between frying pans and fires.
Political marriage in stormy waters
Katharine Murphy Christine Milne understands very precisely where intransigence on asylum seeker policy might ultimately lead. The new Greens leader inhabits the political world of practical consequences.
Katharine Murphy
'Enhanced' press council the bet
Katharine Murphy With media proprietors tense and on the warpath, Cabinet must roll from the current carbon price controversy to the prickly subject of charting future media regulation over the next couple of weeks.
Katharine Murphy
Gillard tries to play with Abbott's mind
Katharine Murphy Not just Labor, but the Coalition and the Greens are facing testing times.
Katharine Murphy
Obscure objectivity of desire
Katharine Murphy Talk of the looming death of newspapers blurs the issue. What's really under threat in the shift from print to digital is a commercially sustainable 'objective' model for news.
Katharine Murphy
D-day looms for Gillard in her fight with the media barons
Katharine Murphy A former sex worker in a blonde wig versus the executive producer of a tabloid television current affairs show. Now that's some 'she said, he said' journalism for you.
Storm over reef not out of blue
Katharine Murphy A BIT out of the blue, this fight between Canberra and Queensland over approval for a $6.4 billion coal project owned by Gina Rinehart and the Indian conglomerate GVK? Possibly, it looks that way.
