Phillip Coorey
Phillip Coorey joined the Sydney Morning Herald in 2005 and is the paper's Chief Political Correspondent, based in Canberra. Previously he was the Political Editor for Adelaide's The Advertiser. He has been in the Canberrra Press Gallery since 1998, except for 2003 and 2004 when he was the New York correspondent for News Ltd.
Phillip Coorey
Politics looks a little topsy-turvy
Phillip Coorey This political year ends with Labor behaving as though it is in opposition and the Coalition humming along as though it were in government.
Phillip Coorey
Plenty of signs, none of them good for ALP
Phillip Coorey THE backlash against the Brumby government in Victoria has surprised federal Labor, jeopardised its health reforms and paved the way for a thrashing of NSW Labor on March 26.
Phillip Coorey
Labor's state losses are Gillard's gains
Phillip Coorey The Victorian government may have been a bit long in the tooth but it was still doing a decent job.
Phillip Coorey
Labor on a steady path to same-sex weddings
Phillip Coorey At the hideously-confected affair that masqueraded as the 2009 ALP national conference, one rare area of real contention was gay marriage.
Phillip Coorey
Gillard on the go is being undersold
Phillip Coorey Julia Gillard will spend about 55 hours in the air and 18 on the ground just to attend the NATO summit in Lisbon. She arrives home this morning from a week overseas and heads off again on Thursday.
Phillip Coorey
CBA and its cronies can bank on the wails
Phillip Coorey Not so long ago, the government was singing the praises of the Commonwealth Bank and its boss, Ralph Norris. It was April last year and the nation was in the grip of the global financial crisis.
Phillip Coorey
Howard's book simply circles the wagons around his own legacy
Phillip Coorey Nothing is ever certain in politics, but in late 2007 it was a near certainty - and had been for some time - that John Howard's Coalition government was going to lose.
Phillip Coorey
Gillard is not for turning on IR
Phillip Coorey Tony Abbott has a new line that maintains his theme that Labor is a puppet of the Greens. ''Labor is in government but the Greens are in power,'' the Opposition Leader said on the eve of today's...
Phillip Coorey
Spare those organising security from more work
Phillip Coorey THE squabble between Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard over Afghanistan misses a key point. It would have been a lot easier on the military had they travelled to Afghanistan together.
Phillip Coorey
Rivers will die of thirst as the arguments get wetter
Phillip Coorey Just over a year ago, Malcolm Turnbull returned from London and a meeting with the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, to declare he was no longer prepared to lead a party that refused to take...
Phillip Coorey
War on the bad guys takes a malign turn
Phillip Coorey Standing in the cockpit of the C-130 Hercules as it began its rapid descent to the Tarin Kowt airstrip, the Chief of Defence Force, Angus Houston, was keen to make an observation.
Phillip Coorey
Abbott the cyborg assassin will not give up on his hell-bent mission
Phillip Coorey Just after Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor decided to back Labor, a relieved minister observed that, throughout the election campaign, Tony Abbott had reminded him of the Terminator, the...
Phillip Coorey
The Typhoid Mary of policy is back
Phillip Coorey Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd have something in common: climate change was the catalyst that brought them down as leaders.
Phillip Coorey
Labor 2.0: a lumbering beast that might just avoid extinction
Phillip Coorey The soft carpet throughout the ministerial wing in Parliament House has its benefits, especially if you are a Labor minister walking behind two Liberal frontbenchers who do not realise you are there...
Phillip Coorey
Surveillance plane not cleared for take-off
Phillip Coorey THE Coalition has shelved one of its border protection promises just two days before the federal election.
Phillip Coorey
Campaign circus veers into realms of bizarre
Phillip Coorey Mark Latham has become all he once claimed to despise, and a sad parody of himself. His presence on the campaign trail is a joke, bullying Julia Gillard - who he has spent the past few years...
Phillip Coorey
Round and round with parade of leaders
Phillip Coorey Should Labor lose this election, Tony Abbott would be Australia's third prime minister in two months and its fourth in three years.
Phillip Coorey
Fearlessly committed to building committees
Phillip Coorey So far, population and climate change have emerged as the key policy challenges of this election campaign and Labor's response to both has been the same: form a committee.
Phillip Coorey
Cold war begins in depths of winter
Phillip Coorey There has only been one other August federal election since federation and, like this poll, it was held on August 21. It was 1943.
Phillip Coorey
Keys to Lodge lie in NSW or Queensland
Phillip Coorey This election, like its immediate predecessors, will be won and lost in NSW and Queensland.
