Michelle Grattan on War - National Times

Michelle Grattan

Michelle Grattan is the political editor of The Age. In 2008, she shared the Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award with Laurie Oakes. She edited the books 'Reconciliation' and 'Australian Prime Ministers' (2000), and wrote 'Back on the Wool Track' (2004).

Michelle Grattan

Belief in victory hard for party at war with itself

Michelle Grattan As Labor MPs gather in Canberra for the new parliamentary year, with the election date set and the ministry reshuffled, they are unsettled and uncertain.

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James Ashby lost the battle but won the war

Michelle Grattan James Ashby has lost his court battle but he has won his wider war. In this dramatic case, the law and politics intersected.

Michelle Grattan

Misogyny war has no winner

Michelle Grattan The PM may have made a hero of herself to some feminists but she did the wrong thing in trying to protect the sexist Peter Slipper.

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Afghanistan

Piggybacking out of an ''unwinnable war''

Michelle Grattan Australia's timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has one central driver - the progressive drawdown of most American troops.

Michelle Grattan

We stay in this 'unwinnable' war only because of our alliance with the US

Michelle Grattan WITH the deaths of two young soldiers last week, Australia has now lost more than a dozen troops in Afghanistan, all but one since 2007. Contrast this with Iraq, where we had no deaths in combat.

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Michelle Grattan

First battle won, but real war is yet to come

Michelle Grattan Predictably, the anti-Turnbull forces did not choose to take on their leader yesterday over the emissions trading issue.

Michelle Grattan

Kinder, gentler politics? Not a chance

Michelle Grattan CHRISTOPHER PYNE didn't exactly promise kinder, gentler politics in canvassing last week plans for parliamentary reform under an Abbott government.

Michelle Grattan

Wrapped in polls, Gillard defies the 'killing season'

Michelle Grattan This will be a bruising parliamentary week, the last of an extraordinary and draining year that has strained voters' tolerance of politicians to the max.

Michelle Grattan

Gillard now needs to settle the dust

Michelle Grattan The politics of the absurd have kicked in with the two men who set up the notorious AWU association from which they then allegedly siphoned money now out there on either side of the war over Julia...