Mark Kenny

Mark Kenny

Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent. A director of the National Press Club, he regularly appears on the ABC's Insiders, Sky News Agenda, and Ten's Meet the Press. He has reported from Canberra under three prime ministers and several opposition leaders.

PM will be judged as skilled at policy, but inept at politics

Mark Kenny dinkus

Mark Kenny In just his first 30 days in office, an impatient Gough Whitlam signed off on a vast array of reforms.

Gillard's fine reforms slip between the gap

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Mark Kenny The PM's policy record holds up well. It's her political skills that let her down, badly.

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Cynical game played at the expense of the disabled

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott

Mark Kenny Around 2 million Australians desperate to see disability insurance become a reality are now caught in a political game of chicken with neither side of politics prepared to unconditionally back...

Comments 392

Triple-F for Labor in convincing voters of budget credibility

mark kenny

Mark Kenny The federal government's political skills are again being exposed as slipshod amid a messy prelude to a pre-election budget.

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Gillard's deal on Gonski a case of better late than never

Mark Kenny dinkus

Mark Kenny Things are somehow different way out west.

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Gillard's diplomatic triumphs have come all too late

mark kenny

Mark Kenny The PM didn't relish a foreign affairs role, but she has excelled as a stateswoman.

PM solved Rubik's Cube of diplomacy but won't get credit

Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited Chenjinglun High School in Beijing.

Mark Kenny It has been said before that if it weren't for bad luck, Julia Gillard would probably have no luck at all.

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Looking for a quicksand escape

Mark Kenny Like the ubiquitous quicksand scene from the movies of his youth, the more John Howard struggled in 2007, the faster he sank.

Back from the brink

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Mark Kenny Prime Minister Julia Gillard faces an uphill battle rebuilding her party's shattered brand after Labor's crippling leadership crisis ended in farce on Thursday with a party-room spill devoid of a...

Comments 129

Mark Kenny and Tony Wright

How it all went so horribly wrong for Labor

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Mark Kenny and Tony Wright How did the government leave Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in a seemingly unassailable position to waltz into the Lodge in September?

Ministerial stamp of authority may be too late

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Mark Kenny Julia Gillard's new ministerial line-up is the embodiment of politics as the art of the possible.

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Simply put, Gillard is indestructible

Julia Gillard

Mark Kenny Whenever American voters are asked to name the qualities they most value in their political representatives, having a strong leader comes out as most important.

Mark Kenny

Frankly, this secrecy is undemocratic

Mark Kenny dinkus

Mark Kenny AUSTRALIA boasts a stable democracy and a famously frank political culture. Yet for all that robustness, Australians too readily accept secrecy by those representing us.

Money makes debate go round

Mark Kenny While much of the world reeled from the banking and related property sector meltdown in 2008-09, swift stimulatory action in Australia, and our good fortune in being a major commodity supplier to...

Mark Kenny

Big plan likely to stay on the drawing board

Mark Kenny If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, on what substrate is the long path to the federal election based? Great ideas? Thought bubbles?

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Mark Kenny

Blunder after blunder sets Swan up for attack

Treasurer Wayne Swan

Mark Kenny Julia Gillard's political troubles went from bad to worse on Thursday as her chief economic salesman first fluffed his lines on possible income tax rises and then quoted the wrong jobless number in...

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