Things couldn't be better for the Coalition, insist insiders, who swear that recent polls' intimations of as many as 19 seats going south will be refuted by local voters 'standing up where it counts'. One gathers those same sanguine strategists aren't mulling the numbers from South Australia

Yesterday, as the press gallery's intrepid watchdogs inform us, the Prime Minister looked closely at a sweet potato. There, that's your election coverage -- not to mention an excuse for reporters to avoid picking over matters of genuine and weightier importance

That The Guardian Australia's website is playground and sanctuary for those whose literary antics cannot withstand scrutiny outside its oh-so-precious and protected environment hardly needs to be said.  The proof, if any more is needed, is columnist Van Badham

The rationale for this election was that it might just produce a more agreeable mix in the Red Chamber. Given that Apple Isle motormouth Jacqui Lambie stands a fair-to-good chance of surviving, and sundry odd sorts with her, the Turnbull logic no longer seems quite so compelling

Today is the last opportunity for voters to place their names on the electoral roll, which it seems many young people will decline to do. No surprise there. Given left-leaning media outlets' interminable whine that democracy is broken, why should the target audience believe otherwise?

They march on the left side of politics, Labor and the Greens, but make no mistake that there is anything resembling comradely amity to unite them. Rather, as the fight for inner-city seats escalates, any available weapon can and is being pressed into service

A long election season presents news organisations with a problem: how to sustain the interest of readers uninspired by photo ops? The Guardian, in typical fashion, has found its perfect commentator: the girl who stole the details  of Frances Abbott's scholarship

Any politician facing the distinct possibility of losing his seat to the Greens should have mastered the first and most important law of stump comportment: don't hand your foe a loaded gun. In forgetting that he owned a $2.3 million house, Labor's David Feeney has done just that

The reaction used to be predictable as the response to Pavlov's bell: mere mention of the Member for Warringah prompted immediate fits of spittle-flecked fuming and frothing. But last weekend, rather than insults, it was cheers that welcomed the ousted PM