http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/laurie-oakes/ Laurie Oakes, one of Australia’s foremost political commentators, has had a distinguished career in journalism that spans more than 30 years. Oakes is renowned for his probing interviews and Canberra-shaking scoops, including the travel rorts saga, the Evans and Kernot affair and breaking stories on the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard leadership fight that changed the course of the 2010 election campaign. By the age of 25, he was The Melbourne Sun-Pictorial’s Canberra bureau chief. While reporting for this paper, Oakes also provided political commentaries for the Seven Network’s Willesee At Seven program. In 1978 he started his own political journal, The Laurie Oakes Report. The following year he joined Channel 10, where he stayed for five years before moving to the Nine Network. For several years Oakes wrote about politics in The Age in Melbourne and The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney as well as the Bulletin magazine. Oakes is Channel Nine’s Political Editor at the Canberra Press Gallery and News Limited columnist. In 2010 he won the Gold Walkley Award for stories he broke during the 2010 election. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ming-money-talks-the-loudest-in-australian-politics/ When North Queensland Liberal MP George Christensen got the idea of launching a new political organisation to counter what he calls “the radical Green movement”, he immediately reached out to Gina Rinehart. Christensen sent her an email setting out his proposals to attack environmental groups (including UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation ) that he claims want to hold up mining projects in the region. The email exchange has now leaked. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ming-money-talks-the-loudest-in-australian-politics/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ming-money-talks-the-loudest-in-australian-politics/#item8598 Fri, 25 May 2012 20:00:46 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/spoof-saga-consumes-an-honourable-profession/ Breakfast television viewers must have fallen out of their chairs in shock at Joe Hockey’s words last Sunday. “It is a very honourable profession, politics,” the shadow Treasurer said. It was the day after Craig Thomson’s extraordinary “I was framed over hookers” interview, with its claims of the most elaborate identity theft plot in the annals of Australian crime. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/spoof-saga-consumes-an-honourable-profession/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/spoof-saga-consumes-an-honourable-profession/#item8538 Fri, 18 May 2012 20:00:14 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/saints-and-sinners-whores-and-lost-souls/ When Wayne Swan is at his desk he likes to work to music. He told journalists during the week that his Budget song this year had been Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams”. Perhaps it was two lines in the opening verse that struck a chord with the Treasurer: You don’t know where you’re goin’ But you know you won’t be back feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/saints-and-sinners-whores-and-lost-souls/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/saints-and-sinners-whores-and-lost-souls/#item8479 Fri, 11 May 2012 20:00:15 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/everyone-is-wrong-gillard-will-lead-labor-to-the-election/ Here’s a novel thought. Julia Gillard might be right when she says she’ll lead Labor to the next election. It’s hard to believe, given all the chatter about a leadership change in the corridors of Parliament House. “One more cock-up and that’s it. She won’t survive.” “The NSW Right is moving. Joel Fitzgibbon (chief government whip) has dropped her, no matter what he says publicly.” feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/everyone-is-wrong-gillard-will-lead-labor-to-the-election/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/everyone-is-wrong-gillard-will-lead-labor-to-the-election/#item8412 Fri, 04 May 2012 20:00:36 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillards-hipocrisy-on-the-presumption-of-innocence/ Journalists who report on politics for a living see plenty of hypocrisy. We’re seeing plenty now from Julia Gillard. She asserts that Peter Slipper should not be sidelined until sexual harassment allegations are dealt with by the courts because he’s entitled to the presumption of innocence. It’s the same excuse the prime minister uses when she refuses to intervene in the Craig Thomson affair and says the Labor backbencher accused of grossly rorting union credit cards still has her full confidence. Yet when Wikileaks infuriated the US Government by publishing a stack of leaked diplomatic cables, Gillard immediately accused editor-in-chief Julian Assange of acting illegally. There was no presumption of innocence for him. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillards-hipocrisy-on-the-presumption-of-innocence/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillards-hipocrisy-on-the-presumption-of-innocence/#item8351 Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillard-rallies-her-troops-for-the-final-round/ Every time Julia Gillard’s desperate Government looks at some policy or event as a potential circuit-breaker, things seem to get worse rather than better.  But hope springs eternal. Gillard and her inner circle now believe they can use a return to surplus, and the Budget that brings it about, as a platform for a political recovery. This was the basis of a speech - a revving-up lecture - that the prime minister delivered to a special meeting of federal Cabinet on Tuesday night. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillard-rallies-her-troops-for-the-final-round/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/gillard-rallies-her-troops-for-the-final-round/#item8293 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:00:52 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/love-him-or-loathe-him-a-rare-man-of-conviction/ With Bob Brown’s resignation as leader of the Greens, Australia has lost its most important left-wing politician. There was a time when Labor and the coalition were regarded as the Left and Right of Australian politics. Not any more. In terms of what they stand for, the major parties are almost indistinguishable. The competition between them is about competence, not much else. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/love-him-or-loathe-him-a-rare-man-of-conviction/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/love-him-or-loathe-him-a-rare-man-of-conviction/#item8239 Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:00:27 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/wanted-local-champions-for-queensland-labor/ The photographs and the TV images should have brought home to those running the Labor Party the seriousness of the situation they face. Seven dejected people sitting around what looked like a kitchen table. This was Labor’s new caucus in the Queensland Parliament. It is also the future of the party across the nation unless it is very careful. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/wanted-local-champions-for-queensland-labor/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/wanted-local-champions-for-queensland-labor/#item8143 Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:00:06 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-labor-brand-is-damaged-and-so-is-the-product/ “When the tide goes out in Queensland,” a senior Labor figure said yesterday, “it goes out more quickly and more deeply than anywhere else.” It’s true. Think the 1974 state election when Labor was reduced to 11 MPs - a cricket team. Think 2001 when Peter Beattie destroyed the conservatives and won 66 seats in the 89 member state parliament. Or think the 1975 federal election, when an anti-Labor tide affected the whole country but in Queensland left the party with just one seat and less than 40 per cent of the vote after preferences. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-labor-brand-is-damaged-and-so-is-the-product/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-labor-brand-is-damaged-and-so-is-the-product/#item8084 Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:00:42 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abbott-listens-to-costello-only-when-it-suits-him/ Nick Minchin is spot on. Making Peter Costello chairman of the Future Fund would have been a very bad decision. If Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and the rest of the coalition’s current economic brains trust can’t see that, it is a real worry. “The fund must be and be seen to be independent, professional, completely above politics and entirely apolitical,” Minchin wrote yesterday in a letter to The Australian newspaper. Appointing a former politician—even one of the stature of Costello—as chairman would therefore be most unwise.” He added that those members of the Fund’s board of guardians who favoured the appointment of the former Treasurer to the job were “naïve”. Minchin knows what he is talking about. As Finance Minister for the last six years of the Howard Government, he was—with Costello—the co-creator of the fund set up to make provision for unfunded Commonwealth superannuation liabilities. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Laurie Oakes) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abbott-listens-to-costello-only-when-it-suits-him/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/abbott-listens-to-costello-only-when-it-suits-him/#item8024 Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:00:30 +0000 Laurie Oakes | Author bios | The Punch