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Niki Savva

Niki Savva

Niki Savva is an award-winning political commentator and author. She was a staffer to former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello, and is a member of the board of Old Parliament House.

Abbott’s ineptitude meant he didn’t last two years as PM. Now he’s back, with four new slogans

There are so many angry, frustrated, pessimistic voters in Australia that One Nation, a party whose defining credo is racist and bigoted, will end up the official opposition. Enter Tony Abbott.

  • Niki Savva

Latest

Thanks to Trump, the national mood has seldom been bleaker. Over to you, Chalmers

It is rare outside a federal election for the fortunes of all political leaders, their parties and the non-aligned to be broken, restored or enhanced in the space of a few days. They will be over the next week.

  • Niki Savva

Pauline Hanson is out to obliterate the Coalition. These two MPs are standing up to her

Andrew Hastie is the most persistent, most outspoken and most lethal critic of Trump in Australian politics. He fully expects Gina Rinehart to spare no effort or expense to destroy him.

  • Niki Savva

One Nation may well win Sussan Ley’s seat – that would be terrible for all of us

Smart Liberals believe the coming Farrer byelection could be a two-horse race, with neither horse wearing Liberal or National colours. That would be bad enough. What would be worse, for everyone, is if One Nation won. That too is possible.

  • Niki Savva
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor in Question Time on Tuesday.

Fury in the Liberal Party meant there was no time for protection rackets

The official review of the catastrophic 2025 election was always going to leak. The opposition leader, Angus Taylor was foolish, and/or naive in the extreme, to think that it could be kept secret.

  • Niki Savva

Ley is toast and the Coalition isn’t just on a break. This bust-up is serious

A growing number of Liberal MPs privately concede the differences within and between the parties are intractable and irreconcilable, so entrenched that neither leadership changes nor a re-formed Coalition can resolve them.

  • Niki Savva
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Peter Dutton led the charge on opposing Labor’s tax cuts, despite colleagues arguing against the move.

‘We were like lemmings going over a cliff’: Inside Dutton’s $17 billion blunder

Anthony Albanese had kept Project Georgia a tightly held secret in the hope of forcing the opposition to make a mistake. As Niki Savva writes in an exclusive extract, the tactic succeeded beyond Labor’s wildest dreams.

  • Niki Savva
Fallout: Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie.

The meeting where Dutton and Hastie’s relationship fell apart

In an exclusive extract, Niki Savva reveals details of the shadow cabinet meeting that irreparably damaged Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie’s relationship, and how Dutton panned his frontbenchers’ policy work.

  • Niki Savva
Artwork: Dionne Gain

Marles is deluded. In a world where merit mattered, he would be shown the door

Richard Marles was warned that if he knifed Mark Dreyfus and Ed Husic, there would be grave repercussions. Initially, he appeared to take it all on board. Then he didn’t.

  • Niki Savva

Dutton has led one of the worst election campaigns in living memory

Peter Dutton must have believed he could skate to victory. How else to explain his abject failure to prepare credible policies.

  • Niki Savva