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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.

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

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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
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
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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
Peter Dutton’s campaign has grabbed our attention, but not always for the right reasons.

‘The knives are out’: Dutton has to win over voters, and win back his party

If Peter Dutton loses the election, this past weekend will be seen as a key moment of the campaign, when one of his allies drove a nail into the coffin.

  • Niki Savva

Wakey, wakey: Dutton looks shaky as his aptitude is put to the ultimate test

This is the opposition leader’s first federal election campaign, possibly the first time in his political life that he will face sustained national scrutiny for weeks.

  • Niki Savva

Teals set to seize balance of power in sink or swim election

Against a backdrop of Trump-driven global chaos, a group of mostly female MPs will decide which major party forms a minority government at the coming election.

  • Niki Savva