Mike Seccombe

Mike Seccombe is an Australian journalist. He is The Saturday Paper national correspondent, and appears regularly as a panelist on ABC TV.

Career

According to The Guardian Australia website, Seccombe covered national affairs and politics for The Sydney Morning Herald and from 2006-2011, he lived on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts writing for the Vineyard Gazette.^[1] He now national correspondent for The Saturday Paper.^[2] He is a regular panelist on the ABC Insiders program.

Political views

Howard Government

Seccombe describes the long serving Liberal Howard Government as "a rather inert government that had a very thin record of reform, that left Australia more divided, that entrenched privilege and inequality, and that left the political and economic landscape littered with mines primed to blow up under successor governments."^[3]

The Abbott-Turnbull Government

He criticised the Liberal Abbott Government for having too many practising Christians (especially Catholics) whom he calls a "social minority", and said the government was "out of step" with social expectations on the environment, on same-sex marriage, and on euthanasia.^[4]

Seccombe says the idea that Tony Abbott would have won the 2016 election is "ridiculous".^[5] When Turnbull replaced Abbott as Liberal leader, Seccombe wrote: "Immediately, the change in messaging from negative to positive, from 'nope' to hope, yielded dividends for the government" and that "We expect Turnbull to be an agent of change" but that if economic change was not forthcoming, cynicism might result.^[6]

The Greens

He says people who vote for the Australian Greens "tend to be fairly well educated and fairly sophisticated".^[7]

Same-sex marriage

He advocates changing Australian law to recgonise same sex partnerships as marriages.^[8]

References