New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

The war in Russian invasion in Ukraine is escalating, and it’s difficult to know how this will end. But Vladimir Putin has already lost, irrespective of the outcome: a crashing Russian economy, the Rouble has collapsed, and receiving opprobrium from most of the rest of the world. As well as what populist dictators hate the most: removal of the Russian football team from World Cup games.

And is has also provided an opportunity for the Australian Prime Minister to talk tough. It’s obvious Scott Morrison wants to be seen as part of a war-time government, but it’s hard to convince the Australian public. He’s doing the right thing to call out Russian aggression in Ukraine but Australia is not at war.

It’s also hard to think that if there wasn’t a federal election coming up, the government’s response would have been close to nothing. After all, that’s all they did when Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014, and almost as much during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s.

Australia doesn’t have very much of a relationship with Russia or Ukraine: the electorate would like Australia to provide the support needed to end the conflict, but it’s a far away conflict and it probably won’t play on the mind of the electorate at the next federal election.

There is one Australian connection, however, that needs to be looked at: Rupert Murdoch and Putin do have a close relationship. Putin facilitated the sale of Russian media companies to the Murdoch empire in the early 2000s, a time when Murdoch was having financial difficulties. And now the favour is being repaid, with favourable pro-Russian commentary on the US Fox News channel, which is now being replayed on Russian television. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and 20 years later, Murdoch is propagandising on behalf of Putin.

There is very little governments could have done to stop the floods in Queensland and northern NSW – except for introduce climate change mitigation about 30 years ago – but, even still, there is action that can be taken to be prepared when the inevitable effects of climate change arrive.

A report outlining the climate change events that would hit eastern Australia up until April 2022 was delivered to National Cabinet in November 2021, but it seems the government failed to act upon anything, and the communities now being affected by these floods were caught totally unawares.

Preparing for a crisis and acting when the crisis arrives is the primary reason for the existence of governments – offering protection and support when the community needs it – but the federal and NSW governments seem to think that it’s best to do nothing. If you lose your house, it’s your fault. If an entire town is flooded, what’s that got to do with the government? Should have prayed a little bit more, otherwise this wouldn’t have happened to you.

It’s the most narrow-minded perspective of what governments should be doing – or not doing, and it’s hard to see either the federal government or the NSW Government being able to win their respective elections with these types of ideological approaches. Governments are there to help and assist, not avoid people and punish them when a crisis arrives.

And in our ongoing series on independent candidates and minor parties, David Lewis is in conversation with Therese Faulkner, the president of the Australian Progressives, to look at their ambitions at the next federal election.

Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton are keen to mention the Community Party of China at every opportunity and how terrible they are – ignoring the fact that China is Australia’s number one trading partner and Australian athletes recently competed at the Winter Olympics in Beijing (so surely it can be all that bad) – and making the link between bad China and the Labor Party, especially its leader, Anthony Albanese.

And creating that link between Albanese and pinko-communist-leftist-Maoist-Guevarian-socialist thoughts, all because (allegedly) he glanced at the Communist Party of Australia’s newspaper, The Tribune, at some point in 1992. The Liberal Party support team at News Corporation did fall short of calling for the execution of Albanese for thought crimes against the state, but the sentiment was there.

An incident between an Australian Defence Force aircraft and a Chinese vessel in international waters in the Arafura Sea was magnified in the media and by the federal government – we still are not sure what occurred – but who’s got time for the facts when there’s an election to be won. And if the electorate tires from hearing about ‘China’, there’s always an opportunity to drag Australia into the Russia–Ukraine conflict, even though it’s not within Australia’s field of interest.

Yes, we need to be concerned about Russia’s invasions in Ukraine, but it’s a complex situation based on old Soviet Union politics, history, imperialism, economics and control of resources. But that doesn’t matter: it‘s an opportunity to push Australia towards a ‘khaki’ election, which the Coalition believes it has a stronger chance of winning, as well as being about to promote the idea that Albanese is ‘weak on border protection’. But will it work?

The Liberal Party seems to be at war with everyone and when they’ve cycled through the usual suspects – China, communists, the Greens, Labor, pensioners, welfare recipients, the poor – they return to an old and trusted enemy: the unions. A shutdown of Sydney’s train system was caused by the NSW Government, with the intention of blaming the unions.

Australia is poorly served by its mainstream media, and the Sydney Morning Herald provided a fine example of this when they pushed the idea that it was strike action caused by unions (no, it was a lockout by the NSW Government), and this provided attack points for Morrison over the next few days against unions – it’s a pity that it was all incorrect, but that was never the point. It allowed Morrison to push the message about life under an Albanese government – train strikes every day of week; misery; inconvenience; something about communism and the left.

In Morrison’s dystopia, there are no shades of grey, just Neanderthal simplicity: Scomo, good. Albo, bad.

And David Lewis catches up with Ryan Bruce, who is the candidate in Aston for The New Liberals: we find out about his campaign, and what The New Liberals are all about and what the future holds for them.

Butchering a classic pop song from a 1970s Australian band and playing a ukulele might not seem like the best way to prepare for a critical election year, but that’s exactly what Scott Morrison did. It seemed bizarre but there is a method to this madness: it keeps all the bad news away from the headlines and keeps the enemies of the Liberal Party occupied with the unimportant and minute details. It’s the hallmark of a populist politician: distract with stunts and gimmicks, keep your opponents in the electorate occupied with irrelevant material, and hope that everyone else forgets about all of your errors.

And, of course, part of the sing-song needs to include your wife and two daughters at Kirribilli House, because nothing overcomes a Liberal Party “problem with women” better than wheeling out Jen And The Girls©™ as a political “secret weapon”. Should family members be used politically to help a prime minister win an election? It would be better to stay in the background but if a spouse is going to become a part of the political process, they need to expect the scrutiny coming their way.

A desperate government will always resort to desperate measures and a government influenced by libertarian thinking and free-market and religio-fascist Christian values will always seek the maximum advantage in the most destructive way possible. If there is a vote to be gained, nothing is too low for the Liberal Party and for Morrison to reach.

And following on from the debacle of the Religious Discrimination Bill, Morrison and Peter Dutton – aided and abetted by a posse of Liberal Party MPs – decided to create all sorts of problems with China (as if they haven’t done enough damage already) by dropping bipartisanship on foreign relations and accusing Labor deputy leader Richard Marles of being the “Manchurian Candidate” – and their friends at News Corporation managed to find a video of Anthony Albanese speaking three sentences of Mandarin to a China–Australia forum in 2018.

Welcome to modern Australia, as interpreted by conservatives: education and being able to speak a foreign language is rubbished, and national security and relationships with the biggest trading partner is damaged, for the sake of an unlikely and undeserved election victory. It’s another good reason why the Liberal Party needs to be turfed out at the next election.

The weekend byelections in NSW suggest the main problems for the Morrison government will be the independents – the seat of Willoughby was almost lost to the independent candidate, Larissa Penn through a swing of 19%, and this spells trouble in the seats of North Sydney, Bennelong, Kooyong, Flinders and Goldstein.

And how difficult will it be for the Labor Party to win the 2022 federal election? Although they are 10 percentage points ahead of the Liberal–National Coalition in the current polls – 55% to 45% – it will still be a difficult election, for mathematical reasons: they only need a net gain of seven seats, but where the votes fall will be critical to whether there are also enough seats that will change hands.

It was an explosive week of Parliament, the first of very few in 2022. The government decided not to schedule too many sitting days this year because, when there’s an election year, a most secretive government doesn’t want too much scrutiny placed upon itself.

And, because it’s an election year, a funding freeze for the ABC has been lifted, which is a little bit awkward: the Liberal Party conference in 2015 voted to privatise the ABC (and SBS), and it’s one of the Institute of Public Affair’s top 50 items on its to-do list. And that’s aside from the 30 years of hardline attacks on the ABC by the Liberal Party, which have dramatically escalated since 2013.

So much time has been spent on the Religious Discrimination Bill, a Bill that not too many people care about, or even want – but Scott Morrison believes this Bill may provide him with a narrow pathway to victory at the 2022 federal election. But it’s off the table now: the government didn’t have the parliamentary competence to manage its own legislation.

The emphasis on a Bill that nobody wants is also instructive for the areas the government is not focusing upon: a national anti-corruption commission was promised over three years ago, but is nowhere to be seen. The Minister for Aged Care attends a cricket match, rather than face scrutiny at a Senate Estimates hearing.

Women’s safety issues are being left behind – and didn’t Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame give the Prime Minister an earful for this: women have had enough, they’re not going to smile and be silent. The powerful never easily relinquish power, but it’s a reminder of what can be achieved with effective advocacy.

And while the Prime Minister was very busy washing a young woman’s hair at a Coco hair salon – creepy! – the Labor Party is carefully preparing its economic agenda for when it returns to government. It will be difficult for Labor to win at the next election – as it is for any Opposition party – but they are ensuring that they are well prepared.

Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, believes the federal government has forgotten the “people” part of the economy and the pandemic has clearly shown that a healthy economy also needs a healthy community and workforce. The current problems in the economy: wage stagnation, a generational debt without a generational dividend, poor economic management, poor management of the pandemic – all need to be addressed, but better economic thinking needs to adopted if the economy is going to “build back better”, rather than a futile “snap back” to a pre-pandemic world, which might be unachievable anyway.

An absolute summer of discontent is almost sealing the fate of the Morrison government, one of the most incompetent administrations Australia has ever seen, aided and abetted by a NSW Government which has managed – or mismanaged – the Omicron outbreak in the worst possible way.

For many families, Christmas was spent in isolation, either with COVID, or waiting until the results of their PCR tests arrived – and this was in contrast to the message Scott Morrison put out in November, when he promised “the restaurants are open and a big Christmas is coming for all of us”.

Of course, Morrison is not solely to blame for the Omicron outbreak: that blame can be fully placed at the feet of the NSW Government. But Morrison, supported by many donors and supporters in the business community, egged this on, and pushed the idea of opening up the community and the economy at any cost.

Although Morrison claimed his government was “blindsided”, every expert warned him about the effects of the spread of Omicron, from as early as November, and explained that a population with a high infection rate, will also have a deleterious effect on the economy. And by ignoring the experts and pursuing his ideological agenda, Morrison ended up with the worst of all worlds: a sick population, a sick workforce. And a sick economy.

The government that did fully follow the medical advice resides in Western Australia and they’ve had the best of all worlds: a healthy population, and a healthy economy growing at the rate of 3.5%. But, for some strange reason, the media and Liberal Party has attacked the state that has the most success. Partisanship in its most extreme form is an ugly sight, and the media was happy to amplify every negative small business story from Western Australia and ignore the successes of keeping the Omicron out and the community safe.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has had an image make-over and his performance at the National Press Club was smooth, confident and assured, whereas Morrison’s appearance was flustered, pressured and the opposite of confident. That tends to happen when journalists start asking the hostile questions and relay information from unnamed Ministers who claim Morrison is a “horrible man”, a “fraud”, and a “complete psycho”.

Morrison is way behind in the polls and under severe pressure and, with less than four months before the next federal election, is looking less likely to be a winner. Things can always be turned around in politics, but that possibility may have slipped by and it’s hard to see how his ship of state can be turned around at all.

Georgia Steele is an independent candidate in the southern Sydney seat of Hughes and is up against the current member Craig Kelly, and candidates from the major political parties. It’s a difficult task for any independent to win any federal seat but there seems to be a groundswell of support for change in the 2022 federal election.

There are many key issues not being addressed by the federal government – climate change, women’s safety, the management of the pandemic – and Steele is using these issues as a focus for her campaign, as well as taking action on integrity in politics. At a time when Australia has slipped dramatically in the international corruption index – from 85% in 2012, to its current ranking of 73% (Australia’s lowest ranking ever), it seems a focus on these issues is coming at the right time for the electorate. And for candidates who are prepared to make a stand and try to do things differently, there may be some electoral reward, because in the current era of the pandemic, doing more of the same in politics is not going to work.

In this in-depth interview with David Lewis, Steele outlines all the reasons why she would be best placed to make positive changes to the Australian political landscape and offer the electorate of Hughes a far better voice to Parliament.

Jo Dyer is the independent candidate in the South Australia seat of Boothby, the third-most marginal seat in Australia. And she’s running under the banner of the ‘Voices Of’ movement, a loose alliance of independents campaigning all across Australia on the issues of climate change, integrity and women’s safety – all of which the Prime Minister and his team are doing very little about, and seem to care even less about.

Which major party forms government at the next election could be determined by independent candidates and there’s a fair chance of this happening, with many in the electorate disenchanted with the Morrison government but unsure if the Labor Party will provide the direction the community is interested in.

A conversation with Jo Dyer about her views on the current state of federal politics, why she’s running as an independent candidate, why a vote away from the major parties is an important part of the democratic process, her background in creative arts, and how she hopes to be a voice for positive change in politics.

An incredible year in Australian politics, but the biggest feature was all the issues left behind and the issues that were not managed very well at all: climate change, corruption, the way women are treated within the political system.

And the biggest issue of all for 2021: the coronavirus pandemic. It can be argued that at least by the end of the year, high vaccination rates were achieved and we finally got there, but in the meantime, there were two protracted lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne that could have been avoided, if the government had procured vaccinations far earlier. And if Australia had the right leadership in place. But that will be up to the electorate to decide at the next federal election, which will either be held in March or May 2022.

Scott Morrison is predictable and is basing his leadership on spin and marketing. Anthony Albanese has cleaned up his image, becoming more forceful and targeted in his messaging. 2022 will be based on the three “C”s: Character, Corruption, Climate change. Or four, if you include Coronavirus. They’ve been the big issues that electorate has been thinking about during 2021, and we think they will also be the defining issues of the next federal election.

Independent candidates are set to play a big role in the next federal election. And why are they running for election? Because they’ve had enough of the politics-as-usual approach and feel Australia is being held back by poor leadership, especially on climate change, a lack of action against corruption, and the treatment of women in politics.

David Lewis speaks with Kylea Tink, the independent candidate in the seat of North Sydney, to find out why she is running for politics and how she is hoping to win the seat from the Liberal Party.

Political parties love to end the year with momentum and provide a springboard into the new year – especially if there’s an election coming up. Labor is starting to release some policy to address long-term political issues: climate change, skills shortages, university placements – and to combat this, the Prime Minister decided that it was best to ride around Mount Panorama in a race car and announce to Australians that it’s time to put them back into the driver’s seat. The symbolism was strange: a Prime Minister in the passenger’s seat, calling for everyone else to take up responsibility. Perhaps it’s an adequate reflection of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership: always the passenger, never the driver.

And if Labor is starting to release policy and make grand announcements for what they will do if they manage to form government, what better way for the Prime Minister to drown out these messages by calling for the return of a former NSW Premier to run in the seat of Warringah. Never mind the fact Gladys Berejiklian resigned because she was being investigated by the NSW ICAC over corruption matters – anything to drown out Labor policy announcements, even if it does magnify a major problem within the Liberal Party. Corruption.

An excellent example of the Pyrrhic victory.

And if the two-party system is not providing the answers the electorate is looking for, there are independent candidates who are willing to fill in the gaps.

The former ABC foreign correspondent and journalist, Zoe Daniel, is the latest independent to seek a move to Canberra, and she’s running in the seat of Goldstein, under the banner of the Voices Of Goldstein. And we think she’s in with a good chance of snaring the seat from the Liberal Party. Why? Because she’s running on all of those issues the electorate is interested in: climate change action, integrity, respect for women, professionalism, honesty and decency.

It’s been such a long time since we saw these types of values in federal politics, it might be shock to the system if they ever do return. And it’s an idea that might catch on, certainly in the seat of Goldstein.