New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

Melbourne has had a big week: it’s long suffering populace had to put up with a barrage of abuse from the Melbourne conservative media, a rent-a-crowd protest dressed up like union members and 74-year-old grandmothers attacked the city and, to top that off, they also had a 5.8 Richter magnitude earthquake.

Of course, there were union members within the rent-a-crowd but it wasn’t an event organised, promoted or condoned by the CFMEU: real unionists wouldn’t protest on the West Gate Bridge – a site where 35 union died when a slab fell from the bridge in 1970; real unionists wouldn't desecrate the Shrine of Remembrance; and real unionists certainly wouldn’t cross-dress and wear wigs to try and trick and police into thinking they’re a 74-year-old grandmother.

But it’s a handy lever for the Morrison government to pull in the lead up to the next federal election, happy to create a link between the riots, unions – even though they had nothing to with the riots – and, of course, the Labor leader: Anthony Albanese.

And you just know that an election is coming up soon: Scott Morrison went to New York and it wasn’t clear why, until we checked his itinerary and found out he was meeting with the head of News Corporation – Robert Thomson. Not quite Rupert Murdoch, but Murdoch is over 90 years old, so perhaps not up to anointing Morrison as his chosen leader and allowing him to kiss the ring of approval.

Every Prime Minister does this in the lead up to an election, and Murdoch has such a hold over Australian politics that it’s now a ritual. Bill Shorten didn’t travel to New York before the 2019 federal election, and he paid the price: he didn’t become Prime Minister. Whether he likes it or not, Albanese should head over to New York as soon as possible to kiss that ring: in Australian politics, it’s the only way to become Prime Minister.

The latest Newspoll – yes, it does show that Labor is ahead in the polls, and has been ahead in all polls since October 2020. But we’ve seen this story before: 2019 – Labor ahead in every poll for three years. 2016, just before the election, and especially during the time of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership. Before that: 1998, 2001. Labor had massive leads in all of those Parliamentary periods but ended up being empty handed on election day.

So, put away that champagne, stop imagining Albanese living in The Lodge and leading the Labor Party to an election victory in the next federal election. The only poll that counts, is the one held on the election day (and the preceding two-week early voting period).

It’s a cliche, but it’s the truest cliche in politics. These polls mean absolutely nothing.

The Labor factions are at it again, this time creating a preselection problem in South West Sydney. Kristina Keneally is a former NSW Premier and sits in the Senate, but if she wanted to continue in politics, she had to be parachuted into the seat of Fowler, which is specifically a back-up-seat when preselection problems arise. It means whoever has been preselected in the seat of Fowler has to stand aside, because whatever the Labor factions want, they are provided with it. They are hungry beasts. So a good local community candidate has been dumped. Is it terrible? Yes, of course it is. But it’s the way all political parties operate, if they decide they want someone to enter parliament. Scott Morrison, for example.

It was like the final show on Broadway: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian decided the 11am media conferences were going to end, because she didn’t want to give the COVID outbreak the gravity it deserves. And a few journalists were starting to ask difficult questions about corruption and her involvement in a $5 million grant in Wagga Wagga. But then Berejiklian uncancelled her cancellation, and much to the bemusement of the citizens of NSW, she appeared in a media conference at 11am on Monday, the day after she said they wouldn’t proceed any further. And the NSW Labor leader, Chris Minns held his own media conference at the same time to highlight all the problems with the management of COVID by the NSW Government. Any relationship between these two events would surely be co-incidental. Wouldn’t they?

A $90 billion deal with a French submarine company to provide 12 submarines had been scuppered and the Australian Government has signed a tripartite deal with the UK and US to purchase shiny new nuclear-powered submarines – in the year 2040. So, in one fell swoop, we managed to annoy the French and Chinese governments, and send a message to the rest of the world community that Australia is a friend which cannot be trusted. But this is all about politics and the bigger question keeps being ignored: why does Australia need nuclear-powered submarines at a cost of over $100 billion?

And Christian Porter is in trouble again, this time, a blind trust has been created to cover his legal costs from a defamation which was settled before it reached trial. But why would a blind trust be created in this way? What does Porter have to hide? The error-prone Porter is likely to keep making mistakes and Morrison is likely to sack him from the frontbench. And if he had any political sense, this would be his first course of action on Monday morning: Porter is now a serious political liability.

It has been confirmed that the federal government was contacted by Pfizer in June 2020 to provide Australia with 40 million doses – which wasn’t taken up by the government – after months of denying the story and suggesting that everyone else was wrong.

There’s two issues here: the constant denials – which continue to be provided by Scott Morrison and the Minister for Health, Greg Hunt – and a deal which could have delivered the Pfizer vaccines to Australia in early 2021, offered protection to the community and avoided the current lockdowns, was squandered by the federal government.

And this has become critical: on a day when NSW recorded 1542 new cases of coronavirus and nine deaths, it’s a issue the federal government wants the public to forget. And those merchants of collective amnesia, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and the NSW Government, have decided to cancel daily media conferences, even though the number of cases is going to peak in a few weeks’ time. It’s an abrogation of responsibility and is a tactic to avoid scrutiny and accountability. It’s going to backfire.

The National Summit on Women’s Safety was held during the week, but it was hard not to think that the event was all about the Prime Minister and his desire to resolve the politics of the issue, rather than the issue itself. Sexual harassment, sexual violence and domestic violence perpetrated against women are serious issues in Australia – and costs the economy around $26 billion per year – but that’s not enough for the Liberal Party to take enough notice of these issues and the Summit was a missed opportunity.

We have been criticised for being too Sydney-centric but we have news from Victoria! – a state which has a new (but recycled) Leader of the Opposition – Matthew Guy. He was the leader of the Liberal Party at the 2018 Victoria election and lost 11 seats – leaders can become more successful when they return to the leadership a second time: Winston Churchill, John Howard, Jeff Kennett – but the successes of recycled leaders are few and far between. It’s going to be hard road ahead.

And the “you only had two jobs” message is starting to get through to the electorate. It’s a message pushed through by federal Labor and it relates to the poor vaccination rollout, and the bungles in hotel quarantine.

It’s a message that can only be sustained during this current lockdown period and if NSW and Victoria ever do come out of their respective lockdowns before the next election, a new election message will need to be developed. But the Liberal–National government has had close to eight years of mismanagement and left behind a trail of incompetence. Labor shouldn’t have too many problems finding other issues to campaign on.

he politics of the COVID pandemic are still being played as hard as possible – at a time when the public craves unity and expecting governments to manage the crisis in the best way possible. It would seem that the Queensland and Western Australian Governments are doing well – case numbers are zero – but they are the governments the media are attacking (as is the federal Liberal Party), while ignoring the problems in NSW, where 1431 cases were recorded yesterday. It doesn’t make sense, until you realise who owns most the media.
Tribal partisanship is perhaps at its worst level ever in Australian history, as is the partisanship within the media, which is keen to see a return of this federal government at the next election. And the election may be with us early than we think: the theory is that NSW will open up in late October – irrespective of how high the daily case numbers are – and hold an election in November. It’s a radical plan, as is the radical belief of the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, to allow as many deaths as the coronavirus will accept, all for the sake of a sacrifice to the altar of rampant capitalism. And for the NSW Liberal Party. It will be a day of shame, not a day of celebration.
Are we seeing the end of the Liberal Party? It’s not the party of Robert Menzies, but more like the party of John Howard: it’s illiberal, it’s intolerant, it neglects the people on the periphery. The modern Liberal Party is a conservative outfit which has adopted the worst traits of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Political parties need to be relevant to the needs of the community, but as the world makes a turn to more communitarian values, Australia is stuck with a reactionary group of extremists who are increasingly out of touch. This doesn’t mean the Labor Party will automatically win the next federal election: they have their own problems, and will still need to convince the electorate that they can be a viable government. But they have a better chance of winning the election than they did at the beginning of 2021.
The report into “who knew what” about the sexual assault of Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in 2019 was meant to have been completed several months ago – but how can a report be released if it doesn’t exist? We doubt that it will ever be released – and if it is, that’s the end of Scott Morrison – and the Liberal Party, and possibly for a long time.

The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, now wants Australia to “live with the virus” and “get out of the cave”. But why the big rush? Essentially, it’s to cover over the mistakes of the NSW Government during this wave of the Delta outbreak, and remove himself of political problems in the lead up to the next federal election.

And “live with the virus” is a mantra also picked up by the mainstream media, keen to let everyone know that now is the time to open up, because the vaccine is here to protect everyone. But is vaccination the only pathway out of this pandemic?

What is ignored by the media is 94% of the 14,000 active coronavirus cases across Australia are in New South Wales – Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania did not record a single case today. Why should they open up their communities and let the virus spread, just because of the serious mistakes of one state government, and be part of a process that is more about securing the next election for the Liberal Party than anything else?

And on a day of a record 1029 COVID cases in NSW, three deaths, entire families with infections in south-west Sydney, the first question asked of the NSW Premier by the media was: “do we need to wear a mask in outdoor environments” when the family picnics become available on September 13, a public relations exercise thrown at the families of south-west Sydney for achieving 6 million vaccinations, a number which has no epidemiological relevance or medical sense.

A NSW Government more intent on spin and deception, in conjunction with the mainstream media, continuing the dissonance between this right-wing cabal, and the public. It’s not going to end well.

And it’s also a part of the federal government’s narrative to return to the ways of the past, the economy of the past, and the society of the past. But history has shown that the countries that embrace innovation and forward-thinking during a time of crisis are the ones that succeed. Looking to the future at this stage can’t be coupled with an obsession to a world that we might never be able to return to: new thinking is required, but we are stuck with government that hasn’t got the creativity to imagine what Australia could be, once the pandemic is over – if it ever gets to that.

The health outcomes for Indigenous Australian are the poorest in the country, and it’s a shocking shame that this is still the case. And they were promised that they would be the first to be vaccinated, because of their vulnerabilities. The small remote town of Wilcannia has a disaster unfolding there because of a break of promise by the federal government, and the negligence of the NSW Government to allow the Delta outbreak to spread to vulnerable communities. And all they’re receiving is blame from the government, even though the community of Wilcannia has been warning them about this possibility for 18 months. Once again, people on the margins have been forgotten by government.

The Delta version of coronavirus has taken hold in Sydney and if the NSW Government doesn’t take action to reverse the tide, the daily case numbers are going to reach 2,000 and it’s an number that is unlikely to be palatable to the electorate. And if it continues to spiral out of control, it’s likely to take hold of the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, who is now facing pressure to resign.

Every historian for perhaps the past two hundred years would recommend that Afghanistan is a difficult country to invade, and best left alone: its terrain is difficult to navigate, and there are many hills for local armies to hide and launch attacks against unwanted imperialist forces. But successive empires have ignored history: the British Empire waged three wars during the 18th and 19th centuries and retreated in each war (they are slow learners); the Soviet Union between 1979-1989; and the United States during 2001-2021 (slow learners, but over a longer period). And each of these empires has left behind humiliating defeats.

The Taliban has returned and will retaliate against the Afghan interpreters who assisted Australian forces in Afghanistan. Morally, the Australian Government has an obligation to support these Afghan interpreters, but this is a government without morals or ethics. Best to whip up a frenzy against these people, lest they seek asylum in our land of milk and honey (sans ethics), and even make the claim that these people – who risked their lives and the lives of their families to assist Australian forces – are now a national security threat to Australia.

One war ends, but another war continues – Australia’s longest running war, the culture and history war. The Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, has decided that he won’t approve the new national curriculum because it’s “warped” and “neo-Marxist rubbish”. A well-read Minister for Education would understand that Marx said history repeats first as tragedy, the second time as farce, but it seems Tudge has repeated history as a calamity and disaster in his own mind.

This is one of the worst public health and economic disasters ever in Sydney but what is even worse, is the entire crisis could have been avoided. Why would the NSW Government avoid implementing the plans that were so successful in every other state and territory across Australia – hard, fast and early lockdowns – when it was obvious that this is what was needed to avert the Delta outbreak? Does the NSW Government have health officers and epidemiologists who have trained at unusually different universities? Or is the Delta virus behaving differently within the borders of NSW?

When governments act in a way that’s different to the prevailing orthodoxy, it’s best to look behind the scenes to see what’s really going on. The NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, was going to be rolled by her Liberal Party Cabinet if she implemented a hard lockdown – it’s a divided Cabinet comprising a relatively palatable right wing, and a hard-right wing religious faction that wants to flex it’s muscle and show the Premier who’s really got all the control.

So, a factional backroom brawl manifests itself in public in the worst way possible: an out-of -control Delta outbreak with a record 390 cases daily, deaths and economic chaos. Politics played in a way that damages the public and the economy.

The climate change wars continue and the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, repeated his three-word slogan – technology, not taxes – and thundered that he’s not prepared to sign a blank cheque for unknown targets in 2050. It’s in response to the latest climate change report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is no longer a “wake-up call”: it’s too late for that, this is a red code for humanity.

And the federal government’s response to the IPCC report? Gas, more gas, and even more gas. Gas is the solution to everything for this government – the pandemic? Gas. The economy? Gas. Climate change? Again, it’s gas. There have been climate change solutions on offer for well over 50 years; even US President Richard Nixon was considering radical climate change options in 1968. UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher also wanted to adopt climate change remediation in 1987. And the rejection of all of these solutions over the past 50 years makes for depressing reading.

And the wrap of the week in federal politics. But at a time when a Delta strain is ruining the state of NSW, and a planet that’s warming so far so it might be uninhabitable by the end of this century, perhaps it’s not such a critical time to report on these matters…

The federal government and its best friend – the NSW Government – are sinking in the polls because of one key issue: the mismanagement of the pandemic. Qualitative and quantitative research is showing a rapid decline in the support of both of these governments and their efforts to spin, manipulate and gaslight the public are falling on deaf ears.

Both Scott Morrison and Gladys Berejiklian have lost the trust of the electorate and the rhetoric behind the gold standard management of the pandemic has turned to ersatz, and a far more inferior standard. They are now tied together and they will either rise or fall in unison: and it seems it’s going to be a fall, rather than a rise. And the vaccine rollout has really become like the Hunger Games, all controlled by an incompetent federal government.

Is offering incentives to encourage vaccinations ethical? Economists believe if it results in good public health outcomes, then it will result in good economic outcomes. So, Anthony Albanese’s proposal to offer $300 for each vaccination completed by December 31 receives the thumbs up from economists and the electorate, but not from Morrison, who must be fuming that he didn’t think of this idea first. And is this is all sounding like a medical games show? Yes it is, and if the price is right, people will “come on down”.

And a return of federal Parliament has seen a return of Barnaby Joyce’s alcohol issues. But he’s not a Les-Paterson-type of maverick backbencher MP – he’s actually the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. Drinking in Parliament? Perhaps it’s time to remove alcohol from Parliament House because there are too many MPs with drinking problems.

Christian Porter is acting Leader of the House of Parliament and for Morrison to install a man who has serious sexual assault allegations hovering over him, its a slap in the face for women of Australia, according to Australian of The Year, Grace Tame. And it’s hard not to disagree.
Closing the Gap is only reaching three of the 16 progress targets, and it’s still a massive stain on the psyche of the Australian society. But, it’s all OK: Morrison wore an Indigenous tie for the entire day, and said “more needs to be done”.

And Brian Houston has been charged for failing to report allegations of sexual abuse. This is Morrison’s mentor and close friend and, as someone who surrounds himself with good news, it will be interesting to see if Morrison decides to cut him lose once Houston becomes an inconvenience for him.

There are too many vested interests in Sydney and it makes it difficult for the NSW Government to act in the public interest and, because of this, the city is now in a nine-week lockdown, with no end in sight.

Gladys Berejiklian says “but there is no guidebook for a pandemic”. Actually, there is, and we provide a five-point plan, which would be obvious to anyone looking at what’s been happening all around the world, including Australia. But, evidently, it’s not obvious to the NSW Government, or to the Prime Minister.

Western Sydney has been sacrificed and next on the block are Year 12 students, who are returning to schools in two weeks’ time: this is a precarious situation, but the private school lobby has decided expensive tuition must be delivered, and the high HSC results they’re expecting from exams much be fulfilled. And Berejiklian has agreed, because that’s how power in NSW works.

The political theorist, Niccolò Machiavelli asked the question: “is it better for a leader to be loved or loathed”, before deciding leaders seeking the love and attention of the electorate are destined for failure. Scott Morrison is seeking tonsorial splendour and is far more focused on his appearances – and trying to make himself loved by the populace – rather than the needs of the electorate but he really needs to decide if he wants to be Prime Minister of Australia, or the next contestant on The Bachelor: he can’t be both.

Prime ministers do need to worry about how they appear in public, but spending time during a pandemic to keep up their appearances? Morrison is fixated on the winning the next election and he’s going about it the wrong way about it. And qualitative research agrees.

McKinsey & Company is a consulting firm with close ties to the Liberal Party and it has received a $2 million contract for [redacted] – no one knows what it is for and the government is not releasing any information about it. So we can only assume that it’s public money used for the benefit of Liberal Party. $108 million has been paid to McKinsey since 2018 – $36 million per year – and that’s a great business model, for McKinsey. But not for the public.

And the Labor leader Anthony Albanese is offering support for the Stage 3 round of tax cuts, to be introduced in 2024. It mainly favours higher-income earners, costs the budget $18 billion each year, widens inequity within the community, is lousy policy, doesn’t even need Labor support to be implemented but yet… the Labor Party is supporting it anyway.

Why? Because politicians should never stand between a bucket of money and the electorate, irrespective of how much it costs, or how inequitable the policy is. And Labor wants to win the next federal election, and one cannot be shot if they don’t have a target on their back. A win for politics, but a disaster for low-income earners, supposedly the supporter base of the Labor Party.

Political games are never far away when it comes to COVID-19 management in Australia and, of course, it’s across the political divide: the Liberal Party of NSW and the federal government on one side, and Labor Premiers on the other. If only the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian had shown some sympathy to Victoria when they went through their lockdowns, perhaps that could have been repaid and requests to access more Pfizer vaccines would have been more receptive. Far from being a victim of success, the NSW Premier has been a victim of her own hubris.

As for the Prime Minister, the mismanagement of the vaccination rollout is quickly becoming a political headache: corruption and mismanagement in other programs – sportsrorts or unwanted carparks in marginal seats, for example – don’t affect everyone, and governments can easily gloss over these problems. But COVID-19 affects every single person in Australia. Which means that it affects every person who votes at election time, and it’s not looking for Scott Morrison, or for the Liberal Party.

Should Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk have made the trip to Tokyo to receive the news of Brisbane becoming an Olympic city in 2032? Perhaps she should have stayed home, but if the media is going to attack her, where were the voices when Scott Morrison went overseas? Or Mathias Cormann? Or Adrian Shrinner? Or Sussan Ley? Never mind, they’re from the Liberal Party, so that’s all alright.

Eddie Obeid, Moses Obeid and Ian McDonald have been found guilty of corruption and they are likely to end up in jail. And that’s good riddance to bad rubbish but 13 years after the corruption was committed in 2008? That’s too long for the wheels of justice to turn, but better late than never.

And there are calls for the JobKeeper program to be reinstated but it needs to be reformed. $7 million went to the Perth private school, Hale School – after they made an $8 million surplus, and while universities across Australia received $0 – and $17 billion was paid to businesses that didn’t need JobKeeper support and didn’t qualify, including $21 million to Harvey Norman. But, all is well: the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg says – nudge nudge, wink wink – no need to pay it back. That energy will be spent chasing up overpayments to Centrelink recipients, where the real rorting is happening. Apparently.