New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

It seems like there was a grand cover-up of a serious sexual assault of a female staffer in March 2019 at Parliament House, but who’s got time for that sort of wimmen’s business when there's an election to be won. If the allegations of rape had been revealed at that time, Scott Morrison would have lost that election, there's no question about this. A political decision was made to keep quiet about the incident but even then, the Liberal Party didn’t even have the decency to offer support to Brittany Higgins at the time. And now, they’ve started backgrounding the media that Higgin’s partner has a grudge against the government. So, it's all his fault. But she also happened to “find herself in this situation”, so it must be her fault. And “Jenny and the girls” seem to be offering Morrison all the advice he'll ever need about rape and serious sexual abuse. The Liberal Party is not just a threat to women, it's a threat to all of humanity.

“The Eagle Had Landed”? The federal government has no shame when it comes to making announcements, and judging by the amount of announcements the government has made, Australia has one billion vaccines, or around 50 per person. But it's all a lie: the first batch arrived in Sydney a few days ago – 140,000, or 0.1 per cent of what the government has actually promised – and zero have been administered, compared to 190 million doses administered around the world. The vaccine rollout is going to be a political exercise – and a painfully partisan affair.

The Labor Party has released policies which offer protection for workers in the gig economy, to guarantee superannuation payments, sick leave and holiday pay, and portable entitlements. Sounds very good for workers and a sensible reform. But that didn't stop Christian Porter from completely misrepresenting the policy as a $20 billion tax on business – which, conversely, means that keeping the existing arrangements is a $20 billion tax on workers, which no-one in the media decided to talk about. Can't stand in the way of a cheap and fast meal delivered to head office by a migrant riding dangerously through peak-hour traffic.

Australia Day has been hijacked by the conservative side of politics. Which means that it's a day of vainglorious nationalism, jingoism, white imperialism and forgetting about the events of 1788, when an entire continent was stolen from Indigenous people, setting off 233 years of racism, oppression and subjugation: all at the stroke of a pen. Should the date be changed? Absolutely.

There is a new US President and while there was a massive amount of grandstanding from Donald Trump about vote-rigging and gaslighting that the election was stolen, there was never any doubt that Joe Biden was going be inaugurated as President. There was an insurrection at Capitol Hill – even though the ABC initially refused to use the word, and the Australian media generally underreported the event. One of the biggest events in US history, but nothing to see here. Scott Morrison has lost a “friend” at the White House, although Harry Truman did once say, “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”. What will a Biden presidency mean for Australian politics? What will it mean for world politics?

An early election is being pushed by the media, and the first available date for a half-Senate election is 7 August 2021. Will Morrison go early? Will he face Anthony Albanese? Or someone else? There has been speculation that Albanese might be replaced unless he seriously lifts his game: we believe if Labor can resolve this leadership issue – whether Albanese becomes a more substantial leader or a new leader is installed – the Liberal-National Coalition will be removed at the next election. It’s a government that waiting to be thrown out of office, and deservedly so.

Just when we thought this federal government couldn't get any more evil, it goes out and tries to legislate the Indue card into permanance, enlists three debt recovery companies to chase down welfare recipients and creates workplace conditions that will be even worse than the WorkChoices policies that were too extreme for John Howard to introduce way back in 2005. But when your policies are guided by the ghosts of Margaret Thatcher, what more could we expect? Except for the end of society because, according to Thatcher, it doesn't exist. Out of sight, out of mind.

2020 will go down as one of the most dramatic years in human and political history, and we look at what went right, and what went wrong. Australia did manage the effects of the coronavirus well – despite the efforts of the federal government – but we could have done so much better on setting up the building blocks for a better and far more sustainable economy for the future. It was a lost opportunity. And it ended up being politics and business as per usual.

As we move into 2021, what are the dangers for Scott Morrison? And what are the dangers for Anthony Albanese? Both need to be looking over their shoulder, but for different reasons. It’s going to be an exciting year and, with the possibility of a federal election, it’s going to be a very interesting one.

Mr Morrison went to Tokyo and returned empty-handed. But the 24-hour trip was never about Japan, it was all about continuing to avoid scrutiny and land the Prime Minister into a two-week quarantine at the Lodge – just enough to avoid the final Question Time of the year. Very convenient. And, of course, two weeks with the official photographer, ready to snap every pair of board shorts, thongs, exercise bikes and COVID test. It's outright propaganda.

Meanwhile, Mathias Cormann is using a taxpayer military jet (and eight government staff) to boost his chances of becoming the Secretary-General of the OECD. But when your chances were zero, any kind of support is not going to make too much difference and we suspect this is a gig Cormann will not get. But which Prime Minister is going to stand in the way of the ambition of someone who collated all the numbers to bring him the primeministership in the first place?

How many pizzas are needed to lock down an entire city? No, it's not an Adelaidian joke, it's a serious concern in the City of Churches. But it wasn't the "pizza guy" who caused the lock-down, it was government incompetence.

The Brereton Report outlined allegations of war crimes against Australian military personnel in Afghanistan, and we’re sure this is going to create a great amount of angst within the military community – as well as guaranteed to ensure Scott Morrison keeps aways from tanks at the next election campaign.

And will the December “killing season” cause any problems for the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese? We think it could be on the cards.

The 2020 US Election has brought in a new President (we think) and the key question will be how an incoming Democrats administration will affect political behaviour in Australia and whether the Morrison government feels the need to do anything at all on climate change. Or change its economic philosophy. Or even feel the need to be more truthful with the Australian public, but we feel this is most unlikely. And will the media turn down the volume on Scott Morrison, as they did with Donald Trump? We don't think so, their courage is in short supply.

US elections are always big news around the globe but the news Trump was on the verge of eviction from the White House was blown away by the revelation Ministers Christian Porter and Alan Tudge were having affairs with their female staffers, smooching in late-night bars in Canberra, and then getting rid of these staffers when they no longer suited their purposes. If only these men in positions of power could keep their hands to themselves and understand that a workplace isn't a place where we all go to have sex and drink alcohol – the world would be a much better place.

We also report on the Queensland election result, the likely outcome for the next series of Australian elections, the bizarre decision of the ALP’s Joel Fitzgibbons to announce his resignation just when the government was on the back foot with its sexual harassment scandals – maybe that's what his intention was all along.

Also, it's NAIDOC week and the government refused to fly the Aboriginal flag at Parliament House. Because nothing upsets a conservative government more than ceding an inch to Aboriginal people or engaging in symbolism that would have cost absolutely nothing.

There's far too much corruption in politics but what can be done about it? There's a compliant media that is always at hand to cover over any corruption performed by conservative governments, and they were at their best when it came to the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian. A high stinking pile of corruption is slowing being uncovered at the hearings held at the NSW ICAC but the media decided to ignore all of that, and go for the ‘girl-in-lurve-dudded-by-the-bad-man’ angle, so the allegations of corruption could be easily swept away. Who needs the years of progress of feminism when there's a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued?

Kevin Rudd, the self-named ‘determined bastard’, has launched a petition for a Royal Commission into the Murdoch media empire. And it's something that's well overdue. Murdoch’s influence over the media in Australia is offensive, pervasive, and it's almost like The Joker is in charge of Gotham City. As Rudd says, News Corporation is a cancer on the Australian political landscape. A Royal Commission won't occur if a Liberal Government controls the levers, it will have to wait until a Labor Government comes into office. But Rudd might be the right person to make this happen.

And why did the Prime Minister go for an all-out postal attack on Australia Post? Of course, it was all about the $20,000 spent on Cartier watches but it was more than that. Morrison is under pressure for not introducing a national corruption commission, and the attacks on Australia Post were all about creating a diversion. This Liberal–National Government is all about smokescreens, and this was another one. Government by smokescreen. It's a very apt title for this Morrison Government.

It's that time of the year when we look at the federal Budget (seasonally adjusted), and the Treasurer has announced a $213 billion deficit. We have no complaints: Governments need to spend money according to the circumstances and with a national government debt reaching $944 billion, the main benefit the Australian electorate will receive is an end to the maniacal debates about “debts and deficits” and “how ya gonna pay for it”. Don't believe the neoliberalist tripe: governments can always pay for the things they need to pay for, austerity will never resolve economic problems.

Anthony Albanese’s Budget Reply speech was regarded as “a line in the sand”, and a “make or break” moment by many in the media. Of course, a Leader of the Opposition is always going to be under pressure to perform, and this year is no different. His Budget Reply speech hit all the right points and focused on universal child care and early education and a streamlined national energy grid. But will it be enough to close down the background murmurings about his leadership?

The COVID Recession, or the Morrison Recession? We suggest all the economic data and evidence points to the Morrison Recession, and we're surprised it has taken Labor so long to start using this well-deserved moniker. It's the result of seven years of poor economic management by the Liberal–National Government; the coronavirus sealed the deal. There is absolutley no question about this, despite the media arguing the opposite.

The mainstream media and the federal government are still making their push to open borders, even though the continuing threat to public health is still there. Border closures are quite popular in the states and territories – 91 per cent support in Western Australia – and it's difficult to understand why vested interests are making this push, when the public support to open up borders is not there. But as we all know, anything is possible when vested interests hold hands with the Liberal government, which seems to be more often than not.

The federal government is also in the habit of recycling, but not in the way we’d expect them to. Old programs, old ideas, old announcements are spruced up, polished and re-issued, sometimes the announcements contain exactly the same words as their previous announcements – coronavirus vaccines, "gas-led recoveries”, for example. It's a sign of a government that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't have ideas.

Problems in the National Party? Of course there are: it's a moribund organisation, and in such personality-based political party, it's always going to cause trouble for its Coalition partner.

It's not a week in politics unless there's a report of more corruption in the federal government. A parcel of land worth $3 million was purchased by the government for $30 million. If only the government was able to purchase integrity, but how much would that cost?

The NBN is supposedly going to be fibre-to-the-premises in three years time, but it's all smoke and mirrors, just to create a positive media message. Did anyone mention a ‘back-flip’.

What does a government Minister have to do to lose their job? Losing control of aged care homes and allowing coronavirus to cause the death of over 400 people isn't enough these days. How we long for those good ol’ days when a Minister could be stood down for possessing a oversized teddy bear or filling out the wrong form. But that was so 1980s, and it's now the year of the pandemic: 2020. Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck still remains in his job, but we're really not sure why.

The tedious and totally predictable border war continues, and while it's not quite like the Battle of Stalingrad, the federal government (Liberal, by the way) is taking aim at the governments of Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria (Labor, by the way) over border closures. But, apparently, “we're all in this together”, so (cynicism warning) it couldn't be anything to do with the Liberal Government playing base politics.

And whenever this federal government is in trouble, it has two cards it can play: race and hate. This time around, it's all about China. The Belt and Road Initiative is a China investment program that Scott Morrison spoke glowingly about in June 2019 but has decided that he never said anything good about the program, never supported the Victoria–China deal in 2018 (yes, he did), and will now veto these projects. This all came out of the blue, and is all about ramping up pressure on Daniel Andrews and the Victoria Labor Government. Who’s got time for the national interest or eliminating coronavirus when there are political points to be scored by using the Royal Flush of race and hate cards?

In shades of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Liberal Party foreign investment: good; Labor Party foreign investment: bad. It really is as simple and basic as this, a philosophy implemented by a government filled with simpletons. It’s like a Ship of Fools.

The public’s patience with Scott Morrison’s constant obfuscation, deflection and outright lies is starting to wear thin. As Abraham Lincoln said “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”. And we think Morrison may have reached the point of no return: once the public image of serial lying is set in stone, there's no turning back. It might not be so evident right now, but this sentiment is starting to gain traction. And there’s no ‘Real Scott’ campaign to fall back on, because what the public sees with Scott Morrison is what they get. This is very real.

We were surprised to hear the hardware giant Bunnings is receiving JobKeeper subsidy support, even through their turnover is up by 19 per cent this year. And we were also surprised to hear some high-end accounting firms are also receiving JobKeeper. It's the price to be paid for getting the stimulus funding out as soon as possible, but surely the government could have foreseen some of these inequities and cleaned up the system so at least those in the cultural industries and the university sector could receive some of this support. Apparently, we’re all in this together. Just not everybody.

But we weren’t surprised to hear the Liberal Party is using Parliament House to hold three fundraising events and we think it's the only reason why Scott Morrison changed his mind about holding Parliament again: to raise money for the Liberal Party. Parliament House is not quite like a church or a sacred site, but there is something very off about using the seat of government to hold party-political fund raising events. It’s seedy.