New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

The federal government is still feeling the warm inner glow after the Jobs and Skills Summit, which was the first public display of the consensus politics the Prime Minister talked about during the federal election campaign. And getting corporate, union and political leaders together is no mean feat: agreement is the harder part though, and it seemed to work out well.

But now the difficult part – the Budget. Anthony Albanese has been pushing out the messages that we’re in difficult economic circumstances and because there’s a trillion dollar national government deficit, high inflation and a wide range of other economic issues, the Budget will be a particularly harsh one. Governments accumulate baggage as time goes on – that’s the nature of politics – and how they manage the October Budget will determine the rest of this term of Parliament.

The media has never supported union action – even when there’s a just cause – they’ve always depicted any form of action as moves by ungrateful and greedy workers – forced upon by the also greedy unions – greatly inconveniencing the public. And, of course, this theme is also pushed by the Liberal Party, with their rhetoric of “union thugs” and making it seem as those unionists and workers are soiling the wheels of capitalism and affecting the wellbeing of the economy.

Yes, a one-day strike is an inconvenience to the public – but low pay and poor working conditions are an inconvenience to workers every single day of the year. Union bashing isn’t good for anyone and it’s a pity the journalists who rail against unions don’t understand where their sick pay, holiday pay, higher wages, leave entitlements and working conditions, came from. A clue: it’s not from the goodwill of their employers.

And the unbridled ambitions of Scott Morrison have resulted in another victim: the Governor–General, David Hurley. It seems his silence on the secret ministries he signed off on for Morrison did have a price: $18 million, in the form of some kind of obscure leadership program. We’re not suggesting any corruption here, but it does seem like it. The Governor–General does have some questions to answer.

The poor opinion polls are continuing for the Liberal Party – this is not the end; we’re only four months into this parliamentary term, but it’s an Opposition with few redeeming features and seemingly bereft of ideas. Using “Kermit the Frog” to lampoon Albanese is their idea of a political strategy, and if this continues, it’s not going to end well for the Liberal Party. And of top of this, there are Pentecostal groups who are seizing control of branches in Victoria and South Australia.

It seems like a long hard road ahead for the Liberal Party.

Robodebt was one of the most disastrous acts of public administration in Australia’s history and the condemnation has arrived from all sides of politics – former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Labor, the Australian Greens, the federal court – and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a Royal Commission into this scheme.

All up, it’s a scheme which cost taxpayers $1.8 billion, over 2000 people suicided from the stress and anxiety created by the scheme, and over 470,000 were asked to pay money to the government, for debts which they never owed. It’s rare for governments to create such a high level of extortion upon its own citizens, but that’s exactly what the Coalition government achieved between 2015–2020.

And their response? To double down and blame Labor for the scheme, even though the scheme was introduced two years after they left office in 2013. And for Peter Dutton to also claim that Albanese’s Royal Commission is a ‘witch hunt’. It’s essential for anti-human and insidious – and illegal – governments acts to be investigated, to ensure that they can never happen again but, just like they did in government, the Coalition always looks to play the blame game. It’s always someone’s fault.

The Labor government has been in office for 100 days and is travelling well – but it’s hard not to travel well in this period because there’s not much that can go wrong in such a short amount of time. Problems accumulate for governments as the years roll on, and it’s still too early to assess how well Labor is travelling.

One issue for sure is the conundrum of the economically irresponsible Stage 3 tax cuts and the rate of the Jobseeker payment. Labor hounded the previous government over the low rate of Jobseeker – $40 per day – but now they’re in government, they’re saying that it’s fiscally irresponsible at this stage to raise it any higher.

Raising Jobseeker to $65 per day – which is a rate broadly supported by the business sector and many people in the community (and the Labor Party too, when they were in Opposition) – will cost $3 billion per year. The Stage 3 tax cuts will cost between $20–30 billion per year, so it’s a strange hill for Labor prepare to die on.

It’s also irresponsible to campaign so vehemently on an issue in Opposition, and do the opposite in government and Labor will have a large credibility problem on equity and fairness – and on key Labor values – if it continues down this path.

And the Jobs and Skills Summit is over and Labor now hopes to create a pathway for low unemployment, secure well paid jobs, expanding employment opportunities, addressing skill shortages, maximizing jobs from renewable energy and the digital economy and addressing equal opportunity and equal pay for women.

These are noble intentions but it will take many years to see if the summit was a success. The Coalition – once again – decided to deal itself out of relevance and felt that it was more important to shout from the sidelines, rather than be a productive part of future solutions. It’s their choice, but with this approach of negative carping and opposing everything in sight – electric utes, unions, royal commissions, jobs and skills (to name just a few issues among many), it seems that Peter Dutton is preparing the Liberal Party for a long stint in Opposition. And seems quite happy to do this.

As the rumblings of Scott Morrison’s secret ministers become louder, the Liberal Party – and their friends in the media – are keen to dismiss Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to hold an inquiry into how and why these appointments were ever made. No suitable explanation has been provided by Morrison – or the Governor–General David Hurley – and it’s essential to find out why.

Democracies depend on people of good will, but our system shows that it doesn’t cater for people of ill will or ulterior motivations. Morrison proved to be one of these bad seeds and laws will need to be enacted to ensure this kind of secrecy in government never occurs again.

During the 2022 federal election campaign, the Liberal Party claimed “it won’t be easy under Albanese”, but it’s very easy at the moment, with the Prime Minister – and the Labor Party – riding high in the opinion polls. It won’t last forever, of course, but it seems that the Liberal Party is keen to stay in the doldrums and continue with their ‘business as usual’ approach of opposition for opposition’s sake, and quickly adopting a culture of complaint, rejecting everything – even the good ideas – because this, apparently, represents their best chance of electoral success.

But looking at the results of the 2021 Western Australia election – the Liberal Party reduced to just two seats – and the diabolical status of the Victoria branch of the Liberal Party – it’s a foolish decision. If the party wants to gain political relevance again, it needs to change tack. But does Peter Dutton have the ability to do this?

And what does News Corporation have against Joy Division? Usually, nothing. But if Anthony Albanese wears a Joy Division T-shirt and goes to a gig at the Enmore Theatre, it’s not very prime ministerial, and it’s unbecoming. It’s an outrage. Perhaps Murdoch’s minions need more joy, and less division. It will be good for the soul.

Irrespective of how much effort conservatives and the mainstream media are putting into downplaying the significance of the secret ministries of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the fact that the two people at the apex of Australia’s political system – the Prime Minister and Governor–General – made secret executive decisions, will reverberate for some time to come.

Secrecy and low levels of accountability – or in Morrison’s case, no accountability at all – are the hallmarks of autocratic societies, and are not the basis of democratic governments. It is of great concern that two journalists from News Corporation knew of these arrangements at the time, which remained a secret to everyone except for Morrison, David Hurley, the Attorney–General, the Minister for Health – and certainly remained a secret to the Australian public.

For sure, these two journalists are the reason why the public now knows about Morrison’s secret appointments, but they sat on this knowledge for well over two years, and decided to release it only after Morrison and the Coalition was out of government, and safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t spoil the Coalition’s re-election chances at the 2022 federal election.

Australia’s mainstream media is among the most mediocre and corrupt in the western world, and this is another example of how vested interests will always act to protect conservative governments and leaders, even when there is clear evidence they have acted improperly and, possible, corruptly.

The only clear course of action is for Morrison to resign from Parliament, and Hurley to resign from the position of Governor–General: there is no public trust for either of them and both of their positions are untenable.

And should Labor repeal the Stage 3 tax cuts? Morally, ethically and economically, yes, they should. It’s a tax cut legislated by the Coalition, it’s not Labor policy, and it’s not a part of the Labor Party’s philosophy to provide massive tax cuts to high income earners and virtually nothing to low and middle income earners.

So, what are they waiting for? The big issue is that, historically, any politician or political party that repeals a promised tax cut is asking for political trouble, irrespective of how valid or economically responsible it might be for the circumstances of the day. It gives the mainstream media – most of whom would be the beneficiaries of tax cuts – and the Opposition of the day to weaponise against the Labor Party, and they’d be shouting about it from the rooftops everyday until the next election.

The Labor Party doesn’t have enough political capital to repeal the Stage 3 tax cuts and, perhaps, no party every would. For the Albanese government, keeping the Stage 3 tax cuts is the lesser of two problems: they’ll have to recoup the $157 billion of lost revenue in other ways.

A lull in politics gives us some time to assess how the political parties are travelling, and since the May election result, most of the focus how been placed on the Coalition – the messages that it can take from their election loss and how they can become a better political party and return to office at some point in the near future.

But what are the lessons for the Labor Party? The did win the election, but victory tends to gloss over any problems a political party might have, and move those problems into the ‘too-hard’ basket. But both major political parties received record low primary votes in 2022 and while it’s possible to win elections through strategic preference voting flows, these types of election victories are difficult to navigate.

While it’s difficult to see the Liberal–National Coalition gaining enough traction over the next three years to pick up those 18 seats it needs to win the 2025 election, it’s easier to see Labor losing seats to Greens or other independent candidates. It’s something they need to be careful of, and their main opponents at the next election might be the Australian Greens and teal-styled independents, and not the Coalition.

And after being thoroughly outplayed on the Climate Change Bill, Peter Dutton has tried to get the Coalition into the climate change debates by throwing in nuclear energy into the mix, even though countless government reports have established that nuclear is not a viable industry in Australia. Including a report the Coalition commissioned in 2019, less than two years ago, which confirmed all of the findings of previous government reports.

If the Coalition had the courage of its convictions, it would have installed nuclear power many years ago – they’ve been in office for 51 of the past 73 years – as well as installing a nuclear reactor in each of their electorates. But they didn’t and never will. The time for nuclear energy in Australia was in the 1960s, and that time has passed. In 2022, it’s a conservative tool to wedge Labor and cause political trouble: that’s all it is.

It’s the gift that keeps giving to NSW Labor – John Barilaro, the man who is now claiming he’s “the victim” in the New York Trade Commissioner debacle, arguing that just because he changed the job from a public service appointment to a political appointment, it can’t be possibly argued that it was purely to benefit himself. Even though – lucky man! – he ended up being benefitted and was appointed as the New York Trade Commissioner. All purely on merit, apparently.

The worst part of this is that these political figures expect the public to believe these fantastic stories and accept them as truth. Politics in NSW has been corrupt for a long time, and it’s hard to see this changing. And Victoria is not too far behind, with corruption and misconduct apparent in both the government, and the opposition. Why is there so much corruption in state politics?

The details for the Voice To Parliament have been released by the Prime Minister, and it’s three simple changes to the Constitution, but already, conservatives are circling the wagons and claiming that that it’s a document that has kept Australia safe since 1901 and is too precious to change.

But it’s an exclusionary document; it was founded on a racist agenda from yesterday and Australia is now a far more sophisticated society than when it was founded in the early part of the twentieth century. There is some resistance from within the Indigenous community, and from different sides of the political spectrum – Senator Jacinta Price has suggested it does nothing to address disadvantage, so she’ll actively campaign against it, while Senator Lidia Thorpe has suggested a Treaty and a truth telling commission should come first. But surely governments can work on more than one issue at a time: why not implement a Voice To Parliament and address disadvantage at the same time? The two processes are not mutually exclusive.

The problem with constitutional recognition of the Voice To Parliament is that it has to be decided – through a referendum – by a system that ignored those rights in the first place. But 250 Indigenous leaders and elders from all around Australia have requested this voice, and it’s because of this reason that it should be supported, and should offer a clearer pathway towards a Treaty and reconciliation.

The state of the economy is becoming more dire and, once again, the Labor Party finds itself in government at a time of severe economic problems. They were in office during World War I, The Great Depression and World War II; the oil crisis in the early 1970s; the 1983 recession; the world recession of the early 1990s; the global financial crisis from 2008; and now, the pandemic economy and massive government national debt.

The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is laying out the economic narrative of the difficult circumstances. The Treasurer needs to be in control of the politics of the economy, as well as the economic output: it’s not just a case where some fine words and Shakespearian delivery can make all the problems go away. Different narratives need to be provided to the electorate; the business community; bankers, the money markets; the share markets. And if any of those areas decided that Chalmers is not up to the job, he’s going to be in for a rough ride over the next parliamentary term. We think that he is up to the job, but which economic levers will he use?

His job – and Labor’s – will be made easier by the current performances of the Coalition, which is finding the transition from government into Opposition quite difficult. And recent opinion polls are also confirming how poorly the Coalition is travelling, who seem determined to ignore the messages they received from the electorate at the May federal election – to paraphrase James Carville, ‘it’s the climate, stupid’.

Peter Dutton refused to support Labor’s Climate Change Bill, assuming that forcing them to deal with the Australian Greens – just like Labor did in 2009 and walked away with nothing – would create mayhem, and the Coalition would reap the political benefits on yet another carcass of a discared climate change policy: anything to kick start the climate change wars.

The only problem: the Greens supported Labor’s Bill and will pass it in the Senate. Dutton was defeated on ideas, on policy, and on politics. If this is the best the Coalition can do, they might be in for a long stint in Opposition.

Anthony Albanese, while he was Opposition leader, declared he would be constructive and support the government wherever possible, especially during a pandemic crisis. Constructive, not de-structive.

Today, Anthony Albanese is Prime Minister. There might be lesson in here for the Coalition, if only they are brave enough to look for it.

The 47th Parliament has commenced and the new Labor government wants to implement its agenda as soon as possible. After nine years of a Coalition government seemingly unwilling to implement anything meaningful, it’s a shock to the body politic to see new leaders wanting to do things, rather than applying the dark arts of politics to spin, diffuse, negate, and ultimately ignore acting on behalf of the community.

Climate change comes to mind, and the Coalition has decided to play itself out of the action on an important issue, an issue the electorate strongly supported at the 2022 federal election.

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has implored Parliament to think about their legacy, and reflect on that point in the future when they leave politics: how do they want to be remembered? As members of parliament who sat around, obfuscated and wasted their own time – and the time of their electorate – or implementing programs and policies that were in the benefit of as many people as possible in the community as possible?

The answer seems straightforward, but many in the Coalition want to fight the losing battle from the last election, and happy to waste their time and every body elses. It’s a nihilistic political force that doesn’t know what to do: they were incompetent in government, and now they’re incompetent in opposition.

There were many questions from the media during the 2022 election campaign: who is Anthony Albanese and what does he stand for? We are gradually finding out. This is an ambitious Labor government, but the quality of this government will be based on achievements and actions, not just the words and statements that it releases to the public: the public had three years of a meandering Morrison government; the demands are quite different now.

If the ambitions of this Labor government are becoming clearer – what are the ambitions of the Liberal and National parties?

It appears they haven’t learnt the lessons of the federal election and are looking at the behaviours of the Howard, Abbott and Morrison governments for guidance. But this is a dead end: they need to make a clean break from this era and forge a new path if they wish to achieve political success.

And part of this process has to be disowning the actions of Scott Morrison on election day, when he broke convention – as well as his own unofficial code of not speaking of ‘on water matter’ – by publicising the interception of an asylum seeker boat at 12.50pm, with only five hours before the polls closed.

It didn’t making any difference to the final result – and it was unlikely to make a difference – but Morrison and the Liberal Party decide to trash convention and their own reputations to try and win an election. The party needs change, it needs reform. And until it does, it’s likely to be spending a long time in political obscurity.

After several months of absence from the national stage, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an appearance on a different kind of stage – the pulpit of the Victory Church in Perth, announcing that he still believed in miracles. And that he doesn’t trust in government or the United Nations.

As the distance between Morrison’s tenure as prime minister and the current events of today become greater, it becomes more apparent that his tenure was a morass of anti-government paranoia, inaction on virtually every aspect of what the public would normally expect from a government, and an agenda that seemed to be based on a misguided religious-based philosophy that has no place in public life.

Morrison and his political philosophies – if they can be described in this way – were more in tune with the radical QAnon ideals that most of the media ignored and if he wasn’t the most mediocre prime minister, he could certainly be considered to be one of the more potentially dangerous ones. It’s hard to think of any leader who was so indifferent to public office and the plight of the electorate – the only benefit for Morrison remaining in public life is as a reminder for the kind of leadership Australia needs to avoid in the future.

And a part of Morrison’s agenda was to totally ignore the environment, as we discovered when the Minister for Environment, Tanya Plibersek released the State of the Environment report, which painted a picture of an almost dystopian future for Australia due to previous inaction on climate change – and a guaranteed dystopia if serious reductions of greenhouse emissions are not made. It’s no wonder the previous Minister, Sussan Ley, refused to release the report, which she had held onto since December 2021.

But how will Labor be able to make its environmental credentials more palatable to the public if it’s approving new coalmines and greenfield gas projects? It will be a difficult balance of many competing interests – and vested interests – but the environment must win out, there is no alternative.

And the 47th Parliament commences in Canberra, with a new government and a House of Representatives and Senate that seems to be more reflective of the Australian community. More women, more Indigenous representatives, less white, more multicultural. And a large crossbench. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has a big agenda and this has the potential to be the most productive and most dynamic Parliament in Australia’s history.

Foreign affairs is still a dominant issue for the Albanese government – and why not – so many relationships to repair after a neglectful nine years of Coalition government which left the Pacific islands behind.

The Prime Minister is also putting out the strong message to the world that there is a new government in office and is taking climate change seriously. But words are one thing; action is another, and we’ll have to wait to see what Labor actually does on climate change, once parliament meets and starts implementing government policy.

The case against Bernard Collaery has been dropped and it’s about time. The case had been going on for too long and it shows that governments can act when they want to. This all relates to events from 2004, when the Australian government (allegedly) bugged the offices of East Timor President, Xanana Gusmao, to gain an upper hand in the negotiations in the Timor Sea oil agreements. It’s a sordid tale, but one the public will never find out about, even after the Cabinet papers are released in 2024, which surely will set some kind of record when it comes to redactions of official documents.

And speaking of corruption and sordid tales, more information is being revealed about the US Trade Commissioner job that landed on the lap of John Barilaro: this is a clear case of (allegedly) corrupt behaviour. How on earth the NSW Government thought they could get away with it deserves a special credit. If there was a court of political incompetence, Barilaro and Stuart Ayres would be serving life sentences for political stupidity, especially in the context of a NSW state election, just eight months away.

And it seems that governments have forgotten about the pandemic, even though 95% of COVID cases have occurred in 2022, as have 80% of all COVID-related deaths. The federal government decided that Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments were not going to be continued, before they finally came to their senses and reversed their bad decision.

If only governments could stop toying with the electorate and remembered that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, and it’s far from over.

There’s a madness in the media and hard to see when it will stop. The Prime Minister has returned from the recent NATO meeting – which included a visit to Ukraine – and the media wanted to create a false equivalence and criticised Anthony Albanese for spending too much time overseas. Why? Because they criticised former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, when he made his secret family holiday trip to Hawaii while half of Australia was burning away in 2019. So, it’s time to criticise Albanese too, even though the circumstances are completely different.

Which, of course, lead to other media outlets outlining how Albanese was now having to defend these criticisms. It’s a circular referral system that helps create the news, assorted click-bait, and continues that tradition of legacy media holding a Labor government to account in ways they never apply to conservative governments. And this style of reporting is becoming as irrelevant as the mainstream media, who seem to be enjoying their descent into a sea of insignificance.

And the factional problems within the Liberal are slowing being exposed and it’s becoming clearer that these interplays between the moderates, centre right and conservatives, was one of the key causes of the defeat of the Liberal–National Coalition: Not the only reason; there was still a great amount of room for the other factors – inaction on climate change, incompetence, mismanagement, corruption.

It’s also the end of NAIDOC week and how close are we to achieving a Voice to Parliament? While the conditions are possibly the most propitious they have been for many years, there is still a long way to go. The biggest problem is that to achieve constitutional legal change where land rights or legal rights given back to the original owners of this land, it has to be agreed to by the people that took it away in the first place. That’s not right.

And who has the mandate on climate change? Labor – which wants to implement a 43% reduction target by 2030; or the Australian Greens, who want to implement a 75% reduction target? They can both claim legitimacy, but the issue here is that Labor is the government and holds 77 seats, to the Greens total of four seats; but to balance this out, the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate and Labor needs their Senate support to pass legislation. How this will be resolved is anyone’s guess, but surely the greater incentive is to act in the interest of the public and end the climate change wars?