New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

Scott Morrison has changed his mind and will now attend the COP26 climate change forum in Glasgow. It was obvious Morrison didn’t want to got to COP26 for a number of reasons: it’s all about climate change action, which is anathema to the Liberal–National Coalition; it’s an international meeting where Australia’s embarrassingly poor policies on climate change action – among the worst in the OECD community – will be the focus; it’s the first encounter with the French Prime Minister after the cancellation of the $90 billion submarine contract; and attending the meeting rules out the possibility of a November election.
But Prince Charles said he would “be shocked” if Morrison didn’t attend and Queen Elizabeth II announced she was irritated about inaction on climate change and instructed leaders to not “just talk, act on climate”.
Morrison is a monarchist – not as staunch as Tony Abbott, but a monarchist nevertheless. And if the Queen and the British Royal Family are showing their displeasure, then Morrison had to act. He’s in a bind: we’re still not sure if he will go to Glasgow, and we will only believe it is happening once the prime ministerial plane touches down on the tarmac at Glasgow International Airport.
But Morrison is an opportunist and has skill in being able to manipulate any situation towards his advantage.
Humiliation at COP26? ‘How dare the unrepresentative officials at the United Nations tell Australia what to do.’
Billboards at Glasgow and Times Square in New York shaming Australia on climate change inaction? ‘Those inner city socialists are trying to embarrass our national pride.’
Carbon tariffs that will crucify the Australian economy? ‘We will decide which products come into this country and the circumstances in which they arrive.’
The Bob Brown-led anti-Adani campaign in Queensland during the 2019 federal election campaign shamed the Australian government, but backfired when locals felt they were being told what to do by outsiders and interstaters, didn’t like being told what to do, and decided to show their displeasure by giving many seats in regional Queensland a 15% swing towards the government. Morrison would be looking at this to see if can swing things his way again.
The direction for both parties in the lead up to the next election? If it is based on climate change issues, Labor will keep it simple: if you want action on climate change, vote Labor.
The Coalition will do the opposite, and will try to make climate change action as complex as possible, distort as many issues as possible and then declare: if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it. It worked for Paul Keating in the 1993 GST-influenced election; it could work for Morrison now.
So, we’re headed for another climate change election – following on the election of 1990, where Labor slid back into government on environment preferences, and the 2007 election, which according to Kevin Rudd, was the issue that was the “greatest moral challenge of our times”. And if it is another climate change election, it could just be the issue that sweeps Scott Morrison out to electoral oblivion.

How many times have we been told by conservative business groups in Australia that minimum wages need to be kept low so businesses have more finances to employ more people? And not just minimum wages, but all wages? The only problem is this erstwhile neoliberal pipedream doesn’t actually work and there’s a recent Nobel Prize for Economics out there to prove it’s absolutely false.

Since 2013, wages in Australia have stagnated – coinciding with the time of the Liberal–National Coalition government – and in 2018, the Turnbull government reduced penalty rates based on old economic orthodoxy. These were real-life experiments and the promised increases in job numbers never actually occurred – and corporate profits went up, while wages went down. It was a false elixir, and help to move Australia towards a recession in early 2020. New economic thinking is needed at this time, and the Coalition seems to hold onto old economic ideas, even when there’s new research to prove them wrong.

And if new thinking is needed on economics, there’s certainly a need for new thinking on climate change in Australia – or at least, any kind of thinking because, there’s been a paucity of intellect on developing good policy for the environment in Australia. And the latest roadblock on climate change and sensible environmental policy? The National Party, whose intransigence has been like anarchic nihilists who aren’t quite sure about why they’re resisting so much, until we explore that link between National Party MPs, mineral and gas resource companies, and the mining industry.

The National Party claims to act in the interest of regional Australia. If this was true, they would be at the forefront of climate change action and management of the environment, because it’s the people in the regions that will suffer the most through water supply issues, rising temperatures and drought. But they’re not: the National Party is the party of corruption and vested interests and are holding the country to ransom, even though only 4 per cent of the electorate voted for them.

If the electorate really does want effective action on climate change and the environment, it won’t be provided by the National Party, or by the Liberal Party. It’s best if these people are voted out of office; that’s becoming more obvious by the day.

The most surprising part of News Corporation’s greenwashing of the Liberal Party is not so much that it’s occurring right now, but the fact that it’s happening so quickly. The Liberal Party – working hand in glove with the Business Council of Australia, and their erstwhile friends at News Corporation – has resisted all action on climate change ever since they returned to government in 2013: they repealed the carbon price scheme, abolished the Climate Commission, reduced funding programs for renewable energy, used funding allocated for renewable energy programs… for fossil fuel programs. And claimed that electric cars were the death of the weekend.

Can eight years of climate change denialism – or 25 years if we include the Howard years that commenced in 1996 – be overturned within a few months before the next election? Obviously, the Liberal National Coalition believes all of this is possible and the public will believe that the party that brought coal into the chambers of Parliament is the new champion of climate change action, and is the best friend of the environment. It’s a big ask, but let’s see if there’s enough collective amnesia within the electorate to accept the biggest greenwash and about-face in Australian history.

NSW has ended its lockdowns and is promoting itself as the Australian leader out of the pandemic and providing direction to all the other states and territories around the nation for how to ‘live with COVID’. This is a surprise to the people of Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory, who have living without lockdowns, curfews and restrictions for most of the past 15 months, and have only had a handful of COVID cases during that time, compared to the 69,552 cases in NSW.

And why were so many politicians of all persuasions so adamant about going to a pub to celebrate the first day of the lifting of restrictions? It’s like Australia is a nation of alcoholics: NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and senior ministers in the front bar of a pub (sans women); Anthony Albanese sucking on a schooner at another bar; Dave Sharma toasting with a middie – and with another bloke. It looks like it’s just a pathetic blokes’ world until you realise the Australian Hotels Association donates substantial amounts of money to the Liberal Party and the Labor Party. And they’ve been actively promoting the end of lockdowns.

And this is all neatly dovetailing into the divisive message the federal government wants to promote in the lead up to the next election: the Liberal Party is the party of freedoms, the breaker of lockdowns, the opener of the economy. The fun guys. Whereas Labor is the dull party of further restrictions, lockdowns at the sneeze of half a COVID nostril, and the denier of business and the economy.

Labor has to keep focusing on the eight years of poor government and incompetence provided by the Liberal–National Coalition while, of course, the Coalition wants us all to forget about this and focus on freedoms. Does Labor have the skill to prosecute the case for change or will collective amnesia win out again?

There’s continuing fallout from the broken French submarines deal, and a humiliated country will seek retribution in other ways. Australia didn’t learn the lessons given by China, where the Australian government pressured the WHO to investigate the origins of coronavirus and Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, decided to directly blame China for releasing the virus to the rest of the world. The result: China placed tariffs and sanctions on Australian exports and caused billions of dollars of damage to the local economy.

The French government has instructed its diplomats to ‘go hard’ on Australia in the upcoming free trade negotiations with the European Union, and to go even harder when it comes to the imposition of carbon tariffs. Australia is going to be whipped at the upcoming COP26 climate change meetings, and it’s probably wise for Scott Morrison to not attend. It’s going to be a humiliation like no other.

And if diplomacy on the international stage is not the Morrison government’s forte, it displays even less on the national stage. Instead of making soothing tones to try an appease difficult negotiations on GST reform and increased hospital funding, Scott Morrison’s natural reaction is to create division and seek opportunities. The ‘divide and rule’ philosophy worked very well for the Roman Empire – until it no longer worked and caused a long-term force in Europe to crumble. And it happened relatively quickly.

This might a portent for the Morrison government: the pandemic has been a time for unity, whereas all they’ve provided is division and argument at every turn. It’s almost as though their willing on their own demise.

Attacking the governments of Western Australia and Queensland is not a vote-winner for the federal government; in fact, it works in reverse. It’s easy for Western Australia and Queensland to whip up a frenzy against the federal government – and perhaps it only the residents of those states who can understand this phenomenon. And it’s a whole lot easier when the national leader is seen as the ‘Prime Minister of New South Wales’.

The state and territory governments have requested more funding for hospitals – $8 billion each year until the end of 2023. But Morrison and Josh Frydenberg say ‘no’, even though they gave $21 billion in JobKeeper support to corporations who made profits and increased their bottom line during the pandemic. It’s always a question of priorities but this federal government always seems to choose the wrong ones.

Another piece of advice for Morrison: stop attacking state governments. It might appeal to the base of the Liberal Party and the conspiracy theorists in the community that despise all governments (but might be partial to a Prime Minister who kicks into regimes he doesn’t like) but, overall, it’s a net vote losing act.

And it might provide Morrison a massive loss at the next federal election.

There’s been far too much adulation from the media for the former Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, who took the decision to resign from Parliament, after the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption declared she is a person of interest in a corruption investigation.

Politicians are not rock stars, and journalists are not their groupies, even though that’s how they behave: too close to action; too close to the people they seem to love. And too close to report and analyze without fear or favour. And their love of Berejiklian means that they mourn her resignation like the loss of a close friend, rather than focusing on the allegations of corruption.

As Paul Keating once said, if you want a friend in politics, get a dog. Politicians are not rock stars; they are there to do a job in the interests of the public, and we want them to be competent. Leave the rock star business (and the song and dance) to the real rock stars, and then the media can investigate what political leaders get up to behind the scenes. And it’s an untidy and messy sight.

Perhaps if the mainstream media performed the job they are supposed to do – make powerful people accountable to the public – Berejiklian might have thought twice about engaging in activities that are now the focus of the NSW ICAC.

And all of this has resulted in a new Premier in NSW, Dominic Perrottet. We’re not sure how long he’ll last – because he might also be receiving a few phone calls from the NSW ICAC over the iCare state insurance scandal – and NSW might be looking for another Premier before the next NSW election, due in March 2023.

And why is the federal government so fearful of a federal commission against corruption? We’ve estimated that if a federal ICAC was created according to existing state and territory guidelines, at least 11 sitting government Members of Parliament would be the subject of inquiries – and that’s just based on the information that’s publicly available. So, it’s obvious why they’re not introducing a federal ICAC – they’d be the first ones to appear in dock. That’s the only reason they’ve been so reluctant to create a federal ICAC with retrospective powers.

It might be up to Labor to introduce such a body – but only if they’re sure that none of their MPs will be dragged into such a commission – and, obviously, a federal ICAC can only happen if they win the next federal election. It will never occur under a Liberal–National Coalition, they have too much to lose.

It happened quickly but it wasn’t really a shock when the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, resigned after it was revealed that the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption was commenced proceedings to investigate whether she acted corruptly in the award of community grants between 2012 and 2018.

There were many tears and Berejiklian resigned reluctantly, giving the impressive that the ICAC was just a minor irritant that shouldn’t be standing in her way. Her greatest supporters – the mainstream media – have been reporting her departure as though she is resigning because of family circumstances, or some other misfortune, and completely neglecting the fact that there are serious allegations of her behaviour as Treasurer and Premier.

Perhaps it’s a sign of how low the threshold has become within Australian politics: a Premier resigning under the shadow of corruption is lauded as “one of the greatest Premiers ever”. It’s almost as absurd as suggesting the disgraced Labor MP, Eddie Obeid, is one of the greatest Minister for Resources ever (if only we can ignore the $100 million worth of corruption).

There is no fury greater than a Prime Minister ousted in a leadership challenge, and Malcolm Turnbull has arrived on the public stage with a vast array of verbal artillery to fire off at the incumbent: Scott Morrison. The botched French submarines deal; the poor vaccination rollout; inaction on climate change: everything is a target. On the day before Morrison ousted Turnbull, he said that he was “ambitious for my leader”. It seems Turnbull won’t be reciprocating, is totally unambitious for his leader and doing his best to repay the humiliation Morrison afforded to him on that fateful day in August 2018. This will be a story that has some way to play.

Several weeks ago, Kristina Keneally was inserted as a preselection candidate in the South-West Sydney seat of Fowler. It’s better for candidates to be preselected by the local membership but, sometimes, it‘s better to choose the best person, even if they are from outside of the area. This is an issue within politics, but all political parties do it: nevertheless, we assumed the issue would blow over, but the mainstream media has decided to revisit the seat of Fowler, no doubt to create problems for the Labor Party in the lead up to the next federal election.

Adrian Boothman was a long-time resident in the seat of Fowler and a former Labor Party staffer and advisor – we spoke to Adrian to see if there’s a different perspective to the one presented in the mainstream media. And – can you believe it – yes, there is perspective that is closer to the facts on the ground.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP26 – is coming up soon, but Scott Morrison is toying with the idea of not attending the event in Glasgow. This is the most important climate change conference since 2015 – and possibly ever – but Morrison isn’t interested, too busy fondling the lump of coal he dragged into federal Parliament, a rock which has become symbolic of his prime ministership. Or too busy remembering his trip last week to New York – a UN meeting that he really didn’t need to be at, but did allow him to meet with the bosses of News Corporation. Why bother about rescuing the planet when there is an election to be won?

And politics is never too far from COVID – the Victoria and NSW governments have almost identical roadmaps out of COVID, but it’s the Victoria government Morrison is taking aim at. And while he’s at it, the Western Australian and Queensland government on borders. Morrison thrives on division and chaos for two reasons – because he does not have a bone of decency in him and knows no other way, and it helps to mask his mismanagement of COVID during 2021 and the corruption and incompetence that has riddled his government since he became Prime Minister in 2018.

But the independents may have a say in this: they’re coming for the Liberal Party, they mean business and they’ve had enough of a lack of action on climate change, and they’ve had enough of incompetency, corruption and indecency. The next federal election might end up being Independents Day.

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.