New Politics: Australian Politics, News, Analysis & Commentary

Australia could have been close to reaching herd immunity but a poor Australian government decision to turn its back on an excellent Pfizer deal means the national level of vaccination is at 3%, one of the lowest rates in the world. The anger in the medical community is palpable, but will the electorate blame the government for this error? And, for a government that was so keen to open up the economy as soon as possible, this foolishness is difficult to understand.

The mainstream media wanted to position Scott Morrison as a key member of the G7 meeting, but he was anything but: Australia is not a member of the G7, it only had observer status at this meeting and it seems the US President, Joe Biden, was keen to let Morrison know about this. It was a ‘much ado about nothing’ kind of meeting for Morrison, he signed a few long-term agreements which are not worth the pen and paper they were created with, and a free trade agreement with the UK – which will negotiated over the next 15 years. And a sideshow to explore his personal ancestry, a visit to a church, and drinks all round for his personal staff at a few drinking holes in Cornwall. Something had to be retrieved from the G7 meeting and this provided for excellent photo opportunities.

The legal dispute between NSW National Leader, John Barilaro, and Jordan Shanks-Markovina (aka Friendly Jordies) has been ramped up and Barilaro has used anti-terrorism legislation to arrest the Friendly Jordies producer, Kristo Langker, all because he made a little bit of fun about him and exposed him for corruption. It’s so ‘New South Wales’ for a politician to want to lock up a journalist who gets in the way – but this is not just a battle between a politician and a journalist, it's a battle between legacy media and new media.

Australia has a new Deputy Prime Minister, same as the old one: come on down, Barnaby Joyce, alleged sexual harasser of women, philanderer, drunk, morally bankrupt and possibly corrupt. Only in Australia (and Britain, US, Brazil, Hungary, Belarus) would the public accept this kind of politician as a leader. A retail politician who tells the electorate what they want to hear, not what needs to be done – the worst and most dangerous kind of politician.

And it’s also so ‘New South Wales’ for the corruption of a Premier to be overlooked with soft media pampering and delicately placed stories about her new love life – who just happens to be the lawyer who represented her at the ICAC. COVID-19 cases are rising in Sydney and the NSW Government, far from the ‘gold standard’ we keep hearing about, has allowed complacency to set it and has mismanaged key aspects of this pandemic. Will it be as bad as the Ruby Princess disaster in 2020? But let’s not worry about that, all should be fine, because ‘Gladys is in love’.

Victoria will complete a two-week lockdown soon but if the Morrison government had done its job properly on quarantine management and the vaccination rollout, the lockdown – which will cost around $2 billion in lost revenues and other expenses – may have been avoided. And it’s nobody’s fault, except for the fault of the Morrison government. And their performance has been so bad that it’s a performance that seems to have been directed by the Big Q. It’s frustratingly puzzling as to why they are refusing to build quarantine managements centres across Australia.

Conservative governments are usually the advocates of free speech but in shades of the infamous East German Stasi secret service, the Liberal National government now wants to monitor the social media accounts of ABC journalists, publicly humiliate them, and sack them. The only parts that are missing are the megaphones shouting out “you know what you've done wrong” and the re-enactment of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ will be complete. Of course, it's free speech for all, except for you, you, you and you, and anyone else the government disagrees with.

The NSW Labor Right faction is an unusual beast in Australian politics, and in most cases is more concerned about its own influence, rather than the critical task of winning elections. They were the instigators of the resignation of NSW Labor leader, Jodi McKay, and now they have their man in the leadership, Chris Minns. And no-one should kid themselves that the Liberal Party is the only party that treats its women poorly: Labor has close to 50–50 gender equality within its ranks, but that doesn't stop it from undermining the women already in leadership positions, or making sure they don't get there in the first place.

It’s Budget time and we've spent the last week analysing the third Budget announcement from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Our verdict? Don’t believe the hype: it's not a ‘big-spending’ Budget; and it’s not a Budget the Labor Party would have introduced. We think it's yet another lost opportunity for the Australian economy and the community – just like Peter Costello squandering the mining boom in the early 2000s, this could be another chance to make positive long-term changes to government spending that ends up being flushed down the drain.

What would Labor do? We don't know: it's not the role of the Opposition of the day to provide itemised line items and specific policies the government and the media can then dissect and misrepresent – Albanese won't make the same mistakes Shorten made with the franking credits policy, where he allowed the Liberal Party too must scope to completely distort the intention of the scheme. Just the broad brush strokes of policy is all that's needed at the moment.

Will the Budget swing the next election for the Liberal–National Coalition? Both the Budget and the Budget Reply will be forgotten at the time of the next election, and the verdict will still come down to competence and who the electorate will trust on debts and deficits.

The world is slowly moving towards climate change solutions and, once again, Australia is the laggard on the world stage but trying to tell everyone how well it's performing, even though no other world leader believes it. And this is the modus operandi of the Morrison government: lie, mispresent the data, gaslight, or divert the attention somewhere else. The US President, Joe Biden, might be an old man but he’s not a fool and knows a fool when he sees one. It’s obvious Morrison wants to lead a government that acts as the world’s double-exhaust pipes, and accede to the wishes of the many vested interests in the mining and oil sectors. But he’ll be in for a huge shock when he sees the size of the tariffs imposed on Australian goods and services exports.

A milkshake video was released through a government-managed website – The Good Society – and if a casual viewer wasn't told about what the video was about, they'd be scratching their head trying to work out how smearing a milkshake in a man’s face relates to sexual consent and the serious issues of sexual harassment, rape and assault. But the content of these videos provides an insight into the mentality of the government that commissioned the videos in the first place: a government that wishes to impose its narrow-minded conservatism upon the community and searching for a teenage community that doesn't seem to exist anywhere in Australia. And its a conservatism based on the Pentecostal beliefs of the Prime Minister.

Prime Ministers have the complete right to believe – or not believe – in any religion they choose, as long as it's a private matter. There is a church-state separation in modern democracies – for very good reasons – but Morrison wants the church to creep over in the political sphere. And it shouldn't be there.

And the vaccination rollout keeps creating political problems for the federal government and they keep looking to apportion blame to everyone – except for themselves. Why did they take on the program in the first place? They provided massive amounts of stimulus funding to the state and territory governments and the states and territories ending up getting all the political credit, much to the chagrin of Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. They weren't going to allow that to happen again. So, they took on the implementation of the vaccination program, something the federal government has never done before, hoping to get all the political benefit, and a clear pathway to victory at the next federal election. And the pear-shaped result is exactly the result the federal government deserves.

The vaccination program is now officially in fiasco territory, with error after error and now another announcement of 20 million Pfizer doses "secured" after problems with the AstraZeneca vaccines. Which, of course, is not the same as actually having the doses in doctors’ surgeries all around Australia. We feel that it’s almost like the program has been designed to fail, because surely no government could handle such an important event so badly. If only Scott Morrison could stop overpromising and underdelivering, everything would be so much better for him.

Is the feminisation of the Liberal Party actually taking place, or is it another case of window-dressing? It might be just another charade: it's not just a case of adding "women" into the titles of ministries, or the Prime Minister being photographed with more of the women who make up 51% of the population. Or deciding to wait four months for an urgent women’s safety summit. And after waiting 13 months to release a national sexual harassment report, Morrison’s behaviour shows that it's all about politics.

The Labor National Conference was a virtual event this year, which means no backroom deals or incidental meetings to stitch up deals. Everything occurred online and in chatrooms rather than the backrooms, but a relatively sedate event suggests Labor believes it’s still likely that a federal election will be held this year. Otherwise, the conference would have seen old-school open brawls, hostilities between the factions, all of which would have been lapped up by the media. Best to wait for a non-election year.

And most chatter in the media has been "who will Scott Morrison’s opponent be at the next election". But this might need to be switched around a little bit to suggest "who will Anthony Albanese’s opponent be at the next election". That’s how poorly Morrison is performing.

The many women of Australia have said “enough is enough”, and said it loudly through the March 4 Justice campaign. But the Prime Minister is hard of hearing and wants it all to be on his terms, refusing to meet the organisers of the rally in public, wanting to meet behind closed doors and in private. Which is exactly what a rapist would do. And, of course, Attorney–General Christian Porter decided to launch his defamation case on the same day of the March 4 Justice rallies. Tone deaf!

Vaccinations are another area which the federal government has totally mismanaged, and yet another example of incompetence which Scott Morrison, Greg Hunt and Chief Medical Officer are trying to spin their way through. The government promised the vaccination program would be completed by 31 October 2021, and have been using a megaphone to let everyone know. But now that the vaccination program is not going be completed by 31 October 2021, the government is adamant that they never actually said that. Apparently, everyone else in Australia has a collective case of mishearing and misinterpreting what Scott Morrison said, because he is always correct, even when he is wrong.

One landslide election victory is rare; a second consecutive landslide victory has never happened before in Australian politics. Until the Western Australian election victory – a 9% swing in 2017, and a 13% swing in 2021. And the Liberal Party has been left with two seats in a chamber of 59 seats. That really is a wipeout – the Liberal Party also lost the seat of Nedlands, home of Gina Rinehart and Kerry Stokes. When the Liberal Party loses a seat like Nedlands, it really means the party might be over.

The message? Competent governments are being rewarded at the ballot box. It will be interesting to see what the result will be for an incompetent government, which the federal government clearly is. Their time will come soon.

Christian Porter’s political career is over. There won't be any legal proceedings arising from an allegation of rape in 1988 but the political repercussions will be far-reaching. And as long as the Prime Minister keeps resisting a call for a public inquiry into these events, this issue will keep burning in the background: for sure, there is a presumption of innocence within Australia’s legal system, but there also has to be a presumption of justice. Justice not only needs to be done, but it has to be seen to be done: and as it had been for many women in Australia for too long, justice has been left out of the equation.

The Royal Commission for Aged Care Quality and Safety has released its report and it has outlined a 25-year disaster that started off when Prime Minister John Howard reformed the sector in 1997 to create business opportunities for Liberal Party donors and the involvement of the private and corporatised sector into social services. And it's a mixture that simply does not work. For-profit thinking shouldn't be anywhere near the provision of aged care services.

The Media Bargaining Code is just one short step away from being law but, already, Google has signed deals with News Corporation, Nine Network, Seven West Media, The Guardian, and deals coming up soon for the ABC and SBS: $100 million from Google and another motza being delivered by FaceBook! And is this good for public interest journalism? Absolutely not, it's not even mentioned in the legislation. This is all about the government placing the media in its pocket in the lead-up to the next federal election. And a bucketload of money for legacy media, it's money for jam. It's actually a sad day for journalism and for the taxpayer.

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.