Theresa May is being warned by cabinet colleagues that a shift towards a harder Brexit will hasten the break-up of the UK, amid a renewed attempt by Brexiters to secure a clean split from the European Union. (more…)
Category: Politics
-
MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison is thinking about retirement villages.
Under normal circumstances Australians do not spend much time thinking about aged care facilities. (more…)
-
JOHN FALZON.Morrison’s mantra is ‘choice’. But what real choice do the poor and homeless have?
Everyone was walking past, refusing to meet her eyes. She wasn’t asking for somewhere to live. She wasn’t even asking for something to live on. All she was asking for was just enough to buy some breakfast. But everyone just kept walking past and the angrier she got the wider the berth they gave her and the faster they moved past her. (more…)
-
MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Not Gonski yet: ScoMo, schools, tools and the battle for Wentworth.
The ScoMo-ment, Episode II: Scott prevails for another week, consolidating his drive to not become Australia’s fourth shortest prime minister. Michael Sainsbury reports as the by-election battle for Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth heats up. (more…)
-
GRATTAN INSTITUTE Special deals for special interests -Catholic School funding
How lobbyists work to advantage Catholic schools at the expense of state schools . (more…)
-
GEOFF MILLER. The Moon-Kim Summit—what did it do, what did it amount to?
The Moon-Kim Summit in North Korea made some modest but significant achievements. The two leaders seemed surprisingly at ease with each other. How the meeting is assessed depends very much on the mind-set of the assessor, and what it achieves will depend very much on what the principals really want. (more…)
-
KATE GRIFFITHS, CARMEL CHIVERS, DANIELLE WOOD. Influence in Australian politics needs an urgent overhaul – here’s how to do it (The Conversation, 23.09.18)
Public policy should be made for all Australians – not just those with the resources or connections to lobby and influence politicians. And mostly it is. But sometimes bad policy is made or good policy is dropped because powerful groups have more say and sway than they should. (more…)
-
MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison and the Muppet Show
In hindsight, it wasn’t Scott Morrison’s brightest move to describe his colleagues as the Muppet Show. (more…)
-
LYNDSAY CONNORS. Coalition recycles old nonsense with business-as-usual schools deal (the Guardian, 22.09.18)
The prime minister’s announcement of an extra $4.6bn in funding over the next decade for private schools makes no sense. (more…)
-
America First or America Isolated: The Case of the International Criminal Court.
Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, has acted on his long-stated distaste for the International Criminal Court by declaring it dead to the US Though a few of Bolton’s protestations have merit, the US is setting a dangerous precedent in condemning the court. (more…)
-
LAURA TINGLE. People grumble about political leaders, but there’s a deeper malaise afoot (ABC News, 17.09.18)
People always grumble about political leaders. But there is a deeper malaise afoot now. (more…)
-
JOHN MENADUE. The Coalition has deserted country people on climate change, NBN and more
Both the Liberal and National parties are taking a drubbing from country voters. A while back it was New England and Lyne. More recently it has been Indi and Wagga Wagga. Strong Independents are thriving in country electorates.
Outside the metropolitan area both Coalition partners have become heavily dependent on the miners rather than farmers for money and ideas.. The Liberal and National parties are also ignoring issues of concern to country voters – climate change, NBN, rural poverty and inferior health services. (more…)
-
MARK BUTLER. Coalition exposes its ignorance in anti-renewable stance (The Big Smoke, 21.09.18)
-
GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media. (more…)
-
ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit: Calamity awaits the world trading system.
The route to overcoming any impasse in the UK/EU Brexit negotiations may involve riding roughshod over their respective obligations under the global trading system, in particular the WTO. This, together with President Trump’s on-going assault on the system, threatens to bring it down altogether – with nothing better in its place. (more…)
-
IAN BURUMA. From Charlottesville to Chemnitz: the West’s race problem.
For obvious reasons, the sight of a German mob chasing foreigners through the streets and throwing up their arms in Hitler salutes is particularly disturbing. This is what happened recently in Chemnitz, a bleak industrial city in Saxony that was touted in the former German Democratic Republic as a model socialist city (it was called Karl-Marx-Stadt between 1953 and 1990). (more…)
-
JOHN MENADUE How Murdoch extracted concessions from governments.
Rupert Murdoch claims, falsely, that he has never asked a Prime Minister for anything. Yet his whole business career in three countries has been founded on threatening or seducing politicians for privileged commercial access or opportunities.
I posted an article earlier this week on how he got favoured treatment from the Hawke Government for Ansett Airlines in which he was a major shareholder at the time.. Today I post extracts from an earlier article on how, with the help of the Keating Government, he got a foothold in Foxtel.in 1995. (more…)
-
JOHN MENADUE How Kerr, Fraser and Murdoch engineered the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. A slightly edited repost from 27 October 2015
Rupert Murdoch has form in conniving to get rid of Prime Ministers from 1975 to 2018 (more…)
-
MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Scott Morrison smashes shortest Prime Minister records.
Is Scott Morrison really on his way to a full half-term? As Liberal MPs flee the parliament and by-elections mushroom, the Member for Cook has already failed to earn the distinction of Australia’s fastest prime ministership. But will he vanquish the record of Arthur Fadden? Michael Sainsbury reports. (more…)
-
JERRY ROBERTS. The Cuckoo and the Nest.
Of all the abuse heaped on the head of Malcolm Turnbull the heaviest spray came from Noel Crichton-Browne, a past President of the West Australian Division of the Liberal Party, a Senator and political power-broker par excellence. (more…)
-
ROSS GITTINS. How market forces have failed the nation (SMH 19.9.2018)
With the memory of the government’s embarrassing delay in yielding to public pressure for a royal commission into banking still fresh, Scott Morrison got in before the Four Corners expose to announce a royal commission into aged care.
Who’s to say this will be the last? A royal commission into electricity and gas prices is mooted. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll see a royal commission into problems with the National Disability Insurance Scheme. (more…)
-
Wentworth, Bill Shorten and refugees
What a boost it would be for humanity and decency if Bill Shorten broke with the government’s refugees policy and told us during the Wentworth by-election that the ALP would no longer support the cruel and crippling policies that leave refugees and asylum seekers stranded and abused on Nauru and Manus. What is happening is not on Planet Nauru or Planet Manus. It is happening in our neighbourhood to people it is our duty to protect. (more…)
-
ISABELLE LANE. Six big players dominate Australia’s scandal-hit aged care sector (The New Daily, 19.09.18)
Aged care providers are expected to rake in $1.7 billion worth of profits in 2018-19, but reports of poor living conditions in nursing homes have raised concerns that the industry is putting profit before people. (more…)
-
JOHN MENADUE. The scourge of lobbyists is likely to continue if there is a change of government.A Repost from June 22 2018
Lobbyists are back in the news but it looks as if the scourge of lobbyists will continue in Canberra if Bill Shorten wins the next election. There is no sign that the ALP, like the Coalition is prepared to curb the way lobbyists are corrupting public policy in Australia.. The media reports that lobby firms are taking on ‘labor staffers’ so that they can influence a future Labor Government. (more…)
-
SUSAN RYAN. Ladies in Red.
In the late 1970s, federal Labor, still in opposition after Whitlam, was struggling. New polling research enabled me to advise national conference that Labor would not regain office unless it increased its support among women voters. If women had voted Labor in the same proportion as men had, Labor would have won every election since World War 2 , with the possible exception of the Chifley loss in 1949.With these findings, measuring the gender gap in polling analysis was introduced, and has remained there ever since. (more…)
-
JOE ASTON AND MYRIAM ROBIN. Clean hands? How five Scott Morrison supporters voted to get rid of Turnbull. (AFR 17.9.2018)
Make no mistake, this new PM stood by the last one just like he stood by the one before. Like Brutus stood by Caesar. (more…)
-
DAVID DODWELL. Keep Calm and carry on amid the current state of the trade war, for time is on China’s side. (South China Morning Post 16.9.2018)
Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s trade team invited Beijing to fresh trade talks. Almost simultaneously, tweets from the White House cast doubt on the talks.
Having mulled this conundrum carefully over the weekend, and without any attempt to discover what Beijing’s leaders might do, I have decided to imagine a secret internal memo from Liu He to Xi Jinping and the Beijing trade team. (more…)
-
ROSS GITTINS. Long way to go to get banks back in their box (SMH 17.9.2018)
Have we learnt from the mistakes of the global financial crisis, now 10 years ago? Yes, but not nearly as much as we should have. (more…)
-
ROD TIFFIN. Murdoch and Stokes
If the Liberal leadership upheaval was a Muppet show, as Scott Morrison described it, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes have been revealed as its Statler and Waldorf. Muppets fans will remember the two cantankerous old men who heckled from the sidelines. The media moguls did not publicly heckle, but their behind the scenes barracking was reflected in their media. (more…)
-
JENNY HOCKING. ‘Bullying, betrayal and backstabbing’: Can the Liberal party survive?
Scott Morrison is an unlikely Prime Minister. The day before the latest Liberal leadership change Morrison appeared in a memorable photo, arm casually draped around then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s uncomfortable shoulders, and proclaimed his support; ‘This is my leader. I’m ambitious – for him!’. Two days later Morrison emerged from a rancorous party meeting, brought on by the failed plotter and would-be Prime Minister Peter Dutton and his vengeful side-kick the deposed Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to become the third Liberal Prime Minister in as many years. The image and its aftermath have defined our 30th Prime Minister as duplicitous, disloyal and clearly ambitious – for himself. (more…)