The Coalition stakes a lot on the perception of them as better managers of the economy. In the past, they have relied on ‘debt and deficit disaster’ rhetoric with promises of surpluses. That’s out for the foreseeable future.

They are now spruiking a low unemployment rate without ever acknowledging the impact that no foreign workers may have had on that. Nor do they ever speak of the precarious nature of employment and stagnant wages. They speak proudly of growth in GDP, not admitting that government spending (read debt) is driving it, and glossing over the increasing cost of living that inflation brings.

Another tactic they persistently use to undermine Labor policies is asking how much they will cost and how are they going to pay for them.

At the last election, Labor had excellent policies for taxation reform that a misinformed electorate rejected. It was too much for people to comprehend and, as such, was easily weaponised with the old adage about Labor will tax you more even though what they were mainly doing was closing loopholes and distortions thrust on us by the profligate Howard government.

The Coalition were able to get away with asking how much action on climate change would cost while never answering how much inaction would cost.

Well this time around, Labor could have an easy answer to how they will pay for policies whilst reducing debt if they are brave enough to use it – delay/abandon the stage 3 tax cuts.

The cuts, set to come into effect in 2024, apply a standard 30 per cent income tax rate to those who earn between $45,000 and $200,000 a year.

The reason given for this is to reverse bracket creep – where a pay rise puts an individual’s income over the threshold for the next tax bracket.  (It should be stressed that the higher rate only applies to the excess over that threshold, not your whole income.)

The only way to truly eliminate bracket creep is to make annual adjustments to the thresholds as explained by a very interesting paper from the Parliamentary Budget Office, Bracket creep and its fiscal impact, released in September last year.

“In the absence of the Stage 3 tax cuts, bracket creep over the next decade would be projected to reduce net debt in 2031‑32 by $276 billion.”

What the government is proposing is “projected to add around $197 billion to net debt in 2031‑32.”

That’s a $473 billion difference in net debt, and it doesn’t keep up with bracket creep anyway.

“The impact of the Stage 3 tax cuts will be more than offset by bracket creep by 2031-32. In that year, the tax cuts are estimated to cost just over $30 billion, while bracket creep is projected to have added $57 billion in additional revenue.”

Research by The Australia Institute shows the benefit from the cuts would predominantly go to high income earners.

“In 2024-25, when stage 3(a) first comes into effect, almost a third of the benefit goes to the top 10 per cent of taxpayers and the top 20 per cent will get more than half of the benefit. At the other end of the distribution the bottom 10 per cent gets none of the benefit while the bottom 20 per cent gets less than one per cent of the benefit.”

As most women are middle to low income earners, these cuts disproportionately favour men according to analysis prepared by the parliamentary budget office for the Greens.

“Men will receive about $2 for every $1 women receive between 2024 and 2031 under the tax plan, receiving a total of an extra $121.7bn compared with $62.4bn for women over the period.”

The wealthy have already been doing quite well out of the pandemic with property and share prices ballooning. Low interest rates and government stimulus have made an ideal environment for those able to take advantage.

Giving the rich more isn’t necessary to stimulate an economy with low unemployment and growth in the target range.

Lifting the tax-free threshold would have a far more beneficial flow-on effect giving assistance where it is most needed, knowing it will be spent, and saving more people from having to fill in a tax return for the ATO to process.

Governments face a trade-off between returning bracket creep and allowing bracket creep to reduce debt faster.

With December’s MYEFO projecting net debt will peak in 2025 at $915 billion, it would be fiscally responsible for Labor to say now is not the time for this tax cut, which would then put their second term budget in far better shape than the Coalition’s.

As the Coalition goes to an election promising to spend hundreds of billions on obsolete and inappropriate armaments and hundreds more on tax cuts for the wealthy, perhaps it’s time to ask them about everything else they promise…

How are you going to pay for it?

If there’s one question a politician fears being asked, it is this one. After announcing a decision to undertake a bold new and expensive development project, the question always arises, “How are you going to pay for it?”

It shouldn’t be a horror moment for politicians, but it is, and the reason is simple. They are afraid to be caught out. Such is the millstone they have tied themselves to, over the years, trying to discredit their opposition, or portray themselves as fiscally responsible. In the process, they have shot themselves in the foot because they don’t understand how sovereign money works.

Therefore, in the interests of common sense and as a means of bringing an end to the foolishness that is endemic within this charade we call our parliamentary system, here is a prepared script for politicians to study which should help them to manage the, “How are you going to pay for it,” all fearing, all threatening, career ending, monster question, when being interviewed by a journalist.

Beginning of interview:

Journalist: And how are you going to pay for it?

Politician: We will pay for it the same way we have always paid for it. By crediting the bank account of the recipient.

Journalist: But how can you do that if there is no money in your account?

Politician: We create the money. There is always money in our account.

Journalist: Until you run out of it, or have to borrow, you mean.

Politician: No, we don’t need to borrow money, we create it. We can’t ever run out of it.

Journalist: But how is that possible?

Politician: We use computers, just like you do. Do you use internet banking?

Journalist: Yes, but I can only do that if I have money in my account.

Politician: That’s right, because you are the currency user. The government is the currency issuer.

Journalist: But you still must have the money.

Politician: No, we don’t. What part of, “we are the currency issuer,” don’t you understand?

Journalist: I’m confused. Are you saying a government doesn’t need to raise revenue to spend?

Politician: I understand your confusion. It sounds a bit fishy, but a sovereign government who issues its own currency doesn’t need to raise revenue to spend.

Journalist: But you need taxation revenue to spend?

Politician: Not for spending we don’t.

Journalist: I don’t get it. You seem to be advocating printing limitless amounts of money. Isn’t that what Mugabe did?

Politician: No, it’s not what I am advocating, and it’s not what Mugabe did. Firstly, we don’t print money anymore. It’s all done via electronic interbank transfers. Secondly, Mugabe wrecked his country’s economy by systematically destroying its resources, not by spending.

Journalist: What about Argentina?

Politician: Argentina foolishly borrowed foreign currency and then wasted it.

Journalist: Venezuela then?

Politician: Sheer incompetence, again, by using another country’s currency.

Journalist: But if we just create money what’s stopping us from doing the same as they did?

Politician: We don’t ‘just create money.’ It’s not about the money, it’s about how we use it. If we use it to engage our workforce and produce meaningful goods and services, the kind of things people here and overseas want to buy, we strengthen our economy, unlike those countries you mention, who failed to use their natural resources, and failed to use their own currency.

Journalist: But surely there is a limit to what we can spend?

Politician: There are always limits, but they are resource related limits, not money limits. We can’t spend if there’s nothing to buy. We must produce before we can buy. So, logically, we must issue the money to get our workforce into jobs and manufacture things we need to live and to prosper.

Journalist: All this seems to contradict any need for the government to produce an annual budget that shows how much they will spend, how much they expect to receive in taxation, how much they need to borrow, to make up the difference, that sort of thing.

Politician: Yes, it does seem that way, but that’s a political choice. We do that to keep the accountants happy and to have you believe that running a government is the same as running a household or a company. It isn’t. Households and companies are different. They can’t create money. They can only use money. Only sovereign governments can create money. But keeping books that show spending versus revenue, makes it easier for us to say we can’t afford it and stuff like that. God help us! We can’t have you think we can work miracles.

Journalist: Then why bother with taxation?

Politician: That’s a great question. We do need to tax, but you are confused enough already. We’ll leave that for another day. There is a limit to what you can absorb in one sitting. Best we schedule another interview where we can cover that issue separately.

End of interview.

Don’t be surprised if, after the interview, the journalist returns to the office and pens tomorrow morning’s headline, “Politician says government is money machine, Taxation unnecessary. Hyperinflation imminent.”

Two British ministers, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, paid a recent visit to Australia recently as part of the AUKMIN (Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations) talks. It showed, yet again, that Australia’s government loves being mugged. Stomped on. Mowed over. Beaten. 

It was mugged, from the outset, in its unconditional surrender to the US military industrial complex with the AUKUS security agreement. It was mugged in throwing money (that of the Australian taxpayer) at the US submarine industry, which is lagging in its production schedule for both the Virginia-class boats and new designs such as the Columbia class. British shipyards were hardly going to miss out on this generous distribution of Australian money, largesse ill-deserved for a flagging production line.

A joint statement on the March 22 meeting, conducted with Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, was packed with trite observations and lazy reflections about the nature of the “international order”. Ministers “agreed the contemporary [UK-Australian] relationship is responding in an agile and coordinated way to global challenges.” When it comes to matters of submarine finance and construction, agility is that last word that comes to mind.

Boxes were ticked with managerial, inconsequential rigour. Russia, condemned for its “full-scale, illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine.” Encouragement offered for Australia in training Ukrainian personnel through Operation Kudu and joining the Drone Capability Coalition. Exaggerated “concern at the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Praise for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and “respect of navigation.” 

The relevant pointers were to be found later in the statement. The UK has been hoping for a greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific (those damn French take all the plaudits from the European power perspective), and the AUKUS bridge has been one excuse for doing so. Accordingly, this signalled a “commitment to a comprehensive and modern defence relationship, underlined by the signing of the updated Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Defence and Security Cooperation.” 

When politicians need to justify opening the public wallet, such tired terms as “unprecedented”, “threat” and “changing” are used. These are the words of foreign minister Wong: “Australia and the United Kingdom are building on our longstanding strategic partnership to address our challenging and rapidly changing world.” Marles preferred the words “an increasingly complex strategic environment.” Shapps followed a similar line of thinking. “Nuclear-powered submarines are not cheap, but we live in a much more dangerous world, where we are seeing a much more assertive region [with] China, a much more dangerous world all around with what is happening in the Middle East and Europe.” Hardly a basis for the submarines, but the fetish is strong and gripping. 

With dread, critics of AUKUS would have noted yet another round of promised disgorging. Britain’s submarine industry is even more lagging than that of the United States, and bringing Britannia aboard the subsidy truck is yet another signal that the AUKUS submarines, when and if they ever get off the design page and groan off the shipyards, are guaranteed well deserved obsolescence or glorious unworkability.

A separate statement released by all the partners of the AUKUS agreement glories in the SSN-AUKUS submarine, intended as a joint effort between BAE Systems and the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC). (BAE Systems, it should be remembered, is behind the troubled Hunter-class frigate program, one plagued by difficulties in unproven capabilities.) 

An already challenging series of ingredients is further complicated by the US role as well. “SSN-AUKUS is being trilaterally developed, based on the United Kingdom’s next designs and incorporation technology from all three nations, including cutting edge United States submarine technologies.” This fabled fiction “will be equipped for intelligence, surveillance, undersea warfare and strike missions, and will provide maximum interoperability among AUKUS partners.” The ink on this is clear: the Royal Australian Navy will, as with any of the promised second-hand Virginia-class boats, be a subordinate partner.

In this, a false sense of submarine construction is being conveyed through what is termed the “Optimal Pathway”, ostensibly to “create a stronger, more resilient trilateral submarine industrial base, supporting submarine production and maintenance in all three countries.” In actual fact, the Australian leg of this entire effort is considerably greater in supporting the two partners, be it in terms of upgrading HMAS Stirling in Western Australia to permit UK and US SSNs to dock as part of Submarine Rotational Force West from 2027, and infrastructure upgrades in South Australia. It all has the appearance of garrisoning by foreign powers, a reality all the more startling given various upgrades to land and aerial platforms for the United States in the Northern Territory.

The eye-opener in the AUKMIN chatter is the promise from Canberra to send A$4.6 billion (£2.4 billion) to speed up lethargic construction at the Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor production line. There are already questions that the reactor cores, being built at Derby, will be delayed for the UK’s own Dreadnought nuclear submarine. The amount, it was stated by the Australian government, was deemed “an appropriate and proportionate contribution to expand production and accommodate Australia’s requirements.” Hardly.

Ultimately, this absurd spectacle entails a windfall of cash, ill-deserved funding to two powers with little promise of returns and no guarantees of speedier boat construction. The shipyards of both the UK and the United States can take much joy from this, as can those keen to further proliferate nuclear platforms, leaving the Australian voter with that terrible feeling of being, well, mugged.

Perhaps the most important takeout from the leaders’ debate was when Scott Morrison admitted that it is Labor that introduces the big social reforms – Medicare, the PBS, the NDIS, paid parental leave, compulsory superannuation for example.

Labor might have the ideas but it was the Coalition who had to pay for them, sighed Scott.

They market themselves as the better economic managers.  This seems to be based on Howard and Costello’s strategy of selling off every profitable asset we owned, privatising everything they could, whilst wasting the profits from the mining boom on doling out huge sums in tax cuts and deductions.

And they hit us with the GST.

Abbott’s strategy was to cut funding to everything except defence which has seen above budgeted rises every year.  He sold the profitable Medibank Private for a short-term sugar hit to the budget, thus ceding any competitive control over private health insurance prices and coverage.  He decided the NBN wasn’t worth doing properly – so now we have to go back and do it again with fibre.

He also imposed the 2% budget repair levy.

Josh Frydenberg’s smiling slide show and smug mugs were as close as the current mob came to any pretence of good economic management.

For many years they have ignored warnings about the compounding effect of multiple climate-induced disasters.  They have resisted calls to prepare and actively fought against global commitments to reduce emissions and phase out fossil fuels.  Their solution is to give a few hundred dollars to a selected few victims and then blame someone else, as Morrison tried to do last night about the bushfires by bringing up a lack of hazard reduction as a cause.

When faced with fires, floods and a pandemic, they abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility and threw money around in gay abandon.

Some form of stimulus was necessary but JobKeeper was poorly designed with few if any checks on eligibility compliance.  A kid who worked one shift at McDonalds was all of a sudden on $750 a week.  Businesses who saw massive increases in their profits were hugely subsidised with that money then going to shareholders and company directors.  Others, like universities and the arts sector, were left out entirely.

We have gone from the promise of “back in black” to the three largest deficits in history and a structural deficit next financial year at 3.6 per cent of GDP.

Gross debt is forecast to reach a record $906 billion by the end of this financial year, grow to $977 billion in 2022-23 and top $1 trillion the following year.  Interest payments in 2025-26 are projected to be $22.4 billion.

With increasing costs for health and aged care inevitable, instead of a plan to increase revenue, we are offered tax cuts for the wealthy and a dam for every Nationals electorate.

There is no recognition of the economic benefits Labor’s “big ideas” have delivered.

Not only do this lot concede they are not the party of big ideas, they have demonstrated that they also have no idea about how to plan for the future and budget and invest accordingly.

Election diary No. 24: Saturday, 2, April 2022.

Before I even begin to comment on this year’s budget, I must point out that I am not an economist. In reality, I have no training in finance whatsoever.

Having said that, let me say this: Most goodies are handed out to maximise the “vote for us” value during the upcoming campaign. Even Blind Freddy could explain why this is a short-term formula for winning an election.

Wages are stagnant with consumer prices steadily rising; the Coalition’s election gift to voters is cash for Australia’s low-and middle-income earners. It is a blatant attempt to buy their votes. Will it buy them enough? Well, that’s anyone’s guess.

I have picked up over many years of more than an average interest in politics and a lifetime in marketing the ability to read the spin of politics. After all, we, the voters, pass judgment on a budget’s worthiness. Therefore, our opinions are the most consequential.

As the Treasurer was reading his speech, I was with a glass of red in one hand and the volume control in the other, asking myself all the relevant questions pertaining to a national budget. It was not by coincidence that the handouts all happen during the election.

What is its intention, how forward-looking is it? Does it look after our most vulnerable? How does it address the health of its people or the condition of our infrastructure and our education? Does it endeavour to make right our inequality? These are the sort of questions a layperson like myself asks.

Indeed, many questions are asked of a budget. However, they are always constrained by the politics of the day and the proximity of an election.

As a layperson, l see this budget as driven by the requirements of an election that is just around the corner, nothing more, nothing less. Politics takes precedence over everything.

It seeks to succeed by addressing the immediacy of our society’s cost of living problems. To this end, it is wholly devoted. But all the gifts our Government offers have a use-by date and will expire in six months. There is no longevity. No thought for the future. No climate change crisis. In fact, every agency dealing with the climate had its funding cut.

In Katharine Murphy’s article in The Guardian; “At this gravest of times the Coalition has served up an election budget designed simply to keep itself in power” she reported that:

“With wages stagnant and consumer prices on the march, the Coalition’s primary pre-election gift to voters is cash for Australia’s low-and-middle income earners.

As well as cash, the government will cut the fuel excise in half in the hope a price cut at the bowser isn’t swallowed immediately by another adverse shift in the global oil price or an interest rate rise between now and September, when the excise is supposed to revert to its full rate.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Anthony Albanese has commented that supporting climate change has not won them an election (paywalled). Just when people have been sufficiently aroused to take it seriously. What a shame it would be if he walked away from it now.

And am I to seriously believe that in the next 20 years, when the whole world is driving electric cars, Australia will have to import them with all our manufacturing knowledge? This budget failed to give them a mention.

What will eventually happen when electric vehicles eliminate the petrol excise altogether. What will replace this massive source of Government revenue?

The words ‘childcare’ and ‘aged care’ hardly ever get a mention, but a wage rise so often predicted, but it never actually happens. Also ignored are those front-line workers who put their lives on the line during the pandemic.

It is a budget based on hope. The hope is that China will continue to pay the top price for our iron ore and coal commodities and that our wheat will continue to bring in record prices.

The politics of survival and the retention of power have taken over this budget, and it is about nothing else.

Remember those historic levels of debt that Abbott and Morrison threw at Labor? Now the shoe is on the other foot.

The way this budget seeks to give cash handouts in exchange for people’s votes is typical of this Government.

In fact, the value of the pension is likely to diminish over the next few years as the cost of living rises. The periodical increases are measured against movements in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), whereas previously, they counted them against a set of articles related to pensioner’s actual costs.

The much-muted low unemployment figure is only because immigration stopped during the pandemic. Unemployment will rise when it resumes.

The Coalition government plans to spend $10bn on 120 projects not recommended by Infrastructure Australia. In fact, a closer analysis by Sarah Martin of The Guardian reveals that:

“… of the 144 projects being funded by the Government in Tuesday’s budget shows that just 21 are included on Infrastructure Australia’s current list of priority projects, accounting for $5.7bn of the approximate $16bn in new funding. The analysis also shows that of the $6.4bn that is allocated to projects within a single electorate, more than half – $3.4bn – is directed to marginal seats.”

If we were to forget Josh Frydenberg’s dour introduction to this year’s budget, “Tonight, as we gather, war rages in Europe,” you would miss any plan for the future and instead find one for the next six months. After that, it’s all about hope.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has outdone himself yet again to prove how out of touch he is. This time telling renters to just buy a house if they can’t afford soaring rent prices. Anyway, just to cap off its silliness, Morrison finally did it! We didn’t think it was possible, friends, but here we are.

Then at the end of play, Tammy Wolffs tweeted:

Election diary No 10. Wednesday, 9 February 2022.

1 In one of the most insincere acts of contrition ever in Australian politics, Barnaby Joyce apologises to the Prime Minister for saying nasty things about him when he was on the backbench. Things he meant, but later under different circumstances, when he became leader of his own party again, found him more likeable.

Mr Joyce said he commented in a text last year when he was a backbencher and had no working relationship with the PM. He now does and has found the PM to be a man of his word.

Kevin Rudd, the recipient of some name-calling himself, was right onto this hypocrisy, tweeting that:

“Barnaby’s claim that he barely knew Morrison before last year is ridiculous. They’d spent 8yrs together in either cabinet or shadow cabinet – including in the pressure cooker of the expenditure review committee.”

In the leaked text, forwarded to the former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins by a third-party Joyce said he did not “get along” with Morrison:

“He is a hypocrite, and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time,” Joyce said in the message, dated March last year.

“I have never trusted him, and I dislike how earnestly [he] rearranges the truth to a lie.”

The Guardian reported that:

“… it was the second time private text exchanges, critical of the prime minister, have been leaked in a week. On Tuesday, Morrison was blindsided when the Ten Network’s political editor, Peter van Onselen, used a televised question and answer session at the National Press Club to reveal private criticism of Morrison.

Van Onselen told Morrison he had a record of a text message exchange between a party colleague and the former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian. She branded the prime minister a “horrible person” who was untrustworthy.

“The minister is even more scathing, describing you as a fraud and ‘a complete psycho’,” van Onselen said. “Does this exchange surprise you? And what does it tell us?”

Van Onselen later said the conversation was between Berejiklian and a federal minister.”

Barnaby Joyce was due to appear on Insiders last Sunday. Guess what? He declined the invitation. The home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, took his place. I’ll leave that to your own thoughts.

A Sunday night bombshell:

I expect his tweet to be splashed all over the front pages the following morning, but there was nothing. I can only find a note from a friend saying Dutton has asked for the tweet to be removed.

It was the subject of some discussion on ABC News 24 but nothing much else I. What it does highlight, however, is the infighting within the Coalition if it’s not about the future of renewables versus coal, its leadership or revenge.

It seems there is more discussion about politicians’ welfare than the peoples’.

Whether Bob Carr is exploiting an already sick situation for Morrison and the Coalition is unknown. Is it just his opinion, or does he know for sure? We shall have to wait to find out.

2 Now at the risk of repeating myself, let me talk about the voters, the ones who decide who governs us. Their opinions are reflected in the numerous opinion polls that are regularly published, but we cannot be 100% sure. Polls are often wrong.

The great majority of people come together every three years to vote unthinkingly for the party their parents voted for. As bad as they have governed, they wouldn’t betray the party.

There are others who, from election to election, glibly take little notice of the affairs of the state. They stand by dispassionately, wondering why politicians are paid so much to do so little.

I would also think that a fair proportion of voters wouldn’t even know who is standing for election in their electorate. Many wouldn’t know who they might vote for until they close the curtain on the booth.

There will be those who will decide based on the scantest information; however, given the lifestyle they live, that’s of little surprise. A modern lifestyle leaves little time for thoughts on politics.

Yet, another group changes their vote according to what’s in it for them. “How will your policies benefit me?”

By far, the largest growing group are those who have opted out of the system altogether, saying a pox on both your houses.

Smack in the middle is a cohort of non-aligned thinkers who put all else aside, placing the country’s good at the top of their priorities. They are called the swinging voter.

This group was estimated at 10% of voters long ago without research. It is now thought to be around 20%. Well that, as I recall, was John Howards figure. However, polling shows that older voters generally support the right and the younger ones the left.

Today’s voters have been subjected to (in my view) the worst governance of any period I can ever remember. The reader should assume that I don’t have a high opinion of the average voter. However, why people continue to vote for a failed party in the face of abject negligence is a mystery.

Then I turn my attention to Labor and wonder about its prospects. At the moment Albo is sitting back, allowing the Coalition to dig its own grave. Since being elected as leader he has restored some of Labor’s traditional ideology but with a modern take. There is far less importance on unions and a concentration on fairness and traditional left values like equality.

Those who want to apply the first rule of politics – obtaining power – must realise that the electorate has had enough of far-right ideology. Many are disgusted with the methods used to acquire power at all costs and its retention. Better to gather the trust of the people with good honest politics.

The door has opened for Labor to fix the many wrongs perpetrated by this undemocratic conservative bunch of unscrupulous lawbreakers full of people with little regard for the constitutional dignity of the parliament.

With scant regard for empathy, fairness, righteousness, compassion, equality of opportunity, it is prepared to go to any end to retain the power it has. A power they say they were born to rule with.

But right now the government is falling apart… let’s hope the voters are paying attention.

It is true that in law Christian Porter has no case to answer. To be brutally honest, it is now non-existent.

The criminal case against Porter is not weak. It is now non-existent. The complainant has not made a police statement, cannot be interviewed as she has died, the alleged offender has denied the allegation; there is no forensic evidence, no witnesses, no crime scene and no CCTV.

Having no case to answer, and as a consequence, is what Scott Morrison will use as his defence of the man.

He will say that there is nothing of substance to put to him. All of this is correct and irrefutable, but even in Scott Morrison’s saying there was no need for an inquiry, public opinion for one remains full of anger.

Morrison was well supported by The Australian, who in last Saturday’s online edition led Porter’s defence with no less than five headline articles on its front page.

“Rape stalemate threat to PM’s agenda”

“Unreconcilable teenage memories”

” ‘Get Porter’ a media disgrace”

“Grotesque political saga ignores principles of justice”

“The pile-on over Christian Porter will prove to be the defining test of Scott Morrison”

(All of these articles are paywalled).

In contrast, a first-blush view suggests the following media outlets support an enquiry into Christian Porter’s fitness to remain as Attorney General:

Porter is another example of the government’s method of scandal management, Crikey

Has Christian Porter been subjected to a ‘trial by media’? No, the media did its job of being a watchdog, Pearls and Irritations

The week that will never go away, The AIMN

If he did it
‘Just imagine for a second…’, The Monthly

Morrison’s response to the allegation against Christian Porter raises uncomfortable questions, ABC News

As do The Greens, Labor and the Crossbench.

Anyone who cares to watch “Inside the Canberra Bubble” might also conclude that Porter’s long history of predatory behaviours, adultery, lying, manipulation and political treachery makes it reasonably straightforward that an inquiry is necessary.

Those like me who argue for an inquiry are not seeking to have Porter institutionalised. We just seek greater clarity of what happened when Porter was 17, what has happened since, and is he suitable to serve as Attorney General.

Are we to believe, as he repeatedly said at his press conference, that “it just didn’t happen” or are we to imagine that it did.

Writing for The Monthly, Rachael Withers puts it this way:

“But just imagine for a second that it is true. Just imagine that for a second. The flip side of Porter’s statement applies also to the people who believe him wholeheartedly, because this is what so many in the Coalition and the media seem unwilling to do. Imagine if a teenage Porter once forced a drunk 16-year-old into oral sex, kicked and choked her, and then anally raped her when she passed out, leaving her bleeding and ashamed. What would it mean if such a man was allowed to remain attorney-general of this country, without so much as an inquiry?”

How do we find the truth when Rossleigh makes this point and many others in this article for The AIMN:

“So let’s deal entirely in hypotheticals here, but let’s keep them non-party specific so that we can establish the general rule and then look at whether or not there should ever be an exception. Let’s give Christian Porter his time off and accept his statements at face value and believe him when he says that he has never been made aware of any of the allegations at any time and he strenuously denies them even if he has never been made aware of what they were except by Scott Morrison who hadn’t read them either but somehow knew that Christian Porter was the person to ask about the allegations of which neither of them had the specifics.”

Canberra is where the Australian government should be working with its total concentration on what is best for the country.

Instead, it seems we have a cesspit of politicians whose focus is entirely on themselves and their egregious conduct, who with little attention paid to governing the country, are presently squirming like maggots desperately trying to disclaim responsibility.

The dishonesty and the muddiness of the political mind is commonplace, and we’ve become used to it, but the abuse and the molestation of women is not normal.

But it seems the males who swagger the corridors of our parliament house think it is normal, with a nod and a wink, and now how frantically they are trying to make the fact of it go away.

The circumstances around Porter’s behaviour towards women more generally is questionable.

And these are the bastards we’ve elected to run our country. Their posturing is sickening!

Unfortunately for Porter, his reputation precedes his declaration of innocence, and Morrison is reaping what he has been sowing for years. He shows no inclination to reprimand anyone, be it Kelly, Christiansen, Reynolds or Porter.

Incidentally, Reynolds has announced she will take another month of leave.

Mr Morrison, if you want leadership perhaps you can heed the words of Joe Biden:

“I’m not joking when I say this: if you ever work with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I will fire you on the spot. No ifs, and, or buts.”

That is leadership.

What about the women of the future, those desirous of a career in politics no matter what rung of the ladder?

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins will lead an investigation into the workplace culture at Parliament House and responses to sexual harassment and assault. As opposed to her last, this one will take in broader aspects of the sexual goings-on in Australia’s parliament.

Fifty recommendations arose from her last report delivered only last November, a few of which have been implemented.

Back to the Porter scandal, the Prime Minister said he would also “welcome” a coronial inquiry in South Australia if the coroner opted for one.

But sexual conduct is only a part of the cultural behaviour of those who frequent the halls of parliament. Will this inquiry include the culture of suppressing freedom of information, telling the truth, transparency, business ethics, open corruption and religious interference?

Culture is a complicated, fluid thing, a learned and shared behaviour. Sex is only part of it.

“Ditch the Witch,” “JuLiar… Bob Brown’s Bitch” Were thrown at Julia Gillard by Abbott supporters and never reprimanded for them.

Respect for women is also a moral, cultural act.

Reminiscent of his “I don’t hold the hose, mate” response to the bushfire catastrophe Scott Morrison gives us,, and “I am not the police a force,” when a 16-year-old is raped.

As reported by Laura Tingle on The ABC live blog.

“Porter argued on Wednesday that “if I stand down from my position as Attorney-General because of an allegation about something that simply did not happen, then any person in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life’s work based nothing more than an accusation that appears in print”.

“I am not standing down or aside.”

Yet people’s lives are destroyed by allegations all the time, often about something that “simply did not happen”, like the RoboDebt scheme over which Porter and a number of other ministers, including the Prime Minister, presided over for several years, including a period in which they had received advice that it was unlawful but said nothing.”

When the NSW Police announced this week that they would not be proceeding with any investigation, they also may have caused a tragedy for those like me who would have liked the allegation against Porter investigated.

But also, for the man himself who will always remain labelled an “alleged rapist.”

Both Porter and Reynolds should resign to save the government more wind that they usually do on matters that require significant amounts of spin.

More than a year after being rebuffed in the Federal Court, then politically critiqued and subsequently discredited, the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) continues to take advantage of the Australian taxpayers, says Tony Burke, Labor’s shadow minister for industrial relations.

Following a Senate Estimates hearing on Tuesday revealing that the ROC has spent over $1.3 million of taxpayer funds in a dogged pursuit of the Australian Workers Union (AWU), with $344,881 of that total coming after the Federal Court ruled last October that the ROC’s raids on the Melbourne and Sydney offices of the AWU in 2017 were invalid, Burke has called for the ROC to surrender its pursuit of the AWU towards an apparent High Court appeal.

“A year ago, the Federal Court quashed the ROC’s investigation into the AWU, finding there were no ‘reasonable grounds’ for it and the Commissioner had acted ‘based on a suspicion’,” Burke said.

“The ROC was fatally compromised by this ruling. It was their first major investigation and they botched it completely.

“But instead of abandoning this ridiculous case, they decided to double down and waste even more money on an appeal,” added Burke.

While the ROC is currently appealing the Federal Court’s initial decision centered around the AWU’s series of donations to activist group GetUp! in 2006, with all signs pointing towards an appeal to the High Court if the appeal is unsuccessful, Burke cites an inappropriate timing for the ROC to persist in its chase of a union whose origins were formed in the shadow of the Eureka Rebellion in historic Creswick, near Ballarat, in 1886 and claims to possess a total membership of over 72,000 workers (as of 2018).

And Burke has even gone to the extent of making an appeal of his own – to appeal to the Morrison government to step in and put a stop to the ROC’s agenda.

“As we head towards a trillion dollars of Liberal debt, the Government plans to borrow more to fund this toxic campaign, treating taxpayers’ money as if it was their own,” Burke said.

Burke’s points about the ROC are well-founded. Since its creation in 2017, and acting under the auspices of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) to monitor and regulate trade unions and employer organisations, the ROC’s dogged determination of its fight against the AWU appears to be matched only by incidents of its own incompetence.

• In 2018, it got caught out accidentally leaking information from a whistleblower’s e-mails, even after the whistleblower had insistently requested that the ROC not to contact their organisation, thereby blowing their cover and voiding their anonymity.
• Ahead of the 2017 raids, Senator Michaelia Cash – then the government’s minister for employment – clumsily denied that her tipping off of the raids to the ROC and a number of media outlets, along with her former media advisor David De Garis, were politically-motivated actions against GetUp! or then-Labor leader Bill Shorten, who served as the AWU’s leader at the time of the donations. Instead, she blamed the ROC for not notifying her office “as the relevant minister” about the raids.
• In the 2018 federal budget, when the likes of the ABC, the FWO, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) all received cuts to their funding, the ROC received an increase, thereby signalling clues and allegations that the organisation acts as a political operative unit rather than to moderate over the union movement.

Michaelia Cash, Employment Minister in 2017 (Photo from abc.net.au)

And whereas Burke maintains that the ROC was “fatally compromised” by the initial ruling from the Federal Court over the AWU raids – or in his view, perhaps should have been shelved permanently – the agency has now lost any credibility in the eyes of the public.

“The Australian public simply cannot have any faith in the ROC’s competence or its impartiality,” said Burke.

“It’s a biased and politicised anti-worker body set up by the anti-worker Liberals and Nationals for the sole purpose of attacking unions – the organisations that fight for secure jobs, better wages and safer workplaces,” he added.

So does the ROC act as a political entity, or a watchdog overseeing the actions of the union movement?

“Our key objective is to encourage behaviours in registered organisations that see them consistently focused on acting in the best interests of their members, ensuring members’ money is spent in a way that is transparent, properly authorised and which complies with their obligations under the Registered Organisations Act, and their rules,” says Mark Bielecki, the commissioner of the ROC, in a statement defending its own transparency.

But as the AWU and its legal representation at Maurice Blackburn contend, even at the time of the initial ruling, the ROC fails its own litmus test regarding its transparency.

“As today’s judgement makes clear, the ROC had no proper legal basis to conduct an investigation into the AWU’s compliance with its rules some ten years earlier. The investigation into that matter was tainted by illegality and so the court has ruled it was invalid,” Josh Bornstein, the principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn who represented the AWU in the case, said at the time of the ruling.

And Bornstein’s statement was echoed by the AWU itself on the day.

“This has been an exhausting, resource-draining, and distracting process for our union, but it’s a vital part of democracy that the actions of public agencies can and should be held to account,” said Daniel Walton, the AWU’s national secretary.

So it appears that the ROC – regardless of whether the topic consists of its finances, budgets, agendas or the execution of its official duties – needs to clean up its house, based on the views of its critics.