Do you feel the sense of desperation in the air?

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has decided that a dam should be built at Urannah in Central Queensland that will according to Crikey

reinforce the Coalition’s electoral dominance of a regional Queensland seat, directly benefiting the Nationals’ holdings of Flynn, Capricornia and Dawson. It would also send an explicit message to the fossil fuel industry that the government is not retreating from spending significant amounts backing coal production — a message it would also hope reaches voters in such electorates as Hunter.

There are a couple of problems with Joyce’s grand plan. Joyce claimed the money was in the March 2022 Federal Budget. First, he has to convince the Queensland Government to stump up the remaining money to build the dam. The Queensland Government doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do that. Then he has to convince the Queensland Government to approve the dam under state legislation as well as apply to the Federal Environment Department for Federal approvals, which again the Queensland Government doesn’t seem to be interested in.

And then the final obstacle is Joyce’s Cabinet colleague, Senator Sussan Ley who is the environment minister. When asked for comment, Ley’s response was

The first step had to be made by the Queensland government: “We will consider matters of environmental significance that impacts the dam, on world heritage places, on natural heritage, on migratory species, on threatened species and so on.
“There is no suggestion that this proposal steps outside our national environmental law.”
The dam was first considered about 60 years ago and 25 feasibility studies have denied it environmental endorsement. Local Indigenous groups have also opposed it.

Joyce’s claim that the proposed dam will enhance the country’s economic growth and stability is argued by others. Again, from Crikey

This wealth guarantee is contradicted by an economic analysis prepared for a Mackay conservation group which argued the return on every dollar spent on the dam would be just 75 cents. A separate report claimed the dam would cover 9850 hectares of suitable high-value cropping farm development and 12,250 hectares of improved grazing land.

Parts of Bundaberg are in the electorate of Flynn. Current Mayor of Bundaberg (and former LNP Queensland Minister) Jack Dempsey claims

“It’s a false stereotype that all regional Queenslanders are coal-loving climate-change deniers,” Dempsey said.
“The minister for coal – Keith Pitt – he doesn’t actually reflect the views of our community on environmental issues.”
“We’re about clean, green, quality products.”

Keith Pitt, the Federal Resources Minister, is the federal member for Hinkler, who represents the rest of Bundaberg and surrounding areas.

A week later, the Morrison Government announced they would fund the $5.4 Billion ‘Hells Gate Dam’ on the Burdekin River in North Queensland despite the environmental assessments and business case being incomplete. The ALP’s environment and water spokesperson, Terri Butler reminded us that the dam was originally announced before the 2019 election. Independent North Queensland MP Bob Katter has been promoting this dam since he was a state MP in 1981 and has claimed the current scheme is incomplete. Queensland’s Water Minister Glenn Butcher commented

it was “interesting” to see the Commonwealth investment earmarked so early.
The state is still providing technical assistance to proponent, Townsville Enterprise, for its business case.
“Investment decisions should be informed by completed detailed business cases, the Hells Gates business case is not yet complete – this means it hasn’t even received necessary federal approvals,” he said.

It seems to be common practice in Australia to ‘means test’ in some ways government assistance to the public. Should you qualify for an aged pension, or child support or any number of other government assistance programs, including assistance after natural disasters, you have to be able to demonstrate that you meet a financial test. The test might be based on your income, your assets or apparently which electorate you live in and is mostly ‘designed’ to ensure that recipients who need the assistance are prioritised over those that only want it. That is fair enough. If someone doesn’t have the income or assets to support themselves, we pride ourselves on living in an egalitarian society and should be happy to assist. That’s how the process works, and it has done so for decades.

So how do we explain the governments of Australia funding private schools? While a generalisation, independent schools are usually the ones with the marketing departments to generate more students, the ‘better’ facilities including ‘necessary’ things such as indoor Olympic standard pools, elite level sporting grounds or permanent ‘camp grounds’ well removed from the school’s main campus, glossy advertising of Year 12 results, private transportation services for students and so on. At the same time, some public schools in the major cities around Australia have to roster their student lunch breaks so there is a little circulation room in the bitumen square that passes for a playground. Yet, significant funding is given to private schools along with inaccurate and uneducated opinions on the alleged differences in educational standards between public and independent schools. Stand-in Education Minister Stuart Robert – yes Morrison’s ‘Brother Stuie’ – has claimed that independent schools don’t employ teachers that are in the bottom 10% of some undisclosed rating process, those teachers are forced to work in public schools where they are protected. The inferred logic being if you want the best teachers for your Tarquin or Madison, send them to a private school. Remember all schools teach to the same curriculum and their student’s work is moderated across the sector – not just schools in the private or public cohorts.

Like Joyce, he’s dreamin’. We commented on Citipointe Christian School in Brisbane (a school run by a Pentecostal Church) demanding early this year that parents sign a document that restricted the students to religiously acceptable gender roles and attitudes. The school’s principal at the time (who has theological but no educational qualifications) chose to take leave for an indefinite period after the justified public outcry. Now the same school has asked teachers to sign a contract that forbids all personal relationships except those that are acceptable to the particular religious principles of the church that operates the school.

Robert’s claim is demonstrably false because if the best teacher for the job falls foul of the implications of the teaching contract and is not employed, that particular independent school won’t employ the best teachers. Not because they are a bad teacher, only because their lifestyle is not acceptable to the church that owns the school based on their literal reading of the parts of a religious text that suits their purpose, regardless of the hundreds of logical and factual errors contained in the bible. Robert has apparently offered no evidence to support his claim, so it is logically based on either privilege or snobbery, not reality. The reality is there are plenty of good teachers who successfully engage with their students at public and private schools. There are also some teachers that underperform across the sector, just as there are good hard-working politicians and others that don’t adequately represent their electorates while claiming as much as they can from the system.

If it wasn’t so tragic, it’ll be funny.

What do you think?

In The Guardian’s detailed history of the ‘Tampa affair’ which occurred twenty years ago, you will notice a number of similarities with the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Sadly, you will also notice that the response by current Prime Minister Morrison is worse than then Prime Minister Howard’s response twenty years ago.

As David Marr discusses in another article from The Guardian

The Tampa affair was about votes. John Howard was facing his second re-election, one he was almost certainly going to win even without the Twin Towers coming down. But stopping the Tampa made victory more certain. The lives of 438 people crammed on the Palapa were, in effect, put at risk to give Howard a bit of an edge at the polls.

That ruthlessness is part of our politics today. The Coalition is still pressing those buttons. Labor is still hopelessly wedged. And the country is still using the language invented – brilliantly – to make a grubby operation blocking refugees sound like an act of national salvation.

Not refugees, but asylum seekers. Not indefinite imprisonment on a barren tropical island, but the Pacific solution. Not slamming the gates shut on helpless people, but border protection. Not violating our treaty obligations, but saving lives at sea.

With what can only be really described as a complete lack of human decency, the Australian Government wrote to more than 100 Afghan nationals that worked for the Australian Government in Afghanistan either as direct employees or contractors. This group of people, who were out of a job because the Australian Embassy and troops were withdrawn, probably have valid concerns about their future should the Taliban discover their past employment. The letter advised them that special humanitarian visas to enter Australia would not be given and they should ‘try the usual channels’ where there was an allocation of 3,000 Visas for Afghan refugees carved out of the already inadequate refugee intake.

A day later, the decision was apparently reversed. Don’t for a minute think there was any sense of compassion as Defence Minister Dutton warned

that an unspecified number could pose a security threat, and said he would be criticised “if one person was brought in that committed an atrocity in our country”.

Dutton also told ABC TV some of the applicants may be hiding their true identity or “forum shopping” by seeking visas from multiple countries, and he said some family groups included “males of fighting age” and “we don’t know enough about those individuals”.

Morrison was just as bad suggesting at a Press Conference

that only people who came through “official channels” would be settled in Australia.

He indicated at least 3,000 Afghan nationals would be allowed to come to Australia this year under the existing humanitarian program.

But the prime minister said more than 4,200 Afghans currently in Australia on temporary visas would not be permanently settled, signalling that there would be no softening of the government’s stance on people who arrive on boats.

It’s probably a good bet that the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be kind to either group should they not be given Australian residency.

For twenty years or so after the end of World War 2, both sides of Australian politics welcomed refugees from Europe to Australia. For most of that time the founder of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert Menzies was Prime Minister. At the fall of Vietnam, Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser welcomed thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Australia. ALP Prime Minister Bob Hawke gave any Chinese students who wanted to stay here a permanent visa to do so after the crackdown of a democracy movement in China that most of us remember because of the Tiananmen Square massacre. These refugees and their descendants have made enormous contributions to Australia’s prosperity, culture and way of life. Hell, even Tony Abbott let those affected by a change of regime in Syria and Iran stay in Australia.

It’s not hard to assume that Bob Menzies would be ashamed of Morrison’s Liberal Party. Malcolm Fraser would be horrified – but don’t take our word for it, his granddaughter says so in this opinion article that ran in Nine’s Newspapers recently.

In a world where developed democracies such as Canada, the US and Europe are opening their arms and creating paths to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees (after all we all helped to create the current situation) – Australia says ‘not our problem’ apart from a token airlift. It beggars belief. We can and should be doing much better than this.

What do you think?

One of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s grand announcements early in the pandemic was the formation of a group of business and technical experts to plan the way out of the (then assumed) deep economic pandemic recession. The theory was this group of ‘experts’ would develop the mitigation strategy for managing the economics around COVID-19 and the ‘climb out of the abyss’ when an eventual ‘cure’ to COVID was identified. In September 2020, the glossy marketing information and the press release promoting a ‘gas fired’ recovery was the result. If you want to see the Government’s Press Release it’s here but neither Morrison, Energy Minister Angus Taylor or Northern Australia Minister Keith Pitt mention the environmental impacts of burning more fossil fuels.

While burning gas isn’t as devastating to the environment as burning coal – the end result could be compared to being a ‘little bit pregnant’ – there is no halfway, just as pregnancy is an ‘all or nothing’ event, burning fossil fuels is damaging to the environment. Part of Morrison’s plan was the opening of various probable reserves of natural gas for exploration and exploitation by mining and energy companies, the same group of people that had representation on the Morrison’s advisory panel. Despite the rhetoric, no one seems to be particularly interested in ‘owning’ the decision – except for Morrison.

We recently discussed the lack of private capital interest in the proposed Kurri Kurri (NSW Hunter Valley) gas fired power plant that Morrison claims is absolutely necessary for electricity supply on the almost National Grid despite ‘the market’ claiming it might be switched on for 2% of the year, if at all. Of course the claim of the coal crusaders across both major political parties is that we need fossil fuelled power generation for the baseload.

The recent catastrophic failure of a turbine at the Callide C power station near Biloela in Central Queensland demonstrates that even ‘reliable’ coal fired power generation is not something that we should bank on. Callide C is one of the newest power stations in the country and the turbine in question was overhauled last year to, as the reports suggest, ‘operate safely and reliably’.

While considering the calls from various interest groups for more baseload power, it is actually interesting to read the definition of baseload power – it’s not what you think.

Baseload, however, is not a virtue. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the minimum required amount of electricity to keep the lights on.

It’s the opposite. It instead describes one of the fundamental shortcomings of coal-fired electricity generators and the inflexibility of steam engines. You can only turn them down to a certain point – the baseload – beyond which, you have to shut them down. They then take weeks to fire back up.

The railways swapped to diesel and electric traction decades ago to overcome the same issue. It’s far easier and cheaper for the operator to turn up, turn the machine on and go. A gas-fired power plant can also be switched on and off at will, so Morrison’s gas plan does have one advantage over coal fired power generation. Pity there are also some deal breakers with burning stuff to make electricity.

Where’s the gas coming from? Morrison’s open invitation to prospectors to invest in potential gas-producing assets is probably going nowhere when the large energy companies such as Shell, Chevon and Exxon Mobil are being ordered by courts or their own shareholders to substantially reduce carbon emissions almost immediately. His ‘gas-fired’ power plant will initially operate on diesel as there is no gas extraction in the area and seemingly no private concern that will commit the funding to make it happen.

The economics don’t stack up. Regardless of the traditional wisdom, political will or the honestly held beliefs of some members of the community, renewable energy is cheaper to produce than energy produced by fossil fuel and in most cases is dispatchable, hardly the case with coal fired generators. True, the sun doesn’t shine at midnight, but wind continues as do the action of the waves. There is also existing and well understood technology to store solar power for ’later on’ – not all of it being large scale batteries, although large scale batteries also play a pivotal role in stabilising the grid.

The Australian Federal Court has ruled that the Nation’s Environment Minister and Government “has a legal duty not to cause harm to young people of Australia by exacerbating climate change when approving coal mining projects.” While the case will eventually get to the High Court, it is hard to make a logical argument that expansion or creation of infrastructure that produces fossil fuel for consumption doesn’t also increase carbon emissions.

Maybe the answer is literally staring at us in the face. Air is a gas, those that are actively promoting further environmental damage despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary are producing hot air. So is Morrison’s ‘gas-fired’ recovery just hot air and all about impressing those around him while trying to recover from the ‘damage’ he caused to the Conservative’s ‘small government’ and ‘budget surplus’ mantras?

What do you think?

Inaction on climate change is already costing Australia’s farmers countless dollars, and urgent political action is needed to avoid more extreme droughts, fires and floods, according to a group of farmers who don’t agree with the statements of Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Senator Matt Canavan, former Party leader Barnaby Joyce and others in the National Party – who’s claim to relevance is representing the people in ‘regional Australia’.

Prime Minister Morrison recently announced an aspiration for Australia to be a nation that emits net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As we’ve pointed out before

Every state in Australia, as well as 73 nations, 398 cities, 786 businesses and 16 investors have indicated that while a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is not easy, they intend to get there.

Morrison’s stated aspiration is similar to his pronouncements on Australia’s COVID19 response – stand up slightly after the real decision makers have worked out what to do, make a wishy-washy statement that has some relevance to the matter at hand and bask in the reflected glory of the successes of others. Even when the issue is solely a Federal issue such as quarantine for potentially infectious people coming into the country or the management of carbon emissions, Morrison is quick to abrogate responsibility to ‘the states’, ‘the market’ or ‘the regulator’ but quicker to claim responsibility when something implemented by others due to federal government inaction works as intended.

However, this time round, the ‘country bumpkins’ from the conservative rump of Morrison’s Coalition Government are upset. As David Crowe points out in the Nine Media newspaper titles, the ‘country bumpkins’ don’t believe the science and want to put one of their own, Barnaby Joyce, back into the leadership role of the National Party.

The ‘country bumpkins’ are building a straw man (something they might be good at if they really had any experience in their claimed constituency) by claiming the cost of a $30 carbon price on every tonne of burps and farts from the nation’s cow herd, then claimed this would cost farmers $70,000 each. As David Crowe goes on to point out – Morrison ruled out a carbon tax the previous day. The argument is a furphy, but watch the ‘country bumpkins’ claim that their hard work behind the scenes has saved regional Australia from an absolute catastrophe (and tearing down the straw man they constructed – the real point of the exercise). The Guardian recently presented an analysis on how the adults over the other side of the Tasman are managing a transition to a ‘net-zero’ emissions economy by 2050 – and it does include addressing every tonne of ‘burps and farts’ from cattle.

Fortunately a representative group of those who really understand and run successful businesses in regional Australia disagree with their alleged representatives – and demonstrate that they are not the ‘country bumpkins’ in this discussion

“In 2019, the last year of the drought, Australia imported wheat,” said Charlie Prell, a sheep and wind farmer from Crookwell and chair of Farmers for Climate Action.

“The potential impact of climate change on food security, not just pricing but the availability, is dramatic – the wheat fields [sic] are going through the floor.”

Mr Prell stressed he was “not a zealot” but a farmer who didn’t want to see his communities suffer the consequences of unmitigated climate change.

The National Farmers Federation also supports a target of ‘net-zero’ by 2050

The industry is making strong headway in reducing its emissions, with red meat expected to be carbon neutral by 2030, pork by 2025, and work underway for grains and dairy.

Mr Prell knows about this first hand – on his sheep farm he has wind turbines, which creates another revenue stream that’s not seasonal.

… and Ernst and Young have found that if nothing is done by 2070, the Australian economy will have a COVID19 sized hole each and every year.

Either a ‘net-zero’ by 2050 target is policy (despite the weasel wording) or it isn’t. Morrison has done nothing to convince any of us that the environmental statement was anything more than smoke and mirrors. He certainly hasn’t stood up to put the ‘country bumpkins’ back in their boxes, or to ensure everyone was on board before making the announcement.

If you want to argue the ‘country bumpkins’ aren’t in the same party as Morrison so he can’t control them, technically you have a point however federally the Liberal Party and the National Party have been joined at the hip for decades. What spin will Morrison and the ‘country bumpkins’ employ when the EU and possibly the USA decide to put a ‘cross border carbon tax’ on nations that are seen as environmental freeloaders – something that is far more likely than you might think.

What do you think?

At the moment, some Premiers and Chief Ministers are being described as heartless, without compassion, cruel and nasty. The descriptions are being applied because of decisions made by the individual Premiers and Chief Ministers or their delegates to contain, to the best of their ability, the spread of COVID-19 in their communities.

While it might be ‘heartless’ for one to miss the interstate funeral, is the risk of inadvertently infecting 90-year-old Aunt Doris at her dear husband Bert’s funeral worth it? Don’t forget there are all the other mourners, the funeral home staff as well as hundreds of others that could be infected through community transmission of a virus with no prevention or treatment medication available at present. It is certainly heartless to run the risk of inadvertently infecting the Uber driver that takes the infected person to the airport, to infect a number of passengers on the plane seated around the infected person, infect the relative that picks up the infected person at the destination, infect the staff in the coffee shop and incidental contacts along the way because you didn’t know you had COVID-19 when you went to pay respects to Uncle Bert.

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to insist on indefinite detention of refugees who have a legal right under a United Nations treaty signed in 1951 by an Australian Government led by Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies that clearly states that people who determine themselves to be refugees have the right to seek sanctuary in any country around the world? The treaty doesn’t specify how or when the refugee has to travel to the country, so the argument of the Rudd as well as the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government that flying into the country is acceptable while arriving by boat is not only illogical but just plain wrong. Those that do arrive by plane have some documentation to get out of their country (which makes the refugee status questionable). Those that overstay visas to enter Australia are acting illegally despite Border Force usually allowing them to stay in the community rather than being sent to some detention facility – which might not be Australian mainland if your only choice is a probably leaky boat.

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to insist on those requiring support to find a new job live on $40 a day for months or years on end as practiced by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government while federal politicians ‘living away from home allowance’ for one night is $288? And arguably even more heartless, if that is possible, after initially increasing the unemployment rate to something that people can actually live on due to COVID-19, they start reducing it during the worst recession Australia has ever encountered.

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to ask why airlines who are still flying into Australian airspace are allowed to price gouge because of limited capacity as this ABC News article discusses?

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to discuss the commodification and lack of care given to our elderly and infirm in what the Federal Government ironically calls an aged care system? Certainly the rot set in a long time ago and both sides of politics deserve some of the blame. This article in The Saturday Paper (paywalled) discusses how various federal governments in Australia have stood by for nearly a quarter of a century and watched while the care for our elderly was corporatised and the residents seen as profit generators for the large corporate entities that own a large percentage of Australia’s aged ‘care’ homes. The current Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government seem to have known about the problems and only acted to ensure greater profits for the corporate entities.

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to only be critical of some state premiers for their responses to COVID-19? It seems the criticism from Morrison and his cheer squad are targeted at the border restrictions implemented by the Queensland (ALP) Premier on residents of NSW, the ACT or Victoria rather than the Tasmanian Liberal Premier who is using his island to advantage at the moment, or the South Australian Liberal Premier who opened his borders to residents of the ACT on 15 September (provided they fly direct). It would have nothing to do with the Queensland state election in late October, would it?

If we are talking about heartless, is it heartless to insist on some state premiers opening their borders using examples of those who can’t attend significant life events in Australia while insisting on those wishing to travel overseas to go through a bureaucratic process to leave the country?

Governments around Australia have significantly reduced service capacity in areas that at some point will be required to be delivered urgently. The Federally funded and managed aged care system, Victoria’s public health system and LNP Minister Peter Dutton’s Border Control system have all been found wanting in the current pandemic. Conservative Governments promoting ‘small government’ or ‘reducing waste’ (such as Campbell Newman’s sacking of some 14,000 Queensland public servants when coming to power in 2012) while demonising and withdrawing funding from well-regarded services such as Medicare, the ABC, TAFE, ensure that when suddenly required, our society gets a sub-standard response to an abnormal event. Then, the politicians and vested interests look for someone to blame.

COVID-19 is a health crisis which leads to an economic ‘flat line’. If you don’t fix the health crisis first, you won’t have an economy to take off life support. In a statement distributed on 15 September, 35 eminent economists agree that the health problem needs to be resolved first. They probably have a better idea of economics than the editors of various newspapers and most conservative politicians.

The heartless ones here are Morrison and his political and media cheer squad, who despite claiming ‘we’re all in this together‘ never let a chance go by to gain a perceived political advantage.

What do you think?

Have you ever noticed that if a number of politicians don’t really want to answer a question, they ‘reject the premise’ or ‘reject the characterisation’ rather than answer it? Current Prime Minister Morrison is a past master of the ‘art’.

The implied message is that the question for some reason is either beneath their ‘dignity’ to answer or ‘too silly’ to be bothered thinking about. The response gives the impression the question is awkward or will bring up an issue that the particular politician doesn’t want to address. A similar sentiment popularised by Adam Savage on the TV series Mythbusters is ‘I reject your reality and substitute my own’. As the Urban Dictionary suggests, the

quote basically means “you may be technically right, but you’re not changing my mind.”

While it could be argued that Adam Savage used the line for comedic value, the concept of refusing the premise or the characterisation of a question is not only deflection, it is suggesting that the question is so far way from being meaningful it should never have been asked.

However, if someone is asking the question, there is clearly some interest in a genuine and honest response. Politicians are supposed to be accountable to the people they represent for their entire term, not only for a few months every third or fourth year when it’s time to kiss the babies, shake the hands and promise that their particular beliefs and ideologies are far better than any other choice. If a reporter at a press conference is told the premise of their question is not accepted, more often than not the impression is the politician is trying to hide something, because the politician hasn’t given us any justification to consider another option.

In other parts of our lives, we understand implicitly and accept that a flat “no” is never a good answer. When responding to our partner, employers, employees or children, if we are delivering an unfavourable outcome, most of us innately know that an explanation is required along with the “no” so the person receiving the message is aware of why there has been a negative response.

So why do politicians choose to look tricky, evil and dishonest by refusing the premise of a question or more simply deflecting it? Discussing ‘why we are or not’ rather than just ‘yes or no’ does take a little longer than the length of a soundbite on the nightly news, and there probably are questions asked that make the politician wish for the ground to open up and swallow them. However, if politicians put themselves up for ‘no holds barred’ long term interviews more often we all might have a better appreciation of why various decisions are made and what’s in it for us, engendering trust. It also might improve the typical shallow reporting of national events that seems to have been an ongoing issue in Australia (and elsewhere) for a number of years.

It’s just open communication and leadership. Most of us know that while saying what you really think about Aunt Beryl in front of your five-year-old (who repeats everything verbatim) may not be a particularly clever idea, explaining why something is or isn’t happening is a learning experience for your children. They realise there is more to a decision than the self-evident and should eventually realise you’re not saying ‘no’ just to be vindictive or annoying. In a similar way, if politicians actually explained why decisions were made, the reasonable amongst us would probably consider the evidence provided versus our pre-conceived ideas and understand and accept the basis for the decision — even if we don’t agree with it.

Leadership is the ability to make a decision that is believed to be correct based on a set of circumstances; and then if the circumstances change or are demonstrated to be incorrect, admitting the circumstances have changed and re-assessing the decision. Open communication is discussing the reasons for a decision and if relevant, the reasons the initial decision was incorrect. If people who claimed to be political leaders did admit errors and discuss reasons, the method of operation for ‘shock jock journalists’ would have to change as there would be no fodder for the ‘gotcha’.

Rejecting the premise or the characterisation of the question points to trickiness and deceit. Taking the time to provide an explanation is much more open and a discussion around why the question was inane, irrelevant or pointless demonstrates there is nothing to hide.

While we have seen traces of real leadership and communication during the current pandemic period, at this stage it is certainly too soon to be able to call most of our political ‘leaders’ authentic leaders and communicators. We have an opportunity to embed a ‘new normal’ in political and business life into the future — our future leaders need to answer the question rather than reject or deflect them. Who knows, they might engender trust if they do.

What do you think?

If you have a memory that is better than the media and Coalition Government hope you do, you would probably remember when the Rudd ALP Government, challenged by what are arguably similar economic conditions to those today, primed the economy with a three-pronged approach. The theory was that there was some immediate stimulus to the economy – effectively giving most Australian families and welfare recipients a $900 cheque, another injection once everyone had spent their ‘windfall’ in the form of subsidies for home energy efficiency measures such as insulation (with an added dividend of reducing the demand for energy into the future) and finally an injection of significant cash into infrastructure, best remembered as the school hall building program.

It is impossible to state with certainty that the Rudd Government stimulus measures were the sole reason Australia apparently did not suffer as greatly as a number of other ‘developed’ economies as a result of the Global Financial Crisis, because we don’t have the alternate lived experience to compare with. However, the UK and USA, both with conservative governments who sailed a different course, were affected to a far greater extent by the economic circumstances of the time. Even if there was absolutely no economic benefit, which is a doubtful premise as people were easily convinced to spend ‘free’ money, those that insulated their houses are generally still enjoying the benefits through reduced energy bills, as are students and staff at the numerous schools across the country that received a school hall, which have a multitude of different uses depending on the creativity of the school community.

Different people spent the cheques in different ways. Some paid it off the mortgage, did some work around the house, fixed the car and so on. Kogan released the ‘Kevin37’ – a $900 37 inch high definition television, and shock horror some chose to spend their money at the pokies. Regardless of how people spent it, it did give a lot of people some money to put back into the economy at the time. The cheque printers and Australia Post delivered additional items, shops had more people buying and even the additional spend at the pokies meant additional shifts were required by the hospitality staff who work in the ‘pokies palaces’.

However, the media were not so friendly. A number of conservative politicians and media commentators including Andrew Bolt (yes, he has been around that long) were critical.

The first lot of Rudd’s cheques went out to many people who hadn’t actually earned that cash, or qualified for the handout because they already were too careless with money.

In fact, they were sent to precisely the people the Government guessed were most likely to spend them, not save.

Not surprisingly, millions promptly went on the pokies.

Frydenberg’s first budget also contained some stimulus in the form of cash handouts. Rather than mailing cheques around the country, Morrison’s LNP Government chose to retrospectively introduce some tax cuts that will give those who complete a tax return up to $1,080 per annum (depending on the individual’s tax position and income) once they have lodged their tax return for 2018/9 and the next two years. So far there is no mention of further measures to prime the economy such as Rudd’s environmental measures and infrastructure spending. Probably unsurprisingly, the Tax Office was reporting record early lodgements.

The delivery method is different (cheques are so 2008!) but the concept is similar. Up to 10 million Australians are getting a government handout for the next three years to go out and spend with no strings attached. Clearly, the ‘better economic managers’ are as they claim because they’ve shown capacity to update the value and process behind something done by the other side of politics 10 years ago.

It’s a pretty safe bet that some of the $1,080 ‘rebate’ payments will again end up being swallowed by the machines at the local pokies palace or otherwise spent in ways conservative commentators have considered unwise in the past. How people spend their ‘low- and middle-income rebate’ is really their business and none of us have the right to impose our own beliefs on others. Again, even extra demand at the pokies palaces will require additional hospitality staff to work and who knows Kogan might reinvent the ‘Kevin 37’. However, in 2019, where is the confected moral outrage by the likes of conservative politicians or commentators such as Andrew Bolt and their fellow travellers claiming that the ‘free’ money is horrible policy because some of it will be wasted by people who don’t deserve it?

If you can only hear crickets, it’s probably because the ‘better economic managers’ are handing out the cash this time.

What do you think?

There are certain responsibilities when you are driving a vehicle. You are required to comply with rules such as not being affected by drugs or alcohol, not checking your social media accounts while driving, maintaining control over your vehicle, parking only where allowed and so on. Some who make a living by driving have to comply with additional rules. For example, taxi and ride share drivers have to obtain authorisation from their state’s transport department as do drivers of buses. Truck drivers have a system of graduated licences and additional regulation which effectively means that not everyone with a truck licence can legally drive semis or ‘B Doubles’ on our major highways.

The transport industry also has ‘Chain of Responsibility’ legislation in most states. While all legislation is complex and there are differences between jurisdictions, the ‘Chain of Responsibility’ legislation requires all those in the transport industry to be responsible for the safety of the national transport fleet. So if the company manager or supervisor requires a truck driver to perform an action that is inherently unsafe, or the person consigning the freight requires the task to be completed in an unsafe manner, the person giving the direction can be held responsible for the consequences of the illegal instruction rather than the driver of the vehicle in question.

Pity there is no ‘Chain of Responsibility’ legislation for the Coalition Government. They seem to have no concept that they have been the government for over 6 years and therefore own the responsibility for their actions. Here’s a couple of examples.

On the first day of the 46th Parliament, Finance Minister Cormann was interviewed by Virginia Trioli on ABC’s News Breakfast. Cormann was being asked to discuss how the proposed tax cuts would be passed by the Parliament by the end of the week.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Look, here’s what I’m interested in, because you clearly have the numbers on the crossbench to pass that tax bill in its entirety. The Centre Alliance see no impediment. That’s their phrase. Cory Bernardi votes with you. Jacqui Lambie is on board. Why this repeated focus on Labor, Labor, Labor, to quote Barnaby Joyce?

Or Trade Minister Birmingham on ABC’s Insiders the previous weekend, again on the proposed tax cuts:

Simon Birmingham: We want to work with whoever is willing to pass this. But it is a stain on the Labor Party that will last all the way through to the next election. If they block and vote against tax relief for hardworking Australians. Now, what we know is that they say they’re going to try to amend this and put an alternate proposal forward. Not an alternate proposal that they took to the election, mind you. So they are saying that they won’t support the proposal the government…

Why should the opposition just roll over and support whatever dross the governing political party puts to Parliament? In the 46th Parliament, as in previous ones, no political party achieved an absolute majority before preference distributions. Therefore, no political party has the right to suggest that the public expects them to legislate whatever their policy planning process suggests is a good thing without discussion, debate or change.

Abbott, when Opposition Leader, gave the impression he would not support anything promoted by the Government of the Day. Benefit for the country, the environment or those with a disability (or even truth or accuracy for that matter) didn’t alter the constant negativity and obstruction. Gillard’s Government in particular showed some responsibility by working with others to achieve real and beneficial change for the country while highlighting the obstruction of Abbott. There is a large difference between highlighting actions taken by others and blaming them for an adverse outcome. While there may have been occasions where the legislation didn’t meet all of the objectives of the Gillard Government Party room or the ALP more generally – 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

By contrast, the current Coalition Government is hellbent on blaming the ALP for its failure to be able to work with the cards it was given. The ALP is the official Opposition – their job is to not just oppose but to suggest alternatives to government policy that, in their view, would provide a better outcome now and in the future. The ALP seems to understand both parts of their job as they were indicating they may not vote for legislation giving billions in tax cuts to high income earners in the term of the 47th or 48th Parliaments while offering suggestions on bringing forward middle-income earners’ tax cuts to generate additional economic activity. The ALP’s job isn’t to roll over on all the legislation put up by the Coalition and ask for a tickle on the tummy for being a good lap dog.

The ‘Chain of Responsibility’ in the transport industry extends to the Managing Director – if the person holding that role demands an employee to do something illegal, there are consequences. It’s the same in politics, the ‘Chain of Responsibility’ goes up to the Prime Minister. If he (in this case) can’t get his legislation through Parliament he should wear the consequences and either negotiate, withdraw or amend the proposal so the majority of Parliamentarians agree with it. It’s certainly a realistic expectation, Gillard did it for three years. Morrison’s failure to accept the ‘Chain of Responsibility’ for his government’s lack of consensus, negotiation skill or compromise is not the fault of the ALP or anyone else but himself.

What do you think?

The recent election was an exercise in marketing and not much else. Morrison promoted himself and ‘good economic management’ rather than the Coalition while flitting around the country handing out dollars to ‘deserving’ infrastructure projects, usually in marginal seats.

Shorten’s ALP had, by contrast, released a stack of policy over the last few years outlining changes they would make to make Australia a ‘fairer place’ for all. The policies and detail were so devilish, it even tripped Shorten up a couple of times.

Morrison’s claim for good economic management was his claim to have returned (past tense) the budget to surplus next year (future tense) – regardless of the tortured grammar evident in that statement – tax cuts for most wage earners over the next decade as outlined in the budget published in April and really, not much else. Compared to Shorten, Morrison didn’t have much to sell except his budget, himself and hope that the instability of the last six years would be forgotten. We published ‘The Cupboard was Bare’ just prior to the election which suggested that there really wasn’t much policy development work going on in the Liberal and National Parties, probably because they were too busy pulling the knives out of each other and cleaning up the blood on the floor, hoping that no one would notice.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how the Coalition seemed to come from behind and win on 18 May, the fact is they did. It could be, as Morrison has sort of claimed, a miracle. Brian Schmidt, Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University and a Nobel Laurate wrote an article in The Guardian on the Monday after the election suggesting the polls suffered from a confirmation bias which if true, clearly wouldn’t help those relying on the ‘accuracy’ of the polls. Shorten also had a harder ‘sell’ than Morrison, in that he had to appease winners and losers while promoting a fairer society in a world where extrinsic motivation seems to be a real issue.

Marketing slogans can be used for a variety of purposes. They can be negative, such as Abbott’s ‘carbon tax’ lie, unable to be proven such as ‘good economic management’, or even patriotic such as ‘football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars’ (even though the original version of that last one actually name checked apple pies and Chevrolets).

The point here is that Morrison and his party learnt the lesson Abbott and other politicians had passed down. Relentless repeating of a particular phrase will lodge it into people’s minds. The facts around the conversation don’t matter if the phrase is repeated often enough. Sure the ALP had a generally positive message throughout the election campaign in comparison to the Coalition’s negativity, but people remember and gradually believe the slogan rather than the nuanced discussion – demonstrating why advertising works.

And the ‘sell job’ for the Coalition’s next three years has already started – returned WA Liberal MP Christian Porter was on ABC’s Midday News on the Monday after the election claiming that Morrison had a resounding victory? Morrison didn’t have anything of the sort. The reality is that the Coalition just fell over the line in the House of Representatives and has to negotiate to get anything through the Senate, just as Turnbull did three years ago. Howard had a resounding victory in his last term as he had a majority in both houses. Howard then overstepped the mark by introducing Workchoices leading to his government being removed and Howard losing his seat in Parliament. However, just as repetitively claiming Holden cars are entirely Australian (when they never were) is gradually taken as a self-evident truth, Morrison’s slogans and ‘resounding victory’ are being used to gradually shape the ‘truth’ to something more palatable for the government.

After Morrison legislates his budget, his policy cupboard is bare. While Morrison will also be seen as the messiah within the Coalition for the next six to twelve months, after that the same factions and self-interest groups that infected the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments from 2013 will reappear, attempting to inject their pet proposals into the discussion claiming they have a ‘mandate’, because they believe their own advertising. Should the ‘mandate’ not be recognised, the self-interest groups will withdraw support leaving Morrison in a similar position to that he was in in the closing days of 2018. Morrison may also be tempted to pinch policy from the ALP or Greens and roll it out. Either way, Morrison could have a problem.

A smart Opposition Leader can sell two messages at once – even Abbott made a reasonable fist of it. Every time Morrison introduces legislation that was not specifically part of his policy at the 2019 election, the Opposition Leader should be asking, “where is the mandate?” If the policy is pinched, the Opposition needs to remind us where that policy is originally from and that while they are happy to see that Morrison can see the benefits, ask why the LNP couldn’t develop such a sensible concept without help? At the same time, the Opposition Leader should be using a tag line to suggest that they could do it better. If the economy goes south (which seems to be the general expectation), the question should be why couldn’t ‘good economic managers’ see this coming and make preparations in a similar way to Rudd in 2008.

Positive policy development is required but they need to sell it as well. Lots of good ideas never succeed because those involved in the idea seem to think the truth is self-evident – it isn’t. Why didn’t the ALP have a clear and consistent marketing program that started the day after Abbott looked on the ropes, which they might have capitalised on when Turnbull’s had his near-death experience at the 2016 election? Because they didn’t, only the rusted-on took the time to appreciate the nuanced discussion on policy fairness that Shorten tried to sell. It really doesn’t work when the other side just kept on saying they had ‘good economic management’ and ‘it wasn’t time’. A tag line can be positive or patriotic, like the Holden slogan from the 70’s. Maybe the ALP should have tried to sell a ‘fair-go plan’ that covered all their policies. It’s a sad reflection that the political party that launched tag lines in Australia has been beaten twice in the past decade because others remembered the importance of a tag line and consistent messaging better than the originator of the concept.

In 2016, we published 36 Faceless men, comparing the ‘need’ for Australian political parties to have an absolute majority when forming a government versus the preferred outcome in other countries where a coalition of political parties have to work together to form a government.

Three years ago we observed:

Really, [Australian] parliament is usually not being used as a place where legislation is debated and passed based on the perceived good for the country, rather it is the two major parties’ regular conferences and the wonderfully named ‘think tanks’ that have usurped the role. Then, when the relative party is finally elected to power (for it will eventually happen), the party policy will be rolled out as legislation and there is very little that the ‘average Australian’ can do about it, other that hope the worst excesses are rejected by the ‘feral’ Senate or someone looks at the polling numbers and joins the dots correctly.

Seems that nothing has changed. In March 2019, Teena McQueen (a Liberal Party National Vice-President) claimed on ABC-TV’s Q&A that coalitions lead to bad governments, despite every federal conservative government in Australia since World War 2, being a coalition of the Liberal and National Parties (a de-facto arrangement with private terms and conditions that has outlasted many real marriages).

Since we published 36 Faceless Men, we’ve had yet another Prime Minister and further demonstration of the fact Australia has had a pretty patchy record of genuine leadership over the past 20 years. Prime Ministers have either sought to suppress alternative viewpoints in the hushed corridors of power or have been too busy looking behind them for the person about to stab them in the back (in a figurative sense only one hopes). This is in a country where one of the ‘core’ beliefs is that a government needs an absolute majority to effectively govern.

The UK, Canada and USA have similar beliefs. Brexit debate/argument in the UK over the past 10 years has also claimed various political careers over a policy that is the perfect demonstration of how hard it really is to unscramble an egg despite the desire. In Canada, Trudeau has sacked ministers who have lost their sense of probity. The USA’s ‘mid-term’ elections saw Trump’s Republicans lose control of their House of Representatives in a demonstration of buyer’s remorse. Most other truly democratic countries in the world seem to survive without absolutely powerful individual political parties.

Maybe it isn’t because our respective politicians are clueless or incompetent, maybe the system is wrong. These figures, albeit from 2013, suggest that at best, the two major political groups in Australia have a combined membership of close to 100,000. From that ‘base’ these groups have to find party members that want to and are suitable to run for election, fundraise and manage the election process as well as represent the viewpoint of around 25 million Australians. From the same set of figures, the Collingwood AFL Club has an estimated 77,000 members and the combined membership of NRL Clubs is nearly double that of all political parties, so it is entirely possible that the two major political parties (ALP & Coalition) have a very small footprint around the country.

Much has been recently said about New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, including this recent ‘weekend’ article in The Guardian. In the article, we learn that Ardern’s Labour Party is in a coalition with NZ First and the NZ Greens. The Deputy PM is NZ First’s, Winston Peters. New Zealand changed their voting system in the mid-1990s to MMP, a process that almost invariably results in the need for a number of political parties to co-operate. In fact, both the German and French Governments are also negotiated co-operatives – and they (like New Zealand) seem to have outstanding longevity for their leaders in comparison to the machinations in the UK, Canada, Australia (all of which seem to have Prime Ministers on shaky ground) and the USA where there is already a conga-line of hopefuls trying to unseat Trump in 2020. In 2016, we observed that the Finnish Government was a coalition of six parties which seemed to work and furthermore, be stable. Should Australia determine to change to an electoral system based on the New Zealand MMP model, the chance of diversity in our politicians would be greater. As a result, there is the probability that legislation would consider the identified needs of all parliamentarians and a greater proportion of Australians, rather than only those sitting in the ruling party’s executive group.

In 2016, we wrote:

Minority governments can and do work in Australia and in reality have to represent the electors better than say the Newman government in Queensland, the last term of the Howard Federal government or the Kennett Victorian government ever did. While the electors finally won the day, in all cases it took longer than it should have for a sense of representation of the community’s interests to be restored.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Gillard’s minority Government worked for close to three years in spite of the outcry of some elements of the media and the Coalition Parties, producing emissions pricing, a new funding model for schools, the legislation behind the NDIS (with implementation subsequently botched by the Coalition government) and the Royal Commission into Institutional Abuse. Even the Turnbull/Morrison government that ended its term as a minority government got there intact, despite their own actions.

There does have to be a better way. Maybe ‘the way’ is to change the voting system to promote diversity and different points of view in a government. Who knows, it might lead to us mug punters respecting our lawmakers.

What do you think?