Prime Minister Morrison seems to be certain that the next federal election will be in May. Cynics would suggest as Parliament is only sitting for two weeks in April, the plan is to hone their political sales pitch, pork barrel marginal electorates and parachute past or failed LNP politicians and their supporters into positions where they could potentially influence government programs and decisions into the future. It’s time to call bovine excrement on the sales pitch (because the word ‘bull****’ would trigger a significant number of internet filters).

The Climate Council is on the record as suggesting that Australia is NOT on track to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions to below 2005 levels by 2030. In addition, they note:

This target is inadequate in terms of the science and Australia doing its fair share to tackle climate change. The independent Climate Change Authority recommended, in the lead up to the Paris climate talks in 2015, Australia adopt a 2030 emissions reduction target of 45-65% below 2005 levels.

Australia’s 2030 target is economy wide, meaning that Australia must reduce total greenhouse gas pollution taking into account emissions from all sectors – electricity, stationary energy, transport, fugitive emissions, industry, agriculture, waste and land use.

Morrison insists Australia will meet the target ‘in a canter’ (partial paywall), and in the last week or so announced a number of ‘measures’ to demonstrate his ‘commitment’. Given Morrison was the one handing a piece of coal around in the Parliament not that long ago and his party was the one claiming earlier this decade an emissions trading scheme would wipe out Whyalla and generate the $100 lamb roast, you really have to question the claim. Well The Saturday Paper did, (partial paywall) using evidence, and not favourably:

Having seen the policy and watched Morrison’s misrepresentations of climate reality in media interviews, Tim Baxter, a fellow of the Law School and associate of the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University, doesn’t see Australia cantering towards its climate goals. He sees a gallop. The “Gish gallop”.

For those unfamiliar with the term – as I was when Baxter used it – the Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique, named for an American creationist, Duane Gish, who employed it.

As Baxter explains: “It’s a term for when you throw out copious amounts of half-truths and baseless claims in rapid succession, knowing your opponent cannot rebut each one in the available time. It’s based on the premise that it takes vastly more effort to debunk nonsense than it takes to put it out in the first place.”

The Climate Council is a group of scientists that look at evidence, not popularity. They work in a similar way to the scientists that monitored every child born in Denmark for an 11-year period (around 650,000 people) and determined vaccination doesn’t have any effect on autism rates versus those who determine that vaccination is dangerous based on Andrew Wakefield’s UK ‘research’ using a group of:

just 12 patients, [which] could not be repeated in subsequent studies, and Wakefield lost his UK medical licence after it was revealed he had conflicts of interest in the case and had falsified data.

Morrison claims he ‘stopped the boats’ and protects our ‘strong borders’. In 2011, Morrison, as a part of the then Coalition opposition (together with the Greens), blocked the ‘Malaysia Solution’ to the ‘problem’ of potential refugees sailing on unseaworthy boats with the intention of arriving on Australian soil.

In all likelihood, those new laws would have significantly deterred asylum seekers from attempting the dangerous journey by boat. Without the legislation, 591 boats brought 39,070 people to Australia from October 2011 to July 2013. Tony Abbott has since expressed some regret about his role in blocking the plan. As far as I can tell, Scott Morrison hasn’t joined him.

From the same article in The Inside Story:

Nevertheless, asylum seekers are now arriving in greater numbers and at an increasing rate by the safer and cheaper means of the aeroplane. In the year ending June 2018, 27,931 people with visitor visas, the bona fides of which may be difficult to assess at points of departure to Australia, applied for protection visas, compared with the 18,365 boat arrivals who made such claims in 2012–13. The backlog of applications for protection visas at June 2018 was 177,140, and the backlog of appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has increased from 17,480 in 2016 to 52,491 in 2018.

The Inside Story goes on to argue that Morrison and Dutton’s Home Affairs Department within the Coalition government is an abuse of process, inefficient and weakens rather than strengthens the capacity of Australia to process asylum seekers claims in a humane and realistic timeframe. Most asylum seekers (who arrive by plane) are living in towns and cities around Australia waiting for their protection claims to be processed by Morrison and Dutton’s monolithic department that has to follow byzantine and inefficient policies to do the work required without adequate resourcing. Apparently the rhetoric around Home Affairs and offshore detention being the response needed for ‘border protection’ is more spin and marketing without evidence.

In both cases here, just as with other policies and practices of the current version of the Abbot/Turnbull/Morrison government, Morrison is clearly in trouble on a factual level and has to rely on bovine excrement and ‘Gish galloping’ to justify dodgy policy. Let’s call him out on it now, during the election campaign and at the ballot box.

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword.

So the Liberal Party has hired a bus as a new toy for PM Scott Morrison. As a special gesture, they have also arranged for the bus to be covered in advertising so no one can mistake who is on the bus. The initial run for the bus is from the Gold Coast to Townsville located on the North Queensland coast, something like 1400 km in four days. Despite the initial publicity, the bus run was subsequently truncated to Rockhampton and Morrison flew to Townsville.

It makes sense. Morrison claims he a ‘fair dinkum’ Prime Minister who is on the road to listen to the Queensland community. Since Morrison’s elevation to the Prime Ministership, he hasn’t reversed the opinion poll trend which suggests that the ALP would win an election somewhere between a whisker and comfortably. Neither has he successfully articulated (despite a lot of invitations) the reasons why he or Peter Dutton would be a better option for the Liberal Party coming into an election that Malcolm Turnbull was.

So, he of the oversized props, including a lump of coal in the House of Representatives and the ‘daggy dad’ persona, is the latest in a long line of politicians that have hired transport vehicles to ‘go out and meet the people’. The USA’s long distance train operator, Amtrak, suggests that the first use of a train in a political campaign was in 1836 and also mentions Truman’s 1948 ‘whistle stop’ tour of 28,000 miles and over 300 speeches. Reagan also campaigned by train, dubbing it the ‘Heartland Special’. The premise of using the train was the train could stop at every ‘whistle stop’ or small community and the candidate could give their standard speech from the train, then alight and meet the locals. The theory goes that the locals — having met the candidate for a high office would be more likely to vote for the person they met.

Trump and both Clintons used planes as have a number of Australian politicians — Australia doesn’t have 28,000 miles of rail lines in the one gauge for a start — and others around the world have used buses, from advertising on the side of commuter buses to the ‘Bill Bus’ used by Opposition Leader Shorten at the last Federal Election. Even the fictional Vice President in the satirical TV comedy series ‘Veep’, had a campaign bus. You might remember Turnbull pinched the slogan at the last Federal Election.

The point of being on a road or rail trip is to stop at the small local communities and meet and greet the locals. Morrison’s trip last week covered a number of Federal Seats held on small margins by the LNP in Queensland, so meeting and greeting in small communities is a great idea — right?

Well it might be, but Morrison wasn’t travelling on the bus. As the Brisbane Times reported:

The ghost bus will be left with only its driver on board for several key legs, including the 400 kilometre-plus stretch from the Sunshine Coast to Gladstone.

That’s right, Morrison and his entourage will be flying to and from campaign appearances on RAAF VIP planes that you and I are paying for. Apart from the obviously missed opportunity to personally charm some people in small towns that just happen to be in marginal LNP seats, the Australian taxpayer is paying for Morrison and crew to travel to and from political rallies at our expense.

So, the Liberal Party’s hired bus is another prop. If you’re a resident of any of the communities between the Sunshine Coast and Gladstone you are being ignored. It’s not like the 400 or so kilometres between the Sunshine Coast and Gladstone is out in the middle of the Nullabor and there are no communications facilities to allow Morrison and others to do something productive or more likely surf the internet when they are fed up with asking if they are there yet. The Federal Government funded a good deal of the communications infrastructure along the Bruce Highway some years ago to ensure communication was possible by either mobile phone or laptop connected to the 3 or 4G networks.

Who knows, if Morrison sat on the Scomobile ©, he might actually observe that the Bruce Highway (part of National Route 1), predominately funded by the Federal Government, is nowhere near the standard of the Hume and Federal Highways that would be used by Morrison if he chose to drive from his electorate to Canberra. But then again, he may not. As anyone who has caught public transport with advertising covering the windows will tell you — it’s almost impossible to see out of the window if it’s dirty or wet. Queensland is pretty dusty, there are usually some roadworks on the Bruce Highway to add a bit more dirt and it rained last week.

What do you think?

On 21 August, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said

I think in the immigration portfolio, you are defined by Nauru and Manus … I would love to get everybody off there tomorrow. If I could have brought them to Australia in a charter flight overnight I would have.

Admittedly this was the ‘kind, warm and fuzzy’ Dutton around the time he resigned as Turnbull’s Immigration Minister after challenging for the leadership and losing. History tells us he was going to make a second strike at the Liberal Party leadership a day or two after the first attempt and was furiously (and incorrectly) counting the numbers. History also tells us the second strike removed Turnbull but installed Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, himself a previous Immigration Minister.

By October, a number of children who are believed to be suffering extreme physical and mental health issues as a result of years of imprisonment on Nauru at the behest of the Australian Government were being repatriated to Australia for appropriate medical care following political pressure from ‘radical’ organisations such as Getup, progressive members of the Liberal Party and the Australian Medical Association. It’s not enough. As reported by Paddy Manning in The Monthly’s weekday afternoon email the next day, on 25 October federal Liberal MP Julia Banks spoke about the continued imprisonment of refugees on Nauru and

relayed the story of a little girl on Nauru who asked the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, “Why am I in prison?” When asked her name, the girl gave her number. “That little girl has a name,” said Banks yesterday. “That little girl has a life, and she’s living in child years. Let us as a country not have to apologise to that little girl and the other children on Nauru in years to come.”

As Paddy Manning went on to observe

Banks is no softie – she was the same MP who earlier this year reckoned she could live on Newstart – and arguably her speech was too little, too late.

Manning goes on to reflect on the ‘rank hypocrisy’ of the Australian Government’s apology to the victims of institutional child sexual abuse while we as a country are still committing equally disgusting and repulsive acts on children as Morrison made his apology speech (as a result of former PM Gillard’s courageous – in the correct sense of the word – Enquiry into Institutional Child Abuse) in Parliament.

That isn’t to suggest for a minute that those that were abused by members of institutions that were supposed to care for children don’t deserve an apology – they do. The people currently on Nauru also don’t deserve an indefinite jail term for the legally permitted action of seeking refugee status in a country of their choice either.

So the ‘cuddly, friendly’ Dutton in August wanted to bring all those on Nauru to Australia. Well Morrison re-appointed Dutton as Home Affairs and Immigration Minister, so he still can. Apparently it’s as simple as hiring a plane. What’s stopping him? Dutton had no trouble authorising that a couple of au pairs employed by people he knew to stay in the country (while declining the application for an Afghani translator employed by the ADF) so the precedent is there. C’mon, Pete, you can do it, hire the plane – those of us that aren’t on the extreme right wing of the Liberal Party dare ya.

The alternative is that Dutton was saying whatever he thought would give him a leg up in the popularity stakes by apportioning the blame to others. While there are others that are equally to blame here from both the red and blue teams in Parliament House, the person with the absolute power at the moment is Dutton. And he chose to use the physical and mental health of children in a vain and ultimately fruitless attempt to remake his image. It demonstrates the calibre of the man’s ethics and morals.

Even if Dutton can’t grow a backbone and hire the plane to bring everyone from Nauru to Australia he can be overruled. Morrison rolled in over the top of Dutton and took the prize (or would poison chalice be a more apt description given the opinion polls and the result of the Wentworth by-election?). We recently discussed Morrison’s attempts in looking for a marketing slogan that works during the period of the Wentworth by-election and noted a number of ‘policy on the run’ decisions as well as a few backflips. Eminent Liberals such as John Hewson have argued that Morrison’s best chance for re-election was to be brave and completely reset the policy agenda (rather than resetting the messaging of the current policies) for the Coalition government and this could include issues such as refugee policy, addressing climate change, integrity and so on. The ABC’s Laura Tingle wrote about the same issues the week after the Wentworth humiliation and now Morrison’s even annoying the IPA.

But then again, to change policies to appeal to a broader cross section of Australians would take considerable backbone, something Morrison has yet to demonstrate he has with his constant kowtowing to the alt-right rump in the Liberal and National Parties. Morrison may not get past the next election, but what a legacy if he was to order the release of everyone Australia has imprisoned on Nauru and really did some ‘fair dinkum’ work on reducing emissions through a trading scheme. He really doesn’t have much to lose but potentially a lot to gain by attracting moderates back to the Liberal Party. As Dutton said, getting people off Nauru is as easy as chartering a plane (and presumably terminating an agreement). So if Dutton doesn’t have the backbone to do it – how ‘bout you, Scomo – we double dare ya.

What do you think?

Population Minister Alan Tudge has suggested that Melbourne and Sydney are experiencing significant pressure from excessive population growth. He’s probably got a point, but his ‘solution’ – forcing immigrants to live in areas with less population pressure for at least five years after permanent residency is granted – demonstrates Tudge’s complete lack of knowledge of the subject matter he is responsible for implementing on behalf of the Australian Government.

That’s not to suggest for a minute that there are not any other places worth living in across Australia – there are thousands of them. Small towns do generally have a greater sense of community, and clearly if immigrants move into regional communities with lower levels of population growth, there is an increase in demand for goods and services in those communities. That’s not a bad thing, but according to former Border Force Commissioner Quaedvilieg, the proposal to link residency visas with residential locations is difficult to enforce, even if it is theoretically legal.

The Department of Home Affairs and Border Security produced a report in January 2014 that concluded:

The migration program has been one tool with which governments have attempted to support regional development by helping to meet the skills needs of regional employers and of adding to the stock of residents living in regional areas. However, one of the key challenges in utilising the migration program to assist in regional development outcomes has been in ensuring that migrants who do settle in regional areas stay there over the long-term. But the extent to which migration-based interventions actually facilitate long-term regional retention remains unclear. In order to develop more effective policies and programs in this area, the academic literature suggests that it is therefore important to develop an understanding of the factors that contribute to regional retention.

Loosely translated – there is more work to be done than to just tell people they have to stay in an area for five years which isn’t necessarily the person’s first choice.

Tudge, like a lot of coalition politicians is taking population growth, in part caused by migration, and comparing it with the infrastructure difficulties that are encountered in Sydney and Melbourne (as well as other areas of Australia such as South East Queensland). The connection is to a large extent nonsensical.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932 and photos of the bridge in the ‘good ole days’ show rail lines where they are now, tram lines on the other extremity and six traffic lanes in between. While the tram lines were converted to traffic lanes, the Harbour Bridge was constructed with plenty of room for future expansion. It’s the same with the Storey Bridge in Brisbane, opened in the 1940’s with six traffic lanes.

Fast forward a few decades and the Harbour Tunnel was constructed to relive pressure on the Harbour Bridge. It opened in 1992 and has two lanes in each direction. By 2008, the tunnel was being used by up to 90,000 vehicles a day. Brisbane’s ‘Clem7’ tunnel which runs close to the Storey Bridge is also a two lane each way tunnel and has never met the traffic expectations of the proponents since it opened in 2010, probably because the ‘time savings’ do not justify the toll charge. Brisbane’s Clem7 could have been constructed with three lanes each way for another $20million on the $3.2billion construction cost, but the decision was made not to do so.

And there is the problem in a sentence. If you are buying clothes for your 2-year-old child, there is always the temptation to buy the next size up, even if it costs a little more upfront as the child will grow into the item of clothing and your dollar will go further. The alternative is going back to the store of your choice within a few weeks because of a growth spurt. Likewise, we know that (in this case) South East Queensland is growing rapidly. While a road tunnel with two lanes in each direction comfortably handled the traffic flows at the time it was opened and probably will for some for some years to come, it will reach capacity quicker than the three-lane tunnel proposal. Back in the first half of the last century they knew that cities, like children, would grow and built accordingly.

There was no need to build the Harbour Bridge, the Storey Bridge, St Kilda Road or any number of other pieces of infrastructure constructed in the first half of the last century to the scale they did, but they did it anyway. However as these structures that were designed with room for growth do eventually reach their capacity, there is frequently a decade or so of political infighting and sledging before the solution commences construction so we are stuck in a perpetual cycle of catching up to current demand.

In Melbourne, clearly the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne is at capacity – they are building a companion tunnel only 40 or so years after the bridge opened as poor planning has made it the only direct connection between Melbourne’s CBD and the western suburbs. The tunnel to act as a companion to the Westgate Bridge was first mooted in 2006 – it will apparently open in 2022.

While it seems that a lot of recent immigrants have settled in Sydney and Melbourne, it is disingenuous at best to suggest that infrastructure capacity problems are solely caused by immigration – it’s more to do with politicians lacking the vision that their predecessors from a century ago obviously had. After all, it’s not only recent immigrants that live in Sydney, Melbourne and other parts of Australia that are growing faster than the average.

The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government has a long history of dog whistling to turn opinions against those who don’t look like them (generally middle-aged to elderly white men). First we had ‘stop the boats’, then the ‘gangs of African youths terrorising Melbourne’ and now the same people are being blamed for failures of politicians over the past 40 years to argue the case for additional capacity when expensive infrastructure is built. Because in the long term it’s cheaper to build it once with some growing room – just like the 2-year old’s new t-shirt.

It’s time to call Tudge’s thought bubble out for what it is – racism.

What do you think?

The sails of the Sydney Opera House were being used as a billboard for a horse race a few days ago. Regardless of the value of the horse race, or the ethics about using a UNESCO listed landmark for promotion of gambling, there is a problem about the way it was done.

According to The Guardian,

Racing NSW applied to the Opera House to use it as a venue to promote a horse race on Saturday 13 October, but Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron drew the line at projecting horses’ names, the name of the race and the numbers of the barriers onto the Opera House sails.

Then Alan Jones interviewed Louise Herron. A couple of weeks after Jones, and by association his employers, had been found guilty of defaming the owners of a quarry in South East Queensland and ordered to pay $3.7 million, clearly he hasn’t yet learnt that his opinion is not necessarily fact, and bluster doesn’t change the facts. Jones

was furious and took up the case for Racing NSW on his program. “Louise I’m sorry I think you’re out of your depth here,” he said. “You should put your resignation on the table today … if you can’t come to the party, Louise, you should lose your job.”

Jones also threatened to ring NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and demand Louise Herron be sacked. Berejiklian hasn’t sacked Herron but has overruled her decision to only allow horses’ colours to be displayed on the world-famous sails. Jones was reported as haranguing Herron by suggesting:

who the hell do you think you are, you don’t own the Opera House, we own it … you manage it,” Jones said.

To that extent Jones is correct, Herron doesn’t own the Opera House. However, the NSW Government pays Herron to manage the facility on behalf of its owners — all those who live in NSW. So, by the same token Jones, the management of the Daily Telegraphor Berejiklian don’t ‘own’ it either.

All this happened on Friday 5 October and media reports the following Tuesday suggested that over 270,000 had ‘signed’ online petitions asking the NSW Government to reverse their decision. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to suggest that a large group of the Opera House’s owners are aghast at the gambling promotion pushed by Jones and News Corp (with support from NSW Premier Berejiklian) being projected onto the building.

On Tuesday night about 1,000 people shone torches to dilute the projection and peacefully protested the use of the Opera House for the promotion of gambling. Racing NSW and the Premier claim they have heard the message ‘loudy’ and the stunt won’t be repeated. Waleed Aly also ‘went to town’ on the crass commercialisation of the Opera House by vested interests, including the two major political parties.

There is a significant cost to gambling across Australia. Tim Costello, a director of Alliance for Gambling Reform, detailed some of them in an opinion piece published in The Guardian. While Jones has given a half-hearted apology four days after the event for his bullying of Louise Herron, it still demonstrates that Jones and Berejiklian persist with accepting the cash over the ethics, and still steamroll those with alternative viewpoints.

Sadly, we should not have expected better. Also demonstrating an alternative world view of acceptable is the LNP’s Stuart Roberts. Roberts, Morrison’s choice for Assistant Treasurer and former ICT Executive, has been charging the Australian taxpayer (that’s you and me) over $1,000 a month for his 4G Internet connection since 2016. As the linked article reports, Roberts lives in a ‘semi-rural’ area behind the Gold Coast and the NBN has yet to reach his home. The article also reports that:

Roberts told Fairfax Media he racked up a high bill [over $2,000] in May because he used 300 gigabytes of data, so had to pay for extra after exceeding his 50GB limit.

Optus currently offers unlimited 4G broadband for $90 a month, while Exetel offers 250GB a month for just $70.

Now it has become ‘an issue’, Roberts is apparently going to pay it back, despite claiming he had done nothing wrong. Those in his electorate that rely on Newstart are receiving not much more than $1,000 a month to live on.

Matthew Lesh, a research fellow with The Institute of Public Affairs has recently released a book suggesting that the major parties have a lot of difficulty in being relevant to those that live in the inner and outer suburbs of Australia’s major cities. Lesh suggests the politicians are aligning themselves too closely with the ‘inners’ and leaving the ‘outers’ to splinter groups such as Katter, Palmer and Hanson. Then, when the splinter groups can’t achieve what they promise (because they don’t get enough seats in parliaments across the country), people living in outer suburbs then get frustrated and disengage with the process.

There could be something to Lesh’s theory. In the electorate of Warringah, former PM Abbott has been the elected Member of Parliament for a considerable period of time. A group of people who live in the electorate, rather than disengaging, have a plan to crowbar Abbott from the seat at the next election by following the process used by Cathy McGowan’s supporters when they removed Sophie Mirabella from the seat of Indi in country Victoria. The President of WoW (Women of Warringah)

Louise Hislop, told Guardian Australia the group was created after Abbott’s refusal to engage on issues considered important to constituents, including climate change, plastics pollution, traffic issues, same-sex marriage and mental health services.

Warringah, despite Abbott’s public posturing, recorded 75% support for the same sex marriage vote and it seems there is considerable community disquiet about Abbott’s role in the destruction of the Turnbull Government. Abbott’s schtick however does go down well in areas that support the Katters, Hansons and so on of this world.

If Lesh is correct, Jones, Berejiklian, Roberts and Abbott are all sailing into irrelevance as they clearly are not representing significant sections of their communities. Why do these people believe they don’t need to consider the views of others? It must be because those on the right are prettier and more confident!

What do you think?

Former Chairman of the ABC Board, Justin Milne fell on his sword after sacking the Managing Director, Michelle Guthrie, recently. The discussion around this will continue for quite a while, especially if the ex-MD follows through on her threat to sue for wrongful dismissal.

Where that particular saga ends up is anyone’s guess and hopefully, when the government does appoint people to the vacant positions, they will follow the legislated process of ‘rubberstamping’ the recommendations of the independent panel that is responsible for research and character checking. In fact, it is probable that the current dramas wouldn’t have occurred if the recommendations were followed last time by Communications Minister Fifield.

It was interesting to watch the change in focus over the week when Guthrie and Milne walked the plank. On Monday, Guthrie was claimed to be someone who was completely out of touch with the demands of the job, by Thursday the narrative had changed to Milne apparently instructing Guthrie to sack journalists who were ‘critical’ of the government, an instruction Guthrie refused, demonstrating how ‘in touch’ she was!

It really doesn’t matter who said or didn’t say what to whom. Milne and Guthrie are victims of a process of the current government to eliminate criticism of their actions.

There was significant media coverage at various times suggesting that Turnbull and Fifield were not happy with perceived errors, criticisms or inaccuracies in some ABC current affairs reports. Fifield has also been regularly filing complaints with the ABC for trivialities.

You can’t really blame Milne for making the assumption that the government was ‘not happy’ with the actions of some of its journalists, albeit his subsequent actions were apparently wrong. However, it is important to note that most of the ‘inaccuracies’ Turnbull and Fifield complained about were actually factual.

Rather than going down ‘he says, she says’ rabbit holes, have a look at the core problem. Yes, the government of the day funds the ABC using taxpayer funds. So the current ABC ‘yours’ marketing campaign is correct – we all own the ABC.

The reporting of information that doesn’t necessarily reflect positively on the government of the day’s actions or behaviours is something that demonstrates that we as taxpayers are getting value for money. This is evidenced by the journalists we employ, who are doing their job and reporting fact without fear or favour to those that control the funding source. After all, one of the many criticisms of governments such as the one in North Korea is that adverse commentary, let alone dissent, on the actions of the government or questioning the government policies is strictly prohibited.

Ex-PM Turnbull has been reported in various media outlets as not directly asking anyone to sack anyone. He’s probably literally correct in that he didn’t get on the phone to Milne and order anything happen to anyone. But he didn’t have to. Waleed Aly’s recent opinion piece in Fairfax publications claims the recent ABC goings-on are part of a bigger issue. Aly writes about a phone call between Peta Credlin (in her role as Abbott’s Chief of Staff) ringing Chris Mitchell (the editor of The Australian) demanding the sacking of an opinion piece writer, a journalist wrongly caught up in the Centrelink ‘robo-debt’ fiasco and, after writing a blog piece on her experiences, having personal details leaked by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government to the media.

In addition, the federal parliament has passed legislation allowing certain issues, say a hypothetical ASIO raid on the office of the Opposition Leader, to be retrospectively claimed as a ‘national security’ issue. Those that have filed their reports on the matter prior to the declaration would then potentially endure jail time because they reported on a ‘national security’ matter. ABC funding is also an area of implied editorial control by starving the organisation of cash to pay the researchers. At the same time, the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government claim to be promoting free speech for ‘persecuted’ right-wing Christian groups!

We could also discuss the undue influence in Australian politics of the likes of News Corp, who’s proprietor chose to forego his Australian citizenship to further his business interests; or radio announcers such as Alan Jones, who recently lost another defamation case through his lack of attention to facts in his commentary – but we all probably have better things to be doing for the rest of the day.

The ABC ran a campaign in the 80s saying it costs each Australian 8 cents a day. Their Chief Financial Officer recently suggested the cost had gone down to 4 cents a day. For our 4 cents a day (or $14.60 per year), we get reporting by some of the best practitioners of the journalism trade in Australia and relevant content targeted to most demographics in this country across many media platforms.

What we shouldn’t get is real or implied political interference because the reporting is perceived to be critical of the government or their policies.

Some will always believe that our government should be the best that their money or influence can buy, and they are entitled to their opinion. However, the recent interest in the ABC’s independence demonstrates that the majority of us want fair, unbiased reporting rather than self-censorship because of interference.

We also seem to have a tolerance for the demonstration of the maxim: if you don’t occasionally stuff it up, you’re not trying to do your job to the best of your ability. As the owners of the ABC, we need to remind all politicians that media independence is our expectation and criticism comes with the turf.

What do you think?

So Australia is going to have another Royal Commission, this time into Aged Care. It really doesn’t matter if the announcement was a pre-emptive response to the two-part ABCTV 4 Corners program or a Fairfax media investigation, if the events just happened to coincide or some other happenstance.

For a change we come to praise Morrison, not to bury him (with apologies to William Shakespeare). While the terms of reference and the Commissioner have yet to be announced, it is not likely that the Commission will be a placebo as there is considerable public support for the Inquiry. However, Morrison doesn’t get off scot free (pun intended). In the 2016 federal budget, then Treasurer Morrison cut $1.2billion from the budget for the aged care sector. At the time, The Conversation reported

In aged care, $1.2 billion will be saved through the “better use of funding”. Some of the $249 million reinvestments will be welcomed, including $102 million to improve services for those living in rural and remote areas, $10 million for unannounced compliance site visits of aged care providers and $136 million for My Aged Care, a contact point for older people seeking to explore their aged care options.

Yet it is difficult to see how these relatively small investments will meet the intended aims of “preventing a spending blowout” in coming years and are likely to shift increasing costs of aged care to future governments.

By the time of the 2018 budget, Morrison was increasing funding to support older Australians staying in their own home, conceptually not a bad idea as people are more comfortable in familiar surroundings, but arguably again putting pressure on those providing residential aged care facilities.

Traditionally, residential aged care was provided by government, religious bodies and other non-profit organisations. While the majority of the religious and non-profit bodies hearts were probably in the right place, over the years there have been the gradual introduction of mandatory standards, introduction of hoops to jump through for those who need to access residential aged care and reductions in government funding to contend with. The religious and non-profit sector don’t have an imperative to supply a dividend to their shareholders (as public and private ‘for-profit’ companies do), but they do need to retain a level of profitability to fund additional services, upgrades to the facilities and comply with required standards as they are tightened. The Conversation recently discussed the difficulties of making money out of aged care. So, it makes sense in a climate of declining funding and decreasing levels of membership of religious and non-profit bodies that they would consider the no doubt generous offer from a ‘for profit’ sector operator to come in and take on the future operations of existing residential aged care facilities.

There are obvious efficiencies in combining the ‘back of house’ operations if a number of smaller residential aged care facilities were combined in areas such as payroll, accounts payable and receivable as well as compliance, building maintenance and operations, marketing and so on. There are also a number of larger service providers that will probably come through the Royal Commission process more or less unscathed. By the same token, the funding for aged care is not actually tied to the provision of services to residents. It’s probably reasonable to suggest that the greater the distance between the management and those receiving the service, the greater the possibility that the level of individual and personal care offered to residents could be submerged under averages, balance sheets and PowerPoint presentations.

Fairfax media has published their suggested terms of reference for the forthcoming Royal Commission. How many of the suggestions Morrison uses is, at the moment, anyone’s guess. Evidence so far presented in the media suggests that if the Aged Care Royal Commission is as diligent as other recent Royal Commissions (maybe with the exception of Abbott’s ‘kill Bill’ Royal Commission into alleged misdeeds of the Trade Union movement), the Australian public is in for another few years of literally shocking revelations of how some of those who are supposed to be caring for individual Australians abuse and misuse the trust we have shown in them.

Likewise, assuming Morrison is fair dinkum about the Royal Commission and allows it to investigate the dark corners and hidden crevices as Gillard did with the Institutional Abuse Royal Commission and Turnbull did with the Royal Commission into the Finance Industry (after he was dragged kicking and screaming to establish it), it will be a richly deserved positive feature in history’s judgement of Morrison’s Prime Ministership. This is regardless of his previous actions in this space or his Prime Ministership generally. Gillard rightly gets the kudos for the establishment of the Institutional Abuse Commission and the Banking and Finance Commission has been so successful that large companies are pre-empting the Commission’s findings through actions such as refunding inappropriately or illegally charged fees – thanks to Turnbull’s terms of reference.

Along with the other recent Royal Commissions, Morrison’s Aged Care Royal Commission has the potential to make Australia a fairer society, by demonstrating that we as a nation value and support all Australians. And that’s not a bad thing.

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

This week we originally were going to be discussing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and their apparent habit of losing Senators. After all, to lose one Senator is careless, two is a concern and so on. Apart from the Betoota Advocate doing the satire better, they also bring in the relevant point of popularism.

Hanson is “President for life” of the party that enjoys the use of her name and at the beginning of June effectively sacked NSW Senator Brian Burston by requesting him to resign from the party and to hand back his seat in the Senate by letter (at least it wasn’t a SMS message or Facebook post!). Burston’s crime was to support the Abbott/Turnbull Government’s corporate tax cuts, a position originally endorsed by Hanson as well.

Hanson has been a politician for around 25 years. After nearly a year sitting on the Ipswich City Council, she first ran for Federal Parliament in 1996 as the Liberal Candidate for the seat of Oxley in South East Queensland. During the campaign she made some statements that were (at the time) so abhorrent, even Howard’s campaign couldn’t stomach them and disendorsed her shortly before the election date. She sat as an independent and lost her seat in the 1998 election. Also in 1998, Hanson’s One Nation won 13 of the 89 seats in the Queensland Parliament

But what happened after One Nation won all those seats all those years ago set the tone for everything that would follow. Within a year, One Nation was deregistered as a party, its MPs split acrimoniously — one resigned from parliament, some became independents, some established the so-called City Country Alliance — and the great shining moment dissolved into tears before bedtime.

Hanson’s One Nation was also supposed to do exceptionally well in the recent Western Australian and Queensland elections. They didn’t.

The problem with popularism is that you may not ‘pick the mood’ of those you are trying to impress. In the past 25 years Hanson, according to her Wikipedia page, railed at times against extra funding for the disadvantaged in the Ipswich City Council, Chinese immigration, Government assistance for Aboriginal people, the media crusade against her, the Islamic religion, the ‘people’ versus the elite and so on. It’s not the first time Hanson’s quest for popularism has rated a mention on The Political Sword, this article appearing about a year ago when Hanson, who hadn’t been on the front page for a while, decided to weigh into a discussion on children of differing abilities/disabilities sitting in the one classroom. It was one of her less successful attempts at ‘picking the mood’ of the ‘people’ and was widely condemned. Surprisingly enough, this has kept Hanson quiet on this subject ever since.

In March this year the Coalition Government sealed a deal with Hanson’s party to support the corporate tax cuts it hadn’t been able to get through the Senate from the 2017 budget. The price for the support was a pilot apprenticeship package that was to be rolled out to benefit 1000 people across the country. At the end of May, Hanson walked away from the deal citing

The people in general don’t want it. It has not been well received. The Government has not been able to sell the package to the people and they haven’t cut through.

She also presented a new list of demands to be met in return for her support, including

cut in immigration, changes to the Petroleum ¬Resource Rent Tax (PRRT), a gas pipeline connecting Western Australian gas fields with the east coast, as well as “use it or lose it” provisions for gas exploration and development, more support for pensioners, a greater focus on reducing multinational tax avoidance and getting banks “to pay for this royal commission into the banking sector”.

“There has to be a decent PRRT,” Hanson said. “We need a pipeline from the west coast to the east coast. Unless we get electricity prices down in this country, we are going to see the closure of a lot of businesses.”

Those with a more suspicious bent might be able to see the forest in spite of the trees. Bernard Keane from Crikey probably can(paywalled)

The government is correct to hope that Pauline Hanson’s backflip on her backflip on company tax cuts — now opposed again, One Nation’s original position — won’t be her last. Hanson’s reversal isn’t due to any ideological reason or based on evidence — such as, for example, the fact that the Trump corporate tax cuts are flowing almost entirely into share buybacks and dividends — but because of the looming by-elections, and particularly that in Longman.

Longman is based around Caboolture in South East Queensland and there are significant pockets of poverty, social problems and under-employment in the seat. Hanson’s popularist ‘I represent the people’ rhetoric goes down a treat in areas like this. The rationale for her promises are illogical, as there is no chance that Hanson’s One Nation could redress the problems because her party won’t win Government (especially as a result of this byelection).

According to a Reachtel survey published in The Guardian

The Turnbull government’s proposal to cut tax for Australia’s biggest businesses is unpopular in the seat, with only 17% endorsement. A majority of respondents (53.7%) also thought the third phase of the income tax cuts proposed by the Turnbull government in last week’s budget, to flatten the tax rate on incomes between $41,000 and $200,000, was unfair.

Voters were asked whether they supported or opposed tax cuts delivering an average of $530 a year extra for low and middle-income earners in the first four years, and tax cuts for high income earners in seven years’ time.

More Longman voters opposed the measure (47.3%) than supported it (38.3%).

It looks like Keane is correct and the backflip on the tax cuts is not surprising as it would be hard for a popularist to be claiming to ‘represent the people’ while supporting tax cuts to large corporations, some of whom are currently attempting to justify habitual practices that disadvantage wage earners and small business to increase their large profits.

That’s the problem with popularism. You have to read the mood of those you are claiming to represent and at times you’ll get it wrong, causing either damage to your reputation with your followers or damage to the larger community. You could make the point that all political leaders seek popularity at one point or other, otherwise how do they become firstly the leader and secondly how do they get the opportunity to lead a government? The big difference is that popularists don’t seem to understand or care that they can’t be popular all the time across the entire population.

Robert Mugabe in Rhodesia is a great example.

Trained as a teacher, he spent 11 years as a political prisoner under Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government. He rose to lead the Zimbabwe African National Union movement and was one of the key negotiators in the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, which led to the creation of a fully democratic Zimbabwe. Elected prime minister and later president, he embraced conciliation with the country’s white minority but sidelined his rivals through politics and force. Beginning in 2000, he encouraged the takeovers of white-owned commercial farms, leading to economic collapse and runaway inflation.

It’s not for us in Australia to determine if the takeover of white-owned farms was warranted or the politics behind the actions, however the same article suggests that the takeovers, while obviously popular with Mugabe’s followers, were of dubious legality and were detrimental to most Rhodesians.

In 2000 Mugabe organized a referendum on a new Zimbabwean constitution that would expand the powers of the presidency and allow the government to seize white-owned land. Groups opposed to the constitution formed the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which successfully campaigned for a “no” vote in the referendum.

That same year, groups of individuals calling themselves “war veterans”—though many were not old enough to have been part of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle—began invading white-owned farms. Violence caused many of Zimbabwe’s whites to flee the country. Zimbabwe’s commercial farming collapsed, triggering years of hyperinflation and food shortages that created a nation of impoverished billionaires.

Republican Party US President Donald Trump is also a popularist. He recently decided to impose

tariffs on aluminium and steel imports, saying the new measures are meant to counter unfair trade practices that hurt American workers and industries and threaten national security.

The tariffs, which Trump had already telegraphed last week, will help protect the U.S. steel and aluminium industries, the White House said. Trump is imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent levy on aluminium imports.

For now, the tariffs don’t apply to Canada or Mexico, which a White House release said, Trump “recognizes … present a special case” while discussions continue with those countries to resolve U.S. concerns.

Ultimately, the US didn’t resolve the concerns it had with Mexico, Canada or the European Union. The European Union (who are now victims of this tariff war) are proposing selective retaliatory tariffs on US products that are primarily produced in states that are seen to be leaning towards the Republicans. These products include bourbon, Levi jeans and Harley Davidson motorcycles.

The EU took the United States to the World Trade Organization to challenge the legality of the new tariffs and the Trump administration’s national-security justification. Brussels has submitted an eight-page list to the international trade body, covering goods it would hit with retaliatory measures.

The list includes U.S. exports running the gamut from big motorcycles like Harley’s, built on the home turf of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, to “canoes”, “manicure or pedicure preparations” and even “sinks and washbasins, of stainless steel” — the proverbial kitchen sink.

“We support free and fair trade and hope for a quick resolution to this issue,” Harley said in a statement.

“We believe a punitive, retaliatory tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles in any of our major markets would have a significant impact on our sales, our dealers, our suppliers and our customers in those markets,” the statement said.

Trump, like Hanson, is going to have real difficulties in retaining his popularist image while being seen as responsible for the imposition of policy that directly disadvantages his support base.

Hanson obviously decided that Burston is expendable (and hopes the rest of us have no recollection of her statements in March being completely at odds to her statements in May and June). Mugabe apparently drove his country into the ground and Trump will have to be performing technically difficult verbal gymnastics to avoid his support base joining the dots between tariffs on steel being connected to reduced demand for US made products.

Abraham Lincoln (also a Republican President — but in another time) is reputed to have said

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Unfortunately Lincoln was correct. Some will follow the popularist leader to the bitter end such as those that followed the Reverend Jim Jones to Jonestown in Africa and ‘drank the kool-aid’. The rest of us need to question the motives and sincerity of the popularist — because drinking the kool-aid can be hazardous to your health and the welfare of those you really care about.

What do you think?

A lot of elite sportspeople are paid very well for what they do, dependent on the depth of the pockets of the club and governing body of the chosen sport. The training and restrictions on elements of their daily lives due to commercial considerations do, to an extent, justify the salaries and undoubtedly there is a lot of pain, sacrifice and lost opportunity involved in getting to the elite level. It’s usually not a walk in the park.

The recent ball tampering controversy involving the Australian men’s cricket team in South Africa really shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Those responsible have demonstrated yet again the apparently common belief across sport, business and politics that all that is important is the win; doesn’t matter how you get there.

The belief that winning rather than the best display of athleticism in sport is not limited to the Australian cricketers. In 2015, the AFL Anti-doping Tribunal issued a lifetime ban to Stephen Dank, a ‘Sports Scientist’ who had worked with three AFL clubs, after finding

Dank guilty of 10 breaches of the anti-doping code from 34 charges, including trafficking, attempting to traffic and complicity in matters related to a range of prohibited substances.

Dank maintained his innocence in the supplements scandal after having 24 serious charges dismissed. He has signalled he will appeal the guilty findings.

At times, the individuals are not the problem. National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) clubs operate under a mandatory ‘salary cap’ process designed initially to even out the ability of individual clubs with deep pockets to buy all the best players, as do a number of other sports domestically and internationally. It’s old news that sporting clubs attempt at times to rort the respective salary caps. This report from the FourFourTwo website reports of seven major salary cap breaches around the world.

The attitude isn’t just limited to the sporting fields. A number of politicians including Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie have been campaigning against the influence of poker machines in hotels and clubs for a long time. One recent claim reported on Fairfax media websites detailed

A whistleblower who worked at a Woolworths-owned pub has described how staff meetings were held to discuss how to encourage a grieving woman nicknamed “Queen Bee” by management to put her inheritance into poker machines after the loss of her parents.

The woman had previously worked in a professional job but began to gamble heavily while on workers compensation after the death of her parents, the staff members said.

The allegation is one of several made by two staff members who worked at different pubs owned by Woolworths pub subsidiary, ALH.

“We basically had a staff meeting straight out saying … ‘When she comes in, day or night or whatever, just treat her like Queen Bee.’ Like she will get this, that, free drinks, free food. They kept her there. If the music was not to her liking, in the gaming room, bang bang bang. We would go there and change the music back to hers,” one of the woman told a staff member of the anti-pokies campaigner and MP Andrew Wilkie in video-recorded interviews.

While a company does have the right to present customers with incentives (such as loyalty cards, frequent flyer memberships and the like), the morality of the seemingly corporately sponsored actions described above are questionable. For the record,

ALH, or Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group, owns 400 pubs around the country and is 75 per cent owned by Woolworths. Its operations account for about 10 per cent of the grocery giant’s overall profits.

While Wesfarmers (through their Coles subsidiary) owns 89 hotels across four states.

It seems that ‘the win’ in the corporate world is profit and again in the eyes of some, the processes used to ‘get the win’ aren’t relevant. The ABC News website has a ‘Fraud and Corporate Crime’ section. Unfortunately it only takes the ABC five weeks or so to file 25 news stories relating to Fraud and Corruption.

Politically, the same win at all costs strategy was displayed by former PM Abbott when Opposition Leader during the Rudd and Gillard years. His mantra was absolute negativity. Remember the $100 lamb roast, the complete ‘wipeout’ of Whyalla and every word being fawned upon by the conservatives that infect the media with their own warped view of the world? We now know that as Prime Minister, Abbott was so popular that his own side of politics sacked him after 30 poor opinion polls. On the way to his sacking he oversaw the hugely unpopular 2014 federal budget that incorporated cuts to the ABC and SBS, healthcare and welfare payments including the draconian requirement that those who commit the crime of being under 30 and lose their job would be ineligible for any government benefit for six months.

Current Prime Minister Turnbull led the ‘palace coup’ against Abbott citing his lack of economic credibility, political style and 30 bad opinion polls in a row. Two years later (and Newspoll number 30 is scheduled for release today), Turnbull is backtracking from the ‘30 polls’ comment faster than a kid can eat an Easter Egg. Realistically, the most probable challenger to Turnbull at this stage is Opposition Leader Shorten so the 30th poor poll is unlikely to be the last. However, the winner take all mentality is still there.

While there are an estimated 62,000 visa overstayers in Australia (most of whom entered the country using an Airbus or Boeing product), the Border Force arm of the ridiculously named Home Affairs Ministry overseen by Peter Dutton took a refugee family from their home and paid employment in a small Central Queensland town called Biloela because their visa had expired shortly prior to the dawn raid. It was only a few weeks ago on The Political Sword that we discussed Dutton’s lack of care for the estimated 400 Rohingya per week being murdered in Myanmar while ‘exploring options’ to assist white South African farmers because potentially there is one murder a week. While one murder is one too many, Dutton’s white farmers are apparently ‘victimised’ less than black South African youth in townships. You can only suggest there is a disconnect here that can only be called racism.

Resources Minister Matt Cananvan’s recent outburst at the National Press Club when asked about transitioning away from a coal future is another case in point

It was “objectionable” he said, to talk about people losing their livelihoods. He said concepts like “just transitions” were a con. “I don’t like the term transition, let’s be frank. If you want to shut down the coal industry and cost people jobs, say it. Have the guts to say it.”

Canavan advised the questioner [Katharine Murphy who wrote this for The Guardian] to take a trip to northern Tasmania to see what a transition really looked like. “Real poverty,” he noted. “House prices halve, people get locked in to an environment they can’t get out of and their lives are destroyed.

His advice, while touching, is completely different to the same Coalition Government’s care and concerns when, as Murphy recalls, the Abbott Government (of which Canavan was a part)

shuttered the Australian car industry with barely a backward glance.

I really don’t remember much outward concern for falling house prices or destroyed lives or “utter heartbreak” in Adelaide. Perhaps some displaced workers are more equal than others.

LNP Senator Canavan, like a considerable volume of coal exports, is from Queensland.

Former Abbott/Turnbull Government Minister Bruce Billson recently made the news when it was revealed that he was receiving a $75,000 per annum private income from the Franchise Council of Australia while he was still the Small Business Minister. While Billson is certainly not the only MP to breach the rules or perception of ethical behaviour involved with taking a seat in Australia’s Federal Parliament, there is no Federal anti-corruption commission where matters such as Billson’s can be investigated independently. So when the ALP (finally) campaigns for a national integrity commission, Turnbull is nowhere to be seen or heard.

Neither is Turnbull to be heard when it is demonstrated that the renewable energy push by the former ALP South Australian Government is paying dividends, when Australia still imprisons refugees offshore in subhuman conditions even when they have a demonstrated legal right to be in Australia, when Dutton’s black-shirted ‘enforcers’ pull a refugee family from their home while apparently doing nothing about the estimated 62,000 visa overstayers who flew into the country, when Dutton favours ‘assistance’ to white farmers over Rohingya who apparently are suffering far more persecution, or when Canavan who seems to suggest that we as a nation can continue to support the environmental ill-effects of coal mining while giving lip service to the Paris Climate Accord.

Yet, in a classic example of ‘look over there’ we do see Turnbull call for an end to sledging in cricket. Turnbull is quoted by the ABC as suggesting:

“It has gotten right out of control. It should have no place.

“The game of cricket … should be one that once again is held up as a role model.”

He’s right – sledging in cricket has got out of control and various reports have suggested that the Australian Cricket Team’s culture is the problem. Turnbull went on to say

“They now have to make sure that this great national game, this great international game that is synonymous with fair play, is once again a game that is played by champions that everybody can look up to.”

And that’s the problem. Turnbull as the leader of this country has allowed his team to clearly deny ‘fair play’ to the environment, ill-treat those who seek out assistance from a country that used to support a fair go to everyone or demonstrate the discipline to bring his rogue ministers to account. He also allows business interests to pursue legal but morally or ethically questionable practices such as the lending practices in the finance industry, claim tax cuts are necessary (while not paying the current nominal tax rate) or the incentives offered to the vulnerable by the gambling industry.

Good (or bad) behaviour is governed by what those in charge will accept. Cricket Australia (eventually) realised they had a problem, dispatched their CEO to South Africa and imposed penalties considerably higher than required by the international governing body on those deemed to be at fault. However, Turnbull is in charge of the country and has demonstrated that pandering to sectional interests and discrimination are acceptable behaviours in his government and by implication, business.

The ABC quotes Turnbull as saying:

“I mean, this has been a shocking affront to Australia.

“Where do we want to get to? We want to get to the point where we can all say once again, not rhetorically but heartfelt and with sincerity, that cricket is a fair game, cricket is a game that is synonymous with a fair go and fair play.”

When will he ensure his government and Australian business live up to the same standards?

What do you think?

Karma is that feeling when you drive past someone beside the road obviously getting a ticket soon after they weaved around you and others on a busy highway. Others would call the feeling poetic justice or note that the situation was rather ironic. Either way, it is a feeling of someone getting their just punishment for a real or imagined transgression. If you ask why it doesn’t happen more often, it’s a good question. This site deals with politics in a couple of thousand words rather than presentation of a theorem in tens of thousands of words, so keep searching (and if you find anything perhaps a link in the comments for the rest of us would be appreciated).

Politicians usually aren’t around long enough to be publicly affected by karma. So far 2018 has been good for us who drive by the (usually unmarked) police car giving your dangerous driver a bit of summary justice. The obvious one to start with is the accidental disposal of a locked filing cabinet at a second-hand shop in Canberra. First of all, kudos to the purchaser of the filing cabinets for realising what they had and giving it to the ABC. The ABC should also be congratulated for keeping the identity of the donor confidential, as the donor has done nothing wrong here. They legitimately acquired some property (admittedly more than they bargained for) and dealt with it as they saw fit. The poetic justice evident in this situation is that we all now have some information from ‘secret’ cabinet files to pillory various politicians while they still have ‘skin in the game’. Waleed Aly, writing for Fairfax media discusses why we should be holding those that have been found to be responsible for making decisions against recommendations to account here and it’s worth a read.

The ABC published a directory of information they felt should be in the public realm gleaned from the material in the filing cabinets and subsequently allowed ASIO into some of their newsrooms to ‘secure’ the files pending negotiations on their return to Turnbull’s own Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet who admitted the filing cabinet should be in their custody. One suspects the ABC demonstrated considerable discretion in what it actually did publish, as well as balance in some embarrassing stories on the last ALP Government as well as the Abbott/Turnbull Government. While embarrassing to those who like keeping secrets, especially given that an Australian delegation was in Indonesia the same week discussing Australia’s expertise in securing confidential information, by the end of the year it will probably be fodder for the ‘what happened in 2018’ television programs, and that’s about it.

Also to be considered as probable fodder for the end of year retrospectives is the actions of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission judges launching legal action in their own court over a NSW Government directive that the Commission will move from a heritage building in Sydney City to Parramatta. The Government is suggesting

the commission has no power to stop the move because it is not an industrial matter and beyond commission powers

and while the Public Service Association lodged a notice in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission at the beginning of February suggesting

They have gone back on their word given in 2016 that they wouldn’t undertake a move without consultation of the affected workers.

Possibly the first legal argument is if the judges can hear the dispute in the first place! It does have the potential to become very legalistic and messy poetic justice to the Government that promises but doesn’t deliver consultation with its employees.

You would have to expect that there was some discussion on inviting ‘traditional’ marriage advocate Tony Abbott to his sister’s marriage to her long-term partner. The karma for the rest of us is seeing news footage of a smiling (or is it grimacing) Abbott at the event and wondering how he can maintain the position that same sex marriage is an abomination while his sister’s same sex marriage should be celebrated. In a similar way, Barnaby Joyce being upset by publicity when his personal life choices vary significantly from his public pronouncements that marriage is a life time commitment between a man and woman to the exclusion of all others at the time of the same sex marriage debate is also an example of poetic justice.

The punitive actions of the Abbott/Turnbull Government in relation to those that rely to a greater or lesser extent on some form of government assistance is well known. It is a continuing narrative that the ‘lazy’ and ‘leaners’ of our society are the only ones on ‘welfare’ and all of them are attempting to rort the system to avoid becoming productive members of the community.

One of the more punitive measures is the targeted introduction of the cashless welfare card, which allows access to the 80% of the individual’s assistance payment they cannot take in cash. The claim (and there is considerable evidence to suggest that the reasoning is false: here in a Fairfax masthead and here in The Guardian) is that restricting access to cash changes behaviours by restricting access to drugs and alcohol amongst the unemployed. The system uses the electronic payment system and there is access to a website to check balances and obtain other information. The card has rolled out in a number of areas across Australia where there is a ‘high need’ to change behaviour according to the Coalition. Pity a number of those areas have relatively poor communications which limits the uptake of the equipment, such as smartphones, needed to use the website to manage the accounts.

The devil is in the detail. The cashless welfare card relies on technology to work, so when the power or communications goes out the card doesn’t work, as those who the card was inflicted on in the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory recently found out to their detriment.

On the Tiwi Islands, around two hours ferry-ride north of Darwin, 2,000 mainly Aboriginal residents spent three days this week with no access to fuel, internet, or phones after a Telstra tower was damaged.

The single shop in Wurrumiyanga, on Bathurst Island, could not process non-cash sales, leaving many without food.

Residents told the ABC that most people in the community were reliant on Centrelink’s “basics card”, and everything from fuel to power must be pre-paid.

There is currently no alternative system in place for when the communication lines that fuel the cards go down, and the community is wholly reliant on repair crews coming from the mainland.

The Coalition Federal Ministers who signed this system off as fair and equitable are clearly delusional that the system in its current form benefits anyone but their own politically motivated ‘lifters and leaners’ narrative, rather than any sense of care and concern for those who need our help. Any adverse publicity on the Government is clearly karma.

Over the last 20 or so years, the outer suburbs of or larger towns and cities have been filled with large homes on small blocks of land. Colloquially, they have been named McMansions. Generally, these homes have been constructed with little concern for the cold in southern Australia or the heat of northern Australia. Part of the reason McMansions are so popular is that mechanical forms of heating and cooling technology are becoming cheaper, making it more likely for homeowners to consider ‘split system’ or ducted air conditioning to address the deficiencies of their home’s environmental design.

It didn’t have to be like that. People’s homes can be designed to suit the environment and it’s not hard, neither does it require considerable technology. Look at the typical Queenslander or the double brick homes in southern NSW or Victoria – they were designed and built to be in sympathy with their environment. For a number of years, reforms such as the ‘stars’ system were implemented to increase the efficiency of homes and appliances. Major appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators and so on were required to become more efficient over time, leading to the ‘3 star’ rated appliance from 2000 typically earning a less efficient rating in 2010.

Efficiency standards for new appliances have been basically frozen in Australia since the Abbott government took office in 2013. The situation is worse for new residential buildings, with standards largely unchanged since 2010 – excluding a modest improvement in NSW last July – and unlikely to be revised before 2022.

The current six-star minimum energy rating imposed on new homes in most states and territories was already unambitious at its introduction.

As Fairfax Media reported on the construction of CSR House in late 2012, an eight-star rated house built in western Sydney showed how – for about $15,000 more – a new home could be designed to cut heating and cooling needs by half compared with conventional ones.

“The real tragedy of housing and buildings in Australia is they haven’t kept pace with global trends and opportunities,” Rob Sindel, managing director of CSR, says. He estimates most of Australia’s 9 million homes would have just a one-star rating.

“People are getting these horrendous energy bills and are saying, ‘my God!’. Exactly what we thought would play out, has played out.”

As suggested, energy efficiency is not expensive in comparison to the continued expenditure on air conditioning inefficiently designed space. It is also worth noting that progress on energy efficiency ceased around the time some extremely conservative governments were elected at a state and federal level. These governments, who are now feeling the effects of power failures despite a ‘gold plated’ system, are blaming the replacement of inefficient and polluting coal fired power plants with renewables rather than their collective failure to act over the past 5 to 10 years. Most certainly another case of poetic justice.

Unfortunately, it always costs someone something when others observe, inwardly smile and think that karma is a bugger. It is a pretty sure bet that one or a number of probably fairly low ranking public servants will face some unwanted attention over the dispatch of the filing cabinet to the second-hand shop without opening it. The NSW Government might have saved itself a whole world of hurt by discussing the relocation of the Industrial Relations Commission, rather than dictating it. Abbott’s double standards should not have been the centre of attention at his sister’s wedding. By the same token, Joyce’s estranged wife and daughters don’t deserve the publicity that Joyce has recently forced on them.

Those on cashless benefit cards should not have to go without if the technology fails (remembering if you present a credit or debit card and the technology fails, a merchant usually has a backup paper-based option). Even if the failure wasn’t envisaged, clearly there was no effort put into some emergency relief for those on the Tiwi Islands. Clearly we are all paying for the inaction of various conservative governments over a number of years for the current level of power prices, while those that cause the problem are madly telling us there is ‘nothing to see here – look over there’.

Obviously mistakes happen. It is how the mistakes are rectified that demonstrates the character of those who are in charge at the time. Abbott’s double standard is writ large by his attempted triple pike with a twist explanation on why he could argue that same sex marriage is abhorrent – except when his family is involved. It is telling that the Coalition Government apparently did nothing when some people in what is allegedly a first world country couldn’t get food or electricity because their government-mandated and politically-motivated only acceptable payment method failed.

And lastly, that there is so little action on low hanging fruit such as building and appliance efficiency demonstrates the current government’s lack of care or concern with meeting emissions standards they agreed to in the Paris Accord. While the effect on your and my bank balance when we get a power bill might be horrific, the probable irreversible changes to our environment as a result of inaction is criminal. Not only is it Abbott and Turnbull’s failure – we are all to blame for allowing them to gamble with our environment and lifestyle.

What do you think?

The Queensland state election was held on 25 November 2017. Due to a number of factors, the results as they came in on Saturday night were so complicated, it took Anthony Green and the ABC computer until around lunch time on Sunday to make the call that the ALP would win 46 seats with a potential 48. Other pundits with form in the area differed slightly, but there was little doubt the Queensland Governor would be asking the ALP to form Government. A political party needs 47 seats for an absolute majority in the Queensland Parliament and ALP leader and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk claimed during the election that if she couldn’t win a majority, she would sit on the opposition benches.

Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) allows for postal votes to be delivered up until 10 days after the election, so they won’t be making a final determination until at least Wednesday 6 December. At the time of writing, the ABC’s Antony Green has the ALP on 47 seats, the LNP on 38, others (including One Nation’s single seat) on 4 with 4 to be decided. Out of the 4 in doubt, 2 are likely to be gained by the LNP, 1 by Katter Australia Party and 1 by the Greens. Fairfax has the ALP on 46, LNP on 36, others (including One Nation) on 5 with 6 in doubt.

The LNP’s Tim Nicholls seemingly has a problem accepting the probable result, making a number of statements in the past week suggesting the election isn’t over yet (true), the ALP will not get a majority (they probably will) and Palaszczuk promised to sit on the opposition benches (correct). The leap of logic is that in Nicholls’ mind, he should be offered government (probably not going to happen). At least he is consistent with the LNP ‘born to rule’ mentality also exhibited by Abbott, Turnbull and co!

Both Palaszczuk and LNP leader Tim Nicholls left it until quite late on the Saturday night to speak to their respective gatherings. Palaszczuk was confident of a good result, Nicholls was already calling Palaszczuk out on failing to live up to her promise on not ‘doing a deal’ with a ‘rainbow coalition of minor parties and independents’ to retain power in George St. As Green commented last Sunday:

But even if she falls a seat short, she doesn’t have to do any deals,” Green said.

She can leave it to the Parliament to vote her out, because it would be unlikely that all the crossbench would vote against them at once.

It is a fixed-term Parliament — the Government can’t just resign and walk out of office and leave someone else to form government — they can’t do that, so somebody will form government.

So it is very hard to see how anyone other than Annastacia Palaszczuk can form government in the new Parliament.

News.com.au published a ‘ready guide’ to the Queensland election prior to the event. If nothing else, it does give you a guide to the personalities and issues. It also predicts, accurately as it turns out, that the result will be complicated and take a while to work out.

One Nation was on track for ‘up to 11 seats’ according to the ABC prior to the election – they might pick up one while losing the seat of the state leader and former LNP Cabinet Minister Steve Dickson. On top of that, ‘star’ candidate and ‘former dual citizen’ One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts failed abysmally in the state seat of Ipswich (which is the ‘birthplace’ of One Nation). Roberts was expecting a better result even if no one else was. Maybe he was as delusional with his chances here as he is with his views on climate change. One Nation’s campaign generally promised much but is best summed up by Hanson’s actions in joining the campaign a week late (she was on a Senate study tour overseas), the ‘battlers bus’ breaking down near Marlborough, a very small town on the Bruce Highway north of Rockhampton and a gradual realisation from her demographic that even if you voted for One Nation, you were not electing Pauline Hanson to State Parliament (despite the implications in the advertising to the contrary)!

The Greens too had high hopes of up to three seats in Brisbane’s inner suburbs, one of which, South Brisbane, is represented by the Deputy Premier, Jackie Trad. Trad seems to have survived a close shave with the Greens, but the former LNP Transport Minister (and potential Treasurer if the LNP formed a majority government), Scott Emerson is likely to fall to the Greens due to preference flows. The Greens did reasonably well in the other seat they concentrated on but to use a cricket analogy, they didn’t trouble the keeper.

Which brings us to a discussion on the South East versus regional Queensland conundrum for political parties. In Mirani (based in rural areas around Mackay in Central Queensland), sitting ALP member Jim Pearce has conceded because his mid-30s percent vote and the Greens and their under 5% of the vote cannot overtake the One Nation candidate, Stephen Andrew with a result of around 30%. In fact, Mirani seems to be One Nation’s best chance of a seat.

There is a significant difference in the share of the votes received by One Nation and Greens in the ‘regional’ areas where One Nation has done well, and the South East as well as seats based on regional cities up the east coast of Queensland. This can be demonstrated by the result for Mirani (see the previous paragraph) and the already marginal south-western Brisbane seat of Mount Ommaney, where LNP Shadow Minister Tarnya Smith lost her seat to the ALP assisted by the Greens low teens percentage of the vote.

News.com.au suggested in their article that one of the controversies in the election campaign was Palaszczuk’s backflip over provision of assistance to Indian conglomerate Adani’s plan to build a 400km or thereabouts rail line from their proposed Carmichael Mine in Central Queensland to a coal loader where they already hold a long-term lease located at Abbot Point, near Bowen.

The Carmichael coal mine and the government loan that’s supposed to be granted to its Indian developer Adani has been a source of great controversy for politicians at all levels of government, but it’s provided no more embarrassment to any other than Ms Palaszczuk.

A long-time supporter of the project and the $1 billion loan to fund it, Ms Palaszczuk announced only days into the campaign that her Government would have “no role in the future” of an assessment over the loan after it had been discovered her partner, Shaun Drabsch, had worked on the loan application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, acting for Adani while working for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

After withdrawing support, the Premier was accused of sacrificing North Queensland jobs to save her own. The decision lost votes in the north but appears to have won support for the government in the state’s south.

The decision by Palaszczuk resonated in the South East but played out differently in the regions. The Greens were (obviously) opposed to anything to do with the Adani proposal while the LNP and One Nation were in favour of the mine, the rail line and a number of other construction projects including dams, roads, bridges and a new coal-fired power station in North Queensland. The Greens and to a lesser extent, the ALP were pushing the uptake of renewable power sources both for domestic and industry and for creating additional jobs through industries such as tourism, the construction and maintenance of solar farms and such like. Both types of development were, according to their proponents, the source of a considerable number of jobs, especially in regional Queensland.

University of Queensland economics Professor John Quiggin wrote an article in The Guardian a few days prior to the election suggesting the renewable versus coal argument was not a discussion over the best way of ensuring future employment, rather it was a proxy for the current progressive/conservative cultural war.

As Quiggin suggests

The disputes are not over the desirability of public ownership (both sides support it). Nor are they, in any serious sense, about electricity prices (no one can reduce them by much). They aren’t even about jobs, or rather, they are more about what kinds of jobs we want to create than about the number that will be created.

Paradoxically, the closest parallel to the current debate is not over energy or economics at all. Rather it is the bitter culture war over equal marriage. Faced with a trend which has swept almost the entire developed world and seems certain to prevail everywhere in time, the supporters of coal are seeking to delay the inevitable. As part of the global push to reduce CO2 emissions, investment in renewable solar and wind power has soared, while coal-fired power is disappearing from most countries in the developed world.

The choice between wind turbines and steam turbines might seem to be purely one of technology. But since environmentalists support renewable energy, the demands of the culture war require that conservatives must oppose it.

The ‘more jobs with a coal fired power station’ argument is plain wrong. As long ago as 2014, Reneweconomy was reporting

Despite Australia’s history as a coal-fired economy, the nation’s solar industry employs a “far larger” amount of people than its fossil-fuelled power stations, a new report has found.

The report, released on Monday by The Australia Institute says that in 2014, 4,300 solar PV businesses employed 13,300 people in Australia – a vast increase on 2008 numbers, when the industry only employed 1,800 people.

This was a “far larger” amount that the total employed in Australia’s coal-fired power stations, said the report, and a good deal larger than the total number of people working in the entire electricity generation sector, which amounted to 9,487 in 2007 according to the ABS, a figure which also included those employed in gas, hydro and renewable energy generation.

The problem for progressive governments and others that do not support new mining endeavours is that any one of the 4,300 solar PV businesses employing one or two more people is not newsworthy, but possible employment for up to 10,000 people in a coal mine and associated infrastructure (even if later shown to be a gross exaggeration) is.

While the coal versus renewables ‘debate’ is not the sole reason for the ALP’s probable second term in government, if Quiggin is correct and this is a proxy fight for the ongoing power play between progressives and conservatives for your and my ‘heart and mind’, perhaps we should turn our minds to a recent article in Fairfax media by Judith Ireland where she suggests that

One of the most stunning things about opposition to same-sex marriage in Australia has been its ability to shapeshift.

Ahead of Wednesday’s result, a frustrated Liberal supporter of same-sex marriage lamented that if the postal survey result was an unthinkable “no”, then that would be it for the “yes” campaign in Parliament for the foreseeable future. But if the result was a “yes”, then the “no” campaign would still have a say in what happens next.

“If people say no, then the answer’s no. If they say yes, the answer is not [necessarily] yes.”

How many times do they have to be told?

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword.

Technically it would be harder to have a hot potato issue without electricity. Amongst other things, electricity makes it far easier to create the hot potato in the first place, as well as light, heating and cooling, traffic control, transport and giving you the ability to read this article.

However, if you listen to the Coalition who, in their best Hanrahan, are crying ‘we’ll all be rooned’ if any more of the coal fired power stations around Australia are allowed to close. The justification is that we need power that we can switch on and off like a lightbulb (pun intended). The problem with the justification is that there are other and better ways of getting power on demand.

Turnbull and his Coalition colleagues are not even sure what they want. At the Australian Forest Products Association Industry dinner in Canberra on 12 September 2017, Turnbull’s remarks included:

So we’ve taken action. Recently we commissioned the energy market operator AEMO, to analyse the future of dispatchable power in our energy market, in the immediate, short term, medium term and longer term.

Their finding, that you’ll have all read about in the news, is that the closure of Liddell power station in New South Wales in 2022 will create a large gap in reliable baseload power, in the national electricity market, the east coast essentially and South Australia.

I’ve made it clear that we will not allow this gap in baseload power to occur.

So naturally we are exploring all options to fill this gap. We cannot have another event like the closure of Hazelwood, which whatever you may think of the Hazelwood power station, its closure at such short notice, taking so much dispatchable power out of the energy market, caused a dramatic rise in wholesale energy prices.

In New South Wales alone, it was over $50 a megawatt hour, nearly double the wholesale price of electricity. So you know ideology and good intentions are not enough; you have to be very hard-headed about this.

Apart from the illogical leaps of faith, the fundamental problem with Turnbull’s speech is that the use of the terms ‘dispatchable’ and ‘baseload’ in connection with power production are not interchangeable.

Dispatchable power can be quickly turned on and then off when the demand for electricity surges or at those times when the wind’s not blowing. It’s best provided by hydro-electricity, or gas.

Baseload power (usually provided by coal) isn’t particularly dispatchable. It’s always on, whatever the need. It’s one of the reasons off-peak power is cheap overnight. Baseload generators needed to get rid of the stuff. As the energy market operator put it in the letter to minister Josh Frydenberg that Turnbull claimed to be acting on, baseload power is in general “not well suited to respond to rapidly varying energy system needs”.

The Coalition government seem to have been caught out by the closure of the Hazelwood power station in Victoria which, apart from its age requiring its owners to fund major upgrades, was one of the most polluting power stations in the world. Possibly as a sop to their own right wing climate science denialists (and to potentially pick up a seat or two in the Hunter Valley based on a local jobs ‘Fear Uncertainty Deception’ campaign), Turnbull’s government appears to have decided to draw the line in the sand over AGL’s announcement that the 46-year-old Liddell power station in the Hunter Valley would be decommissioned in 2022.

The engineer familiar with Liddell said the plant routinely had at least one of its four units out of operation, and that half of the rated 2000-megawatt capacity was suddenly unavailable on February 10 – the first day of a record NSW heatwave – due to leaks in boiler tubes. That poor performance was despite its turbines being replaced about a decade ago.

On three occasions, the plant’s equipment had oil supply failures that led to turbines grinding to a halt in about 10 minutes, compared with 40 minutes under normal conditions; “basically wrecking” the machinery.

AGL, which valued Liddell at zero dollars when it bought it in 2014, said in a statement: “Liddell has four units that, due to age and reliability issues, are rated at 420MW”.

“Safe generation levels at Liddell are driven by a number of factors including market demand, plant outages and maintenance but more critically at present access to coal supply.”

Dylan McConnell, a researcher at Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College, said Liddell operated at just 39.6 per cent capacity in August.

That level was about half the capacity utilised of Victoria’s aging Hazelwood power plant in the final year before its closure in March.

Stephen Saladine, the managing director of Macquarie Generation at the time AGL bought both the Bayswater and Liddell plants, said the then state-owned corporation had planned for Liddell’s closure “in the early [20]20s”.

And even if the two generators were available during the heatwave last February, clearly they can’t be ‘switched on’ immediately. Ironically, AGL bought the power stations from a Liberal Party controlled NSW State government.

Meanwhile in Western Australia, which isn’t connected to the ‘National’ Grid, the Barnett Liberal Party government decided in 2009 to complete a major refurbishment of the coal fired Muja AB power station which was:

… 43 years old and mothballed. Reviving it was meant to cost $150m, paid for by private investors who would reap the benefits for years to come. But costs and timeframes blew out. An old corroded boiler exploded. The joint venture financing the project collapsed; a wall followed suit. The bill ultimately pushed beyond $300m, much of it to be stumped up by taxpayers – and once completed, the plant was beset with operational problems. It ran only 20% of the time.

By April 2016, the government acknowledged it was subsidising more generation capacity than it needed and predicted demand for coal power would fall over the coming decade. In May this year the new Labor administration confirmed Muja AB would shut early next year.

Apparent dual citizen and current Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was recently on the ABC’s 7.30 talking about the Clean Energy Target – and putting another line in the sand that coal had to be included to get the approval of his political party.

LEIGH SALES: Is there any form of a Clean Energy Target that the National Party would accept?

BARNABY JOYCE: Look, I think we have to be part of the negotiations most certainly Leigh and obviously the higher the level, the more it brings in coal-fired power.

Leigh, we are easy to understand in this one, we want to make sure we keep coal base load fired power stations going. Because the reality is that that is how you get the base load power onto the system to keep power prices down to make sure that we keep manufacturing workers in a job and to keep coal workers, to keep power workers in a job.

We’ve seen what happened in South Australia under the Labor party, it was a fiasco. They are doing it now in Victoria.

We don’t want it to happen to our nation, power’s overwhelmingly driven by the states but we’ve got a role in this and we’ve got to try and do our bit to try to keep these people in a job and keep the people in the weatherboard and iron with a power bill they can afford.

LEIGH SALES: Just to ask a first principles question, does the National Party accept that over time coal will be replaced by renewable sources of energy?

BARNABY JOYCE: We accept over time that you have to keep it renewable sectioned in to meet your international commitments. We understand that.

LEIGH SALES: But I mean just broader than that though sorry. I just mean you know generally, like over time, you know whether it is 50 or 100 years does the National Party believe at some stage coal will be replaced by renewable energy?

BARNABY JOYCE: I accept over time that technology goes ahead and if you can use coal more efficiently then you will use coal more efficiently and that Leigh won’t be remarkable you know, because you know cars are more efficient.

You think of what you go around on a tank of fuel today and what you went around on a tank of fuel 50 years ago, it is vastly different.

If we can do this in a vastly more economic way, then we should let technology be the presiding judge as to what form of power is driven, not religion.

And that’s the thing where we stand against the National Party. When someone says, “We’re going to have a 50 per cent renewable target”.

And say, “Well that’s great China plate, exactly how does it work?” And we find out from South Australia that it doesn’t work very well and we know what happens if it doesn’t work. Your lights go out, your lifts get stuck, operations stop in hospitals and people at that moment will completely change their views in the power debate and that mightn’t be a good idea even for the renewable energy sector. I have said that to the renewable energy sector. If the lights go out in Sydney and the lights go out in Melbourne, this is going to be a bad day for all of us.

John Hewson is a former federal Liberal Party leader who, amongst other things, occasionally writes articles in the media. In a recent article published by The Guardian, he observes:

… neither the government, nor the opposition, has yet produced a believable and deliverable energy policy. That is, a policy to specify the path forward to a low-carbon society, demonstrating a genuine capacity to lower power prices and to guarantee supply.

The bottom line is an outcome you might reasonably have expected that they would have wanted to avoid. While consumers are totally confused about what our pollies are doing, they get their regular power bills, which they can’t understand, and the power companies certainly don’t help them in this respect, so they remain absolutely convinced that they are being “ripped off”, which of course they are!

One of the most disturbing aspects of all this is that the government seems to have lost its sense of what it stands for – or at least what the electorate had come to accept that it stood for.

For example, as a Liberal government supposedly believing in small government, little regulation, market processes and private enterprise, they now feel at home “shirtfronting” the board and management of a significant power company, AGL, pressuring them to reverse a board decision to close the Liddell power plant in 2022.

This has come on the heels of them pressuring gas companies to “reserve” a proportion of their output for the domestic market, rather than for the exports that they had been encouraged to pursue in the past.

Of course, self-appointed Prime Minister in waiting Abbott has an opinion:

Abbott declared the government should end all subsidies for renewable energy, and that would mean there was no need to subsidise coal.

Despite leading the successful political campaign to scrap the former Labor government’s market mechanism, the carbon price, Abbott declared on Thursday afternoon: “I don’t want to see subsidies, I want to see a market”.

“I say let’s not subsidise anymore renewables, and if we don’t subsidise anymore renewables, we won’t need to subsidise coal, because coal in a normal market is the cheapest way of providing reliable power.”

“It is vastly cheaper than wind and solar and considerably cheaper than gas.

While Abbott’s opinion is wrong according to Ross Garnaut at least he is ‘suggesting’ a return to a free market and Liberal Party tradition.

There are a few of things here to ponder further.

First, the ‘market’ so beloved of Abbott and (up until recently) Turnbull is clearly telling the government that a new coal fired power station is as likely as most of us winning big on Lotto last night, in short, it just ain’t gunna happen.

Second, the war between the conservative and progressive factions of the Liberal Party, as represented by Abbott and Turnbull, is just as destructive and dangerous to the rest of us as the ALP power wars of the past 10 years.

Third, if I was the owner of coal fired power generator in Australia, I would be either selling now or advising the government at the last possible minute of my plans to close it down, rather than manage an orderly transition with the Energy Regulator and Unions. No one would willingly replicate the problems that AGL is currently having by being the proxy in an ideological war within the Liberal Party.

Fourth, yes there will be readjustment in people’s lives as their jobs in coal mines and coal fired power stations do slowly evaporate over the next 40 years as the coal powered generators close down. A similar thing happened when horses were swapped for internal combustion engines in a generation early in the 20th century as well as when steam engines were converted to diesels in the mid-20th century. While the job losses will inevitably make the headlines, the ‘unemployment rate’ in Australia usually bounces around within a couple of percent from one year to the next. As the Brisbane Times recently reported:

The number of Queenslanders who found a job last month would more than fill a packed out show at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics seasonally adjusted figures show 16,700 Queenslanders found work in August.

The arena at Boondall seats 13,500.

The adjustment is happening already.

Creationists will tell you that life on earth began around 6000 years ago when the good (Christian) lord decided to make a world over 6 days – because on the 7th, he rested. Other faiths and cultures also have mythical stories of how the earth was created, which probably suits the fundamentalists in most religious or cultural groupings. Evolution is a far more common belief. There are museums full of evidence of the process of evolution – how small simple structures became large complex structures, demonstrating the ebb and flow of different life forms at different periods of the earth’s history. Creationists have a leg each side of an interesting barbed-wire fence – having a literal belief in a religious text because they can’t cope with the uncertainty of the alternative but sufficient trust that they will be able to pay off their house from future earnings.

Those who have rationalised that evolution is far more probable that creationism would be aware that around 65 million years ago a large meteor (Chicxulub) landed off the coast of current day Mexico and changed the world’s plant and animal life forever. The meteor is believed to have made a hole in the ground 180 km wide and 900 metres deep. Scientists attribute it to be the cause of the mass extinction of life on earth that, to a large extent, eliminated the dinosaurs. According to National Geographic

Exactly how the Chicxulub impact caused Earth’s mass extinctions is not known. Scientists imagine three possible scenarios: Some think the impact threw massive quantities of dust into the atmosphere which blocked the sun and arrested plant growth. Others believe sulphur released by the impact lead to global sulfuric acid clouds that blocked the sun and also fell as acid rain. Another possibility is that red-hot debris from the falling asteroid or comet triggered global wildfires.

It is unfortunate in some ways that a dinosaur or other animal didn’t pick up a pen and paper to record the event to the extent required by those looking for ‘first person’ narratives. It may have made those who believe in creationism somewhat less sceptical of the existence of the world prior to the time of their cultural or religious belief. If nothing else, a narrative would have made it easier to rationalise the science surrounding evolution for those who need documentation and certainty.

Really it doesn’t matter for the sake of this conversation which theory is correct (or if there is an alternative), the upshot was that a lot of dinosaurs and other animals woke up that morning ready for another day of doing whatever they did – and the world changed completely by the time they died (or retired for the evening – depending what theory you believe).

There are a lot of similarities between the dinosaurs who never saw it coming and some notable personalities today when you think about it.

In recent weeks, former PM Tony Abbott has made speeches to well-known conservative ‘think tanks’, the IPA and Centre for Independent Studies, giving his recipe for the return of ‘genuine conservative values’ to the LNP Government. As Peter Harcher observes

Unpopular Abbott doesn’t expect that he’d win the widespread acclaim of the people with backbench speech-making or political snarkery.

No, he’s targeting the Liberal Party’s conservative base as a way of building an internal campaigning energy.

He has proposed a lengthening list of policies. All stand in conflict with those of the government. Most stand in conflict with his own policies when he was prime minister.

But, as the old adage goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and Abbott certainly seems untroubled by the jarring fact that his ideas today clash with the actual policies of his government yesterday.

Abbott in power pursued the national immigration intake around the standard annual equivalent of around 1 per cent of the population. This slows the ageing of the population, contains the blowout in federal health and aged care costs that come with ageing, and continues the historical trajectory of nation-building.

Abbott in pursuit of power now proposes cutting the immigration intake, perhaps by as much as half, to ease pressure on house prices and job seekers.

Abbott in power was unable to stop the relentless blowouts in government spending and debt. Today he demands there be zero new government spending, outside defence.

Abbott as prime minister wanted the next generation of submarines to run on diesel and to be built in Japan. Abbott as aspirant wants Australia to consider nuclear-powered subs, bought from the US, Britain or France.

In another Fairfax Media report, Abbott canvasses

three energy policy measures to put downward pressure on power prices: freezing the renewable energy target at 15 per cent, a moratorium on new wind farms, and for the federal government to potentially go it alone and build a new coal-fired power station.

Mr Abbott also called for immigration to be slashed temporarily to put downward pressure on house prices and upward pressure on wages, and advocated banning all new spending except on defence and infrastructure.

And he had a blunt message for people hoping he may quit politics: “I’m in no hurry to leave public life because we need strong Liberal conservative voices now, more than ever.”

His comments at an Institute of Public Affairs event in Brisbane this morning are the clearest statement yet of an alternative policy program.

Those who can remember Abbott as Opposition Leader would be familiar with the pattern. Abbott was the one who promised to pay back the ‘government debt’, the ALP NBN was ’unaffordable’ (the LNP process was promised to be significantly cheaper), that Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme would result in $100 lamb roasts and his immediate removal of same once in power would strip $500 per annum from domestic power bills. Of course, none of the promises were fulfilled.

It doesn’t stop there. Abbott has a philosophical objection to what are increasingly mainstream values such as same sex marriage, ‘foreigners’ taking over Australia and assistance for those that need a ‘leg-up’ in society.

Abbott is aided and abetted by conservative commentators such as Andrew Bolt – who went to town over the recent comments by ‘senior Cabinet member’ Christopher Pyne claiming that same sex marriage legislation was coming sooner rather than later because the ‘progressive’ side of the Liberal Party was in ascendance. We can only assume there was an interesting discussion between Pyne and Turnbull over how the comments would be seen just as there seemed to be some positive news coming from Canberra.

It’s almost as if winning the ideological divide in the Liberal Party is more important than government. Abbott is younger that Turnbull, so there is a reasonable assumption that, should he and the electors in his area choose, Abbott could be around far longer than Turnbull. He seems to be making a push for a return of the leadership to his ‘safe hands’ post Turnbull. In some ways, the games playing out at the moment are similar to the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years of the ALP, and we all know how that ended. Peace was declared only after the removal of both protagonists.

Perhaps surprisingly, the LNP is not the only political party that is facing internal warfare over policy and practice. The NSW Greens are a separate entity to the Australian Greens and NSW Senator Lee Rhiannon was recently excluded from federal party room discussions on contentious issues as she ‘authorised’ a publicity leaflet circulating in NSW critical of the Gonski 2.0 education funding package at the same time as she was participating in the party room discussion determining if the Greens should support the legislation.

With news reports discussing why the Greens across the rest of Australia call the NSW party ‘watermelons’ – green outside and red (communist) inside – and the NSW party calling the rest of Australia ‘tree tories’ as they will negotiate for an ideologically better but not necessarily ideologically pure outcome, you could probably put money on this really not ending well.

Both Abbott and Rhiannon would probably argue that they are the holders of the ideological hearts of their respective parties. They are entitled to their opinions. It does beg the question however why there is a line in the sand on ideological purity? Society changes opinion over time as circumstances change. Abbott will tell you that same sex marriage is against the doctrines of his particular Christian religion and he’s right – it is. However, the same Christian religion occasionally goes through a process of review and amending the doctrines, the most recent example being Vatican Council 2 in the 1960s. Who knows, the next review may change the Catholic Church doctrine on a number of contentious issues.

Rhiannon’s particular version of the Greens has roots in socialism rather than environmental activism so you could argue they are there for the battle rather than obtaining a compromise result.

Reality would suggest that there are few absolutes that will never change, based on new information or circumstances. Abbott may believe that his version of ‘conservative values’ is the ideal way to run a country and Rhiannon may believe that ideological purity on policy such as school funding is more important than incremental improvement. The concept is similar to deciding 20 years ago that you will only spend $300,000 on a house in one of the east coast capital cities once you have saved the cash to do so. Conceptually you now have your $300,000 burning a hole in your pocket and are ready to go. Practically, the cash you have saved will give you very little (if any) choice if you are not prepared to change your ideological purity to meet the current reality when you consider Brisbane, the east coast capital with the cheapest house prices, has a median price of $635,000.

Are people like Abbott (and his fellow travellers) and Rhiannon the dinosaurs of the current age? The dinosaurs had a small window to change when the meteor hit and those that could adapt; survived. While ideology is important, reality will suggest that your ideology does not necessarily equate with mine, or anyone else’s, or even be relevant when community attitudes change. Compromise is the essence of living in a society. To require absolute ideological purity according to your particular world view can only lead to one outcome – all the Liberal Party and Greens have to do is cast their minds back to the ALP of 2010 to 2013 to see their probable future.

In amongst the budget, responses and ‘expert analysis’, you might have missed the news that so called conservative ‘warrior’ and MP for the seat of Dawson in Central Queensland, George Christensen, recently became a medical tourist to Asia. Christensen, who before the operation weighed in at 176 kilograms, went to Malaysia for an operation to remove 85% of his stomach.

While it is fair to suggest that this website hasn’t been overly friendly to Christensen in the past, he deserves due recognition for attempting to redress a health problem that he claims was due to the politician’s lifestyle of constantly being on the road and rarely eating at home. Like a lot of overweight people Christensen said he had tried “every diet under the sun”. Christensen apparently wants to outlive his grandmother who died at 96; and good luck to him with this ambition. According to the article quoted above, former politician Clive Palmer has also recently lost almost 60kgs in the last eight months.

Regardless of the reason for Christensen’s former weight, the lack of weight loss success with less invasive measures such as diet and exercise suggests there are some elements of an addictive personality resident in the head of George Christensen. He also apparently has the necessary finance available to fund not only ‘every diet under the sun’ but the costs of travelling to Malaysia and undergoing the operation.

It’s lucky in some ways that Christensen isn’t a job seeker and his particular addiction of choice was not to an illicit drug. Turnbull and Morrison’s second budget introduced the concept of drug testing Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients before they are able to receive benefits. Turnbull’s response to Buzzfeed’s question regarding the medical or scientific evidence that demonstrates this scheme would work was interesting

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that welfare money should not be used to buy drugs, and if you love somebody who is addicted to drugs, if you love somebody whose life is being destroyed by drugs, don’t you want to get them off drugs?”

On the face of it, Turnbull has a point. Generally, those who have family members would move heaven and earth to arrange for the affected loved one to come out of the end of a de-tox program as clean. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Christensen is the perfect demonstration that he knows he has a problem, has tried ‘every diet under the sun’ (presumably failed) and ended up taking an irreversible surgical option. In a similar way, taking money off those using illicit drugs will have a probable outcome of increasing petty theft and house breaking rates due to those who can’t pass a drug test ‘falling through the cracks’ by choosing to leave the welfare system. If he really wants to ‘share the love’, Turnbull should be funding de-tox centres and programs to ensure that those with an addictive personality who find themselves using illicit drugs (instead of food, alcohol or tobacco) can be taken through to fix the root cause of the problem – not the claimed anti-social effects of the problem.

The problem is that Turnbull isn’t funding appropriate treatment centres. According to The Greens, fewer than half those who need it, are able to access drug and alcohol treatment. Regardless of your view of The Greens as a political party, their leader Richard De Natalie is a General Practitioner who specialised in drug and alcohol abuse, so he probably has a better idea than you or I how well this country looks after those who ingest illicit drugs.

“It’s time to recognise this is a health problem not a law and order one. We have to have an open, honest conversation about this and stop pretending we’re winning this war – we’re losing and losing fast.”

In fact, Turnbull’s new policy is a demonstrated failure. A number of conservative states in the USA have been running drug testing programs for welfare recipients over a number of years. Most of them have been shut down by the Courts as unconstitutional. Time Magazine reported on drug testing welfare recipients in August 2014 quoting examples such as Florida, which tested welfare recipients for four months in 2011 (before it was struck down in court as being unconstitutional) and found that 2.6% of the recipients tested positive to the welfare-based drug testing regimen.

As an estimated 8% of the population of Florida were using illicit drugs in that period of time, either the welfare recipients were good at hiding their health issue, they couldn’t afford illicit drugs or generally drug taking behaviour is significantly under-represented in the population of welfare recipients. Regardless, the evidence from the period Florida drug tested welfare recipients clearly demonstrates that conservative legislators aren’t letting the facts interrupt a good ‘druggies on welfare’ story.

There is an alternative to the draconian law and order solution to the ‘drug’ problem. Portugal decriminalised personal possession of drugs in 2001. Those found with drugs are offered support to enter and complete a treatment program.

ABC’s Health Report explained the concept in 2009

Ten years ago Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. Heroin use was out of control and the rate of HIV infections in drug users became a humanitarian crisis. So what did Portugal do? They decriminalised all personal drug use in that country, crack, heroin, LSD, you name it. Drugs are still illegal, but it’s no longer a crime to use them. Instead of jail, users and addicts are offered treatment and education.

Also in 2009, Time magazine reported on the results.

in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal’s drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The German media organisation Der Spiegel reported on the ‘Portugal experiment’ in 2013 (during the time of concern over the Portuguese economy) and concluded:

“We haven’t found some miracle cure,” Goulão says. Still, taking stock after nearly 12 years, his conclusion is, “Decriminalization hasn’t made the problem worse.”

At the moment, Goulão’s greatest concern is the Portuguese government’s austerity policies in the wake of the euro crisis. Decriminalization is pointless, he says, without being accompanied by prevention programs, drug clinics and social work conducted directly on the streets. Before the euro crisis, Portugal spent €75 million ($98 million) annually on its anti-drug programs. So far, Goulão has only seen a couple million cut from his programs, but if the crisis in the country grows worse, at some point there may no longer be enough money.

Greens leader Richard De Natalie has a personal interest in drug reform and has visited Portugal to assess the effectiveness of the program.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Turnbull and Morrison chose to take the path where behaviour outside what they consider to be acceptable norms is punished severely, rather than assisting the victims to recover from an illness. When you think of it, Turnbull and Morrison’s policy of drug testing welfare recipients is not a new concept. Regardless of the reality, suggesting those on Newstart or Youth Allowance are ‘dole bludgers’ or ‘druggies’ will assist a conservative government to reduce assistance to this disadvantaged group of people in our society without a lot of their core constituency protesting that unemployed or underemployed are getting a raw deal.

It’s a similar concept to the 2014 budget attempt by Hockey to make those under 30 wait six months before they would receive unemployment benefits. There are also parallels to the ‘Basics Card’ (when some people’s welfare benefits are ‘income managed’ and paid directly to a EFTPOS card that cannot be used to obtain cash or purchase a host of items including alcohol, tobacco and gambling products) or labelling refugees as boat people, illegal immigrants, queue jumpers and so on as a justification for the horrific treatment (consisting of detention centres in foreign countries, legal fictions in regards to the Australian border and the actions of the black shirted militaristic ‘Border Force’).

Certainly, Turnbull’s response to the question, ‘why test welfare recipients for drug use?’ was more nuanced than the quote reprinted here – but there is clearly a better way than driving people who are abusing substances underground. It’s telling that George Christensen – presumably a victim of an addiction to a legal substance himself – has called for drug testing for welfare recipients (and politicians) over a number of years.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate for Christensen (who seems to have an addiction to food) and other similarly minded conservatives who have a ‘interesting relationship’ with alcohol to be musing on the axiom there but for the grace of God go I.