Well may we ask what’s in a name and if you put that question to our ABC you will get all sorts of responses but not necessarily in a language with which you are familiar.

If you listen to ABC Radio National in the mornings you will hear ‘Breakfast’ presenter Patricia Karvelas announce that she is coming to you from the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation ; I had to Google that as I am – to my eternal shame – not up on the language of the Wurundjeri people. As it turns out, the Wurundjeri people are an Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the traditional owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourne).

So Patricia was broadcasting from Melbourne but, due to a policy on inclusion at the ABC, she was not able to say that she was in Melbourne or Glenelg if you want to be pedantic. Fun fact : The first official name proposed for Melbourne was Glenelg but Governor Sir Richard Bourke overruled this, and on his visit in March 1837 decided on Melbourne – after the then British Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who resided in the village of Melbourne in Derbyshire in the English Midlands. Prior to that, albeit briefly, Melbourne was named ‘Batmania’ after John Batman, who claimed to have founded the city in 1835 – but the less said about that, the better.

Melbourne was just a whisker away from being named Glenelg or perhaps Bourke. Incidentally, Bourke, a town in north-central New South Wales, on the Darling River, was named after the very same Governor Sir Richard Bourke – the township of Bourke is located on Gurnu – Baakandji Country and was home to the Ngemba group of the Wongaibon Aboriginal language group prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Meanwhile back at the ABC : on Saturday mornings David Lipson presents a Radio National program titled ‘This week’ and he tells us that he is coming to us from Gadigal Land. Again, my knowledge of Aboriginal regional dialects fails me so it’s back to Google. It seems that the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the City of Sydney local area were the Gadigal people. The territory of the Gadi (gal) people stretched along the southern side of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) from South Head to around what is now known as Petersham. Although, somewhat confusingly the traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora peoples. Suffice to say, David is broadcasting from Sydney but inclusion protocols at the ABC won’t allow him to mention that ; does inclusion only work one way ?

The Anglo name for Sydney was nominated by governor Arthur Phillip who established the European settlement on the shores of Port Jackson in 1788 and named the inlet “Sydney Cove” in honour of the British Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Lord Sydney.

Visitors to Australia frequently comment on the names the British gave various places in this wide brown land : fancy, for instance calling a highway Bruce (after former Queensland and federal politician, Harry Bruce) or a city Townsville (‘Town’s town’ after Robert Towns, entrepreneur, businessman and occasional ‘blackbirder’, whose ship the ‘Don Juan’ brought one of the earliest shiploads of South Sea Islanders from present-day Vanuatu to labour on his Queensland estates in 1863 – Queensland had only just been formed when separation from New South wales was granted by Queen Victoria in June 1859.

There has been talk of a name change for Townsville but there are many claims for the area comprising the land of the Gurambilburra Wulgurukaba, Bindal, Nywaigi, and Gugu Badhun Peoples. The ABC are still working on that one.

The whole issue of place names and the changing of names is one fraught with attitude, entitlement and ego, with virtue signalling and political correctness frequently evident. There is also a process that needs to be adhered to : you can’t just change the name of a place and say that’s it, from now on everybody must adopt that name, inevitably somebody will have their nose out of joint.

Some changes are not controversial : in 2020, Western Australia renamed the King Leopold Ranges, named after the brutal colonial Belgium monarch, the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, using both the Ngarinyin and Bunuba names for the area. Nobody objected. In 1993 Ayers Rock was renamed Uluru with little controversy particularly as dual naming policies allow Ayers Rock to be maintained as a secondary point of identification for visitors to ‘the rock’.

Most Australian jurisdictions now have dual naming policies, which allow geographical features to be identified by both their traditional and colonial name, as with ‘the rock’. But it can get a bit messy where there is little no consultation. In 1992, the Victorian government renamed the Grampians national park as the Grampians (Gariwerd) national park, but the decision was reversed after a change of government in 1992 and official use of Gariwerd was not reinstated until after the Geographic Place Names Act 1998 (Vic) was introduced. Suggestions that the Dandenong ranges should be renamed with an Aboriginal place name became confused when it was established that Dandenong was in fact a corruption of the original Aboriginal name, Tanjenong possibly and not unsurprisingly, wrongly interpreted by an early surveyor.

Personally I am comfortable with dual naming as being a reasonable compromise in most cases. Back at the ABC, the morning am program is presented out of Tasmania by the very talented Sabra Lane. Sabra without fail will tell you that she is broadcasting from ‘nipaluna, Hobart’. That strikes a nice balance for me.

What do you think ?

Households will be hit by a 56 per cent surge in energy bills in the coming two years according to our Treasurer – this cost impact does not include the petrol or diesel for our vehicles but relates solely to the energy used in our homes and businesses.

On most of mainland Australia we still rely heavily on coal and gas for our domestic energy production. Coal and gas accounted for around 70% of electricity generation in 2021.

Over the last decade, the share of electricity generated by renewable energy in Australia has increased significantly, rising from around 10.5% in 2010 to 29% in 2021.

Tasmania has become the first Australian state to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity generation largely coming from hydro and wind resources. The recently announced Tasmanian Renewable Energy Target will double renewable energy production and reach 200 per cent of current Tasmanian electricity demand by 2040 : the surplus being sent to the mainland by an undersea cable known as the Marinus Link.

Sun Cable in the Northern Territory is planning to export Australian solar energy to Singapore as part of a US$22-billion infrastructure project which will send electricity more than 3,100 miles (5,000 km) to Singapore, via high-voltage undersea cables. Opening in 2027, it will be the largest solar farm and battery storage facility on the planet and will combine 17-20 gigawatts of peak solar power generation and some 36-42 GWh of battery storage. To give you a sense of scale, that’s nearly 10 times the size of the world’s current largest solar power installation and more than 30 times the energy storage capacity of the world’s biggest battery project.

When it comes to LNG, as of 2022, we will export around 87.6 million metric tons. Australia and Qatar are currently the major exporting countries of LNG , followed by the United States, which has an annual capacity of 73.9 million metric tons. But there is something wrong !

Whilst we export equivalent volumes of gas to those coming out of Qatar their government will receive around $26.6 billion in royalties from the multinational companies exploiting its offshore gasfields, whereas, according to Treasury estimates, Australia will receive just $800 million for the same volume of gas leaving our shores.

When it comes to coal – the source of most of our electricity – The 5 biggest exporters of coal are Australia, Indonesia, Russia, United States and South Africa. Combined, those 5 countries shipped 84.5% of the total value of coal sold on international markets during 2021.

Mark Latham found himself a cushy number after he lost the leadership of the federal Labor Party. He nominated himself for a seat in the NSW Upper House, the Legislative Assembly, representing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party : In March 2019, he was elected for an eight-year term.

In the NSW Legislative Assembly you don’t actually have to do much apart from appear on Sky after Dark periodically and give the impression of being a man of the people. But Mark’s ambition has been to get more One Nation representatives into the NSW parliament. Not the lower house as they would actually have to be elected, rather the upper house where they aren’t accountable to an electorate. So Mark has come up with a wheeze to get somebody into parliament without actually being elected.

The idea is that with four years remaining in his appointed term, he’s going to resign and create a casual vacancy. Under the Constitution Act 1902 (NSW) the procedure for filling that vacancy does not require a by-election (it’s the upper house you see) but calls for the state Governor to convene a joint sitting of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly to elect a person to fill the vacant seat.

The person nominated for election to fill a vacant seat – and this is where Mark has been doing his homework – must be a member of the same political party as the member he or she replaces at the time that member was elected.

So, Mark resigns and another One Nation luminary takes his place – they call it parachuting – and Mark goes off into semi-retirement somewhere on the NSW North coast ? Not on your Nelly ! Remember, it is Mr Latham’s intention to get more One Nation people into the NSW parliament and this strategy doesn’t achieve that – one out, one in doesn’t work.

This is where it gets tricky as Mark intends to nominate himself again at the state election in March 2023. He’s relying on his name recognition and the ‘donkey vote’ to achieve this. All going to plan, he will be elected for an eight-year term next March and will join the person who took his place following his retirement.

This is all legal but is it ethical ? Is it democracy at work ? You be the judge.

The current parliamentary sitting has been noteworthy for the attempts by the opposition to ‘ping’ Labor ministers for being in breach of the new code of conduct. It seems that the opposition have dedicated the time of their staff to combing through ministerial declarations of interests trying to find instances where a minister may be in breach of the new code.

Albanese has gone to some considerable lengths to present a ministerial code of conduct that leaves little wriggle room for ministers and clears up the loopholes that the former coalition government ministers were able to exploit.

In particular, the use of Blind Trusts has been outlawed : who can forget the use of a blind trust by former Attorney General Christian Porter to pay legal costs for a defamation action he launched against the ABC using funds, the source of which has never been disclosed.

The new code requires that: “Ministers will not have any direct shareholdings. Ministers are required to divest themselves of shareholdings, except in superannuation and other broadly diversified managed funds. There will be no ‘blind trust’ arrangements,” under this code.

“Ministers will be personally responsible for their private interests. Ministers won’t be allowed to delegate that responsibility to anyone else, such as in a ‘blind trust’ arrangement.”

This is the full code for those interested.

Probably the only criticism of this code is that, in trying to be proscriptive it can be confusing as Attorney General Mark Dreyfus found in Question Time on Thursday following a barrage of questions over his self-managed superannuation fund : fortunately the code allows for external scrutiny and advice in circumstances where there is ambiguity which seems to be the case with Dreyfus.

On the positive side, it is good that the Albanese government has moved quickly to update the code of conduct for ministers and to address some of the glaring omissions of the past – for instance as was noted in the parliament on Thursday pretty well all of the former governments’ ministers would have been in breach of this code of conduct and several engaged in multiple breaches.

I’m no economist but neither am I a fool. When somebody tells me that inflation has taken off in Australia and that the cause is largely due to an escalation in the prices of goods and services driven by wage and salary increases and the costs of production I start to take interest.

For a start it can’t be spiralling wages as they have been stuck in the doldrums for years while corporate profits have surged and executive bonuses have ballooned. So we need to look elsewhere.

The Reserve Bank of Australia says that they have to dampen down spending because you and I (well not so much me, more you) have been borrowing too much money and spending it on buying up residential land and houses like the much maligned drunken sailor – you have been doing this because money was so cheap that you would be a fool not to do so ; also you were cheered on by successive governments who gave you generous negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions to encourage you in your wanton spending.

Well, on Tuesday the Reserve Bank will take a big stick to us (well, more you than me) and probably increase interest rates by at least half of one percent if not seventy five basis points (that’s the clever way of saying .75%). This will quickly be passed on by the banks and will, they hope, quell your lust for borrowing and all will be well.

My response to that economic thesis can be summarized in one word : piffle !

My normal source for economic commentary and advice is my local IGA manager so I put it to him to explain why pretty well every product in his store had gone up in price in recent weeks and months : he gave me three reasons.

First and foremost was the cost of freight, more specifically petrol and diesel which due to embargoes and sanctions on oil production in places ranging from Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and the Russian Federation has meant that the world is reliant on Saudi Arabia and the UAE for our oil supplies and they are quite content to screw us for all we’re worth while they can – they see the coming revolution in electric vehicles and transportation as impacting their business model so they are getting in for a quick quid while they have a captive customer base – hence fuel is costing a lot more money at the pump and goods are landing on the shelves at IGA with an additional premium.

The second reason is climate and floods mainly impacting lettuce, tomatoes and other fresh veggies : this he says will pass as we move towards spring and domestic production gets back online – who eats salads in winter time anyway ? Oddly in my local area growers have been harvesting and dumping large quantities of Avocado in recent times as there is evidently a glut and it’s not worth taking them to market – go figure.

The third reason is a very human attribute summed up as hopping on the bandwagon. A very cynical approach by some suppliers of goods and services who see prices going up all around and decide to bump up their prices just for the sake of it.

Image from australianunions.org.au

So, the question is will actions taken by the Reserve Bank on Tuesday, by way of increasing interest rates, ease inflation in Australia. My IGA manager, adopting a term favoured by economists, says : pig’s arse they will !

What do you think ?

PS : The captioned photo of Clive Palmer has nothing to do with this article but I couldn’t resist it – this was one of the few occasions, when as a sitting member, he actually made it to the parliament and stayed awake (briefly).

The right-wing nutters on Sky-after-Dark are beside themselves with righteous indignation that prime minister Albanese is spending so much time overseas when he should be visiting flood inundated suburbs in Sydney.

They liken Albanese’s overseas trip to that of Scott Morrison’s family holiday in Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires – a holiday that the opposition knew nothing about and even the Deputy Prime Minister seemed unaware that he was leading the country.

Just how a so-called news organisation can equate a family holiday in Hawaii with a trip to war torn Ukraine beggars the imagination.

But then, Sky is not really a news organisation in the traditional mould. Their evening offering is all about confected outrage usually aimed at those they see as Lefties and of course the ABC.

Just to be clear the prime minister has been away for little over a week on official trips to a NATO leaders’ summit in Spain, mending fences with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, rekindling a free trade arrangement with the EU and a high-security trip to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

How dare he screeches Murdoch owned Sky, hasn’t he got a phone? Presumably, according to Sky, if it’s good enough for Rupert to divorce the long-suffering Jerry Hall by email why can’t ‘Airbus Albo’ communicate with world leaders by Twitter.

Despite all the trips being official business and in the national interest, Newscorp are not happy that a Labor prime minister is hobnobbing with world leaders when he could be filling sandbags in Parramatta.

On social media some outraged nutters have taken to the hashtags ‘Airbus Albo’ and ‘Where’s Albo’ and others labelled him ‘Anthony Overseasy’.

In my opinion, Albo is a refreshing change and is letting the world know that Australia is back and that we do actually believe in climate change and that we have a contribution to make on global issues and that we will do our bit.

On 30 April, less than a month before the election I penned this piece, about the foreshadowed spike in energy prices, about to hit Australian consumers: Coalition promises higher electricity costs!

I wrote it because it was quite clear that the Coalition were not going to come clean before the election and it was a known major factor that was going to hit Australian businesses and consumers as winter came on.

The prices for coal, gas and petroleum products are all being hit largely due to the Ukraine war, the sanctions placed on the Russians, profit gouging by OPEC and, in the domestic context, a complete malaise on energy policy over the ten years of Coalition rule.

Clearly, we can’t do much about the supply of petrol and diesel products as we are wholly reliant on offshore producers and refiners and OPEC have told the world that they will not be increasing production to ease the shortages. However, we could start by accelerating the transition to electric vehicles now that we know that the man, who said they wouldn’t tow your boat or get you and your family to your favourite camping spot, was lying.

In the meantime we still need petroleum products to get us through the transition.

Interestingly, Venezuela holds the planet’s largest reserves of untapped oil but that won’t help us as the US have sanctions on the Venezuelan government – evidently they don’t like President Nicolás Maduro. Another fun-fact: Iran holds the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves but their exports are also under US bans and sanctions for much the same reasons.

As regards coal and gas, we are major producers of both and we have the ability to reserve or hold back a portion of our production for domestic consumption at prices that are not determined by world market fluctuations. Something that is obviously necessary until we can break the grip of fossil fuels and replace them with price-stable renewable resources – Vladimir Putin does not control the supply of sunlight or wind although he may think he does.

In the UK the conservative government has imposed a twenty-five per cent ‘windfall profits tax’ on oil and gas companies. A windfall tax being a one-off tax imposed by a government on producers and suppliers who, through no effort on their part, were lucky enough to benefit from something they were not responsible for – in other words, a windfall profit.

Our gas and coal producers are also in the fortunate position of being recipients of these windfall profits due largely to geopolitical happenings in other parts of the world: the question is, should they reap these windfall profits and should we be funding them?

The former Coalition government knew that this supply and demand price crunch was coming, it’s been forecast for over twelve months, but they suppressed the release of information because it didn’t fit with their election narrative and apart from that they love to see ‘can do capitalism’ in action. From comments made by the new leader of the Coalition, they will now be using these price spikes to attack the new Labor government for incompetence in office even though, you will note, the new government were only installed a matter of days ago – that’s Voldemort for you.

You may recall that the Gillard government enacted The Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT), a tax on profits generated from the mining of non-renewable resources in Australia. It was a replacement for the proposed Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT). The tax, levied on 30% of the “super-profits” from gas production and the mining of iron ore and coal was introduced on 1 July 2012.

The Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, went to the 2010 and 2013 elections promising to repeal the tax. They considered the tax to be the actions of a socialist regime and when they won office at the 2013 election the tax was repealed. I wonder what they now think of Boris Johnson’s actions with his windfall profits tax which, is essentially the same thing?

Surely it is time that we had some coherent taxation laws governing the extraction and sale of our non-renewable resources until such time as we can put in place reliable renewable energy infrastructure, which will not be subject to geopolitical price manipulation. We need to ensure continuity of price-stable energy rather than pandering to the multi-national mining conglomerates.

I have a great deal more confidence that the new Albanese government will do this contrasted with the flashmob we have just cartwheeled out of office – don’t let us down, Albo!

We know that the coalition are better economic managers because they told us so. The coalition are also good on one liners. As Josh Frydenberg told us during the budget speech “The government is delivering on its commitment to secure affordable and reliable energy supply and has achieved its goal of wholesale electricity prices under $70/MWh”.

The worrying thing is that they now lie to us without hesitation : Josh Frydenberg at every opportunity tells us how electricity prices have fallen 8 per cent since the last election due to the ‘steady as she goes’ coalition management of the economy. What he doesn’t mention is the 10 per cent lift in car prices, the 8 per cent increase in milk prices, the 11 per cent jump in furniture prices or the 13.5 per cent increase in childcare costs since 2019.

But even on electricity costs they are telling lies. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said in recent days that wholesale electricity costs have soared 141 per cent in the three months to 31 March 2022 compared with the same period last year and these increases will be passed on to consumers (probably after the election).

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that :

Frydenberg is in denial and has yet to acknowledge this massive increase in electricity costs but when he does he will undoubtedly lay the blame with … wait for it … the Labor party and the best way of avoiding these increases is to re-elect the coalition.

Morrison has said that the reasons for the increases, apart from Labor, are the war in Ukraine which has created shortages of coal and gas and according to Scott the rigid laws of supply & demand require that we pay more for our own coal when it’s in short supply in Europe – go figure !

The solution to this global market disruption according to Morrison – I don’t hold a shovel mate – is not to vote for Labor or the TEAL Independents and all will be well.

You know and I know that the real problem is that we are locked into global markets for the supply of fossil fuels and until we start to take seriously the transition to renewable energy we will continue to be price takers when it comes to coal and gas even though we are one of the world’s major suppliers of both commodities.

Meanwhile, the coalition have dropped the economy as being their strong suit and have moved on to national security and preparations for war. Over to you Captain Mainwaring.

Seriously, how could anybody re-elect this mob ?

Did you know that the United Nations has a Human Rights Council made up of forty-seven nations who each sit on the Council for three years, elected on a rotational basis from the 193 UN members. On 1 January 2021 they elected the following countries for a three year term, to oversee human rights on behalf of all nations.

Bolivia, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, France, Gabon, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan,
Russian Federation, Senegal, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.

These 15 members will serve three-year terms beginning on 1 January 2021. Do you notice anything odd about these nominees ?

Yes, you spotted it. Both Russia and Ukraine were sitting side by side on the human rights council : today the UN has suspended the Russian Federation from the council, I wonder why.

Then you have the UN Security Council which has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 Members, and each Member has one vote. There are five permanent members (USA, UK, France, China and Russia). The UN Security Council gives veto powers to its five permanent members, which means essentially that any resolution put to the security council can die instantly if one permanent member of the council says ‘nyet’. So, if there was a vote to remove, for instance, the Russian Federation from the security council it would have to have Russia’s approval to go ahead.

It seems that the only thing the security council can regularly achieve unanimous agreement on is a resolution to break for lunch !

From time to time the UN is characterised as a nut house and it does seem that Alice in Wonderland was adopted as a template – you be the judge :

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

You may well think that the United Nations no longer has a place in the modern world but, like coal mining its supporters say, it provides employment : what more could you ask ?

This is a little piece I penned (and published) in 2018 when the Liberal Party in NSW were trying to make their pre-selection process more democratic. It was known as the Warringah Motion and was driven by Tony Abbott, and it was adopted. This meant that the pre-selection of candidates would be a matter for individual branches without federal interference or factional stacking.

That worked out well, didn’t it?

The Liberal Party is nothing if not democratic: perhaps it’s closer to being nothing after what happened over the Craig Kelly preselection for the NSW seat of Hughes.

Last year the Liberal party in NSW voted on what came to be known as the Warringah Motion sponsored by Tony Abbott and vigorously supported by temporary senator, Jim Molan.

The so-called Warringah motion was designed to reform the Liberal preselection process and ensure a members’ plebiscite to select candidates for state and federal seats in NSW. The motion passed 748 votes to 476 at a party convention in Sydney in July last year.

Tony Abbott emerged victorious from the NSW Liberal Party convention after his motion to give party members a greater say in selecting candidates was passed. “This, gives grassroots members more power in selecting candidates,” Abbott said. He went on to say that it would create a more democratic Liberal Party and end the potential for corruption: “It’s a clear road ahead to one member one vote preselections, a clear road ahead to a democratic political party which is controlled by its members not by lobbyists, not by factionists, not by strong pullers.”

“I think this is a great day for the NSW Liberal Party. And because it’s been a great day for the NSW Liberal Party, I think it will be good for our Government in Canberra and I think it will be very good for Australia” Abbott concluded.

So, a jubilant Tony Abbott must have been a bit non-plussed when this new era of democratic preselections was thrown under a bus at the first available opportunity, essentially to preserve a numpty by the name of Craig Kelly who is nominally the member for Hughes in the federal parliament. Nominally because he seems to spend more time waffling on the Sky-after-dark Muppet Show than he does making a useful contribution to our parliament.

When the preselectors in Hughes were showing signs of getting themselves a decent local member in the lead up to the 2019 election, Kelly made it known that if he was dumped by the grass roots membership, he would go to the cross-benches for the remainder of this parliamentary term and further erode the authority of this already lame minority government; perhaps even bring the government down.

Our prime minister acknowledging the power of the Right, in an act of desperation, capitulated and decided that expedience was the way to go and that preselections by the grass roots Liberal membership was all very well but only when they do as they are told. Clearly in Hughes they were not prepared to preselect Craig Kelly, so our action-man prime minister quite incredibly called on the NSW Liberal party executive to scrap all democratic processes and re-endorse all sitting members – including of course Kelly – without the need for the messy and inconvenient involvement of the party membership: and that’s just what they did.

Ironically, the Warringah Motion was promoted as broadening the democratic processes within the Liberal party which in turn it was thought would boost branch membership, a win win it was suggested.

The question is, when the executive of a political party is prepared to scrap their own democratic principles and processes to appease threats of blackmail from a person like Craig Kelly, is that the sort of party with which you would wish to associate yourself?

Zali Steggall has been a target of the Liberal Party ever since she dared topple Tony Abbott, in the 2019 election, in the seat of Warringah.

So, it now seems there has been a political hit on Steggall over electoral donations she received from the KInghorn Family Trust which had donated $100,000 to Steggall’s campaign. This donation was in one cheque but represented pledges of $12,500 each on behalf of eight members of the family trust.

The eight separate donations at $12,500 fell below the disclosure threshold but the AEC quite correctly noted that the payment by a single cheque exceeded the threshold and required further disclosure: this disclosure was corrected by Steggall in February 2021.

The threshold for donations requiring disclosure at that time was $13,800 since then it has been increased by indexation to $14,500. The system at the federal level was running quite well with a disclosure threshold of just $1500 until 2006 when John Howard decided that was too low and increased it to “more than $10,000” with annual indexation : that’s when the rot set in and neither party has been prepared to address the growing problem since.

This practice of donation splitting, when payments are divided into smaller amounts so that large payments can be kept under the disclosure threshold, has been widely adopted by all political parties and is still quite common and legal. Where Steggall came undone was that the established political parties are alert to the need to keep the individual donations under the threshold ; that’s why they are calling Steggall’s blunder a rookie mistake.

So, in effect nothing illegal has occurred and when the oversight was brought to the independent member for Warringah’s attention, it was corrected.

Does it warrant a media hit? I don’t think so but there is no doubt that the whole of the regulatory system governing political donations badly needs to be overhauled. When you consider that just $17.9 million worth of individual donations were declared for the 2020 – 2021 year compared with the almost $177 million received by parties you would be forgiven if you thought that the disclosure regime was better described as a non-disclosure scheme.

Personally, Steggall’s oversight doesn’t concern me but I am far more concerned that our former Attorney General, Christian Porter, was able to receive and conceal an anonymous donation said to be in the order of a million dollars. In Porter’s case he threw a legal doona over the donation by calling it the proceeds of a blind trust and thus he could not reveal either the source of the funds or the donor – all legal according to him, wink wink, nudge nudge !

Not to mention the potential for disruption to our democracy, not from overseas interests as Peter Dutton would have us believe, but closer to home in the form of Clive Frederick Palmer who spent $60 million in the lead up to the 2019 election without much of a return on his money. But he threatens to spend even more this time around and may well be able to insert one or more of his stooges into the senate: that’s what ASIO are worried about and we should be too.