I rarely use the term hysterical but I don’t know how else to describe Tim Wilson’s increasingly irrational attacks on Independents.

According to Tim, Zali Stegall’s proposal to establish an independent climate change commission to provide advice to the government on the appropriate policy mechanisms and interim targets needed to achieve net zero by 2050 amounts to “subversion and treason”.

Obviously terrified by the Climate 200 fund, Tim has penned an article in the SMH titled Independents more likely to hurt Labor and Greens than Liberals.

Wilson tries valiantly to use his most condescending, dismissive, sneering rhetoric, well-practised at the Rinehart-funded IPA, to suggest that the “Voices of” movement is astroturfing by confecting a community campaign, that they are bankrolled by outsiders, and that all the Independents “just happen to repeat precisely the same spin.”

Oh the irony.

Then it gets personal. Tim is being challenged for his seat of Goldstein by journalist Zoe Daniels.

“The strategy is very simple. Make voters think the so-called “independents” are Liberal-lite. That obviously doesn’t wash when the so-called “independent” candidate for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel, admits she voted Liberal in 2016, only to vote for Labor and their retiree tax in 2019,” says the so-called assistant minister for energy and emissions reduction.

I’m surprised Tim would remind us of his campaign against the “retiree tax” where he was rebuked by the Speaker for conduct that may have caused damage to the House economics committee’s reputation and to the House committee system.

Wilson collaborated with a multibillion-dollar fund manager on a campaign against the opposition’s franking credit policy, failed to declare his investments in funds run by the firm to inquiry hearings, and used the taxpayer-funded probe to help spruik Liberal Party fundraisers.

Needless to say, Tim has since been promoted and is now Angus Taylor’s assistant minister for emissions reduction – as you would with the man who wrote a glowing review of Ian Plimer’s climate change scepticism book ‘How to Get Expelled From School: A Guide to Climate Change for Pupils, Parents and Punters’.

Tim warns of “the confusion and chaos of a hung Parliament” where MPs “hold the nation’s policy agenda hostage.” That’s a gutsy call when we just witnessed the most chaotic two weeks from a majority government with their own members crossing the floor and threatening to withhold their votes until they get their way.

He then dismisses the contribution of independents as “carping from the crossbench” rather than being “at the decision-making table”.

Tim seems to be having an each way bet as to whether the crossbench are holding the country hostage or irrelevant.

His incoherence continues.

Tim states that “narrow, or single, issues may have electoral appeal, but it is not a sustainable and sufficiently broad foundation for government.”

He goes on to tell us that “The media fundamentally got the last election wrong because they underestimated what issues move votes. They missed the nearly one million retirees who risked losing a third of their income overnight because of Labor’s retiree tax.”

Seriously? Excess franking credit refunds are more important than action on climate change?

Throughout his article – eight times in fact – Wilson uses the term so-called “independents”. He thrashes around trying everything he can to discredit and invalidate them.

And then he finishes by saying they “will do far more damage to Labor and the Greens than Liberals at the ballot box.”

So why are you so worried, Tim?

The free speech argument in Australia has always been skewed. Lacking the confidence, courage and maturity to have a bill of rights that might protect it, Australia’s body politic has stammered its way to the frailest of protections. The Australian High Court has done its small bit to read an implied right into one of the world’s dreariest constitutions, though the judges have been at pains to point out that it can never be personally exercised. The wordy “implied right to protect freedom of communication on political subjects” can only ever act as a restraint on excessive legislative or executive actions.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory, enumerates a right to hold opinions without interference and the right to freedom of expression (Article 19). As uplifting as this is, the article also permits restrictions upon that right for reasons of protecting the rights or reputations of others, national security, public order, public health or morals. With such exceptions, authorities have vast latitude to clip, curtail and restrain. But even then, Australia expressly implemented the machinery that would enable anyone in the country to enforce it.

The great stifling brake on free expression in the country comes in the form of draconian defamation laws that can be used by the powerful, the petty and the privileged. The political classes, for one, regularly resort to that mechanism to silence critics, claiming that their tattered reputations would somehow be impugned by a comedy sketch, an angry social media post, or a hurtful remark.

One particularly nasty example of this has come from current Defence Minister Peter Dutton, described by the late Bob Ellis as a “simian sadist”, a pious detainer of refugees. Since then, we can also add war enthusiast, given his regular remarks about a willingness to send Australians over to die on that piece of land formerly known as Formosa.

Despite being in a government proclaiming the importance of free speech, Dutton has, like other politicians, availed himself of the tools that undermine it. That tool – namely, the defamation action – was used recently, with partial and regrettable success, against refugee advocate Shane Bazzi. It is worth reflecting that the action took place over a six-word tweet posted on February 25 this year. The tweet was flavour-fuelled with accusation: “Peter Dutton is a rape apologist.”

It had been typed – as things often are – in the heat of anger: some hours after Dutton had told a press conference that he had not been furnished with the “she said, he said” details of a rape allegation made by Britney Higgins, a former Coalition staffer who has spurred a movement to redress Parliament’s sexual violence problem.

That comment, while seemingly rash, had rich context in terms of opinion, taking issue with Dutton’s characterisation of refugee women detained on Nauru as being the sort who were “trying it on” to ensure entry to the Australian mainland. Those were Dutton’s own words, noted in a 2019 Guardian Australia article mentioned in the tweet.

This legal action was merely one measure of the Morrison government’s general enthusiasm for trying to regulate the Internet and, more specifically, the effusive, often mad hat chatter on social media. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, no less, has called it “a coward’s place” filled with anonymous abusers and vilifiers, and has been on a crusade to make publishers of defamatory comments, and the platforms hosting them, liable.

Dutton had also promised in March with menace that he would start to “pick out some” individuals who were “trending on Twitter or have the anonymity of different Twitter accounts” posting “all these statements and tweets that are frankly defamatory.”

His government is also drafting laws which will require social media companies to gather the details of all users and permit courts to force companies to divulge their identities to aid defamation cases. These regulations stink of advantaging the powerful and political whose tendency to be offended is easy to provoke. They also point to an obvious purpose: reining in criticism, however sound, of the government.

In instigating proceedings against Bazzi, Dutton claimed in the trial that he was “deeply offended” by the contents of the tweet. He claimed to be a paragon of veracity and accuracy severely misunderstood. “As a minister for immigration or home affairs … people make comments that are false or untrue, offensive, profane, but that’s part of the rough and tumble.”

Bazzi, however, had crossed the line; his comments were made by a person verified by Twitter. “It was somebody that held himself out as an authority or a journalist.” His remarks “went beyond” the acceptably rough and tumbling nature of politics. “And it went against who I am, my beliefs … I thought it was hurtful.”

In court, Dutton outlined a series of measures he had taken as a minister to deal with allegations of abuse. He created the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. He dispatched Australian Federal Police officers to Nauru to investigate sexual assault allegations. It never once occurred to him that these initiatives took place on a problem of his own government’s making. If you set up concentration camps on Pacific islands to allow asylum seekers and refugees to sunder, subsidizing client states to so, denigration and depravity follow.

Bazzi, through his lawyer, Richard Potter SC, claimed that the defences of honest opinion or fair comment applied. According to Potter, the honest opinion defence was “a fundamental protection in our society”, “a bulwark of freedom of speech”. In Australia, such assertions would be going too far, given how difficult they are to apply.

The law firm representing Bazzi, O’Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors, also made the understandable claim in April that the whole proceedings should worry us all. “For a politician to use defamation law to stifle expression of a public opinion is a cause for real concern.”

In the public domain, individuals who had known a thing or two about the spiritual and physical torment of rape expressed their puzzlement over Dutton’s response. Higgins, who is seeking redress for her own suffering in this matter, found the minister’s legal response to Bazzi “baffling”. “I’ve been offended plenty.” Despite that, it still afforded “people … the right to engage in public debate and assert their opinion.” The whole case was a “shocking indictment on free speech.”

From the outset, the Federal Court seemed, as much of Australia’s legal system is, inclined to the complainant. The Anglo-Australian culture puts much stock in the artificial contrivance of reputation, which is often a social illusion that says little about the conduct of the defamed individual. Reputations are often false veneers fiercely protected.

And so it came as no surprise that Justice Richard White was critical of the legal firm defending Barazzi. The justice asked those representing the firm whether they were appearing as solicitors with obligations to be objective and independent, or as “supporters and barrackers” of their client. He preferred the parties to seek a settlement. “It does seem to me that this should be a matter of capable resolution. There are risks on both sides.”

In finding for Dutton in November, Justice White ruled that the tweet had been defamatory, and that Bazzi could not resort to the defence of honest opinion. With classic, skewering casuistry, the judge found that “Bazzi may have used the word ‘apologist’ without an understanding of the meaning he was, in fact conveying.” If this had been the case, “it would follow that he did not hold the opinion actually conveyed by the words.” Let it be known: if you do no not understand the meaning of certain words, you can have no opinions about them.

Despite his eagerness to seek damages for all grounds, Dutton was only successful on one of the four pleaded imputations. Claims for aggravated damages and an injunction targeting Bazzi’s comments, were rejected. The Defence Minister’s appetite for pursuing Bazzi for his full legal bill also troubled Justice White, who had repeatedly urged the parties to reach a settlement. Why had Dutton not sued in a lower court, he asked? The reason, claimed Dutton’s barrister Hamish Clift this month, was because his client was a prominent figure requiring a prominent stage to protect his prominent reputation. “It would not be appropriate for the court,” retorted White, “to exercise their discretion more favourably to Dutton simply because of the important public and national office of which he holds.”

In stating that all were equal before the law irrespective of their position, White made a sound point that those schooled in aspirational justice would appreciate but hardly believe. When it comes to Australia’s defamation laws, such a statement is a matter of form and formality, not substance and reality.

I was going to write an article about Barnaby’s Dam Scam – I may still later – but it struck me that all this exposing of dubious grants and dodgy contracts is missing the bigger point that our government doesn’t seem to even know what it is for.

They want “small government” but aren’t suggesting we need less of the political class. They just want less to do apparently. They want to “get out of the way”, leave it to us and the market and “technology”. Meanwhile, they spend their time canvassing each other and their donors for random wish lists to spend all the money on.

It seems to me, that isn’t going so well.

Years ago, I read an essay titled The Responsibilities of Government. I cannot find it on the internet anywhere except where I quoted it in an article I wrote in 2013 when the spectre of an Abbott government had become awful reality. I knew Tony wasn’t up to the job so thought I should remind him of the role a government should play.

Governments have not been fulfilling their responsibilities for many years but this lot have given up any pretence of being motivated by the best interests of the people – unless they are ‘their’ people.

This is an excerpt from that original essay that should remind us all what we have a right to expect from our government:

“The government of a democracy is accountable to the people. It must fulfil its end of the social contract. And, in a practical sense, government must be accountable because of the severe consequences that may result from its failure. As the outcomes of fighting unjust wars and inadequately responding to critical threats such as global warming illustrate, great power implies great responsibility.

The central purpose of government in a democracy is to be the role model for, and protector of, equality and freedom and our associated human rights. For the first, government leaders are social servants, since through completing their specific responsibilities they serve society and the people. But above and beyond this they must set an ethical standard, for the people to emulate. For the second, the legal system and associated regulation are the basic means to such protection, along with the institutions of the military, for defence against foreign threats, and the police.

Government economic responsibility is also linked to protection from the negative consequences of free markets. The government must defend us against unscrupulous merchants and employers, and the extreme class structure that results from their exploitation.

Governments argue that people need to be assisted with the economic competition that now dominates the world. But the real intent of this position is to justify helping corporate interests . . . siding against local workers, consumers and the environment.

Another general role, related to the need for efficiency, is the organization of large-scale projects. It is for this benefit that we accept government involvement in the construction of society’s infrastructure, including roads, posts and telecommunications, and water, sewage and energy utilities. Further, giving government charge over these utilities guarantees that they remain in public hands, and solely dedicated to the common good. If such services are privatized, the owners have a selfish motivation, which could negatively affect the quality of the services.

That such assets should have public ownership is expressed in the idea of the “commons.” They should be owned by and shared between the members of the current population, and preserved for future generations.

Indeed, while we of course still need a means of defence, including against both external and internal (criminal) aggressors, it seems clear that our greatest need for protection is from other institutions and from the abuses of government itself, particularly its collusion with these other institutions. (Many of the needs that we now have for government are actually to solve the problems that it creates.)”

We deserve better than the ScoMo Beetrooter muppet show.

British justice is advertised by its proponents as upright, historically different to the savages upon which it sought to civilise, and apparently fair. Such outrages as the unjust convictions of the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven, both having served time in prison for terrorist offences they did not commit, are treated as blemishes.

In recent memory, fewer blemishes can be more profound and disturbing to a legal system than the treatment of Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The British legal system has been so conspicuously outsourced to the wishes of the US Department of Justice and the military-industrial complex Assange did so much to expose. The decision of the UK High Court, handed down on December 10, will go down in the annals of law as a particularly disgraceful instance of this.

From the outset, extradition proceedings utilising a First World War US statute – the Espionage Act of 1917 – should have sent legal eagles in the UK swooping with alarm. 17 of the 18 charges Assange is accused of have been drawn from it. It criminalises the receipt, dissemination and publication of national security information. It attacks the very foundations of the Fourth Estate’s pursuit of accountability and subverts the protections of the First Amendment in the US constitution. It invalidates motive and purpose. And, were this to be successful – and here, the British justices seem willing to ensure that it is – the United States will be able to globally target any publisher of its dirty trove of classified material using an archaic, barbaric law.

It should also have occurred to the good members of the English legal profession that these lamentable proceedings have always been political. Extraditions are generally not awarded on such grounds. But this entire affair reeks of it. The US security establishment wants their man, desperately. With the coming to power of President Donald Trump, one counterintelligence officer, reflecting on Assange’s plight, made the pertinent observation that, “Nobody in that crew was going to be too broken up about the First Amendment issues.”

The original decision by District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser was hardly grand. It was chastising and vicious to journalism, cruel to those revealing information that might expose state abuses and an offense to the sensibility of democratic minded persons. The point was made that security and intelligence experts, however morally inclined or principled, were best suited to assessing the merits of releasing classified information. Journalists should never be involved in publishing such material. Besides, thought the Judge, Assange was not a true journalist. Such people did not purposely go out to disclose the identities of informants or propagandise their cause.

The only thing going for that otherwise woeful judgment was its acceptance that Assange would well perish in the US legal system. Noting such cases as Laurie Love, Baraitser accepted that the prosecution had failed to show that Assange would not be placed in a position where he could be prevented from taking his own life. Should he be sent across the Atlantic, he would face Special Administrative Measures and conclude his life in the wretched cul-de-sac of the ADX Florence supermax. Any extradition to such conditions of sheer baroque cruelty would be “oppressive” given “his mental condition.”

The prosecution had no qualms trying to appeal and broaden the arguments, citing several propositions. Contemptibly, these focused on Assange the pretender (suicidal autistics cannot give conference plenaries or host television programs), expert witnesses as deceivers (neuropsychiatrist Michael Kopelman, for initially “concealing” evidence from the court of Assange’s relationship with Stella Moris and their children), and the merits of the US prison system: matronly, saintly, and filled with soft beds and tender shrinks. Why, scolded the prosecutor James Lewis QC in October, had the good judge not asked the US Department of Justice for reassurances? Assange would not face the brutal end of special administrative measures. He would not be sent to decline and moulder in ADX Florence. He could also serve his sentence in Australia, provided, of course, the Department of Justice approved.

In reversing the decision to discharge Assange, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde were persuaded by two of the five grounds submitted by the prosecutors. Sounding astonishingly naïve (or possibly disingenuous) at points, the justices accepted the prosecution’s argument that undertakings or assurances could be made at a later stage, even during an appeal. Delays by a requesting state to make such assurances might be tactical and stem from bad faith, but not entertaining such assurances, even if made later, might also result in “a windfall to an alleged or convicted criminal, which would defeat the public interest in extradition.”

Judge Baraitser should have also been mindful of seeking the assurances in the first place, given how vital the issue of Assange’s suicide risk and future treatment in US prisons was in making her decision against extradition.

It followed that the justices did “not accept that the USA refrained for tactical reasons from offering assurances at an earlier stage, or acted in bad faith in choosing only to offer them at the appeal stage.” Diplomatic Note no. 74 contained “solemn undertakings, offered by one government to another, which will bind all officials and prosecutors who will deal with the relevant aspects of Mr Assange’s case now and in the future.”

This meant that Assange would not be subjected to SAMs, or sent to ADX Florence, and that he would receive appropriate medical treatment to mitigate the risk of suicide. (The justices erred in not understanding that the assurance to not detain Assange ADX “pre-trial” was irrelevant as ADX is a post-conviction establishment.) He could also serve his post-trial and post-appeal sentence in Australia, though that would be at the mercy of DOJ approval. All undertakings were naturally provisional on the conduct of the accused.

As the original judgement was premised upon Assange being subjected to the “harshest SAMs regime,” and given the significance of the evidence submitted by Kopelman and Dr Quinton Deeley on Assange’s suicide risk in “being held under such harsh conditions of isolation,” the justices were “unable to accept the submission that the judge’s conclusion would have been the same if she had not found a real risk of detention in those conditions.”

Such narrow reasoning served to ignore the ample evidence that such diplomatic assurances are unreliable, mutable and without legal standing. In terms of solitary confinement, the US legal system is filled with euphemistic designations that all amount to aspects of the same thing. If it is not SAMs, it is certainly something amounting to it, such as Administrative Segregation.

Previous diplomatic assurances given by US authorities have also been found wanting. The fate of Spanish drug trafficker David Mendoza Herrarte stands out. In that case, a Spanish court was given an assurance that Mendoza, if extradited to the US to face trial, could serve any subsequent prison sentence in Spain. When the application to the US Department of Justice was made to make good that undertaking, the transfer application was refused. The pledge only applied, it was claimed, to allow Mendoza to apply for a transfer; it never meant that the DOJ had to agree to it. A diplomatic wrangle between Madrid and Washington ensued for six years before the decision was altered.

And just to make such undertakings all the more implausible, the “solemn assurances” were coming from, as Craig Murray pointedly remarked, “a state whose war crimes and murder of civilians were exposed by Julian Assange.”

“…these are ‘solemn assurances’ from the state whose war crimes and murder of civilians were exposed by Julian Assange…” @CraigMurrayOrg speaking in London (via BBC news). #AssangeVerdict @CredicoRandy pic.twitter.com/8TUJuOYLOI

— ScotNews (@indyscotnews) December 10, 2021

The justices also failed to consider the murderous elephant in the room, one that had been submitted by the defence at both the extradition hearing and the appeal: that US government officials had contemplated abducting and assassinating the very individual whose extradition they were seeking. This was a view that held sway with former US Secretary of State and CIA chief Mike Pompeo.

In the United States, talking heads expressed their satisfaction about the glories of the US justice and prison system. Former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill told MSNBC that, “This was really a guy who just violated the law.” Concerns by Assange’s defence team that his “safety in [US] prison” would be compromised showed that “they really don’t have perspective on this.”

It is fittingly monstrous that this decision should be handed down the same day the Nobel Peace Prize was being awarded to two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov. Or that it should happen on Human Rights Day, which saw US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s boast that “we will continue to promote accountability for human rights violators.” Except one’s own.

On this #HumanRightsDay, we are designating 12 officials for their involvement in gross violations of human rights. As part of our commitment to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, we will continue to promote accountability for human rights violators.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) December 10, 2021

Inevitably, these cruel, gradually lethal proceedings move to the next stage: an appeal to the Supreme Court. As the paperwork is gathered, Assange will muse, grimly, that the entire period of his discharge never saw him leave Belmarsh Prison.

The longer the Coalition remain in power, the greater their arrogance and disregard for our institutions grows.

I don’t expect any better from that idiot George Christensen who recently appeared on the far right wing conspiracy show Infowars spruiking a whole lot of anti-government crap. He is as mad as a hatter and will be gone at the next election. Likewise Criag Kelly hopefully. Good riddance.

The fact that Morrison and Joyce are too scared to “poke the bear” and tell him to pull his head in, their failure to decisively denounce the misinformation, is yet another example of the problems caused by the lack of leadership in our government.

Parents know that children must be taught to respect boundaries and that they themselves must set a good example for their children to follow.

We now find ourselves in a position where both the Prime Minister and his Deputy are telling us that we need to get government out of our lives. They give approval to protests demanding that health orders be overturned in the name of freedom. They ignore the warnings from security agencies that far right-wing groups are infiltrating and leading these protests and the threats to health staff and politicians, and are deliberately fuelling anger towards state premiers.

We also have our leaders waging a shameful attack on the NSW ICAC, describing it as a kangaroo court and pre-empting the results of their investigation into Gladys Berejiklian, presumptuously suggesting that no evidence of wrongdoing had been found.

This disdain for the legal system isn’t an isolated case.

Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar barely escaped contempt charges after they criticised the highest court in Victoria during an active terrorism appeal. In comments published in the Australian, they described the court as an “ideological experiment” run by “hard-left activist judges”.

Peter Dutton, as Home Affairs Minister, launched a similar attack on the Victorian judicial system, blaming the state’s street crime on the appointment of “civil libertarians” to the courts. Dutton also claimed Victorians were “bemused” when they looked “at the jokes of sentences being handed down” due to “political correctness that’s taken hold”.

Attacks on statutory bodies began very early on with the evisceration of Gillian Triggs for being the face of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report on children in detention which Tony Abbott described as a “blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself. it would be a lot easier to respect the Human Rights Commission if it did not engage in what are transparent stitch ups.”

There have also been unrelenting attacks on the ABC, now described as the “Ultimo wokehive”. The really galling part is the government’s reliance on the ABC’s investigative work for so much of their policing and evidence for Royal Commissions. They also rely on it every time there is a disaster. Yet they want to sell it off because they sometimes expose government failings too.

The Freedom of Information Office and the Auditor-General have both had their funding slashed because answering questions about what you are doing is way too inconvenient.

Equally unrelenting has been their attack on unions. The demise of union membership and power has coincided with erosion of workplace entitlements, loss of job security and increased casualisation of the workforce, countless examples of exploitation and underpayment, a rise in workplace accidents, and flat lining of wages. The workers no longer have the right to withdraw their labour without incurring significant penalty.

Public education has been undermined with culture wars waged about the curriculum. Stop wasting time on critical thinking and get back to rote learning.

The hysterical reaction to, and demonisation of, the anti-bullying respectful relationships Safe Schools program was beyond ridiculous. Teachers had asked for advice and professional development on making LGBTI kids safe and reducing their profound distress and social isolation. But according to then Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, the program instead “indoctrinates kids with a Marxist cultural relativism”, with George Christensen stating it is tantamount to a “paedophile grooming a child”.

Climate change deniers in parliament have eroded confidence in our scientific institutions like the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Their tireless efforts to present us with evidence are dismissed as alarmism or fake news. Their ongoing research into mitigation and adaptation is ignored in favour of support for pollution as usual.

It seems the only people we can trust are ScoMo and Barnaby, backed up by the church, the police and Dutton’s army, any criticism of whom will be seen as unpatriotic heresy.

That all of this is done for purely political purposes is quite legitimate apparently, though it does inevitably lead to humiliating backflips and apologies. The real worry is that, having let the dogs off the chain, this government is rapidly losing control of the pack.

By Ad astra

It’s becoming alarming. Every day our Prime Minister becomes more verbose, more shouty, more insistent. The old-fashioned word ‘blatherskite’ comes to mind. Listen to him as he fronts journalists, answers questions in Question Time, or delivers his characteristic off-the-cuff oratory on any subject he chooses, from protestors to carbon capture and storage to electric cars.

In a cute appraisal in The Guardian you can read how Sarah Martin mocked his electric car approach with these acerbic words:

In a galling pivot, Scott Morrison hopes he can peek under the bonnet of an EV and be accepted as a convert.

Not so long ago he said Labor’s electric cars policy would ‘end the weekend’, and now he’s spruiking his own plan, but there’s no substance to it.

It’s hard to say which element of Scott Morrison’s new electric vehicle strategy is most galling. If you missed the unveiling on Tuesday, there’s not much to catch up on, given the strategy has all the substance of a Corn Thin.

The Coalition’s “strategy” for electric vehicle take-up contains $178m of government spending on EV infrastructure but no new policies, just like its “Australian Way” plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It rebuffs calls for vehicle emissions standards and provides no market signal to incentivise take-up – the two measures viewed by experts as the most important to drive change.

But while a policy document three years in the making that is entirely bereft of substance is certainly offensive, it is nowhere near as galling as the way in which Morrison expects voters to forgive and forget the Coalition’s position on electric vehicles ahead of the 2019 election.

As he unveiled the government’s new clean car policy that embraced electric cars, Morrison attempted to deflect accusations of hypocrisy by denying he had attacked electric vehicles before the 2019 federal election when he had insisted Labor would “end the weekend”.

The government has already ruled out subsidising the expansion of electric and hybrid vehicles through rebates or tax breaks, saying it expected only 30% of new sales to be EVs by 2030 – a date by which a growing number of countries plan to ban altogether the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The “future fuels and vehicles strategy” instead includes $178m of new funding, mostly for new EV and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and to help businesses set up charging stations for fleets. It said the government would “co-invest with industry” to install an estimated 50,000 smart chargers in homes. Under questioning at a press conference in Melbourne, Morrison denied he had criticised EV technology before the last election. But the records show that at that time he had insisted: ”battery-powered cars would ‘not tow your trailer’; ‘not tow your boat’; ‘not get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family’.” Touché!

Morrison claimed his criticism had been limited to Labor’s then-policy, not the technology itself, and that he did not regret saying EVs would “end the weekend”.

“I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive and where they should drive them, which is what [former opposition leader] Bill Shorten’s plan was,” Morrison said at Toyota’s hydrogen centre in suburban Altona.

“I’m not going to put up the price of petrol [for] families and make them buy electric vehicles, and walk away from the things they have. That is not the Liberal way and the Nationals way.”

The Shorten-era Labor policy was not to tell people what vehicle they should drive, require anyone to buy an EV or put up the price of petrol. It included a non-binding target of 50% new car sales being EVs by 2030 and the promise of a vehicle emissions standard to reduce the average carbon pollution of the national car fleet.

Morrison stressed the government would not “be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes. Just as Australians have taken their own decision to embrace rooftop solar at the highest rate in the world, when new vehicle technologies are cost-competitive, Australians will embrace them too”.

The expansion of rooftop solar – which, according to the Clean Energy Council, has now led to 3m systems being installed across the country – was encouraged for more than a decade through federal and state incentives and subsidies.

The government vehicle strategy suggests its approach will have only a limited impact as a climate policy. It is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 8m tonnes – less than 2% of the national annual total – over the next 14 years.

Transport emissions are nearly 20% of the national total, were increasing rapidly before Covid-19 lockdowns and are projected to escalate in the years ahead.

Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, said the future policy was “another pamphlet, rather than a serious announcement”. He said a Labor government would make EVs cheaper by removing import and fringe benefits tax. “I think people will look at Scott Morrison today and this announcement and just shake their head and say, ‘What’s changed?’,’This is a guy who says he’s about new technology. Yet he’s resisted it.”

The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government’s strategy of helping install charging infrastructure, rather than phasing out fossil fuel cars, was about helping motorists “embrace the increasing range of technologies available to keep them moving in an informed and fair way”. He claimed credit for the number of low emissions vehicle models available in Australia increasing by 20% over the past eight months, but did not explain how the government’s policy had contributed to this.

Car manufacturers across the globe have released a wave of new EV models as governments have announced emissions limits for passenger cars and future bans on fossil fuel cars. Industry representatives say Australians have fewer options than comparable countries due to a lack of policy support.

Once more, Australians face the risk of being left behind. What’s new!

Scott Morrison’s reaction to the Kate Jenkins’ review was to make it very clear that it wasn’t just his side that behaved deplorably towards women. Whilst no doubt true, it’s a pitiful comeback which invites a response.

Remember in 2011 when Tony Abbott attended an anti-carbon tax rally where he spoke in front of placards that read “JuLIAR, Bob Brown’s Bitch” and “Ditch the witch”? After a speech that was punctuated by chants of “ditch the bitch” and “liar, liar”, Abbott said the crowd was “a representative snapshot of middle Australia”. He said people are “more than entitled” to protest against a Government and a Prime Minister “which has not been straight with them… let’s not get too precious about these things”.

That’s the same man who, as Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, told an Industrial relations conference that bad bosses, like bad fathers and husbands, should be tolerated because they generally do more good than harm. The same man who, when asked to describe the attributes of a female candidate, said she had sex appeal.

Remember the 2013 Mal Brough fundraiser, attended by Joe Hockey? The menu featured a dish called “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box.” That didn’t stop him from contesting and winning his seat – he only stood down when a police investigation into the James Ashby imbroglio was launched.

Around the same time, a public servant accused Minister for Cities and the Built Environment, Jamie Briggs, of inappropriate behaviour on a boozy late night out in Hong Kong. Brigg’s response was to send “a few people” a photo of the complainant which was then published prominently in weekend newspapers as well as private text messages sent by her, her age and job title.

This did not cost Briggs his preselection for the 2016 election. The voters of Mayo had to turf him out.

Peter Dutton’s response to an article criticising Briggs was to send a supportive text to him calling the female journalist a “mad fucking witch” – except in another glaring example of Dutton incompetency, he sent it to the “mad fuckling witch” by mistake.

Dutton has form with this sort of puerile sexist behaviour. In 2010, he defended telling then health minister, Nicola Roxon, to get on her broomstick.

telling nicola to get on her broomstick is hardly "grossly unparliamentary" as joolia claimed

— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) February 11, 2010

When it was revealed that that champion for the sanctity of marriage, that dedicated dad that just wanted his daughters to marry a bloke (not sheila), our on again off again Deputy Dawg, the Beetrooter aka the red octopus, had allegedly impregnated a staffer with whom he had been having an ongoing affair, his response was to question the child’s paternity.

Barnaby told Fairfax Media, as you do, that he had “no choice” but to tell the story about the question mark that hung over whether he is the biological father because, around the time the baby was conceived, he had been on an overseas work trip with his wife Natalie followed by a period as acting prime minister during which he was apparently “accompanied by close personal protection bodyguards”.

I cannot type what I would have said to Joyce had I been either of the women he so cruelly and cavalierly disrespected with this completely self-centred abomination, but I did enjoy reading that Natalie threw all his clothes outside and ran over them with the ride-on mower.

This situation led to the extraordinary bonk ban where the PM felt it necessary to make it a rule that MPs stop rooting their staff.

Still Barnaby hung on until details of a confidential sexual harassment complaint against him by a prominent Nationals woman were, once again, leaked to the press without her consent.

Andrew Broad was the first Nationals MP to break ranks and condemn Joyce for his affair with a staffer, only to have to humiliatingly step down after it was revealed he, once again on a work trip to Hong Kong, went out with a woman he had met on a “sugar babies” website where wealthy older men meet women and provide them with gifts in exchange for company.

The WhatsApp messages were excruciating.

“I pull you close, run my strong hands down your back, softly kiss your neck and whisper G’day mate.”

“I’m a country guy, so I know how to fly a plane, ride a horse, fuck my woman. My intentions are completely dishonourable.”

Broad said he could have survived another campaign, despite the scandal, buffeted by the 21% margin in his Victorian seat of Mallee, but he didn’t want to become a “half laughing-stock” figure like Barnaby Joyce.

That most religious of men, George Christensen’s preferred destination was the girly bars in Angeles City near Manila. So much so that he became a potential threat to national security.

When Four Corners aired an episode titled “Inside the Canberra Bubble”, detailing allegations of inappropriate conduct and extramarital affairs by Attorney-General Christian Porter and Population Minister Alan Tudge with female ministerial staffers, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher was quick to express his outrage to Ita Buttrose.

“Why, in the judgement of the Board, are the personal lives of politicians newsworthy?” spluttered Fletcher as he publicly tweeted the letter he sent trying to intimdate the ABC Chair. After all, this was before Malcolm told them that having sex with their staff was a no-no.

Four Corners executive producer Sally Neighbour tweeted ahead of the episode’s airing that the “political pressure applied to the ABC behind the scenes over this story has been extreme and unrelenting”.

The staffer who had an affair with Tudge has recently claimed it was an emotionally, and on one occasion physically, abusive relationship – a claim Tudge denied as he stood aside whilst the complaint is investigated.

Also emerging in recent days, claims by Natalie Baini, the former Liberal who will run as an independent in the Sydney seat of Reid, that her political ambitions were thwarted after she complained about Craig Laundy allegedly lying to her about his marital status before she entered into a consensual relationship with him.

The bullying and intimidation of Liberal women during the leadership spill in 2018 was well documented yet no-one seemed to bear any consequences for it.

Linda Reynolds said in the Senate, before her silence was bought with a promotion, “In fact, some of the behaviour is behaviour I simply do not recognise and I think has no place in my party or this chamber. I cannot condone and I cannot support what has happened to some of my colleagues on this side, in this chamber, in this place”.

I won’t even start on Liberal party staffers masturbating on desks or prayer room orgies or allegations of grooming or drunken late night sexual assaults and the responses to them.

When women across the nation joined together in an outpouring of grief and anger to demand change, Scott Morrison refused to come out and face the March 4 Justice crowds, instead saying from the floor of parliament that it was a triumph of democracy that protesters were not “met with bullets”.

This is not the time to point at someone else saying they do it too. It shouldn’t be necessary to form another committee to work out what to do either. It’s easy.

Just stop it!

By John Haly

Predictably the crises of climate change and the pandemic highlighted deficits in health services, markets, welfare and education. Both have accelerated a predictable economic recession.

To understand the early signs of an economic downturn, we need to go back to when politically acknowledged signs of a faltering economy appeared. The GDP downturn in the third quarter of 2016 was preceded by nearly three years of a per-capita recession.

The retail boom of the last quarter (Christmas) saved us from an official recession. However, by the end of 2018, Australia re-entered a per-capita recession. “Australia’s economic output shrank 0.2pc per person in the fourth quarter of 2018, after a 0.1pc decline in the third”.

By mid-2019, economists predicted a recession as employment growth was slow, unemployment high, and wages were stagnating. Then, by the end of 2019, as Australia was literally burning down due to climate change, a global pandemic hit, and the pack of cards came tumbling down, and the recession we were always going to have, hit us.

Fig: 1 – Australian GDP Per-Capita for last decade.

Our strollout

The political response to the health crisis, lockdowns, quarantine handling, welfare support, vaccine strollouts has been underwhelming. Yet despite Government mismanagement, we moved from the least vaccinated nation in the OECD to a position by early November 2021 with 80% vaccination rates. Although we still had thousands of active cases, hundreds of newly acquired cases and hundreds in hospital. It isn’t over, but considering the state of other Western countries, we could be worse off.

The Federal Government celebrated some States opening up and criticising those that did not. Our Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had been spruiking our “recovered” unemployment numbers as the ABS claimed we had unemployment around five per cent. However, despite apparently rising job vacancies and falling unemployment (relative to 2020), business sector elements have complained that they can not find staff to fill jobs on offer.

Zero-hours

So let’s explore the nuances of these circumstances where businesses claim they cannot fill vacancies despite insufficient jobs in the economy and millions without adequate levels of work. That assertion in itself is a reasonably broad claim, so let’s establish its bonafide. First, the ABS has stated that unemployment is low, although it has recently risen to 5.2% in October from 4.63%. This is only because the methodology for the measurement ignores several factors I have discussed previously, including and certainly significantly the thousands of people who have “worked zero-hours” in any given month of 2020/21.

If you define employment as widely as the ABS does and unemployment a narrowly as it does, then the dictionary meaning of employment is lost in the equation.

From Wikipedia: “Employment is the relationship between two parties, usually based on a contract where work is paid for, where one party, which may be a corporation, for-profit, not-for-profit organisation, co-operative or other entity is the employer, and the other is the employee.” So if you’re not paid, and you do no work then by any definition (except that of the ABS) you are not “employed”. The ABS stats do not reflect Australian domestic unemployment (Figure:2 below).

Every other measure out-strips ABS

Jobseeker payments shown in the graph vastly outstripped the numbers classified by ABS as unemployed. It makes a farce out of the misuse of ABS’s statistics as a valid measure of internal unemployment. As previously explained, Roy Morgan’s more accurate assessment becomes more evident when ABS plus zero-hours numbers – has of late – been larger than even jobseeker and youth allowance combined.

Fig: 2 – Variant unemployment measures for 2020-2021

Vacancies and job guarantees

The question is now, what do poor Job Vacancy measures indicate? There aren’t enough vacancies to cater to the overwhelming majority of unemployed by any measure. This has been the case for decades and is the failure of conservative governments and the private sector. The Government could easily provide a Federal Job Guarantee but is ideologically opposed. Similar opposition was prevalent when Prime Minister John Curtin, postwar, established a not dissimilar mechanism resulting in unemployment remaining beneath 3% in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, successive governments have diminished the public service by privatisation, undermined manufacturing and “deter investment” in renewables. Ross Garnaut, who produced two Climate Change Reviews for the Australian government, wrote the book “SuperPower”. In it, he notes we have squandered an enormous economic advantage. Worth reading unless you are susceptible to depression at discovering how the “fog of Australian politics” has obscured tremendous economic and employment potential for our country.

Separation of vacancies

This aside, there are two recently diverging measures for job vacancies. The Department of Employment generates the IVI stats for internet job advertisements. ABS does a quarterly vacancy survey amongst businesses. When I first began writing about the anomalies of unemployment stats, the variation between these two figures was negligible enough to be ignored. For example, in 2016, I wrote, “The ABC reported in January that “…newspaper ads rose 0.4 per cent last month, but now make up less than 5 per cent of employment advertising…”.” So I focused on IVI statistics because newspaper advertising, shop windows ads, and private networking recommendations for applicants appeared to be statistically irrelevant.

Increasingly in the internet age, jobs recruitment can occur on various sites: Seek, CareerOne, Australian JobSearch, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The problem is that there is no government break-up in the last three like the IVI does for the first three. (Figure:3). However, private recruitment agents, “shop window” ads, or boutique specialist websites are applicable for the local low-skilled workforce expected to find work in rural areas for labour, like fruit picking.

Fig: 3 – Variant Job Vacancy figures 2019-2021

The ABS survey reported smaller numbers than the IVI statistics over a decade ago. That period aside, there was no significant divergence between ABS and IVI until the last four years. You can see the change in Figure 4. While we can’t blame pandemics, it is worth referencing the coincidental timing of the economic falterings discussed initially.

Fig: 4 – Roy Morgan employment stats and both Job vacancy measures.

Businesses shifted from under-reporting vacancies over a decade ago to reporting more vacancies than were reported as advertised. This is partly due to recruitment alternatives arising in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube that are not included. The most recognised recruitment platform, LinkedIn, is becoming drastically less popular because of stats on how many LinkedIn profiles are exaggerated and out of date. Despite Linkedin’s internal exaggerations, according to Jobvite surveys, the number of recruiters using LinkedIn has dropped from 92% in 2017 to 77% in 2018 to 72% in 2020 to 65% in 2021.

Pre-pandemic economic faltering in Australia meant companies relied on natural attrition or dismissal to shed employees they didn’t replace, sometimes even modifying the job description to force people out. They overworked the ones they employed, but didn’t want to finance their overtime. This became evident as companies were increasingly being outed for wage theft for unpaid overtime. Corporates lobbied to have conservative governments undercut penalty rates on the spurious claims to pay for more employees. Basic maths reveals this was not applicable for anything but a small number of large companies with significant numbers of employees. (Figure:5) Such companies shed employees when penalty rates dropped, and nobody got more work. So jobs continue to be shed.

Fig: 5 – Employment capacity required to benefit from penalty rate changes.

Businesses reported more contingent vacancies than they appeared to advertise, and then the recession hit. Demand bottomed for all but the largest enterprises, people stayed in lockdowns, the economy recessed, and unemployment rose to nearly a quarter of the workforce. Finally, however, its slowly returning status of between 1 to 1.5 million unemployed of 2019 has emerged. From mid-2021 onwards, unemployment settled between 1.2 and 1.5 million. (Figure:6)

There has undoubtedly been higher average unemployment for 2021, but for the last six months, it hasn’t exceeded the boundaries of 2019. So there are – to be fair to the conservative political commentary – grounds for saying employment has recovered to the range of pre-pandemic levels. Just don’t look at the figures (Figure:6) or the relative range too closely.

So now, business is over-reporting vacancies to the ABS that they do not advertise or intend to fill without a demand surge. Yet even advertised vacancies have gone up. (Figure:3/7). So why might specific labour markets be advertising more? Does it represent an increase in new jobs, or does loss of employment markets contribute?

Fig: 6 – Under and Unemployment and variant job vacancy stats.

Considerations

Due to international border closures, consider the loss of migrants, pacific Islanders and backpackers coming to Australia – on visa conditions that require rural employment. Consider the access to work of migrants who, out of economic necessity, live in crowded low socioeconomic LGAs with higher exposure to the Covid-19 virus to jobs in external LGAs that had travel restrictions. Third, consider how travel restrictions and lockdowns restricted high-end recruitment that previously used in-person networking meetups or travelling to interview overseas. Fourth, consider that net migration away from cities has accelerated during the recession and remote work opportunities, which has fuelled the rise of alternatives in smaller towns with lower living costs. Finally, consider that the absence of visa workers revealed an entrenched culture of exploitation and inadequate financial compensation in the farming and service industries.

The results of these considerations are two-fold.

1. This has generated much of the employer claims that they are “struggling to find suitable staff to fill job vacancies”.
   
2. The realisation that low wages you can get away with for migrants, poor conditions, and exploitation will not be acceptable jobs for Australians. Farmers and Restaurants are now forced to engage with better educated Australians who expect better pay and are more aware of their rights as employees. So it is no surprise they have been less successful in filling jobs.

As localised markets for exploitable employees have dried up, businesses have had to advertise outside their LGAs. Figure 7 shows that according to the Department of Employment, rises in advertisements for labour with the only significant dips in recruitment across all industries were during the Covid-19 Delta outbreak. However, this does not necessarily translate as a rise in real jobs. Instead, some portion likely reflects the need to expand advertising into previously unutilised media, with further reach than LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Fig: 7 – 2021 Lead up to October’s advertised job vacancy by role classification.

Recruitment for hospitality, manufacturing, warehouses, leisure sectors and farming industries relied on a willing pool of locally exploitable, low-skilled, migrant labour on tap. This has vanished for all the aforementioned reasons. Moreover, constrained reach advertising via social media might have limited scope to attract Australians. Many don’t want to work for the exploitative conditions or the low wages on offer.

Lazy Aussies

The political and MSM dialogue to cover the exploitation hasn’t changed in years. “Lazy Aussies just don’t want to work” was an excuse to hire cheaper, exploitable 457 visa migrants when Abbott was PM. Under Morrison, “Laziness” and “JobSeeker is too generous” are the absurdities brought to bear. These diatribes never address the wage rates or the conditions, and employers will lie about them, while politicians facilitate labour exploitation. Corporate Australia seeks to frame this as a “labour shortage”.

In contrast, the ACTU and other Unions call it a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, or a shortage of non-discriminatory, non-toxic management. So instead of being responsive to the needs of Australians in a time of crisis and expanding public sector employment, welfare or active labour market policies, the government are facilitating a gig economy. One complete with exploitation and underpayment and ensuring labour mobility and wage growth are at an all-time low.

Money for mates

In the face of a recession, the recent history of record-breaking under and unemployment levels, stagnating wages, a surge in the part-time and gig economy, the Liberal Party’s solution is support for bringing “up to 160,000 foreign workers and students a year into Australia”. So how do they facilitate this amid a global pandemic? Via a private quarantine scheme recommended by DPG Advisory Solutions, “linked to former deputy NSW Liberal Party director Scott Briggs”. The scheme “was awarded a $79,500 “limited tender” contract by the Home Affairs department to provide “consultancy services”. Also, the founder and director of DPG is David Gazard. A close associate of Scott Morrison and former ministerial adviser. The Department of Home Affairs chose these private quarantine reviewers without government tender.

This is the quality of solution for a federal government that had till now avoided building quarantine facilities, as “carefully vetted” consultants are brought into resolving the issue of businesses – who, despite massive unemployment numbers – are “struggling to find exploitable employees”. This deliberately cast illusion of economic prosperity hides the poverty suffered by millions in Australia and is challenging to maintain with the recent GDP drop – the largest on record. It leaves real solutions of federal job guarantees, active labour market policies, and adequate welfare support in the dust. Is this the land of the “fair go” we want Australia to be, or is that just a myth we abandoned generations ago, if indeed such an ethos ever existed?

This article was originally published on Australia Awaken – Ignite your Torches.

By Denis Bright

At a time of internal chaos in the federal LNP Government, political fragmentation still offers a lifeline back to government by Scott Morrison or one of his successors if current polling levels continue to deteriorate in 2022.

Beyond the more mainstream of the far-right minor parties with recent federal parliamentary representation, there are over thirty minor political parties registered on the AEC site. Minor far-right parties come and go after fulfilling their divisive purposes. Almost twenty minor parties have been deregistered by the AEC since the 2019 elections to be replaced by a new exercise in social division.

The formation and registration of minor political parties is of course an essential component of a heathy democracy if these political parties are operating in The We The People Traditions.

Minor political parties can become a sinister force if they are merely delivering votes back to One Nation, the UAP, the Liberal Democrats or the more populist regional leaders of the federal LNP.

Recent amendments to The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Party Registration Integrity) Act 2021 (Party Registration Act) have raised the transparency of minor registered political parties a little. There is a new threshold of 1,500 signed up members for continued registration, annual registration fees and some administrative controls on operational practices. Complaints about breaches of these protocols can be made to the AEC.

While the AEC is quite strict on the accountable enforcement of the amended administrative protocols, there is still tolerance of saturation levels of advertising from generous political patrons.

Expect more fragmentation as voters are attracted to the specific issues raised by minor far right parties with support from well-funded advertising. Details of the extent of Clive Palmer’s campaign spending emerged after the 2019 election (Paul Karp in The Guardian, 23 September 2019):

In the wake of the surprise Coalition victory at the May election, Palmer said he had “decided to polarise the electorate” with an anti-Labor advertising blitz in the final weeks of the campaign, rather than attempting to win seats for the United Australia party. In the final week alone, Palmer spent $8m in electoral advertisements.

The submission noted the party was reported to have spent $60m on a “contentious” campaign that failed to win a single seat but Palmer “claims to have secured the Coalition government’s win with his preferences”.

Strategic deals between minor far right parties and the LNP achieved three senate spots in four of the states to deliver a total of 36 LNP senate places seats. With the votes from the two senators from One Nation, the LNP can pass legislation through both houses of parliament except in those situations when Labor votes with the LNP.

A National Integrity Commission can and should support the AEC in supporting the grey areas of political party registration and transparent campaign spending disclosures which are not covered by current AEC controls.

With its control of 23 of the 30 federal House seats in Queensland, the federal LNP has the capacity to use tax-payer funded electorate allowances to promote its logos through regular mail outs of cards to householders, brochures to attract postal votes and mobile offices festooned with LNP propaganda.

In the 2019 senate count in Queensland, One Nation benefited from the exchange of surplus quotas from LNP senators and preference flows from other minor far-right political parties

Some grey areas of campaigning should be scrutinized by the AEC and any future National Integrity Commission.

At previous state and local government elections for the Brisbane City Council, the LNP set up a Postal Vote Application Centre (PVA Centre) to harvest postal votes from across metropolitan electorates for delivery to the Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ). These PVA Centres are fully controlled by the LNP. Transparency also requires that the costs of these PVA Centres are fully declared as campaign expenses and not written off as legitimate electorate allowances.

Well funded minor far- right political parties can identify themselves with divisive wedge issues through the purchase of political polling data and intel from soft media and mobile phone and computer app devices. This alignment is particularly challenging to Labor’s broad electoral base in regional, outer suburban and inner-city electorates.

The deteriorating state of national leadership from the federal LNP might assist Labor to bridge these policy divides which cost it government in 2019 through net losses of seats in Queensland and Tasmania and a failure to gain new seats in WA.

Dr Jim Chalmers as Member for Rankin and Labor’s Shadow Treasurer is highly adept at talking up these essential policy compromises with support from the latest ABS statistical data:

The stagnation in private sector investment, the housing and rental crises and the state of infrastructure commitment is highly relevant in the very electorates where far-right minor parties have gained political traction in 2019.

Labor has responded with the release of sustainable emission targets for 2030 as noted by Katherine Murphy in The Guardian (3 December 2021):

Anthony Albanese will set an emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030 and boost the share of renewables in the national electricity market to 82% if Labor wins the coming federal election.

The ALP leader has unveiled Labor’s most electorally risky policy commitment since the 2019 election defeat, declaring a more ambitious target would spur $76bn in investment and reduce average annual household power bills by $275 in 2025 and $378 in 2030.

Guardian Australia revealed on Friday the shadow cabinet had signed off on a 43% target, which is lower than the 45% medium term target Labor promised at the 2019 election, but higher than the Morrison government’s Abbott-era commitment of a 26-28% cut on 2005 levels.

The primary mechanism Labor will use to reduce emissions faster than current projections will be the Coalition’s existing safeguard mechanism. Improvements to that scheme are expected to deliver emissions reductions of 213 million tonnes (Mt) by 2030.

These compromises can assist in bridging the divide between affluent inner metropolitan suburbs and those many disadvantaged regional and outer suburban struggle streets.

Let’s hope that the electorate is listening to the need for policy compromises to elect a majority government that addresses the havoc caused by three terms of LNP government by ensuring that Labor’s poor results in Queensland, Tasmania and WA are not repeated again. The current tally of thirteen Labor seats out of over fifty available seats certainly justifies the policy compromises.