Australian Politics

They are: Domestic gas reservation with quotas if necessary.

By Leith van Onselen When it comes to Australia’s immigration program, you would be hard pressed to find a bigger liar than Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. On Monday night, Turnbull again spun a web of lies over Australia’s migrant program on The Project (video above).

Via AP: NSW Liberal government MP Daryl Maguire has resigned after he was secretly recorded discussing the potential “dividend” he and a local councillor could reap from the sale of a Sydney property to a giant Chinese developer.

Via The Australian: Liberal senator Dean Smith is urging Malcolm Turnbull to sanction a wide-ranging Senate inquiry into Australia’s population policy, believing the recent reduction in immigration levels does not go far enough to ease community concerns about population growth.

Lordy, Paul Kelly needs to change his undies: Donald Trump is unleashed and is changing history.

Via Domainfax: Mr [Andrew] Hastie, who chairs the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, said the Chinese Communist Party thought “generationally” about how to maintain its grip on power.

Via the AFR today comes “Beijing Bob” Carr: Last week there were reports of Australia and New Zealand sponsoring a Pacific Pact to include, among other things, agreement on police training.

.@mattjcan thinks there are legitimate views to be considered. @tanya_plibersek thinks we need to provide a quality of life. Teela Reid says stop with Australian values #QandA pic.twitter.com/mXM3QhV8lk — ABC Q&A (@QandA) July 9, 2018 Both parties pretending to care as they ruthlessly stuff in the sardines.

Via Peter Hartcher today: Australia, you didn’t know it, but you’ve been at the very forefront of Donald Trump’s project.

Via The Australian: Pauline Hanson has enlisted former Labor leader Mark Latham to attack Bill Shorten in a robocall phone message that has just started targeting households in the crucial Queensland by-election seat of Longman.

By Leith van Onselen The latest Reachtell opinion poll suggests the upcoming Victorian State Election is too close to call, with the Liberal Opposition leading on the major issues facing the state.

From Australia’s erstwhile foreign minister, Alexander Downer: The government is going through one of those periodic times of diplomatic difficulty with China’s government.

Via The Australian: A quarterly state-by-state analysis of Newspoll results ­between April and June shows Labor’s primary vote in ­Queensland at 38 per cent, a jump of more than seven points since the July 2016 election.

Hoocoodanode?

And folks wonder why I worry about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.

By Leith van Onselen Hot on the heels of the South Australian Liberal Party’s idiotic announcement that it wage a ‘war on weed’ that would see it treated as harshly as hard drugs like heroin, opinion polls show the majority of Australians support decriminalising marijuana.

Via the AFR: A $7.4 billion building boom in office towers, apartments and hotels in central Melbourne is raising fears the city may become a victim of its own success, with oversupply putting pressure on vacancy, rents and values.

Via The Australian: Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will meet pro-coal Nationals MPs and visit a coal-fired power station in a tour of marginal Queensland seats as he comes under pressure from the minor Coalition partner to underwrite three new baseload power plants.

Via the AFR: The Group of Eight major universities say concerns raised over Confucius Institutes in other countries have not been raised with them.