So says James Walter, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University, via Domain: Consider what the post-election Liberal leadership will have to do. First, comprehensive reform will entail recognising what the public has clearly shown it wants. Second, there must be acknowledgement that such policies demand the orchestration of many hands, much advice and diverse
Or so says The Australian: The Australian can reveal the former prime minister has been messaging Dr Phelps, the independent who claimed his seat of Wentworth, and a former electorate office staffer worked for his successor for three days as part of a “handover”. A senior Liberal source said they believed that Mr Turnbull was
Josh Frydenliar isn’t going, at the AFR: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has pulled out of this weekend’s G20 summit in Argentina, opting to remain in Canberra amid parliamentary chaos for the Coalition. Mr Frydenberg had been due to travel to the annual leaders meeting in Buenos Aires with Prime Minister Scott Morrison after Parliament rises on
You can see where the coming Shorten Government is going to go today in Victoria, via the ABC: Victoria’s re-elected Premier Daniel Andrews has unveiled his new front bench, with half of ministry positions going to women. The Andrews Government has become the totemic social progressive regime in Australia. Andrews has done this while the
By Leith van Onselen As flagged yesterday, a federal election seems likely to be held on either 11 or 18 May 2019, after the Morrison Government announced that it will bring forward the 2019 Budget to 2 April. With the Coalition looking certain to take a flogging in the polls, Scott Morrison is likely to
It appears the Scummo Government is entering its death throes, via The Australian: Scott Morrison’s pre-election legislative agenda is in disarray after Victorian MP Julia Banks quit the Liberal Party and defected to the crossbench, aiding Bill Shorten’s attempts to destabilise the minority government and target Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. The shock resignation, delivered
Via The Australian: Julia Banks has announced she will sit as an independent for the rest of the parliamentary term, plunging Scott Morrison further into minority government. Ms Banks said she had quit the Liberal Party but would give the government support on key issues of confidence and supply. That would be this, at SBS:
Via The Australian: Scott Morrison is promising to open an intimate war with Bill Shorten over the next six months, using his clear personal electoral dominance over the Opposition Leader to redefine the political battleground. As former prime minister John Howard warned senior Coalition figures to hold their nerve after the disastrous Liberal rout in
By Leith van Onselen It was a big weekend for micro-parties, who look to have landed 10 upper house seats in the Victorian Election, according to the ABC’s upper house calculator: Included in these 10 upper house seats is Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes – an ex-Mayor of Bayside City Council – who took the final
Via the AFR: The Morrison government is planning an early federal budget next year, all but confirming its intention to go full term and call the election for May. Budgets are typically held in the second Tuesday of May but the election must be held by mid-May, meaning the traditional budget date would clash with
Let’s lead off with the disastrous Newspoll: An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the federal Coalition’s primary vote falling for the third poll in a row to a near-record low of 34 per cent, as senior ministers today defended claims that Victorian voters at the state poll had taken out their anger on Canberra. The
Sustainable Australia are running in all 8 Upper House regions and in 11 Lower House seats in tomorrow’s Victorian Election. Sustainable Australia has excellent policies, which is why I am a paid-up member, as is Dick Smith. If you are a Victorian resident, please give Sustainable Australia your vote. To borrow a phrase from Don Chipp:
More good work today from Martin North to block deposit bail-ins As we await formal responses from the regulators, I discuss Bail-In with Robbie Barwick from the CEC. They have launched a campaign to make a change to the law to specifically exclude deposits, and they have new evidence that despite what many in Government say,
Via The Age: Daniel Andrews’ Labor government is on course for a thumping win in Saturday’s election after extending its lead over its Coalition rivals in the latest exclusive opinion poll commissioned by The Age. The poll predicts a Labor win on Saturday by 54 to 46 per cent of the statewide two-party preferred vote,
Muslim leaders are not playing ball with Scott Morrison: Proposed Government Roundtable We, the undersigned members of the Australian Muslim community, would like to outline the reasons why we will not be attending the proposed Round Table meeting with the Prime Minister this week. Many in the Muslim community including the undersigned are deeply concerned
WTF is Labor’s NSW Right smoking, via the Daily Telegraph: New Labor leader Michael Daley has held a secret press conference exclusively for Chinese media in a deliberate bid to woo the community and seize the crucial Chinese vote. In the news conference, Mr Daley bizarrely praised Labor Chinese MP Ernest Wong who has been
Hell hath no fury like a psychopath scorned: The Roseville branch of the Liberal Party moved last night for the expulsion of Malcolm Turnbull from the party. The motion, passed 16-2, will now go to the party’s federal electorate conference. Were it to be successful there, it would go to the party’s state council. Now
Here’s a taste of what it’s like, via Bloomie: The Maldives is reportedly planning to pull out of a free trade agreement with China as the island nation moves closer to India and the West after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won the presidency in a September election…As he took office Saturday, Solih declared that large-scale corruption
By Leith van Onselen With mass immigration opponent, Luke Foley, resigning from the NSW Labor Party’s leadership earlier this month, I was hoping that new leader Michael Daley would maintain the rage against the mass immigration influx that is destroying liveability in Sydney: Sadly, early indications are not good with Michael Daley appearing on Ray Hadley’s
Cory Bernardi tried and failed. It’s someone else’s turn, at The Australian: An alliance of well-known Australians has launched a centre-right political machine in a bid to rival union-backed activist group GetUp and vowed to campaign as a registered third-party organisation against the Left ahead of next year’s election. The group, Advance Australia, will run
Via The Guardian: Labor remains ahead of the Morrison government, although the national contest has narrowed appreciably during the past fortnight, and a large number of voters say they would consider voting for an independent at the next federal election. The latest Guardian Essential poll has Labor ahead of the Coalition on the two-party-preferred measure
It was barmy then and it is barmy now: The government looked at relocating the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem less than six months ago but rejected it on a number of grounds including security, geopolitical consequences, cost and need. As ministers and senior MPs in the Morrison government bicker publicly over whether to shift the
By Leith van Onselen Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave a speech last night at the 2018 Bradfield Oration at the Art Gallery of NSW whereby he confirmed that Australia’s permanent migrant intake will be reduced, mixed in with a bunch of misleading, false and exaggerated statements spruiking the benefits of migration [my emphasis]: Population growth
Another day and another policy reform master class from Labor. First we had Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen in the morning: “Aussie John Symond has adopted more positions on negative gearing than the Kama Sutra,” Mr Bowen said. “He was against reform, then he was for reform; now he’s against it again. He needs to be held
Jess Irvine’s obfuscation of Australia’s dying political economy has crashed to new depths as she probed what’s gone wrong with Australian democracy yesterday: The envy of the world, as it enters its 27th year of continuous economic growth, the Australian economy in November earned a place on the cover of The Economist magazine for the
Via InvestorDaily. APRA’s deputy chair John Lonsdale made the comments at FINSIA ‘The Regulators’ event saying that Australia had endured 27 years of continuous expansion but no summer lasts forever. “Australia’s unprecedented period of uninterrupted economic growth may have years yet to run. We hope it does. “But when our economic summer inevitably ends –
Via Domainfax: The government has increased its standing from one month ago, when it trailed Labor by 55 per cent to 45 per cent, after Mr Morrison’s bus tour of Queensland and other campaign measures to raise his personal profile with voters. An idiotic assessment of course. The movement was within the margin of error
In PNG this weekend we got a glimpse of how central Australia’s neighbourhood is to the emerging strategic conflict of our time. Via Bloomie: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traded sharp barbs with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in back-to-back speeches at a regional summit, showing that neither country appears to be giving ground in an
The press gallery was in full retardation mode over the weekend in fretting over ScoMo’s Jerusalem bind. Via Paul Kelly: The fiasco over the Jerusalem embassy now looms as a diabolical dilemma for Scott Morrison risking a lose-lose outcome. This is a deepening embarrassment for Australia, a threat to the Prime Minister’s standing, an unnecessary
Via Kim Johnstone who is a demographer with Astrolabe Group at Domainfax on the triumph of Millennials: In our cities, where most of us live, they can’t afford rent, much less a toehold in insane property markets…Making home ownership utterly unimaginable for the great majority is a singular generational achievement. It has been driven by policy settings
