The Morrison Government really doesn’t want to cut its China lifeline. You can feel in the water, in the burning air, in every contradictory statement by its floundering MPs, in the selling out of workers at the airport, via Bloomie: The union representing security workers at Australia’s biggest airports threatened to strike unless members are
The US has gone all in: In little, and soon to be rather ill, Straya, you’ve just got to stay home if you feel a bit off. From the Dept of Defence to staff today: The Government is closely monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus. The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
Via the AFR’s Phil Coorey: The former fire chiefs had been begging the Prime Minister for a meeting since April to impress upon him the severity and scale of the forthcoming fire season and the need for increased resources such as firefighting aircraft and military deployment. For months they were fobbed off and their advice
Italy just blocked all flights from China. No risk management here thanks very much, at The Australian: Qantas will not pull flights out of China unless the federal government says it has to, despite a number of other airlines withdrawing services in the face of the fast-growing coronavirus outbreak and associated plunging demand. British Airways,
Via Domain come more cases: Australian residents trapped in the epicentre of the coronavirus in China are considering rejecting the federal government’s offer to evacuate them to Christmas Island, as Qantas prepares for an emergency flight into Wuhan. Queensland authorities said on Wednesday night that a Chinese man had tested positive for the virus and
Via SmoCo this afternoon comes a notion six years too late: “We need to get the gas from under our feet. There is no credible energy transition plan for an economy like Australia, in particular, that does not involve the greater use of gas as an important transition fuel.” “There are plenty of other medium
Via the ABC: Australians are being officially advised to reconsider their need to travel to China as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Early on Wednesday morning, government travel website Smarttraveller updated its travel advice for China from “exercise normal safety precautions” to “reconsider your need to travel”. Foreign Minister Marise Payne warned Australians should not travel
We know that China has some 60m people in lockdown. The always pragmatic British have now joined the push, via The Telegraph: Britain will put people airlifted from China into quarantine amid concerns that around 1,500 people who arrived in the UK since the new year have not undergone checks. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary,
Coal is doomed, via Ian Verrender at the ABC: It was a story that raised a few hackles, particularly in Canberra, but one largely overlooked as the unfolding disaster gripped the nation. Early last month, as fire swept across large parts of the east coast and South Australia but before the Christmas conflagration, secret internal
Takes one to know one. Via BBC: Australian PM Scott Morrison has been accused of lacking leadership during the bushfire crisis – by the man he replaced after a party room coup. Malcolm Turnbull, who was deposed in 2018, told the BBC that Mr Morrison had misled the country by “downplaying” the influence of global
Off to Hawaii you go.
Perhaps Labor’s Albotross is a genius after all. His embrace of coal at the edge of climate disaster has given the Morrison Government so much rope that he’s determined to hang himself. We begin with SmoCo at The Australian: Scott Morrison has called for a national standard for bushfire hazard-reduction burns and declared that tracking
Via Deloitte: A new global report from Deloitte shows that 81 percent of Australia’s business leaders believe that climate change will have a negative impact on their business operations (compared with a global average of 48 percent). The report, The Fourth Industrial Revolution: At the intersection of readiness and responsibility, surveyed more than 2,000 C-suite
He’s an Albotross around Labor’s neck, via the AFR: Labor leader Anthony Albanese has admitted it was a “mistake” to take the 45 per cent emissions reduction target to last year’s federal election, indicating Labor would reduce the target. Mr Albanese said that while Labor wanted “ambitious” targets, the plan to cut emissions by 45
Deny it all you want but this stuff is real and it is going to stick to the Morrison Government, at News: Sir David Attenborough, 93, spoke to the BBC on Thursday as the United Kingdom prepares to host the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. “As I speak, south-east Australia is on fire.
It’s all good in the party room at Domain: Liberal backbenchers have stepped up calls for greater action on climate change ahead of talks of new policy measures within weeks, backing a blunt warning from a senior minister to “move on” from arguments about whether global warming is real. …Prime Minister Scott Morrison pointedly backed
With each passing day, ScoMo climate change ineptitude burns brighter. He will no doubt be reassuring colleagues that it is all in hand, as the closed loop of politics does its thing. He’s wrong. This is a catastrophic political moment. A tipping point has passed. ScoMo is on the wrong side of it. Indeed, he
Because ScoMo still has no idea what is he doing regarding bushfires, via The Australian: Scott Morrison is preparing to unveil new funding and recovery measures in response to calls to fast-track financial and logistical support for small businesses, tourism operators and key regional industries ravaged by the bushfire disaster. The Prime Minister, who will
It’s hardly news that Prime Minster Scott Morrison is in trouble. The bushfire crisis has two running themes. The first is climate change. The second is ScoMo’s mishandling of the crisis. Today I wish to explore the second. We all know the political motivations behind the ScoMo failure. He won his election purely by attracting
After yesterday’s Newspoll shocker, which showed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s approval rating plummeting from 45% to 37%: A Guardian Essential Poll, released today, also shows Morrison’s voter approval rating crashing: The prime minister’s handling of the bushfire crisis has seen his disapproval rating rise 9 points from 43% in December to 52%… The survey, undertaken
The bushfire crisis has placed Labor ahead of the Coalition for the first time since the federal election, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s approval rating also plummeting, according to a Newspoll published in The Australian, Labor is ahead 51-49 on a two-party-preferred basis, representing a significant turnaround from December’s poll, which had the Coalition ahead
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: Deregulation has given us unstable, anaemic economies with high inequality and the labour parties have demolished their own constituencies, writes Geoff Davies. ANOTHER ELECTION LOST by Labour, this time in Britain. The Blairites have their long knives out and will no doubt fight to drag the UK Labour Party back to
God is condemning SmoCo this morning, via Domain: Church leaders are using their annual Christmas messages and sermons to intensify pressure on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to take greater action on climate change, backing striking school students and fire-affected citizens in calling for increased efforts to tackle global warming. In a video message to be
Via The Australian: Billionaire Clive Palmer spent more than $80m on his fruitless bid for political power while fighting numerous legal battles, establishing a shipbuilding business in Singapore and exploring for rare earth metals in New Zealand. The revelations of Mr Palmer’s spending spree and business activities is contained in the latest financial accounts for
A dodo can see SmoCo has screwed up big time. Whether it is the simple political optics of guzzling Mai Tais in the clear air of a distant land while his country burns and chokes, the basic reality of what is expected of a leader during national crisis, or the formal structure of such. In
Via News: A tourist who took a picture of the Prime Minister relaxing on his Christmas break — after he told media he’d rush back to Australia as quickly as he could — said he approached Mr Morrison. The tourist told 10 News he asked Mr Morrison whether was going home to “resolve the bushfire
There are moments in politics when everything that has come before is crystalised in a moment. Malcolm Turnbull branded himself a phony when he leapt into bed with the Coalition’s right wing. Tony Abbott captured himself when he recommended Prince Phillip be offered an Australian knighthood. Before him, John Howard made himself a political legend
Reuters reports that Chinese tourism was always set to slide this year: China’s aviation regulator said on Thursday it expected a decline in airline capacity and bookings to the United States and Australia over the Lunar New Year period for the first time in nearly four years due to a shift in tourist destinations. Japan,
Fires are everywhere. Two firies are dead in NSW: Two Rural Fire Service volunteers died when their fire truck rolled as they battled a bushfire south-west of Sydney late on Thursday night, authorities say. A further three RFS volunteer firefighters were injured in the crash in Buxton just before 11.30pm, on a day of ferocious
Via the AFR: It’s the cover-up that has backfired, whipping Scott Morrison’s well-earned pre-Christmas break into a controversy. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister’s minders ordered the media not to report that he had taken leave. This bizarre overreach was designed to protect Mr Morrison from churlish criticism for leaving his post while the bushfires
