Via The Australian: Bill Shorten will impose an aggressive pollution cap on industry and business if elected, in a bid to meet Labor’s ambitious climate change targets, and will push for half of all new cars sold in Australia to be electric within a decade. On the eve of the federal budget, the Opposition Leader
Why does everyone hate The Greens? After all, they are the ones trying to save the planet. But you still have to smart about it. The Greens are not. To wit, from The Australian: Senior Coalition figures are warning that legitimate debates over population levels, refugees and border protection are being hijacked by claims of
Via The Guardian: A group closely linked to the Chinese Communist party has not declared itself on the federal government’s new foreign influence register, prompting criticism from China experts. Only 25 groups or individuals have declared themselves on the government’sforeign influence transparency register, designed to make public the identity of foreign government agents attempting to influence Australian democracy.
So says Mr Joye today: In what could be an electoral game changer, the government’s budget has remarkably moved into a full surplus on several key measures – the “net operating balance” and “fiscal balance” report a surplus of more than $7 billion over the year to February – 12 months ahead of the government’s forecast,
It does not take long to ruin a country. One business cycle can do it. And the Coalition has succeeded in doing just that. No matter where one looks today, no matter the sector, the regulator, the governance or policy, the conclusion is the same. Australia has quietly slipped from a liberal democracy run for the
Via Al Jazeera: An official from Australia’s far-right One Nation party offered to influence the country’s democracy as part of a bid to secure political funding from Koch Industries, a United States energy giant, an Al Jazeera investigation has found. The offer was revealed in the second episode of Al Jazeera’s three-year investigation into the US and Australian
Via Domain: Liberal rising star Tim Wilson is set to come under attack from the Victorian union movement, which is buoyed by internal research indicating Labor could snatch his inner Melbourne seat. …Mr Wilson holds Goldstein by a comfortable 12.7 per cent but research commissioned by Trades Hall has Labor ahead. Victorian Trades Hall Council
He’s doing his best impression of it today, at The Australian: Bill Shorten has made a dramatic move to win back support from Chinese-Australian voters following last week’s disastrous NSW election defeat, declaring Labor is not a racist party and that he welcomes the rise of China as a global power. In a group chat
Check out this great news, via Reuters: Vitol Group’s head of liquefied natural gas trading said on Wednesday that the outlook was bleak for LNG in the short term due to an “incredibly” oversupplied market, which would lead to some output shutdowns. “We had record imports of LNG into Europe. Three years ago we saw
Via New Daily: Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull have declined to endorse Scott Morrison’s account that he never sought to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment, citing shadow cabinet confidentiality. In her first public comments on the issue, the former foreign minister said she did not intend to discuss it, despite the Prime Minister’s claim it is
Give that man a cigar, at News: Speaking with news.com.au on his campaign bus in Perth, Mr Shorten said having rich parents had become almost the most important factor in deciding which Aussies succeeded. “Having rich parents is always useful; it’ll never go out of fashion. But, we can’t create a stratified society where having
Scummo thy name is stupid, via The Australian: Scott Morrison has moved to stop the flow of Coalition votes to One Nation, attacking the party as “abhorrent” and urging disaffected conservatives to support the government ahead of Pauline Hanson at the upcoming election. In a direct pitch to One Nation voters, the Prime Minister invited
While the horribly late to the party Fake Left is celebrating at The Guardian: Under the Labor proposal, a Bill Shorten government would amend the Fair Work Act to first instruct the Fair Work Commission, which sets the nation’s minimum wage, to determine “what a living wage should be”, taking into account the views of
Via Peter Hartcher: Scott Morrison as immigration minister proposed a multibillion-dollar program to build new mass detention facilities in Australia for asylum seekers who were living in the community on bridging visas, according to multiple informed sources. …Mr Morrison’s proposal was opposed by then treasurer Joe Hockey, who “hit the roof”, in the words of
From Al Jazeera: How do you respond to a deadly mass shooting if you are a gun rights advocate? First, “Say nothing.” If media queries persist, go on the “offence, offence, offence”. Smear gun-control groups. “Shame them” with statements such as – “How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward
Here’s the latest quarterly Newspoll graphic: Barring a miracle it is over. More at The Guardian: Labor remains ahead of the Morrison government as the major parties gear up for budget week and the looming federal campaign, and, in the wake of the Christchurch murders, 63% of voters believe white extremism is as dangerous as
Via News comes Mediscare 2.0: The campaign that caused irreparable damage to Malcolm Turnbull’s government at the last election is being revived a week before the Budget. [Labor] is promising to end the Medicare rebate freeze in its first 50 days, should it win power. …Mr Shorten’s claim the Coalition was planning to privatise parts of
Nice from Richard McGregor via Newsroom: Talk of strained relations between New Zealand and China has led to fears of trade reprisals – but one expert says the Asian superpower has been “all bark and no bite” with its threats in recent years. Richard McGregor, an Australian journalist who spent nearly a decade as the
Because the only numbers that matter are those in your party room, via the AFR: Scott Morrison and Nationals leader Michael McCormack are working on a peace deal over coal fired power to prevent another outbreak of hostilities within the Coalition before the federal election. After the Nationals performed poorly in Saturday’s NSW state election
Today ends MB’s self-imposed blackout on Christchurch coverage. We paused because we did not believe that anyone would benefit from politicisation of the event. Sometimes not taking responsibility for something is the only responsible path. Alas that that sentiment was not shared by the broader political economy. Suffice to say that: QLD was represented by
Sustainable Australia are running 76 candidates, including 55 lower house seats – the most of any minor party – in tomorrow’s NSW Election. Sustainable Australia has excellent policies, which is why I am a paid-up member, as is Dick Smith. If you are a NSW resident, please give Sustainable Australia your vote. To borrow a phrase
Follow the money as they say, at The Australian: Tickets are $5000 a pop and almost sold out to Bill Shorten’s Labor fundraiser next week at Anthony Pratt’s Kew mansion Raheen. And Margin Call can confirm Anthony — the keynote speaker at The Australian’s and Visy’s Global Food Forum yesterday at Sydney’s Sheraton on the
Readers will know that MB is no fan of the $180bn man, Chris Pyne, but this is a bit rich, at The Australian: Australian coal is set to face tighter scrutiny at Chinese ports at least until after the May election, with a speech by Defence Minister Christopher Pyne in Singapore in January blamed in
Lordy, at this rate I will have to drop my “Fake Left” moniker for just “left”. Via Bernard Keane at Crikey: The charge that the Morrison government is playing up immigration reform to tap into xenophobia — plainly a far more toxic allegation now than it was before last Friday — is false. The collision
By Leith van Onselen Shortly after Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a small cut in Australia’s non-humanitarian permanent migrant cap to 160,000 (from 190,000), Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews has called for the federal government to cough-up billions of dollars in additional funding to assist the states in coping with unrelenting immigration-driven population growth. From The
By Leith van Onselen Fairfax’s Crispin Hull has clearly taken over from Ross Gittins (who has curiously gone silent) in pointing-out the pitfalls of the ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration policy. Back in January 2017, Hull argued that the main solution to making housing more affordable rests with winding-back immigration: The principal cause of housing unaffordability
The wages war rages on with more good material from the suddenly less Fake Left over the weekend. Mike Seccombe at The Saturday Paper: Back then Tony Abbott’s chosen employment spokesman, Eric Abetz, led the scare campaign, doing his very best to talk up the threat of an economy-wrecking wages breakout. He was never clearer than
The problem with being insane is that you become self-satirising. You’re own behaviour exits so far outside accepted norms that it becomes a comedic reassertion of the same. We had one recent example of this in the Scummo & Co defense of Paedo Pell. But that it small fry compared to today’s debacle as School Strike
Warning: not economics, via Domain: Chief Judge Kidd acknowledged George Pell’s sentence would have been lower at the time of offending, but says he needs to take into account the current understandings of the issue of child sex abuse. He says he must technically have regard of “protection of the community from you”, however he
I used to love the Marxist ramblings of Guy Rundle. But these days he has so fully embraced the Fake Left that he is almost unrecognisable. Observe his take on the NSW stadiums issue yesterday: There is something utterly delicious in watching the Gladys Berejiklian fan brigade trying to think their way through the disaster
