Via Paul Kelly: The majority of the “wise men” expert panel created to advise the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, rejected his fallback compromise of recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but keeping the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv. Morrison’s retreat at the weekend confirms he should never have raised the option of moving the embassy
Via Domain today: The Morrison government has suffered another setback after weeks of campaigning to gain ground against Labor, trailing by 46 to 54 per cent in a two-party result that would trigger a landslide loss at an election. Voters have swung against the Coalition in a trend that would cost it at least 18
Via The UNZ Review: So it appears the privatization of France isn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. As I assume you are aware, for over a month now, the gilets jaunes (or “yellow vests”), a multiplicitous, leaderless, extremely pissed off, confederation of working class persons, have been conducting a series of lively protests in
Via Domain: The proposed CIC will be split in two. At the top tier, a ‘‘law enforcement division’’ will have powers roughly on par with the powerful NSW ICAC. Yet a federal Eddie Obeid would have nothing to fear from this body. Parliamentarians and their staff, along with most of the public service and government-owned
Via The Australian: West Australian Labor MP Pierre Yang’s political mentor, influential Perth businessman Edward Zhang, is a member of five China-based organisations directly run by the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful United Front bureaucracy. …The Australian revealed last week that Mr Yang, the McGowan government’s upper-house whip, was a member of two pro-Beijing organisations that
By Leith van Onselen Labor may not have sufficient support in the Senate for its proposal to abolish cash refunds for excess dividend imputation credits if it wins the 2019 federal election. Labor would require the support of the Greens and four crossbenchers to pass the reforms before the current Senate is dissolved on 30
Via The Australian: John Howard defended Australian media and political debate from Chinese criticism at a high-level dialogue in Beijing last week, in a meeting described as reflecting a warmer relationship with China. …Chinese state media and senior diplomats have publicly lashed Australian media for reporting on Chinese government interference in Australia. Beijing’s officials have
Via The Australian: The Morrison government is expected to formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s legitimate capital following a cabinet meeting today, but may delay the relocation of Australia’s embassy from Tel Aviv. Senior government sources have confirmed a final decision was made by cabinet’s national security committee last night. It is believed the option favoured
Here’s is what a green looks like: Here is what a Tampa green looks like: And here is what The Greens look like when you put them together: A NSW Greens MP has lashed out at the “destructive extreme left forces” in her party after members formally asked fellow MP Jeremy Buckingham to step down.
Via Domain: Exclusive Herald polling revealed One Nation has a primary vote of 7.5 per cent statewide, while internal Coalition research indicates minor parties could secure as much as 20 per cent of the primary vote in some seats. One Nation alone is polling in the “low double digits” in some areas. The Coalition needs
Via the AFR: As Sydney and Melbourne house prices continue to fall, Mr Shorten signalled that an originally planned July 1, 2019 start date could be deferred until 2020. He said Labor remained committed to its three-year policy of reforming negative gearing to make the system fairer for first-home buyers against investors who now receive
Via Domain: When NSW Opposition leader Luke Foley spectacularly resigned from Parliament amid a sexual harassment allegation, Labor strategists were bracing for a hit. …Yet Labor has not only recovered but is ahead. The latest Herald poll, conducted across the state on the weekend, has Labor leading the Coalition 51 to 49 on a two-party-preferred
Lordy, how deep do Labor’s China flunkies run? Via The Australian: West Australian Labor MP Pierre Yang, under fire for his links to pro-China groups, spent three months on a Chinese government vessel hunting for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that security experts suspect was spying on the Australian military. The Chinese-born Mr Yang resigned this
Via The Guardian has a nice sccop: [Malcolm Turnbull] urged his Liberal colleagues to revive the Neg – abandoned as a casualty of the August leadership fight – arguing it was a “vital piece of economic policy and has strong support, none stronger I might say, than that of the current prime minister and the current
Bravo, via Domain: South Australian Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick is seeking to overturn a decades-long convention in Australia that ministers, assistant ministers and parliamentary secretaries – unlike their staff and public servants – are exempt from security checks before accessing classified government material. …Importantly, the security services would not be able to veto ministerial
By Leith van Onselen With new NSW Labor leader, Michael Daley, vowing to make the issue of over-development a key plank of his election platform, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has ordered an urgent review into development in Ryde, where more than 13,000 extra people have been sardine packed in recent years. From The Daily Telegraph: The under-pressure Premier
It’s very, very simple. Australia now has an economy that serves a very few elites and rorts everybody else. This is most obvious in income: Corrupted by politics or blinded by economic ideology, the doyens in our institutions simply don’t get it. They are focused and happy with GDP as the only measure of progress
Golden boy of the Australian left, David Marr, yesterday pounced upon a new Scanlon Foundation survey at The Guardian: Australia has not lost faith in immigration. The political narrative has darkened but not the fundamental view of ourselves as an immigrant nation. Most of us remain convinced that we are in so many ways better
Talk about not getting the memo: Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert will headline a Liberal Party fundraiser that promises political donors an insight into the government’s potential response to the banking royal commission. …”It’s appalling and disgusting that after voting against a banking royal commission 26 times, Scott Morrison and the Liberals now want to make
The story goes that Malcolm Turnbull turned down joining Labor because he was not offered a safe enough seat. One wonders, rather, if he did not hatch a plan with Labor greybeards to destroy the Liberal Party by joining then gutting it from the inside. From Domain just now: The federal government’s efforts to craft
The conservative side of politics has two problems right now. First, it has too many ex-leaders. Second, it also has a “master and apprentice” culture of respecting them. As a result it now has four PMs all going at it once! Malcolm Turnbull won’t shut up: Malcolm Turnbull has urged Scott Morrison to revive the
Great stuff today from Australia’s best contemporary political leader, Jay Weatherill: Jay Weatherill has accused Malcolm Turnbull of intervening to “politicise a state emergency” after South Australia’s devastating statewide blackout in 2016, saying this ultimately led to his demise as prime minister because he was needlessly wedged “between the Labor states and his right-wing partyroom”
Via The Guardian: The latest Guardian Essential poll shows Labor’s two-party-preferred lead over the government has blown out again to 54% to 46%. A fortnight ago Labor was ahead 52% to 48%, which suggested a tightening in the contest. In the latest survey of 1,032 respondents, which follows a thumping electoral loss for the Liberals
Check this out from Michael Fullilove at the Lowy Institute: We have just come through summit season. The pace of regional diplomacy has picked up. Recently Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The very next day Abe hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his home near Tokyo. The
From top to bottom, the Coalition vertical identity state is descending into energy chaos. At the political level the party is riven, via New Daily: In an extraordinary intervention, Malcolm Turnbull has slammed as ‘weak’ Scott Morrison’s attempt to prevent another embarrassing defection by rescuing rebel MP Craig Kelly from preselection defeat. The New Daily
It was the usual press gallery echo chamber on the weekend. Leading us off was a Paul Kelly furiously ingratiating himself with the coming Labor Government: This is the week the zeitgeist of the nation turned against an embattled Coalition. The government has lost control of the parliament, cannot maintain discipline on its own side, confronts
Via Domain: New polling for the Herald shows that Labor leads the Coalition 51 to 49 on a two-party preferred basis, with the internal federal Liberal chaos impacting how people will vote in NSW. But the polling also shows that one of Gladys Berejiklian’s key election issues- immigration- is a major concern for voters, with
So says Domain: In the wake of Labor’s landslide victory in the Victorian state election, which followed a string of polls showing federal Coalition trailing Labor, Wakelin Property Advisory director Jarrod McCabe said he had been contacted by a number of prospective investors spurred into action by the increased likelihood negative gearing reforms will become
Via the AFR: State and federal Labor leaders have refused to back Adani’s $2 billion Queensland Carmichael mine after the Indian company said it would fund the project itself, with construction planned to begin before Christmas. The decision to give the financial green light for the mine, which has been the lightning rod for anti-coal
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
