At The Australian today, it’s not a “what if” question: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg struggled to get past security when he drove himself to the billionaire Pratt family mansion Raheen for a fundraiser last night. …Last night’s event was a Liberal Party pre-election fundraiser with Melbourne’s money: a $12,000-a-head dinner hosted by the billionaire family matriarch
Via The Australian today: Bill Shorten has launched a fresh assault in his war on business, branding employers as “fat cats” for criticising Labor’s wages policy and threatening to impose once-in-a-generation changes that would force the industrial umpire to deliver bigger pay rises to 2.3 million workers. Arguing that the principles behind setting the minimum
Even the lunatic RBA has swung behind climate change mitigation now, at the AFR: Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle has called for immediate action on climate change to avert an “abrupt, disorderly” economic transition, in a speech that confirmed climate change policy as one of the central bank’s key priorities. In a speech on
By Leith van Onselen While NSW’s politicians continue to fight a phoney war over Sydney’s ‘overdevelopment’, while ignoring entirely the mass immigration causing the said development, NSW voters have delivered another damning indictment. Yesterday, a Newspoll survey revealed that 80% of voters in NSW do not want the state’s population to increase, with majority support across
Via the ABC: Former trade minister Andrew Robb has slammed his ex-colleagues Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce, as well as Australia’s security agencies, over what he sees as anti-China sentiment. In a wide-ranging interview with AM, Mr Robb confirmed he had been working with the Chinese company Landbridge on a plan to develop a health
God save me, via Herald Sun: One Nation’s Mark Latham has attempted to explain how his DNA testing of people who claim Aboriginal ancestry would work. The One Nation NSW party leader appeared on Today this morning, telling host Deborah Knight “a single dollar of wasted welfare money is a problem”. The state party leader
By Leith van Onselen With the NSW Election to be held in a fortnight, politicians are scampering to appease the voter backlash against Sydney’s over-development, while ignoring the mass immigration that’s causing the problem. An ‘investigation’ published yesterday by The ABC illustrates the shenanigans: NSW Labor claims western Sydney is being “clobbered” by over-development… Development
Via The Guardian: Labor is comfortably ahead of the Coalition in the latest Guardian Essential poll, and just over half of the voters in this fortnight’s sample, particularly voters under 34, worry Australia is not doing enough to address climate change. The latest survey of 1,089 voters has Labor in front of the Morrison government on
The usual garbage from the MSM today, via The Australian: Barnaby Joyce and senior Nationals MPs have warned that the Coalition agreement could be severed over energy policy, setting up a showdown with city-based Liberal MPs fearing a voter backlash over coal in affluent blue-ribbon seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. After Scott Morrison yesterday
More trouble for Scummo: When Julia Banks quit the Liberal party she accused her former colleagues of bullying, but refused to name the men [email protected] sat down with the newly independent MP to ask her about dirty tricks in and out of the party room. #TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/bCOqm0JXOC — The Project (@theprojecttv) March 10, 2019
Amusing stuff from the dreaded teleprompter fail files at The Guardian: The new minister for defence industry, Linda Reynolds, has disavowed and then embraced arguments from her cabinet colleague Mathias Cormann that wages adjusting in line with economic conditions is a “deliberate design feature” of the Australian economy. During an untidy television appearance on Sunday morning,
Goodbye Scummo: Scott Morrison’s visit last week to the Christmas Island regional processing centre in a bid to keep the pressure on Labor’s softened border protection policy failed to ameliorate the damage, with the two-party-preferred vote widening from 53-47 a fortnight ago to 54-46 this week, giving Labor a clear eight-point lead over the Coalition.
For the past five years, MB has berated the emergence of Australia’s Fake Left commentariat as it obsessed over minor social policy battles while a broader class war gutted worker’s wages. Finally today the Fake Left appears to be awakening. The driver is the ALP putting wages on the agenda, forcing until now socially focused
Amazing what the threat of losing your sinecure can do, at Domain: Tony Abbott has backflipped on his call for Australia to withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement, saying the federal government has lost the “emissions obsession” it held under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Turnbull swiftly returned fire on Twitter, suggesting Mr Abbott’s
Scummo has a point at Domain: “More than half the Australians voting at this next election will not have experienced a recession during their working lives and so I can understand that you need a long memory to understand what it was like to work through that type of a economic period of time,” he
Ah yes, Josh Recessionberg the L-plated Treasurer, who writes in The Australian: Yesterday’s national accounts show the economy grew by 2.7 per cent last calendar year…It also underlines the danger of Labor’s housing tax and its plans to abolish negative gearing as we know it and increase capital gains tax by half. …With unemployment at 5
Via our Malcolm in London: And thank you for your service in the British Army, fighting in freedom’s cause in Iraq and Afghanistan, as our Australian servicemen and women have done, and are doing today. Our security depends on the courage and the professionalism of men and women like you – with your deep understanding
Via The Australian: The Victorian Liberal Party is preparing to spend up to $1 million to save Josh Frydenberg’s heartland seat of Kooyong, amid alarm that key city seats will be swept away at the May election. Senior Liberals said the party had initially allocated $500,000 to fight for the Treasurer’s seat but was prepared
Bill Shorten’s retort to Scummo arrives today with a speech at the AFR Summit: “The next election will be a referendum on wages. It will be a contest about who the economy should work for, whose interests the system should serve. I believe we need to renovate the system to revive negotiation and co-operation. Our
Via Yahoo comes the great Australian economy: The former owner of two Subway franchises in Sydney has been penalised $65,000 after underpaying a former employee by $16,345. The employee working at outlets at Artarmon and Stanmore was paid just $14-$14.50 an hour, between October 2014 and April 2016. That’s well below the minimum rate of
Via Domain comes Scummo the Liar: “I’m saying the economy will be weaker under Labor – that’s exactly what I’m saying, because they’re going to put $200 billion worth of taxes and take Australia’s industrial relations system back to the times when we had recessions in this country,” Mr Morrison said at a business summit
Via the AFR comes Scott Morrison who says the next election will be a contest “between enterprise and envy”: …”The contrast at this election between the economic plans of the Coalition and Labor is greater than it has been for 40 years,” he said. . “There was broad recognition that the modernisation of Australia’s economy
By Leith van Onselen Back in December, New South Wales MP Jeremy Buckingham ripped up his membership at a press conference and quit the Greens describing the party as “toxic” and “no longer focused on the environment”. Then last month, a long-term parliamentary staffer, Jack Gough, also resigned, claiming the hard-left faction in the NSW Greens is
by Chris Becker Not many government ministers staying around at this rate, from SMH: The Morrison government is bracing for a new round of cabinet resignations ahead of the May election, with focus shifting to the future of the Coalition’s two most senior defence figures. Defence Industry Minister Steve Ciobo is preparing to announce his
Michael Sainsbury has done a great job exposing Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Michaelwest.com.au. Below are my favourite extracts: WHEN SCOTT Morrison either accidently – or more likely with great skullduggery – emerged as the successor to Malcolm Turnbull in August 2018, the congratulations naturally enough flooded in. But for most Australians, it was unclear
By Leith van Onselen The man that once waved a lump of coal around parliament has announced a $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund to reduce Australia’s emissions. From The ABC: Prime Minister Scott Morrison will today launch a new pre-election climate change policy, pledging $2 billion for projects to bring down Australia’s emissions. The Climate
By Leith van Onselen The Coalition’s scaremongering over border protection and negative gearing has failed to lift its electoral fortunes, with the latest Newspoll of voter intentions maintaining Labor’s six point lead over the Coalition, 53% to 47% on a two-party preferred basis: Labor’s and the Coalition’s primary votes have also remained dead flat at
Via Domain: All new Sydney developments would be subject to a minimum 30 per cent affordable housing target in a bid to address the city’s housing crisis under a NSW Greens proposal. The Saving Sydney package, announced on Friday by Greens MP and planning spokesman David Shoebridge, would also abolish priority precincts and restore planning
In case of emergency break glass for Recessionberg, via Bloomie: Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg downplayed reports that a major port in northern China has banned coal imports from Australia and says trade ties between the two nations are “exceptionally strong.” Frydenberg cautioned against “jumping to conclusions,” after Reuters said Dalian Port Group has imposed an
Chaos! Farewell Julie: Today I announced that I will not re-contest the seat of #Curtin at the next election. It’s been an honour to serve as the member for Curtin, Foreign Minister of Australia & Deputy Leader of @LiberalAus pic.twitter.com/Vqai7ht03K — Julie Bishop (@JulieBishopMP) February 21, 2019
