With last week being the last sitting week before Christmas, so began the quieting of the fun and fantastic world of politics for the holidays. However, there were still three major events that took place.
The Bennelong by-election took place, and although the seat has been retained by Liberal John Alexander, there was a large swing against the party, pushing the seat back into marginal(ish) status. It got nasty this week, with Labor and Kristina Keneally accusing Malcolm Turnbull of being anti-Chinese (despite the fact his grandchild is half Chinese) and the Liberal party continually referring to Keneally’s time as NSW Premier. Both sides have probably not been entirely truthful to voters, because both sides have got some facts wrong either intentionally for scare-mongering purposes or purely by accident. There were multiple robo-calls and pamphlet drops in Bennelong in the last six weeks and it appears that the voters got pretty annoyed.
Sam Dastyari announced that he will be resigning from the Senate before sitting resumes next year – not immediately, which has made people think that Labor was waiting to see how Keneally went in the by-election and then see if she wanted Sam’s Senate spot if she lost. It’d be really nice if Keneally could prove these people wrong and not take the spot, as I (and some others in my house) feel that she is better suited to being an MP rather than a Senator – but that’s just us and my house has weird people in it, including me.
Meanwhile, further allegations related to the whole Dastyari debacle emerged this week, with suggestions that he attempted to talk Shadow Foreign Minister Tanya Plibersek out of meeting a Hong Kong democracy activist for fears it would “upset China”. Basically, the whole party became so annoyed with him and made clear his political career was over, so Dastyari now has no choice but to quit.
It should be noted that the Chinese businessman with links to the Chinese Communist Party that is at the root of the Dastyari saga is not just cozy with the Labor Party. He has donated large amounts of money to the Liberals as well. This is concerning given his Yuhu Group owns the Eastwood Shopping Centre, and there is a push to develop it into a larger shopping centre with a 13-storey residential unit block. The panel that decides on this development is chaired by the Prime Minister’s wife Lucy Turnbull. The panel said that she will not be a part of the panel that makes the decision, but it still looks dodgy to the average person.
Also this week, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse released its report after five long years of hearings. The Commissioners have refereed to the issue as a “national tragedy” and thanked those who gave evidence im both public and private hearings. They found that for most of the people who spoke, their abuse took place in the Catholic Church, followed by the Anglican Church. The Commission has recommended that the sanctity of the Catholic confessional should be voided if child abuse is confessed to, and that celibacy should be voluntary for Catholic priests – something the Catholic Church has said they will need to chat to the Vatican about. Other recommendations include making it a crime to fail to protect a child from abuse in an institution and to strengthen child grooming laws. There is also a push to ensure that all states and territories sign up for a National Redress Scheme, although there are disagreements over how that should be approached.
Finally this week, the Commonwealth Bank is in hot water for allegedly warning a terrorism suspect that his account was going to be closed; there are concerns that there could be institutional racism in the medical community, as it was revealed that very few indigenous people get on transplant lists; and NAPLAN results show stagnation in results and some shocking civics results, although there has been an improvement on indigenous results.
Tweet of the Week
https://twitter.com/janeenorman/status/941799549898711040
Things I’ve Been Looking at Online
Chat10Looks3 listeners recommend episodes of ABC Radio’s Conversations – ABC Online
Michelle Grattan on the “China Factor” in Bennelong and Australia – ABC Online
Kara L 