The Liberal Party is still dealing with allegations of bullying and sexism against women, with Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis announcing she will not contest her seat at the next election. She’s citing bullying from NSW State MP Gareth Ward and branch stacking in her electorate. This, combined with Julia Bank’s decision not to re-contest her seat, Lucy Gichuhi being placed in an unwinnable spot on the Senate ballot paper in South Australia, Jane Prentice loosing her pre-selection battle earlier this year, and the suspicion that Julie Bishop may not re-contest her seat of Curtin, has the Liberal’s pool of women dropping from its already low numbers. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced internal processes to investigate some of these allegations, however there is little information on these internal machinations and women in the party, especially Kelly O’Dwyer, are calling for these investigations to be independent.
Meanwhile there a continuing calls for there to be quotas in the Liberal Party, which most of the men in the Liberal Party don’t think necessary; and Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie has said that she will withdraw support for the government if they don’t sort out the women’s issue by the Wentworth by-election.
Speaking of the seat of Wentworth, the Liberals have a serious challenger in Independent Dr Kerryn Phelps. Phelps, a Sydney City Councillor, GP and marriage equality campaigner, says that if she wins, she would guarantee supply in order to keep stability. It’s thought Phelps could have a decent chance at the seat, despite Wentworth being held by the Liberals at 17%. This is because a lot of that margin is attributed to Malcolm Turnbull’s personal popularity, and many in the seat of Wentworth are unhappy about how Turnbull was treated. This combined with the fact that the Liberals didn’t choose a female candidate, and Kerryn Phelps is a “local”, could result in a large swing against the Liberal Party. To give context on the whole “local” thing, while there is no law that says you have to live in the electorate you’re representing, in Sydney if you’re not from the area in which you’re running (at least somewhat) you’re not considered to be a “local”. So Dave Sharma, who lives on the North Shore, on the other side of Sydney Harbour to Wentworth, isn’t considered to be a “local”. He is apparently thinking of moving to the electorate, but I have a suspicion that he’d want to wait to see if he’ll actually get the seat.
It got a bit weird though this week, when Scott Morrison didn’t show up for a press conference with Dave Sharma, instead opting to visit a school and talk about school funding. It appears Morrison’s people didn’t tell Sharma he wouldn’t be coming, so Sharma was left standing around, only to have the lectern gate-crashed by Kerryn Phelps, announcing that she would preference the Liberal Party over the Labor Party – doing a backflip on her announcement the day before that she would be putting the Liberals last and Labor ahead of them.
It has been revealed that two media moguls got involved in the Liberal instability during the week of the spill that saw Morrison become Prime Minister. Kerry Stokes, the head of SevenWest Media and Rupert Murdoch, the head of NewsCorp, have been named as getting involved. According to multiple retellings (mostly from Malcolm Turnbull since he headed off to NYC), Turnbull contacted Stokes to ask him whether NewsCorp was actually out to get him, so Stokes obliged and spoke with Murdoch, who confirmed that he had told NewsCorp to editorialise against Malcolm Turnbull and push for Peter Dutton. Funnily enough, much like most of the country and the Liberal Party, Stokes didn’t think Dutton as PM was such a good idea, so instructed editorials be written in favour of Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop. One should take this story with a grain of salt given that it’s been retold quite a few times and has come from a quite bitter Malcolm Turnbull.
The government has announced that they will prevent a number of people with outstanding welfare debts from travelling out of the country. These people have either been accidentally overpaid or they are deliberately defrauding the government, and are yet to pay back their debts despite repeated attempts to get them to pay the money back. The concern is however, that this could end up the same way at that debt collection debacle (which happened nearly two years ago, and I wrote about it earlier here), and there are also concerns about whether these travel bans will only ever be used as a last resort.
The Prime Minister has announced that there will be a Royal Commission into Aged Care. This is partially due to a two-part Four Corners investigation into the industry, and preempted the broadcast of the show by 24 hours. There are no costings or terms of reference yet, but the announcement has garnered support from the opposition, who says that there needs to be better pay for aged care workers and more doctors and nurses. There are calls for there to be nationally legislated minimum staff to patient ratios at aged care homes, like there are at childcare centres, which the industry says isn’t necessary.
The Banking Royal Commission is looking into home insurance this week, with Youi admitting it failed to provide “awesome service” (their words) to two clients. In one case, it took 18 months for Youi to arrange for the repair of a roof damaged after a freak hailstorm in Broken Hill, and in another, Youi is yet to organise the repairs on a home damaged by Cyclone Debbie. Meanwhile, Suncorp has admitted to showing “insufficient compassion” to a long-term customer, and AAMI (owned by Suncorp) have admitted to misleading advertising and failing to cover the complete cost of he repairs of a bushfire ravaged home.
Also this week, there were concerns over the conflicts of interest of Margie McKenzie, a board member of the Marine Park Authority. McKenzie’s husband Col, almost completely owns the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, and is a board member of the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. Both of these organisations received money from the Marine Park Authority, which was funded to a company called Gempearl, which is contracted to eradicate the crown-of-thorns starfish in the Barrier Reef. Gempearl is owned by both McKenzies, meaning that there is a massive conflict of interest on Margie’s part. She has said that she abstained from voting on those issues, however with a change in legislation, she may soon be ineligible to sit on the Marine Park Authority’s board. However, this will no longer be a concern, as McKenzie resigned over the weekend, following the story’s broadcast.
Finally this week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is going to visit Darwin in November for trade meetings. It’s been revealed that Infrastructure Australia refused to give NSW money for their light rail project, as they felt it would have little benefit and would worsen congestion in the Sydney CBD; and the government has increased the maximum penalty for food tampering from 10 years to 15 years, in order to bring the full force of the law upon whoever is putting needles in fruits (Queensland Health says strawberries are safe to buy, just keep cutting them in half). Also, Catholic and Independent schools have earned themselves a $4 billion payment over ten years to transition to the Gonski funding program, closing one battlefront and potentially opening another in the form of public schools.
Tweet of the Week
Things I’ve Been Looking at Online
WA Parliament still has a ban on breastfeeding in the chamber – ABC Online
How leaders work hard at being “normal” – ABC Online
Kara L 