Tag Archives: Ardern

Four Things That Happened During My Hiatus (March 3 to March 23)

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I’m back! I took some time off work and then when I got back to work it was a bit hectic, so here are a few things that happened while I was away.

First, we saw yet another announcement from a Liberal MP that they would not contest the next election. This time it was Craig Laundy, MP for the marginal seat of Reid, in Sydney’s Inner West. Laundy was a minister in the Turnbull government, and he is considered to be a moderate Liberal, which many commentators attribute to his ability to hold onto the seat. There is currently a push for a woman or an equally moderate candidate to be placed in the seat in order to keep it in Liberal hands. The seat is likely to be one where the party will parachute a candidate into it given it is so close to the election (it’s expected to be called after the budget).

It’s also concerning that the party has already asked two people if they’d like to run, and they have both refused. These people were ABC Journalist Stan Grant, and former NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas. This means that the candidate the Liberal party announces will be their third choice, and so far no women have been mentioned in rumours.

Second, New Zealand was rocked by a right-wing extremist terror attack on two mosques by an Australian citizen. It’s proved once again to the world and Australia that Jacinda Ardern is an awesome human being – just take her response on the day of the attack:

Once again there were calls for Jacinda Ardern to become Prime Minister of Australia, which isn’t possible because of Section 44, but whatever, we can dream.

The attack in NZ led right-wing senator Fraser Anning to try to blame Muslim immigration in Australia and New Zealand for the terror attack. Anning was widely criticised for his comments, mostly verbally. A teenage boy decided to smash an egg on Anning’s head while he was at an event – leading Anning to punch him in the face before Anning’s supporters tackled him to the ground.

The boy, Will Connolly, has since been interviewed by Channel 10. He admits that egging Anning was the wrong thing to do, and there is no denying it was, but he’s unapologetic because, well, he’s probably not the only one who has felt like smashing an egg on Anning’s head.

Scott Morrison also announced he was going to talk to social media companies about how they manage hateful content, and create legislation to make it illegal not to monitor and remove such content from these sites. This comes after the mosque attacker broadcast his attack live on Facebook, and while Facebook finally found it and deleted it, people kept reposting it.

Meanwhile, in New South Wales the state election took place, with it originally looking like the Liberal party would be in a minority government, mostly credited with the Labor leader Michael Daley’s comments about the Chinese community.

Finally, there was another round of school student strikes, with students campaigning to draw attention to climate change and their displeasure at the government’s action on climate policy, or lack thereof.

That’s it for now, back to regular posting this week.

The Week That Was – February 17 to February 23

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This week was the last sitting week before the Budget in April, and ostensibly the Election – and boy was it a cracker, as we found out Matthias Cormann hadn’t paid for flights to Singapore for a family holiday booked through the travel agency Helloworld. Helloworld is run by Andrew Burnes, the Federal Treasurer of the Liberal Party, and Cormann apparently booked the flights through him. Helloworld has taken the blame, saying an administrative issue meant that Cormann’s credit card wasn’t charged when the booking was made, but the fact that Helloworld had a lucrative deal with the government renewed shortly after Cormann’s trip with his family.

What’s more, it appears that Joe Hockey, former Treasurer and MP for North Sydney, and current Ambassador to the United States, may have also done Helloworld some sort of favour, getting their subsidiary QBT a contract with the government – it’s unclear what exactly the deal was but the head of the foreign service feels that Hockey’s actions were not in line with guidelines for how Ambassadors should act.

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop announced that she will be quitting parliament at the next election. She had said that she would stay on for stability, but many believed this would not be the case. Bishop has been in parliament for 21 years, eleven of those as Deputy Liberal leader under Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull (both as opposition leader and as PM) and Tony Abbott. She has stipulated that her replacement in her electorate of Curtin should be a woman, and I think the Liberals will probably make sure of that, or they’ll never hear the end of it.

This week Agriculture Minister David Littleproud was in hot water over comment he made regarding milk prices. This week Woolworths announced it would increase milk prices to help farmers, and when Coles and Aldi said they wouldn’t Littleproud said people should boycott the two supermarkets in favour of Woolworths. Only problem is at the start of the week David Littleproud held shares in Woolworths, which means that he would benefit from a boycott of other supermarkets. Littleproud sold his shares mid-way through the week when someone looked through his interests, and the money – about $750 – he made from that sale is going to drought relief.

There are questions over whether an arms manufacturer who receives grants from the federal government has been selling arms made under these grants to the Saudi Arabian government. The UK and US have restricted arms sales to Saudi Arabia after their military was accused of war crimes in the Yemeni civil war and after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but Australia has continued trade. There are concerns that the equipment the company was making will be used by Saudi forces in Yemen, and the Department of Defence and the company have not been able to guarantee that the Saudi military won’t.

This week the Aged Care Royal Commission revealed that those approved for Home Care packages are waiting up to two years and sometimes longer for service providers to get to them. These service providers also seem to be more interested in money rather than the care of their patients, with one company charging $2,100 a month just for ‘case management’. It was also revealed that the Federal Health Department froze aged care funding, suspicious that aged care providers were trying to over-claim for patients in order to take in more money, but no analysis was done to see if that was actually the case. The aged care industry body has also recognised that care could be better, and while they are on board with starting a register of workers in order to weed out problematic staff, they don’t want legislated staff-to-patient ratios.

Finally this week, Scott Morrison was in Auckland to meet with Jacinda Ardern, where the New Zealand government again offered to settle asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru, and again Australia declined. Ardern also said that the current policy of deporting New Zealand citizens from Australia, especially those who have only know life in Australia, was becoming corrosive in the relationship between Australia and New Zealand.

Tweet of the Week

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Annabel Crabb on Julie Bishop – ABC Online

The issues surrounding $1 a litre milk – ABC Online

The Week That Was – February 25 to March 3

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Michael McCormack won the ballot for the Nationals leadership, almost uncontested, after George Christiansen staged a last minute attempt in the party meeting. McCormack is a former journalist, who wrote an anti-LGBT tirade when he was editor of a Riverina newspaper. He has since apologised profusely for the editorial and he did vote in favour of same-sex marriage in parliament, so he appears to have toned himself down a bit. Banarby Joyce hasn’t ruled out making a comeback, but for now, McCormack is Deputy PM.

Speaking of Barnaby Joyce, it was revealed in Senate Estimate Hearings this week that the Prime Minister asked the secretary of prime minister and cabinet to investigate Joyce’s conduct and it was then ended when he resigned. Estimates hearings this week were a bit insane, with Labor Senator Kim Carr suggesting Liberal Senator James Patterson would have been a member of the Hitler Youth. Also, Michaelia Cash, upon being asked about the qualifications of her new Chief of Staff, said she’d name all the young women in Bill Shorten’s office ‘because there are rumours’, which left many politicians on both sides angry and shocked. Tanya Plibersek wants Cash to go into Shorten’s office and apologise to every single young woman in the office, but that’s unlikely happen, given that Turnbull defended her saying that she was ‘provoked’. In my humble opinion, that’s a load of crap, and from the look on Turnbull’s face, he didn’t believe it either.

Malcolm Turnbull came back from Washington and welcomed the NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to Sydney. They shared the usual ‘Australia and New Zealand are best friends and we are closer than ever’ spiel before being asked about a couple of sore spots in the friendship, such as Ardern’s offer to take around 150 refugees from Manus detention centre which Turnbull keeps declining, and the fact that Australia sends Kiwi citizens back to New Zealand after they’ve served time for their crimes – only catch is, some of them had no idea they were New Zealand citizens and have spent their entire lives in Australia.

The Tasmanian election took place this weekend, with the issue of poker machines a big one in the state. Labor and the Greens said early on that they would get rid of pokies in Tasmania if they won the election, while the Liberals said they’d keep them. This has seen a large amount of money and support for the Liberal Party from the clubs and poker machine industry. While the Liberals did suggest at one point easing gun control, which made some people uneasy (Port Arthur, the location of Australia’s worst mass shooting, is in Tasmania), it appears they will win the election. Election day was marred by the passing of former Tasmanian Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin from cancer.

Finally this week, Australia is trying to see if it can get an exemption of some sort after President Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium; the gun amnesty last year resulted in 57,324 guns being handed in – many will be destroyed, while some will be registered and returned to owners; and there are still funding issues with the NDIS, with people being kicked off their care programs after bills weren’t paid and providers being left with hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to them.

Tweet of the Week

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

MPs want Julie Bishop to declare her boyfriend – ABC Online

Michelle Grattan on Michaelia Cash’s outburst in Senate Estimates – ABC Online

The Two Week That Were – January 7 to January 20

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I don’t know whether the government decided their New Year’s Resolution was to give Australia a nice break from the annoying back and forth blame-game of politics for a few weeks, or whether this is sheer luck, but it’s been mostly pleasant in the land of politics this past fortnight.

One exception is the whole DRAMA between the Labor Premier of Victoria Dan Andrews, and the Liberal government who have been having a fight about African crime gangs in Melbourne. According to the Liberals there is a crisis, and according to Labor (and some community leaders) there isn’t. There hasn’t been much detail other than tha fact that they are having a bit of a back and forth – but some of that is probably due to the fact I watch the ABC’s NSW news, not the Victorian one.

The Prime Minister is in Japan, meeting with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to talk about security and trade. They’re trying to see what they can salvage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership after Trump pulled the USA out, and also discuss the security threats of China and North Korea.

The ABC has revealed that the Labor plan to change negative gearing would not affect the housing market as much as the Liberals were saying it would. Part of this is because the government models are based off the policy plan that Bill Shorten has stuck to since announcing it, which would only prevent negative gearing on new investments properties, allowing people who have been claiming negative gearing for years to continue to do so. House prices would drop, but it would not be a massive decrease.

There is a push in some parts of the education sector to use the “explicit instruction” model of teaching in order to ensure students are keeping up with the curriculum. While there seems to be some benefits to it, some teachers and academics have concerns that students will only be spoon-fed and they won’t learn to think critically.

Also this week, there has been the regular debate about whether or not Australia Day should be on January 26th, while Kristina Keneally has decided she will nominate for the casual vacancy when Sam Dastyari finally quits the Senate.

Finally this fortnight, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has become a dual Ecuadorian-Australian citizen, in the hope that there would be some way for Assange to have diplomatic immunity by becoming a member of the diplomatic team in London, which the UK refused meaning Assange is still stuck in the embassy; NSW will soon have a shortage of enrolled nurses; and there is a push to have new laws to protect the privacy of Australians with the changes in technology in the last decade or so.

Tweet of the Fortnight

Only in Australia…

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Australian of the Year finalists – Australian of the Year Website

Annabel Crabb on NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s pregnancy – ABC Online

 

30 Things That Happened in the Last Three Weeks – October 29 to November 18

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Uni kind of took over for a while (as did some extra work shifts) so here is a run through what happened in the last three weeks.

  1. After the whole Citizenship thing in the High Court, more and more people are popping up as potential dual citizens, with Stephen Parry, John Alexander and Jacqui Lambie resigning from their positions – More on this in a post coming up later this week.
  2. Questions are being raised over whether or not Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash’s ministerial decisions can be questioned in court given they made those decisions while in parliament, well, illegally. However, a litigant with some money will be needed to do it.
  3. Queensland is holding their State Election on November 25, earlier than expected.
  4. Sir Ninian Stephen, a former Governor-General from the 1980s passed away.
  5. Unions are calling for a boycott of Streets brand ice cream products while Streets attempts to suspend the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement to pay their workers less money.
  6. There will be more government funding for brain cancer research.
  7. Because Barnaby Joyce is no longer in parliament and the PM (or acting PM) has to be in the Lower House, Julie Bishop became Acting Prime Minister while Malcolm Turnbull was overseas, first in Israel and then on his whirlwind Asian conference tour.
  8. Turnbull went to Israel to the Beersheba memorial (a WWI battle on what is now Israeli soil 100 years ago) and to talk with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
  9. Turnbull also went to Asia to show up at the APEC and ASEAN conferences in Vietnam and the Philippines respectively, and also swung by Hong Kong too.
  10. The detention centre on Manus Island closed, but many refugees did not want to leave saying they don’t feel safe outside the centre. They’ve been staying there since it closed on October 31, with no running water, no medicine and only the small amounts of food locals are getting into the centre.
  11. Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten finally agreed on a method to audit (but not audit) MPs’ and Senators’ citizenship statuses.
  12. Stephen Parry is to be replaced by Richard Colbeck.
  13. The Senate has had a small renovation to put in ramps for Scott Ludlam’s replacement Jordan Steele-John who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair.
  14. The traditional owners of Uluru will ban climbing the iconic rock. After 2019, those caught climbing will be fined.
  15. New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has offered to settle a couple hundred of the Manus detention centre refugees in NZ. Turnbull has said “not now thanks” which leaves the door open for him to say “yes please” in the future.
  16. Telstra will pay compensation to around 42,000 customers who have not received the NBN internet speeds they paid for.
  17. Sam Dastyari was accosted by two racists who called him a terrorist at a Melbourne university pub. He was hanging out with Gellibrand MP Tim Watts who will forever be known for asking the racists who were berating Dastyari “what race is dickhead?” 
  18. Protests outside a fundraiser for Tony Abbott got somewhat out of hand, with Abbott’s sister Christine Forster, among other Liberal heavyweights, being accosted by the protesters. Forster’s “favourite” jacket was ripped in the scuffles.
  19. Hollie Hughes, the person that was expected to replace Fiona Nash in the senate is not eligible to sit in the senate because she took a job after the 2016 election that is considered to be a “position of profit under the Crown”. Lambie’s replacement, who is the current Mayor of Devonport is also under a cloud but does not have the $15,000 left lying about to refer himself to the High Court.
  20. Malcolm Roberts’ replacement in the Senate, Fraser Anning, has left the One Nation party within a day of showing up in Canberra – it’s unclear whether he left voluntarily or was pushed out after he had a disagreement with Pauline Hanson.
  21. Scott Ryan has become the Senate President, at least for the time being.
  22. The by-election in John Alexander’s seat of Bennelong has been shaken up with Labor running former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Liberals have already started the dirt throwing with allusions to Keneally’s corrupt ministers and the epic loss of the Labor party in NSW at the 2011 State Election. (Note that she wasn’t corrupt and she was found to be so by the NSW ICAC)
  23. AUSTRALIA SAID YES TO SAME SEX MARRIAGE! 61.6% of the country voted to allow same-sex marriage. Now it just has to be legislated. You can see the makeup of the result and some more detailed numbers on the ABC website. Malcolm Turnbull has promised the legislation will pass by Christmas.
  24. Penny Wong is embarrassed that she cried in front of the country. 
  25. Legislation to allow same-sex marriage has hit the Senate, with Dean Smith introducing the bill. There are concerns from conservatives that there aren’t enough religious protections a la American cake bakers. See this SBS article to get what this is all about.
  26. People are now pointing out the economic benefits of same-sex weddings, because if you do the maths…. 47,000(ish) gay couples multiplied by the average cost of a wedding means a lot of money will be poured into the weddings industry.
  27. The Royal Commission into Juvenile Detention has recommended that the Don Dale correctional centre in the Northern Territory be closed, and that the age of criminal responsibility be raised from 10 to 12, among other recommendations.
  28. Cory Bernardi and his Australian Conservatives party are planning on running a candidate in Bennelong.
  29. 17 people are running in the New England by-election, and there are thoughts from Antony Green that more than that could run in Bennelong.
  30. The NSW voluntary euthanasia bill has been rejected in the NSW Upper House, while the Victorian Upper House debate has been suspended for a few days after a Labor member collapsed in their office during the mammoth overnight session.