Tag Archives: Australia Day

13 Things That Happened in the Last Three Weeks (January 20 to February 9)

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I know, I know, I got behind again, and that isn’t great in an election year, but once everything gets back to normal at work, I’ll get back to regular programming…

  1. Australia Day was celebrated on the 26th of January, with various events across the country. The day was also mourned by Indigenous communities, with several “Change The Date” Rallies, attended by Indigenous leaders, political leaders and the general public.
  2. The election is likely to happen in May this year, and so the ‘pre-election revving’ (I call it this because it feels like race cars revving up before a race) has begun. Labor has been making promises on education and health; as well as subsidising swimming lessons for children. Meanwhile the Liberal party is promising to create 1.25 million jobs in five years, and are saying a Labor win at the election will lead to a recession – something a large portion of the electorate has not faced in their working lives – Labor just says it is scaremongering.
  3. The Liberals are also facing the resignations of two more current or former ministers since Kelly O’Dwyer announced she was leaving parliament to spend more time with her family. Michael Keenan will be leaving to also spend more time with family, while Nigel Scullion is retiring – and plans to go fishing a lot more often.
  4. The Liberal Party has had “Captain’s Call” with Scott Morrison parachuting Warren Mundine into the marginal seat of Gilmore on the NSW South Coast. Mundine is a former Labor President (yes, Labor, you did read that right) and he left the party recently after he felt they weren’t going in a direction he liked. He’s now a Liberal Party member. His parachute into the seat has left the originally pre-selected candidate Grant Schultz unimpressed. He’ll now run as an independent. The Nationals will also run a candidate in Gilmore, and a former NSW State Minister Katrina Hodgkinson will run for pre-selection.
  5. Former Olympic Skier and barrister Zali Steggall will run as an independent in Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah. She’s fiscally conservative, but socially progressive and believes more should be dine for climate change. This is similar to Kerryn Phelps – and it’s believed some of those who worked on Phelps’ campaign are going to help Steggall. Julia Banks will also return to the campaigning at the next election – she won’t be contesting her marginal seat of Chisholm, but Greg Hunt’s seat of Flinders (as an independent)
  6. The My Health Record opt-out deadline was January 31 – so if you didn’t choose to opt out, you will have a record created for you. There were concerns about people’s private information being safe, and there are also concerns about how much information will be put on the records and which medical professionals can access them.
  7. In South Australia, a Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin has reported back, with the Commissioner Bret Walker QC (a NSW jurist) saying that it appeared that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority was either “unwilling” or “incapable” of acting lawfully. He ruled that the water buyback levels were not chosen based on science but on what would make people happy with the Basin Authority. Walker has called for the Basin Plan to be overhauled completely and that water buybacks should take preference over efficiency measures. However it is unclear if any of the recommendations will be accepted or acted on.
  8. The Banking Royal Commission report was released, with Commissioner Kenneth Hayne making 76 recommendations, including banning cold-calling for insurance sales and banning commissions for financial advisers. Hayne also singled out the National Australia Bank (NAB), whose Board Chair Ken Henry, and CEO Andrew Thorburn quit at the end of the week the report was released.
  9. The government is trying to prevent a bill from passing that would allow the medical-evacuation of refugees from detention centres after assessment from two doctors. This would make transfer the decision-making from bureaucrats to medical professionals. This something that Kerryn Phelps, who brought the legislation to parliament, and Labor are supporting. This recently led the government to release classified information from intelligence agencies that suggested this legislation could be risky to National Security.
  10. Three years after the Federal Government took over the management of Norfolk Island, there are calls for a rethink. Most Norfolk Islanders did want more input and assistance from the Australian Government, but were expecting to go into negotiations for some kind of agreement rather than the full-on takeover that took place. There is now an Inquiry by human rights lawyers, including Geoffrey Robertson looking into whether there has been a breach of political and democratic human rights of Norfolk Islanders.
  11. Australia’s Parliament House was the target of a cyber attack recently, with suspicions falling on a foreign government actor, most likely China. It is unclear if anything was stolen during the attack, but the system hacked is used by thousands of politicians and their staff to share who is doing what, as well as dirt files and other sensitive information.
  12. Thailand is under pressure to release refugee Hakeem al-Arabi. He’s been living in Australia for nearly five years after fleeing Bahrain and was arrested on an incorrectly issued Interpol alert. Thailand doesn’t seem to budging, despite appeals from Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and more recently the two Aussie Thai Cave rescue divers. They haven’t released the letter publicly but it is understood that they don’t expect this to be a quid-pro-quo thing, but rather hoped their voice would be taken into consideration.
  13. New South Wales is gearing up for a State Election on March 23 this year (lucky NSW are getting two elections in three months), and it looks like a tight race with a recent Newspoll result showing that the Coalition and Labor are neck-and-neck. There is a potential for a hung parliament, with One Nation and the Shooters Party agreeing not to run candidates in seats that the other party might be able to win, leading them to hold the balance of power.

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

The difficulty of acting on the Royal Commission’s recommendations – ABC Online

Mark Humphries is not a member of the Liberal Party.

The Week That Was – January 13 to January 19

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This week, politicians started to come back from holidays, and given it is an election year, the pre-election rev-up has begun. Both Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison headed to the Northern Territory where they both announced nearly $220 million worth of investment into Kakadu National Park and the township of Jabiru. Labor’s plan includes money to seal a number of unsealed roads in the park, while the Government’s plan is not totally clear.

Meanwhile in the lead-up to the election, Minister for Women, Jobs and Industrial Relations and MP for Higgins, Kelly O’Dwyer has announced she won’t contest her seat at the next election, as she’s made the decision to spend more time with her family. She’s also revealed that she and her husband would like to have another child, and that they needed to be realistic about whether could happen if she’s still in Parliament, and O’Dwyer and her husband have decided the answer to that is “no”. O’Dwyer has insisted that a woman would be the Liberal candidate in Higgins, but we don’t know who that is yet.

Also, Cathy McGowan, the Independent MP for the seat of Indi, has announced that she won’t contest the seat at the next election. She’s decided it’s time to move on and let a new person take her place, with McGowan’s supporters choosing a nurse and health researcher Helen Haines – it’s not exactly a party thing per se, but (from what I can gather) a community group that helps McGowan at elections and with her community meet-ups in the seat of Indi.

This week also saw a the continued anger over a fish kill in the Murray-Darling River Basin at Menindee in early January. After heat wave conditions, the temperature dropped rapidly and algal blooms in the Darling River de-oxygenated, suffocating the fish. There are concerns that given the heat in the last couple of days, there could be more fish kills on the river where the algae is blooming if the temperature drops suddenly again. Many locals believe the algal bloom and the fish kill could have been better prevented by government policy, and again blame is being placed on the poor management of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in NSW.

Meanwhile, on the topic on environmental management, the National Audit Office has released their report into the contentious $443 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation for protecting the Great Barrier Reef. The Audit Office found that the minister at the time, Josh Frydenberg, made decisions based on information the department gave him, but that the Environment Department should have placed the foundation under greater scrutiny and taken into account the high administration costs of the foundation and their subcontractors. Current Environment Minister, Melissa Price, says that the government is proud of the grant they gave the organisation and that they won’t be asking for the money back.

This week also saw the start of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, with The Honourable Richard Tracey AM RFD QC and Lynelle Briggs AO in charge. They’re facing a bit of an issue in that only 80-ish aged care providers have provided the commission with documents, out of the 2,000 or so providers in Australia. They’re going to spend most of their time in South Australia, but will soon travel around the country to hear submissions.

Scott Morrison headed to Vanuatu this week to meet with leaders and promises to invest more money in Vanuatu and the Pacific in general. This is mostly due to the fact that China has been getting involved in the Pacific with infrastructure investment – evidenced by the fact that the tarmac that the Prime Minister’s plane landed on was built by a Chinese company, as was the building Morrison met the Prime Minister of Vanuatu in. However, Pacific nations are not getting one of the big things they want out of Australia, which is for the government to take more action on climate change.

Scott Morrison is under fire because he’s trying to force local councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, because while most councils do hold them, there are a small number of councils that do not. It appears to be some sort of way to counter councils not wanting to hold ceremonies out of respect to indigenous people, however most of these councils don’t hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day because the cost-to-benefit ratio is low. Only two Melbourne councils have ever publicly said they don’t hold ceremonies on the 26th of January out of respect to Indigenous people – and they’ve had their right to hold citizenship ceremonies stripped from them by the government already.

Also this week, the NSW Government has announced their new Governor will be Justice Margaret Beazley, taking over from David Hurley in May, when he becomes Governor-General.

Finally this week, Saudi Arabian refugee Rahaf Alqunun spoke with the ABC, saying that all she wanted was a safe country to live in and that the UNHCR chose Canada over Australia because the Canadian government approved her case faster than Australia did.

Tweet of the Week

Annabel Crabb on the Gillette masculinity ad

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

ABC political journalist Laura Tingle on the possibility of an early election – ABC Online

Tomic and Kyrios are distracting from our Aussie women players – ABC Online

The Gillette “toxic masculinity” advertisement:

 

The Week That Was – January 21 to January 27

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This week began with the announcement that the USA will be sending more troops to Australia’s north, as they now see the threat of Russia and China to be greater than the threat of terrorism. Australia, being the closest friend of the USA in the region, is going to help play host to an increased number of American soldiers. This also makes Australia feel safer too, as the US is helping us be protected too.

After the USA left the TPP, and then Canada made a no-show at a meeting a few months ago, the TPP – although I don’t think it is called that anymore – is back on, and Canada is still in. Australia now has some export deals with Canada, Mexico and Japan, and while Australia already imports a lot, it will be our exporters that will benefit most.

This week also saw Australia Day either celebrated or mourned, depending on who you are. While some had citizenship ceremonies and barbecues, the City of Yarra council in Melbourne decided instead to re-enact the Day of Mourning Protests from 80 years ago.

Australia Day also means both the Australian of the Year Awards, and Australia Day Honours. The 2018 Australian of the Year is Professor Michelle Simmons, Young Australian of the Year is Samantha Kerr, Senior Australian of the Year is Dr Graham Farquhar and Australian Local Hero is Eddie Woo. In this year’s Australia Day Honours, nearly a third of the recipients were women. 2018 has also seen a large number of female athletes and sports stars awarded with honours varying from Member of the Order of Australia through to Companion of the Order of Australia.

Finally this week, there will be an increase in funding for the protection of the Great Barrier Reef, mainly to combat water quality issues and the Crown of Thorns starfish, although environmental activists want more; and a woman was arrested for sending money to terrorist groups.

Tweet of the Week

Things I’ve been Looking at Online

Stan Grant on Australia Day – ABC Online

NZ’s Waitangi Day is way different to Australia Day – 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

 

The Week That Was – January 22 to January 28

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The week began with further commemorations and vigils for the victims of the Bourke St Mall tragedy, after two more people died in hospital – including a three-month old baby, who had been in such bad shape that police decided to transport him to hospital themselves before ambulances arrived. Malcolm Turnbull came to lay flowers, and the Federal Government is believed to be matching the Victorian Government’s contribution to a support fund for victims.

This week saw the country celebrate Australia Day. While many celebrated, Indigenous Australians protested the celebration of what they see as an invasion. There are calls to change the date, and while some agree, Malcolm Turnbull believed that constitutional recognition and reconciliation are the priorities. This year’s Australian of the Year is Emeritus Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, who developed a treatment for paralysis from nasal stem cells. He proved the treatment to be safe, while doctors in Poland recently had success using the treatment on a paraplegic man, who is learning to walk again. Mackay-Sim called for priority funding for medical research.

Meanwhile, Australia Day Honours were given to Julia Gillard, who became a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC); Mick Fanning, who became and Officer of the Order of Australia (AO); and several Olympians and Paralympians received Order of Australia Medals (OAM), including Chloe Esposito.

Barnaby Joyce is being criticised for telling people trying to get into the housing market should buy a house in regional areas, and that houses are bound to be expensive if you want to live in Mosman or Point Piper. The comment is being perceived as one similar to Joe Hockey’s infamous ‘get a high paying job’ comment, and Labor has jumped on it. They’re accusing Joyce of being out of touch, with critics pointing out that most jobs are in the cities, rather than the country.

There are also calls to change negative gearing, with data showing that only 8% of house sales in 2016 were to first home buyers, and that there has been a 61% rise in the number of investment property purchases in the last three years. While many are calling for these changes, the Treasurer Scott Morisson saying that supply just needs to be increased.

Finally this week, federal parliamentarians congratulated Gladys Berejiklian, who is the first female Liberal State Premier; politicians are getting cyber safety lessons; and there are concerns over Trump’s actions and how they will affect Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, although the Trade Minister is suggesting there could be alternatives if the USA actually leaves the TPP.

Tweet of the Week

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Kristina Keneally on Gladys Berejiklian becoming Premier – The Guardian

Alana Schezter on the ‘glass cliff’ – ABC Online

The Week That Was – January 24 to January 30

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Despite the public holiday this week, politics is revving up again in preparation for the first sitting of Parliament for 2016 in the next week. There are discussions about the GST and the economy, with Scott Morrison ignoring calls from state and territory Premiers to tell them what the GST plan was. Morrison has said that he is still figuring it out and that the less he says about it, the more ideas come in that he can consider. Meanwhile economic data shows that NSW is currently the best economy in the country, thanks to its infrastructure boom, while the resource-reliant states are falling towards the back as they struggle with falling resource prices and the difficulty of transitioning their economies.

As we head back into full on political fun, the opposition has begun to sell itself for the 2016 Election (yep, it’s an election year!) and parties are beginning to field candidates. As the infighting in the Liberal Party between the party’s right and moderate factions over candidates in some blue-ribbon seats with long-serving MPs, Tony Abbott has announced that he will stay in his seat to fight the next election. This is despite the giant carrot the Prime Minister waved in front of him in the form of the next High Commissioner to the UK – with people suggesting he wants to stay in order to have another go at the leadership. I wonder if Abbott might go if he’s offered the job of Ambassador to the Holy See, but I could be quite wrong there.

Meanwhile Labor has been selling their new education plan as the election year heats up. Labor wants to re-introduced needs-based education funding from the Gillard days, which will cost around $37 billion, which Labor claims it has found savings for. The Government says that increased spending may not mean actual improvement, and that spending billions that they may not have is stupid, but that’s about it. It is still unclear when the election will be, but general consensus is it will happen later in the year; bearing in mind that the second weekend in September heralds Council elections in NSW.

It was Australia Day this week, in which we welcomed around 16,000 new citizens and the naming of the 2016 Australian of the Year as former Army Chief David Morrison – being credited for his advocacy for gender equality. There was a little controversy, after Catherine McGregor, a transgender advocate and Morrison’s former speechwriter criticised the judges for going with a “conventional” choice and then Veterans feeling hardly done by because Morrison didn’t mention them in his acceptance speech. McGregor has since apologised, and Morrison has clarified that he will also work to support veterans in his role as Australian of the year.

The drama with Queensland Nickel (QNI) continues, as it has been revealed that while Fairfax MP and owner of QNI, Clive Palmer, is happy to be the last creditor to be paid, he is likely to be protected from any collapse of QNI. This is because the QNI refinery is technically (and totally legally) owned by two other Clive Palmer companies. It may also mean that the taxpayers will have to foot the redundancy payment bill for QNI workers. However, no matter how protected Palmer is from the collapse of QNI, he won’t be protected from the collapse in his support in Fairfax. It’s believed that Palmer may loose the seat at this year’s election, which he holds on a small margin.

Finally this week, the Republic debate is revving up again; the Royal Commission into Child Abuse has demanded that victims of abuse at the Parramatta Girls home receive compensation; the town of Hill End has been told it will not be the location of the nuclear waste side and health insurance companies are being told by the Health Minister to come back with a better deal for Australians, after requesting permission to increase premiums by 6%.

Tweet of the Week

Malcolm Turnbull’s adventures in Melbourne at the end of the week included traffic control at a tram stop.

Thing’s I’ve Been Looking at Online

First Dog on the Moon on Australia Day snacks – The Guardian

Matthew Mitcham’s retirement from diving in quotes – ABC News

First Dog on the Moon on First World Problems – The Guardian

The Week That Was – January 25 to January 31

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So, Tony Abbott made Prince Phillip a Knight of the Order of Australia. That announcement kind of took away from the fact that Angus Houston – the former Defence guy that was coordinating the search of MH370 and represented Australia for a bit after MH17 – also received a knighthood, and that anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty was named Australian of the Year.

Other than the awkwardness of the Prince Phillip knighthood “captain’s pick” issue, Australia Day was relatively normal, other than the heavy rain in Sydney. People who did some great things were recognised, there was some interesting helicopter and boat choreography on Sydney Harbour and Prince Phillip received a knighthood (the whole knighthood thing took over for a bit). Indigenous people also reminded people that they still see this day in a more negative light, treating it as a “Day of Mourning” or a “Day of Survival”, since over 200 years ago, they were basically invaded and colonised by the British.

Tony Abbott has been having a tough time this week, especially after his captain’s pick for the knighthood, with ministers and backbenchers saying they had no idea that was the plan and saying that it isn’t really an appropriate knighthood to have given. Those who haven’t specifically said that the knighthood was the worst idea ever, have at least placed all the blame on Abbott who has ignored social media backlash over the whole thing, calling it “electronic graffiti”. However, there’s more to it, because now there are rumours of serious rumblings behind the scenes over Abbott’s leadership, while some of his closest supporters in the media, like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, are suggesting his leadership could be at an end.

Abbott has admitted he should have consulted more with his party and the public over the whole knighthood saga, but the rumours have continued with talk that Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull and others, including Mal Brough (responsible for the whole Ashby-Slipper saga back in the Gillard days), are canvassing the party for numbers, or if not them, backbenchers who think that some of these Ministers could be PM and win them the next election.

The whole thing got a little bit more insane and ridiculous when Abbott said the reason ministers like Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Scott Morrison are any good at their jobs was because he is a great leader.

Meanwhile, the Queensland LNP is fully ready to blame Abbott if they get a poor result in the Queensland State Election, held on Saturday, which now looks increasingly likely. The number of seats needed by a party to rule Queensland is 45, and at last count just before midnight on Saturday night, the LNP had 40 seats, Labor had 43 seats, with three seats in doubt, and three seats to other parties and independents. The prediction is that Labor will get 45 (the magic number) and win the election, most likely with support from the three other MPs – a result nobody expected.

Matthew Gardiner, the Labor Party President in the Northern Territory, has left Australia for the Middle East in order to help the Kurdish forces fight against Islamic State. It has shocked the country, with Bill Shorten telling people it’s a bad idea to go, and asking Gardiner to return to Australia. Furthermore, the government has pointed out that regardless of who you are fighting for, it’s still illegal to go fight overseas.

While the Manus Island Detention Centre protests are over, it appears that the allegations of violence on the part of the security forces and PNG Police may have had some truth to them, with images showing detainees with what appears to be evidence of being beaten. 40 of the Detention Centre’s detainees have also been arrested by the PNG government, however, once again, both the Australian and PNG governments aren’t saying much.

Finally this week, Whitlam and Hawke government minister, Tom Uren died this week; it’s looking more and more likely that the two Australians on death row in Indonesia for drug offences will be executed in the next few weeks; the Sydney Siege Inquiry has begun; the Royal Commission into Child Abuse has released its recommendations for compensation and reconciliation for victims; and Brazil is upset that a NSW court acquitted all but one of four cops charged with a Brazilian student’s death – and the one that was found guilty was charged with assault for using three cans of pepper spray on the student and didn’t even get a conviction recorded.

Tweet of the Week

So Triple J disqualified Taylor Swift from the Hottest 100, only to play another Top 40 song in spot #6

https://twitter.com/KKeneally/status/559657461620027392

Things I’ve been Looking at Online

Kristina Keneally is a Catholic and a Feminist – The Guardian

Things that would have been different if Harry Potter was set in Australia – Buzzfeed

Your Argument is Wrong: “Guns don’t kill people”