15 Things That Happened in the Last Three Weeks (December 17 to January 6)

For the first time in a while, Australian politics actually went on holiday. So, here’s what happened, in case you missed it.

1. A man was arrested in Sydney for allegedly acting as an economic agent for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea). Apparently he was trying to help them get WMDs, although the facts available are very basic given it’s a National Security issue.
2. John Alexander won the Bennelong by-election.
3. The first church services took place since the Royal Commission released their report.
4. Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann presented MYEFO (Mid Year Economic & Fiscal Outlook) and revealed that we are to expect a surplus in 2021, and that they have made $3 billion in savings by capping university places, increasing the wait to three years for migrant welfare claims and cutting the rebate for after hours GP services.
5. Oh, but somehow Australia can still have personal and corporate tax cuts even though the government needed to cut some money from other things.
6. Chris Bowen, the Shadow Treasurer,  responded to the MYEFO announcements, saying that the Liberals have their priorities wrong.
7. A cabinet reshuffle – where several senior Nationals ministers were dumped in favour of some young blood, suggesting instability within the National Party.
8. The new cabinet the got sworn in – and Peter Dutton is the most powerful national security minister Australia has ever had.
9. George Brandis is going to be High Commissioner in the UK, so Christian Porter is the new Attorney-General and will have to keep Dutton on a tight leash.
10. Florence Bjelke-Peterson – former senator and wife of controversial QLD Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson – died aged 97.
11. The replacement for Fiona Nash (who was caught up in Section 44 drama) was finally selected – Jim Molan. There are still questions surrounding whether he will get a 3-year or 6-year term in the Senate.
12. Christmas happened as usual, with images of Malcolm Turnbull helping out at the Wayside Chapel Christmas Lunch in Sydney and dancing with guests.
13. The end of 2017…
14. New Years Day 2018 saw the release of the 1994/1995 Cabinet Papers – revelaing that Keating was warned about allowing the Australian people to vote for the President if Australia becam a republic because we plebeians might pick someone “of the wrong calibre” (read: we might pick someone like Trump).
15. It was also revealed that after Sydney won the right to host the 2000 Olympics, that champion swimmer Kieran Perkin’s swimming record dating back to when he was 12 years old was used to argue for a 6-year funding plan for sport in order to increase the medal tally.

 

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

MYEFO Explained by ABC’s Emma Alberici

Huw Parkinson’s take on Australian Politics with some help from Harry Potter

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

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.

The Week That Was – October 22 to October 28

Apologies for the radio silence, uni assessments combined with work tend to take over around this time of year.

The main focus this week was the “Citizenship Seven” – the seven MPs and Senators whose position in the parliament was in doubt. On Friday, it was ruled that Senators Fiona Nash, Larissa Waters, Scott Ludlam and Malcolm Roberts were elected while ineligible for Parliament. Senators Nick Xenophon and Matthew Canavan were ruled as safe. The court decided that Xenophon’s potential UK overseas citizenship is so obscure that “taking all possible steps” to discover and get rid of it would be very difficult (Xenophon had already renounced his Greek citizenship when he first became a politician) and Matthew Canavan was ruled not to be a dual Italian citizen after his mother took out Italian citizenship.

If you’ve been counting, then you’ve noticed I’ve only listed six people so far. The seventh is Barnaby Joyce MP, the Member for New England, Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. He’s been ruled ineligble for office as a dual Australian and New Zealand citizen. This means that New England is going to a by-election on December 2. Joyce, who has since renounced his NZ citizenship, will run for the seat. Tony Windsor, the independent that the media often thinks might run against him, has said that he won’t be.

There has been some drama though, as Labor has suggested that they might cause trouble in the last sitting week of the year now that Malcolm Turnbull has a minority government. There were also questions over who was going to run the country while Malcolm Turnbull went overseas to Israel, as the top two Nationals – Fiona Nash and Barnaby Joyce – were caught up in the citizenship issue. His options were Nationals Senator Nigel Scullion or Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Given the constitution states that the Prime Minister must be from the House of Representatives, it had to be Julie Bishop. Meanwhile the government is attempting to maintain the image of stable government, but it’s not working very well for them given Labor is continuing to say that things aren’t stable. It also appears that some Liberal Party people are annoyed with the Nationals for causing these issues, putting strain on the Coalition.

Oh, and Labor is planning on challenging Fiona Nash’s and Barnaby Joyce’s decisions.

The Australian Federal Police has revealed that they’re somewhat understaffed – or at least that’s what appears to be the case. The equivalent of three investigative squads have been redirected to keeping an eye on the Prime Minister’s home at Potts Point (ICYMI – Turnbull lives in his family home in Potts Point, not at Kirribilli House) and protecting the PM himself. Several drug investigation cases have been handed to either the NSW Police or to overseas police forces. The Federal Police Commissioner says that this is the “normal” level of protection for the Prime Minister, but that the security climate has changed. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know, but it does seem like they might need to hire more people.

The Australian Workers Union’s offices in Sydney and Melbourne, over some sort of funding issue regarding GetUp! – I think it has to do with donation declarations. Anyway, the whole drama is that somehow, the media was there when the cops walked through the door to carry out their warrants, suggesting that either the AFP or the Employment Minister Michaelia Cash tipped the media off. The AFP said they didn’t, which leaves either Cash or a person in her office. Despite an office staffer talking the fall and resigning, there are still many who think Cash is behind the leak to the media. This has lead to calls for Cash to quit or be sacked.

Finally this week, there’s still more NBN drama; the building works at Parliament House are making it look pretty bloody ugly; and foreign policy bureaucrats are stopping Australia from getting into a China-run trade group due to national security concerns.

Tweet of the Week

https://twitter.com/RyanSheales/status/924376782349860864

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Michelle Grattan on the drama with Michaelia Cash – ABC Online

Julie Robert on ‘Physical Philanthropy’ – ABC Online

The Week That Was – February 7 to February 13

From the interviews, Question Time responses and reports this week, it appears that the proposed rise in the GST may be no more. With someone suggesting that the GST will become a “tar baby” for governments – essentially meaning that it is something bes avoided lest you get entangled – which is possibly true. Turnbull and Morrison appear to believe that tax reform can be done another way. However, the business lobby appears to be annoyed, as is Labor – although not publicly – because they were going to have a pretty good run at the election had the GST been part of the plan. It seems that we will have to wait for the Budget in May before we know what the tax reforms will be.

Internal party drama took the forefront this week, with Veterans Affairs and Human Services Minister Stuart Robert under fire for a trip to China under peculiar circumstances. He says that he went there in a personal capacity, witnessing a deal that mining company Nimrod Resources made in China. The company is a big donor to the Liberals, and despite what Robert has said, it appears that China thought he was there in his role as an MP and as Assistant Defence Minister, and dutifully threw him under the bus. He resigned from his ministerial role on Friday. A lot of the information the media has, seems to have come from people leaking in order to destabilise the Turnbull government. Sound familiar?

This instability was compounded by the fact that several senior ministers have announced they will step down at the next election, leading to a cabinet reshuffle announced on Saturday. Nationals Leader Warren Truss has said he won’t contest the next election and stepped down from his role as leader, leading to a spill that was won by Barnaby Joyce, who is now the new Deputy PM, and Fiona Nash was voted his number two. She will also become Minister for Regional Development, Regional Communications and Rural Health. Trade Minister Andrew Robb has also decided that he will retire from politics, and step down from Cabinet, with Steve Ciobo replacing him. However, Robb will stay on as a “special envoy”, basically so he can finish out the Free Trade Agreements he negotiated and guide Ciobo through the portfolio. There have been some other moves, and an increase in the number of women in the wider cabinet to ten, and the Nationals have got themselves another Cabinet position.

Rounding out the outgoing MPs and Senators is former Defence Minister David Johnston – the guy who wouldn’t trust South Australian shipbuilders to build a canoe – will also leave parliament, with the likelihood of the position of Consul-General to Hong Kong as a sweetener. Along with Phillip Ruddock, who will not be contesting his seat of Berowra at the next election, getting a Human Rights Envoy role in return. A lot of experience – nearly 150 years all together – is walking out the door.

Several State Premiers of both major parties have told the PM and the Immigration Minister that they would like to take in the nearly 300 detained asylum seekers and their family members currently in Australia for medical treatment. Dan Andrews of Victoria, Will Hodgman of Tasmania, Annastacia Palaszczuk of Queensland and Jay Wetherill od South Australia have said that they would gladly allow them to stay in their states, and NSW Premier Mike Baird has said that he’s happy to have them if he’s asked.

Meanwhile, protesters have been rallying against the decision, with many rallying outside a Brisbane hospital on Saturday night after medical staff refused to discharge a baby being treated for burns at risk of being returned.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse has ruled that Cardinal Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, can give his evidence to the Commission via video link from the Vatican, as he is “too ill” to travel. The Commission appears to have accepted the request in the interests of time, as they are due to deliver their report at some point this year, and they will likely see another priest give evidence via video link from their nursing home as they are very unwell and elderly. Victims and their families are not happy, because they wanted to have Pell in person, but in some ways, they should at least feel relieved that Pell will actually give evidence to the enquiry at all.

Finally this week, there are concerns about a CSIRO restructure; the Close the Gap report reveals that while there are some improvements for some indicators, there is still a long way to go in improving the quality of life for the indigenous population; and there has been a suggestion that some of the NDIS could be privately funded – a suggestion that has not gone down well.

Tweets of the Week

 

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/698323436662161408

Things That I’ve Been Looking at Online

Cabinet Reshuffle: Who’s going where? – ABC Online

First Dog on the Moon on Greg Hunt being named world’s best minister – The Guardian

First Dog on the Moon on how Turnbull has disappointed people – The Guardian