Tag Archives: Palaszczuk

The Week That Was – November 26 to December 2

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For a week in which the sitting of the House of Representatives was cancelled, a lot happened.

First, aside from federal politics, Queensland’s State election resulted in an apparent Labor party retain, with incumbent Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk leading her party to victory. It’s thought that part of the reason that the LNP did not do so well is that some of their votes went to One Nation, which is major concern for the Liberals, Nationals and the LNP (the Liberals and Nationals merged in Queensland in the late 2000s, while the parties remain separate entities in all other states). It also appears that the Greens could win their first seat in Queensland Parliament.

This week also saw the New England by-election in which Barnaby Joyce won in a landslide – and if this tweet is anything to go by, it was a given very early on..

Meanwhile, Malcolm Turnbull has had an OK week – with drama from Labor (more on that below), the Senate passing the same-sex marriage bill, and the win in New England. However, there has been some drama for him to, mostly in the realm of political gymnastics. After spending nearly two years rejecting a Banking Royal Commission, Turnbull has done a backflip and decided to hold the Royal Commission. Labor is claiming victory, while also criticising the PM and Treasurer for waiting for the banks to give them a “permission slip”. Essentially this backflip is Malcolm Turnbull saving face. By agreeing to it and making the executive decision, he decides the terms of reference and be nice to the banks. Had he not, the Parliament would have pushed for it to happen anyway and that would have left the terms of reference out of Turnbull’s control.

Turnbull also had to deal with NSW Nationals Leader John Barilaro saying Turnbull needs to step down on 2GB radio. It appears that he may have been trying to get on Alan Jones’ good side by saying so. Turnbull suggests this might be the case, saying that if Barilaro truly believed what he was saying on Jones’ show then Barilaro would have had a private conversation. Liberals and Nationals are all coming in to criticise of Barilaro’s remarks.  Meanwhile, the Bennelong by-election campaign continues with Turnbull announcing a plan for a tunnel under Herring Road in Macquarie Park near the Macquarie University campus and have a bus interchange. Oh, and Kristina Keneally is accusing the Liberals of preferencing an allegedly One Nation affiliated candidate (he’s a candidate for Non-Custodial Parents) ahead of Labor.

Labor, on the other hand, has had a shocking end to the week, with Senator Sam Dastyari getting into more trouble over links to a Chinese donor to both political parties. Last year he let the donor pay a travel bill for him, and lost his shadow cabinet role as Manager of Opposition Business. This time, he’s in trouble for telling the donor his phone was being tapped (it’s unclear if he knew classified info or just said it for another reason) and also saying that Australia should let China do its thing in the South China Sea, which is contradictory to the Labor Party’s position. So now, Dastyari has lost his job as a whip in the senate – which was given to him earlier in the year when he appeared to have been forgiven – and will now only be a backbencher.

Finally this week, the giant Tesla battery in South Australia was switched on; some of the new accommodation on Manus Island is still not ready, despite asylum seekers being forced to live there; there is a push to change the age of criminal responsibility from age 10 to age 14; a man was arrested in Melbourne for plotting an attack on NYE in Federation Square; and the Greens need to be careful about how they appear – are they a part of the left, or a party to knock off the Labor Party?

Tweet of the Week

Twitter remembers the Lane Sainty’s epic rebuke against Miranda Devine

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

With the news about the accusations against TV presenter Don Burke, women in the media have been writing a lot this week…

Juanita Phillips on women speaking out on blokes behaving badly – ABC Online

Sandra Sully on women being “too outspoken” – Huffington Post Australia

 

The Week That Was – October 1 to October 7

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This week saw state and territory leaders have a COAG meeting in which it was readily agreed to implement some form of facial recognition program in time for the Commonwealth Games next year. It’s unclear how it works, because Malcolm Turnbull and Annastacia Palaszczuk say one thing, and Justice Minister Michael Keenan says another. Either way, they’re going to use people’s drivers licence pictures for the program. They also said the system wouldn’t be as cool as the ones you see on crime shows, which is a bit disappointing if you ask me.

The COAG meeting also resulted in a commitment from state and territory leaders to make uniform legislation to allow them to hold terror suspects for 14 days without charge. However, concerns have sprung up that this might involve holding kids as young as 10 (the age of criminal responsibility in Australia) for that period. Domestic air passengers will also have to show a form of ID, which you would have thought Australia would have been doing for years already.

We’re at the halfway point of the same-sex marriage postal survey and we’ve sort of stopped hearing about the yes and no campaigns every single night on the news. I do know that there was a rally in Sydney this weekend, and I did get a robo-survey call which didn’t get very far because the first question asked if I had already voted – which my household has – and then it hung up on me. The major concern is that the no campaign may win due to grassroots level campaigning with ethnic and religious groups working within their communities. Why aren’t they hanging out with the big public no campaigners? Well, as the muslim cleric interviewed in the ABC news story pointed out – those people also tend to be a bit Islamophobic too.

The car industry in Australia is essentially no more, with the Toyota factories in Victoria closing on Tuesday. The main concern has been that the workforce, which is primarily older men, will not be able to retrain or get another job ever, which will only be alleviated if the federal and the Victorian state government work together to invest – and only the Victorians have been serious about it from what I’ve seen and heard since Toyota announced they were leaving three years ago.

This week also saw some refugees from Manus Island head to the United States to start their new lives. The ABC interviewed two of them, and it appears for the moment they’re pretty happy, although they’re only going to get help from a US charity for a little while, so they will soon need to get a job an fend for themselves.

Also this week, Nick Xenophon shocked many when he announced he was goung to leave federal parliament to start a new group in South Australia called SA Best and run for the South Australian Lower House next year. This is all depending on how the whole section 44 thing goes for Xenophon though. For those of you trying to place the guy – he’s the one that does stunts and makes terrible puns about the issues he draws attention to. He’s actually a really smart politician, and pretty good at negotiating for what he wants. His SA Best group has hand a setback though, with a candidate being caught on social media groping two wax statues (think Madame Tussauds) of Australian celebrities, and also making tasteless jokes about Rihanna’s domestic violence issues with rapper Chris Brown, by pretending to punch Rihanna’s wax statue.

Finally this week, there were protests against the proposed Adani coal mine; Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has praised President Trump for getting China to reconsider imposing stricter sanctions on North Korea; there are calls to have a wool processing industry after an incident where bags of merino wool were switched with less expensive wool and people were ripped off; and Australia is taking a fresher look at gun control laws (that may have become more lax) after the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Tweet of the Week

Actor Josh Thomas posted his survey this week

https://twitter.com/JoshThomas87/status/915839756302348288

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Eddie Aryes on how teaching in Kabul changed his life – ABC Online

Australian universities, self censorship and China – ABC Online

The Two Weeks That Were – December 28 to January 10

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Happy New Year. As the government slowly heads back to work after the holidays, Penny Wong has suggested that Tony Abbott’s New Years Resolution should be to stop breaking promises, while Abbott has told senate cross benchers to stop being selfish and think about the big picture, and Nick Xenophon thinks that Abbott is still acting like an opposition leader as opposed to a PM.

After the Air Asia crash just before New Year, Australia began to help in the search for the plane, as has the USA, Russia and other countries Indonesia has asked. It’s believed that some Australian searchers found some bits of wreckage, and Tony Abbott, ever the philosopher, said it was neither a mystery like MH370, nor was it an atrocity like MH17 (Air Asia is a Malaysian budget/low-cost carrier).

In some slightly good news for Peter Greste, judges have overturned his and his colleagues convictions, but they will have to be retried. The Al Jazeera journalists were not given bail, however two have applied to be deported – Greste and his colleague with Canadian citizenship – the other is Egyptian and has no other citizenship. It’s unclear if that will happen, and both Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and the Greste family are not getting too hopeful. Qatar and Egypt have apparently improved their relationship slightly, which will help in the case as Al Jazeera is based in Qatar and run by a member of the Qatari Royal Family.

Meanwhile, more has come to light in the saga involving one of Clive Palmer’s staffers. It’s alleged that he helped with a plan to lure a NAB executive to Bali in order to hold the executive against his will and force him to retract a witness statement he was going to make in court. It turns out the executive reported it to NAB and the Queensland Police Fraud Squad, and nothing was done. It wasn’t until 2014, when Taskforce Maxima – an anti-bikie taskforce – came across the case while looking into other matters and they arrested Palmer’s staffer and some of the other people involved, while also reporting the dodgy fraud squad investigation to Queensland’s corruption watch dog.

Ton Abbott went to Iraq just after New Years to meet with the Iraqi Prime Minister and Australian troops and talk about the fight against ISIS. He talked about decimating the ISIS “death cult” and how everyone wants the ADF to be out there fighting against ISIS. Reports are that the Iraqi PM wants Australia to send more troops and equipment to help, which Labor has said it would like information about before they vote for it. Abbott also went to see air force staff based in the UAE, who have been helping with airstrikes on ISIS strongholds.

Cabinet Papers from 1988 and 1989 have been released showing Australia’s concern about the Cold War, including the bugging of the Australian Embassy in Moscow, the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident, and the expulsion of spies. There were also concerns about the introduction of HECS – the current tertiary funding model – and cabinet papers also show the tension already brewing between Hawke and Keating.

This last fortnight also saw the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (said “ebb-dough” – short for hebdomadaire, meaning weekly in French) in Paris, two men shot journalists and cartoonists, as well as the shooting of a Paris Police Officer and the hostage taking at a Kosher supermarket. The French terror threat level is at its highest level, while Australia’s remains at its second highest, with Tony Abbott drawing links between the Paris attacks and the Lindt Siege, and since Wednesday, has started to scaremonger again, and is also saying that Australia’s safety starts in the Middle East.

Finally this fortnight, Queensland is having an election on January 31, and it is unclear how that will end; Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and Queensland Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk were at a funeral in Cairns for eight children killed by a family member; and an ISIS propaganda magazine has hailed Man Haron Monis’ attack on the Lindt Cafe, encouraging copycats, and there are reports that another Australian fighting with ISIS in the Middle-East has been killed.

Tweets of the Fortnight

As the Queensland election campaign begins, strange things begin to happen.

After the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, people are getting behind the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie

https://twitter.com/ABCNews24/status/553654405036122112

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

First Dog on the Moon’s poignant cartoon about Charlie Hebdo – The Guardian

26 Things about JB Hi Fi – Buzzfeed

2014 in Interactive news stories – ABC Online

Not One More: Leelah Alcorn and how trans* teens in deeply religious families suffer – Huffington Post