Politics returned to relative normalcy over the last fortnight, following a change in Prime Minister, however the Au Pair Affair and another of Peter Dutton’s problems remain. Dutton is still under fire over the thing with the au pairs, after he intervened in the cases of an Italian au pair stopped at Brisbane Airport, and a French au pair stopped in Adelaide Airport. Dutton was asked months ago during question time if he had a personal connection to either of these cases, which he denied was the case. However, the Italian au pair was destined to work for one of Dutton’s former police colleagues, and the French au pair was due to work with the McLachlan family – and AFL boss Gillon McLachlan , who knew Dutton from when he was Sports Minister, alerted Dutton to the situation.
The Senate Inquiry into the au pair affair has seen former Border Force boss Roman Quaedvlieg give evidence against Dutton, saying he intervened in these cases, in one case alleging that Dutton’s chief of staff Craig McLachlan (no relation to the McLachlan family mentioned above) asked Quaedvlieg directly what needed to be done to allow the Italian au pair into Australia. Meanwhile, Dutton is rebuking Quaedvlieg’s account of events, saying they’re untrue because at the time, his Chief of Staff was someone else. Dutton’s accused Roman Quaedvlieg of being a crazed, mentally ill liar and suggested he’s “Labor’s Godwin Grech” – a reference to a former treasury official who went to the liberal party in 2008 or 2009 with false evidence of then-Treasurer Wayne Swan and then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abusing the OzCar scheme, which ended up backfiring on then-Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.
It got to a point where Dutton, under parliamentary privilege, said that Quaedvlieg had been sacked for “grooming” a woman thirty years younger than him. Now, first thing is, the woman at the centre of the Quaedvlieg issues was 18, so while a tad creepy with the whole age gap thing, the relationship is totally legal. “Grooming”, which is essentially the act of making it easier to sexually abuse a child, is a crime. In NSW (because that’s where I live), under section 66EB of the Crimes Act 1900, it’s punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Quaedvlieg’s situation is different as the woman in question was at the time an adult, so Dutton’s trying to do some epic damage. Unfortunately for Quaedvlieg, parliamentary privilege is protected speech and so he cannot sue for defamation.
Add to this the further scrutiny of Dutton’s eligibility to even be in Parliament. Dutton and his wife have a trust, mostly controlled by his wife, that owns two childcare centres. It appears that with the recent changes to the way childcare is funded by the government means that the trust directly benefits from the commonwealth, which it didn’t do before. Sources told The Saturday Paper that when the childcare policy came up in Cabinet meetings, while he did make clear his conflict of interest, he didn’t offer to leave the meeting, something many Cabinet members felt he should have done.
Meanwhile Malcolm Turnbull is texting people from New York, telling them Dutton needs to be referred to the High Court.
While Dutton faces his many issues, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been making deals with the Catholic school system over the “Gonski 2.0” needs-based funding model. In return for going along with the funding program, the government will also give the Catholic school system a transition payment of $4 billion over ten years, which has left Labor unimpressed. He also dragged the parliamentary Liberal Party to a meeting in Albury – the birthplace of the modern Liberal Party – where he attempted to invoke Menzies. The speech also had elements of Christian evangelist preaching – unsurprising given Morrison is the member of a Pentecostal Church.
Morrison also had his first Parliamentary sitting week as PM. It went pretty well, with the exception of his and the party’s inability to explain why the Prime Minister had changed in the first place, and a social media gaffe with this video (Video from the Guardian because Morrison deleted the original from twitter)
The music is Be Faithful by Fatman Scoop – and while this section of the song that Morrison (or more likely a staffer) used is clean, other parts of the song contain sexual references and explicit language (see below).
https://twitter.com/workmanalice/status/1040187121397649408
The only other thing causing the Prime Minister problems is the fact that bullying accusations have continued for the last two weeks. Liberal Senator Lucy Gichuhi is being encouraged to name and shame under parliamentary privilege, and Kelly O’Dwyer has admitted that there was bullying during the week of the spill. It got a bit weird though, because Scott Morrison was being interviewed on 7:30 by Leigh Sales, and he said that Senator Gichuhi had said that in the context of the week of the spill Gichuhi had not been bullied which is in contradiction to her tweet earlier that day:
https://twitter.com/senatorlucy/status/1039317298543177728
So now the residents of my home wonder if the contradiction is the Liberals bullying Senator Gichuhi into silence or if Morrison is using tricky language to say that during the week of the spill Gichuhi was not bullied but she has been bullied generally in her career (as per her tweet) – if that made any sense at all. Julie Bishop has also spoken about the culture in the Liberal Party, and within politics itself, saying much of the behaviour would not be acceptable in any other workplace.
The Wentworth by-election has been set for the 20th of October, with the Liberals party trying to find a candidate that will hold on to the seat for them. Wentworth is currently held on a margin of about 17%, but a lot of that is Malcolm Turnbull’s personal vote, because people like him – Wentworth is one of the most progressive electorates and that combined with the anger at the treatment of Turnbull could see the seat leave Liberal Party hands. Christine Forster, Sydney City Councillor, marriage equality advocate and Tony Abbott’s sister, did not contest the pre-selection battle. However nine others did, until Malcom Turnbull-backed Andrew Bragg stepped out of the race, saying a woman needed to be selected as the candidate. That did not happen, as Dave Sharma, former Ambassador to Israel, was voted as the candidate after a seven hour meeting that ended in the early hours of Friday morning. Sky News reporter Kieran Gilbert was sent a copy of the results by one of the candidates:
There are also concerns about the potential date for the next Federal Election, as there are several factors to take into account. First, the Victorian State election is slated for November 24, 2018, and the NSW State Election is happening on March 23, 2019. Then the government needs to find five clear weeks, preferably without public holidays right in the middle of them, and avoiding school holidays. This means that the last possible date of May 18, 2019 is a bit awkward because the Easter weekend falls on April 19-21, which would be in the middle of a campaign. February and January election dates are not ideal because people tend to take most of their holidays then while their kids aren’t at school. A date in April before easter will result in doubled up campaigning for NSW, which they’d like to avoid as well. I don’t envy the person who has to sit down and figure out the date that works for everyone.
Also this week, the Banking Royal Commission looked at insurance companies and some of their tactics. Freedom Insurance admitted to cold call practices that resulted in a 26-year-old with Downs Syndrome buying life insurance and funeral cover he did not need. His father then fought with the company to cancel the policies, which revealed Freedom Insurance’s practice of not taking no for an answer, with 85% of cancellation requests being unsuccessful. Meanwhile Clearview Insurance has admitted to breaking the law over 300,000 times; CommInsure admitted to using outdated medical definitions; and insurer TAL admitted to having a private investigator trail a customer who was trying to claim for mental health issues which exacerbated the customer’s condition.
Finally this fortnight, the pension age will not rise above 67 for the foreseeable future after the Prime Minister announced the backflip on the Abbott-era policy to increase it to 70; childcare workers across the country went on strike for better pay; there are growing concerns over the health and wellbeing of some young children incarcerated on Nauru – with some apparently close to death; and the GDP rose 0.9% in the June quarter.
Tweets of the Fortnight
https://twitter.com/workmanalice/status/1040352699424755712
Things I’ve Been Looking at Online
Labor’s Muppet Show doorstop – ABC Online
Simon Smart writes about Scott Morrison being a Christian – ABC Online
An anonymous White House staffer on working against Trump – New York Times
Kara L 