16 Things That took Place in December

December is a busy time in retail, and so I’ve been very busy. So here’s a look back at December and we’ll get back to regular posting soon.

1. Labor announced it would maintain the current government’s boat turn-back policy and would continue offshore detention as a deterrent – but would support Kerryn Phelps bill to evacuate asylum seekers to Australia for medical reasons.
2. The Australian Labor Party held their national conference in Adelaide, which went relatively smoothly – minus some environmental and asylum seeker protesters who tried to interrupt Bill Shorten. All in all, it’s become apparent that the election in 2019 is Labor’s to lose and the party showed unity at their conference.
3. As house prices fall, there are concerns that the market could collapse. But the whole thing is weird because generally house prices fall when there are high interest rates, but this time that isn’t the case. For some people if the prices continue to drop, buying a home might actually become attainable.
4. The ACCC has called for data rights legislation, and for search engines to control traffic to news sites. The ACCC says this is so that journalists who break huge news stories get the credit for their hard work by having these search engines push readers to the original story, rather than to another news site that didn’t break the story.
5. Australia finally had two Joint Strike Fighters arrive, 20 years after ordering them (we’ve got more on the way)
6. There are legislation changes for casual workers. They can now ask that their role become permanent after 12 months, but while the business council believes this is a good thing, the unions are concerned that this could lead to casual workers being treated badly.
7. Scott Morrison had his first COAG meeting – which was “co-operative”, “collaborative” and “productive” according to the Prime Minister and State and Territory Leaders.
8. There is a push to sell regional universities to international students to relieve pressure on the major cities and share the money that streams in from international students more widely. However, there are concerns that if international students are forced to go to regional universities, they will vote with their feet and study elsewhere.
9. The government will set up an anti-corruption watchdog after a lot of to-and-fro. The Commonwealth Integrity Commission will have two arms – Law enforcement, which will look after the behaviour and integrity of the AFP, Border Force and other regulators. The other arm will look after the integrity of MPs, Judges, Departments and agencies.
10. Scott Morrison has recognised West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which has made no-one happy. The Palestinians are annoyed that Australia has recognised Jerusalem whether in full or in part as the capital, while Israel doesn’t like the East-West division of Jerusalem.
11. The aforementioned announcement of West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital has put a trade deal with Muslim-majority Indonesia in jeopardy.
12. Australia will get a new Governor-General in 2019, in the form of current NSW Governor David Hurley. Hurley won’t take the role until after the federal election, because Hurley needs to keep an eye on NSW during and after the State Election in March, and almost straight after that is the federal election, so current Governor-General Peter Cosgrove will stay on to deal with that election.
13. Nationals MP Andrew Broad has resigned as Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister after it was revealed by New Idea magazine that he used ‘sugar baby’ services while on a work trip in Hong Kong. He will also not re-contest his seat of Mallee.
14. The Andrew Broad issue did distract from the MYEFO update. It’s been announced that Australia will have a $5 Billion deficit for the 2018-19 financial year, and a surplus of $2 billion in the 2019-20 financial year.
15. The NSW Liberal government has expressed their concern that the Federal Liberal government is out of touch on climate change. Other states believe this too but for the NSW government, who are due to go to the polls in March, it is of great importance to distance themselves from their federal counterparts if they want to save the furniture, let alone remain in government.
16. Australia has revoked the citizenship of Neil Prakash, an Australian fighter in Syria who was a major part of ISIS and is currently in prison in Turkey. Although there is some concern that the government has botched this. They revokes Prakash’s citizenship under the assumption that he had dual citizenship of Fiji, but it may be that he doesn’t have Fijian citizenship at all, and is now stateless.