Slumbering Green

The taste of burnt flesh must be ambrosia for the old pollies of the venerable Australian Labor Party, shocked by the failure of the NSW Branch to make a dent in the authority of the Liberal-National Coalition in the state. The by-election on the weekend furnishing material for a hundred editorials on Monday morning. The online commentariat has launched a thousand arrows of hatred at journalists who’ve fed the beast they themselves create in aggregate. It started a couple of weeks ago with an editorial by old Labour blowhard Tony Blair, the UK’s prime minister before the Tories got their hands on the reins of power a decade ago. It’s been a decade in NSW for the LNP (the conservative coalition) as well. Years of pent-up anger at a fate that has served to bring to power in the United States a Democratic Party that seems confident of years of success. But their success is an index of Labor (and Labour) banishment because the Dems are as left-wing as a UK conservative party. Or an Austral...

The economy is suffering because of closed borders. To allow students and migrants to come back in – let alone tourists – we need new measures to speed up what is turning into an embarrassment for the government. The censure from the right must be the thing that is most painful for Morrison and Frydenberg, Dutton and Hunt, because it means that their traditional friends are getting tired of typical Liberal do-in-on-the-cheap measures. This kind of approach has seen the use of hotels for quarantine instead of special fit-for-purpose bases out in regional areas. Labor wouldn’t have let things get this bad, and would have done what they normally do – spend money – in order to open up a vicious bottleneck. The vaccination delay is bad enough without also having to shut down flights from overseas that universities and landlords – many of whom have seen rents collapse due to low demand in the property market – wish would resume. Many businesses that usually benefit from the economic activity...

Some weeks back when India wasn’t in the public eye a famous comic made fun of Scott Morrison’s wife on account of a rather ordinary photo. The prime minister had earlier been brought to tears on camera after allegations of rape arose in Canberra that were connected to his political party, the Liberals (the main conservative party in Australia). But Magda Szubanski’s attack – harnessing the power of a favoured woke celebrity (the Canadian author Margaret Atwood) – was below the belt. Now, the PM has trolled the left by threatening Australians returning from India with jail time. So far, no such matter has got to court so it’s still arguable if the policy would be able to operate, but at least people have stopped talking about women. In fact, that’s not right. For today the Liberals took a leaf out of my playbook and launched a childcare offer for young mothers that will go some way toward relieving women of a burden they carry due to the biological imperative as well as custom.  T...