Slumbering Green

Sydney residents will understand immediately where I’m coming from. Labor has form when it comes to denigrating the contributions made by people born overseas, or of their children. For me this current debate – which centres on the party’s moves to push aside a candidate from a CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) background in favour of Senator Christina Kenneally – has strong echoes of 2019.  Kenneally had been in danger of slipping down the ladder of places in the list of Senate candidates , so wanted to move to the lower house of Federal Parliament in order to stay there. The casualty was Tu Le, who’d already put herself forward for Fowler.  But on 25 March 2019 the ABC ran a story that contained this:  NSW Labor leader Michael Daley has announced that he will be standing aside as the state's Opposition Leader until the upcoming federal election is over, calling it "the right and proper thing to do". A little before that date he made a gaffe that cemented his...

Labor’s shifting of the chairs on the deck of its powerful cruise liner goes some of the way but perhaps more needs to be done to make the party for victory at the next federal poll. The political landscape has changed since the first half of the year , when it seemed that nothing Labor did could cut through. Covid has scotched that deathless purgatory and the party is now setting its sights on government.  A few niggling obstacles remained to be cleared away when I wrote that post. One which had been removed, and which I refer to in the story linked above, is the decision to reverse a policy on franking credits. This is where people who get income from shares are paid the equivalent of what the company those shares are linked to paid in corporate tax. For context, a relevant media story appeared on 2 January: Labor has been reevaluating its prospects since then and has now dumped two other signature tax policies – the one that would’ve seen the ability to deduct expenses relating ...

It’s tragic that there have been additional deaths due to Covid’s recent surge through suburbs in southwestern Sydney, parts of the city that are not foremost when it comes to knowing who’s been vaccinated. I’m particularly troubled on account of these deaths, since in my personal life there has been a similar tragedy to make memorable a period of time that otherwise would’ve been notable, in my recollection, for the fact that I reached a personal goal (losing 35kg). On the other hand it seems as though the sense of urgency that the current outbreak of Covid has produced in people is working to do what hadn’t previously been done. I wrote about the government’s need to get more people vaccinated at the beginning of May but little at all in the way of new ideas resulted when I first made those comments online. Now that people are starting to fall victim to the virus the government – and, more importantly, the people – are beginning to take steps to ensure that a larger number get the j...

It’s inevitable. Even the Nationals’ installation of Barnaby Joyce cannot stop the progress of change. You see the signs everywhere you turn. Some objects are just too big to halt once they have started moving. While ads for utes continue to depict Australians enjoying the great outdoors, the press of ads on Facebook for solar panel installers drips like a raw wound. It’s even questionable whether the Coalition’s pledge to build a gas-fired power station in the Hunter Valley is tenable. On Twitter, where there’s a lively commentary held every day mostly among people who sit on the Left side of the political spectrum, a feeling of unreality persists. When Joe Biden, the US’ game president, pledged to reduce carbon emissions – a call echoed by European leaders – there was universal condemnation on Twitter for the government here in Australia. The gas plant announcement had just been made and people were unhappy. But the writing is on the wall. Even Mathias Cormann, who once sat in Canber...

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...