Politics
The Dutton – Albanese approval contest
The May 2 Essential Report shows that Albanese’s approval has fallen from his high earlier in the year. But this doesn’t mean Dutton’s is improving: in fact it’s been on a downward trend for the last six months. That same report has Labor’s vote at 33 percent (unchanged from the 2022 election) and the Coalition’s at 32 percent (down from 36 percent). It also shows a large TPP lead for Labor.
Dutton’s hard-line stance on the Voice doesn’t seem to have won him any support: the latest poll, following the Liberals’ loss of Aston and the parliamentary party’s “no” stance on the Voice, shows Dutton’s disapproval has continued to rise and his approval has continued to fall.
Writing in The Conversation, Chris Wallace of the University of Canberra considers the possibility that Dutton is leading the Liberal Party to its dissolution: The Liberals are the fifth iteration of Australia’s main centre-right party. Could the Voice campaign hasten a sixth?.
She points out that while the Labor Party has a long history (founded in 1891 by most accounts), the centre-right of the Australian political spectrum has been represented by a series of parties – five since Federation, four of which have had a shelf life of 14 years or less. She concludes:
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s defensive posture of just appealing to “the base” and trying to hold the Liberals together may prove the losing gambit in this fifth iteration of Australia’s main party of the centre-right.
Life after ministerial service: there’s always lobbying
Provided one waits for a defined period, there is no prohibition on former ministers or public servants engaging in lobbying in matters with which they have had “official dealings”. That period is only 12 to 18 months.
The Centre for Public Integrity has published a research report Closing the revolving door, calling for a longer mandatory separation, more transparency, and a stronger definition of “lobbying”.
They mention several examples of former politicians and senior public servants who have moved to work for lobby groups or industry associations. Most of the politicians are from the Coalition parties, but that may simply reflect the fact that the Coalition has been in office for most of this century so far.
This report coincides with news reports that Scott Morrison is set to resign from politics and take up a job in a large defence company in a foreign country.
Is the National Cabinet still fit for purpose?
Writing in The Conversation Jacob Deem and Jennifer Menzies ask With the COVID crisis easing, is the National Cabinet still fit for purpose?. Their timing may be a little unfortunate, coming the same day that National Cabinet has just announced a set of initiatives to do not only with health, but also with skills, climate change, planning, among other issues.
They have concerns about the secrecy surrounding National Cabinet, and the way it has given a disproportionately strong role to the Commonwealth, which tends to set the agenda. This is hardly in line with the spirit of federalism. The Commonwealth’s strong position was also a feature of the Council of Australian Governments, which the National Cabinet displaced, but COAG procedures were not so shrouded in secrecy.
They also believe that National Cabinet has a bias towards uniform policies rather than allowing variations to suit local needs.
These concerns are valid, but perhaps they overlook the great amount of day-to-day cooperation between state and Commonwealth public servants who work to solve practical problems. It’s only a few issues, usually where there are significant ambiguities in Commonwealth-state responsibilities, and conflicts over funding responsibilities, that make it up the line to departmental heads and ministers.
Press freedom – Australia starts to crawl back to respectability
The map of press freedom on the website of Reporters sans frontièrs is a concise snapshot of press freedom worldwide. Only the Nordic countries, Ireland and the Netherlands come close to a clean score. Since last year’s RSF survey India, Russia and Turkey have all slipped a few more positions among the 180 countries covered: they are close neighbours at positions 161, 164 and 165.
Australia is at position 27, up from 39 last year. The summary for Australia reads:
Press freedom is fragile in this island-continent of 26 million people, where ultra-concentration of media ownership, combined with growing official pressure, endanger public-interest journalism.
In the context of media concentration it specifically mentions the Murdoch media. Malcolm Turnbull’s Monthlyarticle – the Libs are all right – describes the situation. It’s a common pattern in many countries for a media company to be loyal to a political party. Here, however, it’s the other way around: the Liberal Party has almost unflinching loyalty to the Murdoch media’s agenda.
If you travel to France or England, wipe your electronic devices
Lest we believe the UK’s detention of Julian Assange is an isolated case to do with US-UK relationships, Peter Sainsbury has brought to our attention a UK action against French publisher, Ernest Moret. On his way to the London Book Fair, Moret was detained on entering the UK, that detention and interrogation being justified under the UK 2000 Anti-Terrorism Act. The behaviour that led to this detention and confiscation of his electronic devices seems to have been his participation in recent demonstrations against Macron’s pension reforms. According to Progressive International’s account – What the UK’s arrest of a French publisher means for public intellectuals the world over – Moret was asked to “name the ‘anti-government’ authors in the catalogue of the publishing house La Fabrique.”
This was not just a UK incident. He was also pulled over by French authorities at the Gare du Nord station before departing.
The article’s author, Natasha Hakimi Zapata, calls it a worldwide threat to public intellectuals because many other countries, including the US and Australia, have powers to confiscate and download material from electronic devices without a warrant, regardless of privacy laws. (I have been subject to an official searching through my iPad during a transit stop at Auckland Airport.)
Lest we believe those demonstrations in France were simply about a French aversion to the idea of working for another two years, many French people are enraged by Macron’s method to achieve the change, employing a little-used provision that allowed him to bypass parliament. As the ABC’s Michelle Rimmer explains, it appears that the constitutional court’s legitimization of the process energized the protests: Emmanuel Macron receives court all-clear to raise French retirement age, but protesters vow to fight on