Politics
Dutton’s Trumpian positioning
An unfortunate reality of multicultural Australia is that there is an undercurrent of racism in our society. It is not as strident or blatantly offensive as by the Nazis who displayed their “Living space for whites: stop immigration” in Melbourne last week, but it is more widespread, particularly among poorer and less-educated people. It is waiting to be exploited by politicians who are willing to discard any sense of morality and who believe they can find political opportunities in a divided society. The politician who crosses this boundary can claim “I’m not racist, but I can’t help it if my followers are”.
In that context, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald Sean Kelly traces some of Dutton’s statements on the Voice and on immigration, and he goes back further to recall Dutton’s statements about supposed “African gang violence”: Dutton blew his dog whistle. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
Greg Barton of Deakin University, writing in The Conversation, warns that government action to thwart neo-Nazi groups is far more difficult than it appears. Politicians on the right might condemn outrageous manifestations of racism as we witnessed last week, but “when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton doubled down on stirring panic about creeping change such as the Voice to Parliament referendum and high levels of migration, he was channelling the ‘great replacement’ ideas that were first deployed by Pauline Hanson and John Howard in the 2001 election campaign”. He goes on to write that “there is a leakage between hard-line white supremacists and mainstream politicians seeking the support of anxious citizens who fear the ground beneath their feet is giving way”.
What will replace the Liberal Party?
In these roundups there have been many links to commentators, on all parts of the political spectrum, talking or writing about the problems of the Liberal Party.
In his most recent Policy Post Martyn Goddard sees no way that the Liberal party can save itself. He writes:
For Australia’s Liberals, the path back to power is almost undetectable. The dominant forces in its membership and organisational structure are now hard-right. The moderate faction has been in eclipse at least since the accession of John Howard in 1996.
He goes on to write:
There are two reasons why the Liberal Party will not regain its lost centrist support: they don’t want to, and soft centre-right voters wouldn’t trust them even if they did.
His article What will replace the Liberal Party is written from a hard-nosed non-partisan perspective. In his established style he presents a plethora of hard data on elections and polling trends, letting the hard data speak for itself.
On what comes next he has to fall back on to speculation. New groupings will probably emerge, perhaps as tightly disciplined parties like the present big parties or as looser arrangements, and there is no natural law suggesting there should be only two dominant parties.
Bipartisan shortfalls in integrity
The Centre for Public Integrity is always on the lookout for behaviour which, while not necessarily classifiable as “corruption” in a strict sense, falls below the standards one may expect in a strong democracy.
It is particularly critical of the Albanese government’s response to the Senate’s constitutionally ensured right to demand executive government to provide information. Its paper Shrouded in secrecy, reveals that executive government’s response to what are known as “Senate production orders” has fallen. It reports that “the use of potentially bogus unilateral ‘public interest immunity’ claims to protect government documents from production in the Senate has rapidly increased under the current Albanese Government – averaging almost one claim per week compared to one every three weeks under the Morrison Government”.
Another report by the Centre for Public Integrity, Closing the revolving door, is critical of the Commonwealth for its lax regulation of lobbying. It has “allowed a revolving door of former government representatives to wield their disproportionate influence on behalf of monied interests.” The Centre for Public Integrity calls for a lobbying code of conduct to be enshrined in legislation, a tighter definition of “lobbying”, and an extended period before ministers, parliamentarians and parliamentary staff can join lobbying firms after leaving public employment. It finds that corporations are exploiting weak integrity laws to influence government.
In this context it draws attention to a recent editorial in the Saturday Paper – The lobbyist prime minister – that’s highly critical of Morrison’s likely move to become a lobbyist. “Looked at another way, AUKUS was a $368 billion pitch to get Scott Morrison a job”.
More countries abolish the death penalty, but there are more executions
Amnesty International has published its 2022 Death Penalty Report. The good news is that there is progress toward abolition of the death penalty: in 2022 six countries abolished the death penalty either partially or fully. They include Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic, countries that abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
But among those countries that have kept the death penalty there was a rise in executions. China, Iran and Saudi Arabia easily account for 90 percent of executions – and that’s an understatement because of secrecy in China and Iran.
Three high-income “developed” countries – the USA, Singapore and Japan – have retained the death penalty and they executed people in 2022.