NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller, who knows Morrison personally, defended the PM, saying he ‘didn’t ask for anything that was inappropriate and I’m comfortable with the discussion that we had’.
The affair started when Taylor wrote to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore after the council declared a climate emergency, seeking to score a political point.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Most of the money will go to providing an extra 10,000 home care packages, after the commission said many people were dying while waiting for them.
“[The Westpac scandal] comes at a bad time for the government which has legislation before parliament to crack down on union behaviour that goes off the rails, and here you have business behaviour being even worse,” says Michelle Grattan.
Joel Carrett/AAP
University of Canberra VC Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan discuss this week in politics, and talk about what to expect in the last parliamentary sitting fortnight, which starts this Monday.
Morrison this week delivered to an audience of big business what was described as his most important speech for the rest of the year.
Steven Saphore/AAP
Next week begins the year’s final parliamentary fortnight, and the main attention will be on the fate of two bills - the ensuring integrity legislation, and the medevac repeal.
In a speech on Wednesday night, Morrison will insist this bring-forward does not mean the government is panicking about Australia’s economic conditions.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Following increasing calls for stimulus to be injected into the economy, the government will outline an infrastructure bring-forward of A$3.8 billion over the next four years.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison inspecting a burnt-out property in the Gold Coast hinterland in September 2019. Mr Morrison has offered “thoughts and prayers” to those affected by the fires.
Dave Hunt/AAP
Fire officials warn that this week’s catastrophic fire conditions are “where people die”. Climate change has arrived, and politicians should drop the meaningless rhetoric.
There’s ample evidence that a government-led approach to Indigenous policy-making has not always led to good outcomes for Indigenous peoples.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The Coalition government is stressing partnerships and accountability in its Indigenous policies, but PM Scott Morrison is actually taking a top-down approach and ignoring Indigenous advice.
It’s a hard sell to pretend banks are the playthings of activist groups.
AAP Image/Darren England
After a damning interim report from the royal commission, the government will soon announce more money for aged care.
The process will also develop ways to get more Indigenous input to state and local decisions, especially on the issue of service delivery.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Two prominent Indigenous Australians have been appointed to chair a senior advisory group to oversee an extensive process for developing options for an Indigenous “voice to government”.
Christian Porter is confident the Coalition can pass a religious discrimination bill, despite criticism from many groups to his exposure draft legislation.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Rather than asking, “How can we best address religious discrimination in Australia?”, Christian Porter is saying, “This is what we’re doing about religious discrimination; any objections?”.
Albanese and Morrison share certain political qualities. They’re both solid and stolid, with the ability to relate to ordinary people.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Labor’s new policy process shouldn’t be rushed, but taking time inevitably leaves a vacuum, which Albanese will try to fill the space with a series of “vision statements”.
The Deputy PM urges farmers considering leaving their farms to ‘take every bit of good advice available before they take that ultimate step’.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Deputy PM Michael McCormack on the drought and restive Nationals
The Conversation, CC BY33.7 MB(download)
Following tensions in the Nationals party room over the bring-forward of the dairy code for Pauline Hanson, the Deputy PM admits that the party leadership mishandled the situation.
Morrison told reporters he’d made the point ‘which was well received, that Australia is an independent, sovereign nation’.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Morrison stressed “that we will never feel corralled into any sort of binary assessment of these relationships” - assessments that said “pro-United States or pro-China”.
The battle between Jones and Morrison came down to the repeated, and, for the seething Jones, existential question, ‘How does that feed a cow?’
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Alan Jones unleashed his well-known tactics of lecturing and insult as he accused Scott Morrison of failing the immediate needs of drought-stricken farmers.
‘It is inevitable that Australia will make more decisions that China doesn’t like,’ said Penny Wong.
Joel Carrett/AAP
Focusing on China policy in a Monday address - released ahead of delivery - Penny Wong says Australia needs to ‘define the boundaries’ of its engagement with China as the relationship is in a new phase.
The Coalition has been promoting its $7 billion drought relief package, but critics say what’s needed is a more effective national drought policy.
Dan Peled/AAP
Australia’s initial drought policy was plagued with problems and gutted in 2009. Since then, there has been no further attempt at developing a comprehensive national approach to the problem.
The Morrison win doesn’t mean the issue of climate change lacks cut through, or won’t have potency in the future.
Glenn Hunt/AAP
Sometimes birthdays are best let pass quietly. The Liberals are finding the 75th anniversary of their founding another unfortunate occasion for the blood sport they thought they’d put behind them.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to inject a little more subtlety into his pronouncements - and keep a lid on the frustrations.
AAP/Sarah Rhodes
The prime minister’s recent appearances at home and abroad suggest he is tracking to the right, and the lack of nuance in the positions he takes is worrying.
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University