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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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?”.
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”.
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 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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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