Gillard Government

Under pressure himself over his crusade against Craig Thomson, Tony Abbott has moved to present a softer side, suggesting that the ex-communicated Labor MP should quit politics for, ... wait for it, his own good.

“The best thing for everyone, to take the pressure off him, to take the pressure off his family, would be for him to leave the parliament,’’ the Opposition Leader told the Nine network during his regular Friday morning spray.

Mr Abbott acknowledged that the NSW crossbencher was under “enormous’’ pressure but offered no apology for his constant references to Labor’s “tainted’’ vote, his attacks on Fair Work Australia, (since redefined as the author of a rigorous piece of independent investigation) and his ceaseless prosecution of both the Government and Thomson.

For Julia Gillard subject to renewed leadership discussions by powerful forces inside her own party, this is a full-blown existential crisis.

Continue reading "This concern for Thomson won’t change the script" »

Craig Thomson’s wife Zoe must really love him. His political career is over. His reputation is shredded. He has become the butt of a national poor taste joke. And yet he continues to put up a front - blaming everyone, EVERYONE, but himself for the situation in which he’s landed.

He can only be doing it for his wife. When you love someone you want to believe them, but you can only believe them if they give you something to hold on to. And so Thomson is giving the mother of his children his ever expanding denials to cling to.

He’s being aided in this bizarre soap opera by the Labor Party, which is simultaneously defending him and barring him from the Caucus. The moral relativism being practiced in Canberra at the moment is almost comical, and Thomson is in the strangest state of career limbo you can imagine.

Continue reading "There’s no one Thomson won’t burn to save his skin" »

Like a good movie director, Craig Thomson knew the scene which would get the most viewers should be kept until towards the end, and that is when he finally addressed the allegations he on seven occasions hired prostitutes.

But he also knew that this was the allegation for which he had to have the strongest defence, the most convincing line of rebuttal. And he just didn’t.

As Mr Thomson said today after around 35 minutes of speaking: “One of the things I have difficulty in making an explanation about - and I’m certainly not going to use parliamentary privilege to lie or change that - is in relation to phones and how records were on my phones. I don’t have an explanation.”

Continue reading "Thomson didn’t answer the question everyone is asking" »

At midday all eyes will turn to the House of Representatives, as the Member for Dobell Craig Thomson gives a 30-minute speech addressing the amazing credit card/prostitutes/union funds scandal that has engulfed him and the Gillard Government.

Punchers David Penberthy and the Torii (Maguire and Shepherd) will be watching. Join them in the Cover-it-Live module below as they hope for anything but an anti-climax.

Craig Thomson’s address to Parliament at noon today will be unprecedented, but don’t expect much that is new to come from it.

The basics, and great slabs of the detail, of the allegations against the former Labor MP and Health Services Union secretary have been public currency since 2009.

Mr Thomson’s version of events has also been widely known, at least in outline. We could get critical detail.

Continue reading "A big day for Thomson, who thus far is guilty of nothing…" »

It might be one of those urban myths which take hold in politics and follow their subjects to the grave. Legend has it that, during the Sydney Olympics, Bob Carr was caught reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment at the beach volleyball finals. Or it might have been Tolstoy at an NRL match.

He certainly did predict, during a motivational pep-talk to the NSW Blues at Origin Camp where he quoted from Marcus Aurelius, that they would triumph over Victoria in their Origin clash. Carr was also busted teaching himself German during Question Time, mouthing verbs to himself from a textbook called Die Stufen as an indignant Opposition demanded answers about the neglect of Sydney’s trains.

That episode was held up as an example of Carr’s disengagement in the job of premier and his indifference to the parlous state of Sydney’s infrastructure. Conversely, it was hailed as an indictment of the hapless NSW Liberals that the Premier was under such little pressure that he could use the peak forum for executive accountability as a chance for quiet self-improvement.

Continue reading "Cold war warrior ascends, into hell" »

Nobody likes to look incompetent or inept. So it’s no wonder the Federal Government fought to keep secret a report that revealed the $3.5 billion it spends each year on indigenous programs has generated “dismally poor returns”. 

Close to two years after a 470-page Finance Department report slammed the Government’s management of indigenous programs and expenditure there’s been no radical movement, no overhaul of the Departments responsible, and none of the 115 recommendations adopted.

The report may never have even been made public save for a long-running freedom of information case brought by Channel 7.

Continue reading "Billions of government waste not closing the gap" »

In perhaps his most extraordinary exclusive to date, Joe has obtained the credit card statement that could bring down Labor MP Craig Thomson and with him the whole Gillard Government.

See below for this truly explosive document…

Continue reading "The Bill" »

The Sunday before last, Gordon Crawford, the CEO of a five-truck Perth furniture removal company, sat down with his wife to make an unusual investment decision.

Gordon had just received an email from a mate telling him about the “Convoy of No Confidence”, a platoon of truckie convoys travelling from across the country to Canberra to call for a new election. A convoy was leaving Perth that Thursday. Did Gordon want to be a part of it?

Gordon and his wife sure had no confidence in the government. But were they disgusted enough with Labor it was worth them spending $10,000 for Gordon to take his truck on a four-and-a-bit day trek across the country?

Continue reading "Why I spent $10k trucking from Perth to Parly House" »

As the trucks thunder into Canberra, or try to, it appears they have been blocked somewhere short of Parliament House.

It’s not yet clear why they were blocked, but Alan Jones has just called it “the most disgraceful thing that has ever been done to democracy” and “a total corruption of the democratic process”. Meanwhile, Bronwyn Bishop said “we have a government that is not legitimate”.

With all due respect to Australia’s most popular broadcaster and one of our most senior politicians, those claims are way over the top. They simply don’t have the right to make them. But there are some people on the streets of Libya this morning who do.

Continue reading "Truckie sooks vs Libyans with real problems" »

The Gillard government, in concert with the Greens, is planning to toughen up privacy laws. The immediate spark for this has been the appalling electronic hacking by the News of the World in the UK.

A cynic could say that this re-kindled interest in personal privacy is an attempt to put the carbon tax issue out of peoples’ minds.

There is a federal Privacy Act, which prevents private organizations from obtaining information about people without their consent. There is a federal Privacy Commissioner, whose task it is to monitor and act on breaches of privacy laws.

Continue reading "Push for toughened privacy is supreme hypocrisy" »

When the sun rose yesterday morning, optimistic Federal Labor MPs must have woken up thinking: “Monday morning – time for damage control”. Their more pessimistic comrades would probably have been thinking: “A new week, a new fiasco”.

The weekend announcement that some motor vehicle users will be exempt from a carbon tax on petrol proved to be yet another example of the Gillard’s Government shocking ineptitude and deviousness.

It rivals the desperate knee-jerk reactions that were the East Timor “solution” (now abandoned), the Malaysian “solution” (still not finalised), the ban on all live cattle exports (which is killing an industry vital to northern Australia), and indeed the carbon tax announcement itself.

Continue reading "Another week, another new Labor fiasco" »

For reasons which are difficult to fathom, Julia Gillard has found herself on the receiving end of some particularly torrid criticism over her response to the Queensland flood crisis.

Much of it is undoubtedly coming from those who already dislike the Prime Minister and will seize on any event or issue to run her down. But some of it appears to be coming from people who have no real interest in politics, no ideological axe to grind, but who have found themselves left cold by the PM’s performance this week.

Julia Gillard has been criticised for smiling too much, not looking sad enough; at the same time, she’s been accused of affecting a hang-dog expression aimed at contriving a sense of concern, talking in a matronly monotone which makes her sound rehearsed and insincere.

Continue reading "Gillard still struggling to shake the fake tag" »

After the indignity of having its then leader declare himself an ideological social democrat in a culture magazine, it’s the idea that dare not speak its name. Lost in the wilderness for so many years, the Gillard government might finally be accepting its inheritance as the party of economic rationalism and reform.

But it’s early days and Labor might just be teasing.

Labor’s decision to fundamentally change its trade policy is its most promising economic policy in a generation. In a recent address to the Lowy Institute, Trade Minister Craig Emerson indicated that the government will unilaterally cut Australia’s remaining industry tariffs, separate trade policy from international politics and only pursue trade agreements that have an economic upside.

Continue reading "Labor’s big grab for the economic right" »

There are now just four sitting days left of the new paradigm for 2010 –exciting isn’t it – and it’s worth running the ruler over this much-hyped new-look Parliament to see how it compares to the old one.

It’s also worth comparing its performance against the promises that were made by Julia Gillard in the giddy afterglow of forming government, after that joyful period when for 17 days Australia had no government at all.

The term “new paradigm” was coined by Julia Gillard at her National Press Club speech shortly after the federal election when the country remained in limbo. Shorn of its management-speak overtones the term basically meant a new way of doing things. To the public it promised greater transparency and accountability and a more inclusive approach to doing politics, whereby instead of the government of the day exercising a vice-like grip on the national policy agenda, it would listen to the voices of independents, and minor parties. This part of the message wasn’t so much aimed at the public, but the three undecided independent MPs who had the nation by the tail as they pondered whether to back Labor or the Coalition.

Continue reading "New paradigm not much better than old one" »

Gay marriage is supported by a majority of Australians. At least that’s what the few published opinion polls on the issue would suggest.

The most recent poll, in October of this year, was commissioned by a pro-gay marriage lobby group called Australian Marriage Equality. But it was conducted by the independent polling firm Galaxy, which since 2004 has one of the best records at picking federal and state election results. With a solid sample of 1050 respondents, the Galaxy survey found that 62 per cent of Australians did not have a problem with the idea of same-sex marriage.

The result was in keeping with other recent polls which have shown either a narrow or comfortable majority of people supports gay marriage. A different question, however, is whether people wanted the Gillard Government to act as a matter of urgency to legalise gay marriage.

Continue reading "Besieged Gillard can’t afford to act on gay marriage" »

Wayne Swan has a problem.

The banks think he’s a pushover. Several hundred thousand home-owners agree.

Now that the ANZ has joined the Commbank in defying public opinion and overshooting the Reserve Bank’s official interest rate increase, the federal treasurer finds himself in familiar territory. He’s really, really angry.

Continue reading "Interest rates: what now Wayne?" »

This government must have the courage and discipline to cut spending, reduce borrowing and to repay debt.

The mid year economic update (MYEFO) expected this week needs to take the form of a mini-budget. Wayne Swan needs to accept that government spending has and is contributing to the upward pressure on interest rates. We have now seen seven rises under his watch.

The Treasurer was at direct odds with leading economists such as Saul Eslake, Chris Richardson and RBA board member Warwick McKibbin, when he said: “Anybody who’s claiming the stimulus is somehow related to rate rises is simply talking rubbish.”

Continue reading "Labor should cut spending to protect home-owners" »

In his recent book, John Howard claimed that the Labor Party would comfortably have won the recent election had Kevin Rudd remained prime minister.

The government, he said, had torpedoed its principal ground for re-election, namely that it had kept Australia out of recession, by politically assassinating the man who’d led it. It’s a plausible argument but I don’t think that it’s right, notwithstanding my respect for my former leader’s insights.

Julia Gillard’s problem is not that she was a worse candidate for re-election than her predecessor; it’s that she’s turning out to be an even worse prime minister than he was.

Continue reading "Beating a bad government that’s getting worse" »

What does Julia Gillard believe in? Let’s start by considering her history as a guide.

Julia Gillard started her political career in student politics at the Labor Club at Adelaide University. After moving to Melbourne, she worked assiduously to rise to become the head of the peak student union body, the Australian Union of Students, by 1983. Unsurprisingly, given student Labor politics is largely characterised by more radical left-wing ideology than the mainstream Labor Party, Gillard was also secretary of the Socialist Forum at university. The parliamentary register of interests indicates that Gillard remained a member of this Forum until 2002, which included her first four years in Parliament.

Looking at this, you might be led to believe that Gillard strongly favours the left-side of politics. And it is true that Gillard had, at least up until 2009, been a member of the Labor Party’s left faction. But, in fact, when Gillard wrested power from Kevin Rudd earlier this year, she did so with the backing of the dominant right faction of the Labor Party, the hard left favouring Rudd.

Continue reading "Who are you Julia?" »

Less than a month into the new parliament, there is no shortage of advice for our Prime Minister, with News Ltd warning about the danger of ‘over-reaching to the left’, while former British PM Tony Blair – perhaps nostalgic for his own failed New Labor experiment in the UK – is urging her to stay the ‘centre course’. 

But the ‘sky is falling’ hysteria about our new patch-work parliament has been a little overplayed:  it mirrors perfectly the divisions across our rainbow nation – between regional and urban Australia, between migrant and non-migrant communities, between open minded and closed minded individuals … and the list goes on. 

We live with these divisions every day – and manage to negotiate our lives around them.  It’s curious that we don’t reckon our politicians should be expected to do the same. 

Continue reading "A party machine we can believe in" »

The Punch team will be live-blogging between 2.15pm and 4pm (AEST) as the Governor-General addresses MPs and Senators in Canberra this afternoon. In the likely event that it’s horrendously boring we can just have a general discussion about what’s going to happen in this parliament. Do join us.

Tony Abbott might have pretended to be graceful in defeat a couple of weeks ago but it is now clear that he is intent on destroying Julia Gillard’s flimsy government by almost any means necessary.

The Opposition Leader looks more like a campus Trotskyist than an alternative prime minister as he employs a raft of tactics aimed at reducing Labor’s tenuous majority on the floor of Parliament, blocking its policy agenda, sabotaging the ability of the Prime Minister and senior ministers to do their jobs.

At the centre of this strategy is a calculated gamble – that the voters will be less likely to punish the Opposition for treachery than to conclude that Labor is simply incapable of governing effectively and turf them out.

Continue reading "Can Abbott the wrecker build a platform for power?" »

As suspenseful as a Hitchcock movie, the twists and turns along the path to the nation’s 43rd Parliament remain a source of fascination and frustration in equal measure. And still it drags on.

We may have to wait until the last moment to know who will be Speaker, (and Deputy Speaker) in the House of Representatives, where government is made - and potentially unmade.

It matters because it affects the final numbers able to be called upon in a vote. Labor has already announced a massive legislative program including more than 40 bills this coming week alone. How any will get through is simply unknown.

Continue reading "Saddling up for the smiley new politics" »

Two weeks ago we were being told by the federal independent MPs that regional Australia had been neglected and was run down after years of not getting back a fair share of the riches it creates for the nation.

Today an alliance of regional towns is out spruiking themselves as alternatives to metropolitan life, by virtue of their great housing, cheaper living costs and an abundance of career and investment opportunities.

They can’t both be right. So which is the real regional Australia?

Continue reading "Would the real regional Australia please stand up" »

This tricky little election of ours has indeed delivered a bizarre but welcome insight into Australian country life.

And no-one, least of all our country cousins, could ever have predicted such a windfall that, for the first time in a very long time, both left and right of politics are actually listening to a word or two about troubles in the bush.

Thank you Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter for reminding Australians that – yes – people actually do still live “out there”.

Continue reading "Let’s get over the great divide between city and country" »

As a long-suffering leftie, I thought it was just my fragile ego that was picking up an increase in the intensity of the bucketing I have been receiving from my Punch fan club in recent weeks.

But now we have statistical evidence to prove that the federal election has transformed average Liberal voters from mildly dysfunctional union–baiters into feral class warriors who want to tear down a system that no longer works for them.

In a series of questions about attitudes to the independents and Greens, huge numbers of Liberal voters have put themselves in the ‘strongly disapprove’ column.

Continue reading "10 handy stress-relief tips for furious Aussie conservatives" »

“I’m sorry I’m late, but I have piles.” With these immortal words, the former member for the South Australian seat of Mallee, rogue rural Liberal turned independent Peter Lewis, apologised for his late arrival at a scheduled press conference on the steps of State Parliament from North Terrace.

Coming from anybody else the words would have caused shock. Not so in the case of Peter Lewis, a man who made the word maverick seem somehow inadequate to capture the bizarre nature of his unlikely life in the public arena.

Lewis not only looked like Yosemite Sam, he acted like him. In an all-night conscience vote on euthanasia in the mid-1990s, the socially conservative Lewis surprised colleagues by rising to support the legislation on the grounds that, while working as a mercenary in the Thai jungle some years ago, he shot dead one of his fellow soldiers in a mercy killing after he had been mortally wounded by Marxist guerrillas.

Continue reading "Minority government sounds crazy but just might work" »

Update 2pm: Julia Gillard has named her new ministerial team. It includes Kevin Rudd as PM, Stephen Smith in Defence and Simon Crean heading a new regional affairs ministry. You can read full details here.

Australians finally know when Parliament will sit, September 28, but few have any idea what will happen when it does.

Visually, it will be interesting having both sides so evenly matched on numbers in the House of Representatives. Where will the independents sit - on the cross benches yes, but where exactly? On the Government side or on the Opposition side? It is one of many questions.

Julia Gillard may have emerged victorious from our closest ever election, but beyond that stretches yet more uncertainty. A new Cabinet will be named as early as today, but Ms Gillard knows that is the easy bit. Well, kind of.

Continue reading "Headache of government beats not governing at all" »

For all the giddy talk about new paradigms and the renewal of democracy, there’s every chance that this Parliament could end up looking more like an episode of The Office than a functional and productive political assembly.

In a campaign where marketing psychobabble often took centre-stage, it’s only appropriate that, moving forward, the result itself take us further down the path towards the proactive and the inclusive - where instead of just making decisions, it’s now the primary job of parliament to facilitate dialogue and discourse, even to re-open the discussion of issues not remotely on the minds of the 85 per cent of the population which voted for either of the major parties.

Things got off to an inauspicious start when the man who wants ministerial answers limited to three minutes took a full seventeen to address the relatively simple question of whether he was supporting Labor or the Coalition.

Continue reading "The proactive new world of Australian politics" »

Instead of a conventional piece of writing about today’s triumphant ALP Caucus meeting, we thought we’d cover it through the lenses of News Limited photographers Ray Strange, Kym Smith and Gary Ramage, who were there today chronicling an event which often looked like it would never happen.

This first photograph, by Ray Strange, tells much of the story of this bizarre two months in federal politics. In the foreground is Stephen Smith, who served as Foreign Minister in Kevin Rudd’s first and last term as PM. In the middle of the election campaign, when Rudd was accused of leaking damaging Cabinet information and leadership details to Laurie Oakes, Smith magnaminously told Julia Gillard that he was prepared to vacate that portfolio to make way for Kevin Rudd. It’s expected that this will happen when Julia Gillard announces her new ministry on the weekend. Rudd has gone from being the reviled accused leaker to valued senior member of the team.

The next photograph, by Kym Smith, is the moment Julia Gillard arrived at the meeting. By the shape of her smile, she seems to be thinking: “Yikes. We did it.” You can’t quite make out the documents she’s carrying - maybe it’s another list of demands from the independents.

Continue reading "Julia’s triumphant return: The story in photographs" »

It was an election campaign filled with memorable images. Tony Abbott, like some cabaret crooner with a cordless microphone, hitting the swirly carpet to schmooze the crowd at the Rooty Hill RSL.  Mark Latham busting out of his enclosure to go on the rampage at the Brisbane Show. Discharged patient Kevin Rudd, his senses deadened by pethidine, poring over an electoral map of Queensland at a staged summit with the woman who pinched his job.

Given the result of the election, there’s another lesser image which might not be emblematic of the campaign, but speaks volumes about the utterly bizarre policy outcomes it has delivered.

The image was of Independent MP and gentleman farmer Tony Windsor, in moleskins and a leather-shouldered knitted jumper, riding a tractor mower which probably cost as much as a Holden Barina, tending the lawns at his country manor as he finalised his extortionate crusade to turn our national government into the vassal of the laughably persecuted rural class.

Continue reading "The deliverance of cash to those who squeal loudest" »

The drama of the 2010 federal election came to an end as the independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor threw their support behind Labor. This has an immediate impact on Australian climate policy.

A Gillard minority government promises a new cross-party Climate Change Committee to spearhead carbon-pricing legislation in the next term of government. This agenda will face stiff opposition, but with the right design, it can help move Australia towards a low-carbon economy.

Both Labor and the Greens support the notion of carbon pricing but have not yet agreed on the specific mechanism for doing so. (Labor attempted to pass an emissions-trading bill in its last term, however the Senate twice rejected the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The Coalition opposed the CPRS because it was too onerous, and Greens because it was too weak. As a stopgap measure, the Greens proposed an ‘interim carbon price’ of $20 per tonne for two years, but Rudd and Gillard dismissed the idea.)

Continue reading "What we still need to know about a carbon price" »

Before everyone gets too excited about reforming Parliament, it has to be remembered the combative nature of the placed has given millions of people a myriad of enjoyment and entertainment over the years.

Sadly the wags and wits of yesteryear have gone and their replacements have, in the main, never been able to replace them, with some remarkable exceptions.

Going way back we had Fred Daley, Bill Wentworth, Jim Killen and Gough Whitlam – today the not so pale current crop has included Keating, Costello, Albanese, Julia herself and up to a point the Mad Monk qualifies until he loses his cool.

Continue reading "Making Parliament the preserve of delicate flowers" »