Mon 3 Nov
This blog is now closed
Glenn Connley is going to take you through the next couple of hours while I go and deal with a deadline which is ruining my life.
He has had two coffees he informs me and the third one is coming soon. This means he is ready to go. See you soon Ax
In case you missed it, the government last week, tacked on an amendment to an unrelated bill that would give police the power to recommend the cancellation of social security payments, before a conviction. All you need is an outstanding arrest warrant and a police officer who decides it is a serious enough crime and the recommendation can be made.
That completely overturns the principle of innocent before guilty as well as sets up a double standards – politicians facing charges are paid until a court has delivered a verdict. It risks abuse on the most marginal people and then being used against protesters or anyone else police and the government decide is a ‘risk’.
You can read more about that here.
It looks like there has been some action since the government slipped this all in – Lidia Thorpe plans on moving an amendment to the unrelated bill this amendment is tacked onto to remove it all together in the senate and it looks like some others like ACOSS and Economic Justice Australia are getting involved. Groups like the Antipoverty Centre and Nobody Deserves Poverty as well as advocates like Tom Studans were among the first to raise concerns over the amendment, which had been not been raised during the inquiry into the original bill.
Sussan Ley has just been bailed up at the launch of the K-Mart Christmas Giving Tree appeal at parliament. Here is what she had to say about the Nationals decision:
Well, I always said that the Nationals would come to their decision in their party room and the Liberals would similarly come to our decision in our party room. But our joint energy working group has done an incredibly sound job up until this point in time, it’s continuing, and we can look forward to a Liberal Party energy position and then a coming together as a Coalition.
Q: Is it disappointing they’ve gazumped that joint energy group that’s been working for so long on this?
Ley:
Not at all. They’re entitled – as their own party – to arrive at their own position. And David Littleproud made that clear yesterday. And we had a very convivial conversation about next steps in a process.
I’m looking forward to the work that will happen between now and the Liberal Party’s position becoming known, and then us sitting down together as two mature parties developing something that takes the fight up to the Labor Party. Because while a lot of your questions are about process and personnel, for me it is really about one thing and that is the train wreck energy policy of this government.
The fact that we’ve just seen the Kmart wishing tree – in my home state of New South Wales, half of all people are going to experience financial stress this Christmas. One of the reasons is because electricity prices have gone up 40 percent.
So we need a government that is backing in our people with affordable, reliable energy and that’s clearly not the case.
Let’s take a review of what the Liberals response has been to the Nationals news they are abandoning the goal of net zero by 2050 (which, let’s be honest – is just about keeping the culture war going for as long as possible).
Andrew Bragg has told Sky he thinks there is still some wriggle room, because it’s about the second half of the century.
Dave Sharma has told the Australian splitting is still on the table
Dan Tehan thinks the Liberals just need to focus on policy
Sarah Henderson thinks they should follow the Nationals
So does Rick WIlson
The Fin reports that “Angus Taylor, Michaelia Cash and James Paterson were of the view net zero could be dumped while moderate Anne Ruston complained the Nationals had put a gun to the head of the Liberal Party.”
Good times
Right now, the Reserve Bank monetary policy board are meeting, and to be honest I suspect they are going to spend today and tomorrow mostly eating muffins and chatting about where they are going for Christmas, because I doubt there is going to be any real discussion about interest rates.
Two weeks ago, after the unemployment rate for September hit 4.5% it all looked like a rate cut was coming and another one by May next year.
Then last week the inflation figure was higher than expected and so now the market suspect we won’t get a rate cut at all until May next year
Currently the market predicts a mere 7% chance of a rate cut – that’s around a 13/1 bet for those into horse racing, which is almost as good as no chance given this RBA really dislikes cutting rates unless it has no choice.
Under-fire Optus executives have copped a parliamentary bashing for their response to a triple-zero outage linked to the deaths of three people.
Chief executive Stephen Rue was in the firing line from coalition and crossbench senators for taking more than six hours to tell the communications minister and industry regulator about a massive increase in the scale of the September outage.
It prevented more than 600 triple-zero calls from connecting when Optus originally suggested the number involved was just a handful.
The telco announced on Monday that 300 people would be added to its Australian call centres with a focus on the emergency network, while safeguards surrounding triple-zero calls would be ramped up following the incident.
Liberal senator Sarah Henderson said the deaths were preventable after Mr Rue said the company regretted not moving sooner on reforms that would have detected the outage earlier and better protected customers.
“Optus never detected the outage, which I’m shocked about … for hours and hours and hours, Optus did not know what was going on,” she said.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young questioned why senior Optus management were not told for hours that multiple deaths had been linked to the outage.
She also queried why there was a six-hour delay in notifying the Australian Communications and Media Authority or Communications Minister Anika Wells when Mr Rue was personally informed about the seriousness of the issues.
“What on earth were you doing between 8am and 2pm?” Senator Hanson-Young said.
“You were too busy putting your ducks in order, telling your board what was going on, contacting your executives … meanwhile, the federal government, the regulator and the minister, were left in the dark.”
Mr Rue defended the delay, arguing Optus was conducting welfare checks and wanted to provide government officials with accurate data.
“The judgement I made was it was best to get the information accurately together and then inform the regulator, the department and the minister’s office.”
Mr Rue, who has faced calls for his sacking after the outage, said the introduction of new executives could hamper the work Optus had done to increase triple-zero network protections.
Company chair John Arthur backed the chief executive to keep his job.
The triple-zero outage was caused by human error during a routine firewall upgrade, meaning triple-zero calls were not diverted to another network, officials said.
Representatives from the communications watchdog will face the inquiry later.
The probe was set up to better understand what caused the September outage, which stopped hundreds of Australians from making triple-zero calls.
It will also examine the effectiveness of emergency arrangements designed to shift customers to another network if their telco has an outage.
The communications watchdog and Optus are both running their own investigations into the outage.
Rules that took effect on Saturday require telcos to report outages to the communications watchdog and emergency services in real time.
This from AAP shows that its not about net zero, it’s about saving individual political skins. The Nationals announcement is still not enough for Barnaby Joyce, because Joyce is locked in a battle with Littleproud and nothing is stopping that death spiral:
A Nationals decision to ditch its net-zero emissions commitment hasn’t convinced Barnaby Joyce to stick with the party as the renegade MP declares he has more questions to ask.
Members of the junior coalition partner’s federal council voted over the weekend to cut the 2050 target from the party’s official platform, pleasing anti-renewables campaigners but setting up a potential clash with Liberal colleagues.
Mr Joyce, who has flagged his intention to quit the Nationals amid frustration over the net-zero objective, said he had more to go through with fellow MPs before making a decision on his future.
The former deputy prime minister wouldn’t confirm if the policy shift would affect his decision to stay with the regional party or potentially defect to One Nation.
“This is my decision to make and I will make it,” he told Seven’s Sunrise program on Monday.
“I have a lot more to ask and I will do my job and ask.”
The position on net-zero has put the Nationals out of step with the Business Council of Australia and Nationals Farmers’ Federation, but party leader David Litteproud said he wouldn’t be taking “gratuitous advice” from others.
The party has argued Australia is doing its fair share to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the nation’s goals should be brought into line with an average among comparable nations.
“Big business can sign up to this because who pays? It’s you … when you go to the checkout,” Mr Littleproud told ABC radio.
Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan, who is leading the Liberal Party’s review of the policy, is under pressure to set out a position after the Nationals’ decision.
Many Liberal MPs have advocated for the party to stick with its existing support for the 2050 target, setting up a potential policy rift within the coalition.
Mr Tehan said balancing affordable energy and reducing emissions was the priority and that in a perfect world the policy would be finalised by Christmas.
“We’ve been doing it not only as a Liberal party but also jointly with the National party, very constructively,” he said.
Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh said she saw no reason for the coalition to split after the Nationals voted to abolish the target.
New Australia Institute analysis shows that over the past five years the Australian government has allowed the export of enough gas to supply Australia for more than 20 years.
The report, released today, comes at a time when Australians are paying record gas prices and constantly being told they face gas shortages.
These excessive gas exports continue to deplete Australia’s gas reserves, sending Australia’s low-cost gas overseas, leaving only more difficult to access, environmentally-damaging, high-cost gas for Australians.
Key points:
“The Australian government’s apparent prioritisation of the interests of oil and gas multinationals and foreign nations over Australia’s long term energy reserves is deeply concerning, said Air Vice-Marshall (Ret) John Backburn AO, Former Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Air Force.
“Australia does not have a National Security Strategy, does not have a National Risk Assessment, and the last time we had a National Energy Security Assessment was 2011. How can rational decisions regarding the management of our energy resources possibly be made?
“Allowing the depletion of Australia’s gas reserves by decades of potential supply to feed exports, while Australians apparently face shortages, amounts to negligently undermining Australia’s energy security.”
“Manufacturing is essential for the prosperity and security of any nation. The virtual absence of industry policy by successive Australian governments over the last 30 years has brought us to a fork in the road where we could lose our manufacturing base,” said Geoff Crittenden, CEO of WELD Australia.
“The excessive gas price is not only a huge burden on industry, but its impact on the price of consumer goods like water heaters and the retail electricity price adds a substantial additional impost of Australian families.”
“The Australian government is undermining Australia’s energy security by allowing exports to rapidly deplete our reserves, while Australian manufacturers are left short and forced to pay sky-high prices, said Mark Ogge, Principal Adviser at The Australia Institute.
“While Australia’s Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, says we need new sources of gas for Australian manufacturing, since becoming minister she has allowed the export of as much gas as Australian manufacturing would use over 40 years.
“The Prime Minister’s argument for approving a 45-year extension of Woodside’ climate-destroying North West Shelf gas export terminal to supply gas to firm renewables is ludicrous. The North West Shelf project is almost entirely for export, and the gas industry uses more gas just processing gas for export than Australia uses for electricity.
Here is Maria Kovacic on Sky News this morning where she was asked about the polls:
I think they’re reflective of what Australians are feeling at the moment, and that was a clear message that we also got on election day, and we’re cognisant of that. That was, you know, a very brutal election result and it requires us to do a lot of work to rebuild trust with the Australian public. And that’s what we’re doing at the moment. We are working hard and working every day to do that, and it’s a long game. It’s not something that’s going to happen very quickly.
Q: So, are you expecting it to fall even further?
Kovacic:
I think what we’re doing is doing our job every day to demonstrate that we are working towards developing a suite of policies that the Australian public looks at. Yeah, that is important to us and they’re the things that will make a difference to us, to our children and to our future. And we want you to govern. That is our primary focus.
Now keep in mind that this is Sky and so the next question is part of an on-going political project to serve who it sees is its masters and its audience are mostly people who think the Coalition are not conservative enough. But the next question also reveals the danger in taking what Sky does, even before dark, seriously – because this sort of stuff seeps into other coverage and then becomes part of the norm across political reporting from the gallery. It’s not right, it’s not reflective of the average Australian and it only disconnects us further from our audiences, who are already pretty open to the politics of grievance. The Newspoll this is based on does have One Nation at 15%. It has others at 14%. That includes independent MPs. But the question isn’t asked about whether the Coalition needs to harden up its central principles, or return to a more small-L liberal position. Just as when the Greens get a boost, it is not asked of Labor if they need to harden up their progressive principles. But if its One Nation or the far right? Suddenly we all need to jump to the beat of angry (mostly) white, people and respond to that seriously.
Q: Does this drift to One Nation mean you have to harden up your conservative principles?
Kovacic:
I think what it does is it tells us that there are, there is a movement of views in the country, but effectively a week is a very long time in politics and two and a half years is an even longer time. So, there is a lot of work we need to do between now and then, particularly when it comes to policy formulation. And I don’t think you can rest on any particular part of a poll in the interim, because if you do, you lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to ensure that the policies that we are developing now, and we are working very hard to develop those, meet the needs and the aspirations of Australians.
Labor’s Matt Thistlewaite was out on doors this morning (where a sacrificial MP is offered up to the media to deliver the lines of the day and kick the news cycle along to whatever set piece is coming up in the parliament day) and he was pretty happy to just deliver a lot of Labor policy updates as a compare and contrast with the Coalition:
The household solar battery scheme has been oversubscribed and is performing well. That was a promise that we made in the lead up to the last election. We’ve also promised that we ban social media for under-16s across Australia to ensure that kids can be kids, that they can live their lives and we’re delivering that commitment in December.
Our priority is delivering on the commitments that we took to the last election whilst the Liberals and the Coalition determine whether or not they believe in net zero and whether or not they provide that stability and certainty to Australian households and business so that we make a smooth transition to more renewable energy, reducing electricity costs, providing certainty to businesses so that we can make that transition and hand on a cleaner, safer environment for our kids”