Xenophon Team candidate for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie, previously worked for Jamie Briggs.
A former staffer of Jamie Briggs who will run against him as a candidate for Nick Xenophon’s fledgling party went on the attack yesterday, saying she was “not surprised” by the Hong Kong incident.
Rebekha Sharkie, who left Mr Briggs’ office to work for then state Liberal opposition leader Isobel Redmond’s 2010 election campaign, said she did not want to capitalise on her political opponent’s misery, but expected his constituents in his conservative South Australian electorate of Mayo would be disappointed.
Ms Sharkie, who was named as Xenophon Team’s federal candidate for Mayo this month, said she “voted with her feet” and left his office after sexist comments.
“Certainly, I didn’t feel that Jamie and my personal values were aligned. There were things said that were misogynist in nature,’’ she said. “His was typical of the attitude of the Abbott government: that women were either beauty queens or ironing ladies.
“As a person living in Mayo I found it disappointing and I certainly feel for (Mr Briggs’) family, particularly his wife. I also feel for the public servant who showed great courage in speaking up.”
Mr Briggs, who succeeded former foreign minister Alexander Downer in Mayo, fired back yesterday, saying Ms Sharkie’s comments were “a baseless claim made by a career opportunist”.
While the Xenophon Team has worried Mr Briggs’s former frontbencher colleague Christopher Pyne in his neighbouring seat of Sturt, Mr Briggs’s 12.5 per cent margin was thought to have strengthened under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, given Mayo’s growing number of tree-changers moving to areas such as the Adelaide Hills and soft Liberals aligned with the new Prime Minister’s views on migration and climate change.
But this week’s Newspoll analysis, published in The Australian, shows South Australia is the only state to put Labor ahead of the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis with 52 per cent support, putting the Mayo electorate in the crosshairs.
Senator Xenophon plans to run upper house candidates in every state, and lower house candidates in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
From their website, "The Fadden Forum is an initiative of the Fadden Federal Divisional Council (FDC) of the Liberal National Party, designed to foster dialogue between the FDC and the business community and to provide support to the Liberal National Party's Fadden election campaigns. The Forum hosts numerous functions each year accessible to the public with additional events held exclusively for The Forum's membership."
The Qld Federal MP for Fadden is Stuart Robert http://www.robert.com.au. (Are there any links showing any connection to Stuart Robert and Kenton Campbell??)
The Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) records show that jeweller Margot McKinney donated $5,000 to the Liberal Party of Australia on July 26, 2010.
On December 22, 2015, McKinney uploaded a photo of Bishop wearing the necklace to Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_kFkE_tE6N
On December 22, 2015, Ringuet appeared in The Courier Mail advocating for the ending of Sunday penalty rates citing her business, The Great Escape Camping at Coopers Plains.
It’s believed a number of QRC board members believed Michael Roche’s comments in the wake of a Queensland farmer’s death were inappropriate.
Jason TinThe Courier-Mail
QUEENSLAND Resources Council boss Michael Roche described the death of a Queensland farmer as a “gift” to green activists in a memo written to board members to fend off internal criticism.
The QRC chief executive came under fire in October over a statement he issued after George Bender, a prominent anti-coal-seam-gas campaigner, took his own life.
The statement, which offered condolences to the Bender family and noted the industry was “saddened” by Mr Bender’s passing, also controversially claimed public debate had been “hijacked” by some activists and politicians after the tragedy.
It is understood a number of QRC board members believed Mr Roche’s comments in the wake of Mr Bender’s death were inappropriate, with some raising concerns with the peak resources body.
In an extraordinary two-page memo obtained by The Courier-Mail, Mr Roche defended his actions to board members, arguing he had “been hoping that the strong media focus might abate after Mr Bender’s funeral … but instead it went to a new level”.
“For anti-coal and anti-gas group Lock the Gate, this tragic set of circumstances has been a gift,” he wrote in the October 28 memo.
George Bender. Picture: Lock The Gate
Mr Roche wrote that the controversial October 27 media statement, which he described as a “carefully worded circuit breaker”, was part of an attempt to “head off reactive support for the head of steam Lock the Gate was building on the back of Mr Bender’s death”
The QRC boss insisted the statement was respectful of the Bender family and said the feedback had been “overwhelmingly positive”. Mr Roche acknowledged in the memo that two QRC members had expressed concerns about the statement.
“I take such feedback very seriously but in the end it was my judgment that the time had come to push back because land access for all members was (and is) under threat,” he said.
The Courier-Mail understands some QRC members are unhappy with Mr Roche’s advocacy, believing him to be too focused on publicly battling activists, rather than tackling issues such as royalties and red tape.
Mr Roche issued a statement saying “the council does not discuss publicly confidential board matters.”
Independent Queensland Senator Glenn Lazarus took aim at Mr Roche’s comments.
“If these comments are correct then they’re sickening comments, which do not reflect the sentiment of the people,” Senator Lazarus said.
He said the remarks failed to reflect “the feeling of the community and an understanding of the genuine shift that is happening across the country and across the world in relation to energy resources”.
Senator Lazarus has advocated for a “national approach to the conduct and management of CSG mining activities”.
Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters said Mr Bender’s death was a “devastating tragedy”.
“The continuing insensitivity of the mining industry to the wishes and needs of farmers and Queenslanders for clean water and farm land speaks volumes about the priorities of this industry,” she said.
For help with emotional difficulties, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or online
For help with depression, contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36 or online
The SANE Helpline is 1800 18 SANE (7263) or online
Had it not been for the booming, confident presentation by Scott Morrison of the latest mid-year economic and fiscal outlook this week, it would have been easy to conclude that this was just another Wayne Swan special.
The messages were the same: the economy is heading in the right direction; the way back to budget surplus is on track but we need to be “patient and measured”; and all new spending has been offset by “saves” (a horrible term introduced by Swan but now copied by Morrison).
Swan’s predictions turned to dust; Morrison’s are likely to end the same way. Delaying the year when the much-vaunted balanced budget will emerge has become something of an art form for all recent treasurers.
The real problem for this federal government, like the Labor one before, is that there is no political appetite for cutting government spending.
This is matched by the relative absence of any electoral constituency for lower government spending because so many households are recipients of government transfers and many pay no net tax.
You only have to look at the figures. Nearly half of households pay no net tax; they receive as much, if not more, in government transfers than they pay in taxes.
Even if we ignore age pensioners — more than three-quarters of those aged 65 and older receive a full or part age pension — we note that about 85 per cent of single-parent households pay no net tax and a quarter of couples with children are let off the hook entirely.
It is hardly surprising that there is such strong resistance to any move by a government to curtail spending on entitlement programs or in-kind benefits when such a high proportion of the population are not contributing to their cost.
Of course, no one begrudges the support provided to those on very low incomes, especially those who find themselves in diminished circumstances through no fault of their own. But when the support is increasingly snaffled by the middle class, the moral case for large-scale government transfers becomes much more ambiguous.
But one of the lessons of the past half-decade is that poor spending programs are incredibly difficult to reverse. Households quickly factor in any new transfers and benefits into their private budgeting calculations. Any withdrawals are then seen as harsh and/or unjust.
Ronald Reagan surely was right when he observed: “No government voluntarily reduces its size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear.”
Take the paid parental leave scheme. It defies common sense that better-off women can avail themselves of employer-funded leave at full replacement wages, then top up this payment by accessing the government scheme (18 weeks at the national minimum wage). After all, the vast majority of low-paid women simply make do with the government scheme. By any measure, this is unfair.
But when it came to modifying this arrangement — it was put in place by the Gillard government to appease the public sector unions whose members were likeliest to benefit from the two payments — there was a crescendo of complaints, including the accusation that any change was somehow discriminatory.
When it is deemed fair that a public servant on $120,000 a year can receive more than $44,000 in paid parent leave after having a baby but it’s OK for a shop assistant on $35,000 to receive only $12,000, our moral compass somehow has been misplaced along the way.
It’s hardly surprising that government spending remains essentially out of control.
In 2007-08, the federal government paid out $272 billion (in real terms) or 23.1 per cent of gross domestic product. Mind you, no one was really squealing then about how inadequate or insufficient these outlays were. The next year, government spending rose by $44bn or nearly 13 per cent.
Fast-forward to this financial year and the outlays are estimated to be $428bn or 25.9 per cent of GDP. This is down only marginally from the peak spending of the previous Labor government (26 per cent in 2009-10) that was rationalised as a response to the global financial crisis. In other words, government spending jumped to a new plateau and has never returned to anywhere close to the 2007-08 figure.
The reality is that the Coalition government has achieved very little in terms of reining in government spending, let alone actually cutting it year-on-year, which would lead to much more rapid fiscal consolidation.
(It is interesting to note that Swan did manage to cut government spending marginally between 2011-12 and 2012-13, but bear in mind that at the time the iron ore price was around the $US130 a tonne mark — now under $US40 — and some tricky accounting was used to achieve the result. It was also short-lived, with real government spending increasing by close to 8 per cent in 2013-14.)
One of the factors driving Canberra’s relentless urge to increase government spending is the Keynesian Kool-Aid that is liberally dispensed by bureaucrats and advisers and eagerly imbibed by all politicians. It just never seems to be good time to restrict the growth of spending.
Take this naive homily spruiked by the Treasurer about the supposed perils of rushing back to surplus: “Extreme responses would place a handbrake on household consumption and business investment growth, and will necessarily threaten the fresh momentum emerging in our transforming economy.”
This is another Swan-like statement, if there ever were.
If we look at the next few years, federal government spending continues to grow strongly, falling only slightly to 25.5 per cent of GDP in 2018-19, from the present ratio of 25.9 per cent.
And note the MYEFO figures contain the $80bn removed from state funding for hospitals and schools, as well as several savings measures from last year’s budget that are unlikely to eventuate — at least $13bn in total.
On the revenue side, the MYEFO figures point to a return to the long-run average, with government revenue predicted to be about 24.8 per cent of GDP in 2018-19, compared with revenue in 2007-08 of 25 per cent of GDP. (Some higher percentages recorded earlier in the decade were the result of the unusual confluence of rising commodity prices, before the hike in mining investment, and strong capital gains.)
It is a complete myth peddled by left-wing commentators (and even some sensible journalists) that the budget is in a pickle because of revenue.
Over-estimating future revenue streams, a favourite tactic in recent budgets, then finding the projections are not met is not the same thing as saying that we have a revenue problem.
We either have bureaucrats at Treasury who are incapable of providing accurate forecasts of future tax receipts — just check out the mistakes that have been made in respect of superannuation taxes — or treasurers too willing to put a positive spin on future revenue to paint an excessively rosy picture of the likely state of the budget. It is probably a bit of both.
Had governments managed simply to spend at the long-run average of government payments as a percentage of GDP in this decade, the budget would be back in surplus and government debt would be significantly wound back.
Tragically, Morrison’s best-case scenario is that, all going well, we should reach a balanced budget position in 2020-21, with a surplus recorded in the next year. But the surplus quickly peaks and begins to decline to insignificant numbers. There is absolutely no prospect that any debt will be repaid during the next decade or so unless a government decides dramatically to change tack.
The costs of rising government debt are beginning to mount, with interest payments predicted to exceed $20bn a year. Recall that $20bn buys a lot — it would pay for all family tax benefits or about 40 per cent of the cost of the age pension. It would make a substantial contribution to the cost of running the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
No doubt, the government thought it handled this week’s MYEFO release as well as could be expected, with most commentators lapping it up and supporting the Coalition’s continuing endorsement of big government and high taxation.
The Treasurer was remarkably sanguine about the total rise of $26bn in budget deficits across the forward estimates. He compared the path back to surplus to some sort of meandering family holiday drive with the potential for road blocks and delays. His inference was that it was just as annoying that voters should query the likely timing of a budget surplus as it was for the kids to keep asking when the family would reach its destination.
By the same token, for many voters, a future of high taxation is seen as neither here nor there because they simply pay so little, or none at all, in net terms. That the top 10 per cent of income earners pays half of total income tax revenue suits them down to the ground.
The one benefit of bracket creep (taxpayers automatically facing higher average tax rates) — on which the improvement in the budget figures contained in MYEFO continues to significantly rely — is that more and more households will be dragged into having to pay net tax.
Across time, the constituency for restricting the growth of government spending should expand.
While bracket creep has some insidious effects — it is hidden, regressive and affects work effort — it just may be preferable to some of the sillier and economically damaging suggestions to repair the budget that have been doing the rounds.
And on that note, isn’t it passing strange that there should be a full-blown inquiry into tax reform being undertaken by this government but no investigation into reforming government spending?
It tells us that all governments are essentially the same unless jolted by a potentially catastrophic reality or an out-of-the-ordinary personality or two. Sadly, neither of these conditions now exists.
“If a person’s sole source of income is the taxpayer, the
person, as a condition of benefit, must have contraception. No
contraception, no benefit.”
So began my column in The Australian of December 30 last year.
A minor tsunami ensued. In addition to 500, overwhelmingly favourable,
comments on the newspaper’s website, there were more than 432,000
“shares”, which meant that a huge number of readers wanted others to
read it. And they did — at least 1.5 million.
Clearly, many Australians are seriously worried about intergenerational welfare: people who have children while on welfare are likelier to do so if they come from a family that has been on welfare.
Some
charming twitterer suggested I was making a bid for Australia’s “most
repugnant person of 2014” because, they argued, “poor people … have
human rights”.
Others asked whether I had a parliamentary pension.
Others defended me by saying, “if he does he certainly earns it”. And
finishing with the comment “name me a politician who would even open the
subject but let’s not play the man on this important discussion”.
The Australian’s
editorial of January 3 this year was very cautious — “We do not
necessarily agree with Johns” — but, fortunately, in its inimitable
style, it published the piece regardless.
The
first was news that a Cairns mother had murdered seven of her children
and one other child. Inquiries revealed that the woman had her children
to four different fathers.
In the second story, a mother and two fathers were fighting a state
government department in court over the long-term guardianship of four
children. The mother had six children to the two fathers. The mother is
on a disability pension and is in supported accommodation. All six
children are in care.
It was time to write the book. The book is
now filled with case studies. Finding these was difficult. I applied to
the Chief Magistrate of Queensland, who is responsible for the
Children’s Court of Queensland, and to the head of the Queensland
Attorney-General’s Department for permission to access files.
Despite
providing assurances of anonymity of those involved in Children’s
Court proceedings, permission failed to materialise. Only when I
informed the department head that I would publish a statement detailing
the eight-month delay did I receive a response, within hours, denying
permission.
The other reason to write the book was to answer the critics.
The
religious, Catholics especially, argued the dignity of the individual
and the sanctity of life would be violated under a “no contraception, no
dole” regime. But Catholic women in Australia are as likely as
non-Catholics to use artificial contraception. Some Catholic women urge
that “women practise sexual restraint and demand men do the same”.
The slogan coined by English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, “Votes
for women and chastity for men”, is a lot more practical. It reminds
women that the first was a breeze compared with the second. I would
rather intervene to save women from irresponsible men than wait for men
and women to give up on sex.
Some on the Left were outraged
because they believe that beneficiaries have rights. It is not a human
right to raise a family at someone else’s expense. Welfare rights are
not human rights; they are gifts of other taxpayers, granted under very
specific conditions. The Left frets about overpopulation and argues for
restricting childbirth in the name of saving the world from climate
change in 100 years. It appears not to worry about the unsupported child
to be born in nine months.
My libertarian colleagues are
squeamish about compulsion. They need to be reminded that it is not
compulsory to take a benefit. Their hope, a world in which there are no
benefits and charity alone steps in to help the unfortunate, is
impractical. Stopping welfare may stop intergenerational welfare but it
would not stop intergenerational poverty. The welfare state is here to
stay. I am a supporter, but it has a downside. It helps to create the
next generation of dependent citizens.
When someone chooses to
take a benefit, it is reasonable for taxpayers to place conditions on
the benefit. The condition lasts only so long as the person is on the
benefit. If someone is on an unemployment benefit they should be
searching for work, not starting a family. If someone is on a study
benefit, they should be studying, not starting a family. If someone is
on a parenting payment they should be bringing up their family, not
adding to it.
I applied to a previous regime to find out the number of children
born to women on benefits in Australia. The typical response was: “the
department does not keep that data”. That, of course, was duckshoving.
Having almost completed the book I had one last shot at finding out.
Graciously, new Social Services Minister Christian Porter had the
department provide an estimate.
We now know there are perhaps as
many as 60,000 children born each year to women who are on a benefit,
which is almost 20 per cent of all Australian births. As eminent
Australian economist Deborah Cobb-Clark, who has studied
intergenerational welfare, remarked, “Will there be enough policy levers
if it is not all about income or education?” I’m here to tell you that
we’ve done all that, and it doesn’t work: middle-class professionals
soak up most of the money.
I have spoken to scores of police,
judges, lawyers and social workers dealing with children in crisis. They
are sick to death of the poseurs in this field; they want some early
intervention that really works.
We need to intervene in a more
deliberate and immediate way to place women on a benefit into the
situation they would otherwise be in if they were in a relationship and
had a job and were planning for a family.
THE union with which Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is affiliated is in financial turmoil, with auditors warning there is significant doubt it can continue as a going concern.
The Queensland branch of the Australian Workers’ Union, which backs the Premier’s Labor Forum faction, suffered a $1.4 million loss last financial year due to dwindling membership.
The union’s liabilities in Queensland now exceed its total assets by
more than $9.5 million, according to auditor Alex Fraser of accountancy
firm Hanrick Curran.
“The union may be unable to realise its assets and discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business,’’ Mr Fraser said.
The union’s financial crisis was worsened by the exit of 11,467 members from the Queensland branch in just 12 months.
Adding to the union’s woes was the discovery of 12,119 members now classified as unfinancial.
The
union has been bleeding members since disclosures of wrongdoing at the
Royal Commission Into Trade Union Governance and Corruption involving
sweetheart deals, ghost memberships and fraudulent accounting.
Controversy
flared after evidence showing lowly paid workers were underpaid
millions of dollars in an agreement sanctioned by the AWU when federal
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was its chief.
Barristers assisting the inquiry made no submissions of any criminal or unlawful conduct by Mr Shorten.
But
they advised criminal charges be considered against his successor as
head of the Victorian branch, Cesar Melhem, who has vowed to fight the
allegations.
The AWU was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret side
deals to enhance the financial and political power of the union.
One
of the companies, Cleanevent, employed workers to clean The Gabba and
the Gold Coast’s Cbus Super Stadium, according to a spokesman for the
Federal Department of Employment.
The national membership of the
AWU has plunged 13 per cent to 92,789 in the last 12 months, according
to figures tabled in Parliament.
Despite the parlous financial
settings, union chiefs in Queensland still managed to splurge more than
$100,000 on boardroom lunches, campaign functions and donations to the
ALP and Labor candidates last year, financial statements show.
Queensland
branch secretary Ben Swan could not be contacted yesterday. But in one
operating statement he blamed a slowdown in infrastructure for declining
membership.
He said this was made worse by the Campbell Newman government’s restrictions on the automatic payments of union dues by public servants.
“There has been a decrease in membership due to the former government’s legislative prohibition on public service entities facilitating payroll deductions for membership dues,” Mr Swan said.
“Membership also decreased due to the demobilisation of significant construction projects in Queensland.”
Liberals have hit back at ASIO chief Duncan Lewis’s phone calls to
Coalition MPs urging them to use soothing language when publicly
discussing violent extremism. Picture: Ray Strange
The Australian
Rosie Lewis and Andrew Burrell
Liberal MPs say politicians have a duty to engage in an “open
and honest” debate about Islamic extremism, and one senator has warned
that telephone calls from the nation’s top spy chief about how to talk
about radicalisation could dampen free speech.
The Australian
yesterday revealed that ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis had phoned
Coalition MPs to urge them to use soothing language when publicly
discussing violent extremism, as had been the approach of Malcolm
Turnbull.
Declaring the phone calls a “very unwelcome revelation”,
West Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith said it was “not the
behaviour” that people would expect from the head of Australia’s
primary intelligence agency.
“The risk is that this has a chilling
effect on the ability of MPs and the community to exercise free speech
on these matters,” Senator Smith told The Australian.
“These
sorts of things are better said publicly than left to operate in the
shadows of the Australian community. I would argue for an honest and
respectful debate about Islam and all religions in Australia.” Senator
Smith said he had not been called by Mr Lewis.
Victorian
MP Michael Sukkar and Tasmanian MP Andrew Nikolic said the country
could not afford to shy away from a frank conversation on national
security and countering terrorism.
Mr Nikolic, a former brigadier who served with Mr Lewis in the army for 30 years, said while police and security agencies were crucial in protecting the nation and would “always help inform policy”, MPs needed to be free to discuss confronting issues.
Mr Nikolic said he was not one of the MPs Mr Lewis had contacted.
“In the case of national security, our police and security agencies have a vital role to play, but it’s for members of parliament to have an open and frank discussion and people would expect us to have (that) discussion,” Mr Nikolic said. “We should never shy away from debates. When it comes to national security then the head of ASIO and the AFP and others are prominent voices in that debate.”
Mr Sukkar agreed that members of parliament should be free to receive valuable advice from security experts and then “make their own judgments”.
“I believe that we have a duty and obligation to openly and frankly discuss the big issues of our time and Islamic radicalisation is one of those that quite frankly the Australian public and our constituents expect us to speak openly about,” he said.
Reports of the telephone calls stirred Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming to say it could appear as though Mr Lewis was playing politics.
“I just note that certainly there can be briefings from security agencies and partyrooms in Canberra benefit from those intermittently,” Mr Laming told Sky News.
“That’s by far the most helpful way of transmitting this information.”
Some Liberals believe the Prime Minister or his office encouraged Mr Lewis’s phone calls to MPs after being impressed by a briefing he gave state and territory leaders.
While a number of Liberals are angry at what they see as an improper intervention by Mr Lewis into legitimate political issues, others said they had no problem with the ASIO head, a former SAS commander, talking to MPs about the counter-terrorism debate.
Mr Lewis gave an interview to Sunday papers published by News Corp (also publisher of The Australian) on Thursday last week that was widely seen as a slapdown of Tony Abbott. Two days earlier on Sky News, the former prime minister called for a religious “reformation” of Islam, although Mr Lewis did not name Mr Abbott in his interview.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday it was appropriate for Mr Lewis to speak out if the debate on counter-terrorism in Australia was concerning him.
“If the director-general of ASIO has formed the view that a public debate in Australia has the potential to hamper the work that his organisation is undertaking in relation to counter-terrorism then of course it’s appropriate for him to speak out,” she said.
Victorian Liberal MP Dan Tehan, chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said on ABC radio that terrorism was a real threat and the director-general would have been doing what he thought was in the “best interest” of the nation.
The Turnbull government has risked a rift over its message to Muslim Australia after a number of conservative MPs, including some cabinet ministers, criticised Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohammed’s leadership following the Paris terrorist attacks and warned of a “problem within Islam”.
The Prime Minister has made repeated calls for greater unity with Muslim communities to defeat Islamist extremism and said a “culture of mutual respect” was essential to preventing terrorists from turning Australians against each other.
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Alan Tudge, who also said he was not phoned by Mr Lewis, declared it was “perfectly reasonable” for the ASIO head to “call whomever he likes”. “If he’s calling members of parliament, they will no doubt listen very respectfully to what he has to say,” Mr Tudge told Sky News.
“He’s a very highly regarded figure in charge of an organisation that does exceptionally good work and those people would listen to that advice, take it on board but ultimately would make their own decisions as well.”
Bill Shorten said it should not be up to Mr Lewis to contact Liberal MPs and ask them not to make “inflammatory comments”.
“Malcolm Turnbull needs to rein into line the far right wing of his political party and not leave it to our security agencies,” the Opposition Leader said. “Our security agencies’ time is better spent catching terrorists and preventing crime than having to ring up recalcitrant Liberal backbenchers to explain to them the basics.”
West Australian Liberal backbencher Luke Simpkins said he had not been contacted by Mr Lewis but would listen if he called and decide for himself what he said publicly on Islam and other issues. “I won’t be told by anybody what to say,” he said.
Craig Kelly, a NSW Liberal MP who has called for a debate on Islamic extremism without the “tyranny of political correctness”, said he did not object to Mr Lewis ringing parliamentarians and “whispering in their ear”.
“It’s not something that should be done publicly,” he said.
Tasmanian MP Eric Hutchinson, who said he did not talk to Mr Lewis, said he would write his own script.
“But if you can’t listen to people and sometimes take advice then you’re going backwards,” he said. “I think Australians are really a tolerant people and the issue for the faith is that they are having their faith misrepresented. And the Muslim faith is being misrepresented by people who are acting not in the name of Islam but they’re acting in a way that is fundamentally evil.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop was reportedly singled out for a security screening.
Phillip Hudson
Bureau Chief
Canberra
The Australian
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss’s office has admitted the
government played a role in triggering an investigation into a botched
airport screening of Julie Bishop which resulted in a security guard
losing his job and two workers being suspended.
The
Foreign Minister was improperly singled out to be scanned on her way
through Melbourne Airport to board a flight to New York on September 22.
Melbourne
Airport has confirmed that two female screeners were suspended and a
male worker lost his job due to evidence Ms Bishop had not been selected
randomly to be searched.
“A male ISS worker’s employment was
terminated as a result of not adhering to standard security screening as
required at an Australian international airport,” the airport said.
But
the investigation occurred only after Mr Truss’s office referred the
matter on after being “informally notified” of the incident.
“The
DPM’s office raised the matter with the department and Melbourne
Airport,’’ a spokesman said last night. “Melbourne Airport undertook an
investigation and acted accordingly.”
Ms Bishop, who is one of the nation’s most frequent flyers, did not make a formal complaint.
Her
spokeswoman last night said: “The Foreign Minister passes through
hundreds of airport security checkpoints each year and is more than
happy to be treated on the same basis as other travellers.
“Neither
the minister nor anyone from her office has made any official complaint
regarding her transit through Melbourne Airport at any time”.
It
is believed the investigation by Melbourne Airport found the security
screeners did not follow normal procedure and Ms Bishop was deliberately
singled out, contrary to operating protocols.
Jack the Insider is a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation with close ties to leading figures in politics, business and the union movement.
Jack The Insider
The Australian
December 17, 2015 1:35PM
The Bill Leak letters page cartoon which appeared on Monday.
The controversy surrounding Bill Leak’s ‘Aid à La Mode’
cartoon is a reminder that Australia is in danger of becoming a dry,
humourless place.
When I was a kid, I cut my
satirical teeth reading National Lampoon. The magazine was banned in New
Zealand by a National Party government who feared it would corrupt
young minds but in Australia it was available, not so much on the shelf
but via a kindly newsagent who would put a copy aside every month
provided I paid the freight.
The magazine featured some of
America’s greatest cartoonists and illustrators, Sam Gross, Gahan
Wilson, Bobby London and Charles Rodriguez — to name just a few and
writers crackling with madness and humour such as Chris Miller, Ted
Mann, John Hughes and P.J. O’Rourke.
The cover of the Sports edition featured a large Soviet female
athlete glaring back at the camera. It was only on closer examination
that it became obvious the large Soviet woman was packing something
decidedly male in her athletic shorts. In Australia, we’d describe the
package euphemistically as a Chiko roll and two dim sims.
If it
all sounds terribly undergraduate you’d be wrong. These days, it is the
undergraduates who are hell bent on defining what is and isn’t funny and
setting narrow boundaries along the lines of what’s acceptable fare for
humour.
So pervasive is it, I doubt ninety per cent of the
content of National Lampoon could be published today, or if it was it
would not be made available by retailers fearing some misguided boycott
launched after a predictably vehement pile-on on social media.
Early
this year, comedian Jerry Seinfeld made something of a fuss in
entertainment circles when he declared he would not play the US college
circuit and neither would the major headline acts in US stand up, Chris
Rock and Louis C.K., because college audiences were too politically
correct.
“They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist.’ ‘That’s sexist.’
‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what the hell they’re talking
about,” Seinfeld told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd.
Sound familiar?
I
saw Seinfeld sitcom co-creator, Larry David, commence a stand-up
routine with, “Say what you like about Adolf Hitler but he never took
any shit from magicians,” and went on to describe how Hitler would bail
magicians up backstage and under threat of state sponsored torture
demand to know how the trick was performed.
Years ago Australian
comedian Steve Bedwell would sometimes start a set by saying, “My
grandfather died in Auschwitz.” On cue the audience would lapse into a
hush. “Yeah, he got drunk and fell out of a guard tower.”
Analysing
gags can be a tedious and subjective process, but Bedwell’s set up and
punch line do not mock victims of the Holocaust. The joke is on Bedwell
himself, and more broadly his audience who fall into his trap. In
David’s case, gormless conjurers, almost as bad as jugglers in the live
entertainment hierarchy, are the butt of the joke.
When we look at Leak’s cartoon the butt of the joke is the developed
world, represented as the United Nations for “distributing solar panels
to the world’s poor because they think that provides a virtuous, if
inadequate, form of electricity for which they should be grateful,” as Leak wrote yesterday.
I saw the cartoon for the first time on Sunday night and I would have
thought that was blindingly obvious but perhaps I’m an old, white,
racist male and haven’t been sufficiently excoriated on Twitter to
realise it.
Anyway, this is the number one rule of comedic satire.
The victim should never be the butt of the joke. Rule number two is
there are no other rules.
That should be the way it works, yet
today satirical comedy is ruthlessly scrutinised for any hint of racism,
sexism, xenophobia, homophobia or political bias by a generation
disturbingly happy to regard easy, sanitised humour as cutting edge.
Published
in 1976, National Lampoon’s Foreigners issue was a blistering parody of
Americans’ insular and inward looking view of the world. In that
edition, P.J. O’Rourke’s article “Foreigners around the World” featured
crude stereotypical depictions of people from all points of the compass,
including Australians who he described as “violently loud roughnecks
whose idea of fun is to throw up on your car.” According to O’Rourke,
our national sport was “breaking furniture” and “making a shambles” was a
compulsory subject of study on the primary school curriculum.
There is no doubt that article would fail the Twitter twisted
morality test. Gen X-ers would wantonly misconstrue that article as a
privileged white man’s xenophobic ramblings rather than the
breathtakingly brilliant parody of racism it was.
Good satire
should shock. It is meant to defy cultural sensibilities. It is supposed
to make you shift awkwardly in your seat. It is likely to offend. By
that measure, Bill Leak’s cartoon ticked all those boxes.
Whether it was funny or not is a matter for personal judgment.
The
PC-brigade or anyone else must not define what is funny and what isn’t.
Otherwise, before you know it, we’ll all be on a strict diet of the
prat fallings of the Australia’s Funniest Videos type, which
incidentally is a form of humour most popular in Germany. But don’t get
me started on the Germans.
In 1589, Princess Anne of Denmark left to marry King James VI
of Scotland. En route, her boat was struck by storms. Someone had to be
blamed and, as was standard for the time, witches were the usual
suspects.
More than 100 suspected witches were
duly arrested and at least four people were burned at the stake. The
fact James and Anne went on to be happily married, apparently unmolested
by tempests, must have reassured them that justice had been done.
The
supposed connection between human activity and the weather is an
instinctive one and perhaps helps explain the remarkable persistence of
incorrect views on climate change.
Every time there is a big
cyclone a finger is soon pointed to the modern witch of carbon dioxide
emissions. This continues despite there being no evidence that extreme
weather events have increased because of global warming. The latest report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits that “evidence
suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making
landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific”.
A
significant issue with climate change science is that often only one
side of the debate is heard, so clear exaggerations and untruths can
remain unchallenged.
The US military pioneered the use of
so-called red teams whose job was to argue against prevailing wisdom,
making its strategies more robust. Climate change science would benefit
from more red team analysis.
For example, if you listen to the mainstream media, you would not
realise that since the last major attempt to forge a climate change
agreement in Copenhagen six years ago, the science has become less
certain and gives us less reason to worry. This is primarily because the
globe’s climate seems less sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide
than previously thought.
In just the past 18 years we have
experienced one-third of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide
since the Industrial Revolution, but temperatures have not increased as
expected.
Satellite data shows no or only minimal warming, and
surface-based measures show a warming rate far below projected climate
models. At a US Senate hearing this week, John Christy, a lead author on
previous IPCC reports, presented evidence that, on average, climate
models over-estimated the rate of warming by three times compared with
what actually has occurred.
If these models cannot replicate the past, how can we rely on them to predict the future?
The IPCC has recognised this uncertainty by winding down its estimates of how sensitive the climate is to carbon dioxide levels.
In
2007 it reported a possible range of 2C to 4.5C, whereas last year it
reported a range of between 1.5C and 4.5C. More recent evidence
indicates that the figures could be even lower.
The greatest uncertainty revolves around debates about the climate
impact of aerosols in the atmosphere. A paper published this year in the
Journal of Climate by Bjorn Stevens from the Hamburg-based Max
Planck Institute for Meteorology argues that the impact of aerosols on
climate is significantly smaller than the latest IPCC report assumes.
Using these estimates shows that the upper bound of climate sensitivity should not be 4.5C but just 2.2C.
That
is pretty close to what we were told the world needed to avoid
dangerous climate change. Readers who are paying attention will note
that some green activists are now saying we need to keep warming below
1.5C rather than 2C.
When the facts change, so can your arguments.
Whatever
the facts, too much weight is placed on conformity in climate change
science — most widely demonstrated by the inane argument that “97 per
cent of scientists agree”.
Presumably 97 per cent of pundits agreed in the power of witchcraft in the 16th century.
Science
is not a democracy. Scientific knowledge progresses from the ruthless
exposure of competing hypotheses to criticism. But who is doing that
critique of climate change theories today?
Public funding of
climate change science almost exclusively flows to one side of the
debate. Even just a small sliver of the reported $US100 billion ($139bn)
fund that Paris is creating for developing countries could make a
difference.
We need red team funding of scientists who take a different view on
climate change. Even if such teams ultimately take positions that are
incorrect, by challenging the climate zeitgeist they would make our
scientific knowledge stronger. That means the policies we implement
would be based less on dogma and more on a true appreciation of how
carbon dioxide emissions affect our world.
Matthew Canavan is a Nationals senator for Queensland.
I don’t know an associate professor of sociology at Macquarie University called Amanda Wise, but she knows me. She knows me so well, in fact, that she’s not only able to tell me what my cartoons mean, but she’s also able to tell me what I was thinking while I was drawing them.
There I was, naively thinking that if I drew a group of poor Indian people trying to eat solar panels contained in parcels sent to them by the UN anyone seeing the cartoon would assume it meant the people in it were hungry. But, no. What I thought I was thinking wasn’t what I was thinking at all. According to Ms Wise, my “unequivocally racist” cartoon drew on “very base stereotypes of third world, underdeveloped people who don’t know what to do with technology”.
These and other startling revelations were included in an article by Amanda Meade in The Guardian on Monday. As well as being sternly reminded by the shocked Ms Wise that my cartoon would be unacceptable in Britain, the US and Canada (heaven forbid!), I was also told my cartoon was “racist” by no less an authority than Yin Paradies of Deakin University, whose research includes the economic effects of racism.
Professor Paradies didn’t think I’d made the people in my cartoon look hungry, either, but rather, in my own twisted, racist way, I’d managed to portray not only them but the entire population of India as “too stupid to handle renewable energy”.
I’ve been reliably informed my cartoon also triggered a hostile response from the sanctimonious but bloodthirsty mob who spend their time trawling the internet looking for anything they find offensive to provide them with an opportunity to join the orgy of competitive compassion and moral grandstanding that is Twitter.
Such people, understandably, are probably on a bit of a high at the moment having just spent a couple of weeks watching heroic and revered climate scientists such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Robert Redford spouting a series of hypocritical platitudes in Paris that culminated in world leaders signing up to an agreement to meet again in five years so they can sign another one, thereby saving the world from an impending environmental catastrophe. Again. No wonder they’re angry. First chance I get I spoil the party by reminding them that, back here, in the real world, there are billions of people who not only lack food, health, water and education, but also have no access to electricity, and more than 20 per cent of them live in India.
And there’s something obscene about the fact that there are billions of others who’ve had all those things all their coal-power-driven lives and they’re now distributing solar panels to the world’s poor because they think that provides a virtuous, if inadequate, form of electricity for which they should be grateful. I think that’s racist, I think it’s condescending, and I think it’s immoral. But it’s also the truth, and when an impertinent cartoonist dares to tell the truth these days he’d better watch out because telling the truth is a dangerously subversive thing to do.
It has the same ability to simultaneously shock some people while amusing others that four-letter words used to have when Lenny Bruce discovered he could use them to such devastating effect that his audiences would still be laughing while he was being dragged offstage by the police and arrested for obscenity.
In court, Bruce argued he was being denied his right to freedom of speech, and so he was. But I can’t help thinking he had it easy, living at a time when the only people who had to stand up for their rights to freedom of speech were comedians who wanted to say f. k in public.
And not only that, but the only people he had to worry about offending were undercover coppers in the audience whose job it was to be offended so they could arrest him for doing his job.
These days, the undercover policemen in the audience waiting for him to swear would be the least of his worries. They’d be outnumbered 100 to one by members of the Politically Correct Thought Police Task Force, all armed with iPhones and Twitter accounts, ready to pounce the moment he said something that might not necessarily offend them but could, potentially, offend someone else.
There’s no doubt the cartoon I drew for Monday’s paper offended a lot of people. While they might not have enjoyed looking at it, I’m quite sure they enjoyed using it as an excuse to parade their moral vanity.
And, while I prefer to discover there are people who think my cartoons are funny, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t derive a certain amount of pleasure from discovering they enrage the ones that don’t.
December 10, 2015 12:00am
Jason TinThe Courier-Mail
Bulimba MP Di Farmer: missed out..
JOCKEYING for plum parliamentary positions is set to begin in the wake of the Cabinet reshuffle, with snubbed MP Di Farmer potentially in line for a $20,000 pay rise.
The appointments of Labor Unity faction member Grace Grace and Left faction member Mick de Brenni to the new-look ministry have left their previous parliamentary roles up for grabs.
Ms Grace served as Deputy Speaker and Mr de Brenni sat as Chief Government Whip.
Both roles come with pay packets that are more than $80,000 fatter than the base MP salary of almost $150,000.
Party insiders anticipate the positions will remain with the Left and Labor Unity, with each nabbing one of the spots.
Labor Unity is hoping Ms Farmer will fill one of the vacancies, given she missed out on a ministry spot.
Unity
was only able to snare one additional Cabinet position in Premier
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s reshuffle, with Ms Grace taking on the
Employment, Industrial Relations, Racing and Multicultural Affairs
portfolios.
Ms Farmer, a Unity member, missed out on both a ministry and an assistant ministry position.
The
Member for Bulimba is currently chair of the Finance and Administration
Committee, which earns her an extra $57,000 on top of her base salary.
An appointment to either Mr de Brenni or Ms Grace’s former positions would add more than $20,000 to Ms Farmer’s pay packet.
Grace Grace is the new Employment and Industrial Relations Minister.
Fellow Labor Unity MP Julieanne Gilbert currently serves as Deputy Government Whip.
Among the names touted within the Left as possible Chief Government Whip replacements are Nikki Boyd and Chris Whiting.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s warning to her ministers regarding the
media left many in Labor rather confused. Picture: Tim Marsden
AS IT turns out, not all news is fit to print ... but these insiders will whisper if you lean in close.
We’ve brought together our top insiders to report from Brisbane’s
worlds of politics, law, business and entertainment to bring you a
concentrated dose of the week’s top tips and gossip.
Politics with Steven Wardill Premier in charge
ANNASTACIA
Palaszczuk seems to be acting a bit like the “all seeing eye” out of
Lord of the Rings. CoP sources tell us a po-faced Queensland Premier
warned her ministers at a recent Cabinet meeting that she knew which of
them were privately supping with which reporters. More than a few of
Labor’s own inner sanctum were left somewhat perplexed by Palaszczuk’s
cautionary and conspiratorial tale. After all, isn’t it their job to
sell the Government’s message, whatever that is? That notorious Ring of
Power might be getting to someone. Labor asset sale
IS Queensland House, the state’s historic address on The Strand in
London, about to be flogged off? Surely, the Labor Party wouldn’t dare
indulge in ... wait for it ... an asset sale? The former Newman
government pondered the same after a review penned by businessman
Geoffrey Thomas and former Labor minister John Mickel. But it never
happened. The building sits on prime land and would fetch a princely
sum. Several floors are empty. Others have been leased out. Most
interestingly, however, is that Agent General Ken Smith appears to be
already operating out of quarters owned by the Federal Government.
File: Anthony Albanese got behind the decks to spin a few tunes on Friday night.
Yo! Albo in da house
ANTHONY Albanese, the Federal
Opposition infrastructure and transport spokesman, hit the decks at Fish
Lane on Friday night with a few of his favourite tunes. Touted as an
“all round music buff”, Albo was playing for a good cause, raising much
needed dollars for the party’s Moreton, Bonner and Forde campaigns. Cost
was $50 for “waged folk” and $30 for “unwaged” with a free drink on
arrival. And we can’t fault some of Albo’s music picks, which included
tunes from Powderfinger, Spiderbait, Regurgitator and local favourites,
The Go Betweens.
Governor-General of Australia Peter Cosgrove at the 25th anniversary
lunch for the Loaves and Fishes lunch for the Exodus Foundation at
Ashfield. Picture Cameron Richardson
In the firing line
ENEMY fire might not faze former
Vietnam veteran and current Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove but put
him in a room alone with a journalist and he apparently starts to sweat.
Our spies tell us Sir Peter prepared himself for the media when he was
made Chief of the Defence Force a few years back by having a media
trainer “harass” him during lunch. “Basically he’d have lunch with him
at his desk and because he was so time poor he’d have a guy with him
grilling him,” COP’s source says. “He’d basically be firing questions at
him and training him up on how to answer questions, how to divert them
and how to respond.” These days the GG is quite a polished media
performer and no doubt enjoys less interruptions to his lunch breaks.
Courts with Melanie Petrinec Stench of justice
THE
Brisbane Courthouse stank to high heaven on Tuesday, and it was not
because of the controversial Gerard Baden-Clay appeal decision.
Dozens
of journalists assembled outside the court to cover the case were
greeted that morning by the pungent smell of fertiliser in the grassy
area across from the entrance.
Workmen were shovelling the fertiliser throughout the morning, causing some journos to almost gag between live crosses.
The
date of the Baden-Clay decision being handed down was unknown until the
night before, so we’re 99 per cent sure the move to fertilise the area
on one of the busiest days of the year for court reporters was not
deliberate.
Justice John Logan. Picture: Darren England.
Who’s really in charge?
YES, even Federal Court judges have to listen to their better halves.
Brisbane-based
Justice John Logan was last week trying to negotiate a particularly
hectic 2016 schedule, and was having trouble fitting in a lengthy trial.
When September was suggested, he was quick to point out he had already scheduled holidays which could not be moved.
“My wife wouldn’t permit me to do that,” he quipped.
Business with Glen Norris Devine moment
WE
hear David Devine’s proposed float of Metro Property Development is off
the cards indefinitely. Our spies tell us Devine believes he “dodged a
bullet” in calling off the planned listing earlier this year given the
lacklustre performance of the stock market since then. Metro Property in
June deferred plans to raise $170 million on the ASX, blaming the
market downturn and poor sentiment towards new listings. At the time
Metro decided to wait until market conditions improved. But CoP hears
the listing plans have been scrapped. The company has since lined up
funding from Credit Suisse so there is no question it is short of cash.
Fruit and veg
WE hear the planned takeover of the
Rocklea Markets by Sydney-based VGI Partners is set to heat up over the
next couple of days. Brisbane Markets, the operators of the fruit and
vege mecca, is set to release its reply to the $140 million takeover
offer on Friday. Support for the bid is growing but VGI still has a lot
of lobbying to convince traders to sell out.
