https://michaelwest.com.au/whistleblower-persecution-the-cost-of-ignoring-those-who-dare-speak-out/

QUOTE BEGINS

Whistleblowers everywhere act for reasons of conscience and integrity. They are vital to protect our society against corruption and power abuse, yet they are often persecuted for speaking out. Whistleblower Tony Watson reports from experience.

Whistleblowers are compelled to speak out, most often against their own organisation, in order to maintain their self-respect. “How could I keep my head up, and look people in the eye, if I kept quiet?”

But it is that very sense of self-respect that is targeted and hurt by the retaliations of the organisation they expose. It is precisely why humiliation makes such an effective tool. Driven by their own moral compass, whistleblowers are portrayed as unstable, money-seeking grubs.

C. Fred Alford, in his book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organisational Power, calls this the “nuts and sluts” strategy: The key organisational strategy is to transform an act of whistleblowing from

an issue of policy and principle into an act of private disobedience and psychological disturbance.

As well as gaslighting, shunning, marginalising and ostracism, there are rumours, questioning the employee’s performance, threats, harassment, reprimands, demotions, forced transfers, assignment to trivial duties, dismissal and blacklisting. The fate of a whistleblower is unattractive and lonely.

As a society, we sense that whistleblowing matters and that the cost of ignoring whistleblowers could be huge. All too often, when there is a scandal or disaster, it transpires that it could have been avoided or mitigated if someone who knew of it spoke up, or if their message had been heeded when they did speak up.

Timely, then, is a report by the UK Whistleblowing Charity Protect, released early February. The charity’s report, The Cost of Whistleblowing, analyses three UK disasters that unfolded largely after whistleblowers had raised concerns. They are the Post Office Horizon Scandal, the multiple deaths of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and the collapse of construction giant Carillion.

Most whistleblower scandals share a basic timeline. Financial costs are incurred before and after someone blows the whistle and fall into three broad categories: Unavoidable, Avoidable, and Fallout. Unavoidable Costs precede the whistleblower and are incurred irrespective of any action by the company. These costs are not included in the figures below. Avoidable Costs are incurred because the whistleblower is ignored.

Fallout Costs follow the scandal becoming public and are associated with investigating the failings that caused it.

In all three instances, the figures are large. £178m for the Post Office Scandal; £39m for the Hospital Scandal; and £209m for the Carillion Collapse. In the case of the Post Office, aside from the financial costs, ignoring the whistleblowers resulted in wrecked lives, false convictions, and suicides. In the Hospital Scandal, seven babies were killed.

MWM has published a series of stories about whistleblowers in Australia.

We could add and then analyse our own scandals to this sorry list. Robodebt is a good example. Several staff raised concerns about the unlawful and unfair nature of the scheme, as aired in the Royal Commission. But none triggered the necessary responses and legal protections. As Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes observed in her final Report:

“The disastrous effects of Robodebt became apparent soon after it moved, in September 2016, from the last part of the limited release, involving around 1000 recipients, to sending out 20,000 notifications per week. In December 2016 and January 2017 the media, traditional and social, were saturated with articles about people who had had demonstrably wrong debts raised against them, and in many instances heard of it first when contacted by debt collectors.

“The human impacts of Robodebt were being reported: families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment, and, horribly, an account of a young man’s suicide…

“What was, in fact, clear was that there were a number of senior departmental officers who did not understand the online compliance system or its effects. To compound that problem, when people like [whistleblower] Ms Taylor raised legitimate concerns, which in substance reflected the reality of what was occurring to those subject to the system, they were, effectively, ignored.”

How much did this debacle cost us?

Viktor Frankl’s words have become the whistleblower’s creed: “What is to give light must endure the burning.” But it should not be so.

Whistleblower stories can be depressing: their experiences are traumatic, their treatment by big corporates is grossly unfair, and their efforts are often in vain. And yet, there are a few hopeful signs. First, whistleblowers and the role they play are getting more airtime. Naming a problem is an important step in addressing it.

Second, although disillusioningly slow, the Government has promised better whistleblower protections. Even symbolic political promises can reflect underlying societal expectations. And just last week, four independents, Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines, Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, introduced a Bill into Parliament to establish a Whistleblower Protection Authority.

Third, more whistleblowers and their supporters are sharing their stories. Across the globe, there are organisations springing up to help and support whistleblowers, such as the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC).

The sharing of information and experiences and offers of support are indicative of a better future.

It can’t come soon enough.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump #whistleblowers

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/10/safeguard-mechanism-carbon-emissions-labor-plibersek/

QUOTE BEGINS

It is deeply weird that one of Labor’s most expansive climate policies is also one of its least mentioned. The “safeguard mechanism” — a policy that purportedly limits the greenhouse gas emitted by Australia’s heavy industry and fossil mining facilities — covers a full third of Australia’s domestic emissions. Yet it barely exists in public discourse. Why?

Safeguard has a grim origin, with Labor having rejigged a Coalition policy instead of designing its own (wedging opponents takes precedence over deploying policy that works). Safeguard’s progenitor, the Coalition’s “emissions reduction fund”, set limits high above actual emissions (amusingly, as emissions rose, these limits often gently floated upwards).

It was an IKEA houseplant: it looked real, but only from a great distance.

Due to the higher climate policy standards faced by Labor, it had to achieve the same goal using different tactics. The carbon offsetting industry came to the rescue.

Like the old scheme, safeguard sets emissions targets for each facility. Unlike the old scheme, these targets fall over time, meaning theoretically the facility should cut its pollution to comply. Naturally, there’s a glaring loophole: a company can meet the targets even when its pollution is above the limit by purchasing an equivalent number of Australian carbon offsets.

Another option is that overperforming facilities which are under their target can “trade” credit units with others over theirs, but this is unlikely in the short term (and would be more expensive for a polluter than just buying normal offsets).

Safeguard is frequently defended (and derided) as a form of “carbon pricing” — being forced to pay for offsets is a financial disincentive against high emissions. Offsets are exceedingly cheap, have the added benefit of fake neutralisation of your climate damage, and fossil fuel companies swimming in record-breaking super profits only use a tiny fraction of those profits for the required number of offsets. Worst of all, the money ends up in the pockets of carbon trading corporations, rather than the government.

A red-hot political debate ensued: the Greens pushed for real emissions cuts, but Labor won the vibes contest. Tuning safeguard to mandate real, deep emissions cuts was decried as excessive perfectionism that would resurface Australia’s mythical “climate wars”.

Once safeguard passed, it was memory-holed. It only gets exhumed when Labor tries to defend its passivity around the expansion of coal and gas. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was pushed on including a “climate trigger” in mine approvals, he muttered that “climate issues are dealt with through the safeguard mechanism”. When Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was pressed on the same, she dismissed it, saying, “The safeguard mechanism is the way that we deal with carbon emissions in this country … it’s bringing down carbon emissions.”

Safeguard came into effect July 1, 2023, and we won’t get official data on its first full financial year of operations until April 15. However, we can prod existing data to check if it really is “bringing down carbon emissions”.

Quarterly federal emissions data gives us a rough overview. Looking at the sectors that cover heavy industry in Australia (with the caveat that non-safeguard facilities are covered here too), there has been zero noticeable difference to each sector’s greenhouse gas emissions from mid-2023 through to the end of 2024

A Climate Change Authority (CCA) “progress report” examined the first year of safeguard in detail using preliminary data, and found 153 of the covered 215 facilities had emissions higher than the limit set by the Clean Energy Regulator. Thirty-one of those facilities exceeded their limits by 30%. In aggregate, all of the sites that are meant to be regulated by this scheme emitted 10.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent above the total limit.

In short: no change beyond business as usual, despite the new targets. But the massive, widespread beaching of targets means the guaranteed mass purchase of “Australian carbon credit units”, or ACCUs.

Safeguard is an incredible demand fabrication engine for carbon offsets. The CCA cites modelling that shows between 58% to 68% of compliance with the scheme will be met using offsets instead of real emissions reductions out to 2030. “Safeguard facilities’ reliance on ACCUs to meet obligations is forecast to drive ACCU demand out to 2030. ACCU prices are forecast to increase as a result of the growth in demand for ACCUs”, the report says.

The CCA offers a confident forecast of future carbon offset profits, and a nervous shrug about whether real emissions will be cut. That is before it details that there will be 31 million tonnes of new emissions to be added to the scheme’s coverage up to 2030, 21 million of which relate to coal, oil and gas “carbon bomb” projects.

While it’s almost certain the first year of the scheme did nothing for real emissions, it has already created a massive surge in demand for Australia’s highly criticised carbon offsetting scheme. The Clean Energy Regulator’s new quarterly report reveals the growing stockpiles of carbon offsets specifically for meeting the safeguard mechanism’s ratcheting targets

The highest emitters in safeguard can pay a pittance to indefinitely comply with the scheme. But they still consider it an irritation and have restarted calls for compliance to be opened up to allow cheap international carbon offsets — even more controversial than Australia’s heavily criticised scheme.

Profits for carbon markets thrive in two conditions: “ambitious” net-zero targets paired with zero will to actually reduce emissions. Voluntary targets are already starting to shudder and shift thanks to the unashamed fossil-fascist permission space of TrumpWorld 2025. If Peter Dutton were to become prime minister, he could wreck this regulatory capture paradise for Australia’s fossil fuel and offsetting industries. Equally, Dutton might recognise the value of mandated greenwashing schemes. The offsets lobby is already pleading with him to keep it in place.

You aren’t meant to look too closely at the safeguard mechanism. The formulas, acronyms and faux-complexity are there to obscure the simple dual stories of protectionism and cronyism from two massive, interlocking fossil/offsetting industries.

It’s a plastic houseplant: you leave it on the windowsill and let it look vaguely like something real and respiring.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump

This bloke has done so much nasty stuff in his political life, so atm i dunno how i feel about this.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8911903/senior-liberal-philip-ruddock-joins-forces-with-teal-candidate

QUOTE BEGINS

High-profile former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock has lent his weight to the local teal campaign in a video designed to protect trees.

Mr Ruddock, who was mayor of Hornsby council in Sydney for seven years after serving in federal parliament for 43 years, lost Liberal party preselection for council leadership in 2024.

Now, the 81-year-old has appeared in a social media campaign video with Tina Brown, the Climate 200-backed independent candidate for the federal electorate of Berowra.

Mr Ruddock suggests in the video there could be something "sinister" behind a move by the local Liberal-led council to change vegetation rules around development in the name of safety.

Any changes could affect the tree preservation orders his father and former Hornsby shire president introduced in the 1950s, he said.

"Global warming is exceedingly significant," Mr Ruddock says in the video, posted to social media on Saturday, March 8 as ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred bore down on Australia's east coast.

Ms Brown has launched a petition on the back of the issue, demanding transparency around decisions affecting tree protection in the local area.

Mr Ruddock played down the political significance of his appearance in the video when he spoke to ACM, the publisher of this masthead.

"My comments were made immediately I became aware of the mayoral minute and were based upon my personal experience," Mr Ruddock said.

"I have not resigned from the Liberal Party and I've made it very clear that I intended to support, particularly [Liberal candidate] Scott Yung in Bennelong, and that would be my preferred role during this campaign."

Mr Ruddock's wife, Heather, has already quit the Liberal Party and is supporting Ms Brown's federal election campaign.

Formerly John Howard's attorney-general and immigration minister, he oversaw the "children overboard" affair in 2001 and has sat on the Liberal party's federal and state executive.

Mr Ruddock said he was on the panel to preselect Gisele Kapterian for the Liberals in Bradfield, the federal electorate that sits adjacent to Berowra, currently held by Paul Fletcher who is retiring.

The Climate 200-backed candidate, Nicolette Boele, is considered to have a strong chance.

"Bradfield is certainly competitive," Mr Ruddock told ACM.

He also acknowledged Berowra was not a sure thing for the Coalition.

It's held by Liberal MP Julian Leeser with a 7.56 per cent margin.

"But I also think that the assumption that Berowra is a safe seat and that you don't have to be concerned about it is put to one side when you look at the way in which Julian Leeser is campaigning."

Asked about his specific mention of global warming in the video with Tina Brown, Mr Ruddock said trees were important to combat heat.

"I have spoken in council about the impact of trees in the streets and the way in which they ameliorate the impact of heat," he said.

"If people don't understand in the context of what we are experiencing now the value of trees, I think they're being very foolish."

Berowra covers a broad area of north-western Sydney, including bushland and farmland, but is being rapidly developed to accommodate Sydney's growing population.

Its boundaries were changed when the seat of North Sydney was abolished.

A federal election has to be held by May 17.

Hornsby Shire Council was contacted for comment.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump

Yep, as i'd long presumed, too many of the Dickson voters are still fuckheads.

Carn Ali France, Ellie Smith, Vinnie Batten.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8909711/election-2025-peter-duttons-public-service-cuts-reach-dickson

QUOTE BEGINS

It's impossible to miss a towering billboard as you round a bend on Gympie Road, just north of Brisbane. It greets you on the drive past what was once the old Petrie paper mill and is now a university campus, in the federal electorate of Dickson.

On it, a grinning Peter Dutton tells motorists he wants to get Australia "back on track".

It's a message reminiscent of the one that got Trump over the line in the United States and for some residents in the marginal seat of Dickson, it is resonating.

Having grown up in the seat that Mr Dutton has held for more than 20 years, I travelled back there to get a sense of how voters are feeling mere months out from the federal election.

Those who are willing to share their opinions give glowing references to Mr Dutton, describing him as decisive, strong and a clear thinker.

"He's got what it takes," says veteran Max Revell who plans to vote Liberal at the upcoming election.

Mr Revell says there is nothing that would change his vote.

"[Peter Dutton] is great for the electorate, people love him, he is decisive, he knows how to call a spade a spade," he says.

"He can talk the talk and walk the walk, which is what is needed in Canberra at the moment."

A woman at the same shopping centre in Strathpine says she likes Mr Dutton because he's genuine.

"He means what he says and there's no mucking about with him," she says.

Mr Dutton's office did not respond to ACM's inquiries for this story.

The strong, straight-talking persona is one Mr Dutton has built within his electorate over more than two decades.

The Coalition leader has held the seat of Dickson since late 2001, after a 10-year career with the Queensland Police Service.

The seat of Dickson, about 25 kilometres north of Brisbane CBD, is a working-class area and a mix of built-up housing estates, industrial parks and more affluent suburbs with acreage plots. Mr Dutton lives in the latter.

The Opposition Leader approaches the 2025 federal election on a razor-thin margin of 1.7 per cent, after a nearly 3 per cent swing to Labor on a two-party preferred basis at the 2022 election.

Labor candidate Ali France is going up against Mr Dutton for the third time and, despite her confidence, admits claiming victory will be "absolutely difficult".

Many Queensland residents would be aware of Ms France's personal adversities, which have driven her to become an advocate for people with disabilities.

Ms France had her leg amputated in 2011 after she was pinned between two cars during an incident in a suburban shopping centre car park. One year ago, Ms France's son Henry died of leukaemia, just months after Henry's father and Ms France's ex-husband also died from cancer.

The Labor candidate and para-athlete is certain Mr Dutton's time is up in the electorate but admits it will be a hard task coming up against such a public figure.

"Especially when you've got the Opposition Leader who's on television every single day," she says.

"But we just focus on speaking to as many people as possible, right across the electorate."

Ms France has some reason to feel confident heading into the election. While Mr Dutton has his staunch supporters, the results from the last federal election show there is plenty of groundswell for change. Mr Dutton went into the 2022 election with a 4.6 per cent margin on a two-party preferred basis, which fell to 1.7 per cent after a fierce campaign by Labor.

On the ballot paper this year is also the independent candidate for Dickson, Ellie Smith, who's received funding from Simon Holmes a Court's Climate 200, and Greens candidate Vinnie Batten who claimed 13 per cent of the primary vote last election.

Ms France and her team of volunteers are spending their days door-knocking the suburbs, which she says is in contrast to the "huge war chest" Mr Dutton has available for flyers and billboards.

When I join her for an afternoon of door-knocking in Strathpine, those who answer the door are keen to hear about Labor's policies. She reminds them about Labor's revised tax cuts, fee-free Tafe and energy bill rebates. One resident thanks her for increasing wages for early childhood educators.

The Coalition's commitment to cutting public service jobs has gone beyond the national capital, despite Mr Dutton's attempts to make the job cuts appear targeted towards "Canberra-centric" roles.

Cuts to the public service are something Ms France discusses with residents as she door-knocks through the suburbs. She believes the idea of shrinking the public service is important to the people of Dickson, even if the "government waste" the Opposition Leader is targeting has been incorrectly pitched as entirely Canberra jobs.

The sacking of more than 12,000 state public servants under former Liberal-National premier Campbell Newman is still fresh in the minds of Queenslanders, Ms France says.

"The ghost of Campbell Newman, it still haunts us here in Queensland," she says.

"So when [people] hear cuts to public service, they know what that means here. And I think as we get closer to the election, people are going to have to take a closer look at that."

When she speaks to residents, Ms France points out what she believes job cuts could mean for Queensland residents.

"It will be to things like people working for the NDIS, people working for Centrelink, people working in Veterans' Affairs, people working in Medicare," she says.

"These are all the services that people in this electorate rely upon."

Voters have their own opinions on public service job cuts. Some say they worry about those who'll be sacked and left without work, while others are concerned about the potential for increased government spending on external contractors.

But others, like Mr Revell, believe cuts are a good thing.

"There's too many people in the public service," he says.

"All public servants, whether it be in Canberra or where it is, you ring up and they say 'I'll pass you onto another person,' and then they put their feet back up on the desk."

If they don't cut jobs, the government should amalgamate departments, Mr Revell says.

Similarly, Peter Aquino says there's room to cut some jobs. Speaking outside a Woolworths in nearby suburb Warner, Mr Aquino says from personal experience, "There's a lot of people that just don't do anything."

"Even if he cuts some I don't think it's going to make much of an impact," he says.

Petrie resident Judy Hughes is indifferent about who the next prime minister should be but praises the Labor government for her cheaper medicines and electricity bills.

"I haven't paid an electricity bill for a year," she says.

But Ms Hughes also talks of Mr Dutton as a nice person, whom she met when he visited her workplace, Meals on Wheels. She says he "treated everyone well" and even offered to buy a new cooker for the kitchen.

Vickie Pentecost is another Dickson resident who has personally met Mr Dutton. She says his strong focus on community engagement is part of his success.

Ms Pentecost believes Mr Dutton would make a good prime minister.

"I just think Albanese stuffed up a bit, I don't think he's ever recovered from losing the Voice," she says.

However, there is plenty of uncertainty in the lead-up to the election, even among those who are certain of their vote.

Mr Aquino says he would put his bottom dollar on Mr Dutton winning the election, but also wants to see more policy detail from the Opposition Leader.

"This nuclear thing, I don't know how it's going to go in Australia," Mr Aquino said.

"It'd be nice if someone could give us a full rundown of how it's going to work, whether it's going to affect people and stuff like that."

But a policy that's light on detail doesn't appear to concern some voters in Dickson, many of whom seem content with the idea of their local member becoming prime minister.

The question is whether his smiling billboards and community-man persona will help him secure his seat for a ninth consecutive term, or if Labor's message of an out-of-touch pollie ready to slash jobs will be enough to change the tide.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8909494/opinion-its-only-peter-dutton-who-has-a-problem-with-aps-working-from-home

QUOTE BEGINS

There's been a bit of talk this week about flexible work and working from home.

Is it good? Is it bad? Does it work?

The research says that flexible work improves workforce participation, and that people are just as productive, if not more so when working from home. Hybrid working arrangements, which is what overwhelmingly applies in the APS, are positive and productive.

The reality is that flexible work and working from home is important to lots of workers - especially women. Which is why there have never been more women working full-time in the APS, instead of part-time, than right now.

Earlier this week the Coalition, copying Donald Trump's homework once again, announced they would be ordering all public servants back to the office five days a week if they win the next election.

This announcement really is a solution in search of a problem.

Because the real story is that flexible working arrangements and working from home are working well for both workers and public services.

In fact, there are clear and enforceable enterprise agreement provisions that establish both the right to request flexibility and the factors the supervisor will take into account when considering the request.

There is not a problem that needs fixing.

The CPSU's 12th What Women Want survey, which we have released just this week, paints a very clear picture about how important flexible work is for women in modern Australia.

96.7 per cent of women said that flexible work arrangements are important or very important to them and the following stats will clarify why.

68.2 per cent of respondents had caring responsibilities for either dependent children, older parents, partners, adult children or other relatives and friends

And 36.2 per cent of respondents had dual caring responsibilities. That is, they were the primary carer for dependent children and had caring responsibilities for others. And of those with dual caring responsibilities, seven in 10 also worked fulltime.

These figures make it abundantly clear that women are balancing a lot, and that the ability to be flexible about when and where they are working is helping them to keep their heads above water.

This is probably a good time to mention that the monetary value of unpaid care work in Australia has been estimated to be $650.1 billion, the equivalent to 50.6 per cent of GDP.

So, you'd think governments would be bending over backwards to support people to balance work and care. But Peter Dutton took things in the opposite direction and told women that if his return to the office mandate was a problem, maybe they should consider job sharing instead.

The reality is that flexible work is helping women increase their working hours, with benefits for both them and their families, as well as increased productivity.

Indeed, since the introduction of greater workplace flexibility, the proportion of women electing full-time work over part-time has increased. In 2020, 72.2 per cent of women working in the APS were working full-time. And as of June 2024, that had jumped to 79.9 per cent - the highest percentage on record.

It is, of course, not just women who benefit from increased flexibility and working from home. Flexibility has opened the doors of employment to people who have otherwise been shut out, including people with disability and people from regional and rural Australia.

But it must be said that the biggest winner in all of this is the APS. Thanks to flexible work arrangements, the public service is now tapping into talent from right across Australia.

In the past, rigid expectations about where work can be done would have locked many out of pursuing public sector employment.

Fundamentally, it is important for the public service to be representative of the people it serves.

A broader and more diverse public service with connections to communities right across the country is a good thing.

It means our public sector can tap into the talents of all Australians, it makes the public sector more resilient and more representative.

And that's important.

It's important that we have people with lived experience of disability working in the NDIA so that families accessing the NDIS can be better supported.

It's important that we have culturally and linguistically diverse Australians in agencies and departments that contribute to policy development and increase the accessibility of our public services for all Australians.

It's important that we have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working in agencies like National Indigenous Australians Agency, informing policy development and the services that impacts them.

It's important that we have people from regional and rural Australia working on the ground in regional and rural Australia, supporting the communities they live in.

Representation matters - and you don't achieve it by shrinking the public service or locking diverse talent out of a career in the APS.

Australians don't want to see the Coalition import yet another anti-public service, anti-diversity agenda from the United States. They want a strong, capable public sector- one that's ready to serve the community when it matters most.

Whether it's supporting veterans, safeguarding our biosecurity, regulating aged care, delivering the NDIS, or responding to disasters like Tropical Cyclone Alfred - with agencies like Services Australia, the National Emergency Management Agency, the ABC, and the Bureau of Meteorology working together to protect and support Australians-a well-resourced public service is essential.

Progress has been made in rebuilding public sector capacity and there is still more to do. But the Coalition's plan to cut one in five jobs and strip workplace rights won't fix anything. It will only weaken the services Australians rely on.

The real question isn't whether flexible work is working - we know it is. The question is why the Coalition is so determined to tear the public service down.

• Melissa Donnelly is the national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump #misogyny

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8898435/teals-and-independents-would-hold-the-power-in-a-hung-parliament

QUOTE BEGINS

Any teal or independent standing for the House of Representatives at the election would be well advised to keep schtum about their cards in the upcoming poker game.

All will depend on the numbers and negotiations with the major parties and each other following the election. Indeed, any one of them who cannot resist the temptation "to come clean with the electorate" on their intentions may be dealing themselves out of any bargaining process.

The most recent polls confirm that the most likely result will be a hung Parliament, with the independents determining which party will sit on the Treasury benches. The Coalition could win more seats than Labor, or than Labor combined with the Greens. But the crossbenches could well contain up to 16 or more teals and independents, suggesting that the Coalition will fall short of the numbers to govern in its own right. It needs to be so close to that number (effectively 76) that the Coalition can lure independents not aligned with the teal agenda.

The allegiance of the Greens (however many there are) to Labor, can be taken for granted. Labor figures that it is because they have nowhere else to go, and thus that it can abuse Greens without limit. I often wonder whether that is wise policy.

The Coalition would expect the support of Bob Katter. They could get up to four more, unless there is a grand reconciliation with the teals. I doubt that this will happen, but I also doubt that the Teals will ever give anything more than passive support to Labor. Perhaps they will guarantee supply. But also insist they are not pre-committed to a legislative program beyond an item-by-item basis. And even then, only after some Labor support on its own agenda.

None of the other independents should be taken for granted. Nor should it be assumed that the teal independents will vote as a bloc, though it would be to their negotiating advantage if they had a core of common views or demands.

Coalition supporters will say to returning teal members, and Zali Steggall and Helen Haines, that they sit in seats that have been traditionally on the Coalition side. It is almost impossible to imagine that Labor could win any of them. Coalition supporters would probably point to 2010, when Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - both former Nationals from traditional National seats - decided to support Julia Gillard rather than Tony Abbott, as evidence that voters wreak vengeance about showing up in the enemy's ranks.

The teals might admit that Labor has done the teals no favours during the last term of government.

Anthony Albanese and Katy Gallagher were foolish to cut the staffing entitlements of teals at the beginning of the term. It seemed a deliberate insult, and, in retrospect, caused much more offence than the government needed. Albanese's sense of tactics or strategy (which included his extraordinary strategy of "preserving the two-party system" also saw the teals virtually excluded from National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill negotiations, in the process deliberately breaking Labor's own promises, and ignoring teal commitments. The gratuitous discourtesies will, I expect, be one day returned with interest, and just when Labor needs their support.

Albanese also disappointed teals over carbon targets, and, towards the end of the term over national environmental protections. He also disappointed most of the independents over his campaigning regarding the Voice to Parliament referendum, but, just as seriously, over his prolonged sulk after its defeat. That has seen Indigenous policy at a standstill - perhaps going backwards during his term.

Broken promises on gambling - effectively the surrender, again, of protection of the weak against those who ruthlessly exploit them, have undermined Labor's moral authority to govern. That's a matter which no doubt enrages anew Andrew Wilkie in particular, because he was betrayed, more than a decade ago, by Julia Gillard on the same issue.

Casual abandonment of promises and principle, and Labor's return to a culture of open and partisan rorting over electoral funding, has frustrated any casual bond with the teals, even though Labor is not in any competition for teal seats.

Perhaps the strongest single campaigning point for the Teals and sympathetic independents would stress the advantage to the public of a group with real balance of power and ideas for exercising it. A hung Parliament is not an impotent parliament but one that can be creative and progressive in ways that a clear outcome can prevent. Labor and the Coalition have become so corrupted and complacent from bare majority government that they ignore the experience and the wisdom of those who are revolting against the tyranny of the two-party state. It can be pitched differently to different classes and age groups of voters, each time appealing to a restorative idea. The primary agenda in question is the reform of governance, and the restoration of convention and process.

The Morrison era saw a serious erosion in the calibre of government. Corruption became more evident. Financial management controls, whether by ministers or public servants, seemed to become voluntary. Money was pushed into the private sector without proper process, tenders or value-for-money controls. In significant respects it might be said that Donald Trump is following a path of governing by whim set by Morrison.

As robodebt illustrated, governments imposed cruel and unconscionable rules that were in breach of the law. Members of the public became uneasy about blatant illegalities and defiance of due process. The unease increased with evidence of government indifference to exposure, and reports from the Auditor-General. The contempt for audit reports from the prime minister, and senior ministers including Dutton, was matched by the contempt still in evidence from many in the public service.

In opposition, Labor and other groups including the teals were shocked by the misbehaviour and promised better. Governance did not get reformed because Labor's zeal for returning the system to regularity wilted as soon as it got power. There have been no systemic changes to the public service.

The Public Service Commission is openly campaigning against FOI, notionally the policy of the government. It has failed to follow a recommendation by the robodebt commission about issuing instructions trying to restore the proper documentation of government decisions. There's no virtue in that if senior public servants produce documents that could be accessible to FOI, it says. Inside government FOI and open government have no champion.

A focus on the unfinished agenda has another commonsense point. Wanting a higher quality of accountability and honesty in government is hardly radical. It is conservative: seeking a restoration of standards, openness and probity that had, in theory always existed. It is a supreme irony that modern conservatives have broken and disrespected once universal rules, and destroyed many of the institutions of civil society. Successive inquiries have exposed the dishonesty of senior bankers. Others the fundamentally venal morality of the consulting industry and major retailers. There has been a marked deterioration of ethical standards in institutions of government, of private institutions, and among civil institutions, including charities, religious bodies and some of the institutions of the law. The collapse of ethical standards and of public expectations of good citizenship has eroded trust. Undoing this is a major task, essential for a better society. It is not beyond the wit of good men and women to change. It is a noble task to which independents could recommit themselves.

Judging by these standards many might think that the teals (and hapless voters) owe the Labor government nothing. It is from Labor and the Liberals that we deserve apologies. Albanese has not delivered better government. He has broken significant promises. Independents have the capacity, if they control the balance of power, to insist on improved performance as a condition of their support.

Of course, they could also force the alternative parties of government to change their attitude, their approach, and their spirit of cooperation. They could make it from either party a condition of political support. Most teals come broadly from Liberal Party philosophical ideas, particularly about free enterprise, even if, traditionally, they have been more liberal and moderate than the increasingly conservative Dutton party. Increasingly, however, they can argue themselves to be more virtuous than either Labor or the Liberals.

That the teals come from a philosophical stream different from Labor might seem to account for Albanese's strong antipathy to them. Curiously, however, Albanese repeatedly shows that he sees his main enemy as the Greens. A man who once said his mission was to defeat Tories devotes far more time to attacking the Greens, the party most philosophically close to Labor. It's the party whose preferences he needs to get re-elected. Fifty per cent of Labor's old following now votes Green. Labor has lost most of that through pragmatism-swallowing principles. Green preferences may generally go to Labor, a reason many Labor supporters point to as a reason not to be too concerned. But by no means does a smaller Greens turnout cause an increase in the combined share of the vote. Albanese's war against both the Greens and the teals creates the risk of getting squeezed between them.

Teals might well think they are more comfortable with a Labor regime, at least until the goals of a reform agenda are achieved. The Coalition is, if anything, more flatly opposed to action on climate change or environmental change than it was in Morrison's time. There are no obvious grounds for expecting better governance behaviour from Peter Dutton and his team. Dutton was himself one who, as a minister, had a very expansive view of his right to control public expenditure in his portfolio, even when it was being spent in a consciously partisan way. He has never apologised or committed himself to a higher standard than shown by Scott Morrison. If he becomes prime minister, he will most probably resume an autocratic and authoritarian style of governance. With an added aversion to anything that can be labelled "woke". And assisted by mostly the same senior public servants as Morrison used to have. None seem to have much examined their management philosophies or working contempt for those on welfare. All of the improprieties and poor public service leadership issues could be repeated tomorrow.

A change for the better depends on an independent boot placed on the neck of the next party in power.

• Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights ...1/2

Well well well... who could have known that Liebs are scumbuckets? Totes amazeballs. 🙄🤦‍♀️

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8897571/nacc-clears-zoe-daniel-of-corruption-claims-mp-blasts-liberals

QUOTE BEGINS

The National Anti-Corruption Commission has issued a rare statement advising that a referral involving teal MP Zoe Daniel did not raise any issue of corruption.

"The essential issue raised by the referral was a suggestion that Commonwealth resources under Ms Daniel's control (ie, a parliamentary staffer) may have been misused by or on behalf of a parliamentarian, to lobby on behalf of a donor," the NACC said in a statement on Thursday.

The NACC said it had assessed the referral "to determine whether it raises a corruption issue that the commission can investigate", and had concluded that no such issue arose.

Ms Daniel, the independent member for Goldstein who won her seat in 2022, welcomed the finding and urged the commission to "call out" the misuse of its function for political purposes.

"Vexatious or politically motivated referrals undermine the NACC and waste its time and resources," she said.

"I hope the people of Goldstein see this episode for what it was - a deliberate dirty tactic by a Liberal Party operative to tarnish my reputation to prevent me winning my seat."

In October, a former Liberal MP made a referral to the NACC over allegations that a staffer believed to be working for Ms Daniel had lobbied the Australian Financial Review to withdraw billionaire Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court from its annual AFR Power List.

The former MP is understood to be Jason Falinski, who lost his seat of Mackellar to independent MP Sophie Scamps at the 2022 election and is now the NSW Liberal Party president.

Political editor Phil Coorey had reported that independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender walked into the newspaper's Canberra press gallery bureau to request that Mr Holmes a Court be scrubbed from the list and that a staffer from Ms Daniel's office "had already rung with the same request".

The NACC found the person was not a staffer, but a consultant acting on behalf of a third party, which The Canberra Times has confirmed to be Climate 200.

The individual had ceased being employed by Ms Daniel as a parliamentary staffer and now worked as a consultant, with both the MP and the political donations aggregator as clients.

The alleged approach to the AFR "was not made with Ms Daniel's knowledge or authority", the NACC said.

Ms Daniel had engaged her former staffer to provide part-time consulting services through her private not-for-profit company, meaning there was no use of Commonwealth resources.

The independent MP said in a statement on Thursday that she had run for office in 2022 "because I believe that the people of Goldstein and Australia deserve a better type of politics built on honesty, respect, integrity and trust."

"A robust and effective National Anti-Corruption Commission is an essential pillar in rebuilding that trust in government," she said.

"I will continue to practise a different kind of politics, and to fight, work and act on behalf of the people of Goldstein and Australia for the values we all deserve; accountability, transparency and honesty."

The MP faces a challenge from former Liberal member for Goldstein Tim Wilson, who is campaigning to win back the seat at the federal election due by May.

The NACC noted that the consultant "disputes the accuracy of the AFR report of the substance of their representations", but said it was "unnecessary for present purposes to resolve that dispute as the outcome is the same".

It is understood the consultant phoned one of Mr Coorey's colleagues at the AFR to convey on behalf of Climate 200 that Mr Holmes a Court did not think he should be on the Power List.

The NACC said the commission was aware of media reporting of the referral in October and was "making this public statement because the referral is in the public domain, being satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so."

"Ms Daniel has fully co-operated with the commission," the statement said.

"The matter is now closed and the commission will not be making further comment on it."

QUOTE ENDS

#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/02/06/climate-200-teal-independents-funding-political-donations/

QUOTE BEGINS

As usual, we don’t know where much of the money in politics is coming from. The newly released 2023-24 donor returns form a wildly incomplete picture, with “dark money” making up 45% of what parties received.

According to the Centre for Public Integrity, $74.5 million was declared by parties without a source, $35.2 million of it by the Coalition (little wonder the opposition opposes reforms to lower the disclosure threshold to $1,000). And don’t get me started on right-wing Advance Australia, which declared sources for just 7% of the $15 million it received — including $500,000 from the Cormack Foundation, a Liberal Party fundraising group. Nothing suss!

However, one group of donors has received outsized media attention. As the Mudrake media has eagerly reported, two of the three top donors gave to fundraising outfit Climate 200, with investors Rob Keldoulis and Marcus Catsaras* each tipping in $1 million to its $6 million total — small in the scheme of things, but conveniently aligned with Coalition claims that Climate 200 constitutes “big money”.

I’m about to add to that attention, with a caveat that we should be more concerned by the money we can’t see. But it’s worth considering Climate 200’s backers, thousands of whom opt to be named on its site. Who are they? What do they want? And with debate once again swirling over Labor’s electoral reforms, how much is too much for one individual to give?

Climate 200 certainly has a reputation for attracting wealth. Keldoulis, a trading firm founder from Sydney’s east, has d0nated more than $1 million for three years running (as he told Nine in November 2022: “I’m hooked”). Catsaras, a young energy-market trader who gave similarly for the past two years, hasn’t spoken to the media about his d0nations, but this week posted a video explaining the urgency of supporting climate-driven candidates.

Previous major backers of Climate 200 include Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar (among other tech founders), the Milgroms and the Fairfaxes, with convenor Simon Holmes à Court contributing relatively smaller amounts.

Climate 200 has been at pains to clarify its donors aren’t just the mega-rich. Analysis given to Nine in 2022 suggested 85% of Climate 200’s 11,200 donors gave $500 or less; similar figures were circulated in November 2024, suggesting an average d0nation size of $95. The AFR last week pointed to Sydney Film Festival founding director David Donaldson, who marked his 94th birthday with a donor drive, matching smaller d0nations to the tune of $94,000.

Several other d0nation-matchers are listed on Climate 200’s website, including health start-up founder Jenna Tregarthen and her husband Stuart, whose previous startup was acquired by Walmart. The Australian entrepreneurs are partaking in their second fundraising drive, while moving home from the US with their two small children — prompted in large part by TuckFrump’s reelection.

Tregarthen tells me she didn’t use to be politically active beyond trying to vote for values-aligned candidates. But the 39-year-old Bright Therapeutics founder was “inspired” by the community independents: “Predominantly accomplished, professional women making a sacrifice at the peak of their careers in the interest of public service.” d0nating is the “easy” part, she adds, seven different times, often gushing about her pride at being involved.

Tregarthen and her husband gave $28,000 to Climate 200 in 2022, matching d0nations up to $40,000 in a campaign run with a friend. This election they are pledging $60,000, with a (reportedly quite successful) focus on the need to ward off TuckFrumpism, which she felt powerless to stop in Merka.

“Now I know how quickly things can change,” she laments, adding she no longer takes basic human rights for granted. “I have much more of a sense of urgency and of wanting to protect the Australia that I know and I love, because it could all go away so quickly.”

Tregarthen sees d0nating to independents as “an investment in democracy”, saying it’s crucial that communities select their challengers. She doesn’t have contact with candidates, saying her only expectation of those who receive her funds is that they uphold Climate 200’s values of “climate, integrity, and gender equity”, while being free to set their policies. (She won’t stop d0nating over individual differences on other issues, she says, something Sussan group owner Naomi Milgrom has reportedly threatened).

Tregarthen doesn’t rule out chipping into individual campaigns. But she views “Climate” — as she casually refers to the funding aggregator — as a useful vehicle to “strategically and efficiently deploy the funds”, focusing on the “bigger picture”.

“I don’t necessarily have time to think about how and when to d0nate to who in the most effective way,” she explains. “I’m a full-time mum running a company and I just don’t have time to stay as on top of things … I value the fact that Climate 200 is working full-time to be informed and to be responsive in a way the candidates need it to be.”

I put to Tregarthen that Labor’s electoral reforms have seen little public pushback (though plenty from experts) because “getting money out of politics” sounds vaguely positive. She agrees there needs to be some limit on contributions (her d0nations fall well under Labor’s proposed cap), but she takes issue with how the reforms undermine Climate 200’s aggregation model, preventing “syndicates of individuals coming together” to support a common goal, meanwhile ensuring the majors remain flush.

“I see Climate 200 [as] democracy working,” she says. “It’s giving the everyday person a vehicle to contribute, as opposed to, you know, large institutions that have political interests being the ones that are d0nating.” That said, Tregarthen understands the qualms about money in politics — she used to share them, as her 2022 drive expressly noted.

“My instinctive reaction to d0nating was like, ‘Oh no, not money in politics’,” she recalls. “But when I looked more closely, it made so much sense to deploy money in this way. When you think about climate, you can contribute and d0nate to any number of individual not-for-profits, organisations advancing different things. We need system-level change, which starts with policy.” She references doing an impact analysis, finding that her dollars could have the greatest reach by getting climate-friendly candidates into office.

Tregarthen obviously can’t speak for all Climate 200 donors — after all, there are more than 10,000 of them. But she insists she doesn’t seek any personal benefit “other than helping my children to have a brighter future, and even just retaining the freedoms that they have in this incredible country — that’s my vested interest”.

We will have to Tregarthen’s word for that. But at least we know where her money is coming from, unlike the cheeky $74.5 million in dark money that went to the majors, whose source and interests cannot be traced.

*Greek media also picked this up in 2024, though for slightly different reasons.

QUOTE ENDS

#crikey #AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies

https://www.smh.com.au/national/tame-grace-good-luck-with-that-i-delight-in-her-brave-belligerence-20250128-p5l7pu.html

Quote

Grace Tame was Australian of the Year in 2021. She received her award for outspoken advocacy on behalf of sexual assault survivors and her successful campaign to eliminate Tasmania’s gag laws which, at the time, prevented sexual assault survivors – like Tame – from identifying themselves publicly. Her case was a catalyst for the “Let Her Speak” campaign.

Tame has been speaking ever since. She continues to be clear, precise and blunt in her advocacy. Sometimes, she uses words, sometimes, her facial expression, including her famous stony side-eye to Scott Morrison at the 2022 Australian of the Year celebration.

Morrison was a prime minister, it should be remembered, who had claimed to need his wife to explain why he should launch an investigation into workplace culture after a sexual assault allegation in parliament. It was Morrison who had admonished hundreds of thousands of Australian women – who marched for gender equality in 2021 – that they should be grateful that their demonstrations had not been met with bullets.

For last weekend’s Australian of the Year morning tea at The Lodge, Tame chose to use her clothing to make her point. Specifically, she wore a rather smart white T-shirt with “F--- MURDOCH” emblazoned across her chest.

The usual pearl-clutching has ensued, no doubt as Tame knew it would. As a brilliant and strategic campaigner, Tame understands how much our society loves to police the behaviour of women (hello, March for Justice participants), especially young women. Indeed, the prettier they are, the more we delight in wagging our fingers, pursing our lips and turbocharging our radio mics, if lucky enough to have them.

Certain sections of the community – usually older men with aforementioned mics, conservative politicians and their acolytes, various pulpits and those spouting family values – particularly enjoy policing women’s clothes. There has been a recent minor kerfuffle about the fashion for thong bikinis.

’Twas ever thus. Back in my day, beach inspectors went around with tape measures to check that a girl’s bikini bottom was wide enough. Valuable learning time was once spent measuring the distance a schoolgirl’s tunic was from the floor. Some girls’ private schools had knicker inspections! But the same critics are also down on hijabs and burkhas, even burkinis. Seems women are always wearing either too much or too little.

Many column inches can be filled fulminating about young women’s behaviour, morals, language, ideas and ambitions. Chick-bait masquerading as clickbait. But Tame regularly and gleefully tramples such nonsense. Tame understands, perhaps as the Murdoch empire and its creation Donald J. Trump does, that attention is power.

The difference is that Tame uses attention to expose injustice and inequality, whether for sexual assault survivors, Indigenous Australians, Australians with a disability or merely as the victim, as she has been, of the personal crusades often launched by one of the world’s largest media companies against individuals they happen to disagree with.

And Tame is in good company. Another young renegade has stood up to the behemoth right at the eleventh hour. Prince Harry has been stalwart in his campaign against intrusive activities, such as phone hacking and searching through dustbins, by Murdoch-owned newspapers. He only settled last week, having taken the 93-year-old to the brink of having to face another “humblest day”. Harry is not very popular in the UK, but perhaps his holding Murdoch to account, not just on his own behalf but in memory of his mother, has gained him some respect.

Some of the criticism of Tame is about her pulling focus from this year’s winners. Actually, I think we’ve done that by being so incredibly easy to bait. If we’d all just shrugged, her activism would have failed. Indeed, a word to other winners, maybe take a leaf from Tame’s playbook. If you care about a cause and want to draw attention to it, be prepared to take flak.

That is the lesson courageous young women like Grace Tame continue to teach me. As a lifelong feminist – yes, I was one of those women lucky not to get shot – I delight in witnessing the refusal of younger women to pipe down, behave, and stifle their opinions and their rage. I am inspired by their rejection of shame about their age, their beauty, and their bodies. Flaunt them, cover them up, I don’t care. Women’s bodies belong to them to be used and accessorised as they see fit. My generation, with a few honourable and mouthy (bless them) exceptions, were more easily cowed.

And where did that get us? The good girls who behaved like ladies and put other people’s needs ahead of their own from dawn to dusk, from cradle to grave? A fast track to an old age of poverty and fear, including the very real possibility of living in our cars.

Speak up, girls. Don’t be tame. Be wild.

• Jane Caro AM is a Walkley-winning columnist, author, novelist and social commentator.

Unquote

#FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists 🖕
#Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #misogyny #sexism #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety #GraceTame

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8868678/election-2025-peter-duttons-strategy-for-election-spotlight

QUOTE BEGINS

As the federal election draws near, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is honing a campaign strategy that appears to be straight out of the populist conservative playbook.

It's been six days since Dutton emerged from a comparatively quiet summer break to launch his campaign for the prime ministership, with the slogan "let's get Australia back on track".

"This year, Australians will have an opportunity to remove a weak and incompetent Labor government that has sent our country backwards," the opposition leader said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had opted for the hope-filled slogan "building Australia's future", quickly slid back into negative campaign mode, warning voters: "We don't want Australia to go backwards."

The Prime Minister told ABC radio he'd been stunned that Dutton's campaign launch in Melbourne had delivered "not a single new policy initiative in what was built up as a major speech".

Dutton "had nothing positive to offer," he jibed.

But while the Opposition Leader has been sparing in his policy announcements, his messaging targets key voters precisely where it can have the greatest impact.

His language has been described as "Trumpian", with a strongman flavour that emphasises law and order, patriotism and economic conservatism while, crucially, forensically targeting voters' pain points.

"Australians are worse off," Dutton says.

"Aspiration has been replaced by anxiety. Optimism has turned to pessimism. And national confidence changed to dispiritedness."

And he's throwing around the term "woke" at every opportunity, using it on Thursday to take aim at Bendigo Bank for knocking back a company's application for finance because it was involved in native forest logging.

Former Liberal party campaign strategist Tony Barry, now corporate affairs director at polling firm RedBridge group, says Dutton's slogan to "get Australia back on track" is squarely based on research, and is more compelling in the current circumstances than Albanese's bid for optimism.

"In recent published research, 48 per cent of Australians said we were on the wrong track and only 30 per cent said we're on the right track," Barry tells The Canberra Times.

And, he says, warning voters that a vote for the Coalition means going backwards will not be effective.

"People do want to go back to what they consider more prosperous and financially secure times," Barry says.

The theory behind Dutton's tactics isn't exactly new, and it's not ripped solely from Trump's playbook.

"What Peter Dutton's doing is pretty well-established conservative politics," Australian National University senior politics lecturer Jill Sheppard says.

"He wants to go back to some more glorious, more stable, more comfortable time."

While it can be tempting to call this Trump-style populism, she says, it is actually on par with the last century of conservative political messaging.

Dutton and former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott are "very similar in lots of ways, and perhaps chief among them is that they're quite popular with their colleagues -even though voters may sometimes be a bit affronted by how conservative they seem," she says.

But ANU political campaign expert Dr Andrew Hughes describes Dutton's campaign messaging as "very Trumpian."

However, he says, the playbook that worked in the United States may not be as effective in Australia where voting is compulsory.

"Trump was only after engaging enough of those people he needed to win, [with] very targeted, very specific messaging," Hughes says.

Barry says the trend sweeping the globe over conservative governments taking power is largely about voters being frustrated with the status quo.

"It's not a great time to be incumbent government," he says.

"Because there's a lot of grievance in the electorate, a lot of pain, a lot of hurt ... [Voters] are looking for something different."

While key Dutton policies - such as building nuclear power plants - are criticised for not stacking up, the Opposition Leader forges ahead without flinching, giving the impression that details don't matter.

So what's Dutton playing at, and does he have a real chance at the prime ministership?

Here are the central themes that are emerging in Peter Dutton's election campaign playbook.

There's one word that Dutton seeks every opportunity to lob at Albanese, no matter what the context: "weak".

From his handling of the major supermarkets' duopoly to relations with China, the Opposition Leader has jumped every mishap and event to make the accusation.

"This Prime Minister, who's the weakest that we've seen since Federation, is leading in a way that makes Gough Whitlam look like a competent leader of our nation," he told reporters on Thursday.

Albanese's response is to paint Dutton as the villain, this week calling him "cold-hearted, mean-spirited, just plain nasty."

Sheppard says the dichotomy risks missing the key attribute voters wanted from their leaders: competence.

"What competence looks like changes drastically depending on whether someone is more left or right-wing," she says.

Dutton's approach parallels that of United States President-elect Donald Trump, who spent years calling outgoing President Joe Biden "weak" before defeating him to secure a second term in the Oval Office.

Both right-wing leaders have seized on the Israel-Hamas conflict to accuse their rivals of being "weak" on the Middle East and failing to offer fulsome enough support to Israel or to tackle rising antisemitism.

Dutton has given the Australian public service a kick as he vows to crack down on "waste", echoing Trump's war on the US bureaucracy though his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), co-headed by billionaire SpaceX and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.

He's specifically referenced the DOGE when criticising the Albanese government, which has funded an additional 36,000 public service jobs since being elected.

"When you look at what Elon Musk has been tasked to do in the United States, why are we tolerating money being wasted when people are working harder than ever for their wage, they're paying taxes at a higher rate than they've ever paid and they want to know that money is being spent efficiently?" he told 2GB radio.

Dutton has linked government spending with cost-of-living woes, blaming it for inflation while capitalising on entrenched pessimism among voters about their living standards.

Dutton, who last year called for the visas of pro-Palestine protesters who mouthed anti-Semitic chants to be cancelled, used his campaign launch last weekend to pledge to "keep Australians safe".

The approach is a no-brainer, Sheppard says.

"We've got pretty good evidence from decades of the [ANU] Australian election study that says voters trust the Liberals on law and order."

For Dutton, a former Queensland cop, law and order is a vital pillar of his campaign messaging, particularly after the issue was central to the Liberal National Party and Country Liberal electoral wins in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

After criticising bail laws - which are under state and territory jurisdiction - as being too lenient, he pledged an extra $7.5 million in funding to Crime Stoppers if elected.

"If there is no consequence, if there is no red line, if there is no ability for the police to have an enforcement mechanism, then these people will continue to commit crimes and the crimes will escalate," he told reporters on Monday after using his weekend campaign launch to say Australia was "less safe ... less cohesive" under Labor.

The Coalition has relentlessly pursued the Albanese government over last year's High Court decision that forced it to release dozens of immigration detainees with criminal records, on the basis that detaining them indefinitely was unlawful.

No matter how many times the government points to previous decisions when Dutton was immigration minister, the saga weighs heavily in favour of the party known to be tough on arrivals.

The opposition has been so successful at blaming migrants for Australia's expensive property market that the Albanese government quickly followed suit after Dutton announced his plan to cut net overseas migration.

Even shadow treasurer Angus Taylor's fumbling of the numbers cited did not tank the idea of pushing down migrant numbers to enable the property market to cool off.

But Dutton is always careful to talk up the positive benefits brought to Australia by migrants, praising the contribution of those who already live here.

Dr Sheppard says this highlights a "tension between being anti-immigration generally and trying to talk nicely to potential migrant voters."

Dutton has gone so far as to declare that the national science agency - whose analysis found nuclear energy would be 50 per cent more expensive than renewables - is wrong, calling its report "discredited" and sparking outrage from CSIRO chief Doug Hilton.

He's promised to ramp up domestic gas production to get power prices down and restore stability to the grid, and to get rid of environmental "red tape".

"It means more digging," he said last weekend, echoing Trump's "drill, baby, drill" refrain.

The Opposition Leader says power bills will be 44 per cent cheaper under his $331 billion nuclear energy plan, but experts say his modelling is flawed, underestimates growing demand and would simply prop up the coal industry for years to come.

Surely, if the policy is a dud, the voters will walk?

But while the Coalition nuclear energy policy has sparked countless Labor memes, from three-eye koalas to Dutton as snow white, it's not that clear-cut.

"No voter trusts any institution," Barry says.

After being told their energy bills were cheaper when they clearly weren't, Barry says, cynicism in the electorate is high, meaning the government's arguments about science and costings can only have limited effect.

"If Labor's strategy is to say 'our costings on energy is better than your costs on energy', they are going to lose that debate."

Dutton, this week, reignited the debate over Australia Day, which has become a divisive topic that raises the hackles of voters on both sides of the political spectrum.

The Opposition Leader, who campaigned against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, now gets to remind voters of Albanese's failure and seize on identity politics.

Announcing a policy to force local councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day within 100 days if elected, the Opposition Leader used a hot-button issue to bolster his tough image and stoke divisions that could be blamed on the government.

1/2

QUOTE ENDS

#WeAreTotallyFscked #AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8869720/mark-kenny-australias-political-evolution-the-lefts-uncertain-future

QUOTE BEGINS

The world has become more hard-edged, more right-wing.

Social democracy seems lost in the storm, its outlines blurry and indistinct.

Across the West, the political right speaks to the hot viscera of disgruntled human bodies while the left mouths the cold abstract language of markets, fiscal discipline and economic indices.

When was the last time you heard a Labor Party figure make a major speech calling for transformative government interventions to rescue those left behind?

More often, its suited technocratsia explain to voters who feel pessimistic and unheard how much better off they really are.

This is a politics of disconnection. And disaffection.

Around the globe, established parties of the centre-left are waning, usually following periods in power in which they have failed in their core aims of materially improving the lives of working people, protecting the poor and ending environmental rapaciousness.

Economies have become harsher as companies have replaced governments in many services.

The richest have become richer. Living standards have stalled and often slipped back. Education has become less affordable, less enjoyable, more narrowly instrumental.

Health insurance is prohibitive and a trip to the dentist, potentially ruinous.

Home ownership is a pipe dream. Some reforms have been implemented but voters view them mostly as tinkering.

The left, long-accused of virtue-signalling, is now trapped in the middle and losing the values fight.

The question is not merely what does it stand for, but with whom does it really stand?

Is it the tuxedo crowd or the homeless?

While the current shift is electoral in form, it may turn out to be epochal in nature.

It is not just swinging voters in the middle who are shifting rightward, but core supporters - blue-collar communities and even unions who have long made up the bedrock of parties like the US Democrats, British Labour and the ALP.

Once unbolted, these voters may never return.

Peter Dutton is onto this and has been speaking to these voters in soft breakfast TV spots for three years.

Around the world, the message from voters has been the same. Incrementalism has failed.

Centrism has failed. Internationalism has failed. Multiculturalism can become a negative.

Resurgent nationalism is in vogue. The people lust for sharper turns, radical shifts - mostly inwards and backwards.

They hanker for disruption of a system that no longer offers the credible hope of continuing improvement for all.

Declarations consistent with this new philistinism - even when plainly cruel or idiotic - attract supporters where previously they would have been laughed at. Like annexing Canada or invading a European ally.

In the quickening run-up to a state election in WA, the once more sensitive Liberal Opposition Leader, Libby Mettam, has suddenly announced she would not stand in front of an Aboriginal flag if elected premier on March 8.

This calculated nastiness mimics the harsh stance recently taken by Peter Dutton.

Capitalising on a latent racism successfully fanned in the Voice referendum, both argue that they are virtuously pro-unity.

The country, they say, can have just one flag.

Mettam had supported constitutional recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty as recently as 2023 but now calibrates her political presentation to a harsher Australia.

The gestural mediocrity aside, it eludes both leaders that almost uniquely in the world, Australia's "one flag" features another country in prime position. Now that is laughable.

What genuinely self-respecting nation would put up with this? But then, consistency is irrelevant in emotion-based politics.

Invariably, these abdominally aimed pitches animate two intertwining measures of identity: nationalism and nostalgia. That is, they speak to an inchoate sense that things used to be simpler and better before multiculturalism and woke politics, before the international interference of the UN and multinational finance.

Consider the market-tested themes punctuating the democratic world's hardening nationalist sentiment.

In Brexit in 2016, British voters were urged to take "back" control. In Donald Trump's unlikely run that same year, the impudent outsider promised simply to make America great "again".

His plagiarised Reaganite slogan worked so well, he used it again. Indeed, so in tune was it that after four managerialist years of Bidenomics, Trump's "make America great again" even facilitated a bizarre nostalgia about his first shambolic term. MAGA voters recalled how rosy the economy had been under Trump the first time.

The Harris campaign protested that the numbers told a starkly different story but nobody cared.

America was "on the wrong track" voters kept saying and media kept reporting.

In that vein, is it any surprise that Dutton's working slogan going into the looming federal election is "let's get Australia back on track". Once again we see this unquantifiable notion of a previous golden age to which he promises return. It is an attractive idea and one hard to meet on its own terms, precisely because it is not a fact but a feeling.

Even more so in the digital communications age, emotion beats fact, and subjective perception - often called "lived experience" - leaves objective evidence writhing in the gutter.

At the core of the crisis gripping the cosmopolitan left, is its own timid failure to conduct politics and policy in this light.

A reluctance to confidently assert that the state has a role in social and environmental problem-solving and a refusal to demonise social division, widening inequality and galloping corporate profits.

• Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast.

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#sigh #AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies

IMO Rodney is a champion, with far more courage & integrity than i've ever had, so it's nice to see him standing up now for trans safety & rights, akin to his own personal history of blazing successful trails for gay safety & rights.

I fear this coming election campaign might be as sordid & hateful for trans peeps as was the awful experience of the leadup to Marriage Equality. In the intervening years the RWNJ toxicity has only further escalated, & they will love this new culture war frontline.

I'm a transwoman, but will be personally untouched for most of the issues Rodney mentions in his article, given i'm not young, & not in need of transition support. However, i will very much be even more traumatised than i already am, simply from the escalated political rhetoric of hate & mockery of people like me, which is already bad but i think is going to get much worse.

Yay for the "gift" of having been born trans. Fsck it.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8860912/opinion-the-looming-culture-war-trans-rights-in-2025-election

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The 20th anniversary of John Howard's ban on marriage equality ahead of the 2004 Australian election is a reminder that another LGBTQIA+ culture war is likely to taint the 2025 election.

In 2004 John Howard amended the Marriage Act to make it clear marriage could only be between a man and a woman.

It was a move designed to wedge Labor and stir up homophobia for electoral gain.

It was a tactic adopted directly from the US where George W. Bush promised to ban same-sex marriages ahead of the 2004 presidential election.

A generation later the conditions are right for a similar election war over the rights of trans and gender-diverse people.

Attacks on trans rights figured prominently in the 2024 American election with conservative commentators convinced those attacks helped win Donald Trump a second term and deliver Republican control of Congress.

In Australia parties to the right of the Coalition will inevitably seek to replicate Trump's success by also attacking trans and gender-diverse people.

To diffuse this challenge to its voter base, the Coalition is likely to promise its own trans rights rollback.

The Coalition knows Labor is unlikely to push back because the ALP needs to win anti-LGBTQIA+ seats in western Sydney and regional Queensland - the seats that voted "no" to marriage equality in 2017 - to retain majority government.

I know some Labor figures would contest my prediction and declare the ALP is on the side of trans people, but let's be serious.

In 2004 Labor supported Howard's marriage equality ban to keep or win seats in Western Sydney.

Since winning government in 2022, Labor hasn't once publicly defended trans people from attack for the same reason.

That's very unlikely to change when an election is declared and the Coalition rolls out its anti-trans fear campaign.

I fervently hope I'm wrong. I hope the Coalition takes the high road, and Labor stands firm should it not.

But I was intimately involved in advocating for marriage equality in 2004 and I correctly predicted Howard's ban months before it was unveiled.

I feel it would be irresponsible not to point to the likelihood that history is about to repeat.

Should there be transgender election fear campaigns in 2025, what would they focus on?

A national review of healthcare for young transgender people is likely, as well as a ban on puberty blockers and hormones until the review is completed.

The likelihood of this has increased since the UK's Labour government put a permanent ban in place following a review commissioned by the previous Tory government.

Other possible election fear campaigns could focus on amending the Sex Discrimination Act to make it harder for trans women to play women's sport, and attempts to ban school courses, resources and groups that affirm young trans and gender-diverse people.

Such fear campaigns will be amplified by groups opposed to trans rights, including the so-called "GLB Alliance" and trans exclusionary feminists.

In the US, these relatively small groups have suddenly found themselves with far more resources in the lead up to elections where trans rights figured, and the same may happen in Australia.

Amplification is also likely from trans-sceptical media like Sky News and The Australian newspaper, as well as serial election meddler, Elon Musk.

If Labor is unlikely to contest fearmongering about these issues it will fall to the LGBTQIA+ community, non-government human rights groups and everyday Australians to stand up for trans and gender-diverse people.

Naturally, we should make the case that transgender Australians already experience high levels of discrimination, hate and suicide which fear campaigns make worse.

I believe another important argument, especially against a Liberal Party fear campaign, is personal freedom from government meddling.

Young trans people, together with their parents and doctors, should decide what treatment is best.

The government has no role dictating a one-size-fits-all response to the healthcare of young trans Australians.

The 2004 same-sex marriage ban eventually had the opposite effect to the one intended.

It led to a determined, persistent campaign for marriage equality that delivered a strong majority of Australians in support for reform in 2017.

I have no doubt trans fearmongering in the 2025 election would eventually have the same positive effect, fostering greater respect for the humanity of trans and gender-diverse people.

But before then, the nation faces a likely attack on some of our most vulnerable young people.

The more of us stand with these young people, the quicker Australia will evolve to embrace gender diversity.

• Rodney Croome AM is a long-time LGBTQIA+ human rights advocate.
• Support is available for those who may be distressed. PhoneLifeline 13 11 14

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#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #LGBTQIA+ #Transphobia #Homophobia #Racism #Trans #TransRightsAreHumanRights #GayRights #WomensRights #Misogyny #FsckThePatriarchy #fsckALLreligion #RWNJs #FsckRWNJs #FsckChristoFacists #ChangeTheSystem #FuckAroundAndFindOut #Misanthropy #GayRepresentation #LesbianRepresentation #TransRepresentation #transwoman #transwomen