Albanese must play hardball with gambling industry
Highway to hell
I wholly empathise with Thomas Mitchell's opinion piece (' In a jam, don't tell me which lane is faster ', May 11). I feel his anguish, especially when motoring along a freeway when a 'roadworks ahead' sign appears, providing a clear indication that things are about to slow down. Invariably, the back seat driver occupying the front passenger seat pipes up 'they're moving over to the right, darling'. Knowing it was meant helpfully, I indicate and merge to the right. Fury soon sets in, for as sure as tradies drive utes, several of those oversized pick-up trucks go whizzing by in the left lane, intent on barging into the queue ahead. With thoughts of 'I just knew I shouldn't have listened to him', the steam billowing from my ears promptly fogs up the windscreen. Mary Carde, Parrearra (Qld)
Thomas Mitchell wrote another fun article in Sunday's paper (' In a jam, don't tell me which lane is faster ', May 11). He mentioned the 'Baby on Board' sticker. His comments about it reflect the erroneous view of most motorists. It is not a sticker to proclaim that others should drive more carefully around you because you may have a precious person inside. It was conceived as an alert to emergency workers that in the event of an accident they will always look to save a baby first. Susan Haylock, Mosman
Maley, Huntley hit the mark
What a delight it was to read two excellent articles analysing the election results. Jacqueline Maley's article details the key points from the post-election reviews conducted by the Liberal Party in 2016, 2019 and 2022 (' The Liberals still refusing to learn from their history with women,' May 11). She concludes very accurately that they have never been comfortable with feminism, and that this is a critical component in addressing equality and improving productivity. Rebecca Huntley's article includes the startling statistic that 'Australia added more renewable capacity to the energy system than the entirety of the Coalition's nuclear plan' (' Toxic fallout assured if Coalition sticks to nuclear ', May11). It was simply astounding that the Liberals depended on a consultancy to work on a completely new direction for Australia's energy needs – for free. No wonder they declined to do more work on it to give us an idea of how much energy would actually cost. The downer was Parnell Palme McGuinness' article (' Libs' failure needs a paternity test ', May 11). A paternity test points the party backwards to Howard or even Menzies. This misses the points of progress needed as described in the first two articles. To conclude that 'Albanese was the lesser of two evils' denies the focused and cohesive policies put forward by Labor to progress Australia. Bill Johnstone, Blackheath
Rebecca Huntley's research underscores the federal election result. Intuitively, renewable energy feels the right fit for our vast continent, where the sun shines and the wind blows across millions of square kilometres. It would be right for Australia even without alarm over climate change. The long view of history will look back on fossil fuels as only ever an interim source of energy – eventually superseded, like horse power and steam engines. The transition to renewables may not always go smoothly, but home-based energy security and sustainability have immense appeal in a world where uncertainty prevails. Margaret Johnston, Paddington
What an interesting article from Rebecca Huntley about nuclear power and its effect on the election result. She also discussed the relative popularity of renewable energy in Australia. Hidden at the bottom of the article was an interesting assertion that last year Australia added more renewable capacity to the energy system than the entirety of the Coalition's nuclear plan. If true, I have to ask first, why on earth did the Coalition put forward such a costly, problematic, taxpayer-funded scheme? Was it a death wish? Second, why did Labor not provide this information as part of their election campaign? Power supply is such an important part of the economy that Australians should know more about it. Can I suggest a new 'Power Supply' section in the Herald? A Daily Power Dashboard could be useful showing yesterday's power usage and which power source it came from, including the working life of power stations. With some actual data, maybe we could take some of the politics out of this important topic. Dick Barker, Epping
Jacqueline Maley's opinion piece rightly draws attention to the Liberal Party's own analysis of its 'woman problem'. It's not like they haven't figured it out, it's just that they are apparently unable to change. In my view, people have a tendency to overrate their uniqueness. Everyone who ends up with a ministerial portfolio is faced with a steep learning curve. If they are willing and able to knuckle down and learn, they can master it. Gender is irrelevant. As for feminism, I always thought the power at the core of that idea was its potential to liberate everyone, not just biological women. If it had worked as the ultimate force for change in the human world, we would all be liberated from restrictive ideas about gender differences. Garry Feeney, Kingsgrove
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Sydney Morning Herald
26 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
In the current climate, the Coalition looks cooked
'We are in that situation with the Liberals,' with the electoral changeover to new generations of Australian voters, says Samaras. 'The Libs are extra vulnerable to takeover at the ballot box. If the teals can form a network or coalition or whatever you want to call it, they could be it. They could push the Liberals completely off the electoral map.' While there are fewer than 10 Liberal-held seats in the cities available for possible teal takeover, there are country seats that could be open to challenge by community independents like Helen Haines, who represents the predominantly rural Victorian seat of Indi. Rather than rage against climate realities and renewables investment, Haines is preoccupied with making the transition work for her constituents. She's proposed a 20 per cent share in the profits from big renewable projects for regional communities, for instance. Climate wasn't always a losing argument for the Coalition. It won some of the critical early battles of the climate wars. Barnaby Joyce was the original Coalition climate warrior. From the Nationals backbench, he illuminated the political pathway for Tony Abbott to follow. Climate scepticism worked for Tony 'climate change is crap' Abbott. It worked for Scott 'lump of coal' Morrison, until it did not. It did not work for Peter 'nuke 'em' Dutton. And it won't work for Sussan 'moderniser' Ley. If she goes there. But, thanks to the Nationals, it might not much matter. Because Barnaby, once again, is leading the Coalition into the rejection of climate change policy in all its manifestations. His current campaign is to abolish the Nationals' commitment to net zero. Which seems odd. Because he was the party's leader who signed on to net zero in a deal with then-prime minister Scott Morrison only four years ago. Even 'lump of coal' Morrison could see that Australia would be marooned, missing out on the global $US200 trillion ($311 trillion) renewables investment boom, unless it could commit to the bare minimum of plausible climate policy – net zero emissions by 2050. Such national responsibilities mean nothing to the rabble-rousing Joyce and company. The populist obscurantists in the Nats are more interested in incendiaries than investments. They only agreed to Morrison's net zero plan because he bribed them with some $30 billion in government spending promises plus an extra seat in the cabinet. But today there are no bribes on offer. Opposition parties have no access to the Treasury or seats in the cabinet. So Joyce is unchecked. He's been joined by his former rival for the Nationals leadership, Michael McCormack. They have enough internal support and momentum to succeed. The man supposed to be leading them, David Littleproud, is meekly following them. Not formally, not yet, but it seems inevitable that he will. His job is on the line otherwise. 'The Nats will be great,' says Samaras. 'They're not losing anything out of this. Their rural constituencies are older and their seats are safe.' Joyce & Co are fomenting a country-versus-city resentment – the countryside is being destroyed by toxic solar farms and fascist new power lines so that rich city investors can make money from them. But the Liberals? What do they do? They don't have a formal position at the moment. It's under review, and the party is divided. One argument is that they adopted net zero and lost anyway. So why not ditch it? The counter is that they didn't lose because of net zero, that it was overshadowed by an unpopular nuclear reactor plan. And that a party that aspires to government must have a credible climate and energy policy as a prerequisite to power. Loading But the Liberals face a wicked dilemma. With their junior Coalition partner exuberantly trampling climate change for the next three years, the Libs will have three options. One, join the Nats and suffer more electoral damage. The Liberals were all but driven out of the cities in the May election. Of the 88 seats classified by the Electoral Commission as metropolitan, Labor holds 71. The Liberals hold just nine. They can't aspire to government without a recovery in the cities. And if they embrace Barnaby's climate policy, they can pretty much forget about that. Two, the Libs can outline a separate policy and spend three years arguing with the Nats over it, which would be divisive and ugly. And how do you take two conflicting policies to an election? Three, the Libs can terminate the Coalition and go solo, much as Littleproud did by splitting with the Libs in the Eight-Day War in May. But that would be likely to mean being sentenced to permanent opposition – or oblivion – for both. The Libs don't have enough seats in their own right, and the Nationals don't have enough votes and rely on Liberal preferences. When Barnaby first launched the climate wars over a dozen years ago, they were directed against Labor. Today, the Nats' climate war is waged against the Liberals just as much. A war against the enemy has turned into a war against the supposed ally. It's not that Labor's renewables plan is rolling out smoothly. One of the gurus, Ross Garnaut, gave a damning speech this week calling the energy transition 'sick'. The entire national enterprise was 'on a path to comprehensive failure'. There is a big and rich political fight to be had. Not in raging against the reality of climate change or the advantages of energy transition, but in interrogating the government's execution of it. The smart course for the Coalition is not to attack Labor's goals but its incompetence in reaching them. A colleague of Kos Samaras, fellow Redbridge director and former Liberal campaign chief Tony Barry, sees the opportunity cost of the Nats' climate crusade: 'There are massive problems with the rollout for [Minister for Climate Change and Energy] Chris Bowen, and if Barnaby Joyce retired tomorrow he'd be beside himself. Barnaby keeps giving him a 'get out of jail' card.' Loading As the pollster for this masthead, Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic, puts it: 'The public debate about climate change is largely over, but the conversation about what to do about it, how urgently and at what cost still rages.' But a Coalition lost in delusion and distraction can't prosecute these real problems while it's caught up in ideological and irrelevant ones. 'The Liberals,' concludes Samaras, 'are in the killing zone'. It's just that, like the Black Knight, the Coalition seems unable to grasp the reality of its situation. As the victorious Arthur goes on his way, the Black Knight, now legless as well as armless, demands that the king come back and keep fighting. 'What are you going to do, bleed on me?' retorts Arthur.
The Age
26 minutes ago
- The Age
In the current climate, the Coalition looks cooked
'We are in that situation with the Liberals,' with the electoral changeover to new generations of Australian voters, says Samaras. 'The Libs are extra vulnerable to takeover at the ballot box. If the teals can form a network or coalition or whatever you want to call it, they could be it. They could push the Liberals completely off the electoral map.' While there are fewer than 10 Liberal-held seats in the cities available for possible teal takeover, there are country seats that could be open to challenge by community independents like Helen Haines, who represents the predominantly rural Victorian seat of Indi. Rather than rage against climate realities and renewables investment, Haines is preoccupied with making the transition work for her constituents. She's proposed a 20 per cent share in the profits from big renewable projects for regional communities, for instance. Climate wasn't always a losing argument for the Coalition. It won some of the critical early battles of the climate wars. Barnaby Joyce was the original Coalition climate warrior. From the Nationals backbench, he illuminated the political pathway for Tony Abbott to follow. Climate scepticism worked for Tony 'climate change is crap' Abbott. It worked for Scott 'lump of coal' Morrison, until it did not. It did not work for Peter 'nuke 'em' Dutton. And it won't work for Sussan 'moderniser' Ley. If she goes there. But, thanks to the Nationals, it might not much matter. Because Barnaby, once again, is leading the Coalition into the rejection of climate change policy in all its manifestations. His current campaign is to abolish the Nationals' commitment to net zero. Which seems odd. Because he was the party's leader who signed on to net zero in a deal with then-prime minister Scott Morrison only four years ago. Even 'lump of coal' Morrison could see that Australia would be marooned, missing out on the global $US200 trillion ($311 trillion) renewables investment boom, unless it could commit to the bare minimum of plausible climate policy – net zero emissions by 2050. Such national responsibilities mean nothing to the rabble-rousing Joyce and company. The populist obscurantists in the Nats are more interested in incendiaries than investments. They only agreed to Morrison's net zero plan because he bribed them with some $30 billion in government spending promises plus an extra seat in the cabinet. But today there are no bribes on offer. Opposition parties have no access to the Treasury or seats in the cabinet. So Joyce is unchecked. He's been joined by his former rival for the Nationals leadership, Michael McCormack. They have enough internal support and momentum to succeed. The man supposed to be leading them, David Littleproud, is meekly following them. Not formally, not yet, but it seems inevitable that he will. His job is on the line otherwise. 'The Nats will be great,' says Samaras. 'They're not losing anything out of this. Their rural constituencies are older and their seats are safe.' Joyce & Co are fomenting a country-versus-city resentment – the countryside is being destroyed by toxic solar farms and fascist new power lines so that rich city investors can make money from them. But the Liberals? What do they do? They don't have a formal position at the moment. It's under review, and the party is divided. One argument is that they adopted net zero and lost anyway. So why not ditch it? The counter is that they didn't lose because of net zero, that it was overshadowed by an unpopular nuclear reactor plan. And that a party that aspires to government must have a credible climate and energy policy as a prerequisite to power. Loading But the Liberals face a wicked dilemma. With their junior Coalition partner exuberantly trampling climate change for the next three years, the Libs will have three options. One, join the Nats and suffer more electoral damage. The Liberals were all but driven out of the cities in the May election. Of the 88 seats classified by the Electoral Commission as metropolitan, Labor holds 71. The Liberals hold just nine. They can't aspire to government without a recovery in the cities. And if they embrace Barnaby's climate policy, they can pretty much forget about that. Two, the Libs can outline a separate policy and spend three years arguing with the Nats over it, which would be divisive and ugly. And how do you take two conflicting policies to an election? Three, the Libs can terminate the Coalition and go solo, much as Littleproud did by splitting with the Libs in the Eight-Day War in May. But that would be likely to mean being sentenced to permanent opposition – or oblivion – for both. The Libs don't have enough seats in their own right, and the Nationals don't have enough votes and rely on Liberal preferences. When Barnaby first launched the climate wars over a dozen years ago, they were directed against Labor. Today, the Nats' climate war is waged against the Liberals just as much. A war against the enemy has turned into a war against the supposed ally. It's not that Labor's renewables plan is rolling out smoothly. One of the gurus, Ross Garnaut, gave a damning speech this week calling the energy transition 'sick'. The entire national enterprise was 'on a path to comprehensive failure'. There is a big and rich political fight to be had. Not in raging against the reality of climate change or the advantages of energy transition, but in interrogating the government's execution of it. The smart course for the Coalition is not to attack Labor's goals but its incompetence in reaching them. A colleague of Kos Samaras, fellow Redbridge director and former Liberal campaign chief Tony Barry, sees the opportunity cost of the Nats' climate crusade: 'There are massive problems with the rollout for [Minister for Climate Change and Energy] Chris Bowen, and if Barnaby Joyce retired tomorrow he'd be beside himself. Barnaby keeps giving him a 'get out of jail' card.' Loading As the pollster for this masthead, Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic, puts it: 'The public debate about climate change is largely over, but the conversation about what to do about it, how urgently and at what cost still rages.' But a Coalition lost in delusion and distraction can't prosecute these real problems while it's caught up in ideological and irrelevant ones. 'The Liberals,' concludes Samaras, 'are in the killing zone'. It's just that, like the Black Knight, the Coalition seems unable to grasp the reality of its situation. As the victorious Arthur goes on his way, the Black Knight, now legless as well as armless, demands that the king come back and keep fighting. 'What are you going to do, bleed on me?' retorts Arthur.
West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
New parliament, same old props for Anthony Albanese in ascendency
Midway through Question Time on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese received a yellow messenger envelope from which he extracted a slip of green plastic. Health Minister Mark Butler had already discreetly handed his own Medicare card to the Prime Minister minutes earlier. When Mr Albanese rose next, sure enough, he brandished the Medicare card that was never far from his hand during the election campaign. He was so wedded to the bit that, on the day he called the election, a staffer had to be dispatched to the Lodge to retrieve the green and gold card that had been forgotten on the early morning drive to visit the Governor-General. The reiteration of the familiar gesture during this first sitting of Parliament spoke to the Government's determination to focus attention on its delivery of election commitments. It wants to keep talking about what it's doing and sees the Opposition as irrelevant. The attitude shows as well in how Mr Albanese is approaching interacting with new Liberal leader Sussan Ley – or, rather, not interacting with her. He ignores her in the chamber and out of it. Even letters sent to his office go unanswered, where previously Peter Dutton's missives would at least be acknowledged. The Coalition meanwhile was determined to focus on the very topics Australians have just comprehensively shown they like Labor's approach to: health and energy. It didn't carry out any sustained test of brand new ministers Sam Rae (whose aged care portfolio has plenty that needs examining) or assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino, baffling people on both sides of politics. The toughest questions came from the crossbenchers, like Kate Chaney asking why just 5 per cent of the National Reconstruction Fund had been spent, or Helen Haines wondering what was happening for the nearly 90,000 older Australians waiting an extra four months for the home-care packages they urgently need. Ms Ley and her inner circle jettisoned their planned QT strategy on the fly the day Mr Albanese produced the Medicare card to instead hammer the Prime Minister on the cost of seeing a doctor. Despite the boosted bulk-billing incentives promised during the election not kicking in until November, they asked repeated questions about why it wasn't free now to see a doctor. Coalition frontbencher Melissa McIntosh brandished her own Medicare card along with a credit card during Monday's question time, earning her an admonishment from Speaker Milton Dick: 'The member will not use props!' Mr Albanese, too, received a light rap on the knuckles – 'I'm sure the Prime Minister will look after that card carefully and will continue with his answer' – but it didn't prevent his gleeful grandstanding. He delivered a lesson in the old adage of campaigning in poetry and governing in prose – and fine print. How many Australians today were using their credit card to see the GP? 'Too many is the answer, which is why we want 90 per cent by 2030 to just use this little card here, this piece of green and gold plastic,' Mr Albanese said. Energy Minister Chris Bowen could barely contain his enthusiasm at being given multiple opportunities to point out the Coalition's ongoing rift over net zero and climate policy. After the WA Liberals' State council used the weekend between the sitting weeks to call on the party to dump net zero, Mr Bowen linked Andrew Hastie's leadership ambitions with his enthusiastic support for the moves and hit job on local leader Basil Zempilas. 'The West Australian Liberal Party state council voted against net zero, the Leader of the Opposition in WA came out and disassociated himself from that which earned him an attack from the member for Canning,' Mr Bowen told Parliament. 'The member for Canning will undermine any leader of the opposition that he can find. He's taking a practice run in Perth for what he intends to do in Canberra, sometime in the next 12 months as we all know.' Ali France, who won Dickson from Mr Dutton, asked the first and last questions of the fortnight. 'How has the Albanese Labor Government been pursuing its agenda this fortnight? And how does this compare to other approaches in Parliament?' she inquired on Thursday. 'The Opposition have certainly been pursuing their own agenda – or, should I say, agendas, because there's more than one over there: fighting publicly over whether climate change is real and over whether they support net zero,' Mr Albanese said, continuing with a jibe about 'a split screen showing a split party'. The Prime Minister cautioned his caucus colleagues this week against hubris, telling them Labor had to maintain its humility and sense of service and purpose to keep in voters' good books. That hasn't stopped him and his trusty Leader of the House Tony Burke from rubbing their opponents' noses in the new way of doing things. This is compounded by the depth of the Government's frontbench and ranks of rising talent, in contrast to a decimated and divided Coalition. It's like a grand final team running on against an under-14s side, one longtime political observer put it. From slashing staff to slashing questions and committee leadership positions, they're taking advantage of Labor's numbers in both chambers and control of the ways of Parliament to hinder the Opposition's work in ways that will barely register with the public at large. Take the last-minute stunt on Thursday afternoon, where Labor did a switcheroo on the private members' business for Parliament's return at the end of this month, coming good on a threat to allow Nationals renegade Barnaby Joyce all the time in the world to debate his legislation to repeal net zero. Labor also backed the Greens to set up an examination of 'information integrity on climate change and energy', which might have escaped notice had the Greens not belled the cat on it being an inquiry into conservative campaign outfit Advance. The broad sense from Liberals willing to give her a chance is that Ms Ley's first parliamentary test went OK. She didn't make a splash, but she is giving voters a reason to look again at the party. The fights over net zero and soul-searching about the party's membership and women should have happened three years ago, Liberals from both sides of the party's broad church say. It might be leading to some pain now, but better now than on the eve of an election. Same goes for contributions like that of Longman MP Terry Young, who told Parliament the 'ridiculous practice' of quotas caused more problems than they solved. 'Men tend to be more drawn to vocations that involve maths and physical exertion like construction and trades, whereas women in the main tend to be drawn to careers that involve women and care and other people,' he said. The response from most Liberals asked about it was to put their head in their hands. It was a particularly stark contrast after a week of first speeches from Labor's two dozen new MPs, most of them women and many from diverse backgrounds. They told varied and often emotional stories of what had brought them to Parliament. But the one uniting strand throughout the speeches was their genuinely heartfelt thanks to Mr Albanese — far more so than is typical. Again and again the new MPs thanked him for believing in them when no one else did, for campaigning in their seat despite many writing it off, for asking them to run in the first place. 'Advice given to us when preparing our first speech was that it wouldn't be a bad career move to put in a 'thank you' to the Prime Minister,' Rowan Holzberger, who won the Queensland seat of Forde, said. 'Of course, I want to thank him for his performance during the campaign … But I really want to thank him for being like a big brother.' Once the excitement of the new dynamics of Parliament wears off and the Prime Minister falls back into old habits, there is potential for his bulging 123-member caucus to grow restless and unruly. The deep and personal loyalty to a leader on display during these speeches shows Mr Albanese will have as firm a grip on his party room as he does his Medicare card.
