Joyce & Public Interest
In my Commentary yesterday I suggested that various aspects of Joyce’s “affair” with staffer Vicki Campion were of public interest and not simply a “private” matter, as Joyce (and some other Coalition Ministers) had suggested. Today’s media has now woken up to the public interest (some journalists apparently knew about the affair some months ago) and have written about it, albeit in mostly soft tones. But Andrew Bolt identifies a number of questions which require answers (see Joyce’s Affair is of Public Interest),
Battles on Climate Policy
In my Commentary last Saturday 20 Jan I referred to my battle to persuade The Australian to publish a letter critical of analysis on climate policy by Energy Minister Frydenberg and to my success in eventually having a shortened version published. This is attached together with two others praising the 19 Jan article by climate expert Bjorn Lomborg arguing that, even if fully implemented, the Paris climate agreement would have a much smaller effect in preventing temperature increases than predicted but would be incredibly expensive and could very well exacerbate hunger.
US Foreign Policy, Frydenberg’s Energy Policy & Trump’s Medical Test
The US Secretary of State , Tillerson, has made a major speech in which he effectively says the US will increase its political and military roles in the Middle East.The attached report by the Washington Post (not generally supportive of Trump) says: “Tillerson listed vanquishing al-Qaeda, ousting Iran and securing a peace settlement that excludes President Bashar al-Assad as among the goals of a continued presence in Syria of about 2,000 American troops currently deployed in a Kurdish-controlled corner of northeastern Syria. His comments represented the most comprehensive and ambitious articulation of Washington’s often-contradictory policy in Syria since President Trump took office a year ago, and they underline the extent to which the war against the Islamic State has inevitably also entangled the United States in the region’s other conflicts.
Existing Climate Policy Could Cause Further Energy Price Rises
As we enter the New Year many ask what happened last year and what is likely to happen this year. Not surprisingly, the climate is a point of focus as is whether Australian governments’ policies to reduce carbon emissions are working. Also not surprising is that there are fundamental differences in opinion about the merits of those policies, not the least being Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and his recent failure to mention in a major security statement.
Turnbull A Gonna & High Cost of Energy Policies.
Turnbull is Finished, But…
Today’s media is replite with analyses which, although not actually saying that Turnbull is finished as PM, leave the reader with little else but to conclude that this is the case. Below is a summary of conclusions by several commentators
Qld Election and COAG Meeting Negatives for Turnbull
Although as this is written more than 30% of votes still need to be counted, it now looks almost certain that Labor will be returned and may even have a majority of seats. As the ABC election expert Green says,even if Premier Palaszczuk “falls a seat short, she doesn't have to do any deals. She can leave it to the Parliament to vote her out, because it would be unlikely that all the crossbench would vote against them at once. "It is a fixed-term Parliament — the Government can't just resign and walk out of office and leave someone else to form government — they can't do that, so somebody will form government. "So it is very hard to see how anyone other than Annastacia Palaszczuk can form government in the new Parliament. "They have a certain 46, and they only need one more vote and at the moment we are giving them another two seats on a prediction." (see Labor to Win in Qld Election). Note the failure of One Nation while the Kapper party may get two seats.
Turnbull Which way Which way
Turnbull’s decision to postpone by a week the resumption of Parliament, and his “guidance” to MPs that it should then focus for a couple of weeks on debating the same sex marriage legislation, has not been favourably received. It is widely seen as being an attempt to be “dodge the music” and extend the time at which Parliament would not be considering policy issues. His subsequent speech to the Business Council, where the main message was that his government wants to” ease the burden on middle-income Australians and at the same time return the budget to surplus”, hasn’t been well received either. Turnbull’s explanation (sic) that he is only “actively working” on preventing the otherwise higher tax burden through bracket creep is unlikely to persuade voters that he should stay as leader.
Turnbull’s Leadership Dwindles Further
As soon as Turnbull arrived back in Australia from his visit to Israel for the BeerSheba, he held a press conference in Perth at which he rejected the idea of having an audit to determine whether MPs have complied with the constitutional requirement of having no foreign ancestry or, if so, of having renounced it before becoming federal MPs. He particularly attacked reports that Frydenberg might be deemed to be of Hungarian ancestry because his mother was born in Hungary but escaped the killing of Jews there and migrated to Australia. Frydenberg is reported as telling the ABC that “I did seek some advice and I am very confident with that advice but also contacted the embassy here and I was very comforted by conversations with them”.
In The Right Direction?
The kerfuffle over the ministerial handling of the Australian Federal Police raids on the Australian Workers Union raises serious questions about why the Turnbull government timed such action now and whether Turnbull himself was more closely involved than appears in the media. It followed Turnbull’s decision to announce a new energy policy with important details absent and a promise that these will be “explained” in due course. These “rush” decisions by Turnbull may well be connected with an attempt to lift his continued disastrous polling in Newspoll and prevent any move to replace him before Christmas. Yet an examination of recent developments suggests the polling is now more likely to fall than even stay put.
A Victory for Turnbull?
The week-end’s Media assessment of Turnbull’s New Energy Guarantee (NEG) is generally favourable, but withTerry McCrann predicting an extremely unfavourable outcome for the Coalition viz
“Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg have made a deliberate decision to lose the next election and to lose it badly. The rest of the joint party room voted to endorse the decision, an indeterminate number of Liberal and National members voting for an early retirement. This is the irresistible and even more the irredeemable political consequence of the Turnbull-Frydenberg decision to opt for a policy of (only trying) “to keep the lights on” over a policy of significantly and quickly cutting both electricity and gas prices. Far less, the third, but first-best, option — the option, begging to be embraced by a half-rational government that had the most minimalist understanding of political dynamics — of aggressively aiming to deliver both more and more reliable power and cheaper and sustainably cheaper power”.