It’s a truly terrible realisation, but the person most like Peter Slipper in the current Australian Parliament is none other than Tony Abbott.
You don’t, or at least don’t want to, believe this? Then, as Gough Whitlam might say, compare and contrast.
Both are vigorous men; highly ambitious and committed politicians. Both went to exclusive schools and on to university to study law. Both are now conservative Christians and militant monarchists with a zeal for their causes which occasionally upsets their more cautious colleagues. Both are married with children.
For a time at least their shared positions and interests apparently drew them together: Abbott was a welcome guest at Slipper’s wedding and as recently as 2010 spoke glowingly as the man was endorsed for the ninth time by the Coalition to represent them in the federal Parliament; indeed, they even voted for him as their sole nominee for the high office of deputy speaker.
It was Slipper who cast the final vote to enable Abbott to knock off Malcolm Turnbull in 2009; if he had been able to repeat the act to make Abbott prime minister a year later, his grateful leader would have happily kissed him on both cheeks, or probably all four.
But how it has all changed. We are now assured that Abbott knew Slipper was pretty suss all along and that the party was planning to deny him preselection next time around.
Well, true, but this was only because a heavier candidate, the former Howard minister Mal Brough, wanted his seat. It had very little to do with the many allegations of rorting and misconduct which Abbott and his colleagues had known about, and studiously ignored, for at least six years.
Now suddenly they have become hanging offences. As a boxer, Abbott was forced to abide by Queensberry rules, but he has abandoned them in his single-minded desire to sink the Slipper. No, not quite single-minded: he would also like to stomp Craig Thomson, a comparative stranger but another who is standing in the way of Abbott’s overweening ambition.
And his relentless pursuit of both is at least starting to pay off: the media have responded to Abbott’s campaign to such an extent that Julia Gillard has been forced to abandon her commitment to the presumption of innocence and sideline them both.
Slipper will not return to the chair until all is resolved, which will take months, and Thomson has been suspended from the Labor caucus for a similarly indefinite period.
Abbott says this does not count because Thomson still intends to vote with the government and Gillard intends to accept his vote; but once again, Abbott is exhibiting a selective memory, not to mention weaselling hypocrisy.
He was a member of John Howard’s government in 1996, when the prime minister lured Labor’s Mal Colston to rat in the Senate with the offer of the deputy president’s job. Colston accepted, but was forced to stand down from the chair when his former party brought allegations of rorting his travel allowances against him – sound familiar?
But unlike Slipper in the House of Representatives, Colston still had a deliberative vote in the Senate. For a while Howard virtuously rejected it, but then found he needed it and grabbed it – at a time when Colston, unlike Slipper or Thomson, had actually been charged with defrauding the government and was awaiting trial.
Howard’s excuse? Well, the man was entitled to the presumption of innocence, wasn’t he?
It has all been very unedifying and Gillard is right to say that it is bringing the Parliament into disrepute at a time when that august institution needs all the help it can get. But just who is responsible for dragging the place down?
Read the rest, with full links, on The Drum here
• ABC Online: Opposition hits 10-year high in Newspoll
The latest Newspoll gives the Coalition an 18-point lead over Labor on a two-party preferred basis.
The 59-41 result puts the Opposition at its strongest point in more than a decade and is up three points on the previous Newspoll in mid-April.
The poll of 1,150 voters taken over the weekend has a margin for error of 3 per cent.
Labor’s primary vote fell two points to 27 per cent while the Coalition’s primary vote is 51 per cent.
• ABC Online: The Bernie Fraser broadside
Former Reserve Bank governor and Treasury secretary Bernie Fraser has launched a broadside at both sides of politics, accusing them of failing to maintain a compassionate and fair society.
In an interview with ABC1’s 7.30 program, Mr Fraser savaged Treasurer Wayne Swan’s insistence on delivering a budget surplus next week, and called for the RBA board to slash the cash rate by a full 50 basis points when it meets today.
Mr Fraser, who ran the Treasury, then the Reserve Bank during Labor’s long reign in the 1980s and ’90s, was scathing about the present Government’s record, arguing its incompetence and mismanagement has paved the way for an “extreme ideology of small government” in Australia.
“The last 20 years or so we’ve had conservative governments and Labor governments and in terms of my benchmark – competence, fairness, and compassion – they both failed and they’re both failing,” he said.
“Still, the more distressing thing is I don’t see a way out from either side. For a long time I’ve thought Australia could become something of special country, a demonstration of a country that was competitive, fair, and compassionate, and I’m afraid those hopes have been dashed.
“We’ve had 20 years of uninterrupted growth – solid sustained growth for 20 years – and yet we’ve got more homelessness, the distribution of income and wealth is more unequal now than it was 20 years ago, we’ve got infrastructure, social and economic, that is breaking down and creaking.”
His comments come as the Federal Government ramps up its rhetoric about fairness and equity.
Read the rest, ABC Online here
• SMH: Reserve slashes interest rates
• TFGA: Davis says watch the banks’ response
Banks have to pass on the full 0.5 per cent cut in interest rates to farmers, Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association chief executive Jan Davis said today.
“Anything less and we will feel short-changed,” Ms Davis said.
“The cut is a clear indication that inflation has to be held in check. Commodity prices are softening and we see no indication of the high Australian dollar coming down and that does not help farmers.”
Ms Davis said farmers saw it as an act of faith that the banks passed on the full rate cut.
“Each will be judged on its response,” she said.
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• RATE CUT RAISES QUESTIONS OVER BUDGET SURPLUS MANTRA
Banks Need to Pass on Rate Cut in Full
Tim Morris MP
Greens Treasury Spokesperson
The Tasmanian Greens today said the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to cut the official interest rates by 0.50% raised further questions about the need to cut services simply to keep the State Budget in surplus.
Greens Treasury spokesperson Tim Morris MP said that it was important to ensure the State Budget does remain in surplus across the economic cycle but that the RBA’s decision yesterday was further evidence that now is not the time to be drastically cutting vital services that support people and business.
“In cutting the official rate by 50 basis points the RBA is providing the leadership that, if passed on by the retail banking sector, will stimulate the private sector by ensuring the cost of borrowing is significantly lower,” Mr Morris said.
“The rate cut is great news for mortgage holders and small businesses, but it’s further evidence that a more flexible approach is needed to the State Budget’s fiscal strategy to ensure there are no further cuts to essential services while the budget is put on a sustainable footing,”
“This goes to demonstrate that the Greens were on the money with our preferred position that a managed deficit plan, as part of a longer-term fiscal strategy, should be adopted rather than just relying on budget cuts.”
“Instead of slavishly following the mantra that Budgets must remain in permanent surplus, Tasmania needs a fiscal strategy that allows for a surplus across the economic cycle but isn’t afraid to go into deficit as a planed management measure.”
“The good news is that the if banks do cut rates by the full 50 basis points it will give a boost to investment, consumer spending and confidence across the economy, which will flow directly through to future State Revenue.”
“The economic dogma that the budgets must be kept in surplus every year is therefore motivated more by political fear mongering than by rational economic decision making,” Mr Morris said.
