Poltics
Effectively, what was all that about? After having its agenda stymied for most of the last two and a half years, Labor came upon it wished suitable half a billion dollars and some minor concessions to accept the all at as soon as compliant Greens to start the legislative floodgates, ending the parliamentary year with a bang.
The Apartment of Representatives returned this morning to rubber stamp a quantity of bills arriving back from the Senate, together with the obligatory on-line ID bill, another of many black marks on this Parliament. How Labor whinged and whined when the Howard authorities, in fat hubris mode after the 2004 election, passe its withhold watch over of the Senate to conduct three-day inquiries into major bills — but right here was Labor operating a farcical non-inquiry into a major intrusion on privacy conjured up by the dying mainstream media industry. Richard Alston must be gay — Australia’s status as a global village idiot that he labored so hard to achieve remains safe for several years to near.
The authorities’s other stitch-up with the Coalition, on political funding, has vanished into subsequent year and will expectantly never be viewed again, given the likelihood Albanese will call an election earlier than Parliament resumes in February. That would have near as a shock while you relied solely on the 9 papers, which had repeatedly insisted the Coalition was in the back of the bill, but that’s what happens when journalists simply repeat Don Farrell’s claims without scrutiny.
In lieu of the political spending stitch-up returning in February, Farrell will have the honour of being answerable for a actually spectacular failure on electoral integrity. He had a mandate to implement Labor’s election dedication of a $1,000 donation disclosure threshold and real-time disclosure, and may have easily completed so even with the opposition of the Coalition at any time over the last two and a half years. Even that would have represented a significant step forward for the farcical donations disclosure regime at the Commonwealth diploma. Instead, Farrell and Labor made up our minds it had larger fish to fry in relation to revenge on Clive Palmer and choking off the threat of independents at a time when the major party vote is collapsing.
The last-minute hasten brought some better legislation, nevertheless. Australia will now have a original statutory tort to address critical invasions of privacy, a long-late reform finally advised via by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus as part of a substantial reform of the Privacy Act (though the anti-doxxing sections of the same bill, specifically drafted to offer protection to those that want to ruin others’ careers for the crime of protesting genocide, belong in the garbage with the obligatory on-line ID legislation and Farrell’s stitch-up).
Labor also climaxed this period of time’s competition policy reforms with an overhaul of merger approval laws — extra snappy than Crikey predicted mid-year. The legislation itself won’t extinguish the spectacle of the pro-colossal trade Australian Opponents Tribunal overturning brilliant Australian Opponents and User Charge (ACCC) choices to block mergers, nevertheless it caps what has been the most important parliamentary period of time for strengthening competition for over a decade. The ACCC’s Gina Cass-Gottlieb has been an important part of that with the regulator — encouraged by Labor — pursuing landmark cases against Qantas and the colossal supermarkets; these of us who said she’d be a dud are having to regularly eat our phrases. If only Labor may overcome its unusual mental block about divestiture powers.
Simon Birmingham also said his farewell yesterday, bringing to an extinguish nearly 18 years in the Senate and thus marking another step in the gradual deliberalisation of the Liberal Party. Birmingham had a few ministerial stints in his time, but he may clean remembered as the education minister who first cleaned up Labor’s mess around vocational education institutions and then, with the encouragement of Malcolm Turnbull, actually tried to offer us a fairer education funding system in 2018. It’s forgotten now, but after a succession of stressed policy positions on education funding and the Gonski reforms beneath Tony Abbott, the Liberals beneath Turnbull made up our minds to actually strive imposing the original Gonski reforms successfully — without the Gillard authorities’s politically motivated handouts to the Catholic sector.
Labor beneath Invoice Shorten, nevertheless, made up our minds to accept some payback for all these years of Coalition claims that Labor had a private faculty hit checklist, and launched a cynical campaign to defend excessive funding for Catholic faculties. Birmingham and Turnbull fought hard to implement suitable policy earlier than having to succumb to Labor’s craven renounce to the Catholic lobby. Australia would have a better and fairer system of faculty funding if Birmingham had won.
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