Among the many lessons to be learnt by Australia’s defeated Liberal-National coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation.

Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?

The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.

Last Thursday, in her eponymous programme on Sky News Australia, Markson said:

For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.

Sharri Markson issues own Dutton endorsement as ACM says ‘Australia is Tanya Plibersek’https://t.co/UYh0xKeXPR

— amanda meade (@meadea) May 2, 2025

After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sun admonishing voters:

No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed. Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies.

That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the coalition in their election eve editorials.

Repudiation of minor culture war
The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Peter Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error.

The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.

But they were either voting for the coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the coalition desperately needed to keep onside — the moderates who already felt disappointed by the coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.

Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the coalition no longer represented their values.

Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message.

But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.

What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing — which voters desperately wanted to hear — were little more than sound bites.

Steered clear of nuclear sites
This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.

Dutton has come out this morning to say his biggest regret was not attending more petrol stations. #auspol #ausvotes #qanda #abc730 pic.twitter.com/sbd6GWpElR

— C h r i s 🏳️‍🌈 @chrishehim.bsky.social 🦋 (@ChrisHeHim1) May 4, 2025

The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.

On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some coalition supporters might assume.

He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.

Instead, the coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.

Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.

The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief-of-staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.

Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd  is professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

To be Jewish does not mean an automatic identification with the rogue state of Israel. Nor does it mean that Jews are automatically threatened by criticism of Israel, yet our media and Labor and Liberal politicians would have you believe this is the case.

We are seeing a debate in Australia about the so-called rise of antisemitism which includes rally chants for Gaza at a time when we are witnessing the most horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians in which our government is complicit.

Jewish peak bodies here and internationally have continually linked their identity to that of Israel.

Why? Can generations of Jews in this country still believe that Israel represents anything like the myths that were perpetrated at its inception?

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Jewish Board of Deputies and others, all staunchly defend this apartheid state that is accused of plausible genocide by the UN International Court of Justice and confirmed by dozens of human rights and legal NGOs, UN Rapporteurs, medical organisations and holocaust scholars.

Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister have been charged as war criminals by the International Criminal Court and must be arrested and tried in the Hague, yet Australia maintains a cosy relationship with Israel and our media dutifully repeats its outright lies verbatim.

Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been the main focus of the Israeli state and its defenders for decades. With the emergence of the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2005, Israel’s narrative was countered, leading to a persistent Israeli directed campaign to link BDS with antisemitism.

Colonial, occupying power
BDS focuses on the actions of Israel as a colonial, occupying power violating international law against the indigenous people of Palestine. It is anti-racist and human rights-centred.

On December 11, we heard Prime Minister Albanese at the Jewish Museum in Sydney combining his support for Jewish people with his ongoing condemnation and active campaigning against BDS.

He referred to the Marrickville Council BDS motion, (which I proposed back in 2010 along with my Greens councillor colleague, Marika Kontellis), and again repeated the bald-faced mistruths that were spread back then about BDS and the intent and focus of the Marrickville motion.

“I was part of a campaign against BDS in my own local government area. At the time I argued that if you start targeting businesses because they happen to be owned by Jewish people, you’ll end up with the Star of David above shops.

“And that ended in World War II, during the Holocaust, with six million lives lost, murdered. We need an end to antisemitism.”

In one sentence we see Albanese’s extremely offensive equation of the horror of the Holocaust and antisemitism, directly linked to BDS. Why would a prime minister and local federal member deliberately mischaracterise BDS, given the movement has always been clear that its targets are global companies and corporations that are complicit in the Israeli state’s apartheid and genocidal actions, as well as Israeli government bodies and arms companies?

What is in it for Albanese, Wong, Plibersek or Dutton and all of the politicians back in 2010/2011 who appeared to think there was political advantage in scapegoating BDS by jumping on the frenzied anti-BDS campaign?

Fawning support for Israel
It was obvious back then, as it is now, that their fawning support for the rogue Israeli state knows no bounds. Lock step in line with the United States outlier position, Australia has maintained its repugnant inaction in the face of 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza despite continued condemnation by the UN and a majority of states.

But Australia has, however, appointed a public supporter of Zionism and the Israeli state, as its special envoy on antisemitism.

The inaction by all states since 1948 to apply sanctions has gifted Israel the impunity that’s led to its industrial scale slaughter of innocents in Gaza and its continuing violence and killing of civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All governments must bear responsibility for this.

Albanese has been described as an opportunist, liar and a bully.

At the time of the Marrickville BDS, he used the situation to attempt to discredit the Greens who were challenging the incumbent Labor state member, Carmel Tebbutt (his former wife). He fanned the national media frenzy that was fed by pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists who were the long-time custodians of the “reputation” of Israel.

Marrickville Council and the Greens were characterised as antisemites who would be pulling Jewish books out of the local library.

This insanity was akin to what is happening today. The legitimate opposition to the worst, most egregious, brutality of the Israeli state has somehow been cleverly morphed into so-called expressions of antisemitism.

Absurd claims on protest
In the media conference of December 11, Albanese also made absurd claims that the peaceful 24-hour protest outside his electorate office in Marrickville was displaying Hamas symbols in a vile attempt to discredit the constituents he had refused to meet for more than eight months.

He and his colleagues in Canberra continue to appease the powerful Israel lobby at the expense of our rights and the rights and visibility of the whole Palestinian population here and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who are now literally on death row.

Back then, we heard locally that he and the party had bullied the four Labor councillors to vote to rescind the Marrickville BDS motion that they had all previously wholeheartedly supported. Some months earlier these same councillors had also supported a motion condemning the latest Israeli strike against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The meaning of BDS was no secret to them — they appreciated that it was important for a council to check its ethical purchasing guidelines to ensure that it was not supporting companies that were in violation of international human rights law by operating in the illegal Israeli settlements or by providing technology or services that maintained Israel’s apartheid and dispossession of Palestinians.

They knew then, as we know now, that this is not antisemitic. They knew then that no Jewish businesses per se were the target of this peaceful civil rights movement. And they knew then that the Labor Party was lying for political gain.

Now, as for far too many decades, political parties in power in this country have failed Palestinians for political gain and at the behest of Israel lobby groups which dare to speak on behalf of anti-Zionist Jews like me.

Despite all the gratuitous rhetoric, these politicians have failed to uphold the basic precepts of human rights law — rights they regularly give lip service to, but rights they will never defend by taking the action required of them as signatories to numerous UN conventions.

Australia must sanction Israel
To act with humanity and to act as required by international law, Australia must sanction and end all economic and military ties with the Israeli state.

We must expel the Israeli ambassador and bring our ambassador back and we must prosecute any Australian citizen or resident who has joined the IDF to kill Palestinians. We must also support Palestinian refugees and take all action necessary to assist those in Gaza for as long as it takes.

But as we have seen so clearly this year, most governments have not acted to pressure Israel to end its barbaric colonial project. To protest as allies and to call out the hypocrisy of governments and politicians that speak of a rules-based order while enabling a state that has continually breached fundamental human rights laws, is to be called antisemitic.

The pressure applied to governments, universities and the like in recent years to adopt the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism is precisely because it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

It’s the perfect tool for shutting down condemnation of Israel’s grave human rights violations. We’ve seen some universities and parliaments endorse it in deference to this pressure, despite the serious flaws that have been identified, including from Jewish Israeli experts.

Now more than ever BDS is imperative.

BDS campaigns will work to isolate Israel as it should be isolated until it complies with international law. Multinational companies are increasingly loath to be associated with this terror state.

Major pension funds are divesting from companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations and local councils, unions and universities are taking steps to ensure they divest from any partnerships or investments that would make them part of the chain of complicity and liable for prosecution by the International Court of Justice as enabling Israel’s genocide.

The facts are indisputable. Australia’s complicity with Israel’s genocide and colonisation of Palestine can be countered by individuals, churches, unions, councils and students taking immediate and urgent BDS action.

Do not wait for Labor or Liberal politicians in this country to act, as they are doing their best to shut us down and to appease Israel. Their complicity will never be forgotten.

Cathy Peters is a former Greens councillor on the Marrickville Council from 2008-2011 and the co-founder of BDS Australia. She worked as a radio producer and executive producer for the ABC for 30 years making some documentaries on the Israeli occupation. She is Jewish and her grandparents and other relatives perished in the Holocaust. She has travelled to Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories on a number of occasions and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights and justice. First published in the Australia social policy journal Pearls and Irritations and republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s decision to embark on a diplomatic offensive to outflank China in the Pacific within days of being sworn in has yielded what appears to have been an early success.

Whether Wong’s intervention gave Pacific leaders pause about a wide-ranging economic and security pact with China or they would have baulked anyway, the fact is Australian diplomacy can claim a dividend.

In the process, the country appears to have a new foreign minister who will engage in more creative and activist foreign policy then her predecessor.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s extensive tour of the Pacific has been aimed at extending Beijing’s influence in the region at a moment when regional leaders had grown restive about Australia’s commitment to its immediate neighbourhood.

The Morrison government’s equivocation on climate has not sat well with leaders of the Pacific’s micro-states.

Wong’s mission appears to have succeeded on three important fronts:

1. it has reassured Pacific neighbours that a new Labor government will do more than pay lip service to their concerns about climate and other issues
2. Wong has made it clear Canberra will not be reticent in contesting Beijing’s influence in the region
3. her mission has enabled her to assert her own authority early over the foreign policy and security reach of her portfolio.

This latter aspect will be important in how and in what form Australia responds to Chinese overtures aimed at achieving a re-set in relations.

Labor governments have long managed the relationship well
In one respect, the new Labor government has history on its side.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing.

All these years later, another Labor government has the opportunity to re-set Australia’s relations with the dominant regional player at a moment when the Indo-Pacific is undergoing profound change.

Few would reasonably argue against the proposition that a “re-set” is overdue after years of drift and ill-will under the Morrison government.

The question for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his national security team is how to proceed in a way that conforms with Australia’s national interest, is faithful to its values, and enables Canberra’s voice to be inserted in regional councils.

Wong has, for some time, been sketching out a more creative foreign policy approach — evident in her Pacific initiative — that will seek to expand Australia’s regional relationships and, where appropriate, take the lead in alignment with the country’s national interest.

In this sense, the joint communique on December 21 1972, signalling the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China, makes interesting reading.

Unlike Richard Nixon’s Shanghai communique of 1972, which fudged the Taiwan issue, the Whitlam government document is explicit.

The Australian government recognises the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China, and has decided to remove its official representation from Taiwan before 25 January, 1973.

Albanese and his security policy team can be sure this document will not be gathering dust in a Chinese Foreign Ministry archive.

China’s attachment to anniversaries is one of the more notable features of its diplomacy. These occasions may be used for political purposes, but history weighs heavily on Beijing’s foreign policy calculations.

Albanese government should jump on the promise of a thaw
When Prime Minister Li Keqiang promptly sent a congratulatory message to Albanese on the latter’s success in the recent election, Labor’s historic shift towards Beijing back in 1972 will not have been overlooked.

The wording of Li’s message was pointed. It said, in part, that China was:

ready to work with the Australian side to review the past, face the future, uphold principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit.

Beijing talks a lot about “mutual respect” and “mutual benefit”. These are phrases that are, more often that not, designed to deflect criticism of China’s human rights abuses and other bad behaviour.

But taken together with overtures for a “re-set” by the new Chinese ambassador in Canberra, Xiao Qian, Beijing has clearly decided it is in China’s interests to turn the page on a sour period between the countries.

Asked at his press conference after the conclusion of Quad talks in Tokyo about his response to the conciliatory message from Li, Albanese simply said:

I welcome that. And we will respond appropriately in time when I return to Australia.

In other responses to questions about troubled relations with China, the new prime minister has said it is up to Beijing to start removing sanctions on Australian exports.

These Albanese responses are prudent. There is no point in rushing to acknowledge such overtures. However, he would be making a mistake if he seeks to prolong what has the makings of a thaw.

He might remind himself that virtually all of Australia’s western allies, including America, have working relations with Beijing that enable officials to engage in a constructive dialogue, despite differences.

Australia’s first ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald, has some wise counsel for the new government in Canberra about how to better manage relations with Beijing.

Australia under a Labor government must now return to diplomacy, talking with the PRC, for which it is ready and putting away the megaphone of gratuitous criticism, insult and condemnation which were the hallmarks of Morrison’s China policy. If we do this, there will be many issues on which we can have constructive engagement.

One of these issues can — and should — be the continued detention in China of two Australian citizens, the journalist Cheng Lei and the democratic activist Yang Hengjun. Progress towards their release should be a condition of improved relations, along with removal of punitive tariffs on imports of such items as wine and barley.

Finally, Albanese’s security policy team should pay particular attention to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s landmark foreign policy speech delivered to the Asia Society in Washington on May 26.

In that speech, Blinken laid down guidelines for the conduct of relations with Beijing in a world whose foundations are shifting. His words bear repeating as a template for Canberra’s own interactions with Beijing.

We are not looking for conflict or a new Cold War […] We don’t seek to block China from its role as a major power […] But we will defend [the international order] and make it possible for all countries – including the United States and China – to coexist and co-operate.

Blinken’s attempts to define a workable China policy should be regarded in the same vein as another important statement delivered 17 years ago by then Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in New York. In that speech, Zoellick said:

We now need to encourage China to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system.

Blinken’s and Zoellick’s interventions, two decades apart, are important guardrails for a constructive relationship with China.

Dr Tony Walker is a vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Australia’s newly sworn-in Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, says the new Labor government “will be a generous, respectful and reliable member of the Pacific family”.

In a message addressing the region on Monday, Wong set the tone for Australia’s renewed priorities for its island neighbours.

Wong said Australia recognised climate change was “central to the security and well-being of the Pacific”.

She said the Labor government had heard the Pacific and would act to address the climate crisis.

She added Australia would also boost assistance to support the region’s pandemic recovery, enhance defence and maritime cooperation, as well as expand opportunities and improve the working conditions for more than 24,000 Pacific workers in Australia.

“I’ve become foreign minister at a time when our region faces unprecedented challenges. But we will face these challenges together, and we will achieve our shared aspirations together,” she said.

“We want to help build a stronger Pacific family. That is why we will do more, but we will also do it better. We will listen because we care what the Pacific has to say.”

The Australian Labor Party’s win in the 2022 general elections was its first such victory in almost a decade, defeating a conservative coalition government led by Scott Morrison.

While the count continues, Labor currently has 74 seats with independents holding 15 and the Liberal Coalition 53.

Labor needs 76 for an outright majority.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

You first have to lose an election on principle if you want to win one on principle.

This was how Labor rationalised the miscalculations that led to its “Don’s Party” disappointment in 1969, followed by the 1972 triumph of the “It’s Time” campaign.

Half a century later, the idea of sticking with unpopular policy seems romantic, unthinkable. Principles are not just old-hat in an era of professionalised politics, but absurd.

Swamped by voter-attitude metrics, modern democratic leaders are not leaders in the traditional sense. Rather, they are followers.

Followers of market researchers and media proprietors who disabuse them of ambitious conceits like national leadership, or anything that might tempt them to make changes based on electoral judgment, the national interest, or even ideology.

Still, a few months ago, one starry-eyed fool (to wit, this author) described the looming 2022 federal election as the most important national choice to be put before voters since that 1972 hinge-point.

If it was an invitation to Labor leader Anthony Albanese to paint in bold brushstrokes, he didn’t receive it.

Instead, Labor’s risk-averse policy presentation has largely mirrored the reform-shy government it seeks to replace. This makes for the least policy-divergent choice in the 50 years since 1972.

The 2022 election more closely resembles a velodrome match-sprint where the two riders have almost stopped on the banked section, each terrified of leading off and being overtaken in the final dash for the line.

Whitlam’s re-imagining
The 1972 comparison gets even harder when you look at former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s first month in office.

He promised to establish diplomatic relations with Peking (now Beijing), following his audacious trip to “Red China” in 1971. Imagine this (or any) opposition making a play of similar foreign policy gravity today.

Whitlam’s bold Australian re-imagining, which historian Stuart McIntyre later characterised as “a nationalism attuned to internationalism”, kick-started a lucrative economic co-dependency that has propelled Australian prosperity to this day. Hungry for commodities and services imports, China’s staggering growth has also insulated Australia through global shocks like the Asian Financial Crisis, Global Financial Crisis, and the covid-19 pandemic.

While the Coalition would no doubt have come to it eventually, Whitlam acted without hesitation or American permission. Crucially, he backed his capacity to explain it to the country, despite the danger of being tagged as soft on communism.

Again, leaders taking decisions and then relying on their persuasive powers to win arguments seems fanciful amid the timidity of contemporary politics.

A shot of adrenaline
In those first days, Whitlam also ended conscription, withdrew from Vietnam, granted independence to Papua New Guinea, and set about ratifying long-deferred international conventions on basic labour conditions, racial non-discrimination, and nuclear weapons proliferation.

With his pared back, don’t-frighten-the-horses agenda, Albanese might have less to do over a whole term, and Whitlam was only getting started.

Before his government crashed, Whitlam would end the White Australia Policy, scrap royal honours, appoint the first women’s adviser, reform draconian divorce laws, champion multiculturalism, dramatically ratchet up funding for the arts and humanities, abolish university fees, revive urban development, and more.

To a slumbering post-war Australia, it was a shot of late 20th Century adrenaline and the results were startling. Australian historian Manning Clark described it as the “end of the Ice Age”.

But in 1975, it ended in ignominy. As McIntyre later observed, “the golden age was over”.

History rhyming, not repeating
So far, the case for equivalence between 1972 and 2022 is not obvious, right?

But what if it is not Labor that now represents the radical option but the status quo? What if changing governments offers the safer, more conventional course for nervous voters? As Mark Twain noted, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

Labor’s 1972 manifesto was inspiring, but it was the urgency with which its modernising promise was articulated after 23 years of Coalition rule that had impatient voters energised. The McMahon Coalition government was a no ideas factory in the lead-up to the 1972 election, although it did not exhibit the insidious corrosive streak of its modern-day equivalent.

This is the rhyme. While the 2022 election is not about the magisterial reform possibilities of an incoming government, it is about the urgent need to rescue longstanding governing norms around transparency, accountability, ministerial standards, trust and the honesty, and of course, the viability of the public service.

It is in this critical sense that the two elections might be compared.

Divide and dither
The radicalism absent from Labor’s 2022 manifesto is made up for in the unspoken but no-less transformative erosion of standards by the government. The Coalition is primarily intent on the political dividends of division, on courting the applause of media vassals, religious conservatives, and a populist Nationals rump.

Morrison’s approach can be described as divide and dither.

It finds its expression in the Coalition’s reflexive recourse to politics over policy — frequently at the direct expense of the national interest such as in the weaponisation of climate change and more recently, the attempts to weaken the outward presentation of domestic bipartisanship on national security.

The former is a classic of the genre. Morrison’s hollow embrace of net zero by 2050 ahead of Glasgow last year was greeted by political insiders as a triumph of prime ministerial skill, when all it really did was expose how utterly pointless the Coalition’s decade-long negation had been.

Moreover, it brought no revision to interim targets nor adjusted any other policy architecture.

Its real aim — in which it was successful — was the neutralisation of a Coalition stance that had morphed into a clear electoral negative.

The latter, national security, was tickled along last Friday in Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s ultra-earnest press conference transparently called to (re)frighten voters about a Chinese “warship” that was “hugging” Australia’s north-western coast at a distance of 400 kilometres.

Manufactured wars and textimonials
Divide and dither revels in manufactured culture wars over transgender teens and identity politics, fumes about supposed attacks on faith, and white-ants efforts to build support for a First Nations Voice in the Constitution.

Witness the government’s pillorying responses to anti-discrimination campaigners with dismissive throw-aways like “all lives matter”.

Divide and dither’s existence was spectacularly laid bare in a series of explosive “textimonials” regarding Morrison’s character from his own colleagues — people much closer to him than voters, including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. These described him variously as a “hypocrite and a liar”. A New South Wales Liberal senator called him a “bully with no moral compass”.

It’s there, too, in the vicious campaigns against “fake” independent women – simply for standing for office. In a democracy.

The Liberals’ refusal to acknowledge and address female under-representation has invited the very rebellion it now faces from high-calibre female candidates in safe Liberal seats.

The overall impression is of a government shamelessly enabled by a pseudo-independent media that makes no serious attempt to govern for all Australians.

No change means no consequences
In light of these multiple failures, in opting for no change, Australian voters would be saying there is no cost for governing like this.

The Coalition’s take-out would be — keep misleading and pork-barrelling and fomenting useless culture wars.

Keep stacking boards and cutting taxes for the rich and emaciating the public service. Keep denying an anti-corruption commission even as its need becomes ever-more pressing.

Psychologists would call such a verdict “learned helplessness” — an acceptance that such corruptions are inevitable, and no more than we deserve.

Accountable government, national unity, evidence-based policy, and democratic accountability are all on the ballot at this election.

It is not 1972, but the choice might be equally stark, despite Labor’s timidity.

Dr Mark Kenny, is professor at the Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When Australians go to the polls on Saturday to elect a new government, the vast continent which was stolen from the indigenous people in 1788 and annexed to the British crown may have its “independent day” — not one that would declare itself a republic, but a day when independent members of Parliament may hold the balance of power in the lower house in Canberra.

In February this year, the founder of Climate 200 Simon Holmes à Court — son of Australia’s first billionaire Robert Holmes à Court — in an address to the Canberra Press Club said that independents hold considerable sway in some seats, and they will provide a tough challenge to the two major parties in Australian politics — Labour (ALP) and Liberal-National (LNP) — in the forthcoming federal elections.

He added that they have gathered a $7 million (US$4.9 million) war chest to fix Australia’s “broken” political system.

“As we approach this upcoming election, the Australian political system is broken. That’s the problem. That’s why we are here today,” he told a packed press club in the national capital adding that Australians have had a “gutful” of politics.

“Engaged Australians are deeply frustrated that we are not making progress on the issues that matter … We are frustrated that so often our government is found to be either lying or incompetent, sometimes both,” he said.

“We have a government more interested in winning elections than improving our great nation. A government that seeks power, without purpose.

“We are frustrated about climate and action. We are frustrated about corruption in politics. We are frustrated about the treatment and safety of women.”

Looking over their shoulders
As the election campaign approaches its final stretch, politicians from both parties are looking over their shoulders at independent candidates who are challenging them in some crucial seats.

The Liberal Party of Prime Minister Scott Morrison is more worried than his opposition counterpart, the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Polling indicates that some blue-ribbon Liberal (governing LNP is a coalition of Liberal and National parties) seats could fall to popular local independent candidates and may result in a hung Parliament when the results of the elections are out by the early morning of May 22.

Liberals got a taste of things to come at a New South Wales (NSW) state byelection in February when voters in the heart of Sydney Northshore (which is a bastion of conservative politics) seat of Willoughby chose a replacement for the former Premier of the state, the hugely popular Gladys Berejiklian, who was forced to resign under corruption allegations.

She last won the seat with a hefty margin of 21 percent but there was a swing of 19 percent against the Liberal candidate who very narrowly won the seat via postal votes. The successful Independent candidate Larrisa Penn ran her campaign with very little funding.

Holmes à Court’s environmental organisation has been providing funds to a chain of candidates around the country, but he says that Climate 200 is not a political party and the candidates they give money to do not have a common political platform.

He also added that they give them money if they ask for it and give them advice on campaign tactics if they seek it. However, most independents are funded with donations from ordinary Australians who want to see systematic political change in Australia.

“These candidates don’t need to go into politics to be successful because they are already successful,” he told the press gallery.

“They are business owners, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and athletes. They are in it for the right reasons.”

Community advocacy group
In the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, held by Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, local independent Professor Monique Ryan, the head of neurology at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, who was endorsed by the community advocacy group Voices of Kooyong to stand in the seat is being given a good chance of unseating the government heavyweight.

“A genuine contest between two smart people to represent a smart, engaged electorate should make for good politics. Instead, the Kooyong campaign has turned rancid, as Ryan and her principal backer, Simon Holmes à Court, can almost touch an unlikely prize and Frydenberg, a potential future prime minister, can see his political career fading to black” observed Melbourne Age’s chief political reporter Chip Le Grand.

Professor Ryan is one of 21 “Voices of” candidates to have announced their run for a lower house seat for the 2022 federal election, and political analysts believe that in at least 5 Liberal-held seats in Victoria and NSW they stand a good chance of toppling the sitting candidate.

“The grassroots campaigns have attracted tens of thousands of people across Australia, many of whom have never volunteered for a political cause before,” noted Guardian Australia’s Calla Wahlquist. “Government MPs are feeling the pressure.”

The Seven Network claimed last week that PM Morrison had become “hysterical” about the independent challenge. It pointed out that he had started to hammer out a key campaign theme in media interviews and speeches claiming that independents in Parliament would threaten Australia’s economic stability and national security.

“The allegation by the prime minister … that independent parliamentarians and candidates are a threat to Australia’s security is a shameful slur on decent people exercising their democratic right to stand for election,” Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie said in a statement broadcast on Seven Network.

“It’s also symptomatic of a government becoming increasingly hysterical at the realisation it’s out of step with a great many Australians.” Wilkie pointed out that some crossbenchers, such as himself, had served in the defence and intelligence services and it was “outrageous” for the prime minister to criticise them.

Encouraged voting for independents
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was toppled in a party-room coup by Morrison in 2018 is encouraging Australians to vote for independents whom he calls “small-l Liberals” that are trying to save the liberal values he once espoused.

He says the party is now being taken over by climatic change deniers supported by Rupert Murdoch’s media in Australia such as Sky News, which has given ample coverage to Morrison’s “independents being a national security threat’’ argument.

Well-known election analyst Malcolm Mackerras predicts that the May 21 elections would result in a hung Parliament with both ALP and LNP dependent on 6-8 independent MPs to form a government.

The preferential voting system in the lower house of the Australian Parliament has resulted in favouring a two-party system, but he believes it is due for reform and voters would deliver it. It is compulsory for Australians to vote in elections.

Independents supported by Climate 200 are called “teal candidates” because they use colour in their campaign material which is a merger between green and blue.

“The teal independents are speaking directly to moderate Liberal constituents who are frustrated with the (blue) Liberal Party’s positioning on social and environmental issues” argues Amy Nethery, senior lecturer in politics and policy studies at Deakin University.

“While these same voters may never vote Labour or Greens, many are alienated by Morrison and his government, particularly on climate change and women’s issues.”

Many candidates are women
She points out that it is significant that 19 of the 22 Climate 200 supported candidates are women.

“All of whom have had highly successful careers in their own right. High-profile candidates include Ryan (Kooyong), a professor and head of neurology at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Zoe Daniel (Goldstein) a former ABC foreign correspondent, and Allegra Spender (Wentworth) the chief executive of the Australian Business and Community Network,” noted Nethery writing in The Conversation.

“The teal independents are not political staffers taking the next step towards inevitable political careers. These are professional women making a radical sideways leap because, they say, this is what the times require. It’s a compelling story.”

Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sydney-based IDP-InDepth News Southeast Asia director, the flagship agency of the nonprofit International Press Syndicate. He is currently in Suva. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

If the coming election goes to Australia’s Labor party, Penny Wong is very likely to become Foreign Minister. So when she speaks, people across the region prick up their ears.

Without the least disrespect to her recent forebears, she could be one of the most acute, incisive and insightful FMs in recent history.

Whether she’ll be any more effective than them is another matter.

Australia has a long tradition of placing prominent front-benchers into the role, and then pointedly ignoring their efforts, their advice and their warnings. It’s as if government leaders find their greatest rival and send them trotting off around the globe, more to keep them from making mischief at home than to achieve anything noteworthy while they’re gone.

In Australia, it seems, foreign policy is domestic policy done outdoors.

If she achieves nothing more, Wong would be well served to look closely at the people supporting her, and to spend considerable effort re-organising and in fact re-inventing DFAT.

Its disconnection from other departments, especially Defence and PMO, has created an internal culture that spends more time feeding on itself than actually helping produce a persuasive or coherent foreign policy.

Ensuring foreign policy’s primacy at the cabinet table is a big ask, but it will be for naught if the department can’t deliver. There are significant structural matters to be dealt with.

‘Worst failure of foreign policy in the Pacific’: Labor launches scathing attack on government over Solomon Islands-China pact https://t.co/efbU2tM6Iu

— ABC News (@abcnews) April 19, 2022

Rolling development and aid into the department was a significant regression that hampered both sides. Volumes can be written about the need to distinguish development assistance from foreign policy, and many of them could be focused on the Pacific islands region.

The two are mostly complementary (mostly), but they must also be discrete from one another.

It’s far more complicated than this, but suffice it to say that development aid prioritises the recipient’s needs, while foreign relations generally prioritise national concerns. The moment you invert either side of that equation, you lose.

Exempli gratia: Solomon Islands.

It’s well known that Australia spent billions shoring up Solomon Islands’ security and administrative capacity. Surely after all that aid, they can expect the government to stay onside in geopolitical matters?

Applying the admittedly simplistic filter from the para above, the answer is an obvious no.

Aid is not a substitute for actual foreign relations, and foreign relations is definitely not just aid.

So is Penny Wong correct when she calls the CN/SI defence agreement a massive strategic setback? Sure.

Is she right to call Pacific Affairs Minister Zed Seselja “a junior woodchuck”, sent in a last minute attempt to dissuade Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare from signing the agreement?

The idea of a minister responsible for the complex, wildly diverse patchwork of nations spanning such a vast space has value. But in terms of resources and policy heft, Seselja rides at the back of the posse on a mule.

There are good reasons to devote an entire office to Pacific affairs. There are also blindingly good reasons to keep the Foreign Minister as the primary point of contact on matters of foreign policy.

That means the role—and yes, the existence—of the Pacific Affairs ministry needs a ground-up reconsideration. Notionally, it fulfills a critical role. But how?

It’s fair to say that Wong is more insightful than those who describe Solomon Islands as a fly-speck in the Pacific, or a Little Cuba (whatever the F that means). But in the past, Labor’s shown little insight into the actual value and purpose of foreign policy.

For the better part of four decades, neither Australian party was fussed at all about the fact that there had been few if any official visits between leaders. Prime Ministers regularly blew off Pacific Islands Forum meetings.

In Vanuatu’s case, the first ever prime ministerial visit to Canberra was in 2018. Why aren’t such meetings annual events?

Australia is rightly proud of its pre-eminence in development assistance in the Pacific islands. But that never was, and never will be, a substitute for diplomatic engagement. And you can’t have that without a functioning diplomatic corps whose presence is felt equally in Canberra and in foreign capitals.

But even that’s not enough. Penny Wong has yet to show in concrete terms how she plans to address what could accurately be called the greatest strategic foreign policy failure since WWII: Leaving Australia alone to guard the shop.

In 2003, George W. Bush was rightly vilified for characterising Australia’s role in the region as America’s Sheriff.

But the Americans weren’t the only ones who walked away, leaving Australia alone to engage with the region. The UK and the EU (minus France in their patch) rolled back their diplomatic presence substantially.

Even New Zealand agreed to restrict its engagement in large areas in deference to its neighbour. The most enduring presence was provided by organisations without any meaningful foreign policy role: UN development agencies and multilateral financial institutions.

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, there has been a consistent and often deliberate draw-down on the capital provided by democratic institutions, multilateral foreign policy, and indeed any collective course-setting among nations.

Post Cold-War democratic momentum has been squandered on an increasingly transactional approach to engagement that’s begun to look alarmingly like the spheres of influence that appeal so much to Putin and Xi.

This hasn’t happened in the Pacific islands alone. The UN has become an appendix in the global body politic, one cut away from complete irrelevance. ASEAN and APEC are struggling just as hard to find relevance, let alone purpose, as the Pacific Islands Forum or the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Australia has “led” in the Pacific islands region by being the largest aid donor, blithely assuming that all the other kids in the region want to be like it. But that “leadership” masks a massive gap in actual influence in shaping the agenda in a region that’s larger and more diverse than any other in the world.

Want to know more? I have a whole chapter in my last book about it: https://t.co/RjggiClW5Z

— Joanne Wallis (@JoanneEWallis) March 30, 2022

The data’s there if people want it. This isn’t a particularly contentious… er, contention, if you’re among the far-too-small group of people who actually live in and care about the future of the region.

In a regional dynamic defined and dominated by transactional bilateralism, China holds all the aces. The only hope anyone has of slowing its growth in the region is through meaningful multilateralism that treats Pacific island countries as actual nations with national pride and individual priorities. Instead of silencing them, their voices should be amplified and defended, not by Australia alone, but by every other democratic nation with the means and the will to do so.

If we can’t respect the equal standing of nations, we can’t protect their integrity.

Scott Morrison may indeed be one of the worst exemplars of this blithe disregard for actual foreign policy engagement. He’s certainly won few friends with his world-class foot-dragging on climate change. America’s suddenly renewed interest in the region is an indication that they’ve woken up to the Bush administration’s mistakes.

It’s also clear they don’t trust Australia to play Sheriff any more. Kurt Campbell’s upcoming visit to the region is just the latest in a series of increasingly high profile tours of the region.

So yes, Penny Wong is justified in saying that China’s advances in the Pacific derive at least in part from Australia’s lack of a coherent and effective foreign policy.

But foreign policy is not made at home. It’s not Australia’s interests alone that matter. And subjugating Pacific nations in compacts of free association isn’t a substitute for actual policy making.

Pacific island nations will not defend Australia’s national interests unless they share those interests. The only way that Australia—and the world—can be assured they do is by actively listening, and by incorporating Pacific voices into the fabric of a renewed and revitalised global family.

Dan McGarry was previously media director at Vanuatu Daily Post/Buzz FM96. The Village Explainer is his semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. His articles are republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Marija Taflaga of the Australian National University in Canberra

The man that has “always believed in miracles” has just delivered one for the Liberal party.

It’s not clear at the time of writing if the government will have minority or a narrow majority. But it is a deafening defeat for Labor.

This election result is an extraordinary achievement by a man that has doggedly presented himself as the ordinary, suburban dad.

READ MORE: The Junction student journalism coverage of the Australian federal election

Morrison — a man we are still just getting to know — was triumphant as he addressed a rapturous crowd.

It was an uncomplicated victory speech. He told us that Australia was a great country, thanked his family and — finally — his party for their roles in running a ruthlessly disciplined campaign and, promised to get back to work for the “quiet Australians”.

This is the most presidential campaign run by a single party in Australian history, pitted against the biggest policy target since John Hewson’s Fightback!. What really made this election singular was the impact of a quarter of voters preferring minor parties as their first preference.

At the beginning of the campaign, the task of defending so many safe seats from an insurgence of would-be liberal independents seemed overwhelmingly difficult. It would leave too many marginal seats under resourced to defend what has been an unpopular government, riven by infighting.

Negative campaign
Voters always say that they hate negative campaigns. But they work. Morrison deftly crafted his negative message around the unpopularity of Bill Shorten and the risk he posed to the “promise of Australia”.

Morrison has a gift for easy simplification. To give just one example, he framed the complex franking credits issue into the “retirement tax” scare.

At the same time, Morrison smoothed out this overwhelmingly negative campaign, and rounded out his previous public image as aggressive and shouty, by showing himself to be just another dad in the suburbs.

This is Morrison’s victory, and he will forever be a Liberal hero.

What do the Liberals want to do with three more years of power? By the campaign’s end, it remained a question without a detailed answer. And it is still the most important question.

By delivering a result most thought improbable, Morrison’s personal authority will be titanic within the Liberal party. It is not clear what the government’s agenda is beyond their tax plan. There remain several pressing policy questions particularly around climate and energy.

The government does not have a mandate to act in these policy domains and these are issues that are difficult internally for the Coalition.

Competing political traditions
Much is made of ideology within the Liberal Party. It is often presented as the factor that explains the party’s internal woes — and for good reason. The fusion of Australia’s Liberal and Conservative forces in 1909 mashed together what were previously two competing political traditions. They’ve had to co-exist ever since.

But ideological conflict within the liberal party is the symptom. The cause is that the party lacks effective institutional mechanisms to safely and semi-publicly debate ideas.

This also applies to how debates are undertaken. What are the formal rules about who, where and when party members can speak? Just as important are the informal norms around what can be said and in what context.

The Liberal party has traditionally relied on strong leaders to embody and articulate what it stands for. Successful leaders in the Liberal Party (like other conservative parties in Westminster systems) are dominant, but also deft enough to allow sufficient breathing room for their factional rivals.

More importantly, being a proven winner counts for a lot. With this victory, Morrison now has the opportunity to transform himself into precisely this kind of leader.

Liberal leaders’ dominance is reinforced by the way the party machine (but less so its members) has contented itself with setting out broad policy principles. This leaves the parliamentary Liberal party plenty of scope to interpret the political landscape and best position the party for electoral victory.

In the past, the Liberal Party’s links with civil society were strong. It had a healthy branch structure and was embedded in the lives of its core constituents. Today, the average age of its members is around 70, and the decline in party membership means that parties are no longer a key democratic link between representatives and voters.

More independent
This ultimately makes leaders more independent of their parties. We’ve seen this trend borne out in Australian parties over many decades, and particularly in Morrison’s campaign.

Finally, the Liberals have famously rejected formally recognised and organised factions. But in doing so, the party has also given up a tool for organising ideological interests and debates.

It’s hard to have both open and robust debate, and a dominant leader. Open debate is very quickly interpreted as dissent or “open revolt” by outside observers. It is even more challenging in government when discipline matters more and dissent is reported by the media as a failure of leadership.

As the party room has declined as a site of robust debate, the Liberal party’s primary mechanism for dealing with difficult ideological debates is leadership change. It is no accident that this party has been unable to resolve its internal debate on climate change, and has had six leaders in 12 years.

Climate change is so potent a debate within the coalition because it is really about changing the relationship between government, economy and citizens. How this ought – whether it ought – to be accomplished calls into question core assumptions about the role of the state and Australia’s sources of prosperity that have traditionally bound together the “broad church” of the Liberal party.

To be clear, the Liberal party has governed successfully under multiple leaders over decades by putting their faith in the leader to listen, but to ultimately set the course. This formula works when leaders’ authority is high. We should also never underestimate that simply keeping Labor out is sufficient reason for government for the conservative side of politics. At its simplest, their politics is one of incremental change, sound finance and fending off the “radicalism” of Labor.

Proven winner
Morrison is a proven winner and now has the chance to exercise his personal authority. He will need to address climate policy, because business wants a price signal for carbon emissions. He may follow in the footsteps of another giant of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, and poach some of Labor’s more compelling ideas, refashioning them through a Liberal lens.

While questions of the party’s ideology are important, the truth is, the party has always had to navigate tensions between its Liberal and Conservative traditions. This debate has never been settled and it is foolish to suggest that it ever would be.

The more pressing questions relate to how it will govern and win the next election. Over the long term, the party should really be asking how it will seek to renew itself, both in terms of ideas and candidates.

This win should not be an excuse for ongoing organisational drift and complacency.

Marija Taflaga, Lecturer, School of Political Science and International Relations, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz