Tag: John Howard

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. "It has been an immense honour to be the longest-serving Member for Curtin and also to be the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the first female to hold the role, [and] for 11 years, over half my entire political career," she told the Parliament. She served in that role in opposition under Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. After the party won the 2013 election, she became foreign minister and remained in the job until Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership last year. Ms Bishop ran in the ballot to replace Mr Turnbull against Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton but was eliminated in the first round of voting. Mr Morrison, who won the leadership ballot and became the Prime Minister, paid tribute to Ms Bishop and her "tremendous service to her country". "She is an incredibly classy individual. "Her successor will have big shoes to fill, and we know that Julie has the best shoes in Parliament." Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described her as a "trailblazer", even if they had not shared much in common when it came to politics. Ms Bishop had little to say as she left Parliament House for the week after making her announcement.

The former Labor deputy prime minister Wayne Swan has used his final speech to parliament to warn against a resurgence of what he termed “American race-based, dog-whistle politics”, arguing democracies work best when they exhibit moral force. Referring to the resurgence of a partisan debate about border protection, Swan told parliament on Tuesday night he wanted to use his valedictory speech to “reach out” to government MPs about “the divisive tone that’s pervaded this place in the past week”, although he noted the overture was probably pointless. Before then, covert appeals to racism and xenophobia were regarded as unworthy of our country’s elected representatives. Wayne Swan urges Labor to muscle up against rightwing thinktanks Read more “When the [Tampa] was turned back, something else floated into our harbours in its wake: American race-based dog-whistle politics. It’s likely as old as politics itself. We all thought it had died before 2001. But we were wrong.” Swan said this approach had been deployed during the 1988 US presidential election – “a determined strategy to link the black community with violent crime”. Swan’s strident parting shot at his political foes came as Bill Shorten signalled Labor was sanguine about asylum seekers being given medical treatment on Christmas Island if it “makes people well”. The Labor leader also declined to criticise a decision by the government of Nauru to pass laws banning overseas medical transfers based on telehealth referrals. “On Nauru, listen I haven’t seen what the Nauruans have passed, they are a sovereign country.

I think the convulsions we are seeing in Australian politics right now — in fact , since John Howard was defeated in 2007 — are a culmination of decades-long trends that center on the slow decline of our two big political parties. There’s a void at the center of our politics because the public and the political class have both retreated. Again, this is happening in all Western democracies: people have stopped joining political parties and civic organizations with a political voice, and the parties have responded by making politics more elite and professional. At the last federal election, nearly 25 percent of voters gave their primary vote to an independent or small party, and that figure is on a slow upward trend as the primary vote of the two major parties declines. In fact, minority government might be the new norm in Australian federal politics. Unfortunately, however, I don’t think the cynicism about politicians actually motivates the public to get involved. In fact, it may just reinforce the retreat I talked about. Now, for the most part, that has not been terribly damaging — O.K., politics is hollowed out and Australians are deeply cynical, but by global standards the place is still pretty well run, and economically we are in enviable shape. What might that look like in Australia? Readers from all over the world, including Australia, have been sharing questions all week with the climate scientist Kate Marvel, who has already started answering some of them.

Nominations opened today for the 2018 prize, which includes two categories: Political Leader of the Year, for politicians with at least five years in office; and the Emerging Political Leader of the Year, for those with less than five years in office. The latter will receive $20,000 to be used for professional development and growth courtesy of the Susan McKinnon Foundation. Professor Mark Considine, a public policy specialist, University of Melbourne Provost and chair of the 2018 selection panel, said a national conversation about Australian leadership was vital in the current political climate. “Facilitating a national conversation about the qualities Australians expect from their leaders, and celebrating politicians who exemplify those qualities, strengthens our democracy and helps promote the positive work of true political leadership.” ‘A moment where that cynicism dissipated’ The 2017 winners were Senator Dean Smith, recognised for his bipartisan leadership on same-sex marriage, and Councillor Vonda Malone (pictured above) for her collaborative and compassionate leadership as Mayor of Torres Shire Council. “We’re a long way from Canberra, so one of our biggest challenges is getting our voices heard,” Malone said. For a girl in the Torres Strait to be recognised nationally is incredible. “Other leaders in big cities can go home and close the door and be removed from the community. Here you’re surrounded … you have to work with the community and bring them with you, there’s no place for divisions.” Smith said winning the prize had given him a powerful understanding he had achieved something good. “It’s very obvious to me that there’s a high degree of political cynicism in Australia about the political class,” Smith said. The winners will speak at the oration in March next year.

The Senate president, Scott Ryan, has lamented the lost art of compromise in Australian politics, pointing out that meeting in the middle on contentious policy does not equate to “abandoning the base”. With the Liberal party still processing the corrosive civil war of the past fortnight, Ryan used a speech in Melbourne on Wednesday night to argue the greatest successes of Australian politics had come from “compromise and negotiation” and the use of parliamentary process to resolve competing points of view. In an implicit rebuke to the death match character of politics that fuelled Malcolm Turnbull’s demise as prime minister, the Victorian Liberal warned Australian voters not to reward politicians projecting uncompromising stances to the community. Australian politics needs women like Julia Banks – but it is hostile territory Read more Ryan invoked a number of examples from the Howard era to illustrate his point – the passage of the GST and labour market deregulation with the support of the Australian Democrats in the Senate, and the passage of gun controls that were contentious with the Coalition’s rural supporters. Or that we would be better off still arguing about it?” “Peter Reith’s reforms to workplace relations, the product of compromise with the Democrats, no natural fans of labour market deregulation and now sadly wound back, were a driving force in our economic boom that saw record low unemployment, productivity growth and substantial real income growth for the first time in more than a decade”. “But they weren’t relentlessly attacked as abandoning the base simply by virtue of challenging supporters, even on such a difficult issue”. The Senate president argued the tonal shift in Australian politics has been accompanied by a change in the dynamic of the chamber he currently presides over. He said the Australian Senate was drifting in the direction of the American system which manifests “entrenched positions, or explicit unrelated trade-offs” when legislation moves through the chamber. “Governments need to be able to legislate the agenda they take to elections, otherwise we will see frustration at democracy increase. Ryan said adopting the convention would require senators to acknowledge the difference between supporting a program of an elected government, and acquiescing to it.

Back in 2012, a major study on the selection and removal of party leaders in Anglo parliamentary democracies was published. After the defeat of Malcolm Fraser at the 1983 federal election, the Liberal Party changed leaders six times, eventually settling on John Howard in 1995. Following the defeat of Paul Keating’s Labor government at the 1996 election, Labor has had eight leadership changes, a remarkable feat considering that two of those leaders – Kim Beazley and Bill Shorten – have between them tallied up almost 13 years. The rest – Simon Crean, Mark Latham, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard – do not account for even a full decade between them. Australia did not begin discarding party leaders and even prime ministers yesterday. It’s hard to overlook one or two parallels in this scenario with the current state of play in Australian politics. He might have been the classic “rat”, but even once he switched sides he remained true to many of the policies long favoured by his former party. It is about how we do politics. But the Liberals have not travelled down this path, and the destabilisation of Turnbull is one of the results. For Turnbull, it is starting to look like it might be too late.

There’s a reason why the cohort of voters colloquially known as “Howard’s battlers” have a semi-mythical status in contemporary Australian politics. This group of working and lower-middle class Australians had traditionally voted Labor, but for much of Howard’s reign they kept the plain-talking and mostly uninspiring PM in office. Labor will repeal tax cuts for companies earning $10m-$50m Read more Howard had little of the charisma or gravitas of his previous prime ministers, but he was a canny political operator who knew how to connect with the majority of voters who made up working class and middle Australia. It’s also why his opponent is trying to use the very same group to bring the PM down. Even before Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek mentioned in an interview last week that the term “aspiration” was a mystery to her, Malcolm Turnbull and his ministers had been accusing Labor of denying workers the motivational benefits of personal income tax cuts and trumpeting that only the Coalition understood the aspirations of such everyday Australians. “Stick with me if you want to get ahead”, the PM was essentially promising voters. The opposition couches its approach in terms of equity and fairness rather than resentment. But the effect is the same The difficulty for Malcolm Turnbull is that aspiration ain’t what it used to be. Longman byelection: will One Nation decide who wins? Read more Of course Longman is also the tightest of the five byelection contests, with the seat being extremely marginal after Labor snatched it with the help of One Nation preferences in 2016.

It is remarkable for a Coalition government to cut skilled migration during an upswing in the economy. The John Howard government significantly increased the skilled intake when the Australian economy surged from around 2001. Increased use of system alerts to identify visa applications and issues that require additional investigation has been a long-standing priority for Australia’s immigration authorities. But from one year to the next, these lead to a tiny increase in the visa refusal rate, hardly 20,000. How much further is he suggesting visa processing times will increase to explain a cut of 20,000 visas? Australian immigration authorities are more than capable of delivering the program on target without any additional risk to visa integrity or national security. And he could not use Morrison’s explanation that the program would only be delivered below the ceiling if there is a lack of demand. No state/territory premier or chief minister is calling for a cut, and as usual the business community is supportive of maintaining the current program. Could Hanson argue the government has cut immigration as part of her negotiations on the corporate tax cuts (but that the government has not gone far enough so she has withdrawn her support)? But how will he secure credit for something his own department says will be a negative for the economy and the budget?