CHALMERS RIPS INTO DUTTON
Treasurer Jim Chalmers used a speech to flesh out his vision for Australia’s “fourth economy” — and to rip into Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who he described as “the most divisive leader of a major political party in Australia’s modern history — and not by accident, by choice”.
“He divides deliberately, almost pathologically,” Chalmers said of Dutton in his 2024 John Curtin Oration. “This is worse than disappointing, it is dangerous.”
The Australian labels the treasurer Anthony Albanese’s “offence minister” in a headline this morning, calling it a “politically charged speech” where Chalmers “launched an extraordinary assault on the opposition leader’s readiness to lead the country”.
So what about that fourth economy? As Capital Brief explains, it’s a concept Chalmers has mentioned previously and an extension of ex-Labor prime minister Paul Keating’s idea of the country’s three past economies.
“The first was colonial, the second industrial and the third, which Keating presided over, was centred on opening up the economy, dismantling tariffs and introducing reform. The new fourth vision includes AI, an ageing population and the transition to renewable energy,” the outlet writes.
Meanwhile, the Coalition has launched an economic agenda of its own, vowing to save almost $100 billion by cutting Labor spending programs as part of what it calls a “back to basics” inflation-fighting move, The Australian reports.
GAMBLING’S CRIME LINK
Australia’s “love affair with gambling” causes problems for the entire community as people with betting addictions turn to crime to fund their habits, a researcher told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The lead author of a new paper by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre says a “substantial” link between crime and gambling has been found. The research claims cutting gambling expenditure by just 10% would result in 4,579 fewer assaults, 4,247 fewer break and enters, 1,398 fewer car thefts, 2,361 fewer stealing from motor vehicle offences, and 3,793 fewer frauds each year.
“We’ve known for a long time that problem gamblers cause all sorts of problems to themselves and their families,’’ researcher Don Weatherburn said. ‘‘What we didn’t know is the big picture — like how much extra antisocial behaviour does an increase in gambling expenditure cause across a whole community, and this study provides that answer.’’
In other gambling news, Channel 10 has been slapped with a warning by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for breaching rules that say gambling ads must not be shown during live coverage of a sporting event between 5am and 8.30pm. The broadcaster showed 17 unique gambling ads during two soccer matches on October 14 last year.
“These rules are in place to minimise potential harm caused by gambling promotional content,” ACMA member Carolyn Lidgerwood told Guardian Australia.
And in even more gambling news, Crown Resorts chief executive Ciarán Carruthers has announced he will leave the business by the end of the year after steering it “through a period of significant transformation and remediation” following a turbulent time during which the casino chain was “found to have facilitated money laundering and organised crime”, The Australian reports.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Yesterday we told you about Maria Branyas Morera, who was the world’s oldest living person when she died earlier this month in Spain, aged 117 years. Her passing meant the title was inherited by Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka, 116.
Today, let us introduce you to the world’s oldest living man: UK 112-year-old John Alfred Tinniswood, who celebrated his birthday on Monday. He attributes his longevity to sheer good luck, according to The Guardian: “You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it.”
Say What?
It’s the contrast. Four men talking about business, then four women come in, dolled up and scantily clad. What is the role of women at this company?
Unnamed Seven employee
Seven has had a rocky time recently, facing questions about its company culture. Earlier this month, some explosive revelations in a Four Corners episode heaped additional pressure on the broadcaster’s leadership. So staff were surprised when they were treated to a dance number by four women dressed as “sexy Santas” during a town hall-style meeting, which made one staffer feel like they were back in the 1980s (and not in a good way), The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
CRIKEY RECAP
With nothing in the way of opinion polling to herald it, the scale of Labor’s defeat in the Northern Territory on Saturday came as a surprise — including, it seems, to the party itself, which did not engage in the expectations management customary for parties that can see the writing on the wall.
Labor can be confident of holding only five seats in the 25-member Parliament, with incoming Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro all but assured of leading a Country Liberal Party contingent of 16.
In a sign of the times for Labor, it had to reckon with the double whammy of a highly effective CLP campaign focused almost entirely on law and order, and a backlash over gas developments and local planning that could give the Greens their first-ever seat in the territory, with a further seat lost to a progressive independent.
Gerard Rennick, the Queensland LNP anti-abortion and pro-Putin senator who was dumped from the party’s Senate ticket last year, has defected to the crossbench, with plans to launch his People First Party at the next election.
In contrast to the defection from Labor of WA Senator Fatima Payman, which saw extensive backgrounding of the media by the government and tens of thousands of words written demonising an invented threat of Muslim sectarianism, the defection of a middle-aged white guy from the LNP has caused barely a ripple of interest among political journalists. Not, of course, that there are any double standards in the treatment of Muslim women in politics.
Where Rennick has gone further than Payman is in committing to establish a new party, though mainly because he wants to be reelected — he wants “to get my name above the line on the Senate ticket”. In response to a query on Twitter, he appeared to be open to the idea of joining One Nation, though “Malcolm [Roberts] is already on their ticket“. He told Nine newspapers he wanted to focus on “bread and butter issues”, but an examination of Rennick’s tweets shows what he’s really interested in: conspiracy theories.
Under chair Kim Williams, the ABC looks to be charging back into the centre of news content creation — “content” being defined as a never-ending supply of articles and commentary about the ABC and its internal machinations.
And not before time. For all the self-interested chatter about gambling advertisements and oligarch-owned television, the rejuvenation of “our” ABC should be recognised as the big media policy challenge of the moment.
The broadcaster’s pivot to “stability” in 2019, with the appointment of ABC-lifer David Anderson as managing director and Scott Morrison’s captain’s pick of Ita Buttrose as board chair, has been a disaster: increasingly bland, uncontroversial, lightweight and in a permanent defensive crouch, with only the occasional flash of traditional brilliance to remind us of how important the organisation can be.
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THE COMMENTARIAT
Don’t believe Trump’s politicking about Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal — Daniel R. DePetris (Los Angeles Times): Three years ago, the US military was at Kabul’s international airport frantically organising evacuation flights out of Afghanistan as the Taliban returned to power in the capital city after a 20-year hiatus. The evacuation mission was rushed, with overwhelmed US forces working to get as many Afghans out of the country as possible.
The Biden administration received significant criticism both during and after the evacuation. Former national security advisor John Bolton said the Taliban would again provide a safe haven and support to Al-Qaeda as it planned attacks against the United States. Retired general David Petraeus, a one-time commander of US forces in Afghanistan, stated that the withdrawal damaged America’s credibility around the world.
In the three years since, none of these doomsday predictions have come to pass. Nonetheless, the weeks-long evacuation remains fodder for the campaign trail; former president Trump constantly reminds rallygoers of the “Afghanistan catastrophe,” hoping to use the chaotic withdrawal as a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policies.
We need to pay politicians a lot more if we want better behaviour — Peter Stahel (InDaily): Federal Parliament is currently discussing reforms to force politicians to behave better, including penalties like fines and suspension. While these reforms will be welcomed by the public — especially given most of us would be immediately fired for the kind of behaviour we see regularly in Parliament — they are little more than a fig leaf.
The root causes are structural, workforce development and governance issues. They can’t be fixed with a new HR handbook and a complaint process. So, while better rules and processes are a good idea, unfortunately, they won’t be enough. This is because — by and large — the quality of talent, intellect, and leadership in politics is so abysmally low.
Think back to the worst job you’ve ever had. Most of us have at least one horror story to tell, maybe involving a toxic boss, unclear responsibilities and accountability, unrealistic expectations or even just unbearable insecurity. Now, imagine a job that combines all of that. This is the life of an MP.
ALP’s Pyrrhic victory may yet lose it the war — Simon Benson (The Australian) ($): The political debate over inflation and who is now to blame is poised to explode on Wednesday when the monthly CPI data comes out. This will be a critical moment in the cost of living contest between the Albanese government and the Coalition. It will establish more acutely than ever the wildly different economic approaches on offer and who can command the narrative.
For the first time, the billions of dollars in energy rebates rolled out by the federal and at least two state governments will begin to flush through the system. As a result, economists are forecasting the headline inflation number to drop significantly for the first time in 2½ years.
If this happens, Jim Chalmers will have got his Christmas wish early. He will claim a considerable victory. Yet it will also expose Labor’s tactical approach to the problem. Anthony Albanese and the treasurer are trying to buy relief from inflation by indirectly funnelling money into people’s pockets.
