ECONOMY TO DOMINATE AS PARLIAMENT RETURNS
The weak state of the economy is set to dominate proceedings as federal Parliament returns today, with AAP predicting the opposition will use the opportunity to try and heap more pressure on the government. Last week’s GDP figures, stubbornly high inflation and the suggestion there will be no rate cut anytime soon will all no doubt feature.
Over the weekend it was reported that Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed almost half of all jobs created in the first half of 2024 were classified as public sector. The AFR reports the recruitment bolstered government spending as private sector growth stalled and consumer spending dropped. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has rejected claims government spending is contributing to inflation and The Australian is keen to keep that debate going by also highlighting the public sector workforce, claiming nearly two-thirds of the jobs created in the first two years of the Albanese government have been funded by the taxpayer.
Which leads us to the latest polling for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald which shows the majority of voters hold the government responsible for fighting inflation, amid the endless back and forth with the Reserve Bank of Australia regarding what/who is to blame. Only 27% of voters blame the central bank for high inflation, the Resolve Political Monitor found. In terms of economic management, 37% of voters backed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and 26% backed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The poll also found Labor and the Coalition remain neck-and-neck in popular support in two-party terms and Albanese holds a one-point lead over Dutton as preferred prime minister, 35% to 34%.
Meanwhile, the AFR reports on another poll that suggests Labor is facing minority government and could lose up to 10 seats at the next election, while the Coalition could win back teal electorates in Victoria and Western Australia.
JULIA GILLARD URGES LABOR RETAIN QUOTAS
As the government prepares to navigate another challenging week and hopes to generate some momentum from somewhere with the federal election forever looming, former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard has called on the party to never remove its 50% female quota for parliamentary candidates, Guardian Australia reports.
Speaking to the site to mark the 30th anniversary of Labor’s affirmative action rule, Gillard also warned of the “toxic sewer” of social media. The former PM said while in many ways it would be easier for the next woman who runs the country, in others it won’t. “What has become harder is how dominant social media is in political messaging and political reporting. And as we know from all of the analysis, all of the statistics, the social media world can be a toxic sewer for women,” she said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports the Labor caucus will mark the anniversary in Parliament House this evening, with Albanese, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher speaking. The paper highlights how the parliamentary library calculates women make up 52.4% of the Labor caucus and 29.2% of the Liberal partyroom. Gillard told the SMH the stats showed the impact of the affirmative action rule, as in 1994 Labor and the Liberals both had around 14% women. “When we look at the other side of politics, they always said that they wouldn’t do an affirmative action rule, that they would try other mechanisms to encourage women, and that largely hasn’t worked,” she said.
On the theme of social media, the ABC highlights the South Australian government has drafted a bill to ban children 13 and under from using social media. A 276-page report released by the government says social media companies would need to take “systemic responsibility” for restricting children from using their products. The report, by former High Court justice Robert French, claims the draft legislation is “available for other state governments to pursue” if they choose.
The national broadcaster led overnight with Treasurer Jim Chalmers telling Insiders that the next census will include a new topic that will canvass sexual orientation and gender. The Australian Bureau of Statistics would be left to determine the questions, he said.
The ABC’s live blog of events in Paris is top of the site this morning as Australia’s Paralympians take part in the games’ closing ceremony after finishing in ninth place on the medal table, with 18 golds, 17 silvers and 28 bronzes.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
The UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has revealed his family have welcomed a new pet kitten named Prince into Downing Street.
Speaking to the BBC, Starmer said following a summer of “negotiations” the family had decided to get a cat, having previously revealed his children had initially requested a German Shepherd.
The new Siberian kitten will live with the prime minister and his family in their Downing Street flat alongside their current pet, a rescue cat named JoJo, and the No.10’s resident chief mouser Larry, the Press Association reported.
Starmer said the new pet was an acknowledgement of the upheaval and pressure his job would have on the family. He and his wife Victoria have not named their children or appeared with them publicly in photographs to maintain their privacy.
The prime minister told the BBC: “People asked me before the election what am I most worried about and I always said the impact on my children.
“I have to acknowledge this is a big move for them and therefore negotiating a fantastic kitten called Prince was part of the deal that they extracted from me.”
Say What?
I’m making a factual point borne out by the national accounts. I don’t second-guess the Reserve Bank in the way that Wayne has.
Jim Chalmers
The treasurer on Sunday tried to distance himself from Wayne Swan’s remarks at the end of last week, who claimed “The government is doing a lot to bring down inflation, but the Reserve Bank is simply punching itself in the face.” The SMH reports Chalmers said on Insiders that Swan had gone “much further” than he would have, but defended his own recent claim that high interest rates were “smashing the economy”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Ultimately, though, it will be the NDIS that is Shorten’s legacy, given he was a key progenitor of it, and the minister charged with bringing it under control after Labor returned to power. His current reforms — tortuously negotiated through Parliament and with the states and territories — are decried by disability advocates (who no doubt feel betrayed given Shorten in opposition denounced every Coalition reform as an existential threat to the program) as some sort of fundamental assault. In fact, not merely will NDIS funding remain at record levels, but it will continue to grow, albeit at hopefully a far slower rate than the double-digit growth Labor inherited. Arguably no-one else could have negotiated such a package of changes — only Shorten, one of the people responsible for the very existence of the NDIS, could so aggressively pursue reforms to rein the program in.
If the tag “future prime minister” was never fulfilled and his powerbroking role in the Rudd and Gillard governments was a blight on his record, Shorten proved an unexpectedly positive influence on the quality of discourse in Australian economic debate. He leaves, in the NDIS and FOFA, a substantial policy legacy. As the Albanese government struggles to makes it mark, he’s a reminder that if good policy isn’t always good politics, politics can still be a vehicle for good policy.
Older Australians are much more likely to feel positive about AUKUS than younger ones, new research by the United States Studies Centre shows.
Crikey got access to exclusive data from the research centre’s 2024 “Allies and partners” poll breaking down attitudes towards AUKUS by age group.
The data shows Australians aged 65 and older are about twice as likely to “strongly agree” it’s a good idea for the country to have nuclear-powered submarines.
The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (DVSRC) will hand its final report to the governor-general on Monday. Then, it will be up to the government to table the report so we can all read it. Don’t expect the government to rush on this. The report will be huge, complex and, frankly, harrowing. The recommendations will be broad and, if implemented, change how Defence works.
Consequently, you can expect the government to play politics on it. The minister will also have the voices of the ADF in his ear — inevitably seeking to water down and control any change. The government will sit on the report as long as it can, release it when it can gain the most politically, then kick the can of reform down the road, past the next election. We can already picture the Minister for Defence Richard Marles saying: “A review body will be established to assess the recommendations and how they can be done.” The government will desperately not want to be wedged by the Coalition on anything to do with the ADF or national security.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
‘Out of a horror movie:’ Typhoon Yagi makes landfall in Vietnam (The New York Times) ($)
Three Israelis shot dead at West Bank-Jordan crossing (BBC)
Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion (CNN)
Murdoch family fights attempt to have legal battle televised (AFR)
Thousands protest in Pakistan to demand ex-PM Imran Khan’s release (al-Jazeera)
Trump threatens to jail adversaries for ‘unscrupulous behaviour’ if he wins (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Brawls over RBA and ASIO as election season starts — Laura Tingle (AFR): Politics starts to change as people start to concentrate on the last possible date for an election.
(It is May 17 to save you googling it). That’s just on eight months away.
Among the things that change: journalists start focusing on opinion polls; they start reporting more on the opposition as an alternative government, and ask for some policy specifics; and prime ministers and their senior colleagues anxiously contemplate how the economy might be travelling on various Saturdays between now and the last possible election date.
It’s not quite been playing out that way this parliamentary cycle, and certainly not in the past few weeks.
Joy derision: Democrats turn Trump’s deadliest weapon against him — Martin Pengelly (The Guardian): With Joe Biden as his opponent, it seemed Trump would once again dominate with nicknames and ridicule, based on “Sleepy Joe’s” (even more) advanced age. But then Biden dropped out, and something unexpected happened. Kamala Harris and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, turned fierce ridicule back on Trump and his VP pick, the Ohio Senator JD Vance, deriding both for their simple weirdness: personal, social and of course political.
If polling is any guide, the tactic has worked like a dream.
To Molly Jong-Fast, a podcaster and MSNBC commentator now touring Politics as Unusual, a live show with the Republican operative turned anti-Trump organiser and ridicule merchant Rick Wilson, Trump, Vance and the rest of the GOP are simply easy targets.
“They’ve just gone so far afield, this Republican party, that you can mock it all because it’s just so weird,” Jong-Fast said. “All this stuff about women’s reproductive cycles” — support for abortion bans, Vance attacking women who do not have children, endless tangles over IVF — “that stuff is quite weird from an adult man, and so it does lend itself to mockery.”
