Wise words from the sagacious and venerable Jack Waterford

[pim]

Scott Morrison inflames China tensions over doctored Tweet outrage

Jack Waterford 4 December 2020 www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7041434/why-is-scott-morrison-playing-games-with-china/?cs=14329


Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not usually reckless or crazy-brave.

Scott Morrison is a naturally cautious, if ruthless politician who is not Prime Minister by accident. Almost every significant step in his career has been carefully - mostly successfully - gamed with close political colleagues. He's obsessively secretive, of course, so no one expects he will explain as he goes alone. Still, his worst enemies on either side of politics accord him the respect of thinking that he knows what he is doing, and expecting that he has thought it through with care.

Damned if I know, however, what he is expecting to gain, either in the domestic or the international sphere by his play on China. Just why did he take up as Prime Minister, the gibe of an unimportant middle-level Chinese bureaucrat about the involvement of some Australians in Afghan war crimes? Leave completely aside any offensiveness, and intention to offend, and readily discard the fact that the cartoon, showing Australian soldiers slitting an Afghan's baby's throat, appears on a government website. The preconditions existed, perhaps, for any proud Australian to be provoked. But prime ministers choose when, and by whom they will be provoked, particularly when it is clear that an official reaction of some sort is expected. Not necessarily from a prime minister, of course. Or even from a foreign minister given that the insult came from a pipsqueak, would-be tiger or not. An angry formal note from a minor diplomat at the embassy - not the Ambassador - would probably have been appropriate.

Morrison has been more than a decade in high-level politics, and has been insulted by experts. No doubt he loves the country he leads - though his career has been full of occasions in which he has shown himself very careless of its reputation. But he has never been accused of being an emotional hand-on-the-heart Tennessee type who completely loses it when someone spits on the flag or disrespects the military. There is absolutely nothing spontaneous or out-of-control about any political anger he confects. His reaction to the provocation was deliberate and intentional. He knew that he was responding in a predictable way to a stimulus applied for just that effect. He cannot have done it unconscious of the likelihood that a furious response, particularly at his level, could only aggravate serious existing tensions that some, at least, were trying to cool down. He must have considered the possibility - even the probability - that the ratcheting up of hostilities would lead to a widening of the categories of goods now facing discrimination from Chinese markets. He would have known that the damnable thing about that sort of retaliation was that the form that penalty would take was entirely out of Australian control. He could not even expect it to be proportionate to any rage expressed.

Beyond that, of course, he knew China was pitching the ball right at a tender wound. The implication of the gibe - that the murder of innocent Afghans had been conscious Australian policy - was false, and to many people, including thousands of ADF veterans of Afghanistan, very offensively so. But the sore point was that Australia had just published to the world a report showing credible evidence that suggested some Australian soldiers had murdered Afghan civilians. It may be a tribute to our open society - and a rebuke to China's closed one - that the allegations, facing further investigation, were now on the public record. But it made Australia vulnerable. Many an Australian cartoonist - indeed many an Australian politician - has, over the years, extrapolated from an incident far more hurtful generalisations than in the Chinese Tweet.


Usually an over-reaction of this sort - often with trade penalties, or some terrorism - would follow some alleged insult to Islam, criticism of the personality of a Malaysian prime minister, or the deliberate humiliation of a PNG prime minister by a Border Force official. That would usually cause our politicians to tell the "victim" to grow up, or take a pill, or, ruefully, to remark that being pilloried and mocked was part and parcel of Australian life, only occasionally shared with foreigners.

Morrison is not usually reckless or crazy-brave. One has to assume that he had weighed and considered the consequences of any sort of Australian response, including one by him personally. He is simply not impulsive, in the manner that Tony Abbott was when he wondered aloud about an Australian invasion of Ukraine after the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner containing Australian passengers. Nor is he given to applying the onion, in the manner of a Bob Hawke, after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He may well understand the attraction, to Cronulla and RSL types of ostentatious clutching of the heart and the flag when we can pretend the honour of the nation has been impugned. But that can be managed without intent to damage the Australian economy, or to portray us as some victim.

Even for domestic consumption, and allowing for his patriotic fury that the Chinese tweet had "gone too far", he had just been through a difficult domestic balancing exercise over the Brereton report discussing the alleged war crimes. He warned the nation the report would be very disturbing, confronting and damaging. He told the ADF through the CDF General Angus Campbell that he expected a searching examination of officer responsibility as well as criminal investigations and prosecutions against the small number of non-commissioned soldiers actually accused of murder. He had to arrange the disappearance of himself and any relevant ministers while the ADF had a bucket of shit poured over it. He then had to carefully monitor the media, especially the Murdoch tabloids, for any popular reaction, particularly within the wider defence community, or even among the many special force soldiers who had never been accused of anything.

A pathetically loyal media faithfully reports that some other nations have noticed that Australia is being bullied by China, with the implication that they care deeply about it. Some leaders have suggested that they might buy our wine, or perhaps look over our barley or our lobsters, as a gesture of solidarity. No doubt some will speak approvingly of plucky Scott Morrison putting his finger in the Chinese dyke. Such gestures are as nothing compared with the real consequences of his actions.

Perhaps (I'm giving 1000-1 against this) the Chinese will realise they have horribly overstretched. They may give in and apologise for everything back to the invasion of Tibet. Perhaps some China-sized new customer will sign one of those terribly effective free-trade agreements to sop up our excess production. This could make Morrison seem the great statesman. In the real world, however, it would be interesting to see if there's a "good" outweighing the loss of the 10 per cent of our GDP that our China relationship is worth in a typical year. That's bigger than the damage done to our economy this year by the coronavirus.

Australia not easily cast as a victim of China or Afghanistan

It's hard to escape the feeling that most of the heat and light generated by Scott Morrison's fury at a cartoon by a middle-level Chinese tiger cub was designed for Australian, rather than Chinese consumption. Had Morrison wanted any Chinese movement in our direction, it is unlikely that he would have "demanded" a Chinese apology he must have known would never come. Indeed he must have known that the form of his protest could only lead China's senior leadership - as opposed to its surrogates - to double down.

Could a worsening of the trading relationship - or merging an increasingly tense economic dispute with the US-China tussle over power and influence in south-east and north Asia - be in Australia's interest? Only, one might think, if one had concluded, or knew, war between China and America was inevitable, or that China had determined on a major breach of the regional peace, for example by the invasion of Taiwan, the unleashing of North Korea, or the complete incorporation of Hong Kong. After any of these, relationships could never be the same again. Anything is possible, I suppose, not least with the Trump legacy in the US. But it is hard to see why Australia, alone of the nations likely to ally themselves against it -- is moving so decisively towards the front. It is not behaviour we are seeing from Japan, South Korea, or India, let alone by any of those of the nations of South East Asia who view Chinese expansion -- if and when it occurs -- with trepidation. It is even more difficult to understand our apparent compulsion to spit in the Chinese face.

It is that compulsion, rather than our stout defence of human rights that seems to have caused China to show its displeasure through trade punishment. We are, on the one hand regarded by them as a pipsqueak in international affairs, with little in the way of a moral stump allowing us to lecture them, least of all about human rights. We are also, on the other, an ungrateful nation that has benefited enormously from privileged access into trade with China, in a way that has worked to benefit both countries.

Our recent prosperity has been tied to China's rise, whether in iron ore, coal and other mineral exports or as a premium destination for Chinese students and tourism. China never initially complained strongly that Australia was closely allied, in defence terms, to the US, though it often chided us for meekly supporting American trade grievances, or posturing in North Asia, as being directly against our own interests.

Progressively, China has been signalling its increasing displeasure by arbitrary cuts to trade in particular goods - cuts that hurt Australia far more than China. That might be described as bullying - a little less convincingly as part of a Chinese pattern of dealing with any country that displeases it. It may be one thing to be determined not to be bullied, or to be seen to be bullied. It may also be important that Australia show that it has a continuing concern for human rights and democratic forms of government - concerns it will not lightly sacrifice on the altar of trade. It is another thing altogether to go on picking new fights and inviting fresh forms of retaliation as the Morrison government appears to be intent on doing.

The Tweet "meme" - whatever that means - seems to have invited a conga line of loyalty oaths, and claims that "my outrage exceeds thine" from all who engage in such lemming-like activities- including, predictably, the Labor leadership. It seemed to take Labor a while to wonder whether over-egging the outrage pudding was really in Australia's interests. Meanwhile Morrison seemed to keep raising the ante. If I were China, I would not have apologised, but congratulated myself on the arrow hitting the bullseye. Morrison, indeed, seemed to start playing both sides of the fence, calling for a resumption of ordinary trade and of civilities even as he was making it impossible. It was even seeming to dawn on coalition figures from the Treasurer down that the short and medium term of any escalation would be disastrous to the economy. That's the risk of unforced error when playing diplomacy in the Twittersphere. If he felt he had to say something, lest he be damned for silence, he should have waited until he could condemn the Tweet in more moderate and non-threatening terms, as a comment on a more hysterical response by another.

The past fortnight has seen a good many usually cynical political journalists rally around the flag, understanding at last that the Chinese are beastly, that there is no long-term reasoning with them, and that we may as well take the tough medicine of reducing our dependence on the Chinese economy - sooner rather than later. Perhaps they are getting privileged briefings that have inspired such conversions, but if so, those explanations must be confidential. John Howard was the first of any number of coalition leaders to understand that Australia did not have to choose between China and the United States - and nothing much over the past five years has materially changed that. The idea that we must make choices and choose sides, and the notion that China is now suddenly more dangerous to us is an ideologically-led, not evidence-led conclusion. The threat is that ideologues, most not open to any form of public account, have an enormous capacity to cause the fulfilment of their own prophecies.

The latest deterioration in the relationship began when prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided that the Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei could not participate in the 5G rollout, and otherwise instituted a more suspicious and transactional business relationship. The Chinese irritation seemed to be aggravated by a feeling that Australian was playing pig in the minefield for a more general "five-eyes" isolation of Huawei, and a belief that Australian commercial policy over China was too much influenced by Australia's perception of a need to march in close step with the United States, even when our interests differed.

The latter perception was becoming more of a problem because President Trump was becoming increasingly protectionist and isolationist, and blaming China's economic success for the loss of American manufacturing jobs. Trade war, with the imposition of American tariffs and Chinese retaliatory tariffs, saw both sides posture about the threat from each other if the struggle for hegemony in the western Pacific and the South China Sea became war. But it has never seemed that war was inevitable, that either nation could "win" or, indeed, that conflict was going to be binary. A growing China was investing in its own defence. So have most of its neighbours. And Australia.

It is not clear that the worsening has been the horse or the cart, but we have suddenly seen an explosion of folk agitating for action, or pontificating about new-found dangers of appeasement. Some of these folk have discovered, mostly recently, that China is a totalitarian nation, notionally communist, which oppresses many of its subjects, including Tibetans and Uighurs. Moreover, it has systems of mass surveillance that our Department of Home Affairs envies and plans to copy. It constantly threatens two of its prodigal provinces, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and gave not-so-secret encouragement to North Korea and Iran. These discoveries, assisted by generous US sponsorship of the "independent" think tanks publishing this research and spruiking war, came generally from scholars hitherto blasé about human rights generally, and still deeply unconcerned by their absence among allies and customers such as Saudi Arabia.

Expect in due course further Chinese journalism on our treatment of minorities, including Aborigines, our international actions in nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, on missions almost impossible to describe, but certainly unachieved. Our history of marching to American military music, after a century of marching to British music. Our history of racism and exclusion of Asians. And other military atrocities, back to Breaker Morant.

None of this may be news to most Australians. Or about anything of which Scott Morrison is ashamed. But wrapped up in a Chinese marketing effort to vilify and discredit Australia to its own population and a wider Asia, it could generate and justify inspired consumer revolts against Australian goods, a turning away from Australian education, and a rejection of any idea that we are a citizen of the region. I think the Morrison government should be more open with its strategy.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times. [e-mail]

[ponto]

ScoMo is acting like Trump, playing to an audience of anti China people like Stellar and Casnuts...division the course.

[pim]

Morrison, the man with no abiding beliefs, also lacks agenda, map or destination

By JACK WATERFORD 23 December 2020 johnmenadue.com/morrison-the-man-with-no-abiding-beliefs-also-lacks-agenda-map-or-destination/


Assuming that the Morrison government goes more or less to full term — and some senate obstruction should not be enough to persuade a governor-general, even one in a witness support scheme — to grant an early dissolution — Morrison has probably about 15 months of economic recovery, ordinary economic management, and general steering of the ship of state before he must face the electors.

His recovery results will be heavily influenced by matters now out of his control, such as the future of trade with China, consciously put in jeopardy for no clear reason. For the moment, iron ore prices may overcome, in total value, the losses faced by coal miners (many of the mine owners actually Chinese), wine, fish, and barley, and any other item chosen for impact on the Australian economy and Australian public opinion. But it is China setting the pace, not us.

Quite separate from that is the impact on the world economy, on the United States, and on Australia, of the continuing trade war between China and the US. It is said that President Joe Biden is as hardline on China as Trump, but of a somewhat different style, more focused on negotiation and multilateral channels. All that may be so, but one can be sure that the economic conflict and the “local hegemony” pushing and shoving will be resolved by Chinese and American negotiators in their own interests, and without any regard for Australia’s. Nor should we kid ourselves that the cost of going out of our way to provoke China is being negated by a wave of world sympathy for the way China is said to have been bullying us. Deeds, not words, will matter, and all of our traditional trading competitors will be trying to grab Australian market share.

The pandemic has hit many economies very hard. Even with the availability of vaccines, including ones being distributed free, mostly to the third world, by Russia and China, it may take a long time before trade supply and demand and the movement of money and people between countries is anywhere back to normal. An obvious example from the Australian viewpoint involves air transport and tourist income from overseas. Sooner or later, the Australian recovery is going to bump hard against such considerations, which operate quite independently of our attempts to provoke a war with China or the resolution of the trade war.

It is by no means clear that Morrison has the currency or the cred with international players to manoeuvre Australia into a position where we can pick the low-hanging fruit of world recovery. Indeed we may have squandered the hard-won advantage of good virus management and an earlier restart by the way we have become involved in unnecessary quarrels.

We are certainly not improving our standing with other countries with our position on climate change, loyally maintained by Morrison to the supposed advantage of some tiny constituencies against strong opposition from the wider electorate. Australia is now an international rogue — almost a pariah at the level of apartheid South Africa — on the matter.

Many of our traditional friends, particularly in Europe, Canada, the Pacific and now the US are looking at us with disdain. Morrison is ignoring the advice of some he regards as friends, such as Boris Johnson. Biden has been a good friend of Australia but has no real relationship with Morrison (or any of his ministers) and plenty of reason to treat them (as Barak Obama did) with a certain disgust. This is not least because of how Morrison tried to associate himself with Donald Trump. If Biden thought about it, and there will be people who remind him, the resentment will extend to Morrison’s association with deeply politicised American cults operating rather more as Trump public action committees than in furtherance of religious beliefs. George Pell apparently to the contrary, God is not a registered Republican, and nor should any Australian PM be.

Morrison learned from both John Howard and later Tony Abbott, a certain type of anti-internationalist rhetoric about Australia making up its own mind about international problems and refusing to be bullied by others. It may serve well, up to a point, with an Australian audience when our leaders are getting lectures on human rights from Libya or dealing with critical commentary from the OECD, under present management, on our lack of meaningful or effective action on climate. But Australians do not, by and large, have a chip on their shoulder about being citizens of the world, champions of human rights and advocates of collective action to fight common problems, including pandemics.

It was Morrison, in particular, who ramped up the rhetoric against refugees, and treated them not as people fleeing war and oppression but as invaders, possibly terrorists engaged in intrinsically illegal activity. Liberal ministers have incited hatred against groups of refugees and confected a law and order crisis — one which was, it is to be noted, repudiated by the electorate.

Morrison and Frydenberg (when the former was Treasurer, the other, minister for the environment) were notionally on the side of Malcolm Turnbull when he was trying to coax some (minimal) action on climate change. But Morrison is now personally one of the most reactionary and obstinate ministers on the subject. He is seemingly unable to make any sort of significant shift, and will not if it makes him look bad.

But his obstinacy does not come from philosophical or scientific opinion — he simply ignores the science and the advice coming to his government that are entirely against him. Nor is he doing this simply from a strongly-held opinion (or detached independent external advice). On matters such as these Morrison is pragmatic and conviction-free. If he has any abiding beliefs they cannot be deduced from what he says. Most likely he now recognises the need to move in a significant way but hasn’t yet worked out a marketing trick for making any concessions seem enormous to an outside audience, while minuscule to voters. It’s a hard ask, made more difficult every day. Perhaps he fears that a major move would have a few cross the floor — but to vote with whom?

Morrison acts as though he is on top. But carrying on in the way he does can only make his government more vulnerable. Labor might want to avoid being wedged — on national security for example — but should reflect that hardly any of Morrison’s views or policies are in the national interest. I cannot think that a smart opposition ought to be assisting him to resolve any of his dilemmas, or helping to smooth the contradictions of his policies. It needs more mongrel, not more understanding, deference and discreet assistance. But a winning opposition must do more than inserting more “nots” in government policy statements. It should be imaging and selling, an altogether fresh view of what Australia and Australians need. It ought to on about an entirely different, yet strangely familiar concept of the role of government, the purpose of government, and the way good government is done. In my lifetime not a single alternative Labor government has won simply by promising not to be like the government.

[Gort]

... man with no abiding beliefs, also lacks agenda, map or destination.


Didn't stop Menzies.

[ponto]

ScoMo government shooting their mouths over China at Trumps bequest so Scotty gets a medal pinned to his chess now has China flexing its muscles against Australia.....oh how they flocked to Trump worshipping at his feet as a God to capitalism when all his is is an arse, there he was crippling small countries with sanctions and tried the same thing on China and China kicked right back with a bigger boot...what can on say other than fucking dickheads.

[pim]

Does Morrison need Porter more than the votes of 50% of the population?

Jack Waterford March 9, 2021 johnmenadue.com/talk-of-collapse-of-rule-of-law-by-morrison-is-nonsense/


An inquest is not usually well placed to settle matters in contest. In the case of an alleged suicide, for example, the Coroner’s remit is to find the cause of death, not to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry. One the other hand, in cases before professional tribunals, lawyers, doctors, nurses and others have been struck off after the consideration of allegations going to their character and fitness. This is for the protection of the public.

Those who want to contemplate what the complete breakdown of the rule of law in Australia could look like should re-contemplate one of the scenes of the riots in Washington as supporters of Donald Trump gathered to try prevent the two houses of America’s parliament confirming the election of Joe Biden as President. Outside, the congress was erected as a gallows, at which, perhaps symbolically, Trump’s vice-president, Michael Pence, was to be hanged if he participated in certifying the election.

The gallows and the noose, sometimes the tree and the noose, have long been symbols of the lynch mob or vigilante mentality that is deeply embedded in American history, particularly when white folk have become angry about allegedly unpunished crimes, such as horse or cattle stealing, or a perceived want of respect, particularly for white women, from blacks, Jews and, at one stage, Catholics. It has also been used, frequently, to deal with people trying to unionise workforces.

State and federal authorities have a long and ignoble tradition of cowering before white mobs, and of failing to punish vigilantism or lynch law. Likewise, American hotheads on the far right of politics are greatly given to talking of exasperated American patriots who are not going to take it any more, seizing power and disposing of those they think have been abusing it. The American Bill of Rights is said to protect such speech.

It was perhaps in deference to that tradition (or perhaps his respect for the role of police in fostering it) that Prime Minister Scott Morrison hesitated about condemning the mob violence of January 6. Or the words and (lack of) deeds of President Trump in inciting a violent takeover of the legislature, and the extension of his presidency on the grounds that he had really won the election except for the fact that the other side had more votes in the electoral college and had probably, if not provably, cheated.

Given what happened, and the continuing truculence of Trump and many of his followers, it would be difficult to insist that respect for the rule of law, or for the processes and institutions of American government, have been restored. However, most of those institutions, and the rule of law itself, seem to have survived the attack upon it.

Morrison is talking self-serving nonsense in claiming that the fundamentals of the rule of law in Australia would collapse if action were taken to investigate allegations of sexual assault by the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, even though the alleged victim is now dead. So is Porter, who is using the claim for refusing to resign. Criminal prosecution of Porter is now impossible, given that, investigating police had not, in spite of five interviews with the alleged victim, bothered to get a sworn statement. Indeed it is said that the victim, shortly before she was found dead, asked police by email to drop the matter, given her mental health situation.

Scott Morrison has suggested that the police having spoken, any investigation into Porter’s behaviour would involve succumbing to “mob rule”, or being voted off the island.

“That’s not how we run the rule of law in Australia. We run the rule of law based on the police. On courts. On judicial systems. On rules of evidence. On presumption of innocence. That’s how liberal democracies function.”

“And we have to be very careful even in traumatic and sensitive issues like this that we do not fundamentally undermine that principle. Because upon that, our entire system is built.”

Morrison, Porter, and/or the Morrison government have, over the years, violated every single one of these fundamental principles. Regardless of their complete hypocrisy, we should respect (in a way they often do not) the principles of fair and public trials, based on evidence able to be seen and cross-examined on both sides, guided by the rules of evidence (including exceptions provided for) and on a fundamental presumption of innocence. If Christian Porter is to be tried for any crime it should be by the same rules that prevail for everyone else (including Bernard Collaery).

In theory, had the NSW Police been more diligent, and less distracted by the grandstanding of Mick Fuller as he accumulated more and more power last year, they might have gathered enough evidence to found a prima facie case, and a charge, even after the woman’s death. But it’s too late to repair the deficiencies now.

It is not too late to find out what happened by other means, and that can occur without putting Porter at any sort of criminal “double jeopardy” or denying him the presumption of innocence.

It is open to the government to hold an inquiry – even a royal commission. Or a parliamentary inquiry. I don’t see why it should be confined to questions of sexual assault. Whether, for example, Porter is a fit and proper person to be the first law officer of the nation, does not depend on whether he has been charged, or convicted, of a sexual assault offence. It is not foreclosed, as some sort of autrefois acquit, by an incapacity to launch a criminal prosecution.

Porter can’t be charged. But the rule of law does not prevent an inquiry

Does anyone imagine that Morrison can long hold out that Porter is without a single stain on his character, the ideal person to take his place in a campaign to enhance the dignity, safety and rights of women, including particularly people working in ministerial officers? It would be interesting to see Morrison try.

One sees regularly cases before professional tribunals in which lawyers, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and others have been struck off after consideration of allegations going to their character and fitness. In some such cases, the person has had their re-registration challenged even after being acquitted of alleged crimes. Striking off is not regarded as punishment, but protection of the public.

Likewise with footballers (including those accused of sexual improprieties), racing clubs, even sporting clubs. Nor do allegations have to be framed in the form of some criminal offence. Court challenges generally go to issues of whether the “rule of law” was followed: which is to say whether natural justice was accorded, whether the party was given a fair chance to answer allegations, including, usually but not invariably, a chance to face accusers and to cross-examine them.

Last month, after extensive hearings, former Justice Paddy Bergin held that Crown Casino, as represented by its owners, board and managers, was not a fit and proper person to have a casino licence in NSW. Bergin cited evidence of slackness in enforcing strict rules – even laws – about money-laundering, association of the casino with organised crime figures and so on. But she did not “convict” Crown of such crimes. She simply found, to her satisfaction (and on the balance of probabilities) that such things were occurring and that Crown had not been doing enough to counter them.

Over the years, any number of commissions against corruption, royal commissions or commissions of inquiry have examined the behaviour of officials or citizens accused over conduct, which if found to have occurred, would amount to a crime. But such inquiries are not alternative courts, and they do not hand out sentences if they establish that a crime occurred. Rather, they make broader findings for government and the community about patterns of crime or misbehaviour, and whether these amount to official corruption. If they see evidence of specific crimes, they may pass these on to police, or directors of public prosecutions, for follow up.

A Coroner’s inquest is not usually well placed to settle matters in contest, even if it has processes for bringing evidence to light. In the case of an alleged suicide, for example, the Coroner’s remit is to find the cause of death, not to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into anything, or everything, thought to have been in the mind of the victim at the time of the actions which brought about the death.

It is rare for Coroners to investigate the truth or reasonableness, or even the facts about, the grievance or matter agitating the mind of the person committing suicide, or to allow material – such as suicide notes – to point a finger, as it were, from the grave. In my experience, coroners are often given to dispensing with inquests altogether once police inquiries satisfy them that suicide was involved.

Women, already talking of gathering soon at parliament to protest against the appalling treatment of victims of sexual assault, are unlikely to be looking for a tree branch from which to suspend Porter. But their eyes will be on Morrison. Morrison should ask his wife and daughters whether he really needs Porter more than the votes of more than half of the population.

[ponto]

The last bastion of male chauvinism and the noose is tightening.

[pim]

Jack Waterford is an old style small "c" conservative lawyer who also used to be editor in chief of the Canberra Times. He's not rusted-on Labor and in fact has had good things to say about Scott Morrison in the past. But the Christian Porter saga represents a tipping point for Waterford. Not just for Porter but for the Morrison Government. He argues that Porter must go - and that's just for starters:

Is Christian Porter fit to hold public office?

By Jack Waterford Mar 10, 2021 johnmenadue.com/is-porter-fit-to-hold-public-office/


Any proper assessment of Christian Porter’s fitness for office would not only properly assess the sexual assault allegations but would his performance as a politician and as a minister. It would appear his personal failings mirror his abuse of political principle.

It began long before I had any knowledge of his private character or about the allegations of the rape of a schoolgirl 33 years ago. But it was strengthened by what I learnt in Louise Milligan’s Four Corners report about his character as a university student and young lawyer around Perth. Milligan, it seems, was unable to satisfy ABC lawyers in November that it was safe to broadcast the rape allegations, but it seems clear, in retrospect, that some of the material that was broadcast had been gathered in the context of the allegation.

It is apparent that his personal failings mirror his abuse of political principle. He emerges as a deeply unpleasant character, particularly in relation to drinking, to deeply sexist, misogynist and dismissive attitudes to women (and indeed other groups including the disabled) and to being, generally, a Hooray Henry sort of entitled buffoon of the type exemplified in Britain by the associates of David Cameron and Boris Johnson. He was frequently accused of inappropriate behaviour with women.

While he was teaching criminal law, he was said to have had a gratuitous focus on violent and sexually graphic material in the legal cases he taught. It was not necessarily different at the law school I attended but, for what it is worth, Porter was teaching in an era that was supposed to have absorbed some of the past 50 years of feminist insights.

A barrister, Kathleen Foley, told Four Corners:

“For a long time, Christian has benefited from the silence around his conduct and his behaviour, and the silence has meant that his behaviour has been tolerated and after a certain amount of time, the silence means that it’s condoned and that it’s considered acceptable. And I’m here because I don’t think that his behaviour should be tolerated, and it is not acceptable.”

None of this shows him to be guilty of the rape he so vehemently denies. But it says something of his character that an independent observer would be entitled to consider while assessing the wider questions about his personality, temperament and disposition. They certainly contrast with the posture of a strong ethical and moral base and deep religious conservatism.

All this sit alongside a record as Attorney-General of appointing Liberal Party cronies to high-paying quasi-judicial positions, outside the merit process.

It includes giving dubious secret advice permitting highly irregular distribution of grants for partisan purposes, interventions in deeply political prosecutions that violated principles of the Crown being a model litigant.

It involved his role as a social security minister administering the Robodebt scheme when he knew, and was concealing legal advice and quasi-judicial findings, that the scheme was illegal. The Robodebt process, like an increasing number of processes in the refugee system, has a reversed onus of proof, contrary to the rule of law to which he has so suddenly become attached.

Porter has carried on with a new type of approach to being law officer. Once, the first law officer had occasionally to stand at a distance from his colleagues, explaining what the law was, rather than presenting them with schemes, stratagems and dubious interpretations to assist ministers or agents to circumvent the will of the parliament. Once, the concept of the rule of law necessarily implied that public administration was circumscribed by guidelines that enforced equality of access to, and fair dealings from government.

Government law subverts basic principles

Under Porter and Morrison, particularly since the pandemic, we have shysters finding ways to subvert the law. Much government is occurring under discretion, without accountability or public reporting, and without the slightest attempt to offer all citizens an equal fair go.

Morrison may be chiefly at fault, but no one could suggest that Porter has demonstrated the slightest amount of spine in the way he has enabled it. It is for that sort of reason that he would be doing Australia a big favour by withdrawing from public life.

Nearly 50 years ago, Richard Nixon’s attempt to frustrate the various Watergate inquiries included the insistence that many of his claims for executive privilege were made not so much for his personal private advantage, but so as to preserve necessary freedom of action for future presidents. If the public were able to learn what was said in the Oval Office, he claimed, no one would be able to give a president frank and free advice ever again.

Indeed, the lawyer appearing for him told one court,

“The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.”

The US Supreme Court rejected the argument, and the power of presidents does not appear to have waned.

Porter’s argument that his refusal to resign is in defence of the rule of law, to prevent the creation of some circumstance whereby a person can be forced to resign by mere allegation, is entirely self-serving.

First, it is simply not true that he is under attack only because an allegation has been made. While the allegation is not enough to sustain a criminal prosecution, it can be examined in any number of contexts, including the courts, as any number of notorious cases involving alleged sexual harassment or unfair dismissal would show.

No process in prospect creates any risk of jail or fine, other than for perjury. If it puts at risk his position as a minister, that is not a position he holds by right but at the whim of the prime minister.

It is clear that he must go if and when Morrison thinks him a burden. He is that, if only as a perpetual distraction about the government’s treatment of women. There is simply no way in which a man of his character and disposition can become an asset rather than a liability.

Indeed, it is almost impossible to imagine Morrison – marketer supreme – transforming himself, in the mind of Australian women, into a champion of the rights and dignity of woman. If he doesn’t already know that could never occur while Christian Porter is his legal adviser, he is not the politician I have thought.

[pim]

Women’s passion and anger isn’t enough to force lasting change

By Jack Waterford Mar 30, 2021 johnmenadue.com/womens-passion-and-anger-isnt-enough-to-force-lasting-change/

It is said that early in the catalogue of Morrison’s mismanagement of recent issues that some of his advisers asserted the matters that had come to the fore – alleged rape, the safety of women in parliament and in the wider world – was a “doctor’s wife” sort of issue, of intense interest only to the female chattering classes, with little bite in the main electorate, particularly among women predisposed to vote conservative.

On this account, it was said, the best political strategy for Morrison was to ignore protests and evidence of increasing anger, and to expect that the marchers and the speakers, having waved their little fists would go home with smug self-satisfaction and let the issue subside until the next occasion to grandstand arose. That attitude seemed also to guide the response of Marise Paine, the minister for women’s issues, whose response to the issue was, if anything, more leaden than Morrison’s.

If that was the judgment, it was disastrously wrong, as Morrison now concedes. Nor is the issue, now that it has gained some momentum, likely to go away. There are umpteen inquiries in train – at least three more were announced last week, including belated requests of the Solicitor General and the Attorney-General’s Department that they examine the capacity of Porter to resume any of his legal officer duties. That’s on top of an inevitable investigation into PMO backgrounding, after a formal complaint and direct evidence from a journalist. There are also investigations into the behaviour of a group of Liberal minders, as well, if more privately into what can be done about Senator Eric Abetz. Criminal trials, inquests and defamation cases cannot be delayed, deferred, or closed by the government.

Labor might think that it has benefited politically, even as it has been aware of the capacity of the issue (or at least any grandstanding about it) to rebound on them. Labor women have been to the fore, because that was the natural thing to do on such an issue. Even if, as women might tartly respond, the real issue needing to be addressed is not the safety and security from assault of women, but the changing of men’s attitudes and behaviour. Yet another reason why an already unenthusiastic government may falter.

It is, actually, an issue from which the coalition can lose votes. But it is not necessarily one from which Labor can automatically gain them, even if it talks the talk more convincingly, or — something it has yet to do — weaves recent events into its existing policies.

The electorate may be much more forgiving, even of Scott Morrison, than one might think. There are many issues on which voters feel strongly without their automatically becoming vote-changing issues — particularly when both parties have promised to lift their game. The lack of virtue of some players is obvious: it is not so clear who voters should trust.

The issue has dominated parliament for more than a month, seemingly with a fresh atrocity or evidence of sexist or offensive thinking almost by the day. It has caused good commentary, particularly from female journalists, and, probably, affected their view of Morrison’s character, decency and integrity forever. The fury of some journalists is palpable, and many — including some who have failed to call out refugee detention policies or Robo-debt atrocities — are determined that governments — of either side — will not be let off the hook.

But it is all too easy to assume that a consensus among politically engaged people is an accurate reflection of the mood out in the electorate. That is not to suggest that large numbers of women are indifferent to the issue, or have not themselves been continually anxious and worried about the real risks of sexual assault. But the obvious problem has not been honed into political shape, and the determination that something must be done has yet to emerge with a marketable set of policies for action. Paul Keating once said that to really put an issue on the agenda one had to talk about it until one was blue in the face and sick of the sound of one’s own voice. And even then, one had only started.

And there is a real risk of the issue losing momentum as parliament goes into recess, and the number of set-piece occasions (all too limited) to hold the government to account decline. Those who are engaged may have great zeal to keep the issue alive, including monitoring all of the inquiries. But Morrison, at last, has the opportunity – in much more of a vacuum – to make more announcements without substance, on every other subject in the world. There’s also the vaccination campaign and the budget, leaks from which will be orchestrated, inter alia, whenever the temperature of the sexual assault issue increases. Political arguments are rarely won simply because they are right, or just, or necessary, or evident common sense. They are won by noise, or by behind-the-scene influence. The better half of the Australian population is still, in politics, regarded only as a pressure group. Perhaps altering that perception – in Scott Morrison as much as anyone else – should also be on the agenda.

[ponto]

The COALalition are good at digging holes....not surprising they are digging their own.

[pim]

Morrison’s day of reckoning may bring down his temples

By Jack Waterford; May 4, 2021 johnmenadue.com/morrisons-day-of-reckoning-may-bring-down-his-temples/

It’s all very well to have a prime minister who believes that he has been anointed by God for his task, and is thus above some of the checks and balances imposed by law and by custom on the mere mortals who have preceded him. Experience and the career so far of Donald Trump suggest, however, that a day of reckoning will come when either human chicanery or an act of omission by God deprives him of his mandate. Even assuming he goes with good grace, it is doubtful that the structures and styles he developed in government can or should endure.

A reversion to constitutional government involves the end of government by decree – the spending of money by ministerial whim, authorised not by appropriation and the processes laid down by law, but by ministerial discretions inserted into legislation. The deviation from proper practise was greatly potentiated by pandemic economics, and the determination of government that money put into the economy would go through the private sector – generally through mates and cronies of government – rather than through the public administration and the processes it has developed to ensure wise stewardship of public funds.

It involves a reversion to accountable government, subject to administrative law and freedom of information legislation. And it involves proactive measures to ensure the probity of government action, whether by ministers, by public servants or public officials – sometimes even by people and structures, such as the political parties, given access to public funds, resources and rights.

One of the problems for a reckoning could well end up being relations between government and church organisations – not least some of those, such as Morrison’s Pentecostal movement, which have secured tens of millions from discretionary grants by government. The artificial labels put on some of these subventions might be argued to prove that these were not direct subventions to religion. But a critical constitutional court might well find that in practice they breach fundamental principles of the separation of church and state. If that happens, the consequence of a brief period of Morrison rule may well end up being the compromise of some of the temples he has helped establish.

The Australian constitution protects freedom of religion – including freedom of being of no religion if one wishes. The Commonwealth – and I think the states, though this is not entirely certain – are not allowed to establish any particular religion as the official religion of the country – perhaps, as in Britain and many places in Europe with a paid clergy.

Government cannot ban any religion – for example, Islam, or any particular religious cult or sect – for example the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nor can it set any sort of religious test as a qualification for government office.

The United States has a similar section in its constitution, and the interpretation there is slightly different from ours. There are some folk who think that the freedom of religion provisions originally meant that one could not discriminate against different protestant sects, but that one could discriminate against Catholics or Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. As in Australia, the US has readily approved measures which benefit all religions – without favouring any in particular. The obvious example involves very big tax breaks for religious organisations, including offshoots involved in education, health care or foreign aid.

But the American courts are far warier about schemes that produce excessive “entanglement” between Church organisations and the state. If, for example, governments give subsidies to both government and religious schools to advance some proper purpose – such as literacy – a system of requiring all schools to acquit their grants, show how they have spent it, and what results they have achieved, might be regarded as producing excessive entanglement.

The Australian Catholic church considered as a single unit spends more money from government than the state of Western Australia.

Various religions in Australia receive enormous support from the state, if never directly so as to advance a particular religious agenda, ideology or system of belief. Major religions, such as the Catholic church, receive government subsidies in maintaining schools and school systems, in providing hospitals and health care, in providing aged care and care for children in institutions and the community, and in providing welfare services for people in need. The Catholic church considered as a single unit spends more money from government than the state of West Australia. That’s on top of exemption from rates, goods and services taxes, income from investments and taxes on surpluses – never, of course, called profits in non-government institutions. Its agencies get their money because they are providing services – generally although not always without discrimination – that otherwise governments state and federal might have to provide.

Some churches have also been adept in obtaining government grants – including through increasingly discretionary funds administered directly by politicians such as operated with Sports rorts – for projects such as sporting facilities, building and grounds security, or for providing, under government contracting out, services administering unemployment, disability and welfare services. Often the terms of such sub-contracts involve clear arrangements that would be in difficulty under the American entanglement doctrine, as where, for example, taking the money involves a duty not to criticise the government.

Long before sects of American origin, such as the Pentecostals, arrived on the Australian scene, there was vigorous debate about the role of religion in the public square. It was, for the first 60 years of federation complicated by intense sectarianism, particularly against Irish-Catholics. Many believed that “state-aid” for schools was constitutionally forbidden, even under schemes where aid went equally to all groups.

There is lasting bitterness about the pattern of distribution of government money, particularly to non-government schools, many of which are obviously far better off than even the best state schools, yet still receiving enormous subsidies. But there may be a special type of anger going for secretive payments to groups such as the Pentecostals.

First, although they have become incredibly influential within the Morrison government, the total number of Australian adherents is very low – less than 0.2 per cent of the Australian population. There will be an inevitable tendency to think that the generosity has been more a matter of inside connections than any intrinsic merit. Other, bigger, and more mainstream faiths may have little to complain of, in terms of the money they have been receiving, but they have not received funds through the same pipelines. And the worldliness and opulent lifestyles of some of the leadership – as well as scandals affecting leaders of some congregations – reinforces a sense that need was not the primary consideration.

Some have suggested that any sort of Labor attack on such relationships will backfire. It would be used to argue that Labor does not respect the morally conservative views or the beliefs of ordinary decent “quiet Australians” who attend church and are worried about the long-term impact of “permissive” laws, such as on same-sex marriage. But neither the beliefs nor the lifestyles of such people are under attack. The revenue and the power are as ever going to the top. The hands Scott Morrison is laying on others have been in the taxpayers’ pockets.

[pim]

For years Jack Waterford was Editor-in-chief of The Canberra Times which, as you would expect, is still Australia’s best newspaper for informed commentary on the APS - or Australian Public Service - and public policy generally. So when Jack warns about the steady corruption that’s become a feature of the way the Morrison government hands out government contracts, Australia should sit up and take notice.

Government rorting is now the Australian way of doing business

By Jack Waterford, Jun 8, 2021, johnmenadue.com/government-rorting-is-now-the-australian-way-of-doing-business/

Australia has moved to a deeply corrupted system of doling out consultancy contracts to mates by pure discretion, in circumstances which in the classic Morrison style are compulsively secretive, and vague in sums and contract terms.

Typically, government claims complete exemption from producing reports on the grounds that they were prepared for Cabinet or are “commercial-in-confidence.” It’s a reversion to the 19th century, with all of its risks of jobbery, bribery, fraud, nepotism and extortion, in a ministry not obviously beyond temptation, especially given the low chances of being held to account.

Note the resemblance to the sports rorts affair, whereby the prime minister’s office helped and assisted a hapless sports minister to give out extensive sports grants to marginal electorates the government was hoping to retain or to win from Labor. Though the PMO used spreadsheets colour-coded by electorate, the head of prime minister and cabinet was unable to see political influences at work. Ministers involved in this, and other schemes rorted to reward friends and punish enemies, have not seemed in the least embarrassed. Some Nationals are quite truculent about thinking the spoils of office include the right to hand over money to whomever it likes. Few, however, have been as shameless as the apparent cleanskin, Gladys Berejiklian, premier of NSW, who admits that it is wrong but says that “everyone does it.” It is wrong; too many politicians on both sides of the fence do it, and it is to be hoped that ICAC in NSW will soon judge whether such blatantly partisan administration amounts to the ICAC definition of corruption.

Not that one could, or would expect the AFP to investigate if it suspected this was happening at the Commonwealth level. First, it is impossible to conceive of a senior AFP officer entertaining such a notion. Second, the AFP cannot, or will not, investigate such matters of its own motion. It must get a reference from government, as with a leaking complaint, or with an allegation of criminal fraud on the Commonwealth. It goes without saying that no senior public servant or minister has ever sent a reference. The AFP has not uncovered a case of high-level corruption, even in its own ranks, since its establishment in 1979. It’s the cleanest police force in the world – never once made the subject of genuinely independent critical review.

Money handed over to consultants for tame consultancy advice is not the only problem. With Jobkeeper, hundreds of millions were given to businesses with little in the way of accountability requirements, even the prospect of repayments when money was not spent. The spot of PR bother in which Harvey-Norman, among others, has found itself, after pocketing $21 million it turned out not to need is a good example of the lack of controls, as is the shameless and spiteful attitude of the major shareholder about criticism. Some coalition members have accused those who make anything of it guilty of the politics of envy and fomenting class hatred. These are, frequently, just the same people who work themselves into lathers about whether unemployed or sick people are getting anything more than their entitlement.

In one sense, one cannot criticise the public service for this shift away from accountability or for policies of deliberately starving most public sector programs and contracting out to the private sector. It is, simply, just doing what it is told, and, most likely, would be doing the exact opposite were this government, or a future Labor government to ask. It is also carrying out government policy in stonewalling FOI requests, cutting back on the disclosure of information, and loyally implementing deeply partisan policy.

Public administration is a pretty spineless show, and the public deserves better. The quality of leadership – and example – in the public service is at a low ebb.

Most departmental secretaries are virtually unknown to the public. Few have strong personalities, in private as much as in public. Many have no particular expertise or background in the policy or programs administered by their departments and have little appetite for personally exercising the independent functions imposed on them by legislation. They do not foster any public debate, nor do they work to make their agencies academies where good policy and program ideas – including ones that might be necessary to serve a future government – are nurtured and developed. Nor do they foster any sort of robust debate about public sector ethics or fundamental principles of good government. Most secretaries give every impression of being cowed and compliant, even when they are well aware of significant legal doubts about the way the government is going about business. In some cases, as for example in Attorney-Generals, Home Affairs and Social Security, senior public servants are promoting their own sectarian institutional agendas with the same zeal, and lack of regard for a wider public interest, as for doing whatever ministerial officers want.

One of Australia’s greatest public servants, the late Tony Ayers, used constantly to tell his staff that one of the most important jobs they had to do involved the careful selection of staff. Good leaders picked good staff. People wanted to work alongside or under good staff. Bums appointed bums – usually people in their own image, he said.

It is rot from the head down. Scott Morrison, like Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbot and Kevin Rudd before him, has rotten judgment in selecting people. Those they have selected dilute the quality down the line.

Perhaps this is at the core of the problem. With few good leaders and few managers who led by example in good management, we are not selecting and advancing the best people. Too many are advancing who are clones of secretaries, or who will not rock the boat, or attract the animosity of the prime minister, the minister or minders. It is not that the service lacks good people, but the message they are getting from their superiors is that there are no rewards for standing out, for standing up or standing against. The premium is for moral vacuums who are enthusiasts for government policy, as well as enthusiasts for the way of thinking of the secretary.

That’s not going to attract the best and the brightest. Indeed it will drive them away, in just the same way that the blandness and lack of moral character or imagination does. Nor is money the answer. It’s other rewards that matter most. An interesting job. An academy of ideas in competition with each other, with heretics as welcome as traditionalists. A sense of achieving something for the public good. Even when the result of a political decision is disappointing, a belief that contrary ideas were discussed and given due weight, rather than dismissed out of hand. A sense that one is working as much for the long term and the public interest as for the government’s re-election or popularity as measured by the latest public opinion poll. A sense that there is something noble, valuable and worthwhile in helping governments decide what is in the public interest, rather than in mere scratching for a profit or the highest material rewards. Respect. A sense of power. A sense of being valued. A sense that one can actually make a difference.

These are not values fostered by the modern machinery of ministerial government, or by the regiments of minders. As often as not, even the opposition fails to appreciate what an engine room of progress and good government a good public service can be – all too often being obsessed, as the Morrison government is, with using power to benefit particular constituencies. If we are going to have any sort of revolution in honest and creative government it is going to have to come from example, exhortation and practical leadership.

[ponto]

Here here...or is that hear hear..??.....doesn't matter stop the rorts..includes Gladys.."Few, however, have been as shameless as the apparent cleanskin, Gladys Berejiklian, premier of NSW, who admits that it is wrong but says that “everyone does it.”

[caskur]

Dec 6, 2020 6:13:15 GMT 10 ponto said:

ScoMo is acting like Trump, playing to an audience of anti China people like Stellar and Casnuts...division the course.

Yes, let's roll over and be butt fucked into oblivion by the bat soup eaters. You and Pim will enjoy that.

[ponto]

China is a huge trade market...not anymore.

[caskur]

Jun 11, 2021 22:50:42 GMT 10 ponto said:

China is a huge trade market...not anymore.

Still ignorant about WA mining I see?...lol

[ponto]

WA will lose that soon when Africa and Brazil mines are operational also...+ www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/china-warns-of-economic-winter-for-australia-as-it-reveals-a-new-plan-to-ditch-our-iron-ore/news-story/8880204dfa4a56cf7bb076ac32d85925

China will wipe Australia...

[caskur]

Jun 12, 2021 4:12:26 GMT 10 ponto said:

WA will lose that soon when Africa and Brazil mines are operational also...+ www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/china-warns-of-economic-winter-for-australia-as-it-reveals-a-new-plan-to-ditch-our-iron-ore/news-story/8880204dfa4a56cf7bb076ac32d85925

China will wipe Australia...

Brazil and Africa are infested with covid... WA has none... good luck finding men to operate mines while infected with covid....lol We produce 900 million tonnes of high quality iron ore per annum. No one even comes close to us. It just goes to show how completely clueless you all are about the state the drives the nation.

[caskur]

And we have lithium for batteries... so if and when they ditch the iron ore.. our lithium will replace it. China buys 75% of our lithium.

[ponto]

Can ya nay tread... China increasing their scrap metal recycling, plus Africa and Brazil still is a prospectus for the near future despite covid...as by the end of2022 most of the world will be vaccinated.

Australia will have to find new markets that are willing to buy at what China is paying...and that may prove to be difficult.

Then Australia could produce its own steel and manufacture cars again...preferably hydrogen fueled....none the less will lose the lucrative China market.

[pim]

Being a one trick pony economy like Saudi Arabia is not a good long term prospect for Australia. Saudi Arabia has its oil ... and that’s it. The fundamental error that these oil-rich Arab countries have made is that they’ve pumped up the oil, flogged it off to countries like ours, made a shitload of money in the short term, and pissed it into the desert sand. The scenario that Toots puts forward is basically one in which WA turns Australia into the Saudi Arabia of commodities: we dig up Australian dirt, ship it off to the Chinese for a shitload of money in the short term, and piss it up against a wall. What we’re left with is a lot of holes in the ground, Aboriginal sites like Juukan Gorge desecrated and destroyed, and fuck all else. The commodities boom has been a windfall, that’s true. The problem is that Coalition government after Coalition government has refused to see it as an opportunity to make the investments necessary to diversify the economy. They think the commodities boom will last forever. The term “fools gold” springs to mind.

[caskur]

Jun 12, 2021 8:25:53 GMT 10 ponto said:

Can ya nay tread... China increasing their scrap metal recycling, plus Africa and Brazil still is a prospectus for the near future despite covid...as by the end of2022 most of the world will be vaccinated.

Australia will have to find new markets that are willing to buy at what China is paying...and that may prove to be difficult.

Then Australia could produce its own steel and manufacture cars again...preferably hydrogen fueled....none the less will lose the lucrative China market.

Trust me when I say this, I would LOVE it if China stopped buying our iron ore. They only buy 80% anyway. We should be manufacturing our own steel. Australia is the worst run country on the planet by a country mile... no vision, no backbone... no nothing. All that happens in Australia is wanton destruction of virgin habitat... wanton rape of our unique landscape.

[pim]

National Party greed was once restrained by Liberals

Jack Waterford 6 July 2021 johnmenadue.com/politicians-never-have-legal-authority-to-spend-money-by-whim/

We ought to be asking questions about the mysterious failure of public service systems to hold any senior public official to account for anything, let alone to punish or dismiss.

This week saw the publication of a report by the Auditor-General, Grant Hehir, into the rorting of commuter car parking projects within the urban congestion fund. Yet again it was a plausible-sounding scheme, in part borrowed from an opposition promise about relieving traffic congestion. But, like sports rorts, and other schemes generally under the supervision of the National Party, it was ruthlessly used to put money into coalition seats, or marginal Labor seats the coalition hoped to gain, without the slightest pretence of fair process, honest and impartial administration or, even compliance with the rules the administration pretended would be used to dispense money, or the law itself.

One of the ministers fingered for this serious maladministration, which involved $660 million, was Paul Fletcher, who thinks things were legitimate because ministers were openly engaged in dispensing the money (as opposed to with sports rorts, where, with Department of Health help, the government hid behind the Australian Sports Commission.)

But ministers have no more legal ambit to spend money just as they wish than the officials who normally handle the detail of grants programs. The fact that the prime minister and deputy prime minister – arguably a cabinet subcommittee – also had their paws in the very dodgy and partisan distribution does not amount to an authority to dodge the rules.

As the Auditor said, the minister or ministers were required by law to comply with section 71 of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act of 2013 which states that “a minister must not approve a proposed expenditure of relevant money unless the minister is satisfied, after making reasonable inquiries, that the expenditure would be a proper use of relevant money”. The PGPA Act defines “proper” as efficient, effective, economical and ethical.

It is not enough to insist, as Fletcher has, that the money was actually committed to commuter car parks – albeit ones selected without calls for submissions, effectively without consultation with relevant states, with express disregard for greater needs in other places. The sites chosen were effectively settled among a conclave of local Liberal members and Morrison and Fletcher’s offices, generally to be announced during the election campaign. It is not a rort. It’s a fraud on the taxpayer.

The audit makes it clear that the department played dead, doing little to document what was occurring, to prepare or put up more worthy cases, or to argue the toss about fairness or process once it was clear that the fix was in. It went passive. It forgot its duty. Its paperwork, not for the first time, was a disgrace.

Dr Steven Kennedy was the secretary of the Department of Infrastructure at the relevant time, which also embraced a shocking scandal of the department paying up to ten times the value of land near the second Sydney airport. No one would suggest any personal malfeasance in this case: the questions about responsibility concern when a chief executive must be held accountable for grossly deficient systems, for insufficiencies in the supervision of officers and the scrutiny of spending.

Similar questions arise over chronic mismanagement and waste in the Department of Home Affairs, with the loss of billions over concentration camp facilities and staffing, computer purchases, and the development of an almost entirely unaccountable unofficial operational intelligence agency in the almost private charge of the departmental secretary, Mike Pezzullo. And about how blame should be distributed, as between ministers and very senior public servants, over the Robo-debt fiasco, in agencies commanded by Kathryn Campbell – a person, like Pezzullo, being talked about for promotion to a more senior agency.

We ought to be asking questions about the mysterious failure of public service systems to hold any senior public official to account for anything, let alone to punish or dismiss. Such failures also raise questions about whether the supposed head of the public service, Phil Gaetjens of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Public Service Commission, are actually engaged in general quality control, or development of proper public service leadership. If there is a scandal and a secretary will not accept responsibility, is she holding someone junior to account, or helping sweep everything under the rug — perhaps after claiming that a review, expected to last until everything has been forgotten, is happening.

But secretaries, of course, might well retort that since ministers – from the prime minister down – will not accept responsibility even when it is obvious, why should they?

And that is at the centre of the problem. Poor leadership, almost by definition, comes from the top. Whatever skills, or whatever luck, the prime minister displays, he is not setting any sort of standard of good management, of a strong sense of stewardship and propriety in managing public funds, or in enunciating broad principles of public service (whether by politicians or public officials) that anyone would write down and admire. Nor does he enforce standards: ministerial responsibility has become a joke during his period in office, and the very phrases and let-outs he uses to deny personal or managerial responsibility for his own failings are the very templates for further disasters.

If it is hardly any surprise that the government rejects any idea of a corruption body with teeth, it is equally no surprise that the auditor is starved for funds, that watchdogs such as the FOI Commissioner and the Ombudsman have been rendered harmless, and that the AAT has become seriously compromised by being stacked with coalition friends, relations, and cronies.

Over the life of the Morrison government a few public officers have been forced to depart if they have fallen out with their ministers – Barnaby Joyce for example – or had to be the scapegoat for prime ministerial embarrassment – over Cartier watches for example. The prime minister’s conduct over such matters has been embarrassing.

National Party ministers have always made clear that they regard the public purse as spoils of office, entitling them to dole out contracts to favoured party donors, mates and cronies, and the diversion of public resources to pet ideas and projects. Their greed and larceny were once restrained by Liberals who regarded public office as a matter of trust, and who entered public life not so much with an eye to diverting public funds to their benefit as to improving the lives of fellow Australians.

Such public spirit has not entirely disappeared, but it is under heavy pressure from the short-termism of the Morrison government, the appalling example of party leaders, the shamelessness with which they treat the truth or recourse to principle, and the apparent belief that it is good politics to hurl the entire Commonwealth Treasury at the cause of re-election.

It is hardly any surprise that parliament has these days few parliamentarians: people interested in improving the systems of politics, legislation and public administration, in a bipartisan way.

There was a time – it was not so long ago – when there were backbenchers who put their personal integrity, and desire for good general government in the public interest – ahead of mere point-scoring, obeisance to ideology and factions, and branch stacking. The party of business and the middle class has recently had little to offer the parliament in the nature of wisdom, attention to the long term, and the maintenance and development of the institutions of government.

Once, a senior public servant aware of the likely venality of ministers in a particular matter would have insisted that the formal record be especially clear when it was clear that a rort was about to occur if only to make it clear that the malfeasance was elsewhere.

It would now appear that practice is changing and not only towards frank complicity in rorts, and covering-up the role of ministers and minders, but making sure the paperwork is so thin and inadequate that it is almost impossible to point the finger. The passivity of senior public servants involves an implicit rejection of public service codes of conduct, makes clear to potential whistleblowers just how much support and departmental integrity they can expect if they do their duty.

But the number of officials sacked for mismanagement, disobedience, incompetence, malfeasance or appalling stewardship of public money? None that I can think of. Scott Morrison, who when a public servant running tourism was dismissed by his minister for one or other of these sins, isn’t a hanging judge on such matters. Apparently.

[ponto]

Gort loves Rorts.

[pim]

PM’s focus on short-term fixes and politicisation of every conflict

By Jack Waterford Jul 28, 2021 johnmenadue.com/pms-focus-on-short-term-fixes-and-politicisation-of-every-conflict/


The Smirk is wearing a bit thin these days

Can prime ministerial temporising, short-term fixes and spin see him out to a new election? His best hope is continuing good economic news. But the real crisis is about his character and his credibility — as well as his apparent abdication of a leadership agenda. Increasingly people realise that Morrison is full of bullshit, even (or especially) when he is being sincere. But there’s just as much of a problem with his failures to make real or lasting policy, instead of promises and quick fixes to instant political problems. Less and less does he seem in charge.

Most of his failings seem rusted on. He doesn’t change much. Or learn much from experience, however much he pretends. His declining cred involves much more than an eccentricity about coming clean, or being resistant to telling the truth.

Nineteen months ago, Morrison was widely criticised first for taking a family holiday as bushfires were raging and secondly for an almost complete want of empathy with bushfire victims. He confessed some error, but seemed determined to show he “got it” by pledges of large sums for reconstruction, calling in the military for emergency aid, and efforts to be seen to be very concerned, and very much in touch. At least until the pandemic became a problem a month or two later. Since then it has become clear that actual government help to survivors, other than that organised through a partisan political system of helping friends and ignoring enemies, has been slow, and disorganised. And far from involving any inspiration or vision about a reconstruction program that improved the social, physical and economic environment of scores of little communities, it was boringly addressed, at best, to a grumpy and minimalist restoration of what had been lost. No Christopher Wren was involved.

Morrison made umpteen marketing efforts, not least in standing alongside compliant military officers, to show he felt for the victims and their losses. It was always a short-term public perception problem, and soon he was back inside his strange incapacity to see the world through eyes other than his own. The most one can expect is that the next natural disaster, of flood, or famine or fire, will come with warning so he won’t be caught with a beer in his hand on the other side of the world.

Morrison announced many inquiries and not a few initiatives when he and the government came under sustained public attack over issues of violence against women, including women who worked in parliament. At first, there was inertia, including a refusal (by himself and women ministers) to go outside to speak to a large gathering of women in front of Parliament House, alongside some tough talk to press gallery sycophants about how neither he nor the government were going to be bullied by street action. Soon after, he realised that he had miscalculated — again — on an issue he had long regarded as of low priority in the political order of things. He was, apparently, helped to this insight by his wife. Later, he pleaded and wheedled about his failure to get it, and masqueraded his new-found empathy and determination to do lots of things — tough things by golly — about the problem, not least in his own backyard. Money was appropriated to astonishingly inept marketing campaigns. More women — none very well regarded by the sisterhood — were appointed to ministerial positions from which they could give the prime minister insights beyond those available from his wife. Reports were ticked off, but nothing much happened. Indeed, police have yet to launch a prosecution of the rape case, though they have compassionately assisted ministers in political strife about their inaction. Now we are to have a parliament house education program by which MPs are to be given, only if they feel like it, a one-hour chat with an expert on matters such as sexual harassment and assault. Morrison seems to feel that the political crisis — for him — has passed. It hasn’t. Worse, at least from his point of view, its return will not be countered by lists of the innumerable inquiries or recommendations adopted, but from fresh evidence, such as by the restoration of Barnaby Joyce, that the issue is not regarded as important by the Morrison government.

Morrison, in short, has learnt very little from the affair, just as he learnt little from his public relations disaster with the bushfires. Very little fundamental, that is, other than about managing a political crisis, rather than dealing with the source of it. His short-term responses involve a little bending to the wind — a lot of promises, sometimes (if all too late) agreement that the problem was bigger than he thought. When the publicly funded public relations blast was over, and either a new crisis arrived or the momentum of the issue declined, back to inaction, inertia and conscious downgrading of any policy action. Symbolised, perhaps, by what was said to be the initial Cabinet discussion after the report of the aged care royal commission — with minister arguing about what minimum amount of money could be thrown at the “problem” so as to convey the public relations impression that the government was taking it seriously.

Neither Morrison, nor his health minister, Greg Hunt, are to blame for the individual disasters with particular vaccines, including the difficulties (not as great as expected) in getting just the sort of medical advice they wanted so that they could solemnly swear to be acting on medical advice. But they, and their bureaucratic advisers, are to be faulted for putting all their eggs in one basket, failing to anticipate serious problems with supply, the initial privatisation of the logistics and delivery of vaccines, and continuing failures (even as they now have surpluses of Astro-Zenaca) to complete coverage of the aged, people in aged care institutions, the disabled, workers, in aged care homes and disability residences, indigenous people in settlements, and others in vulnerable occupations, including, as we now know, drivers transporting people to quarantine centres.

Morrison must be blamed for overpromising, schedules and declarations about the progress of vaccination, and prevarication and delays about supplies.

He is also the author of most of his own problems with the premiers, not least from the way that he opposed lockdowns — at least until NSW was forced into one — and suffered his ministers into attacking Labor premiers who closed their borders. All the more embarrassing now that the state he held up as the gold standard is locked into a still expanding crisis, one made worse by the premier’s failure to go early, or go toughly, in trying to contain an outbreak. Ministers from the Treasurer down might have expected the sort of rebound their relentless politicisation of fresh outbreaks from clear evidence of high popularity of the Labor premiers, even in the face of non-stop attack by the Murdoch press. In West Australia, the Liberal Party was virtually wiped out at the last election.

It would be wrong to suggest that Morrison’s shortcomings have only been on display with issues and crises not anticipated when he won the leadership. No one was expecting a pandemic, and the various challenges that presented. Nor bushfires, or a sudden focus on the sexual and physical assault on women. These may have dominated the headlines, and created and compounded the impression that Morrison is a poor pilot, now scarcely in control of events.

But in fact all of the same problems have been evident in areas where the government ought to be achieving things, but isn’t. Over climate change, where the message changes daily according to the audience but where Morrison and the government are now manifestly out of touch with world opinion, and local public opinion. It has reached the point where Murdoch and Nine polemicists, particularly in the Australian and the Financial Review, are now arguing that Australia must give way to the emotional and overstated arguments of the wider world. Not because the wider world is right, according to them, but because Australia is coming to be seen as a leading recalcitrant and might soon suffer economic damage from our trading partners.

Inaction on climate change — and threats from the Nationals that they will oppose targets unless their constituencies (the coal lobby, first, then farmers) are handsomely bribed is a reflection not only on the government, but on the leadership and moral cowardice of Morrison himself. Just as bad, however, has been his inaction over water, particularly in the Murray Darling basin, including his handing back control of it to the rorting ways of Barnaby Joyce. With that and more general environmental policy, the Morrison characteristic is to avoid or deny any sense of public stewardship -=- let alone any idea of being a trustee for future generations. Instead it’s all about short-term actions designed to appease lobbies, and neutralise opponents.

Morrison, and the government as a whole, have also been undermining their positions with a determined assault on the institutions of government, on the proprieties and decencies of public spending, and over Morrison’s refusal to acknowledge fault in serious, perhaps criminal, abuses of processes required by law. Down the track, indeed, this is a government which may be seen by history more for its corruption and abuse of power than for its local management of an unprecedented crisis. It will not be an attractive picture.

Some of Morrison’s fixes might paper over the cracks until the next election. But the more that colleagues, his political opponents, the lobbyists and the public come to believe that Morrison has lost moral authority and certainty, and a feel for the right thing, the harder they will press him. More and more will count him a dud. Even if they ruefully blame themselves in part for poor judgement in selecting their leader, they will probably, in the Morrison manner, not look back but seek to get rid of the problem.