Uncategorized | Crispin Hull

Cleaning politics: hopes and fears

The elected Whitlam Government was sacked by Governor-General John Kerr in 1975 for trying to govern and spend money without the approval of the Parliament after Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Party blocked Supply in the Senate.

In short, spending money by a Government without parliamentary approval is a a constitutional No-No.

Yet, last week the Australian National Audit Office reported that the Department of Health in the Morrison Government did precisely that. But that was four years and two elections after the event.

Nightmare for ‘young people today’

“Young people today!” The Yorkshire-accented words emitted from the narrow-screen television in the Monty Python classic skit.

I was reminded of this last week when the “young people today” were hit with a 7.1 per cent increase in their student debt through indexation. On the average debt of $25,000 that is $1775. It is the highest indexation for three decades, but back in the 1990s wage increases matched inflation. In 2023, very few got a 7.1 per cent wage increase.

Which Australians are more equal?

The Constitution gives some Australians more rights than others. Or in the words of George Orwell borrowed by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, “some Australians are more equal than others”. They are called Tasmanians.

Why is that so? Because the founders thought that the smaller colonies would not have a reasonable say in the affairs of the Commonwealth. They could be silenced or squeezed out.

Calvary and legal glitches

The key to the dispute over the takeover of the public hospital land of Calvary Hospital lies in what is, in effect, the ACT’s Constitution – the Self-Government Act.

Putin and the lessons history

What follows is an instructive parallel chronology, from which one can draw unmistakeable conclusions.

Big Australian lottery loss coming soon

Is Peter Dutton for real? If so, it will be the first time a major political party has questioned the mad high immigration policies begun by the Howard Government in the late 1990s.

If he is not for real, his objection made in his Budget response to the “Big Australia” policy of the past quarter century is just a short-term opportunist grab to attack the Government at best, or dog-whistling at worse.

Wealth to the already wealthy

Here we go again, yet a couple more subtle quiet shifts of wealth to the already wealthy away from middle- and low-income people.

The process can be seen with several announcements in the past week or so: the Reserve Bank’s decision to lift interest rates yet again; the interest cost of government debt to be $122 billion over the next five years; and the finding that in its last year the Coalition Government spent $21 billion on consultancies.

Threat to Albanese Government

The Albanese Labor Government has just sown the seeds of its own defeat unless it changes course on one key issue.

The past week or so was busy and productive for the Government. It announced half a dozen excellent policies, all but one of them essential steps in reversing the almost-decade-long stupor of Coalition Governments which allowed Australia to become a two-tier society: property-owning, high-income, or high-wealth people and the rest.

Murdoch cases: best to do nothing

The disappointment – especially among people in the media – at the settlement of the defamation action between Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems was almost audible.

Murdoch has just bought his way out of accountability, they wailed. When will he ever be brought to account?

Australia’s two-tier society

There has been a fair bit of commentary in the past fortnight or so about inequality in Australia with good research by the Australia Institute, the Grattan Institute, Anglicare, the ABS, and the ATO itself among others.

They rightly tell us tax breaks go to the already well-off, but do reveal how truly insidious the fundamentals of the whole government benefits system are.

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