Economy

It is most disturbing how genuine compassion has been lost from our national government. Even worse, they seem so shameless about it. Concepts of government responsibility, integrity and accountability are increasingly downplayed, even ignored. A sense of shame is essential to an effective moral compass. Shamelessness is a real threat to our democracy and to the rule of law.

The decision to transfer one of the daughters of the Murugappan family to Perth Children’s Hospital sent shock waves across Australia and abroad. Growing public pressure forced the Australian government to release the whole family into Perth community detention.

Scott Morrison has found a very useful ally in an unlikely place. His name is Joel Fitzgibbon, opposition member for the New South Wales seat of Hunter, and the prime minister is certainly grateful for his contribution. The veteran Labor member, whose coalmining electorate encompasses much of the state seat of Upper Hunter, went on a media blitz early in the week, which gave no comfort to his own side.

A government doesn’t spend $100 billion in a budget addressing every political problem, either of its own making or imposed on it, and leave anything to chance. Scott Morrison certainly didn’t this week. No sooner had parliament adjourned than he hot-footed it to Queensland – the state that did the most to save his government and without doubt holds the keys to the Lodge at the next poll.

Against this alarming backdrop, one significant question is being asked about the Albanese opposition: Is it capable of winning the election that’s due some time in the next year?

The morning after the three-ring circus that is budget night in Canberra, Scott Morrison came close to telling the truth: that he and the treasurer are in fact flying blind. Morrison repeated in his round of dawn media interviews that he has a plan, a very big plan. But if that is meant to sound reassuring, it’s mightily hedged by an economic reality that he almost admits is out of his control.

Next Tuesday the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, will up-end 40 years of Liberal Party ideology with a budget that will hugely increase spending and create deficits as far as the eye can see. The small government, ‘trickle down’ prescriptions championed by United States President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and zealously advocated by Australia’s conservatives right up until March 2020, will be consigned to history.

Revenge, so the expression goes, is a dish best served cold. Six months after her ‘humiliation’ by the prime minister and ‘bullying’ by Australia Post’s chairman, Christine Holgate gave ice-cold vent to her fury. And while the former chief executive of the nation’s mail service came to the senate inquiry into her demise attired in the white livery of a suffragette, gender discrimination was far from the whole story.

When Malcolm Turnbull was dumped last week from New South Wales’ Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy advisory board as quickly as he was appointed, the move shocked many people. Turnbull was dropped by his own protégé, the state’s Environment minister, Matt Kean, and by a government in NSW that had previously seemed receptive to his brand of liberalism.

I spent 10 years as a police officer, working in Queensland. My book, Black and Blue, recounts my time in the police as an Aboriginal woman, and my life as a single parent of three brilliant and amazing children. It also documents the racism I was subjected to throughout my career but also everything that led up to that point.