Politics

No one did more to shape the direction of Australian politics in the past decade than Tony Abbott. His ruthless and determined resistance to effective action on climate change was reprehensibly short-sighted but was the template for four election campaigns.

Boris Johnson has joined Donald Trump and Scott Morrison on the list of leaders who have lost office in the past two years. We can say with some confidence they were all a particular kind of Covid-19 fatality: their inability to manage the pandemic – both in terms of appearing to manage it as well as actually managing it – was the main reason the three of them went from victorious to vanquished in one election cycle.

One of the most disappointing aspects of our recent politics – at a tremendous cost to our national interest and wellbeing – has been the treatment of education as something of a political football. Such a fundamentally important policy area has been basically neglected, ignoring the reality of the system’s failures and the magnitude and urgency of the challenge to ‘fix it’.

It was the drum that alerted them to the political event unfolding on the grass between the old and new parliament buildings early on Saturday afternoon. A ‘freedom movement’ rally was under way. A hundred people gathered around a flatbed ute with a pleasant young female MC and PA system perched on top, conducting amplified chats with identities familiar to the crowd. This was the hard core of the ‘cookers’, as Canberrans call them.

Four years. Four million taxpayer dollars. More than a dozen judgements. Days and days in court – often in closed court, with the media and public barred from attending. On Thursday, it was finally over. The prosecution of Bernard Collaery came to an end.

While the climate debate intensifies over the inevitability of further, even more extreme weather events, and the necessary transitions to a low-carbon Australia, it seems that governments are ignoring or playing down the possibility of further pandemics and the need to be better prepared next time.

The de-ScoMofication of Australia on the world stage took a leap forward this week as the Albanese government consolidated its international relations edge over an enfeebled opposition in a series of high-level meetings in Europe.

The greatest challenge facing the defeated federal Liberal Party is not whether to move to the right or the left, nor whether to court voters in the outer suburbs or try to win back its once blue-ribbon seats. It is how to stay relevant.

While it is still early days, it is becoming clear that the Coalition and their media sycophants didn’t believe they would lose the election. They seem unprepared to move on. Beyond the immediate disappointment – both individually, for those who lost seats, and collectively, for a party now facing at least three years in opposition – clearly some are soul-searching.

Thirty-four is the number and it has turned federal parliamentary politics on its head. While the Albanese government has a slender majority in the lower house – 77 of the 151-seat chamber – it falls a long way short in the senate.