Politics

‘Why would he quit his career pretty well at the top of his power and influence if he didn’t think the odds were against us winning the next election?’ was the wry comment of one Liberal.

Attorney-General Christian Porter seemed unwilling to replicate ICAC federally. Politicians nobbling such a body would be a very bad look, almost as bad as refusing to set one up now that it is squarely on the table. And that’s the challenge Shorten has given Turnbull. Parallels with Turnbull’s long reluctance to set up a banking royal commission are certainly not misplaced.

As long as we keep celebrating the past, it’s always going to affect the future. When we glorify the same power structures that led to dispossession, when we revere the violence and glorify the white supremacy and harsh imperialism relied upon, then that is who we are and who we are going to be.

Turnbull has spent the past few weeks meticulously planning strategy and tactics for his revival. One insider says the PM has had a series of deep-dive sessions on policy. He has also had backbenchers break their holidays to meet him for a drink and frank exchange of views.

Joyce’s ham-fistedness, if not vindictiveness, in also sacking Queenslander Keith Pitt from the frontbench has precipitated a new threat to the government’s majority. An angry Pitt has told colleagues he is seriously considering moving to the crossbench. Those who know him say that, unlike his colleague George Christensen, Pitt is not a person of idle threats.

This shift in government rhetoric and sentiment around China did not start with Dastyari and Bennelong. These two events have merely blown it out of any sane proportion. It can be traced back to the arrival of the mercurial Trump presidency worsening America’s paranoia about China’s rising economic power and influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Laborites’ Deep Concern has been applied to every death, rape and outrage since, along with fretting entreaties that the government be more “accountable” and “transparent”. This purely rhetorical stance evaporates the moment the Greens apply any real measure of accountability and transparency. Then, Labor rushes to protect the government, still terrified of the chimera of the western Sydney voter.

Maybe Bill Shorten’s luck is running out. Complicating Labor’s campaign in Bennelong is Senator Sam Dastyari’s highly controversial dealings with Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo. Turnbull slammed Dastyari as an ‘agent of foreign influence and you can’t have an agent of foreign influence sitting in the senate’.

It has often been said there will be wars over water. In its own way, the scene I was watching was a skirmish in what has the potential to become a war and rewrite the politics of water, land use and energy in this country. It was also an insight into how threatened the farm community felt and demonstrated how it would be difficult to fight these farmers’ guerilla tactics. It was a warning they were serious players.

The Courier-Mail says eight Queensland federal Nationals will divorce themselves from the LNP campaign at the next election. The eight are counting on Barnaby Joyce to win this weekend’s byelection in New England and to relaunch them in the bush under the old green and gold colours. It is eerily like the response from the Nationals 19 years ago.