Politics

Old heads on the government backbench aren’t holding out for Morrison to provide a circuit-breaker in May. Good budgets – that is, ones the public don’t get too upset with – tend to disappear within the first sitting fortnight. Even tax cuts are taken for granted after the first payday. What they are looking for is a vision for Australia that captures the imagination.

The botching of the treaty ratification with our biggest trading partner exposed much that is wrong with this government. It brought to the surface, yet again, deep divisions that have leadership implications. And it exposed a political tin ear that is destroying the government’s attempts to regain political ascendancy.

On Wednesday, Labor tried to have the bills debated in the house of representatives. Bill Shorten said the government’s choice of the senate was nothing more than a cynical attempt by the prime minister ‘to be able to make the claim to the extreme elements in his party room that his government is taking action … while hoping MPs in the chamber can avoid having to vote on the issue’. The champions of free speech in the government immediately gagged the debate. So the plan to ‘strengthen the protection of free speech’, as Turnbull claimed, was dead on arrival. But the charade had to be played out, and not without damage in the broader electorate.

One report says an emission intensity scheme would save businesses and households up to $15 billion in electricity bills over a decade. But that is an inconvenient truth.

As if having the entire nation under surveillance for potential criminal offences was not sweeping enough, George Brandis has fresh thoughts about extending Big Brother’s scope.

Just as Barnett benefited from the disarray in the ALP and the backlash against the Gillard government in 2013, now he has the baggage of his Canberra colleagues replaying a similar script.

The culture- and knowledge-producing class has become steadily less interested in a real transformation of a privatised, neoliberal economy. After all, they have done quite well out of it.

Abbott’s mantra that Turnbull is losing the base to One Nation is not addressed by aping her policies.

Bennelong MP John Alexander says five years of being a team player and keeping his gripes in-house have got him nowhere. His burning issue is housing affordability.

So often we hear the same bleating refrain, “Where are the moderate Muslims?” After the past fortnight, the answer is apparent. You just threw her, and every other Australian Muslim, in the water.