Comment

‘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.

Simply put, we are not asking for the current generations of non-Indigenous Australians to apologise for the acts of their ancestors. What we are asking for is that they join us in dismantling the power structures that reinforce the oppression first started by their ancestors and help us create a future where Australia can live up to the narrative it tells about itself.

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.

#MeToo’s corroboration of multiple accusers offers women a chink of light in this judicial impasse. In this entirely untested extra-legal and post-hoc process, millions of women have made abundantly clear that corroboration is solidarity. The onus is now on law reformers to listen to this core articulation of #MeToo – embrace corroboration and change rape law to admit prior convictions as evidence.

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.

A country that permits and encourages private religious schooling should understand that such schools will expect to discriminate in their student admission and teacher employment practices in favour of those who are members of their faith communities, and they have long been able to do just that. In the case of schools, at least, given how much public money they receive, the question is not how much more leeway churches should get to discriminate but the opposite.

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.