Comment

Key ministers in the political line of fire over the past two weeks will be missing in action when parliament resumes on Monday. The Morrison government, currently being held together by gum and string, is in full strategic retreat in the hope it can brazen out the crisis. But you can’t sideline an attorney-general and a defence minister on indefinite leave and it not become an obvious admission of wilful impotence and avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny.

The Online Safety Bill was introduced by the Morrison government last month with much fanfare about its mission to improve and promote the online safety of Australians. A lot of analysis of the bill has focused on its attempt to minimise harm to children online and to restrict the sharing of non-consensual images across digital platforms. The bill aims to do this by providing several new powers to the eSafety Commissioner, an office that was established in 2015.

Citizens have been kicking up a dreadful fuss about Mathias Cormann spinning around Europe in an RAAF jet while lobbying to land his well-padded backside on the top chair at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in not-so-gay Paree. The Belgian Waffle (hat tip, Mike Carlton) has been clocking up $4300 an hour for taxpayers as part of this global pocket-moistening tour. The Europeans have been warned that Cormann may not be all he seems – despite what passes for an Australian charm exercise.

China’s ‘Wolf Warrior diplomacy’ is proving more than a menacing howl for Australia, and what to do about it seems beyond the gumption of the Morrison government. It is one thing for the prime minister to dismiss a list of grievances from the Chinese embassy in Canberra as ‘unofficial’, but it is an entirely painful reality when they are accompanied by unofficial trade bans and restrictions on about $6 billion of Australia’s yearly exports.

Seventy-five years ago, Australia committed to a rules-based international order. Our continuing commitment to that order is based both on pragmatism – the peace and prosperity it has provided; and on principle – the ‘fair go’ that the rules-based order promises. The problem with continuing to champion that order, however, is that it may not offer a ‘fair go’, but rather entrench privilege.

We’d almost entirely forgotten about Fabulous Mitch Fifield, until there was a brief grab of him on the telly, beamed in from New York, where he has landed softly as our ambassador to the United Nations. It’s pleasing to see the Human Toilet Brush still maintains his bristling, brush-like qualities, yet it’s to be wondered just what he’ll be doing at the UN Summit on Biodiversity. Nothing much, it seems.

‘The first thing Josh Frydenberg should do in next Tuesday night’s budget speech is say sorry,’ says Wayne Swan, the man whom the Liberals cut no slack after he failed as treasurer to deliver Labor’s promised budget surpluses. Neither a global financial crisis nor a massive collapse in export revenues were acceptable excuses to the Coalition back then.

The boundaries of what is politically possible have shifted, rapidly, during this pandemic. The conditions have been created for the most significant policy reforms in our history. No one wants to see what we are now weathering repeated. There is an appetite for change.

An emotional nation has been moved by Schmo Morrison’s humanity as he fights for the freedom of citizens to cross state borders to attend funerals. Funerals and their role in salving grief over the loss of a loved one is something dear to the Coalition. Government Finance Minister and Turnbull quisling Mathias Cormann announced gutturally that Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is “so cold-hearted and so harsh and so nasty”.

Two weeks ago, during the last sitting of the federal parliament before the budget early next month, Anthony Albanese decided it was time to take up the fight against the government on the economy. The Labor leader sensed the prime minister and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, were embarking on a course of action that would see jobs and economic management become the key issue at the next election. Rather than it being the Coalition’s strong point though, Albanese saw what could be its fatal weakness.