Bruce Hawker warns Kevin Rudd's Labor leadership overhaul 'critical'
BEN PACKHAM THE AUSTRALIAN SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 9:29AM
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Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd's Labor leadership reform has been backed by his key strategist, Bruce Hawker. Picture: Kym Smith Source: Herald Sun
LABOR strategist Bruce Hawker has moved to defend Kevin Rudd's legacy, saying his rank-and-file ballot for Labor leader must be retained for the sake of the party.

Mr Rudd's campaign manager and long-time supporter said "the worst thing that could happen right now'' would be for the leadership to go uncontested.

Labor powerbroker Stephen Conroy has warned the "farcical'' new rules threaten to turn the party into a "laughing stock'' by delaying the appointment of a new leader.

But Mr Hawker, who has been blamed in part for Labor's chaotic campaign, said the reform was "critically important'' to re-empower Labor's base.

There is no doubt that by moving power away from factions and some affiliated unions to the rank and file there will be much greater influence exerted by ordinary member,” he said in a blog post today.

Bruce Hawker's blog post

"No one should be in any doubt either that there are groups within Labor who are determined to ensure that these democratic reforms are stillborn.

"That would be a travesty and set back Labor's move to modernise and democratise itself.''
He said the party must end the disproportionate influence of unions over its affairs at a time when they represented just 18 per cent of the workforce.

Mr Hawker said Labor would be well-placed under either Bill Shorten or Anthony Albanese - who is yet to declare his candidacy - as leader.

He said if everyone involved behaved respectfully, there was no reason why there should be any lasting fallout from the ballot.

Mr Albanese is refusing to be rushed into making an announcement on whether he will stand.

Nominations for the party leadership will be called at tomorrow's caucus meeting, but under the new Rudd rules would remain open for another week.

Mr Shorten, the outgoing education and workplace relations minister, spoke to Mr Albanese yesterday and lobbied colleagues over the leadership, putting his case for the position and making clear he would contest a ballot.

Mr Shorten is expected to make a public announcement about the job today, having told colleagues on Tuesday that he "wants the job''.

While some grassroots elements of the party are hoping for a leadership contest that is opened up to the rank and file, a number of MPs are keen for a consensus choice to avoid a repeat of the divisions of the Rudd-Gillard years.

MPs are also divided about the merits of having a 30-day leadership hiatus if the position is put to a ballot under the new rules.

Senator Conroy said the party had been left in a "ludicrous'' position where it might be leaderless for eight weeks, when it should have a leader and a frontbench already in place to hold the Coalition to account.

"A parliamentary Labor leader cannot sustain their leadership if they do not have the support of a majority their colleagues, and these rules that have been put in place will make us a laughing stock. An absolute laughing stock.''

Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said he would back Mr Shorten to take the leadership.

"It's a difficult choice but I think that on balance, he would be the best leader of the two," he told Sky News.

He said he supported an "open and democratic process" to select the leader.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it taking a bit of time," Mr Dreyfus said.

"That's what democracy sometimes requires."



- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/bruce-hawker-warns-kevin-rudds-labor-leadership-overhaul-critical/story-fn9qr68y-1226717433217#sthash.1zWBve1z.dpuf

well to be honest where do they come up with this shit?? so for the leader of the ALP to be voted out they require 60% in opposition and 75% in government to replace the leader?
isn't 51% a majority in democracy? or is this ALP structure not based on democracy?
and how will the caucus accept a leader and work with that leader if they are voted in by the rank & file??

that's what i mean by wait and see......

Understandable from a simple, pessimistic, theoretical analysis but there are very solid reasons.

The concept of a more-than-50% majority is not a new one in democracy. A 50%+1 majority is called a simple majority but there are other kinds in politics (government and business) such as two-thirds majority (or the two-thirds rule.)

A caucus simple majority to oust a leader is setting the bar extremely low for a party that has been lambasted for changing leaders with the wind based on highly factional powerplays. Bumping that bar up means that should caucus members feel the itch to push for a leadership change they need to be very sure that there is a general party consensus that it is a good idea. It makes even more sense for it to be higher still when in government as we all saw how the public reacted to having the prime minister changed without a public vote (despite this being how our system has always worked.) Realistically this means Labor will only be able to change their PM if there is consensus that the PM is doing actual harm to the country and party, and even aside from that they need rank and file approval.

The rank and file vote is an important democratic milestone that removes the bulk of factional power from the leadership decision whilst still weighing in favour of the caucus. Shoring up a majority from 55 members is a lot easier than 27,000 who have combined an equal say to those 55 combined. One caucus member vote is worth 490 rank and file votes (more as the rank and file numbers increase.) In simple terms it means Labor members have an influence on the choice of leader that is not insignificant, but the heads of the party that have perhaps more experience and have earned more right to power within the party have proportionally more sway.

Caucus will accept leaders voted in under this system as a) they had relationally more say so it is highly likely that if they are in factional control and their candidate is a good choice their candidate will be selected and b) if caucus is closely divided and the rank and file vote reverses the caucus decision, it is a reflection of what the people that keep them employed want and it makes zero sense to jeopardise your future employment by going against their wishes (and further harming the party in the process.)

I would honestly be surprised if, post their next defeat and subsequent run in opposition, the LNP are not using this system.

i really wonder how well the ALP politicians will accept a leader if the rank and file vote delivers one other than one the politician vote for????

To elaborate on what I said above, the only way for rank and file to overthrow the caucus vote are in the following circumstances:

1) The caucus vote is tight. In this case it is the same as if there were no rank and file vote and one or two caucus members voted the other way. Politics is a long game, if you don't have the support you bide your time until you do (unless you are the ALP of the last 6 years. Which is what they are actively trying to avoid.)

2) The caucus preferred candidate is exceptionally unpopular with the rank and file. I'm talking absolute majority here- in the range of at least 70-80% vote against them. In that situation a politician will realise that their preferred candidate would result in them losing votes (and thus potentially their job.) In reality, a rank and file vote between acceptable candidates will be tight as the ideology of the voters aligns with the ideology of all of the candidates due to it being a vote strictly within paid up party members.

Backing candidates in the caucus is all about having friends in power to advance your own career, there is no sense in not working with the democratically elected leader if doing so means you are more likely to lose your job. Again, any politician whose preferred candidate is not given the position in this situation will tow the line until there is reason to believe the person best for their career improvement has popular support. A candidate without rank and file support may be notionally better for your career, but once you have that information it is clear that they are not practically better for your career.

Politicians may be self-serving arseholes, but they aren't by definition stupid.

It is worth noting that rank and file membership of the ALP has risen 15% since this system has been put in place. By any measure, that is a remarkably good outcome for the party.

Oh and if anyone wants my tip, Shorten has it in the bag.

Albanese suits me more as a socially left leaning voter, but I'm not a Labor voter (or a member of any party) so my opinion doesn't matter. Shorten has the caucus, and the rules of the vote stipulate that you must be a paid up member of the party for more than 12 months to vote. Even though this was reduced from 24 months, it still favours long term members who are aligned mostly with Shortens right-wing and union centric support base. Future votes will have more input from the left leaning ALP voters as this new process will encourage them to join the party.

Yes, such a farce that the Labor Party in so many other countries (Like Canada and England) use exactly the same system. The only reason he's upset is because it removes his chances to bully the leader.

New Australian government faces sharp economic downturn

By Mike Head
12 October 2013

Less than a month after taking office, the Abbott government confronts a rapid erosion in the prospects of Australian capitalism, driven by a structural crisis of the Chinese economy, continuing stagnation in Europe and the United States, and intensifying global financial turmoil.

Falling growth rates, collapsing mining investment and an underlying rise in the unemployment rate are cutting budget revenues, placing the Liberal-National Coalition government under intense pressure from the financial markets and corporate elite to move more swiftly to slash social programs and drive down the wages and conditions of workers.
Under the previous six years of Labor government, the full impact of the global capitalist breakdown that erupted in 2008 was cushioned for a period by a combination of stimulus packages in China and Australia, a revival of mining exports to China and other Asian markets, and a resources investment boom.
Over the past 18 months, these processes have begun to unravel, as China’s growth slowed, commodity prices fell and the investment tide turned, highlighted by major project cancellations by BHP Billiton and other resources giants.
Between 2003 and 2012, the global mining sector is estimated to have invested $284 billion in new projects or mine expansions in Australia. In the first half of 2013, however, that inflow dropped dramatically, deducting about 0.5 percent from economic growth. In addition, during 2012–13, Australia’s mineral and energy export earnings fell 8 percent to $177 billion.
Two reports by the International Monetary Fund this week underscored Australia’s exposure to what is emerging in China—the end of its 20-year period of fast growth, and the danger of a financial crash. Heavily dependent on recession-hit European and US markets, China cannot continue to grow at the same pace, while the Beijing regime’s pumping out of credit to boost domestic spending has created debt bubbles that threaten to burst.
According to the latest IMF World Outlook, a slowdown in Chinese growth from an average of 10 percent during the previous decade to an average of 7.5 percent over the coming decade would cut Australia’s gross domestic product by more than 3 percent per year by 2025, primarily as a result of slower Chinese demand for coal, iron ore, and copper. Only Mongolia is more vulnerable—facing a 7 percent GDP impact.
A second report, the IMF’s global financial stability report, warned of further “downside risks” from China: “a sudden credit squeeze could further decelerate economic activity and trigger serious asset-quality problems” unless Beijing urgently reined in credit growth, which expanded more than 22 percent in 2013. The IMF said these dangers were compounded by the shocks likely as the US Federal Reserve pulled back its “quantitative easing” program of pumping $85 billion a month into the US financial system.
The Australian Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) has warned that mining investment has peaked, in real terms, and would decline from 2014–15. “While there still remain several very large projects under construction, as these are completed over the next three to four years, there are few projects of equal value scheduled to offset the decline in mining capital expenditure,” it noted.
BREE reported that record low official interest rates of 2.5 percent had failed to spur capital investment to replace the gulf being left by the mining decline. In fact, capital expenditure in Australia was 2.3 percent lower, year-on-year, in the June quarter of 2013. The bureau predicted that Australia’s GDP growth would stagnate at 2.5 percent from 2014–15. That is well below the level of 3 percent regarded as necessary to halt rising unemployment, which saw mining jobs fall by nearly 16,000 in the year to June, on top of the destruction of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
After rising from 5.2 percent earlier this year, the latest official unemployment figures showed a decline from 5.8 to 5.6 percent during September, in seasonally adjusted terms, but that was largely because the workforce participation rate decreased 0.1 points to 64.9 percent, the lowest level since 2006. This indicates that growing numbers of people have given up looking for jobs. An estimated 100,000 people have left the workforce in the past three months, the biggest number since Australia’s last official recession in 1992.
Aggregate monthly hours worked also decreased 6.4 million hours to 1,641.5 million hours. The share of the workforce either unemployed or working less hours than desired rose to 13.7 percent, the highest since 2002. All the indicators point to a worsening jobless crisis, with Treasury forecasting a 6.25 percent official rate by the middle of next year. That would mean 770,000 out of work and more than 1.5 million unemployed or underemployed.
Despite the record low interest rates, the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment fell 2.1 percent in October, partly reversing an immediate post-election jump. The subindex tracking consumers’ assessments of their finances relative to a year ago fell by 1.9 percent, a sign of increasing financial stress. A related index of unemployment expectations rose to 10.1 percent above the level in November 2011, reflecting heightened concerns about job prospects. There was a shock fall from 140 to 135 in the index of assessments of “whether now is a good time to buy a dwelling.”
Likewise, dwelling approvals fell 4.7 percent in August after a 10.2 percent jump in July, denting efforts by sections of the media to talk up prospects of a housing-led recovery. Overall, construction activity declined in September, extending a three-and-a-half year contraction, even though house and apartment building rose for the first time for months, according to the Australian Industry Group/Housing Industry Association Australian Performance of Construction Index. The protracted fall in construction industry employment continued, and in fact registered its steepest pace of decline in the past three months.
Borrowing by businesses is continuing to stagnate, underscoring the impact of waves of industrial and retail closures, and lack of business confidence that conditions will improve. According to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of Australia, business credit increased by just 0.2 percent in August, after a 0.4 percent lift in July. Over the year, business credit barely rose, by 1.4 percent, which is a fall in real terms.
Public demand, which represents 22 percent of the economy, actually declined over the past year, contracting by some 2 percent in the year to June 2013. This reflects the record cuts in public spending already imposed by the Gillard and Rudd governments as they attempted to implement the dictates of the financial markets to eliminate the budget deficit.
Plumetting revenues in 2012–13—the equivalent of a $40 billion drop from 2005–06, at the height of the mining boom, ultimately compelled the Labor government to defer its pledge to balance the budget. For 2013–14, another $20 billion is expected to be wiped off revenues, producing a deeper budget black hole.
Business leaders and the corporate media are now ramping up their demands on the government to cut spending far further, radically lower business taxes and rewrite the workplace laws to clear the way for the wholesale cutting of wages and working conditions. David Uren, the Australian’s economics editor declared on Thursday that Treasurer Joe Hockey was “getting a crash course on the global economy” at the IMF-G20 finance ministers’ meetings in Washington this week. “Hockey should return from Washington with a much fuller appreciation of the challenges of his job and a sense that the post electoral glow of rising confidence levels may prove ephemeral,” he wrote.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/12/abbo-o12.html?

Abbott must not shirk economic reform
Date
October 12, 2013

It is crunch time for the Australian economy. The investment phase of the resources boom is over, the jobless rate is hiding the difficulty in finding work, the nation needs new sources of growth and reform is needed. Australians will have to be more open to compromise to ensure the nation can grab the significant opportunities on offer before others beat us to them. Long-standing expectations about workplace flexibility, the role of government, protection of agriculture and the importance of foreign investment need to be revised.

Underlying these challenges is how well Australia relates to Asia. For all the disappointment with Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the political culture about perks, in his first month in office he has offered hope that change in the economic culture will come from the top down. His plan for a quick decision on a second airport at Badgerys Creek is long overdue.

So is the acceleration of free trade agreements with Asian partners. Australia will have to cede more than many would like in negotiations to meet the tight deadline of deals with China, Japan and South Korea within a year. Conflicts over Australia's access to key Asian markets in dairy, sugar, beef and services remain. But the good news is Beijing's apparent willingness to reduce barriers on professional services in a broader global trade deal - which is preferable in most cases but when progress is slow, bilateral ones have to be pursued.

In any free trade agreement, some sectors will be disappointed and others will benefit. But the potential overall rewards for more trade with our region are great, as Labor's ''Asian century'' research showed.

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With the background work done and a mandate for economic revival, Abbott is well placed to finish the job Labor couldn't amid the political shenanigans of the past three years. NSW in particular can use its strengths to grab opportunities in Asia, especially in what Deloitte Access Economics calls ''super'' sectors that are expected to grow more rapidly than the overall economy.

But there are hurdles to overcome. Tourism is expected to double in size in the next 20 years, driven by China - already our second-biggest source of tourists and with the largest expenditure per visitor. But Deloitte queries the lack of federal-state-local co-ordination of policy, the suitability of some infrastructure for Asian visitors and whether the federal government is underplaying the sector's importance.

Global demand for education is expected to rise 7 per cent a year between now and 2020. But Australia lags in offering Asian students courses that capitalise on our expertise in the environment and engineering. Asian perspectives are lacking in key areas of university teaching, our visa rules are restrictive and educational technologies underutilised.

The Coalition and Labor have stressed Australia's potential to become a food bowl for Asia. But foreign investment rules are a hurdle. The Coalition has promised to tighten scrutiny, especially of deals involving state-owned enterprises. To his credit Abbott is hinting that he will not allow these to stand in the way of free trade agreements. Deloitte also sees challenges in luring graduates into agribusiness and in a dearth of infrastructure.

Investment is also an issue in developing our gas reserves as a clean alternative to other fossil fuels used to drive Asian growth. While concerns about the environmental and health impact of gas extraction are understandable, there are less acceptable impediments to progress in the form of high costs, red tape, visa rules and uncertainty over climate change policy. For Sydney in particular, the potential of growth in financial services is immense.

Labor saw this and commissioned the Johnson report on making Australia a financial centre for Asia. More than 3 billion Asians are forecast to become middle class by 2030. Deloitte says by 2050 Asia will be home to more than half of the world's financial assets. Building on the Johnson report, Abbott can lead the drive to tap this market. He is already focusing on Asian languages and closer cultural ties through his revived student-swap Colombo Plan.

But even if the government can convince Asia we mean business and free trade deals are struck, Australia is a fairly costly place to do business. The government has the potential to bolster business confidence by cutting red tape but will eventually have to go further by revisiting workplace flexibility and incentives to get more people into the workforce. None of these reforms will be easy and Abbott's mandate in many contentious issues is questionable. But the economic plan cannot be a one-term affair. Long-term thinking should begin now and be carried through, no matter who is in government in the next 20 years.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-editorial/abbott-must-not-shirk-economic-reform-20131011-2vdur.html#ixzz2hTtnpV3F

PM must choose to govern for all, not just business
Date
October 12, 2013
Read later

Ross Gittins
The Sydney Morning Herald's Economics Editor

A fundamental question facing the Abbott government is whether it will succumb to the General Motors syndrome: what's good for big business is good for Australia. Does its slogan that Australia's now ''open for business'' actually mean open slather for business?

Will it run the country to please its business backers or to benefit all of us? Because the notion that what big business wants of government always coincides with what's best for the rest of us is a fairytale only a chief executive could believe.

Another way to put it - to clarify the choice Tony Abbott faces - is whether the government will be pro-business or pro-market.

The economic side of our lives is about producing and consuming; you can't have one without the other. To be pro-business is to favour producers, making life easier for them when they ask for help, whereas to be pro-market is to favour consumers, the people market economies are meant to serve.

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As Adam Smith put it: ''Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the welfare of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.''

It's easy to tell yourself that by helping an industry you're helping its customers, though it's more usual to tell yourself you're saving workers' jobs. Business people lobbying to protect their profits almost invariably hide behind their workers' jobs, often making greatly exaggerated claims (claims they're rarely asked to substantiate) about how many jobs will be lost if their demands aren't met.

When you think it through, however, you realise that giving business people the easier life they seek isn't the way to maximise the benefit going to consumers, nor to maximise total employment. You may imagine - as does everyone on the left - that capitalist economies are designed to benefit the owners of capital above all others. In fact, in an efficiently functioning market economy the suppliers of capital get little more than a reasonable return on their investment, with most of the benefit going to consumers in the form of an ever-expanding range of reasonably priced goods and services.

The magic ingredient that brings this about - shifting the benefit from producers to consumers - is competition: competition between the producers but, just as important (and often lacking in our busy lives), competition between consumers and producers as consumers seek out the best deals and the best service. When industries lobby governments for favours, what they're usually seeking is a reduction in the competition they're facing or about to face - all in the name of protecting their workers' jobs, naturally. They're seeking an easier life than the rough and tough life the capitalist system would otherwise serve up to them.

Often they're seeking protection from competition with imports. In the old days protection was achieved by imposing a tariff (import duty) on imported goods; these days a similar effect is achieved by granting the industry a subsidy from the taxpayer. Either way, the protection comes at the expense of the public.

But does it save jobs? It may save them in the particular industry being protected, but only at the expense of employment in the rest of the economy. How so? Consumers are left with less money to spend on the products of other industries. People in the protected industry don't care about that, of course, but the rest of us should.

Longer-term, protection involves keeping your head in the sand and pretending the rest of the world isn't changing. This is unsustainable. When the world we live in changes, we have to adapt to that change or become an industrial museum.

The way to maximise employment for everyone who wants to work is for us to pay the world price for everything and produce those goods and services where we have an advantage, and leave it to others to produce stuff where we don't have an advantage.

So being pro-market means examining requests for help from particular industries from the perspective of the economy as a whole. This avoids another problem: often one industry's request involves being favoured against rival industries.

Give in to one and the others redouble their screams of pain. You can't help 'em all, and if you try to you end up with a mollycoddled, inefficient economy.

Complicating things for the Abbott government is that its Labor predecessor didn't know how to say no to the business lobbies.

And the more it said yes to particular industries the more dissatisfied, demanding and contemptuous the rest of business became. Lobbying has become a way of life for big business, and no doubt the whole of business is expecting a bonanza now their own side is back in power.

If Abbott has any sense, he'll get the business lobbies back in their box from the start, telling them the era of rent-seeking is over. He'll stand up to big business the way Labor never could because, unlike it, he need have no fear of losing business's support.

The first place to stand up is against the unending blackmail game General Motors and the other global car makers are playing so successfully against all national governments.

And when he and Joe Hockey start delving into the budget, they'll find quite a few areas of hidden protection, starting with the plan to continue paying a fortune for faulty submarines to be made in Adelaide when much cheaper, better-working subs could be bought off the shelf in the US or Sweden.

Then there's the protection for local pill-making companies (not to mention retail chemists) hidden in the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

And coming up is a bid by manufacturers to be exempted from paying the world price for gas when the eastern states become part of the world gas market in the next year or two. We'll hear a lot more about this one.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/pm-must-choose-to-govern-for-all-not-just-business-20131011-2vdy0.html#ixzz2hTuURAoL

Tony Abbott 'scared' of gay marriage

Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has been accused of being “scared” of gay marriage after he launched a court challenge to block a territory government from legalising same sex marriages.


Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has been accused of being “scared” of gay marriage after he launched a court challenge to block a territory government from legalising same sex marriages.
Mr Abbott, a staunch Catholic and opponent of same sex marriage, has sought to block laws by state and territories, saying the nation needs a consistent definition of marriage.
His conservative Coalition government said it will launch a High Court challenge to an upcoming law by the Australian Capital Territory to allow same sex marriage. Polls show a majority of Australians support same sex marriage.
The move drew a furious response from the territory’s chief minister, Katy Gallagher, who said Mr Abbott feared taking on public opinion and was instead seeking to “play the issue”.

“When you can’t argue the point, you argue the process,” she said.
“It does avoid the more difficult position that people don’t want to articulate: that is that they don’t like same-sex marriage, which is what it comes down to at the end of the day.”
A federal bill failed to pass last year after it was opposed by then prime minister Julia Gillard, as well as Mr Abbott. The ruling Labor party allowed a conscience vote but Mr Abbott’s conservative Coalition did not.
Despite his strong personal opposition to same sex marriage, Mr Abbott has left open the possibility of allowing government MPs a conscience vote, saying he will leave it for the party-room to decide.
“If it comes up, we’ll look at it,” he said. “We’ll decide exactly what we do about it.”
However, Mr Abbott has opposed moves by states and territories to pass their own laws allowing same sex marriage. He said this was because state marriage laws should be consistent with the federal law, which specifically defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman following changes introduced by former prime minister John Howard in 2004.
“We think it is important that there be a uniform approach to marriage around the commonwealth, and that's what we are going to do our best to ensure,” he said.
"It's simply a question of the constitution.”
However, legal experts are divided over whether the upcoming territory law is invalid. The law has been carefully drafted to only apply to people who could not otherwise marry under federal law.
Mr Abbott’s government has asked the territory not to allow same sex marriages until after the court challenge. The territory rejected the request and is planning to push ahead with what could be the first same sex marriages under Australian law, though their validity may be in doubt until the seven-member court brings down its ruling.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10372726/Tony-Abbott-scared-of-gay-marriage.html

Choosing to put the kibosh on the territories making that decision is a terrible move IMO. It's going to cause rifts all over the place.

and all of this doom and gloom delivered by the previous mangificent government;) ;) ;)

RedKat did you ever explain why it was ok for Abbott to lie during the eelection and not be held to the same scrutiny that Gillard was with the carbon tax "lie"?

For what purpose? A challenge is nigh on impossible

Good for Albanese. And good for the country really. This country is too centerist as it is. Nobody is willing to make extreme assertions because they're worried about upsetting someone.

Peter Slipper says coalition MPs should be charged over expenses

Former speaker of Australian parliament says prosecuting him is a double standard and Liberal party conspired against him

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Sunday 13 October 2013 13.32 AEST

Peter Slipper, the disgraced former speaker of the Australian parliament, says it is a double standard for him to be facing charges of misusing taxpayer-funded cab dockets when other MPs have been allowed to pay back travel entitlements they wrongly claimed.

Recent revelations include senior figures in the new coalition government claiming travel allowances for attending weddings, as well as Tony Abbott, the incoming prime minister, getting taxpayers to cover his flights and accommodation when he entered various sporting events.

A number of MPs have since paid back money.

"I think that either the charges against me should be dropped or everyone else should be charged," Slipper told ABC TV on Sunday.

"There's a double standard here."

An emotional Slipper claimed the stress of a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by former staffer James Ashby cost his wife, Inge-Jane Hall, a chance at motherhood. She had abandoned IVF treatment following the "politically motivated allegations".

"Inge was just getting to a situation where she felt her state of mind was such that she could go through that traumatic process [IVF] again, then all of a sudden Ashbygate descended," he said.

"She now feels that [the case] cost her the opportunity to be a mother."

Slipper said his life had been destroyed by the "conspiracy" against him. "There's no doubt in my view that Ashbygate reaches to the highest level of the Liberal party," he said.

"It was part of a plot to not only destroy my speakership, political career, but also bring down the newly elected government of Australia."

Federal court Judge Steven Rares ruled in December that Ashby had "pursued a political attack" against his former boss, "in combination" with others including Mal Brough, who was a minister under former prime minister John Howard.

Brough denies any wrongdoing. He ousted Slipper from parliament in the September federal election, winning the seat of Fisher on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Slipper has pleaded not guilty to charges arising from his use of a government Cabcharge card for a tour of wineries in the Canberra area.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/13/peter-slipper-coalition-charged-expenses

Quentin Bryce offers to quit but Tony Abbott declines

Australian governor general wanted to avoid perception of bias after son-in-law Bill Shorten's election as Labor leader

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Sunday 13 October 2013 16.33 AEST

Tony Abbott has revealed Quentin Bryce offered to resign as Australia's governor general in anticipation of Bill Shorten's election as leader of the opposition Labor party.

Bryce, who is the mother-in-law of Mr Shorten, wanted to avoid any perception of bias.

"I have thanked her for her magnanimity but declined to accept her resignation," Abbott, the prime minister, said in a statement on Sunday.

Instead the prime minister asked Bryce to stay on until March 2014 when her term is due to end.

Bryce's agreement to stay was a measure of her personal commitment to provide continuity at a time of political turbulence, Abbott said. "She should be commended for her dedication to public service."

It was only "fit and proper" that Bryce be permitted to conclude her term and be accorded the appropriate farewell that her exemplary service merited, Abbott said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/13/quentin-bryce-offers-quit-abbott

melodrama much

Irony much :lol:

-PB

Hah, calling out the Prime Minister for blatant lies is 'melodrama' if it happens to be a Liberal Party pm.

What's this apparent "lie" that's whipped the left in a mad frenzy? It's not the promise to spend the first week in office with that tiny aboriginal community is it? Even if he did tell a fib (worst case scenario) surely it doesn't compare with a total policy back flip which has implications for millions of households and businesses. Sure politicians need to be held accountable for their words, but surely you moral puritans can also gauge the difference in gravity between a teeny weeny remark that harms nobody and a total 180 u-turn on a critical policy mandate. If this is the the best dirt you can dish up on Tony he must be doing a pretty good job so far.

Well so far we've had Abbott change his stance on the immigration policy, scrap the internet filter, spend all of a week in the country as PM. I'm sure there's other stuff I've forgotten.

Good job guys.

](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

Nice rebuttal.

inb4 "I don't need a rebuttal" and/or namecalling.

never was going to be an internet filter........

Bill Shorten caucus 55 rank & file 12,196 TOTAL. 12,251
Anthony Albanese Caucus 31 rank & file 18,230 TOTAL. 18,261


and the winner is...!!!!!!!:shock:


Edited by batfink: 15/10/2013 11:49:11 AM

ITT: Batfink adds weighting to the list of things he doesn't really understand but is morally outraged about anyway.

Well yes, there was.

The LNP tried to sneak it through, Malcolm Turnbull defended it on radio, and then suddenly when the story started gaining traction it was all abandoned as "poor wording".

Another lie from a shamefully dishonest government.

[youtube]DKi1lGPe0BA[/youtube]

who said i was morally outraged???