Track record

WANT to know what your federal members of parliament have been up to? It’s actually not that easy to find out. Sky Noise and other mainstream media won’t tell you. I’ve had a go at it and here is what I have found. It’s essential that we all know the track record of our MPs before we vote for them again in the next federal election.

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Note: This is a long read. You might want to work through this post over a number of weeks.
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Look up They Vote For You . Ask your federal member(s) if this record is correct. The Parliament House website does not show how each and every MP or Senator voted on each and every Bill passed by Parliament so hats off to the OpenAustralia Foundation for this initiative.

Look up Revolving Doors to see if your federal MP or Senators are mentioned.

Look up their names in magazines like:

Search the ABC online. Search the New Daily online.

Commonwealth Electoral Division Profiles are available at the ABS website if you want to see a picture of the demographic make-up of your electorate.

From a variety of trustworthy sources, I’ve put together the following record of the Coalition in power since the last federal election on the 18th of May 2019. It’s not a complete record –– too much is going on to keep an eye on it all –– but it will give you some indication of the actions of the Liberal / National Party Coalition since the last election. What I’ve looked for in particular is:

• transparency and accountability in government decision-making (as opposed to secrecy and corruption).
• respect for the rule of law and accepted norms of democratic governance.
• the making of good laws (as opposed to bad laws). Bad laws include, for example, the many so-called national security and so-called anti-terrorism laws that were introduced with both Coalition and Labor support and are now being used to attack whistleblowers, journalists and political dissidents.
• an understanding of the risks facing Australia and the world and the development of public policy to mitigate those risks.

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See the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020 for an overview of the ‘global risks landscape’. See also the Commission for the Human Future.
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Jun 2019
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On June 26, 2019, following raids on the ABC and a News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst by the Australian Federal Police, the heads of all the main news organisations in Australia presented a united front at the National Press Club in accusing the government of criminalising journalism. They called for a thorough overhaul of laws on national security, government secrecy, whistleblower protection, freedom of information and defamation. Australia has more national security laws than any other nation. It is also the only liberal democracy lacking a Charter of Human Rights that would protect media freedom through, for example, rights to free speech and privacy. Addressing these issues has not been a priority of the present government.

Source: See the many articles at The Conversation on this topic.
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Sep 2019
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Crikey reported that the Coalition was stacking the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) with mates: 65 AAT members were former Liberal Party staffers, former Liberal/National politicians, party donors, members, unsuccessful Liberal candidates and Liberal government employees; 24 of them have no legal qualifications. Ian Cunliffe went further, arguing that Christian Porter has shown himself unfit to be federal Attorney–General. The AAT is supposed to provide independent merits review of a wide range of administrative decisions made by the Australian Government.

Sources: ‘Anatomy of a scandal’, Crikey 24 Sep 2019; Pearls and Irritations 29 Sep 2020, Ian Cunliffe (type Christian Porter in Search then filter by author Cunliffe)
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Oct 2019
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The Guardian revealed Australia’s environment department is unlawfully withholding more than 10,000 pages of freedom of information documents from the public, including internal records on Adani and the Angus Taylor grasslands affair.

Source: Christopher Knaus 16 Oct 2019 in The Guardian
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Mar 2020
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Coalition announced the formation of a new advisory body, the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission. Dubbed the ‘Covert Commission’ for its secrecy, The Guardian revealed that “The prime minister’s department refused to publicly release 1,100 documents linked to the Covid-19 commission’s discussion of gas projects and 690 documents about potential conflicts of interest, while also redacting its meeting minutes on economic and national security grounds.” So far the Covert Commission has mainly proposed taxpayer support for the gas industry.

Source: Christopher Knaus, 30 Jul 2020 in The Guardian
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Apr 2020
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The Coalition’s Underwriting New Generation Investments (UNGI) program, spearheaded by Angus Taylor, “has no legislative basis, no guidelines or criteria, and is following no clear process. Despite this the government has already shortlisted projects, made agreements and engaged in detailed negotiations.” The program primarily supports gas, hydro and coal power projects through government underwriting.

Sources: The Australia Institute 27 Apr 2020; see also Laura Schuijers, ‘The government’s UNGI scheme: what it is and why Zali Steggall wants it investigated’, The Conversation 29 April 2020
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Jun 2020
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The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) issued a scathing report on the Coalition’s seeming disregard for effective implementation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. In its interim report later in Jun 2020, an independent review of this Act headed by Prof Graeme Samuel AC recommended far-reaching changes to the way implementation of the Act is managed. The Coalition ignored these and, without waiting for the final report, rushed its Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Streamlining Environmental Approvals) Bill 2020 through the House of Reps …
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Jul 2020
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The Guardian revealed the government is attempting to stop the auditor-general giving evidence about a report critical of a $1.3bn arms deal, more than two years after it used extraordinary powers to suppress parts of the auditor-general’s findings.

Source: Christopher Knaus 13 Jul 2020 in The Guardian
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Aug 2020
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Coalition delivered budget with a record number of ‘not for publication’ $ amounts. And for the tenth year in a row, the Australian National Audit Office, the agency that brought to light the sports rorts affair and revealed that the federal government had massively overpaid for land in Western Sydney, had its funding cut in the federal budget (a Labor budget in the first 3 of those years).

Sources: Australia Institute 13 Oct 2020, ‘The most secretive budget ever’; Grattan Institute 20 October 2020 ‘The Government is shrinking Australia’s accountability agencies’
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Aug 2020
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The Goulburn district, in the heart of federal energy minister Angus Taylor’s electorate of Hume, is highly suitable to be a designated renewable energy zone yet the Member for Hume, Angus Taylor, remains a staunch advocate of fossil fuels.

Source: Prof Andrew Blakers, ANU, in Renew Economy 21 Aug 2020; see also Angus Taylor’s profile in Revolving Doors
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Aug 2020
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The Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Grid Reliability Fund) Bill 2020, presented to the House of Reps by Angus Taylor on 27 Aug 2020, would compromise the integrity of the CEFC by (a) giving the Minister the power to intervene and influence CEFC investment decisions; (b) allow public money to be used to prop up the fossil fuel industry; and (c) redefine ‘low emissions’ technology to include polluting gas and carbon capture and storage projects.

Source: See Adam Morton, 28 Aug 2020, < ‘Orwellian’: Coalition accused of planning to open green bank to fossil fuel investments >, The Guardian.
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Sep 2020
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On 3 Sep 2020, the Coalition introduced the Defence Legislation Amendment (Enhancement of Defence Force response to Emergencies) Bill, 2020. The Bill enables the ADF, Reserves and foreign military forces and police to be used in Australian emergencies and gives them immunity from civil or criminal prosecution for actions arising from these emergency duties. “Emergency” is not defined. Could an “emergency” one day include industrial actions or large scale climate change protest actions?

Sources: Bevan Ramsden in Pearls and Irritations on the 1st Oct 2020; Prof Susan Harris Rimmer in The Conversation 17 Nov 2020
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Sep 2020
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Coalition proposed dumping laws that require banks to meet responsible lending standards, thereby opening up new opportunities for banks to aggressively sell debt. The Banking Royal Commission did not recommend any changes to responsible lending laws. Commissioner Hayne concluded:

“I am not persuaded that the NCCP Act’s framework for responsible lending to consumers needs change. The responsible lending issues identified during the Commission’s hearings will be resolved by banks applying the law as it stands.” (p.117 Final Report)

Source: Consumer Action Law Centre, media release 25 Sep 2020. See also Andrew Schmulow and others in The Conversation on 15 March 2021
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Oct 2020
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The Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill 2020, sponsored by Helen Haines, Independent MP, was put to the House of Reps in Oct 2020. A National Integrity Commission Bill 2019 sponsored earlier by Adam Bandt, Greens MP in the House of Reps, received short shrift. The Coalition is involved in multiple scandals involving the misuse of federal funds: the Western Sydney airport land deal, the “sports rorts” affair … yet we still don’t have a National Integrity Commission with teeth.

The Centre for Public Integrity, a body comprising former judges, senior academics and lawyers, estimated that in the past decade the Commonwealth government has cut A$1.4 billion from the budgets of agencies that keep government transparent and accountable.

Source: The Centre for Public Integrity, briefing paper, Oct 2020
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Oct 2020
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Coalition environment minister, Sussan Ley, approved the expansion of a quarry that would see more than 50 hectares of koala habitat in the New South Wales town of Port Stephens cleared. Earlier in the year, a NSW parliamentary inquiry found koalas would be extinct in the state by 2050 unless governments took urgent action to address habitat loss.

Source: The Guardian, 28 Oct 2020
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Oct 2020
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Officials from the Attorney-General’s department told Senate estimates that, as of October 6, the cost of the external legal advice as well as government solicitor costs in the case against Witness K and Bernard Collaery had reached $3,094,583. The legislative provisions guiding the case were described by Law Council President, Pauline Wright, as offending “the principles of open justice, since holding proceedings other than in an open court contradicts a fundamental attribute of a fair trial. It is a basic rule of the common law that the administration of justice should not take place behind closed doors but must take place in an open court.”

Sources: Canberra Times 22 Oct 2020; Law Council of Australia media statement 16 Oct 2020
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Oct 2020
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“The Coalition government has given fossil fuels four times more stimulus funding than renewables, and has prioritised coal-fired power, carbon capture and storage, and gas industry expansion in its recent federal budget.”

Source: Kate Crowley in The Conversation 20 Oct 2020
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Oct 2020
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Coalition passed the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020 which adds new sections to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 that, in the words of Prof Twomey:

“exclude certain political donations from being affected by State or Territory electoral laws, such as laws imposing caps on political donations or prohibiting certain categories of donors, including property developers”; “One could imagine, for example, functions being held where access to State government ministers was sold to prohibited donors, who when paying for a seat at the Minister’s table, ticked a box stating that the amount paid is a donation for ‘federal purposes’. This would render ineffective the laudable efforts by some State Governments to reduce the potentially corrupting influence of political donations upon ministerial decisions.”

In the words of Assoc Prof Beck:

“This will make it easier for federal politicians to accept secret donations from property developers. … federal parliament had an opportunity to introduce better federal political transparency measures. They could have lowered the federal donations disclosure threshold so the public knows where federal politicians get their money. They could have introduced real-time reporting of donations so the public doesn’t have to wait until after each election to find out the identities of the biggest donors. Labor has introduced bills on both these measures. Instead of dealing with those, both major parties took the time and effort to override state anti-corruption laws.”

Sources: Prof Anne Twomey, University of Sydney, submission to the inquiry into the bill conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Parliament of Australia; Assoc Prof Luke Beck, Monash University, 4 Nov 2020 in The Conversation; ParlInfo Search
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Oct 2020
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Nov 2020
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The ABC revealed that Foxtel, which is majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (65 per cent) and part-owned by Telstra (35 per cent), received $40 million in taxpayer funds to “broadcast under-represented sports”. The grant was never put out to any form of competitive tender.

Source: Daniel Ziffer, ABC Online, 13 Nov 2020
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Nov 2020
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The Prime Minister has announced that the report on war crimes in Afghanistan will be properly investigated. But when will the charges against David McBride for blowing the whistle on the culture in the SAS be dropped? With its attack on McBride in 2017 and the raids on the ABC and News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst in 2019, has the Australian Government been complicit in an attempted cover-up of war crimes?

Source: See, for background, Denis Muller at The Conversation and Sue Wareham at The Canberra Times
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Dec 2020
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In December 2020, both the Coalition and Labor rejected a bill introduced by crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie to improve transparency of political donations. It wasn’t revolutionary — the bill didn’t ban donors, or limit donations, or restrict what parties could do with donations. It simply proposed giving the public more and better information on the major donors.

Source: Report by the Grattan Institute published in The Conversation. See also ‘Money in politics’ by The Centre for Public Integrity which has released a 15 point plan to eliminate the undue influence of money in politics.
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Feb 2021
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Nick Feik, in a major article in The Monthly, claims a lack of accountability in the Morrison government has become systemic. This is a must read article if you are opposed to secrecy and corruption in government.

Source: The Monthly, Feb 2021
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Feb 2021
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When the poor were thought to be keeping welfare payments they were not owed, the robots were put onto them, the ‘robodebt scandal’. Fast forward to 2021 when Prime Minister Morrison was asked what concrete action he’d be taking to ensure the companies that accepted millions of dollars from taxpayers under the JobKeeper scheme, then funnelled it to executive bonuses and dividends, would be paying the money back. Morrison dismissed the question. “I’m not into the politics of envy”, the Prime Minister said. One standard for the poor and another standard for the rich? Is this the ‘rule of law’? And which jobs have priority? “Crown Casino received $115 million in JobKeeper payments in the first four months of the scheme’s existence, to August 2020, and more after that. The universities received no JobKeeper support. … Crown Casino employed about 15,000 people before the pandemic; the universities employed about 130,000 in academic and professional and many more in other roles.”

Source: Envy quote from Gareth Hutchens, ABC Online, 28 Feb 2021; casino quote from Ross Garnaut, Reset (2021, La Trobe University Press), p. 121
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Feb 2021
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“At the height of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreaks we came to better understand insecure work as a disease vector and an immediate danger. However, these employment conditions constitute an enduring threat to our well-being that the federal government seeks to entrench and expand via the Fair Work Act (Support Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill. Despite its name, the bill should be partly understood as a reaction to recent Federal Court decisions pertaining to leave entitlements for casual workers. Its objective is not economic recovery but the further destabilisation of worker power.” Casual jobs make up one quarter (25 per cent) of the Australian workforce.

Source: Orlando Forbes & Andrew Jones, ‘‘We are disposable’: casual work, low pay and low power’, Arena, 25 Feb 2021, <Arena>.
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Feb 2021
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“The Australian government response to climate change since 2013 has been arguably one of systematic dismantling of action on both mitigation and adaptation. This has included the abolition of the Climate Commission, the defunding of the National Climate Adaptation Research Facility and the deskilling on climate science and adaptation in national agencies including the CSIRO and the Federal public service. As a consequence, there has been a general devolving of responsibility to the subnational level, resulting in a patchwork of initiatives rather than an integrated climate response.”

Source: Barbara Norman, Peter Newman & Will Steffen 2021, ‘Apocalypse now: Australian bushfires and the future of urban settlements’ in npj | urban sustainability and available at <Nature>.
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Mar 2021
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During the 2019 election campaign Prime Minister Morrison spoke about the difficulty women often face in coming forward after being sexually assaulted.

“One of the things that often happens with [rape] is they’re not believed and their stories are not believed and it’s important that their stories are believed and they know that if they come forward their stories will be believed,” Morrison said. “Women in those circumstances should have a greater sense of confidence that if they tell their stories they will be believed.”

It’s not a sentiment the Prime Minister has repeated in relation to the allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter that he raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988.

Source: David Speers, ABC online, 4 March 2021; see also Elizabeth Minter, ‘Christian Porter responsible for serial breaches of the law, now cries “rule of law”’ at Michael West Media 04/03/2021
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Apr 2021
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Actions speak louder than words. The Australian Government condemned the Myanmar military for its February coup but failed to take action against companies operating in Australia that are providing cash flows to the Myanmar military. Australia’s Future Fund, for instance, has $3.2 million invested in Adani Ports, a company with ties to the Myanmar military. Immediate divestment was an option but the Future Fund failed to act. A UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission Report in 2019 warned investments in companies that partner with the Myanmar Economic Corporation can help finance the Myanmar military.

Sources: Investigative reporter Josh Robertson, ABC online ; the UN report can be found here .
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May 2021
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Fossil fuel subsidies cost Australians a staggering $10.3 billion in the 2020-21 financial year with one Commonwealth tax break alone ($7.84 billion) exceeding the $7.82 billion spent on the Australian Army, according to research released on April 26, 2021 by The Australia Institute.

Source: The Australia Institute
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A government should be judged on what it did and also on what it did not do. Have a look at the ‘Bills not proceeding’ section of the Parliament House website to see some of the issues that were not priorities for this government.

Had enough? I have. Secrecy, corruption, sleaze; it just goes on and on. If you want to read more Matthew Davis has compiled a list of the ‘Achievements of the Coalition Government‘. I’m closing this chronology off now but don’t just shake your head in disgust at it all. Write to candidates in your electorate and tell them that they’ll only get your vote if they commit to:

• Restoration of funding for institutions that hold government to account: the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian National Audit Office, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
• Creation and funding of a National Integrity Commission with teeth along the lines proposed by, for example, Brown, A J et al 2019, Governing for integrity: a blueprint for reform, Draft Report of Australia’s Second National Integrity System Assessment, Griffith University & Transparency International Australia and the National Integrity Committee of The Australia Institute.
• Caps on donations to political parties to curb undue influence over political decisions and reports on donations as they happen so that we are all informed.
• Ending the prosecutions of David McBride, Witness K, Bernard Collaery and Richard Boyle and implementation of the recommendations of the Senate Inquiry into Press Freedom 19 May 2021.
• Serious efforts to close down the fossil fuel industry in Australia before 2030, without compensation to the corporations and shareholders involved, but ensuring that workers and communities in affected regions are not left on the scrap heap.
• Serious efforts to address the risks outlined in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report.

Of course, much more needs to be done: a national housing policy, an adequate response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, justice for women … A government like the present one is wasting the precious little time we have to reframe the future.

Question: Is the Australian Public Service a bulwark against corruption?

Few people realise the true effects of the ‘reforms’ of the Australian Public Service (APS) legislated by both Labor and Liberal governments since the 1980s. These reforms abolished the permanent tenure of Departmental Secretaries, putting them on fixed term contracts instead, able to be sacked at whim by the government of the day. Hired hands, they are expected to be ‘responsive’ to the government of the day while remaining ‘apolitical’, ‘impartial’ and able to provide ‘frank and fearless’ advice! In reality the APS does more kow-towing to the government than the eunuchs in the imperial courts of China. It has become a tool of corruption and with a penchant for secrecy – it hates Freedom of Information requests – is a good servant of the government of the day (however corrupt) rather than the people of Australia.

Here are some excerpts from a “Chronology of changes in the Australian Public Service 1975-2010” that can be found on the APH website:

1984 – The Hawke government (Labor) introduced the Public Service Reform Act which, among other things, created the Senior Executive Service (SES) and established a greater political role in appointing and managing departmental secretaries (no longer ‘Permanent Heads’).
1994 – Provision of fixed term appointments for departmental secretaries.
1995 – The report of the Public Service Act Review Group recommends that the Public Service Act 1922 (Cth) be replaced by a new Act that will be ‘built around the principles and values which stress the centrality of an apolitical public service with merit-based staffing, high standards of honesty and integrity, a strong focus on efficiency and results, and responsiveness and accountability to the government of the day while maintaining a capacity to provide quality and impartial advice.’
1996 – Following the election of the Howard government (Liberal), six departmental secretaries’ appointments are terminated.
1999 – The dismissal of Paul Barratt (Secretary of Defence) is upheld by the Federal Court; a Prime Minister does not require cause to dismiss a secretary.
1999 – Provisions for departmental secretaries to enter into collective and/or individual employment contracts and agreements with the government of the day.
2007 – Rudd government (Labor) announces that all appointments of departmental secretaries will be for five years …

According to some of our most senior and respected journalists, and indeed senior bureaucrats within the APS itself, the APS today is really a crippled descendant of its predecessors.

Some good references are:
Laura Tingle 2015, ‘Political amnesia: how we forgot how to govern’, Quarterly Essay, Issue 60
Clive Hamilton & Sarah Maddison (eds) 2007, Silencing dissent: how the Australian government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate, Allen & Unwin. In his essay in this book, ‘The public service’, Geoffrey Barker concludes that ‘From its highest to its humblest echelons the public service has been remade to ensure its compliance with the government’s political agenda’ (p. 147).

–– Gary Shapcott, Canberra

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What makes this post an example of ‘public journalism’? Public journalism doesn’t just seek to inform a (passive) public; it seeks to form an active public. Contact details for local civic organisations are given or, if necessary, fit for purpose civic organisations are created from scratch by the media company itself. Or the media company will organise town hall meetings (online or face-to-face) to enable the community to discuss issues. A great example is The Big Deal, aired on ABC TV then followed up with <makeitabigdeal.org>. I am not in a position to do all of that but I’ll do what I can here.
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