New Premier Chris Minns visits Lismore in the NSW Northern Rivers region

 

https://youtu.be/VjhckdT2Caw

 

BE THEIR HERO - Animals Australia

https://youtu.be/aKhl-FUpp8E

‘Be their Hero’ is designed to show Australians just how extraordinary this unique species is. That each and every one of these animals suffering in factory farms or slaughterhouses is a ‘Tottie’ – curious, intelligent, sensitive and loveable.

Tottie and Davo’s exploits (there's more to come!) are set to become beloved in Australia and will resonate with the hearts of those who are on the cusp of refusing to ‘buy into’ and support the suffering inflicted upon these beautiful animals.

We are only limited in our ability to create change by the number of kind hearts we can reach and inspire.

[Animals Australia, 4 April 2023]

Cartoons of the Week

 

Cathy Wilcox

Megan Herbert

Parliamentary joint committees make recommendations to Australian Government concerning covert powers for the federal Anti-Corruption Commission and government decision-making in relation to armed conflict

Parliamentary Joint Committee supports covert powers for federal Anti-Corruption Commission 

Medianet Press Release, 29 March 2023:

Committee supports covert powers for Anti-Corruption Commission

_____________________________________________

Parliament of Australia

_____________________________________________

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) today presented its Advisory Report on Item 250 of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2022.

The report considers Item 250 of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2022, which was passed into law in December 2022.

Item 250 amended section 110A(1) of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA Act) to allow the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) access to stored communications and telecommunications data.

The Committee made seven recommendations in relation to the reform of Australia’s electronic surveillance framework, parliamentary privilege and security of information.

The Committee noted that Item 250 gives a wide range of covert powers to the NACC and considered the effect of the use of these powers on parliamentary privilege. The Committee recommended the Government ensure the protection of parliamentary privilege in relation to the use of covert powers in its Reform of Australia’s Electronic Surveillance Framework. Further the Committee considered that the TIA Act should be expressly amended to ensure that the provisions of that Act do not abrogate parliamentary privilege.

The Committee also recommended that, given the sensitivity of information to be collected and stored by the NACC, it should be required to comply with the Essential Eight Maturity Model to Maturity Level Three as recommended by the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Finally, the Committee recommended that employees at the NACC hold a security clearance of at least Negative Vetting Level 1, with increased requirements up to Positive Vetting depending on their access to sensitive information.

Committee Chair Mr Peter Khalil MP said: ‘The Committee supports allowing what will be Australia’s premier anti-corruption agency the covert powers necessary to undertake its important work. The Committee has recommended some additional measures to ensure that the NACC can operate effectively while ensuring necessary protections for parliamentary privilege, and for sensitive information.”

Further information on the inquiry as well as a copy of the report can be obtained from the Committee’s website. 

ENDS

Parliamentary Joint Committee concluded there is a clear need to improve the transparency and accountability of government decision-making in relation to armed conflict 

Medianet Press Release, 31 March 2023:

'War Powers' Inquiry into International Armed Conflict Decision Making

______________________________________________

Parliament of Australia

______________________________________________

The Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade has completed its examination on how Australia makes decisions to send service personnel into international armed conflict.

Defence Subcommittee Chair, Mr Julian Hill MP, said “The power to declare war and send military personnel into conflict is arguably the most significant and serious institutional power, and the gravest decision a government can make.

“Through this inquiry, the Committee has carefully and seriously considered fundamental questions regarding decision-making in relation to international armed conflict and parliamentary oversight, both preceding and during the commitment of the Australian Defence Force.

“The Committee has concluded there is a clear need to improve the transparency and accountability of government decision-making in relation to armed conflict. Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy is likely to be kept healthy, effective, and well-adapted by making sensible changes that respect our well-established institutions and conventions.

“Accompanying recommended changes to the Cabinet Handbook and new Standing Resolutions of both Houses of Parliament, the Government has an historic chance to exercise leadership and establish the Joint Statutory Committee on Defence to enhance Australia’s national security while providing increased parliamentary scrutiny of Defence.

“In 1988, Prime Minister Bob Hawke created the Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, rejecting the advice of the Hope Royal Commission not to enhance parliamentary oversight of the intelligence agencies. History has proved he was right to do so, and the Government is encouraged to emulate Prime Minister Hawke’s example and act to strengthen national security and enhance the accountability of Defence to the Parliament.

“The Committee is convinced that greater transparency and parliamentary consideration of the decision to commit forces to an armed conflict can and must occur, and commends this report, on this most serious of subjects, to the Government”.

The Committee’s recommendations are to:

• Reaffirm that decisions regarding armed conflict are fundamentally a prerogative of the Executive, while acknowledging the key role of Parliament in considering such decisions, and the value of improving the transparency and accountability of such decision-making in the pursuit of national interests.

• Amend the Cabinet Handbook to:

• Restore the primacy of the Governor-General under Section 68 of the Australian Constitution to give effect to decisions of government in relation to war or warlike operations, particularly in relation to conflicts that are not supported by resolution by the United Nations Security Council, or an invitation of a sovereign nation

• Require a written statement to be published and tabled in the Parliament setting out the objectives of major military operations, the orders made and legal basis

• Require Parliament to be recalled as soon as possible to be advised and facilitate a debate in Parliament at the earliest opportunity following a ministerial statement, based on the 2010 Gillard model, including a statement of compliance with international law and advice as to the legality of an operation

• Introduce Standing Resolutions of both Houses of Parliament to establish expectations of Executive Government in relation to accountability for decisions in relation to international armed conflict, including regular Statements and Updates from the Prime Minister and Minister for Defence.

• Establish via legislation a new Joint Statutory Defence Committee, modelled on the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, able to receive classified information to improve parliamentary scrutiny of Defence strategy, policy, capability development acquisition and sustainment, contingency planning, and major operations.

Thank you to the many stakeholders and submitters who contributed thoughtfully to the inquiry whose carefully formed and expert views are acknowledged with respect and drawn upon in this report.

Further information in relation to the inquiry is available from the JSCFADT’s website.

ENDS

Unemployment numbers in the NSW Northern Rivers region

 

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the national unemployment rate in February 2023 remained at 3.5% (est.559,200 people). 

NOTE: ABS Labor Force, Australia data for February 2023 was published on 16.03.23 & the next Labor Force, Australia covering March 2023 will be released on 13.04.23.

In New South Wales the unemployment rate held steady at 3.4% (est. 153,100 people) and seasonally adjusted stood at 3.2%. Broken down from original data ABS records there was an unemployment rate of 3.6% for males and 3.2% for females.

According to idcommunity:demograhic resources, monthly data published by the Department of Social Services (DSS) for February 2023 shows that there were 120,135 Jobseeker and Youth Allowance recipients in regional New South Wales. That figure represents 7.1% of the total regional workforce age population – a drop of 0.2% since February 2022.

By comparison there were 15,767Jobseeker and Youth Allowance recipients in the Northern Rivers region in February 2023. That figure represents 8.8% of all people of workforce age in the region – a drop of 0.5% since February 2022.

In terms of local government areas the combined Jobseeker and Youth Unemployment numbers are:

Tweed Shire – 4,135 people being 7.4% of the LGA workforce age population.

Clarence Valley – 3,210 people being 11.1% of the LGA workforce age population.

Lismore City – 2,736 people being 10.1% of the LGA workforce age population.

Byron Shire – 2,115 people being 9.3% of the LGA workforce age population.

Ballina Shire – 1,560 people being 6.0% of the LGA workforce age population.

Richmond Valley – 1,378 people being 10.3% of the LGA workforce age population.

Kyogle Shire – 663 people being 12.7% of the LGA workforce age population.

Dept. of Social Services monthly data by Statistical Area Level 2 shows that in February 2023 the two Northern Rivers LGAs with the highest levels of unemployment had this profile for major population centres:

• In Tweed Heads & Tweed Heads South there was a combined total of 1,420 people on an unemployment payment/allowance, with Murwillumbah & Murwillumbah Region had a combined total of 1,210 people. While Pottsville Region had 500 people on unemployment payment/allowance, Banora Point 490 people and Kingscliff-Fingal Head 450 people.

• Grafton City & Grafton Region has a combined total of 2,400 people on an unemployment payment/allowance, while Maclean-Yamba-Iluka had a total of 810 people.

Note: The Board of Reserve Bank of Australia expects the national unemployment rate to rise towards the end of 2023.

Mainstream media in broad agreement over parlous state of the Liberal Party of Australia?

The day after the Aston by-election The Guardian ran with this headline: Wipeout beckons for Liberals after Aston byelection and the problem is not just Peter Dutton and raised the possibility of leadership change along with the need for sensible emissions policy and a rejection of culture war issues.

Two days after the by-election this appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on Page 9:

Peter Dutton says he's determined to rebuild the Liberal Party after its weekend defeat in Aston. That's necessary but insufficient. It needs a personality transplant too.

And it's not as simple as replacing Dutton. He is merely the current face of a party that has chosen to make itself inherently unattractive.

Kelly O'Dwyer, then-federal minister for women, explained to her Liberal colleagues in 2018 that the party was widely seen by the voters as being "homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers".

And that was when Malcolm Turnbull was leader. It wasn't about the leader - it was the collective personality of the party.

What's changed? Today you could probably add the perception that it's anti-transgender and anti-Indigenous as well. From being merely unattractive, the party is now on course to make itself irrelevant to contemporary Australia.

A byelection is a chance for the people to lodge a protest against a government. Instead, on Saturday the people of Aston lodged a protest against the opposition. That's what made it so extraordinary.

Extraordinary yet, if the Liberals read their own official review of last year's federal defeat, unsurprising: "The Coalition now holds its lowest proportion of seats as a share of the House of Representatives since the Liberal Party first ran in a federal election in 1946."

The review authors - former federal director Brian Loughnane and sitting Victorian Senator Jane Hume - said this was merely the latest in a continuing trend: "Many of the problems identified have been constants for a decade or more."

And now Aston. The byelection results make it impossible for the Liberals to console themselves with any of the shallow rationalisations they've been telling themselves since Scott Morrison led them to disaster in May.

First, it's clear that the problem wasn't just Morrison. He's gone, but the problem only gets worse.

Second, it wasn't simply the "it's time" problem afflicting a nine-year-old government. Because it's no longer in government and yet the electors continue to withdraw support.

Third, the Liberals can no longer tell themselves that their problem is strictly one of teal independents taking votes from them. The teals took six traditional wealthy Liberal seats at last year's federal election. Hardcore right-wingers in the party consider these to be votes lost to the "left".

But in losing Aston, the Liberals lost a middle-class, middle-income, mortgage belt seat. The Liberals are losing not only traditional, principled, wealthy Liberals. They are losing women, young people, the cities. In other words, they are losing Australia…..

IMAGE: The Guardian, 21 March 2023

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s (pictured left) national flagship since July 1964, The Australian, went a little further than this. It appears to indicate that he may be slowly resigning himself to seeing his tame conservative politicians spending years in the wilderness.

However neither the 92 year-old mogul nor the editor are going down without a fight. Bottom line: it’s all the fault of unseen global forces, the 'Left' and a blindly ignorant populace. Nothing to do with the mismanagement, misadventures and often downright corruption of conservative politicians whenever they are in office around the world.

Weekend Australian, 1 April 2023, p. 21, excerpts:

Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, Conservatives fail dismally worldwide and in Australia

Centre-right parties no longer set the agenda across Western democracies

Whatever the result of the critical Aston by-election, conservative politics is in the midst of a crippling, perhaps mortal, crisis within Australia, and around the Western and democratic world.

In Australia, conservatives hold office neither nationally nor in any mainland state or territory. Worse, they seem intellectually and politically exhausted, and don’t look as if they’re on the brink of posing a serious electoral challenge in any jurisdiction. Peter Dutton is a substantial politician but he is miles behind Anthony Albanese. Most Coalition state leaders are anonymous and ineffective.

But they’re in good company internationally. For some version of the same crisis is evident in most democratic nations from North America to Europe. There are a few exceptions but the tide is mostly out for conservatives. Of course, politics mostly runs in cycles. And conservative wisdom will be needed again, eventually.

But today conservative ideas don’t set the agenda. The conservative crisis is part of a larger crisis throughout Western civilisation. In time, the centre-left parties that rule will face their own crisis because without exception they are leading the nations they govern to live way beyond their means. They are also indulging ideological dynamics that are intensely destructive in the long term.

The last great conservative era was the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even Malcolm Fraser all led self-confident conservative governments. The world’s most authoritative moral figure was Pope John Paul II, a theological and social conservative and communism’s worst nightmare……

The broad cultural crisis in the West is multifaceted. There is the loss of belief in God. There is the associated loss of belief in institutions and all traditional sources of social authority. There is the particular toxic hangover of Covid that taught Western electorates the worst, most dangerous and fraudulent lesson in public policy, that government money is effectively limitless, all demands can be met by more more government spending, endlessly increasing debt. As important as all that, we’ve also had several generations go through school and university education that imparts a message of near hatred, certainly contempt and condemnation, of their own society and history.

The climate change issue is linked to the idea that everything about Western society is rotten, if not downright evil. Some version of this is widespread in elite media. Hostile foreign nations do their bit by clandestinely spreading internal hostilities and divisions on social media. And the fiscal delusions fostered by Covid spending feed into the idea that nations can afford any cost that climate measures impose.

Australia’s conservative politicians have been strikingly unsuccessful. On the odd occasion they form government, they do more or less nothing. You cannot blame conservative politicians for the transformation of the ambient culture. The institutions and consensus on which they rested – family, church, patriotism, hard work, living within your means – are all under constant attack. But this environment means, more than ever, conservative politicians must fight for the things they believe in. They must advocate more energetically, more courageously, more passionately, with as much sophistication and good humour as they can muster. If they do that, they might be surprised at the influence they can still have on institutions. If, on the other hand, they surrender to the zeitgeist they will surely lose the arguments and the elections. As Australia’s greatest modern conservative says: “A lot of conservatives have lost the will to argue a case.”

NEWSPOLL APRIL 2023: Dutton's dismal leadership does not impress the average voter

 

Hot on the heels of the Liberal Party loss in the Aston by-election "The Australian" released its latest YouGov Newspoll.

The headline statistic was the preference flows based on survey respondents stated voting intentions on 2 April combined with recent federal and state elections.

Two Party Preferred Graph 28 Jan 2019 to 2 April 2023

Click on image to enlarge

Labor Party 55 (+1) to Liberal-Nationals Coalition 44 (-1) on 2 April 2023

Five days before the last federal election held on 25 May 2022, the two party preferred numbers had Labor standing at 53 (-1) and Liberal-Nationals at 47 (+1).

Primary/First Preference voting intentions on 2 April 2023 

Labor 38 (+1)

Liberal-Nationals 33 (-2)

Greens 10 (no change)

One Nation 8 (+1)

 Better/Preferred Prime Minister

Antony Albanese 58 (+4)

Peter Dutton 26 (-2)

Unsure 16 (-2)

Albanese has outstripped Dutton as better/preferred prime minister by a wide margin in every Newspoll since the 21 May 2022 election.

Click on image to enlarge

Leaders Approval Rating

Anthony Albanese - Approve 56 (+1)  Disapprove 35 (-3)

Peter Dutton - Approve 35 (-2)  Disapprove 48 (no change) 

It would appear that in the estimation of the national electorate, Peter Dutton and the Liberal-Nationals Coalition he has led for the last ten months rate even lower than Scott Morrison and the Liberal-Nationals team he led to a loss of national government on 21 May 2022.