Anthony Albanese also appeared on ABC radio Melbourne this morning to talk more about his favourite line this morning ‘that Peter Dutton is too reckless to be prime minister’.

Q: Why reckless?
 
Albanese:

Because it endangers, you cannot verbal the leader of one of our major friends in Indonesia. It’s an extraordinary thing to do.
 
Q: PM, can I interrupt? I just want everyone to know what we’re talking about. I’ve got, Peter Dutton was saying you should have known about this before the media did. If I can just play the statement you’re referring to.
 
(Plays Dutton speaking to Afternoon Briefing)
 
Peter Dutton:

Did the Prime Minister know about this before it was publicly announced by the President of Indonesia? And what is the Government’s response to it.
 
 
Q: So why, why is that reckless? He’s just trying to –
 
Albanese:

That’s the point. It wasn’t announced by the President of Indonesia. Indonesia are having nothing to do with such a plan. They have made it very clear. He has fabricated a statement by the President of Indonesia that simply did not happen, based upon goodness knows what, but based upon something that simply wasn’t fact. Now, when you deal with our international partners, what you need to do is to have a considered approach. Deal with them in a respectful way, not verbal the President of our nearest major power, just to the north of Australia, based upon some media report. One of Peter Dutton’s problems, just one of them, is that he always dials things up to 11. He always shoots from the hip. And when you are either the Prime Minister or the alternative prime minister of this country, what you need to do is to have a considered approach to our international relations. I have had to spend this term repairing relations with friends like France, friends in ASEAN, in the Pacific. And what Peter Dutton has reminded people of is just how reckless he can be.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has a new report out showing that prolonging the lifespan of coal fired gas power generators is only going to make things more expensive.

You can find the report here, but the key takeaways are:

1. Operational coal power stations in the National Electricity Market (NEM) average 38
   years old, close to the average historical retirement age of 42 years.
2. The reliability of coal power plants deteriorates as they near retirement – historical
   experience for plants that have closed indicates that leading into retirement 34% of their
   capacity is unavailable on average.
3. Proposals to extend the life of ageing power plants often fail to plan for poor coal
   reliability, which could lead to electricity supply shortfalls. For example, analysis by
   Frontier Economics of a policy to delay coal closure assumed coal generation levels on
   average 9,300 gigawatt-hours per year (equivalent to power consumption of 2 million
   households) higher than one would expect based on the historical availability of retiring
   plants.
4. To cover such a power supply shortfall using gas would strain the domestic supply of gas
   and lead to spikes in the price of electricity and gas.

Johanna Bowyer, Lead Analyst, Australian Electricity at IEEFA, “has reviewed the historical availability of coal-fired power stations as they approach retirement to understand how the Australian coal fleet might perform as it ages” and says:

Since 2000, 13 coal-fired power stations have closed in the NEM, totalling 8 gigawatts of capacity. Their average age upon closure was 42 years. The average availability of these power stations in the 10 years before they retired was quite poor, at 66% on average. That means that on average 34% of a plant’s capacity was unable to produce power.”

As Australia’s ‘ally’ the US, begins to rip away legal representation from children arrested by immigration agencies – meaning you’ll see toddlers sitting across immigration judges and ICE lawyers in court, without legal representation (Australia also put children into immigration detention and locks up children in prisons domestically, with the age of legal responsibility as low as 10 in some jurisdictions) the University of Sydney has found there is NO SAFE FORMS OF DETENTION FOR CHILDREN.

From the release:

The study led by psychologists at the University of Sydney reviewed findings from 21 English- language studies involving 9620 children in eight countries. It reveals alarming levels of mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among children held in all forms of immigration detention.
As global population displacement continues to rise, the review highlights an urgent need to consider alternatives to the detention of children and families seeking asylum.
The research has been published in The British Journal of Psychiatry. It is the first study to focus on the impact of a broad range of detention experiences on children’s mental health.
Senior author Professor Caroline Hunt, Head of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sydney, said: “The data shows any level of detention will put a child’s mental health at risk, with the lengthiest and most restrictive showing serious harms, including high levels of post-traumatic stress, self-harm and suicide attempts.
“Our findings are a clarion call for change. Immigration detention for children is not just an administrative issue; it’s an ongoing global public health crisis.”

The study showed 42.2 percent of children experienced depression and 32.0 percent displayed
symptoms consistent with PTSD

Joshua Black

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

For many journalists, the past – specifically the past before 1945 – is a foreign country.

Election coverage is replete with references to “firsts” or “milestones” that assume that Australian history began in the post-war period.

But a longer view would help us better understand the political processes around us.

Journalists described the 2010 federal election result as “Australia’s first hung parliament in 70 years”.

You could alternatively say that the 2010 election produced Australia’s seventh hung parliament.

No party or existing coalition won majorities in 1901, 1903, 1906, 1919, 1922 or 1940.

Minority governments depended on negotiation and collaboration for success and, indeed, survival.

As with those earlier elections, the 2010 result ensured that parliament played a role in keeping governments accountable.

Similarly, journalists said that the 2022 election produced a “record crossbench of at least 16”. But it is only a record in the post-war era.

Large crossbenches in the lower house were a core feature of the early federal period.

In 1906, crossbenchers outnumbered the governing and opposition parties, and in 1934 the crossbench (comprised of MPs loyal to former NSW Labor leader Jack Lang) held 12% of lower house seats to Labor’s 24% (although since the House of Representatives was half as large, that 12% represents just 9 MPs).

In 2022, Antony Green remarked that “[w]e’ve never seen support for the major parties drop so low at a federal level before”.

That is true of current major parties. But minor parties can become major parties and vice versa.

In 1901, the Labor Party was a ‘balance of power’ crossbench party with weak claims to the status of major party, having spent a grand total of one week in power (in Queensland, two years earlier).

The major parties were the protectionists and the free traders, who won 79% of the primary vote between them at the first federal election. That fell to just 64% at the 1903 election, with Labor winning nearly a third of the vote on its own.

Labor would go on to briefly form the world’s first labour government in 1904, and by 1909 in the face of Labor’s success the free traders and protectionists merged to form the country’s first majority government.

The Country Party emerged at the 1919 election, and supported a minority government of the centre-right. While the government was only a few seats short of a majority in 1919, the gap was much bigger three years later, giving rise to a new power-sharing agreement that was quickly formalised as the Coalition.

The Coalition marked its centenary in 2023, and many times in the intervening 100 years it has only been thanks to the Country/National Party that the Liberals could form majority government.

On Indonesia’s relationship with Russia, Wong says:

Well, I think that the relationship between Russia and Indonesia is well known, and the reasons for Indonesia joining BRICS have, according to President Prabowo, have been very much about trade and the economy. That’s their standard position. But what matters is what we do, and what you’ve seen under this Government, the Albanese Labor Government, is a real focus on deepening relationships and trust with our region. We’ve worked very hard on those relationships, both at the Prime Minister’s level and at my level, and also at the defence level. And you might recall that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence flew to Indonesia to ensure we had agreement for a Defence Cooperation Agreement between Australia and Indonesia. That’s the first time we’ve had that, and it’s example of our understanding that Australia’s security requires us to work in our region. And this is something that is lost on Mr Dutton. You know, he’s prepared to say something that is not true, to assert that it is out of President Prabowo’s own mouth in this pursuit of a political point. And I really think that shows he’s simply too reckless and too risky to be Australia’s Prime Minister.

The BRICS includes 10 countries – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russian Federation, South Africa, United Arab Emirates. It started with Brazil, Russia, India and China and then South Africa came on board (hence BRICS) and its an informal intergovernment co-operation agreement between the member countries to work together on issues like global finance. It is seen as the foil to the G7 nations (and the reliance on the US dollar) and there are efforts to create a new global currency reserve. Which America is helping create the case for, through the Trump administration policies.

Penny Wong is VERY available today, which shows you just how excited Labor is over Peter Dutton’s latest over reach.

She was on Sky News this morning where she was asked:

Q: So what conversations have you had with your counterpart and what assurances have you been given?

Wong:

Good to be with you Pete. Well, we’ve learnt two things yesterday. One through the outreach of Richard and myself as well as our diplomats, it was confirmed by Indonesia that they are not contemplating any so-called Russian base or any Russian assets operating out of Indonesian territory. So that was made very clear to us. The second thing though that was confirmed is that Peter Dutton is really too aggro and too reckless to be Australia’s Prime Minister, because the most concerning thing about yesterday was the fact that he was willing to fabricate a statement by the President of Indonesia in order to make a domestic political point. Now, I think that is an extraordinarily reckless thing for a man who wants to be Prime Minister to do.

Q: When you say that Indonesia is not contemplating, does that mean a request was made or not by Russia?

Wong:

Well, I’ve made two points about that –first is, I’m obviously not going to go into all the discussions we have diplomatically. We don’t do that through the media. But I would say this to you, it is the case that there has been a longstanding relationship between Indonesia and Russia. It’s an historic relationship. They have had engagement. They’ve had engagement in terms of not just diplomatically, but also in terms of military equipment and hardware. So we’re well aware of the historic relationship. But what is important is to ensure we have a relationship with Indonesia where we can engage on issues, including the sorts of things that you saw yesterday. That’s what we’ve done. And it is so disappointing to see Mr Dutton prepared to be so reckless as to make the whole statement about what was said by the President of Indonesia.

Here is the official announcement on the Coalition’s $6m funding pledge for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation:

An elected Dutton Coalition Government will provide $6 million to the Alannah & Madeline Foundation to keep our children safe from online harm. 

The Foundation’s eLearning tools include a set of age-appropriate teaching and learning resources focussed on essential online safety, digital and media literacy skills for children aged 4 to 16. 

This commitment builds on the Coalition’s strong record of protecting children from online harm. We established the eSafety Commission and the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, which we will double in size. The Coalition has also led the national debate on restricting social media for children under the age of 16. 

Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Peter Dutton MP, said only the Coalition can provide the strong leadership needed to tackle the issue of online safety.   

“There is no more important matter for Australian society to consider than the protection of children. I know that many parents are desperate for help to limit the impacts of harmful content that’s re-wiring impressionable young minds in a bad way. We need to ensure parents and children are equipped with the knowledge and skills that will help them safely navigate the online world.     

“A Dutton Coalition Government proudly stands with parents, teachers and communities who want to see real action – not just words. Today’s funding announcement to continue the work of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation is an important part of our plan to keep children safe.” 

Labor’s main message today is based around Peter Dutton’s overstepping (again) on an issue where he could have still criticised the government by telling the truth:

Both leaders are in Melbourne today, and whenever that happens there is generally commentary about how bad Victoria’s budgetary situation is. But is it really?

If you were to follow the press, you would be under the impression that Victoria is a basket case. People can point to the cash deficit of $12.2 billion in 2022-231 and total debt (liabilities) of $177.5 billion.

But that leaves out a rather large aspect.

There is very rarely any mention of the $412.9 billion worth of assets owned by the Victorian Government.

Taking liabilities away from the assets gives net worth of $235.4 billion.

Just like a household may take out a mortgage to purchase a home, so the Victorian Government has been borrowing to purchase the assets that provide critical facilities for the people of Victoria. The movement in Victoria’s net worth is illustrated in Figure 1. Victoria is like the prudent household whose home, super, and other investments are increasing relative to their debts.

Figure 1 clearly shows that Victoria’s net worth has been growing steadily. It has been compounding at 6.8% per annum. Victoria does not necessarily set itself commercial criteria, but if an investment fund demonstrated such a record it would be proud of its performance and would brag to its members.

At the same time, Peter Dutton was announcing a pledge to donate $6m to The Alannah & Madeline Foundation which was created in honour of Alannah and Madeline Mikac, who, along with their mother Nanette in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

The foundation works to prevent violence against children.

Dutton:

Every parent’s nightmare is the worry that your child will end up in a difficult or traumatic circumstance because of an interaction online, which is just devastating for a family. There are many examples of this. I want to say that very much a thank you to Walter as well for his amazing life story, the tragedy that no family should have have to go through, with the loss of his wife and two daughters, and what this foundation has turned into now, in honour of Alannah and Madeline. It is quite phenomenal.

To see what you are doing here and the beautiful people we have just spoken to, it really says to me we have made exactly the right decision.