Peter Dutton believes he can return the L/NCP to power in one term. He will need to get his skates on.

THE AGE today: “Core support for Labor (has risen to) to 42 per cent cutting the Coalition to just 30 per cent since the May election.

Core support translates to first preference votes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leads Opposition Leader Peter Dutton by 54 to 19 per cent as preferred prime minister.”

In an article entitled Dutton’s plan for a one-term comeback, Anthony Galloway and James Massola reveal the master strategy. It seems to boil down to Dutton’s belief that the voting public will get sick of the Labour Party and vote for Dutton and his team of discredited losers.

The plan appears to rest on the belief that the public will realise that Dutton is really a nice bloke. It hasn’t happened yet and it probably never will.

Morrison’s response to the censure motion shows that the Parliament and his party would be well rid of him.

The historic censure motion against ex-Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been passed in Parliament.

The responses from the Opposition have been unsurprising.

All members of the Opposition, with the exception of the courageous Bridget Archer, voted against censure motion.

The Opposition decided to close ranks behind the leader who had single-handedly led them to a catastrophic defeat.

There were mutterings of overreach and political motivation but no one in the Opposition has been able to mount a plausible justification for what Morrison did.

Why did they do this? There can be no political gain to be had from failing to condemn this egregious attempt at the centralisation of power.

This failure may quite reasonably be interpreted as a total lack of comprehension of the gravity of what Morrison did. A fundamental premise of a democracy is that power should be shared amongst those who wielded it. Morrison took a dangerous step back from this fundamental idea.

Whatever the Opposition’s motivation, this will only be seen by the Australian public as support for Morrison’s secretly abrogating five ministries to himself.

In his reply to the censure motion and in a desperate attempt to salvage his legacy, Morrison accused the government of intimidation and retribution.

“I am proud of my achievements in this place, and I am proud of my government. I am proud, at a time of extreme trial, my government stood up and faced the abyss of uncertainty.”

His justification was that he needed to be able to take “swift action if necessary in the national interests in a time when Australia’s interests were under constant threat”.

This begs the question of why it was necessary for a single person, namely him, to hold multiple ministries. Why did he not share the burden with other members of Cabinet?

In a totally bewildering feat of logic, he said “Had I been asked about these matters at the time at the numerous press conferences I held, I would have responded truthfully about the arrangements I had put in place.”

Why was he waiting to be asked?

How can the media ask questions about a matter they know nothing about?

Morrison is now a much diminished figure in the Parliament. He should resign and spare himself and his party the embarrassment of his continued presence.

Is it time for Stuart Robert to assess the contribution he has made and decide whether the Australian public needs him in Parliament

Using ‘leaked” files, presumably from within Synergy 360, the article paints a damning picture of the relationship between the Minister and company actively involved in advising and assisting clients in their relationships with government departments.

In an article that details, in considerable detail, the contact between the Minister and an external consulting company, Nick McKenzie and David Crowe, expose the relationship between Minister Robert and Synergy 360, whose client Infosys won government contracts worth more than $135 million. 

Federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert.CREDIT:ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN

Singing from the same hymn book entitled “Never apologise or resign” as ex-Prime Minister and fellow Hillsong member, Robert said: “Of course not. What a load of rubbish. There’s no way a minister could do it. It’s just nonsense.”

From THE AGE: “A consulting company owned by good friends of federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert claimed in leaked internal documents that the politician attended meetings to discuss potentially lucrative government projects after becoming a minister.

A new tranche of leaked files shows that Robert kept in regular contact with Milo and Synergy 360, as well as its clients, after he was appointed assistant treasurer in August 2018 and then minister for the NDIS and government services on May 29, 2019.”

In business, and in particular in stockbroking, this is called insider-trading and is punishable by dismissal and considerable jail time.

It is disgraceful as continues to sit in Parliament if what is in the article is true.

He must demonstrate that the meetings which he is alleged to have he attended, which are detailed in the files, never took place or that he is not the Minister referred to.

Let’s be quite clear about what Morrison was doing by secretly appointing himself to five ministries

As background it’s worth understanding that “Morrison’s Christian faith on his prime ministership “drove him, made him immoveable, more resistant to logical explanations”.

“I have been mocked every day because of my faith because I am a Pentecostal,”

“I have surrendered this battle to God now. I have said, over to you.” – Niki Savva, a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, writes in her new book Bulldozed

Morrison believed it was a miracle from God that won him the 2018 election. No doubt, he was expecting another such miracle in 2022.

It’s only a small step from this type of delusional thinking to believing everything he does is God’s will.

From there, any justification he makes for his actions becomes acceptable, at least in his own mind.

The danger to our democracy was the abrogation of these powers to himself constituted the first steps towards the dictatorship.

Had the government won the election, quite possible in Morrison’s mind given God was on his side, the centralisation of power within cabinet would have continued.

As defacto Minister in a number of key Ministries, Morrison would then argue that he was entitled to an extra Cabinet vote for each ministry. Pretty soon, he would have had a personal majority in the Cabinet voting process. His dominance of the Parliamentary party would be complete.

This power grab would be justified by an argument that, with God’s help, he was the only person who could take on the burden of government.

The next stage would be to subvert the public backlash against such actions.

A manufactured crisis around a pandemic, a threatened invasion, or internal terrorism would be sufficient for suspending the next election ostensibly to avoid instability and lack of confidence in the government.

A parallel and orchestrated program of disinformation would discredit the Opposition.

Nothing ever goes quite to plan in politics and Morrison may not have the intellectual and political acumen to have thought events through in this level of detail.

Besides which, when the election came, either God let him down badly or simply wasn’t paying attention.

But we must be clear, what he did was take the first steps towards establishing a dictatorship in Australia.

This map shows the enormity of the task facing the Liberal opposition in Victoria

While all the seats have not yet been called, is likely the Andrews government will returned to a position of strength similar to the one they have occupied for the last term of government. A couple of seats have changed hands, one for each party cancelling out any real gains.

What further consolidates Dan Andrews’ hold on power is that the opposition is in the state of complete disarray both politically and organisationally.

Organisationally, they need to reform the system by which they preselect candidates. This will be a difficult and tortuous process but they need to stop pre-selecting candidates that are so extreme that they have no real connection to any anybody other than like-minded religious extremists and right-wing crackpots.

Politically, they need to be able to select new leader rather than recycling Michael O’Brien who lost his job to a recycled Matthew as leader of the party.

They also need to do something about Treasurer David Davis who has become a walking advertisement for why people should not vote for the Liberal party.

The Greens are celebrating a “Green Wave”. It’s a bit of an exaggeration as they have so far picked up two seats and may possibly pick up a couple more. They are gaining strength in inner Melbourne but it is hardly a wave, more like the tide coming in.

With the Andrews government having a large and comfortable majority, Greens will not be in the position of power they had hoped for a hung parliament.

The Greens are now in the very fortunate position where they are often one of the top two candidates when the votes are counted. This means they benefit from whole range of preferences from people who probably wouldn’t vote for them but preferences are distributed to the last two standing.

This time round the Liberals gave their preferences to the Greens. In Richmond, which the Greens won for the first time, Liberal party voters had a choice between the Greens and Labor for their second last preference which is the one that gets distributed to the top two candidates.

The Greens are now in a position where they will get either Labor preferences or Liberal preferences which means that once they are established in a seat they will be very hard dislodge.

There is one surprising aspect to this election, which didn’t follow the trend in the Federal election. When counting stopped on Saturday night, there were no Teal or independent candidates elected. In fact, a number of independents lost their seats to Nationals in regional electorates.

It remains to be seen, if the final votes are sufficient to elect Teal candidates to Parliament.

Would-be Treasurer David Davis’ plan to privatise Melbourne’s sewage works is a return to the economic stupidity of the Kennett era

Just as the Andrews’s government is planning to return the SEC to public ownership, the Liberal party opposition announces that it is going to privatise Melbourne’s sewerage works to pay down Victoria’s debt.

Werribee lagoons

The idea of the Kennett government in selling off the SEC was that privatisation would lead to greater efficiency and lower electricity prices. Blackouts and rising prices to consumers have proved to be the disaster that sensible economists would have predicted.

In addition, Victoria’s disastrous bushfires were, in part, a result of underinvestment private enterprise in the maintenance of transmission infrastructure.

The idea that adding the profit motive to the costs of supply from public utilities is clearly stupid. It simply adds the cost.

The argument that private enterprise, through competition, is likely to be more efficient is dubious at best. At worst, when the privatised enterprise is effectively a monopoly, there is no competition and hence no improvement.

Clearly, David Davis has learned nothing for as  George Santayana, wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Who were the fictional characters who influenced you as a child?

Some current teenagers told The Age who they think were important to them.

“In the lead-up to the event (next month’s Teen Gala being staged by the Wheeler Centre) participants were asked to write about the characters who helped them find their way. The results might surprise you.”

Fictional heroes (clockwise, from top left): Zuri and her father in Hair Love, Jake the Dog from Adventure Time, Barbie, Robin Buckley from Stranger Things and the title character from Kiki’s Delivery Service.CREDIT:VASHTI HARRISON, CARTOON NETWORK, AP, TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX, STUDIO GHIBLI

In the article, teenagers talk about the influence of these characters.

It got me thinking about who was important to me.

Here are the ones I remember. Looking back to the 1950s, this is probably a fairly representative group. Significantly, no women heroes seem to have appeared to during this time.

My first three are a Superman who really did wear his underpants on the outside, Dan Dare, a space pilot with little understanding of physics and Rockfist Rogan an RAF pilot and boxing champion.

My next three are Robyn Hood (played by Eroll Flynn, who I later found out was a man of dubious character and not really fit to be a childhood hero), Biggles and Deadwood Dick (you wouldn’t get away with a character called that today.) Deadwood spent 15 weekly episodes of a black-and-white serial pursuing a masked villain known as the Skull. The final episode and showdown was shown to a packed matinée audience at the Ngaio Hall in1952.

This is the Ngaio hall which doubled as a picture theatre in the 1950s.

I remember my parents would not let me go to the afternoon matinée pictures if the sun was shining. They told me to go out and play which was hard because most of the other kids had gone to the pictures.

Will the GIMPS hold the balance of power in a hung parliament in Victoria?

The election is getting closer as the primary vote gap closes.

Both Labor and Liberal Parties neck and neck on 36% of the primary vote according to Resolve Strategic for The Age.

But the GIMPS (Greens, Independents, Minor Parties) hold 28%. so preferences will decide who takes power. Greens preferences will overwhelmingly be directed to the Labor Party. Where the other 18% ( Independents and Other in the table) will be crucial to the outcome.

However, the preferential voting system means the GIMPS will not get 28% of the representation. But they may win enough seats to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

Who was in charge while this was going on over the last decade?

Australian colleges identified in allegedly helping women enter country to work in sex industry

“Trafficked is a project led by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, 60 Minutes and Stan’s Revealed documentary program that has exposed the wholesale exploitation of Australia’s border security and immigration system by criminal syndicates involved in human trafficking and other crimes.

None of the 14 Australian colleges identified as corrupt have faced criminal sanction and most remain open.”

Who was responsible at the time?

It must have been the Ministers for Immigration and Border Security.

Photo NICK MOIR

(Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

The All Blacks start against Japan was hardly a confidence builder.

RNZ The All Blacks have paid a heavy price for the 38-31 win over Japan in Tokyo with captain Sam Cane and hooker Dane Coles ruled out of the rest of the end of year tour.

In addition, Brodie Retallick received a red car or a dangerous clear out. He could easily be given a penalty that will rule him out for the rest of the tour.

Photo: AFP / Philip Fong

With Sam Whitelock out recovering from an ear infection, the steel core of the All Black scrum could be in doubt.

The ABs face Wales, Scotland and England In the next mont. Japan will play England and after their performance against New Zealand, the Brave Blossoms must fancy their chances.

Scotland has not beaten New Zealand in 31 tests since they began playing in 1905. They must be looking forward to an historic victory.

Wales has beaten New Zealand three times in 36 tests since they first played in 1905. That first-ever match was a 3-0 victory for Wales in Cardiff Arms Park. Thirty years later, Wales edged a win by one point in Cardiff. They won again in 1953 in their home city.

England has beaten New Zealand seven times in 41 tests, including the 2019 Rugby World Cup Semi-final.

You have to feel sorry for Ian Foster the New Zealand coach. He is carrying a lot of history in the saddlebags.

It’s hardly been a great start for him.