Australia must avoid ‘foreign policy autopilot’, thinktank report says
Daniel Hurst
The climate crisis and the rise of China should spur Australia to get smarter with its statecraft, according to a report to be published today.
The paper, produced by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) thinktank, will be launched by Labor’s Penny Wong and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning.
It suggests Australia’s engagement with the world cannot be left solely to the departments of foreign affairs and defence, and the country must avoid “foreign policy autopilot”.
There is growing bipartisan support for the idea of a “whole of nation” approach to international policy.
The executive director of AP4D, Melissa Conley Tyler, told Guardian Australia that during recent consultations, some groups suggested climate change required a whole-of-nation approach because it was an existential threat and “we just can’t afford to have different parts of society doing different things”.
Another group saw a whole-of-nation approach as an opportunity for Australia: “Think about how much better our international engagement would be if you took the views of multicultural Australia into account, if you really involved First Nations peoples, if you thought about civil society and what they offer.”
Key events
David Littleproud lists off the other aspects of the IR bill he doesn’t like:
But there’s other elements to this IR laws that give us real concern as well – particularly for farmers. They’re taking away the unions having to give 24 hours notice to come on to a farm. Now, just understand that farms are not just there to produce food and fibre. They’re family homes. They’re where children live, but there’s biosecurity risks.
If they roll up there to a piggery or a henhouse and bring in a biosecurity risk because they turn up unannounced, there could be tens of thousands of animals that have to be destroyed.
A farmer’s livelihood being taken away because they want the unions to bowl up. There is a sensible solution to this.
We’re getting the balance right and I think that the balance has gone too far one way.
So why is David Littleproud against the right to disconnect, which is part of the government’s IR bill, following negotiations with the Greens?
(You can learn more about the right to disconnect, here)
Because he thinks employees can already do it.
Look, it’s already happening. There’s a thing called common-sense. And employers and employees have been using it for many, many years now. Where they understand – and employers want to go and spend time with their family as well. But there are times, peak periods during the year, where people do get busy. But so long as it is done in a reasonable way, which invariably it has.
(Speaking as someone who did a decade in hospitality, ‘common sense’ really depends on the manager)
How does Littleproud know this?
Lived experience. I was actually in the workforce for 20 years before I came into this place. But obviously, I deal with a number of employers around my own electorate and talk around the country. There is a reasonableness and understanding of making sure that once you leave work, as best you can, you leave people alone. And this is where government doesn’t need to reach into every facet of everyone’s life. We’re smart people. We should be allowed to use that common-sense. And where there’s occupations where it is necessary – well then, there obviously is remuneration that needs to happen. And that’s already happening.
Littleproud was in banking and finance before he entered parliament. And employers aren’t exactly who the right to disconnect is for.
On Allan Fels suggestions that Australia should pay whistleblowers, name and shame price gougers and establishing a commission on prices, David Littleproud is all aboard:
I think that there’s real merit in that. What we found in the perishable goods inquiry – farmers feared coming forward, because they feared retribution. Because the supermarkets controlled so much market that they wouldn’t buy off them again.
So they weren’t even game to come forward, even though it was confidential, because they feared that this could get out and they could be identified.
So I think that there is real issues all the way through this that Allan Fels has identified in a very calm and methodical way.
And I think that it is a very (big signal) to legislators to do something about it. And it’s not just about now in a cost of living crisis – it’s about doing the right thing for not just now but into the future to protect supplies and to protect consumers and I think that this is an opportunities to work with this and to move in a bipartisan way, to put those regulatory guardrails around competition policy in this country.
David Littleproud continued:
But there needs to be greater architectural reform, which is also what Professor Fels articulated, which is what the Nationals have said. When there’s too much market concentration, you have too much power.
And all we’re saying is that whether it is in the supermarket (or farm gate), we want fair prices from the farm gate to the supermarket gate.
And there’s a lot of work that we can do. I actually wrote to the competition minister over 12 months ago offering bipartisan support to bring forward all of the reviews into the architecture, and actually bring forward divestiture powers so they could be used by a court or by the ACCC.
That’s what the consumers want, what the suppliers want, and transparency and fairness. But there’s too much market power in some of the industry and we need to protect suppliers and also the consumer.
Fels ‘nailed it’ in report on price gouging: Littleproud
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, is speaking to ABC News Breakfast about one of his favourite topics – the big supermarkets – and says former ACCC chair Prof Allan Fels has “nailed it” in his report to the ACTU about price gouging in Australia.
I think that he demonstrated the need and reinforced what the Nationals have been calling for, when there’s evidence, clear evidence around price gouging.
We saw that with meat prices where farm grade prices dropped by 60% or 70% in June. Yet, the checkout price only dropped by 18%. They put pressure all the way down through the supply chain. And what Allan Fels has said in his inquiry is that we need to have more ACCC price investigations, where there’s clear evidence. And that’s what we were calling for and the government ignored that. And I think shoppers have paid too much.
Labor senator becomes first father to bring baby to Senate
As one of the all seeing eyes who oversee the blog pointed out, there was a new baby in the Senate yesterday.
Labor senator Raff Ciccone became the first father to bring his baby into the Senate, when he appeared with his 10-week old son.
“It’s essential that all workplaces create a family friendly and respectful environment,” he told AAP.
“Bringing your child to work should be encouraged by more workplaces wherever possible.”
Bringing your cat to work should also be encouraged, but society isn’t ready for that conversation yet.
Good morning
Amy Remeikis
Welcome to the final sitting day for this week. Thank you to Martin Farrer for kicking us off – you have Amy Remeikis with you now for most of the sitting day.
And it’s going to be a big one, with PNG prime minister James Marape to address the parliament. It’ll be the first time a Pacific leader has done that and comes just after a visit in December where Australia and PNG signed a new security pact.
There will be a ceremonial welcome outside Parliament House this morning ahead of the address (which is something for building dwellers to take into account with their own arrival).
Other than that there is the ongoing tax debate, Tony Burke looks to have IR all but wrapped up, plus the usual argy bargy.
Ready? Let’s get into it.
‘It all boils down to tired gender essentialism’: Elle Hunt on Newington
With the co-ed issue front and centre in New South Wales today, Elle Hunt has taken a critical look at the campaign by some parents at the posh boys’ school Newington in Sydney’s inner west to stop it admitting girls.
She’s less than sympathetic with the parents, it’s fair to say, as they complain about the “woke palaver” that has brought us to this point.
She writes:
To listen to these old boys’ inarticulate defence of “traditional values”, you can’t help but think they’re really misty-eyed about a time when men’s dominance in public and political life passed without challenge. But times have changed, as Newington’s board is recognising.
Read her whole piece here:
Dutton denies backing tax changes is a ‘humiliation’
Peter Dutton says he took a pragmatic approach in deciding to back the government’s changes to stage three tax cuts because people are hurting.
The federal opposition leader also denied it was humiliating to have to stand in favour of Labor’s changes – which will shave the tax relief offered to high income earners to the policy created by the previous Coalition government, AAP reports.
“We stood up because we want to see people given assistance,” Dutton told ABC TV last night.
“It addresses some of the damage that Labor has done to the economy and the cost-of-living pressures are really acute for families, so we listened to that and we acted.”
Dutton also rejected suggestions the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, should get credit for taking a political risk and altering the cuts.
“They did this with the Dunkley election contest in mind,” he said, referring to the upcoming byelection in the Victorian electorate which Labor faces a tough battle to retain.
This week, Albanese has taken the opposition to task for railing against the tax cut changes before eventually capitulating.
“(The opposition) have described our policy to give tax cuts to every Australian in the following terms: an egregious error, a betrayal, trickery, absolutely shameful, class warfare,” he told parliament yesterday.
Australia must avoid ‘foreign policy autopilot’, thinktank report says
Daniel Hurst
The climate crisis and the rise of China should spur Australia to get smarter with its statecraft, according to a report to be published today.
The paper, produced by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) thinktank, will be launched by Labor’s Penny Wong and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning.
It suggests Australia’s engagement with the world cannot be left solely to the departments of foreign affairs and defence, and the country must avoid “foreign policy autopilot”.
There is growing bipartisan support for the idea of a “whole of nation” approach to international policy.
The executive director of AP4D, Melissa Conley Tyler, told Guardian Australia that during recent consultations, some groups suggested climate change required a whole-of-nation approach because it was an existential threat and “we just can’t afford to have different parts of society doing different things”.
Another group saw a whole-of-nation approach as an opportunity for Australia: “Think about how much better our international engagement would be if you took the views of multicultural Australia into account, if you really involved First Nations peoples, if you thought about civil society and what they offer.”
Caitlin Cassidy
NSW single-sex high school catchments to remain unchanged amid coed shake-up
The NSW deputy premier and minister for education and early learning Prue Car said work was ongoing to ensure all parents had access to co-educational high schools by 2027.
The catchments of current single-sex high schools will remain unchanged.
Car said:
There is growing interest in co-education, and no family should have to face leaving their local area to access a co-educational high school.
Member for Summer Hill, Jo Haylen, said for years families in her constituency could only opt for the single-sex Ashfield and Canterbury high schools if they were to go public.
Life is co-ed, and parents and students should have access to a co-ed school option.
Caitlin Cassidy
Sydney public high schools to go co-ed in Labor shake-up as parents face tough choices
The New South Wales government is to announce a major shake-up of school intake boundaries that will grant thousands of families in Sydney access to co-educational public high schools for the first time.
Prior to the state election, Chris Minns pledged parents would have guaranteed access to co-educational public schools within Labor’s first term of government.
The changes, to roll out from next year, finalise updates to intake areas previously flagged in Sydney suburbs across parts of the inner west and south-west, where students only have a single-sex public high school option.
The final intake areas across NSW will have a co-educational option by 2027.
The NSW Department of Education confirmed the boundaries will be adjusted for 20 co-educational high schools – following feedback with more than 120 schools and their staff, parents and students.
Welcome
Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our rolling politics blog, in this first parliamentary sitting week of 2024. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be rounding up the best of the overnight stories before Amy joins the fray.
Today we reveal how staff at the Human Rights Commission are pushing back against what they see as the organisation’s soft line towards Israel. Staff across eight of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s teams – at least 24 of the 122 staff employed – have written to the commission’s president, Rosalind Croucher, about what they say is a “failure to fulfil its mandate as an accredited national human rights institution: in regard to Israeli war crimes”.
School principals have joined the teachers’ union in demanding that the Albanese government boost its offer to co-fund the gap in public school finances with states. The Australian Education Union, leaders of all major principals’ organisations and the Australian Council of State School Organisations have written to the prime minister demanding the federal government pay at least a quarter of the cost of fair public school funding. The issue of co-ed schools will be big news in New South Wales this morning when ministers announce a major shake-up of school intake boundaries that will grant thousands of families in Sydney access to mixed public high schools for the first time. More on that coming up.
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, will this morning become the first Pacific leader to address Australia’s parliament, and he is expected to talk up the relationship between the two nations. Last year Albanese became the first foreign leader to address PNG’s parliament. The pair will meet again today when Marappe receives a ceremonial welcome at Parliament House before addressing a joint sitting of senators and MPs.
It comes as a thinktank report will be launched by the foreign minister, Penny Wong, and the Coalition’s Simon Birmingham in Canberra this morning calling for Australia to get smarter with its statecraft to counter the rising power of China. More on that, too, coming up.