Australian Politics

Hmm was it science or was it diplomatic negotiation?

Anger is rising among Labor’s base over the war in Gaza, with nearly 80 local branches passing motions over recent weeks calling for Australia to impose sanctions on the Netanyahu government and sever military ties with Israel.

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Seventy-eight Labor branches have passed motions calling for far-reaching sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals involved in the war and a two-way arms embargo on Israel, including the supply of military parts and components.

The branches include one in Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s home city of Adelaide and three in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Sydney electorate of Grayndler.

“Strong words are not enough,” the conveners of the Labor Friends of Palestine group said in a letter sent to Wong on Wednesday and seen by this masthead.

“Expressions of concern and repeated calls for restraint have achieved little in the last 21 months; indeed Israel’s violence and clear disdain for international humanitarian law have only intensified.”

archive.org

The Greens are also pretty incensed about some of the changes – particularly the rule that would allow Hansard not to record the names of MPs voting in favour of legislation if there are six or fewer members on one side of the chamber for the vote.

Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown has called it a “stitch up” that undermines transparency.

It gives Labor and Liberal MPs cover to hide how their MP’s are voting on important issues. Voters deserve to know how their representatives are voting.

Labor needs to explain why they want to hide their MPs voting positions from the public. Transparency should be a bare minimum in a democracy.

Among the changes are rules allowing members to be booted from parliamentary proceedings for a maximum of three hours, up from the previous rule of 60 minutes.

Another change would allow Hansard, the record of proceedings, not to record the names of MPs voting in favour of legislation if there are six or fewer members on one side of the chamber (ie, clearly in the minority) at the time of a vote. The new rule states:

If, after the doors are locked, there are six or fewer Members on one side in a division, the Speaker shall declare the decision of the House immediately, without completing the count. The names of the Members who are in the minority shall be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

The US geopolitical objective is to destroy China’s power. This is being pursued variously. China’s economy depends on Asian sea traffic. The US military strategy is to sever those sea lanes. Thereby China’s economy is imperilled.

However, as the US itself has claimed (from Obama on) it lacks the resources to achieve its objective. It says it must rely on allies’ support.

Unsaid by US planners is that those same sea lanes upon which China depends are critical also for Japan and Australia. Any pedant can see that the natural allies here are China, Japan and Australia.

smh.com.au

Bob Katter, the long-serving MP for the northern Queensland seat of Kennedy, has refused to swear allegiance to King Charles, his heirs and successors during the opening of parliament.

When asked if he would swear allegiance, Katter responded: “No, I swear allegiance to the Australian people.”

The small protest did not disrupt proceedings, as it did when Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe gave the oath in 2022.

Members are asked to swear faith and allegiance to King Charles III. They are expected to respond “I do”.

Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian has appealed her narrow loss to Nicolette Boele in Bradfield to the court of disputed returns. According to Professor Anne Twomey, no questions of law are raised in Kapterian’s challenge. Rather, the court is being asked to determine more mundane questions. Is that 1 actually a 7; is that 6 an 8? and so on.

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The last time the courts considered questions about ballot formality was in 2007 from the seat of McEwen. The resulting federal court case produced one of the more unusual judgments one will find in Australian law reports. Mitchell v Bailey (No 2) ****contains a lengthy tabular schedule, listing the disposition of 643 reserved ballots and – in 153 instances – reasons for Justice Richard Tracey’s assessments about ballot formality differing from those of the AEC. Examples include comments such as “Notations reasonably resemble numbers. In particular, three of them can be recognised as figures 7, 6, 5.” Why? How? Presumably, they just did to Tracey, just as they did not to AEC officials. No criticism of the late justice is intended; the point is to highlight just how subjective and hence seemingly unfair these assessments – and election outcomes – can appear.

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Here’s a modest proposal. For decades we’ve been training computers to recognise handwritten digits, principally for making mail processing and delivery more efficient. Massive datasets of real, handwritten digits have become one of the touchstones of machine learning, test beds for refining algorithms and global competition among researchers. The best algorithms have 99.82% accuracy in recognising digits. And the AEC itself uses digital scanning to process Senate ballot papers.

Australia has done what it does best today, which is to throw its weight behind a flawed but familiar larrikin simply because he’s being sued by a bigger and worse cunt from overseas.

News broke this morning that US President Donald Trump has launched a $15 billion lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch over a Wall Street Journal article reporting on his alleged involvement in a bizarre birthday tribute to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

While Murdoch has long been accused of corrupting global democracies, manufacturing moral panics and platforming people who would’ve been fed to bears for entertainment in the Middle Ages, the fact that Trump is now suing him has flipped the public’s view of “our Rupert.” [...]

Ms Ryan said that she planned to introduce another private member's bill during the upcoming term of federal parliament, after an initial bill in 2018 failed to pass.

It is hard to see how this helps a Jewish community that feels threatened, attacked and misunderstood. Could it be that the Segal report’s only contribution to the necessary battle against antisemitism will be to fuel the growth of the antisemitism it is meant to combat?

If the ironies are endless, the dangers are profound.

It is not simply that these things are absurd, it is that they are a threat to us as a democratic people. That the prime minister has unwisely put himself in a position where he now must disavow something he previously seemed to support is unfortunate. But disavow and abandon it he must.

Antisemitism is real and, as is all racism, despicable. The federal government is right to do all it can within existing laws to act against the perpetrators of recent antisemitic outrages. Earlier this month, the Federal Court found Wissam Haddad guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act with online posts that were “fundamentally racist and antisemitic” but ruled that criticism of Israel, Zionism and the Israel Defence Forces was not antisemitic. It is wrong to go beyond our laws in new ways that would damage Australian democracy and seem to only serve the interests of another nation that finds its actions the subject of global opprobrium.

archive.org

archive.today

Umm what fuck? This is not going to go well.

Before the last election, a bureaucrat in the office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet attempted to embed ministerial blindness into the conventions of our government.

2.6 Following the end of the caretaker period and once a new government is appointed, successive governments have accepted the convention that ministers do not seek access to documents recording the deliberations of ministers in previous governments.

One only has to think for about 20 milliseconds to realise how detrimental that advice would be.

Despite outcry from the opposition, about 57 per cent of seniors endorse the change, according to a survey of 3000 people aged 50 and older conducted by National Seniors Australia for the Super Members Council.

The results appear to track with broader public sentiment on Labor’s bill, Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert said.

A growing chorus is calling for Australia’s republic conversation to focus less on symbolism and more on empowering local communities through real structural reform, writes Kaijin Solo.

Anthony Albanese has backed America’s “unilateral action” to strike Iranian nuclear facilities after a day of silence on the superpower’s decision to enter the Middle East conflict.