Crispin Hull

Lessons from Howard autocracy

Never in the 40-year history of releasing Cabinet documents after 20 years have we learnt so much about the value of proper Cabinet Government and the catastrophic consequences of departing from it as we learnt with this month’s release of the 2003 Cabinet papers.

Among the worst government decisions in Australia’s history, two were made that year by the Howard Cabinet – the decision to go to war in Iraq and the decision not to put a price on carbon or do anything much about reducing greenhouse gases.

Psephological bomb awaits PM

Unless things change this year, the Albanese Government will not deserve to win the next election. That said, neither will the Peter Dutton-led Opposition.

The Government’s slow decline in the polls, however, should not be ascribed to the loss of the Voice referendum, which many see as the main political event of 2023.

No, the 2023 event which will have the most significant political fallout was the Albanese Government’s loss of control of Australia’s borders.

Lessons from Cyclone Jasper

Powerlines downed by Jasper in Port Douglas

Cyclone Jasper wasn’t supposed to hover there, right next to the coastline dumping a metre of rain (two and half times Canberra’s annual rainfall) in just a few days.

Blame the Bureau of Meteorology, of course. The same scientists who have been warning us for decades that the climate has changed because we have pumped too much carbon into the air and that the weather will get more extreme and more unpredictable.

Beware the new normal

In the brouhaha over immigration in the past fortnight, we must ask ourselves how did Australia allow 512,000 people enter Australia as immigrants in the past year? It is a critical question to this nation’s future.

How did we allow this mind-blowing number in when we have a housing crisis; a hospital-waiting crisis; a congestion crisis; an endangered-species crisis; and an infrastructure crisis? And when more than three quarters of voters surveyed say that it is too many.

A 25-year failed education lesson

The report card is in and the results are bad, and appear to be getting steadily worse.

Last week’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results reveal Australian students have fallen nearly two academic years behind students who went to school in the early 2000s. Nearly half of pupils do not reach national standards in maths and reading.

Why? We can safely rule out all the educational hyperbole about class sizes, phonetics, open or closed classrooms, teacher training and the like.

Medicare: Robin Hood tactics needed

Media has been alive with comments about the Albanese Government losing steam and even the possibility of Peter Dutton becoming Prime Minister.

Then there are the contradictory tea leaves of history. On one hand, no Government has lost power after just one term for nearly a century, so this first-term government should be safe. On the other hand, no Prime Minister has obtained a second term for a quarter of a century – that was John Howard in 1998, and even then, he did not win the two-party-preferred vote.

Govt loses its way over navigation

National security is often cited as the No 1 priority of government. Without that, all else becomes meaningless. It is why we are spending billions on nuclear submarines and other defence hardware.

It is why the Government last week put forward a major initiative on cyber security. These days cyber-attacks can be as damaging as physical attacks and a great deal more difficult to find out their source and how to respond.

Rule of law rings in the ears

The dangerous sonar pulsing by a Chinese naval vessel close to HMAS Toowoomba exercising (pictured) in international waters off Japan that injured some Navy divers this month tells us quite a bit about both Australia and China.

The incident happened seven days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ended his official visit to China during which relations were supposed to improve.

Time to Reserve judgment

The other day a family member showed me his “man’s shed” in his new house. It has a wall with silhouettes where the tools should be: chisels, fret saws, blade screwdrivers, a tomahawk and the like. I think there was a VCR and vinyl records as well.

It reminded me of the Reserve Bank – last century’s tools. no longer fit for purpose for this century. Except the Reserve Bank has only one tool – interest rates.

Behind zero tolerance

Over the past half decade or so, you must have noticed the proliferation of “zero-tolerance” signs at businesses and government services. They quite rightly point out that abusive language; threats of violence; and actual violence will not be tolerated and will result in a cessation of services.

But why the recent proliferation? Are Australians becoming more abusive and aggressive? Are governments and corporations just becoming more protective and concerned about their staff?

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