Democracy struggled this week. Wherever you look, regulatory fails on multiple fronts exposed the most vulnerable Australians to exploitation while parliaments, federal and state, explored new ways of insulting us.
For citizens fond of fairness, openness and proper process, it is a grim time.
Daniel Andrews, Gladys Berejiklian and Scott Morrison.
The Andrews government dumped 211 different reports in Parliament on Thursday. Will we ever know what scandals are buried in the paper tsunami? For a government under pressure over unnecessary secrecy during the pandemic, it is a bad look.
Just because the Coalition played that silly game when they were in power, is no reason for this administration to be so cynical.
Much-needed new laws for declaring health emergencies were introduced, but reeked of over-reach, triggering criticism not just from the usual suspects but also the generally supportive human rights community. The ‘Dictator Dan’ tag will not go away.
Resurrected Liberal leader Matthew Guy gave his colleagues hope they made the right call when they switched jockeys. Guy used his sabbatical well, but many of his frontbench are plain lazy, wasting opportunities. The casino inquiry, mounting COVID debt and significant infrastructure project over-runs are just a few soft spots deserving scrutiny.
The casino report by former judge Ray Finkelstein gives Crown two years’ probation whilst they attempt cultural change. ‘Profit preferred over social licence’ is the one-line summary of his findings. Will the new Crown board be less greedy?
James Packer told the WA inquiry on Friday that he accepts the recommendation that he sell down his controlling stake in Crown, so now it is a question of who will buy into a struggling casino business where no one shareholder will have control.
Missing from the final report was any critique of the gambling regulator – because the inquiry excluded scrutiny of it. A wasted opportunity which could have explained how the NSW inquiry could find out what was happening in Melbourne, but the Victorian regulator did not.
Federal Parliament witnessed a one-in-a-100-year event when the government defied the Speaker, who thought Christian Porter’s ruse of using a blind trust to circumvent disclosure rules warranted investigation.
Whether to protect Porter or his donors, the Morrison strategists decided trashing a century of principle and precedent was preferable to even exploring Porter’s contrivance. Astonishing.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and former minister Christian Porter.Credit:The Age
It is surely no coincidence that within days the Speaker Tony Smith brought forward his departure from the chair, presumably to avoid the risk of being humiliated again. The President of the Senate Scott Ryan has similarly pulled the pin early, and will shortly be announced as the ambassador to Uzbekistan or somewhere similarly attractive.
Former opponent-in-chief of a carbon price, ex-senator Mathias Cormann, now insists we must introduce exactly that in his new role at the OECD. And politicians wonder why the public do not trust them?
Nothing though is worse than the Coalition’s attempt to change voting rules by introducing a national requirement for photo ID at the polling booth. This will doubtless disenfranchise some voters, and may tip the highly marginal NT electorate of Lingiari to the Coalition.
The huge Alice Springs-based seat – where Labor’s long-term incumbent Warren Snowden is retiring – has the highest proportion of Indigenous voters in the land, at just over 40 per cent even though only about two thirds of First Nations people in the NT are even enrolled to vote.
A complaint was lodged this month with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that remote communities across the NT do not have the same opportunities to vote as people elsewhere.
If the two developments are linked, then the Morrison government’s response to a complaint that the electoral bar is too high is to try to raise it even higher. Disgraceful.
As if all this is not enough, regulatory fails do not come much bigger than that confirmed by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission at Victoria Police.
If the ethics boss did not know the difference between right and wrong, what hope did the rest of the force ever have?Credit:Illustration: Matt Davidson
The former assistant commissioner who was in charge of the force’s ethical standards was being egregiously unethical. Brett Guerin concocted three fake social media accounts to racially, homophobically and offensively troll people who dared criticise him or VicPol. He quit the force after his trolling was exposed in February 2018.
Culture is set from the top. If the ethics boss did not know the difference between right and wrong, what hope did the rest of the force ever have?
Regulatory failure is the recurring theme. After years of “cutting red tape” we are coming to understand why red tape is actually needed and how short-sighted it has been to over- enthusiastically slash it.
Whether it is cosmetic surgeons, flammable building cladding across the country, apartment towers in Sydney declared uninhabitable, banks and financial advisers ripping off customers – it is an epidemic.
The worthy goal of red-tape cutting has too often been turned into a self-interested push by the greediest and most unprincipled in business and some professions to be left free to prey on the weakest in our community.
And the richest companies in the world – tech giants and social media titans – are the most unregulated of all.
Cheered you up? Don’t worry – Barnaby Joyce is now Acting PM and despite the Murdoch media being in “Gladys spin cycle”, the ICAC washing machine is trying to clean up that mess.
Jon Faine is a regular columnist. He has worked on contract for the state government.
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