Thread by @c_s_wallace

🧵Me on cleaning up Australian politics @theage @smh. theage.com.au/politics/feder… #auspol 1/

'The message could not have been clearer at the last federal election: voters want clean government.'

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'Sketchy grant-giving and contract-granting under the Morrison Government created an unsavoury impression of a mob just this side of sliding into an ethical abyss.'

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'The situation was reminiscent of the character in Ernest Hemingway’s 'The Sun Also Rises' who asks someone how he went bankrupt. ‘Gradually, then suddenly,’ is the reply.

'It’s the same with moral bankruptcy in politics.'

theage.com.au/politics/feder… #auspol 4/

Those who follow the mother of parliaments have watched Johnson drag British politics gradually, then suddenly, to a poxy low more characteristic of emerging nations lacking robust institutions than to the world’s oldest functioning democracy.

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Today the Johnson Government faces by-elections triggered by the resignation of two Conservative MPs, one for sexually abusing a teenage boy and the other for watching porn on the floor of parliament.

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'They’re just the latest among serial scandals on multiple fronts, usually with little or no consequence for transgressors – including Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself over his repeated ‘Partygate’ lawbreaking.'

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'Similarly, Australians watching the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack hearings are agog at testimony on the Trump-connected attempted coup to stop incoming president Joe Biden taking office last year.'

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And it’s not just Trump behaving badly. The Republicans’ campaign to limit voting rights, skew district boundaries and undermine vote counting integrity rules suggests conservative politicians in the US have junked electoral ethics altogether.

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'Their efforts to undermine America’s democratic fabric, going on gradually for decades, now suddenly threatens to fundamentally compromise US democracy itself.'

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'The January 6 Attack committee’s vice-chair, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, electrified the hearings and wrote herself into the history books by standing out against the toxic indifference to integrity on her own side of politics.'

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‘I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,’ Cheney said. ‘There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain.'

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Her courage in the breach begs the question, who is the Liberals’ potential Liz Cheney, capable of stimulating ethical reflection here?

It’s not new Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

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Dutton’s post-election attempt to dress as lamb extends only a limited extent beyond photo shoots with family members. He is considering support for some kind of federal integrity commission but unapologetic about the LNP’s record in office.

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Dutton & his deputy Sussan Ley say they'll listen to voters. They’re deaf if they missed the integrity message which not only helped Labor win office but helped community independents take a swag of Lib heartland seats off the Libs too.

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If deaf, they might not be blind to the fact that if the Andrews Govt is re-elected this year & the Perrottet Govt falls in 2023, mainland Australia will have Labor govts at both federal & state levels for only the second time in history.

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(It happened only once before, briefly under the Hawke Government.) You’ve got to be determinedly myopic not to see that coming.

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Sadly, no Liz Cheney is evident in the current Liberal party room in Canberra.

Nevertheless there is a grand experiment in Liberal renewal running right now from which federal Libs might learn. It’s the Perrottet Government in NSW.

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Scott Morrison derided ICAC as a ‘kangaroo court’. Premier Dominic Perrottet, in contrast, defended ICAC & increased its budget.

Further, Perrottet & Treasurer Matt Kean are visibly trying to drag the government towards the political centre.

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This week’s NSW budget includes some material examples, most prominently in relation to women. Perrottet & Kean know they’ll lose office if the gender split evident at the federal election happens to them at the state election next March.

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Kean’s centrist standing was already established with his climate change-related energy policy initiatives.

Perrottet, a hard right-winger, is developing his own with an improved recent performance featuring repeated centrist declarations.

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It has cut through surprisingly quickly. ‘Can’t quite believe I’m writing this,’ journalist @MikeCarlton01 tweeted this week for example, ‘but in a number of areas Perrottet is displaying a welcome, commonsense pragmatism.’

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The invisible hand of Labor giant Paul Keating is part of the reason. Victorian premier Dan Andrews’ disclosure that Keating had suggested he get together over shared policy interests with Perrottet is the tip of the iceberg.

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Keating was consulted by the govt in recent years in relation to the Macquarie Street arts precinct as well as ideas for an Indigenous arts centre. He came into contact with the then treasurer Perrottet & stayed in touch with him as premier.

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For Perrottet it’s a ‘bromance’ according to one Liberal. ‘They’re very close,’ another confirms.

‘Perrottet is picking up a lot from Paul about how to do things,’ a Liberal who has observed them directly says.

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‘From Perrottet’s side, he’s long admired Keating. Dom in private can’t stand all these f-----s who pussy foot around. He’s very derogatory about people who don’t have any vision. He was very derogatory of Gladys because she was a plodder.’

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Yet just as things were going so much better for Perrottet, the tendrils of the ethically compromised former Berejiklian Government threaten to entwine him.

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Instead of hacking them definitively away, the appointment on Perrottet's watch of former deputy premier John Barilaro to a lucrative government job overseas sends the message this is the same old government with a new coat of paint.

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Should Perrottet falter over the Barilaro appointment – something he strenuously disavows had anything to do with him – it would likely be up to Matt Kean to carry on the grand experiment.

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Kean is a hard factional player in internal NSW Liberal politics but apparently scrupulous in his conduct as a government minister. Nor is he a pretend centrist – he’s the real thing.

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Peter Dutton could at some point find himself having to measure up to the contemporary, centrist standard Kean has long worked to establish. There’s no sign yet Dutton has that in him.

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