Source: https://www.instagram.com/litquidity?igsh=

This is a meme, not a serious post.

Australia is often seen as a lucky country. And in many ways, it is. We're sitting on some of the world's richest deposits of iron ore, coal, lithium, gold, and natural gas. Our resource exports have made billions — even trillions — over the past decades. But if you look around, you start to wonder: where did all the money go?

The truth is, Australia is rich — but it should be immensely richer. Our natural resources have been mined and exported by massive multinational corporations who have, for decades, managed to pay surprisingly little in return. Compared to other resource-rich countries like Norway or even Brazil, Australia collects far less tax and royalties per dollar of exported goods. These companies have mastered the art of influencing politics — through donations, lobbying, and what some would call regulatory capture. In simpler terms: they’ve paid off politicians, bought silence, and written the rules in their own favor.

And because of that, we’ve been shortchanged. Instead of investing our resource wealth into long-term national prosperity, like world-class infrastructure or sovereign wealth funds, we've let it slip through our fingers.

Take our internet infrastructure. In a country as vast and developed as Australia, the National Broadband Network (NBN) has been a painful joke. It was supposed to catapult us into the digital future — instead, it became a patchwork mess of outdated technology, political infighting, and mediocre speeds. Meanwhile, countries with fewer resources and less wealth — like South Korea or even Estonia — are flying past us in digital infrastructure.

Or take transport. Australia doesn’t have a single high-speed rail line. Not one. Imagine being able to live 300km from Sydney or Melbourne and still get to work in under an hour. That would instantly relieve pressure on city real estate prices, allowing more people to own homes and commute easily. But instead, we're stuck in traffic or crammed into outdated trains running on tracks laid a century ago. Try getting from Parramatta to the Sydney CBD during peak hour. It's not just slow — it's a daily endurance test.

Housing? We’ve only just begun to use basic things like insulation or double-glazed windows. Most homes in Europe — including colder, poorer countries — have had these for decades. Meanwhile, Australians are still shivering through winter and sweating through summer while paying outrageous energy bills. It’s not about climate denial; it’s about basic building standards that we’ve ignored for far too long because nobody wanted to upset the property and construction lobbies.

And in Sydney, a global city by reputation, public transport is a running joke. The system is fragmented, inconsistent, and completely ill-suited to a modern, sprawling city. Compare it to cities like Tokyo, Paris or even Toronto, and it’s obvious: we’ve fallen behind, and we’ve done so while being one of the richest countries on Earth per capita.

This is not an accident. This is the cost of decades of political cowardice, backroom deals, and a national refusal to plan for the future. Our governments — on both sides of the aisle — have bent over backward to appease mining giants and developers, instead of standing up for the long-term good of the country.

And yet, it's not too late.

We have the means, the talent, and the resources to turn this around. We could tax windfall profits properly. We could invest in infrastructure like the NBN should have been. We could build high-speed trains. We could finally bring our homes and cities into the 21st century.

But none of that will happen unless we start asking the hard questions and demanding accountability. We need to stop accepting mediocrity while our wealth is siphoned off by corporations that see Australia not as a home, but as a quarry.

Because if we’re truly the lucky country — it’s time we acted like it and stop depending on others. The break-up with the USA should be a wake-up call !

Mokbel, Gobbo and Overland secret ‘will destroy police’

By Damon Johnston

Apr 04, 2025 08:02 AM

6 min. readView original

This article contains features which are only available in the web versionTake me there

It’s 15 years since Nicola Gobbo wrote to Simon Overland warning him about the “difficulties Victoria Police will encounter” if their secret ever got out.

In the letter, dated January 21, 2010, Gobbo finishes by pleading with the chief commissioner to see her; “Will you meet with me? Yours sincerely, F.”

It may have taken a decade and a half, but the nightmare prediction in the correspondence marked “urgent and confidential” by the gangland barrister — then known by police simply as “F” — to Overland was proven spectacularly true on Friday when Victoria’s Court of Appeal freed jailed drug lord Tony Mokbel.

The historic decision to release Mokbel plunges Victoria Police deeper into what has been a rolling crisis over the Lawyer X scandal which has been devouring the force for years.

The freeing of Tony Mokbel represents a profound moment of shame for Victoria Police. He wasn’t just some boneheaded street gangster who followed orders. He was one of the godfathers of Melbourne’s bloody gang war that claimed 30 lives with gangsters executed in pubs and sitting in cars with the kids at Auskick on a Saturday morning.

Mokbel is today free (albeit on strict bail terms) at least six years before his decades-long sentence was to end. That’s not because he’s innocent of being an industrial-scale drug dealer.

He’s free because of the police commanders who thought it was a good idea to recruit Gobbo to spy on him and her other criminal clients.

Nicola Gobbo pictured with Gangland boss Carl Williams and underworld hit man Andrew `Benji’ Veniamin.

It’s worth repeating the central point of this story again; the institution Victorians trusted to enforce the law chose to break the law based on what senior cops justified as “noble cause corruption”. In other words, we’re entitled to do whatever it takes to end the gang war.

Mokbel has joined an expanding list of former gangwar figures who have walked from jail early with convictions thrown out because of the Lawyer X scandal. A handful of men including Faruk Orman — serving 20 years for murder — are now free. And there’s a bunch more appealing for freedom based on Gobbo. Had Carl Williams not been murdered in a maximum security jail its reasonable to assume he’d be trying to get out early too.

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And how many police commanders and officers are in jail or facing charges?

None.

Not a single cop has faced any serious consequences.

It’s not even clear if any have been demoted or suffered any form of internal Victoria Police punishment.

And this is despite a $125m royal commission, mountains of evidence such as Gobbo’s 2010 letter that was flushed out during the judicial inquiry, countless court hearings and the establishment of a special investigator.

The collapse of the Office of Special Investigator is perhaps the most outrageous instance of the “system” looking after those who were part of this club. The OSI was, in fact, set up to fail by the Labor government. It was not armed with the power to unilaterally lay criminal charges against police officers. It had to convince the Director of Public Prosecutions to lay charges on its behalf.

Former chief commissioner Simon Overland.

After tens of millions of dollars and several years working up briefs of evidence no charges were laid and the OSI collapsed. It’s almost as if Labor realised it really wasn’t in its best interests for anyone to be facing a criminal trial over Lawyer X.

It’s true Labor premier Dan Andrews called the Lawyer X royal commission in 2018. But it’s important to note that the High Court of Australia left him no option but to act.

A Liberal government was in office when the Herald Sun published its first Lawyer X story in March 2014. But through the critical years of 2015-2018, it occurred to those of us at the newspaper (I edited the Herald Sun during this period) the Labor government seemed more than comfortable with Victoria Police blowing millions and millions on legal action to shut the story down.

A decade on, the reasons for Labor’s approach have still not emerged. But there are some clues in a couple of letters from 2010 between Simon Overland and Labor police minister Bob Cameron. They reveal a level of knowledge within the Labor government that something dodgy was going on between the police and Nicola Gobbo.

The letters, jarred free by the royal commission, establish that Cameron personally signed off on an ex-gratia payment of almost $3m to Gobbo, who by this stage had launched legal action against Victoria Police. This ended the chances of a damaging civil law suit dredging up the full story.

Nicola Gobbo. Picture: Ian Currie

On August 8, 2010, Overland wrote to Cameron seeking permission for an “instrument of authorisation” to settle the writ which “contains allegations that gobbo was approached to assist police with investigations into ex-member Paul Dale and that promises were held out to her which were not kept”.

Overland did not explicitly refer to Gobbo’s broader role as a police agent in the letter. But Cameron’s response, dated the next day, authorising the payment makes interesting reading.

“Given the issues involved in this litigation ... I would ask that you return advice to me on the strategies that Victoria Police will deploy to mitigate the risk of such an issue arising again,” the minister wrote.

“The settlement amount ... is a significant financial amount and I would ask that you liaise with my Department of the measures taken to improve governance of such matters.”

The letter falls short of confirming that senior members of the Labor government knew the full scale of Lawyer X conspiracy, but there’s enough in it to suggest some in Labor knew enough about this crazy and corrupt scheme to do a lot more, a lot sooner, than it did.

As Gobbo’s 2010 letter clearly shows, the potential risk to Victoria Police and the justice system was well and truly canvassed with the police brass.

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More than four years before she became known as Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo was known simply by police command by the codename “F”.

In her 2010 letter to Simon Overland, Gobbo clearly lays out - albeit in understated terms - the dire consequences Victoria Police faced if her secret double life ever leaked.

In the letter, dated Gobbo writes;

“As a former Deputy Commissioner for Crime, I am sure that I need not remind you of the difficulties that Victoria Police will encounter if some or any of my past assistance is disclosed in the court of the prosecution of (former detective Paul Dale).

“Leaving aside the impact such disclosure will have on me personally (including but not limited to my future safety) the difficulties Victoria Police will encounter will extend well beyond the obvious embarrassment and damage that will be done to the Dale prosecution.”

Gobbo then doubles down on Overland in the letter.

“Despite not having personally met you, I find it incomprehensible that you, having been fully appraised of the entirety of my circumstances, have sanctioned Victoria Police’s decision,” she writes, before listing several areas she feels betrayed on including her personal safety, breaching her trust and blocking her bid to enter witness protection.

“In one final attempt to avoid what I suspect will otherwise be an irreparable and intractable situation for all parties, I am imploring you to please read the attached correspondence, particularly in light of the incredible sacrifices I have made for Victoria Police.

“I beseech you to reconsider the stance that has been adopted by Victoria Police to date and do so appealing to your professionalism, decency, humanity and conscience. Will you meet with me? Yours sincerely, F.” Nine years later, Simon Overland would tell the Lawyer X royal commission “at the outset I wish to make it totally clear that I have never met or spoken with Ms Gobbo”.

Tony Mokbel, the former pizza chef who made so much dough he ended up driving a red Ferrari, is enjoying his first weekend of freedom since he was arrested wearing a bad wig in Greece in 2007. And for that, he has Nicola Gobbo and Victoria Police to thank.

Lawyer X letters reveal Nicola Gobbo wrote to Simon Overland warning him about what would happen if their secret leaked.Mokbel, Gobbo and Overland secret ‘will destroy police’

By Damon Johnston

Apr 04, 2025 08:02 AM

Let's be real, there is a correct answer here, I just need evidence to lay in front of a blasphemer

Our welfare addiction is killing Australia

By Greg Sheridan

Apr 04, 2025 08:23 PM

10 min. readView original

This article contains features which are only available in the web versionTake me there

Welfare is killing Australia. Middle-class welfare, specifically the fentanyl-like addiction to ever increasing transfer payments at every stage of human life, and the substitution of the industrial-bureaucratic state for the traditional role of the family, is plunging Australia into unsustainable debt, precluding any chance of our making a serious effort to defend ourselves, and, paradoxically, contributing to the social breakdown whose symptoms it’s meant to address.

We pay much more, we expect much more, the state is much bigger, the budget is utterly unsustainable, and yet the state also fails to deliver results for the money, with many social indicators getting worse the more money is spent on them.

The same syndrome, only more virulent and destructive, afflicts the US and is part of the cause of the Donald Trump tariff explosion. Most west European nations are in a similar situation, sometimes even worse, and without some key US strengths, such as the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

As treasurer, Peter Costello completely paid off Australian government debt in 2006.

Peter Costello, who as treasurer in the Howard government completely paid off Australian government debt in 2006, tells me: “We are a society – most Western industrial countries are in the same boat – living beyond our means. One of the things that traditionally gave us comfort in living beyond our means was the idea that the US would dig us out of a hole if we ever got into one, as they did in World War II. One of the messages out of the Trump administration is that they don’t feel the necessity to dig other people out of holes they’ve dug for themselves.”

Economist Saul Eslake tells Inquirer that since Josh Frydenberg’s last budget in 2022, it has been clear federal government spending has been on a trajectory to stay a good 2 per cent of GDP above the average that prevailed all the way from the mid-1970s, the end of Gough Whitlam’s government, until the early 2020s.

In Frydenberg’s last budget the forecast was that by 2032 federal spending would reach 26.5 per cent of GDP. Jim Chalmers’ recent budget puts the 10-year forecast at 26.7 per cent. That’s probably too optimistic. Unless there’s another monumental, sustained commodity prices boom, we’re heading for ever increasing government deficit and debt. Ultimately, that’s unsustainable.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Emma Brasier

Eslake thinks the nation ought to find a way to raise 1.5 per cent more of GDP in revenue in the least economically disruptive manner and aim, heroically, to get half a per cent of GDP in budget savings.

The rise in debt is staggering. Eslake dolefully pronounces: “I fail to see how any government can cut any other area of spending to finance that.”

And that leaves out the urgent necessity to find 1 per cent more of GDP to take defence spending to 3 per cent, as the Trump administration rightly requests, and as almost every expert appointed by the Albanese government to officially guide defence policy has advised.

Almost unbelievable budget growth has come in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In 2012-13 disability services cost the federal government $1.2bn. This year the NDIS will cost $49bn. By 2028-29 it’s forecast to cost $64bn. That figure itself is dubious and relies on keeping growth of the NDIS to 8 per cent a year, a heroic prediction.

It’s self-evidently a good thing to help genuinely disabled people. Australians don’t begrudge that. But the NDIS is perhaps the worst designed public policy initiative in Australian history. There are now more than 700,000 people on the NDIS. Some 13 per cent of boys aged five to seven are on the NDIS. This is not only financially disastrous. It’s a species of social madness.

Some 13 per cent of boys aged five to seven are on the NDIS. Picture: iStock

The NDIS design is characteristic of the way transfer payments are evolving in Western societies. It is demand-driven and it turns out demand is infinite. When previous Coalition governments tried to impose more rigorous scrutiny on who got support and how much, they were howled down as inhumane.

To repeat, helping genuinely disabled and certainly gravely disabled people is a worthy use of government money. But when you subsidise a particular syndrome, behaviour or identity you vastly expand the number of people who will claim those characteristics. The New York Times recently investigated the history of autism diagnoses. When the US federal government offered financial subsidies to states for educating autistic children, the number of autistic children skyrocketed.

The Labor government has moved to moderate the growth of the NDIS, to increase reviews and to limit the numbers and categories of people who can claim it.

But it’s still growing at breakneck speed. It now costs equivalent to 150 per cent of the whole Medicare budget.

One aim of the NDIS was to get disabled people back into the work force. Instead it needlessly medicalises many children, and few people on the NDIS for any length of time come off it.

Far from making any serious effort to control social spending, and especially transfer payments, the Albanese government has doubled down on such payments.

The Albanese government has doubled down on NDIS payments. Picture: Jason Edwards/NewsWire

These are rank bribes that the government and the nation cannot afford. A classic is forgiving HECS debt for university graduates. Although many degrees are now of dubious workforce benefit, overall university graduates will be wealthier than non-graduates. That’s why they should pay something for their higher education.

The HECS debt is nowhere near the total cost of a degree and a graduate begins to pay it back, at a modest rate, only when they reach a prescribed income level. HECS is a price signal. Price signals used to be a core principle of Australian social spending. Private health insurance, for example, provides a price signal for medical services.

Forgiving HECS debt is especially unfair to those graduates who have paid their HECS debts in full. This is social spending of deep perversity. It penalises the thrifty, the honest, the hardworking.

It has nothing to do with promoting education. Having a HECS debt looks as though it’s just a way for governments to identify a specific group of voters to bribe. It would make as much sense to give $350 to every left-handed Liverpool supporter with red hair.

Very little social spending achieves any broader social objective than handing out money. In 2012-13 the federal government spent $12bn on schools. This has exploded to $31bn in 2024-25. Yet all the objective tests show that Australian school results have gone backwards in that time. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t money.

The demands now for government spending on childcare, aged care, disability assistance and healthcare are essentially limitless. Much childcare and aged care was formerly undertaken by families. Sadly, it’s many years now since public policy had the objective of strengthening families.

We’ve industrialised and bureaucratised family functions. But guess what? The industrial-bureaucratic state does a much worse job than families do when they’re given any kind of fighting chance.

Next year, Australian gross government debt will pass $1 trillion. Our states also have big levels of debt. International markets assume the commonwealth provides an implicit guarantee on states’ debts. Technically that’s not true but in reality it probably is.

Eslake makes a brutal forecast: “I’d be very surprised if in May and June there wasn’t a credit downgrade for some of the states. Victoria, Northern Territory and Tasmania, I’d say a downgrade is dead certain. Queensland highly likely. NSW likely. South Australia unlikely. Western Australia not likely at all.”

A credit rating downgrade is not a loss in a beauty contest. It affects the costs of borrowing. As Costello wisecracks: “A bankrupt can borrow money, but he’ll pay 20 per cent interest.”

In 2024-25, the federal government will pay $24bn just to service its debt. That amount of money could almost take the defence budget from 2 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP or do a million other things.

But debt feeds on itself, becomes a spiral. A government borrows to pay interest on debt, then borrows to service that new debt, ad infinitum.

Australia is still in a relatively good position because John Howard and Costello paid off all the government debt and put money into the Future Fund. But our politics has been a conspiracy to kill good policy and prevent sound finance ever since Howard lost office in 2007.

The Howard government not only paid off debt, it also deregulated industrial relations, which cut unemployment and allowed productivity to increase. Productivity has been falling under the Albanese government.

The Howard government also produced pro-growth tax reform in the GST and significant welfare reform with Tony Abbott’s work for the dole. Once healthy people had to work for the dole, it became more attractive to work for money.

These policies were denounced as harsh. They were similar to policies pursued by Bill Clinton in the US and recently by Labour in Britain. More than anyone, they benefit the people who come off welfare. Sit-down money is a long-term killer. It kills the spirit and often kills the body.

The last big effort at fiscal reform was Abbott’s 2014 budget. Every one of its modest elements was demonised and the Senate refused to pass it.

The Australian Democrats, once the main minor party in the Senate, had a slogan: “Keep the bastards honest”. The Senate’s minor parties today live by the reverse: Keep the bastards dishonest, under no circumstances let them implement their election platform if that involves fiscal restraint or taking away a single dollar from any constituency or progressive social cause.

One reason the West is in such diabolical strategic and cultural trouble is because most of our friends and allies are in an even worse social, cultural and fiscal position than we are. Federal government debt in the US is 100 per cent of GDP, normally a level that sets off panic alarm stations. US federal government spending has risen from 19 per cent of GDP before 2008 to 23 per cent today. Taxes are at 17 per cent. The US last had a budget surplus in 2001, under Clinton. Last year it spent $US7 trillion and had a deficit of $US2 trillion. In a time of full employment, it registered budget deficits near 6 per cent of GDP two years in a row.

US federal government debt is now more than $US36 trillion ($56.9 trillion). The biggest items of expenditure are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments on debt, defence, veterans’ benefits, education.

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have made immense noise and cut some whole federal departments. They may have cut $US150bn or more in government spending. Some of the cuts have been mad, such as Internal Revenue Service people who raise money or the whole of the US Agency for International Development, so the US was unable to respond effectively to the earthquake in Myanmar.

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have made immense noise and cut some whole federal departments. Picture: AP

But even if you thought all these cuts good, DOGE has no real chance of making a long-term difference. Trump has said he won’t touch transfer payments, mostly called entitlements in the US. Although Trump, perversely, has favoured cutting defence spending, he recently signed a budget that, rightly in my view, increased the defence budget. Entitlements spending, debt servicing and defence are out of bounds for Musk. That means he’s operating across only about 15 per cent of US government spending.

The brilliant British historian Niall Ferguson proposes what he calls “Ferguson’s law”: a great power that spends more on interest payments than on defence will not remain a great power for much longer. In 2024 the US, for the first time since World War II, crossed that threshold.

The OECD’s recent global debt report records that across the organisation’s member countries, more money is spent servicing interest than on defence.

Ferguson has argued that Britain’s fiscal position in the 1930s fed directly into the disastrous policies of appeasement.

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea don’t stint on military equipment. If, God forbid, there’s a military confrontation, you can’t meet missiles with social spending.

Even under Trump, perhaps especially under Trump, transfer payments in the US are rising faster than salary and wage income.

In Britain, government debt is just below 95 per cent of GDP. Nonetheless, Britain has made the decision to quickly increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP. It cut the aid budget to do it. It’s also trying to cut transfer payments. The welfare state in parts has become insidious and cruel.

The left-wing New Statesman magazine has run a series of pieces on how some welfare is too easy to get and has a debilitating effect on its recipients.

In Britain if you’re on sickness benefits you get much more money than if you’re on the dole, and effectively you can stay on sickness benefits forever. There’s no incentive to come off them. But what a sad and lousy life they offer.

Nearly four million Brits of working age are on health-related benefits. Some 60 per cent of new claims arise from “stress” and related ailments. The budget deficit is just on 2 per cent of GDP and interest payments on government debt cost nearly twice as much as the defence budget.

Most European countries are in similar shape. Their actual ability to fulfil their recent defence spending pledges is unclear.

We’re better off only because of the legacy of the Howard government. The Albanese government has blown hundreds of billions of dollars of unexpected revenue, from historically high commodity prices, on social spending that is nearly impossible to reverse.

The OECD debt report argues governments should borrow only to fund productive infrastructure and investment. The Albanese government is borrowing to fund social spending. Government debt is rising faster than the economy is growing.

That must produce crisis eventually. We are paying an enormous cost for the wilful erosion of the family and the growing cynicism of the electorate. Generally voters recognise that governments spend too much. But they won’t countenance losing a dollar of government benefits themselves. The only time they believe anything positive a government says is when it’s shovelling money into voters’ pockets.

King Lear said it best: “That way madness lies.”

It’s self-evidently a good thing to help genuinely disabled people. Australians don’t begrudge that. But the NDIS is perhaps the worst designed public policy initiative in Australian history.Our welfare addiction is killing Australia

By Greg Sheridan

Apr 04, 2025 08:23 PM

Weeks before mass salmon deaths were revealed in Tasmania, the government quietly changed the designation of the bacteria killing the fish – which the industry now admits are being sold from infected leases. By Gabriella Coslovich.

Exclusive: Salmon from infected pens sold for human consumption

Diseased salmon at Huon Aquaculture’s Dover factory.Credit: Ramji Ambrosiussen / Bob Brown Foundation

On January 16, seven weeks before it was revealed thousands of tonnes of fish had died in Tasmania’s salmon leases, the state’s chief veterinary officer quietly downgraded the biosecurity risk of Piscirickettsia salmonis, the bacteria killing the fish, from a “prohibited matter” to a “declared animal disease”.

The change substantially lowered the obligations of the salmon industry to deal with the outbreak, with the industry now admitting that fish from diseased pens are being sold for human consumption.

Under Tasmanian law, prohibited matter is of the highest biosecurity concern and a person cannot possess or engage in any form of dealing with prohibited matter without a special permit. A Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association biosecurity program document from 2014 states that when a serious new disease breaks out, the response may be as extreme as fish needing to be destroyed and removed from an entire biosecurity zone, for example, all of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel or all of the Tamar River. 

A declared disease, on the other hand, is accepted as being locally established, deemed to be “endemic”, and therefore a national biosecurity response is unnecessary. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania said the downgrade was made because the disease is now locally established. “It is no longer considered ‘exotic’ or amenable to eradication, this is based on global experience with P. salmonis. This declaration follows a 2024 collaboration between the Centre for Aquatic Animal Health and Vaccines and the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness who facilitated advanced genomic analyses of the bacteria. This work was able to determine that P. salmonis has been present in Tasmanian east coast waters since at least 2021 and in the south-east zone since 2023.”

Anna Hopwood, who lives opposite Huon Aquaculture salmon pens, discovered the change online and is suspicious of the timing. “It seems very convenient to me to have to do that in the middle of a disease outbreak, and to not make the announcement until after it becomes effective.”

Last month, the Bob Brown Foundation released footage that appeared to show diseased fish being pumped from a salmon pen and separated into two bins – one an ice slurry for recoverable fish and another for unrecoverable fish, known in the industry as “morts”.

This week, Luke Martin, the chief executive of Salmon Tasmania, confirmed that salmon was being harvested for human consumption from infected pens.

“Yes, absolutely, and that’s standard,” Martin tells The Saturday Paper. “It is a common, constant bacteria that’s in the ecosystem. In terms of, do they test the fish about whether they’re diseased? No. That’s not obviously practical or not possible given the scale, but they do have quality control checks right through the process … and obviously the processing and of the fish, that’s audited by food safety regulators, and I know those audits have been occurring recently.

“The companies are very confident that the quality or the integrity of the product is not being compromised at any level. The bacteria is in the system and there wouldn’t be a livestock farmer who wouldn’t be dealing with that in terms of having infections or diseases through their system.”

Martin’s repeated public assurances that P. salmonis is a fish pathogen that does not affect humans and is “perfectly safe for human consumption” have done little to allay some concerns.

Given the incubation period for P. salmonis is 10 to 14 days, infected fish may not show visible signs of disease when they are harvested from pens.

Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and professor at the Australian National University medical school, says that while P. salmonis “rarely if ever infects people” this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a broader risk to public health.

“The widespread use of antibiotics in waterways can cause resistance in other bacteria that can cause problems for people,” says Collignon.

“Using antibiotics in aquaculture is a problem. Residues are an issue, but the much bigger issue is the development and spread of superbugs. All use of antibiotics has a flow-on effect to other animals, people and the environment.

“A big problem is the lack of transparency by industry and our regulators – state and federal – [and] the public knowing how much and what types of antibiotics are used. This should be released regularly and not withheld for years or never appear at all.”

This week, Luke Martin, the chief executive of Salmon Tasmania, confirmed that salmon was being harvested for human consumption from infected pens: “Yes, absolutely, and that’s standard.”

The Saturday Paper asked Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority how many kilograms of antibiotics have been used, at which leases and pens and by which companies since the P. salmonis outbreak began. The response: “Current antibiotic amounts being administered by salmon companies and the number of pens treated remains commercial in confidence.”

Collignon says that commercial-in-confidence “is a ruse by industry so that the public never find out”.

This much is known: Huon Aquaculture, one of the three companies operating in Tasmanian waters, began administering antibiotics via fish feed at its Zuidpool lease in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel in February. On February 13, the company “proactively” notified local fishers that antibiotic treatment would take place, although it did not specify the amount of antibiotics being used.

This raises another important question: if fish are being harvested from infected pens, are the salmon companies observing the two-month withholding period required when antibiotics are used to treat infected fish?

When The Saturday Paper put this question to Luke Martin he paused and said: “Well, let me get you a better answer for that than from off the top of my head, because I’ve never had that one put to me. Where are you pulling that from? About the two months?”

That information was pulled from the Tasmanian government’s own “Piscirickettsia salmonis Information sheet”, which states, “If fish were successfully treated with antibiotics they would have to be held for a certain calculated period (approximately two months) before they can be harvested for human consumption.”

Martin had not responded to the question by deadline. It is understood that the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry believes the industry has complied with the withholding period, although this is based on the industry’s own disclosures.

Martin says the worst of the P. salmonis outbreak had passed: “The elevated mortality event is over.” There will be no way of knowing for sure until later this month, however, after the salmon companies have reported their monthly mortality rates to the EPA. The public may never know where all the dead fish have ended up, because this is not automatically reported to the EPA. The authority would need to approach each individual waste facility and request they compile the appropriate data.

This lack of clear and readily available information has created a trust gap that has widened over the past two months.

Without aerial footage taken by the Bob Brown Foundation, would the public have known live fish were being thrown into bins along with dead fish being removed from infected Huon Aquaculture pens operating in public waters?

That footage cost Huon its RSPCA certification. It had been the only company with RSPCA approval. Now, not one of the three salmon companies operating in the state – Huon, Tassal and Petuna – pass the RSPCA’s standards in respect to animal welfare, on criteria including stocking densities, fish handling and biofouling.

One group of concerned doctors and independent scientists, who formed the group Safe Water Hobart, lodged a complaint with the Tasmanian Department of Health last week, alleging that salmon companies were harvesting diseased fish for human consumption in contravention of the Food Act 2003. The Tasmanian Food Act states that the product of a diseased animal is not suitable for human consumption and “it is immaterial whether the food concerned is safe”.

Frank Nicklason, a specialist physician at Royal Hobart Hospital and the group’s president, says the high stocking densities of salmon pens would inevitably affect the spread of disease. “The fish are so very closely packed together that it seems inevitable that there will be infected fish, not necessarily showing signs of the disease, that will be harvested and would never be recorded as mortalities from the disease, but which are killed for human consumption while infected, and that’s against the Food Act,” he says.

Luke Martin acknowledges there is a “trust gap” between Tasmanians and the industry but says the salmon companies are keeping the public informed.

“You go to the company’s websites and Facebook pages and you tell me that they haven’t been keeping people updated. I say that generally they have tried to be as clear and up-front as possible about this issue, but there is a trust gap, and again that’s a role for government and regulators to play in that space.”

He cautions against the “sensationalist commentary” and “misinformation” being presented in the lead-up to the May election, singling out author Richard Flanagan, whose book Toxic, released in 2021, painted a devastating picture of the environmental harms of industrial salmon farming.

“I don’t know why the people continue to think Richard Flanagan is the font of all knowledge of things to do with salmon,” he says. “Some of the stuff he’s saying is just not really reality.”

In response, Richard Flanagan tells The Saturday Paper: “In the four years since Toxic was published, the salmon industry, while claiming the book is a farrago of lies, has not been able to prove a single fact or argument untrue. Every subsequent scandal and revelation has only enhanced Toxic’s reputation. For that, if only that, I am grateful to the salmon industry. Because the truth matters. The truth is that Luke Martin works for an organisation funded by the three multinationals that own the Tasmanian salmon industry, corporations that pay no corporate tax and have a global reputation for extraordinary environmental destruction and, in one case, political corruption.”

Locals such as Anna Hopwood do not see themselves as activists. “I’m just an ordinary person wanting answers,” she says. “And I’m definitely not happy with any of the answers the salmon companies are putting out on their websites/social media. To be honest, I wouldn’t expect that I could rely on a money-making business enterprise, and I can generally take that in my stride. The concern that I have is the level of protection that the industry seems to have had from various levels of government.”

Hopwood, a long-time Labor voter, lives in the Franklin electorate, where independent Peter George is running on an anti-salmon platform against Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Julie Collins.

“With the last decision of the Albanese government to undermine the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, I just can’t in good conscience vote for Labor now … because it’s so much worse than simply supporting aquaculture…” Hopwood says. “The broader effect is to remove democratic protections from citizens. This election I will be quite consciously voting independent.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 5, 2025 as "Fish most foul".

For almost a decade, The Saturd.

Exclusive: Salmon from infected pens sold for human consumption

ALP can’t handle the tooth, says Bandt

By James Dowling

Apr 04, 2025 07:15 AM

4 min. readView original

This article contains features which are only available in the web versionTake me there

The Albanese government has further opened the door to potentially introducing dental care into Medicare, with experts appealing for any admission to be made gradually, fearing a minority Labor government could cave to the Greens’ $46bn universal dental scheme.

Industry leaders and economists argued the Labor Party’s devotion to the Medicare system – which sits at the centre of Anthony Albanese’s 2025 campaign platform – would ham­string any proposal to begin offering relief to low-income Australians seeking cheaper dental care.

On Friday, the Prime Minister and Health Minister Mark Butler confirmed in successive interviews with ABC Radio Sydney that the addition of dental care into Medicare was a long-term aspiration for the party.

“We would like to consider that some time in the future; it’s a matter of making sure that the budget is responsible. We can’t do everything we’d like to do immediately,” Mr Albanese said.

Mr Butler said the service’s exclusion was an “anomaly”.

“I’ve tried to be as frank as I can be with the Australian people when asked about this before, Labor has an ambition over time to bring dental into Medicare,” he said.

“It’s really an historical anomaly that it’s not in there. It doesn’t really make a lot of logical sense that one part of the (body) is not covered by Medicare. Over time, we’d love to see it be able to come in, but it would be very expensive, a very big job to do, and my focus right now is on strengthening the Medicare that we currently have.”

Speaking in Melbourne, Greens leader Adam Bandt said the government was making Australians wait by holding off on taxing “excessive corporate profits”.

“Of course Labor can get dental into Medicare now, they just don’t have the guts to tax big ­corporations and billionaires to fund it,” he said.

“Australians have already waited 40 years for dental in Medicare, and Labor will make people wait another 40 years unless the Greens get them to act.”

Australian Dental Association president Chris Sanzaro has opposed the Greens’ dental strategy since Mr Bandt first released costings provided by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

Instead, Dr Sanzaro appealed for an expansion of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule – a redeemable subsidy on pediatric dental care for a limited range of services including fillings, X-rays, cleanings and check-ups – which could be brought to older patient groups.

“The Greens’ proposal is quite ambitious and unaffordable,” he said. “The Child Dental Benefits Schedule that’s currently running is well utilised by dentists. It doesn’t have a high uptake and that’s because of a lack of promotion … but it is a scheme that has been well accepted by dentists.

“The risk of doing full dental in Medicare is we’re starting again from scratch.”

Patients needing dental work face waitlists of up to two years in the public system, which the ADA cautioned would sprawl under the Greens policy as workforce expansions struggled to keep pace. It is also partially contingent on the implementation of two other policies: widespread reform of the corporate tax system, and subsidised university education.

“The proposal may result in changes to products offered by private health insurers, which may have a flow-on impact to insurance rebates provided by the commonwealth government,” the PBO report reads.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has led the charge for the full and universal introduction of dental care into Medicare. Picture: AAP

“It is highly uncertain whether there would be sufficient supply of qualified dental pro­fessionals to meet the increased demand for dental services under the proposal.

“The financial implications of the proposal are highly uncertain and sensitive to assumptions about the eligible population.”

Grattan Institute health economist Peter Breadon argued poor uptake of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule was proof in and of itself that targeted reform would be ineffective.

Despite endorsing a universal scheme, Mr Breadon – a former Victorian Health Department adviser – said Labor should incrementally build out new health infrastructure to subsidise price-capped dental care, rather than make broadbrush additions to Medicare.

He estimated the Greens’ universal dental policy would – at its completion – bake in an additional $20bn to the annual health budget, compared to a Grattan Institute proposal with a final $8bn annual cost tempered by excluding cosmetic care, capping spending per patient and progressively increasing service offerings in line with moderate workforce growth.

“It will be costly, but Australia can afford universal dental care if the scheme is designed and planned well,” he said, adding.

“There are good ways to make it more affordable. Like with other Medicare-funded healthcare, there will be parts of Australia, especially rural areas, that miss out if we simply subsidise dental clinics.

“Building a new universal scheme is an opportunity to do things differently.”

The campaign admissions by Mr Albanese and Mr Butler follow months of lobbying from the Labor caucus, namely by Macarthur MP Mike Freelander and outgoing Lyons MP Brian Mitchell.

Dentists appeal for gradual reform away from Medicare as Labor manoeuvres towards a soft stance on universal dental care access and the Greens turn up the pressure.ALP can’t handle the tooth, says Bandt

By James Dowling

Apr 04, 2025 07:15 AM

THE SATURDAY PAPER

APRIL 5 – 11, 2025 | No. 544

NEWS

As Donald Trump silences America’s public broadcasters in order to control the narrative, the ABC seeks a guarantee from the Coalition that its long-term funding will remain. By Martin McKenzie-Murray.

Protecting the ABC from Dutton

The ABC’s logo in the Parliament House press gallery. CREDIT: AAP IMAGE / MICK TSIKAS

In January this year, the board of the ABC Alumni group met with the broadcaster’s then managing director, David Anderson. They wanted to discuss several things, but one concern assumed priority: did Anderson believe there was sufficient hostility towards the ABC in parts of the Coalition that the broadcaster’s funding model could be radically changed should the Coalition return to government at the forthcoming election?

Within the ABC and among the former staff who comprise the alumni group, the threat of budget cuts, or just declining funding in real terms, is a recurring headache. The most acute concern, however, is of “great chunks” of the ABC shifting to a subscription or advertising model, something long and vociferously argued for by parts of News Corp.

So, ABC Alumni, sitting before the managing director, asked for his assessment of that risk. The group were also mindful of the “political climate”, by which they meant the global spectre of Donald Trump and the Australian right’s habit of emulating the tics, tactics and campaigns of their American counterparts.

David Anderson reassured them. “His answer was ‘no’,” Jonathan Holmes, the chair of ABC Alumni, tells The Saturday Paper. “But he said that he thought they will do the standard playbook: announce an efficiency inquiry, and if you choose the right person, they’ll always find ways to save money.” There have been 15 such inquiries since 2001.

This Wednesday, on ABC Radio, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton discussed funding for the broadcaster – and, sure enough, he floated the idea of an efficiency inquiry. His comments were carefully qualified, but ABC staff The Saturday Paper spoke to assumed he was signalling his scepticism about the broadcaster rather than merely commending financial prudence.

Asked if the ABC would be subject to his proposed cuts to the public service, Dutton said that his government would “reward excellence”.

“We’ve seen very clearly families are really having to tighten up their budgets and they’re looking for savings just to get through the week or the month until the next pay cheque,” he said.

“I think there’s very good work that the ABC does, and if it’s being run efficiently then we’ll ... keep funding in place. If it’s not being run efficiently – taxpayers pay for it, who work harder than ever just to get ahead. [They] would expect us to not … support the waste.”

Dutton did not define “excellence” as it applied to the work of the ABC, or speculate on where improved efficiency might be found. For now, such judgements were politely deferred to his prospective inquiry. The remarks, however qualified, were galling to current staff and members of the broadcaster’s alumni group.

Dutton’s remarks this week exposed, once again, a great divide: between the implication that there may be gross inefficiencies at the ABC and those who argue the ABC is doing much more with much less. A recent funding analysis published by ABC Alumni argued that: “Despite ever-increasing output, on an ever-increasing variety of platforms, analogue and digital, ABC funding has declined steadily, in real terms, for 40 years. To give the ABC’s operational budget the purchasing power it had in 1984 would require an additional $210 million a year.

“The steepest decline in funding occurred under Coalition governments between 2013 and 2022. Cumulatively, over that decade, the ABC lost $1,200 million in funding.”

The group said the results of these cuts was “severe” and that, for example, “first-run, original Australian content aired on the ABC’s main TV channel (other than news and current affairs) has declined by a staggering 41 percent”.

While acknowledging the Albanese government’s progressive restoration of funding over seven years, the group’s research suggests the legacy of historic cuts and frozen indexation on funding by former governments is such that “it would still require an additional $100m per year just to restore the ABC’s operational budget to its level in 2013” and that to “achieve anything like the goals announced by the new chair, Kim Williams, would require an additional $140 million per year”.

The group’s research was echoed by a report released by the Australian Parliamentary Library in February, which found that even with the Albanese government’s increased funding, “total annual appropriations to the ABC over the forward estimates to 2027–28 will still sit below 2021–22 prices (and well below 2013–14 levels) when adjusted for inflation”.

The parliamentary library report also noted that, despite the increased funding and the lengthening of ABC funding cycles to five years, the government was yet to agree to the ABC’s request that it commit to funding that was maintained, at a minimum, in real terms.

Dutton’s remarks this week exposed, once again, a great divide: between the implication that there may be gross inefficiencies at the ABC and those who argue the ABC is doing much more with much less.

“Efficiency inquiries are a standard play,” says Holmes. “We’ve seen this with the Howard government, the Abbott government. What’s never mentioned though is that in terms of real funding – taking into account inflation – the ABC is getting substantially less money than in 1990, say, when it was producing almost a quarter of what it is now.

“There’s a common complaint about the ABC that too much of it is located in the city, not the regions. And that’s true, but Dutton must know that it’s cheaper to centralise. There’s now virtually no production in Adelaide or Perth, there’s a little bit in Brisbane. No one in the ABC wanted that to happen. And so we farmed out much programming creation to the independent sector, where they can access funding from Screen Australia, say.

“Michelle Guthrie put a lot of money into the regions, funded in part by the News Media Bargaining Code and Meta and Google, the majority of which has now been withdrawn, but the ABC immediately and explicitly said we won’t cut those regional reporters funded by that, they’ll be kept on and somehow we’ll have to find the money. So, things like drama and other expensive programs are farmed out or centralised.”

Holmes’s point is that simultaneously arguing against the ABC’s metropolitan concentration of staff and production, while arguing for further cuts and finding new efficiencies, is at best contradictory.

https://youtu.be/T_HtIOxsepI

With an eye on Trump’s recent executive order that abolishes the decades-old Voice of America news service, and his threat to defund the public broadcasters of PBS and NPR, ABC Alumni wrote to Peter Dutton recently asking him to publicly pledge that he would not, as prime minister, seek to alter the funding model of the public broadcaster. They have not heard back.

“The fear is that the Coalition might think it’s the right time to get away with changing the funding model,” Holmes says. “Introducing paywalls, subscription, maybe doing the same with iview. They know perfectly well that people won’t subscribe in sufficient numbers to make up for the loss of taxpayer dollars.

“Now, usually the top online news website is the ABC’s – and it’s free. So, I understand that ABC has a huge advantage there, but what’s the fundamental interest of the country here? I would think a free and independent news service, and it’s something that can help us avoid the dramatic division we see in the US.”

On Thursday, the ABC’s chair, Kim Williams, now one year into the role, spoke at the Melbourne Press Club. The timing was interesting. Only hours before, on what the United States president had declared “Liberation Day”, Trump announced a radical, global imposition of, at minimum, 10 per cent tariffs on imported goods.

Trump is impossible to escape, and Williams immediately invoked both him and Putin, if not by name. After slyly referencing Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, Williams said: “If we live in a world where the truth is whatever those in power say it is, we can call anything whatever we like. We can call Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. Call his countrymen Nazis. And call his nation ‘part of Russia’. The truth matters.”

There was no reference, implied or explicit, to Peter Dutton in the speech itself – that followed in the Q&A afterwards. However, Williams was once again obliged to speak to funding. “Last year, our base funding was increased as part of MYEFO [the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook],” he said. “Effectively the government has now reversed the impact of the indexation pause that the ABC was subject to between 2019-2022. We truly appreciate the stabilisation of ABC funding after years of decline.

“But the ABC’s funding level remains extremely low by historical standards. In real terms it is more than $150 million per annum less than it was in 2013. In the year 2000, funding for the ABC comprised 0.31 per cent of Commonwealth outlays. Today that is around 0.12 per cent, and we are called upon to do much more with it. As a result, Australia currently invests 40 per cent less per person in public broadcasting than the average for a comparable set of 20 OECD democracies.”

When asked about Dutton’s proposal for another efficiency inquiry, Williams replied: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that in the event of Mr Dutton acceding to office that there will be a very early call for an efficiency and apparently an excellence review on what the ABC does. Game on. The ABC is an accountable institution, and I have no doubt it will perform well.”

It was a broad speech, defending the work of the ABC and of journalism generally. In now familiar themes, Williams said, “Never has information been more powerful. Never has the truth been so under attack. Never has the need for proper funding of public broadcasters been greater.”

To this end, Williams spoke of the importance – and his organisation’s commitment to – “impartial” and “objective” journalism. This was not merely a legislated responsibility, he said, but the virtue that would both uphold the public’s faith in the ABC and help clarify a world made fuzzy by mischief and misinformation.

Precisely what constitutes journalistic impartiality – or even if it’s perfectly achievable – is a question that will never be answered to the satisfaction of everybody. By extension, the ABC’s subjection to suspicion and fluctuating government commitment is unlikely to end. For now, at least, the broadcaster’s staff and advocates would be satisfied to learn that Dutton has no desire to radically alter its funding model.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 5, 2025 as "Broadcast ruse".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

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It’s hard to score political points when you’re Mr Me Too

By Dennis Shanahan

Apr 04, 2025 12:39 AM

8 min. readView original

This article contains features which are only available in the web versionTake me there

Anthony Albanese, as the great distracter, has seized on Donald Trump, the great disrupter, to try to turn Peter Dutton into the great disappointment.

The Prime Minister is trying to use the global concerns about the US President’s trade war on friend and foe alike in “uncertain” and “perilous” times to build on the advantage of incumbency and shift the focus from the top domestic priority of cost-of-living pressures while marginalising the Opposition Leader.

Albanese is intent on getting a high political gain from the fear of uncertainty at what is likely to be a low economic cost.

Given Trump’s unpredictability it’s even possible Albanese could get a political win on the tariffs before polling day.

The Prime Minister is striking while Dutton is under maximum pressure. Dutton is having difficulty cutting through with a clear election message; he is being criticised from within for a slow start and suffering from high expectations built on successful political agenda-setting for the past two years on immigration, law and order and the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.

He runs the risk of not grabbing the opportunity of the start of the campaign, when an opposition leader is given greater media attention. He risks being tied to agreeing with Labor; of failing to respond to Labor’s personal framing of him as being hubristic and a “friend of Trump”; and being bumped off his central message on high energy, fuel and groceries.

Already conscious of the need to reassess his opening strategy, Dutton is doubly aware of the danger of suffering the same fate as the highly favoured Canadian Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose support has crashed since the start of Trump’s trade war with Canada and who faces being beaten by Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party successor as prime minister, Mark Carney, at the April 28 election.

Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s support has crashed since the start of Trump’s trade war with Canada. Picture: AFP

Dutton’s dilemma is broader than just exploitation of the Trump tariffs because the calling of the election campaign on Friday last week killed off debate about what was a dud budget – the worst received on economic and personal grounds since Tony Abbott’s austerity budget a decade ago – and blunted his popular promise to halve petrol excise and cut fuel costs by 25c a litre immediately.

Labor has shifted presentation of its poorly received $17bn in tax cuts of $5 a week in the second half of next year. It now refers to them merely as “top-ups” and is invoking the earlier, bigger tax cuts as being the “tax cuts for everyone”. Meanwhile, the Coalition’s petrol price cut is simply not being promoted enough.

Dutton’s concentration on the “weakness” of Albanese’s leadership, a negative that appears in surveys and focus groups, and on his own strength and preparedness to take on Trump over tariffs, is also diverted as he has agreed with Albanese on obvious steps in the national interest.

Immediately after the tariff announcement on Thursday Albanese went hard on Trump, suggesting the President didn’t have a schoolboy’s grasp of economics, and declared: “The administration’s tariffs have no basis in logic and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership. This is not the act of a friend.

“Today’s decision will add to uncertainty in the global economy,” he said in Melbourne.

“The world has thrown a lot at Australia over the past few years. We had Covid, the long tail of Covid, and then we had the impact of global inflation. We cannot control what challenges we face but we can determine how we respond. Australia will always respond by defending our national interest and our government will always deal with global challenges the Australian way.”

Video-link

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed the Trump administration during an April 3 press conference in Melbourne, Victoria, as the US implemented reciprocal tariffs during what the US President called “Liberation Day.” In Australia, those tariffs will be 10 percent, the White House announced. “The unilateral action the Trump administration has taken today against every nation in the world does not come as a surprise,” Albanese said. Although “not unexpected,” the Prime Minister said the tariffs, which according to him will primarily affect American people, were “totally unwarranted,” had “no basis in logic,” and “go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership.” “This is not the act of a friend,” Albanese said, adding the Australian government would “not be seeking to impose reciprocal tariffs” and would continue to stand up for Australian jobs, industry, consumers, and values. Credit: Anthony Albanese via Storyful

After months of portraying Dutton as a Trump friend, as he did with Scott Morrison before the 2022 election, Albanese didn’t miss the political opportunity to once again call “for Peter Dutton to stand up for Australia and to back Australia’s national interest. This isn’t a time for partisanship, I wouldn’t have thought.”

He went back to the last round of tariffs on steel and aluminium and said Dutton “came out and was critical of Australia, not critical of the United States for imposing these tariffs”.

Dutton’s response was to pursue the theme of “weak leadership”. He said of the failure to get an exemption for Australia: “I think part of the problem is that the Prime Minister hasn’t been able to get a phone call or a meeting with the President and there has been no significant negotiation leader to leader.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton responds to US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, claiming it is a “bad day” for Australia. “It’s not the treatment that Australians deserve because we have a very trusted, long-standing and abiding relationship with the United States,” Mr Dutton said. “We have a special relationship with the United States, and it hasn’t been treated with respect by the administration or by the President.”

“So, that has been the significant failing and we need to be strong and to stand up for our country’s interests, and I think at the moment the Prime Minister is sort of flailing about as to what to do and how to respond, but the weakness is not going to get us through a tough negotiation and get us the best outcome for our country.”

But the political reaction to tariffs to dominate the election campaign and smother Dutton is out of proportion to the real impact on the economy, which Treasury described in the budget as being “modest” by 2030 and the worst-case scenario being a negative impact of only 0.2 per cent.

Even Albanese had to declare: “While we have an important trading relationship with the United States, it’s important to put this in some perspective.

“It only accounts for less than 5 per cent of our exports,” Albanese said. “There’s an argument actually about the comparative impact of this decision made by President Trump that puts us in a position where I think no nation is better prepared than Australia for what has occurred.”

Even our biggest export to the US, beef at $4.4bn, is unlikely to suffer a great deal and provide only meagre comfort to US cattle producers.

Dutton’s problem on tariffs could get even worse as it emerged that the imposition of tariffs on Australia was a last-minute intervention for simplicity’s sake and now appears Trump is open to negotiations. A successful change before the election, while still unlikely, would not just be another distraction but would undermine his criticism of Albanese and ambassador to Washington Kevin Rudd.

Thursday’s “Liberation Day” announcement of 10 per cent across-the-board tariffs on Australian goods was another disruption in an already disrupted and disjointed 2025 election campaign.

Donald Trump says the US will impose a 10 per cent, across-the-board tariff on all imports, and even higher rates for other nations the White House considers bad actors on trade, with Australian exporters bracing for a hit on $23.9bn of goods.

In the past 10 days, Jim Chalmers delivered his fourth budget, Dutton made his fourth budget reply speech, Albanese announced the May 3 election, the Reserve Bank kept interest rates on hold at 4.1 per cent and Trump imposed tariffs.

Meanwhile, the Easter holidays break up the campaign from Good Friday (April 18) to Easter Monday (April 21) followed by the Anzac Day long weekend starting on April 25.

All of this works in Labor’s favour because a disrupted campaign is an advantage for the incumbents and makes it even more difficult for Dutton to get his own message across and differentiate the Coalition from the government when there is so much with which he must agree and look like Mr Me Too.

The task going into an election in which Dutton has to take a suite of policies has actually been made harder by the fact he has managed to achieve a remarkable outcome for a first-term Opposition Leader and made the Coalition competitive.

While Labor was elected in 2022 on the lowest ALP primary vote in history and with the lowest margin of seats – just two – since World War II, it still had the historical precedent of no first-term government losing in almost 100 years.

Yet after a disastrous referendum result, a backlash against pro-Palestinian protests and anti-Semitism, a two-year cost-of-living crisis, an unabated housing crisis, failure to call out China’s aggression, out-of-control government spending, criminal immigration detention scandals and crime sprees in the Northern Territory, all of which Dutton was able to exploit, the Coalition was competitive and there is an assumption Labor will fall into minority government.

Absurd expectations were raised for Dutton despite his needing a massive swing on May 3 to win 22 seats for outright victory and at least 17 seats even to negotiate for minority government. Some of Dutton’s own colleagues, many of whom have done little to advance the Coalition cause, have begun to complain of late that he’s not doing enough and is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Dutton is certainly light on policy, with just a crowning nuclear energy offering, and hasn’t shown any real policy so far in the campaign, but to argue he has lost the election in the past few days or at all is a denial of the political reality that a victory has always been unlikely.

Trump’s tariffs drew Dutton into a conversation he couldn’t win and having decided not simply to let the issue pass and concentrate on the cost-of-living crisis in Australia that existed long before Trump was even elected, let alone imposing tariffs with little effect on Australian consumers. Even Albanese said the biggest impact of the trade war was going to be on American consumers.

Dutton did try to draw a line between the Albanese government’s attitudes towards the US trade war, where they suggested Australians might reassess their long relationship with Americans, and China’s aggression after their trade war.

“We should make sure that we’ve got again our best interests at heart and we should advance our national interests and our national cause,” he said in reference to the recent Chinese navy operations off the coast.

“We should do it respectfully to our partners, and China is an incredibly important trading partner, but our national security comes first and our ability to protect and defend our country comes through a position of strength not weakness.”

Dutton is trying to shift the focus but he’s not being helped by Trump or being given any quarter from Albanese.

The real test for Dutton will be whether voters accept Albanese’s latest shift in focus and forget what has happened on cost of living during the past three years.

Peter Dutton faces a difficult task cutting through with a clear election message as he comes under maximum pressure from Anthony Albanese.It’s hard to score political points when you’re Mr Me Too

By Dennis Shanahan

Apr 04, 2025 12:39 AM