Abbott dances to his own tune
IT seems strange to end a budget week with the government changing the topic to population strategy and Tony Abbott forcing Bob Brown to rule out an early election.
It's been an unorthodox budget season. Wayne Swan delivered an unspectacular budget that failed to deliver the tough cuts he promised. Yet Labor's strategy was to put the onus on Mr Abbott to either agree with its cuts or provide alternatives. It challenged him publicly and cajoled journalists to do the same. The Prime Minister's frustration was palpable as she sought to switch attention to Mr Abbott and set him up to fail. But the Opposition Leader would have none of it, simply ignoring the directives from the government and some media, and dancing to his own tune. His budget reply was actually a campaign speech, an effort to empathise with family cost-of-living pressures and a stinging critique of the broken carbon tax promise and other perceived government weaknesses. Mr Abbott had every right to deliver such a speech, and he did it with some aplomb. Ms Gillard has retorted that it was "mindlessly negative" and that the opposition has surrendered any right to the economic high ground. She might be right, or Mr Abbott might be on to a winner. It is all there for the public to see and they will be the arbiters.
THE Gillard government's population strategy, Sustainable Australia, Sustainable Communities, released yesterday is a troubling departure from the principles that have underpinned immigration policy for decades and upon which our prosperity has been built.
In the week in which the government's own budget drew attention to the labour shortages that could constrain growth and fuel inflation, we are landed with a report that challenges the connection between economic strength and immigration levels. Talk about mixed messages.
Since Treasury confidently predicts Australia's population will reach 35 million by 2050, the absence of numbers in the report released by Sustainable Population Minister Tony Burke looks like political cowardice. Instead of providing a big-picture national overview, it takes a parochial, community-by-community approach to dealing with the challenges of growth, focusing heavily on regional development, the digital economy and lifestyle issues. This piecemeal strategy raises the question of what purpose the report serves, other than pacifying the Greens, by canvassing mainly state and local government issues.
The government moved in the right direction in the budget, announcing that 16,000 skilled migrants would be allowed into Australia in 2011-12 under the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme. That 60 per cent increase will help relieve labour shortages created by the mining boom and will lift the total number of new migrants for the year to just under 200,000 and should be part of a comprehensive growth strategy. As former Queensland premier Wayne Goss told ABC television on Thursday, Australians should be told the facts -- that as baby-boomers retire, the nation faces lower living standards unless governments plan and build infrastructure to cope with a population of at least 35 million.
After an unedifying, populist race to the bottom during the population debate in last year's election campaign, Mr Burke's report, hamstrung by Julia Gillard's opposition to a "big Australia", has not provided the circuit-breaker that was needed. It is still unclear to us why the word "sustainable' was added to Mr Burke's ministerial title since the word had become so ubiquitous it has virtually lost its meaning. But an immigration policy built on a flimsy document like this one would, without doubt, be unsustainable.
Overland faces quiz and search. Anything to hide?
A TRAVESTY of justice will occur if the current inquiry into Victorian police command does not examine the most worrying behaviour of the Chief Commissioner of Police, Simon Overland.
The inquiry, conducted by Jack Rush QC, was established this week after the Baillieu cabinet discussed the option of sacking Mr Overland. The Victorian police leadership crisis must be resolved. But doubts about Mr Overland will never disappear unless there is a serious examination of his role in the Operation Briars affair, which dates back to 2007 when Mr Overland was a deputy commissioner.
The crisis has reached a crescendo this month after the commissioner fell out with his well regarded deputy, Ken Jones, who resigned before Mr Overland expedited his exit. This drama comes against a background of serious budgetary and operational problems. A computer system failure led to parole offenders being left free before going on to allegedly commit murders, and the cost blow-out in a replacement computer system could top $100 million. Mr Overland has been accused of succumbing to political pressure from the former Brumby government to release incomplete crime figures during last year's election, he faces problems with an officer recruitment drive and he has refused to reveal the source of his disagreement with his departing deputy.
Considering all this, the Baillieu cabinet discussed sacking Mr Overland but instead has ordered the Rush inquiry. Mr Rush has broad-ranging powers and it is in the interests of all Victorians that he uses them to look back at Operation Briars. The main relevant facts of Operation Briars are now well known, thanks to a series of court cases and affidavits. Yet Mr Overland has never been held to account for his role. By his own admission, the then deputy commissioner shared information from a secret murder investigation's phone tap. Under law, such information can only be shared for the purposes of the operation. Yet it appears that neither the information nor the purpose for which it was shared related to the murder investigation.
In an intriguing tale of rivalry within policing ranks, the ambitious Mr Overland acted because the phone tap revealed the Police Association might be about to embarrass him by leaking news to a radio station that he was being sent on an overseas training assignment. By intervening to protect himself from this media embarrassment, Mr Overland inadvertently set off a train of events that tipped off the subject of the phone taps, undermining the investigation. The person Mr Overland shared the information with, police media chief Stephen Linnell, the man he passed it on to, assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, and in turn the man he told, Police Association secretary Paul Mullett, all subsequently lost their jobs and faced legal action over the incident. But Mr Overland was spared. The Weekend Australian would like to know why. Mr Rush now has the opportunity, and we would argue the duty, to revisit these matters to consider whether Mr Overland has a case to answer, and if so, question why action was not taken at the time.
There can be no doubt that Mr Overland has been a media and political player. From the day he allowed the premier and police minister to pin on his commissioner's insignia, he was seen as too close to Labor. This week he even admitted that cosy start was a mistake. But he has also sought cosy relationships with certain media, and issued media bans on those, such as 3AW's Neil Mitchell and The Weekend Australian, who have dared to question him. It is not without irony that this media vanity provided the motivation that led to his questionable actions in 2007.
The situation now, however, is even more serious. A poll shows 92 per cent of serving officers lack confidence in his leadership. His highly credentialled deputy is gone, the budgetary, computing and recruiting problems remain, and he is facing the humiliation of a top level inquiry into the command of his force. Mr Overland is familiar with all these difficulties and says he has nothing to hide. But he must also realise that unless the cloud of Operation Briars is cleared, it will always hang over him.
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