What kind of country do you want? | Between the Lines
The Wrap with Amy Remeikis
What Peter Dutton and the Coalition are offering Australian voters is a fiction.
It’s headlines without substance, chimeras and half-truths that never stand up to scrutiny, but comprehensively misdirects the media’s gaze.
The nation has been in election mode since the beginning of the year, when Anthony Albanese used his January press club address to remind voters of what he had spent the better part of the last three years doing.
Dutton fronted his own quasi election opening campaign launch in Victoria, the state he hopes will help deliver a Labor defeat, complete with a new slogan ‘let’s get Australia back on track’.
If it sounds as though someone in Coalition headquarters ran ‘Make America Great Again’ through ChatGPT with the instruction to make something similar for Australia, but different, congratulations – your neurons are firing in exactly the way someone receiving big money worked to manipulate.
But on the eve of the election being formally called, one has to ask – what track is a Dutton led Australia heading towards? An imaginary fantasy of the 1950s, when ‘strong’ men made decisions and women did what they were told, and migrants were indistinguishable from their neighbours, as long as their name wasn’t printed on the letter box?
The Coalition has spent the time since the last election working on keeping itself together, with Dutton particularly focussed on his own political survival as leader. It doesn’t leave much room for working for the Australian people. If there is a way to divide, Dutton will find it, and he’ll lead the Coalition, a party where unity has come to mean blind obedience, into the chasm with him.
While opposition leader, Dutton has promised to slash migration, allegedly to ease the housing affordability crisis, but won’t give answers as to how any of that would work. Nuclear is barely mentioned any more, as the Coalition tries to avoid giving detail for a policy that was intended as no more than a distraction. The public service is under attack, with the Coalition promising to cut spending, without acknowledging it would only benefit the private sector. Angus Taylor is on a ‘marginal seat tour’ claiming that Australians are paying $3,500 more in tax under Labor, without acknowledging that people also received pay rises – hence more tax – or that it was the Coalition which phased out the low and middle income tax offset in the first place. When it comes to the fundamentals of Australian society – how the Coalition would address housing affordability, inequality, climate, energy security, fractures in social cohesion, protection, of the environment or the growing risks associated with the changing geo-political situation, the Coalition’s answers have been to either completely vacate the space, or worse – back in populist strongman tactics that would cede Australia’s sovereignty and sink us further into regressive regimes.
It’s fiction, dressed up as change, but only takes us all backwards. Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie showed just how far the Coalition had slipped into the world this week, when in an interview with the ABC, she accused Tanya Plibersek of having “a conflict of interest” in holding the environmental portfolio, because Plibersek’s main electoral rivals were the Greens.
“And so she is out greening the Greens,” McKenzie, who had been found to have breached ministerial standards during the Morrison government’s sports rorts scandal, said, claiming Plibersek’s electoral rivals created an ‘inherent’ conflict of interest for Plibersek heading the environment ministry.
“It’s in her own electoral interests,” McKenzie insisted.
Which again, is fiction. Plibersek has approved 10 new coal mines or expansions since winning government. That’s an additional 2,449 million tonnes of lifetime emissions. Another 22 new mines or expansions are under consideration. Labor has a gas strategy that locks in fossil fuels to 2050 “and beyond”.
FOI documents revealed this week that Plibersek has known for almost a year a half that salmon farming should be comprehensively assessed under national environmental law for its impact on the endangered Maugean skate and Macquarie Harbour’s world heritage value. Documents the department fought to keep secret.
And instead of following the science, the prime minister pledged $37m in public funding to support the salmon industry and then went further, promising to introduce legislation that will allow the foreign-owned salmon industry to bypass Australia’s environmental laws, even as rotting chunks of dead and diseased salmon was washing up on Tasmanian beaches.
We now know that the proposed environmental legislation Labor wants to rush through the parliament this week goes even further and will gut existing environmental protections, prohibiting civil society from fighting to protect nature.
Does the Australia Institute have a dog in this fight? Of course it does. But we ALL do. The proposed legislation would prohibit third-party civil society organisations like the Australia Institute and the Environmental Defenders Office was challenging environmentally damaging projects.
Who does that benefit, other than the vested interests who gain financially from these projects at the expense of the environment?
What Labor is proposing will make it harder to use existing environmental laws for their intended purpose. It limits who can challenge projects on their environmental impact. The research and modelling organisations like the Australia Institute provide would become inadmissible, leaving community groups fighting against multi-million dollar consultants and corporations alone. Which is, by any definition, undemocratic.
And yet the Coalition would have the average voter believing Labor has been ‘out greening the Greens’ on environmental policy. It’s one of the worst aspects of the fiction the opposition has created in lieu of a policy platform. Void of ideas, it has instead created a black hole of half truths and populist statements, so dense light bends around them, but manages to smother critical appraisal of what the government is actually doing.
As one opposition figure said to me this week, the Coalition could manage to do what no one in Labor can – win it re-election.
There are so many real issues Australia is facing, without throwing fiction into the mix.
As is almost always the case, the truth is stranger than fiction. And in this case, more damaging.
As always, thank you for your arm in this fight. We need it more than ever. We won’t give up ensuring that facts and the truth are at the forefront of decisions, and as the election campaign starts in earnest, it’s your support that will ensure the necessary voices are heard.
Take care of you, Amy x
— Amy Remeikis is the Chief Political Analyst at the Australia Institute
The Big Stories
Daddy issues: Finding ourselves in Trump world
With Australia risking debasing our integrity and sovereignty in appeasing Trump, Dr Emma Shortis asks the crucial question; “for what”?
“In courting Trump, the Australian government risks undermining the shared interests that transcend specific administrations in democracy and collective security. There is a solidarity to be found between actual people over their governments – a solidarity that might build genuine security and help stave of the worst excesses of an increasingly totalitarian White House.”
Mythical gas shortages and a manufactured crisis
After years of annual scare lines about “gas shortages”, this week’s AEMO gas report shows that errr… it was all just a lot of beat-up fears.
Earlier, we published a report showing the long-running list of scary headlines, that according to AEMO’s latest report, are not coming true.
The ABC reported that a looming gas crisis was ‘averted’. Was it really averted, or was the ‘crisis’ totally overblown by gas companies who wanted an excuse to open more gas fields?
AEMO’s report also shows demand for gas is plummeting. No wonder Big Gas is kicking up a stink.
The real question is, will our Governments keep throwing favours at an industry that is rapidly becoming obsolete?
Hundreds rally against rotten salmon industry
As a catastrophe unfolds with mass fish deaths on the state’s east coast and commercial farms placing an endangered species at risk in the west, the federal government is proposing special legislation to exempt foreign-owned fish farms from environmental laws.
Australia Institute Tasmania director Eloise Carr spoke at a massive rally organised by the Bob Brown Foundation and Neighbours of Fish Farming to protest the Government’s plan to introduce special laws to protect the salmon industry.
This comes after documents released under Freedom of Information showed that Department finds salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour is having a significant impact on the endangered Maugean skate and World Heritage. The Environment Minister has had this advice for almost a year and a half, but is yet to make a decision on the future of the skate. So much for “no extinctions on my watch.”
Next week, we’ll deliver our petition to Parliament, signed by over 20,000 people, calling for the Government to save the skate and remove the toxic salmon farms from Macquarie Harbour.
Can you help us get as many signatures as possible before Tuesday? Please sign and share.
Can you buy a home on the average income?
Ten years ago, Joe Hockey said that to buy a house, one just needs a “good job, with a good income.”
Greg put that claim to the test.
If you earned the average male full time wage in NSW, you would earn more than 80% of Australians. This would probably count as a “good job” as far as Joe Hockey is concerned.
If you saved up 15% of your income (after tax) – could you save up for a deposit?
5 ways and 63 billion reasons to improve Australia’s tax system
The next parliament can raise as much as $63 billion more each year by cutting fossil fuel subsidies, ending the gas industry’s free ride, reforming negative gearing and closing tax loopholes for superannuation and luxury utes.
This would still see Australia’s tax levels stay below the average for developed countries, but could fund over 70,000 extra jobs in health, education and other public services.
Fossil fuel subsidies hit $15 billion
New research from The Australia Institute has found that state and federal governments have given $15 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel producers and major consumers in the 2024-25 financial year.
Subsidies in the forward estimates have increased to a record $67 billion, 14 times more than the nation’s $4.75 billion disaster response fund.
The Win
ACCC releases report on supermarket prices and profits
This week the ACCC released a 441-page report with 20 recommendations on the supermarkets. It is good to see that they have discovered the Coles and Woolworths are making much larger profits than similar supermarket chains in the UK and USA.
However, on the day the ACCC released its report, the share price of both Woolworths and Coles rose strongly. This would suggest that everyone knows there is little the ACCC can do.
For over two years now we have been presenting research showing how Coles and Woolworths increased profits have contributed to the cost-of-living crisis. We have consistently called for divestiture powers be introduced similar to what exists in the USA, and that the ACCC or another body be given the power to examine prices and also have the power to issue fines for price gouging. It seems that investors all know that the ACCC right now can do little than hit the two supermarket giants with a limp lettuce leaf.
Knowing Coles and Woolies, they would probably over charge them for the lettuce.
The Bin
Undemocratic environment laws to silence the public
The Federal Government and Opposition are proposing to weaken environmental protections and stop community groups from protecting nature.
The changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act will reportedly be rammed through Parliament next week as a favour to the salmon industry in Tasmania. They would also benefit gas and coal mines.
“Weakening environmental laws doesn’t help the Australian community or the Australian economy. It simply boosts the profits of salmon corporations, coal companies and other corporate interests,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director of The Australia Institute.
The Quote
“Of course he’d like it, it’s such a bad deal for us. He will be thinking who are these dumb guys who agreed to this deal?”
– Hon Malcolm Turnbull AC, 29th Prime Minister of Australia, speaking on what Donald Trump would think about the AUKUS submarine deal. He added,
“AUKUS is a terrible deal.”
“The most likely outcome of the AUKUS pillar one is that we will end up with no submarines of our own. We will have lost both sovereignty and security, and a lot of money as well.”
Podcasts
Greg’s budget wishlist | Dollars & Sense
The Australian Government can’t afford to do everything, but it can afford to do anything it wants.
Listen now:
Fish out of water | Follow the Money
Chunks of dead salmon have washed up on Tasmanian beaches and the Maugean skate is at risk of extinction, so why won’t governments to more to rein in the salmon industry in Tasmania?
Listen now:
Dog acts | After America
The will-he-or-won’t-he game over Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs is over. Turns out he will – despite the apparent offerings of the Australian Government.
Listen now:
What’s On
NEWCASTLE: Big gas is taking the piss | 6pm AEDT, Monday 24 March
Gas exports have led to a tripling of wholesale gas and electricity prices since LNG exports began in 2015. LNG companies deliberately exposed Australians to global prices, which is driving up YOUR energy bills.
Join Richard Denniss and Konrad Benjamin from Punters Politics to find out how the gas companies have managed this spectacular heist of our gas and what can be done about it.
Politics in the Pub: Budget Wrap 2025 | 6.30-7.30pm AEDT, Wednesday 26 March
Join Dr Richard Denniss and Matt Grudnoff in conversation with Dr Alice Grundy for their analysis of the 2025-2026 Federal Budget. Who wins? Who loses out? What’s hiding in the budget papers, and what do you need to know?
Crimes Against Humanity with Geoffrey Robertson KC | 11am AEDT, Friday 28 March
Join special guest Geoffrey Robertson KC in this webinar about his definitive book on human rights law, Crimes Against Humanity, for this special edition of Australia’s Biggest Book Club.
Climate Academy: Hotter Climate, Higher Bills | 11am AEDT, Tuesday 1 April
Cost-of-living is the biggest issue this election, but the worsening climate crisis continues to concern voters, including those who are struggling to pay the bills. Join us for the first edition of our Climate Academy series to discuss how the climate crisis is directly driving up insurance, food, and energy costs.
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