Anna Burke theguardian.com, Friday 13 December 20

The new measures to curb misuse of entitlements will do nothing to improve public confidence in politicians. We need a genuinely transparent process – and one exists

Anything to declare? A 747 flies past a 767. Photograph: Tim Wimbourne/Reuters

Let’s start with a confession. Like many members in this Parliament, I have made the mistake of breaching entitlements. In my case, I accidentally exceeded the family travel entitlement and repaid $4,000 to the Department of Finance when they notified me I’d exceed the limit.

In the same year, I had taken the kids with me to Sydney for the select committee on the Australia's clean energy future legislation, and to Lord Howe Island for the joint standing committee National Capital and External Territories. Now I know most people easily remember the number of interstate trips they take in one year but it was a rather turbulent time for me and my family and I forgot. I am not asking for forgiveness: it was my own foolish mistake and one I’m happy – though a little embarrassed – to be upfront about.

My error was brought to my attention by the Department, a different process to the way a number of other members’ incorrect entitlement claims have been uncovered since September. Those issues came to light either by a member of the press gallery, or, more recently, a member of the public examining all members’ published entitlements claims and reporting their concerns. With such potential breaches brought to everyone’s attention, it is up to the Department of Finance to approach an MP for explanation and/or repayment. This process generally occurs while the matter is all over the front pages of the newspapers. The MPs in question then either repay under duress or weather the storm. All the while, public confidence in politicians sinks to new lows.

It should not be the Australian public’s job to police whether MPs are correctly using their entitlements. People have rightly been outraged that the system is not as transparent as it needs to be. A strong democracy demands public confidence in both the politicians they elect to parliament and the system of entitlements they fund. In the aftermath of the most recent entitlements scandal, it’s vital that we assess the effectiveness of the government’s response and whether it actually goes to the extent required to restore public trust and confidence.

Members and senators are paid in arrears for travel claims. In other words, I come to Canberra for the week, I pay my accommodation bill and then send a claim to the department to reimburse. On the form I state the reason for the claim was for the sitting of parliament. Hypothetically, under the current system, I could go to a colleague’s wedding (to pick a not completely random example) and then put in a travel claim stating that the purpose of the travel was for parliamentary business. The Department would accept this claim at face value and no repayment would be sought because for all intent and purposes the claim is not outside entitlement. Most reasonable people though, would contend that such a claim is a rort.

The public should also be aware that any member can seek advice about travel claims from the Department, their party whip or indeed the clerk of the house to ensure they do not breach the rules. Genuine mistakes or other examples of misuse can easily be avoided.

In an attempt to quiet the media storm after weeks of government stonewalling, the special minister of state, Michael Ronaldson, announced measures to curb misuse of entitlements. These include a fine valued at 25% of the claim in breach; naming and shaming in parliament for members who don’t comply with Department requests; and other minor adjustments.

While a fine for rule-breakers sound nice and firm-handed, is it enough to restore confidence? Almost certainly not. Does the government have a ready-made and thoroughly investigated mechanism available to restore public confidence? Yes, absolutely.

In the 43rd parliament I had the opportunity to pursue many roles, one of which was chair of standing committee of privileges and members' interests. During this time, the committee conducted an inquiry into a draft code of conduct for members of parliament. We tabled a draft document for consideration of the parliament and sadly, given the nature of that beast, we had no hope of getting traction on this issue. If we had, many of the ills befalling members and our poor public perception could have been avoided.

This was a thorough piece of research and not just window-dressing like the recent changes proposed by the special minister of state to distract from unwanted but well-deserved media attention.

The inquiry was a product of the agreement reached between the independents and all major parties during negotiations to form government following the 2010 election. It resulted in a discussion paper including a proposed code of conduct against which the public and the parliament could judge all members and senators. The paper also proposed a parliamentary integrity commissioner whose remit would be to receive and investigate complaints.

There had also been movement in the previous parliament to establish a code of conduct not primarily to deal with entitlements, but, sadly resistance ensured that this discussion went nowhere.

The desire to establish a code of conduct had arisen from the issues surrounding the early years of the Howard government where several ministers and parliamentary secretaries lost their roles because of travel rorts. This prompted the Howard government to propose that they would raise the integrity standards. In the end this resulted in the oft quoted Minchin protocols – quietly pay it back and all will be OK.

Meanwhile in the UK there was the more outstanding rorts scandal where six MPs were jailed and literally hundreds were judged to have wrongly claimed expenses.

That episode did little to inspire confidence in politicians as most of the MPs caught out considered themselves more wronged than wrongdoer – victims of a dysfunctional system. Many in the UK scandal claimed they did not know what they were doing was wrong and, given the nature of their very odd system compounded by supressed wages and the temptation to make up the difference of entitlements, they sought forgiveness for these indiscretions.

That is not the case in the Australian system as our entitlements are clear and the system for making a claim is very straightforward. The issue that needs to be resolved is: did any parliamentarians knowingly fill in a form saying they did something they actually didn’t do? Were they not in fact travelling on parliamentary business?

The recent attempts by the Special Minister of State to strength the rules surrounding entitlements does nothing to enhance the system. A simple penalty applies if you get caught and most rorts will still go unchecked.

Senator Ronaldson’s changes do nothing to enhance transparency and will not instil confidence in our system. There is a guide set by the Belcher review and the draft code of conduct sitting on the privileges committee website which should have and could still be embraced. This would do more to answer the question as to why a former member is facing court while others are able to repay – myself included – and add confidence to an already jaded public attitude to pollies with their snouts in the trough.

I've mistakenly claimed expenses – but the system needs cleaning up | Anna Burke | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Gabrielle Chan and Daniel Hurst 

theguardian.com, Thursday 12 December 2013

Finance department report on spending habits of federal MPs reveals millions spent on overseas travel and office fitouts

In his downtime Tony Abbott reads Quadrant, Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, the Economist and Policy by the Centre for Independent Studies. Photograph: AAP Image

Tony Abbott is often noted as one of the most successful opposition leaders of all time, mostly for his work in the 43rd parliament. Now we know his inspirations.

On the eve of parliament rising for the year, the finance department released the spending habits of our politicians for the first half of 2013.

It contains salient points such as travel allowance, office costs and family travel, right down to printer consumables and photocopying paper.

Granted, the prime minister-in-waiting, as he was then, had a lot on his plate. He was making hay while the sun shone, with two of the three Labor leadership crises in the first six months.

In his downtime though, we learn from his declaration that he only had five publications for which he regularly claimed - Policy by the Centre for Independent Study, Quadrant, Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and the Economist.

His attorney general, George Brandis, already known for his reading habits and his $7,000 taxpayer-funded office bookshelves, continues his broad reading habits.

During the period in question – January to June 2013 – he claimed reimbursement for a range of publications, including Waiting For Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett; The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class by the Australian’s columnist Nick Cater; Three Crooked Kings by Matthew Condon; and Great Operas: A Guide to Twenty Five of the World's Finest Musical Experiences.

Across the main, there were some spectacular costs listed, including some wonderful travel bills.

Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr racked up $388,620 for overseas travel, though his publication list was just the usual range of newspapers. His total costs were $566,310, placing him as the third highest entitlement spender.

The Senate president John Hogg spent nearly $33,000 on an 11-day trip to Spain, Portugal and the UK to consider parliamentary procedures, including "management of entitlements".

The Labor MP's study tour report outlined a range of meetings with Spanish and Portuguese parliamentary figures, including a discussion with Pío García-Escudero, president of the Spanish senate, about "the role of the media with parliament and how they tend to focus on sensationalism".

South Australian senator Anne Ruston topped the list with total costs of $649,417, pushed up by a $438,829 office fitout to relocate to her home town of Renmark as per an election promise. It seems it turned into a renovation nightmare to rival The Block, with asbestos and crumbling walls.

“Unfortunately, due to a lack of suitable premises being available it was necessary to extensively renovate a dilapidated building in Renmark in order for the new electorate office to meet government standards and regulations, resulting in a significant fit-out cost,” she said.

“This included the need to remove asbestos. The move to Renmark has resulted in an annual saving to taxpayers of more than $50,000 per year in terms of rent, as the office I was previously assigned in the Adelaide CBD was much more expensive to lease.”

The Greens senator Larissa Waters was second on the totals with $579,287 spent, including $414,638 for an office fitout.

Julia Gillard, prime minister for most of the six months, spent a total of $556,377.59 and Tony Abbott spent $474,707. Kevin Rudd did not make the top 15.

 

Politicians’ expenses: Tony Abbott spent $474,707 in first half of 2013 | World news | theguardian.com

Mary Hamilton theguardian.com, Thursday 12 December 2013

'They are selling us a technology that’s already obsolete - this is the greatest con in Australian history,' critic claims

The strategic review effectively cancels the NBN rollout for almost a third of Australia. Photograph: Stefan Postles/AAP Image

Almost one in three Australian premises will miss out on pure fibre internet connections under the Coalition’s new NBN policy.

The strategic review, announced today, effectively cancels the NBN rollout for almost a third of the country, with those in areas already served by hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks receiving upgrades to that network but no new fibre-optic connections.

HFC networks carry data for cable TV signals as well as voice calling and internet data, and according to the review approximately 2.7m premises are already passed by Telstra and Optus’s networks, with another 700,000 premises within the geographic area.

HFC connections can struggle to deliver high speeds consistently for users at busy periods, because they become congested as more people log on.

The strategic review acknowledges that there is a need to upgrade the network, and suggests that by 2019 peak use of the networks will reach 4-7Mbps per user, and that expanding the existing HFC networks could deliver a user experience equivalent to 50Mbps download speed.

But that is still at the bottom end of the download speed the Coalition previously promised, with no commitments made as to minimum upload speed, calling into question the use of the network for video conferencing and other applications that require stable, consistent and symmetrical connections.

It fails to account for connection quality, reliability and other issues that Australia struggles with, and that fibre could alleviate, according to RMIT engineering lecturer Dr Mark Gregory.

“You might be able to get 100Mbps but there are concerns about the effectiveness of those connections, and how well they will be able to carry the traffic they need to carry,” he said.

The new strategy, dubbed the optimised multi-technology mix, will see 26% of premises reached by fibre to the premises (FTTP), Labor’s preferred technology.

Thirty percent will receive HFC connections, and 44% will get fibre to the node (FTTN) – the slower option which relies on copper wiring to carry data from fibre connections into homes and businesses.

NBN Co says this approach will increase revenues, reduce costs and deliver better internet speeds more quickly to more people, but critics say the technologies used mean it will not be able to deliver the hoped-for benefits to health, education, business and entertainment.

“They are selling us a technology that’s already obsolete,” said Gregory. “This is the greatest con in Australian history.”

The strategic review has been completed without knowledge of the state of Telstra’s copper network on which the FTTN rollout relies.

No trials of FTTN have been carried out in Australia, and the quality of Telstra’s copper remains very unclear – the unions claim it’s in a terrible state, while the managing director has defended it.

As Gregory points out, the new plan will see the Coalition’s FTTN rollout begin in earnest one year before the next election – and if they lose, he believes it’s unlikely that Labor would continue with that plan.

“Any sane government isn’t going to continue with FTTN,” he said. “One year in, the Coalition will have spent perhaps $10bn and completed perhaps 5% of their rollout, and if Labor gets back in that $10bn will have been written off.”

The strategic review does hold another option for the future: an upgrade path that would see FTTP rolled out across the country with 1Gbps download speeds for all by 2030.

That would bring the NBN to the speeds and coverage promised by Labor, and deliverable by June 2024 if the rollout proceeded under the revised outlook described today.

But it would be slower, more complicated and more expensive, again.

Coalition’s new NBN: one in three Australian premises will miss out | Technology | theguardian.com

Gabrielle Chan theguardian.com, Thursday 12 December 2013

Strategic review blames cost blowouts and poor management as government breaks promise to deliver NBN by 2016

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull claims the Coalition's NBN election policy was 'written without access to experts'. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP Image

The Coalition government has massively revised its plan for the National Broadband Network, breaking a promise to complete the first stage by 2016, after a strategic review found cost blowouts and poor management.

Under the new Coalition plan, the NBN will be completed with a mix of technologies containing just 26% fibre to the home, will cost almost $12bn more to complete and will take four years longer than promised by the Coalition before the election.

The revision follows the results of a scathing strategic review of the current financial and construction position of the network by the Coalition-appointed management of NBN Co.

The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said the Coalition’s election policy was based on the assumption that NBN Co would meet its own forecasts, but the review marked the end of “heroic forecasts”.

“Our [election] policy was written without access to experts and information within the NBN Co and we assumed they would be further ahead than they were,” Turnbull said.

Labor immediately released an NBN Co review given to the Coalition government on 20 September, which advised the Coalition would be unlikely to achieve its promised speed of 25mb/sec due to various contractual and technological obligations faced by the network.

“It shows that Malcolm Turnbull’s second-rate network will not cut it,” Labor’s communications’ spokesman Jason Clare said.

However Turnbull ridiculed the review, saying the former management had not managed to get any forecasts right under Labor.

The Coalition has revised its own projected costs of the NBN from $29.5bn promised during the election campaign to $41bn, though the minister committed to limiting its equity investment in NBN Co to $29.5bn. The rest will be funded by debt.

The government has appointed a panel of experts to conduct an independent cost-benefit analysis of broadband and a review of the regulatory arrangements for the NBN. It will be chaired by former treasury secretary and businessman Michael Vertigan, with director of the Australian Industry Group Alison Deans, economist and NBN critic Henry Ergas and regulatory consultant, telecommunications expert and economist, Tony Shaw.

The panel has been established to provide independent advice on the economic and social costs and benefits of different broadband technologies.

The NBN was announced by the Rudd government in 2009 and the corporate plan predicted the network would have passed 1.1m homes by 30 September this year.

According to the review released on Thursday, the NBN had passed 227,483 homes by that date, of which 153,977 can be connected.

The review found the network would take four years longer (until 2020) to complete under the Coalition’s revised multi-technology plan, but under Labor’s fibre to the premises plan, the NBN would not be finished until 2024.

Turnbull said the review found the NBN was in a “fundamentally worse position” than Labor had disclosed, with construction behind time, financial returns overestimated by $13bn to 2021, a lack of infrastructure experience in NBN Co staff, a “corrosive internal culture” and lack of commercial rigour.

The Labor model being rolled out is 100% fibre. The Coalition’s new model, now described as a Multi-Technology Mix (MTM), will include 26% fibre to the premises (FTTP), 44% fibre to the node (FTTN) and 30% hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC), which uses both optical fibre and coaxial cable for the delivery of pay TV, internet and voice services.

“I have always said fibre is great technology but it takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money,” Turnbull said.

The minister said the increase in internet demand did not necessarily mean a lot more speed was required, as suggested by supporters of the FTTP model to every home.

“Just because people take up more services on the internet doesn’t mean they necessarily need a lot more speed,” Turnbull said.

“There has been a correlation between increased demand to increased line speed. While there is a connection, it’s not linear connection.”

NBN Co executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski said the bottom line of the review was that an alternative to the existing model could be delivered sooner and cheaper. The new chief was critical of the culture inside NBN Co, describing decision-making as decentralised and not co-ordinated.

“The biggest issue is a commendable and tenacious commitment to the [original] corporate plan but a failure to recognise reality is moving so far away, then a failure to take action,” he said.

Switkowski said the new model would be a mix of existing technology as well as other future technology platforms that may emerge and resembles the architecture of systems in other advanced economies.

“Our calculations confirm that it is economically more efficient to upgrade over time than to build a future-proof network in a field where fast-changing technology is the norm,” Switkowski said.

But Clare said under the Coalition’s plan, capacity would be met as soon as it was built.

“Three years ago Tony Abbott said Malcolm Turnbull’s job was to demolish the NBN,” said Clare. “Then they promised to keep the NBN. This issue is a bit like Medicare. The government knows it’s too popular to destroy but they are doing almost everything they can here to destroy it, which means we are getting a second-rate NBN.”

NBN: how the two parties compare

Coalition’s NBN to cost $12bn more and take four years longer | Technology | theguardian.com

By ABC's Annabel Crabb

Photo: Holden has announced it will stop making cars in Australia by the end of 2017. (AAP: Alan Porritt, file photo)

While the Coalition has blamed excessive salaries for taking down Holden, we know how Tony Abbott himself felt when he was given a pay cut in 2007, writes Annabel Crabb.

Subjectivity in the human brain is a marvellous thing, and nowhere is it more richly observed than in the matter of comparative value for money.

"I am underpaid," is how the universal conjugation of comparative remuneration begins. "YOU are fairly recompensed. But HE is taking the piss."

And so, this week, as the Parliament brawls its way toward Christmas like a gaggle of Friday-night office workers, several strains of thought emerge as to what constitutes a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Treasurer Joe Hockey - who has decidedly pro-market and anti-protectionist inclinations and on the matter of the Australian car industry is temporarily being allowed to indulge them - made it pretty clear yesterday that he blames the overpayment of automotive workers for the economic troubles that have since claimed the scalp of Holden.

"And why are we in a position today where the third manufacturer, Holden, is refusing to confirm it is around for the long term, even though there is an additional $1 billion on the table?" the Treasurer demanded in Question Time.

"I will tell you why. It is because the Labor Party has made it so damn hard to make anything in Australia. Labour costs are one great example."

Mr Hockey recommended that if Labor wanted to give the automotive industry its best chance of survival, it should immediately encourage Toyota workers to accept the cost-cutting package that company is currently offering.

This advice coincides with the strong feeling within the Government that other workers should also accept pay cuts; childcare workers, for example, whom Child Care Minister Sussan Ley hopes will hand back recent pay rises on account of the scheme delivering those pay rises having been maladministered by the previous Government.

"I'm asking these providers to think about the greater good of the sector," she said this week.

A realist might point out that there is about as much chance of childcare providers voluntarily handing back $62 million in agreed funding as there is of Bill Shorten telling Toyota workers to cop it sweet, or of Tony Abbott making Clive Palmer ineligible for paid parental leave.

People don't like pay cuts. It's a uniquely insulting process to have to go through, as it entails not only a decline in quality of life, but a broader judgment, keenly-felt by the subject, that the world does not value what they do. And that is not a nice feeling.

We know that this feeling is universal, because it's exactly how Tony Abbott felt, after losing 40 per cent of his income in 2007 when the Howard government lost power and he went back to a basic backbench salary.

"What's it called? Mortgage stress? The advent of the Rudd Government has caused serious mortgage stress for a section of the Australian community, i.e. former Howard government ministers!" he said at the time.

"You don't just lose power ... you certainly lose income as well, and if you are reliant on your parliamentary salary for your daily living, obviously it makes a big difference."

Mr Abbott was notoriously knocked-around by his change of circumstance, which obliged him to take out a $700,000 mortgage on his northern beaches home, and fostered a period of gloom and introspection in which he remained mired for more than a year.

When Kevin Rudd announced a salary freeze for all politicians in early 2008 - a decision greeted with bipartisan loathing around the corridors - Mr Abbott remarked that it was "all very well for politicians who have other sources of income or who have very high income from their spouses".

Mr Abbott's spouse, of course, works in the child care sector, which is notoriously under ... oh, stop me if I'm repeating myself.

He was not the only one to complain; quite a few former Howard ministers felt the sting of their reduced circumstances, and discreet approaches were even made to the new Labor Government to fiddle things so that shadow ministers might be paid more.

It never happened, of course. Governments are bastards like that, don't you find?

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.

Pay cuts hurt, don't they Prime Minister? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Jonathan Green

Photo: General Motors-Holden will stop manufacturing cars in Australia in 2017.

The Holden decision to cease Australian manufacturing is not the end of this moment of complexity and adjustment for our economy, writes Jonathan Green.

In the finest traditions of the village levelled in the broader strategic interest, it may be necessary to destroy Adelaide to save the economy.

That is if you accept the argument that letting the local General Motors franchise (if we stop calling it Holden this business might lose some of its emotional clutter) go to the wall would be destructive to the South Australian, Victorian and wider Australian economies.

We shall see.

Alternative views are available - the full play of opinion finding accommodation within the confines of the Coalition party room among other places - with the only certainty being that this is a debate for our times.

There is a strong body of opinion that sees the continual subsidy of underperforming industry as no answer to the fundamental issues that bedevil it, never mind the purely economically liberal case that any sort of subsidy is an unhelpful economic distortion.

But in the end the Holden issue was a debate framed not economically, but against the traditional values of our politics, with the government and Holden squaring off in a tense stalemate this week, a stalemate aimed more than anything else at shifting blame for the final decision: the government, keen that Holden should make the call before it, in turn was forced to decide whether or not to extend its multi-hundred million dollar program of support.

The government was spared that awkwardness, no doubt in some part relieved to see the death of an iconic local brand within that period where blame might not unreasonably be sheeted home to its predecessor; a pretty flimsy pretence given the long-run issues at play, but a politically potent one in the circumstances.

But the end of Holden is not the end of this moment of complexity and adjustment for our economy, and - hopefully - our politics.

For all of us, the era of tough decisions is only just beginning; a moment in the country's history where the alarming possibility exists that multiple choices will need to be made, guided not by the traditional evaluating metric of political necessity, but by the national interest.

In the beginning the decisions could be viewed as isolated instances - tricky, but part of no discernible trend.

Holden might have been one had Detroit not done the heavy lifting.

Keeping GrainCorp in predominantly local hands was another, and too easy to see as an isolated moment divorced from a broader economic context. Put it in that wider context, the GrainCorp question shifts from one of allowing the incursion of controlling foreign capital to wondering how it could be that a monopoly agricultural infrastructure business serving a pretty robust sector of the rural economy should be in such desperate investment-starved straits in the first place.

Qantas too, another imminent decision point and another business hampered by a lack of cash and constrained by where it might source that money. But also a business that chronically underperforms, and is apparently burdened by all sorts of structural impositions.

The issues are complex, but go in combination to the future progress of the Australian economy, an economy famously in transition from the happy largesse of a resources boom to one still finding its feet and future path while burdened - as it now seems - by the conditions and expectations of fast fading better times.

It is a moment that presents no end of potential for political paradox, as it has in the moment we have just seen pass, in which a tough decision on industry protection was demanded … a decision that may have had short term negative impacts, but held the potential for structural choices that may have produced long term gain.

In the terms of politics such a moment places a government in an invidious and challenging position. In terms of nation building and mature strategic thinking, it places a government at a moment of opportunity.

And perhaps that is where we are with Holden, facing an opportunity for reframing - confronting the possibility that our economy might do better than sandbag underperforming sectors with shovels of public money.

As it will need to if you follow the reasoning of people like Ross Garnaut who argue compellingly that we face nothing short of a slow process of decay and decline unless we act quickly to restructure, revise and rethink.

As he argues:

There has to be a clear perception across the community that what is being done is fair ... A democratic polity will never support a government that, for example, is systematically entrenching privilege for high-income parts of the community and asking for sacrifice from the rest of the community ... That's where we are now heading - with the continuation of the great Australian complacency we're heading towards the entrenchment of business as usual, with big economic problems down the track.

A process of re-imagination is required, and no part will be more critical than the portion devoted to a reconsideration of our political priorities, and what constitutes victory in our political contests. In the best of all worlds it would have been possible to have a discussion on the future of Holden that maturely contemplated the possibility of closure and set that moment into a broader view that answered the question "if not car manufacturing then what?".

As it is, the moment was milked under the normal terms of political advantage. Holden has gone and the question is still hanging.

It's a case that shows, starkly, just how far we are from setting a public and political mood that will carry us through the necessary near future of adjustment and change.

Take the value of the Australian dollar, an issue isolated by everyone from Garnaut to General Motors in Detroit as perhaps the most fundamental impediment to future Australian prosperity and growth.

And yet the public discussion on the issue is lost in a dumb Aussie triumphalism that crows when the dollar is strong, and uses the language of defeat when it goes down, or "slips", "plunges" and "falls".

Yet a plunging dollar is just what we need. Just as an end to motor vehicle subsidy might be just the tough medicine we need on a path to greater healing.

The tough calls are just beginning.

Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. He is the author of The Year My Politics Broke. View his full profile here.

Holden first in era of tough decisions - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By David Braue

Photo: Not even Malcolm Turnbull's Strategic Review can change the reality of the NBN. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

We knew before today that the Coalition's NBN plan would cost much more than claimed, and that the odds were stacked against its easy implementation, writes David Braue.

After six years of attacking Labor's National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout in opposition, the reality check handed to the Coalition about its own alternative policy has substantially rephrased the entire conversation about the future of broadband in Australia.

In presenting the long-awaited Strategic Review into the current state of the NBN, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the review marked "the beginning of the era of truth on broadband, and the beginning of an era where we will have facts to work with, objective analysis instead of political spin".

It's quite a claim since in opposition Turnbull was, in my view, a master of political spin, engaged in a ruthless smear campaign against Labor's fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) rollout while promoting a less technically-capable alternative NBN built on fibre-to-the-node (FttN) technology that, among other things, requires the government to somehow gain control of Telstra's century-old copper phone network.

The Strategic Review's revelation that the Coalition had seriously underestimated the costs of its alternative policy going into the election - and made rollout promises that it can not deliver - made the review a Pyrrhic victory for Turnbull, who had previously concocted a worst-case scenario putting Labor's version of the NBN at up to $94 billion.

The reality is much humbler - $73 billion if the current FttP rollout is continued, versus $41 billion for the Coalition's mostly FttN model. Factor in potential financial and social returns, and it's not even clear that the Coalition's option represents the best value-for-money option.

Yet behind the headline figures is an interesting story you may have missed, which was played out on the pages of Fairfax Media newspapers and specialist telecommunications site ZDNet Australia, in which I processed and published NBN Co's unadulterated advice to the incoming government in small pieces over the last fortnight.

This advice - which was prepared by NBN Co during the caretaker period to help the now Department of Communications prepare its 'blue book' incoming government brief for Turnbull - was the first formal evaluation of the Coalition's policy and spelled out in some detail just how many challenges the Coalition's NBN model would present.

It was leaked after Turnbull resisted repeated calls to publish the blue book, and the Department of Communications has knocked back repeated freedom of information requests for its release - even in redacted form.

After my stories based on the leaked document began appearing, Turnbull continued to defy calls for the release of the blue book - and said that the NBN Co advice was not part of the blue book.

Just to recap: the advice was prepared by NBN Co for inclusion in the blue book, cleared by its board and, it would be assumed, delivered to the department for inclusion in the blue book. If it did not eventually make it into the blue book, that could only be because either the new minister, or someone in the department, had instructed that it not be included in the incoming government brief.

In other words, the expert and objective opinion of NBN Co - whose over 3,000 staff include some of Australia's most talented telecommunications engineers - was deemed to be so politically tainted that it did not merit presentation to the incoming minister. Turnbull, whether by design or by what we might infer, preferred to make his own truth about the NBN.

As you read through the NBN Strategic Review, it's important to also consider the advice that was given to Turnbull by NBN Co's experts as they sought to paint a realistic portrait of the challenges facing the Coalition in its construction of a mostly FttN NBN.

The NBN Co knew months ago that the Coalition was "unlikely" to make its 2016 deadline for delivering 25Mbps broadband to all Australian premises, and would struggle to meet its 2019 secondary deadline of boosting this to 50Mbps on 90 percent of fixed-line services.

In response to the Strategic Review announcement today, the Shadow Minister for Communications, Jason Clare, was quick to condemn the timeframe blowout as an indictment of a government that had made grandiose promises before the election that it was showing it couldn't keep. Yet that's only the beginning of what became a stream of stories highlighting different aspects of the NBN Co advice.

Much of that advice is damning and suggests that the Coalition has painted itself into a corner by advocating the widespread use of technically inferior FttN technology. For example, use of FttN would not only force the biggest spenders on broadband to look elsewhere for connectivity, but would threaten revenues from high-end broadband services.

The problem is so significant, NBN Co warned, that the Coalition needs to plan an eventual fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) rollout now to cost-justify its own approach.

Failing to do so, NBN Co warned, could leave the government facing such an unfavourable FttN revenue model that it could be forced to pay for its NBN out of taxpayer funds rather than funding it off-budget as a strategic investment.

Then there was NBN Co's assessment that the Coalition's preferred FttN technology wouldn't support its policy promise of delivering guaranteed 50Mbps services; that the FttN model's lower revenues could keep prices higher than they need to be for existing FttP customers; that the installation of approximately 60,000 large and unwieldy kerbside FttN cabinets would face resistance from local councils; and that FttN's limited bandwidth would threaten the ability to provide government, e-health and other services across the network.

NBN Co advised that the Coalition's NBN had to be built as a monopoly or risk losing so many customers that it would be financially unviable; and that it should prioritise signing up large numbers of customers quickly rather than racing to cover the entire country.

Not to mention that NBN Co advised the government that its two-stage rollout was completely the wrong approach to take and would blow out costs compared with doing the whole rollout in one hit.

NBN Co also advised that the government should not, as Turnbull has previously suggested, seek to own Telstra's legacy copper network - access to which is a non-negotiable requirement for FttN to work - but should instead seek to lease it to minimise its exposure to the risk of an "unknown" amount of work to fix the century-old network.

It knew that building the complex administrative systems to manage an FttN network posed a "high risk" to the government's project and could hold back the project's timetable. It warned that the VDSL2 technology on which FttN operates would require costly and time-consuming visits inside each and every home on the network to test speeds and fix any performance issues caused by old copper. It even raised concerns that trying to maintain compatibility with existing phones, faxes and other analogue phone equipment might not be a "sensible" use of government funding.

Indeed, NBN Co identified 12 major issues that the Coalition Government would have to remedy - each of them incredibly complex in its own right - within the next 18 months or so if it wanted to have any hope of meeting its objectives.

Not even Turnbull's Strategic Review can change the reality of the NBN, which is that changing the direction of Australia's largest-ever infrastructure project not only involves massive change and unknown risks - but could, by virtue of its own technological limitations, prove unable to deliver enough revenues to justify being built in the first place.

Those issues remain major challenges that will impede whatever rollout the government designs once its revised Corporate Plan becomes available next year. The new government may have chosen to ignore the well-considered advice of the very people that built one of Australia's largest telecommunications carriers from the ground up in just four years - the same people it will task with building its technically inferior alternative NBN - but it now faces an uphill struggle to deliver a functionally limited NBN that will already be outdated by the time it's complete.

Technology journalist David Braue has been covering the telecommunications industry since it was deregulated in 1997. View his full profile here.

The inconvenient truth for the Coalition's NBN - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Chris Berg Posted Tue 10 Dec 2013

Photo: Abolishing the debt ceiling has given the Coalition room to breathe on the budget. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The debt ceiling might have been raised repeatedly with reckless abandon, but at least it was an awkward reminder that we are living beyond our means, writes Chris Berg.

Sometimes great things happen by accident. The debt ceiling was one of those things.

Back in June 2008, then-assistant treasurer Chris Bowen pushed through Parliament the obscurely named Commonwealth Securities and Investment Legislation Amendment Bill.

The worry at the time was that the demand for Australian government debt was out-stripping the supply. (The past is another country, as they say.)

There were only $50 billion worth of Treasury bonds on issue, and the financial sector wanted more. So the government complied. But, as this was the era in which Kevin Rudd was an economic conservative, the government put an economically conservative cap on the increase: $75 billion.

Thus was born the debt ceiling. It had a short and unhappy life.

The ceiling was bumped up to $200 billion to accommodate the big stimulus package in February 2009, and bumped up again in 2012 to $300 billion.

Yesterday, the Coalition government and the Greens abolished it entirely.

This makes sense from the Greens, for whom fiscal prudence is not one of the higher political virtues. But the Coalition has spent the past half decade banging on about debt and deficit. And now they have eliminated one of the few tools to get the budget under control in the long term.

The debt ceiling was a rare example of a fiscal rule in Australia, an explicit constraint imposed on the government's financial power.

The purpose of a debt ceiling is to fight the natural proclivities of government to run persistent deficits. There's every incentive in politics to spend money but very little to save it. I explained this dynamic in the Drum during the election campaign. Because spending is popular and taxing is not, deficits are the inevitable result.

Yes, the debt ceiling wasn't much of a ceiling. It didn't stop government spending more than it earned. Labor raised it twice, and - if the Greens had not pushed for its abolition - the Coalition would have raised it again.

But that's not the point. A debt ceiling is an assurance that going further into debt has at least some political cost. It helps at the margin.

And in that sense, Australia's debt ceiling was very effective. From the opposition benches, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott tore strips off the hapless Wayne Swan when he raised the limit in 2012. It confirmed everything the Coalition had been saying about the irresponsible Labor government. Swan would not have enjoyed asking Parliament for his increase. The debt ceiling helped keep his budget troubles in the news.

Australian politicians like to say Parliament should be supreme and sovereign. It has been claimed in recent weeks that a debt ceiling is somehow anti-democratic - Parliament has an absolute right to spend as it sees fit without any roadblocks being placed in its way.

Well, they would say that.

But that this argument has been seriously entertained across the political spectrum goes to show how poorly the commentariat understand - or are even aware of - elemental political theory.

For one, such an argument gives the legislature a moral authority it does not deserve. Governments need rules which govern their operation. A government without rules is an autocracy.

That's what constitutions are for. The Commonwealth Constitution is really just a long list of things the government can and cannot do.

Some fully democratic constitutions place even stricter limits on what democratically elected politicians may do. The Bill of Rights in the United States constitution violates the sovereignty of the legislature by preventing politicians from interfering with the liberties of its citizens. That's no bad thing.

A bill of rights and a debt ceiling are both imposed to keep a government from doing things that governments tend to do: restricting liberties and spending more than they tax.

No wonder governments are reluctant to adopt such rules.

The US debt ceiling has been raised more than a dozen times since 2001.  It has been a constant focus of intense partisan wrangling and brinkmanship. Every time the ceiling is approached, the Congress and White House go into crisis mode.

This is how it should be. The periodic battles over whether to raise the debt ceiling are the only time in which the Congress and White House seriously come to terms with how badly they have ravaged US government finances over the past decade.

The debt ceiling isn't to blame for this chaos. No, the real crisis is that caused by the Bush and Obama administrations' financial gluttony.

Abolishing the American debt ceiling would only allow US politicians to pretend the debt problem doesn't exist. Just as abolishing the Australian debt ceiling has released some of the pressure on the Coalition to get the budget back into line.

And if there isn't enough pressure, it simply won't happen.

Chris Berg is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. His most recent book is In Defence of Freedom of Speech: from Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt.View his full profile here.

Scrapping the debt ceiling is no victory - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy

Photo: The mood in the media all week has been that somehow the Abbott/Pyne backflip solved a problem. It did nothing of the kind. (AAP: Stefan Postles)

Whatever the motives, the Gonski backflip by Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne has left the country with a failing schools system still in need of reform, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Good work guys. Gonski's gone. Now what?

Years of work by an expert panel, drawing on thousands of submissions, has come to nothing.

For that furious educators and parents can blame the Rudd and Gillard governments for taking too long to address a decline in standards that the OECD now confirms is only getting worse.

And they can blame the Abbott government for finally throwing some of the most meticulous homework ever undertaken into the bin.

The mood in the media all week has been that somehow the Abbott/Pyne backflip solved a problem. It did nothing of the kind.

The problem was not so much money as a commitment to reform. That commitment has been shredded.

The Abbott Government threw new funding at Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory without demanding anything in return.

They cashed up the new states without demanding that they in turn increase their own funding and that they commit to additional funding for the disadvantaged.

In fact there is nothing to stop the states ignoring altogether needs-based funding, or even worse, re-directing education funding to other areas. Though, the government says, that would be "poor form".

Some will argue that the five who signed on before the election are bound to meet the Gonski criteria.

But why do you think those states are not complaining that their funding is tied, while the latecomers can do what they like with their money?

Because they have been given a nod and wink, that's why. A nod and a wink that the new government has no intention of enforcing any restrictions placed on the states by the previous government.

As the Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, so transparently put it, "We would expect the signatory states to keep the promises that they've made but, at the end of the day, that is a matter for those sovereign jurisdictions."

Days after the backflip, parents are left wondering what last week was all about.

Why did Pyne do what he did? Parents can only speculate.

Demonstrably, neither Abbott nor Pyne ever liked the Gonski reforms. On top of that, just for a few fleeting and futile days they thought they might be able to save some money and blame Labor. And maybe all along they had in mind making it easier for the states to improve the deal for private schools.

Whatever the motives, the country is now left with a failing system still in need of reform.

Who knows what will replace the current system, and who knows how long that will take?

Behind all the rhetoric this week, two contributions stood out.

The Prime Minister said on Sunday: "We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made." Brilliant. A quote for all seasons.

And the second was Pyne's boast that he had increased Labor's funding, only to argue that money is not the answer.

Both efforts would be marked "fail" by any examiner.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders. View his full profile here.

Money for nothing in Gonski backflip - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

3 December 2013

It’s not too often you see a backflip on a backflip, but education minister Christopher Pyne has managed it. AAP/Stefan Postles

It seems we’re in Gonski groundhog day. The repeated backflips and policy position switches from the Abbott government – only three months into its term – have been astounding.

After announcing last week they would dump the so-called Gonski model and the former government’s deals with the states, this latest announcement sees three new states sign up and the government honouring the other state deals again.

But the government is only committing to four years of these agreements, not the original six promised by the Gillard government – leaving the states missing around 70% of the funding they were first promised.

The precious little policy detail available and rhetorical back and forth still leaves much uncertainty about the future of schools funding. But in this debacle, the real aims of the Gonski review’s recommendations have been forgotten.

Forgetting Gonski

For six years the Coalition has repeatedly told us that the Howard government’s model for school funding was working.

They said the schools were getting the money they needed, and education minister Christopher Pyne even recently claimed that he believed there was no equity problem to address in Australian education.

This made the government’s school funding reforms – which saw a fairer funding system based on need based on David Gonski’s review – unnecessary.

Now the coalition says it will go through with the Gonski model but it will strip the “command and control” aspect of the Australian Education Act – the legislation underpinning the reforms. These were always a major roadblock for Queensland, Northern Territory and West Australian in signing up to the Labor scheme.

This simply gave federal oversight of tax-payer contributed funds. In fact, it is exactly the stronger governance and accountability that the Gonski Review originally recommended.

In this latest announcement, Pyne and prime minister Tony Abbott have also dropped the requirement that the states co-contribute funds – another key plank of the Gonski reforms. This leaves the newly signed up states to take as much as they like out of school funding while the commonwealth pours money in.

Over the last few years, most states have ripped money out of public education, to the tune of billions of dollars. The fact that the co-contribution requirement has gone will mean more state funding could go, leaving state schools, that have the most disadvantaged students, worse off.

Command and control

Pyne and Abbott both repeatedly said they don’t want to interfere with how states run their schools. But this sits oddly with another part of their electoral program.

Abbott went to the election with his Real Solutions booklet as his core political platform. Its “Delivering better education” policy seeks to encourage “state schools to choose to become independent schools, providing simpler budgeting and resources allocation and more autonomy in decision making”.

The rationale to justify the drive for more school autonomy is driven by a misguided belief that it improves student results.

Victoria, which led the world in increasing autonomy, has not performed above New South Wales, which was until recently the most centralised.

The funding argument

In anticipation of further falls in Australia’s performance in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results - due out tonight - Pyne has once again reiterated the furphy that while education funding has increased 44% in the last decade, education standards have declined.

He argues that resources are not the issue but teacher quality, principal autonomy and parental engagement.

This nonsensical figure, estimated by Ben Jensen of the Grattan Institute, has been used by politicians of all sides. But the facts are that apart from the 2008-09 spending that helped save Australia’s economy from meltdown, according to World Bank figures, Australia’s spend on education as a proportion of GDP has declined from 4.9% in 1999 to 4.4% in 2011.

Figures also show that only 71% of Australian government spending goes to public schools. The majority of the increase in government school funding over the past decade has gone to private schools. Since 2010, more than A$5 billion has been removed from public education in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.

Significantly, Commonwealth funding for non-government schools rose from around $3.50 for each dollar spent on public schools, to around $5 per dollar since 1997. In 2009, the Commonwealth provided 74% of all government net recurrent funding for the Catholic sector and 73% in the independent sector. Canberra now gives more money to private schools than it does to universities: more than $36 billion in federal funds has gone to non-government schools in the period 2009-2013.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” – this has been the Liberal Party mantra since the Gonski review commenced. Abbott and Pyne are ideologically wedded to increasing funding for independent schools as their priority, as part of their “school choice” program. We also know that they fundamentally dislike the Gonski model and don’t see any problem in the inequitable school funding model we have at the moment.

They are now faced with the dilemma of having to stick to some form of the “Gonski-lite” program of the previous government for at least the next four years and through at least one election. It’s clear, they’ve changed their position for political expediency. But this latest announcement doesn’t mean their problems have gone away, they are now only delayed.

From Gonski to gone to Gonski again: school funding future remains uncertain

Daniel Hurst political correspondent

theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013

Document outlines response to prickly questions that may arise when government finds extra $1.2bn for school funding

Education minister Christopher Pyne finds himself at the centre of a storm over his Gonski backflip. AAP image for The Guardian/Alan Porritt

The education minister, Christopher Pyne, was anticipating his school funding announcement on Monday would be interpreted as a “giant backflip”.

Indeed, it was the second suggestion on a question-and-answer sheet produced by the government and provided to state and territory governments to help it explain its new position.

The three-page document, obtained by Guardian Australia, outlines the official response to a range of prickly questions that may arise from the announcement the government had found an extra $1.2bn for school funding and would substantially retain the David Gonski-inspired model over the next four years.

It came a week after Pyne declared the reforms were “unimplementable” and would be replaced by a yet-to-be-devised new model in 2015, triggering criticism from the five state and territory governments that had already reached six-year agreements with the commonwealth. Last week he flagged only $230m extra for the three hold-out jurisdictions next year.

The second question on the government sheet says: “Isn’t this a giant backflip?”

The answer asserts: “No. The Coalition committed to matching Labor’s school funding over the next four years and today’s announcement ensures we are not only keeping that commitment, but investing more than Labor in schools.”

The sheet says Labor failed to deliver a national school funding model because Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory did not sign up before the election. It says the new government has now reached in-principle agreement with those jurisdictions, and points to the reinstatement of $1.2bn cut from the four-year budget before the election because of the absence of deals. The end result is a restoration of a total $2.8bn commitment nationally over the four-year budget cycle.

Later, in the same document, the question is posed: “Didn’t you call the Labor model unworkable and not fit for implementation?”

The official response hinges on the assertion the government had since obtained national support for the funding model and was cleaning up Labor’s negotiating “mess”.

“We will remove the red tape and command and control features that characterised Labor’s model and treat the states and territories like adult governments who operate and own government schools,” it says.

Critics warn the reduction in restrictions will free state and territory governments to cut their own contribution to school funding, or not index their budgets to the extent required under deals with Labor, potentially undermining the aims.

In a reference to the government’s election commitment to ensure no school was a dollar worse off over the next four years, the document raises the question: “Can you guarantee that schools won’t be worse off under the Coalition?”

It says the decision to match originally earmarked federal funding over the next four years means “no school will be worse off because of anything the commonwealth does” but acknowledges state decisions could create winners and losers.

“Final amounts for government schools will be determined by the states and territories, as each jurisdiction has a different application of the model,” the document says.

It also acknowledges year five and six of existing agreements will not be honoured, but the Coalition made clear before the election its pledges to match funding applied only to the four-year budget cycle. NSW, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and South Australia will get the same federal funding agreed to over four years while Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will receive the same offered by Labor even though they had not signed up to the National Education Reform Agreement.

The Abbott government will need to formalise new agreements with these three jurisdictions “and they will not be conditional on signing up to a deal which reduces their authority over schools or creates unnecessary red tape”.

Labor and the Greens say the latest announcements raise more questions than they answer, leaving the future of “meaningful” lasting education reform based on student needs far from certain. The government document says the commonwealth will have to work with the states and the territories to develop “a fair and sustainable approach to school funding beyond 2017”.

Revealed: Pyne's sheet to help him explain his Gonski 'giant backflip' | World news | theguardian.com

Lenore Taylor theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013

Asylum advocates label move that will leave about 33,000 people on bridging visas without working rights 'heartbreaking'

Tony Abbott (right) and Scott Morrison at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP

Asylum seekers who arrived by boat and are already in Australia will be left on bridging visas until parliament allows the Abbott government to reintroduce Howard-era temporary protection visas.

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has used his ministerial powers to cap the number of permanent protection visas at the exact number already issued – meaning no asylum seeker will gain permanent residency and about 33,000 will be left on bridging visas without work rights.

A ministerial decision was published late on Tuesday night in which Morrison made the decree under section 85 of the Migration Act. In explanatory memorandum, it says: “The instrument is exempt from disallowance and therefore a Human Rights Statement of Compatibility is not required.”

Pamela Curr, of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the decision was “heartbreaking” and potentially left thousands of asylum seekers without any visas at all because many of the Labor-era bridging visas were now running out.

The current cap on permanent protection visas lasts until next July, but Morrison has reportedly said it will continue until the Senate changes its mind and allows the reintroduction of TPVs.

The manoeuvre makes good Tony Abbott’s vow to circumvent the Senate’s rejection of the government’s proposed temporary protection visas.

Labor and the Greens combined in the Senate to veto the reintroduction of Howard-era temporary protection visas on Monday night, a move the prime minister described as a “two-finger salute” to the Australian people’s decision in the September election.

Abbott is vowing to keep the parliament sitting through Christmas until it passes the carbon tax and mining tax repeals, the increase to the debt ceiling and an as-yet-unspecified measure to enact the intent of the temporary protection visa law.

The government has also unveiled legislation to remove from the Department of Immigration – and confer instead on the immigration minister – the power to make a determination in the case of people whose claim for asylum had been rejected but who would be in danger if returned to their home country.

It is unclear how the government can force the Senate to continue sitting, since the Senate determines its own sitting patterns and the government does not have a majority in the upper house.

“The government could hardly have a clearer mandate than for temporary protection visas … I want to make it absolutely crystal clear … this government will never allow people who come here illegally by boat to gain permanent residency in Australia,” Abbott said.

“The Labor party is giving the two-finger salute to the voters of Australia.

“We will have more to say shortly about measures to ensure Labor’s attempt to sabotage TPVs is not effective,” he said. “This is a government who is not going to allow itself to be thwarted by the people smugglers and their allies in the Australian parliament.”

Abbott threatened to keep parliament from its holidays if it did not vote for his policies.

“The parliament should sit and do its job and doing its job means supporting the policies the people voted for. I want to ramp up the pressure on the Labor party, I don’t think the Labor party should get a free pass at Christmastime."

Labor and the Greens used their combined majority in the upper house to pass a disallowance motion against the government’s “cruel” TPV regulations on Monday night.

Legislation often allows ministers to set detailed rules and regulations within their portfolio, but such instruments can be struck down by a majority vote of either house of parliament. A similar regulation cannot normally be made within six months of a successful disallowance motion.

The government’s regulation prevented unauthorised maritime arrivals, as defined by the Migration Act, from being able to apply for or be granted a protection visa that allowed the holder to remain in Australia indefinitely. Instead, protection would be temporary.

Since the government now sends all asylum seekers arriving by boat offshore for processing, with none eligible for resettlement in Australia, its intention to offer temporary protection visas only applies to the backlog of asylum seekers already in Australia.

The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young moved the disallowance motion in the Senate on Monday night, saying TPVs led to “dramatic, harmful and dangerous effects”.

“We have had temporary protection visas before in this country and they were incredibly cruel, incredibly dangerous and created incredible suffering for the people they were imposed upon,” Hanson-Young said.

“Temporary protection visas under this government are for punishment's sake only. They are only being given to people who have already arrived in Australia.

"They have waited for years in immigration detention and then waited more years, perhaps on a bridging visa or in community detention, only to finally have their application for asylum assessed, be found to be genuine refugees and then be slapped with a temporary protection visa.”

Labor argues there is no need to use TPVs as a deterrent now that all asylum seekers are being sent offshore, and the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, was unmoved by Abbott’s threat to keep parliament sitting.

“If Mr Abbott wants to bring us back to parliament, we’re all for it," he said. "It's extraordinary the PM thinks he needs to manufacture a crisis situation for his members of parliament to turn up to work.”

Labor abolished TPVs in 2008. Morrison said the Senate vote showed Labor had “learnt nothing from their border failures”.

On Wednesday Hanson Young said the move showed a government “drunk on power” and “chucking a hissy fit” because it hadn’t got its own way in the Senate. She said the people who would suffer are refugees.

Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said the government was “being mean for the sake of it”. Since Labor’s pre-election decision to send all asylum seekers offshore there was no deterrence value in preventing the backlog of asylum seekers already in the country from having their claims processed, he said.

“The cost of this will be the stress and anxiety to the refugees themselves who are being left in a permanent state of limbo, and the financial cost to the Australian people who will have to continue to support them because on bridging visas they are unable to work,” he said.

Scott Morrison uses ministerial decree to halt permanent protection visas | World news | theguardian.com

By Peter Fray

Photo: Christopher Pyne has hefty measures of determination, cunning and self-assurance. (AAP: Stefan Postles)

Christopher Pyne knows when to hold, when to fold and when to appeal to a person's needs, something the states should remember as they negotiate education funding, writes Peter Fray.

A few years ago, Christopher Pyne was revealed to be a sneaky smoker by the Sunday Age's back page gossip column. A modest item in every sense, it was only of passing interest because Pyne then held a junior ministerial position in the health portfolio of the Howard government.

Oh, how naughty, the item intoned: a health minister who enjoys a secret puff. Tut, tut, tut.

It wasn't Watergate and is only worth dredging up now, seven years on, because Pyne's actions post-publication attest to his political acumen and capacity to deal with negative publicity. As the premiers and state education ministers are finding out over the Gonski backflip, Pyne is a wily operator. There are, of course, other words for it.

The Pyne smoking item was published on my watch as editor of The Sunday Age and written by the paper's then Canberra political correspondent Jason Koutsoukis.

Pyne is generally liked by the press gallery because, well, he's not boring. He's sharp of mind and tongue, and can be a bit cheeky: qualities that endear him to many journalists. He can also take a joke.

So, both Koutsoukis and I were surprised when Pyne called up the following Tuesday and invited himself to the Sunday Age office for a "little chat".

I expected a polite smacking. But when we did meet a few days later, Pyne came offering a gift.

The Sunday Age had been running hard on the issue of drugs in the AFL, and in particular, the tragic case of West Coast Eagles star Ben Cousins.

A series of stories by Andrew Rule had provoked wide debate about the AFL commission's soft stance on drugs. Rule and I were rightly chuffed about leading the pack, not always the easiest thing for a Sunday paper.

Pyne had clearly been following our success.

Noting the paper's interest in drugs and sport, Pyne mentioned that cabinet would be considering a tough new policy approach to drugs in sport that would be at odds with the AFL.

- Would I like to have a copy?

- Of course.

- Right, said Pyne, I'll get back to you. 

And after a bit more chit-chat, he left, without any mention, let alone rebuke, about the smoking story.

A win, I thought: a pleasant enough chat and a potential splash to come.  

Days then weeks went by. The promised leak never arrived. There was always a plausible excuse for why it wasn't yet forthcoming. George Brandis, then minister for sport, was often cited as the cause of the delay.

In the end, the AFL drugs issue went a bit stale and the caravan moved on.

To this day, I don't really know if Pyne ever intended to leak the document, or whether the roadblocks to its non-leaking were real or imagined, but I do know he achieved the desired effect.

He'd effectively moved our Pyne-watch from his own questionable habit to the much bigger and sexier target of the AFL and drugs. 

It wasn't as if we were suddenly over-nice to Christopher. Or so I'd contend. We wouldn't have held back a negative story about him.

But in the weeks we were waiting for the leak to materialise, it's fair to say we weren't about to nip at a hand that might yet feed - certainly for no good reason. 

A few months later the Sunday Age broke the story, again by Koutsoukis, about Pyne telling a private gathering that he was too young to be the minister for the aging.

He did take exception to that one. But we never returned to his smoking.

I assume he managed to quit.

Dealing with Pyne taught me much about myself - I've ever since guarded against my own gullibility - and more about him.

Here is a man with plenty of front and hefty measures of determination, cunning and self-assurance. Someone, in short, who knows how to use political power: when to hold, when to fold and when to appeal to a person's needs.

State premiers and education ministers probably already know this and much more about Pyne. The NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has certainly been around the Liberal traps long enough to be a fair judge of his character.

But as they duke it out over Gonski, the state pollies ought to be mindful that with the member for Sturt, what you see is not all you get. If Pyne offers them a salve for their education sores, they should get the script in writing - in his blood.

Peter Fray is the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact Australia, a fact-checking website, and the former editor of the Sunday Age, the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald. View his full profile here.

A short history with Christopher Pyne - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By chief political correspondent Emma Griffiths Tue 3 Dec 2013

Photo: Scott Morrison says the Government will announce a number of measures to counter the Senate decision. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)

Related Story: Labor, Greens block bid to bring back Temporary Protection Visas

Prime Minister Tony Abbott insists the Government will act to ensure refugees who arrived by boat will not stay permanently in Australia, despite the Senate blocking moves to restore temporary visas.

Labor and the Greens voted to disallow the reintroduction of the Howard-era Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) in the Senate last night.

Mr Abbott says the Government has a "whole range of measures" available to counter the Senate decision, some of which will be announced "shortly".

"I want to make it absolutely crystal clear today that this Government will never allow people who come here illegally by boat to gain permanent residency in Australia," he said.

"And my message to the people smugglers is you should not come because you will not stay.

"We'll have more to say shortly about measures that will ensure that Labor's attempt to sabotage Temporary Protection Visas is not effective.

"Obviously in the long run, we will seek legislative outcomes here, but it seems that we've got to deal with the short-term issue and we'll have more to say on that shortly."

Mr Abbott has accused the Labor Party of giving voters the "two-fingered salute" and says his Government will not be deterred.

"This is a Government which is simply not going to allow itself to be thwarted by the people smugglers and their allies in the Australian Parliament," he said.

In Question Time, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison attacked the Opposition for "teaming up" with the Greens.

And he reminded Labor MPs of reports that former foreign minister Bob Carr advised them to not let "a bit of daylight" between the ALP and Tony Abbott on the issue of asylum seekers.

"This is the Prime Minister Tony Abbott - this is what he looks like," he said, gesturing to the PM.

"This is the man you should be following."

Then, holding up a picture of Greens Senator Christine Milne, he said: "This is the leader of the Greens - this is not the person you should be following."

TPVs allow refugees to stay in Australia for three years before facing a review of their refugee status.

The Government says about 33,000 people who came to Australia by boat before Labor announced the offshore resettlement deal with Papua New Guinea in late July will be affected.

Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles says Papua New Guinea arrangements have rendered the TPV regime redundant.

"If the Government is not intending to issue a TPV to a person who is yet to arrive in Australia, well then TPVs cannot act as an incentive or a disincentive," he told AM.

"The reality is that from the time that the PNG arrangement has been put in place, the whole policy of TPVs became redundant."

Decision a win for decency, Hanson-Young says

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young successfully moved the disallowance motion in the Senate and described the visas as cruel.

"All they did was punish the most vulnerable, the most genuine, the most deserving refugees simply for having dared seek protection for their families," she said.

"Refugees on TPVs often refer to living in fear of being returned home back to the dangers they fled in the first place.

Refugees on TPVs often refer to living in fear of being returned home back to the dangers they fled in the first place.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young

"This is a win for decency and a win for fairness."

Senator Hanson-Young has vowed to fight any similar measures the Government tries to implement.

"[The visas] separate families, mothers and fathers from newborns," she said.

"They keep children in detention, they stop children from going to school and this is just one more step in their toolbox of cruelty.

"We've put an end to TPVs today. We'll take on the next battle because fairness should prevail."

They were abolished by the former Labor government, but bringing back TPVs was one of the Coalition's key election promises.

It had allocated "a handful" of TPVs under a regulation and Mr Morrison said they were acting as a clear deterrent.

"Since Temporary Protection Visas were restored, over 180 people on bridging visas had already decided to go home, because they knew there was nothing of an incentive in hanging around for a Temporary Protection Visa," he told AM.

"The provision of that measure had already begun to have a very serious impact."

The Australian Human Rights Commission has also welcomed the Senate's rejection of the TVPs.

It says refugees should be granted permanent protection, and that several studies show the uncertainty associated with temporary visas can contribute to ongoing mental health problems

Government to introduce new asylum seeker measures after Temporary Protection Visas blocked in Senate - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)