By Susan McDonald

The Federal Opposition is looking increasingly unlikely to move a no-confidence motion against the Government, with key independents dismissing the Coalition's latest moves to secure their support as "pathetic" and a "stunt".

Manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne has written a "firmly worded letter" to the independents asking them whether they would support such a motion, which could force an early election on August 3.

Mr Pyne says he will only proceed with the motion in the remaining three weeks of the parliamentary sitting if the independent MPs say they will back it.

Key points

• A successful motion of no confidence would force the Government to resign
• The tactic has never been successful in Australia
• But governments have resigned in the past after losing votes on crucial pieces of legislation
• Tony Abbott moved to suspend standing orders to debate a motion of no confidence after Labor's leadership stoush in March
• That failed, so the actual motion of no confidence was never moved
• The only time a motion of no confidence in a PM was successful was on November 11 1975 after the dismissal of the Whitlam government
• The House agreed to a motion of no confidence in the new PM Malcolm Fraser
• But the sitting was suspended and never resumed because the Governor-General dissolved the House

"If they come back and say forget it, well we're not going to waste everyone's time," he told Channel Nine this morning.

"That's why I've written to them to see what their position is, and I think we'll see what their response is by next week."

But independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor have criticised Mr Pyne for releasing the letter to the media before they had received it.

"My first response is, how pathetic," Mr Oakeshott said.

"If Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne, and his colleagues truly believe this to be the worst government in the history of the world, and their alternative option as the key to world peace, then I invite them to put their case on the floor of the Parliament."

Mr Oakeshott says Mr Pyne is "grovelling to the crossbench".

And he will not reveal his position unless the Coalition introduces the motion.

Fellow independent Tony Windsor has suggested the Coalition is either "frightened" or "embarrassed" to bring it on.

In March, after Labor's aborted leadership challenge, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott flagged that he would move a no-confidence motion during budget week.

But earlier this month he declared the Coalition would move the motion in the current sitting fortnight.

"May is over and still there is no sign of the no-confidence motion," Mr Windsor said.

Mr Windsor says he is more than happy for the confidence of the House to be tested, and has not ruled out testing that himself, either alone or in conjunction with other crossbenchers.

"It would be a worthwhile exercise as we draw to the conclusion of the Parliament for MPs to express their views on its performance," Mr Windsor said.

In his letter to the independents, Mr Pyne writes that: "I think I would be entitled to take an equivocal response as marking your determination to support the government and the current Prime Minister to the bitter end."

"If after three years of disasters and broken promises crossbench members can't decide definitively now on whether or not they continue to support the Labor Government, then their answer is pretty clear," Mr Pyne said in a statement to the ABC.

Lead of the House Anthony Albanese has dismissed the threat of a no-confidence motion as nonsense.

Oakeshott rebuffs 'pathetic' Opposition bid to woo independents for no-confidence motion - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy

YouTube: Emotional Abbott farewells MP

Photo: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (right) congratulates new Prime Minister Julia Gillard during Question Time in Canberra on June 24, 2010. (Alan Porritt: AAP)

Australia, it seems, is not having an election on September 14, but a handover. Never before has there been this level of expectation that a government is about to be thrown out, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Tony Abbott's near tearful tribute to the departing former government minister Martin Ferguson was properly, and widely, acclaimed for its generosity and bi-partisanship.

It was also clever, calculated politics.

Consider the phrasing: "I regret that he is unable to remain in the current government. The government, his party, the parliament and our country will be the poorer for his absence".

And then the conclusion: "Well may we shed a tear… for things which were, which should be, but which are not". Pure Wordsworth; romantic sentiments expressed more in sorrow than anger.

He was none too subtlety implying that Labor under Julia Gillard was no longer the party that "over the years, made a monumental contribution to this country… at its best, a nation building party".

For all its generosity to the individual it was also an obituary to what he regards as a dead government.

That same morning, the lead story in The Australian newspaper detailed how the Government is continuing to write green loans in defiance of the Coalition's call for the contracts to cease.

Imagine that. This lame duck soon-to-be-replaced government is blatantly defying Coalition policy!

Had they forgotten that the Coalition wrote to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation way back in February asking them not to write any more loans after July 1?

"It is unconscionable," protested the Coalition's finance spokesman, Andrew Robb. "We have been crystal clear in our opposition to the CEFC and in our resolve to abolish it."

Do you see what is going here? Australia, it seems, is not having an election on September the 14, but a handover.

Never before has there been this level of expectation that a government is about to be thrown out.

The nearest comparison in atmospherics must surely be the period in the United States between the election and the inauguration. The new president is known, but can't take office for almost three months while various administrative arrangements are put in place.

The outgoing leader is there by default, barely filling a vacuum while the other side of politics quietly plans cabinet positions, key appointments and policy priorities.

Witness Tony Abbott's admission that he had already thought about his victory speech, only to add rather lamely a day later that he had also thought about a speech in defeat.

"This is the sweetest victory of them all", in the right breast pocket; "Men and women of Australia, thanks for nothing", in the left.

This is not so much hubris on the Opposition's part, though that is a danger as the many weeks between now and the election are counted down. It is more a reflection of a mood that is shared by so many right around the country, not the least of it in the Caucus itself.

So now Tony Abbott, without appearing to be too presumptuous of course, gets himself up to speed on national security issues and invites the cameras in as he discusses weighty issues with the 'incoming' Attorney General George Brandis.

And the best Julia Gillard can do in the meantime is to adopt a persona of strained civility. That's what lame duck American presidents usually do.

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

Is this an election or a handover? - The Drum - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 23 Aug 2011, 12:24 pm   -   Source: Ron Sutton, SBS

Ten years after the Tampa, former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says he wouldn't do anything differently, Ron Sutton reports.

Ruddock has no regrets (and so he shouldn’t. He put Australia first!)

RELATED

• Tampa key players look back
• Tampa SAS commander remembers 'overreaction'
• Tampa ship captain voices frustration
• Refugee shares Tampa memories

One year after the pivotal Tampa boat crisis, Philip Ruddock was asked if he had any regrets over the Australian Government's hardline stance against the asylum seekers.

The then immigration minister said no and suggested the person the reporter ought to ask whether he would do anything differently was the ship's captain, Arne Rinnan.

Now, it is 10 years after the Tampa, and Philip Ruddock still says -- without a second's hesitation -- he would do nothing different.

But, these days, he points the blame for the affair not at the captain, but at the asylum seekers themselves.

“If what you're arguing is that you simply give way to people who stand over you, as a country, you know, in my view, that has a far more deleterious downside, and you have to respond to it with a degree of determination. And that's exactly what we did,” Mr Ruddock said.

The degree of determination, as Mr Ruddock puts it, was to send special-forces counter-terrorism troops onto the ship to keep it from landing in Australian territory.

It is that degree that most troubles the former second-in-command of the force sent to stop the Tampa, Peter Tinley.

Mr Tinley says the Government overreacted and left the soldiers as the meat in the sandwich between asylum seekers and a government making a political statement.

But the former immigration minister, living a quieter life as an opposition backbencher today, insists the Government reaction was appropriate.

“Who, if you have a vessel that intends to disobey your instructions, do you use to actually take over the vessel and assert your authority? I mean, if the police had a tactical-response group that could operate at sea, you might well have used them,” he told SBS.

Philip Ruddock argues Prime Minister John Howard was actually conservative in how he used his military forces when he had other options for enforcement.

He says many people later wanted the Government to use soldiers to protect the Woomera immigration detention centre when protests broke out but Mr Howard declined.

Mr Ruddock says the Howard Government felt civilian power should be used where adequate but areas like customs and surveillance operations of the seas sometimes needed help.

“Nobody argues that, if you've got a major flood, that it's inappropriate to use some of the military capability to assist the civilian power in handling the crisis. Nobody argues that you wouldn't do that.

“These matters are matters of judgment for the government of the day, with advice as to whether or not the civilian power is able to do it adequately,” he told SBS.

Critics, including the then Labor opposition, have long maintained the Tampa showdown was nothing more than a pre-election move -- and a successful one at that.

Arguably their main point, from the outset, was the Howard Government had raised little concern over the 213 previous boats carrying asylum seekers during its time in power.
Mr Ruddock has always denied an election plot, and still does, arguing there were other valid reasons to block the ship from Christmas Island.

For one, he says, it was unfairly costing the boat's owner, Wilhelmsen Lines, millions of dollars to divert there when Indonesia was en route to the boat's Singapore destination.

Mr Ruddock acknowledges Wilhelmsen was backing Captain Rinnan's plea to take the asylum seekers to Christmas Island so the Tampa could continue its voyage.

But the former immigration minister says that was the best outcome for the shipping line and the captain only after the asylum seekers resisted going to Merak.

And, similarly, he discounts Captain Rinnan's argument that the asylum seekers needed medical help, saying that was not the case when the Tampa first reached them.

“He had people that he'd rescued at sea, and they wouldn't have been in any particular shape at the point in time in which he rescued them and was taking them to Indonesia.

“There was no particular issue about their condition until they had forced the vessel to change its route and bring them to Christmas Island. And these matters get down to, "How do you put pressure on Australia?," Mr Ruddock said.

The asylum seekers' health when they boarded the Tampa has been debated over the years.

At the time, Captain Rinnan told a Norwegian magazine up to a dozen people from the sinking K-M Palapa 1 were unconscious after being carried onto the Tampa.

He said several had dysentery and one pregnant woman was suffering abdominal pains.

An Australian army doctor reported four people seriously ill when he boarded after the SAS troops arrived, although that proves nothing specifically about the moment of rescue.

Regardless, Mr Ruddock says many people forget, when they think back to the Tampa affair, that the asylum seekers, as he phrases it, put the Government under duress.

“When you think about it, those people should have been happy to have been rescued at sea and been happy to have been taken to the most convenient and closest place where they could get support and assistance, which was Merak.

“But they stood over -- effectively, blackmailed -- the captain of a ship to turn it around and to take it off its course, to bring them to Australia, where they essentially ... were not welcome”.

The solution to the stand-off with the Tampa was the beginning of what would become known as the Pacific Solution.

It began with sending the ship and its asylum seekers to Nauru and went on to involve much more, including excising islands like Christmas Island from Australia's migration zone.

Again, 10 years later, Philip Ruddock says he has no regrets.

“My view is that all of the elements that we used were all necessary and, collectively, played a part in bringing the (people) smuggling to an end. In my view, it is not a menu that you can pick and choose from and say, "Well, look, we only have to do this, and this will make it work."

“My view is that it was the offshore processing, it was the excision, it was the way in which we managed to significantly reduce the role of the courts in managing these matters, it was the Temporary Protection Visas, it was the return of boats where it was safe and possible to do so, all of these measures”.

No regrets for Ruddock 10 years after Tampa | SBS World News

 Dan Harrison, David Wroe and Bianca Hall

May 31, 2013

Mistakenly cleared for release: A convicted Egyptian terrorist was held in low-security detention for nearly eight months. Photo: Craig Sillitoe

The Coalition has demanded the government set up an independent inquiry into how an Egyptian terrorist who came to Australia as an asylum seeker was mistakenly cleared to be released into the community by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

The convicted Egyptian terrorist, who arrived in Australia by boat, was on an Interpol red alert list at the time.

Even after the mistake was realised, the man, who had been convicted in Egypt on murder and terrorism charges in 1999, was held in a low-security detention centre for nearly eight months, a Senator hearing was told on Thursday. In the end, the man was never released.

Coalition immigration spokesman has called for an independent inquiry in the case of the terrorist mistakenly cleared for release in the community. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

He was moved last month from the low-security Inverbrackie centre in the Adelaide Hills to a higher security centre in Sydney.

The Australian Federal Police also realised who the man was in November 14, 2012. Yet the Department of Immigration has said it was not informed of the man's criminal past until February this year.

Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison on Friday warned the Coalition would move for an independent inquiry next week if the government did not act first.

''The government was grossly negligent in keeping a known and convicted jihadist terrorist in low security asylum seeker family accommodation at Inverbrackie for five months, a facility secured by a perimeter pool fence and located adjacent to a defence force facility. This disgraceful incident is a scandal and demands a full independent inquiry," Mr Morrison said.

''The government's response to date has offered no word of concern or explanation for this scandal.

''We need to know just how this was allowed to happen and make the changes needed to  ensure it does not happen again. We also need to know whether any other serious cases may have slipped through Labor's light touch immigration security net.''

The revelations came on Thursday when ASIO director-general David Irvine was questioned in a Senate estimates hearing, which also revealed that only 10 per cent to 15 per cent of asylum seekers arriving by boat receive a full ASIO security check before they are given protection visas.

The man convicted of terrorism offences is understood to be a 55-year-old named Suleiman and he appears to have been connected with a bomb attack.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus told the hearing the man had been convicted in absentia for belonging to a terrorist organisation, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. His offences also included premeditated murder, destruction of property, unlawful possession of firearms and explosives, and forgery.

The man arrived at Christmas Island in May 2012 with his family and was moved to Inverbrackie.

ASIO deemed him fit to be released into community detention due to ''a clerical or some other mistake'', Mr Irvine said.

''ASIO missed that man, didn't they?'' shadow attorney-general George Brandis asked.

Mr Irvine replied ASIO had either ''thought … that he was someone else or that he was not registered in our holdings''.

ASIO was told by the country that put the man on the Interpol list - thought to be Egypt - the man in Inverbrackie was not the same man as the terrorist. That country later corrected this. Yet even after ASIO corrected its mistake on August 30, 2012, the man was not moved.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration said the department learnt of the man's identity in February.

''In late February when suspicions about the man's criminal past were confirmed by the relevant agency, the department did take immediate steps to facilitate the man and his family's transfer into a higher security detention at Villawood,'' she said.

Asked whose fault the security breach was, given it the apparent time gap between ASIO informing the Australian Federal Police, and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship taking action, the Coalition's attorney-general spokesman, George Brandis blamed the federal government's border protection policies.

''There have been - since the Labor Party was elected - some 42,000 arrivals, and of those only about 15 per cent have been given a full security treatment,'' Senator Brandis told ABC's Lateline on Thursday night.

''This man wasn't; he slipped through the net, and the reason he slipped through the net is because ASIO simply doesn't have the resources to cope with the vastly increased number.

''The system that they have in place at the moment is the best system that they can devise, given the resources that they have and given they are no longer able to give a full security - a risk assessment - to 100 per cent of the arrivals.''

Call for inquiry into terrorist asylum seeker

Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent

May 30, 2013

Business is cutting jobs, and the PM may pay the price.

'For a government that keeps telling us it is all about jobs and growth, that could be painful.' Photo: Josh Robenstone

Julia Gillard was wise to avoid a clash with those great secular festivals, the AFL and NRL grand finals, when setting the election for September 14. Unfortunately for some, she could not avoid a clash with the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Observers are precluded from undertaking work, and many will spend polling day in fasting and prayer.

But a bigger problem, given that Labor needs every card to fall its way between now and the poll, was situating the campaign in a softening global economy and at the end of the peak annual reporting season for most listed companies.

In previous years, the season when companies reveal their hand to shareholders may not have figured too heavily in political considerations. For Australia in 2013 however, it perhaps should have. The month-long corporate show-and-tell from August 1 looms as a kind of climactic deadline by which many companies will have moved decisively to cut costs and bolster their bottom lines.

For a government that keeps telling us it is all about jobs and growth, that could be painful.

''The quickest, sharpest, way for CEOs to repair their balance sheets is cutting costs, and costs is labour,'' said one senior business figure. He added that of the top half-dozen executive appointments in mining over the past 12 months, all have been recognised as specialists in cost cutting, at ''ripping the costs out of businesses through restructuring and labour shedding''.

Ford's sad withdrawal from manufacturing in 2016 rocked the nation last week, yet it is likely that more of these kinds of announcement are to come in manufacturing, in finance, and in the services sector.

Holden, which has done a superior job in cost minimisation through using a global platform to build its medium-size Cruze, and by developing export markets, nonetheless faces a very uncertain future. It is committed to building cars here until 2022, according to co-investment agreements with the federal government and the states. Tellingly however, Ford decided to quit despite substantial governmental assistance, revealing losses of $600 million over the past four years.

Holden, and for that matter Toyota, may yet come to the same answer, particularly if their projected losses exceed the quantum of governmental assistance they would forfeit by leaving early.

While car making faces its own set of challenges, large employers across the board are eyeing cost pressures, and many will be coming to similar harsh conclusions.

It is not the pre-election environment one would choose.

The Australian Industry Group has been warning for some time of deteriorating conditions. While the official jobless rate hovers around 5.5 per cent, the Ai Group's CEO, Innes Willox, believes Treasury projections of a jobless rate of 5.75 per cent for 2013-14 and 2014-15, then dropping back to 5 per cent after that, might understate the severity of the coming business response to a softening economy.

''We have data which is way ahead of the official data and we're very concerned about what's around the corner for the economy,'' he said. Much of that ''data'' is feedback from member firms, including assessments of their prospects and immediate plans.

Willox said construction and manufacturing had been in decline for three years, and the services sector is now also slowing quite substantially, driven even lower by declining business confidence.

While the depreciation of the dollar is likely to assist, economists say the recent dip below parity with the US dollar needs to be much faster and more substantial if recessionary pressures are to be resisted.

The OECD - which relies heavily on data supplied by Australia's Treasury to help construct its picture - predicted in a report released on Wednesday night that Australian growth would slow to 2.5 per cent in 2013. ''The persisting high exchange rate and still fragile confidence are inhibiting the emergence of new drivers of growth,'' it said.

Bureau of Statistics figures released on Wednesday also pointed to a faster-than-expected slide in economic activity, noting that construction work slipped 2 per cent in the March quarter against market expectations of an increase of 1 per cent. That could take 0.2 percentage points off GDP when the March quarter national accounts are released next week.

Willox argues the excruciating reality confronting many large employers now is the outlook itself. Unlike the GFC in 2007-08, during which many trimmed costs while retaining their hard-won skilled labour, he says the outlook now suggests no end in sight. Having made all the obvious efforts to retain employees by creative means such as rostering workers for fewer hours and cutting overtime, the only option left, in many cases, is job shedding.

If companies want to report healthier balance sheets in August, they may need to take unpleasant decisions in the next few months. A spate of labour shedding would set a bad feel in the weeks before voters decide. Yom Kippur, which begins on election-eve, is also known as the Day of Atonement. It may be the day Labor is asked to atone for the decisions of those over which it has no control.

Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent of The Age.

Gillard could face her own day of atonement

Posted by Antony Loewenstein

Tuesday 28 May 2013 09.22 EST guardian.co.uk

The state of immigration detention tells us this neoliberal consensus is damaging the country. We must challenge it

Riot police at the Villawood detention centre in 2011. Photograph: TIM WIMBORNE/Reuters/REUTERS

The racism was raw. In 2011, John worked inside the Villawood detention centre in Sydney, and had little time for asylum seekers and their plight. He believed they had more rights than he and his co-workers had been given. John was employed by MSS Security, a private company contracted by British multinational Serco for menial work. He claimed that the lack of accountability for the behaviour of his employer proved the immigration detention system was broken. It was his opinion that the Australian army should manage detainees, because companies such as Serco “balk at a problem and remain eternally paranoid about losing the contract with the government”. The racism expressed by John is commonplace; I have met countless others on Christmas Island and at the Curtin detention centre holding similar views.

Nothing, it seems, has happened since that would change his view. Serco has over a billion dollars’ worth of contracts with Canberra to manage the never-ending stream of asylum boats. No other country in the world has outsourced these services to so few companies (you can count on on one hand the corporations receiving the vast bulk of the government’s money). In recent years, countless alleged cases of mismanagement and price-gouging have been documented within Serco and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. These include Canberra’s failure to impose an independent auditing regime to monitor the multinational’s conduct in its many centres and the apparent failure to address potential remaining asbestos risks at Villawood.

Despite such problems, both the Labor and Liberal parties support the model currently in place for immigration detention, and few voices in the mainstream media challenge the underlying philosophy of having a for-profit company managing some of the most vulnerable people in society. The results are high rates of self-harm, mental health problems and attempted suicide (all documented last week in a damning report by the Commonwealth and immigration ombudsman), restricted media access and unnecessary commercial-in-confidence agreements between the government and corporations. There is an ethically blurry environment where the more refugees arrive on our shores, the more profits companies make.

The ongoing march for privatisation does not stop here. Rightwing thinktanks in Australia, such as the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs (a group that refuses to release a list of its financial donors), regularly call for the mass privatisation of state services. This includes the ABC, despite consistent public polling finding huge support for the broadcaster.

Australia is the most tightly controlled media environment in the western world, with over 70% of print publication owned by US citizen Rupert Murdoch; in the words of John Pilger, “Australia is the world's first murdochracy”. Indeed, charges against the ABC mirror the comments by James Murdoch about the BBC in 2009: “The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.”

Imagining a different Australia is possible, but the challenges are great.

The corporate media deliberately conflates “privatisation” with “reform”, and neoliberal ideology is accepted as fact. Even the Greens have embraced a market mechanism to reduce climate change, despite vast evidence questioning for-profit companies being the most appropriate way to do so. Canadian writer Naomi Klein is currently working on a book that will argue that capitalism is inherently incapable of reforming itself to tackle catastrophic changes to our climate.

In Australia, resistance to privatisation is reflected at the ballot box. The vast bulk of voters, according to polling, believe that corporations are the greatest beneficiaries from selling off public assets and overwhelmingly think that the state should own essential infrastructure. Voters also show their displeasure with the outsourcing agenda by often opposing parties that back it. Queensland is a key example, with current moves for mass outsourcing facing huge union opposition.

The left must now do a far better job in providing appealing alternatives. The facts are on its side. According to a recent report by the Australia Institute, electricity privatisation in Victoria has neither increased efficiency nor reduced prices. You won’t hear these uncomfortable truths from neoliberal propagandists. Despite the corporate press praising public-private partnerships, 2013 has seen the collapse of Australia’s biggest transport infrastructure project, Brisbane's Airport Link tunnel, leaving more than $3bn of debt.

Civil disobedience, akin to protests in Western Australia against the overwhelming influence of Serco, or detainees on Nauru hunger-striking for better care and processing, may be necessary. But more central is understanding how privatisation has become normalised in this country, despite it being opposed by societies across the world. Although states such as Argentina have seen first-hand the disastrous consequences of a rush to privatise water, Australians’ ability to resist similar plans requires a concerted effort from communities, media and politicians to explain the fallacies of accepted wisdom from market fundamentalists and free-marketeer historians who hold extreme views too often dressed up as rational and sensible.

The rot sits deep in Australia. The dumping of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island is enriching countless organisations who know a desperate government when they smell it. Vulture capitalism thrives on poor Pacific islands because the Labor party wants to restrict the ability of the public to humanise the plight of those fleeing Afghanistan, Sri Lanka or Iran.

That companies are making a profit from this suffering shames us all.

Privatisation agenda locks Australia into failure | Antony Loewenstein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Bianca Hall Bianca Hall is immigration correspondent

May 29, 2013

Since the introduction of the policy, a record 19,760 people have sought Australia's protection. Photo: Wolter Peeters

A new underclass of 100,000 asylum seekers, living on as little as $220 a week and with no rights to work, could be created in just five years if current trends continue.

Charities have warned they are unable to cope with the rising tide of impoverished asylum seekers, with one centre in Melbourne's south-east closing its doors to new clients after being ''swamped'' with requests for food aid.

The government introduced its ''no-advantage'' policy on August 13, saying people who arrived by boat would have their protection claims processed no more quickly than those who waited for a humanitarian visa in a refugee camp. Since then, a record 19,760 people have sought Australia's protection.

Since October 2011, 16,477 people have been released on bridging visas while their claims for protection are considered. Of these, 7256 are subject to the government's no-advantage policies, meaning they have no rights to work and are eligible for just 89 per cent of the dole - about $220 a week.

Immigration Department secretary Martin Bowles insisted at a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday there had been no ''freeze'' on processing asylum seekers' refugee applications - even though not one of the 19,760 who arrived after August 13 has had their claim processed.

He confirmed that even asylum seekers found to be refugees could be forced to wait up to five years for a permanent protection visa while living in the community.

Heather Holst, the chief executive of housing charity HomeGround, said her agency was bracing for more asylum seekers to be released. She said the agency had recorded a 195 per cent rise in clients from Pakistan, and an increase of 182 per cent in housing requests from asylum seekers from Afghanistan.

''We're just seeing this big group of asylum seekers with very limited income,'' she said.

This included a husband and wife forced to live for months in a garage with no toilet. The pair were allowed to use the toilet inside the adjoining house at set times.

''I just think they're unintended consequences of releasing people into the community,'' Ms Holst said. ''I just don't think they've thought this through.''

A centre in Dandenong that caters for asylum seekers said on Tuesday it could not care for any more families on bridging visas. Asylum Seekers Centre manager David Spitteler told Fairfax local magazine the Dandenong Journal he had been forced to make the decision because the centre had been swamped with requests.

The Coalition stepped up its attacks on asylum seekers' behaviour, with Liberal senator Michaelia Cash questioning why there were no behavioural standards set for asylum seekers released on bridging visas, as there were for those living in community detention.

There had been 17 incidents of ''possible criminal conduct'' involving asylum seekers on bridging visas, the hearing was told, including two who had been convicted.

Alarm over asylum underclass

Rob Taylor Canberra Tuesday 28 May 2013

Hackers traced to China stole floorplans of the new A$630m base for the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation, according to ABC news

Chinese hackers have stolen the blueprints of a new multi-million-dollar Australian spy headquarters as part of a growing wave of cyber attacks against business and military targets in the close US ally, an Australian news report said.

The hackers also stole confidential information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which houses the overseas spy agency the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australia's ABC Television said late yesterday.

The ABC report said Chinese hackers had targeted Australia-based companies more aggressively than previously thought, including steel-manufacturer Bluescope Steel, and military and civilian communications manufacturer Codan Ltd.

The influential Greens party said the reported hacking was a “security blunder of epic proportions” and called for an inquiry, but the government refused to confirm the security breach.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr said the report would not damage Canberra's ties with its biggest trade partner China.

“We have enormous areas of cooperation with China. I won't comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not,” Carr told reporters today.

Hackers using a computer server traced to China had stolen floorplans of a new A$630 million headquarters for the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation, the country's domestic spy agency, said the ABC report.

The attack through the computers of a construction contractor exposed not only building layouts, but also the location of communication and computer networks, said ABC.

Australia security analyst Des Ball told ABC in the report that such information made the yet to be completed spy headquarters vulnerable to future cyber attacks.

“You can start constructing your own wiring diagrams, where the linkages are through telephone connections, through wi-fi connections, which rooms are likely to be the ones that are used for sensitive conversations, how to surreptitiously put devices into the walls of those rooms,” said Ball.

The ASIO building, being built near the location of Australia's top secret Defence Signals Directorate, is supposed to have some of the most sophisticated hacking defences in the country, which is part of a global electronic intelligence gathering network including the United States and the UK.

But its construction had been plagued by delays and cost blowouts, with some builders blaming late changes made to the internal design in response to cyber attacks.

Australian officials, like those in the United States and other Western nations, have made cyber attacks a security priority following a growing number of attacks of the resource rich country, mostly blamed on China.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei was last year barred from bidding for construction contracts on a new Australian high-speed broadband network amid fears of cyber espionage.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said in March that it had been targeted by cyber attacks, but no data had been lost or systems compromised amid reports the hackers had tried to access intelligence on Group of 20 wealthy nations negotiations.

In the United States, the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military developments accused Beijing for the first time of trying to break into US defence networks, calling it “a serious concern”.

China has dismissed as groundless both the Pentagon report and a February report by the US computer security company Mandiant, which said a secretive Chinese military unit was probably behind a series of hacking attacks targeting the United States that had stolen data from 100 companies.

Reuters

Chinese hackers 'steal blueprints for Australian spy HQ' - Australasia - World - The Independent

Photo: Julia Gillard and Bill Gates at The Lodge in Canberra this morning (AAP: Lukas Coch)

The world's richest man, Bill Gates, met Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Canberra this morning to lobby for an increase to Australia's $5 billion overseas aid budget.

Gates in Australia

• Gates meets with Gillard at the Lodge
• Gates disappointed with foreign aid cuts

The meeting kicked off a hectic day for the Microsoft co-founder, who was to speak at the National Press Club in Canberra, meet Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, and take part in a special ABC TV Q&A program tonight.

Speaking on Radio National Breakfast, Mr Gates thanked Australians for their generosity in raising the aid budget but said more could be done.

"Australian aid is spent on a lot of very important, effective things, like health," he said.

But he said he was saddened by Australia's decision to defer increases in aid as part of this month's budget.

"When that got slowed down I was a little disappointed," Mr Gates said.

"But it [the aid budget] has been increasing and people should feel good about that."

Mr Gates now co-chairs a foundation aimed at dealing with extreme poverty and disease in developing nations, including eradicating polio.

Following his meeting, Mr Abbott said he told Mr Gates that he wanted to make sure people in need received the biggest bang for their buck out of aid spending .

"I'm sure there is always room for improvement when it comes to the administration of aid projects," Mr Abbott said.

"Julie (Bishop)I know has had some concerns over the years about whether we could do better in terms of getting the right money to the right people at the right times, and we'd love to be as constructive as we can on all of those things."

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates meets PM Julia Gillard and lobbies Australia for more aid - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 Andrew Macleod May 27, 2013

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.

My father had been an active member of the Labor Party. In November 1975 I rode my bicycle around the streets with a ''We Want Gough'' and a ''Shame Fraser Shame'' badge pinned to my chest. I remember meeting Whitlam as a kid and being presented with a Tonka toy for coming second in a sack race at the ALP family day at Burnley Oval in the mid-1970s.

Even though my family had a strong Labor background, my joining was not automatic. I made my own decision on which party to join and it came after deep thought. In the end I summed up my reasoning thus: one cannot look at the moderates of either political party for guidance on which to join, for they are too similar. One has to look at the radicals of the parties and decide which is least disconcerting.

Back in 1988 when I looked at the outliers of both parties I came to this conclusion: the Labor Party believed in having a social safety net a bit too high. There was some waste, but few genuine people missed out. The Liberal Party had the social safety net too low. Less waste, but some genuine people missed out. For me, it was less bad to have a little waste and no one missing out, compared with less waste and genuine suffering.

During a long career working for the United Nations and for the Red Cross in hell zones such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Australia's place in the world and how we treated those less well-off became more important to me.

In particular, how we treated asylum seekers and refugees became the main yardsticks I use in judging Australian society. I was disgusted by the events surrounding the Tampa and the 2001 federal election. I was deeply involved as a Labor candidate in a marginal Victorian seat. No matter how much John Howard seeks to rewrite history and say the Tampa had little to do with the result, it did.

Labor tied itself in knots after 2001, losing focus on its position on asylum, and missing an opportunity to put alternative policies to the people. This is a complex issue that does not lend itself to slogans. Just as it is too simple to say, ''Stop the Boats,'' so it is also too simple to say, ''Let Them Land''.

After election in 2007 and again after Julia Gillard took over as leader, Labor missed the chance to lead Australia in a genuine, well-thought-out debate on an alternative policy. Labor could have reset the national mood to one of ''how do we safely and securely control entry to genuine asylum seekers?'', instead of continuing a negative dialogue around ''how do we stop illegal entry and excise territory from our migration zone''.

Hence, when my Labor membership renewal form arrived in the post in 2011, I could not see principled leadership challenging the Australian people on the issues that matter to me. I could not in all conscience find a meaningful difference between Labor and Liberal. I decided to quietly let my membership lapse and judge the two parties afresh.

So why speak out now? Excising the mainland from Australia's migration zone is an additional slap in the face to core beliefs of mine. It means that I no longer wish to leave the ALP quietly.

The asylum-seeker issue now defines our national character. It sets the tone of how we wish to be perceived by ourselves and by others.

I have had friends say that I have been disloyal to the Labor Party for leaving. But to me, loyalty is to principles first, party second and leadership third. Many in the Labor Party appear to have forgotten this.

But Liberal Party apparatchiks should not rejoice in another member leaving the ALP. Labor's current dysfunction hides very similar problems inside the Liberal Party.

Social justice doesn't belong just to the labour movement. The philosophical liberalist tradition is about the freedom for people to attain their potential within a community, while recognising the need to look after those in genuine need. This is why some in the Liberal Party also speak out against the current asylum-seeker policies.

The old ''worker versus boss'' divide that historically characterised the two parties no longer seems to be the divide on the social issues of the day.

It is not just asylum where this can be seen. Take gay marriage. Under a liberalist philosophical tradition there would be sympathy for gay marriage. Under a conservative political tradition there would not. So what of the Liberal Party?

The current conservative-leaning leadership has the Liberal Party objecting to gay marriage, even though many so-called ''wets'' from a liberal philosophical tradition would like to support the change.

The Liberal Party is split along a conservative versus progressive divide. Same in the Labor Party.

Many in the religious right of the Labor Party - especially from the Catholic union base - oppose gay marriage. On the other hand, many from a social justice but non-union background in the Labor Party support gay marriage.

So, two unusual alliances are forming within Parliament: the pro-gay marriage camp from both the social justice (non-Catholic ALP) and liberalist (wet Liberal Party) traditions; and the anti-gay marriage camp from the Catholic Labor and conservative Liberal sides.

In other words, the anti gay-marriage push is made up of some Labor and some Liberal MPs. Likewise the pro gay-marriage push. And there is a similar divide on asylum and many other issues. Australia has elements of bipartisan liberalism and bipartisan conservatism, where the parties no longer represent the ideological divide.

What does this mean for party politics? There are many in the ALP who come from a non-unionist background but who joined the party on the basis of a belief in social justice. They are not so interested in the worker versus employer divide of the Cold War days.

There are those in the Liberal Party who are also philosophically interested in social justice rather than the employer versus employee divide. The major parties no longer debate different beliefs, they just debate power. And neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott inspires us to follow them. Instead, they try to scare us about the other side.

No wonder people are confused. The truth is we don't need just new leaders of the two main parties. It is not about changing Abbott or Gillard. What we need is new parties.

Australia needs a conservative party to represent the conservative views in our community on gay marriage, asylum, the monarchy and so on. We also need a liberalist, progressive party to represent the alternative views.

If we do not have parties that represent the ideological divide in our community, then where is our democracy? Where is our choice? Australians should get to choose on belief, not personality. Perhaps then we might get better government.

Andrew Macleod was the ALP candidate for the federal seat of McEwen in 2001, and is a former chief executive of the Committee for Melbourne and the author of A Life Half Lived (New Holland Press).

Why I quit the ALP

Dean Kalimniou 22 May 2013

Genocide is the responsibility of the entire world - Ann Clwyd

A few weeks ago, an article penned by John Williams appeared in Quadrant entitled, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Greeks from Gallipoli, April 1915." This marks a rare moment where a mainstream publication has attempted to draw attention to an aspect of the Gallipoli myth that the organised Greek community itself knows little about and as a result has done nothing to ensure that it enters the public discourse. This aspect is that the hallowed turf upon which the Anzacs lost their lives was, for at least 3,000 years, the home of Greek people, who as a result of the First World War and the Allied landing on the peninsula, fell victim to a persecution whereby: "all the hallmarks of later 20th-century ethnic cleansing - rape, pillage, murder and the seizing and destruction of property - were present in full measure." As far as I know, only Dr Panayiotis Diamandis and Stavros Stavridis - both committed genocide scholars, have attempted effectively to place crimes of this nature in an Australian context. Both, of course, do not represent nor are affiliated to any Greek community organization and indeed for some of these aforementioned organisations, Dr Diamandis is a figure of controversy.

Some time later, I attended the annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration. At that moving event, which was notable in how fervently it was attended by passionate members of the Armenian youth and also by its marked absence of Greek community representatives, a member of the Liberal Party read out a letter by Liberal leader Tony Abbott. In that letter, Tony Abbott referred to what happened to the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottomans as a "genocide." Also present at this sombre ceremony as a keynote speaker, was Deakin University academic Liana Papoutsis, who has a special interest in genocide. In her nuanced address, Liana Papoutsis stressed the need, along with the political aspects of the crime of genocide, to also focus on facets pertaining to gender and in particular crimes against women. In June she will be travelling to Rome to attend an international conference, wherein she will speak about the Armenian genocide. Liana Papoutsis is Greek and she too does not represent and is not affiliated with any Greek organization. In fact, the multitude of Pontian organisations that are supposedly charged with the responsibility of raising awareness of the genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor are blissfully unaware of her existence, and I harbor grave reservations as to whether they have followed the lead of their Armenian cousins and written to the leaders of the political parties, requesting that they outline their stance regarding genocide recognition.

A little less than a week later, on 1 May 2013, the NSW Legislative Council passed a motion recognising the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks by the Ottomans around the time of the First World War. The Armenian genocide has already been recognised by the NSW Lower House in 1996, and the "Armenian, Assyrian and Pontic Greek" genocides were recognised by South Australian Parliament in 2009. On 8 May 2013, the NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell in the Lower House also moved for the recognition of the genocide against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks.

This year's recognition thus marks the first time that an Australian parliament has recognised that the genocide was perpetrated against Greeks, rather than Pontians, who are not an ethnicity. This may, of course come as some surprise to some Pontians, for in our community, whose ethnic consciousness comprises a loose confederation of regional tribes all sharing the common suspicion that Socrates and Kolokotronis may have been our ancestors, each regional group tends to abrogate to itself the right to deal with issues pertaining to its own narrow history, with the result that Greeks from other regions treat such events with indifference. In our blinkered communal world, commemorative events centre around bringing scholars of middling reputation from Greece to Australia in order to re-hash the same old narrative year after year to a specifically Pontian, ever-ageing and ever-dwindling Greek speaking audience. Some aspirational Pontians also hold a Pontian Genocide Workshop, again for internal consumption but invaluable at least in that it ensures that knowledge of the crime is passed down through the English speaking generations. This year, the Pontiaki Estia workshop of "Pontian Continuity" laudably features genocide scholars Racho Donef and Stavros Stavridis and deserves complete community support. It is there that genocide related activities come to an end and there seem, (save in South Australia where the Pontians, through their local groups and their Federation, were at the forefront of the ultimately successful campaign for genocide recognition) to be scant attempts to engage firstly with the broader Greek community, (as is evidenced by the pitifully attended genocide protest held outside the Turkish consulate every year), secondly with the other peoples who were also victims of this unspeakable crime (in the 2007 Return to Anatolia conference, the Armenian contingent withdrew in disgust as the various Pontian clubs could not agree upon joint participation) and thirdly, with the broader Australian community, though this is slowly changing.

The hitherto named 'Pontian' and now properly termed Greek genocide is a case in point. The most recent 'bout' of recognition seems to have come about primarily through the efforts of the Assyrian community in Sydney, not by the exertions of the Greeks. Furthermore, in his moving speech, the revered Fred Nile thanked Dr Panayiotis Diamandis for enlightening him about the genocide over the course of many years, exemplifying both what the dedication of one individual can achieve but also, how ineffectual, indolent and complacent our community institutions can be. It is hoped that by re-branding the genocide as Greek, this will stir the rest of the community from the sloth of their disinterest enough to realise that anything that happens to any part of the Greek people also affects them, and become a clarion call for concerted and united action upon this issue but this is highly unlikely. Instead, it appears that little known figures such as Diamandis, Papoutsis and Stavridis are destined to maintain a shadowy existence, away from the vertiginous strobe lights of the Greek community stage, achieving many and great things, in spite of the rest of us and our local organisations.

At the abovementioned Armenian genocide commemoration, the guest of honour - National Political Editor of US-based publication POLITICO, Charles Mahtesian, offered this example of just how committed his compatriots are to achieving genocide recognition: An Armenian living in a state where Armenians were few contrived to gain his congressman's ear in a novel way. Learning that said congressman had his hair cut at the same barber, he arranged an appointment for himself at the same time, so that while being shorn of his curly locks, he was able to introduce the said politician to this most heinous crime and the necessity of its recognition. This type of dedication is lacking in our community, where such activism has kudos and micro politics as its primary motivation.

That is not to say that the recognition by state governments of matters that the Department of Foreign Affairs can easily distance themselves from should be viewed out of context. Yet it is hoped that as a symbol of the growing appreciation of this crime by the broader community, official recognition in each state can present a compelling case to the Federal Government for a change in its policy on this issue. To this effect, Armenian bishop Najarian's message to the politicians attending the Armenian genocide commemoration is telling: "Do not promise what you cannot deliver. Instead, deliver on your promise not because you will derive a benefit from it, but rather because you believe that it is right." We would all do well to emulate such forthrightness when dealing with our elected representatives. They do not exist merely to provide us with photo opportunities.

In his book «Μικρασία Χαίρε» Ilias Venezis, genocide survivor and captive of the Turkish army, states that remembering catastrophes such as the genocide and putting these into context constitutes a source of strength for our people, to be drawn upon in times of crisis. In such times, as now, the Greek people can consider their past and take courage stating: "this is nothing compared to the suffering of our fathers." It is incumbent upon us not only to remember that suffering but also to make others recognise it in order that the perpetrators and the denialists can finally understand the extent of the pain that their actions have caused and reconciliation can be achieved. After all, as Philip Gourevitch aptly points out in: "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda," "Genocide, is an exercise in community building."

*Dean Kaliminou is a Melbourne solicitor and freelance journalist.

Recognising genocide | Neos Kosmos

Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent

May 20, 2013

Julia Gillard has arrested a three-month decline in her standing with voters, to be back level with Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister, although Labor would still be beaten if an election were held now.

Both leaders sit on 46 per cent as preferred PM - an 8-point improvement for Ms Gillard since April and just 4 points below her December high of 50 per cent when she enjoyed a 10-point lead over Mr Abbott.

The latest Age/Nielsen poll, taken after Treasurer Wayne Swan's unorthodox no-handouts pre-election budget, has found voters drifting back to Labor, with two-thirds approving of what was supposed to be the most politically risky aspect of the budget, the decision to scrap the generous Howard government baby bonus.

Asked about the decision to dump the $5000 payments for a first child (cut last year to $3000 for subsequent babies), 68 per cent of respondents backed the move, with 27 per cent opposed.

Majority support for dumping the cash bonus, ridiculed as the most blatant of all the vote-buying ''middle-class welfare'' measures built up during the ''rivers of gold'' resources boom, was evident across all age groups and party affiliations, although parents of child-bearing age gave the change its coolest reception.

Yet the poll also showed less than half of all voters, 44 per cent, think the budget will be ''good for Australia'' and 67 per cent think Labor's promised surpluses in the third and fourth years of the budget will not be delivered. And 45 per cent say the budget overall has made them less likely to vote Labor.

Labor's primary vote has rebounded from its disastrous post-leadership turmoil poll-dive, when it fell to just 29 per cent in April. The figure is still low but an improved 32 per cent.

That 3-point turnaround was actually smaller than the statistically significant 5-point drop-off in support for the Coalition since April.

The Coalition's primary support went from a 2013 high of 49 per cent to 44 per cent - almost identical to what it scored at the previous election.

On a two-party-preferred basis, the Coalition has a strong lead with 54 per cent of the total vote (down 3 points) compared with the government on 46 per cent (up 3 points).

Pollster John Stirton said the result was a return to the longer-term trend after the April survey recorded a sharp drop for Labor.

''Last month's results were a little on the low side for the ALP and a little against trend,'' he said.

''This one is on trend with perhaps a very slight improvement for the government.''

He said that trend was reflected in most of the voting intention numbers with the possible exception of the 5-point fall in the Coalition's vote.

''The Liberal and National parties would win an election held now with a two-party preferred swing of around 4 per cent,'' he said.

The result of the May poll, which canvassed 1400 voters from May 16 to May 18, will be seen as encouraging to a beleaguered Labor Party that has been staring down the barrel of a historic defeat for much of the past three months since Ms Gillard broke with tradition to name the September 14 election date nearly eight months in advance.

While Labor's primary vote languishes well below the 38 per cent achieved at the 2010 hung parliament election - itself insufficient to secure a majority in the House of Representatives - the government will take heart from what it hopes is a return to the slow but steady poll recovery achieved in the second half of 2012 when Mr Abbott's anti-carbon tax scare campaign collapsed.

However, neither Ms Gillard nor Mr Abbott is is popular with voters.

With 56 per cent disapproving of Ms Gillard's performance, and just 40 per cent approving, her net approval sits at minus 16 per cent.

Mr Abbott has the approval of 42 per cent but 54 per cent disapprove - a net approval rating of negative 12 per cent.

In response to Ms Gillard's stronger personal ratings, Mr Abbott told reporters on Monday: ''I never said it was going to be easy to win this election.''

''I've always said that winning an election from Opposition would be like climbing Mount Everest,'' he said.

''While this government is really hopeless at administration, they are really clever at low politics and that's why you can never ever take anything for granted.''

When Ms Gillard was asked about the results on Monday she said she did not comment on polls.

with Judith Ireland

Gillard's budget boost

May 16, 2013 - 7:40AM

Suspended Labor MP Craig Thomson will contest his NSW seat at the next election as an independent.

The Dobell MP is expected to quit the Labor party on Thursday.

''I can't in all good conscience contest this election as a Labor party candidate,'' Mr Thomson told ABC radio on Thursday.

''I will be standing as an independent.''

Mr Thomson is contesting civil and criminal charges relating to his alleged misuse of Health Services Union member funds when he was the union's national secretary.

The allegations saw Mr Thomson's suspension from the ALP.

''I will be standing as a left-of-centre independent ... someone with Labor values but someone who is very frustrated with the way this government has gone about things,'' Mr Thomson told a News Limited newspaper.

''I have been a member of the party for more than 20 years. But the Labor party today is not the party I joined.

''They have got to finish things. You can't be a reforming government, you can't try and change people's lives by making announcements. You have to complete the policies.''

Denying he felt bitter toward the ALP for the way he has been treated, Mr Thomson cast a shadow over the party's leadership.

''This won't please some of my colleagues when I say it . . . but people including Labor party members may greatly fear Tony Abbott as prime minister but there are great reservations about the leadership of the Labor party,'' he said.

Mr Thomson's exit means Labor will need to endorse a new candidate for the marginal NSW Central Coast seat of Dobell, where polls have put the incumbent ahead of the Coalition.

In October Mr Thomson was ahead of the opposition 51 to 49 on a two-party preferred basis.

Mr Thomson won the seat in 2007 from Liberal member Ken Ticehurst.

AAP

Thomson to stand as independent

Adele Ferguson Business columnist May 14, 2013

Budget tough on business

Businesses are hard hit in the federal budget with cut backs on interest, exporation deductions and toughening thin capitalisation rules, says business columnist Malcolm Maiden.

If politician Benjamin Disraeli was alive today and reading the 2013 federal budget, he might well have revised the third part of his saying from: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" to damned budgets – particularly government budgets posted weeks before an election.

The brutal reality is Treasurer Wayne Swan's “stronger economy, smarter nation, fairer society” 2013 budget is predicated on politics rather than economics and that means the numbers have been bent to fit the spin.

This is clearly demonstrated by its $24 billion infrastructure spending pledge, which Swan pitches as a key to boosting productivity, building capacity, relieving congestion (which will cost the economy $20 billion by 2020 if not addressed) and improving the quality of life.

Swan says: "That's why we have committed more to urban public transport infrastructure than all our predecessors since Federation combined”. What he doesn't say is the headline $24 billion emanates from the nation-building program, which has become available since the last one expired this year, and it is a massive 33 per cent lower than the last one.

In addition, the key projects have strings attached. For instance, a promise to allocate $1.8 billion to Sydney's $8 billion M4 and M5 road extensions project on the condition there are no tolls. This means the project has $8 billion in unfunded conditions that sit on it, which makes the economics of the project tricky, given that the private sector's interest would rest on its earning revenue through tolls.

Given the state of the NSW budget, this is a big ask, but politically it looks better than the Coalition's offer of $1.5 billion to build the extensions, with tolls attached.

In Victoria it has allocated $3 billion to build the $8 billion Melbourne metro project, which consists of a nine-kilometre underground railway from west of South Kensington to east of South Yarra. The condition is that Victoria has to match its $3 billion equally, which is in doubt given it is keen to keep its credit rating.

New infrastructure spending in 2013-14 adds up to $559 million, dropping to $467 million in 2014-15.

If this year's budget was designed to restore some of the government's diminished credibility, it failed. If it was designed to wedge the Coalition, it fared somewhat better.

Either way, like all Swan's previous budgets, this one was always going to be taken with a pinch of salt, given the number of times budget estimates and forecasts have changed due to changes in revenue sensitivities.

On Tuesday night the government delivered an $18 billion deficit for 2013-14 as tax receipts fell $17 billion.

Over the four years it forecasts a $60 billion revenue shortfall. According to the papers, company tax was the single biggest contributor to the writedowns. Lower than expected capital gains and mining taxes compounded the fall in company tax receipts.

But if the dollar remains high, the revenue shortfall could rise to more than $150 billion over that period.

If the polls are anything to go by, the chances of this budget or most of its individual announcements being implemented are low.

The government also hasn't learnt from previous mistakes in terms of using overly optimistic forecasts to help tart up its revenue estimates. For instance, an original forecast carbon price of $29 a tonne came unstuck in this budget and has been revised down to $12 a tonne, cutting $2.5 billion from its revenue. But at $12 a tonne it could be argued it is still too high, given that it recently traded at a third of that price. It is a similar story for its mining tax, which has been revised down from an original revenue estimate of $2 billion in 2013, to $800 million, to the latest revision of $200 million.

In a bid to fill the revenue shortfall caused largely by dwindling tax collections, the government has gone softly in an election year and targeted multinational companies to raise more than $4 billion in extra taxes over the forward estimates period. It intends to do this by changing the “thin capitalisation” rules, clamping down on transfer pricing, closing a loophole to stamp out dividend washing, addressing non-resident CGT arrangements, concessions for mining exploration expenditure and the offshore banking unit regime.

But its actions won't be enough and it is a matter of time before more significant policies are introduced to tackle the problem. The quickest way to do this is to tackle personal taxes, change capital gains tax or target company taxes. But in an election year, both sides of politics will steer clear of anything meaningful and will instead tinker around the edges.

The most useful thing about this document is the size of the revenue slippage over the forward estimates. It is these figures that will give the investment community an idea of where interest rates and the dollar are heading along with the severity of future policies for raising revenue and reducing costs.

Federal budget 2013 | Adele Ferguson

Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent

May 16, 2013

2013 Federal Budget breakdown

Wayne Swan's sixth budget forecasts a shift from the resource investment boom and into a fresh boom in production and exports, a shift Mr Swan says will shuffle the economy toward wider sources of economic growth.

Trap. Wedge. Trick. Ploy. All these words have been used to describe Wayne Swan's latest federal budget.

To many observers, it was all too obvious: an outgoing Labor government was laying booby traps for an incoming Coalition outfit. But if there is a trap for Tony Abbott, it is no sleeper.

Budget 2013 is a reversal of the normal order of things: the backdrop of the event has commanded almost more attention than the action on stage.

Illustration: John Spooner.

That backdrop is a government apparently limping towards the exit, humiliated by its failure to deliver a surplus that it had itself stipulated as the only true test of its prowess, and an opposition setting itself for victory, unified to a fault, and doggedly wedded to populist contradictory political fixes, such as its ''direct action'' climate change plan, and the unsustainable forward march of middle-class welfare.

Even before Swan had finished speaking in the House of Representatives on budget night, outlining a raft of tough savings measures worth $43 billion over five years, attention had turned to what Tony Abbott would do.

There's been a lot of that kind of questioning lately, which tells you all you need to know about the expectation of a change of government now more-or-less built in to most people's thinking.

In these strange times, policy and politics have become further entangled than is normally the case.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Julia Gillard and her Treasurer had unsuccessfully applied a pincer movement on Abbott over a proposed extension of the Medicare levy to pay for DisabilityCare.

Now, in their ''last roll of the dice'' budget, they were at it again - trying to turn their two key weaknesses, the minority Parliament and a big deficit, into strengths, by using Abbott's momentum against him.

In place of what had been promised as a surplus for 2012-13, the balance sheet remained deep in the red. But across its ''out years'', the subsequent three-year forward estimates, it proposed a rapid fiscal consolidation, a steep ascent back to surplus.

This is to be achieved through a combination of better economic performance and politically unpalatable spending cuts - savings that Abbott would either have to back, thus vindicating the controversial savings measures and forfeiting a short-term political advantage, or block. The latter option offers Abbott the sugar-hit reward of a short-term electoral dividend - more government chaos, claims of broken promises, etc - but brings with it the expense of a worsening fiscal imbalance which he and Joe Hockey will in all likelihood be lumbered with after September.

This is the calculation Abbott and his advisers are weighing up right now, ahead of tonight's budget reply speech. Whether to wave the cuts through, allowing Labor to take bragging rights - and do the heavy lifting of repairing the budget - or to continue to play hard ball.

In deciding which way to jump, Abbott knows there is another danger, too.

He had, of course, confounded the government (and some in his own camp) when he backed the NDIS levy. On that occasion, he felt he had little choice because to equivocate on the prospect of a guaranteed funding stream for a scheme he had strongly backed meant he would be seen as disingenuous.

Nonetheless, the emergence of Dr Yes briefly wrong-footed the government.

All was not lost, though. By definition, the 0.5-percentage-point increase to the Medicare levy would not pay for the whole scheme, a fact Abbott repeatedly pointed out. With just half the funding, you get only half the scheme, he goaded.

That opened the opportunity for a second wedge in the form of painful cuts to existing spending to guarantee the remainder of NDIS funding. Enter the decisions to slash the $5000 Howard-era baby bonus, and to wind back further creeping family payments, among others.

Many in Labor believe that for Abbott, cutting the baby bonus and family payments will prove to be a bridge too far. Indeed, they're banking on it.

They're likely to be wrong.

This close to an election he is poised to win, the Opposition Leader is hyper-alert, alive to every risk - his recent IR non-policy being a case in point.

Abbott believes the government is again manouevring for a more damaging claim than merely suggesting he is ''all talk'' on balancing the budget.

That being the charge that he is not a ''fair dinkum'' backer of the new disability program.

In other words, if Abbott blocks the budget measures to close off the baby-bonus and trim family tax benefits, he will be putting the very financial viability of the $14.5 billion DisabilityCare in jeopardy.

The trap is set, but a wily Abbott is unlikely to get caught - which would be a win for the budget, for DisabilityCare, and for common sense.

Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent.

Labor sets a booby-trap as it heads for the door

 Lindy Edwards May 14, 2013

As federal Labor wades through the quagmire of its budget woes this week, the government is reaping the consequences of a train wreck set in motion six years ago.

Generally when governments come to power they spend their first year in office gutting the legacy of their predecessor.

They express outrage that the budget they have inherited was worse than they realised. They attribute major emerging policy challenges to the mismanagement of their predecessors.

And they cut the beejeebies out of the predecessor's policies that they hate.

This slate-clearing exercise buys them a little bit of clear air where they can make unpopular decisions without being blamed for them. They also tend to cut hard in the first budget, which frees up resources they can spend on their own agenda for the rest of their term in government.

New governments do all the hard stuff upfront and then spend the next several years spending and building a positive agenda.

The arrival of the global financial crisis and the government's adoption of the stimulus package cut short this essential phase for any new government. It has been a disaster for Labor, with long-term consequences.

Labor's dilemma was that the government did inherit a major problem from Peter Costello, one that they should have labelled at the time as his economic legacy.

In 2007 they knew the budget was in structural deficit. Costello had used windfalls from the mining boom to create election sweeteners that had long-term costs on the budget, like the bloated family payments system. In effect, he had used his birthday money to take out a mortgage he couldn't afford.

In any normal first year of the political cycle, Labor would have been yelling from the rooftops about the problem and used it as a rationale for cutting hard into Coalition policies it opposed. But because of the GFC, the government could not do that on two counts.

First, it couldn't implement the cuts because it would have counteracted the stimulus, at best nullifying it, and at worst throwing the economy into a deep recession.

Second, the government could not even really talk about the problem and ensure Peter Costello was blamed for it, because it could not go out and talk up a long-term budget crisis while also arguing for a short-term stimulus package. The economics of it might have made sense, but the story was too complex to get across.

Labor was left with a major problem that was both political and economic. Having missed the window to attribute the structural deficit to Costello, the government was being criticised for lavishing money on the stimulus package. And in the government's back pocket was a structural deficit for which Labor was going to have to carry the can, and it was facing sharply declining revenue as the GFC hit business profits.

To top it all off, the government had not left itself any money to implement Labor's agenda. Labor was going to have to introduce cuts to pay for any new initiatives.

This is basically what the government has done, with each of the subsequent budgets being a rebalancing exercise. Labor has been systematically cutting cash handouts to the top and middle to broaden and strengthen the delivery of safety net services.

We have seen the government cut the private health insurance rebate and family payments, and move the money to mental health services, dental services, disability services and schools.

Each year the government has struggled to explain why it was taking with one hand and giving with the other. Labor has been accused of incoherent budgets that didn't make sense, but it was the only way the government could implement its agenda.

Now the beastie has really come home to roost. The mining downturn means the birthday money has dried up, and the government is well and truly caught high and dry.

The question that will haunt Labor dinner parties for years to come will be: ''Should we have introduced the stimulus package?''

On the one hand, it is probably the government's most important policy achievement. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates it saved up to 200,000 jobs.

The experience from the 1990s recession was that a very large proportion of those who lose their job in the first year of a recession are still unemployed 10 years later. There are huge long-term social and economic benefits in averting a downturn.

Not to mention if we hadn't gone the stimulus route, the economy probably would have gone into recession, for which Labor would have been blamed; it would have been bundled out of office anyway.

But as the world falls down around their ears this week, the Gillard government's members will be wondering if there was anything they could have done differently.

Lindy Edwards is from the International Political Studies Program at the University of New South Wales and the author of The Passion of Politics: The role of political ideas in Australia.

Seeds of Labor's destruction sown six years ago

Michael Bachelard Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media

May 13, 2013 - 1:39PM

Update: Police removed the remainder of the asylum seekers waiting on a boat at Benoa port in Bali to sail for Australia, but the mystery of why they were there in the first place remains.

Police took the remaining 61 passengers off at about 4am AEST after the boat, originally carrying 96 sailing from Bali and trying to get to Australia was stopped outside the harbour on Sunday morning.

But Bali water police chief of operation unit Rai Suandi said this was the first ever refugee vessel to sail from Bali. Until authorities have had a chance to talk to the refugees they will not know whether this is a one-off or an attempt by people smugglers to find a new route to Australia through the busy Ngurah Rai international airport in Bali.

Limbo: asylum seekers caught in Indonesian waters while sailing to Australia sit on their boat at Benoa port in Bali. Photo: AP

It's unclear at this stage if the boat was aiming for mainland Western Australia, Christmas Island to the west, or Ashmore reef to the east

Bali water police chief Tubuh Musyareh said the group had been intercepted by water police about 5am on Sunday as their boat entered the Badung Strait. They escorted it back to port, but only a small proportion of the people on-board agreed to disembark.

Also on Sunday, 42 Iranians were caught in Bali as they waited for a boat to sail to Australia, and were taken to Jimbaran detention centre.

Indonesian marine police officers guard the asylum seekers. Photo: AP

The resolution to the stand-off came as one of Indonesia's biggest people smugglers, Billu, who arranged a boat in June last year that sank and killed 96 people, was arrested in a police operation in Jakarta.

The smuggler, whose real name is Javed Mehmud, was arrested on Friday at an apartment in North Jakarta according to Indonesia's anti-people smuggling taskforce chief, Budi Santoso.

Billu is understood to have admitted to arranging four boats, but people smuggling sources said he has been involved in dozens of ventures stretching back to the first wave of asylum seekers between 1998 and 2002.

Budi said Billu would face people smuggling charges in Indonesia, which carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail.

A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police confirmed the operation, while also congratulating Indonesian authorities for the arrest. "This arrest demonstrates the successful close co-operation between Australia and international law enforcement and the joint commitment to the fight against people smuggling," the spokesperson said.

A people smuggling source said Billu had lost more than one boat in his career. One in about 2000 had cost 100 lives, the source said.

His offsiders on that operation, Zahid Nana and Kamran Bhat, were still active and arranging boats for another prominent people smuggler, Mohammad Ali Chote.

The source said Billu's network had the strong involvement of corrupt Indonesian police, and used the West Java towns of Garut and Bandung and staging posts for their activities.

It has been a big week for Indonesian activity against people smugglers. As well as Billu's arrest, Australian citizen Ali Qaseemwas sentenced to six years in prison for his activities and another kingpin, Sayed Abbas, faced a court seeking to extradite him to Australia.

with AAP

Bali asylum-seekers' stand-off ends

Paul Sheehan Sydney Morning Herald columnist

May 13, 2013

When Julia Gillard called a federal election seven months in advance, her greatest hope of survival was that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott would step on a political landmine, or his own party would undermine him. After all, it was a group of NSW Liberal factional obsessiveness and vengeful ex-Nationals who saved her in 2010.

As if on cue, one of those factional obsessives, Liberal federal backbencher Alex Hawke, has openly confronted Abbott's credibility and authority in an election year. Last week he portrayed Abbott's core policy on paid parental leave as ''unaffordable'', ''unsustainable'' and ''unnecessary''.

The same can be said about Hawke. His political career is a civil war without end. His obsession with his own self-advancement has in effect destroyed it. He may sit in Federal Parliament, he may hold a safe seat, he may pull factional strings, but in the Canberra caucus he is indelibly marked by episodes of treachery, scorched earth tactics and backbench Siberia.

Alex Hawke: criticised Tony Abbott. Photo: Lee Besford

The first time I met Hawke was during an interview with state Liberal MP David Clarke, in Clarke's office in the NSW Parliament. Clarke is one of the most eccentric men in politics and Hawke was his right-hand man, his protege. Clarke has since come to despise Hawke, for reasons that are infamous within the party.

On September 30, 2009, Hawke called the police to a branch meeting in his electorate office in Castle Hill. It was a desperate ploy, and a black mark against the party, but Hawke's local power base was under threat. The Liberal Party later produced a detailed report about the incident. Although the party bans its members from discussing internal matters with the media, the past president of the Mitchell Federal Electoral Council, Tim Abrams, who lodged a complaint about Hawke's actions, is on the record as stating: ''I have now received the ruling confirming that the behaviour of preventing members from entering the meeting and calling the police was inappropriate … The decision accurately sets the record straight and notes there was no basis or reason to stop the meeting by Alex Hawke MP or indeed his calling for the police to attend.''

I checked with Abrams to make sure his published comments were correct, which does not breach the party's suppression rule. He confirmed they were accurate: ''Yes, he used the police to close the meeting.'' Hawke, too, has claimed the party report vindicates him. I disagree.

This ugly tactic was critical to a wider stealth campaign Hawke was waging to build his factional base and end the career of his mentor, Clarke. Having been elected to Federal Parliament, and having ministerial ambitions, Hawke now regarded Clarke as a liability. Clarke, unaware, had assumed Hawke was an ally, not realising that Hawke had organised a carefully planned attack to have Clarke lose his preselection in 2010 and thus his seat in Parliament in 2011.

On January 28, 2010, Barry O'Farrell wrote to the NSW Liberal Party state director, Mark Neeham, supporting Clarke's re-endorsement for the upper house ticket, adding: ''I am especially grateful for David's support in my efforts to reform the NSW Liberal Party and put an end to the antics that have so damaged our electoral prospects in the past.''

Hawke defied his state leader. He moved against Clarke, opening a fissure within the party with exactly the sort of ''antics'' O'Farrell was condemning.

On February 4, 2010, Abbott wrote to the NSW state director: ''It's important for the stability of the NSW Liberal Party, and for the party's success at the upcoming state and federal elections, that David Clarke remains in the Legislative Council.''

Hawke, in defiance of his federal leader, moved against Clarke, and almost succeeded. On June 28, 2010, Hawke's key factional ally, Nick Campbell, was forced to resign as president of the NSW Liberal Party, after he tried to stop a vote to curb the frequent use of special powers, a tactic which Campbell, Hawke and another factional warrior, Michael Photios, had used frequently to build their factional numbers.

The use of these special powers, meant to be invoked only in emergencies, had affected the outcomes of numerous preselection contests. Campbell, Hawke and Photios were part of the majority factional alliance in the state executive which failed to have key marginal electorates ready because of factional manoeuvring.

This blew up on July 17, 2010, when Gillard announced a federal election for August 21.

The Liberal preselections for the key marginal seats of Greenway and Parramatta had not even been completed. No candidates were in the field. Preselection for a third crucial marginal seat, Lindsay, had only just been completed. All three seats are expected to fall to the Liberals this year. But in 2010 the Liberals were not ready, Labor held all three seats, and this turned the election.

During the past year, Hawke, with no prospect of advancement under Abbott, has been cultivating Malcolm Turnbull.

Last week, Hawke mounted a frontal attack on Abbott's authority with a piece for the Institute of Public Affairs calling for Abbott to scrap his paid parental leave scheme. Last Monday he gave a series of radio and TV interviews elaborating on his opposition to this signature Abbott policy. Whatever misgivings Liberals may have about this policy, the place to air them is the party room, not the media.

Having chosen to undermine his leader, again, during an election year, again, Hawke is burnishing an inedible association with division, delusion and disloyalty.

SMH Paul Sheehan on the Liberal Party