Albanese talks with Europeans, Liberals overhaul committee

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5 hours ago

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.
The whole thing has the whiff of a reality TV dating show.
Will they meet? Won't they meet? Will there be chemistry? Will there be a blow-up and then an awkward scene where the two need to sit in neighbouring arm chairs and try their best to say nice things about the other.
Likely, it's just how the reality TV star-turned US president likes it.
Such is the omnipresent nature of Donald Trump's second presidency that he manages to loom over everything, even when he's not even in the room, as was the case at the G7 summit when he took his (nuclear) football and went home early.
Barely a week has gone past in the last seven months without Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being asked when he would meet with Trump in person.
Speaking ahead of his scheduled meeting, he made clear he'd been putting in the preparation work, doing all the stretches needed to walk onto the field with Trump.
At the same moment he was saying that, Trump's press secretary was drafting a message that she'd send out six minutes after the PM's press conference ended, announcing the US president was leaving the G7 summit to go home.
There was no shortage of pontificating about whether or not it was a snub of the Australian prime minister (said by people seemingly forgetting that the Middle East was literally on fire).
Sure, Albanese's desire to talk AUKUS submarines and tariffs are important. But in the case of the boats, they're not arriving for decades. More pressing is the prospect of bunker-busting bombs being dropped over Iran, which could fundamentally reshape what the looming decades look like.
To view a meeting of world leaders through the prism of Trump also seemingly ignores the reshaping the world is currently going through.
When Albanese travelled to South America for meetings with world leaders late last year, there was questioning about who might step into the void as world leader should Trump pursue an isolationist agenda.
The thinking was that the Europeans were diminished figures and China's Xi Jinping sensed an opportunity. Fast-forward to today and suddenly the Europeans are back in play, eager to fill any void Trump might leave behind.
With Trump gone, Albanese started talks with the Europeans to forge closer defence ties, while also using his time in Canada to deepen his relationship with the leaders of Britain and NATO.
But there are clear signs that Albanese wants to lance the boil and meet with Trump (if for no other reason than to end the questions about when the two will meet).
To do that, it could see Albanese make an unexpected trip to Europe next week to meet Trump on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in The Hague.
Before he set flight for North America, Albanese announced he'd be bringing Camelot to Canberra, summoning knights from the business, union, government and civil sectors for a roundtable meeting on productivity.
Falling to Jim Chalmers to fill in the details, the treasurer used a a National Press Club address on Wednesday to issue a clarion call to the two dozen groups that will be invited to the August roundtable.
Chalmers pointed to Labor's landslide victory as a signal that the government needed to be bold and to build beyond the slate of commitments it took to voters, including on taxation.
He said he expected those who attend the roundtable to put their vested interest aside and work towards achieving practical outcomes. He vowed to put aside his own political ideology and expected others to do the same in pursuit of consensus.
The treasurer also took aim at the assembled media, deriding the "rule-in-rule-out game" as having a cancerous effect on public discourse.
The treasurer broke with his prepared speech to pay tribute to his new departmental secretary Jenny Wilkinson, who last week became the first woman to lead the Treasury.
He then went on to call out the head of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, the Reserve Bank, Michele Bullock and the chair of the competition watchdog the ACCC, Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
"It is a source of considerable pride in our government that we have women leading the Reserve Bank, the Productivity Commission, the Treasury, in each of those cases, for the first time in the history of those economic institutions," he said.
There's never been a female federal treasurer. That's something Chalmers might change should he rise to PM one day.
Murray Watt has fast developed a reputation of the man the prime minister turns to when he has a troublesome issue to resolve.
First, he phased out live sheep exports as agriculture minister.
Then as workplace relations minister, he phased out CFMEU officials from the embattled union, a move the High Court this week deemed was constitutional.
The Queenslander now finds himself with the daunting task of trying to pass an overhaul of environmental laws that somehow manages to reach consensus between business and environmental groups.
His predecessor Tanya Plibersek was working towards the same goal before Albanese brought a stop to that to appease WA Labor concerns before the state and federal elections.
Two successive governments have failed to update the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act since it was written in 1999.
Environmentalists want a "climate trigger" in the legislation so it could be used to block projects based on their climate impact. Business groups argue that would add complexity to an approval process that they already think is too burdensome.
Speaking after a meeting with stakeholders on Thursday, Watt said they'd agreed to an 18 month timeline to land the new laws.
He said there was no other option, with the current laws failing to do enough to protect the environment, while also resulting in approvals taking too long.
Until recently, Alan Stockdale's greatest sin in Liberal ranks was for coming from south of the Murray River.
That a Victorian had been called in to run the NSW division as part of a federal takeover goes a long way to explaining the state the party found itself in.
Desperate times (not nominating candidates for elections), call for desperate actions.
That said, Stockdale's days were always going to be numbered after he told the NSW Liberal Women's Council that women were "sufficiently assertive" and the party might need to "protect men's involvement".
Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, a fellow Victorian, was quick to suggest Stockdale would do well to reflect on the "shocking" comments over a whiskey with the old boys at the men's only Melbourne Club.
As it turns out, he'll have plenty of time to do just that.
Speaking after a Liberal Party federal executive meeting, Ley announced the intervention in the NSW division would continue for another nine months.
She thanked Stockdale and fellow Victorian Richard Alston before announcing their services would no longer be required, calling in former NSW premier Nick Greiner to take over the intervention.
That wasn't the end of the call ups to help the party. On the same day, Ley announced former state minister Pru Goward and federal minister Nick Minchin would conduct an autopsy into the Liberal's disastrous federal campaign.
The review will examine the Liberal's historically low primary vote, its performance among key voter demographics and the long-term challenge posed by teal independents.
After the May election, there were no shortage of Liberals bemoaning the number of election reviews that have been left to collect dust on shelves.
With their future survival at stake, they're hoping this one might actually get put into action.