Piers Akerman: Scott Morrison must represent the conservative side of politics
The PM plans to dump COAG and bring Big Business together with Big Unions but is he actually representing the conservative side of politics? With two High Court vacancies looming, this government can do without outside emotional influences, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison may win the Good Housekeeping seal of approval with his plan to dump the egregious pork-barrelling COAG meetings in favour of retaining the National Cabinet but is he actually representing the conservative side of politics?
Bringing together Big Business, Big Unions (who is he kidding?) and the government to, in some manner, replicate the forum successfully used by Bob Hawke may excite those in need of warm, damp hugs, but this government has yet to show any stomach for real industrial relations reforms.
To be brutally honest, Scott Morrison is no Hawke. Hawke knew IR backwards, forwards and sideways and knew all the players.
Plus he had former ACTU secretary and union hardhead Bill Kelty on his side when he needed to bring recalcitrant unions to heel. Current ACTU secretary Sally McManus is no Kelty.
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Being hugger-mugger with the trade union movement (even though it represents fewer than 10 per cent of workers in the private workforce) may produce a warm inner glow but the nation needs the sort of hard-won productivity increases achieved on the docks if the economy is to benefit.
This issue is yet another for the already overburdened Attorney-General Christian Porter to deal with, remembering that he is also the Leader in the House as well as being responsible for his own vast legal affairs department.
Foremost in his mind should be the question of filling the two High Court vacancies that are looming — the seats filled by judge Geoffrey Nettle, who retires in December, and Virginia Bell, who will leave in March.
The February 4-3 decision by the High Court to rule that anyone identifying as Aboriginal — even if born overseas — could not be considered “alien” under the Constitution and deported to the country of their birth (and even citizenship) on character grounds sent shockwaves through legal circles.
It was a display of judicial activism, restricting parliament’s power to make laws with respect to aliens and drawing the ire of Chief Justice Susan Kiefel, who wrote a powerful minority decision in which she said the finding was beyond the role of her court.
That didn’t dissuade the youngest member of the court, judge James Edelman, who wrote in an emotional outpouring: “Since settlement, Aboriginal people have been inseparably tied to the land of Australia generally, and thus to the political community of Australia, with metaphysical bonds that are far stronger than those forged by the happenstance of birth on Australian land or the nationality of parentage.”
Kumbaya trumps black letter law and overturns the strictures of the Mabo decision which was tied to a particular place — not on mainland Australia — where custom was closely identified with land ownership.
Judge Edelman was an appointee of former Attorney-General George Brandis and Mr Porter is being urged by government backbenchers to appoint a more conservative judge.
In private discussions with Mr Porter, a number of MPs have red-lighted Victorian judge Mark Moshinsky, who recently ruled for a Tamil family with terrorist links to remain in Australia because they had a child here, and suggested that if the political demands are such that a Victorian should be appointed, Federal Court Judge Simon Steward is a good option.
Other names put forward for consideration by the Attorney-General include Federal Court Justice Michael Lee (NSW), Queenslander Jonathan Horton, QC, considered a brilliant silk, and a former associate of the extremely effective former High Court Justice Ian Callinan, and Queensland Supreme Court Justice Thomas Bradley.
In recent years, the court has been graced by the outstanding former Chief Justice Murray Gleeson and such notable intellectuals as Judge Dyson Heydon, Anthony Mason and Harry Gibbs.
The Attorney-General’s appointees will shape Australia not just for the duration of a parliament but possibly the next 20 years and must be made on the strict basis of merit and appreciation of the Constitution as it was written — not as activists wish it may have been written.