Labor’s computer crash

Lucy Turnbull, Malcolm Turnbull, Daisy Turnbull, David Panton and Julie Bishop in Sydney. Picture: Instagram

True believers are getting their laptops ready for Labor’s all-virtual national conference, but there was a wee hiccup for the National Left beforehand. Friend of Strewth Greg Brown can reveal members of the key ALP faction — whose leading lights include Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Mark Butler — saw their Zoom meeting collapse on Sunday and they were unable to reconvene to game out their conference plans. Strewth sources say bad planning was to blame and not foreign cyber assailants. Labor will have to hope their national conference — set to look a wee bit like US President Joe Biden’s Zoom-style Democratic Convention last year — does not suffer the same issues the Left online catch-up did.   The ALP’s crack cybersecurity team will be working overtime either way after Brown revealed the emails of MPs in parliament had been targeted by cyber attacks.

Paid parental problems

Labor’s newly repackaged paid parental leave scheme is certainly generous, but is it “rolled-gold”? Anthony Albanese announced on Monday that a government he leads would give parents of newborns in Australia 26 weeks off on their full salary. Woo-hoo, we hear the Mas and Das of the nation cry. But when then-opposition leader Tony Abbott proposed a similar scheme — initially capped at $75,000 per person — Labor frontbenchers were not exactly thrilled.   Plibersek said in 2013: “It’s incredibly unfair. We don’t give more to the people who already have more. We give more help to the people who need more help.” Tony Burke said when Abbott dumped the policy in 2015: “[The government is] colliding with reality to discover that it’s unfair, unaffordable, can’t get through the parliament and their own party room doesn’t like it either.” And former ALP frontbencher Jenny Macklin said Abbott’s plan was a “rolled-gold paid parental leave scheme that favours wealthy women” and “I don’t believe that is fair”. The paid scheme hailed by Albanese in pre-conference interviews has actually been in the party platform for some time and he even suggested the policy was a goal “over time”. Let’s see if it is ultimately much different to the poo-poohed Abbott plan. 

Mal & JBish ride again

Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop got the band back together over the weekend. The Carpenters of Liberal Party politics caught up at a small Sydney gathering for the ex-PM’s wife Lucy’s birthday. Bishop, Turnbull’s loyal deputy and foreign minister, took a number of happy snaps on Instagram with the Turnbulls, her good self and her partner David Panton. Who knows if they talked about the woes of Scott Morrison or their own recent comments criticising their former colleague’s government. But no doubt they had some time to sing a few tunes from Hamilton. The former Liberal leadership duo were both at the musical’s Sydney premiere.

Laming’s lamentations

Now, here is an interesting quote our history editor Alan Howe found. “When speaking to members who served in this House with Mr Laming, the most common thing they had to say was that he was a lovely man and a real gentleman of this House.” And these words were uttered by a Labor star — Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. But the past tense is a clue. This was spoken in a condolence motion in the Queensland parliament for Andrew Laming’s father Bruce Laming who died in 2017, and who was a Liberal member there for nine years until the state election in 2001 that saw him lose his seat in a swing of more than 18 per cent against him. Young Andrew might have bettered that had he elected to stay in parliament to contest his seat of Bowman, also in Queensland. Bruce told parliament in his maiden speech: “To be a representative of the people at any level of government is the ambition of many but the privilege of few. I intend to take seriously the responsibility entrusted to me.” If only young Andrew had been listening. Bruce had been a mines worker, a wool classer, worked on the Snowy Mountains scheme, a patrol officer, a cray fisherman, and was even employed as circulation director for a newspaper, recording his life in a book You’ve Got To Knock Around Son. “When Mr Laming left parliament, he continued his education, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of the Sunshine Coast in 2006,” said Palaszczuk. “In 2009, he won the Fellowship of Australian Writers best short story for his first attempt.” Maybe Andrew should continue his own education. He also has quite a story to tell.

Pension pennies

Laming has been in parliament for 17 years and six elections but he has just missed out on a very pretty payout. The controversial Liberal doctor came into the House of Representatives in the 2004 election, when all MPs were henceforth cut off from a massive parliamentary allowance for life. Laming will get decent super, but he’ll need to start looking for alternative work as soon as possible. So who is on the old pension scheme and is likely to be set up for the rest of their days once they leave politics? The nation’s new defence minister Peter Dutton (2001), recently dumped Father of the House Kevin Andrews (1993), Plibersek (1998) andAlbanese(1996) are among the lucky few.

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