- The Prime Minister, in Parliament, apologised personally to Brittany Higgins for the culture that contributed to what allegedly happened to her, and announced his government’s general acceptance of the Jenkins Report’s recommendations to reform toxic aspects of parliamentary culture. Grace Tame, meanwhile, again highlighted her true personal and blatantly partisan enmity by labelling Morrison’s statement a ‘stunt’. She and Higgins today will address the National Press Club, an address scheduled by the NPC (president, Laura Tingle) to do maximum political damage to Morrison, just as last week’s lynch mob did likewise.
- ABC types are gloating at Morrison’s new funding plan for the ABC and SBS giving them substantial additional funding, and ending a four-year funding freeze. ABC chairman Ita Buttrose purred. The likes of Media Watch’s Paul Barry ungratefully say it’s a political fix that won’t shut them up – it is, and it won’t. But would you appease a perennially-misbehaving toddler by giving him an ice-cream as a reward for his selfish tantrums? That’s the principle being applied to the rent-seeking ABC management by the Morrison government, in a vain attempt to mollify its enemies who talk to its friends.
- Perhaps even to his own surprise, Scott Morrison yesterday got his modified religious freedom legislation package through the Coalition party room, with embattled MPs maybe realising it’s better to hang together than hang separately. One Liberal MP, Tasmanian Bridget Archer, has signalled she’ll likely vote against it because it doesn’t have sufficient protections for her liking, but otherwise the bills’ fate is to be decided by the so-called ‘progressives’ in the Senate, rather than rebellious government MPs and senators
- The late Christian Kerr put greater store on the Left-biased Essential poll in the Grauniad than Newspoll in the Australian. So take note, all those on the Left and Right who fervently wish the Morrison government gone: the Essential poll released yesterday shows Labor and the Coalition neck-and-neck on both primary and two-party preferred votes, with 8 per cent undecided. It also indicates summer’s voter anger with Morrison is cooling, with his satisfaction rating recovering from a recent low. For all Morrison and the government’s faults, is the game still afoot?’ This is from an Email from The Spectator Australia https://spectator.com.au/