Daily Archives: April 19, 2021

There are legitimate concerns over the legality of the Liberal Party's attempts to block the registration of The New Liberals, writes their Leader Victor Kline.

AS THE LEADER of The New Liberals (TNL), I received a call from a senior member of the Liberal Party some months ago. He told me that when we applied for registration of our party name with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), the procedure was that anotification would be published allowing anyone who wanted to object to registration to do so within 28 days.

He said that the Liberal Party would object on the basis that our name might mislead voters. He pointed out that such an objection would have no legal basis because three Federal Court judgeshad said that the Liberal Party could not lock up'a generic word like "liberal"and try to make it their property.

He cautioned that the AEC might choose to ignore the law and find against us anyway. He refused to be further drawn on why that would be. But most importantly, he pointed out that, whilst we would have avenues of appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and the Federal Court or the High Court, these would be extremely time-consuming.

This, he said, was the Liberal Partys main purpose:to delay us through endless litigation so that we would still not be registered by the time the election came round. In that event, wecould not stand candidates under our party name and logo. And that they further hoped to bankrupt us with legal costs along the way.

As a barrister myself, I researched his legal advice and found it to be correct in every detail. I was,of course, curious as to why a senior member of the Party which was about to try to litigate us into extinction, would call to warn me and give me details of what they would try to do to us.

Given that he had been so accurate on the legal side of things, I anticipated that he would be right about the fundamental fact that the Liberal Party would lodge a challenge.I was surprised, when I rang our contact at the AEC, Tim, right on close of business on the final day allowed to lodge an objection, to find that no objection had been lodged.

However, Timrang me the following Monday to say that there had been an objection lodged after the close of business but before midnight. He was told to explain to me how they considered that to be a valid objection. I said that my understanding of the law was that anything received after close of business did not meet the requirement of "receipt"before the deadline because there was no oneto receive it.

Without responding to that, he moved on to explain that the next step was for a delegate of the Commissioner to examine the objection to ensure it met formal requirements.Once that was done, we would be sent, probably the next day, the identity of the objector and their written objection.

A week later I hadnt heard from the AEC contactand so I called him to see what the delay was. He couldnt really explain that, but said we should hear soon. In the end, we didnt hear for a month, when I was rung by another AEC official, Karen, who said that Tim (with whom we had been dealing for months) had been taken off our case and that she was now handling it.

Karen told me that we would now finally be told who the objector was and be allowed to see the documents in support of their objection. When I asked her why there had been such a delay, when all that was required was a 30-second scan of the documentsand when she knew how crucial time was to us, she just laughed and said "oh, you know how we bureaucrats are".

I then asked her to provide me with evidence of the time the Liberal Party documents were received at the AEC. She refused to comply. I explained that we were fully entitled in law to see evidence of this crucial aspect. She again said that it would not be possible to show us the covering document with a timestamp.

I asked her to provide me with reasons why she was refusing a perfectly proper and normal request, at which time she put me on hold and got her boss, Rob.

Rob also refused to show me this crucial piece of evidence. I explained to him, as I had explained to Karen, that I had strong reasons to believe the objection was not received before the close of business on the last day, for the very obvious reason that Tim had told me so.

Rob then assured me that the documents had been received before the close of business. I asked him how Tim could bewrong about such an important matter, especially when we were the only objection case they had.

He did not answer.He again refused to provide the proof of receipt. And that is where we left it.

I have now written to Mr Tom Rogers, Australian Electoral Commissioner, detailing what I have reported here, and formally requesting that we be sent proof of receipt. I pointed out to Mr Rogers that a failure to do so would amount to a denial of procedural fairness, which would render any decision he or his delegate made against us, void in law. Weawait his response.

Victor Klineis the leader of The New Liberals, a writer and a barrister, whose practice focuses on pro bono work for refugees and asylum seekers.

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Liberal Party seeks to prevent The New Liberals from registering - Independent Australia

Liberal Leader David Honey is standing by his decision to hire a man who quit Richard Courts government in disgrace.

Jack Gilleece resigned in 1999 after a conflict of interest was uncovered where he was conducting media work for a number of corporate firms in Perth.

An inquiry found he earned $46,000 while moonlighting as a freelance media advisor, on top of earning $144,000 a year as executive director of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Mr Gilleece has now been employed as a media consultant for the WA Liberals, and David Honey said he has full faith in his abilities.

Jack Gilleece is a highly respected corporate media advisor, he told Liam Bartlett.

22 years has gone by since that time, and my understanding of that time is that Jack actually believed he was entitled to do that.

He is someone who I think has a very keen political mind, and someone who will give me good advice on a range of political issues.

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Why the WA Liberal Leader has hired a former disgraced government advisor - 6PR

Christine Holgate's $20,000 spend is pretty tame when you consider the Liberals squander $450,000 a year on Australia Post directors.

Christine Holgate not only lost her job but took a severe reputation hit for trying to reward staff for hard work. Her only actual error was buying Cartier watches rather than sending her executive team and partners to a Bledisloe Cup game. She should have known better we do sports in Australia, not luxury items.

Her $20,000 expenditure for four watches looks trivial compared with the $450,000 retirement scheme the Liberal Party extracts from Australia Post annually. What you say? Thats the equivalent of 90 Cartier watches a year.

The Liberal Party appears to use board positions as a thank you for loyal dedication. If you were concerned that government or party officials were poorly paid and not keeping up with the private sector, take some comfort that their post-retirement fun is looked after.

The good old Australia Post with its dedicated posties is not immune to government board stacking. Four of the eight board members are highly linked to the Liberals.

Heres who they are and what they got:

I am not an expert on Holgate-gate, but I know one thing: people in glass houses should not offer up cushy board postings.

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If you havent joined us yet, subscribe today to get your first 12 weeks for $12 and get the journalism you need to navigate the spin.

Peter FrayEditor-in-chief of Crikey

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Four Cartier watches? Bah! Libs hand out the equivalent of 90 a year to party hacks - Crikey

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Getty

When four liberal lawmakers came to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to roll out legislation to add seats to the high court, they may have had the base of the Democratic Party strongly behind them, but their party leaders across the street in the Capitoland many of their colleaguesmight as well have been residing in a different political universe.

Just before Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the lead Senate sponsor of the bill to pack the court, took the microphone outside the Supreme Court, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters at her weekly press conference that it was going nowhere fast.

I have no intention to bring it to the floor, she said.

Later that afternoon, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus and a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the partys leadership team hadnt discussed the legislationat all.

I haven't heard too much about it one way or the other, Jeffries, who has not taken a position on adding seats, told The Daily Beast. No one within the Democratic caucus has said anything to me about it yet... We just had a leadership meeting, and this didnt come up.

Top Democrats surely know, however, that among many of their voters, this issue is hardly an afterthought. In four years, Donald Trump shifted the high court to the right with three successful confirmations. And with every addition, Democratic support grew for adding seats to the bench.

Now that Democrats have control over the White House, House and Senate, liberals say its time to act. The leaders of the pushJudiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Sen. Markey, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)acknowledged this was just the first step in a potentially long but existentially important campaign. But the imprimatur of Nadler made Thursdays first step more forceful.

I wish we did not have to stand here today, said Jones, a freshman progressive, at the press conference. I wish we didn't have a far-right Supreme Court majority that is hostile to democracy itself. But here we are. And the fact is, if we want to save our democracy, we must act before it is too late by restoring balance to the Supreme Court.

Story continues

Among a broad swath of Democrats, though, this push is seen as politically toxicespecially for the swing-district lawmakers who will determine whether the party retains its House majority in 2022.

Up until now, those frontline Democrats could keep their distance from the court debates, which were historically the purview of the Senate. But the introduction of this bill on court-packing now puts them on the spot on this touchy issueand Republicans are all too happy to exploit that development.

Conservative politicians and media buzzed with Thursdays press conference. Fox News aired it live. And House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made special note of the press conference during his weekly press conference, saying the idea should scare every American.

They didnt have to make it this big push, a senior House Republican aide told The Daily Beast. The outrage is justifiable, especially after the last four years, after they said we were trampling on normsnow theyre trying to add seats to the Supreme Court. Its something were going to make every one of their members own.

President Joe Biden, who has avoided taking a clear position on court expansion, moved to create a commission to study the issue further. Republicans intend to use this to put pressure on him, too.

Nothing symbolizes liberal overreach more than packing the court, said a senior Senate GOP aide. The American people recoil at the idea. It was too radical during Franklin Delano Roosevelts presidency, and if Joe Biden wants to maintain any claim of being a moderate he ought to shoot this down immediately.

In the early days of Bidens presidency, Democrats have confronted a challenge of taking control of Washingtons levers of power: reconciling the pent-up demands of their party base with what is politically possible. Biden and congressional leaders have satisfied progressives so far with a sweeping COVID relief plan and its dramatic expansion of the social safety net, and the infrastructure plans early designs on climate policy are promising to them as well.

Proponents of court expansion know that, in order to pass the bill, they would need to eliminate the Senates 60-vote threshold for making laws. There is increased Democratic support for that, but whats pushing them there isnt necessarily a desire to expand the court; its a fresh urgency to expand voting rights.

The issues place on the liberal back burner is notable, given how much space it has taken up in Democrats recent debates. During the 2020 presidential primary, Democratic hopefuls faced pressure to back the ideaor at least not reject it outright. That bar was cleared by several top candidates, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and now-Vice President Kamala Harris. A New York Times poll from October, when Trump and Senate Republicans rushed to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the 2020 election, found that 57 percent of Democrats nationwide backed court expansion.

But Jones, who was elected the 2020 freshman class representative to House leadership, said that its safe to presume we begin this process with the vast majority of Democratic members of the House being supportive of reforms to the Supreme Court.

Now, Jones said, we've got to get them to a place where they would agree to co-sponsor this legislation and vote for it, and that needs to take place before we even have discussions about whether there will be a floor vote on Supreme Court expansion.

Other Democrats do favor some court reforms, like term limits for justices, and most believe that Republicans dealt the most lethal blow to court norms by eliminating the 60-vote threshold to confirm high court nominees. Still, most are far from ready to support adding seats to the bench. A senior House Democrat, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), backed the legislation in a Thursday tweet, but there was hardly a rush to get on the bandwagon.

One of the partys most outspoken moderates, Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA), plainly said he was going to ignore the legislation.

There's just a lot of things we're working on right now that actually have a chance of getting done now that Biden is president, and I don't think that's one of them, Lamb told The Daily Beast. So I really mean it when I say I'm just not going to devote thought to it.

Jones dismissed the idea that Democrats would face real political ramifications for the push, arguing it would be key to ensuring their popular policies withstand a legal assault from conservatives.

People are not going to be losing elections over an effort to make sure that everyone has the right to vote in this country, said Jones, to make sure that we can continue to have the Affordable Care Act, which is deeply popular with the American people, and which the Supreme Court has been dismantling and a series of decisions over the past decade.

But the bills proponents acknowledge they have some selling to do, too, and they believe that politics will do some of that work for them. Asked about Pelosis opposition to bringing the bill to the floor, Nadler emphasized that the speaker didnt rule out the idea altogether.

Speaker Pelosi is a very good judge of events, and of history, said Nadler. And I believe that as events unfold and the court comes down with decisions obstructive of a womans right to choose, as they come down with decisions obstructive to the climate, as they come down with decisions obstructive to civil liberties, I believe that Speaker Pelosi and others will come along.

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Dem Leaders Quick to Kill Liberal Dream of Packing the Court - Yahoo News

A key element of the Liberal government's reconciliation agenda is facing resistance from Conservatives in the House of Commons and some First Nations critics on the outside.

Bill C-15, An Act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is at the second reading stageand is being discussed this week by members ofthestanding committee on Indigenous and northern affairs.

The proposed legislation aims to implement the UN declaration by ensuring federal laws respect Indigenous rights.

Some First Nation critics say the bill doesn't go far enoughand may end up restrictingthoserights.

"It doesn't seem like Canada has really learned its lesson from Oka to Wet'suwet'en to the Mi'kmaq fishermen," said Grand Chief Joel Abram of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians.

"Our first choice is to have it go back to the drawing board."

UNDRIPaffirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to their language, culture, self-determination and traditional lands.

It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Canada's Conservative government voted against itat the time, citingconcerns about natural resources and land use but then endorsed it in 2010.

In 2019, an NDP private member's bill to implement UNDRIPdied on the order paper after Conservative senators warning it could have unintended legal and economic consequences slowed its progress. Last December, the Liberal government introduced a new form of the legislation.

Conservatives again are raising concerns mainlyover UNDRIP'srequirement that governmentsseek"free, prior and informed consent" from Indigenous communities before pursuing any project that affectstheir rights andterritory.

"When a First Nation says no to a project, does that mean it's dead?" asked Jamie Schmale, Conservative Crown-Indigenous relations critic, at Tuesday's standing committee hearingon Bill C-15.

"It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and potentially the courts to decide that definition."

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, legal counsel to the Assembly of First Nations, said those fears are misplaced.

"Consent is not a veto over resource development," Turpel-Lafond said.

"What this is doing is saying we want to end the process of this very colonial approach to taking Indigenous peoples' lands, supporting projects and developments on those lands without their consent, engagement and involvement."

Turpel-Lafondsaidthe language in the bill should be made clearer by, for example, replacing the word "discrimination" with "racism".

She also said the bill has promise and aims to closeagap by reinforcingexisting rights that haven't been respected.

"The most important thing it does is it puts an obligation on Canada to conduct its policies and conduct its interactions with Indigenous peoples on the basis of recognizing Indigenous people have rights," Turpel-Lafond said.

"Since as long as there's been a Canada, it's been doing it the opposite way, which is denying that Indigenous peoples have rights and ... a very high-conflict relationship. The bill is meant to shift that."

In a statement to CBC News, Justice Minister David Lametti's office said the government remains open to any proposed improvements to the bill.

"Our government has been clear in recognizing the realities of discrimination and racism that Indigenous peoples face in Canada, and we continue to work in partnership with Indigenous peoples to find and implement concrete solutions to address them," said the statement.

WATCH: Inuit leader says government bill is a test of Indigenous rights

Natan Obed ispresidentof the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which co-developed the bill with the federal government. He told CBC News the legislation creates a new avenuefor Indigenous people to seek justice in the courts.

"This legislation really is a test on whether or not specific political parties or specific jurisdictions accept that Indigenous peoples have human rights," Obed said.

"If governments are still in the place where they're fighting against Indigenous peoples rights, what they're really saying is that human rights apply to some of their constituency, but not all. I hope that political parties can understand that this is actually what is at stake here."

Russ Diabo, a member of the Mohawks of Kahnawake and apolicy analyst, went to Geneva in the 1980s and 1990s to develop the declaration with the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

He said Canada's interpretation of UNDRIPdoesn't advance the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and allows the government to keep the upper hand under the law.

"Bill C-15 is going to entrench all of that, the colonial status quo," Diabo said.

Diabo said the bill reinforces Canada's existing policies on modern treaties and self-government, which he believes are in breach of the UN declaration's standards.

That, he said, will make it harder for Indigenous communities to blockresource projects they don't want.

"(UNDRIP)will be used domestically against land defenders and water protectors to say that they're acting outside of the law when they go and stop projects or activities that they feel are infringing or affecting their aboriginal treaty rights," Diabo said.

"You're going to see more conflict."

The provinces alsocould play spoilerand undermine the federal bill if they decline to pass their own laws on UNDRIP, since natural resources fallunder their jurisdiction, Diabo said.

"It doesn't deal with provincial jurisdiction and that's going to be the big problem."

Half a dozen provinces already have asked the government to delay the bill over worries it could compromise natural resource projects.

NDP Premier John Horgan's government in B.C. is the only one so far that has passed a provincial law implementing the declaration.

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Liberals' bill on Indigenous rights getting pushback from Conservatives, First Nations critics - CBC.ca

The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling in its biggest religion case this term, but a new report makes a victory for the Catholic foster care agency involved feel like a foregone conclusion.

The study, conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago, shows that advocates of religious rights have logged an 81% success rate before the Supreme Court in the 16 years since Chief Justice John Roberts took the helm.

Plainly, the Roberts court has ruled in favor of religious organizations, including mainstream Christian organizations, more frequently than its predecessors, the study explains, noting that religions win rate used to hover around 50%.

According to the researchers, religions current hot streak primarily stems from changes in the makeup of the court rather than other factors, like growing cultural hostility toward faith.

In the Roberts era, its become almost unthinkable for conservative justices to rule against people of faith, they said.

The justices who are largely responsible for this shift are Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, the study argues. They are all clearly the most pro-religion justices on the Supreme Court going back at least until World War II.

Critics of the Roberts courts approach to religious freedom have seized on this finding to call for an overhaul of the legal system. They want the Biden administration to move quickly to add liberal jurists to the bench.

Its time for court reform and expansion! tweeted the Freedom From Religion Foundation on April 6.

What nearly all these calls for reform failed to note is that conservatives rarely acted alone when handing down victories for faith groups.

In 9 of the 13 cases counted as Roberts-era wins for religious freedom in the study, liberals joined with conservatives in either a 7-2 or unanimous decision, according to a Deseret News analysis.

The new conservative majority is essential to the high-profile cases, but not to all the others, said Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and religious studies at the University of Virginia, in an email.

For the most part, liberal justices only peel away en masse from their conservative colleagues when religious freedom is in tension with another important human right, he said.

Most of the hot-button cases present conflicting interests that the liberals care about more, like gay rights, contraception or public health, Laycock said.

Even that assessment slightly overstates the gap between liberals and conservatives, said Richard Garnett, director of the program on church, state and society at the University of Notre Dame. As recently as last year, two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, joined with conservatives to rule in favor of two Catholic schools wanting to sidestep employment nondiscrimination law.

That decision was 7-2 even though the governments interest in these cases is limiting employment discrimination, he said.

The court also ruled 7-2 last year in favor of the Trump administration and a group of Catholic nuns in upholding a policy enabling moral and religious objectors to birth control to avoid covering it in employee health plans.

Citing these and other recent decisions, Garnett argued that the Roberts court as a whole not just its conservative members should be seen as supportive of religion.

At the very least, Kagan and Breyer have earned that designation, since both fall in the top half of the studys list of the most pro-religion justices to serve since 1953. Kagan is just a few spots behind her conservative colleagues.

I think its a mistake to frame the religious liberty question in terms of present-day left and right labels, Garnett said.

However, Steven K. Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University, believes there is a difference in intensity of conservative and liberal support for religious freedom that justifies concerns about a pro-religion bias.

Looking at the data, its clear that the courts conservative justices are putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of faith groups, he said.

Breyer and Kagan have been more willing to sometimes decide against religious claimants. They take it on a case-by-case basis, Green said. Conservatives are just kind of going in lockstep about this.

In some cases, conservative justices have actually presented themselves as defenders of faith, he added.

Justices Alito and Thomas in their opinions have used language that mirrors the culture wars, like the state is out to get religious believers, Green said.

For example, in a scathing dissent criticizing the courts July decision to allowing the state of Nevadas COVID-19 related restrictions on churches to stand, Alito wrote, The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine or to engage in any other game of chance. But the governor of Nevada apparently has differently priorities.

When you add opinions like that to the significant winning rate that religion has had, it does seem to suggest that some of these cases are being decided on the basis of justices ideology and not so much on the facts, Green said.

Such an approach to decision-making would always be controversial, but its especially so right now since Christians, rather than members of other faiths, are the primary benefactors. Many observers question why the court needs to repeatedly intervene on behalf of a religion that has historically had plenty of political and cultural power.

Theres been a shift in the character of the religious liberty claims that make it to the Supreme Court, Green said.

Critics of the court sometimes imply that this shift stems from Christian favoritism. But others argue that it makes sense for Christian groups to need more help these days.

The courts critics say it is now protecting the religious majority, but thats not true, Laycock said. By definition, no one comes to the court seeking legal protection until after it has lost in the political process.

The Catholic agency involved in the current Supreme Court case, for example, was unable to convince the city of Philadelphia to exempt it from anti-discrimination rules governing the foster care system. The agency lost its government contracts when the city learned it was not willing, for religious reasons, to asses whether same-sex couples were fit to be parents. Catholic officials say the citys decision to freeze it out of contracting work violates the Constitutions free exercise clause.

There is no religious majority in the U.S. anymore, Laycock said. We are all minorities now.

The idea that American Christianity is vulnerable may be a difficult development to grasp, but that doesnt make it false, Laycock added. People who claim otherwise may be motivated by animosity toward conservative Christian beliefs.

Conservative Christians are one of the least popular minorities because their public spokespeople so often sound hostile or even hateful to so many others (and) because they would deny fundamental rights they disapprove of to so many people who desperately need the protection, he said, noting that their support for former President Donald Trump further damaged their reputation.

Whats often forgotten is that Christian victories at the Supreme Court benefit more than just Christians, Garnett said. In the context of free exercise cases in particular, precedents set by the Roberts court make it easier for members of any faith group to live out their beliefs.

Its not a zero-sum game. Its hardly the case that its Christians versus others, he said.

And, despite the publicity that surrounds their lawsuits, Christians are still less likely than people of other faiths to be involved in religious freedom battles if you look at the legal system as a whole, Garnett said.

The vast majority of religious liberty claims involve members of minority religious groups, not evangelical Christians, he said.

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Is the Supreme Court biased in favor of conservative Christianity? - Deseret News