Wilson, Weatherill, Wyatts: The winners and losers of the week in politics
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The Coopers Brewery brouhaha, energy policy and the WA election dominated the week's news, but who ended up on top?
Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas, hosts of the Party Room podcast, pick their winners and losers.
Winner: Tim Wilson
Patricia Karvelas: Tim Wilson has been the most effective at articulating the case for liberalism and for ensuring that the Liberal Party maintains its liberal values in the face of the One Nation/Liberal Party deal and its symbolism. He came out after the WA election and made the point that the Liberal Party shouldn't be "One Nation lite".
He's a really interesting backbencher to watch. Obviously he came into Parliament with a high profile, having been a human rights commissioner, but he seems increasingly to be a backbencher who's not afraid to say what he thinks, and not afraid to get involved in the big battle of ideas.
I think the other example of him doing that this week was in that very contentious advertisement where he debated gay marriage with fellow Liberal MP Andrew Hastie for the Bible Society. He is always front and centre of every debate and doesn't shirk from having an argument or trying to reach as many people as he can with his views.
Loser: Common sense
Patricia Karvelas: When SA Premier Jay Weatherill and Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg had a public brawl in front of cameras, voters became the losers again as our political leaders put petty politics in the spotlight.
Weatherill clashed with Frydenberg during a weirdo press conference that descended into a brutal fight over energy policy. The exchange went viral for all the wrong reasons. It showed politicians at their worst.
Winner: Claire from the Finance Department video
Fran Kelly: Poor Claire has been slammed for weeks after being credited with coming up with the line about "paleo pear and banana bread" in the infamous video spruiking the Finance Department's graduate program. She was probably even recognised by people on the street.
But it turns out it wasn't her idea at all, it was someone on the crew of the production company. The deputy secretary of the Finance Department, who first made that claim during Senate Estimates, has written to the Senate committee correcting the record, making Claire the winner this week.
Loser: Coal
Fran Kelly: Coal is the loser this week. All the money being spent on energy — $2 billion from the Federal Government, $550 million from the South Australian Government — is being put into renewables, which is ultimately there because we know we need to replace carbon-emitting fossil fuels as we march inexorably towards the 2050 Paris target of zero emissions.
So, the writing's on the wall: we're going to have to phase out these heavy emitters, or at least clean them up dramatically, and while we're doing that, public investment will be in renewable energy like pump hydro, energy storage and gas.
Winners: Ken Wyatt and Ben Wyatt
Patricia Karvelas: Ken Wyatt and Ben Wyatt are very successful Indigenous politicians who've made it to the top of their game — obviously Ken Wyatt is in the Turnbull ministry, a Liberal, and Ben Wyatt, the first Indigenous treasurer in the country, as part of Western Australia's new Labor government.
They're related. In fact, Ben Wyatt told me Ken Wyatt was first knocking at his door after the election win, waking him up to congratulate him. Even though they're on different sides of the political fence, I love the solidarity between Indigenous men who've made it to the top of politics, a system that hasn't always been inclusive of difference.
And a hat-tip on this one: Ken Wyatt says he wants to see Ben Wyatt become the first Indigenous premier in the country. He's possibly stoking a few leadership tensions there, but I think he means that genuinely.
Topics: government-and-politics, coal, alternative-energy, federal-government, federal---state-issues, australia, wa, sa
