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In better times, there likely would have been little reaction to the announcement in late March that an experienced investigator in the office of the federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner who also happens to be the sister-in-law of a senior Liberal cabinet minister would serve as interim ethics commissioner for six months.

In those better times, the opposition parties and the public would have been apt to accept Martine Richard as an honest broker who would act impartially and recuse herself from cases should the need arise.

After all, shes done so in the past, notably in 2018 when her brother-in-law, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, was investigated and found to have broken the Conflict of Interest Act by taking part in a decision to award a fisheries licence to a group linked to his wifes cousin.

That her original appointment to the ethics office happened a decade ago under a Conservative prime minister is also a signal that she is non-partisan. And given the number of times the ethics commissioner has busted the Liberals for violations since Ms. Richards hiring, there is little call to question her professionalism, or that of the broader office.

Except that these are not ordinary times, and Ms. Richard is another person, after David Johnston, whose credibility has been tainted by their association with a Liberal government known for its serial conflicts of interest.

These are the same Liberals that Mario Dion, the former ethics commissioner whose early retirement in February created the need for an interim replacement, found to be so oblivious to even the most straightforward conflicts of interest that he suggested on his way out the door that the Trudeau government send its ministers and parliamentary secretaries to his office for training.

And with good reason. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and two of his current and former senior ministers Mr. Leblanc and Bill Morneau have all violated the Conflict of Interest Act in an impressive variety of ways.

Lesser cabinet members have done it, too. Trade Minister Mary Ng and Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen were both caught giving lucrative government contracts to close friends and family members.

And just this year, Mr. Trudeaus parliamentary secretary, Greg Fergus, was caught violating the act by improperly intervening on behalf of a television station seeking a broadcast licence from the CRTC.

We wrote at the time of Mr. Dions announced departure that he had identified the real problem: a culture in the Liberal Party that starts at the top, and in which too many caucus members are indifferent to the conflict-of-interest rules governing MPs.

That toxic culture has created a party that appears to have lost interest in basic ethics, and it is rubbing off on much of what the Liberal government touches.

That includes Mr. Johnston, a man Mr. Trudeau calls a family friend. His appointment last month as the governments special rapporteur investigating foreign election interference might have gone over better had, prior to that, the Prime Minister demonstrated the faintest interest in avoiding conflicts of interest.

Instead, Mr. Trudeau himself violated the Conflict of Interest Act on two different occasions, his former finance minister did it once, two of his junior ministers were unaware that the public purse is not a bank account to be used for the benefit of best buddies and immediate family, and his parliamentary secretary missed the memo regarding his obligation not to interfere with a quasi-judicial tribunal.

And so any potential calculation that Mr. Johnstons well-earned reputation as an honest broker would bolster the Trudeau government has backfired. It has instead had the opposite effect and indelibly tainted the credibility of the special rapporteur process.

Mr. Trudeau breaks the rules that preserve the publics faith in the integrity of government, then he or his government appoints family friends and relatives to positions that oversee government, and he expects the public and the opposition to accept this at face value.

Like we said, maybe a prime minister who played by the rules would have the credibility to pull off the kinds of appointments Mr. Trudeau has overseen lately.

But then again, that kind of prime minister would never permit such appointments in the first place.

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Globe editorial: The Liberals' many ethics gaffes cast a long shadow - The Globe and Mail

The confidence-and-supply agreement between the Liberals and NDP is now just over a year old. The primary takeaway from the experience to date might be merelythat such a thing is possible that two competing parties can find agreement on a set of ideasand work together to implement those policies.

For the parties involved, the greatest lesson might be the value of communication and building personal relationships.

"When I contrast this minority government with the last minority government, there's just way more communication. And that, I think, is what helps keep us out of the ditch," said an NDP source, speaking on the condition they not be identified by name.

"Now that I've been through this for a while, I can totally see how it would be possible to end up in a confidence crisis that nobody meant to engineer. Just because nobody's communicating."

When opposing sides are left to interpret each other's actions and guess at motivations, suspicions are heightened and needless conflict can follow. So while the Liberal-NDP deal demands progress on the 27 policy items it covers, what it really requires is dialogue.

"Having set those structures in the agreement so we don't leave communication to chance, but there are structured meetings where it has to happen that's been really helpful, both in times when things are going smoothly, but also helpful when things aren't going smoothly," the source said.

"And I think it's also helped to build relationships at many levels between staff, between critics and ministers, between MPs, between the leaders, that [are] also helpful in kind of steering the ship."

A senior government source, also speaking on the condition they not be named, agreed.

"By working with folks closely, you learn how to talk to folks and that helps you in good and bad. And there's relationships and capital and goodwill to call on in good and bad," the government source said. "It's a relationship and you need to be building it."

The value of communication is the basic message of every guide to marriage. But if the notion of relationship-building seems novel in the context of Canadian politics, it's because public communication between parties consists almost entirely of accusations, boasts and taunts.

Judged only by question period, it seems the participants can barely stand to be in the same room together and are only capable of speaking in partisantalking points.

At least some of that conflict is necessary it creates accountability and gives expression to the differing views within a pluralistic society. But minority Parliaments cannot function without at least some amount of compromise and cooperation, at least not for long.

And if minority Parliaments are now more likely to be the rule than the exception, parties are going to need to work on their communication skills (or Canadian voters are going to have to get used to having elections every two years).

In most European countries where proportional representationessentially guarantees that no single party will win a majority of seats in the legislature parties working together is the norm. Even within the United States Congress (no one's idea of an ideal legislature)there is a rich history of members working across party lines. In such systems, some amount of cooperation is considered a requirement.

Not that such things were completely unheard of in Parliament before now. But a confidence-and-supply agreement seems to require a much greater degree of coordination. Liberal ministers can't simply call their NDP counterparts with a head's-up the night before a new program or bill is announced. For the most part, conversations are starting earlier in the policy-making process, with ministers and critics going back and forth over ideas and policy design.

Things have not always gone smoothly. Outside the 27-point agreement there have been notable points of conflict first over proposed amendments to new firearms legislation, then over the question of whether Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, would be called to testify about foreign interference at a parliamentary committee. The parties still regularly disagree and air those disagreements in forums like question period.

But the deal has held. The government figures it has completed 16 of the 27 items (not including the plan for dental care that was laid out in last month's budget) and this Parliament has now been in session for more than 500 days. If it survives until the scheduled end of the Liberal-NDP deal in 2025, it will be the longest-lasting minority Parliament of the last 60 years (the modern record is 888 days).

Whether the Liberal-NDP agreement will serve as a model for the future will depend to some degree on both politics and math.

There have been 10 minority Parliaments since the NDP first contested an election in 1962. In only five of those Parliaments did the Liberals and NDP combine to occupy a clear majority of seats in the House of Commons, as they do now. In all other cases, they would have had to work with a third party to be sure they could pass legislation.

In cases such as 2004 or 2008, that third party could have been the Bloc Quebecois. But it's not clear how willing any party will be in the future to make a formal deal with a separatist party. In 2008, when the Liberals and NDP attempted to form a coalition government with the Bloc's support, the Conservatives effectively weaponized the involvement of separatists to denounce the deal.

The Conservatives themselves could have a hard time finding a dance partner. During the two minority Parliaments that ran from 2006 to 2011, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were able to govern by either winning support for legislation on a case-by-case basis or by simply daring the other parties to vote against them and trigger an election (the Liberals of the day made a habit of standing down).

But federal politics may have changed in significant ways since then particularly as it relates to climate change. Would the Liberals or NDP be willing to work with, or even just avoid toppling, a Conservative government that was set on rolling back or outright repealing policies designed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Would either the Liberals or NDP allow a government led by Pierre Poilievre to follow through on his promises to scrap the federal carbon tax and clean fuel regulations?

While the Liberals and NDP may have had a relatively easy time finding points of agreement, it should be possible for nearly any two parties to find some amount of common ground. But could two parties possibly bridge a chasm as wide as the current left-right split on climate change?

For now, the Liberals might be keen to point out that they're working with another party and to contrast that with what they call the ConservativeParty's opposition and obstruction. And Conservatives might be happy to portray themselves as standing resolute against the progressive tide.

But the future might require that all parties learnthe value of communication, relationships and everything elsenecessary to ensure Parliament can function for four years at a time.

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The Liberals and NDP are learning to work together. Is that a model ... - CBC News

The defeated conservative governments recorded near-identical primary votes: 35.7 per cent for the Liberals at the South Australian state election in March 2022, 35.7 per cent for the Coalition at the federal election in May 2022, and 35.4 per cent for the Coalition at last months NSW state election.

Recent elections have shown the two-party system is officially cooked. Alex Ellinghausen

But Labor did not get above 40 per cent in its own right in any of its successful campaigns. Only Peter Malinauskas and Labor took power decisively in South Australia with a primary vote of exactly 40 per cent, and a two-party vote after the distribution of preferences of 54.7 per cent. , and a two-party preferred vote of 52.1 per cent, while with a primary vote of 37 per cent and a 2PP of 53.7 per cent.

The two-party system as we knew it in the 20th century, when a new government started with a primary vote of around 50 per cent, and its opponent still had a base in the low 40s, is officially cooked.

But it is the federal and state Liberals who are now facing an existential threat, with predominantly white and male party rooms. The Liberals are the least representative major party that the federal parliament has seen; a factor reinforced by the, in Melbournes outer east, last Saturday.

The party of Robert Menzies is outnumbered 26 to 30 in the lower house by their coalition colleagues from the Queensland LNP and the National Party. And the 10 city-based Liberals outside Brisbane are matched by the 10 independents and Greens.

Labor, on the other hand, can afford a record low entry vote into power because it has proven, at a state level at least in the 21st century so far, that it knows how to turn narrow first-term wins into second- and even third-term landslides.

Peter Dutton should understand this dual equation the vulnerability of his own side to the great shifts in Australian society, and the precedent on the Labor side for a decade-long rule across the national and big state parliaments following an era of divisive Coalition governments.

The loss of Aston was catastrophic not merely because it was the first time since 1920 that a federal government had picked up a seat from an opposition at a byelection. It is because Victorians have done this to the Liberals before at state level.

When Steve Bracks led Labor into minority government in 1999, there was an assumption that the Coalition would be competitive at the next state election because it no longer had the one-man drag on their vote former premier Jeff Kennett. Insert Scott Morrison in Kennetts place and you can appreciate why the Albanese government will be wargaming another byelection upset if and when the former prime minister resigns from his southern Sydney electorate of Cook.

Labor won the byelection for Kennetts seat of Burwood, in Melbournes middle east, in 1999, and then the byelection for the former National Party leader and deputy premier Pat McNamaras rural seat of Benalla in 2000. Neither had ever been held by Labor before, and while Benalla returned to the Coalition fold in 2002, Burwood remained in Labor hands during the next two Brackslides in 2002 and 2006. Today, it is part of the new seat of Ashwood, which Labor won with a primary vote of 40.3, and a 2PP of 56.2 per cent, at last Novembers state election landslide for Daniel Andrews government.

Dutton may not have bothered with the finer details of Victorian state politics when he was a rising star in John Howards Coalition government. But Bracks is the leader who is closest in manner, and underestimated political appeal to Albanese. Neither are white Anglo men. Bracks has Lebanese heritage; Albanese is half Italian. Neither man is consciously ethnic; in fact, they are routinely surprised when constituents share stories from homelands to which they themselves have no direct connection. Bracks and Albanese have diversity projected onto them. It is innocent in many ways. But in the head-to-head between Albanese and Dutton, in a nation that is majority migrant now, it matters more than the latter probably appreciates.

Dutton is already sick of hearing the advice from his own side that the Liberals have a problem with female voters, with young Australia who cant afford to enter the housing market, and with migrant communities, especially Chinese Australians whom he helped alienate with his war talk.

Illustration by John Shakespeare.

But there is a structural paradox that he and his colleagues ignore at their peril. It is inevitable that diversity will accelerate in every state.

Take a step back from the slicing and dicing of the electorate by cohorts and consider the basic question of population growth, through the concept of the Australian family tree, with First Australian roots, an Old Australian trunk and New Australian branches. The trunk represents non-Indigenous people who were born in this country, as were their parents and grandparents, while the branches cover migrants and their locally born children.

At the 2021 census, New Australia formed the majority with 50.8 per cent of the then population of 25.4 million; Old Australia was 45.4 per cent and First Australia 3.8 per cent. Almost two years on, the population is one million larger and the branches and the roots will have increased their respective shares at the expense of the slower-growing trunk.

We know this because of what happened in the boom years before lockdown. Migrants were responsible for the majority of the nations population growth for the first time since the gold rushes of the 1850s.

Migrants accounted for 60 per cent of Sydneys population growth and 54 per cent of Melbournes between 2011 and 2021. In Darwin, it was 62 per cent, Hobart 55 per cent, Canberra 46 per cent, Adelaide 44 per cent and Perth 42 per cent. Brisbane was the outlier at 39 per cent because it had a more even mix of growth thanks to internal migration. Yet once you add the children of migrants, 69 per cent of the growth in the Queensland capital came from New Australia. In Sydney, the figure was 97 per cent; Melbourne 88 per cent and Perth 75 per cent the three key cities from which the Liberals were evicted by Labor and the teals at the last federal election.

Australia, seen through Duttons LNP binoculars in Brisbane, looks like another country. But even Brisbane is moving closer to the cosmopolitan south. Remember that Greens picked up three seats here two from the LNP and one from Labor. They did this in the whiter parts of the city where young professional renters are moving the pendulum to the left.

The most brazen aspect of Duttons on the referendum for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament is the attempt to shake the leaves of our family tree. Migrant communities are among the key swinging voters in the referendum soft Yes voters, according to the public and private polls, who could be persuaded to vote no if change is seen as too risky, or complicated.

What Dutton seems to have forgotten is that Howard himself took an equivalent dark path as opposition leader in the late 1980s when he criticised Asian migration. It cost Howard the Liberal leadership at the time, and placed a personal re-entry barrier to the job which he finally cleared in 1995 by apologising for his comments. Howard helped make the Liberals electable again by dropping his ideological baggage on Medicare, industrial relations and migration. He met the electorate on its terms, while articulating a positive agenda around core Liberal values.

Where is the equivalent work being done by Dutton and his colleagues, either federally, or in basket case states or Victoria, South Australia or Western Australia?

On the evidence so far, Dutton believes he has nothing to learn. He went to work immediately after the Aston debacle determined to double down on the politics of division that helped make the Liberals a minor party across large parts of the country.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. .

The rest is here:
The two-party system is cooked, and the Liberals are leftovers - Sydney Morning Herald

During the past week, European liberals have joined in commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. The watershed deal, signed in 1998, ended 30 years of violence and conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles.

The 10 April anniversary was a chance for both the public and politicians to reflect on the work that went into the agreement and following peace, and to commemorate the victims of the conflict.

On the anniversary, Naomi Long, leader of ALDE Party member Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, spoke on the importance of the Good Friday Agreement, while highlighting the need for reforms:

As we mark the 25th anniversary of this historic agreement, I want to pay tribute to all those who played a role in the Good Friday Agreement.

However, the Good Friday Agreement was not perfect. The structures created rigid identity politics, which gives less weight in the Assembly and Executive to those who dont identify as unionist or nationalist.

If we are to move forward into the next 25 years with the optimism and hope offered by the Good Friday Agreement, then reform of the institutions for a new generation is key, she concluded.

In the Republic of Ireland, Tnaiste Michel Martin, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Defence and leader of ALDE Party member Fianna Fil, commented:

The ambition for the future has to be to realise both the potential of the Good Friday Agreement and to work out how we share this island in the future in a truly reconciled way and in a way that can give real opportunity to generations yet to be born.

ALDE Party member Fianna Fil hosted an event to honour the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement, including remarks from Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fil Taoiseach at the time and signatory of the Good Friday Agreement. ALDE Party Co-President and Irish Senator Timmy Dooley also took part in the event.

You can watch Fianna Fils anniversary video in full below or on YouTube.

In the European Parliament, MEPs marked the important anniversary during a plenary session on 29 March. During the ceremony, Barry Andrews MEP of Fianna Fil said:

"The peace in Northern Ireland is, in my view, one of the European Unions greatest achievements. It was the EU that provided the financial support through structural funds and the peace programme. It was the EU and its Single Market that made borders less relevant."

In his remarks to the plenary, European Council President Charles Michel added:

Peace in Ireland and in the European Union are staked to the same ideal. Exploiting the richness of diversity, rather than sowing division.

Photo credit: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

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Liberals mark 25th Anniversary of Good Friday Agreement - ALDE Party

The NSW Liberals will decide who takes the mantle of Opposition Leader nearly a month after they lost government.

The April 21 party room meeting, called by Dominic Perrottet on Thursday afternoon, comes after the former premier stood down the night of the coalition's election loss on March 25.

The meeting falls a day after the expected declaration of results in the upper house, where Liberal candidate Rachel Merton is hoping to score one of the final sets.

Jordan Lane is another Liberal with just one foot through the door of the party room.

The electoral commission will conduct a recount of Ryde over the weekend, after the first two counts had Mr Lane 50 votes ahead of Labor's Lyndal Howison on a margin of 0.05 per cent.

Former NSW attorney-general Mark Speakman is favoured to take the Liberal leadership and the Opposition Leader title.

The moderate Cronulla MP has his party's support to become opposition leader but speculation is rife he may have a tilt at former prime minister Scott Morrison's federal southern Sydney electorate of Cook if he quits.

Mr Speakman is yet to confirm he will actually run to replace Mr Perrottet, with Alister Henskens and conservative Anthony Roberts the other names put forward.

The three are considered the party's most experienced MPs following the coalition's March 25 election loss but so far only Mr Roberts has confirmed he will contest the leadership.

It comes as rumours swirl Mr Morrison will announce his retirement in May.

The Nationals last week re-elected leader Paul Toole and deputy leader Bronnie Taylor in their first formal meeting since the election.

Mr Toole saw off a challenge from Dubbo MP Dugald Saunders, who fell short by two votes in the 16-member party room.

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NSW Liberals land on date to consider leadership - The West Australian