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A month after Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott for the prime ministership, there was another coupin the Liberal Party.

The scene was Paddington, the affluent suburb in Sydney's eastern suburbs inTurnbull's electorate of Wentworth.

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Ahead of the release of a report into the 2016 election, where the Liberal Party scraped home, the party's director Tony Nutt has resigned.

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Elderly residents of Waterloo's social housing estate are determined to live their last days in the communities they have grown old in.

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Police report that a missing boy, taken from a Brisbane hospital, has been found in Newcastle.

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The 17-year-old has been charged with 74 offences over a series of school bomb threats across three states. Courtesy Seven News Melbourne.

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Police provide details of a missing boy taken from a Brisbane hospital.

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Long-time friend Mark Soper reads out a eulogy Andrew Chan wrote about himself before his execution in Indonesia.

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The Federal Police admit to illegally accessing a journalist's metadata while investigating allegations of an internal leak.

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The government now says it can't guarantee gas prices, a day after the Prime Minister said they should be halved.

Ahead of the release of a report into the 2016 election, where the Liberal Party scraped home, the party's director Tony Nutt has resigned.

Turnbull's son-in-law James Brown, an armyveteran turned academic, seized control of the Liberals' Paddington branch from long-time president and Woollahra councillorPeter Cavanagh.

Working with Brown behind the scenes was his close friend Andrew Bragg, a fellow branch member.

"I know he was backing James," Cavanagh said."Ibelieve he helped him to getpeople to turn up and vote."

Last Friday, the Liberal Party announced Bragg as the party's acting federal director following the resignation of stalwart Tony Nutt.

Unless something goes wrong duringhis probation, Bragg is expected to receive a permanent appointment inthe middle of the year.

That would put the little-known 32-year-old who has never run a state or federal election campaign in charge of theLiberals' organisational wing at one of the most challenging times in its history.

A damningofficial review of the last federal election campaign found the Liberals were comprehensively outgunned by Labor. The party's finances were so dire that Turnbull had to tip in almost $2 million of his own money to keep the campaign afloat. And the Liberals aretrailing in the polls, withBill Shorten increasingly confidentof winningthe next election.

The Liberal Party needs a hero andis set to turn to Bragg.

"People were a bit shocked," an insider close to Bragg said of his appointment.

"Everyone agrees we ran a terrible campaign in 2016 so it seems bizarre to put in someone without any nuts and bolts campaign experience.

"Not everyone thinks it was a wise decision."

Bragg's resume looks thin compared to his predecessors. When Brian Loughnane took the job he had beenchief-of-staff to two Liberal leaders and run the Victorian division of the party.Lynton Crosby had run the Queensland division. Andrew Robb had led the powerful National Farmers Federation and served as deputy federal director.

Bragg, by contrast, worked in senior policy roles at the Financial Services Council for seven years before joining the Liberal-aligned Menzies Research Centre as policy director.

"He's been considered more as a think-tank guy than a campaign director," a Liberal MP said. "But there was an absence of other candidates."

Federal directors are only chosen withthe blessing of the prime minister and that'strue of Bragg.

"The PM trusts Andrew and respects him," a Liberal source said. "He has complete loyalty to the PM and loyalty is important to Malcolm."

For several years Bragg, who declined to comment for this piece,was secretary of the Wentworth Federal Electoral Conference, thefundraising and campaigning vehicle in Turnbull's seat.

As well as being good friends with Brown, he was best man at the wedding of long-time Turnbull staffer David Bold.

While one confidante questions whether Bragg is"too close" to the PM, others point to his allies across the party.

Robb, who conducted the recent election review, is said to back his appointment as well as frontbenchers Josh Frydenberg and Alan Tudge.

Menzies Research Council executive director Nick Cater said: "A lot of people talkthe talk but he actually gets things done.

"He may not have the experience of a party insider but he certainly has the right skill set."

Cater has been impressed by Bragg's organisational skills, framing of policy issues and knowledge of digital media.

Businessman Tony Shepherd, who has worked closely with Bragg, said: "He's dynamic, has tonnes of energy and is strong on policy.

"He's a can-do person who brings a younger perspective to the job."

Bragg grew up in Shepparton in regional Victoria, where he attended the local Catholic school. While other students took gap years to travel overseas, he worked on the floors ofthe local fruit packing and dairy factories to save money to study accounting at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Many close to him express surprise he would take the backroomjob given his obvious ambitions to become a politician. Bragg unsuccessfully ranfor a Senate spot last year before narrowly missing out on preselection for theVictorian seat of Murray.

Victorian senator James Paterson, who entered the Senate at28, said Bragg is a "great liberal intellectual" who will one day enter Parliament.

"It's terrific to see the party place its trust and faith in a young person with ideas, energy and creativity," he said.

Another Liberal source, without excess optimism, said: "If we win the next election he can have a Senate seat in any state he wants."

More here:
Andrew Bragg: Can an inexperienced 32-year-old save the Liberal Party? - The Sydney Morning Herald

Immigration Minister AhmedHussensaid the federal government is clamping down on marriage fraud even as it scraps atwo-year co-habitation requirement for newcomers sponsored by their spouses.

Hussen said the conditional permanent residency, which was brought in by the Conservatives in 2012, wasleaving some women in harmful domestic situations.

"We're doing away with a measure that could potentially result in people choosing reluctantly to remain in abusive relationships as opposed to moving out and getting out of those abusive relationships," he said at a news conference in Toronto Friday.

The Conservative measure requirednewcomers to live in a conjugal relationship with their sponsoring spouse for two years or face deportation.

When the Conservatives enacted it, then immigration minister Jason Kenney said the change targeted con artistswho dupe Canadians into marriage then dump them once they get to Canada. Itwas also designed to deal with "marriages of convenience," where two persons pretend to be in love for one to gain entry to Canada, often in exchange formoney.

ButHussensaid the policy did not achieve itsintended outcomes, and that reversing course reflects the government's commitment to eradicating gender-based violence.

Rescinding the conditional permanent residency is also a recognition that the vast majority of marriages are genuine.

But Hussen said the government is "doubly committed" to detecting fraudulent marriages.

Frontline immigration officers will carry out stringent screening procedures, Hussen said. And a five-year waiting period will remain for people who have either sponsored a spouse or been sponsored themselves and who want to use the program again.

Continue reading here:
Liberals 'doubly committed' to tackling marriage fraud while ending 2-year spousal residency rule - CBC.ca

Can there be a classical liberal political science?

To answer that question, it is instructive to examine how classical liberal ideas have developed and what disciplines have shaped the classical liberal tradition most.

And to begin, we must acknowledge that contemporary scholarly classical liberalism has developed in an imbalanced way.

By far the greatest intellectual investment has been in economics.

There are good reasons for this, of course: the understanding of market processes and market ordering that liberal economists have given us is central to an appreciation of the counterintuitive idea that unplanned and decentralized voluntary action can yield beneficial social results.

The insight that the market economy is a spontaneous order has been a crucial one for the development of modern classical liberalism as a whole. And economists, those who study market processes and orders, have a disproportionate tendency to be sympathetic to open and liberal markets. Most of the founders of the Mont Pelerin Societythe organization that shaped the intellectual agenda of postwar classical liberalismwere economists (of one methodological stripe or another).

Somewhere behind economics, in an order I wouldnt know how to rank, come law and philosophy.

Classical liberal legal scholarship has encompassed both US constitutional law, recovering a sense of the commitment to liberty found in the US Constitutions protection of rights as well as its structure of federalism and separated powers; and private law, especially in the law-and-economics tradition.

Classical liberal philosophy has taught us a great deal about the meaning and intellectual structure of rights, liberty, and justice, and about the vision of human well-being and flourishing that animates a concern with freedom. And, in a broad way, these streams of research and scholarship in economics, law, and philosophy have complemented and enriched each other, contributing to the emergence of a distinctive kind of classical liberal social theorythe humane studies highlighted in the name of the organization that hosts this website.

In contrast, political science, including the kind of political theory that is done within political science, has been relatively neglected in this ongoing scholarly program. (So has sociology; another topic for another time.)

This is not, as some readers will be tempted to think, because political scientists are sympathetic to the state as economists are sympathetic to the market. Political scientists are in routinely in the business of studying things we dont find attractive: wars, coups, revolutions, genocides, civil wars, authoritarianism, populism, voter ignorance, and institutional dysfunction of all kinds.

Yet the study of those topics through the lens of political science ought to be a key part of a classical liberal social theory.

We dont have to agree with those who think that markets and civil society are constituted by the state to see that they may be either facilitated or jeopardized by political outcomes. War, civil war, institutional collapse, the rise of authoritarian or totalitarian governmentsunderstanding where these come from and how to inhibit them is a cornerstone of a fully developed account of social orders compatible with human liberty.

And we dont have to conceptually identify democracy or majoritarianism with liberty in order to think that, as a matter of fact, constitutional democratic governments are a crucial feature of free societies. It follows that we ought to care about how they work, and where they come from.

But the current classical liberal interpretation of political science is lacking.

All too often, classical liberal social theorists (who, in other domains, are well aware that social outcomes can be the product of human action without being the product of human design) treat political outcomes as being a matter of other peoples bad will and bad decisions. But political orders are complex emergent phenomena, as much as other orders in human society. Building a stable government that protects and facilitates individual liberty, involves more than a group of people with the correct beliefs about rights theory agreeing to do good things rather than bad things.

In other words, too many classical liberals who understand complexity in other social arenas become decisionists when they think about politics: all we need from governing institutions, they assert, is for people to make good decisions rather than bad ones.

They fall into this fallacy partly because they identify good government from a classical liberal perspective with mere inaction: all our rulers need to do is to stay their hand. Whatever the truth (and its a partial truth, as Hayek knew) of laissez faire as a description of good policy, it is no truth as an answer to the underlying organization of violence, coercion, and rule. A political order that can engage in and commit to the right kind of inaction, in the right ways and at the right times, is a rare accomplishment, and we still know too little about how to get it and how to keep it.

Over the course of these posts in coming weeks and months, I will identify some obstacles that have prevented the development of a classical liberal political science and political theory that can fit within the broad development of the humane studies. (Spoiler alert: Lockean social contract theory and public choice theory, while theyve both taught us valuable things, have become in important ways intellectual obstacles to overcome.) And Ill try to draw on what political scientists and theorists have learned, offering some thoughts about what needs to be incorporated within the developing liberal social theory of the humane studies.

Follow this link:
What Classical Liberals Get Wrong About Political Science - Learn Liberty (blog)

Amazing how a lawsuit can rattle the rust off an outdated institution.

A couple of weeks after Bellwether spotlighted the University of California at Berkeleys cancellation of a speech by conservative firebrand Ann Coulter, a student group has sued the university for inhibiting free speech on campus.

Good for the students!

Bellwether had argued that shutting down Coulter because of supposed security concerns amounted to viewpoint discrimination, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled is illegal. Thats the argument that the Berkeley College Republican club made in its lawsuit, filed in federal court this week.

And, after trying to ignore the issue for a few weeks, Berkeley has now been prodded into responding. The school says that Coulter is welcome on campus, but only during the first week of May, which, not so coincidentally, is a study week in preparation for final exams. Thats like inviting someone to your house, then locking all the doors and turning out the lights.

Significantly, the lawsuit also names Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of Californias extended college system. Remember her? She was President Obamas first secretary of Homeland Security and a previous governor of Arizona. Though she is now fighting cancer (and we wish her all the best in that challenge), Napolitano is ultimately responsible for defending free speech on the campuses she administers. Naming her personally sends a signal that real people, not just institutions, must be held to account when freedom is threatened.

Berkeleys lame defense exposes just how out of touch the school is. This isnt the 1960s, folks. And being conservative is not a crime, or a personality disorder. Its just a point of view that Berkeley, and other universities, try to keep in a dark closet, like dusty lawn furniture that never gets used.

Hey, Berkeley: What kind of world are you preparing your students to enter? In case you hadnt noticed, Donald Trump is president, Republicans control both houses of Congress, and Neal Gorsuch just donned the robes of a Supreme Court justice.

This isnt the first time Berkeley has tried to shut down free speech. Back in February, it refused to let conservative bomb thrower Milo Yiannopoulous deliver remarks on campus. The reason then was the same as with Coulter: people who dont agree with him threatened to disrupt the event. Some protesters carried signs that read, This is war. Really? Whats going on in Syria is war. In Berkeley, its more like whining.

John Moody is Executive Vice President, Executive Editor for Fox News. A former Rome bureau chief for Time magazine, he is the author of four books including "Pope John Paul II : Biography."

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Slow learners: UC Berkeley liberals get schooled on the law - Fox News

OTTAWA Help keep our borders safe, read a recent fundraising pitch from the federal Conservative party a plea the official Opposition is linking directly to the increased flow of asylum seekers crossing illegally into Canada.

Since January, nearly 1,900 people have been intercepted by the RCMP crossing into Canada. Asylum numbers in general are on the rise, projected to be at historic levels by years end.

The Conservatives lost the last federal election in part because of a perception they were too tough on the worlds most vulnerable; the Liberals won it with a pledge to open Canadas doors.

But the asylum seekers coming illegally into Canada have opened up a political can of worms and now both parties are rethinking their approach, each with a careful eye to how the politics of immigration played out in the U.S.

READ MORE:RCMP lay human smuggling charge after investigation into asylum seekers crossing border into Sask.

Since Justin Trudeau issued his open invitation on Twitter that Canadians will welcome you, our country has seen an influx of asylum seekers illegally crossing our border from a perfectly safe country the United States, the letter said.

It is during times like this that Canada needs strong, transparent leadership that will enforce our laws and keep Canadians safe, it continued. Help us set the course for victory in 2019.

In the Populism Project, The Canadian Press is exploring the factors behind Donald Trumps upset U.S. election win, testing them against Canadas current economic, social and political climate to gauge the possibility of a similar kind of political upheaval.

Trump seized on immigration policy as a sure vote-getter in his campaign, framing the status quo as a physical and economic threat to America.

We have no country if we have no border, he said during one debate, and his early executive orders pausing immigration from seven majority Muslim countries and a halt to refugee resettlement were direct follow-ups on campaign promises.

READ MORE:Man charged for assaulting CBSA officer after illegally crossing border into Manitoba: RCMP

Trudeaus #WelcometoCanada message, posted on Twitter in response to those orders, was a natural follow-through for Liberals.

In 2015 I made a conscious choice to try to draw people together, to work on allaying fears rather than highlighting them and exacerbating them, Trudeau said in an interview last week with Bloomberg.

I was up against a government that ran on snitch lines against Muslims, and headscarf bans and a fear-filled narrative that Canadians chose to reject for the large part because there was a positive, inclusive solutions-based alternative on offer.

Tory fundraising efforts suggest that fear-filled narrative is emerging anew.

Many Conservative leadership candidates are taking hard-line stances, promising to step up border enforcement and deportations or close legal loopholes that allow those crossing illegally to file for refugee status.

READ MORE:Manitoba RCMP warn refugees of dangerous trek across US/Canada border

Among them is Kellie Leitch. She visited the border town of Emerson, Man., over the weekend where hundreds of people have been coming across since January, and promised to deport the newcomers if elected prime minister.

Emerson is in a riding thats been Tory blue for more than 15 years, so theres not much political risk there for the Liberals if theyre seen as being soft on border controls.

Political wisdom in Canada also holds that Liberal messages of inclusion and diversity will win far more support with immigrants clustered in the riding-rich cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver than the tough Tory talk.

Then again, everyone expected Trumps promised Mexican border wall and depictions of Mexicans as bad hombres would surely cost him the entire Latino vote. Instead, national exit polls suggested he won about 30 per cent.

An online Ipsos poll for Reuters last month suggested nearly half of Canadians surveyed wanted action, and expressed dissatisfaction with how Trudeau is handling the file.

READ MORE:Goodale says RCMP, CBSA keeping a very active watch on refugees crossing border

If that turns into sustained political pressure, the fault could rest with the government, suggested Lori Wilkinson, director of Immigration Research West at the University of Manitoba.

The Liberals arent countering the misinformation being spread by their opponents as much as they should be, she said, nor doing enough to explain how well the current system is actually working.

It frustrates me that we dont talk about things more openly, but maybe informing people doesnt help the vote machine, she said.

Fear is more the driver here.

Some inside government say privately they agree with the Conservatives, and believe many border crossers are being pulled into Canada by Brand Trudeau, not pushed from the U.S. by Trump, as others have alleged.

But whats vexing Liberals is what kind of policy response they could take to both protect the border and their brand. Its not just a question of appeasing those on the right, but also holding onto the support they received from the left.

READ MORE:More refugees arrested after illegally crossing into Quebec

NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton has pulled on populist threads on the border crosser question, positioning Trudeaus refusal to help asylum seekers cross legally into Canada as pushing marginalized people further onto the sidelines.

Theres room for a policy response, said Michael Donnelly, a political science professor at the University of Toronto who earlier this year helped publish a study on Canadian attitudes towards immigration.

VIDEO:Manitoba RCMP warn refugees of dangerous trek across US/Canada border

If they took a big policy response and they framed it in a welcoming-refugees and in a pro-integration sense the chunk of the public that is ever going to consider voting for them is going to give them a pass.

The Liberals do see another immigration-related political risk on the horizon how the 40,000 Syrian refugees theyve brought to the country will settle in.

The perception that Syrians are getting better access to jobs, education and housing than other immigrants or those born in Canada is a problem the government has already identified, including in their evaluation of the first wave of the Syrian refugee program.

READ MORE:No reports of refugees crossing into province outside of official border points: Sask. RCMP

Integration challenges were also a key theme in last years annual government survey on immigration, which came before the end of the first year in Canada for most Syrian refugees, during which they get financial help from Ottawa or their sponsors.

With lower education levels and facility with English than previous groups of refugees, as well as larger families and greater medical needs, there is concern the population will take longer to achieve success, fuelling more government criticism.

When Trudeau has spoken up in recent weeks about Canadas immigration policy, his answer has been shifting from a previous focus on the benefit of welcoming refugees to the importance of their outcomes.

That could be a pre-emptive strike, suggested Andrew Griffith, the former director of multiculturalism and citizenship for the federal government.

Good politicians tend to fine-tune their messaging as needed, Griffith said. This may be perceived as such.

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Illegal border crossings into Canada a hot topic for Conservatives and Liberals - Globalnews.ca