Category: Australia

Community and charity groups are dealing with plummeting rates of volunteering, and Charities Minister Andrew Leigh is on a mission not only to stem the drop-off but halt the crisis in community participation.

Reports compiled by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) show the number of volunteers has been steadily falling each year. It estimated there were 3.3 million volunteers in 2020, and the census found just over 2.9 million people had done voluntary work in 2021, or about 14 per cent of those who answered.

At crisis helpline Lifeline, the search for volunteers is a constant and has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

“Our phones are ringing. 24/7, obviously, and tech service now is 24/7 – and [we have] around 3000 phone calls a day. So we always need more volunteers at Lifeline, that’s for sure,” acting chief executive Robert Sams said.

Lifeline had experienced a small peak of people looking to help out in the early days of the pandemic when they suddenly weren’t working or going out, but that had dropped away again.

“We hear across the sector, and definitely here at Lifeline, that, for one, their availability, volunteers are affected [by illness] like all of us, and two, I think people are genuinely tired and fatigued. There’s been a lot in the last two years to cope with,” Sams said.

As well, volunteering tended to be a discretionary thing for people and thus was one of the things they dropped as they looked for more space in their life.

But Leigh says the problem is broader than volunteerism. Australians are now less likely to be a member of a community organisation, go to religious services, be a union member, play a team sport, give blood, and don’t have as many friends or know as many neighbors as they used to.

But this symbolic importance – as the possible representatives of a seismic shift in voters’ attitudes – is at odds with the amount of legislative power these new MPs have in the House, which is close to none. How much attention should they get?

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If this is a tricky question for the media, the government, at least, has decided to give some of them – the teals – quite a bit. The conventional wisdom is that this is because Albanese wants them to win again, depriving the Liberals of seats.

This is probably right, but the other reason, I suspect, lies in their symbolic power. Each time he gets their vote he sends a message to voters that he is part of the emerging sensitive centre; that the weight of reasonable opinion has moved away from the Coalition. This is power too.

Is the parliament important or unimportant? Is the parliament a symbol, or a body with a practical operation as a venue for accountability and the passage of important legislation? Are the teals historically important or the product of a moment? The answer to all of these may be “both”, and that is fine. What the government must avoid is running from one extreme to the other depending on circumstance.

It is often said, reasonably enough, that Scott Morrison had contemplated for parliament. That was true, but what was particularly egregious was the way his public approach was chopped and changed. When he needed the parliament to seem important, he said it was; when he lost a vote, or when he tried to hold him to account, he was happy to dismiss it. This undermined the parliament; Unfortunately for him, it undermined Morrison too.

Much of the government’s impact so far has come from symbols: speeches, meetings, and, yes, parliament. A paradox for Albanese is that, while he is quite good at the symbolic work of politics, his political appeal to him remains on seeming to be someone who does not grandstand, who is less concerned with image and more with quiet action.

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The stage 3 tax cuts occupy interesting ground. It is clear Albanese sees them partly as symbolic: a part of his pact with the Australian people to deliver his election promises from him. The problem with the cuts, though, is mostly practical: they are poor policy, hurting the budget for a little point, spending money in the wrong place.

To say that they are “already legislated” gives them a mythic, symbolic status they do not deserve. If the government is considering scrapping them, as it should be, then it must work to shift the discussion to a more practical ground.

Unless you are a lawyer or a law student, you have probably never heard of Pat Keane. The Honorable Justice Keane, AC, to give him his proper title, is the oldest person on the High Court. He reaches the constitutionally mandated retirement age of 70 at the end of October.

Filling Keane’s vacancy will be the first of two appointments the Albanese government will make to the court in this term. The Chief Justice, Susan Kiefel, reaches what judges sarcastically call “the age of statutory senility” in January 2024.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus will be now turning his mind to whom to appoint as Keane’s successor. He will also be giving some long-term thought to who should be the next chief justice.

Unlike the United States, the appointment of members of Australia’s highest court is seldom controversial. That is because, with rare exceptions, attorneys-general from both sides of politics have had the good sense to recommend eminent men and women in whom the public can have complete confidence. On the four occasions that I took recommendations to cabinet for High Court appointments (Justices Nettle, Gordon and Edelman, and Kiefel as chief justice) there was near to universal acceptance of my choices. The only murmur of criticism came from a few on the extreme right, who complained that the appointees were not ideological enough. Which they were not; they were chosen on merit alone. I took the straightforward view that those who sit on the High Court should be the most accomplished lawyers in the land.

The appointment of High Court judges is a process over which the attorney-general usually has almost complete control. It is he or she who decides what name to take to cabinet. Most, if not all, political colleagues will have no idea who the nominee is. They look to the attorney-general as the one person familiar with the senior members of the judiciary and the bar and, basically, trust your judgment. Of course, it is prudent to clear the name with the prime minister first. When Sir William Deane retired in early 1996, Tony Fitzgerald was understood to be the nominee of his fellow Queenslander Michael Lavarch, until Paul Keating (having been lobbied, so it was rumoured, by Neville Wran) blindsided his attorney-general with Michael Kirby.

A recommendation is made after consultation, although there is little but custom to govern who should be consulted. The only formal requirement is s. 6 of the High Court of Australia Act, which requires the Commonwealth Attorney-General to “consult with the attorneys-general of the states” (although not of the territories). That usually consists simply of a letter soliciting their views; predictably, they propose a senior judge or barrister from their own state. When Nicola Roxon was the attorney-general, she extended me, as her shadow de ella, the courtesy of seeking my views; it was a practice which I followed when Dreyfus was my shadow of her.

The most important consultations are with the senior members of the judiciary. This is ultimately at the attorney’s discretion, but by convention the chief justice of the High Court, other members of the court, the heads of the other federal courts and the leaders of the legal professional bodies should be consulted. The attorney-general’s department will also put forward its views.

What surprised me was how self-selecting the shortlist is. While there are many eminent judges and QCs, like any profession, the best of the best are generally acknowledged as such by their peers – their reputations won by decades of practice and the respect their judgments command. The attorney-general also must pay heed to the federal structure: the court should not be too much dominated by a single state. (In the late 20th century, due to the high number of judges from Sydney, Victorian barristers would sarcastically refer to it as the New South Wales Court of Appeal.)