Achievements Of The Coalition Government

by Matthew Davis

A comprehensive list of (almost) everything the current Australian government has done. The Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott government has been in power for over 8 years. This page contains a list of most of what they have done so far.

Spent $5 million building a water pipeline underwater, to supply a privately owned golf course in a city, using funds that were supposed to be spent on sustainability and regional communities. Personal conflicts of interest were not declared, which violates the ministerial code of conduct.
Voted to prevent debate about creating a federal anti-corruption commission (‘Federal ICAC’).
Paid 8 times more than the market rate to conserve water in the Murray Darling Basin (overpayment of $112 million).
Proposed new laws which will allow the government to block capitalists from planting lots of trees to fight climate change, despite saying they plan to solve climate change with “‘can do’ capitalism, not ‘don’t do’ governments”.
Spent $450 million on carbon capture and storage projects (CCS), resulting in every attempted project being cancelled or late, with no carbon actually being captured, mostly because the projects were found to be technically infeasible, financially infeasible, or there just isn’t anywhere to store the carbon. The government did not attempt to monitor whether the program successfully captured carbon. Their only success criteria was number of projects funded, regardless of whether the projects work. Even by this measure it was a failure because the committed money ($2 billion) ended up mostly unspent due to project cancellations. The spending program had no conflict of interest safeguards. Coincidentally one of the main Liberal ministers pushing for this cash handout to the fossil fuel industry left parliament for a job as a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry.
Spent $1,400 per person per day to feed asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea. This $82 million contract was paid to a a high-risk shell company owned by PNG political figures, without any competitive tender process. The government did not ask any other company whether they can provide the food for a cheaper price or with less insolvency risk. The government spent far more money than it would have cost to feed the asylum seekers caviar and lobster for every meal from a high end restaurant.
Quadrupled government net debt.
Spent $105 million on grants for marginal and Coalition-held electorates which they are expected to deliver less value than other proposals. They then refused to release documents justifying the decisions. (This is separate to the Sports grants and the car park grants.)
Allocated $44M from the Building Better Futures fund to marginal electorates, through a process that was clearly not merit based (a.k.a. ‘pork barrelling’). Projects ranked last for merit were more likely to be funded than ones ranked first. Rejected applications were not told that they ranked higher than the ones that the minister chose. When the audit office asked for an explanation, the government refused.
Cut funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) by 4% per participant.
Burnt brown coal (the dirtiest kind of coal) and used the electricity to split water to make hydrogen, to export to Japan, then claimed this is green and reduces our emissions. The government contributed $50M to this project which cost $500M overall, to produce only 3 tonnes of hydrogen. The government said “we’re not going to get ideological about it” despite choosing to fund coal-powered hydrogen plants when solar and wind powered hydrogen plants are substantially cheaper.
Took children to court to argue that the environment minister is not required to consider the harm their decisions cause to young Australians via Climate Change when approving fossil fuel projects.
Broke a promise to close loopholes that allowed child abusers to keep their superannuation when paying compensation to victims.
Paid $300 million to landfill operators for carbon credits (ACCUs) to incentivise them to burn of methane which they would have done anyway. This is in addition to them already being paid green certificates (LGCs), and includes sites which are legally required to burn that methane.
Failed to achieve their own water efficiency targets for the Murray Darling off-farm efficiency program, achieving only 1% of what they said they would.
Refused to pay compensation to a man whose family was accidentally killed by Australian air strikes. The department claims they weren’t killed by Australian bombing, even though the department did not read the defence report about Australian bombing in that area that day, and they did not provide any alternative explanation for the 35 deaths.
Purchased 70,000 tonnes of coal to be shipped to the other side of the world to give to Ukraine. It would be cheaper and quicker to simply buy it from Ukraine’s coal-producing neighbour (Poland). The government has not said how they will sneak a huge ship past the Russians, who control most nearby ports. The government did not attempt to shop around with other coal companies in Australia, and decided to give the money to this company prior to agreeing on the price. Coincidentally the company is a Liberal donor.
Spent $18M on a new leadership program, given to an organisation with no staff, no track record in anything related to leadership, with an incorrect registered business address, without a normal tender process.
Chose not to publish a 5-yearly report about the official state of the environment for over 3 months, so that voters in the 2022 election won’t know what the reports’ findings are.
Did not follow cyber security best practice for COVID digital vaccines. They have no effective way to report vulnerabilities, let alone have bug bounties to discourage sale of vulnerabilities to criminals. When the government is eventually made aware of vulnerabilities in their app, they don’t respond to or resolve them in a timely way.
Refused to publish numbers about how many COVID close contacts had been identified by the COVIDSafe app. They said it’s the job of state governments to report how many contacts are identified by the federal government’s app.
Kept secret the budgeting documents used to justify changing the NBN rollout from fibre to the premise to fibre to the node.
Introduced a bill which they called the “anti-trolling” bill, which doesn’t even mention trolling. It does not make trolling illegal. It does not give social media companies the power to remove defamatory or troll content. The bill means that moderators of Facebook pages no longer have an obligation to take down troll content, which will help trolling, not hinder it. What this new red tape does do is make it easier to sue social media companies for defamation when their users post mean things. Social media companies may still be sued even if their failure to notice the material was not due to negligence. The main change is that social media companies need a way to name accused anonymous users, but the accused users will be allowed to just say ‘no’. The powers can only be used if a defamation case is likely (i.e. only for people with a spare $20k lying around), which means this bill won’t reduce school-age cyber bullying. The government themselves already hide behind anonymous online accounts to defame political opponents. These changes violate our existing free trade agreements.
Prevented the release of data relating to the effectiveness of carbon credit schemes to improve forest regeneration.
Refused to justify or breakdown the $400 million per year being spent running the Nauru immigration detention centre. The number of detainees has dropped by a factor of 10 but the total spending has remained the same. The cost is now $15,000 per person per day. It would be cheaper to house the detainees in any five star hotel.
Vetoed research grants for projects about climate activism and Chinese politics, thereby undermining the independence of the Australian Resource Council.
Passed legislation for sharing data between law enforcement agencies in different countries, which means we may help countries known to persecute minorities, or help foreign prosecutors execute criminals, despite not having a death penalty in Australia.
Withheld the cost estimates of the legal defence costs for a class action against the commonwealth (about wage theft by a previous government).
Threatened media companies, saying they will have their access blocked if journalists report on a particular housing affordability policy from a new, competing political party.
Launched a defamation case against a citizen, charging him $35k because he tweeted something mean about a minister.
Blocked a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the report explaining why the Prime Minister was sacked from his last job.
Sat on a review of video game classifications for two years. They did nothing until weeks before the 2022 election, proposing a plan without consultation with video game makers, which won’t be implemented until after the election (if they win).
Approved projects which will destroy 25,000 hectares of koala habitat.
Claimed that a corporate emissions baseline policy is a sneaky proposal by Labor, when actually it’s their own policy that they already legislated.
Announced a $800 bonus for aged care workers, but then processed the applications slowly, paying only 3% of aged care workers after 2 months. The government asked aged care providers to pay the bonus out of their own pocket in the interim. This means the government is taking a loan from those providers, which increases government debt in reality, but not on paper.
Paid hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon credits to landowners for growing trees which were already there.
Waited 4 months between being told by the Therapeutic Goods Administration that a new treatment for cystic fibrosis should be allowed, before putting it on the normal Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Snuck a controversial bill through parliament in the middle of the night, ending debate and voting on it at 4am.
Spent $675,000 travelling to investigate drought relief. When asked why nothing was produced from the trip, the government pointed to SMS messages, calling them “reports”. When asked via a Freedom of Information request, and also by the Information Commissioner to publish these reports, the government refused, claiming it would take 50 hours of work to dig up a few SMS messages from a specific phone. The government refused to give a breakdown of those 50 hours.
Built no quarantine centers for COVID, leaving the responsibility for COVID response to the state governments, even though the constitution (clause V.51.ix) clearly states that it is a federal responsibility.
Blamed renewable power’s intermittent nature for electricity outages caused by storms and cars hitting poles. On that day in particular there were generation capacity shortages due to outages from unreliable coal generators.
Did not sent any minister or representative to the opening ceremony of any solar farm, wind farm or large scale battery, in more than 8 years.
Spent $77.5M just to investigate whether to continue the train line to the new western Sydney airport by one station, to close the loop instead of a dead end. This expense is just to think about whether to do this build, not actually planning or designing it.
Criticised capitalist Mike Cannon-Brookes when he tried to transition AGL from coal to renewables, in the same month they claimed they’ll solve climate change with “‘can do’ capitalism, not ‘don’t do’ governments”.
Failed to mentioned in the COVIDSafe app privacy policy that information about the phone model and device name (e.g. “Mary’s iPhone”) is broadcast over Bluetooth. An example of this being exploited is that a domestic violence abuser can tell whether the victim is at home and their house-mates are not, without setting foot in the building.
Claimed “Alan Tudge is still in my cabinet”, 4 months after standing down Alan Tudge over domestic abuse allegations.
Planned (if re-elected in 2022) to cut federal funding for Australian music to $0.
Showed evidence to a judge when prosecuting a case against an Australian whistle-blower in a secret way such that the defendant cannot see the evidence used against him, and therefore is unable to fairly defend himself.
Introduced new police powers to spy on and hack innocent Aussies, without a warrant, even if they’re not suspected of committing any crime. Powers include snooping, modifying, deleting data and account takeover. The legislation was voted on only hours after giving it to the crossbenchers to review. The legislation was reviewed by intelligence groups, but no public interest privacy advocates. The legislation went against the government’s own review into hacking powers. The government rejected a proposal to have a public interest advocate argue on behalf of the hacked person to balance privacy against safety. The argument is that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide. Powers include removing two factor authentication on accounts, thereby making it easier for unrelated criminals to hack those Australians.
Refused to publish minutes from the national cabinet tackling COVID. After a judge ruled that it must be published, they introduced a new law to keep it secret. They argued that even though the cabinet has done nothing wrong, they should be able to hide discussion details from the public.
Blocked a House of Representatives investigation into the source of a substantial donation to a minister’s personal legal costs for a defamation prosecution, arguing that the anonymity and privacy of the rich donor must be protected. The procedure for blocking this investigation was unprecedented. The government has previously made the exact opposite argument when criticising a Greens minister who published only partial information about legal fee donors for her defamation case.
Proposed forced identification of all social media users, arguing that citizens should not be able to post comments on social media anonymously, and that ordinary, upstanding citizens have no need for anonymity. Citizens would have to upload passport and driver’s license documents to OnlyFans before uploading or consuming content. Domestic violence victims would no longer be able to seek help on social media sites anonymously, without risking discovery by their abuser. Teens of conservative parents would no longer be able to ask questions about sex education and safe sex on social media anonymously, thereby deterring them from making safe, informed decisions. Closeted LGBT youth would no longer be able to seek support online anonymously without outing themselves. When this was tried in Korea the sensitive information was inevitably hacked.
Lied by claiming new unprecedented police hacking laws would only apply to terrorists, paedophiles and drug traffickers, when their actual legislation says they can be used for crimes as benign as illegal gambling and illegal importing of fauna.
Introduced legislation designed to make gig economy companies like Deliveroo report more tax information about their employees, which was so sloppily written that it means websites for booking doctor appointments would technically be required to ingest details about the patient such as their income, and then give that to the tax office.
Secretly pressured the United Nations to delete from their climate change report the claim that closing coal power plants is necessary to fight climate change, as well as deleting mentions of fossil fuel lobbyists successfully watering down climate change legislation and action in Australia.
Flew a mostly-empty plane home from Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban, leaving behind local translators who may be killed because they helped Australian soldiers.
Lied by claiming that $90 million worth of oil for Australia’s stockpile in the USA was bought at “record low prices”. The oil was bought at 40 USD per barrel, around the time when prices plummeted to negative 37 USD per barrel, because the markets thought all oil storage facilities were full. The Australian government actually had 23 million litres of empty storage space within a day’s drive of the negatively priced oil. Had the Australian government actually bought at the record low, they would have been paid 90 million AUD to take oil off others’ hands. The government tried to keep secret the actual price they overpaid (despite proclaiming it was a good price), and the volume. They have still kept secret the price of the daily lease fees, filling fees, draw down fees, withdrawal fees and fee escalation process, and the identity of the seller.
Handed free marketing opportunities to a private gas company by letting them take over some of Australia’s stall at a global climate summit for world leaders.
Refused to sign a pledge to reduce methane emissions which was signed by 100 other countries.
Added red tape for business by forcing company directors to register for a special identifier through myGovID. This is supposed to make it easier for investors to track company directors as they move between companies. However the name, address, date and place of birth of directors is already recorded in a public database, which will be replaced with this new single 15-digit number. This attempt at transparency actually reduces the amount of information available to the public.
Slowed down visa processing for families from Afghanistan by years, resulting in the families of Australian being stuck in Kabul as it fell under Taliban rule, when they would have been safe if the government’s paperwork was as fast as for Europe or America.
Ran an expensive marketing campaign promoting a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, but then voted against legislating a net-zero target for 2050. The new “plan” involved no new laws, no new taxes, and nothing binding. The plan included fanciful estimates of carbon capture with trees and soil twice as high as the most optimistic peer reviewed research.
Approved 3 new coal mines with record speed, and rejected new solar and wind farms with record speed.
Refused to release modelling to support the claim that their climate policy can achieve the targets they say it will.
Moved the role of Minister for Science and Technology to be held part-time by the Minister for Defence.
Proposed scrapping recovery plans for 200 endangered species, replacing them with documents that ministers are no longer legally bound to follow.
Refused to tell the public how much they’re paying a private company to build the COVID vaccine passport system which is already 6 months behind schedule.
Repeatedly refused to publish legal advice they received before implementing the robo-debt scheme (which has since been ruled to be illegal)
Changed the role of ASIC (the corporate cop), moving them away from prosecuting law-breaking companies to focusing on removing regulatory burdens, economic growth, and removing ASIC’s independence by expecting them to consult with the government when enforcing the law.
Broke their own law by not conducting a report into the privacy impacts and effectiveness of the COVIDSafe app every 6 months.
Obscured millions of dollars of funding to a think-tank co-funded by private arms manufacturers, which primarily just creates anti-China sentiment and stirs up fears of war (which is good for those arms manufacturers).
Failed to deliver any new assets or infrastructure 2 years on after a big announcement about drones patrolling our maritime border.
Approved the majority of weapon export requests to countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE, who are accused of multiple war crimes in Yemen. The government was unable to rule out the possibility that these war crimes are being committed with Australian weapons. Despite approving most exports to these authoritarian regimes, they claim they have strict controls preventing weapons exports to authoritarian regimes. The government is keeping secret the information about who is selling billions of dollars worth of weapons, who they’re sold to, what weapons, how much, and for what purpose.
Increased marketing spend for weapons exports from $1 million per year to $20 million.
Allocated $660 million in funding for new car parks based on which electorates were marginal for the upcoming election instead of which areas most needed car parks. (i.e. pork barrelling) The National Audit Office found that the funding allocation was “not demonstrably merit-based” and “not designed to be open or transparent”. The federal government did not talk to state governments or local governments to determine which areas were most in need of new car parks. 3 years after the announcement, the government had only managed to complete or start building 11% of the car parks. (This was uncovered by the same Audit Office who uncovered the sports funding pork barrelling and then had their audit funding cut.)
Paid hundreds of millions of dollars to for-profit private companies to oversee and deliver COVID vaccine distribution, instead of using the existing, proven public pharmaceutical distribution system they already pay for. Many of these chosen companies are Liberal party donors, and the details of the contracts are kept secret. Rollout advice paid for by the government is being kept secret, so the public cannot tell whether it was worth paying for.
Tabled law amendments which would result in charities losing their tax deductible status if they tweet in support of public protests, or display their logo at a protest where the commissioner suspects an unaffiliated protester has or might commit a minor offence such as blocking a sidewalk.
Spent $600 million building a new gas power plant after the private sector decided it made no commercial sense to do so.
Paid $2 billion to help keep private for-profit oil refineries open, which they claim will save consumers only 1 cent per litre when filling up their vehicle.
Paid $6.7 million in JobKeeper subsidies to a private company whose profits quadrupled during 2020, and which is half-owned by a foreigner via a shell company in the Bahamas.
Handed $1.34 billion to Qantas (a private company) for the purpose of creating jobs, but Qantas spent most of that paying redundancy packages while culling their workforce.
Handed $38 billion in JobKeeper payments to companies who did not suffer significant downturn during COVID, and refused to ask for the money back once this became clear.
Underwrote surge costs on popular airline routes. That is, risk is being shouldered by the taxpayer, whilst profit is privatised. This increases off-book government liabilities, while making it look on paper like debt hasn’t actually increased.
Kept secret the arguments made by the government during an appeal for a whether a court case against a journalist should be secret. That is, the government does not even want people to know why their trial against truthful public-interest journalism will be secret. The government officials who committed the crimes reported by the journalist have not been charged. The original articles about the government’s crimes are still public, despite the government claiming their publication somehow harmed national security.
Removed 3 out of 4 recommendations from a report investigating a blank-cheque payment to a private consultant which was made without even verifying that the service was delivered.
Spent $250,000 per month developing an NDIS app. They have no data about how many users wanted the app.
Illegally appointed a Liberal Party Senator to a high-ranking high-paying role at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The candidate was not eligible because she was not an enrolled legal practitioner. She has no experience in the field (social services and child support law). She will be paid $500,000 per year. The government lied by claiming she was appointed on merit, but the interviewers did not interview her, and did not recommend her.
Spent $10 million per month maintaining an offshore oil rig that is not producing any oil, after private owners profited for many years for costs of only $4 million per month. There is no planned end date for when this plant will be decommissioned to stop these costs.
Proposed a robo-debt style program to claw back money from disabled people under the NDIS, waving away all concerns about accuracy and ethics by tacking a blockchain onto the new app. Blockchains do not in any way make it easier to solve the Oracle Problem, such as determining whether a taxi ride was to a medical practitioner or the pub next door to it.
Gave $2.7 million to a private company for a buzzword-rich trial about blockchain and distributed energy.
Illegally mislead voters by creating dozens of Facebook pages for fictional institutes and pages with deceptively similar names to real organisations, to attack a Labor minister, without any of the legally required notices stating that the message really comes from the government.
Spent $3.7 million making a video to teach 16 year-olds about sexual consent without talking about sex. The video was pulled within days due to it being ineffective and poorly targeted to the late-teenage age group. The cost of the videos was more than the budget for the first Mad Max movie, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Sued the ABC for defamation, after they published sexual assault allegations about a unnamed senior politician without identifying him. Private news companies who published the same story were not sued. The accused Attorney General asked the court to keep secret the evidence which the ABC provided to support their claim that the allegations were true.
Banned public servants from wearing clothes that expose bare shoulders.
Paid $1.6 billion to house only 115 asylum seekers offshore, at a daily price about 10 times higher than the most expensive room at Sydney’s Four Seasons Hotel, through a closed tender. The company’s parent company is coincidentally a Liberal party donor. The company had no assets and no other revenue, worth only $8 at the time. Despite this risk, the government chose this company anyway, without conducting due diligence checks on their financial health. The government eventually paid KPMG to do due diligence checks, but on the wrong company.
Charged taxpayers for a domestic flight to a personal lunch.
Ignored urgent requests from the commissioner of the Disability Royal Commission, providing neither a yes nor a no answer to a simple extension request.
Claimed that the federal environment minister is not responsible for climate change efforts and policy.
Modified an infrastructure funding scheme to bypass state governments, to allow investment in fossil fuels without being blocked by the Northern Territory government for environmental reasons. These changes allow the fund to trade in derivatives other than as a hedge to existing risk, and without a requirement for expected financial return.
Introduced laws which are supposed to combat the rise in unconsentual sharing of nudes (“revenge porn”), but do not include any punishment for people who upload nudes on people without their consent. The new punishments only apply to platforms, even if the platforms remove almost all reported content within 24 hours.
Granted an unelected official the power to delete online posts by politicians and ban them from platforms for expressing controversial political opinions.
Lied by claiming that new legislation could not result in dating apps such as Tinder being banned in Australia, when the legislation clearly states in section 6.12.1.d that the relevant commissioner will be granted the power to ban those apps for a broad range of reasons.
Granted an unelected official investigative powers to force people to provide documents and answer questions or face imprisonment, without any of the usual protections and oversight that apply to police investigations. i.e. it takes away the right to remain silent.
Granted an unelected official the power to mandate facial-recognition scans for adults who want to look at porn. They are not required to consider the privacy or security implications of such a scheme.
Introduced 194 pages of complex, globally unprecedented, controversial legislation into parliament only 10 days after public consultation closed.
Withheld the report from the Aged Care Royal Commission for 2 days, releasing it only half an hour before the relevant press conference, which meant journalists were not able to ask meaningful questions.
Used a meme to successfully distract the media and populace from the government’s lack of action after a report revealed dozens of horrific war crimes were committed by Australian special forces soldiers due to systemic cultural issues.
Prevented Australians stranded overseas during the pandemic from boarding existing chartered flights, resulting in empty planes flying into Australia.
Lied by claiming they had implemented the majority of recommendations from the Banking Royal Commission, when they had only completed a minority.
Removed the names of many Australians stranded overseas during the pandemic from the register of stranded Australians.
Deleted warnings of dangerous right-wing extremism in a senate motion about extremism, despite advice from ASIO that it is a serious and growing threat.