Tag Archives: Morrison

Australian Politics

The Coalition seems to be full of disappointed grumps and fantasists

1 Comment

If you were exposed to the last conservative government in Australia you have just about seen it all. It was like a trip back in time, to a time when the communist scare had legs, when there was no such thing as ‘society’, and crony capitalism took over from the idea that Australia was the land of the ‘fair go’. And never forget the last prime minister really believed that he was chosen by God.

In the 1950s and 60s many in Australia were afraid that communism was going to sweep down from the Soviet Union, down through China, through South East Asia, with a short stopover in Indonesia, until it made its inevitable landfall on Australian soil.

Darwin would fall, and the absurdity of a new Brisbane Line was a part of the fever dream. We would abandon the country north of the Line, but our brave Aussies would rush to take up arms. It was hoped that we could push the communists back, preferably into the sea.

During Scott Morrison’s shambolic time in office, nothing reminded us of those dark days of fear and xenophobia like Dutton and his China bashing.

Of course he had a lot of Coalition confederates, happy to take China’s money in the good times, but still wanting to blame them for the Covid-19 virus, and attributing all sorts of evil to the Chinese Communist Party.

What was shocking was their willingness to re-visit those days, where the Communist word caused heartburn, and we stood behind LBJ. This time around it was Donald Trump providing us with a shield. Risky!

And we must remember Trump’s record of favouring white supremists. Was there a whiff of the White Australia Policy in our rush to condemn the Chinese? Is there a whiff of post-colonial racism in our demonisation of a document titled “Statement from the Heart”?

Dutton is a throwback to cold war thinking

Watching Peter Dutton as he struggles to find relevance is exhausting. There he is, wearing his scholarly glasses, using words like “history” and even referencing George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The quote he is using describes Soviet Russia in the 1930s and 40s, and is laughable in an Australian context.

In my opinion it better resembles the belief system of the born-again community, where it divides the world into the ‘saved’, and those not saved.

“At a time when we need to unite the country, this prime minister’s proposal will permanently divide us by race,” he said.

If Dutton had acted like any sort of aspiring leader, he would have embraced the Voice as being essential, and as a necessary first step toward reconciliation with our original inhabitants.

He would have welcomed the opportunity to lead the cranky and the disenchanted in his party toward their better selves, but he has instead handed them more to be grumpy about, and sowed seeds of doubt, where none existed. All it takes is a reasonable amount of goodwill.

Even the Coalition would be aware that we have built our estimable modern achievements on stolen land. The least we can do is to give First Nations folk some acknowledgement of past wrongs, and a heartfelt promise that we will consult them in the future.

Everything about the Coalition these days reeks of grim reaction, of rejecting every aspect of modernism. Who do they think they represent? Not even Uncle Arthur, who terrorises all of our Christmas dinners, could hold to all these regressive ideas.

They don’t believe in climate change, because they haven’t read any of the science for the last forty years. They also presumably think those images of melting glaciers were photo-shopped.

They are panicking because they think a shadowy crowd of transgender kids is plotting to flood into girls’ toilets, for some unspeakable reason.

Although they know that there is a tsunami of hunger and homelessness, they do not want to vote for a $40 a fortnight increase in the Jobseeker allowance.

We need a decent opposition. But what we have is a Dad’s Army of nay-sayers, spooked by issues of gender, equality, law and order, reparations for past wrongs to our Indigenous fellow citizens, immigration terrors, and absolute panic that an unemployed person, somewhere in Australia, is rorting the system. God help us!

Australian Politics, International Affairs

Is our alliance with Trump’s America worth it?

1 Comment

Over eighty years ago Prime Minister John Curtin prepared a New Year’s Eve message for the Australian people. It was written three weeks into the war with Japan. It was published in the Melbourne Herald on 27 December, 1941: 

‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.’

With this message he informed the world that Australia’s foreign policy direction must change, in response not only to the military situation with Japan, but to Australia’s location in the Pacific. From then on, he states, Australia will be proactive, the architect of her own interests. 

Australia disengaged from the ‘general war’ to concentrate on the Pacific conflict. Both Churchill and Roosevelt were surprised, and dismayed, but the die was cast. Australia survived the war, but only with massive assistance from the U.S. America has been the cornerstone of our foreign policy ever since.

Eighty years later, are Australia and the U.S. still a ‘perfect match’, or is it time to re-consider the partnership? Although America is still the pre-eminent power on earth, does Australia need its protection, and secondly, does America provide that protection, and if it does, at what price?

Is there a credible threat to us, or would we be more sensible to take a leaf out of New Zealand’s book, and be no-one’s enemy, and no-one’s target? It is important to look at our similarities, but also at the areas where we diverge.

Shared history, shared values?

For years, at least until President Trump was elected, there was a type of consensus that what we had in common far outweighed our differences. Recent events, particularly in America’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and then the Black Lives Matter protests, have thrown some doubt on that shared vision. 

Many have used the “shared history, and shared values” argument to justify our continued relationship. Others question the value for Australia, which has stood loyally by its mighty ally, through its many wars, with not much to show for the effort, except in terms of lost lives, and wasted military resources. We were never there as equal partners. 

We supported American wars whenever we were asked

Australia joined the U.S. in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War in Iraq, the Afghanistan War, the Second Gulf War in Iraq. We even joined the so-called War on Terror.

When push comes to shove, Australia is expected to step forward, no questions asked. Perhaps the debt from 1941 – 1945 has been repaid?

Democratic standards

Australia and the U.S. are both nominally democratic societies, and yet there is a tradition in the U.S. of actively trying to suppress the vote for minorities, and to rig elections by gerrymander. There are efforts to outlaw postal voting, begun when in the midst of a global pandemic. 

Australians are used to electoral matters being decided by independent umpires. We are not only encouraged to vote, but we are punished if we do not. So is America still a democracy, and is it worth defending?

Guns in America

Probably the most contentious right Americans possess is the right “to keep and to bear arms”. Covered by the Second Amendment, and intended to permit the personal use of arms as a defence against state tyranny, it has mutated into a violent and uncontrolled gun culture. 

In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. 

This was the highest number of gun deaths since 1968. see here  Another side of this tragedy is that suicide accounts for almost twice as many deaths as homicide. 

By comparison Australia’s gun deaths in 2019 were 229. It is incomprehensible to us living in Australia that Americans insist on their right to kill, and to be killed. 

This situation is exacerbated by the militarisation of the various state police forces, and the sheer number of mainly gun-fuelled deaths. Most of those deaths are of Black men, arguably by overzealous police. Do we share the values of a nation which practices officially sanctioned, racially based murder? 

Did Scott Morrison commit us to a war with China?

Our previous, unlamented Prime Minister ramped up the hysteria and the rhetoric concerning China. He committed a sum of $270 billion to defence, which included funding for long range missiles. These are presumably to warn China that we are deadly serious about defending ourselves, militarily, against our largest trading partner. 

This can be traced back to a slavish desire, on Morrison’s part, to please Donald Trump. The ex-President, in an attempt to divert attention away from his own criminal governance of the country, had sought to demonise China for somehow ‘inventing’ Covid19.

By jumping on Trump’s bandwagon, Australia is going to be ‘protected’ if China reacts badly to our belligerence. That must be why we are investing in nuclear powered submarines, to be ‘delivered’, in dribs and drabs, if at all, in the 2040s.

It is uncertain whether human civilisation will even survive until the 2040s. Already climate change is contributing to mass migrations; droughts and floods are affecting food and water security; the West is already fracturing under the political pressures of exploding refugee numbers, and political volatility is out of control. Russia is just the first rogue state to bust out of the bubble.

Labor has drunk the kool-aid

The logic behind following the United States anywhere is flawed. It is a nation which seemingly needs wars, in order to keep its over-sized military busy, and focussed outwards. How else to restrain its generals and admirals?

The American Century is over. The country is hopelessly divided, and its people are not only divided on political grounds, but also on economic, religious and racial lines. Inequality has morphed into something resembling the Middle Ages.

If America was once a trusted ally, the Trump presidency must have caused us to reconsider where we stand. A buddy this week, maybe not so much next week?

We need to tread carefully until the U.S. has a leader who can be trusted. Joe Biden is 80 years old. His main opponent will probably be Donald Trump, who is crazy, old and unstable.

This then is the horse we have hitched our wagon to. In Australian terms “have we backed the wrong horse?”

Australian Politics

Time for a re-build

2 Comments

John Curtin is best remembered as a war-time Prime Minister. He is routinely described as Australia’s greatest prime minister. His policy work, alongside that of his Treasurer, Ben Chifley, was crucial in establishing a welfare state, on Australian lines, designed for Australian conditions.

Curtin was influenced by the economic theories of Keynes, and he had long wanted to transform life for Australians. He had seen the real and lasting damage caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s, and took the opportunity offered by wartime conditions to transform the nation.

In 1942 he imposed uniform taxation on the states, which changed the financial relationship between the two levels of government forever. It also allowed him to increase the revenue.

The removal of the states’ individual rights to levy their own income taxes was to be compensated, by the Commonwealth ‘picking up’ their liability for social programs. This was the ‘great bargain’ he made.

With a uniform income tax he was then in a position to expand his vision of a socially activist Commonwealth Government. The states, especially New South Wales and Victoria, had been adding elements of a social safety net since the beginning of the century.

He and Chifley, the treasurer at the time, between them, completed it. Early examples were the Widow’s Pension Act, and the Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act.

By the end of that same year (1942) he had set up a Department of Postwar Reconstruction, which laid the groundwork for establishing a Commonwealth Housing Commission, the postwar Rural Reconstruction Commission, the Secondary Industries Commission and the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. Many of these programs were designed to assist in re-building Australia, after the war ended.

In 1944 he set up the Department of Immigration which was to be responsible for organising postwar immigration to Australia. These changes were the basis for the enormous growth of the Australian economy in the postwar years.

John Curtin was a believer and a doer. He was lucky to be succeeded as prime mininster by Chifley, who carried on their joint project.

Their aim was nothing less than the dynamic re-construction of Australia, post-war. Curtin and Chifley both maintained that the key principle of a successful re-construction was full employment.

Robert Menzies was of a similar mind. He defeated Chifley in the election of 1949, and won seven elections in a row, on a platform which included full employment.

In 1961, he was lucky to be re-elected, because the unemployment rate had ‘blown out’ to 2.1%. He won that election by just one seat.

The welfare state in Australia is under constant threat, by both sides of parliament. This is counter to the wishes of a great proportion of the population, and it is driven by a political class who, especially in recent times, look after only themselves.

They rely on the apathy of the people, who do not inspect governments closely, and who are disengaged from the political process. Politics and society are of no interest to most voters – a sad fact of life.

The “teal wave” of the 2022 election has shown a new, invigorated voting bloc, and it will play merry hell with political orthodoxy. Educated women have decided that they are not “soccer mums” or “doctors’ wives” any longer, if they ever were. They have asserted their right to be heard, and I suspect politics will be changed forever.

The Liberal Party has been infiltrated by many IPA-type neoliberals, whose political mantra can be simplified to a “survival of the fittest” trope. The Labor Party, although not yet as badly infested with IPA ideas, is slightly less crass, paying lip service to an egalitarian ethic, while rubber-stamping much neo-liberal legislation. It leaves voters stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Watch as Anthony Albanese moves, probably slowly, to incorporate many more woman and family friendly policies. Now is the time, when the blokes of the Liberal Party are bereft of numbers, and importantly, their macho confidence.

Where to from here?

In the Age of Coronavirus, food insecurity, the Ukraine War and the seemingly inevitable devastation even limited climate warming will cause, we need the utmost in inclusive government, and a government released from the ideological shackles of the neo-liberal movement.

Scott Morrison was a man tied to his party, by his own strange, anti-science ideologies, and his limitless ambition. He could have formed a National Government in order to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, but in his blinkered and political way he excluded the Opposition.

So we never had any sort of national anything. Instead we had premiers of states saving their people, while the Federal Liberals worked to pry the gates open. We had economics before people, and look at where that has landed us.

Instead of subsidising fossil fuel companies, and handing out money to billionaires, and private schools which don’t need it, try employing people. Try luring car manufacturers back to Australia, and electrify everything, including the cars we make.

Stop picking fights with China. Anyone with an elementary education is aware that China has had a short, but vexed relationship with the West. The Opium Wars, invasions, the unequal treaties imposed by Western nations, the theft of Hong Kong; all these are like burrs under China’s saddle, and pesky states like Australia would do better than try to rile them, in pursuit of political gain. Morrison sucking up to Trump was the reason behind our current difficulties.

Stop throwing cash at multinational consultancies, and pay aged care staff and health care workers enough to live on. Stop our brightest and best scientists from leaving our barbarian land, and embrace the arts and the universities again. Build lots of housing. It is not clever to strangle supply, because all you do is drive up demand, and prices.

That is probably enough to begin with. But if you look around you, people look happier, and it has been less than a week since we delivered ourselves from Morrison’s rule.

Let us give Albanese the opportunity to be a real leader. He could really lean into the task of re-building the country, from the ground up, after the laying waste of the economy, and our society, caused by the pandemic, and the LNP vandals.

It just takes character, and a commitment to Australia’s real needs. That is why we call it the Commonwealth of Australia. Could this be his moment? We will see.

Australian Politics, COVID-19

Bring out your dead

4 Comments

We are a polite lot in Australia. We do not like to rock the boat. The recent Omicron death toll here has effectively doubled the number of deaths we suffered in 2020 & 2021. We continue to listen to Scott Morrison and his team of incompetents, when they can be forced to appear in public; rolling out their excuses, and their selective, but non-specific comparisons with overseas countries. We live on an island, we care how WE are doing. We are now doing very badly, and it is still summer here. Imagine what winter will be like.

We have learned to decipher the weasel words, and to find the callous, and orchestrated, indifference behind them. When people die, and you could have prevented the deaths, then you might have a case to answer. It is more than a political problem – it is a question of humanity.

Of course Richard Colbeck’s decision to go to the cricket, for THREE DAYS, while Omicron was marching unimpeded through Aged Care facilities, is breathtaking, and insensitive. But he is merely a pawn. Last year he was already hopeless, and then they put Greg Hunt in to ‘oversee’ his work in the sector.

That was merely a cosmetic change, however, and an unsuccessful one, because if anything the sector struggled more, and learned absolutely nothing from mistakes of the past. This time around Morrison has defended him, by saying he has listened, and he would take it on the chin, and move on. That is not a response, it is empty and meaningless.

How do the aged care residents who have died move on? How do their grieving families move on? As Prime Minister, did Morrison not know his Minister for Sport was off to the cricket? Did Greg Hunt, his immediate boss, not know? Surely the team discussed his appearance before a Senate committee, to discuss his department’s response to the Omicron wave. If not, why not? Of 55 recent senate hearings into aged care, Colbeck has attended 2.

Morrison has never understood that he is responsible for every problem, he is expected to fix every problem, because he has the resources and the people to fix them. We gave the Prime Minister great powers for that reason. With great power come great responsibilities.

Of course Morrison does not have the personality or the sense of destiny to take control. He dithers, he deflects, he searches desperately for ways to elude responsibility. He has now become so predictable in his public appearances that we listen for the “we” instead of the “I” when it comes to accepting the Commonwealth’s major task, which can be condensed into three words: Keep Australians safe.

Attending the cricket is trivial however, when we look at the way the Prime Minister hi-jacked the pandemic response and opened up the country before it was ready. The incompetence and the hypocrisy of a fundamentalist Christian telling us all to throw off the shackles, and take back our lives is stunning. A man whose every aspect of life is controlled by his religion, telling us to live free, so the economy would kick back into life, and get him re-elected.

It was a gamble. Now he cries that Omicron was a surprise. No it wasn’t. It was decimating Europe and the U.S. and we were insulated from its damage. Until he opened the borders, we were safe, but grumbling. Now we are in mourning.

Morrison has proved himself to be a spectacularly poor planner. In the early days of the pandemic, he sometimes over-delivered. Much of his response was ‘reputation-repair’ after the Hawaii debacle, but it worked. Deaths were kept to a minimum, health advice was followed, and we felt that our government was putting people ahead of the economy.

Of course the lessons he learned in the first year and a half have been forgotten. Economists have almost universally supported leaving the Jobseeker payment where it was, because the poor spend their cash immediately. Not on paying down the mortgage, not buying a speed-boat. No, they buy food, and they pay their bills. But Morrison knew better. He reduced it back to starvation levels, and threw out the safeguards.

Morrison and Hunt told us to look at numbers in hospitals, not case numbers. Then, because they thought it was like a cold, they reduced support for testing. They did not buy Rapid Antigen Tests, although they were the only way for us to test ourselves. And so the inevitable happened. The sick were heading off to work, for two reasons.

First, they did not know if they were infected, or infectious, and second, the payments had either stopped, or been reduced, so people had no choice but to present for work. As more became ill, the supply chains collapsed. As the booster shots were certified and deemed essential, we didn’t have enough, in the right places.

The vulnerable groups remained the same that they had been in the first waves. Indigenous communities, those covered by the NDIS, the regions, the economically disadvantaged were all exposed, again. They continue to bear the burden of infections, hospitalisations, lack of testing, lack of boosters.

Amidst the rising infection rates, Morrison and Frydenberg were taking the time to boast about the economy. Stunning. Take a walk along any shopping strip, and see the shuttered shops. Take a look at supermarkets, look at the empty shelves. Ironically, as Morrison lifted restrictions, many self-imposed them. Someone had to do it, because the government went missing.

Morrison’s triumphal progress to another term is looking pretty sick, because he became tangled up in stupid plans to “push through”. This was part of his re-branding as a freedom fighter. And we are paying the price.

Their characterisation of the deaths in Aged Care this year has sunk to levels of infamy not seen in Australia before. They now regularly insert the false narrative that most (60%) of the elderly Australians dying of neglect in Aged Care facilities were ‘at death’s door already, so no harm done’ is the implication.

No, their deaths are not able to be dismissed. That is why we call the facilities “nursing homes”. Not dying homes. People who have lived lives, paid taxes, brought up children, built this country, so the spivs in the Morrison Government can write off their deaths as incidental.

1519 people have died in Australia with or from the coronavirus so far this year. I can’t put a date on that figure, because it is going up at around 80 – 100 each day. The Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer expects more variants, a flu season, and winter to present many more deaths in 2022.

Now would be a good time to quote our retiring Minister for Health: Greg Hunt, “Aged-care facilities have been required to implement infection control training and it is encouraging that despite the increase in cases, there has not been the same level of increase in illness or loss of life, with most facilities indicating that the cases have been more mild at this stage.”

It might be time to retire the lot of them, and see if there is a way to prosecute those who failed us.

Australian Politics, COVID-19

The gambler in The Lodge is gambling with our lives

2 Comments

“As a politician, my instincts and passions have always been domestic,” the prime minister said. “Despite my activity of the past year, I am not one who naturally seeks out summits and international platforms. But as prime minister you must always be directed by the national interest. As has been the case for prime ministers past, so much of Australia’s future right now is being shaped by events and relationships beyond our borders”.

There is not enough time left this year, or next, to analyse the sheer emptiness and fatuousness contained in the statement above. Where would one start? Like everything he says, if you pay attention you realise that you are reading strategically placed little lies, sprinkled like fool’s gold through the serious words.

Verbal fairy floss, spun out of a desperate search for respect, and plausible deniability. Of course there is a percentage of the electorate which automatically respects the office of Prime Minister, no matter the quality of the incumbent. But even those trusting souls who believe in the institution of government are about to be betrayed.

Morrison and his lieutenants, Frydenberg and Dutton, are betting the house on the Omicron variant being little more than a cold. They have created such a climate of faux “freedom from government” that the premiers of New South Wales and Victoria have blindly followed the flawed rhetoric. By the 10th of January we could reap the reward from ignoring scientific advice, and common sense. Our hospitals could be bursting at the seams.

Andrews and Perrotet have been shamed into putting the economy ahead of lives, with their own versions of betraying their own populations, by going along with the most dishonest government ever seen in this country.

Morrison is always scheming for political advantage, and he rode the wave of anti-vax and anti-lockdown rebellion cynically, until Omicron hit us. He dared the premiers to open up, too early, and he has them backed into a game of chicken. Who will blink first?

The Astra-Zeneca vaccine is about to lose its efficacy against the new variant. The other vaccines are marginally better, but not enough to protect the community. So boosters are strongly recommended.

There are a couple of problems with boosters. The first is that there is a limited supply available, and no adequate supply will arrive in Australia until after the New Year. Considering the monumental mess created by the first (st)rollout, who has faith we will have adequate supplies this time around?

By shortening the time gap between second and third (booster) shots, the number required by eligible people by December 31, rose from 2.3 million to 3.8 million. There are less than 1 million doses in the country now, and going by the empty shelves in most stores, international logistical problems will play a big part in whether we get our boosters in time, or not. Put an executive from Toll in charge, or at least someone who knows about logistics. Not a lightweight politician!

Secondly, Morrison, or Hunt perhaps, has reduced the fee payable to pharmacists for delivering vaccines into arms. Pharmacists received $16 per jab when administering the first dose, $26 for the second, and will now drop back to $16 per booster, which is less than the $24 paid to GPs. So pharmacists, who run businesses, not rorts, are pulling out of the program. So we have a shortage of doses, and a shortage of those prepared to deliver them. Some of the squandered cash from JobKeeper might have encouraged the pharmacists.

Morrison in campaign mode is different to Morrison the bad tempered and ‘shoot from the mouth’ leader of the country. When he sniffs an election he morphs into the ‘miracle worker’ he thought he was in 2019. He plays in the moment, there is no past, just the news cycle and the headlines, day after day after day, until he falls over the line.

This time around you can almost script his response. It will be the fault of logistics organisations, or overseas countries, or the Omicron variant was nastier than he thought, or the AdBlue diesel additive supply ran out, or people were reluctant …

The vulnerable were left till last during the last rollout. Aboriginal communities are even now still getting their first or second doses. Nursing homes and disability residential services have also missed out, as have many of their staff. Imagine what it will be like for them, adding another five months onto their already ridiculous waiting times.

A sobering thought – even if Omicron proves to be mild, its ferocious transmissibility will probably overwhelm our hospitals, and all classes of patients will be exposed to further delays in their medical treatment. The death toll will rise, and we will have our leaders to blame.

As we head into Christmas it is clear that no mainland Australian politician has the guts or the integrity to tighten up the rules, and to impose whatever limits it takes to keep us all safe. And we will be forced to watch their disgraceful attempts to shift culpability.

Australian Politics, COVID-19

The Aussie Pandemic Diaries

2 Comments

Date: October 6, 2021

Another week of cynicism, lies, prevarication and obfuscation. We should have a unique page in the thesaurus for the many ways we can label public discourse in Australian public life.

Today Dan Tehan arrived in Paris. Yes, slow talking Dan, who is our Trade Minister. He is going to try and arrange for someone in France to talk to him. His loner status was caused by the Prime Minister’s recent attempt at international diplomacy.

You might remember how the Prime Minister tore up a long-standing, large ($90 Billion) contract for submarines. If he worked for a corporation rather than a country, he’d be sacked on the spot. The damages will be substantial, as will the damage to our reputation for fair dealing. But then I cannot think of a corporation which would consider employing him.

He replaced the contract with the French with (drumroll) zero, zilch, nothing. A photo opportunity in Washington. But there was a result. The French are not taking our calls. They do sit on the Security Council of the United Nations, but who needs the French when you’ve got Boris on your team?

Remember the PM’s first foray into international affairs? He attempted to move our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was slavishly following Donald Trump’s lead. Remember how the Islamic world turned on him, (and us, by association) for his sheer naivety, and his stupidity. Who else would have joined with Trump, that well known career diplomat?

I have a theory that he heard the name “Jerusalem”, from those “end of world” lectures at that weird church he belongs to, and he thought “how good is Jerusalem?”

Angus Taylor has had a bad week. Firstly an American advisor to Joe Biden on climate change, asked whether he was an idiot, or an ideologue? Tough question, when you have listened to his nonsense about gas-led recoveries, and the end of the weekend. Then Ford announced they are releasing electric versions of the F150 ute. Thank God the weekend is safe.

This week Twiggy Forrest described Carbon Capture and Storage as useless. It doesn’t work. All Angus’ eggs are in that basket. What to do? Send some dodgy figures to a newspaper, Angus. Hopefully your goose is cooked, come election time.

New South Wales lost its Premier. There was a’moaning and a’groaning about what a great Premier she had been. Strangely forgotten was the reason for the loss of her career. She was being actively investigated for corrupt conduct. Or having bad taste in men? Possibly both.

With no hint of shame, several news organisations suggested that the Federal Liberals would use this event to further delay a National Integrity Commission, because it had ‘caught out’ a Liberal Premier, and such a result was regrettable, and a reason NOT to have a Federal watchdog. Very like abolishing the police, because they keep catching criminals.

Her replacement was a staunch and rigid Catholic, who looks to have close to zero life experience, but he likes straight marriage, lots of kids, and presumably doesn’t mind people like George Pell. He is against abortion in all cases. He has also something of a chequered career as Treasurer, but he is white, straight, male and religious. What could go wrong?

He wants to open up the economy, like Scott Morrison does, when they hit the bare minimum of vaccinations, no matter the number of cases. We will remember if they cause unnecessary deaths, and the thinking electorate is already stocking up on baseball bats.

Morrison has also just accused the Queensland Premier of attempting to extort money from the Commonwealth, because she fears an overload on their hospital system, and she wants to be prepared for the rush of cases when we do inevitably open up.

Now his chronic inability to actually deliver a reasonable sentence, has him accusing a Labor Premier of a criminal offence, for trying to cushion what will be an outburst of new infections, once those borders come down.

If nothing else, his statement was tone deaf, stupid, defamatory, demeaning, meaningless. She wasn’t trying to buy herself a condo in the Gold Coast, she was asking for health funding in the midst of a pandemic which has seen the deaths of nearly five million people. Classy, Scotty. Even your mates from the Gas Industry would call that a step too far.

Finally, will he, or won’t he, go to Glasgow? Too chicken to go, too chicken to not go. Decisions, decisions. Man up, Scott.

I can’t wait for another week to pass. Reminder! I am not making this up.

Australian Politics

Christian Porter’s inevitable fall

Leave a comment

Christian Porter is something of a cliché. Brilliant, charming, gifted, but apparently a tortured soul. Searching for what? Authenticity, or respite from all the privilege and expectations, piled onto his young shoulders? Could he be the lonely high achiever, doomed to be separated from his fellows by his towering intellect, and his looming date with destiny?

Born into an established and high profile Liberal Party family, it was always expected that he would achieve greatness. He was educated at Hale School in Perth, an exclusive and expensive old college. Its secondary fees begin at around $27,000 a year, plus. Its grounds are immaculate, and extensive. Its strict uniform policy is rigidly applied.

It is not clear when Christian Porter took up the demon drink, but it seems he was an enthusiast while still at the University of Western Australia. It did not diminish his academic abilities, however. He completed three degrees while there; a bachelor’s degree in Economics, Arts (Politics) and Law. He later attended the London School of Economics, where he obtained a Master of Science (Political Theory). He topped his class.

So why does he consistently take aim at his own feet? He has suffered a shattering fall from grace, compounded by a seeming inability to regulate his own behaviour. He is now seen as arrogant, narcissistic and self-destructive, and with a tin ear. His drinking is seen as problematic, and his attitude to women has been front and centre. His legalistic bluster has proved ineffective at redeeming his reputation.

The Four Corners program, and its consequences

The ABC’s Four Corners program aired on November 9, 2020. Titled “Inside the Canberra Bubble”, it detailed allegations of inappropriate conduct and extramarital affairs by Attorney-General Christian Porter and Population Minister Alan Tudge, with female ministerial staffers.

Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher agreed that one of his senior staff questioned the program’s bona fides, before its release, but it was shown, as scheduled. Porter denied the allegations made against him, and indicated that he was ‘considering his legal options’. He did not follow through with his threat to sue.

Barrister Kathleen Foley was quoted on the program, based on her knowledge of him when they were at university together. She said she believed he was “deeply sexist” and a “misogynist”. She provided examples, which must have been damaging to his standing amongst women.

Grace Tame was named Australian of the Year on 25 January, 2021. She was the inspiration for Brittany Higgins, helping her to find the courage to come forward and to divulge her own story. She did so on 15 February, which caused the Morrison Government to scramble to protect itself. Morrison initiated enquiries into who knew what, and when. Unsurprisingly, the enquiries are still ongoing, with no results.

Anonymous letter sent to selected politicians

On 26 February 2021 the ABC published an anonymous letter, which accused a Cabinet Minister of an historical rape. The Cabinet Minister was not named. The letter had been sent to several politicians, including the Prime Minister, which made it impossible to ignore. Although the Minister was not named, Twitter settled on Porter’s name quite quickly, which caused much innuendo and tension.

Porter made much of protecting his reputation, when he fronted the media, to name himself as the alleged rapist. Although he strenuously denied the allegation, the earlier Four Corners episode had unearthed aspects of his personality, and of his personal style, which had started as a trickle, but which would become an avalanche, of suspicion and distrust.

The country was divided. Morrison sat on the fence, but he stonewalled, with nonsensical arguments about the sanctity of the ‘rule of law’. He also denied reading the letter. So we were faced with a farcical situation where the accused Minister, and the Prime Minister, both professed to not having read the letter. As one is forced to acknowledge when discussing the Morrison Government, I am not making this up.

Morrison stood by his man, until it was inconvenient. He then demoted him to Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Porter has been criticised for ‘going missing’ in his new role, although he has stayed in the newspapers.

Legal actions, and their payment

He sued the ABC, and its journalist, Louise Milligan, for defamation, but he then discontinued the action. He claimed victory, but he received no damages. The ABC agreed to pay for the mediation costs. There has been relative quiet, apart from Porter’s reported sorties to the courts, where he has sought to permanently remove the ABC’s defence from public scrutiny. His costs have presumably continued to accumulate.

On Monday, September 13 Christian Porter updated his register of interests. In it he stated that a portion of his legal fees had been paid by an anonymous donor, or donors. This of course has unleashed a huge controversy, about transparency and accountability. These are sensitive areas for Porter, considering he has been accused of previously stalling on an Integrity Commission. For nearly three years! Great job, Christian!

Ex Prime Ministers, many eminent judges and even the current Prime Minister have questioned the morality, and or the optics of the donation, with its attendant potential for corruption, blackmail, or even threats to national security. The greatest casualty has been Porter’s reputation. If it was not irredeemably in tatters already, it surely is now. Porter looks to be yesterday’s man.

In breaking news, Porter has ‘resigned’ from the Ministry, but in an apparent deal he continues in Parliament, but he gets to keep the cash. Morrison is thus spared the indignity of calling a by-election, which he would lose. This Government defies all laws, of morality, and even of gravity. How does it remain in power?

Australian Politics

JobKeeper was just another rort (but big!)

Leave a comment

When this Government decides on a program which distributes taxpayers’ money, it seems that they never start with a blank sheet of paper. The spreadsheets might be pre-populated with Coalition seats, as in the case of the “sports rorts affair”, although some of the cash went to vulnerable seats, which might, under favourable conditions, swing back to the coalition.

The arrival of the pandemic was akin to a miracle, in that it swept in just in time to save Morrison from the escalating scandal, which had already claimed Bridget McKenzie’s scalp. It would have eventually worked its way up to Morrison, because his fingerprints were all over this program. Morrison was implicated as the architect, and the chief beneficiary, of the cash splash.

The timing was, if not close to being criminal, at least cynical and immoral. Just before an election, arguably some crucial funding decisions were taken after the caretaker period began. Caretaker mode means that the Government refrains from making major decisions, because the House of Representatives is dissolved, as is half the Senate. There is effectively no legislative powers, until the next government is sworn in. Everyone in Canberra knows the rules. They also know it is a convention only, so no problem there.

There is another rule, about governing for the whole country. That is where funds are allocated on a needs basis. Not on where you live, or how you vote, but on your needs. So, every one of his team who received, and then announced, their ill-gotten gains had a moral duty to return the funds. But, as it is a moral question, the Morrison Government failed to admit to the rort, and failed to rectify it.

$1.1 MILLION TO UPGRADE AND REPLACE SPORTING FACILITIES IN KOOYONG

That is the headline from Frydenberg’s announcement pre-election. The local member, Josh Frydenberg, is the Treasurer, and he was when this program unfolded. He oversaw $150 million being squandered on buying votes, and he did not object. Was that because he didn’t expect to win the election, and they were shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic? His announcement of the grant to Kooyong sporting clubs was made on May 3, 2019, fully 15 days prior to the election. So much for fiscal rectitude, or for following the spirit of the conventions.

Not only is Kooyong one of the wealthiest areas in Australia, its sporting facilities are second to none. Kooyong should have been the last place chosen, if the program was decided on a needs basis. Do not expect the local member to hand anything back. He suffered a swing of 8.2% against, even with the electoral sweetener.

The car-parks rort was more of the same, except four times bigger, and even clumsier. $660 million was offered to MPs who didn’t even have to ask for the money. The scheme was launched by preparing a list of 20 top marginal seats, and inviting the sitting MP to nominate projects for funding. Both the sports rort and the car-parks rort involved the same staff member from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Keeping JobKeeper secret

So why are we surprised when Morrison and Frydenberg ‘design’ JobKeeper, and lo and behold, the main beneficiaries are Liberal supporters and donors. Already red-faced with excitement at the prospect of their promised tax cuts, here is the Treasurer offering them more free money, with no strings attached. They don’t even have to prove eligibility. All they need to do is guess that their turnover will fall, and the money starts to flow. If they erred, no problem. No need to pay it back, we don’t engage in the politics of envy.

Another quirk of the system is that public companies can be shamed into paying it back if it wasn’t needed, because the ATO released a list of the companies who claimed JobKeeper, but were later found to be ineligible, or not in need.

Private companies were protected by their veil of secrecy, which is even now being extended by the Government. Their latest recruit in protecting the names of the companies has been Pauline Hanson. She was apparently rewarded for her support, by being allowed to announce a Fitzroy Community Hospice upgrade in Rockhampton, to which the Treasurer had pledged $8 million. That is how things are done by this Government. Very transactional.

In his defence to charges that he had mishandled the scheme, Mr Frydenberg said the JobKeeper scheme deliberately did not include a claw-back provision, because it might have made the companies stop and think about their eligibility, which could have caused a delay.

I know, he is the Treasurer, and he does obsess about deficits, and he espouses small government. This was despite $6 billion in emergency funding flowing to 150,000 companies who actually increased their turnover last year. Labor MP Andrew Leigh has called it the biggest waste of taxpayer money in Australian history.

We know from the Parliamentary Budget Office that $13 billion was funnelled into companies whose sales rose during the period covered by JobKeeper, and a further $15 billion was given to companies whose sales didn’t fall by 30 or 50 per cent.

What Australian voters want is an honest Government which does not play games with our money, and does not spend most of its time devising tricky schemes to deceive voters. We also want to know that the Government is fair. Relentlessly pursuing Centrelink clients for tiny debts incurred by Centrelink’s own errors does not align with letting our largest private companies off, when we know many of them did not qualify for JobKeeper, but chose to keep the money, because the Prime Minister and his Treasurer told them they could.

Australian Politics

Morrison has made a Faustian deal with the cabinet

Leave a comment

Australians have never seen the like of this Government before, precisely because of the unlucky convergence of two unique circumstances. The first is Scott Morrison’s relentless ambition, and the second is the sycophantic, supine nature of his governmental colleagues.

Scott Morrison has become a scourge on this democracy. His anti-social and ideologically driven policies have generally only been spasmodically opposed by some of the cleverer Laborites, but mainly by the independents in Canberra. His so-called Cabinet Ministers act more like a team of obedient assistants, rather than the dedicated professional policy makers they should be.

Australians pride themselves on an egalitarian, larrikin spirit of individualism, but a collective apathy has overtaken the people. When Morrison ran for the Prime Ministership, we congratulated ourselves for ‘dodging a bullet’, in the figure of Peter Dutton. By now we all know that was a false victory. What we got with Morrison was much worse than the alternative.

Dutton reminds me of the cartoon figure, Dick Dastardly, described by Wikipedia as a “fictional, villainous anti-hero”. In that characterisation, Dutton does regularly play to the ‘peanut gallery’ with his outrageous displays of supposedly tone-deaf utterances, but as with Dick Dastardly, he is more comic-book than evil. And his ‘administration’ of the Home Affairs Department was so inept, that he proved there is nothing to fear. His major act as Defence Minister has been to cancel ‘woke’ morning teas, so the Chinese People’s Army better wake up to itself!

Morrison on the other hand, is suffused with a shape-shifter’s amorality, with seemingly no beliefs, no principles, and total shamelessness. His acceptance of Andrew Laming returning to the Liberal fold demonstrated his contempt for parliamentary or even moral standards, but also a withering scorn for Australian voters. He must genuinely believe that we have no memories, or at least no capacity to judge, and no expectations of our governments.

His professed Christianity is not rooted in any reputable church’s history, but it is a confected import from the U.S. Traditional Christians in Australia are continually being confounded by his apparent lack of charity, or compassion, or common decency. But his branch of Christianity does not espouse these qualities.

Instead it basks in dog eat dog competition, as in the gospel of rich versus poor; it revels in a narrow orthodoxy because mankind is seen as not being fit to exercise free will and moral choices; it reads the Bible as literal truth because it presents a simplistic view of the world, one that is more than two thousand years out of date.

It believes in the duality of the world, divided between the Prince of Light, and the Prince of Darkness. This appeals to the uneducated who feel cast off and left behind by the modern world, and it has provided a handsome living for those who have latched on to the scam. Many of those leaders traditionally end up in jail, or disgraced, when their misdeeds are uncovered.

Matters as important as the status of women are settled, in that women are at best help-meets, and never equals. The Pentecostal and its stable-mates on the evangelical right are designed for, and sold to, white males of a certain cast of mind, and Scott Morrison fits the mould.

His treatment of asylum seekers when he was Minister for Immigration and Border Protection was so clinically and morally harsh that 300 of his schoolmates from Sydney Boys’ High School were compelled to write an open letter objecting to his speaking at a fund-raiser at the school. They were ashamed of him.

His apparent obsession with punishing the asylum seekers led him to re-open Christmas Island, so that he could rain hellfire on them, again. That was fully five years later. He was now Prime Minister, and his anger was re-ignited because he thought their struggles with physical and mental health issues were, not imaginary, but confected. After five years, in a badly run gulag, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

That is not to mention the hapless Sri Lankan family he has imprisoned on Christmas Island, for years. Don’t think that ‘Dick Dutton’ calls those shots; Morrison controls the members of his Government as if they were toys.

We are all too polite, in a typically Australian way, to call him out for his authoritarianism, his miserable, penny pinching nature, his weird set of beliefs, his sociopathic pursuit of his enemies. It is no wonder that the ABC is running scared, and the rest of the media, if that is what we call it, is either controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his own brand of puppets, or by Channel 9. It is definitely no surprise that Morrison has had such a run with the Australian public.

So are we just unlucky enough to have scored this dangerous person, at this moment in time? Not at all. He studied Trump’s post-truth regime, and he saw that, if enough of the people are apathetic, or ill-educated, or fed lies on a constant basis, he might just get away with it.

Recent failures in quarantine and the vaccine rollout have seen his self-assurance wobble. The Victorian Labor Government applied some heat to Morrison, and he has retreated. This might be the way to attack this incompetent one man band. Actually challenge them, and then even the Murdoch press has to deal with the public disenchantment. Hopefully Australian voters wake up before we sleep-walk into another Coalition government.

Australian Politics

Morrison’s shallow talent pool

2 Comments

As a general rule, upon election, it usually took Parliamentarians some time to show what they were made of, and gradually those with the best minds, and the greatest capacity, worked their way up through the ranks. In political life that has always meant attaining ministerial appointment. If one was unfortunate enough to be seated on the ‘wrong’ side of the chamber, one gained ‘shadow’ ministerial experience.

Often the Minister, and his or her shadow, continued in the same portfolio, over a period of years. In this way each became expert in the area covered by the job. For example, when the Government was changed by the electorate, the Shadow Minister was able to step into the ministerial role almost seamlessly, and often with shared goals. That approach was known as bi-partisanship.

This served to illustrate the maxim that the Cabinet is there to serve the country, rather than the party. In the best of times the Minister and his or her shadow were able to work together, with the goal of achieving improvement, for the country as a whole. This really came to an end with the Howard Government.

How did Howard change things?

To many Australians John Howard was known as honest, earnest and relatively harmless. But that persona was carefully crafted. His Government was described as ‘mean and tricky’ in a report Howard himself commissioned, from the Liberals’ own president, Shane Stone. Howard was on a mission in 1996 to re-make Australia, into a faux Thatcherite society, and he used the oldest trick in the book – a faux ‘budget emergency’.

Serving as a beacon to Tony Abbott in 2013, Howard ‘manufactured’ his budget emergency, and embarked on a ruthless project to rid his Government of debt, by imposing strict savings on reluctant Ministers, and selling off the country’s silver.

Some of the more notable pieces of silver were the sale of Telstra, and the privatisation of both the Commonwealth Employment Service, and the Aged Care sector. The damage these own goals have caused, has cascaded throughout the years, and continues to cause the country to bleed.

This served Howard in two ways. Firstly he engineered “cabinet solidarity” on solving the ’emergency’, thus mandating even unreasonable savings, and he isolated the so-called ‘wets’, many of whom fought for their portfolios’ funding.

‘Wets’ was another term for moderates, who generally believed in a type of humanistic Conservatism, where they achieved economic goals, while protecting the poor. Some of his best performers were either sidetracked, or actively removed from the parliament, through selective organisational targeting.

The party is of course now stacked with time-serving, narrow, ideologically motivated drones, whose life experience is usually having served as an ‘adviser’ to a parliamentarian hack, or as a lawyer. That does not deepen the gene pool, but it does provide malleable cattle with which to work.

What happened to bi-partisanship?

Cabinet ministers are now chosen on the basis of loyalty to whomever is sitting in the prime ministerial chair. Talent is in such short supply that someone like Michaelia Cash, a former lawyer, is now a cabinet minister. Her portfolio area is Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. With her unreasoning loathing for all things union, who could she work with, across the aisle? And working at a major law firm, as a taster for small business?

Angus Taylor is a former Rhodes Scholar, and he has worked as a management consultant for twenty years or so. He must know about risk management, or he would not have been employed in management consulting. And yet, in possibly the most important role he will ever be employed in, that of reducing Australia’s emissions in a pre-apocalyptic world, he adheres to the anti-science rhetoric, and apparent obfuscations of a global heating denialist. The only possible explanation for his behaviour is that he is unable to read a risk profile, or he cannot escape the shackles of his denialism.

The Hon Melissa Price MP was Vice President of Legal and Business Development for Crosslands Resources, an iron ore miner, before she was appointed to the Environment Ministry. As Peter Fitzsimons asked on television, “If a million dead fish at Menindee doesn’t attract your attention as the environment minister, what does it take?”

She also approved the Adani Mine’s groundwater plan just days before the 2019 election, although the plan was riddled with errors. It puts her in line to contest the Worst Environment Minister in History Award, with Greg Hunt and Josh Frydenberg also in the running.

Was the Prime Minister joking with these appointments?

One theme runs through this tiny sample of ministerial misfits. It can be read as being the best we can do, with a shallow pool to pick from, or did Morrison actually choose ministers who would so underperform that he could show his contempt for the very areas they represent.

Considering the IPA obsession for small-to-no-government, could this be, like Trump’s, a new low in ministerial commitment, as we head to low-to-no regulation, and really ugly capitalism?

Politics has been called, unkindly, show business for ugly people, but it should not be taken so lightly. Politics is a deadly serious undertaking, because it has real, tangible consequences. That is why it constantly surprises us that politicians think that they have some form of pass, that they will not be judged for their actions. Because their decisions often have real-world consequences.