Bill Shorten addressed the National Press Club on Tuesday and committed a future Labor government to a policy of full employment. When asked by Leigh Sales on ABC’s 7.30 Tuesday evening what he considered to be an acceptable unemployment level, he said 5%.

It was a safe answer, but not the right answer. Full employment should mean just that; he should have answered, 0%. Full employment means a full time job for everyone who wants one and a part time job for everyone who wants one.

Anything less is not full employment. Whether or not Bill Shorten understands this, is open to conjecture. But on the other side of the parliamentary chamber, they don’t even care. Full employment is anathema to conservative, neo-classical politics.

Their most recent mantra, ‘jobs and growth’ is a smokescreen to hide their conviction that a minimum level of unemployment (somewhere between 5-8%), is needed to maintain an orderly workforce and control wages growth.

The present level has been hovering around 6% for the last two years and is probably right on the mark for them, evidenced by their lack of interest in reducing it.

Unemployment dropped to 5.8% for February due to a steep fall in the participation rate, but the trend figures are not encouraging, even worse when we compare February 2016 results with September 2013, when the Coalition came to office.

The ambivalence demonstrated by the government on the issue of employment is breathtaking. That the MSM allows them to get away with it, is outrageous.

Minister for Employment, Michaela Cash salivated recently over the claim that 300,000 new jobs had been created in 2015, but could not point to one convincing government initiative  that had contributed to it. Well, let’s take a closer look at those figures.

You may remember one of Tony Abbott’s core election promises in 2013 was the creation of one million jobs over the next five years and two million jobs in ten years.

What he didn’t tell us was that natural population growth plus immigration requires around 125,000 new jobs to be created each year just to maintain existing levels of employment. Boasting to create one million jobs in five years sounds impressive, but in reality, it barely covers the minimum required.

And, as it happens, they have Buckley’s chance of achieving that.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show the September 2013 unemployment rate was 5.7% in trend terms. At that time there were 706,400 unemployed. In February 2016, unemployment was trending at 5.8% with 736,600 people unemployed, meaning unemployment has increased by 30,200 over the past 2 years and 5 months.

The same ABS reports show that 11,646,800 persons were employed in Australia in September 2013, while in February 2016 that number was 11,903,100. This tells us that there were 256,000 new jobs created over the past 2 years and 5 months (a big drop from that short term 300,000 in one year boast).

However, it gets worse. From an available workforce in September 2013 of 12,353,200 we grew in numbers to 12,639,700 in February 2016, an increase of 286,500. Which means the 256,000 new jobs created have failed to keep pace with population growth, let alone reduce existing unemployment.

By any language or spin, this is a failure of government to sufficiently stimulate the economy.

Tony Abbott’s 1,000,000 new jobs in 5 years was a pipe dream. He, or whoever came up with it, might as well have dreamt it.

No doubt Scott Morrison will put the usual optimistic spin on the latest figures but when proper comparisons are made, one can clearly see, that in trend terms, we are going in the wrong direction.

Palace coups have become a seasonal tradition in Australian politics.  Between 2007 and 2018, Australia had six prime ministers, four of whom were overthrown by their own parties, the first five never being allowed to complete their first term in office. In contrast, between 1983 and 2007, the country could count on the dry, solid stability of three leaders. The change of heart led to the irresistible description of Australia being “the coup capital of the democratic world.”

In the Westminster system of government, where the executive is drawn from the representative chamber, prime ministers are at the mercy of party hacks and factional gangsters. The party hacks, in turn, are terrified by the polls, the make-belief register of electoral emotion that psephologists pretend to decode.

As has been shown recently in the United Kingdom, and for a longer stretch in Australia, no ruling leader is safe from their sponsoring party, the shallow and insecure apparatchiks who, always worrying about the next election, will carve you up if needed to make way for a more viable, vote-getting successor. No principle is sacrosanct if it can be sacrificed in the name of victory, no policy worthwhile preserving. Every conceivable weapon of choice will be deployed when it comes to ousting the leader of the day. As for democratic sensibility: What of it?

Nemesis, a three-part documentary series running on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, deals with the conservative side of the country’s politics, the Liberal-National coalition. It should be seen alongside the Killing Season, which offered the Labor Party equivalent of ritual-killing and political cannibalism starring Australia’s current ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, and its country’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Both series leave viewers scratching their heads and wondering what all the murderous fuss was about.

For the three big figures in Nemesis, the fuss was ample, the disquiet loud.  Tony Abbott, the doctrinaire pugilist Catholic, aggressively superb in opposition but raggedly estranged from the electorate in office; the suave, money-attuned Malcolm Turnbull, lawyer, merchant banker, the thinking suit suspected for not being ideological enough; and the least sympathetic of them all, that walking advertisement of treachery and mendacity, Scott Morrison.

With Abbott not participating in the series, we are left with the hammed-up Olympian wisdom of Turnbull, describing events with false detachment, and Morrison, his successor, who did as much to assist Turnbull as he did to oust him. (He who uses the dagger for you is bound to use it on you.) Morrison’s versions of events are much like that of the critic Mary McCarthy’s assessment of Lillian Hellman’s work: “every work she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

Most depressing of all is the distinct lack of ideas in the field of battle. In politics, they shrivel before the glare of hatred, envy and fear. In these bouts of savaging, leaders are not sacrificed because of their vast hinterland of thought and wonder. They are not overthrown because one saw the numinous light, the other, despairing dark. They are sacrificed because they lost, in Abbott’s case, 30 Newspolls in a row, supposedly making them unelectable. They are removed – again, to take Abbott’s example – because they put their trust in a bullying advisor and confessor, such as the autocratic harridan Peta Credlin.

When ideas do bubble to the top of the torrid sewerage, they feature such gruesome policies as “Turn Back the Boats,” an Abbott favourite from 2013 that was, contrary to what Morrison claims, popular in its cruelty, a real vote getter. Voters can be convinced to do the goose step and stomp on the vulnerable if you give them reason to. By turning back boats heavy with asylum seekers and refugees, a cheap humanitarian sentiment could be massaged: at least they did not drown, even if they were to rot in sadistic enclaves in the Pacific.

A disturbing nugget from Abbott’s brief prime ministership (2013-2015) is thrown in. With the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukrainian territory by Russian separatists in July 2014, Abbott was aflame with aggressive vengeance. Of the 298 dead, 27 were Australians. While an officially cool version of Australian anger was offered by foreign minister, Julie Bishop, Abbott privately wanted the crash site overrun with Australian troops. 

The military establishment of the day was alarmed. “I was concerned,” former army chief Sir Angus Houston stated, “that the military operation would be provocative, because the crash site was only a short distance from the Russian border, and already I was aware of a huge buildup of Russian forces on the border.” Houston’s effort at dissuading Abbott proved successful. “OK, Angus, I accept your advice,” the Australian PM responded. “It’ll be a police-led operation.”

Interestingly enough, the makers of the series omit a similar suggestion by Abbott in November 2014 that 3,500 Australian troops be sent to rescue Yazidis being butchered by zealots of the Islamic State (Daesh) on the desert sands of Iraq. There was not even a hint that US air support would be offered, nor participation from any other power. Again, the caution of military officialdom and good sense prevailed, though Abbott denies ever floating the idea.

In a peculiar way, those two suggestions, while coterminous with the fringes of lunacy, also showed a man of some principle, fanatical as it was. Muscular, masculine and misguided in his quixotic way, he was driven by a burning, messianic fire. But in his broader outlook, Abbott resembled a warrior of yesteryear, a repository of anachronisms, the latter exemplified by his daft decision to give the late Prince Philip a knighthood. If there was ever talk about the superiority of Western civilisation, he would be there to boast about it. Increasingly, even proudly tone deaf to the electorate, he lost his seat in the 2019 election to the independent Zali Steggall. In doing so, he unintentionally laid the seeds for disruptive change that would, in May 2022, see the greatest number of independents ever returned to Canberra.

Scott Morrison smirks and sniggers as Bill Shorten shreds the ex PM’s attempt to play the victim over Robodebt. Mugs the camera. Peter Dutton needs a stunt to distract from his deal with a corrupt contractor Nauru. Or the stench from his rejection of six indigenous applications to the 2019 safer communities fund. But it takes more than chutzpah to repudiate a Royal Commission. 

Dismissing Catherine Holmes’ report as “unsubstantiated, speculative and wrong”. Morrison denies all responsibility and blames public servants for keeping him in the dark. As for his not giving truthful evidence, the notorious liar simply says Holmes is wrong. We can take his word for it.  

You can’t swagger and sit at the same time but somehow Morrison manages to drape himself over the green leather of the back bench as if it’s a throne. I’m still Boss Cocky, the body language says. John Howard shrank his party and the nation to fit his meagre, “mean and tricky” leadership.

A deluded egomaniac, Morrison fancies he can still cut Labor down to size. And he’s always fancied himself as a black belt in rebarbative wit. The Sultan of Sting.

Instead, Morrison’s an epic failure; he’ll go into the record books as the Liberal’s most talentless has-been, or never-was PM, a fraud who fluked a second term in office he didn’t deserve and whose Rorts R-Us racist, sexist, chauvinist government was contracted out to the gas lobby only to waste years in office doing nothing.

His bogan chauvinism? OK, he’s the only PM to wear the Australian flag on his face. 

Or unless you count epic corruption; the Buttrosing of our ABC; an eagerness to appease corporate greed and tax cuts for the rich. And galloping inequality. 

The PBO finds that the stage three tax cuts will cost $20.4bn in their first year, 2024-25 and increase every year to $42.9bn in 2033-34. Yet 3.3 million people now live below the poverty line; 761,000 of whom are children. Let’s not talk about AUKUS and the four hundred billion dollars we plan to sink on obsolete, nuclear submarines that we can’t fuel, dock or crew. That’s a lot of aged care or welfare. Buy a lot of social housing. 

Flash back to that Robodebt moment in Question Time, another parliamentary convention Morrison continues to abuse. Parliament is lessened by the presence of an ex-PM and poly-minister, under a cloud whose legacy includes his Robodebt monster; his undermining of responsible, democratic government, a holiday in Hawaii and that kamikaze ending – in which his embrace of ugly transphobic bigots and his capture by the dirty liars of coal and methane mining helped the federal Liberals destroy themselves.

But how he smirks. Scotty could smirk for Australia. You wonder what’s wrong with him. Or, perhaps, like Macron, you don’t wonder, you know. ScoMo’s a sociopath. Not just naff; grotesquely inappropriate. Dangerous. 

Shorten talks of the human cost; lives ruined. Or poor people who took their own lives to escape ScoMo’s shakedown extortion racket. As he acted out the tough new cop on the welfare beat, a Kafkaesque terror was unleashed on the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. Nearly half a million of us received false debt notices, some with AFP logos. We were told we would go to jail, victims say. Or they punished us for speaking out.

Take a bow Alan Tudge. To “Tudge” should be a transitive verb in the vocabulary of state sanctioned violence. To Tudge is to order your underlings to get the personal files of everyone who complained about Robodebt and then leak their details to mates in the media. Alan Tudge did that.  

Michael Towke, pre-selected for Cook, suffered something very similar, except his vilification ran for four excoriating articles in The Daily Telegraph filled with lies. One claimed Towke faced jail; a headline that sent his mother in hospital while eminence grise Morrison got the nomination for the safe Liberal seat in a second ballot.

Unless you’re a Scott Morrison, or a Tudge or a member of the Coalition who condoned if not cheered them on – or any one of the countless public servants who went along with Robodebt. It’s unfathomable. You wonder what it takes to be a Minister who demands the files of every public complainant about an illegal income average strategy to levy false debts on people who couldn’t pay. Wonder what it says about us. 

What is not in doubt is that as PM Morrison knew exactly what was going on. His utterly unrepentant denial is completely at odds with the reports of his colleagues.

Fran Bailey at Tourism Australia, his boss from 2004-2006, reports a complete lack of trust. Says Morrison hasn’t changed. Cites his need for secrecy, lack of consultation and a “supreme belief that only he can do a job”. 

Or take credit for others’ dirty work. To the average man or woman, Morrison’s boat trophy boast “I stopped these” would evoke the destruction of so many lives. Terror. Separation from family. Crushing poverty. The death in life of indefinite detention. 

It gets weirder when you know it’s a lie. Rudd stopped the boats.

Morrison’s disconnection is disturbing. Imagine. You withhold vital information from your cabinet; duck your duty to inform your colleagues and wage a dirty war on Australia’s poorest and most vulnerable. Only to achieve abject failure. 

“Not my doing” you lie to the Royal Commission and you bully Rachelle Miller, who worked closely for former Human Services Minister, Alan Tudge. 

Although Morrison swears that he ceased his Robodebt involvement once he got promoted, Miller confirms that it’s just another lie.

“We were getting feedback from the PM’s office that this was playing quite well in the marginal seats, Western Sydney, that sort of thing.”

Back to the chamber. Government Services’ Minister, Shorten, uses last Tuesday’s (1 August) Question Time to rebuke the disgraced former PM over his self-indulgent statement on indulgence the previous day. 

A brazen kleptocrat who stole five colleagues’ portfolios from under their noses between 2020 and 2021, Morrison just loves to steal any show. Bad news is good news in the moral algebra of the post-truth- post shame ScoMo-Dutton-Trump era. 

Never waste a good crisis; even if you have to set your own pants on fire.

“Very personal, Bill…And we all know why,” Morrison heckles across the chamber stooping to personal innuendo himself. But the sly dig only encourages the Sisyphean Bill Shorten, one of Labor’s top performers. Bill knows he’s drawn blood.  

Shorten belabours the failed federal Liberal Leader over ScoMo’s lonely, tone-deaf, off-key solo played to a deserted chamber, Monday 1 August, in which the dreadful ham plays the victim of a political lynching. 

It’s a TKO. In a powerful, mounting incremental repetition, Shorten lists a dozen real victims of Robodebt to ridicule Morrison’s public display of self-pity. Here’s a couple.

“The real victims were those who suffered trauma, anxiety, distress. The real victims were those who took their own lives. The real victims are the mothers of those who took their own lives.”

“The real victims are all those Australians who lost trust in government because of an unlawful scheme run for four-and-a-half years.”

“One person who is not a real victim is the member for Cook.”

Morrison’s snide riposte accuses his nemesis of personal revenge, payback for ScoMo’s key role in Kill Bill, a campaign of AFP raids, ridicule, innuendo, slander and bastardry which Liberals have run since 2013 but only with the collusion of our MSM and with our ABC increasingly over-eager to join the anti-Labor fray. 

Shorten’s under no illusions about ScoMo. Bill’s late mother, Ann, was not off-limits. Lies appeared about her in The Daily Telegraph, in May 2019, alleging her son had lied about his mother’s “illustrious career as a lawyer”. 

Some hear a dig about 2019 where Labor lost the unlosable election largely in Queensland and chiefly because of Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson. But the Liberal team plan is to pummel Labor at every turn, as it does via the reporting of Morrison’s melodramatic stunt almost alone in the chamber Monday. 

It’s a dramatic contrast to last November and Labor’s censure of his secret powers; appointing himself to other key ministries. In the end, Morrison was in charge of six of the fourteen departments of state, as former High Court Judge Virginia Bell notes, early in her report. Then, Dutton organised a show of solidarity with a notorious liar who continues to undermine our democracy. Morrison is the Dutton regime’s totem.

In November, every Opposition MP was rounded up by Whips despite klepto-Mo’s dim defence of his multiple ministry megalomania. He had to keep his new portfolios secret so that his colleagues wouldn’t have to second-guess themselves. But he expected them to find out when it was all gazetted?

Of course, nothing was gazetted. And Greg Hunt was told. Another lie is called for. His lawyer writes to Bell adding another crazy evasion.

The public statements by Mr Morrison were directed to the fact that he did not inform all relevant ministers or members of the public of the ministerial appointments by way of media release or public statement. However, this in no way suggests that he did not expect that the usual practice would apply and that PM&C would publish the appointments in the Gazette.

As in Robodebt, Morrison poses as the innocent victim of dud public servants. Which brings us back to his latest one-man political lunatic fringe festival show.

You could hear a pin drop, says Paul Bongiorno wryly – not because Scotty from marketing has his audience rivetted but because there’s no-one there. But be fair. The theatre of self-pity can be a lonely place. And let’s not kid ourselves that “Optics” Morrison’s orchestrated performance falls on deaf ears. 

Or that professional nihilist, Peter Dutton, is not in on the act. He has the Whip hand. In a flash, Uncle Spud’s on plasma TVs across the nation: “Mr Morrison has put a very strong case in relation to his position”. Archly, Dutts adds, “He is right to put it in parliament and he is right to serve in parliament after having been elected.”

Dutts is all loved-up, buff, refreshed and reset after a quick second honeymoon – all part of his reinvention as a loving husband and family man – which buys him some time to ring the odd mate in the AFP and dodge a bucket of dung dug out of the muck-heap that was his realm as Czar of Home Affairs and Minister for stopping people at random on Melbourne streets in 2015.

Did Dutton do a deal with a dodgy contractor, Mozammil Gulamabass “Mozu” Bhojani? At first, AFP spokespersons claim they tipped off the Minister that Mozu was bribing local politicians on Nauru. Seriously? It would be news if he were doing business without bribes. Is that possible on Nauru? 

“The AFP acting commissioner provided a verbal briefing on the investigation to the then minister for home affairs on or around 12 July 2018.”

Minister of Home Affairs Supremo, Spud-who-just-can’t-recall anything is briefed Bhojani is under AFP investigation, on Nauru, a twenty-one square kilometre island of fossilised bird turd which is now eighty percent mined out, a uninhabitable and infertile wasteland, leaving its people to eke out survival on its coastal rim; a tribute to our proud history of colonial exploitation. Or is he? 

The time frame is telling. Dutton returns, aglow with connubial bliss, flash as a rat with a gold tooth. Now the AFP retracts its claim. What it could have done is “used tighter language”, is their latest response to Labor senator Helen Polley, earlier this year.

Polley knows something. She asks if AFP told Dutton or his office that it was investigating Mr Bhojani for foreign bribery prior to September 2018.

At first AFP say they provided “a verbal briefing on the investigation to the then minister for home affairs on or around 12 July 2018.” Now it claims that it warned of the danger an over AFP presence might pose to diplomatic relations. 

That exceeds peak implausibility. This is the same Nauruan government which in 2015 is reported to have colluded with Australian Immigration Department officials in the persecution of public enemies. Yet our dodgy dealings go back a long way.   

The former island paradise is now a wen of nepotism and corruption, run by gangsters; a tribute to the civilising mission of Australia’s imperial past. We had the power to help make the place whatever we desired but instead, with our customary colossal colonial conceit, we have fashioned it in our own image. 

A type of portrait of Dorian Gray, the ravaged wasteland of what was once a fertile Pacific idyll is now a desolate, barren husk where Islanders struggle to exist on the rim. Nauru attests to our appetite for environmental degradation. Most of the island’s vegetation is replaced by unsightly mining tailings. Using the miracle of mercantile enterprise and The Pacific Phosphate Company much of Nauru disappeared long ago; fertilising paddocks all over Australia and New Zealand.

“A worked-out phosphate field is a dismal, ghastly tract of land, with its thousands of upstanding white coral pinnacles from ten to thirty feet high, its cavernous depths littered with broken coral, abandoned tram tracks, discarded phosphate baskets, and rusted American kerosene tins,” Photographer Rosamond Dobson Rhone, writes in 1921 for National Geographic Magazine

The people of Nauru took us to the International Court of Justice in 1989 seeking compensation for mining away their home. They won a pittance. Since then, Australia has been involved with economic help and most recently with its regional processing centre but under the relationship corruption has flourished. 

Mozu was up to no good. Even if bribery is endemic. What could come out about Nauru may help terminate Dutton’s career. But, stop. Look over there! 

Within hours, Morrison’s package of lies; his capture of the narrative is faithfully relayed on all MSM stations across the nation, in all its defamatory glory, with ScoMo safe in coward’s castle; parliamentary privilege. 

Scott Morrison accuses Labor of a campaign of political lynching, The Guardian Australia, happily gurgles, regurgitating a key theme in Opposition HQ comms. It does help to flood the zone with shit, as master of disinformation, Steve Bannon, puts it. MSM help him subvert the narrative of the Royal Commission’s indictment of Morrison for failing to act responsibly in presenting Robodebt to cabinet whilst knowing that it was illegal. 

Of course, there’s more. Morrison lied. Commissioner Catherine Holmes also found the liar from the shire lied to the commission. Or presented untrue evidence. No-one ever told him income averaging was an established practice yet he claims he was given verbal assurances of this fairytale.

It not only beggars belief that Morrison had nothing to do with Robo-debt after he became Treasurer or PM, as he claims, it upends ministerial seniority. In ScoMo’s absurd version, he grew less responsible the higher his rank.

It gets worse. Echoing Julia Banks who says that he was a “menacing, controlling wallpaper”, Commissioner Holmes found that Morrison then bullied public servants; or “pressured departmental officials” over Robo-debt.

Liberals knew Robo-debt was illegal in 2014, before the scheme even started. David Mason, Acting Director within The Department of Social Services DSS told its delivery arm, then known as the Department of Human Services

“We would not be able to let any debts calculated in this manner reach a tribunal,” Mason warns. 

“It’s flawed, as the suggested calculation method averaging employment income over an extended period does not accord with legislation, which specifies that the employment income is assessed fortnightly.”

Robo Debts are still being collected. Those who were coerced into paying back an illegally assessed debt and money they didn’t owe are still meeting instalment arrangements which Centrelink says must be honoured. The culture of the department administering them hasn’t changed even if the rhetoric of its Minister is upgraded. 

As ever, there’s a touch of the torch song of unrequited love from Morrison. Narcissus drowning. Tragically, grotesquely overcome by self-love and self-pity, a vainglorious lout who is in love with himself, can have no rivals. 

Mixed with bile and venom, ScoMo’s swan song (we can hope) is a bizarre, discordant, contortion of lies, crack-pot logic and Trumpery which slanders the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme as a part of quasi-legal political lynching while the coward in him abuses parliamentary privilege. 

Morrison who is fresh back from serving his electorate of Cook by holidaying in Italy and Greece, is “a bottomless well of self-pity with not a drop of mercy for all the real victims of Robodebt”, Shorten tells Parliament. 

But it’s worse than that. Our attention is turned away from some serious corruption to an easier narrative; the fiction of Labor’s vendetta or political lynching of poor Scott John Morrison whose own version of the truth – a bit like the apocryphal tale of the boy who put his finger in the hole in the dyke -he was only maintaining the system’s integrity and saving taxpayer dollars is grotesque and insulting but a cunning parody, nevertheless.  

Worse. Trumpista Morrison would have us believe that he is the victim and that Commissioner Catherine Holmes, a former Chief Justice of Queensland, has let herself become a Labor Party stooge in Shorten’s vendetta. It’s defamatory and untrue but our parliamentary privilege convention makes it all somehow OK if it’s said in parliament? 

As with Trump, there is the chance of legal proceedings against those mentioned in the sealed section of Holmes’ report. Holmes also warns of victims suing individual ministers for misfeasance in public office. 

A fitting outcome would be the prosecution of both Dutton and Morrison over their engagement of a contractor known to be corrupt given he was sentenced before the then PM and Home Affairs Ministers renewed his contract.

But who knows what other evidence of misfeasance may turn up? Dutton and Morrison must have upset enough AFP and Border Force operatives in their race to the bottom that more damaging evidence of corruption Is highly likely. 

Not that you’d wish a prison sentence on anyone. Some community service on Manus Island or Nauru would be most appropriate for either as long as the pair are kept apart. Indefinite detention, whilst fitting, is probably a patrol boat bridge too far. But no mobiles, no conjugal rights and don’t let Morrison near a camera. Ever again.

By Frances Goold  

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” (Groucho Marx)

Last Thursday’s ICAC report on the NSW ex-premier’s “serious corrupt conduct by breaching public trust” was quickly countered by her assertions that nothing in the report demonstrates that she did not work her hardest for her constituents and in the public interest.

That the ex-premier somehow considered corrupt behaviour to be in the best interests of the state she led suggests that the abuse of public trust is so endemic to conservative/neoliberal political culture and its easy denial so hidebound that no one is more surprised than the protagonists when it’s called out. Even the ex’s ex – imminently facing criminal charges – is proud of his achievements as the member for Wagga Wagga, and who according to his lawyers had always worked “tirelessly for his constituents”.

Over at the Federal electorate of New England it seems also be water off a duck’s back to be cast into the political wilderness, and hands in the cookie jar or no still tough for a limelight junkie to be demoted to the shadow ministry. Perhaps this explains why Federal Nationals leader and ex-Deputy PM (EDPM) is currently working tirelessly for his electorate by bombing every stray issue, with his latest efforts focused on a demented plan to march on Parliament to rally against renewables.

*****

Notwithstanding a decade of Coalition climate denial, gross political dereliction at both state and Federal levels, years of drought, apocalyptic fires and floods, and almost two decades of local stonewalling, the battered region of New England/Northern Tablelands is finally being called upon to assume its fair share of Australia’s international obligations to meet net zero emissions targets – global initiatives themselves cobbled together at ninety seconds to midnight. In its wake a gaggle of eleventh-hour activists (with a gratuitous swipe at the Indigenous Voice to parliament) have formed the Voice for Walcha (VfW) and ReD4NE, a dynamic duo of well-resourced organisations dedicated to scuttling whatever planetary lifeboats are ready to launch from the Walcha slipways.

My farming friends from Walcha report that the government-hating member for New England has been ramping up local opposition to renewables developments in his electorate for some time now. Last January, propped up by his senior lieutenants, EDPM summoned forth a typically incoherent yet stirring peroration at a community meeting organised by VfW in response to Danish company, Vestas, which released its Winterbourne Windfarm EIS for public comment late last year.

Presided over by lawyer and ‘lobbyist’ Mark Fogarty, leader of the NSW Nationals Adam Marshall, a semi-comatose EDPM, and graced by a spellbinding cameo from professional storyteller and wind-farm opponent John Heffernan, the proceedings unfolded more like a scene from Animal Farm than a town hall meeting to address legitimate local concerns about a windfarm project.

When not propping up the bar or hounding visaless puppies EDPM is occasionally spotted eagerly in thrall to the bloated munificence of the fossil fuel grandees, and at the Walcha Bowling Club on January 12 he rose unsteadily to the occasion to do what he does best: act as proxy climate wrecker in service to mining interests.

The plot is a simple one: Napoleon disagrees with Snowball’s ideas to build a windmill and has been instructed to nip it in the bud – in this instance by rallying the troops in opposition to windfarm developments in the New England Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) and declaring war the Winterbourne Project’s “most unsatisfactory” EIS – a detailed and comprehensive 4,000-page document (with a 322-page summary) released to the public on October 27, 2022, described by the Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs as a “packet of poo-tickets”.

EDPM’s gift for the gaffe is legendary, for reasoned oratory – not so much. But these deficits matter little when it comes to the business end of the obfuscation and obstruction required for the job of stalling progress on renewables in NSW. After all, it’s not like EDPM is denying that the weather or the climate exist, or that he’s against renewables per se, it’s just that those turbines are some big mothers, and – unlike the mining sector and its captive politicians – the Danish developer is only in it for the money. Furthermore, in classic pot-kettle-black style, he can denounce the Winterbourne project as lacking transparency while the elephant in the room – climate change and global emissions targets – rate not a mention.

In any event, any delay of a windfarm development is a win for the fossil fuel behemoths, some of whom are positioning themselves for market share if not simply to gazump the renewables competition. And who better to prop up the back end of this three-man trojan horse than EDPM, whose scattergun bluster on any topic is matched only by his unique capacity for cognitive dissonance and a penchant for porkies (something he endorses as par for the course during his Bowling Club speech, “Don’t look for honesty in politicians”).

Indeed, his rambling rhetorical style amounts to little more than a farrago of paranoid non-sequiturs as far from the substantive issue s and interests of his constituents as it is possible to be without venturing into cuckooland.

Furthermore, being the amiable larrikin, he is and powerful friend to the landed gentry, his runaway tongue is an endearing asset for the task of discombobulating townsfolk too time-poor to wade through the maze of conspiracy theories being rustled up by a well-heeled opposition, or even address their niggling concerns with developers – certainly not before EDPM and his first lady mangle them first. [As the conveniently-positioned Newscorp loyalist opined: “You cannot claim a change from a natural landscape to a landscape of hundreds of industrial machines, which will undeniably impact cultural heritage, biodiversity, visual and audio amenity, and no plan for its disposal except for rusting on the horizon, is good for the local environment… If this were not a wind farm, this proposal would be laughed out of any planning authority for the literal monumental environmental destruction it will cause.”]

It’s unlikely anyone familiar with the science of climate change or who fought the 2019-2020 bushfires would agree that there is much remaining of the “natural landscape”. And heaven forbid that fossil fortunes ruthlessly amassed by sucking the lifeblood out of a country and its first peoples and whose monumental destruction of ecological biodiversity (yet to be fully assessed) should be threatened by some woke transition to unsightly renewables. But his mistress, Campion, has the proud backing of EDPM in their topsy-turvy right-wing campaign against the green-renewables-conspiracy: “I have to acknowledge Vikki. Vikki is pathological, she’s using the Daily Telegraph as your advertising venue… the most read article in the Telegraph. But that’s shifting other people’s opinions. So it’s going to become more and more incumbent upon you…”.

Undaunted by the patent conflict implied by Campion beavering away at the Telegraph ostensibly on behalf of the Walcha community, EDPM presses on with suggesting in a typical burst of foot-shooting logic that any divisiveness in the community was the result of the windfarm proposal per se, even as he demonstrated his unique aptitude for sowing it himself.

That dividing a community might constitute even an inadvertent element of Vestas’ mission statement is hard to fathom.

But we have a rural power index behind the Voice here, with high emitting Fleet Helicopters’ owner and ReD4NE founder boasting a fraternal connection – a family to whom the jovial EDPM is happy to cow-tow, not to mention fly with.

*****

The Federal National Party is occasionally referred to as the ‘Miners Party’. Its leader is notorious for his longstanding ideological opposition to action on climate change – and specifically to 2050 net zero targets – demonstrating not merely his unwavering support for fossil fuels but an unbridled enthusiasm for SMRs as the way of the future. After all, he has a job to do – to lock his electorate into a permanent state of energy transition at the expense of future generations – for which no doubt he will be one day be rewarded handsomely. And it’s not as if pleasing one’s donors, especially if one must secure one’s livelihood post-politics, is foreign to the LNP business model.

Whether there is evidence for it or not, it has been claimed that local indigenous communities have not been properly consulted by the developer, an alleged oversight that provides grist for the windfarm opposition despite access to consultation and the resolution of community issues by the developers. [Let us not forget that only a generation ago if a thought was to be spared at all for indigenous communities  beyond the value of their indentured labour for the carving out and deforestation of their country for mining, grazing land, livestock mustering, and domestic service, it was probably of the calibre of mining magnate Lang Hancock’s when daughter Gina was just a slip of a thing dreaming of being one of the richest women in the world. These days she is a major donor – if indirectly – to the LNP and its thinktank, the IPA, which only last year endorsed EDPM’s fulminations against net zero.]

Conflicted interests may also be the business model for VfW and ReD4NE. These range from fundamentally denialist conflations of opinion and fact by the partisan editor of the New England Times to influence-peddling potentiated by family links between ReD4NE and the local chopper fleet, and inevitably by Joyce’s friendship with mining millionaire magnet Gina Rinehart, which has long come under fire but most spectacularly when she awarded him $40,000 for the inaugural “National Agricultural Related Industries Prize” during the by-election campaign in 2017. Joyce accepted the donation, which was promptly returned on advice.

*****

According to my good friends – who are stakeholders – the Winterbourne windfarm project has been on the drawing board for nearly two decades, and public knowledge for over fifteen years, during which time it has enjoyed community support for the generous and innovative community fund being negotiated for it. Yet, somewhat coincidentally, within the past year or so, since the Coalition’s loss to Labor in the Federal election, ‘grassroots’ opposition to the windfarm has taken hold.

Yet despite the bounteous time for the Walcha community to get around the issues and the generous community benefits built into the Winterbourne development; an eleventh-hour proposal of community-based ways has been suggested as an alternative to privatised renewable infrastructure.

Obstructionist denialist politics and issues of the survival of renewables initiatives in a shifting political landscape and the need to scale up have emerged in the UK context, for example; is the idea of community-generated energy as a timely alternative for Walcha too little too late? Is a wind farm to be put on hold until before a CORE gets up and running in a renewables – fatigued and divided community?

But time is running out, Kean’s Act has been passed, and community-owned energy alternatives being proffered to mollify communities spooked by the idea of renewable energy projects in their region may need to be reminded that, unlike CORE projects elsewhere in the world, not a single project has so far made it to the drawing board in the region.

*****

A major problem for worried farmers and stakeholders supporting windfarms in the region is the politicisation of renewable energy issues by EDPM by means of an organised scare campaign of disinformation; they are concerned that this anti-windfarm coalition may not merely scuttle Winterbourne but may undermine community trust in renewable energy sources more broadly as a viable alternative for the region.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the organised opposition to Winterbourne is the insidious erosion of community trust by methods that are far from democratic. EDPM’s modus operandi traduces the democratic process where trust in its processes is critical to equitable and sensitive development and constructive liaison with developers: as he calls out a lack of consultation and transparency by the developers, EDPM himself fails to support his constituents in addressing their legitimate concerns as their Federal member, choosing instead to politicise and polarise the issues and foment division in the community, aping to the letter the wrecking game being played to the hilt by the Federal Liberals in its tactically similar campaign against an indigenous Voice to parliament.

It’s a no-brainer that issues associated with windfarm developments – as with any state significant renewables project – will need to be examined and dealt with according to due process (such as the cost of de-commissioning, the opacity of contracts with stakeholders, even EDPM’s bogeys of bankrupt “carpetbaggers” leaving farmer stakeholders with debt, or selling a farm with crippling stamp duty attached to a decommissioned turbine, or recyclability of wind turbine components), and any highly invested scare campaign will comprise – as here – a mix of true and false interlaced with mis- and disinformation bereft of science, ethics or integrity. For the time-poor and climate fatigued denizens of Walcha, winkling out the authentic from the fakes must feel overwhelming if not merely tiresome.

In a moment of blinding insight EDPM once boasted that he is a “political animal” who will “go wherever the wind blows”. As he reiterated to his spellbound audience in January, “Now I know the EIS is a packet of poo-tickets. But you know what? All I know is that if we are going to win this, you have to change the politics…You have to make it seem like myself and Adam might lose our job. When Adam and I think we’re going to lose our job our radar goes up and we start thinking… we might have to change our point of view.”

Only a small semantic parse reveals both the alliance implied by a shared single job, and the emotional blackmail implied in the mention of jobs lost.

It has been suggested that certain inadvertent conditions have paved the way for vested interests to exploit community anxieties, such as the expeditious and rapid passage of the REZ legislation and some own goals by developers regarding public reach-outs (given the contentiousness of social license). Certainly, EDPM’s Trump-like luck and craven disrespect for the rules have conspired to render him a political opportunity in a numbers game held together by such patently threadbare polarities that questions are begged as to who or what is underwriting the growing anti-renewables agitation and why.

*****

Walcha’s open-air sculpture

Of all the objections raised against the proposed Winterbourne development, the nimbyesque aesthetic objection is perhaps both expectable and the most paradoxical (the turbines are too big, too ugly, and too numerous: they are in the wrong place, eyesores spoiling the view and so on). It is as if wind turbines are exclusively dedicated to visually offend and degrade the pastorale symphony that is New England.

The truly odd thing is that Walcha township is positively littered with contemporary sculpture -little turbines reaching the sky even. This unique aspect of the town is not centred upon the occasional monument to the fallen or legendary highwayman (‘Thunderbolt’s Way’ being a singular overstatement) but consists in its seamless integration of dozens of powerful and authentic art works into the townscape.

The unexpected scale and soaring reach of so many of the fifty or so open-air sculptures – several of them prestigious prize-winners – is a joyful surprise to many visitors unaccustomed to such a muscular and unapologetic art presence in a small country town.

In 1996, Walcha Council was approached by Stephen King, a local farmer and sculptor, to collaborate with him to create a fountain sculpture for McHattan Park in the centre of town. The decision to accept his offer and install Walcha’s first sculpture led to the suggestion by Council to form the Walcha Arts Council to facilitate an ongoing public art program. A plan was conceived and drawn up by the Walcha Arts Council and was adopted by Council into its 1998 Management Plan. The concept came to be known as the Open-Air Gallery. Currently, the collection consists of 54 sculptures and artworks by local, national and international artists. And, it turns out, the town’s open-air sculptures are progressing towards a permanent open-air exhibition of world-class status.

As it is, the edgy, rough-hewn timber and metal foundry sculptures scattered about the streets and plazas are in edgy harmony with the rolling contours of the surrounding countryside, the sculptural middens of the dieback eucalypts that mar the landscape, and the mingled reds and rusts of iron roofs, last roses, autumn foliage, and gaudy shop awnings of the town.

Sculptures of all shapes and sizes weave through the town as a living element. There are no harsh notes or kitsch – instead arresting rough-hewn elements are scattered about as if to proclaim the transcendant beauty of the utilitarian over the grandiose and sentimental that were once the hallmarks of a colonial aesthetic.

The street atmosphere of the town exudes a sense of comfortably embracing a deep history that is valued and celebrated. One senses a gritty appreciation of things larger than ourselves, with ancient timbers and abstract forms scaled to the massive landscapes beyond. Yet the figure is ubiquitous – maternal, powerful totems supporting and propping up awnings and gracing open spaces, some functional (for example, as seating) others simply lyrical, or to amuse children and visitors in playgrounds, parks, and utility blocks.

The significance of this aesthetic consensus should not be underestimated, nor the humanism of its rugged symbols of resourceful creativity, its sense of history and the acceptance of its social interdependencies – the timber came from somewhere, the iron from somewhere else, disparate elements refashioned in homage to lives lived and histories merely hinted at.

How then is this thoughtfulness, this farming spirit of co-operation, these statements of hope, and this legacy of environmental custodianship to be reconciled with community-wide objections to progressive and viable solutions to Australia’s net zero commitment?

But it turns out there is no mystery and no contradiction: it transpires that less than 10% of Walcha residents lodged submissions objecting to the Winterbourne Windfarm EIS.

One might even surmise that the remainder was submitted by a community familiar with the unromantic, deadly reality of an “agricultural wonderland” decimated by years of drought, wishing now to collaborate with efforts towards climate mitigation and restoration processes offered by safe, viable and clean technologies available at the eleventh hour. The very idea that such people in their wisdom might be persuaded by fossil fuel interests to deny reality and oppose renewable solutions to anthropogenic climate change is beyond credulity.

*****

February 2014

So how verdant was the Northern Tablelands in 1890 – 1902? 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020?

This pastoral wonderland – so called – endured a drought that persisted on and off from 2013 until it became catastrophic for farmers enduring the lowest rainfall on record during 2019 when there were no agistments and no feed to be had across NSW.

November 2019

Then came the fires.

Rounding up

It’s hard not to conclude that community concerns regarding the radial impact of a windfarm on the agricultural landscape are being co-opted by a well-resourced campaign against to block the proposed windfarm development and undermine progress on renewables. The provincial character of this aggressive campaign is also at odds with the progressive atmosphere of a robust community that has embraced new and difficult art, and which is now confronting serious global realities and challenges. In the meantime, however, wealthy politically connected backers of fossil fuel interests will continue to wine and dine the politicians who in turn will recruit writers and artists and recent settlers into convincing the broader community to not only reject a wind farm, but renewable alternatives per se, all the while splitting the community whilst claiming to represent their interests.

Disinformation has become a tactical art form since the divisive conspiracies of the Covid era. It is a form of community gaslighting designed to foment division whilst callously and loudly deploring it.

Grassroots activism is bottom-up, beginning with large numbers. Political interference is top-down, beginning with small numbers. Fearmongering is a political tactic so manipulative that it begs serious questions as to its ultimate purpose. Here it is a cynical attempt to distract from real global threats by conflating navigable, negotiable concerns with spurious, sometimes irrefutable objections.

Solar is the alternative so far on the Coal Coast, though there are big plans for wind and a few nukes as the decommissioning of mines progresses. The outdoor setting where I sip my latte is wiped down weekly to remove the fine coal dust. We’ve just had our first few millimetres of rain after a couple months of occasional light dustings and a couple of windy days. Yet another El Nino is predicted to be just around the corner. My friends tell me that the grass and fuel that have sprung up over three successive La Ninas in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park are now metres high, impenetrable, and soon to be tinder dry.

And they are worried not just for themselves, friends, neighbours, community and their environment, but for their children and grandchildren who, like previous generations, will continue to farm around Walcha.

Sure, wind turbines are big – but then how do you define big to generations of hard-labouring, season-dependent, drought and flood-afflicted, financially-strapped, increasingly insecure farming families? How is big contextualised in the even bigger picture depicting future generations of farmers wrestling with the unpredictable impacts of climate change? How does one reconcile the image of farmers having to shoot sick or fatally bush-fire injured livestock as somehow unable to face up to man-made global warming being implicated in these tragedies? How late is too late?

Perhaps the only reconciliation needing to be made now is between the people of Walcha who are being set apart by the socially destructive divide-and-conquer MOs of vested political interests. The truth is that, while the REZs cannot be changed, each and every renewable energy development can be examined on its merits according to legislated planning processes and procedures. Now more than ever, as we squabble over the lifeboats at tipping point, government planners and elected officials are reclaiming their independence from influence so as to secure the trust of the people they represent, and who pay their salaries.

Like kindred others, farmers on the Northern Tablelands are facing up. At the same time their maverick federal member is not only failing to act in their best interests, if indeed he ever did, but is actively subverting them. It’s probably time for the adults to reclaim the Bowling Club. The people of New England are not being asked to lab test proven technology, they are being asked by all the nations of the world to engage in good faith with a global climate emergency the best way they can. If this means negotiating with governments and developers to refine the technology and rationalise impacts as opposed to torpedoing the lifeboats, then – though the transition may be difficult – community tension and division should bow to unity of purpose and community pride, economic hardship should eventually shift towards sustainable growth, and a wonderland of pastures and regenerated forests may be eventually restored to the region and its people.

But, in the meantime, the ship is going down and time is running out.

Diary entry 29: Saturday, April 20 2022

1 If a reputable fact-checker corrects a blatant attempt to pull the wool over the public, it could reasonably be a “gotcha moment”. The culprit has been found out telling a lie, lying by omission, gilding the lily, or simply trying to cloud the issue. “Gotcha”

Following are seven examples from AAP Factcheck of what could be called “gotcha” moments. Most fact-checked examples refute a wrong, then published and quickly forgotten, particularly by a media predisposed to self-interest or straight-out propaganda.

The culprit has achieved its purpose of misleading the public. This is not to say that Labor doesn’t also do it to a lesser extent. However, the overwhelming culprits are the Prime Minister and his ministers.

i) The claim. The Government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic saved 40,000 Australian lives.

AAP Fact check verdict.

Misleading. Experts say Australia’s low death rate is due to a mixture of state and federal government policy and non-government factors.

Read more here.

To claim that you have saved 40,000 lives while at the same time your mishandling of the ordering of vaccines probably cost some is shameful.

ii) The Claim. No trees have been planted toward the coalition Government’s 2018 target of one billion new trees by 2030.

AAP Fact Check verdict. Mostly True. Around 4300 hectares of trees have been planted since 2018, equivalent to only around one per cent of the 2030 goal.

A Labor claim that proved to be a gotcha one.

iii) The Claim. Minister Dan Tehan Claimed that the Australian economy is performing better than any other country after COVID-19.

AAP Fact Check verdict. False. Australia has had a strong recovery from the pandemic, but several other countries have performed better on key indicators.

Such lies are told regularly. I shall go on:

iv) The Claim. The Prime Minister has claimed that Australia has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by around 20 per cent – more than the US, Japan, Canada, and New Zealand.

AAP Fact Check verdict. Mixture. Australia likely reduced net emissions by more than all except the United States between 2005 and 2020; however, Australia was the worst performer when comparing gross emissions.

Lying by omission.

v) The Claim. The Morrison government cut climate spending by 35 per cent in the 2022 federal budget.

AAP Fact Check verdict. Mostly True. Budget papers show a 35 per cent decline in funding for climate programs over four years, although this doesn’t necessarily account for all spending by government agencies.

vi) The Claim. The Government insists that Labor will introduce a death tax.

ABC/RMIT fact check verdict. Death taxes or an inheritance tax are not part of Labor’s current official policy platform — nor were they in the lead-up to the 2019 election. While senior Labor figures Mr Albanese and Mr Leigh may have historically indicated support for an inheritance tax in their non-parliamentary roles, both have since indicated they no longer support such a policy.

Talk about the masters of the scare!

vii) The Claim. Defence Minister Peter Dutton has claimed that Labor cut billions of dollars from the defence budget when it was last in Government.

ABC/RMIT fact check verdict. Misleading. Labor cut defence spending in two years while in office, but overall real-term spending went up while in Government.

2 The Prime Minister is facing an uphill battle to convince the electorate that he is serious about a corruption commission. Trying to present an argument that it won’t happen because Labor cannot bring itself to support his policy is a friendless argument.

3 Another observation of the first week of campaigning is that the standard of media reporting is deplorable. Of course, we have come to expect it from the Murdoch tabloids whose bias seems to have no end but is this the best we can hope for. Scott Morrison, it has to be said, is an excellent campaigner but can they at least balance that against the destruction of our democracy over the past 10 years.

But when on day one, news anchors are asking their travelling correspondents whether or not Albanese had just lost the campaign, I’m afraid they leave me somewhat breathless.

4 “The first campaign poll shows the scars of Labor’s troubled first week but still suggests they lead on two-party preferred.” Read more at The Poll Bludger.

5 On Insiders last Sunday, Marise Payne refused to endorse Katherine Deves for Tony Abbott’s former seat of Warringah. There was a time when people with views like hers were immediately dis-endorsed. But then she was personally picked by Scott.

Marise Payne also refused to enlighten us as to why Rachel Miller, a staffer in Alan Tudge’s office, is to receive over half a million dollars plus expenses after having an affair with him. And, of course, he remains in the Ministry. We are entitled to know.

6 Let’s hope that this week we will see the campaigning move to some policy debate about things that matter instead of following some immature gotcha moment of little importance.

We have to change the government to one that is indeed a representative democracy that reflects the community’s views.

I could just go on repeating all those reasons for voting this government out, recounting their dishonesty, nit-picking the Canberra gossip, cataloguing dishonesties and incompetence’s – ceaselessly doing what I have been doing and losing readers because of my passion.

But I would implore our readers to think of the future and marry science, technology, and economics to best reflect a community with a compassionate heart.

A couple of months back, a Facebook reader wrote:

“Lately, John, you’re thinking has run into a brick wall that others have built. The significant issues are not parochial, not country or city, urban or rural; they are dire ubiquitous problems that are universally threatening.”

Alas, that is true. I must redouble my efforts not to just condemn the wrongs of this vile government but to point out the possibilities the future holds for a government intent on serving the people and not themselves.

By John Haly  

From THAT women’s network logo to a corseted perspective where he can only understand women through the lens of his wife or daughters; Scotty from Marketing can’t recognise the inequality, bias and dangers that women face.

Trying to defend himself, he ran the following list past Kymba Cahill during an intense interview on Perth Radio show Mix94.5. [See Fig 1.]

Scott Morrison raised these points asserting that the coalition had made significant progress on:

• women’s employment and unemployment,
• Women in executive roles and gender pay equity,
• domestic violence funding.

Fig 1: Extract from News article on Morrison’s actions on behalf of women

Women’s Employment

Using unemployment figures from the ABS is a dubious exercise, as I have noted previously, but this will be the data to which Scott is referring [see Table 1]. According to ABS, Females employed in the workplace in Australia in Feb 2022 was 6,407,730 (Men were 6,964,2820). This left 256,378 of the female workforce unemployed. That is a 3.85% unemployment rate for women in the workforce. I will dispute this claim later.

In the meantime, the lack of inclusion of zero-hours workers (which the ABS calculates) in the unemployment percentages is a blatant misrepresentation. People with registered employees (usually in the Gig economy) offered zero hours of work in a month and zero dollars for pay, while considered “employed”, are not segregated by gender in the ABS stats. However, people in employment are segregated by gender. So calculating the ratio of women in the workforce to men at 47.9% in February 2022, provides a reasonable basis for extrapolation. Zero-hours workers for February 2022 were 130,000 people, and multiplying that by 47.9% for February gives you an estimate that 62,678 workers were likely female.

Adding zero-hours female workers back to ABS’s unemployment numbers means that 319,056 women (or 4.79% of the workforce) are without paid work. That means women in employment dropped to 6,345,053. Making the same relative month-by-month calculations over the last three years generates a female ratio that varied between 49.9% and 46.4%, resulting in the Fig 2 Graph.

Another consideration is that since our Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, claims our economy has recovered to pre-pandemic levels (i.e. 2019). Commencing with ABS stats from the beginning of 2019 will allow some trend analysis. Of course, other journalists have demonstrated Josh’s claims are fallacious propaganda, but let’s overlook that for now.

Fig 2: ABS’s Female Employment estimates in Australia 2019 to Feb 2022

Looking at the trends in the Graph for Full-time, part-time and workforce numbers for women, it is evident none of the categories has made a full recovery. Compared to February 2019, the ABS figures claim: 5.996 million women were employed and 314K unemployed. However, it is 375K, if you add back the female proportion of zero-hours “employed” estimated in Feb 2019. That would have reduced our wage-earning employed to 5.954 million. So Morrison seems correct that more females are employed.

Still, it should be apparent that his claiming credit is a misdirection. Over that same three years, the total workforce moved from 6.310 million to 6.664 million. The population of women over 15 went from 10.417 million to 10.687 million. Unless Morrison is claiming credit for population growth or women entering the workforce – both of which are rising at similar levels. Is a rising level of employment, therefore, something for which he can claim the credit? Significantly when they have not even risen to a level that an extrapolation of 2019 figures would predict? What legislative change has Morrison’s government passed that has even achieved this underwhelming rise in employment?

As for “the lowest level of unemployment” for women, the evidence for real domestic unemployment for women demonstrates otherwise. This is where I will review not just ABS data but also include zero-hours data, Jobseeker and Youth Allowance and Roy Morgan’s unemployment figures. These measures demonstrate that unemployment exists at around 8.5% for women. This was lower than current levels for all of the second half of 2019. However, just as zero-hours “employees” are not segregated into gender statistics, neither are Roy Morgan’s estimates. Roy Morgan’s methodology has more in common with the Jobseeker and Youth Allowance as a measure of unemployment. Accordingly, I have used their month-by-month ratio of men and women on both stats to extrapolate the proportion of Roy Morgan’s total estimates, likely female. The results in the following graph [see Fig 3] and accompanying sources and internal explanations demonstrate why Morrison’s claim is inaccurate. Please see my articles here and here if you want further explanations concerning this multi-data analysis.

Fig 3: Female Unemployment measure variations in Australia from 2019 to Feb 2022

More women on Boards and gender pay gaps

I assume Morrison boasting of more women on Government boards doesn’t include former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate, who is still waiting on his apology. It should be noted that “more than 50%” of women on government boards is larger by a factor of 0.2%. In short, it is 50.2%. The history of that climb resembles a long and tortuous effort. Not unlike Morrison’s appointment of women to his cabinet – another point he raised.

This may be true for a tiny percentage of women who represent the country’s government executives. Still, many social and economic issues for women who are non-board members (i.e. the vast majority) remain unresolved. Women’s Agenda publishes a range of these issues, like sexual assault through to women’s career anxiety. As for Morrison’s claims about the gender pay gap, beyond some minor fluctuations, it has sat around 14% for the last three years. Taking credit for a recent 0.4% drop is hyperbole when you consider it depends:

1.  entirely on what State and with whom you are employed,
2.  and the changing state of employment and unemployment. [see Figs 2 & 3]

One doesn’t have to take a human’s claim that falling gender pay gaps are fallacious in a volatile employment economy with stagnating wages. Even internet bots are pointing out the disparity.

Domestic Violence funding

The Domestic Violence Package of $1.1 billion announced by the Minister for Women’s Safety, Anne Ruston’s media release from October 2021, is full of self-congratulatory praise for their “landmark” contribution to DV.

Keep in mind that the DV funding was not considered sterling before this point. Monash University’s assessment in 2020 was that previous funding arrangements for women were woefully inadequate. Although the subsequent $1.1 Billion in the following budget might improve on previous efforts, “it does not yet reflect the level of investment so desperately needed to address, interrupt and ultimately prevent what is a national crisis.” according to two Violence prevention experts. Other critics have noted it is hardly enough, and falls short of the need.

In truth, all this expenditure is a transparent effort to put a bandage on the gaping wound left in the wake of

• Brittany Higgins’s allegations,
• Grace Tame’s public condemnation of Morrison,
• the former Liberal MP Julia Banks’s confession or Industry Minister Karen Andrews’ complaints,
• Morrison’s disparagement of Christine Holgate,
• the Jenkins review,
• Gladys Berejiklian’s and other’s texts,
• Coalition staffers masturbating over the desks of female MPs, and
• the innumerable stories about the misogynistic predators in Parliament, such as Barnaby Joyce, Christian Porter and Andrew Laming.

But while that was a long sentence, no sentences of any length have been applied to any of the misogynistic male perpetrators responsible for these abuses.

Despite the massive protests by women over these issues, not even the Minister for Women, Marise Payne, showed solidarity by attending “March 4 Justice” at Parliament House. And I suspect we all recall Morrison’s bullet point based response in Parliament to that protest.

Assessment

So yes, Morrison has poured in more money into domestic violence, but it isn’t anywhere near enough to deal with the scope of the problem. Yes, employment has risen but so has unemployment amongst women. Yes, the ruling class women at the height of the government echelons have enjoyed more executive work. But, in contrast, the non-executive women (known as the vast majority or working-class) are still increasingly unemployed, poorly and unequally paid, compared to their male counterparts.

So if this is Morrison’s idea of “action” in response to women’s needs, dare I suggest his “action” is quite definably “small” and “inadequate” to meet the real needs of women in Australia?

This article was originally published on AUSTRALIA AWAKEN – IGNITE YOUR TORCHES.

Politicians, predominantly on the right, have repeatedly been caught lying in direct contravention of video evidence. The falsifications aren’t minor.

In Canberra at the moment there is an almost total lack of accountability. Any effort to confront Prime Minister Scott Morrison or his cabinet with their lies, corruption and ineptitude is met with deflection to a disingenuous list of “achievements” or more lies. Without effective supervision and repercussions, the threat this poses to our democracy will only become more dire.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is potentially facing repercussions after years of lying to the electorate. Whether or not he does so, the damage to British democracy taking place under the Tories is confronting. In the US, Donald Trump’s lies have been embraced by the party he led and the majority of Republican voters. Deception is widespread in that party’s efforts to subvert the possibility of Democrat victories in the future. The American Republic’s democratic processes are already undermined; whether they will survive the next decade is in doubt.

From Plato’s time, philosophers have noted the instability of democracy. Its freedoms – including freedom of speech – are the seeds of its own destruction. Would-be tyrants and their propaganda have the capacity to end the system we prize, even without us noticing. Truth, and trust in what is being said, is crucial to the democratic system.

Deceit is at the heart of the problem. Sometimes it is the insidious propaganda that aims to (mis)represent our nations as well-run liberal democracies. At other times the stratagem is outright demagoguery that seems likely to end in bloodshed.

In Australia, Crikey in particular has been tracking the lies that mark Morrison’s government. While there has long been an expectation that politicians aren’t always truthful, the scope of deceit that has besmirched the performance of the Coalition, just like this era’s Republican and Tory parties, is enough to shove the timid media beyond euphemisms.

The brazenness of the deceit is the factor that has provoked that shift. Politicians – predominantly on the right – have repeatedly been caught lying in direct contravention of video evidence of their own previous statements. The falsifications aren’t minor: some are complete inversions of earlier positions. In America some Republican politicians supporting Trump’s Big Lie do so because they literally fear for their lives. Without an armed and angry base to threaten them back into line, Australian and British leaders have little justification beyond knowing that there are no consequences any more.

In January 2022, as Australians largely fail to find the rapid antigen tests (RATs) we need to participate in society in a pandemic, the government is running advertisements that boast it has them. Nobody is sure whether these are the collation of RATs that have been taken from private and public sector organisations’ deliveries, or an inflated boast. As with so many other (in)actions of this government, the disaster follows supply offers and warnings made months before, instructing the government that millions would be necessary. According to the AMA, the government refused to purchase them, wanting to let the private sector profiteer.

In the wake of the Park Hotel Djokovic drama, Morrison misinformed radio listeners about the refugee status of the people imprisoned for months in the Alternative Place of Detention (APOD). When confronted he disingenuously asserted he hadn’t “said” what he’d clearly implied. Given that the innocent men (some then boys) were placed in indefinite detention by Morrison as immigration minister eight years ago, his claim to vagueness on the cases seems disingenuous.

Over COP26 in Glasgow last year, the Australian delegation was reviled for its blatant climate action disinformation. French President Emmanuel Macron’s assertion that Morrison is a liar was confirmed by the Prime Minister’s former colleagues. It’s not just our own civic space under threat from constant deceit, but our standing among nations.

Part of the dissimulation is intended to suggest that the system is functioning well. In none of the three countries is that the case, and healthcare workers have been bearing the brunt of the pandemic mismanagement. NSW nurses held a stopwork protest in mid-January because their workplace is unsafe for them and their patients in the Omicron surge. Their exhaustion and the nurse-to-patient-ratio blowout are making hospitals dangerous. In the face of constant federal and state government mantras that they are coping, the nurses’ signs said they are not.

Rather than listening to poorly paid frontline workers exhausted by the third year of bearing the brunt, Josh Frydenberg mislabelled them “militant unions”. He hoped thus to nullify a cry for help for his voter base. The former “essential worker” praise was quickly inverted to disdain when the nurses drew attention to being Sisyphus borne down by the weight of government “let it rip” apathy.

The moment where the crisis of truth in “conservative” Anglosphere politics and some parts of the media became obvious might be pinned in 2016 when “post-truth” became word of the year. The fact that Trump’s victory and the Brexit referendum occurred in that year is not unrelated.

Many factors made the truth harder to detect at that moment: the swirl of social media disinformation; its targeting by bad actors like Cambridge Analytica; increasing competition in the attention economy; and the internet’s devastating impact on legacy media (partly celebrated initially because of the establishment’s own failures to convey truth, such as The New York Times and its assertion of the presence in Iraq of WMD).

It did not begin that recently, though. In 2004 George Bush adviser Karl Rove was alleged to have said that the US government did not function in the “reality-based community,” instead having the ability to “create our own reality.” Fittingly, he denies having said it.

The following year, commentator Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness” which became the American 2006 word of the year. It is intended to cover the sense or feeling that something feels true on intuition rather than requiring data to bear it out. It was meant to satirise the Tea Party development in Republican politics and its unhinged assertions. In Trump’s era, Kellyanne Conway called truthiness “alternative facts.”

Now Republican politicians and pundits spew the “blue lies” that divide tribes, and even the “accusations in a mirror” of total inversions of truth that precede horrors. Their followers often appear to see lies as weapons of war rather than necessarily a matter of sincerity. Verifiability does not matter as much hurting the loathed enemy.

The internet has unleashed those alternative realities. Right-wing thought leaders such as Joe Rogan on podcasts and YouTube and social media speak to millions around the world. They have a much more powerful impact than radio shock jocks or “conservative” media pundits. Provocative communications are shared to provoke “lib tears” and then these right wing figures “rage farm” the resultant furore.

Part of the long-term crisis is based in the role of PR in politics, with the right over the decades deploying increasingly effective marketing and communications strategies. Funded by the ultra wealthy and honed through free-market think-tanks, this strategy was intended to counteract alienating policies meant to benefit only the donors.

The Coalition government is much more concerned with messaging than being able to do the job of creating policy that benefits the country. It is aided by co-operative media that is satisfied to echo government talking points in gormless stenographic journalism. The fact that Morrison’s own marketing background is not strewn with successes might explain lacklustre efforts such as under-age forklift drivers.

Rather than finding strategies to solve the massive challenges of living through a pandemic, the government is involved with the spin project of their religious “freedom” bill or the ability to unmask anonymous “trolls” on the internet. This is intended to enable Coalition politicians to sue internet commentators for defamation if they expose government misdeeds. The point is to chill criticism of government (in)action, hardly consonant with their posture as “free speech” warriors. It sits well, however, with the government’s many efforts to prevent transparency over the years, including working to silence charities.

Structuring a narrative to sell a government as successful and a country as efficiently navigating difficult times is not the same as being successful or dealing with challenges. Lies and misleading messaging buttressed with strategies to silence criticism leave us with a crisis of trust, and with cynicism. This is combined with the swirl of internet misinformation centred in America but with enthusiastic adherents here. The result is a total inability to agree on a shared data-based reality that must ground our decisions as we face the much bigger crisis of the climate emergency.

The Coalition must confront its decision to pursue the American right into a focus on culture wars and spin. The US is proving to us that this divisive propaganda can only be destructive. We must transform the supervision of Australia’s federal government to ensure truth, integrity and accountability. Without those steps, we too risk losing our liberal democracy.

This article was originally published on Pearls and Irritations.