Racism and the Australia Day Conundrum

If you listen to some in the political classes, Australia day is a day for all Australians to come together, therefore it should remain unchanged. But in spite of this rhetoric every year it becomes clearer. Australia day is driving us apart, not bringing us together.

The date debate has divided our nation. On the left is a progressive movement for inclusivity through change. On the right a nostalgic camp of date loyalists who see change as an affront to our nation.

Even though the date remains the same, many seem oblivious to the fact that Australia day has already changed. It is no longer the joyous, white, flag waving, beach BBQ of the Howard era. These days it is broadly recognised as invasion day, which makes throwing a huge party seem somewhat problematic (and a little distasteful).

It can be difficult to illicit empathy for those we see as “not like us.” Often we need to imagine things in a more identifiable construct in order to understand those that seem so intractably foreign. So, imagine if you will…

France, June 25, 1940…

Hitler’s troops have defeated the allies and take France. Then move forward 81 years, and imagine the incongruity of the French getting ready to celebrate their national day. June 25^th 2021, the day Hitler’s troops conquered France. The German settlers can’t understand why so many native French people have a problem with the date. “It’s been that date for decades”, they cry, “it is a day to bring us all together”.

In this context the problem is obvious to most of us. We actually get it. But when it comes to first nation’s people in Australia, we seem to suffer from a collective lack of imagination. We just can’t see how things might look through their eyes.

While we regale ourselves with idealised tales of mate-ship and ANZACS and solemnly reflect on mantras of “lest we forget,” we spit back at first nation’s people with a patronising prescriptive “just get over it.”

What many date loyalist fail to understand is that in sticking with Jan 26 we are engaging in a socially sanctioned form of white supremacy, (something a lot of Australians don’t feel at all comfortable with). Date loyalty is aligning yourself with a damaging social divide that adversely effects many of our first nation’s people.

Date loyalty is sending a clear message, “Your trauma and grief are of no interest or importance to us.”

Just as it was with the toxic “Coon Cheese” name debate, or the rejection of the statement of the heart, the date loyalists are making their opinion quite clear. First nation’s people have no place in defining the culture-scape of our nation.

Those resisting change need to get over their collective lack of imagination. Denying first nation’s people a voice in defining what is celebrated, and what is mourned is simply wrong.

Date change may not be on the calendar just yet, but a growing number of Australians feel uncomfortable with the status quo. Date change will happen, but the question is how much damage will occur waiting for our politicians to lead from behind.

Are the LNP preparing to throw chief Medical Officer under a bus?

Saw Angus Taylor this morning on the ABC, and noticed how many times he STRESSED that the government is providing advice (regarding leaving the schools open) from the Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy.

Not once did Taylor state the advice was the government’s position. Instead he stressed over and over and over again “We are taking the advice of the Chief Medical Officer”.

What we need to remember is that Chief Medical Officer, Mr Brendan Murphy, is the man that was advocating hand shaking just four days ago on the ABC program INSIDERS.

So we need to ask ourselves, is Brendan Murphy’s advice the advice we want to trust for our and our family’s safety? What would lead a thinking person to conclude that his advice today is any better than the advice he offered last Sunday? Especially when all advice is getting walked back on daily basis.

When government ministers are distancing themselves from their own stated advice it certainly raises some questions. Is Angus Taylor lining up their chosen scapegoat for when the “schools open/business as usual” message backfires horribly?

Given the UK has just closed schools, it can’t be too far behind for us. The much trusted Norman Swan, who expressed some relief that the decision was not his, stressed that his view was that a school shut down would be the most prudent course.

Time is of the essence. Everyday we avoid lockdown is another day of exponential spread and rising mortality. Things are moving so fast, infection rates are skyrocketing, and people are rightfully skeptical of the government’s advice.

If the LNP are reluctant to claim ownership of, and stand behind their own advice, how can they seriously expect us to trust it?

We all need to make our own decisions with what is currently permitted under law. It is difficult for all of us to decide on the best course, and we all must do what we feel is best. My reading of the situation is those that are able to do so should stay home and stay safe.

In light of the so-called “Nauru files” questions are naturally being asked. However the questions being asked by decent minded people of conscious are decidedly different from the ones being asked by the government and our immigration minister Peter Dutton.

While those of us who would prefer our nation didn’t behave like a sub-branch of the Third Reich are asking questions like, “why are we spending billions of tax payer dollars torturing and imprisoning people who have committed no crime?”

And “How can we ignore blatant human rights abuses on our watch?” the government is asking questions like “Who told, who leaked the reports?”

Under the government’s carefully managed messaging the innocent victims of our concentration camps have, until now, been successfully branded as criminals in the broader public’s eye. But the cat is well and truly out of the bag. Everybody knows that we have not only been locking up innocent people, we have been systematically subjecting them to all manner of abuse, rape and torture on our watch.

So where to now for the government? At this point you would have thought someone in the LNP party room might have suggested they put down the shovel and step away from the hole, but no. They are sticking to their guns. In his Orwellian attempts to manage the message Dutton has chimed in with a range of assertions so patently absurd they would be laughable if they weren’t so agonisingly tragic.

From his accusing refugee advocates of encouraging suicide attempts, (an allegation that has subsequently been proven to be false), to claiming that allegations of sexual assaults in the camps are simply a misguided attempt to penetrate our boarders, Dutton is a man so deep in denial that he seems unable to contemplate the notion that any of the 2000 plus incidents listed in the Nauru files might actually be the awful truth. He has become little more than the unfortunate mouthpiece of a government so driven by distorted ideology and political opportunism that it has fully embraced the Seinfeildian logic of “it’s not a lie if you believe it”.

But if we are to figure out how to move forward we must first look back and understand where we have been and how we got here.

Howard started it all with the children overboard scandal. A false claim made to demonise innocent people and gain political advantage. Down in the polls and facing electoral defeat, 9/11 landed on Howard’s doorstep like a political godsend. Suddenly he had a new Muslim bogey man to with which to terrify the public. Throw a compliant media and boatload of middle eastern refugees into the mix and he sailed back into office on the back of his successful scare campaign. So successful was his little man hate campaign that from that day forward everything changed. Where we once recognised refugees as hard working, often highly educated and entrepreneurial additions to our society, we were now encouraged to view them as self serving illegal interlopers bent on milking our benefits system and destroying our way of life. The torture and vilification of refugees was etched in stone into the LNP party platform, and the Murdoch rags gleefully cheered them on from the sideline.

Some of you will be too young to remember, but before Howard cynically exploited the Tampa crisis and invented the lie that was children overboard, refugees attempting to come here where greeted with a broad smile and hand up.

So here we are several years later, one of the richest countries on the planet, with the biggest houses and the largest per capita carbon footprint in the world, thumbing our nose at international law. With absolutely no sense of irony we seem able to torture and persecute innocent people for the outrageous act of fleeing torture and persecution. And for what? Why are we doing it? It costs us far more to persecute these people than it would to resettle them.

If you analyse it, the reason is clear. It is not about the money. It’s not about these people being a threat to the community. (As if 400 refugees are going to bring down the nation? It’s utter garbage, we have taken in thousands of refugees in over the decades and they have been overwhelmingly good for the nation).

What it is really about is political opportunism and advantage. Just like the Nazi’s did in the 30’s, the LNP get a lot of political capital out of fear of the other. Fear has proven such an effective wedge against labor and the greens, or any other party that can be packaged up by Murdoch and sold to the public as “soft of boarder protection” that the LNP are totally unwilling to give it up.

But it is not just a matter of the political advantage the LNP garner from prosecuting the case for fear, they have made the lie so big, and told it to us so often they simply can’t back away from it, even as it is crumbling around them. Even though the truth has well and truly escaped their control they are clearly willing to push back hard. I’m sure they think that if they mount a good enough fight, with Murdoch on their side, they still might be able to save their precious rhetoric from being shown up for the lie that it is. After all if they back down now, not only will they lose one of their most valuable political cards, they are going to lose one hell of a lot of face.

In the wake of the Nauru files one thing has become abundantly clear. As human beings the LNP clearly lack the moral backbone and courage required to say, “we got it wrong”. Given the choice between owning their error and rethinking their policy or continuing on with the human rights abuses, clearly they prefer to keep torturing people.

So what now for us as a nation? More of the same I suspect.

Capitalism (as we know it) is in Crisis, and it is going to fail!

We live in an increasingly brutal economy. Almost everything is granted or denied on the basis of your ability to pay. If you have the cash you get the service, if not you get nothing. The economy just doesn’t care if you are homeless, hungry, sick, war wounded, traumatised or retrenched. It only cares whether or not you can pay.

The system pits us against each other in an endless quest for money, and it encourages us to view our fellow humans as either a means to increase our personal wealth, or as a potential drain on it. This is the stark reality of living in an economy rather than a society.

But given that this is the system we live in, and we all need money to survive, how exactly does one make ends meet?

The easiest way is to be born into a family that has enough resources to feed, house and pay for a good education for you. However if you fail to secure such a birth then I’m afraid your chances of wallowing in poverty are astonishingly high, no matter what country you were born into.

You could enter the “labor market” and sell your time to the highest bidder. While this works reasonably well for some highly educated folk, unfortunately education has become extremely expensive of late, and often only results in a massive personal debt with no prospect of a job at the end of it.

You could of course forgo education and seek out unskilled work, but the drive to ever-decreasing levels of service and ever-increasing mechanisation has created a large reserve of unemployed, which keeps the price of human labor cripplingly low. (This fact is vividly on display in places like Bangladesh or downtown USA, where a person can easily work a gruelling 60 hour week and still fail to make enough money to eat well and rent somewhere semi decent to live).

There are of course the much-touted inspirational tales of those who start out with nothing and work their way to the top. But what are the odds of such a meteoric rise in status, especially if you had the misfortune of being low born in a 3^rd world country? Suffice to say we are talking odds that would make a lottery ticket look promising. Even if you were blessed with the brains of Einstein and worked like a proverbial dog, without the right start in life you’re pretty well screwed.

For most people the system as it stands is precarious enough, but when you factor in the disruptive force of mass mechanisation that is hurtling towards us at break neck speed, it’s pretty clear that without major structural reform things could get much worse very rapidly.

There is credible research out there suggesting that up to 40% of Australian Jobs could disappear by 2025. That is LESS THAN 10 YEARS PEOPLE!

For the first time in our history we look set to run head long into the ultimate capitalist paradox. You know, the one where the .01% has everything and no one else can afford to buy anything, which rapidly brings the whole thing to a grinding halt. It’s the classic end to every game of Monopoly ever played. One person is filthy rich and smilingly self-satisfied, and everyone else is broke, resentful and threatening to up end the board.

Like it or not robotics and automation are on the rise right across the globe, & HUMAN EMPLOYMENT IS STRUCTURAL DECLINE. Just last week Adidas announced it was going to open new fully automated ‘robot’ factories to make shoes. The driverless cars and trucks are coming people, and no matter how much the LNP might wish it, the attendant tsunami of unemployment is not going to be halted simply by tinkering with the company tax rate.

We are talking about four out of ten Australians potentially losing their jobs within a decade.

And even if our job is safe, we need to understand that every new face on the unemployment line, every 457 visa granted to an underpaid Chinese worker puts Australian wages and conditions under increasing pressure. And as wages contract people’s disposable incomes shrink, and as people’s incomes shrink demand falls away, and as demand falls away profits start to fall, and before we know it we are in a full blown recession, or worse.

One thing is for sure; this slashing of labor costs due to mass mechanisation is NOT going to result in GROWTH for anyone but the 1%, (and even that growth could be very short lived if no one can afford to buy what they are selling).

We also have to take into account the massively increased cost of welfare, policing, and health care as record unemployment, increased crime, depression, addiction and ‘unforeseen’ climate events starts to ripple throughout the land.

This crisis is real, it’s on the horizon, and left to run its course it could get pretty damn ugly.

We are fast entering uncharted waters. Never before in human history have we had the capacity to produce so much, while having so many people that are just not needed to do the work. And the frightening truth is, no one really knows exactly how this is all going to play out.

How do we address a situation where a large percentage of the population is not able to earn enough to feed and house themselves? We can’t continue to blame and demonise them. After all it isn’t their fault the robots took their jobs.

So what the hell do we do? Do we kill the unemployed; do we turn them into thieves and criminals? Do will build gated communities so we don’t have to watch them quietly starve? Do we all start carrying guns to shoot them if they try to take our stuff? Seriously, what do we do?

There is only one humane answer. We have to reconfigure the model of distribution. We need to start a conversation about introducing some kind of UBI (Universal Basic Income). A UBI is, in short, a no questions asked basic livable stipend given to all citizens regardless of any other income.

I know this is a big leap, and it goes against the grain for many, but what other choice is there; war, famine, mass homelessness?

We have to accept the fact that 40 hours well paid employment is not going to be a viable or achievable expectation for many people in the very near future. We also need to understand that for big and small business to survive people need to be able to afford to buy their goods and services.

The first question most people ask is “but how can we afford it?” While the answer is not yet clear, here is what we do know; if we are to afford it then we will probably need to be taxing companies MORE in the near future, not less. (or at the very least get them to actually pay tax at the headline rate rather than allow them to continue using convoluted off shore structures and tax havens to avoid it).

Sure, in the short term tax cuts might fuel investment, but is Coles investing in automated checkouts, or McDonalds installing a touch screen automated ordering system, or banks adding more automation to their systems, or taxi companies going driverless really going to employ more people? Or is it simply going to strengthen their company bottom line and thus reduce what they cycle back into the community?

Change is coming and we need to start discussing what the hell we are going to do to avoid complete social collapse in the face of massive, unprecedented underemployment.

And I am sorry to say it Mr Turnbull, but your long debunked, trickle down ‘jobs and growth’ tax cut for companies is a lame duck policy that simply fails to grasp or address the structural changes that are upon us.

You will be hearing a lot more about UBI’s over the next few months and years, (they are already being discussed and trialled in parts of Europe). And if we are to avoid a social/humanitarian disaster we need to start reframing the conversation.

The wave is coming, and we either learn to surf it or we are going to drown.

Being “PC” was once considered the calling card of civilised social commentary and educated debate. But over the last few years (in fact ever since Pauline Hanson let the racist genie out of the bottle with her maiden speech to parliament in 1996), the act of being “Politically Correct” (or PC) has been systematically assaulted by battlers, shock jocks and right wing pundits as a repressive constraint on free speech.

The mainstream media have effectively rebranded the once lauded virtue as an act of excessive pandering to vocal minorities, and managed to disingenuously package it up as an assault on the mainstream.

But what does actually it mean to be “politically correct”? According to dictionary.com the active component of the term means, “avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental” (particularly on matters pertaining to race, gender or sexual orientation).

I realise this may sound somewhat old fashioned but to my understanding this would mean that being “politically correct” is simply the act of exercising GOOD MANNERS by not publicly espousing derogatory racist or sexist sentiments, or abusing those that are of an alternate race, gender, orientation or circumstance to ones own.

I admit good manners are somewhat of an old fashioned concept, but for the uninitiated the idea is basically this, you don’t say or do things that are HIGHLY LIKELY to lead to offence, vilification or active discrimination against others.

As a caveat to that, exceptions can be granted for those engaging in activities and speech (that might offend some) if their actions are designed to dismantle blatantly unfair and discriminatory practices, such as slavery, or securing women’s right to vote or drive cars. However exceptions cannot and should not be granted when the aim of the speaker is to vilify, arbitrarily exclude and incite hatred and violence.

Contrary to what some in the government may think, dismantling 18c (our laws against hate speech) and legally enshrining the right to abuse and vilify would not serve our political freedom; it would simply be inviting more ignorance, bigotry and hostility to run rampant in our society. (And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that may lead to some pretty ugly consequences).

Censorship has always been a thorny issue. A persuasive case can be mounted that the ability (under law) to say whatever we please ought to be one of our fundamental rights and freedoms, but in reality extremes very rarely produce good outcomes. While we clearly do not want the overtly repressive censorship that is exercised by some nations, we don’t want to allow an unchecked stream of hateful, violent,antisocial rhetoric to gain popular traction either.

As a society we must walk the tightrope between and the extremes of the overly repressive and the overly permissive, and it is a difficult balance to strike.

This is where “political correctness” once used to serve us so well. Being PC was the unspoken pact we had with each other that we would refrain from behaving like utterly hateful bigots, (at least in public); and anyone who crossed the line would be met with anything from the shaming disapproval of a sharply raised eyebrow to unemployment or outright social shunning.

It was a good, self-regulating system. We all agreed not to be hateful in public, and those that harboured hateful, antagonistic feelings towards others knew that they needed to keep those thoughts and feelings to themselves, lest they become a social pariah.

Abandoning that pact comes at no small cost. While the likes of Hanson and Abbott have cleared Australia’s way to socially permissible bigotry, one only needs to look to the USA and the phenomena that is Trump to gain an understanding of what it may ultimately cost us if we progress any further down that road.

Watching Trump abandon all sense verbal restraint is an agonising spectre. The ease with which he spews his loathsome bile all over the mainstream news cycle, (who happily devour it like rabid dogs), is horrific.

The unapologetic swagger with which he peels off racist and misogynistic epithets is simply staggering. He does nothing for social cohesion; instead he sets the stage for the hateful to come out loud and proud; and emboldened by the vicious unrestrained political rhetoric the haters are rising to his call. Whether it is advocating the brutal torture of refugees, discriminating against the LGBT community, punishing the disabled and unemployed, assaulting Muslim women on the train, or spraying racist epithets on my local Indian restaurant (or worse), they are out there and they are getting increasingly brazen. (So much so that even some right wingers realise it has gone too far, and are now clamouring for the restraint that “political correctness” once afforded them).

But how do we contain the hate? How can we reinstate the PC pact? Can we actually make back the ground that has been lost? Having thrown off the “PC” shackles of societal shame, the bigots and haters are on the march, and they will not be silenced easily.

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If Australia has learnt anything from Abbott’s history, it is that Abbott has learned nothing from Abbot’s history.

DFAT have been working tirelessly behind the scenes with every ounce of their diplomatic persuasion to move Indonesia from it’s seemingly intractable position. They have carefully nuanced their presentation of Australia’s heartfelt desire for mercy. They have acknowledged the political difficulties Indonesia’s president would face if he were to acquiesce to our wishes, and let it be known that we, as Australians, understand the incredible act of political courage it would be for Joko Widodo to grant clemency at this late stage.

The fact that Indonesia delayed the transfer of Chan and Sukamaran was evidence of some slight progress. Glimmers of light were starting to appear in the darkness; and then Abbott steps in, like the street brawler he is, shirt fronting the Indonesians with a mouthful of toxic threatening rhetoric.

The lack of emotional intelligence displayed by Abbott is utterly staggering. One can not help but wonder if he actually wants to see the executions go ahead? Because if he wants to save Chan and Sukamaran he has got know that bullying Indonesia is not helping.

Does Abbott understand anything about human nature at all? If the Indonesians were considering clemency before Abbott started going off like a loose canon, it could only have been cast as an act of supreme generosity of spirit and political bravery; the benevolent act of a fair minded and courageous leader. After Abbott’s little stunt it could just as easily be cast as Indonesia buckling under the fist of the local colonial bullyboy. Honestly does Abbott understand nothing?

Abbott’s meddling in this situation is tragic, embarrassing and may well have cost Chan and Sukamaran their lives. Australia simply can not afford to have Abbott rolling around like a loose canon on the world stage.

Our one hope is that the Indonesians will take Abbott’s lack of domestic popularity into account when accessing his rather inappropriate contribution to the situation. Hopefully the Indonesians are aware that Abbott doesn’t speak for us as a nation. Hopefully they know and understand that we Australians find Abbott’s commentary as offensive and inappropriate as they do. Hopefully Indonesia will understand the profound respect, gratitude, warmth and friendship Australians would hold eternally in our hearts should Indonesia see fit to spare our fellow countrymen.

Hopefully?

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After a string of ghoulishly inappropriate tweets it seems the irrepressible Rupert it is at it again. With very own his media empire poised and ready to dedicate swathes of precious air time to his every hashtag, it’s no surprise that the man cant keep his hands off his twitter account.

But given his latest round of tweets one has to wonder what on earth is Murdoch up to?

First he blasts Abbott for knighting that shining beacon of misogyny and casual racism that is Prince Phillip, and now he is saying Abbott needs to sack Peta Credlin?

I’m no great fan of Peta Credlin but blaming her for Abbott’s woes is like blaming a creme cake for Boko Haram. Admittedly she could have kept him on a tighter leash, but the reality is that Abbott is her boss, not the other way around, and if he is determined to go off like a loose cannon there isn’t really a lot Ms. Credlin can do about it.

While Murdoch’s call for Credlin’s scalp is understandable on one level, after all there is a well set precedent in Australian politics that powerful women are expected to clean up the messes made by the boys, and then thrown under a bus for their efforts, (Just think Joan Kirner, Julia Gillard, and more recently Sussan Ley, who – after Dutton’s abject failure- has been handed the delightful task of destroying Medicare… I guarantee you, give it 18 months and Ms Ley will be road kill), it is still a somewhat curious manoeuvre.

We all know that Abbott is Murdoch’s boy, bought and paid for, and no one would be surprised if Murdoch was suffering a touch of buyer’s remorse where Abbott is concerned. I for one would not be shocked if Murdoch, much like anyone else that buys a lemon, is desperately searching for an exit strategy that won’t leave too much egg on his face. But why would he slap Abbott down one day, and blame Credlin the next? Are we simply witnessing the random #’s of man who is getting on a bit and losing the plot, or does Murdoch have some kind of cunning plan?

Riding on the back of his media empire Murdoch currently enjoys great sway with the Australian voting public, but even he knows that in this social media age you can not take anything for granted. With the disgrace that was the phone hacking scandal in the UK, and the utter derision with which most of the USA views fox news (when Fox news can’t even raise enough votes in a racially polarised America to keep Obama out of office, you have know it’s a spent force), Australia is possibly the last place on earth where Rupert wields the kind of political influence he so clearly craves, and he certainly doesn’t want to blow it.

Murdoch has now quite rightly assessed the public sentiment, and realised that sticking up for his man Tony is only going to erode his social and political capital. So what to do? Abbott is now so toxic, standing by him is clearly not an option, but who can Rupert turn to to be his new man in Canberra?

Trouble is, in setting a such a hideous policy agenda Abbott has managed to turn each and every portfolio into a poison chalice that is guaranteed to cruel the chances of any potential successor.

It is unlikely Scott Morrison will ever recover from his stint in immigration, George Brandis has been eternally lumbered with the racist tag (courtesy of the ill advised attempt at 18c amendments), Joe Hockey is forever blighted with his budget opus, Julie Bishop is a woman so forget that, and let’s face it Christopher Pyne was never going to be a saleable option.

What about Andrew Robb or Peter Dutton? Really? I don’t think so! And then of course there is the ever popular Malcom Turnbull, the only one who could probably save them, but Turnbull is way too much of centrist for Murdoch’s purposes, and he isn’t supported in the party room anyway.

So what is poor Rupert to do about toxic Tony, he can’t side with him, and he can’t find a suitable successor?

This is where the attack on Credlin starts to make sense. From Rupert’s point of view, (as the undisputed emperor of his very own personal 24 hour news cycle), it’s not hard to see how Credlin could make a credible scape goat for all Abbott’s stuff ups. She is powerful, she is a woman, she is unelected (which means no messy bi-election swings to have to explain away), and as she is largely attributed with Abbott’s successes surely it wouldn’t be too hard to spin her into the cause of his failures as well.

Will Murdoch be able to successfully to transfer Abbott’s stench onto Credlin, (because if his tabloids are anything to go by, he is certainly having a red hot go at it)?

To me it looks like Murdoch is throwing Credlin to the wolves in one desperate last ditch attempt remediate Abbott’s image. The question is will the electorate buy it?

I’m thinking probably not.

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It’s been a punishingly busy year for the coalition. With so many pressing items on their to do list, like:

Dismantling medicare, cutting foreign aid, reducing real wages, slashing funding to the ABC and SBS, destroying the NBN, raising the retirement age, gutting the CSIRO, cutting child care staff subsidies, axing secular social workers in public schools in favor of chaplains, trashing the renewable energy sector, spending billions breaching international law with our treatment of refugees, stripping away our right to privacy, granting immunity from prosecution to ASIO officers, unwinding the same sex marriage laws in the ACT, ushering in ISDR clauses in the South Korean, Chinese and Japanese free trade agreements, blowing holes in the budget with the repeal of the carbon and mining taxes, investing in a shiny new war and handing an unsolicited multi-billion dollar gift to the reserve bank… it’s just been go go go for the Abbott government.

Given the cracking pace of their legislative achievements it’s quite amazing they have had the time to (among other things):

Axe the Climate Commission, cull the sharks, fast track the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, open up the Galilee Basin, scrap the Australian Animals Welfare Advisory Committee, scrap the Commonwealth Firearms Advisory Council, scrap the International Legal Services Advisory Council, scrap the High Speed Rail Advisory Group, scrap the Maritime Workforce Development Forum, scrap the Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing, scrap the Insurance Reform Advisory Group, scrap the National Housing Supply Council, and as a special last minute present for Christmas, scrap the funding to homeless and housing groups!

Admittedly the government will need a bit more time to “sell” the obvious merits of some of their policies to the ignorant cross-benchers and whiny leaners in the broader electorate, but never fear, with a few more tax payer funded “public education” campaigns we will all no doubt be clamoring for Hobbitt (yes, that is a Hockey Abbott couple contraction) to dish out their lavish Paid Parental Leave to high earning mums to be, ensure our universities are properly reserved for those with a fiscal pedigree, and to finally pull the trigger on those pesky unemployed youth who are currently cowering in their cross-hairs.

But it hasn’t all gone Abbott’s way! And while we may lament that some of the government’s noblest ambitions, (such as their push to de-list Tasmania’s world heritage forests or secure our right to engage in hate speech), have been thwarted by forces beyond their control, at least the coalition government have had the guts to stand up to those lefty green nutters and try!

None the less I think we can feel relieved that the government hasn’t made any significant move to stem corporate tax evasion, (in fact they have pro-actively stood in the way of international co-operation on that issue). Nor has Abbot been swayed by all that hysterical feminist white noise, managing to keep the number of women in cabinet down below 10% in his Christmas reshuffle. (Golly gee, if I had known it would be this fabulous under the Coalition I would have voted for them!)

As the first full year of the Abbott government draws to a close, comedy and tragedy stroll hand in hand through our political landscape into 2015, a future as yet unknown. If all goes according to the play book Abbott and his team have two more years to weave their special magic over the nation, but who knows? Maybe we can look forward to some PLEASANT surprises in the New Year!

Happy Holidays 🙂

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