By Ad astra 

Make no mistake – Dutton’s thirst for power remains unquenched. His conviction that he is ‘the better man’ to be prime minister continues unabated. This piece argues that in pursuit of this lofty goal, he has now consciously embarked on a process best described as ‘Duttonisation’.

Let me explain.

The most recent demonstration of what I have termed Duttonisation was his foray into intimidation of sections of the mainstream media that dared to reveal information that was embarrassing to the government. By bringing the Australian Federal Police into play, he exposed his intention to flex his muscles and push his retaliatory line, even if it embarrassed Morrison in the process.

What’s more, I posit that it’s credible to deduce from Dutton’s recent behaviour that his intention is to put the finger on Morrison until he buckles and the time is right to strike. This is the theme of this piece. 

There is no need for me to detail the intimidating AFP raid on the Canberra home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst, or the raid on the ABC’s Sydney headquarters; you have seen accounts of them ad nauseam. They will remain as emblems of the Morrison government’s strident push towards authoritarianism, its intolerance of criticism, and its rejection of any disagreement with its values and actions.

Some critics insist that this push will inexorably lead to ‘a police state’! They put side by side the authoritarian pattern of behaviour exhibited by Dutton and Morrison and that of ‘Big Brother’, the central character in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four. who, as leader of The Party engaged ‘Thought Police’ to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Read what David Tyler had to say about this in ScoMo embraces police state in a shocker of a week on The AIM Network.

Although Morrison has not resisted the push towards authoritarianism, it is the mean, intemperate Dutton who is the driving force. His nastiness is legend, his persona exudes it, and his daily words and actions confirm it. Paul Keating’s request to his electorate to ‘drive a stake through his mean heart’ was ignored by the voters of Dickson, who re-elected this meanest of men. You can picture him in his former role as a ‘tough cop on the beat’.

Morrison ought to be worried about this viper in his nest, who would undo him in an instant should the opportunity arise.

If you have doubts about Dutton’s agenda, reflect on the words and extraordinary actions of his departmental head Mike Pezzullo, who took the unusual action of ringing Senator Rex Patrick to tell him to watch his words after he issued a press release criticising the media raids.

What did Patrick say? “The overall trend has been clear for some time with the Government clearly working up a suppression trifecta: routinely obstructing and delaying Freedom of Information applications; persecuting whistleblowers such as Witness K and Richard Boyle, and now using the police to intimidate journalists. There is no doubt that Coalition Ministers and senior bureaucrats have no love of media scrutiny.” 

What was Pezzulo’s beef? Apparently, he felt the last sentence reflected poorly on his character! We can be sure that he would not have said what he did without a nod of approval from Dutton. Departmental heads do not go out on a limb different from their masters.

Morrison’s reaction was muted. While hinting that Pezzulo’s action was not appropriate, he did not come down heavily on him for castigating an elected member of the Senate. Was Morrison afraid of upsetting Pezzulo’s boss – the intemperate Dutton?

Following a previous episode of criticism, Dutton had angrily retorted: ” Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC, and on The Guardian, and The Huffington Post, can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it. They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.” His insolence is legend.

Recall his oft-used words when, as Immigration Minister, he was publically commenting on ‘boat arrivals’ and their asylum-seeker cargo. He shrouded vital information about them by insisting he would not comment about “on water” matters, “operational” matters, “national security”, “commercial-in-confidence” matters, or matters “under investigation”. He insisted that such matters were a “report to government not by government”. Whenever he elected to address the public, his obsession with secrecy ensured that the truth was obscured.

Sadly, secrecy has now become the Morrison government’s modus operandi.

Writing in The AIM Network, Kaye Lee comprehensively spells out the Coalition’s obsession with secrecy in Pull your head in Mike. Do read it.

As current Minister for Home Affairs, Dutton continues on his shameless pursuit of those who seek asylum in our country. Although our National Anthem joyfully declares: “For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share”, Dutton differs. His intention is to punish those who try their hand in leaky boats.

A recent case exposes yet again Dutton’s mean heart. Sri Lankan Tamils Nadesalingnam and Priya arrived separately by boat in 2012 and 2013, having fled the civil war in that country. After being processed on Christmas Island, and having been given a bridging visa, they met in Queensland, married, and started a family in Biloela. But one day after Priya’s visa expired last March, the family was moved to the Melbourne Immigration Detention Centre (MITA), 1800km south of Biloela, where they remain to this day. Dutton insists they are illegal migrants, and the courts confirm this. He is hell-bent on deporting them. But that is not the point of this story.

On last Sunday’s Insiders, Dutton insisted that he had ”got all children out of detention here in Australia”, patently a lie, as the family remains at MITA. About to celebrate her second birthday, youngest daughter Tharunicaa was eagerly waiting the arrival of her birthday cake – a strawberry cheesecake – but this was denied entry into MIT. Although Dutton is responsible for goings-on at MIT, did that touching situation melt his hard heart and persuade him to intervene? Will it? Don’t hold your breath! Will Morrison get involved? What do you think?

Now that the Federal Court has ruled that doctors do not have to have a face-to-face interview with a refugee before determining whether they need medical treatment in Australia, and can instead make a recommendation based on a person’s records, the medevac issue has been raised to prominence once more. Already Dutton has claimed: “It may have applicability to many hundreds of people, which has certainly the potential to restart boats and that would be a travesty.” No doubt he will again insist that countless murderers, rapists, paedophiles, and sundry criminals will soon arrive on our shores. Dutton never misses an opportunity to mount a monumental scare campaign, no matter how many safeguards are in place to prevent this. ‘Fear’ is part of Dutton’s stock in trade.

How will Morrison react? No doubt he’ll amplify Dutton’s scaremongering. He certainly won’t attempt to dampen down any of the fear Dutton generates around Medevac. Fear is his stock in trade too!

Now in case you think that Dutton could not behave even more abhorrently about the effect of Medevac, reflect on what he said on Sky News on 12 June: “…women have been “trying it on”, under the Medevac legislation. Let’s be serious about this. There are people who have claimed that they’ve been raped and came to Australia to seek an abortion because they couldn’t get an abortion on Nauru. They arrive in Australia and then decide they are not going to have an abortion. They have the baby here and the moment they step off the plane their lawyers lodge papers in the federal court which injuncts us from sending them back.”And now he’s claiming that asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island and Nauru are refusing resettlement offers in the United States because of the medevac legislation!

Dr Kerryn Phelps, former member for Wentworth, who led the charge for Medevac, blasted Dutton’s claims: “It’s outrageous that the Minister of Home Affairs should come out swinging on this law, and try to deny people the healthcare they need on World Refugee Day. To denigrate the motives and reputations of the doctors who are giving their time for a humanitarian cause is unconscionable.

“These doctors are acting out of compassion in the interests of human rights and the obligations of the medical profession to provide healthcare where possible to people who need it. To disparage their reputation in this way is just unforgivable. It’s an international embarrassment.”

So what can we conclude?

In summary, this piece argues that Dutton is resolutely determined to elevate his status and eventually take control of the LNP government. From the moment Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership came into question, Dutton believed he was the ‘better man’ to replace him, and that his bid for the top job should be supported by his colleagues. There is no evidence that he has abandoned this lofty ambition. In fact, recent revelations show how he and Morrison colluded in this shameful process. And I’m not the only one who sees it that way. Read David Tyler’s Dutton’s naked power grab in The AIM Network, and Kristina Keneally’s assessment of the ‘man who cries wolf’ in The Guardian.

I wonder how Dutton will react to the recent National Press Club statement on the AFP raids and the NPC event on 26 June: Press Freedom – On the line featuring the Managing Director of the ABC, David Anderson, the Chief Executive Officer of Nine, Hugh Marks, and the Executive Chairman Australasia, News Corp, Michael Miller?

Watch Dutton in the months ahead and draw your own conclusions.

Dutton wins by the length of the straight.

It’s not unfair to say that amongst Coalition MPs there are a lot of slimy types. If I’m being polite, it’s my nature. Others might say that the likes of Barnaby Joyce, Julie Bishop, Scott Morrison, Christopher Pyne, Peter Dutton, Michaelia Cash, Matthew Canavan, Greg Hunt, Mitch Fifield, Josh Frydenberg, Tony Abbott and even the Prime Minister are in differing ways the sort of people you wouldn’t invite to dinner.

But they do form the collective leadership of the nation. If you think that in character they are suitable for the enormous tasks facing the nation please say so. Conversely, if you think they are not,perhaps you could say why in the comments section.

I recall the night when Penny Wong and Barnaby Joyce were on Q&A together. They were discussing Marriage Equality, and Barnaby was spruiking the virtues of his Catholicism, putting Wong down in the process. A transcript of the program no longer exists but I recall Barnaby making a derogatory remark about Wong’s sexuality and her rebuttal, referring to her family, was absolutely priceless. Now it seems family wasn’t as important as he made out.

If you have ever witnessed his cringing appearances on Q&A when surrounded by people of sagacious knowledge you will understand where I’m coming from.

Julie Bishop is another conservative without compassion. Some of you might recall this from 2012 …

Lawyer Peter Gordon told Australian Doctor magazine in 2007: “We had to fight even for the right of dying cancer victims to get a speedy trial. I recall sitting in the WA Supreme Court in an interlocutory hearing for the test cases involving Wittenoom miners Mr Peter Heys and Mr Tim Barrow. CSR was represented by Ms Julie Bishop (then Julie Gillon). (She) was rhetorically asking the court why workers should be entitled to jump court queues just because they were dying.”

Labor MP Stephen Jones said at the time:

Of course, solicitors don’t choose their clients but Jones thinks Labor should point out Bishop’s role. “You can’t judge anyone by their clients, I suppose. But she had some pretty dodgy ones in my view.”

And more recently this, referring to Barnaby Joyce’s NZ immigration problems:

“It was all at the behest of the Australian Labor Party, who stop at nothing, will trash any principle, trash any promise, trash any element of decency in order to gain a political advantage.”

Scott Morrison will of course be remembered for his statement that Cabinet wasn’t taking full advantage of the plight of asylum seekers and his rather indelicate remarks that Australia should not have to pay the air fares for asylum seekers to attend the funerals of those who died at sea.

Morrison’s oafish intransigence, a refusal to infuse any form of decency into his thinking while Immigration Minister disgraced our country in the eyes of the world.

Of course the one thing, the thread that binds all these people together, is their enormous capacity for lying. Which brings me to perhaps the greatest grub of all. The self loving Christopher Pyne who often calls fellow members “grubs” but now and then c#nts. He did this in Question Time and the proof of it is on YouTube

As a Minister of the Crown, he is an alarming spectacle. Is he mad? Is he a deluded, paranoid megalomaniac? Does he suffer an extreme narcissistic personality disorder? The jury is still out. It could be all of these and more.

Christopher Pyne is the second youngest MP ever elected to the House of Representatives. He is also arguably the most disliked. (He doesn’t mind that) No one has been expelled from the Chamber for unruly behaviour more times than Pyne.

Offence comes as naturally to him as does sleeping and wakening. His demeanour is crass and unpleasant. His self-righteous indignation is prissy, shallow, superficial, and school boyish. Some time ago the Coalition said that “the adults were back in charge”: then it’s difficult to imagine how this adolescent loutish, imbecile with an uncouth acerbic tongue got a jersey.

Which brings us to Greg Hunt, who a couple of years ago received an award for ‘Best Minister in the World’. It was received with much scepticism by many Australians. Even hilarity.

Mr Hunt told Fairfax Media at the time that he was “genuinely humbled” by the prize, but noted “this is really an award for Australia”.

The criteria for winning the award, according to the organisers, was that the minister should lead quality successful initiatives that serve the needs of citizens.

Any economist, environmentalist or climate scientist or journalist specialising in the subject would be aghast that a person who has done so much harm to environmental policy could be honoured with an award.

In environmental gatherings Hunt is referred to as the man for all seasons. He has long been admired for his ability to put the case for Direct Action without ever explaining exactly how it might work. Or how it might be paid for.

He gained a masters with honours in 1990 with a brilliantly argued thesis for a carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions. Then he did an about turn when Abbott gained power supporting Direct Action. It was then that he lost all credibility and has been ridiculed ever since.

There is an award at every climate summit called ‘The Fossil of the Day’. The award is given by the international Climate Action Network to the country which has done the most to block progress at the climate change negotiations. We are a regular recipient of this award.

After Abbott might I suggest that Hunt is a sublime liar who does it with a calmness that is frightening.

This brings us to Michaelia Cash. Writing for The AIMN in December David Tyler said:

“Pluto-populism has been a GOP strategy in the US since Ronald Reagan. It involves a super wealthy elite who have systematically learned to manipulate the electorate to their advantage. Its key feature is to use democratic processes to establish an authoritarian, autocratic power over the people.

It was deployed in Latin America; it is at work in Trump’s America and it is at work in Australia, too.

Recent events in the brilliant career of former employment Minister, Michaelia “Union-bash” Cash reflect how the Turnbull government’s jihad on organised labour aka “union thuggery” confer a self-righteousness which help Coalition MPs set themselves above the law.”

Josh Frydenber is another MP in the Hunt ilk. Calm, rational with Hunt’s grubby need for lying.

Although not now in the cabinet Tony Abbott has done more than any other to destroy our democracy and the institute that is Parliament. I have written more on Abbott than any other person, so the short summary that follows suffices for this post:

“Tony Abbott if nothing else is a very colorful character. He is aggressive both physically and in the use of language. His negativity is legendary and he has little consideration for any ideas other than his own and says NO to his opponents policies regardless of their worthiness. He is by evidence and his own admission a liar of some regularity. Added to that he has a political gutter mentality and little respect for the institution of parliament and its conventions. Like most conservative politicians from the Abbott/Turnbull governments he show an incapacity to feel or display compassion.”

Currently we are experiencing a shift in power from government to those who control the means of production, financial institutions, the media and large corporations.

Transparency isn’t something this Government displays openly. The Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield cannot explain what appears to be a gift of $30 million to Rupert, and is in the budget when there are no papers to explain it. An application to FOI revealed no paperwork. It seems it is just a nod and wink gift of taxpayers money between friends.

Yet Fifield complains incessantly about ABC bias and has defended his decision to legislate that the ABC must be “fair and balanced”. But private enterprise doesn’t need to.

The Prime Minister, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull must surely be the greatest hypocrite the country has ever seen so I won’t expand much, suffice to say that power is a malevolent possession when you are prepared to forgo your principles and your country’s wellbeing for the sake of it. Those who follow me would know just how much I have written about his leadership, or lack of it.

The new Minister for Anything approaching evil insists that “people are to scared to go out to restaurants of a night-time because they are followed home by these gangs”.

When asked to provide factual evidence of this the former copper from Queensland could not. No one is surprised for it is a method of demonising people that he has used for some time now.

Is it effective? Well, he must think it is because he takes every opportunity to use this malevolent methodology of scaring people at every opportunity. He is the sort of bloke I would never like to meet up a dark ally on a bleak cold winters night.

In short I have posted a summary of the qualities of some of our cabinet members. Surely the Liberal and Country Party can come up with better people than these.

Victoria Rollison in her open letter to the Prime Minister last December on this site said:

”This week you’ve made the call, through saying nothing at all, by hiding away, by pretending you don’t need to comment, to support your Immigration Minister Dutton’s blatant lies, designed to demonise asylum seekers by accusing them of paedophilia. We all know it’s messy for you to call Dutton out, to say he’s lied, to take responsibility for sacking him as Immigration Minister; he’s just as dangerous to you as Abbott. But Malcolm, just because something is messy and hard and takes a bit of bravery, doesn’t mean you need to rule it out. Were you never told as a child that nothing worthwhile was ever easy?”

My thought for the day

“Current experience would suggest that the Australian people need to take more care when electing its leaders.”

By David Tyler

Australia is way ahead of the game in terms of using government policies and processes to punish and isolate our most disadvantaged citizens so the Government can reduce its welfare spending a few million. We now allow our Government to implement the work of sociopaths and threaten poor citizens with imprisonment on the basis of half-cocked ‘automatic computer-matching’ algorithms that are allegedly tracking welfare fraud. (Bill Mitchell Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia).

“Bill Shorten’s skin is so thick it puts a rhinoceros to shame”, snipes Liberal hit-squad reservist, retired SA senator Amanda Vanstone who is rostered on this week to kick off the government’s perpetual rubbishing of the Labor leader.

She would know. Her own political style was brutal: “Let me put my dancing shoes on, ” she said on learning of the death, from stomach cancer, of fugitive Christopher Skase in 2001. At the time, she was the minister responsible for pursuing the fugitive. More recently, on Nine ‘s election eve commentary, she thrust her hand in Maxine McKew’s face.

“Talk to the hand, the face doesn’t want to listen.” The hand was almost as controversial as Turnbull’s victory speech.

She’s got her hand up again this week. Handy Mandy’s attack is a bid to help a government in crisis over its Centrelink debt collection disaster  while continuing the line that its policy failures are always Labor’s fault. Shorten and Tanya Plibersek invented the scheme, Vanstone writes, so they have no grounds, whatsoever, to criticise it.

Centrelink “does an outstanding job,” she dashes off, in pursuit of a red herring, because it is so big and complex and deals with 4.5 million (sic) “mindboggling permutations”. She reckons she knows. She once “had the welfare portfolio.”

Someone else can tell her it’s now more like 7 million. If they can get past the hand.

Vanstone and Welfare? Now there’s an winning double. It must be Liberal policy to choose the worst possible fit, like Greg Hunt, the Minister for killing the environment, for Health. Dutton for refugees. Who would have thought, Alan Tudge, another MP, like Ms Vanstone, with an empathy bypass, whose robotic delivery so perfectly suits an automated debt recovery system, would be Human Services Minister today?

Who would have thought a government could be so utterly out of touch that it would follow its debacle, this week, by extending Robo-debt to age and disability pensioners?

Vanstone’s bull-dozing joins Alan Tudge’s verbal sludge. The system is working perfectly, he crows. It’s meant to have a twenty per cent failure. That’s how it works. Fear and surprise worked for the Spanish Inquisition, too. Who knows how much more harm is yet to be done when the scheme is unleashed on age pensioners and the disabled?

Apart from its gratuitous cruelty, Centrelink’s “outstanding job” has public servants pitted against each other by managers, competing for the highest daily quota of debt notices, according to Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie.

There’s a lot of “talk to the hand”, moreover, as thousands of Centrelink clients report, as their attempts to seek help or appeal mistakes and miscalculations are brusquely pushed aside. Fobbed off. Threats to seize or garnish bank savings have been reported. The “outstanding job” clearly includes extortion and obtaining advantage by deception.

“If the government was a private company it would go out of business or be shut down by regulators for fraud over the Centrelink debacle,” says former Digital Transformation Office head Paul Shetler. Talk to the hand, says Vanstone.

Vanstone is an expert in the straw man.

“What is it about us”, she writes, “what kind of bongo juice are we on when we fall for some schmaltzy rubbish suggesting that everyone should be allowed to keep overpayments?”

But no-one is making that suggestion. Liberal MPs caught in travel rorts defend rorting, it is true. Look at Steve Ciobo’s absurd claim that a Grand Final is a business meeting if you are an MP . Sussan Ley says she’s broken no rules. But that doesn’t mean everyone tries to cheat.

Keep overpayments? It’s a tactic to blur the issue, divert criticism. It’s a low ploy that can only increase suffering; further harden the dehumanising nurtured openly by Joe Hockey. the prejudice that the poor are leaners. Take away their humanity: take away their human rights. Scapegoat. Its demonisation of the poor is a domestic version of a cruel government’s denial that asylum-seekers are “legal” – have human rights, are entitled to care and compassion. Vanstone’s mob  helped start that with babies overboard in 2003.

Scapegoating helps bury the hoax of broken promises. When authoritarian structures or figures can’t keep their promises to their constituency, they scapegoat, Noam Chomsky warns. “Let’s blame it on people who are even more vulnerable and who are suffering even more than you are. Let’s make it their fault.”

At issue is an employment data matching system between ATO and Centrelink which crudely calculates client’s fortnightly earnings by assuming annual income is earned regularly over a year and generates letters demanding repayment of debt when it discovers or it miscalculates a discrepancy between the two agencies’ records.

Twenty per cent of demands from Centrelink are wrong. Yet many recipients are bluffed or frightened into paying up. 200, 000 letters have been sent since September. The pain and suffering is unprecedented.

In a reversal of natural justice, you are deemed guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Proof may be hard because the Robo-debt claw-back system can search back six years. Workers may not keep their records that long; ATO rules do not require it. Most don’t and the government is counting on it. Yet in contempt of reciprocity, fairness and good faith, if Centrelink owes you money, however, you have only two years to claim it.

Being bullied is the first approach many report. A threatening letter demands debt repayment with a ten per cent processing fee. Alan Tudge, appears elsewhere, to make it clear that defaulters could go to gaol. Attempts to clarify or rectify mistakes are often met with delays. In brief, Robo-debt claw-back is a flawed system, a wrong system, an illegal system before we even begin to consider the social or economic effects.

Bill Mitchell warns that the letters violate recipients’ human rights. Ben Eltham sums up.

“Like the government’s last data debacle, the 2016 Census, it’s clear that there are massive IT failures here. This is not just a few glitches and bugs. A government department is sending out tens of thousands of erroneous communications accusing welfare recipients of over-payment. The government is falsely accusing some of the most vulnerable members of our community.”

Cruelly and irresponsibly, Vanstone misrepresents the issue, smears welfare recipients as cheats, parodying Shorten’s case for an inquiry as “We don’t give a hoot if you get overpaid, by accident or design; it doesn’t matter. Keep the lot. You’ve figured out how to get more than your neighbour? Good on you. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

How to get more than your neighbour? The pernicious lie of widespread deliberate welfare fraud is lightly tossed into the mix. It’s an assumption which underlies the whole clawback policy yet it is egregiously, wilfully wrong. Your prejudices are showing Ms Vanstone. DHS reports show a decline over the years in cases brought for fraud. In 2008-9, it recovered $113.4 million out of $87 billion in payments – 0.13 per cent.

There is no evidence to support $4.5 billion is available to claw back. That pot of gold your government is chasing just doesn’t exist, Ms Vanstone. But you can frighten people into paying anyway. Nowhere is there evidence of widespread rorting – for that you would have to look at politicians and their travel allowances.

Familiar also is her emotive plea that welfare is a burden on the taxpayer, yet Vanstone can add a loopy twist. “Take a $3000 Centrelink debt, she says. A person who pays about $26,000 a year in tax has to work for about six weeks to give the taxman that $3000 to dish out in the first place and certainly wants it paid out according to the rules.”

Yet only half of government revenue comes from PAYE tax. The rules? A tax system is part of a fair society it is not about resenting responsibility – “giving the tax man” but a way those who can work are able to help those who can’t. A real drain on the system, on the other hand, is the third of big businesses who pay tax. Yet Vanstone’s mob will give companies a $50 billion tax break.

Putting in the boot comes naturally to Vanstone who holds her own in a Coalition stable which boasts such feral attack dogs as Tony Junkyard Abbott or Senator Ian Macdonald or Peter “Nutso” Dutton. Indeed, her prowess in sinking the slipper once caused a mild-mannered Wayne Swan to call her “a political hyena who takes delight in attacking society’s most vulnerable”.[4] Swannie’s too much of gentleman to tell us what he really thinks. Nor does he need to remind us that hyenas hunt in packs.

While she is unlikely to get under his skin, Amanda knows full well that Kill Bill is the only strategy the Coalition has going for it. OK it may well be derivative, out of date and increasingly ineffectual – like the Turnbull government itself but, hey, it’s fun and why debate the issue when you can play the man? Or all that you know.

Vanstone’s attack on Shorten, is a crude bid to redeem Clawback; to rehabilitate the Coalition’s automated debt-collecting process, a process which is part of its war on the poor and allied to its demonisation of welfare recipients – a process which is so wrong on so many levels that it has already done incalculable harm to thousands of Australians .

Vanstone’s chief tactic is to pretend that the only alternative to clawback is to leave overpayments alone entirely. You don’t pay the money back at all. Showing she’s all class – ruling class, the former Howard government minister charmingly manages to combine this misrepresentation with a dishonest slur of dishonesty on all Centrelink beneficiaries.

Yet Amanda is a welfare recipient herself. After retiring from the senate in 2007, she spent three years on the nation’s tit as Australia’s Ambassador to Rome. The job comes with a few perks such as subsidised accommodation, utilities and travel. Taxpayers lavish on the incumbent a multi-storey Italian mansion perched in the hills above Rome’s Piazza del Popolo.

This is not about Amanda, primarily, but the thick-skinned, wrong-headed, morally bankrupt government she represents. Never in Australia’s history has there been such utter heartlessness by the government department cruelly, ironically entitled, Human Services. Never has it been clearer to the Australian public that their government, unwilling and unable to chase revenue from company tax defaulters is prepared to go to war on the poor.

Most victims of Centrelink’s abuse in its Robo-debt-scam-the-poor-the-weak-and-helpless scheme have nowhere to go to get legal help. The basic legal help available from Centrelink will be axed in July. is Last year 150,000 of those who asked for help though community legal centres were turned away. Centres have had their funding cut.

Spare us the barracking, Ms Vanstone. Spare us the lie that the poor are worthless, lazy, dishonest and underserving. Save us your talk-to-the-hand endorsement. No need to put your own boot in. Your government is doing enough of that already. If you are worried about overpayment, how about refunding your government pension for the three years you were Ambassador to Rome. Remove the grounds for accusations of double-dipping.

The money could fund a legal aid centre for poor people falsely accused of fraud because Centrelink has made a mistake and that they are guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Call that an outstanding job all you like Amanda but it’s illegal, it’s immoral and it’s dangerous. Best of all you could back off with your attacks on the poor and turn your journalistic pen to ending rorts in your own political party. Reform is so badly overdue, they are about to undo themselves entirely.

This article was originally published on Urban Wronski.

By David Tyler

“A bunch of bong-sniffing, dole-bludging, moss-munching, glue-guzzling, K-Mart Castros are again vandalising Parliament. And stopping other opinions being heard”.

Queensland LNP senator and PM’s Assistant Minister, James McGrath, sneers at twenty members of the Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance who disrupt Question Time mid-week with a plea to end the punitive detention of the 1300 innocent men women and children held on Manus and Nauru. “Close the bloody camps now,” they urge. Even worse, WACA is back next day abseiling down the building with a banner; putting red dye in the water feature.

For a moment, the government is flummoxed; shocked to hear the people they represent speak up, out of turn in parliament. Yet no-one heeds the message. MSM turns not to the protesters’ concerns but how best to keep the people out the people’s house. Democracy is under attack, squawk Shorten and Turnbull in unison. Only The Greens applaud the protesters. But nothing happens. To those suffering the torture of indefinite detention in the open air rape camp on Nauru and on Manus, the government’s Christmas present is the cruel hoax of false expectation of resettlement in the US, a prospect which recedes daily in the wake of news of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team opposition.

Turnbull is typically conflicted. Earlier, he seemed cautious about a proposed $60 million security upgrade to parliament house which includes 2.5 metre high barriers. “We have always got to make sure the people’s house … is as open and accessible as it can be and we try to get the right balance there” says the leader of a government whose secrets and lies over Manus and Nauru include making government operations off-limits to journalists and criminalising whistle-blowers.

Turnbull’s Australian people are free to marvel at the architecture, listen to Question Time, even take a selfie, provided they don’t get fancy ideas about inspecting policy, expecting accountability or, God forbid, voicing their outrage about our government’s human rights abuses on Nauru. The new, you-beaut, security measures are voted in on Thursday in what constitutes the government’s biggest victory all week; part of its drive to curtail, if not outlaw, the impertinence of political dissent. Oddly, no-one from the repeal 18C brigade leaps forward to defend the protesters’ freedom of speech.

The right to protest has long offended the Coalition, especially should it impede oil rigs and coal mines. Australia’s offshore oil regulator is censoring documents about BP’s plans to drill in the Great Australian Bight because environmental campaigners could use the information to “oppose all drilling activities” there. If they could understand them. The plans, it tells Greenpeace, who requested details under FOI, are too “technical” for the public to understand. Yet the FOI Act states that government agencies cannot consider whether releasing information “could result in confusion or unnecessary debate”.

Accountable to Energy and Resources Minister Josh Freydenberg, The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority told a senate inquiry in November that BP’s application “was still in play” and the company could sell its right to drill to another company if its application was successful. NOPSEMA, which is said to be reviewing its transparency is our gatekeeper for information which in all other OECD countries is a public document.

Similarly, Attorney General George Brandis aims to change the Environment and Biodiversity Act to restrict green groups from challenging major developments under federal law after Adani’s Carmichael Mine was challenged on environmental grounds in what Brandis attacks as “green lawfare”. Labor opposes any such change.

Its gang-bashing of Bill Shorten, rudely interrupted, a rattled government scurries out of the House by the nearest exit, leaving only its supercilious sneer behind, a dysfunctional, discombobulated Cheshire cat, its lily-livered leader cowed in yet another humiliating retreat. Later, safely behind an ABC microphone, Turnbull urges reprisals. The protests, he thunders, are an appalling “denial of democracy” … an affront to the Australian people. Unlike Coalition asylum seeker policy or an ABCC which makes it harder for construction unions to protect workers who risk their lives to earn a living.

Construction sector fatalities rose between 2005- 2012 during the last ABCC. On historical data, Turnbull’s reintroduction of the ABCC will cost another ten deaths a year, calculates Bernard Keane. As it stands, big companies can “get away with murder”nsays CFMEU Queensland District President Stephen Smyth. Mining giant Anglo American pleads guilty this week to disregarding safety obligations, causing the death of worker Paul McGuire at its Grasstree mine, North-West of Rockhampton. The company settles with a paltry fine of $137,000.

While concessions to cross-benchers by a government desperate for any kind of victory mean that the heavily amended ABBC bill amounts to a re-badged Fair Work Building and Construction according to Andrew Stewart, University of Adelaide employment law expert, it still empowers Michaelia Cash to impose on Commonwealth contractors, a new building industry code of practice. This will spread to other major construction firms. The code will strike down Enterprise Bargaining and prevent “virtually everything” unions would seek to negotiate.

Labor sticks to its post in Parliament at least when the government clears out fearing the protesters. It’s a brief respite in the LNP’s war on Bill Shorten. A succession of MPs are howling down the Opposition Leader, rubbishing his union history and accusing him of post truth politics and lying before trumpeting its own fiction that passing its bastardised ABCC bill and resolving its backpacker tax fiasco are somehow victories; vital to running the country and not just desperate political expediency, critical only to saving Turnbull’s bacon. Parliament is given over to hysterical denunciation and personal attacks. Like a bad rash, the madness of “Good Captain” Abbott’s regime flares up again.

Even Laurie Oakes is disgusted. The government’s conduct is “grubby, unedifying, unpleasant. A week of brinkmanship, horse trading, and undisguised cynicism”. The Coalition’s unrelenting kill Bill invective is primitive, shrill and eerily reminiscent of March 2011 when Tony Abbott stood next to a sign urging “ditch the witch”, near another sign reading “JuLiar Bob Brown’s bitch”.

An ugly undertone of misogyny enters as Liberals itch to ditch Kimberly Kitching, Labor’s recent appointment to a casual senate vacancy by repeating unsubstantiated allegation made in Tony Abbott’s $46 million Heydon Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption 2014. The smear was made during the long witch hunt into unions which led to only one criminal conviction but provided many a handy stick to beat Labor with all this week.

“The Leader of the Opposition deliberately parachuted into the Senate Kimberley Kitching to become Senator Kitching, who is alleged to have fraudulently filled out the safety tests for six union leaders in the Health Services Union,” Pyne crows, labelling the new senator a “Captain’s Pick”. Pyne, the mouth that roars, hyperventilates with confected outrage.

Parachuted into a portfolio he might not stuff up, Pyne is currently fighting a turf war with Marise Payne who refuses to tell Senator Labor’s Kim Carr who is the senior Defence Minister in a partnership which has yet to be clarified, Labor Senator Don Farrell points out, more than three months after Turnbull’s government was sworn in, despite ABC reports of duplication and confusion from Defence and industry.

In July, Turnbull promised something better. “I believe they want our Parliament to offload the ideology, to end the juvenile theatrics and gotcha moments, to drop the personality politics”. Instead, he has presided over more of the same, subtly undermined by his patent insincerity, his own, inner lack of conviction, achieving a hollow, stagey theatricality; a bad, toothless, flea-bitten, parody of Abbott’s junkyard dog.

The government line is that Labor is not the Labor Party of old; the party of Hawke and Keating but one ruled by militant unions and bosses who exploit their members. It’s a high-risk strategy which invokes invidious comparison between Fizza Turnbull and two real Prime Ministers. Further, “hard-working Australians” may not be wooed by Liberal nostalgia for a time when neoliberal Labor PMs traded off workers’ wages and conditions for companies to increase their profits; increasing inequality, vastly shrinking union membership and eroding Labor’s traditional support-base.

The semi-slavery of an itinerant and readily exploited expanding migrant rural workforce is the sordid reality behind the backpacker tax which is tricked up in parliament as a favour to rich white tourists. Instead, it is the result of an unregulated underpaid and increasingly illegal cut-throat labour market exploited by farmers and fruit growers to meet the ever lower prices offered them by our dog eat dog supermarket duopoly plus upstart Aldi. The real crisis lies not in the government’s utter incompetence in levying an effective backpacker tax rate, but in our economy’s growing dependence on ever cheaper part-time or contract and piece rate labour, a legacy of the neo-liberal Hawke and Keating regimes.

Labor’s Accord with the ACTU removed union opposition to Labor’s neo-liberal “reform” agenda, helping governments to strip away hard-won rights and drive down living standards. Risky or not, however, the Shorten-is-no-Keating nor-is-he- Hawke tactic diverts attention from Attorney-General George Brandis, whose crisis-ridden tenure must surely end soon. Brandis awaits a Senate inquiry into how he directed Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson to argue in the Bell Group High Court case or his role in an alleged deal to dud the ATO of $300 million in 2015. Brandis’ retirement is imminent judging by Turnbull’s perfunctory support. “Of course I do,” he says when Labor asks if he still supports his AG.

Labor knows union-bashing failed the PM miserably last election. And as for harping on about how unfit your opponent is to be the nation’s leader, look how well that worked recently for Hillary’s campaign against Donald Trump. Labor’s most powerful indictment comes from the protesters’ banner outside. It reads “Labor: No opposition to cruelty”.

Yet there are some extraordinary if not recklessly indulgent union-bashing performances. Turnbull repeatedly trumps up his rhetoric insisting absurdly that the Labor Party “is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CFMEU”. Barnaby barnyard Joyce goes barking mad and attempts to throw the dictionary at the Opposition leader’s character. Shorten is “swarmy and lubricious.” He reads a scabrous, unsubstantiated TURC allegation until stopped mid-blow job reference by the speaker. Joyce has no problem, however, parroting his PM’s outrageous lie that the ABCC will reduce housing costs, a lie which has drawn censure from The Australia Institute’s senior economist, Dr Jim Stanford.

Stamford, has recently published a report rebutting what he says is the Prime Minister’s “appalling” ideological claim that a tougher construction union watchdog would make houses more affordable. There is no link between construction costs and rising house prices. The property bubble is not the fault of unions.

Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull repeatedly mock Wayne Swan for being the author of Joe Hockey’s backpacker tax. It’s a transparent lie which reveals more about the speaker than the object of ridicule. Turnbull could be talking about himself and his ABCC or his capitulation to his right wing or his Faustian deal with the Nationals to become Prime Minister.

“The hypocrisy of this Leader of the Opposition knows no bounds. He has no regard for consistency. He has no regard for accuracy. He is concerned only with seizing one political opportunity after another—no principles, no integrity, no consistency, no accuracy and no regard for the truth. Except there is one truth we all know about this Leader of the Opposition: he will stop at nothing to pursue his own political self-interest”.

The parliamentary year ends with Turnbull having managed to tidy his sock drawer, says Lenore Taylor. The Backpacker tax which was Hockey’s solution to the debt and deficit disaster so urgent a year or so ago will raise less than a spit in the bucket over four years. Expect instead an expansion in the cash in hand work force. Expect more overworked, underpaid, scammed Pacific Islanders and Malaysian pickers in orchards, vineyards and packing sheds. Getting big companies to pay their tax or getting a fair return from our gas exports which should be worth $400 billion over the next ten years, according to the Tax Justice Network are far more productive tasks which the government has squibbed.

Despite the government “getting on with the job” or “ending the year with a win” spin on a pliant media; despite all the lies that houses will become cheaper in a “win for the economy”, its last week is a tour de force of chaos and crisis beneath the smokescreen of its war on Bill Shorten, its attack on unions and hence the wages and conditions of the average worker. $50 billion’s worth of tax cuts to companies, promised this year as a first priority, can only further increase inequality and divide a society which is increasingly polarised between those few at the top and the rest.

Best SNAFU comes on Thursday. The government could pass a backpackers tax rate of 13% in the senate Thursday. It has the numbers. Instead, it waits to be rescued by The Greens, an inexplicable move which costs it $100 million which will go to Landcare. Pressed (lightly) for an explanation, the PM says he loves Landcare and wouldn’t hear a word against it.

The ABCC, which has never been another cop on the beat, or a tough watch dog, is gutted of its ugly STASI-like powers and is all trussed up like a Christmas turkey with local preference rules, economic benefit strings and such trimmings as Doug Cameron’s hire Australian unless there is “no Australian suitable” for the job clause which has nothing to do with the spirit of the act but which will bugger the 457 Visa and impose more red tape and expense on a body in a bill which was supposed to streamline construction and lower building costs.

In the end the self-styled Fixer, a self-satisfied Christopher Pyne preens. “We’ll do a deal with anybody to get things done,” he says on Friday, making a virtue out of the sheer, unbridled, horse-trading of the government of the turning bull in its last week of the year where doing something, anything, is preferable to searching for the right thing, the democratic thing, the just thing. Not a word about principle, ideal or dedication to the common good.

“All tip and no iceberg”, to quote Paul Keating, Turnbull’s government, for the elite by the elite, ends the year spruiking success but all it has to show is a big, new, security fence.

This article was originally published on Urban Wronski.

By David Tyler

It was Getup; it was Labor’s lies about Medicare. It was the super changes. It was the electorate getting it wrong. It was a week of finding someone else to blame.

Liberal Party power broker, Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz is almost quick enough off the blocks to lead of the Coalition’s nation-wide chorus of denial, its political feature of the week, with his bizarre defence of his party over its election rout.

For Andrew Nikolic, the 10.6 % swing which lost him the marginal Bass to Labor’s Ross Hart resulted from a “dishonest, nasty, personal campaign.” That nicely clears up any confusion about the role of his refusal to talk with any but pro-Liberal voters.

Nikolic, former chair of the nation’s joint parliamentary committee on intelligence, accuses unions and Labor of deception “built around the core lie of Medicare privatisation.” He attacks GetUp! for peddling lies and frightening pensioners.

Yet GetUp! National director, Paul Oosting, says volunteers had communicated “clear facts about cuts to health education and renewable energy supported by Nikolic, whilst a funding crisis at Launceston General Hospital was of great concern to locals – as was the GP Medicare freeze which will price some families out of seeing a doctor.

The government’s nothing-to-see-here case was not helped, moreover, when Sussan Ley was put in witness protection for volunteering in May that she would lift the Medicare freeze but that she was blocked by departmental red tape.

Rumours abound that Ley will be relieved of her post with some suggesting that world’s best minister Greg Hunt, who has also been in witness protection during the campaign, will be an ideal Health minister given his outstanding success in environmental protection and his clean bill of health for the Great Barrier Reef.

One in twenty Australians already can’t afford to see a doctor. Yet the government’s extension of the Medicare freeze until 2020, means patients could face a $25 fee per consultation according to the AMA. No mention of a red tape problem.

Dotty Scott Morrison is also quick to claim that the government was robbed. “Beam me up Scotty” loves antics and theatrics and corny mock shock horror shows but he has failed at the main game. He has not got a handle on the Treasury portfolio.

There’s the trust issue for starters. His PM would not even trust him with the date of his own budget. Surely he will be relieved of the post after his shocking campaign in which he sacrificed any shred of credibility remaining to him with his war on business, his childish charts and his own black hole in Labor’s hole and other loopy stunts.

The reason, voters were dumb enough to be bluffed by Labor’s lies, he blusters Wednesday, was that the Coalition had run such a positive campaign.

Has he forgotten his own scaremongering; the Labor’s war on business scare, the certainty that Bill Shorten would run Australia like a union scare; the collapse of housing and even the stock market negative gearing scare, the soft on border security leading to chaos on our borders scare or Peter Dutton’s refugees taking Aussie jobs while simultaneously sponging up all our Centrelink scare?

Even his PM the day before is wearing what Barrie Cassidy calls his “shit-eating grin” and conceding that there was “fertile ground” for voters Medicare fears to grow. What he could say is that voters are intelligent enough to recognise the Coalition’s moves amount to establishing a two-tier privatised health system.

Part of the “fertile ground” for this campaign is that Australians have heard this promise before. Many recall John Howard’s undermining of Medicare by failing to allow funding to keep up with costs and population growth.

Many others would also remember Tony Abbott’s disastrous 2014 Budget promise of “no cuts to health” and how the Liberals tried to introduce a $7 GP tax and hike the price of prescriptions while ripping billions out of public hospitals.

And surely all would recall how Turnbull took the opportunity of his very first economic statement, the 2015 MYEFO, to cut even further than Abbott, slashing $650m from Medicare rebates for pathology and diagnostic imaging, cuts which Pathology Australia, the Diagnostic Imaging Association and others said would increase the price of vital tests and scans beyond affordable for some Australians.

Yet it is still a stretch to claim that Labor tricked electors into voting for it. Scruitneers and electoral officials reveal Medicare may have cost the Coalition votes, it seems from this stage of the vote count, but did not boost Labor’s vote, as it might if people had been conned into believing they needed to vote to “save Medicare”.

In the meantime, as vote counting continues its glacial pace in marginal lower house seats as well as the Senate, Tasmanians’ votes below the line on the ballot ticket for Labor’s popular Lisa Singh appear to be pushing her towards a senate seat.

Not only is Lisa popular, she, like Liberal Richard Colbeck, campaigned for a vote below the line, a trend which is likely to result in Eric Abetz, who easily accessed number one spot, receiving fewer votes than Colbeck, thereby signalling the end of party control over senate voting and some attenuation of Ubergruppenfuhrer Abetz’s authority over the Tasmanian Liberals.

The gobsmacked senator-elect is onto something, however with his suggestion that someone form a right wing GetUp, a theme also embraced by conservative party luminary Senator Cory Bernardi, who is once again said to be starting a group of right-thinking red-blooded Australians who aren’t already voting One Nation.

Cory’s new conservatives will nudge politics a little further to the right in response to the Liberals’ thrashing in the polls and the miraculous resurgence of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, former guest of Her Majesty and latterly celebrity demagogue on the Today Show, clear signs to Eric Abetz and others that what voters are craving is another dollop of right wing nut-jobbery. A right wing GetUp would help, he reckons.

Yet there are a few hurdles ahead of Bernardi and Abetz starting with the support the conservative cause already enjoys from the odd powerful press baron, almost all mainstream media including the ABC and all our captains of industry and commerce, their supporters, the well-funded lobbyists, think tanks, foundations and institutes.

Also on the lucky Liberal list now are Chinese language voters who get all their news from WeChat, which hosted a non-scare campaign information service which explained for the non English reader Labor’s plans for boys to use girls’ toilets.

Voters in the Victorian seat of Chisholm in Melbourne’s East were also told by WeChat how Labor was going to open the gate to refugees who would take jobs. Labor was going to increase the refugee quota at the expense of Chinese migrants.

Chisholm records a first-preference swing of 4.2% to the Liberal candidate, Julie Banks, and 5.6% away from Labor which is so low as to use scare tactics.

The volunteer-run WeChat social media campaign was organised by Gladys Liu, the Liberal party communities engagement committee chairwoman for Victoria.

Apart from being superfluous, Eric and Cory’s concept of popular activists telephoning voters, for example, and canvassing votes on the basis that big business really needed a tax break or that pensioners needed further hurdles to jump to get their paltry allowances may need a little re-thinking.

Voters are more likely to paint their bodies blue and lie about naked in the street to be photographed, an event entirely of our time in the recent “Sea of Hull installation”, another of Spencer Tunick’s, true-blue artworks.

Yet Abetz is no lone wolf. His whingeing echoes his hapless Prime Minister’s petulant victory speech at the Wentworth hotel, such an ugly dummy spit that it even causes seasoned sourpuss Laurie Oakes’ some grief.

“It is the first time that I have seen a bloke that has won the election give a speech that saying we was robbed,” Oakes says on a Channel Nine chat show that also doubles as an election night special.

The “we was robbed” theme is continued at the end of the week by the dynamic Arthur Sinodinos who appears on ABC Insiders to demonstrate in person that his party has learned nothing, claiming the results as a mandate for tax reform.

Oddly, none of the journos present asks Arthur whether his memory has recovered enough for him to be able to assist ICAC in what he did in the 25 and 45 hours a year he spent working as a director for AWH 2008-11 to justify his $200,000 salary.

We were robbed. Not that the candidates were out of touch or that their policies were duds. All voters were offered the usual hollow slogan of jobs and growth with the promise of a tax cut for the top four per cent – surely an irresistible package. Plus extra stability.

Denial is capably assisted by scapegoating and blaming. Already recriminations are flowing thick and fast while Tony Abbott is getting fan mail on ABC from the likes of Andrew Probyn. Is a bit of factional sand-bagging already taking place?

The consensus on Sunday’s Insiders is that Abbott played a blinder of a campaign even helping out others such as poor George Christensen, one of the Liberals’ Lost Boys and deserves a Brownlow for best non-sniper on the field and that he cannot possibly be linked to the salvos of criticism which underminded his nemesis Turnbull from Sky media celebrity Peta Credlin. Nor will he in any way benefit.

Abbott does have a little jab at Malcolm on 2GB in yet another on-air rub down with Cronulla riot demi-urge Alan Jones. The big issues like budget repair, national security and border security, were underplayed in his opinion, aired for everyone’s benefit, along with a lot of Rugby playing analogies that leave no doubt that after a spell on the bench, Abbott is waiting to be picked again for the firsts.

Stop the press. Tosser Turnbull has claimed victory, Bill Shorten has conceded defeat.

It’s an odd speech about good government a phrase which recalls “good captain” Abbott who promised the same, not long before, he, too, got thrown out.

Tosser waffles about “building on the strength of our economy,” with a bit about how we get him wrong and how he is not an unduly sentimental fellow and how he was holding his grand-daughter when Bill Shorten rang him and sod the present it’s all about the future and our grandchildren. We are trustees for our future generations.

Has he been on the single malt again?

Perhaps Turnbull’s had a Damascene conversion. Perhaps he’s about to ring Birmingham and Sussan Ley. Tell them he’ll put back the $70 billion that his government ripped out of health and education.

Could someone get Greg Hunt on the phone? It is too late to ring Howard about getting the profits of the minerals boom back? A word with Keating about QANTAS and the Commonwealth bank, the infrastructure he sold off for a song?

There’s a bit about democracy too, just to keep the Mineral Council of Australia happy, not to mention the long list of lobbyists and powerful backers to appease.

Many of us remember what the Minerals Council of Australia did to subvert public discussion on the Mining Super Profits Tax. Or what Clubs Australia did to stymie gambling reform, or what Big Coal did to Emissions Trading Scheme; the Carbon Tax.

Now it’s all over bar the shouting. The blood-letting. The blaming. Will Turnbull be able to manage a slim majority and a cross bench of nine? He had the odd spot of bother with the last mob. And they had no Pauline Hanson. No Derryn Hinch.

How will he go with a leaner Liberal Party but a fatter right wing, a “broad church” with a rabble of conservatives pointing the finger at the Sinodinos faction of wets, circling cabinet positions and back-benchers bitching, ranting about their betrayal, now every one of them a king maker?

Whatever the outcome there’ll be someone else to blame.

A party room meeting is scheduled for Monday.

David Tyler blogs at http://urbanwronski.com. He is a regular writer for The Tasmanian Times and has had work published on Independent Australia.

Double D is all the buzz in Canberra this week as a Malcolm Turnbull shrewdly deflect a bit of media attention away from Niki Savva, The Trump Show or Rupert and Gerry’s nuptials. The PM looks exhausted, uneasy. Is he well? Has he been reading something which disagrees with him? “Government poll plunge, says a headline: voters drift away in disappointment”. Surely not?

The Pell Show, whose brilliant superstar never knew what was going on either, or could not recall; a natural leader who asked no questions and who took neither initiative nor responsibility to protect anyone but himself was always going to be a hard act to follow.

Big Mal doubles down. He coyly hints at early July, using the words “working towards”. It is a week of such nebulous certainties from a government of definite maybes. Turnbull’s drawn, weary face increasingly betrays his hesitance, his indecision and timidity. As PM he is our most brilliant ditherer. When reporters bravely question the uncertainty, the unwillingness to rule out idle speculation, the indecision he just says bafflingly:

“It’s a great story.”

No indecision, whatsoever, is shown by Victorian Liberal President Michael Kroger, however, who leaps straight into bed with the Greens. Liberals could enter a “loose arrangement” with the Greens ahead of the forthcoming federal election, he says adding the Greens are “not the nutters they used to be”. Say what you like about his bedside manner, at least he’s not shilly-shallying when picking his date.

31 different election dates have now been offered by a government which came to power promising clarity, economic leadership and adult government. Russell Broadbent calls a 2 July election date “the longest suicide note since the Roman Empire”. He’s lost his marginal Victorian seat twice and sees “only negatives from a campaign that long”. But the hares are already away.

An adult Peter Dutton jumps the gun to tell ABC radio listeners Labor will raise rents, lower prices, “bring the economy to a shuddering halt. The stock market will crash”.  Dutton is immediately accused of channelling Tony Abbott leader of the Monkey Pod faction who continues to swear he is doing everything he can to see that a Turnbull government is re-elected despite all evidence to the contrary.

Could it be, as Niki Savva warns, Abbott is back to what he does best: wrecking governments? Or is he, as Peter Reith contends, hell-bent on bringing down Turnbull at any cost?  Both of these notions have a grain of truth in them but the blame game is always a trap if only because of its false assumptions. Let us not forget that Abbott’s bad policies ultimately brought him down.

Turnbull has inherited most of his predecessor’s bad policy baggage and he’s captive to the hard right. Even without Abbott’s destabilisation campaign, Turnbull is batting on a sticky wicket. Even if he had the world’s best cabinet or party room, he would still be lumbered by unpopular and unworkable policies on climate, marriage equality and defence binge-spending. Adding or perhaps multiplying these vulnerabilities are his lack of any economic plan, Budget plan or taxation policy. Now factor in his poor decision-making.

Turnbull’s self-sabotage tops any list of threats. If Abbott’s monkey pod yahoos are aiming to wreck the joint, the PM is already doing some useful self-demolition on his own. What’s the story? Where is his narrative or his strategy? Turnbull the great communicator remains mute; so conflicted on what he stands for that trivial speculation about the date of the election eclipses all else. He is shaping to take the record as Prime Minster who spent longest as a man in search of a plan – any plan.

Turnbull is putting undue pressure on Unicorn Morrison and his rookie team with a 3 July election. Chances of embarrassing errors increase as the tight budget deadline is brought forward even a week.

His slogan about the need to bust union corruption and power is a weak case for the ABCC and an unlikely election winner in the context of news of ANZ rate rigging or revelations that the Commonwealth Bank’s government-subsidised health insurance arm has scammed policy holders including forcing some doctors to alter their diagnoses to avoid payouts to the sick and vulnerable.

CFMEU secretary Dave Noonan even cites Dyson Heydon against bringing back the ABCC. “Even the Heydon Commission Final Report points to the conclusions of the 2014 Productivity Commission Report which says there is no credible evidence that the ABCC regime created a resurgence in construction productivity and that its removal has had a negative effect.”

Although he talks as if we can all bank on bucket loads of improved productivity because the economy is “transitioning”, Scott Morrison shows he still has no clue what he is doing or how the economy works, while Turnbull appears to be “doing him slowly” as Keating put it.

Will the PM beat the Abbott and Hockey Budget Show ratings by bribing our higher earners with tax refunds in an economically unwise move which none of us can afford? Will he tinker with super? Will he fudge the budget with income from legislation yet to pass the senate? Nobody is talking.

At least it gives reporters another chance to get their mouths around the words double dissolution, a delicious attention-getting confection which few could ever explain. Experts differ on whether it will confer the government control over a new senate. What is certain is that haste increases the risk of error.

Rushed decisions are statistically guaranteed to succeed better on average than no decisions, Turnbull must be thinking. Bugger tip-toeing around business and investor confidence. Optimism. Positivity. Taking risks, he drones on. No-one asks him why Tony’s Tradies” magic bullet in the last Abbott budget, set to “turbo-charge the economy,” or so we were assured, was a flop according to a recent report. Was it simply another quick-fix?

The small business package, a mere $5.5 billion over four years, was to be a centrepiece of the Abbott Government’s re-election plans. Boost the economy and create jobs, Hockey boosted in a slogan that his successor Unicorn Morrison now applies to everything including breathing and passing wind.

There is no boost. Economist Saul Eslake says that car and retail sales may have risen slightly over a couple of months but nothing was sustained. Less clear is why anyone ever expected it to. No reason was ever given. Perhaps it was part of the magical thinking or wilful self-delusion of the trickle-down theory. Tradies with new utes would immediately burn rubber down to the Centrelink to hire new workers.

In the real world, IMF economists argue that the same investment in pensions, in improving the bottom ten per cent of income-earners’ spending power would be a real boost; stimulate economic activity and dampen galloping inequality. Yet as our Iranian overture this week clearly shows, reality and the Turnbull government are often estranged.

One of the week’s most unreal achievements in political boosterism is news from Julie Bishop that Australia could be on the verge of an Iran asylum-seeker deal, a wondrous tribute to our Foreign Minister’s diplomacy and tact and a great help to a PM dithering over an election date.

All 9000 of our Iranian prisoners are to be forcibly repatriated. Iran is on the verge of becoming really safe for dissidents and minorities, it is thought, although DFAT retains its website warning:

“The Australian Government remains deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Iran, including the use of capital punishment, in particular for juvenile offenders; violations of political and media freedoms; and discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities.”

DFAT cites people smuggling, terrorism, regional issues and human rights as issues of importance to Australia’s relationship with Iran. Clearly nothing to see here.

Champagne corks are on the verge of popping when the Iranian Ambassador pulls the rug. Luckily Peter Dutton is able to confirm that we still have two former detainees in Cambodia. At $55 million he adds, the plan is working, a prudent investment of $27.5 million per person which the remaining 2000 people now in their third year of indefinite detention on Manus and Nauru look forward to at least the same amount being spent on them. Those resettled on Manus receive $50 per week allowance and must pay for their own medicine.

Is it a flip flop or just another Turnbull government flop? Just how did The West Australian come to print such a piece? It claimed talks on repatriation, a long-running point of contention between the two countries were well-advanced and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was hopeful of a deal next week. Was it a pressure tactic gone horribly wrong? Surely Peta Credlin is not still leaking against Bishop?

Some governments would believe they owed someone at least an explanation but Turnbull regime is just as preoccupied with keeping things secret as its predecessor. Nothing to see here.

Australians are quietly, firmly, pushed away from better security and intelligence oversight. Senator David Johnson tells Labor that John Faulkner’s private member’s bill to improve oversight of the joint committee on security and intelligence will be refused because the situation does not require fixing. It is the first Labor hears of the change of plan.

For new JCIS chair, Andrew Nikolic, since we are at war with ISIS, the public has no right to know anyway. Under its new chair the committee will become a rubber stamp. Turnbull’s government is rejecting improved oversight out of hand. Any supervision now relies on a government appointed overseer and a monitor it tried to do away with in 2014. it could have been worse. They could have called in the IPA. The agile IPA is called in to help the ABC decide its exciting new future.

Those who value what independence is left in the ABC will be alarmed that under its new head, Michelle Guthrie, a Turnbull appointee, the ABC invites the right wing IPA which holds that the broadcaster should be privatised. At least their views are on public record.

“Only privatising the ABC will resolve the public policy failure that sees more than $1bn of taxpayers’ money annually spent campaigning for left wing causes.”

Public policy is not about to fail if Alan Tudge can do anything about it. The newly sworn in Social Services Minister who replaces an unfortunate but enterprising and pro-Chinese Stuart Robert is keen to ensure saving money on welfare while splurging on contractors who scan social media as Centrelink changes its role from support to surveillance agency.

When Australians get to see a budget it will be interesting, once again to note how many billions the government is keen to recover from welfare fraud. Last budget listed over a billion dollars. Less conspicuous will be the cost incurred hiring contractors to catch the unwary fraudsters who may unwittingly divulge income or a change in marital status they have not reported to Centrelink.

I have been trying to write about other things for weeks now, but with such an avalanche of scandal and poor governance coming from the Coalition it has been almost impossible. Even as I write, the headlines in Fairfax Media are suggesting that Barnaby’s baby might not be his. No, really. Let’s stop here.

Now I haven’t written a Trump Report for months. In fact, August last year was the last time. I stopped because I felt we Aussies had had enough of this excuse for a President. After all, Americans are the only race that believe their own bullshit.

But it surely cannot have escaped everyone’s attention that the President has gone mad. Well, the American press is suggesting it to be so.

Who would have thought that the likes of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and Rob Porter and Hope Hicks would have their access to the President limited. A group of well-connected young folk who had been granted privileges that were beyond the reach of others.

Kushner’s security clearance has been taken from him and he is under scrutiny for playing on both sides of the court (mixing government with business), and the Russian probe looks like closing in on him. He was once the President’s favourite, but many say we are witnessing the end of the “House of Kushner,” and we learn that:

Kushner is now stripped of his access to the nation’s deepest secrets, isolated and badly weakened inside the administration … [But] Trump said only a week ago; “Jared’s done an outstanding job. I think he’s been treated very unfairly. He’s a high-quality person.”

He only forms part of the chaos inside the White House.

The President also lost his fourth Communications Director, Hope Hicks who was so close as to be called a surrogate daughter. His responses on gun control following the deaths of 17 – mostly high school students – was frightening to say the least. An acknowledged draft dodger, after declaring himself a genius he backed it up by saying he would have been a hero by confronting the shooter unarmed. Here is a man who needs a buggy to get around a golf course.

Now it looks as though he intends start a world trade war (they are easy to win) that has the world wobbling on its axis. So bizarre and ubiquitous has been the President’s behaviour that his sanity is now being seriously questioned. Why has it taken so much time, you might ask?

David Smith in The Guardian writes that:

“… whilst there has been disarray in the White House before this time, observers say, the checks and balances that have provided a modicum of restraint in the past appear to be crumbling, leaving Trump isolated, angry and ready to lash out. It is, they fear, not inconceivable that the world’s most powerful country is now being guided by instinct, by impulse, by whim and by mood swing.”

“Rick Tyler, a political analyst, said: “It’s appalling that anyone would leverage their time in government to enrich themselves or do personal business and Jared Kushner appears to have been doing that consistently. He ought to leave immediately. They are nothing but grifters.”

Remember when Trump was victorious and we were told to focus on what he does rather than what he tweets or says?

Well, with victories including economic growth,(started by Obama), tax cuts (controversially making the rich richer), and the appointment of conservative judges (enshrining conservatism), the President looks as though he will continue to govern according to what’s best for the US and stuff the rest of us. “America First.”

Trump seems to be increasingly relying more on emotion than factual evidence, The steel tariffs are a case in point. Trump,?like many of his vintage, maintain that foreign countries cheat American workers out of their jobs.

People in Australia of the same ilk as Trump also bring up the same theory when it comes to manufacturing. Trump thinks that simply by applying tariffs he will correct the problem when the job’s lost, because of automation, will never be regained and if manufacturing were to begin again then the factories would be technologically advanced, requiring few workers with skills that the existing workers no longer have.

He would of course been told all this but his “America first“ state of mind has even scared the **** out of his own conservatives. Let alone Australia, Canada and his other allies. All this exercise from a mind buried in the past will do is gain a few extra votes in an otherwise futile exercise.

Only a deluded mind would do this for so little gain. Remember what he said:

“We are living through the single greatest jobs theft in the history of the world.”

Nobody stole their jobs. They lost them.

To quote Peter Baker of the New York Times:

“The week of wild policymaking has left lawmakers on Capitol Hill, investors on Wall Street and leaders around the world trying to make sense of it all. Republicans in Congress are wondering if Mr. Trump really intends to defy one of the party’s most valued and powerful constituencies to push for gun restrictions that they say will never go anywhere in Congress. Corporate executives and foreign governments were guessing whether Mr. Trump will really follow through on his unscripted vow to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and, if so, what that might mean.”

My thought for the day

We live in a time where horrible things are being perpetrated on us. The shame is that we have normalised them and adjusted accordingly.