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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first thing I asked myself before commencing this piece was, does conservatism have a future? By conservatism, in this instance, I refer to the philosophy practised by the LNP over the last decade or so.

l have deliberately jumped over the Liberal Party, assuming in my thinking that Scott Morrison and others are responsible for its destruction. Or perhaps its murder might be blunter. If one were writing a political thriller, the three suspects would be Howard, Abbott and Morrison.

Liberalism no longer exists. The party of the people for the people, as envisaged by its founder Robert Menzies is long gone, ruined and wrecked by vandals of its political philosophy.

Those followers with twisted minds and duplicitous thoughts have to decide what it is they want to be. They can choose to continue as the Conservative party they have become with the leader they have acting as if an evil thought never entered his head or under the same leader, leading a far-right party and being who he really is. A woeful man without an empathetic thought. That is his history, his record.

Albanese won the election because he concentrated on two issues. The first was to focus enormously on a failed leader who had become deeply unpopular and consistently lied. The second was his failure to come up with profound solutions to Australia’s significant challenges.

The chronology shows that its leaders are attracted to the same disposition. Look at Tony Abbott; he was so diabolically bad at being prime minister and was of the same personality traits.

When Tourism Minister Fran Bailey sacked Scott Morrison as CEO of Tourism Australia in 2006, she said of him that he was “missing that part of the brain that controls empathy.” (From the Niki Savva book, Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise, and reviewed on The Conversation).

I’m currently reading her book, and whilst it lambasts Morrison and the conservatives, it isn’t without humour:

Barnaby Joyce being “to Liberal voters what Roundup was to weeds.”

“Often, he would screw his friends” (speaking about the former Prime Minister).

Voters “grew sick and tired of his weaving, wedging, dodging, fibbing, and fudging,” Savva judges. He was “Boris Johnson without the hair or the humour.”

He was “messianic, megalomaniacal, and plain mad.”

“He was woeful,” says Savva, “the worst prime minister I have covered … He simply wasn’t up to the job.”

The Coalition, it would seem, attracts, for whatever reason, the racist, the conspiracy theorist, strange people, science deniers, the misogynist, the anti-gay and a media led by a much louder man than the voice of reason. Then, of course, some are of dubious intellect.

Christensen, Paterson, Abetz, Joyce, Dutton, Cash, Hastie, Littleproud, Stuart, Sukkar, Taylor, Ley, Porter, Abbott and Canavan. And others are of that ilk.

In their Newspoll quarterly aggregates: July to December, The Poll Bludger reports that:

As it usually does on Boxing Day, The Australian has published quarterly aggregates of Newspoll with state and demographic breakdowns, on this occasion casting an unusually wide net from its polling all the way back to July to early this month, reflecting the relative infrequency of its results over this time. The result is a combined survey of 5771 respondents that finds Labor leading 55-45 in New South Wales (a swing of about 3.5% to Labor compared with the election), 57-43 in Victoria (about 2%), 55-45 in Western Australia (no change) and 57-43 in South Australia (a 4.0% swing), while trailing 51-49 in Queensland a 3% swing).

Further analysis by The Poll Bludger would suggest that if an election were held now, Labor would win another six seats.

So, it all looks rather bleak for the conservative side of politics, and it all comes back to reading community attitudes. It had been self-evident for some time that the people had become disenchanted with how the body politic was being torn asunder in Australia. Scandals had become commonplace, and corruption was rife.

On May 21, the Australian people let their opinions be known. The new leader of the Conservative Party, Peter Dutton, is busy in this new world trying to convince a rapidly declining audience that he is different from the person we have known for the past decade.

I have not yet known a politician who has successfully changed his image from somewhere near subhuman to a nice guy. Abbott tried and found a bridge too far. The senior conservative party thinks this leopard can change its spots into love hearts.

Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)

Now the National Party is falsely claiming it had a good election (it kept its seats but had swings against it in each). Its leader David Littleproud is prancing around as though he is the de facto leader of the Coalition and would be happy with a divorce. His decision not to support the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is appalling and has cost him one member in Andrew Gee.

Both parties are performing poorly in the parliament, asking questions that reflect badly on themselves. And Paul Fletcher is deplorable as Shadow House Leader.

Writing for The Spectator, Michael Sexton reports says that:

“Demography is moving against the Liberals in a number of electoral groups. This is particularly true among young people who are often attracted to the Greens. They have no fear of the Greens’ irrational economic policies because they have never experienced anything in their lives other than continuing periods of stable economic growth and assume that this cannot ever be disrupted. Moreover, they have grown up in a society where many members of the community make no connection between a government’s revenue and its expenditure so that it is simply assumed that any problem that arises in the community can be addressed by increased government spending without any corresponding increase in taxation.”

Other factors that point to a problematic future are that, based on the previous history, the independents are likely to keep their seats. And a demographic missed by most scribes is the dying off of Conservative baby boomer supporters and the emergence of young Labor and Greens voters.

The Liberal Party as we know it was well and genuinely outspent by Labor, the Teal independents in those seats captured by the Teals. Large companies so concerned about projecting a clean image have stopped donating to a party with an embodiment of buffoonery.

Unions, as is their right, donate heartily to Labor whilst business is reluctant to do so with the LNP, fearing a backlash. It is unlikely to change, so the Liberal Party will continue under-financed into the future.

Again quoting Michael Sexton:

“To all this can be added the fact that the Liberals have comprehensively lost the culture wars. They are the subject of mockery in schools and universities, by the ABC and at artistic and literary festivals. And, as already noted, even in many corporate boardrooms their policies in such areas as climate change, border protection, freedom of speech and religious rights are the subject of deep hostility. These views are not necessarily reflected in the general community but the relentless denigration by these opinion-making groups in Australian society has inevitably taken some toll in the electorate. In the 1950s and the 1960s the Liberals were the respectable party of the establishment and Labor the slightly disreputable alternative.”

At the risk of repeating myself, under its current leadership and personnel, the Liberal Party is finished and has been dead, buried and cremated for some time.

Under a leader as unpopular as the previous one, the party needs somewhere to go. It can remain right of centre, which Labor now occupies or move more to the right, which would be more their actual position.

There is no future in whatever they do.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr’s snap lockdown forces PM fan-boy, Josh Frydenberg to doss-down at The Lodge, in ScoMo ‘n Frydo’s Canberra Sleepover, a lightweight sitcom pilot about mateship, relatability and who does the washing-up.

In Episode One – An Odd Coupling – scripted by professionally coached, empath and noted folk-orator, Scott “Demosthenes” Morrison, the PM puts up his Treasurer in the now, largely vacant, forty-room, 1927, Georgian revival mansion, the PM’s, Deakin bolt-hole, which, like Old Parliament House, was, wisely, never intended to be a permanent residence. Buoyed by a landmark oration, he preps Josh to flog his vision.

Only Frydenberg could lead by arguing in The Australian that we must open up because we’re all going stir-crazy and our economy is up shit-creek.

Embrace fear, the dark or the dawn – it’s still not clear which – Morrison tells a mystified House of Reps. His pitch includes the idea that The Croods, a 2013 DreamWorks animated movie about cave dwellers, is an allegory for our times. Some MPs are reminded, instead, of the PM’s modest intellectual horizons, which a wag reckons you could easily stroll up to and back before breakfast. Horizons, were all the rage, in June, when the PM flourished a document, coyly entitled Covid Vaccination Horizons.

Leigh Sales made fun of his evasiveness. “One of the grandest euphemisms I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist.”

And his ear of tin – this is a PM who, lamely, defends his decision to take a family holiday in Hawaii, at the height of the bushfires, a year ago, as equivalent to “a plumber taking that extra contract on a Friday afternoon.”

“Well, gee, I bet it felt good to get that out,” he tells Grace Tame after her moving and powerful speech, detailing her experience of abuse and her determination not to remain silent, at the Australian of the Year Awards.

“Are you better off now than you were 4 million years ago?’ is similarly crass tagline from The Croods, which our PM sees as a parable to help him pitch his proposal that we sacrifice our health, well-being and security in “learning to live with” the Coronavirus pandemic; a “National Plan” of his own devising, which he sprung on the states in July. It’s worked so well, after all, in the UK and in Trump’s USA.

Morrison’s “plan” is a punt; a political gamble with all risk of infection, chronic illness, death and the collapse of the NSW hospital system falling on everyone but himself. Doherty is the fall guy. He’ll do or say anything to secure his own dull, political survival.

A “safe plan,” urges a man who is so desperate to be “the man with a plan” that he invents thousands of lives, (which miraculously become “millions upon millions” in Question Time, Monday), – of lives which we’ve saved already. The concept of extrapolating a figure from other OECD countries is flimsy, if not patently absurd. But the PM spruiks his plan with a reckless desperation. He morphs into your crazy punter mate, the coat tugger, who’s done his all dough but won’t leave you alone; insisting that you put all the money you’ve got left on Dead Certainty in the 4:35 at Doomben.

But Morrison is more malignant than a mug punter. He does not have agreement from the premiers. It’s neither national nor a plan at all. Worse. It’s a white flag of surrender to the virus, an abdication of duty of care and a shameful capitulation to the corporate sociopaths and fat-cat-Liberal Party, mega-donors who call the shots, helped by a servile media; a tamed fourth estate. And Sky all over your web browser.

“We can’t live in lockdown for ever,” Frydenberg smirks, setting up yet another straw man. As if anyone proposes that lockdown is anything but a prudent interim measure.

Tuesday the PM talks up Team Australia, an Abbott era hangover, which ignores the fact that we are neither all of one accord, nor should we ever aspire to be. Nor are we all in this together. The pandemic hurts most those who have fewest resources, the elderly, the poor, recent migrants and first nations’ communities such as Wilcannia.

COVID-19 is rampaging through First Nations communities In western NSW, where, 11.6% if Indigenous Australians are fully vaccinated in contrast to 28.9% of non-Indigenous Australians report Anne Kavanagh, Helen Dickinson and Nancy Baxter in The Conversation. But it’s not as if the federal government did not time to act.

“Our indigenous people”, he shouts, The Great White Bwana of Question Time, patronising and glossing over his government’s abuse and neglect, seen most recently in report of a letter, written eighteen months ago, warning Ken Wyatt, the Morrison government’s Minister for Indigenous Australians of the grave risks faced by Wilcannia.

The Maari Ma Aboriginal health corporation writes to the Minister pleading with him to take action to prevent an outbreak. “Basic mathematics says that by the time our first hospital patient presents, around 100 cases will already exist in the community, and this is based on best case modelling.”

Yet the Morrison government’s response has been “chaotic, substandard and services are vulnerable to collapse” reports The Guardian Australia’s Lorena Allam. By Monday, Wilcannia records sixty-nine coronavirus cases in a population of 720, the highest transmission rate in NSW.

Despite its team rhetoric, inequality has increased during the pandemic, under a Coalition addicted to the myth of trickle-down economics and the lie that tax breaks for the rich lead to a prosperous community. More jobs. Instead, the nation gets a revealing demonstration of how a ruling class looks after its own, as ScoMo puts up Frydo.

Canberra Sleepover is a limited episode, series, artisan-crafted by PM Puffery™ to be a PR repair-patch for FIGJAM Frydenberg, who is overdue for an image upgrade since Julia Banks outed him as one of Scotty’s “bully-boys.”

Monday, Frydenberg’s all over the airwaves droning low, slow and ponderous; talking over those who know the plan is toxic bullshit. Beyond the public coercion of state premiers and chief ministers is a wilful misreading of the flawed Doherty report which is based on small numbers of community infection and a better standard of testing, tracing intervention and quarantine than NSW, the pariah state, will ever muster now after its fatal delay and its failure to take the pandemic seriously, even today.

Showing just how in touch he is with the average Australian, Frydenberg warns ABC Radio National listeners that residents in NSW and Victoria may be able to travel to Canada before Cairns, or Bali, before Perth. Planning an overseas trip may not be the first priority for the twenty-eight percent of NSW’s workforce, now underemployed.

Hours worked in New South Wales in July fell 7%, reports The Guardian’s Greg Jericho, taking a reliable measure of employment. It’s 40.5 million fewer hours in total, the third biggest drop in NSW history. A 0.9% drop in the number of people employed in the state is accompanied by a huge 28% increase in the number of people underemployed.

Rather than overseas flights, Australians will be faced with a health system in crisis. It’s possible that NSW doctors will have to extend their triage to exclude those over seventy from ICU. Already, they are forced to triage to preserve a hospital system, rapidly stretched to capacity. Since 30 July all non-urgent ,elective surgery is postponed.

Morrison also needs a reboot, given recent reports he continues to be rude, crude and abusive towards premiers and their staff, especially when anyone has the hide to seek genuine consultation, or ask what happened to the vax. And while the latest News Poll shows he’s up one per cent in the fatuous preferred PM question, his government is increasingly on the nose.

There is the smell of political death about the PM writes The Canberra Times’ Jack Waterford. The veteran joins Niki Savva in noting the unprecedented shift of power from the commonwealth to the states, a direct function of a weak, untrustworthy PM who increasingly reveals his lack of leadership in National Cabinet meetings. It may take the federation decades to recover from the collapse in Prime Ministerial leadership.

The Coalition’s primary vote drops to 36 per cent, according to News Poll – the party’s lowest since March 2019 and over two points below its May 2019, election result. Yet Labor support rises to 40 per cent – its best result in the poll since December 2018.

As Frydo and ScoMo buddy up, imagine a McCain Man Size Chicken Kiev pinging in the microwave, a few games of pool and Yes Minister on widescreen TV. Frydo, the 26 billion-dollar dill, sets out to regale ScoMo with his hilarious JobKeeper SNAFU. Peta Credlin’s $12 million reno, the cost of two new builds, makes The Lodge almost liveable.

But Credlin’s eye-watering overspend, helped by thirty changes to the original redesign brief, for a pad Albo never got to crash in, is dwarfed by Frydo’s free money plan. Labor’s Andrew Leigh, who says the Morrison government knew and did nothing about the massive overspend, commissions a report by the Parliamentary Budget Office, (PBO).

“By mid-2020, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg already had a report from Treasury warning that billions of dollars of JobKeeper were going to firms with rising revenue,” Dr Leigh says. “The Morrison government is yet to explain how it saved jobs by giving money to firms such as Best & Less, AP Eagers, Premier Investments and Accent Group.”

Frydenberg was gulled by wily business types – who were only too happy to forecast losses due to Covid – into doling out $25 billion in as many weeks, the PBO reports to the ATO.

A tidy $13 billion goes to firms which increase their profits, reports John Kehoe in the AFR. Laugh? Any other treasurer would get the ATO to raise a debit in their tax return. Bake it into JobKeeper law. It’s already a standard ATO procedure.

But not “business-friendly” Frydenberg. He leaves it up to hard-nosed tycoons to decide. If they want to pay back a lazy $13 billion, they can. Or not, as the case may be. Or so he says. Besides it’s the law, now. His own bad law. It’s an incomprehensible error. A colossal stuff-up, even for a Morrison government, whose pandemic response, alone, combines criminal negligence with a catastrophic failure in quarantine, aged care and vaccine supply and distribution.

For $13 billion, you could build a solar farm covering all of Far North Queensland, the AFR’s Joe Aston, estimates. He’s talking quality German panels not “the cheap Uighur slave ones on Fortescue’s solar plant at Chichester.“

But let’s not be too harsh. Glad-handed Frydo may be channelling his idol, Ronald Reagan, who, in two terms, took the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor. Reagan also falsely believed he’d served his country in wartime, as he confused his B-grade movie roles with reality, or what vaguely approximates reality, for any US President.

Reagan also helped the US de-industrialise, increased inequality, pushed personal savings into the red and increased government indebtedness, expressed as debt to GDP ratio. Sounds familiar? That’s because we make the same errors. Frydenberg’s certainly doing his bit. Team Australia? It’s a tale of two cities in Sydney, especially.

But $25 billion? It took the ADF fifteen, long, years to get Treasury to blow $25 billion on submarines, AFR’s Joe Aston notes. But that’s a bit unfair. Overnight, February 2015, military genius, Abbott, decreed a new “competitive evaluation process. Instead of tenders for contracts being based on suitability, time and place were the only criteria. Could subs be built in SA? And could a deal be announced in time for his next election campaign? Tony needed to win over a few Liberal MPs to shore up the budgie-smuggler’s waning popularity. A challenge from Fizza Turnbull was in the wind.

But let’s not take away from Frydo’s Olympic gold medal standard stuff-up. No wonder there’s no JobKeeper 2.0.

Fellow incompetent, “Photo-Opp” Morrison whose government is run by Mad Men; spin doctors and fixers, such as “The Butler”, Phil Gaetjens, a personal manservant, who cooks up a fix when the bell rings, as Labor’s Katy Gallagher has it, could swap his shaggy dog story of how he failed to buy vaccine, squibbed his quarantine responsibilities and let over eight hundred old folks die in a privatised aged care system, built to be fit for profit -not fit for purpose.

Phil’s just announced another delay into his investigation into who-knew-what about you-know-who and the Liberal staffer’s alleged, March 2019, rape of Brittany Higgins, who was the junior staffer, her former boss, Linda Reynolds supported by calling “a lying bitch.” Ms Higgins later receives a creepy “sleep tight” voicemail from Michaelia Cash.

ACT DPP, a superbly named, Shane Drumgold, says Gaetjens’ private and top secret inquiry “could be prejudicial” to the case being brought by an ACT police (AFP Canberra Office) with zero experience in bringing a rape case. Yet it’s very hard to see how and why. Morrison is pointedly refusing to guarantee that he will ever release his man-servant’s report. Perhaps it would make sense if we knew what Gaetjens asked Drumgold. Regardless, justice delayed is justice denied.

Still, Phil’s decision, taken after legal advice, will make doubly sure nothing comes out before the next election. It’s the same theme with Christian Porter who was going to clear his name in court, you remember, opting instead to make twenty-three pages of testimony off limits to journalists – held in a special, sealed envelope by the court.

Five weeks ago, ABC’s 7:30 Report challenged Frydo. But the Treasurer hasn’t got back. Because there is no explanation. Scott and Josh have a bit of a giggle over an Ableour single malt. Morrison riffs on his speech. Brags about his plan for an October election, or perhaps the following January, another miracle victory, with Clive’s help, in which he casts himself as setting the nation free from Labor lockdowns.

Cue the PM’s coercive control of the states. How good is taking Peter Doherty’s name in vain so often that the phrase Doherty Report now bears no relation to the original, nuanced, scientific modelling of the same name?

Morrison’s redefined Doherty as a licence to let ‘er rip when we’ve vaccinated 70-80% of the eligible population. Or 56% or 64 % of us, unless you include children in your duty of care and your calculation of risk. Yet he’s counting on our having short memories. It was only last year, August 2020, “Dr Morrison” was telling Sunrise audiences that 95 per cent of Australians would need to be vaccinated for a national immunisation program to be effective.

“You have got to get to herd immunity with any vaccines, and for those who are unable for absolute medical reasons, not able to take vaccines … they are the ones who rely on everybody taking it even more.”

But in July of that year, the PM was going to the footy, watching his Cronulla Sharks play the Penrith Panthers in an NRL match at the Kogarah Oval. In fact, forget the words, “Doherty” or “Plan”, Morrison has done a series of Olympic-standard backflips to arrive at the very place he began. Behind the thicket of verbiage, it’s “let ‘er rip”.

What Morrison’s urging on the state premiers is that they follow BoJo whose Freedom Day fiasco is followed now by a rise in UK cases, to a total of 6.6 million since February 2020 with 132,376 deaths. But, fear not, fellow cave-dwellers, our bogan with the slogan is also a word-salad wizard and he has twenty-twenty fortune-cookie vision.

“It is always darkest before the dawn, and I think these lockdowns are [a] demonstration of that, but the dawn is not far away and we are working towards that dawn and we are hastening towards the dawn. We should not delay it. We should prepare for it. We should not fear it. We should embrace it. And we should move forward together.”

Morrison’s Delta Dawn won’t go down in history as his finest hour, nor, even earn him an Andy Warhol five minutes of fame. It’s too long for starters. (Anything over five is the province of petty notoriety or infamy – and the hall of shame is already stuffed full with politicians and petty tyrants.) But he’s not bluffing anyone in his National Cabinet hoax.

The PM’s seen as an “evil bully” by Gladys Berejiklian, reports Peter Hartcher, who adds that the NSW Premier’s colleagues reject Dan Andrews’ PM for NSW gibe, in favour of “The PM for Morrison” in a piece which is a clue that just possibly, maybe, the premiers have had a gutful of The Prime Minister for Appearances and Announcements on whom you can rely only for his failure to deliver on his promises – his arrogance and his contempt for accountability.

Nowhere is this better seen in his government’s quarantine debacle. Hotel quarantine has led to twenty-seven outbreaks of Coronavirus, including the current NSW disaster, which quickly spreads across Victoria’s border where by Tuesday, seventy-six cases are reported out of a total of 841 and more mystery cases mean that the state-wide lockdown will not be lifted Thursday.

Cue another anti-Dan pile-on from our Murdoch-led media claque. Expect more anti-lockdown, Dictator Dan sniping. Look over there. Let’s not dwell on the 16 thousand, nine hundred active cases in NSW or its 137 deaths and 1164 cases since the pandemic began, Tuesday. Pollyanna Gladys is upbeat about the good times just around the corner. Or after October. Or whenever. She appears on Sky News urging other premiers to support the bogus national plan repeating the Morrison lie that they have “signed off” on it. All they have is a Clayton’s “agreement in principle.”

There is no corresponding clamour to rush to end lockdown from states such as South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, or territories such as the ACT and NT where the virus is yet to run rampant.

“There is simply no way Queensland or Western Australia are going to open their borders to people from NSW while the virus is running rampant in that state, and nor will Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania or SA commit to any course of action that will obviously endanger their populations,” notes The Monthly’s Nick Feik.

Scotty’s Office wonks are slaving to depict The Blue-Tongued Lizard of Oz, as our heroic liberator, battling Labor premiers who white-ant a national agreement -and also at war with Labor HQ, Federal Opposition’s yellow-bellied snakes -and what’s left of the left – after Labor’s tax and carbon abatement concessions and The Murdoch Empire’s jihad on Labor, joined by mining and media billionaire, Kerry Stokes’ Seven, a Liberal Party COMM’s Department outlet. And don’t forget Sky over everything networked.

The federal government pitch is you choose between its safe plan or you lose your freedoms, your jobs, your picnics, weddings, parties, everything and business goes bust. St Peter (Doherty) says. Amen. It’s a travesty of the real report.

Everywhere in our Vaccination Plan we’re hitting our marks, the PM claims. Yet as with fan-girl, Typhoid Mary Berejiklian, the PM over promises and under-delivers; he’s more your Uber Eats than Ubermensch.

A freedom Deliveroo will be heard ringing his bicycle bell to give us back our libertarian birthright. Never mind that federal government will soon legally “hack into or alter” your online communication, as its Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) became law, last Wednesday.

Neoliberals commodify everything and each other, as freedom rider, Auntie Gladys B, NSW’s lame duck Liberal Premier, makes clear in bizarre attempts, this week, to equate getting your hair or nails done with emancipation. Weddings with up to five guests are permitted as of Saturday, she says, but you’ll have to do your own hair and nails.

NSW schools will open late October in a staggered start plan which includes wishful thinking about younger children wearing masks, if they wish, and overlooks the fact that even “fully vaccinated teachers” can still carry a full viral load.

In this rosy-tinted perspective, there is no room for the fact that the world is a giant petri dish of eight billion people and that as fast we get vax into arms, the virus is mutating. Our current Pfizer and AZ may be become less effective, after four or five months, according to recent studies. There already is excellent medical advice advocating a booster but there is also evidence that new variants of concern in South Africa, such as B1.351 for example, pose a challenge in being fifty per cent more transmissible and possibly, less susceptible to existing vaccines.

But the dominant narrative in our media monopoly is simplistic. Scotty’s gold standard Premier helps turn NSW into ground zero of the Delta wave sweeping Australia, but Gladys promises the full nail bar, wax , tan and hair salon extravaganza as a reward for good behaviour. We will get through this, she claims, citing vaccination rates as cause for celebration when the bigger picture is far more complex.

But just for now, it would be refreshing to hear some acceptance of responsibility. The state was too slow to get its lockdown act together and its efforts are hampered by a shortage of vaccine and a reliance on hotel quarantine despite the federal government having had more than enough time to construct dedicated facilities. In frustration, Queensland and Victoria are building their own, but it’s a federal responsibility.

The gracious granting of spurious freedoms in exchange for nominated rates of vaccination compliance is a crass PR stunt. The 70-80 but effectively 56% -64% rates are too low and the freedoms do nothing to alter the fact that had her government acted in a timely and effective manner, the virus would not have got out of hand. Failing to exercise duty of care is not repaired by easing restrictions when It is unsafe to do so.

Blue tongue? NSW Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, won’t deny that Morrison drops the “F” bomb to make clear there would be no JobKeeper for NSW workers in a “National Cabinet” exchange reported by Niki Savva whose sources inform her that the “tired and cranky” PM let his temper get the better of him – as bullies do.

Readers will recall, as Peter Gutwein, must, when the PM is reported to have called him a “fucking mendicant” in 2018, in a meeting convened to reach agreement over sharing the GST, a report, the Tassie premier, now disputes. Begs off.

Poor Mr Gutwein is rushed to hospital, after a recent bad turn at work, but latest report is of no serious condition, other than being a member of National Cabinet, which is less a consultative body than a screen for a PM who can’t lead. Increasingly, leaks depict premiers telling the PM what they think of him and what they plan to do in their states.

Of course, none of this sits well with a PM who not only has tin ear but also a glass jaw.

Government sources, quickly, point out that “if anyone had a go at Perrottet he probably deserved it” – which is the type of blame-the-victim response you’d expect from a party with a toxic culture as Julia Banks puts it.

Our glorious and noble rout in Kabul triggers a round of Anzackery, flatulent claptrap and patriotic humbug from MPs behind newly-erected Perspex pandemic barricades giving a novel spit level transparency to parliamentary proceedings. And an eviction.

“There are thousands of Australians and their loved ones who are only in Afghanistan because you haven’t processed their visas for years and now you are leaving them to die,” Labor MP Julian Hill  shouts, accusing the Morrison government of “killing my constituents” before Speaker, Tony Smith throws Hill out, along with truth and compassion. While Hill’s electorate has a high percentage of Afghan refugees and migrants, you would hope others abhor the cruel injustice.

There is little in MPs responses that acknowledge the failure of our foreign adventure but, instead, they relegate the complex issues of foreign policy failure and the human tragedy of our ill-fated intervention to the ANZAC level of veneration of lofty ideals and noble rhetoric that misses the grotesque obscenities of imperialist warmongery.

Doubtless the Morrison government’s decision to cut and run will be lauded as an heroic rescue, despite the leaving of thousands of Afghan collaborators behind. No heed will be paid to our abrupt closing of the Australian Embassy in Kabul in May, which would send an unambiguous signal of commitment to retreat – to both Taliban and groups of terrorists, harboured in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s big supporter, Pakistan.

Hope surges in a nation’s heart, however, as independent, Craig Kelly, claims he’ll lead mining billionaire Clive Palmer’s UAP, a type of Trojan virus or even a political hack registered as a political party. Kelly’s also got an anti-vax bill he’d like to introduce.

And with Kelly on the team, Clive need not fret about having enough members. On the other hand, he’s already had to undermine Kelly who as party leader had the odd notion he’d be able to dictate policy, such as running anti-lockdown candidates. Palmer says instead that Kelly will have “input into policy,” as part of the Party Executive.

Politics is show biz for ugly people – and UAP does provide an exhibitionist outlet for Palmer’s pals and extended family clan, but UAP’s main purpose is to let Clive tell targeted anti-Labor lies on social media and older media next election.

UAP won’t win a seat, but its preferences go to the pro-mining Liberals. How good is gaming our electoral system? And there’s a poetic justice in Kelly’s new career, too.

Who better to inspire the flagging spirits of an ailing nation than “Wellness” Kelly, another mountebank peddling snake oil? Yet these are dangerous fake cures for coronavirus, such as the de-wormer, Ivermectin and malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Nothing can be done, of course, because the government needs his vote.

Bonus points. A former Liberal energy and climate guru, Kelly is also a former small businessman, the sainted backbone of the nation. Amen. But a flawed saint.

Kelly, who appears in Kiwi court documents as a listed director of DVK International – and, therefore, liable for $4 million, his family furniture sales business owed staff and creditors when it went bankrupt. Luckily, it’s all a mistake as Kelly says, because the constitution does not permit undischarged bankrupts to be MPs.

Moral bankruptcy doesn’t count. An increasingly unpopular, unscrupulous and devious Morrison omnishambles may spring a General Election upon unwary voters as early as October, or if not, Australia Day, as MPs peddle their Crosby Textor stable of spin-doctors’ myth of an heroic PM standing up for our freedom, against a gang of bolshie lockdown state premiers, especially the Labor traitors.

Premiers and Chief Ministers just don’t get that a National Agreement exists just because Morrison says it does. Nor do they understand that we’ve got to learn to live with Covid and not be bullied into lockdowns; ruining the economy. In Friday’s faux national cabinet, state leaders learn that the nation may well be able to increase intensive care beds by 944 places – but has staff to operate only 346, at best, reports Rick Morton in The Saturday Paper.

Together with the smell of political death, there is a desperation about the Morrison government as it gambles on being able to politicise the pandemic before victims of its own failure to provide enough vaccine or quarantine in time, to say nothing of its aged care failure confront it – before it is forced by the suffering it inflicts on a nation becomes too widespread even for this government to deny. Or evade. Or explain away, poorly with its straw men or its spurious statistics from pandemic deaths in other countries.

In the meantime, Josh and Scotty’s excellent adventure in the Lodge is a bromance or even a type of marriage of convenience which illustrates vividly the values of a government which has spent years refining its objective, which is simply to stay in power by whatever means available. Look after its donor class come what may.

Politicising the pandemic, however, is a risky business and the PM’s desperate gamble against time may backfire as his mind-numbing rhetoric of bumper-sticker slogans fails to gain traction amidst a nightmare world of real pain, fear, suffering and rampaging contagion, his inept, ill-prepared government for a rich and powerful corporate oligarchy by a rich, privileged and entirely self-centred elite, has unerringly helped bring about.

Above all, it’s hard to pose as the nation’s saviour when you’ve lied and backstabbed your way to power so openly that no-one in their right mind would ever trust you.

In the end, however, what will count the most against Morrison’s chances will be when CEOs realise that his government’s plan to end lockdown and let the pandemic rage will, in fact, end up costing them a lot of money. It has everywhere else in the world.

New England recaptures the title of Dope Capital of Australia.

Barking Barmy Joyce, our most celebrated family man, has resumed his role as the nation’s Number 2.

Image from Twitter

Barmy is the answer to questions no one seems to have asked. Do dinosaurs still roam the earth? Who’s been plucking Gina Rinehart’s chin hairs? Do the ladies’ lavs in Tamworth pubs have panic rooms?

* * * * *

References:

‘I didn’t sleep for a week’: Catherine Marriott speaks out about alleged sexual harassment by Barnaby Joyce. ABC

Barnaby Joyce spent $675,000 in expenses but less than three weeks on ground while drought envoy. The Guardian.

Barnaby Joyce signed off $80m for Angus Taylor’s old company after zero was paid for same sort of water nearby. Michael West Media.

An outline of #AngusGates – Yumpu.com

Matt Canavan’s family obsession with coal. The AFR.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

1 This Government is devoid of wit, humour, words of intelligence and those with the eloquence and debating skills to give them meaning. Mainly it embraces a maleness that believes in conflict as a means of political supremacy over and above the pursuit of excellence in Government.

That is my view of this obnoxious Government.

2 Without so much as a whimper, the Government has caved in on its proposed Industrial Relations Reforms. Labor’s Tony Burke called it pure spite.

The Federal Government will not commit to keeping its industrial relations changes even though it had the numbers to pass the legislation.

The (on sick leave) Attorney-General Christian Porter, after countless hours of consultations with employers and unions, had proposed five major reforms but ended with only a fragment of what he wanted.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Centre Alliance senators stepped in to help the Government get through a measure providing a more straightforward pathway for casual employees to convert to permanent jobs.

In a fit of anger, measures to crack down on wage theft by employers that had the support of all the Parliament were also dropped.

In my view, it is no tenable for an alleged rapist to remain in the job of Attorney General.

3 A few years back, Christopher Pyne said:

“Our reforms will make Parliamentary Question Time more concise and ensure Ministers are held to account and remain relevant to questions asked.

We will look to strengthen the definition of ‘relevance’ in the standing orders so Ministers must stay directly relevant to questions and ensure Matter of Public Importance debates follow Question Time.”

There is no requirement for relevance at all. And without it, Ministers cannot be held to account.

Without civility, a reasoned debate cannot take place.

All we have at the moment is a shambolic gaggle of incompetent, unedifying politicians not in the least interested in enhancing our democracy.

It has degenerated to the point of being obsolete. It needs to be given the flick and rethought.

What a ludicrous load of nonsense, Mr Speaker.

4 “Australia reports quarterly population decline for first time since 1980s,” read the headline. Not since quarterly population data was first collected in 1981 has Australia’s total population fallen until now.

Ross Greenwood (Editor of Sky News business) said:

“… while the current low population growth rates should be “bad news”, he expects the Government will allow the populations to grow “quite rapidly” once international borders reopen.”

The Government needs to give this urgent attention.

5 Sports Rorts scandal returned to the headlines this week with the Senate reporting that the Labor-controlled Upper House Committee, chaired by Anthony Chilsom concluded that:

“The evidence available to the committee indicates clearly the prime minister’s office, and likely the prime minister were aware of the use of electorate information to identify projects in marginal and targeted electorates well before the first grant recipient was announced.”

It also concluded that there was ample evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was involved in the selection, although Coalition Senators disagreed.

Bridget McKenzie, in evidence, said that an unnamed staffer had made the $100m late changes during the caretaker period before the 2019 election.

Just one of many stains on the Coalition’s governance.

6 What do you think when thirty-four of Australia’s largest companies claimed JobKeeper wage subsidies in 2020 despite having improved their earnings on pre-pandemic levels, pocketing a total of $284m?

Here is one example from Kaye Lee. It is about Gerry Harvey, who I have said before only sees the world through the prism of his cash registers.

“In February, Harvey Norman reported that first-half sales climbed 25% and contributed to a net profit after tax of $462.03m for the last six months of 2020 – up 116% on the same time period in the previous year.

The retailer said it would pay dividends totalling $249m, of which Gerry Harvey is set to receive $78m due to his 31.4% shareholding in the company.

Despite this, they declined to pay back the estimated $22 million they somehow collected for JobKeeper, a payment they should never have qualified to receive.”

I have some questions: 1) Should they keep your money? 2) Should they be made to give your money back to you?

Scandalous, I should think, but our PM seems to think its perfectly okay.

7 An article in Central News also caught my eye during the week: “Leigh Sales asks why the powerful who abuse our trust keep getting away with it.”

She was being interviewed at a writer’s festival when she decided to let it rip on those who would destroy our democracy. Anyway, rather than quote a powerful read from start to finish, I urge you to read it on this link.

I suppose it’s the same as what I do every time my fingers hit the keys. In my 8th year now writing for The AIMN and I wonder at times just what effect my attempts at exposing these influential people has. It, at times, can be very dispiriting.

A Labor of love.

8 Is it just semantics (the meaning of a word)? It now seems powerful conservatives have convinced ASIO to delete “right-wing” from its description of rising right-wing terrorism.

We wouldn’t want to give it a bad name, now would we?

9 The Prime Minister, when confronted with a crisis, seems to harden himself. Australia’s most powerful man is waiting and calculating. There is no empathy shown. He is ruthless when he deems it necessary. His Christian teaching is forgotten.

What he wants to find out is this: is the Australian “Me too” movement just a flash in the pan, or does it have lasting credibility?

If it does, then both Linda Reynolds and Christian Porter will have to go. If it is just a passing thing, as the polls seem to suggest, then one or both might survive.

The Australian character’s malaise often seems to resolve these matters; however, to help the Government navigate the most significant political crisis they’ve faced, Morrison needs all the information he can gather. Then he will decide if the bar is too high to jump.

To think that we need to tell men how to behave decently when it is something their parents should have taught them as children.

10 The Government continued to play “Self-congratulations” with last week’s unemployment figures; however, the demise of JobKeeper will shoot unemployment through the roof. The Government is about job creation.

If it doesn’t happen, then don’t blame us. Blame Labor.