Ok, some of you may have noticed that I’ve been on holiday…
Just in case that seems a little egocentric, I’m sorry. It’s just that someone commented about one of my recent contributions that they’d been waiting to see what I made of it and it sort of made me think that there were people out there who wait to see what I make of the world… Of course I do have to balance that against the fact that most people didn’t notice when our PM, Scott Morrison, disappeared for days…
Whatever, every time I checked the Australian news I thought that I should write about what was happening, but as I was in Malaysia I couldn’t access a number of sites including this one, so by the time I’d made a few notes and had a few paragraphs, there’s usually be a whole new development in Australian politics that made everything I’d written seem like yesterday’s news, and the only thing staler than yesterday’s news is a policy announcement from Tony Abbott. After all, if you look at the policies that he took to both elections, you’d find that even he doesn’t pretend that he ever believed in them. Most politicians have the decency to at least pretend that they meant what they said and that it was the circumstances that changed. Not dear old Tony. Nah, for Tony it was: “Climate change is crap!!” morphing into “I never said that… and anyway, people are taking what I didn’t say out of context, so it’s not fair to judge me on that you need to look at the policies we’ll be releasing closer to the election…” morphing into, “Now I’m no longer in Parliament I can tell you that I never believed half the things I said and that I only said them because I had to keep people happy, particularly Rupert because without him I wouldn’t have this great job now!”
But enough about the past. I spent a large part of Monday thinking about the Bruce Lehrmann verdict…
There were a number of people on social media who were attempting to undermine Judge Lee’s conclusion on the grounds that sex took place and how do we know it wasn’t consensual. My reaction to that was to try to put myself in Bruce’s shoes and if I’d managed to to that, I certainly wouldn’t have gone back for my hat…
Before I make the obvious point that if you swear under oath that sex did not take place then it’s pretty hard to go back and say, “All right, it did, but trust me, it was something that we both agreed to and she’s just changed her mind and you can’t trust someone who changes their mind… apart from me, who has now just admitted to perjury…” This point is general in nature and doesn’t refer to anyone in case anybody gets an idea that I may be the one holding their hat.
Anyway, before I make that obvious point… oh wait, I just made it…
The other strange takeaway from the Lee ruling was some media outlets were asking that a rather strange question about whether Brittany Higgins would have to repay the money after the judge ruled that there was no evidence of a coverup. This is strange because my understanding was that the payout was to do with her workplace causing issues. If we remember that a certain other female Liberal staffer was granted $600,000 without much investigation because the investigation may have named someone who harassed her and who wasn’t Alan Tudge which could have been more embarrassing for the government than merely handing over money to make her go away.
Apart from all the terrorist and non-terrorist attacks, there’s been a bit of chatter about the introduction of disinformation and misinformation laws. The concern has been that media companies and politicians are concerned that there’s a lot of incorrect stuff being posted on social media, and they feel that it’s their job to spread misinformation. Like when social media named the wrong person as the Bondi attacker and Channel 7 just assumed that it was correct and went with it. It was social media to blame and not Channel 7 who can’t be expected to have the resources to do a simple check when so much of their resourcing goes to getting important stories which cost a lot in terms of Thai massages and steak dinners…
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