Actually doing a good job as Prime Minister of Australia is far harder than trying to think up smart marketing slogans. That sounds like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but I wonder whether there are not some who do not appreciate the fact!
Priority Number One – remember that your policies, and the legislation you enact, are intended to improve life for as many people as possible, with most attention being paid to the people who are in most need.
So forget the subsidies to wealthy corporations, and the dinners to raise party funds and, before making any decisions, remind yourself that you are one of the world’s best paid Heads of Government, comparatively speaking, despite our small population, and most people have far more problems than you do in trying to balance their budgets (as far as preparing Australia’s budget is concerned, you have unlimited funds at your back and call!), put food on the table and keep a roof over the heads of their families – if they are fortunate enough to have a roof and/or a family!
Many casual and part-time care workers in aged care homes are between a rock and a hard place. If they feel unwell and stay away from work, they get no income. If they go to work, prove to be infectious with COVID-19 and pass it on, other lives are at risk and the worker will again be out of work. What is your policy here?
When someone reaches the pinnacle of government, it is assumed – rashly in many cases – that they, and the political party which elected them as leader, have an awareness of the issues that require attention and they have a Public Service to provide them with all the background information they need in their decision-making.
Priority Number Two – remember that the Public Service is there to service the needs of the country, through the political party in power, so sometimes they will offer advice you do not like, but you need to consider that advice seriously, because the Public Service will still be there, long after you have gone, and the members of the Service have the ability, after they retire, to enhance or sully your reputation! (Trump ought to remember this!)
And if you choose to use external advisers, whether political staffers or major corporations, keep in mind the payments they receive are monies no longer available to carry out necessary policies for those who elected you – AND all the others who didn’t – and the advice may well be biassed in order to ensure the advisers are employed again. KPMG, PwC, EY, etc are doing very nicely, thank you, but do they not sometimes have a conflict of interest, which is ignored?
We often quote the statement ‘the only certainties in life are death and taxes’, but have we not overlooked a very import addition? Change is an absolute certainty, although the nature of change is often far from clear, and failure to accept that policies for the future MUST take change into account dooms a successful outcome
Priority Number Three – in considering policy, do not confine your analysis to its immediate impact. The Spanish flu, the GFC and COVID-19 have made it crystal clear that what worked yesterday may very likely not work tomorrow.
Julia Gillard was branded a liar because, when she expecting to have a majority government, she rashly made a a statement about future intentions in relation to climate action, which, with a minority government, she could not fulfill. You, Mr Morrison, will never know what the future will bring, and you were caught out holidaying in Hawai’i when your country was struggling to cope with an unprecedented bush fire season.
Not a good look, Mr Morrison!
You were supposedly keeping in touch with events at home while you were away. Are you doing so more carefully this time? There are still lots of bush fire victims who cannot enjoy a holiday – in fact they cannot enjoy a life!
Once more – not a good look, Mr Morrison!
Many of the people who lost everything, including, in some cases, their lives, have not, themselves, or their families, received the support and help they so desperately need, because advice, from experts, of the likely seriousness of the fire season was ignored, and forward planning had failed to take account of the possible severity of the fires, following lengthy drought.
And the fact that the fires were so closely followed by the Coronavirus has really thrown a spanner in the works.
To dream of a ‘return to normal’ is, frankly, a wet dream.
Worldwide, economies are faltering, capitalism has no answers to solve our current problems and, lurking in the background, becoming ever more urgent, is the need to completely change our policies to tackle Climate Change.
While we have been able to rely on good scientific advice from the medical fraternity, they cannot perform miracles when, in a multicultural country, governments (and Victoria is not alone in this) do not manage to communicate effectively the graveness of the situation, the need to overcome innate selfishness and the processes which absolutely must be followed if a disastrous level of infections is not to follow.
Priority Number Four – Make sure the country has immediate access to scientific advice of all kinds. Reducing funding for R and D is foolish at the best of times. When change is occurring as rapidly as it has been in recent decades, you must have plans ready, plans that can be pulled up on the screen for immediate action – and you MUST be prepared to accept appropriate advice from scientists.
Where are the CSIRO staff who could be involved in this? Elsewhere in the world helping others who are less ideologically warped and do truly respect science. More evidence of the inadequacy of government forethought.
Following the bush fires, there has been a lot of – entirely appropriate – emphasis on the skills we ignored – those of our First Nations, who used fire to support life and who see themselves as guardians of the land.
The greedy culture of the white invaders sees land and all that is on, in and under it, as a source of wealth to be plundered, leaving destruction in its wake.
WAKE UP!
Unless we dramatically change our attitudes, Nature’s fight back, by way of fires, floods, storms and pandemics, unleashed by our pollution, will destroy us.
Australia might seem a big country but it is only a small part of the world.
We ignore the fact that the emissions we produce, both here and through exporting fossil fuels, have formed a significant part of the greenhouse gases.
The polar ice is melting at an alarming rate, causing the tundra in Siberia to defrost, releasing methane far more abundantly than do our herds of cattle, and adding an even more deadly greenhouse gas to the mix.
Priority Number Five – Prime Minister – it is your duty to keep in touch with this information, to learn to discriminate between scientifically based information, and disinformation, spread by oil and gas magnates, who benefit financially – along with their shareholders – by people believing those lies.
If Australia is to have a future, which will certainly be very different from what we have had, if and when we cope with the present hiatus, and if you plan wisely, you need to ensure we rapidly reduce pollution, and work to reduce the massive and increasing gap between the really poor and destitute and the obscenely, in some cases, wealthy.
A few of these lucky people are genuine philanthropists, and do try to help those in need. Sadly that is not true across the board.
Priority Number Six – If you and your party are, as it often appears, only in government for what you can get out of it, then please resign.
We need someone capable of understanding the variety of problems which arise for the unemployed and the many poorly paid workers.
We also need a leader who cares about us and the future well-being of humanity.
You show little that gives us confidence that you are that leader.
You have been propped up by the National Cabinet, with its sensible mix of ideologies, while you have illegitimately hogged the limelight.
If you want to help Australia, bite the bullet and go!
I end as always – this is my 2020 New Year Resolution:
“I will do everything in my power to enable Australia to be restored to responsible government.”
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
[/textblock]
One wonders how a person whose fundamental and openly admitted beliefs so occupy their very being can ever run a nation where a majority do not hold the same beliefs?
Can we ever trust a leader who puts their personal priorities first whether or not they realise that they are doing it, let alone accepting that others may feel differently?
My biggest criticism of Howard was his inbuilt belief that he and Janette were just like every other Australian or more to the point we are all like them.
When Morrison does his everyman impersonation, or as some call it “the daggy dad” routine he imagines we are all accepting him as “one of us” so that it gives legitimacy to his frequent mantra of “what Australians want …….”.
He rarely says what I want, and I do not regard myself as all that unique.
For an Australian leader to announce a bullshit, loud, applied, out of time policy as four hundred millions for movies, which will be controlled and sucked out by USA operators is sickening. Our universities, with staff members being betrayed by all who should do and know better, is equally sickening. Pushy sports, drink, gambling, retail operators are getting their way, partly, while the citizen of little standing but with great needs is ignored. A bowelbrained leader is not at all useful or decent.
Well said, as usual, Rosemary! I agree with all your thoughts & ideas etc. God help us all if this lying, flat earth, happy clapping, failed in marketing idiot is re-elected! We DO NOT want his “style” ? of “leadership” ?, nor do we want this f-cking lot to be in power any more!!
Unfortunately I think we are stuck with this lot in power for at least 2 more terms, Thru stupidity of people and downright selfishness, to think longer than a day into the future. Plus a Labor party totally marginalised by marketing spin, and a Press that refuses to acknowledge their input. I had hope for Albo, but regret he is a Dud. No fire in the belly, and a party that has been scared to frighten the horses with a bold plan for the future. By the time I see a Labor gov, I will be ready for the pine box and beyond care anymore. Feel sorry for my kids as they are going to inherit this mess, and the majority of youth dont seem to care. Again living for the moment.
Uhm RosemaryJ36 … I think you optimism may be showing, just a little. As a long time political skeptic of the morality of Liarbral Nazional$ politicians, may I revise your priorities to a more likely expectation by those same politicians?
PRIORITY 1: Remember that the legislation that you enact is only for the benefit of financial political donors to the COALition, and then only if the amount is generous enough to keep the unelected political hacks who determine pre-selection in the manner to which they wish to remain accustomed.
PRIORITY 2: Remember that the Public Service is there to service those areas of government that have not yet be allocated to party financial donors.
PRIORITY 3: In considering policy, only consider the short term impact on your foreign owned multinational financial donors to the COALition parties.
PRIORITY 4: Make sure that access to expert advise is confined to Hillsong Church regulars and strip out any financial support for R&D because “” The Good Book”” promises divine intervention for all believers, even the amoral politicians in the Nazional$.
PRIORITY 5: It is your duty to discriminate between the truth of Fauxsmell news as supported by your good mate, the very knowledgeable and erudite Trumpery and the mischievous misinformation of thousands of practising experienced scientists who have studied, evaluated, analysed and understand all that nonsense about the fallacy of “Climate change”” that has always been with us. If Australia is to have a future then it is up to you to make it as the worst third world export economy in the OECD by gifting tax concessions to the multinational corporations stripping out our natural resources for processing in other countries for sale back to Australian taxpayers at an enormous, indeed exorbitant, profit made possible by allowing overseas processing.
PRIORITY 6: As all members of the Liarbral Nazional$ COALition misgovernment are probably recognised as self-serving, egotists unable to get a proper job in society because their meagre talents only suit them to licking the backsides of foreign corporate executives, it is most important that you do everything in your power to ensure that there are no taxation reforms that would require 24 hour publication of political donations from all sources. The sanctity of secret political donations to such luminary organisations as the IPA must be preserved as essential to the good of our democracy. As the demonstrably uncaring misleader it is essential that you maintain your cavorting in the pubic gaze to show the unthinking Australian taxpayers that nothing has changed since Little Johnnie Howard told lies about Children Overboard, subsuming the excellent four word mantra of Pig Iron Bob Menzies :”Reds under the Beds”.
Good luck RosemaryJ36 in your quest to de-throne the protector of child abusers who was so honest that he was sacked from marketing then fiddled the pre-selection process to his personal advantage; a mere case of “This is how Liarbrals do business”.