Sometimes people lie. We’ve all had the experience of hearing someone tell the most outrageous lie and felt that someone should set the record straight. And when the person continues to lie, we often feel the need to question everything they say.
Now this is a perfectly human reaction. The trouble is that when you’re dealing with an habitual liar, you can get bogged down in the lie to the point that you completely overlook the fact that sometimes the lie isn’t the issue.
For example, if I ask you, “Did you accidentally stand on my veggies when you were rushing to the aid of the old lady who’d fallen over in my front garden?”, your denial that you were the one who squashed my beans and broccoli may be implausible given the fact that there’s a footprint that looks suspiciously like it’s the same size as your foot. However, while I’m obsessed with proving you a liar, I may overlook the fact that what you said is even worse than a dead vegetable or two.
“Of course, I didn’t stand on your vegetables because there’s no way I’d have been rushing to help that silly old woman who didn’t have the capacity to stand on her own two feet. I believe in letting people live their own lives and if someone is stupid enough to fall over then it’s up to them to get up again without help from me. I don’t care if the next-door neighbour said they saw me. They were just probably just trying to cover up for the fact that they were the one who helped that woman get to her feet!”
In case you haven’t worked out it already, I’m talking about the RATs and our Federal “Don’t Do” Government’s insistence that they hadn’t commandeered the RATs. While we’re all wondering whether they’re telling the truth and various people are expressing doubts because, while there’s got to be a first time for everything, it’s highly unlikely that they’d start a dangerous precedent so close to an election, this stops us asking a very important question:
Why AREN’T they commandeering all the RATs and distributing them?
I do understand that this would seem a bit unfair to the businesses who’ve ordered and paid for them, but the obvious counterargument is that if there’s a shortage that’s likely cause significant problems, shouldn’t some central body be prioritising where they go until there’s greater supply?
I mean, we wouldn’t say to any of the towns cut off by the floods, “Sorry you can’t have any food because it’s been ordered by Coles and Woolworths and you’ll just have to wait until next week. Bottled water? Sorry, there’s a shortage of that, too. Just open your mouths next time it rains.”
Whatever else, I must say that Morrison’s government is good at creating distractions. It’s often hard to tell whether Scotty has the sort of brain that enables him to come up with things like, “We all like cuddling koalas” (Don’t try it in the wild, kids, those claws are sharp!) or his daughter’s poem (Picking on a 12yo, the left is cruel just leave my family out of this!), or whether he really is as dopey as Matt Canavan.
Some questions are easy to answer; others not so much. There was a bit of argy-bargy about a suggestion that the Liberals might split the election because, while the Senate election needs to be called in May, the House of Representatives could be delayed until September. The Australian Electoral Commission and various others jumped on this suggestion and said that it wouldn’t happen because, well, it wouldn’t.
I understand that it would be a complete break with precedent, but, as I said on Twitter, anyone who thinks that just because something is highly improbable has obviously overlooked most of the events this century from the September 11th attacks to the GFC to Brexit to the election of Trump to Covid-19, as well as several dozen other events that look almost expected by comparison.
Personally, I suspect that Scotty has probably thought about it, but the reality of doing it would have him out his job before Libspill could trend on social media. There’d be the possibility of going to the election with a hostile Senate because people would think you were avoiding scrutiny. Then, even if the tactic worked, you’d have a hostile Senate for the next three years.
Given the fact that our Treasurer was personally handing out showbags in his electorate… So much for not everything can be free. I missed him or I’d have asked if there was the promised carpark in the bag. Where was I? Oh yes. Given that the Treasurer was personally handing out showbags in his electorate, I had to wonder if the plan is to call a snap election in March because LABOR. We can’t wait till after the Budget because there’ll be things in it and LABOR.
Speaking of the election, I am starting to wonder if the Coalition are actually thinking things through. I’ve heard several say don’t vote for Albanese because he’ll have to listen to The Greens and then they’ll do something about climate change! Not sure that this is the sort of message that’s going to appeal to most Australians. Sure, some will like it but nearly all of them are planning to vote for Coal-lovers Party anyway. it’s more likely to push some moderate Liberal voters into the arms of the Independents. And it’s more likely to help Labor with the voters who think that they won’t do enough on climate change.
It’s like I said when Domicide Perrotet was opening up the state and allowing larger gatherings: I’m not sure that “THANKS TO US YOU CAN NOW GO TO YOUR GRANNY’S FUNERAL!” is quite the vote-winning slogan that he thought it was.
Still the election’s a long way off – or maybe not – and nobody’s actually cast their votes yet so anything could happen. War with China seems to be off the table and even Russia seems to be failing to invade with the speed that Petey “The General” Dutton would like, so maybe they’ll have to resort to a terror raid where they arrest the entire front bench of the Labor Party for reasons that they don’t have to divulge thanks to our anti-terror laws.
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