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What could possibly go wrong?

September 30, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
20 Replies

By Kathryn

Why on earth would a climate-change-denying PM who shows 100% support for the filthy, polluting coal-mining and environmentally destructive gas fracking industries attend the COP26 (climate change conference) in Glasgow? Wasn’t this the same fool who dragged a piece of coal into Parliament House and declared – in front of a gleeful Barnyard Joyce – that “there is nothing to be afraid of – it’s just coal! Nothing to see here!” It came as no surprise that the yellow-bellied coward, Sloth Morrison, slunk away and returned back to Australia right before the conference even started! Why? Because he knew that his climate-change-denying ideology will be held up for ridicule on the world stage at any international summit on the emergency to address important issues on a subject the LNP do not believe in! That is exactly the type of disgraceful, cowardly behaviour we have come to expect from a useless, non-achieving PM who expends more energy trying to get out of work and totally avoiding any of his responsibilities as one of the highest paid “leaders” in the free world!

When we recall how Morrison hid behind a deck chair in Hawaii when his own state of NSW nearly burnt to the ground last year; when Australians recognise that this lazy, bone-idle political parasite delegated 99.99% of his job to the hapless State Premiers; When he tried to steal the “limelight” from the Ruby Princess aka Gladys Berejiklian when he thought she was the “Golden Girl” only to betray and abandon her the second he (and we) realised that she was not – it provides anyone with an IQ >10 a thorough insight into the self-serving, smirking entitlement of a stone-cold, ineffective, callous and contemptuous Sloth Morrison!

Now we have the LNP at State and Federal level making ridiculous claims to have some type of non-existent plan set up to halve emissions by 2030 – WTF??? Anyone with any semblance of foresight combined with a sense of reality knows that it is highly unlikely that the LNP will even be in power at that time! Truly, Morrison is right up there with John Howard (who has been likened to a war criminal), and that useless, swaggering, smirking misogynist, Phoney Abbott, as the three worst, most inept, stratospherically arrogant and totally corrupt politicians in Australian history! What makes them even worse is that, despite their appalling cowardice, despite their increasing level of corruption, their never-ending lies and broken promises, the way the LNP literally thrive on hate, fear, division, misogyny, chaos, dysfunction and war – especially when they are backed into a corner or right before an election; despite the LNP wasting countless billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars (that Australians can ill-afford) on useless weapons of war that will soon become obsolete – they remorselessly try to hide all this appalling depravity behind a thin, transparent cloak of sanctimonious bible-thumping hypocrisy!

The fact that Morrison is a signed-up member of a notorious, alleged paedophile-protecting cult of Hillsong and, indeed, stacking his cabinet and staff with other Hillsong members, should be a red flag warning that this dangerously undemocratic autocrat is determined to increase his sick, twisted and dangerous mix of politics with the rabid, misogynistic flat-earth ideology of Hillsong!

Ever since Morrison rose to power on the back of his treacherous, backstabbing betrayal of Michael Towke and Malcolm Turnbull, the level of political subterfuge, self-serving corruption, rorting and waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars has risen to an alarming level together with Morrison’s smirking arrogance, secrecy and autocracy which is now bordering on fascism. The sooner this monstrous and totally depraved regime are kicked to the kerb, the better for everyone.

The tragic fact is that the LNP – at State and Federal levels – are wrecking balls destroying, annihilating, vandalising and defunding everything Australians value including our taxpayer-funded ABC (into which they are parachuting obsequious right-wing sycophants like Lisa Millar and David Speers), Medicare, Aged Care and just about every socially-responsible program devised to protect our environment and the most vulnerable people in our society!

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Rainforest Alliance says coffee rituals are changing for the better

September 29, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
6 Replies

Rainforest Alliance Media Release

This International Coffee Day, 1 October 2021, the Rainforest Alliance announces that Australians’ purchasing behaviours around coffee are changing for the better.

As the reality of climate change hits, consumers are continuing to educate themselves on the importance of buying sustainably sourced coffee and lowering their impact on the planet. Coffee lovers, in particular, are becoming more interested in where their coffee is sourced and how changes to their daily coffee rituals, such as buying more sustainable coffee, or investing in a reusable cup can make a significant positive impact, particularly when done collectively. To help people make a change, this week the Rainforest Alliance will be sharing useful tips on how to take action as part of its Follow the Frog campaign.

Melanie Mokken, Markets Transformation Manager Australia/New Zealand for the Rainforest Alliance said:

“The Australian coffee market is amongst the largest in the world, with coffee culture forming a large part of Australia’s cultural identity. In fact, over the last decade Australia’s coffee imports have more than doubled, likely fuelled by the booming café industry and an ever-increasing appetite for coffee.[1] In fact, a morning coffee is so well engrained into most people’s routine that on average, Australians consumed around two kilograms of coffee, per person, in 2021.[2] Similarly, demand is increasing beyond Australia, and unless something changes, the current system of coffee production will not be able to meet the increasing global coffee demand in the coming decades. The minimum gap that we expect to see will be 60 million bags. This is a deficit higher than the current annual production of the world’s largest coffee producer, Brazil.[3]

“Without major efforts to adapt coffee production to climate change, global production could even be lower in 2050 than it is today. Due to rising temperatures, more irregular rainfall, and a higher number of severe droughts, growing coffee is becoming harder, the impacts of which can be seen closer to home. For example, rising temperatures in Brazil mean that farmers are facing more droughts, and because Australia imports around 15% of its coffee from Brazil, this could have significant consequences on the price of coffee on our shores,” said Melanie Mokken.

A recent survey by the Rainforest Alliance revealed that 83% of Aussies are concerned about the global effects that the destruction of the world’s rainforests is having on the planet.[4] In addition, 63% say that they look for product labels to ensure they are making purchasing decisions that are more socially and environmentally sustainable.[5] To add to this, a recent study by the University of Bath which looked into the thoughts and feelings about climate change and government response in 16-25-year olds revealed that respondents were worried about climate change (59% very or extremely worried, 84% at least moderately worried). Over 50% felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.[6]

“With climate change at the forefront of many people’s minds, we expect that consumers will start asking more and more where their coffee originated, whether it was sustainably sourced, and if any price increases benefit the farmers and workers behind the beans,” said Melanie Mokken.

Coffee rituals in 2022

The Rainforest Alliance encourages coffee-lovers to make it a habit to ask their favourite coffee shop, roaster or brand the following questions and make small actions:

Ask where the coffee beans originate and how their sourcing practices contribute to sustainability – are coffee producers receiving a decent payment? Are ecosystems being protected?

Check sustainability labels that have been verified by an independent party – such as the Rainforest Alliance’s green frog seal – when purchasing coffee and tea in cafes, restaurants, supermarkets or grocery stores.

Take a reusable cup to the local coffee shop to avoid waste.

“Eighty seven percent of consumers expect companies to operate responsibly to address social and environmental issues and 62% say that they make sustainably conscious purchasing choices even when it is more expensive to do so.[7] Australians are not afraid to support businesses with their wallets when they are doing the right thing for the planet, and this comes right down to their local coffee shop.

Photo from mobjackbaycoffee.com

“At the Rainforest Alliance, we are working to better position coffee farmers by connecting them with responsible businesses, and by providing trainings in climate-smart and regenerative growing practices that help boost productivity and make them more resilient [to the effects of climate change]. A study with Colombian coffee farmers showed that certified farmers were more resilient to adverse climatic conditions. In a year of adverse weather and abundant fungal infestations, these farmers only lost 1% of their yield while a control group lost 52%,” said Melanie Mokken.

Less than 25% of global coffee production is procured as standard-compliant by the coffee industry, while as much as 55% of global production volume is certified. This means a substantial number of farmers are often unable to recognise the economic benefits of improved market access and price. The Rainforest Alliance continues to appeal to the industry to favour independently verified certified coffee over conventionally produced coffee in order to support producers and help create a more sustainable sector.

“The well-being of farmers and workers is vital to the sustainability of any agricultural business, and the Rainforest Alliance certification program also promotes the human rights of those working in the coffee sector. When customers see our seal, the little green frog, on products, it means that the certified ingredient in the product was grown on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms.

“It is important to remember that making small individual changes, such as seeking out sustainably sourced coffee, can add up to vast positive impacts. It’s not far-fetched to suggest that when Aussies’ change their coffee rituals, they really can change the world!” said Melanie Mokken.

[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/4615/coffee-market-in-australia

[3] https://coffeebarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Coffee-barometer-2018v2.pdf

[4] An independently commissioned survey conducted in June 2021 involving 1,001 respondents aged 18-65+ across all states in Australia.

[5] An independently commissioned survey conducted in December 2020 involving 1,003 respondents in Australia

[6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3918955

[7] An independently commissioned survey conducted in December 2020 involving 1,003 respondents in Australia

About Rainforest Alliance:

The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organisation working in more than 70 countries at the intersection of business, agriculture and forests. The Rainforest Alliance is creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities. By bringing farmers, forest communities, companies and consumers together it addresses some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges of today. The organisation changes the way the world produces, sources and consumes, with a focus on cocoa, coffee, tea, bananas, forest products and palm oil through its certification program, tailored supply chain services, landscape and community work and advocacy. In 2020, more than 6.8 million hectares of land and more than 2.3 million farmers were certified according to the Rainforest Alliance or UTZ standards, which are designed to improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

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The trailblazer

September 28, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
7 Replies

By Mark Baker

Journalist Jan Mayman pioneered reporting of Indigenous deaths in custody

Jan would hate this. She never liked the limelight, constantly doubted her talent and was always self-effacing, unsure of her place on the margins between Black and white Australia where she had such a profound impact for good.

Her humility as much as her humanity was perhaps the secret of her success, why those for whom she fought so passionately and tenaciously throughout her life trusted her and shared their stories – and why she was able to pierce the defences of the powerful to reveal often shocking truths.

Jan Mayman, who has died at the age of eighty, was the most important journalist of her generation in exposing the systemic cruelty, neglect and injustice suffered by Indigenous Australians – long before most of the mainstream media were awakened to that grim and abiding reality.

For Jan, the turning point came in a hotel in the town of Roebourne on the northwest coast of Western Australia in 1983. A teacher friend had told her the alarming story of a sixteen-year-old Aboriginal boy who had died in police custody in Roebourne after a brawl with police officers. She flew north from Perth to investigate.

After the Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer refused to talk to her, a tall Aboriginal man approached: “I’d never met him before, he just beckoned me and I sort of followed him… He led me to a hotel room and he had eight Aboriginal people, all men, and they were lined up sitting on two beds and he said, ‘Tell her.’ And they all told me this shocking story.”

John Pat had joined a drunken confrontation with four off-duty policemen outside the Victoria Hotel on the evening of 28 September 1983. According to the witnesses, he was struck in the face by one policeman and fell backwards, striking his head hard on the roadway. Another officer kicked Pat in the head before he was dragged to a waiting police van, kicked in the face, and thrown in.

Other witnesses, who had been across the street from the police station, said Pat and several other Aboriginal prisoners were beaten as they were taken from the van and, one after another, dropped on the cement path. Each was then picked up, punched to the ground, and kicked. According to one observer, none of the prisoners fought back or resisted. An hour later, when police checked on Pat in his cell, he was dead.

The dramatic story was accepted by Age editor Creighton Burns, who ran it on the front page. The subsequent inquest, which led to the four policemen being charged with manslaughter, triggered the public outcry that precipitated the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. Jan Mayman’s reporting earned her a Gold Walkley, the highest accolade in Australian journalism.

It would be the first of many powerful stories detailing injustice over the next four decades. These included more cases of abuses and deaths in custody, the plight of stolen generations survivors and the battle to protect sacred Aboriginal lands against the encroachment of mining – notably the epic struggle by the Yindjibarndi of the Pilbara against Twiggy Forrest’s Fortescue Metals.

Jan became a champion of Indigenous rights with an unlikely colonial pedigree. Her grandfather, George Mayman, was a pioneering gold hunter and mine owner in the Kalgoorlie goldfields.

She was never comfortable in the tough, ego-driven world of journalism, where she was always an outlier, a freelancer who worked for some of the biggest newspapers in Australia and overseas but was never really embraced by the mainstream. Her independence was an asset, but she always struggled to earn enough money and was fearful of ruinous litigation without the guaranteed backing of a monied publisher.

She was both a powerful reporter and an elegant, evocative writer – a rare combination in journalism. While her investigative journalism was compelling, her writing captured the beauty of Aboriginal lands and powerful mystery of Indigenous traditions.

A generation before the killing of George Floyd in the United States ignited the Black Lives Matter movement around the world, Jan Mayman had exposed the ugly truth of endemic racism and abuse in Australia to a largely indifferent or ignorant mainstream audience.

The royal commission triggered by her journalism promised a sea change. Its 339 recommendations lit the path to reducing deaths in custody, imprisonment rates, inequality and disadvantage. “Few Australian royal commissions have attracted stronger, more passionate media attention than the 1991 final report,” journalist Wendy Bacon would write. The failure of that promise of change broke Jan’s heart.

The issues on which she fought so hard remain as far from resolution as ever. In the thirty years since the royal commission, almost 500 more Aboriginal people have died in custody. To John Pat’s name have been added others whose deaths are etched in shame – Mulrunji Doomadgee, Mr Ward, Ms Dhu. But most are forgotten numbers on a roll without end.

This article was originally published on Inside Story and has been reproduced with permission.

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Fomenting fear and loathing

September 27, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
38 Replies

By Ad astra

What appalling scenes we’ve witnessed recently in Melbourne: its streets engulfed by protestors marching to who knows where, or why. Do they?

The Westgate Freeway, the major arterial to the Western suburbs, was blocked and traffic disrupted by marchers plodding to the other side. Then where? Who knows what their purpose was?

What precipitated all this? Lockdowns, bans on the unvaccinated working in some situations, no option to decline vaccination, no possibility of refusing the wearing of masks even when mandated, punitive moves against the construction industry, and who knows what else. Whatever the reason though, it was hijacked by extremists hellbent on causing mayhem. And in the process, sites sacred to so many people, notably the Shrine of Remembrance, were desecrated by the protestors, even to the extent of urinating on it.

The protesters are said to be angry because of a three-week prophylactic lockdown of the construction industry to limit the spread of COVID, but anti-vaccination advocates, right-wing extremists, fascists, and neo-Nazis hijacked the event. Union officials insisted that these people had nothing to do with the union movement, and that they were ‘blow-ins’ using the occasion to advance their right-wing agenda. Attacks on the CFMEU headquarters affirm this.

This is what Premier Dan Andrews actually said:

Due to continued concern about case numbers, transmission risk and reduced compliance, construction will shut down in metropolitan Melbourne and other Local Government Areas currently in lockdown for two weeks from 11.59pm, Monday 20 September.

Recently, we have seen multiple outbreaks linked to construction. Construction workers are a mobile workforce who may work across multiple sites and travel longer distances to work than other permitted workers. Concerns have also been raised, and remain, about the sector’s compliance with public health measures and directions.

Also concerning is the transmission risk and geographic spread of construction cases, which led to a number of important public health measures including preventing workers crossing the regional/metropolitan border – but more action is required to stop the spread.

The immediate shut down action is being taken to reduce movement, minimise transmission and allow for the entire industry to appropriately adapt to the Chief Health Officer Directions, including increasing vaccination rates.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But reasonableness was not on the disrupters’ agenda. Fomenting fear and loathing was. Need I say any more?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

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What Strategic Game is AUKUS playing in Asia?

September 26, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
24 Replies

By Darrell Egan

In the 2004 movie Alexander which depicts Alexander The Great’s push into Asia, his long-time colleague says to him:

“The generals question your obsession with Darius. They say it was never meant for you to be King of Asia.”

The newly established Australia, United Kingdom and United States AUKUS alliance has a similar obsession in Asia and that obsession is China. This obsession for conquest in clearing Asia from any China input ignores China has been trading with Southeast Asia, even as far back as the time of Alexander with the later part of the Zhou Dynasty having Maritime Silk Road trade routes into South East Asia.

This was the early times of trade and diplomacy for China with South-East Asia which existed right up to the 13th Century with sandalwood trade with East Timor, then the Australian Trepang trade through Malaysian seafarer traders, before Australia was colonised and invaded by Britain.

Throughout this interaction in South East Asia, in a strategic chess game of compromise diplomacy, China never had a desire to invade or take over countries in these trade areas and was mostly concerned with protecting their border regions which include the South China Sea.

China as a civilisation state dealing with many regional neighbours in its long history of diplomacy realise this, with offers to both Vietnam and the Philippines for a joint venture in the South China sea.

The United States seems to be undermining, with militarising the area with their Navy even though China is not interfering with the freedom of movement of international shipping in the South China Sea as admitted by retired US Admiral Cedric Leighton.

In the 16th century we saw invasions from western powers with the Portuguese, Dutch and British saw invasions of conquest right up to the US in the Vietnam war.

In these invasions was the western powers invasions of China and division on their country in the late 19th century, with a zero-sum, your with us or you are against us foreign policy with Asia. Many horse gamblers bet odds on the historical track record of a horse US lead AUKUS group who does not seem to have a strategy of Chess game but more like a game of Hungry Hungry Hungry Hippo zero-sum win game in Asia.

With this US pivot to Asia and dragging Australia into direct conflict with China in the AUKUS group, this hawkish strategic game of Hungry Hungry Hungry Hippo has even more dire consequences for the region and the world, than Western powers incursions in Asia starting in the 16th Century.

Asian countries must be vigilant with these developments.

This article was originally published on Dazza Egan Australia & China Watch Journo.

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Examining Matt Canavan’s clean energy China cop-out

September 25, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
10 Replies

By Darrell Egan

Australian Minerals and Resources Minister Matt Canavan has been conjuring up a boogey man China comparison cop-out in not wanting to commit to clean energy targets, without any details of what he is comparing Australia to in regards to China.

If Matt is attempting to hold China up as an example of not making inroads to clean energy we really need to look at in detail what China has done in regards to moving towards clean energy.

From 2013 the Tsinghua University and Asian Development Bank has been producing Clean Energy reports for the Chinese Government.

This years report showed that China has one of the largest Green Financial markets with Green Loans exceeding $10.6 trillion and the issuing of Green Bonds exceeding $1.1 trillion.

In efforts in being part of an international Green Energy future China Co-Chairs the G20 Green Finance Study Group, co-founded the Network for Greening the Financial System and launched the Green International Principles with International partners as part of the Green Belt and Road Initiative to name a few of their environmental initiatives.

In cooperation with Mongolia the first Green Finance Tax scheme in Mongolia, with Technical assistance from the Tsinghua Green Finance Centre and the China Green Finance Committee. (See also Mongolia Green Taxonomy).

Further to this is on the ground grassroots efforts to tackle climate change in establishing the roots for the Billion Tree Project in which schools, community groups and private companies covered 23 per cent of China with forests in 2020.

These are initiatives Matt Canavan could learn from and get off the starting blocks.

In relation to China’s Electric Vehicle production their sales domestically increased by 8% and 43 % in export sales from 2019 to 2020. This increased sustained itself through the COVID pandemic.

With a population of 1.4 Billion people China plans to have 40 per cent of all vehicles in China sold to Electric Vehicles.

In relation to electric buses a 2018 Bloomberg New Energy Finance report found in 2016 that China was on average registering 340 buses a day in every single city in China.

In this same report it was found that in 2017 the circulation of China’s buses, 17% are Electric Vehicle buses. 90,000 of China’s registered buses are electric powered and 16 thousand are hybrid plug in powered.

This is far from the cop-out excuse boogey man that Matt Caravan is conjuring.

If Matt wants to come on board with the boogey man he is conjuring, the only thing that he has to decide on is what he is going to do with the stocking of coal import reduction present China gave back to Australia last Christmas.

This article was originally published on Dazza Egan Australia & China Watch Journo.

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Scott Morrison’s coercive control of women (part 3)

September 24, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
17 Replies

By Tess Lawrence

Women live with Mandemic virus

Scott Morrison’s coercive control of women

In this third and final excerpt of her treatise, Tess Lawrence takes no prisoners but leaves no woman behind. In the face of the Mandemic, she calls for women – and the world – and politicians to all woman up. (Please also see Part 1 and Part 2).

Women have long lived with what I call the Mandemic virus.

Like Coronavirus, it has various global variants and mutations and as burgeoning statistics attest, can cause physical and psychological injury – and prove fatal.

Unlike Coronavirus, there is no Mandemic vaccine.

Ironically and catastrophically, Coronavirus has formed an antigenic shift with the Mandemic virus, igniting sporadic breakouts of increased ‘domestic’ violence, mostly by men, towards women, children and their families in general.

Women have become the punching bags of the world. As well as the perennial sexcuse ‘she made me do it’ chuck in another one. Blame Covid-19.

I killed her. I blame her and Covid. They made me do it

Blame Coronavirus and everything and anything for beating her up, for knifing her, for running over her with the car, for glassing her, for kicking her in the stomach while she’s carrying a baby, for breaking her arm, for strangling her, for pouring petrol on her, for throwing acid on her face, for gaslighting her, for beheading her, for drowning her, for stoning her, for starving her, for breaking her spirit, for drugging her, for killing her children, for setting her and the children alight in a car, for throwing her/your child off a bridge, for raping her, for gang raping her, for killing her by grief, for not allowing her to vote, to dance, to sing, to love, to lust, for harassing her, for demeaning her, for sodomising her with implements, for torturing her, for keeping her uneducated, unfed, unhealthy, poor, for selling her into sexual slavery, for not letting her vote or stand for public office, for killing her with an axe, for killing her with a gun, for killing her with a Kalashnikov, a rapid fire assault rifle, for killing her with barrel bombs, cluster munitions, landmines, chlorine and lewisite, for mutilating her, for slicing off her clitoris, for killing her by humiliation, for ridiculing her, by rumours, for degrading her in public, for killing her by stealth, for killing her dreams, for killing her hope, for killing her aspirations, for stealing her dreams, for slut-shaming her, for killing her with unkindness, for sobbing like a girl, for weaponising sex abuse, by killing her with political psycho violence, for killing her with coercive control.

To all the above I have been privy. As a journalist, as an advocate, as a sister to all the women and girls and girl babies above. Some of the above I have experienced.

She. We. I. Have nowhere to hide.

Govt in-house inquiries into rape and sex abuse, dead loss

The industrial strength parliamentary allegations of rape and sexual harassment have resulted in a plethora of various inquiries, reports and navel upskirting, making international headlines and deadlines.

The community has to endure the nonsensical and irritating propensity of time-wasting of so-called ‘independent’ in-house investigations, often led by party flunkies, former or current staffers. They are a dead loss.

They are meaningless and invariably have happy endings for the accused. Nothing to see here, nothing to hear here, nothing to say. The government is simply regurgitating its own vomit.

Morrison’s cos, John Kunkel, an émigré from Rio Tinto that used sacred Juukan Caves for target practice

They are an insult to our intelligence and to justice. Most of all they are an insult to those who are courageous enough to speak their truth.

Take the facile Kunkel Report. It should be read with more than a grain of Epsom salts.

Dr John Kunkel is Morrison’s chief of staff and general advisory factotum. A proud émigré from Rio Tinto, the blow up doll of the mining industry who used the indigenous sacred caves of Juukan for target practice.

See what I mean? Goodness me, he might as well have been seconded to the Prime Minister by Rio Tinto.

It was Dr Kunkel who was charged with the onerous task of investigating the black ops sleazebags who were spreading false rumours about David Sharaz, partner of Brittany Higgins – his own colleagues in his own office, mind you. As if.

The Battle of Great Brittany in Manberra

Inspired by Grace Tame’s courage and example, on February 14, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, who worked for then Minister for Defence Industry, the hapless and some say hopeless, Linda Reynolds, revealed she had allegedly been raped by a colleague on a sofa in the Minister’s office in March, 2019.

The allegation stunned an already disgusted public, especially in learning how reaching out to her political peers left Higgins feeling threatened and isolated.

Headlines ricocheted around the world about this latest in a string of allegations and loud rumour that still swirl about Canberra, better named Manberra.

The usual platitudes of faux concern slid out of Morrison’s mouth, along with the pro forma denial of all knowledge of any such thing.

Il Duce Dutton Minister for Home Affairs and Au Pairs reduce Higgins’ claim to “He said, she said.” Really?

Add to this nothingness the repugnant, snide remarks by the ever-plotting prime minister-in-waiting Peter Dutton, still smarting from Morrison shrewdly out manoeuvering him for the top job in the Turnbull coup.

The then Minister for Home Affairs and Au Pairs blithely dismissed the Higgins allegations as a mere “he said, she said” affair. Really?

Well no. Not really. It turns out that Il Duce Dutton was being less than honest with the Australian people he professes to serve. Further, he has been more than duplicitous and misrepresented the facts about his knowledge of the Higgins allegations and his contact with his nemesis, Prime Minister Morrison – his office and minions.

An appalling Home Affairs Minister, Il Duce is now busy making an even greater mess of his current Defence portfolio than his predecessor, Marise Payne, whom Morrison has pathetically crowned the Prime Minister for Women in yet another forensic red flag of his disassociation to women and dismissal of the physical and psycho political sexual assault crisis in our Parliament that now warrants a Royal Commission.

Moreover, this crisis continues to compromise our national security and confirms that Dutton has lost control of this aspect of both portfolios. The stereotyping of cherchez la femme has obscured the brutal reality of cherchez l’homme.

Security Alert! If Putin has video of Trump peeing on prostitutes, what does he have on Aussie politicians?

If Vladimir Putin really has footage of Donald Trump peeing on prostitutes (hope they got paid extra, not for the peeing but because it was the Donald) then imagine what filth he has on Australian ministers and parliamentarians in general.

Despite serious allegations made by a number of women employed by the government, most politicians, including females, failed to make any definitive statements.

They displayed the political cowardice for which Australia has become synonymous, whether the discussion is about submarines, asylum seekers, voting at the United Nations, the judicial system, the workplace, the home, wage parity, aged are, superannuation, employment opportunity, welfare, housing, gender equality, Indigenous and other human rights, religious persecution, abortion, climate change or change of life. By any measure women get a bum deal.

But Australia has been blessed with a singular tribe of mostly young, fearless warrior women who have emerged from the shadows of autocratic abusive male dominance to stand defiantly in front of their accusers and their fellow Australians to call out and denounce their abusers and the systemic culture of toxic masculinity that protects and incubate them, including within corrupt political and institutional spheres.

Grace refuses to tame the shrew

Grace Tame, 2021 Australian of the Year, left the nation in awe with her profoundly eloquent, inspiring and moving acceptance speech. It shamed those of us who could have done more and didn’t. Including female politicians.

No more shaming or taming of the shrew within!

The end of her courageous speech when she talks of her serial rapist teacher’s command to be quiet, still echoes in my head and turns my gut:

“I remember him saying, ‘Don’t make a sound…
Well, hear me now!
Using my voice, amongst a growing chorus of voices that will not be silenced.
Let’s make some noise, Australia!”

Grace Tame’s Australian of the Year speech… shamed those of us who could have done more and didn’t. Including female politicians (Image from abc.net.au)

Tame’s speech prompts ScoMo’s ‘Felt good to get that out’ remark as if he was speaking about a fart

The first publicly known survivor of child sexual abuse to win the award, as well as the first Tasmanian recipient (she earlier won Tasmanian of the Year) Tame was also responsible for changing Tasmania’s archaic gag laws to enable victims/survivors to identify themselves if they so wished.

And what did our Prime Minister say to Tame after her compelling speech?

‘Well, gee, I bet it felt good to get that out!’

Image from pedestrian.tv

This is our Prime Minister speaking for gawd’s sake. As if he were talking about a fart. His repugnant and crass response again reflects a patronising pathology. Either he just doesn’t get it, or he just doesn’t care. Or both.

Women force fed manburger with the lot

It is apparent that our political system is geared to protect the guilty from all sides of the political spectra. The Westminster system was constructed by men, for men and remains mostly comprised of men to this day.

This inequity is reflected in all tiers of our society and the body politic, women are force fed the manburger with the lot.

Lacklustre leaders and governments without vision like Scott Morrison and the LNP compound the problem. The Labor Party and the Greens are not without sin. The world has a glut of such men.

Of course, Australia is not on its Pat Malone with any of this but given our track record we are implicit and complicit in the decrepit legacy world order that subjugates women through coercive control, menace and mendacity. We need a new model of government and governance.

Women getting the short end of the dick

If it is correct that 80 per cent of the world is ruled by men, then at 20 per cent women are surely getting the short end of the dick.

Don’t be misled by inane Coalition propaganda that it is genuinely concerned about the plight of women and girls in this country or any other.

We openly trade, consort, cavort and play sport with regimes that treat girls and women as chattels ultimately owned and enslaved by the male dominated state.

We do so because we share strands of the same intellectual and societal DNA as these foul regimes.

Execution of adulterous Saudi Arabian women related to execution of Hannah Clarke and her three children

The stoning to death of an adulterous woman in Saudi Arabia is unquestionably related to the horrific murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children, Aaliyah 6, Laianah 4, and Trey 3, burned alive by Hannah’s estranged husband Rowan Baxter, who poured petrol on his family and set them alight while they were in their car in Brisbane, February last year.

Ultimately, they were both executions engineered by the state. By defaullt. By intent.

In her 2019 book ‘Coercive Control – See What You Made Me Do’ and so-named SBS TV series, Australian journalist Jess Hill provides us with a litany of ugly home truths about this insidious societal disease that Australia has failed to incorporate into our Commonwealth criminal code, unlike Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.

Why do you think that might be?

Image from womensagenda.com.au

Says Hill:

“For a lot of people [coercive control] sounds like second-grade abuse, a lower form of abuse that wouldn’t be so hard to recover from. What the model of coercive control shows, is that where that is present, you are actually looking at a situation of entrapment, not just abuse.”

The psychological trap and the threat of violence for non-compliance is often enough to keep victims in a state of fear. In the case of Hannah Clarke, Baxter would change his routine randomly to keep her guessing his movements.”

Morrison’s – and the Coalition’s continual sometimes subliminal attempts to coercively control women – ultimately relegates us to instruments and possessions of the state, do they not? They are the same and similar tactics deployed by the likes of the Taliban, Islamic State, Boko Haram, cults, established religions and various pop up terrorist groups.

American Evan Stark’s book ‘Coercive Control – How men entrap women in personal life’ first published 14 years ago, nails the similarities between terrorism, hostage taking and coercive control.

I add the sexual grooming tactics of predators and the more blunt force tactics like cyber terrorism, spiking drinks and raping women whilst they are drunk or unconscious. Or dead.

I’m also adding government, fiscal, political and institutional coercive control of women. Dammit, chuck in manburger with the lot!

Australia slave to Granny England and Uncle Sam and any fossil that precedes the word ‘fuels’

In Australian politics we continue to follow whilst others lead. Latterly, there are no saints and few heroes. We boldly go only where others have already trod and that includes banal intellectual wastelands and fallow paddocks.

We don’t stand on the shoulders of our own giants, instead we genuflect to the United States, party donors, benefactors, sponsors and any fossil that precedes the word ‘fuels.’ We buy, sell and trade policies and principles on the toss of a dollar.

Since white settlement, we have never stopped tugging at the mullet that grows like a razorback hog’s down what remains of our political backbone, to ingratiate ourselves with Granny England, Uncle Sam or the carpet baggery of home grown and imported marauding mining companies.

Today Morrison is at the helm of this fetid heap of poisonous tailings.

His benign demeanour is dangerous. Consider the company he keeps. I’m not talking only about his QAnon mate, Tim Stewart or indeed Brian Houston but rather those who comprise and compromise his government.

Red-faced wombat Barnaby, eats beetroot and leaves

For a start there’s the red-faced wombat, deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, so called because he eats beetroot and leaves.

Barnaby’s philandering Joyce stick had already once caused him to be stripped of the position and cost him a marriage as well as inspiring then PM Turnbull’s ministerial ‘bonk ban’ on having sex with staff.

Even though Morrison is said to loathe Joyce and claims he cannot interfere in National Party internal politics, he could have and should have in this instance, given the squalid, hypocrisy of Joyce’s past and the (strenuously denied) allegations of sexual harassment by Catherine Marriott.

Regional as well as National Party women have deplored Joyce’s return, including former federal and state president, Christine Ferguson. The Nationals are no different to others when it comes to the disregard and disrespect for the safety and well being of women and girls.

Not only did an in house investigation into the allegations against Joyce predictably prove inconclusive but now there are circumstances concerning the man who headed up that investigation that warrants a truly independent investigation into Marriott’s allegations that will be seen to be fair to both parties.

It was discovered that Ross Cadell, the Nationals’ NSW State Director who oversaw the Joyce inquiry had been the subject of an apprehended domestic violence order by police in 2014 on behalf of Cadell’s former wife, that had later been withdrawn.

Women have had enough of sexcuses

Morrison’s pimping of obnoxious behaviour has been debated on social and anti-social multimedia platforms, mainstream and upstream media alike, in the court of public opinion and in national protest marches led by angry women who have had enough of sexcuses; me included.

Enough is more than enough. We have reached a stage when the coalition’s response to serial allegations of rape and other forms of sexual abuse and intimidation, harassment, covert and overt violence both within and close to parliament’s portals, are met by SloMo and his bovver boys and girls with indifference and diffidence.

The Liberal and National parties are mired in sewage of their own making; muck expunged from a body politic riddled with parasites feeding on their egos.

Too harsh? I’m not finished.

The reflux of the allegations by a now dead woman of rape against former Attorney-General Christian Porter and the allegation by Brittany Higgins that she was raped by a former parliamentary staff member have forever severed the larynx of the LNP circa Scott Morrison.

The facile and arrogant notion held by Morrison and Porter that he could remain Attorney General after his inane press conference when he outed himself, is again another red flag on the coercive control map.

So too is Porter’s arrogant presumption that anonymous monies poured into a Blind Trust is yesterday’s news, now that he has stood down as Industry Minister. Porter has long forfeited his right to represent Australia and the good folk of Pearce.

Christian Porter is the Minister for Christian Porter. Even in this porterfolio he has proven his deceit

Christian Porter is the Minister for Christian Porter. Even in this porterfolio, time and again he has shown his propensity for deceit. This ghastly man, who presumed he would one day be Prime Minister has been the architect of his own demise.

When Morrison goes down, and go down he will, the Porter scandal will indisputably be writ large on his political epitaph.

In my Independent Australia article, The night Porter and allegation of rape, I’ve documented a number of reasons for this claim.

We live in an era of big dick politics and big dick politicians. Hard men with hard-ons all the time, seemingly. Pun intended, there is more to come this side of the federal election.

Australia is a cause without a rebel

Time and again, claims of sexual harassment and cover-ups, the general fobbing off of women and the largely uncensured snide remarks and insult directed towards women for decades by members of both houses of parliament have brought the coalition into particular disrepute on this day. And for sure, some of the insult has been by women in the House.

Who can forget histrionic UteGirl, Michaelia Cash, the political scraps pecker who somehow reminds me of a gallus gallus domesticus (although that is probably unfair to your average chook) threatening to name “every young woman” in Bill Shorten’s office during a tit for tat Senates Estimates hearing?

This noxious bile spat from the mouth of a former Minister for Women! Now this political mercenary is the first law officer in the land. Just what is it about the likes of George Brandis, Christian Porter and Michaelia Cash that vaguely warrants their appointment to Attorney General?

Australia has become a cause without a rebel.

Women are political roadkill

Instead of railing against bigotry and bigots, the Prime Minister has led the Charge of the White Brigade. I’ve touched on only a few of the many worthy examples of proof

For too long in Australian politics, women have been perceived as roadkill. Politically, a bit on the side.

Throwing a few million overdue dollars at us recently is designed to shut us up, tantamount to economic coercive control.

It is as if we should be grateful for extra housekeeping money – if we’re good girls and don’t march or make a noise!

Women around the world live under a mandemic yoke. We need to woman up

We don’t need to wait for the results of a Morrison Rorschach test. He has a list of priors that are sourced well before he was elected PM. He has a modus operandi when dealing with problems – largely ignores them.

The global reality for women is that the design of all governments and regimes, fractured, rogue or otherwise practice coercive control of women, as do institutions and society in general, where it is so often culturally enshrined.

Our world remains a patriarchal collective, like it or no. Even the spoils of war, the looting and the mooting of a new world order really refers to male power, military and political supremacy. Let’s not kid ourselves that the notion embraces gender equality on any level. Millions of women are enslaven to men and their governments and governance.

None of this is so called feminist rhetoric, or the spoutings of any womanifesto. This is the reality for women and girls. The societal dominant and dominating gender is male. It is men who hold the greater power.

Australia and the rest of the world needs to forensically analyse what is left of our degraded democracies and all other forms of regimes infected with the Mandemic virus.

Some of us must step up and take responsibility for not making enough noise, as Grace Tame urges us to do.

We have to fight against an elitism and the corporatisation of what must be a new kind of emancipation. We need to see more so-called ordinary women and indigenous women attend summits and contribute to reports; women who are not always renowned corporate game changers, but women who are mostly voiceless. We need to seek them out, we need to hear their voices. We need to learn from them.

I want to hear from potential Hannah Clarkes and not just hold a wake around their funeral pyre.

Women – and the wonderful men who love us and support us – need to lock this in. To lock our arms around one another. Leave no woman behind. Politicians throughout the world need to acknowledge the wars on women.

Women, myself included, need to woman up.

Please Note: If you need any support, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14. You are not alone.

© Tess Lawrence

Tess Lawrence is Contributing editor-at-large for Independent Australia and her most recent article is The night Porter and allegation of rape.

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Scott Morrison’s coercive control of women (part 2)

September 23, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
24 Replies

By Tess Lawrence

Porter reveals he has document signed by Kate!

In her second excerpt on Scott Morrison’s Coercive Control of Women, Tess Lawrence doubles down on her treatise calling out Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s dangerous weak and duplicitous leadership. She asserts the continuous political assault and insult of women spills into his incompetency in foreign affairs and gross mismanagement of domestic policies and argues that the body politic itself is corrupted by toxic masculinity when it comes to the treatment of women.

Please read excerpt one here.

Content warning: This article discusses rape, suicide and institutional political psychosexual violence.

By any abacus, Christian Porter’s Blind Trust adds up to dirty money.

More than that, it smacks of something more ominous and ugly; something sinister; perhaps a cover up.

One consolation for those of us who still mourn the death of the woman known as ’Kate’ who alleged she was raped by Porter when they were both teenagers, is that this outrageous contribution to Porter’s legal fees has resulted in Porter’s overdue resignation as a cabinet minister.

But that’s not enough. As a double act, Porter and Morrison clearly think we are fools. So must Porter’s donors. We need to know who donated those monies. We will find out.

Morrison’s obfuscation at Sunday’s press conference and his continued reticence to call out Porter’s latterly conduct is repugnant. SloMo has priors.

If Porter and Morrison continue to promulgate the myth that it is of no consequence who donated these monies to Porter, to help pay the legal fees for a spurious defamation action he initiated after outing himself as the alleged perpetrator, then I suggest they are deluded. Big time.

Porter saga proves Morrison government unfit for purpose.

This latest tawdry episode in the Porter saga, again confirms that he and Morrison are undeserving of the trust of the electorate.

The Morrison government is unfit for purpose and well beyond its use-by date.

What if, like former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, Porter’s sly money was sourced.

Dastyari said it was; “support for settlement of outstanding legal matter.”

Sound familiar?

What if Porter’s donors are far-right supremacists?

What if the monies were donated by a company/individual awarded hefty government contracts rubber stamped by Porter when he was Attorney General or Industry Minister?

What if the donor is a far-right supremacist group, or an international armaments group or a mining company, or a country – Saudi Arabia? Or other conflicts of disinterest? Quid quo pro?

Importantly, what if the donors had a vested interest in suppressing any more information relating to ‘Kate’s’ allegations of rape against Porter?
What if the donors were part of a Liberal faction slush fund?
What if the donors had any influence in Porter’s decision to discontinue the defamation action against the ABC and Louise Milligan?
What if the donors had any influence in ‘Kate’s’ decision to withdraw her complaint against Porter?
What if the donors had criminal affiliations?

Not only are we voters entitled to speculate on the nature and identity of Porter’s benefactor(s) but he actually invites us to do so by virtue of his Blind Trust.

The subtext to all the above is the utter contempt and disrespect shown towards women – and the flagrant disregard for political ethics and standards.

Let us not forget, we are still awaiting Morrison’s legal advice on Porter’s Blind Trust. Pathetic.

Porter and the hours of power

While researching this article, I see that last year, Porter enjoyed the hospitality of former Fortescue chief honcho, now Perth Airport CEO, Neville Power on several charter flights, the first being in May, mere weeks after Scott Morrison appointed Power as Chairman of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC).

How fortuitous it is then that one of Power’s (great surname for someone on the board of energy company Strike) boardroom colleagues on Strike just happens to be Andrew Seaton, the Managing Director of Australian Naval Infrastructure Pty Ltd.

A curious entity, ANI is owned by the Australian Government represented by two Shareholder Ministers, the Minister for Finance, Senator Simon Birmingham and Il Duce Peter Dutton, Minister for Defence and Prime Minister-in-Waiting.

ANI seems to be an empty vessel at the moment, its assets apparently including six Collins Class submarines.

Ships ahoy! When Porter leaves politics, of his own free will or otherwise, the old boy’s network will surely kick in for him. For your perusal and in the interest of transparency, we include below the text of Porter’s entry to the Register of Members’ Interests, dated September 13, 2021.

This is how the big boys pay their debts. Corporate jobseeker for mates, if you will:

“I wish to alter my statement of registrable interests as follows:

In March 2021, I commenced defamation proceedings in a purely personal capacity against the ABC and Ms Louise Milligan [NSD 206 of 2021]. On 31 August 2021 this matter was finalised by the Court.

Although these matters have been conducted in a personal capacity and all legal services were engaged in a purely personal capacity, out of an abundance of caution and consistent with approaches adopted by other parliamentarians in relation to the provision of reduced fee or pro bono legal services, I advise that, in addition to my own personal funds, the following contributions have recently or may shortly be made:

• As has been publicly reported, as part of the settlement an amount was paid by the ABC to Company Giles. Now that the matter has been resolved the relevant cheque will be deposited in Company Giles trust account and applied to my account.

• Part contribution to the payment of my fees by a blind trust known as the Legal Services Trust. As a potential beneficiary I have no access to information about the conduct and funding of the trust.

• My engagement of Ms Chrysanthou was on a commercial fee arrangement. However, consistent with her practice for individual clients, she did not charge me for all of the time she spent on the matter and in the recent settling of her fees I am aware there has been a reduction in fees which has resulted in me having received some services from Ms Chrysanthou on a reduced fee basis.

Although all of the above contributions were made to me, or were for my benefit, in a purely personal capacity, in the interest of transparency and out of an abundance of caution I make this disclosure pursuant to item 14 of the Register of Members Interest.”

Porter bombshell! He has copy of Kate’s signed document

Porter must have known that this perfunctory entry would unleash another media firestorm, but the statement he posted on his website on Sunday contained a bombshell that seems to have escaped closer scrutiny and yet it reveals so much about the man – the political milieu of Morrison’s collective narcissistic government and the LNP in general.

I’m not alone in noting that in talking about his dead accuser Porter rarely expresses any emotion, even when referring to her suicide.

I prefer the phrase ‘alleged suicide’ in this case not because I think Kate was murdered, but because I am well aware that we human beings can be driven to suicide. And we can be driven to it by individuals, by social media, by the ‘system’ and other factors and triggers.

Note: Here I must state categorically that in no way am I – or The Australian Independent Media Network – asserting or implying that Christian Porter had anything whatsoever to do with Kate’s suicide.

Read Porter’s analysis of Kate’s 88-page signed document!

Reading Porter’s resignation statement, I was struck by these words:

“…I have recently been provided from a source outside the ABC with a copy of the only signed document that the person who made and subsequently withdrew the complaint ever made.

Many parts of that 88-page document are such that any reasonable person would conclude that they show an allegation that lacks credibility; was based on repressed memory (which has been completely rejected by courts as unreliable and dangerous); which relied on diaries said to be drafted in 1990/91 but which were actually words composed in 2019; and, was written by someone who was, sadly, very unwell…”

Porter needs to be questioned about the above paragraphs in particular:

How can he be so adamant that the copy of the 88-page document in his possession is the only signed document by Kate that exists?
Has Porter given a copy of this signed document to the police?
Does Kate’s friend and one of her ardent champions, Jo Dyer have this document?
Did Porter show Prime Minister Scott Morrison the copy of this signed document?
Has the signature and the document been verified as Kate’s?
Was the document sworn and witnessed?
Where was it sworn and who was the witness?
Was the document stamped?
Was the document addressed to anyone?
Is the document source connected to Porter’s donor(s)?
How long has Porter been in possession of the 88-page document?
Does the 88-page document contain Kate’s unsigned statement that was released by the Federal Court in the public interest?
Has Porter sent a copy of the 88-page document to the Federal Court?
Do Porter lawyers Sue Chrysanthou and Rebekah Giles have a copy of the 88-page document? Are they obliged to forward that document to interested parties?
Has Kate’s family got a copy of the document?
Was that document produced in Court and/or presented as evidence?

So many more questions. So many more answers to be declined by Porter and the Government.

Federal Court releases unsigned statement by Kate

In March, my article The Night Porter and Allegation of Rape, published in Independent Australia prompted heartening interest and response from informants and sources, not just about the Porter saga but also about other allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence within and outside of Federal and State Parliaments and invariably coercive control was discussed as a major factor, whether it be in institutions, companies, workplaces, including media outlets, or within households and relationships.

Out of respect for Kate’s own story, her truth as she believed it, of no less value because she is now dead – and because the Federal Court, in a breathtaking decision, thought we the people should hear Kate’s voice – I’m including this comment I posted under The Night Porter article – as is. It has all the links to access Kate’s unsigned statement.

PUBLIC INTEREST BOMBSHELL ! FEDERAL COURT RELEASES ‘ KATE’S ‘ STATEMENT!

* WARNING: KATE’S STATEMENT INCLUDES HER GRAPHIC AND DISTRESSING RAPE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AUSTRALIA’S FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL, CHRISTIAN PORTER, WHO REMAINS A CABINET MINISTER IN THE MORRISON GOVERNMENT.

* Dear Readers, we invite you to read ‘ Kate’s ‘ profoundly moving statement along with the preamble sent by her friends

The Federal Court yesterday released the redacted statement in the public interest and I’ve placed links to the actual ‘Exhibit 1’ that is the redacted document, as well as a link to the court case Dyer v Chrysanthou that precipitated its release.

‘KATE’ ALLEGES BRUTAL ANAL AND ORAL RAPE BY PORTER THAT LEFT HER BLEEDING AND ALSO ALLEGES HE SHAVED HER LEGS AND UNDERARMS.

The Federal Court is to be thanked for posting the statement online, so that the wider community has access to what many lawyers, politicians and journalists have been privy to, for some time.

24 June 2021 25 May 2021Exhibit 1 – Dossier + Letter (PDF, 1.8 MB)Second respondent

https://www.fedcourt.gov.au…

‘Kate’ was found hanged in the garden of her home in Adelaide last year. Her statement is a voice from that cold and lonely grave. We cannot exhume Justice for her. But we can at least, listen to her voice and allegations and yes, we can decide whom is more trustworthy – whom is to be believed – Kate or Porter?

Christian Porter criticised the ABC In connection with the settlement of his defamation case against it.
He can say or believe what he wants, but his reputation is trash.
Speaking for myself, I believe that he is a terrible, immoral and grotesque human being

— Julian Burnside (@JulianBurnside) May 31, 2021

Julian Burnside has spoken up for so many of us on so many occasions, invariably on behalf of the least of us, including indigenous Australians and Asylum Seekers.

In the above Tweet he says he is speaking for himself. But thousands of us will share his views on Christian Porter.

It is sickening to think Porter was once our Attorney General, holding the highest law office in the land. He was appalling then and more so now.

We have listened to him lie and distort the truth. If his reputation is trashed it was he who trashed it. He continues to hold himself unaccountable to no-one save his ego.

He has dashed his hope of becoming Prime Minister.

The Porter affair thus far can be viewed through the prism of institutional coercive control.

Porter’s lust for power is mirrored in Morrison’s ineptitude and mishandling of Porter’s clear political misconduct. Morrison thinks that if he ignores the stockpile of problems exacerbated by his leadership and a Coalition that clearly strives for mediocrity that we will go away – not the problems.

Australia is languishing through lack of leadership. Christian Porter, Scott Morrison and the LNP have forgotten that they are servants to the people. Instead, they are trying to enslave us to a decrepit legacy system that is reliant on coercive control, and social infrastructure drip fed by political bullies.

CONTACTS FOR SUPPORT. Please reach out. You are not alone.

Lifeline
Phone: 13 11 14
Website: www.lifeline.org.au

Blue Knot Foundation
Counselling and support for survivors
Phone: 1300 657 380

Bravehearts Inc
Counselling and support for survivors, child protection advocacy
Phone: 1800 272 831

Continued tomorrow …

© Tess Lawrence

Tess Lawrence is Contributing editor-at-large for Independent Australia and her most recent article is The night Porter and allegation of rape.

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The Hawke Files and the Birth of the 51st State

September 23, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
9 Replies

By David C. Paull

As recent foreign policy developments show, Australia has abandoned any notion of an independent defence policy to one of strategic offence as part of a new US-UK alliance, fulfilling a long-standing desire by the US for Australia to be a client state.

A recent article published (June 2021) in the Australian Journal of Politics and History has for the first time reviewed diplomatic cables from US official archives from the 1970s. It highlighted the extent to which Hawke was a primary informant to US diplomats during this time, a relationship the US was keen to nurture given the growing importance of Labor in national Australian politics following the Menzies era and its relationship with the labour movement. The article contends that this relationship was key to the shaping of policy under the Hawke-Keating Government and beyond, particularly, by ensuring Australia remains within the US sphere of military influence.

The article by historian Cameron Coventry comes not long after earlier insights into the relationship between US intelligence and Australia revealed in Brian Toohey’s 2019 book ‘Secret’, shedding light, among other things, onto the active role US intelligence played in trying to oust the Whitlam Government, largely due to his wish for greater transparency into the operations of the US military and CIA on our shores. As it turned out Buckingham Place delivered the coup d’grace a year later.

The close relationship between actors in Australian and US intelligence of course goes back prior to the Prime Ministership of Whitlam, as evidenced by Australia’s secret role in the overthrowal of the Allende Government in Chile and the Sukarno Government in Indonesia.

It is clear from the Toohey disclosures that the US considers Australia as vital in maintaining its strategic position in the world, particularly through its bases at Pine Gap and the North West Cape. However, the Coventry article shows how much the US was interested in influencing government policy in Australia, particularly in the areas of industrial relations, macroeconomics as well as foreign policy. The role played by Hawke as an informer, while certainly not the only one, appears to be a crucial factor for the US and its successful maintenance of its corporate and military interests during the Hawke-Keating era and subsequent governments.

Robert Hawke is on the record for being a strong supporter of the American alliance, while the extensive diplomatic cables from 1973-79, released by the US Government during the period 2004-15, do not reveal his words, they do record the main concerns of the US and how American diplomats responded to this relationship.

The cables show US diplomats recognised Hawke’s ambition to become the nation’s leader and his unequalled ability to deal with union affairs, particularly during his role as ACTU head. Hawke provided information regarding union disputes with multinational corporates such as the Ford Motor Company¹. US diplomats lauded Hawke for his ability to keep them abreast of labour developments and his ability to keep militant unions at bay.

Perhaps Hawke was most useful to the US in his attitude to foreign affairs and the bilateral relationship. Tensions with Whitlam had emerged over the bases and with a perceived shift in public opinion². But as the cables show Hawke came to the rescue pacifying any anti-American sentiment which may have come from his Labor colleagues even to the point of denying any CIA activity in Australia³. Hawke even warned the US when installations were to be targeted by union activity.

It was also widely known that Hawke was zealously pro-Israel, Whitlam thought this was blatant electioneering because of the high number of Jewish voters in Melbourne, but Hawke pulled in the bucks, even interfered with Whitlam’s negotiations with Arafat by involving US diplomatic staff ⁴. This pro-Israel tradition has also come down through the decades.

What is clear from the cables is that US diplomats maintained a belief in Hawke’s ability to maintain US global interests, while publicly he projected a desire for “an independent non-aligned Australia”, privately, he wanted to expand ANZUS beyond a “purely defensive military alliance”⁵.

Is this what has been realised under Prime Minister Morrison? The original deal with the French of 12 diesel submarines was clearly about patrolling Australian waters and providing a strong deterrence to incursions into our waters. There was less requirement for stealth, more for covering a large territory with the ability for more frequent re-fueling and easing any requirement for this task to be undertaken by allies.

Nuclear powered submarines will have a longer-range capacity and a greater stealth abilities, more suited to assisting offensive operations. On top of this the US intends to step up military presence on our shores with more troops and operational capability. The whole package of AUKUS must be taken as a re-alignment of Australia’s security policy, with all the implications still not apparent, though New Zealand seems to have been cast aside.

One implication is for a proliferation of nuclear infrastructure within Australia. The reactors used in U.S. nuclear submarines require highly enriched uranium, and it makes little sense that Australia should not do this from its own shores. Although this is being denied now, Australia will gain access to this technology as its fleet expands. The greater U.S. and British willingness to transfer highly sensitive technologies to Australia suggests that we will see increased capacity to service the submarines on our won shores.

The legacy of the Hawke/US relationship lives with us today. Under Howard, the groundwork had already been done, the Coalition continued to wind back union rights, increase neoliberal corporatization of the economy and follow the US into any war they saw fit.

Today, US corporate financial, water and property interest in Australia has never been stronger. Now the military connections have been stepped up such that our sovereignty has become blurred, as Keating points out.

As the war hawks today swirl at the spectre of a Chinese paper tiger, it seems we are locked into a more offensive UK-US alliance structure and a government determined to undermine our rights and welfare at every turn. What a betrayal those days of Hawke now seem to those who long for a country that supports social justice and an independent foreign policy. Surely this is the task of a new Labor Government.

¹Coventry, C.M., 2021. The “Eloquence” of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79. p. 7

²ibid, p. 18

³ibid, p. 18

⁴ibid, p. 22

⁵ibid, p. 20

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What does it take?

September 23, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
29 Replies

By Sue Carrigan

Seriously, my head is about to explode. Never in my living memory have I had to witness the failings of a Prime Minister and his Coalition members as they lead a stunned populace headlong into what amounts to a shitstorm of catastrophic proportions.

Let’s for a moment put aside the country’s current pandemic crisis. We all know how we wound up in the situation; quarantine, vaccine, lockdowns, protests etc. What I think we have missed in the backwash is the bigger picture of how inept the current government is due to the absolute lack of integrity, honesty, foresight, intelligence, leadership or personal responsibility for their actions.

Let’s also put aside the governments complete lack of preparedness or even concern for the global climate crisis. Their complete ignorance with regard to emission targets and fossil fuel reduction can’t be underestimated, as they continue to open up new coal mines and argue the barrier reef is ‘nothing to see here, mate.’

Perhaps we should also turn a blind eye to the culture within our government with regard to sexual harassment of women, politicians’ behaviour in a work environment that has no formalised code of conduct. But it is impossible to turn away from appalling calibre of some of the elected representatives that run our country.

The list of current LNP members whose conduct in the office that they represent has been overshadowed by underhanded dealings is through the roof. Insult to injury is that they all manage to resurface as the government merry-go-round of ‘how quickly we forget’ spins on its merry way.

Susan Ley quit the front bench in 2017 under an expenses scandal. 2019 sees her back as Minister for the Environment, for fuck’s sake, she is a coal advocate who demands that ‘The Great Barrier Reef’ be taken of the endangered list, and took a trip overseas to make sure it happened.

Bridget McKenzie quit the cabinet in 2020 because she had breached ‘ministerial standards’ over dodgy fund allocations, but here she is back in 2021 as a Minister for ‘who gives a rats’ arse.’

Michaelia Cash, accused of lying to the Senate Committee and all-round nasty when it came to defending Britanny Higgins, is unbelievably now back in one of the highest political positions as Attorney-General. Seriously, is it just me?

Craig Kelly, a furniture salesman turned scientific expert, removed to the back bench in 2021 for being an absolute moron, jumps ship along with his anti-vax messaging and joins up with that other charmer, who I had hoped choked on his money, to head the United Australia Party.

Christian Porter, well what a saga that has turned out to be. Track record as a compete misogynist and womaniser then accused of historical rape. Stands down as Attorney-General but no shit sticks to Teflon, and he takes the ABC to court. Then won’t say who funded the bill, breaching Ministerial Standards (laughable because it appears this government has no standards). Does the PM sack him or make any decision at all? That would be a no, Porter decides to step down and go and twiddle on the back bench. These people have absolutely no shame or even a sense of public humiliation.

But this is the final straw. Barnaby Joyce (we all remember who he is, the bloke who practically said; ‘what baby, I’m not sure if it’s even mine’… nice one, resurrected from the back bench in 2021 as deputy PM, go figure) announced that:

‘Christian Porter has now paid the price. He has gone to the corridor of the nearly dead, where I was for 3 and a bit years, just above the carpark. He has like so many of us, gone to the corridor of the nearly dead (yes, he repeated it) … I bet you his electorate won’t resign from him though. He’s an incredibly astute politician, he’s incredibly capable. I’ll put money that we’ll see him back again.’

What the absolute fuck!! Joyce is an ignorant mouthpiece for what many politicians think but aren’t stupid enough to say. That we voters are dumb bottom feeders who have the memory of a gnat and will forget the shit that goes on behind the locked secretive hallways of the federal government.

We should and must demand a better class of human being than those which we are suffering through and tolerating. Joyce’s corridor of the nearly dead, needs to lead from the hallowed hallways to the servant’s exit where they should be despatched and never be heard of again.

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Scott Morrison’s coercive control of women (part 1)

September 22, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
25 Replies

By Tess Lawrence

Tess Lawrence is not known for holding back when holding forth. In this first excerpt from a longer treatise she calls out Prime Minister Scott Morrison, accusing him of both implicit and complicit coercive control over women in Australia, including female cabinet ministers as well as complainants of alleged rape and other forms of sexual assault and harassment.

Content warning: This article discusses rape and institutional political psychosexual violence.

Scott Morrison’s coercive control of women

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has burgeoned into a political psychopath.

His flaccid leadership and the gross logistical incompetence he’s displayed whilst mismanaging the accumulation, distribution and access to coronavirus vaccines for the comparatively small population who inhabit our vast continent are just two reasons why his tenure is doomed.

There are other crises that warrant immediate attention despite his continuing attempts to suffocate public debate. One of them is Morrison’s ‘woman problem.’ His misogyny and contempt for women have long been stripped bare. They are self-evident; two-faced on the one coin.

The government’s shrewd appropriation of last week’s National Summit on Women’s Safety was an indictment of the continuing irrelevance of the Liberal National Party when it comes to self-examination and institutional reform.

The lack of public advocacy by LNP female cabinet ministers and their appalling political subservience to the ‘father’ of the nation is galling, when it comes down to cleansing Parliament of its sleaze and sleazebags and rehabilitating the House of ill-repute it has become.

So is this. Mere days before the summit, Morrison and his desultory flunkies turfed most of the recommendations made by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins for the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Today the Morrison Government voted against 49 of the 55 recommendations made in the landmark Respect@Work report by @Kate_Jenkins_ .

These reforms would have had a real long term impact on the lives of all Australian women ensuring safer and more equitable workplaces. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/4DQIrm3xtw

— Brittany Higgins (@BrittHiggins_) September 2, 2021

Many good and wonderful women attended the summit and participated in good faith. Many more should have been there. The paltry 48 hours assigned to the summit was cruel insult. As was Morrison’s keynote address. He is a study in hypocrisy.

His twinkling eyes belie a smarmy paternalism. We have watched him slither from autocrat minister to prime minister, snatching the wattle crown with stealth from more politically agile expectants after the Turnbull spillage.

Morrison’s coercive control stem from Christian Sharia

Afghanistan’s Taliban are shameless in their overt control over women, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s insidious coercive control of women stems from a fundamentalist white man’s version of Christian sharia that deems women, like animals, are mere chattels owned by men and the state.

Of course, all regimes and governments exercise greater coercive control over women than men. Institutional bullying of women in particular is endemic in the construct of rule and religion. Democracy and the Westminster System alike are founded on the coercive control of women, are they not? In the West we learn how heroic women died in the fight for suffrage. They did us proud. My generation has betrayed them. How so?

Elsewhere and everywhere millions of faceless, nameless women continue to die from the catastrophic realities of simply being born female; remaining third class humans within their family household, the notion of voting or standing for any kind of parliament or public office not even a secret fantasy. We all have a shared history, a shared humanity, a shared inhumanity.

What is our Prime Minister doing about it in our own backyard? Bugger all.

We know enough of Morrison’s past and present to call out his patriarchal authoritarianism.

He is publicly steeped in evangelical, biblical primitivism and the subversive, oppressive white tribalism that fuels racial and male gender supremacy.

The latter marches alongside the latent new dawn of pan aryanism now insinuating its emergence from the darker marginalia of history into the stark daylight of global reality; the memento mori of those black and white Pathe’ newsreels replaced and repurposed with full blown glorious technicolour that capture scenes of terrorism, murder and butchery most foul.

Yet blood shed by all nations is as the same crimson shared on humanity’s own Pantone colour chart, regardless of gender.

Morrison’s laying of hands one thing – what of that other kind of laying on of hands?

Morrison may indeed possess healing powers when it comes to his religious laying on of hands upon unwitting constituents enduring hardship.

But it is his failure to adequately address allegations of the unwanted laying on of multiple hands of another kind by male parliamentary predators within the Liberal Party that renders him liable to being described a facilitator and enabler of such creeps; at the least, a bystander.

Then there’s the many allegations of historical and contemporary rape made against other politicians and staff – not all members of the Coalition either.

Morrison’s remit is Parliament and Australia entire; whether polity or populi. Time and again he has manhandled these allegations. He has weaponized them. He has turned that rapid fire assault rifle on the accusers themselves, forever trying to suppress their speech and control the public and political narrative.

His tolerance of what may yet prove to constitute criminal behaviour is disturbing.

Remember how he contemptuously nominated his bestie Brian Houston to be in Australia’s entourage and a guest at President Donald Trump’s White House state dinner?

Houston, we have a problem!

But hey, with Pastor Brian Houston, we had a problem.

Royal Commission cited Houston over father’s sex abuse.

The New Zealand-born founder of global behemoth Hillsong Church, Houston, Morrison’s religious guru and mentor was cited by the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse for failing to inform police that his own father, Pastor Frank, was a self-confessed child abuser.

That failure dogs the son of the paedophile preacher man to this day. It dogs Morrison too.

Note: Houston was recently charged by NSW police with the alleged concealment of alleged child sex offences. In the United States, Hillsong continues to be mired in sexual scandals as well.

Sources say Oz big bizzo threatened boycott White House dinner if Houston attended.

It was Wall Street Journal’s Vivian Salama who broke the story about Morrison’s failed attempt to secure Houston an invite to Pennsylvania Avenue. And yet before Salama’s scoop, there was loud rumour in diplomatic circles that Trump had given Morrison and Houston the finger.

Now I have learned from former White House insiders that they were not the only ones who didn’t want this episode in the life of Brian to cause political fission. I was told that powerful Australian business interests didn’t want a bar of Houston either.

Of course, Houston had visited Trump’s White House before and after Morrison’s visit but the intervention by some from big bizzo was uncompromising. Some were said to have threatened to boycott the state dinner if Houston attended.

I quote one member of the group who asked not to be identified:

“We don’t want to be in the same room as Houston, whether it’s the White House or the Lodge – let alone sit at the same table with him.”

Further, I was told by a former White House staffer that some of those White House dissidents are also amongst the group of business powerbrokers that recently approached former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to intervene in the lack of vaccines debacle in Australia.

White House rebuff kick in the goolies for Morrison

The fact that even pussy grabbing Trump knocked back the megachurch’s Pastor Houston in this instance was a kick in the goolies for the embarrassed and embarrassing Morrison.

He’d tried in vain to keep a lid on the fact that Houston’s name was on his intimate dance card, once even preposterously asserting that to do so would constitute a threat to national security.

Morrison and Houston were both humiliated by the knockback. I understand our US Ambassador Joe Hockey sided with the business power brokers. Surprise, surprise. Australia now has to endure the historical ignominy of inviting Houston to represent Australia in the first place over arguably worthier invitees.

But wait, there’s more, in less than a fortnight, SloMo is off to the White House again to attend the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue Leaders Summit. President Joe Biden will be doing his darndest to get some sense out of Morrison on the subjects of Covid 19, climate change, cyberspace and oh, yeah, something about a free and open Indo-Pacific. Did someone mention China? No mention of the increasing violence towards women or the disintegration of Afghanistan and particularly the plight of women.

But out of earshot of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, Morrison will be discussing the implications of the Houston fracas.

Houston episode forensic insight into ScoMo’s psyche

The point is, this White House-Houston episode gives us important psycho-forensic insight into Morrison’s tolerance laissez-faire attitude and mindset about the proliferation and subject of sex abuse in general.

It exposes a worrying personal and political diffidence towards the many historical and contemporary allegations of rape, sexual harassment, insult, abuse and violence made by women – and directed at women within and beyond parliamentary precincts.

It shows too, how Morrison puts his mates first and Australia second. He does this time and again.

Note: Here we must also cite the Coalition’s failure to implement critical aspects of the Royal Commission’s recommendations, specifically the Redress Scheme.

Does Scott Morrison really treat men against whom allegations have been made differently to their alleged victims? Yes. His biases favour males in general and they include alleged male perpetrators.

The siring of daughters has clearly done little to prompt him to be either friend, mentor, protector or prime minister for womankind. We are the last among equals and our Indigenous sisters are the least among the last.

The barbarians at the Holgate

Consider the outrageous bullying and egregious cowardly attack under the protection of parliamentary privilege upon then Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate, by Scott Morrison.

On the morning of October 22, last year, Ms Holgate appeared before Senate Estimates where it was revealed Australia Post had gifted $3000 Cartier watches to four employees, as a bonus for (it has since been revealed) securing contracts worth several hundred millions of dollars.

In feverish delight, Morrison seized the opportunity to put the boot in to Holgate in Parliament, once again displaying his capacity for demeaning women, going so far as to cast aside common sense let alone natural justice and the law:

“She has been instructed to stand aside, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go.”

It was a repugnant abuse of power and parliamentary privilege by a Prime Minister who is accustomed to maintaining a political harem of proudly compliant female ministers who lack the moral and political fortitude as individuals or even as a group, to seriously denounce and indict allegations of bullying and sexual abuse within their own party, even within their own cabinet.

Morrison’s notorious corporate slut-shaming and bullying of Holgate is forever documented in hansard and the ugly saga of the barbarians at the Holgate is far from over. Holgate recently received a $1million payout from Australia Post.

Morrison’s outrageous presumption of the woman’s guilt was out of order, given he did not have the facts at sleight of hand. It was an act of political psycho-violence against Holgate; part of a behavioural pattern, coercive control.

He bloody well knew that Australia Post had a history of dishing out opulent bonuses, including those made to Holgate’s male predecessor Ahmed Fahour.

Mathias Cormann, Onan the Invisible v CEO Holgate

Revelling in his power and toxic masculinity, Morrison proceeded to demean and vilify Holgate in the people’s house. In our name. Not only was he her accuser but also the jury and sentencing judge.

But there had been a long-time plan afoot. Months earlier, he’d sent in his bovver boy Communications Minister Paul Fletcher to politically stalk and undermine Holgate.
Go-fetch-her-Fletcher was only part of it.

There was the sneaky skullduggery of Onan the Invincible, former Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, he who was the regurgitator in 2014 of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s offensive “economic girlie man” slur. How is it okay for a minister to use the word ‘girlie’ as an insult?

The Government needn’t have bothered paying for actors for this ‘play like a girl’ ad – it simply should have featured Mathias Cormann and his ‘girlie man ’insult. After all, there’s no copyright on sexism.

Together with certain members of Australia Post’s Board and Executive, the blokes plotted to get rid of Holgate, who’d dug in her high heels, to keep Australia Post intact, despite being subjected to industrial strength gaslighting, undermining, mudslinging and character assassination.

Magna Cartier

She was steadfastly opposed to any Coalition privatisation or divestiture of Australia Post, as had been conveniently recommended in a Boston Consulting Group report.

It just so happened that Boston Consulting’s report happily coincided with the LNP’s intent to sell off AP and sell out Australia’s iconic mail delivery service.

Holgate’s apparent largesse provided Morrison with the perfect sexcuse. The perfidious plan to flay Holgate in public was detonated by the Primed Minister.

The Magna Cartier ‘scandal’ provided him with cover for political thuggery. Or so he thought.

Parliamentary privilege – the politician’s condom and ScoMo’s soiled French letter to Ms Holgate.

There is nothing that I can find to compare with the circumstances and sly subtext of Morrison’s deplorable abuse of privilege – and personal attack on Holgate.

It was malevolent character assassination writ large. She was a soft target. She wasn’t there to defend herself. It was a political mugging and seemingly entertained much of the hypocritical rabble in the well named Lower House. It was below the bikini line for sure and symptomatic of the toxic boy’s club that is our Parliament.

Wearing the politician’s protective condom of parliamentary privilege, Morrison had Holgate by the short and curlies. But it was a soiled French letter that again contained more forensic evidence of his appalling attitude towards women – and the CEO of Australia Post in particular.

Look at his body language in Parliament as he goes in for the Holgate kill. He’s enjoying it big time. He’s getting off on it. No question.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison – and his government – is guilty of exercising coercive control not only over Australian women, but also those women and children seeking asylum, and refugees seeking a new life in Australia.

The popularity and proliferation of coercive control runs rampant across all societal strata: such is the level of physical and mental sexual violence towards women and girls in Australia, that it may as well be declared a national sport.

It is dangerously close to being described as a bonding mechanism for some males, given vituperative social media posts. For some males it is not a badge of dishonour but rather a campaign medal.

A war on a particular woman so often evolves into a war on all women.

If the sport was granted Olympic status, given our prolific expertise in domestic violence, we would probably win gold, silver, bronze and be runners up as well. This is the ugly reality for so many women in Australia. I know it to be true for my sisters everywhere.

Don’t just take my word for it. Let’s have a shufti at last year’s Parliamentary Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence and check out what it recorded about coercive control.

What is coercive control?

4.7: The concept of coercive control was developed by Professor Evan Stark, a sociologist and forensic social worker, who defined it as a ‘pattern of domination that includes tactics to isolate, degrade, exploit and control’ a person, ‘as well as to frighten them or hurt them physically’. Professor Stark describes coercive control as a ‘liberty crime’, and it has also been described as ‘intimate terrorism’.

4.8: Submitters to the inquiry characterised coercive control in various terms, but a common theme in evidence was that coercive control is not incident based, but instead involves a pattern of behaviour.

I rest my case. And for the time being, I rest my heart.

Please Note: If you need any support, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14. You are not alone.

Continued tomorrow …

Tess Lawrence is Contributing editor-at-large for Independent Australia and her most recent article is The night Porter and allegation of rape.

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Josh Frydenberg: Training for Future Leadership?

September 22, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
20 Replies

By Denis Bright

Josh Frydenberg made a successful transition from a recognized tennis ace to excellence in studies in economics and law. A successful corporate career followed. He has represented the normally safe federal seat of Kooyong since 2010. Either from Opposition or in a future LNP Government, Josh Frydenberg should be a familiar face in Australian politics into the 2030s.

Josh Frydenberg’s future contribution to policy innovation could be more creative if the federal LNP followed a more flexible path in domestic and strategic policies. In an economy that is resource rich and already half the size of either France or Britain, Australia has no need to be a dependent power within new strategic alliances that stoke up international tensions and divert resources into unproductive militarism to the cheers of military industrial complexes globally.

Generations of building up DFAT expertise justify a more independent outlook on international affairs so that Australians can enjoy the benefits of new associations with rising powers in Asia without the need for intelligence clearance from deliberations of the Five Eyes Intelligence Network.

The text from the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum was a good chance to note the style of Josh Frydenberg as he handled the provocative themes of Building Resilience and the Return of Strategic Competition.

Side-stepping great issues like global warming and the COVID-19 crisis, a potential LNP future leader focused on a manufactured complaint about the consequences of a more confident and assertive China that is willing to use its growing economic weight as a source of political pressure and regional coercion against countries in the US Global Alliance including Australia.

Josh Frydenberg offered a new China Plus Strategy. Australia would be in the forefront of managing the rise of China for the mutual benefit of countries in our Indo-Pacific Region, including the USA.

DFAT summaries of existing commercial ties with China shows the difficulties of turning around the ship of state in new strategic directions. China is indeed Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for one third (31 per cent) of our trade with the world.

Any spontaneity from the address disappeared when The Australian (6 September 2021) reported on the address in considerable detail before delivery at the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum. By that evening, the address was hardly newsworthy. The usual coverage of COVID statistics and even Scott Morrison’s attendance at the two-day National Summit on Women’s Safety had become far more significant.

In opposition or government, Josh Frydenberg would take Australia in a more conservative direction in both foreign and domestic policies. Elections with Khaki Militaristic Rhetoric have been favourable to the LNP in the past. The 1954 election assisted in the generation of 23 years of continuity to LNP government after 1949. The landslide to the LNP in 1966 offered more oxygen to the continuity before US hastily abandoned Saigon to Viet Cong forces in 1975.

Today’s LNP overstates the importance of strategic concerns about the rise of China. As warned by retired Rear Admiral Chris Barrie, Australians can and should welcome the rise of China as a stabilizing influence in the Indo-Pacific Basin. Britain made similar mistakes by mishandling the rise of Germany in the generation prior to the Great War (1914-18).

Our currently badly skewed China card can help to win elections in the short-term at a cost of financial and strategic burdens for generations ahead. President Biden is also playing a mutual China card to stoke up patriotic fervour before the US mid-term elections on 8 November 2022.

Rapprochement with China is likely to commence after that date when projections from the US Federal Reserve for the US economy are less favourable than at present. The strategic disputes with China are probably less serious than our leaders claim. China is always in a good bargaining position because of its long-term economic strength, the diversity of its commercial outreach through Belt and Road Projects at a time when the property giant Evergrande is in financial difficulties.

Jaunts by US military vessels through the Taiwan Straits, co-exist with ferry services operating between the Chinese city of Xiamen and the Taiwanese port of Taichung with a capacity for 150 cars, 256 standard containers and 683 passengers on a six-days a week schedule. This is a luxurious ferry service which is owned jointly by investors on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.

As reported in The Taipei Times (13 July 2021), there is less polarization in public opinion within Taiwan and a willingness to embark on Win-Win Relations with China over the confrontation associated with saturation military aid to Taiwan from US Republican administrations since 2001. Readers can easily access articles on changing public opinion within Taiwan as new public opinion soundings are communicated.

US Corporate leaders also ignore the excesses of the political rhetoric against China and foster new deals in China’s growing and diversifying economy. Despite the intensity of Trump’s rhetoric about commercial ties with China, US exports to China increased in 2020. Most US firms have a positive relationship with Chinese manufacturers for the delivery of popular American brand names and services. Extending this commercial relationship to higher level financial services is a step too far for US political leaders who do not want to be identified with the growth in the Chinese economy and its new global outreach in the current climate of public opinion in both China and the USA. In practice however, commercial relationships with China continue as the US economy needs a healthy commercial relationship with China. Just recently, US sales of microchips to Huawei’s auto component sector proceeded as usual while local conservative leaders continue talk down ties with China.

Josh Frydenberg’s New China Plus agenda is available for perusal in the ANU Crawford Policy Forum. Its macro-themes are:

The Return of Strategic Competition
An Australian economy that can cope with strategic competition
An Innovative Phase of Australian high technology market ideology in association with other regional partners

There is little that is Whitlamesque in Josh Frydenberg’s address. It promotes an Australia First Strategy in the manifest destiny traditions of other countries, large and small in the US Global Alliance. When the Biden administration makes its rapprochement with China, the LNP will quickly go with the flow of world opinion particularly if the shocks of current market corrections continue to disrupt the initial post-COVID global recovery.

All this is Politics 101 for a potential leader with Josh Frydenberg’s academic and corporate background. However, his own electorate of Kooyong is ahead of Josh in demanding a less pedestrian stance on the great issues of our times. Perhaps changed insights will come with Josh Frydenberg’s own keep fit agendas as the wider LNP takes a skip to the right in economic and strategic policies while Scott Morrison sizes up the most opportunistic election date.

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

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A tale of two ideologies

September 20, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
12 Replies

By 2353NM

Once upon a time, the newly elected progressive Australian Government was told by their advisers that financial calamity was to sweep the world, bringing financial ruin, uncertainty and pestilence (the last one might just be made up) to humanity. The newly elected government, being of the mind that they employ specialists who have likely forgotten more about their subjects than the politicians had ever known, asked what to do. The advice was ‘to go early and go hard’. Provide short term, medium term and long-term economic stimulus to the community.

So the government wrote pretty well everyone in the country a cheque for $900, which some saved, some bought the ‘new-fangled’ wide screen TV or made repairs to their homes and others distributed to the community by consuming the products available at the local bar or pokie palace. Short term stimulus done.

The government then devised a program that would improve the living conditions of thousands of people around their fair land. They decided to support those that wanted to insulate their houses. This would ensure that energy consumption to heat or cool the populations’ homes would be lower forever more. Regrettably a small number of insulation installers lost their lives, predominately due to lax occupational health and safety standards in a number of states where those out for a quick buck cashed in on the largesse without care for the employee or customer. As it took a while for people to decide if they wanted insulation and for the material to become available – medium term stimulus, tick.

The newly elected government believed in providing educational opportunities to all. Observing that a lot of schools didn’t have appropriate facilities for indoor sport, assemblies, performance spaces or even a place to run around when it was wet outside, the government determined that its long-term stimulus would be to fund the design and construction of multi-purpose school halls. Anyone who has ever designed and built anything will know that the process can easily take two or three years. Bingo – long term stimulus.

Those that followed a more conservative ideology were aghast! Some of the $900 cheques were being spent ‘inappropriately’, including the casinos or pokie palace! Exactly said the government, that keeps the casino or pokie attendant in a job and earning money. Others claimed insulating houses would increase energy efficiency, to the detriment of the large companies that mined the coal and owned the power stations. Exactly said the government, the homeowners will reap the benefits of lower energy prices for decades while reducing carbon emissions as less power, gas and heating oil would be consumed across the country.

Those that didn’t get the economic stimulus message also asked why schools that couldn’t afford to build their own hall were being given the money to do so. The government explained that the halls increased the opportunity for all students to excel at sport or become a famous actor and if nothing else provide a play area in wet weather. Besides, the construction would employ thousands of people for years. Those employed as a result of the program would then have the confidence to buy the new wide screen TV, spend a bit on the pokies as well as continue to provide economic stimulus to the shopkeepers and construction material manufacturers of our fair land. They would also probably return a bit to the government through income and payroll taxes as well as GST.

The result – Australia was one of the few developed economies that didn’t fall into recession between 2007 and 2010.

After a few years waging war on the government’s ‘feckless’ spending, amid claims of maxing out the credit card, rorts that benefitted political friends and finding every little process and procedural failure, the conservatives were in power. There was no recognition given to the ‘go hard and go fast’ mantra’s quick implementation, leading to some finding the inevitable flaws in the process and exploiting them.

Twelve years after the financial crisis that was going to affect the entire world, a global pandemic swept the world. In early 2020, the government’s ‘fearless leader’ (so named because he stabbed his predecessor in the back for having the hide to attempt to introduce an emissions trading scheme) addressed us all one Friday afternoon and advised that financial ruin, uncertainty and pestilence (the first one might just be made up this time) were going to be experienced across our fair land. From the following Monday there were going to be some restrictions on our ability to gather together and move around, but they were only going to be introduced after he saw his favourite footy team, ‘the Sharkies’, play their first game for the new football year (and presumably attend his Pentecostal church on the Sunday).

The restrictions caused a lot of employees to either not be rostered for their casual shifts or stood down from their permanent employment. Our ‘fearless leader’ claimed there was nothing he could do, as less than a year earlier he had gone to an election claiming that the government’s budget was ‘already back in the black next year’ despite the logical tautology. You could even buy the ‘back in the black’ coffee mug from the Liberal Party online store! We had unlikely bedfellows, the Union movement and the Business Council of Australia, together with the states, imploring the Australian Government to do something to avoid widespread financial calamity and ruin across the country (maybe the first one wasn’t made up after all).

The government, still hurting from the marketing and sales disaster that was the ‘back in the black’ coffee mugs finally agreed to introduce a system where they would pay the employers of stood down staff who would in turn pay the employees a fixed sum. Despite Johnson’s UK having the skills to calculate a percentage of the normal wage payment for each employee, it was too hard for our ‘fearless leader’ to work out someone on $700 a week and someone on $1500 a week probably had different levels of financial commitment and some would struggle on a fixed payment. Always looking at the marketing hook (remember the black coffee mugs) they christened the payment JobKeeper but put conditions on the payment that it would reduce after some time and be eliminated towards the end of 2020 when the pandemic had gone away.

The states, fearing the effects of the calamity on their health systems of people infected with the pandemic coming into the country and straight out into the community volunteered to oversee the federal responsibility of mandatory quarantine of returning travellers in hotels because all but one of the government’s purpose-built quarantine facilities around the country were sold off years ago. Our ‘fearless leader’ imposed caps on the numbers of arrivals into the country. Our ‘fearless leader’ also agreed to look after the sourcing and purchasing of vaccines and to ensure that the pandemic didn’t run riot in aged care homes.

In June 2021, The Guardian was reporting that the management of the vaccine rollout was ‘a dog’s breakfast’. While the purchase of 1 million Pfizer COVID 19 doses from Poland, announced in August 2021 was helpful – it begs the question why a comparatively rich country such as Australia is scouring the world in the second half of 2021 looking or something it had the ability to reserve and purchase half way through 2020. Our first purchase of Pfizer was only made in November 2020 with additional purchases in February and April 2021. But there were still ‘back in the black’ coffee mugs for sale.

Aged care homes have been subject to visits by the pandemic on a number of occasions and unfortunately hundreds of residents have died ahead of their time, with little ability for their relatives to say goodbye, ensure that the resident was comfortable in their last moments on earth or, on a number of occasions, even attend the funeral. At the time of writing this, there are still significant dangers for residents of aged care homes as the staff were not vaccinated at the same time as the residents – and the staff are far more likely to pick the virus up in the community.

Some firms that received ‘JobKeeper’ funds chose to keep the funding even though they were fortunate enough to increase profit during the pandemic. For example, when Harvey Norman totted up their annual financial statements in July 2021, they found their profit increased by 116%. Did they return their $14.5million in ‘JobKeeper’ – not a chance. Who would have thought that people would be online shopping to purchase equipment for their ‘home office’ when they had been told to work from home?

The government’s response was the program was designed quickly to create the most stimulus and there was no mechanism to recover the funds from those that found out after the event they didn’t meet the criteria. Sounds like the same thing they pilloried the progressive side of politics for about a decade earlier. At the same time, the same conservative government considered chasing individuals who received JobKeeper as well as JobSeeker during the 2020/2021 Financial Year. In the government’s eyes this isn’t a correct and proper use of resources.

The story is pretty clear – the progressive political party really couldn’t market themselves out of a wet paper bag. The conservative political party is all about the marketing.

Anyone want a black coffee mug?

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

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Spanish Flu, Covid and Vaccines

September 20, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
26 Replies

By Annasis Kelly

People seem to be very careless about just how important this pandemic is so I will use the information presented from the 1918 Spanish Flu (or H1N1) Pandemic as a reference. Now that one has been dubbed as the worse pandemic in recent human history with amount of approximately 50 million people dying of the virus worldwide. With 500 million people contracting the disease which was approximately one-third of the population of the world at the time. In a comparison of the Covid-19 virus, we have, to date, 227,026,185 people worldwide who have been confirmed with having contracted the virus. The United States is on the way to having more dead with Covid-19 than they did have with the Spanish Flu, with 678,183 dead and 42,222,673 cases. The reported number of deaths in the US with the Spanish Flu is about 675,000, though the number generally sits at between 500,000 – 850,000 or 0.48-0.81% and 105 million cases or 25% of the population.

To put into perspective, India has a total population of 1,391,942,558 people, yet has 33,380,522 cases and 444,278 deaths due to Covid-19. The US has 331,449,281 people and has 42,222,673 cases and 678,183 deaths. India has fewer deaths and cases than America despite them being more than 1,000,000,000 more people. Yet has less, despite having more areas prone to having sickness being able to run rapidly because of the conditions there.

Australia fares better than other places in the majority of the pandemics that we have had over the past 100 odd years, currently sitting at 82,202 cases and 1,138 deaths. Most of the cases are in Victoria and NSW with 25,591 cases, 826 deaths and 49,611 cases and 276 deaths respectively. Most of these cases are internationally contracted.

Now back in 1918 we didn’t have the medical information we have now. But the absolute basic information was used back then, with masks, social distancing and isolations.

“A later study found that measures such as banning mass gatherings and requiring the wearing of face masks could cut the death rate up to 50 percent, but this was dependent on their being imposed early in the outbreak and not being lifted prematurely.” (Bootsma MC, Ferguson NM (May 2007). “The effect of public health measures on the 1918 influenza pandemic in U.S. cities.” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104 (18): 7588–93. Doi:10.1073/pnas.0611071104. PMC 1849868. PMID 17416677. S2CID 11280273).

In response to past pandemics, the scientific community had a calculation that it wasn’t a matter of if, but when the next pandemic was to hit, and sadly it hit in November 2019. So in preparation for this they had been developing a vaccine so when the time was right they were to be able to produce the vaccine and send it out in mass for the world. So all they needed to do was isolate the bit of information that was needed in order to create the vaccine. They have created a messenger to enter the cells via the RNA to address the issue. How that differs is; “Safety: Unlike live-attenuated or viral-vectored vaccines, mRNA is non-infectious and poses no concern for DNA integration – mainly because it cannot enter the nucleus which contains DNA. Other strategies such as protein-based or inactivated vaccines also require chemicals and cell cultures to produce. mRNA is made through a cell-independent process and does not require inactivation; thus, it poses no safety concerns due to contamination with toxic agents.” How does an mRNA vaccine compare to a traditional vaccine? (Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation). (https://t.co/KPGehAPYU2).

With the success of Covid-19 vaccines, the push for introducing the type of vaccine for the flu mRNA flu vaccines may face a sterner challenge than Covid-19.

The differences in how the vaccine was developed are why it seemed quicker to go from the lab to production. The fact that it is not reliant on live-attenuated or viral-vectored helps make the stages quicker. It is not dangerous because of this.

If you choose to not vaccinate that is your choice. I chose to vaccinate and have already received the first shot of Pfizer with a sore arm and currently a sore bump at the injection site. That is it. I do not feel ill in any manner.

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Is Albanese accepting nuclear subs?

September 19, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
9 Replies

By Darrell Egan

In a statement from Australian Shadow Defence Minster Brendan O’Connor’s office authorised from Labor Leader Anthony Albanese and Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Australian Labor appears to be accepting the nuclear powered submarine deal, with some house keeping checks as follows:

“While there is much that we welcome, it’s also clear that today’s announcement is the single biggest admission of failure on the part of the Morrison-Joyce Government over its $90 billion Future Submarines program.”

The Morrison-Joyce Government must also urgently explain:

The cost of this new plan.
The number of submarines to be built.
The impact of today’s announcement on local jobs and businesses.
The timeline for construction and delivery of the nuclear-powered submarine capability.
The impact on the Life of Type Extension (LOTE) of the Collins Class submarines.
How local skills and know how will be delivered through the biggest acquisition in Australia’s history.

With $4 Billion spent on his deal there will be sure to be further costs and a lot of political effort to be put into this project, how much money and political will be left for an Albanese government to follow through of Clean Energy jobs in the future, in now seemingly accepting this nuclear submarine deal with some conditions?

This issue will test principles or in a word of similar part meaning “Mana” in Maori in both sides of the Labor Pacific with Anthony Albanese’s counterpart Jacinda Ardern clearly stating New Zealand will not allow these nuclear submarines near in New Zealand territorial waters.

If a Labor government gets in accepting these nuclear submarines it will be interesting to see how this pans out with their Labor counterparts across the Pacific.

Albanese, along with Opposition Foreign Minister Penny Wong, in this statement seek to enhance greater ties with the AUKUS pact Scott Morrison has signed Australia on to.

New Zealand foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta

The AUKUS pact seeks to have a more militarily aggressive stance in building up forces in the South China Sea and the elephant in the room question is that will an Australian Labor government in accepting these nuclear submarines, have them deployed to the South China Sea in the decades these are deployed, putting Australia on a war footing?

In Foreign Policy terms in regards to AUKUS there is a stance on this issue regarding Australia’s Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong and New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta with the New Zealand Foreign Minister not wanting to expand Five Eyes remit let alone going along with AUSUS pact’s hawkish approach.

With New Zealand standing by traditional Labor values in relation to the nuclear issue and a strong stance on Nuclear Proliferation, even if the nuclear product for these submarines is produced offshore, we will see who prevails in this test of Labor Party Mana.

This article was originally published on Dazza Egan Australia & China Watch Journo.

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