To people of my vintage it seems like yesterday that these events in the history of Australia’s democracy took place.

Those of us who lived through it see it through reflective battle-weary feelings.

An unelected representative of the Queen, the Governor General John Kerr, had dismissed a democratically elected government.

How was he able to do such a thing? Why did Prime Minister Whitlam accept his dismissal with such feebleness of spirit? Why wasn’t he on the phone to the Queen straight away?

Kerr was considered a Labor man. Was his betrayal longer in the making that everyone thought? There are many questions that have never been answered.

Fraser and Whitlam later became good friends. Did the Palace want Whitlam gone?

1975 is but a thought away but it lays heavy on the hearts of those on the left who believe that some sort of palace conspiracy took place.

Well, we won’t have to wait much longer now that the High Court has ruled in favor of historian Jenny Hocking in her bid to secure correspondence between the Queen and former Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr regarding the dismissal of Gough Whitlam:

“The high court on Friday ruled that the commonwealth was wrong to withhold the so-called “palace letters”, a series of more than 200 exchanges between the Queen, her private secretary and Kerr, the then-governor general, in the lead-up to the 1975 dismissal of Whitlam, the then-Australian prime minister.”

It is believed that the exchange consists of some 211 letters Jenny Hocking is calling on the National Archives of Australia to immediately release them.

I expect there might be some last minute quibbles about procedure but the public interest demands little delay.

After all the full history of the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia’s history demands the truth; a truth that has never been told.

For me personally it will bring to an end many years of frustrated suspicion that there was more to it that meets the eye. Even a total 211 letters suggests a certain depth of plotting never explained.

Our nation should be forever grateful to Jenny Hocking for the four years of persistence she has shown in obtaining what are critical documents in our history. She writes that:

“To have them closed to us, not even through our own laws or regulations, but because of an embargo by the Queen, that has just been a really terrible situation.”

Hocking in her research had previously found evidence that the Queen was indeed aware of Kerr’s intention to sack Whitlam.

The Queen was in fact fully briefed and involved in the deliberations. She believes the palace letters could reveal what the Queen said and the extent to which she influenced Kerr’s actions.

I still recall the state of shock the nation was in at the time. There existed a state of disbelief that a pompous twit and piss-pot like Kerr could dismiss a man of Whitlam’s stature.

All of it was of course was shrouded in the political machinations of the time. The blocking of supply by Fraser and Whitlam’s mishandling of the economy, which by today’s standards would suggest that the past four Prime Ministers should have been sacked.

For those who had come of age in the 1960s and 70s, Whitlam’s dismissal generated an intense personal anger and became the genesis for the lack of trust now shown for politicians. For those more directly involved it became a life and death confrontation with the principles of what constitutes a democracy and an ambiguous constitution.

As grotesquely as these events came upon us so did they disappear leaving a gaping unsatisfactory hole in the rights or wrongs of the dismissal. I expect the contents of the letters will not be revealed for a couple of weeks but I’m excited by the prospect of some holes being filled. In the meantime, The Conversation’s Anne Twomey gives us a couple of points to ponder:

“[Firstly], the queen never personally engages in correspondence with her governors-general. All correspondence goes through her private secretary, and it is he (as they have always been male) who responds to the governor-general.

[Secondly], in times past, when the governor-general was a member of the British aristocracy or upper classes, there was a “personal” element to this correspondence.”

This changed when Governor Generals were appointed from Australian citizenry.

What a laconic couldn’t care less lot we are. Even when we get agitated over something we rarely make a ripple on Bondi beach.

The last time I can remember us getting a wee bit pissed about a something of importance was the marriage equality debate when we told the politicians enough unfairness was enough and to just get on with it. Then Turnbull claimed the credit.

It is true, I think, that we have a morbid distrust of seriousness and we are less enamoured by a sense of occasion than others. Although Anzac Day and sport may be the exceptions that generally raise our collective nationalism, but otherwise we remain indifferent in the face of things worthy of protest.

So forgiving of bad governance have we become that we have twice voted back in the governments that have been spectacularly unscrupulous without the blink of an eye. On current reckoning we will even allow them to wreck the planet without the slightest resistance.

Our national character is of loudness, speaking our minds when the situation demands it, so long as it doesn’t interrupt something more important.

Understanding the sovereignty of our Indigenous folk has been a thought for most, too difficult.

We still cling to the monarchy with childlike fascination and a republic is a threat to the celebrity of it.

Domestic violence is a crying shame but like many other things we sit quietly and say little. The same can be said of our underlying racism.

Suicide, the scale of it, explains the utter hopelessness we have created with our vision of what life and society is.

Men, those younger than I, seem to be narcissistic unfeeling creatures who derive pleasure from what life can give them rather than what virtues their maleness can give the world.

Rightly or wrongly religion is dying. We are replacing it with the worship of celebrity. The young, in particular, adore people of the most mediocre endowment as if they were gods to be deified. Royalty, sports and television stars fill this category.

Our politics is confrontational, even ugly, and in the last 20 years or so has done its best to uphold our larrikin anti-authoritarian nature.

In trying to describe what ‘Australian culture’ is we are confronted with the contradiction of an incredible culturally diverse nation. Our immigrants come from all over the world with one in four Australian residents being born outside of Australia.

Few understand the rich cultural diversity immigration has given us because politicians of the ilk of Tony Abbott have taught them the political value of hatred.

We have not yet grown into, or obtained the truth, that people are just trying to find a place in the world where they can be secure and loved. Our reputation around the world, perpetuated by the likes of Peter Dutton on immigration, is pitiful.

I guess that what I am trying to say here is that Government is responsible for all the laws made at a national level, state government at a state level and local councils at a community level. That’s three levels of government for 25 million people.

As a result of the political malaise we find ourselves in the government has been unable to govern to a standard befitting the needs of this nation. Its first problem is it’s standard of leadership. The second its quality of representation where one wonders how many MPs got past pre-selection n the first place. The third, of course, is that economic decisions have human consequences. That economics and society are  interwoven.

Examples of the government’s inability to govern arise every day. Last week we had an almost total breakdown in diplomacy with China.

China is an emerging power while the US under President Trump is vacating its once held position as leader of the free world.

China is speaking to the world in its own language and we are failing to comprehend.

We should remember that China, in rescuing millions of its people from poverty in 30 years or so has performed a miracle of sorts. To my knowledge it has never started a war but is now saying that it won’t be pushed around by the likes of Trump and Morrison.

Our government, instead of using words of understanding to China, seems intent on climbing aboard Trump’s hateful bandwagon. The leader of China is at least sane whereas the leader of the USA should be encouraged to get in as much golf as possible.

This is not to say that they are right in their actions. They are not. We are in a new phase of our relationship with China.

It says that it is incumbent on us to choose our words more carefully or pay the consequences.

After 19 attempts to arrive at an energy policy our government has reverted to old technologies to resolve this issue.

Even in the face of calamity it cannot bring itself to admit it was and is still wrong on climate change. Christiana Figueres – considered the world’s top climate change negotiator – commented that:

“I am deeply pained by the attitude of the current Australian government: that still after the worst disaster that has ever hit the planet, the bushfires in Australia, that this government is still denying climate change and denying the fact that there is a lot that Australia can and should be doing.”

Another display of incompetence occurred last week and remains a bone of contention: How on earth was the error of Job Keeper/Seeker not picked up earlier? It seems incomprehensible and a better explanation is required.

We now end up with the following:

• On Job-Keeper the PM announced a spend of $138 but is actually spending $70b.
• On the drought fund the PM announced $7b but is spending $2b. On the Bush Fire fund it is $2b with the actual at $250 mil.

The government has become accustomed to making announcements without putting in the hard yards of meticulous planning. I expected Morrison’s speech on Tuesday May 26 to be much the same – and I was correct – but I hope he is successful for the sake of the common good of the nation. Having said that, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

In my recent article I concluded with:

Confronted with the fact that no one wants to invest in coal, what do you do? One is you set up an inquiry, stack it with lovers of the clean black stuff, and call it the ”King review.”

The idea is to grab some cash from the $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund, as well as Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

In their findings you have the inquiry recommend that the funds be opened up to provide funding to heavy emitters and fossil fuel projects.

Not a bad plan. After all, it wasn’t the intention to use the funds in this way.

They are not just environmental vandals but straight out corrupt con merchants. Angus Taylor makes a good crook, it would seem. Or at least he knows how to get away with things.

I wanted to expand a little on the subject of this con job. You see there was a time when Australians didn’t like being conned.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s a con artist,” my folks would say.

I can vividly remember that phrase. As a teenager we seemed to apply it to everything. We sort of instantly knew when someone was bullshitting.

Now it seems we have lost that instinct and are now a gullible lot ready to believe whomever and whatever we are told.

If you didn’t read pertinent articles in The Guardian, The Age (paywall) or News24 you wouldn’t have a clue as to what the Coalition is doing. You might if you watch Sky After Dark and wanted a warped version of the truth.

After committing the worst possible domestic violence on our part of the planet, the Coalition decided to have a review of their existing madness, with men who in part created the environmental vandalism and go back to the past and use discredited technology.

Having spent a decade proving their incompetence these same idiot politicians now speak of the virtues of gas as being some sort of gentle nurse to the raped victim.

As Katherine Murphy wrote in The Guardian:

“Politicians and their advisers used to talk up the virtues of gas as a transitional fuel, and they used to talk about carbon capture and storage (CCS) as technology that governments needed to invest in to drive the transition to low-emissions economies.

The great botch-up is now well past infancy, and Australia’s record on climate and energy is a disaster so profound it’s still traumatising backstage protagonists years after the stadium rock wreckers have left” the crime scene.”

Allow me to bring you up to date. The Coalition is proposing that after appointing a committee headed by former Fortescue boss Nev Power and others of the same persuasion, who in turn have probably been instructed on what to conclude; propose to spend heaps of your money on a gas-fired revival of manufacturing.

Conning the Australian people is really that simple. They do it all the time and people don’t care or don’t know. Paddy Manning in The Monthly reported that:

“Environment groups reacted with alarm, and independent Warringah MP Zali Steggall has called on the federal government to bring industry groups together to canvass their views on stimulus measures, arguing that the COVID-19 commission’s decision-making processes lacked transparency

Manning reported that:

Shadow climate and energy minister Mark Butler welcomed the roadmap’s step away from coal, but described the document as the Coalition’s 19^th energy policy – and one that was light on details. “Minister Taylor has pulled a hamstring making sure that his anti-renewable colleagues know that expensive new coal is still in the mix, while also tipping his hat to expensive and dangerous nuclear power,” said Butler.

“… shadow resources minister Joel Fitzgibbon told Sky News, the roadmap appears to imply that CCS could keep the ever-contentious Liddell power station operating in his Hunter Valley electorate. “It’s just ludicrous to suggest that you can retrofit any carbon capture and storage system to a more-than-50-year-old coal-fired generator,” Fitzgibbon said.”

Once again a political donations-focused government seems determined to do nothing about climate change.

Absent is a price on carbon and nothing about a new regulatory strategy and there isn’t any room for a sizeable public investment.

And God help us! Talk about going back to the past. It even talks about big role for carbon capture and storage. You know, that technology that was going to change the future and give us clean coal.

Goodness knows how many millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on this obscenely expensive yet failed technology over the past 10 years.

The Prime Minister made a proper clown of himself in his handling of the summer fires, and the punters told him so.

During the coronavirus pandemic he made up a lot of ground. However, with climate change he finds himself, on the one hand, between his job, party donations, the backbench, the cabinet, and a squillion-dollar fossil-fuel industry that has he and his government by the short and curlies, and on the other hand what is best for the planet and its people.

It is not as though the government is without options. If it had the intestinal fortitude it could use a COVID-19 recovery that would drive full-time sustainable jobs and growth on the back of a low-emissions transition that would last 50 years or more.

The other option is to use the recovery to continue with fossil fuels and pretend (lie your way through it) that in a time of great uncertainty you had a moment of gas led fossil fuel enlightenment. Jobs versus the environment.

History tells me they will take option two.

Nothing to show: A year in power … Nothing to show. Two years as PM in August … Nothing to show. Three terms in office … Nothing to show.

Monday, May 18 marked the anniversary of the Morrison government’s election win, and Scott Morrison is fast approaching two years as serving as Prime Minister. In addition, the LNP will be on their way to concluding three terms of governance.

So how has this period advanced Australia as a nation? Well, the simple answer is it hasn’t. Are we likely to see from Morrison any bold ideas that will inspire us to be better than we are? Conversely, what did Abbott and Turnbull achieve? Turnbull claims marriage equality but I put that down to social protests.

What has Morrison done in his two years at the helm that would get you excited? It is fair to say that at present he is confronted with a pandemic and is being applauded for his efforts. Rightly so, but all he has done is to follow the advice of science and the experts. Not hard.

When Labor was confronted with a similar economic problem (the GFC) to what the coronavirus is doing, Morrison as much as denied the GFC’s existence.

Turnbull, in his book, describes Morrison as a pragmatic professional politician with a plan for winning but not for governing.

1 You have to wonder if he is a man for the times. One not of necessity a brilliant intellectual, but a man who could see what lay ahead for the next 5, 10 or 20 years and could drag from those around him the ideas and willpower to get us there. A man like Anthony Albanese has those qualities.

But instead we have a government that doesn’t want parliament to sit because it is paranoid that someone from the opposition might throw a curved ball at them. Nobody knows.

Not even our most senior public servant knows. Paul Gaetjens had to take some fairly basic questions on notice at Senate hearings on COVID-19 last week. Take these for example:

“Do the decisions of the national cabinet have to be ratified by the full cabinet? Do they bind the states and territories? How, exactly, is it different to the Council of Australian Governments? Are all of its workings covered by cabinet confidentiality?”

Just as suss is this mysterious committee known as the NCCC or National COVID-19 Coordination Commission to be headed by the Prime Minister’s mate’ Nev Power, who was a former head of Fortescue and is to be paid the princely sum of $267,345 for doing 6 months work which is yet to be defined.

However his chief executive, Peter Harris AO (a former chairman of the Productivity Commission), padded up at the Senate and admitted that the NCCC’s processes were somewhat “opaque.”

Opacity is a word that best describes the government’s attitude toward accountability. Hardly transparent at all.

The NCCC has no commissioners with expertise on clean energy but an abundance of folk with ties to fossil fuels that are set to push for a gas-fired recovery, as the ABC has reported.

2 The Trade Minister’s counterpart in China won’t return his calls because we are saying silly undiplomatic things about them. We have been playing “deputy sheriff” for the US for so long other nations resent it.

China has now slapped an 80% tariff on our barley to remind us that diplomacy is – sometimes best done in-house rather than shouting in the streets.

3 The Prime Minister’s self serving indignation over the Sports Rorts Affair and Angus Taylor’s self-indulgent incriminations are making the government look pathetic in terms of parliamentary obligations and standards.

The inquiry into the rorts prior to the election tells us that the prime minister’s office asked Bridget McKenzie to seek Scott Morrison’s “authority” for intended recipients of $100m of sports grants and coordinate the announcement with Coalition campaign headquarters.

The Australian National Audit Office to the Senate inquiry gives evidence that contradicts Morrison’s claims that McKenzie, the former sports minister, was the ultimate decision-maker.

It also confirms that changes for the grant program were not made after parliament was dissolved.

On 27 February, Morrison told the House of Representatives that “there was no authorisation provided by me as prime minister on the projects”.

This article by Paul Karp in The Guardian gives a thorough account of the sequence of events and it would be difficult not to conclude that the Prime Minister has certainly mislead the Parliament and should resign.

He won’t of course because integrity has gone out of fashion.

There still remains of course the question as to the grants constitutional validity.

But then it would seem that no one resigns for misleading parliament anymore. It’s just another example of the declining standards of political integrity in this country.

4  Is our government treating students who would make an enormous contribution to our Universities and our economy fairly? Why are they standing in food lines?

5 What is the real figure of our unemployed and underemployed?

Employment, underemployment and unemployment will be a problem for years to come and trying to spin the figures as they have been doing for some time will only make matters worse. The million the government says they have created only ever kept up with immigration and didn’t create any “new” jobs.

There will be no snapback as Morrison predicts. One reason being that it is not known how many jobs will be lost from companies that just go broke for any number of reasons.

Paddy Manning writes in The Monthly 15 May says:

“The official employment figures show that a staggering 2.7 million people (one in five working Australians) either left employment between March and April or had their hours reduced. The participation rate – people working or looking for work – fell back to the level it was at before the China boom took off in 2004, with half a million people giving up job seeking altogether.”

Brendan O’Connor, Labor’s shadow Employment Minister responded to the ABS figures, saying they were a picture of the economy a month ago, and would get worse.

Labor called on the government to expand the JobKeeper programme to include others (such as casuals) but the suggestion seems to have fallen on deaf ears of conservative ideology.

We can expect the job figures to become increasingly worse in the months to come.

The Prime Minister says he wants a business-led recovery but a recovery by any means might be a better idea.

6 Some businesses wont even comeback let alone snapback. The Prime Minister has yet to lay before the Australian people a plan to take us forward, to take the opportunity of creating new economics that

7 I have no doubt that the government will use COVID-19 as an excuse for doing nothing on climate change. “It will have to wait,” will be the spin.

Monday night’s ABC Four Corners revealed in chronological order the blameworthiness of our politicians on this most serious of matters.

Take these quotes for example from The Guardian’s report on the program:

“Ken Henry, the Treasury secretary between 2001 and 2011, said the question the government should be asking itself on climate was how to put a cap, or limit, on national emissions at least cost to the country.

“The answer to that question – and everybody will tell this – is an emissions trading scheme,” he said.

Martin Parkinson, a former secretary of Treasury and the now defunct climate change department, said it was incorrect to categorise carbon pricing as being “about taxing people”.

“The carbon price is actually about creating the right sort of incentives to develop the technology and then use it,” he said.

On national climate policy, Parkinson said: “What climate policy? I mean it’s basically … it’s a mess. It’s incoherent and has been for a decade.”

Peter Shergold, the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in the final years of the Howard government, was asked what he would say to the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, if he held that position now.

He said he would tell him: “My sense, prime minister, is that there is a mood to follow such leadership if it exists. Tell it honestly, and tell it truthfully, and don’t try and pretend there are not going to be costs imposed on industry and costs imposed on individuals, but it is worth that for the sake of your children and your grandchildren.”

Now you would think that these fellows would know a bit about the problems of climate change and how to address it, but our friend Angus and the Prime Minister seem to know more.

Confronted with the fact that no one wants to invest in coal, what do you do? One is you set up an inquiry, stack it with lovers of the clean black stuff, and call it the ”King review.”

The idea is to grab some cash from the $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund, as well as Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

In their findings you have the inquiry recommend that the funds be opened up to provide funding to heavy emitters and fossil fuel projects.

Not a bad plan. After all, it wasn’t the intention to use the funds in this way.

They are not just environmental vandals but straight out corrupt politicians. Angus Taylor makes a good crook, it would seem.

You should read this. It is absolutely scandalous.

To answer the implied meaning of my headline I simply say that this Prime Minister and his Ministers are so ineffectual that they are incapable of fixing anything, let alone guide us into the future.

We all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health. Why then should we not be liable for the cost of a healthy planet.

President Trump is giving his daily press conference and on a split screen a man constantly interrupts to point out his lies, his misrepresentations, his illogicality and his perversions.

As is my custom I write early in the morning because in the silence my mind is at its most receptive. This morning however, before I begin I find myself in need of some think time.

“What to write about?” I ask myself. “Do I just continue on voicing my views at the injustices of the world or could I take another path? Why not reinforce your views with those of others. Just freelance and let your mind go where it will. You can always scrap it if turns out crap.”

I accept the challenge and my mind is directed to my “to read” folder where I have forgotten the purpose of putting things there, but whatever the purpose, it must have been important at the time.

1 So my mouse finds its way into my “to read” bin and like a lucky dip the first piece it comes up with is by former US Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration; Robert Reich. A man short in stature but big in logic, truth and analysis. In this piece he is talking about his least favourite politician, the President of the USA.

I find myself married to his opinions. He is relentless in his attacks on Trump.

2 Trump has claimed that Obama left behind “bad, broken tests” … for a virus that didn’t yet exist.

The Huffington Post also quoted the President saying:

“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: this is going to go away without a vaccine.

“Eventually it’s going to go away. The question is will we need a vaccine?”

3 To follow that up, the Huffington Post reported that President Trump abruptly ended his coronavirus press briefing on Monday 11 May after getting visibly angry with two female reporters, one of obvious Asian appearance. This brought out the racism in Trump.

4 With Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo saying anything and everything to blame China for a laboratory origin for the coronavirus I came across this piece (“The Discussion Is Basically Over”: Why Scientists Believe the Wuhan-Lab Coronavirus Origin Theory Is Highly Unlikely) by Joe Pompeo in Vanity Fair. Of Trump’s reasoning he says it “makes for great propaganda – but uses dubious science.” It’s a great read.

5 In this piece by Paddy Manning in The Monthly, Manning accuses the government of using the pandemic to target old foes:

“We’re well past the stage where any of this could be excused as an oversight, an unintended consequence of the rushed pandemic response. By now it’s obvious: this is a deliberate strategy. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the rest of the Coalition’s culture warriors are not wasting this crisis, that’s for sure.“

6 No, I’m not yet finished with COVID-19.

According to Rod Myer of The New Daily it is ripping a great hole in the finances of News Corp with a $1.5b loss for the March quarter.

So much so that the media giant has called in consultants to its Australian operations to advise on how it can shrink costs and jobs.

“The move, reported in Nine Newspapers, comes after Rupert Murdoch’s flagship called out a poor performance in its Australian operations since July.

“Stories published on Google and Facebook in turn drive a lot of readers back to companies like News and Nine,” says [media analyst Peter] Cox

“If those visits are cut, then I assume advertising revenues would fall because advertising revenue depends on the level of traffic on media sites.”

7 Former LNP Opposition Leader John Hewson wrote an exceptional piece for The Guardian titled “Coronavirus is a dress rehearsal for what awaits us if governments continue to ignore science.” Hewson warns that:

“The coronavirus pandemic should be seen as a dress rehearsal for what awaits us if we continue to ignore the laws of science, the physical world and the demands of several catastrophic threats such as climate change.”

8 Former US President, Barack Obama always lowers my political blood pressure. His quiet calm dignity, appearance and reasonableness of argument are qualities of leadership that you would want leaders and especially politicians to have. This piece by the ABC’s North American correspondent James Glenday speaks of the Obama’s critique of Trump’s mis-handling of the coronavirus crisis:

“Former US president Barack Obama has attacked the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, describing it as an “absolute chaotic disaster.”

Mr Obama added that the pandemic would have been difficult for any administration but the Trump White House had approached it with a “what’s in it for me?” attitude.

What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”

In the interests of length I have omitted Angus Taylor’s alleged Cayman Island company, Peter Dutton failing to register one of his companies, and George Christensen summoning the Chinese Ambassador before a Senate Committee.

I always had a soft spot for Malcolm Turnbull. The early pages of his memoirs outline the many occupations he experienced as a young man and the remarkable dexterity he showed in performing them.

But Prime Minister is what he wanted to be and that’s what he achieved. There are many who would say, and they would be right in doing so, that he was out of his depth.

They point out his unpopularity in his party and his failure with the NBN. That he failed to live up to his potential.

In all fairness, it has to be said that had he been allowed his way with policy he may have made a success of it.

But that wasn’t to be. Instead, he was made to sign an agreement that saw his leadership at the mercy of the ratbag fringe of the LNP. The so-called conservative extremists who eventually got rid of him so as to have their own way.

Many others and I called him a hypocrite in not being able to legislate policies such as. climate change and on a national energy policy. Policies that were joined to his hip, so to speak.

That the likes of Scott Morrison, Barnaby Joyce and other like-minded dunderheads defeated the prodigious intellect of Malcolm Turnbull  showed how out of touch with reality the LNP are.

But this post has more to do with Turnbull,s opinion of the man who ousted him than Turnbull himself.

Katherine Murphy, a consummate journalist for The Guardian, in a preview of Turnbull’s book gives an exhilarating insight into the – what can only be called devious – workings of Prime Minister Morrison. She writes that:

“Turnbull says his first encounter with Scott Morrison happened in 2001, when the then-businessman was mulling options to enter politics and Morrison was the state director of the Liberal party.”

As the story goes Morrison wanted Turnbull to be the Premier of NSW and “had hatched an ingenious” plan to implement it.

Turnbull, however, wasn’t interested and I could imagine he felt it was beneath a man seeking the big prize.

It seems to me that Morrison is always central to the machinations of the party, always in the scrum directing the moves, and always with a long-term objective.

He plays his politics in the shadows just behind the play ready for any eventuality.

Murphy continues:

“Turnbull portrays the current prime minister as always ringside, either in person or through surrogates, during the corrosive leadership battles that erupted shortly after the Coalition came to power in 2013. Turnbull says Morrison began to “sniff out interest in removing Abbott” as early as 2014, only a year after the Coalition’s election victory, when the majority of colleagues were not countenancing a change.

There was talk of moving Turnbull to Treasury to replace Joe Hockey after the disaster of the 2014 budget. “I was careful to play no part in this. Abbott would never move me to treasurer,” Turnbull says. “And I felt I was being used as a stalking horse by others, especially Scott Morrison, to position themselves.”

When one watches individual politicians over a long period of time a profile emerges. In this case the one of Morrison is incomplete but it can be seen that he is conspiratorial type with great cunning.

At this point I’m trying to condense Murphy’s words but the scheming of Morrison is getting the better of me.

Let’s move on.

According to Murphy Turnbull says the “agitation persisted,” and on “10 December he had dinner with Morrison, who wanted to replace Abbott as party leader.”

“It was the first time he laid out, fairly comprehensively, his thinking on Abbott, who he felt would have to go by the middle of 2015 if his performance didn’t improve. He said Hockey should go now and he was making the case to Abbott to replace him with me.

He was closely in touch with the key figures at News [Corp], he told me, and said they were getting ready to dump Abbott. And he made it clear he saw himself as the successor.

After reshuffle at the end of the year and Abbott moved Morrison out of Immigration and into Social Services, Turnbull said that Morrison was “furious” and “this was the first time I recall him saying we will need to remove him before the budget”.

Morrison, according to Turnbull, garnered a cohort of MPs who would readily get rid of Abbott from the leadership.  It was obvious that Morrison wanted the job, “but didn’t want to be seen to challenge him.”

According to Morrison, the shock jocks wouldn’t support him (by whom he meant Alan Jones and Ray Hadley). Morrison also, according to Turnbull, wanted to sideline Julie Bishop, but later changed his mind, and they agreed that Turnbull would be the leader in the event that Abbott got the flick.

Turnbull noted:

“Morrison was vocal in his support for Abbott and publicly denied discussing leadership issues with me. Of course, he’d done so on many occasions, and every indication was that he’d encouraged, if not masterminded, the [first] spill itself.”

If Turnbull is correct you can see the succession and opportunistic planning in Morrison’s mind. The dice were beginning to roll for his own benefit.

Back to Katherine Murphy:

“Turnbull’s ire is directly predominantly at Mathias Cormann and Peter Dutton for the coup that terminated his prime ministership in 2018 but he concludes after some equivocation (“it’s never possible to be 100% certain about these things”) that Morrison “was playing a double game: professing public loyalty to me while at the same time allowing his supporters to undermine me.

It was, of course, precisely what he’d done in 2015 when he said he’d voted for Abbott in the leadership ballot but worked closely with me to ensure his supporters voted against Abbott.”

You might describe Morrison as a cunning rat, loyal and disloyal depending on the need.

Murphy continues:

“Turnbull says he knew on the morning he spilled the leadership, “while I was prepared to accept Morrison’s assurances of continued loyalty, I knew that some of his supporters were starting to urge him to make a move himself”. He says he was aware of the risks of tactical voting by Morrison supporters in the first ballot. Turnbull says Morrison sent him a note while the ballots were being distributed.

The note said: ‘I don’t know why we didn’t discuss this. But that’s your call.

Turnbull is on my ballot.’ I replied, ‘Thanks! It’s the right call. The room has to make up its mind.’”

When the result was 48 votes for Turnbull and 35 for Dutton, “I wondered whether some of Morrison’s supporters had taken the chance and voted for Dutton, hoping they didn’t accidentally deliver him a win.

Subsequent accounts of these events indicate that Stuart Robert and Alex Hawke had organised about half-a-dozen of them to vote for Dutton – enough to lift his numbers up to a level that damaged me but didn’t get Dutton over the line. If Morrison’s friends had voted the way he said he did, the Dutton insurgency would have been utterly dead that morning.

The idea that they did that without his knowledge is fanciful. Scott is a control freak and I’d seen before in the ballots in 2015 how he’d publicly vote one way while ensuring his supporters voted the other way.

When it was clear he had no prospects of retaining the prime ministership, Turnbull actively encouraged Morrison’s campaign.

Turnbull says he lined up behind Morrison because he believed he was “a responsible, safe pair of hands. But Dutton, were he to become prime minister, would run off to the right with a divisive, dog-whistling, anti-immigration agenda, written and directed by Sky News and 2GB, designed to throw red meat to the base.

With no constraints, Dutton would do enormous damage to the social fabric of Australia. It’s one thing having the tough cop handling border protection and counter-terrorism, but not at the head of our multicultural society”.

Turnbull also records the messages he exchanged with his successor after Morrison was sworn in.

“I messaged him,” Turnbull says, “Congratulations prime minister and good luck.” According to Turnbull, Morrison replied the next morning. “Only you can know how I feel today, but I cannot begin to know how you feel.

I loved working for and with you. I’m really proud of what we did. And that is always how I will always feel and speak of it. I want you to know I am thinking about you a great deal and you know I pray for you.

That doesn’t change now. I don’t know why all this happened, but now it has come upon me, you know I will be relying on my faith, friends and values to overcome and conquer what is ahead …

Thank you for all you’ve done for me. But above all as one PM to another, thank you for everything you did for our country. No one knows that contribution better than me.

“Love you, mate.”

All we can do is gather the evidence, sort out the fact from the fiction and come to a decision. For my part, I have the added benefit of about 65 years of an up front close observation of politics that allows one to see through the lies, the bullshit and the intended airbrushing of it all.

I make two points. On the one hand Morrison mentions in his note to Turnbull, “all that we have achieved together.” I’m lost as to what he is referring to because in 7 years they have achieved nothing,

On the other hand I used to think that the Americans were the only race on earth that believed their own bullshit. Now I know that Australian politicians do also.

My association with the man Malcolm Turnbull began in 1999. It was the year that Australia attempted to become a republic.

I was an area leader in this effort to become a country of the future and not the past. Twenty and a bit years on I remember the time for Turnbulls leadership, John Howard’s lack of it, and Tony Abbott’s unpleasantness in his defense of the monarchy.

I confess to a tear or two when I read Turnbull’s post-republican book “Fighting for the Republic.” It was an extraordinarily and rank memoir of the convention and the egos, idealists and opportunists who took part.

Turnbull said John Howard “broke this nation’s heart” over the Republic referendum. He was, without doubt, correct.

I mention this because I’m only 71 pages into his autobiography (ibook version) and my expectation is that it will be filled with many such descriptions of colleagues and of the times.

As my reading progresses I intend to feed readers of The AIM with snippets of Turnbull’s versions of events and the personalities that were placed in the centre of them.

Turnbull would frequently appear on Q&A and other programs and spoke of freedom of the press as though he really meant it. Unlike many of his conservative colleagues.

But before then I want to comment on a couple of things already published in the fourth estate. I refer to two articles that give some credence to a picture of Turnbull as a man of democratic principles, and one who saw them as first and foremost in a democracy.

The first article – by The Guardian’s editor Lenore Taylor – tells the story of how the left-leaning online newspaper got started in Australia and Malcolm Turnbulls involvement.

Those on the Left may find themselves puzzled, even bemused by the fact that it was largely by way of Turnbull’s suggestion that the Australian version of The Guardian came into being.

Why would he do such a thing if he were a true blue conservative hell bent on seeing that the Left got as little exposure as possible?

Taylor reports that in his memoir Turnbull writes that:

“I was beginning to despair about the state of Australian journalism,”

“I wasn’t especially concerned about the political slant of one outlet or another, but more about the fact that newsrooms were shrinking and editorial standards were dropping to the loopy standards of the twittersphere. Gina Rinehart was threatening to buy Fairfax – no doubt so that its newspapers could emulate her own ultra-rightwing views.

“In June 2012, I suggested to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the UK’s Guardian, that he should establish an Australian edition. For a modest cost, he could start a digital-only edition. That would provide a good base from which to build. Alan was interested. We exchanged some rough numbers and he concluded he’d need $20m of underwriting for three years – if it couldn’t get to break-even in that time, it never would.

“Given my political role, I could hardly participate myself, but I thought I knew someone who would. Graeme Wood had made hundreds of millions of dollars from an online travel booking business called Wotif. He was on the political left and had been generous in the past to the Greens. He’d also recently funded a progressive free online newspaper called the Global Mail. It wasn’t going to make it. So, I suggested to Graeme he drop the Global Mail and instead use his fortune to bankroll an Australian edition of the Guardian.

“Its progressive politics suited him plus it was one of the greatest newspapers in the English language, nearly 200 years old and, unusually, wasn’t controlled by any media mogul but rather an independent trust dedicated to ‘quality, independent liberal journalism’.

“Once Graeme Wood was on board, I introduced Rusbridger to two seasoned Canberra political writers, Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy (AKA murpharoo). He sent his deputy, Kath Viner, to Australia to be the first editor. The (digital) paper-exceeded expectations broke even after a few years and Wood got all his money back. Clearly, my deal-making skills remained intact.”

Lenore Taylor concludes that particular story with this:

“Turnbull’s recollection skips over a long and complicated process that followed those initial introductions, after which Turnbull had no further involvement as far as I know.”

Perhaps Turnbull’s memoir will enlighten me further but until then I shall remain unconvinced as to the true state of his political philosophy.

However, we can thank Malcolm Turnbull for ridding his party, and the nation, of the combatant pugilist Abbott.

He was, for a time, rewarded for his effort with election winning polls and a personal popularity rating the envy of any celebrity.

Initially with charismatic personality, he seduced and beguiled his way into the hearts of those who wanted nothing more than to see the back of Abbott and some who didn’t.

The punters welcomed his sense of reason, fairness, discretion and natural charm, even if these characteristics seemed out of place in a party so demonstrably right-wing.

He certainly wasn’t a conservative, perhaps an old fashioned Liberal. The sort that don’t exist anymore.

Immediately after being installed as Prime Minister he found himself in charge of the greatest bunch of out of control, extreme right-wing nut cases who he could never control and in the end accepted his assassination without so much as a whimper.

Had he been allowed to govern in his on right it may have been a different story.

There was always this nagging feeling that he was more left than right but would morph into anything to become Prime Minister.

Perhaps some of you will recall the story of Malcolm wanting to join Labor at the time of the Republican Referendum but was told in no uncertain terms that he would be more suited to the Liberals. There are various antidotes.

The second piece I refer to is about Morrison’s part in the deceptive dismissal of Malcolm Turnbull and in turn Turnbull’s characterisation of Morrison. For a so-called Christian he would be somewhat of a disappointment to Jesus, to say the least.

But more on that in Part 2.

Where would the President of the United States get the idea from that injecting disinfectant into the body could cure COVID-19? From a fellow called Mark Grenon, apparently. Writing in The Guardian, Ed Pilkington reveals that:

“The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.

In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.

Who could imagine any American President in his right mind ever suggesting the citizens of his country take bleach by injection as a cure for the coronavirus, but Trump has.

The American people are indeed unfortunate to have, during a time of crisis, a man so unqualified to lead, let alone lead them through a pandemic.

While the piles of dead mount daily and millions lose their jobs, and the very fabric of its culture is torn asunder, the President seemingly indulges himself in his own self interest, embellishes his own character, his TV ratings and is now suggesting that people-inject disinfectants into their lungs which is tantamount to suggesting they commit suicide.

Never, under any circumstances inject Lysol or Dettol into your bloodstream say the manufactures, Reckitt Benckiser.

The President of the United States is not a doctor of medicine. Instead, ask yourself what is his Cabinet doing about his dangerous advice?

Nothing. And to think this President has described himself as a “very stable genius.”

When the foolhardiness of his words were explained to him or by some miracle he realised it himself later, he back peddled and told another lie. Rather flippantly he suggested he was just being sarcastic.

What would his thinking be if a declaration of war were required?

With the death toll at 53,000 what will it take for the American people to realise that their president is of unstable mind?

In a piece for The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg wrote that:

“Trump, meanwhile, spoke of the crisis in the past tense, as something America is now emerging from, suggesting that all the country will face in the future is “some embers of corona.” The day before, the country had recorded around 2,200 deaths, making it one of the deadliest days of the pandemic in the United States.

Over the last three and a half years, Americans have had to accustom themselves to a relentless, numbing barrage of lies from the federal government. In one sector after another, we’ve seen experts systemically purged and replaced with toadying apparatchiks.”

Frankly, the president shouldn’t be left in charge of his own mouth.

trump is saying that his comments about using disinfectant to fight COVID-19 were sarcastic.

1. He doesn't know what sarcasm is
2. He wasn't being sarcastic
3. He saw everyone laughing at his stupid ass, so he's backtracking
4. He's a complete moron

All these things are true. pic.twitter.com/1ZfjJ7iIrX

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) April 24, 2020

An app for the purpose of finding and identifying those who are close to a virus carrier is an invention of significance.

It deserves the co-operation of every citizen with a device able to accommodate it. So why all the negativity? Despite every possible assurance by the government, why do so many say they won’t download it?

Well, take your choice:

A. The government and its ministers cannot be trusted.

B. The Prime Minister is a liar and cannot be trusted.

C. The government has lied so much that you wouldn’t believe a word they say.

D. They have stuffed around with matters relating to people’s privacy that you wouldn’t trust them as far as you could collectively throw them.

E. People wouldn’t have a bar of anything Stuart Robert was involved with.

F. The data will be housed in another country.

Truthfully, any of the aforementioned points would be justifiable in making your decision. And it’s such a pity given the app’s unique ability to save lives and end the crisis.

Although I have some misgivings about the government handling of the coronavirus emergency they have, thanks to an acceptance of the science, performed admirably.

Consequently they have received praise for their efforts proving in the process that doing good has its rewards.

Improving the common good post COVID-19 is another matter.

Lies that are told when an internal conscience tells the liar that he/she are wrong is the last act of self-defiance.

The lies so frequently being told by this government are worse than the normal ones couched in innumerable shades of grey.

The lies being told by Morrison, Dutton, Hunt, Taylor and others are so repetitive, so blatant, and so desperate that they could only come from men of self guilt and deliberate intent.

The Prime Minister sets the example for the ministry to follow. It’s when he is being questioned under stress that his lying is most blatant.

These are scared politicians who have become so immersed in untruth that they have forgotten the truth that sincerity and transparency brings with it. It’s called ‘being honest.’

The Prime Minister continues to say that we will reach our Paris targets in a canter. He does so in the knowledge that it is untrue.

His own department tells him we cannot but he so desperately wants everyone to believe him that he is prepared to toss his faith out the window and lie to us.

Only a very desperate person would stoop so low. Morrison is one such person.

In September 2017 in a piece for The AIMN I wrote:

“How important is truth in politics? As a writer who happens to love the way words can be constructed to shape a thought, send a message, express love, anger, or convey an action I am lost without them.

Without them something vanishes from our discourse. Without words the ability to communicate the seemingly endless aspects of human emotion is taken from us.”

Tony Abbott is the greatest liar ever to have soiled the plush carpets of Parliament House.

Malcolm Turnbull, by walking away from what he believed in, is the greatest hypocrite.

Scott Morrison by with his lying has betrayed his faith.

If more people had the capacity to think for themselves and question what they are being told perhaps we would have more genuineness in politics.

If more journalists had the intestinal fortitude to question and syphon out the truth of what politicians are telling them we may get a better body politic. A more honest democracy.

In July 2016 in Dr. George Venturini’s outstanding series, The facets of Australian fascism: the Abbott Government experiment, he wrote:

“The State lives on fear. Today, it is the fear of ‘terrorists’, which is a manufactured threat, meant to scare people into handing over their rights and dignity to the tricksters in power. “Our twentieth century is the century of fear,” wrote Camus in his article ‘The century of fear’ for Combat, the newspaper that had supported the French Resistance to Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Camus said that fear could be regarded as a developed science.”

The next time you hear or see an interview with an LNP politician consider these methods they use to counter questions or even avoid them:

• Keep talking. The more you talk the fewer the questions.
• Questioning the question or attack it.
• The question is offensive
• Attacking an external group. (The opposition or rival groups). Blame Labor.
• Starting an answer but not finishing it (interrupting yourself)
• Saying or implying that the question has already been answered.

Lying, misinformation, lying by omission, subliminally implied suggestion, straightforward propaganda, deliberate scare campaigning and any form of untruthful communication has become the norm in the way politicians and the media converse with the public. So normal and long applied has this form of conversation become that we are now unquestioning of it.

Four months ago Morrison argued that there wasn’t any evidence that connected the bush fires with Climate Change. When he said that reducing Australia’s emissions would do nothing, he told another lie:

“But I think to suggest that at just 1.3% of emissions, that Australia doing something more or less would change the fire outcome this season – I don’t think that stands up to any credible scientific evidence at all.”

It is well known that those countries with the equivalent emissions or under Australia’s make up for a third of the total problem.

Grant Turner, writing for Independent Australia about the Sports Rorts said:

“LOOKING BACK through Australian political history, I’ve tried to find a more blatant example of a Prime Minister knowingly looking down a camera lens and flat-out lying to the Australian people as Prime Minister Scott Morrison did when he said in relation to the sports rorts grants program that all projects funded were eligible and that his office had no input into which projects received grants.”

When addressing the United Nations in September of last year the Prime Minister said, “plastic pollution in the oceans is a more immediate threat than climate change.” This simply isn’t true and you don’t need to be a scientist to know so.

His holiday in Hawaii was yet another unnecessary lie as was the lie about Paster Houston being invited to the White House.

Another time when being questioned about the phrase “Shanghai Sam” in connection with Gladys Liu’s potential links to China’s central government as being racist. He denied it, where as in fact he had used the phrase 17 times. He then claimed he misheard the question.

We can go back to the time when he was immigration minister and at the height of Abbott’s “stop the boats” propaganda he invents the phrase “on water matters” and under these words refused to answer the simplest questions.

Scott Morrison displays an annoyance, an almost paranoid dislike of answering questions. He finds it anything but comfortable.

It’s not that he is born of incompetence but rather petulance. Like it’s beneath him. The longer an interview goes the more seething is his demeanour.

Of course he, as Prime Minister has to front up but you can tell he doesn’t like it. That he should be questioned at all he finds contemptible.

It has never been as easy as it is now to get away with lying in politics.

What does ‘snapback’ mean?

Our political system is in crisis because our government fails to speak with any clarity on issues that concern us.

Last week’s Essential Report asked people about their expectations of what would happen to the economy following the coronavirus situation:

“Half of the people (51%) think the coronavirus will impact the economy for up to a year, with slow growth following. A further 29% believe the impact will be even more devastating, with long-lasting impact and recession.

Younger people aged 18-34 are a little more optimistic, with 16% thinking the economy will recover within 2-3 months (compared to 9% of those aged 55+).”

The now retired Senator and Scottish warhorse Doug Cameron tweeted:

Murdoch rags are portraying Morrison as a great leader in a time of crisis.
Give me a break!
He is taking Treasury advice, reluctantly abandoning Coalition dogma and neoliberalism.
SnapBack will reinforce trickle down, small govt, inequality and tax cuts for the privileged

— Doug Cameron (@DougCameron51) April 6, 2020

Cameron’s words in there brevity contain the sting of truth and the bark of foolhardiness.

Only a government bereft of any political nouse would believe that it were possible to, as Cameron said, abandon its own dogma, snap its fingers and return to the political settings of early January 2020.

I know I’m stepping on my previous words here but please be patient. In a short space of time the government (1) doubled the benefit payed to those out of work, and (2) spent $130 million on unconditional wage subsidies with the dole queue likely to remain lengthy for a long, long, time.

For the first time in my life the issue of peoples’ health became the government’s top priority.

The answers to the question from Essential poll show a remarkable naivety by the young with the other half of the people just as gullible.

That said, what of the born to rule party who think they are best to manage the economy? The party who, before COVID-19, was almost certain to take us into a recession waving a white flag.

But no party is recession proof.

Wikipedia tells us that Paul Keating’s recession – the one we had to have – saw 11% unemployment.

The young of today wont know what hit them. Youth unemployment reached 17%; inflation and interest rates soared, and financial institutions collapsed.

I was in business at the time and paying 19% interest on a large overdraft.

Having ticked up the biggest budget deficit in postwar history, and recognising that at some time it will have to be paid back the Prime Minister intends to go ahead with the already legislated tax cuts for the well off. Greg Jericho wrote last week it’s a form of “snapback” austerity – meaning cuts to services will be inflicted on the less well-off. He went on to say that:

“And yet, despite the coronavirus shredding all projections made even just three months ago, the government remains firm in its view that it will deliver its tax cuts – cuts which were not even costed when they were legislated, and which now are based on scenarios of pure fantasy.”

Having now dipped his toe in the waters of flexible ideology why doesn’t the Prime Minister just put a blanket ban on subsidies (unless proven to be in the common good) and the taxation loophole doors that are always revolving for the rich and privileged.

As I said in my previous piece, this crisis could be the catalyst for change.

“Snapback” won’t snapback easily. Having seen the value of our public health system and the part private hospitals play in it pressure will be on the government to fund it better. Or organise it better.

We have also witnessed the intrinsic value of essential workers including nurses, cleaners, aged care workers, child carers and home delivery drivers. Their value must be adequately recognised and recompensed.

Pause and think; should be the mantra, develop ideas look at different ways of doing things, dismiss nothing? A moment of tranquillity that brings creativity, stillness, thoughtfulness and change is a precious one.

We, together with our politicians need to stop and ask ourselves what a society is and what are the aspirations and desires of it. Surely they must be better that what we have now.

They put their ideology aside to help fix the problem. Why not prolong it with ideological forgetfulness.

Now that the government has accepted the science of the coronavirus they should totality accept the science of climate change and recognise that we must all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health.

So why then should we not be liable for the cost of a healthy planet and do something substantial to lower our emissions as a matter of urgency?

But having said that, one can picture the deniers of climate change arranging their forces to attack those who believe and don’t want it to become worse than what it is.

Now is not the time – “they will say afresh” and the same old story will be repeated.

We must at all cost resist them.

Those of us game enough to display our naked idealism see a much different world than the unregulated one of capitalism and the far right.

We see a society where the common good works hand in hand with regulated capitalism. Where caveats are placed on policies so that fairness, kindness and the colour green is evident. A society where ample time is given to the children we have conceived to raise the citizens of tomorrow.

We must have time that balances work, rest and play. We must plan ahead free of the dogma of greed is good and free of past errors.

As I see it, the simplistic message of “snapback” suggests that governments are only ever reactive institutions instead of, as far as is possible, being proactive.

This must be reversed.

Hugh Mackay, writing for The Conversation puts it this way:

“But pandemics are such a potent sign of our interconnectedness and interdependency, they remind us that sustainable communities depend on a steady supply of compassion to nurture them. Longer term, major disruptions like this one tend to bring out the best in us, so we are entitled to hope for some overdue corrections to our mad materialism and our unhealthy individualism.”

Scott Morrison said “snapback” means, more or less, that we have to get back to where we were before.

Surely he doesn’t mean experiencing the rorts, the corruption, the daily incompetence and the appalling lies … then forget it.

When we emerge from our confinement the worst possible thing would be that the “snapback” principle simply reinforces a conservative view of a world that has long past us by. Let us hope that it is not the destination the leader wants to take us.