A walk down memory lane, with a cast of all too familiar characters.

Saved for prosperity.

We begin:

Our Prime Minister

Our Treasurer

Our Defence Minister

Our Attorney General

Our Minister for the NDIS

Time to bid this rabble farewell.

Scott Morrison has made it patently clear that he thinks he is above the law and that public money is his to spend as he sees fit without having to answer to anyone. The judiciary disagrees.

Scott Morrison:

“I have serious criticisms of the NSW ICAC model, I’ve never been a fan of how it’s conducted itself.

And I don’t care barristers and lawyers and others up there in Macquarie Street – I don’t mean in the Parliament, I mean sitting around in the barristers’ chambers – disagree with me.

They disagree with me all the time. I’ve never had much truck with them over the course of my entire political career.

It’s just not about having any integrity division, one that is driven by populism, one that’s just been driven by the latest thought bubble.

If we are going to so disempower our elected representatives to do things about what is needed in their communities, then what is the point?

We can’t just hand government over to faceless officials to make decisions that impact the lives of Australians from one end of the country to the other. I actually think there’s a great danger in that.

It wouldn’t be Australia anymore if that was the case, it would be some kind of public autocracy.”

31 former Australian judges:

“We are retired judges who believe that a National Integrity Commission is urgently needed to fill the gaps in our integrity system and restore trust in our political processes. Nothing less than halting the serious erosion of our shared democratic principles is at stake.

There must be conferred upon that commission a broad jurisdiction and strong investigative powers, including the power to hold public hearings, and respond to bona fide complaints from the public, so that serious or systemic corruption and misconduct can be adequately investigated and exposed.

Despite recent criticisms of anti-corruption commissions, the widely accepted case for a well-designed national integrity commission remains impregnable.

This is public money, held on trust for the nation as a whole, to be spent in the national interest and not for unethical political purposes or illegitimate private gain.

Where billions are to be spent and significant power is available to dispense it with little oversight, greedy people with convenient consciences and powerful connections will ensure that, with the manipulation of their influence, they will obtain illegal or unethical advantage to the detriment of the interests of the general public.

And they will do so by means which only a specialist anti-corruption body will have the skill and power to detect.

Institutions of democracy are being eroded. Important roles in government are being given to political friends. And there is no proper scrutiny of ministerial decision making. We must act now to rein in corruption in Australia.”

The Morrison government justifies its horror about the idea of the minimum wage keeping up with inflation by lamenting that it would lead to the death of small business.

What they neglect to mention is that over 60% of small businesses don’t employ anyone and a further 30% have between 1 and 4 employees.

The minimum wage is currently $40,286 a year. A 5.1% wage rise would increase that to $42,341 but, as Michael Pascoe points out, once tax is taken out, their take home pay only increases by 4.6% from $35,284 to $36,908.

Business would have to come up with an extra (tax deductible) $5.63 a day, of which $4.45 would go to a minimum wage employee to help cope with the soaring cost of living.

A business with 4 employees would have to come up with an extra (tax deductible) $157.64 a week.

So, to sum up, the 60% of non-employing small businesses wouldn’t be affected at all. The 30% who employ 1-4 people would have to come up with less than $40 per employee per week which they could then further reduce by claiming it as a tax-deductible business expense.

As for being inflationary, this paltry wage rise would go nowhere near covering the increased cost of petrol, electricity and food. And any small business that cannot absorb that small outlay wasn’t viable in the first place.

Now to the promise that “A re-elected Coalition government would help create 400,000 new small businesses by 2027.”

The government refused to specify if this was a net increase but, either way, it’s nothing special.

In 2020-21, the ABS reported that there were 365,480 entries as new businesses. With 277,674 exits, this meant an annual increase of 87,806 in the number of businesses.

It’s a bit like their promise “to create 1.3 million new jobs over the next five years”.

The labour force is projected to grow by 1.5 million over that time.

Let’s be clear – a Coalition government will never support employees regardless of the economic case for doing so. As with everything, they claim credit for things that happen in spite of them, not because of them, and wash their hands of any responsibility to do anything meaningful to address the plight of the working poor.

ScottyfromCasting is now pleading with the electorate to re-elect him because there are more characters he hasn’t yet had a chance to show us.

Daggy DIY curry-cooking ukulele-playing dad and number 1 Sharkies fan, high-viz and hard hat spokesmodel, apprentice welder, hairdresser and barrista, has “a lot of other gears” he promises to show us should his season be extended.

“I know Australians know that I can be a bit of a bulldozer when it comes to some issues and I suspect you guys know that too,” said Scott.

It’s not a description I have heard others use. Bullshitter, yes. Arrogant, yes. Asleep at the wheel, yes. Perhaps he was referring to his ability to wreck relationships in record time.

Scotty assured us that, “as we go into this next period on the other side of this election, I know there are things that are going to have to change with the way I do things.”

A 54-year-old man (happy birthday BTW), who has been in parliament for 15 years, is promising to change and be nicer? But not till after the election.

I find myself looking up the signs of an abusive relationship.

Scott Morrison has announced his determination to go ahead with his failed religious discrimination act, without the promised concurrent amendments to the sex discrimination act to protect gay and transgender students.

According to Morrison, there is no problem.

“We’ve been having this conversation for about the last four years, and on each occasion, it has been presented that apparently students are being expelled each and every day, each and every week, or each and every year. There is no evidence [of that] because the religious schools themselves don’t wish to do that. They don’t wish to do it. This is an issue that is actually not occurring in these schools.”

They may not want to expel students, just threaten them with burning in the fires of hell unless they give up their perverted, evil ways.

And that’s what this bill is designed to do – to protect the right of the religious to abuse and discriminate.

Back in 2017, Morrison revealed the true beginnings of this bill – a payback for losing the marriage equality plebiscite.

“There are almost five million Australians who voted no in this survey who are now coming to terms with the fact that they are in the minority. That did not used to be the case in this country for most, if not all, of their lives. They have concerns that their broader views and beliefs are also now in the minority and therefore under threat. They are seeking assurances from this House and this parliament at this time – whether one agrees or disagrees and whether rightly or wrongly – that the things they hold dear are not under threat because of this change.”

Malcolm Turnbull, as kind of a consolation, commissioned Philip Ruddock to do a “religious freedom” review which found Australia did not, in fact, have a religious freedom problem and that there was evidence of only very low levels of intolerance towards Christians.

In December 2018, the Morrison government promised a Religious Discrimination Act, observing that Australians of faith felt “the walls have been closing in on them” despite the fact that no-one was asking religious people to change their lives or views or beliefs in any way.

Introducing the revised third draft of the bill late last year, Morrison told Parliament it would bring “clarity” and “confidence” that “Australians of faith would be protected from discrimination”, noting how people from “various religious traditions” were concerned about “cancel culture”.

Morrison originally told the Parliament the core idea of the bill was to give legal protection against discrimination for people of faith, including in employment and education – a problem that the review showed doesn’t exist.

What the bill actually does is provide protection for people of faith to discriminate against others.

Most controversial are the provisions that override all other federal, state and territory anti-discrimination laws so that “statements of belief” are immune from legal action.

For example, a childcare provider could tell a single mother that childbirth out of marriage is evil, a doctor could tell a patient that their disability is punishment for sin, a boss or colleague could tell a gay employee that they would go to hell for their sexuality.

The bill would also allow religious bodies – including schools, hospitals or aged care services – to seek to preserve their “religious ethos” by ensuring all employees are of a particular faith. In reality, religious institutions such as schools can already discriminate in hiring and firing under special exemptions from existing discrimination laws.

This whole exercise is not to fix any existing problem of discrimination against people of faith – it’s a sop to homophobes. Pure and simple.

Somewhere along the line, election campaigning moved from being about vision and policies to being a hotchpotch of funding promises, a festival of pork-barrelling announced by leaders who are marketed as celebrities.

We are bombarded with an ignominious display of our prospective PMs’ personal lives. Photos with the dog are a must. I always wonder who actually looks after those poor benighted creatures since their owners are so rarely at home. Who is feeding the chooks and cleaning out the pen that DIY Scotty built at the Lodge since they live at Kirribilli?

Jen and the girls live with the constant presence of an official photographer. Consequently, we live with a constant stream of photos of Jen and the girls. When I visit the Prime Minister’s social media pages, I am greeted not by policy discussion but by photos of what he (supposedly) cooked last night.

Not to be outdone, Albanese is dragging his girlfriend by the hand along the campaign trail. Barely a press conference or interview goes past without him telling his log cabin story.

Anecdotes about disabled relatives abound. Encounters with individual constituents are recounted to show that our leaders are “in touch” with the people but, instead of solutions, they are offered a selfie.

We follow our leaders to church and the footie. We watch them exercise.

So ridiculous has this become that Morrison tries to convince us that, because he hasn’t changed glasses or lost weight, that is proof that he is best suited to offer a steady hand to steer the ship.

Someone needs to remind these two men that they are not vying for supreme leader. They will be the spokesperson for government should they gain or negotiate majority support.

Albanese is playing the wrong game.

Rather than ceding the stage to reporters asking gotcha questions, he could so easily say “My job is to communicate our priorities and goals and our strategy to achieve them. The strength of the Labor Party is a team of very capable ministers in every portfolio to answer questions about policy detail or relevant statistics. I am not a one-man show.”

Why do the two leaders spend so much time and money flying around the country to stage managed photo shoots with hand-picked crowds to make local announcements? Does the entire entourage really have to fly to Corangamite to announce a swimming pool or a few solar panels for the local bowlo?

Very few of us will have the opportunity to vote for either Morrison or Albanese. We need to hear from our local candidates if they are to be the ones representing us but they are sidelined in this celebrity circus of presidential style campaigning – a nodding head providing background for the aspiring star of the show.

Neither of these men are inspirational individuals. Instead of trying to sell themselves, they should be concentrating on explaining the what and how rather than the who.

After all, this is not an autocracy – yet.

If you are sick of the disappointment and white noise of a presidential style campaign where two rather ordinary men vie to be the chosen one, pre-poll voting starts May 9.

It gets to the stage where there is nothing left to say.

I wrote this two years ago. It’s kind of tragic that, despite the cast changing, the futility of it all remains as stark today as it did then…

Spokesmodel Christian Porter has been all over the airwaves announcing the government’s latest…ummm…announcement, which is that they want everyone else to sort out the “known problems” in industrial relations and to do so, they will form not one, not two, but five new “working groups” to come up with recommendations to add to the kazillion other ignored recommendations from countless previous reviews and inquiries and reports.

Unlike during the Accord, the government is not offering anything. In fact, they are, in advance, very much limiting what the “known problems” up for discussion are.

We won’t be discussing the minimum wage or the superannuation guarantee. We won’t be discussing the level of Newstart or the cutting of penalty rates. And we most definitely will not be considering sustainability in the “Jobmaker” discussion.

The task that ScottyFromMarketing has given the face of the latest advertising campaign is to, in Porter’s own words, “have a product come out of every working group.”

“…the product may in some instances be legislative, it may be budgetary, it may be a policy product, but whatever product there is, the purpose of the working groups is to try and garner as much agreement around that product as possible.”

And just in case you didn’t get the message of what these committees will do, Porter repeated the latest slogan over and over during his interview with Leigh Sales.

“They’re designed to deal with specific known problems in the system”

“There are known problems inside the system”

“What we’re concerned about is known problems”

“What we do have here is a known set of problems”

“why would we not try and limit ourselves to solving known problems”

The trouble with this approach is that the government gets to decide which problems to ignore.

Slogans like “technology not taxation” are not action. They are not even a plan for action. And they aren’t even true.

Spokesmodel Angus Taylor, whilst spouting his three-word script, is also pushing to spend taxation dollars propping up an expansion of fossil fuels. Even the very expensive Snowy 2.0 is to be powered by fossil fuels. The hydrogen industry will be powered by fossil fuels. The gas industry will be ramped up despite that being the major source of rising emissions in this country.

At some stage today, the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources are obliged to publish the December quarter emissions figures. Bushfire emissions will not be included but reductions due to the drought will be. Not that we should be “setting our hair on fire about climate change and all the rest of it” as whatsisname, the Deputy PM, chided recently.

Meanwhile, the Senate inquiry into the recent catastrophic fires is hearing how the “known problem” of a potential disaster was ignored by the government. Current fire chiefs are gagged from linking bushfires to climate change. Limit what they can say and you limit your response to areas that are more politically advantageous. It’s not fossil fuels causing climate change, it’s greenies stopping hazard reduction burning and wholesale land clearing. And those hundreds of arsonists.

When you employ the gas industry to suggest a road map for the future, you aren’t trying to solve a “known problem” – you are looking for affirmation of the irresponsible abrogation of our responsibility to tackle global heating.

When the pandemic hit, we listened to the medical experts and took action. Sure, they have formed countless committees, but they didn’t push decisions down the road six months until the committee published their findings.

We have thousands of reviews and reports and recommendations. We know what the problems are and how to go about fixing them. And it certainly is not by creating more committees to produce more reports telling you what you want to hear and coming up with more slogans to announce.

The greatest “known problem” in this country is that we are run by ScottyFromMarketing and his inept band of backup vocals.

When Josh Frydenberg gave his budget speech a few weeks ago, he grandiosely proclaimed “This is what we deliver tonight. The largest and fastest improvement to the budget bottom line in over 70 years.”

Now to most people, an improvement in their budget bottom line would mean they had more money, or at least owed less.

But that’s not the way this treasurer works.

He went on.

“By the end of the forward estimates, the budget is $100 billion better off compared to last year.”

Wow. That’s some achievement. If it actually meant anything.

So let’s have a closer look at that claim.

Firstly, you’ll notice that Josh says “by the end of the forward estimates” and “compared to last year”. That means his guess last year as to how much the budget deficits would add up to in the coming four years was out by $100 billion. That’s a pretty big mistake to make.

It also shows that the Treasurer has no idea what will happen next year, let alone in 4 years’ time.

In the first budget of the Morrison government for 2019-20, Frydenberg told us that, over the forward estimates, we would have surpluses totalling $45 billion. A year later, he was projecting deficits totalling $480.5 billion. That’s a negative turnaround of over half a trillion dollars in the space of a year.

The next year, the cumulative deficit total was estimated to be $342.4 b and now he is saying it will be $224.7 b and claiming the credit for the improvement when he hasn’t been close to being right once in his four attempts so far.

It’s fair enough to use the pandemic as an excuse for the change in fortunes but any suggestion of an improvement in the budget bottom line is ridiculous – it’s based on compounding bad guesses about the future, none of which have come to fruition, and ignores the fact that we have deficit budgets for the foreseeable future.

Josh’s other trick is ‘lowballing’ where numbers are manipulated to present favourable outcomes as explained in this article by Satyajit Das.

“Budget forecasts have repeatedly underestimated revenues, overestimated outgoings and understated commodity prices to make the actual outcome better and demonstrate competence.”

Some might call that being conservative but when Frydenberg then claims credit, it’s just dishonest.

To demonstrate just how “conservative” Josh is being in this budget, you only need look at commodity prices. The price of iron ore was $US134 a tonne – the budget assumes a price of $US55 a tonne. Thermal and metallurgical coal prices were $US512 and $US302 a tonne – the budget assumes US$130 and $60 respectively.

Whilst the prices may well drop from these historic highs, Josh has been doing this in every budget. A similar assumption for iron ore in last year’s budget ensured an upside surprise in revenue this financial year and the next of more than $6.5 billion. Claiming credit for improvements resulting from nothing more than poor, or deliberately manipulated, assumptions is very lazy.

Frydenberg has the smile of a confident man – the heir apparent to the Liberal party leadership representing a safe seat that will always vote Liberal.

The only possible risk to the path Josh envisages for himself might come from taking the people of Kooyong for granted when many of them seem to be more concerned about actual action on climate change and weeding out corruption in politics than they are about rubbery figures that mean nothing real. As Bobby Kennedy famously said, GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

Josh has a nice smile. Then again, so do most conmen.