Perhaps the most important takeout from the leaders’ debate was when Scott Morrison admitted that it is Labor that introduces the big social reforms – Medicare, the PBS, the NDIS, paid parental leave, compulsory superannuation for example.

Labor might have the ideas but it was the Coalition who had to pay for them, sighed Scott.

They market themselves as the better economic managers. This seems to be based on Howard and Costello’s strategy of selling off every profitable asset we owned, privatising everything they could, whilst wasting the profits from the mining boom on doling out huge sums in tax cuts and deductions.

And they hit us with the GST.

Abbott’s strategy was to cut funding to everything except defence which has seen above budgeted rises every year. He sold the profitable Medibank Private for a short-term sugar hit to the budget, thus ceding any competitive control over private health insurance prices and coverage. He decided the NBN wasn’t worth doing properly – so now we have to go back and do it again with fibre.

He also imposed the 2% budget repair levy.

Josh Frydenberg’s smiling slide show and smug mugs were as close as the current mob came to any pretence of good economic management.

For many years they have ignored warnings about the compounding effect of multiple climate-induced disasters. They have resisted calls to prepare and actively fought against global commitments to reduce emissions and phase out fossil fuels. Their solution is to give a few hundred dollars to a selected few victims and then blame someone else, as Morrison tried to do last night about the bushfires by bringing up a lack of hazard reduction as a cause.

When faced with fires, floods and a pandemic, they abandoned any semblance of fiscal responsibility and threw money around in gay abandon.

Some form of stimulus was necessary but JobKeeper was poorly designed with few if any checks on eligibility compliance. A kid who worked one shift at McDonalds was all of a sudden on $750 a week. Businesses who saw massive increases in their profits were hugely subsidised with that money then going to shareholders and company directors. Others, like universities and the arts sector, were left out entirely.

We have gone from the promise of “back in black” to the three largest deficits in history and a structural deficit next financial year at 3.6 per cent of GDP.

Gross debt is forecast to reach a record $906 billion by the end of this financial year, grow to $977 billion in 2022-23 and top $1 trillion the following year. Interest payments in 2025-26 are projected to be $22.4 billion.

With increasing costs for health and aged care inevitable, instead of a plan to increase revenue, we are offered tax cuts for the wealthy and a dam for every Nationals electorate.

There is no recognition of the economic benefits Labor’s “big ideas” have delivered.

Not only do this lot concede they are not the party of big ideas, they have demonstrated that they also have no idea about how to plan for the future and budget and invest accordingly.

The way this election is currently being framed, the choice is between an autocratic bully and an unknown who is doing his best to say he is no different.

When asked about the eye-watering sums being spent on defence, Albanese said it’s what the money is spent on that is more important than the amount. Good answer, completely undermined by then adding that he would continue expenditure of over 2% of GDP.

Why commit to a totally meaningless arbitrary figure with no context?

Three years ago, both Morrison and Albanese were speaking warmly of our growing relationship with China. When Marise Payne changed all that with her ham-fisted accusations about China and the pandemic on TV one Sunday morning, things started a downhill slide. China has become increasingly hostile, Morrison increasingly belligerent, with Albanese trying to keep up.

Do they seriously think that preparing ourselves for armed conflict is the best way to handle this?

When asked about offshore processing, Albanese said there would be no need for it if boats are turned back. He could have expanded on that by offering to reinstate the humanitarian intake levels and speed up processing and relocation but he didn’t. When challenged, he immediately scrambled to say offshore processing would remain.

Why commit to continuing an inhumane extraordinarily expensive failed policy, even claiming credit for it being introduced when Albanese was Deputy PM?

Everybody in the country agrees that Jobseeker should be increased except for the two major political parties. And before you say they are the parties who have to deliver a budget, they are the same two parties who both agree the stage 3 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favour high income individuals, should go ahead.

On climate change and the environment, there are some differences but Labor joins in the chorus that we will continue to use and export coal and gas.

Albanese said he didn’t think a price on carbon was necessary to incentivise industries to reduce emissions yet this is exactly what the Emissions Reduction Fund and carbon credit market are – policies Labor appears to be going to continue though hopefully with some improvements.

Why pretend we aren’t pricing carbon when we are and when all agree it is the most effective way to reduce emissions?

Labor’s announcements on health and aged care are aspirational, lacking detail about how staff shortages will be addressed, how private aged care facilities will pay increased staffing costs, how GP clinics will be chosen or how those that are not will be affected by subsidised competition, how to attract health workers to regional areas.

It might be ok to not have every detail worked out yet but why then assure us that they won’t need foreign workers and 50 GP clinics will be open by mid next year? How can you have decided where the GP clinics will be located when you haven’t even decided on the process. To single out one area’s need invites an avalanche of comparison which should be subject to a rigorous appraisal before any decision is announced.

Piecemeal announcements of funding for local projects are just a focus for accusations of pork-barrelling. They become white noise to most of us. Just another really annoying photo shoot.

It’s great to aim to have a federal ICAC ASAP but you cannot guarantee to have it up and running by the end of the year so why make that promise?

The Republican Movement has been sidelined for Indigenous constitutional recognition. One would have hoped that both would be considered important and achievable. Surely Australians are capable of thinking about, and voting on, two such long standing issues.

On public education…crickets.

Morrison is running a one-man campaign filled with announcements that he doesn’t care if he fulfills or not. He has put all his energy into surrounding himself with compliant and complicit allies and stacking public bodies with his hand-picked choices. His entire focus is on winning an election and retaining the power to bestow largesse on his supporters. He lies with impunity, changing his story with no compunction.

Why play his game?

This shouldn’t be a choice between Morrison and Albanese. It should be a choice between competing visions for the nation.

Morrison thinks good campaigning more important than good governance. Albanese is going to have to improve at the first if we are to have any idea if he is capable of the second because, so far, this just doesn’t feel right.

I have never understood why Richard Marles is deputy leader of the Labor party – a factional payback no doubt – but his performance on Insiders this morning was a lesson on what Labor needs to get better at.

For pity’s sake, stop saying Labor won’t increase taxes. It is bleedingly obvious that revenue will have to increase to pay for an aging population, amongst other things, and categorically rejecting tax reform is madness. Sleep-walking along relying on bracket creep and hoping multinationals will cough up some tax is not what a proactive government planning for a better future should do.

If you are going to announce that all aged care homes will have a registered nurse on premises at all times when there is already a significant shortage of nurses, you need a better plan than just wage rises which are not up to the government to decide anyway.

How will private providers pay for increased staff costs? What is being done to train more nurses and to provide an ongoing career path for those who choose aged care? How will you attract health workers to regional areas?

Marles answer on public school funding was pathetic. ‘We’ll provide a pathway for them to get what they are supposed to in conjunction with the states’ means to me that they think public school funding is not a priority. That is immeasurably disappointing and short-sighted as public schools cater for the vast majority of the disadvantaged in our society and are hugely underfunded compared to the private sector.

When asked about what job he would like in the new government, Marles looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He could easily have talked up Labor’s wealth of experience and talent – make it about the team rather than individuals – and then segued into the Coalition’s squabbling and poor individual performances. But he didn’t. He just spluttered, as he so often does.

Labor needs to stress honesty, accountability and the importance of independent advice. There is a wealth of issues to address there – pork-barrelling, federal ICAC, nepotism in appointments, contracts without tender, infrastructure announced with no business case, scathing auditor general reports, reports not released, enormous cost of consultants, neutering of the public service, attacks on the ABC – the list is endless.

I sincerely hope Labor candidates are well enough informed that they do not endlessly parrot talking points. There is nothing more disingenuous than hearing the same phrase repeated by any number of talking heads.

Do not fall into the Morrison habit of talking in analogies about blank pages or family car trips or whatever other inane rubbish he goes on with.

Be honest about the real problems we are facing and the headwinds coming our way. Don’t be distracted by the ‘how will you pay for it’ diversion. It’s a ridiculous question from a government that has run up a trillion-dollar debt. The answer should be that there are some things that must be paid for and the times dictate priorities.

Morrison and Frydenberg are cherry-picking a few stats from a moment in time to claim they are good economic managers. Labor needs to be ready to answer that.

Unemployment is going to rise as foreign workers return. Interest rates are going to go up to curb rising inflation. Housing pressures, both rental and mortgage, will increase. Action on climate change becomes ever more urgent as the bill for natural disasters skyrockets. Inequality will worsen with a less progressive tax system. Poverty will increase with no changes to income support payments. Debt is rising and so is the interest bill. And there is no plan for higher wages.

As for national security, Morrison’s arrogant neglect of the Pacific region has opened the door for China. In three short years, he and his backroom buddy Alex Hawke have completely trashed our relationship with both China and our island neighbours. (not to mention what the same pair did to the NSW Liberal Party)

I sure hope Labor get this right because the country, and in fact, the world, cannot afford another three years of Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce – a more short-sighted self-serving pair would be hard to find.

Government is constitutionally obliged to act in the public interest. The institutions of government and the officials and agencies of government exist for the public, to serve the interests of the public. This ‘trust principle’ expresses the condition upon which power is given to the institutions of government, and to officials, elected and appointed alike.

Acting in the public interest has two separate components:

• objectives and outcomes – that the objectives and outcomes of the decision-making process are in the public interest, and
• process and procedure – that the process adopted and procedures followed by decisionmakers in exercising their discretionary powers are in the public interest.

Whilst the first may be somewhat subjective – some think submarines are more important than aged care – the second is not. The processes and procedures surrounding decision making are crucial in order for citizens to have confidence that it is the public interest being served rather than private, personal, parochial or partisan interests.

The government should comply with both the letter and the spirit of the law rather than trying to find loopholes to get around it.

We have had the unedifying spectacle of environment minister Sussan Ley going to court to contest that she does not owe a duty of care to the next generation to act on climate change and refusing to release a report she has had since December because parliament hasn’t racked up 15 sitting days in the last four months.

Rather than emphasis on public officials acting ‘in the public interest’, the term is now most associated with freedom of information applications or in journalists’ legal defence against prosecution brought by the government. It’s less about the quality of their decisions and actions and more about our right to know about them.

Due process must be followed in decision-making to ensure public officials are acting fairly and impartially, with integrity and professionalism. Without transparency and accountability, it is impossible to expose corruption or serious maladministration.

We now have the AFP joining the call for a far-reaching anti-corruption body that can compel witnesses and hold our lawmakers to at least the same standards as the people who enforce the law.

The rorting of parliamentary expenses has become a joke. (George Christensen is milking it for all he can). Conflicts of interest abound in the allocation of public funds, in regulatory decisions, and in appointments. (Reference the Taylor dynasty.)

Over the last nine years, the public interest has been totally subsumed by the interests of the Coalition and their powerful and wealthy puppeteers.

Scott Morrison has successfully completed his coup, disenfranchising party members and installing sycophantic supporters, but he has failed at every turn in his constitutional obligation to act in the public interest and should, along with his enablers, be rejected by the public whose interest he so wilfully ignores.

Scott Morrison isn’t a racist. But he will ruthlessly pursue whatever he considers will give him political advantage.

Remember the arm around Turnbull? An embrace that had something of the Godfather kiss to it. Morrison’s relationship with race and ethnicity has a similar feel about it.

He will cultivate relationships with certain groups and people. Then change hats and demonise whole cohorts of others to create a political narrative.

In 2011, it was reported that Morrison urged the shadow cabinet to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about “Muslim immigration”, “Muslims in Australia” and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate, as an issue on which the Opposition should concentrate its political attack.

The article also referenced Morrison’s comments on the cost of asylum-seeker funerals and his role in the controversial decision to cut a Howard government program to fund schools in Indonesia, reporting “colleagues are privately questioning whether he is trying to pursue an anti-Muslim political strategy unilaterally.”

When Morrison pandered to the history culture war crowd, putting down the Black Lives Matter protesters and claiming there had been no slavery in Australia, he enraged the Indigenous community.

“Morrison is utilising Trump’s dangerous and divisive rhetoric founded on racism and elitism by implying that the whole history of Indigenous struggle and culture in Australia is subservient to the white history and white culture of Australia.”

It isn’t personal with Scott – it’s all strategic.

Brian Houston went from being a close personal friend, mentor and spiritual guide, to ‘I haven’t seen him in years’, basically overnight. What was once seen as something for the cameras to lap up was now denied.

Morrison’s denials of his part in taking down Michael Towke in his original preselection have as much credibility as his denials that he rubbished electric vehicles before the last election.

As has been shown in the NSW Liberal preselection debacle, Morrison will do anything to get and retain power.

He’s not racist, but he willingly exploits the racism of others. Scott looks proudly on the success of his demonisation and hostage holding of “illegal” immigrants.

In late 2016, Morrison’s successor as Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, in talking about gang violence and the threat of terrorism in Australia, said Malcolm Fraser made mistakes in bringing “some people” in in the 1970s and we were paying the price for that now.

When pressed about who he meant, Dutton singled out people of Lebanese-Muslim background and pushed for tougher immigration laws – all part of the national security drum beat(-up).

As Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said, Morrison will run with the pack and hunt with the hounds. He has no moral compass as shown by him providing the Murdoch press with private texts from another world leader to try to show he wasn’t a liar. Now he is seen as not only a liar but a pariah.

Morrison isn’t racist but he has no hesitation about throwing anyone to the wolves if he thinks it will save his hide.

The Coalition claims the budget sets out their plan for the nation, so what is that plan?

To address cost of living pressures, millions of people will be given a one-off few hundred dollars and a temporary reduction in petrol prices.

No permanent increase to pensions or Jobseeker. No support for an increase to the minimum wage. Nothing to address unaffordable housing and childcare.

To address climate change, we will increase our exports of “cleaner” coal and pin our future on gas, carbon capture and storage, and buying carbon credits.

No plan to genuinely cut emissions. No risk assessment of potentially stranded assets. No commitment to, or recognition of, the global effort to keep heating below 1.5 degrees.

To address the aged care crisis, a few hundred million will be spent on improving medication management.

No increase in wages for aged care workers. No mandated staff to resident ratio. No requirement for specifically trained staff.

To address national security, we will spend hundreds of billions on war toys that won’t arrive for decades, recruit more personnel, who also won’t materialise for decades, and join the dirty world of cyber and space warfare.

No thought of the value of soft diplomacy or being a responsible, respectful, reliable global citizen – it’s all about military ‘alliances’.

To address water security from droughts, we will build dams.

To address flood mitigation, we will build dams.

To address rising power costs, we will build dams.

To address irrigating increasingly unviable farming land, we will build dams.

The decision on whether dams are commercially viable, environmentally appropriate, where they should go, how they will operate, and who they will benefit, will be left to Barnaby Joyce who does not need unelected bureaucrats like the National Water Grid Advisory Body telling country folk what to do.

To address anything else, we have the following slush funds to be doled out one marginal electorate at a time:

Energy Security and Regional Development $7.1B

Regional Accelerator Program $2B

Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility $2B

Regional Telecommunications $1.3B

Local Roads and Community Infrastructure $501.7M

Modern Manufacturing Strategy and Fund $328.3M

Environment Restoration Fund $100M

Community Infrastructure Murray-Darling Basin $97M

Community Development Grants Program New Projects $67.7M

Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Rural Health $66M

Recycling Modernisation Fund $60.4M

Safer Communities Round Six $50M

Strong and Resilient Communities Grants $45.1M

Stronger Communities Round Eight $29.2M

Planting Trees for Queen’s Jubilee $20.3M

Community Child Care Fund $19.4M

Total $13.8B

Let the pork barrelling begin.

“The best remedy for higher wages is a stronger economy, and the way that you get that stronger economy is through responsible economic management,” says the man whose government last year oversaw the biggest fall in real wages this century aside from when the GST was introduced.

As reported by Greg Jericho, “Since September 2013, private-sector wages have grown just 1.4% above inflation, compared to the 4.2% they grew during the Rudd/Gillard governments – despite being in power for three fewer years.”

In February, the Australian Financial Review reported “Investors are primed for the highest levels of corporate profits on record in the year ahead after upbeat half-year results that have calmed fears that rising costs and supply chain hiccups could dampen earnings.”

And it seems the war in Ukraine has only boosted that outlook here as commodity prices soar.

So with low unemployment and high corporate profits, why aren’t wages rising?

Because workers no longer have a collective voice.

The undermining and demonisation of unions has done its job. Workers can no longer even withdraw their labour without facing huge penalties or the sack.

The rot started with the Accord brokered by Bob Hawke. Unions gave up demanding large pay rises in return for social benefits like Medicare and superannuation. But, as time went on and union membership dwindled, so did any pay rises.

Combine that with the erosion of secure work through contracting and labour hire firms and the casualisation of the workforce, the rise of the gig economy and skilled visa workers, and we end up with no representative body protecting workers rights.

The Fair Work Commission has been stacked with employer-friendly commissioners who enjoy enormous salaries to decide that the lowest paid workers don’t need penalty rates and that increasing the minimum wage would be too inflationary.

Worker exploitation is rife and the penalties, if caught, negligible. The same cannot be said about the penalties imposed on unions or workers who engage in industrial action.

Big business, aided and abetted by the Murdoch media, have kept the Coalition in power for twenty of the last twenty-six years and they have been rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

It’s time the workers united again to claim their share of the profits their labour produces. Companies should fulfil their part of the social contract by paying fair wages and taxation.

With 12% of Australians living in poverty, it’s time we had a government that puts the welfare of its people first.

It’s time.

I don’t often agree with Greg Sheridan but when he described Scott Morrison’s announcement that Australia was sending weapons to Ukraine as “performative symbolism,” he was right on the money.

We transferred a few million dollars to the people who do have weapons – a token gesture that Morrison wants acknowledged by the Ukrainian President in an address to our parliament. After all, he addressed other countries, why not take time out from the war to thank us too.

Morrison and Dutton want a khaki election. They want us to concentrate on a war in Europe and threats of Chinese invasion via Antarctica and Russian Space Wars.

But as they furiously point over there, Australia reels from the cumulative onslaught of drought, fire, flood, heatwave, cyclone, storm surge and new diseases.

Nothing underlines the “performative symbolism” of the Morrison government more than their pretence at taking action on climate change.

In response to criticism from the UN secretary general, government MPs were quick to show their true colours.

Matt Canavan said the UN should “read the room” and accused it of being “asleep” as “Europe has got itself into an absolute vulnerable mess because they failed to develop their own fossil fuels.”

“It is clear now that what we need to do is restore natural resource production to the free world … For the UN here – they are not only so hopeless on Ukraine … Now they’re actively undermining our peace and security, and we should totally ignore them.”

Paul Fletcher told ABC News Breakfast the “chattering classes of the UN can say what they want” while Australia was “delivering outcomes” like a 20% emissions reduction since 2005. That was a “better performance” than the US, Canada, and New Zealand, Fletcher said.

That claim requires so much cherry-picking that it is beyond credible.

Excluding LULUCF or changing the starting year to 1990, when the data begins, puts Australia well behind the pack. The claim also doesn’t acknowledge the effect of the pandemic and compares recent data from Australia to pre-pandemic data from other countries.

Comparable emissions reduction data from 2005 to 2019:

• The UK: -34 per cent
• France: -19 per cent
• Germany: -20 per cent
• Italy: -32 per cent
• Australia: -15 per cent

Pep Canadell, chief research scientist at the CSIRO Climate Science Centre and the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, told Fact Check the sudden drop of around 5 per cent between 2019 and 2020 was the result of “a pandemic problem that has nothing to do with structural changes of energy, or economic system.”

The government has told us that they are committed to a fossil-fuel led recovery in Australia and continued expansion of mines and exports and support for the industry.

Any pretence otherwise is, as Mr Sheridan put it, performative symbolism.

The Coalition’s boast to being stronger on national security is based purely on throwing so much money at defence that they are wasting it in their haste to spend it.

The government’s ham-fisted megaphone diplomacy “shirt-fronting” in the Australian media has seen our relationship with China go from a standing ovation in parliament for Xi Jinping as he spoke about our free trade agreement to trade sanctions from China and warnings to their citizens not to travel or study here.

The hyping up of the threat that China poses to Australia is deliberate and dangerous. That is not to ignore the threat they may pose to Hong Kong or Taiwan, or their claim to islands in the South China Sea, but we have no stake in those disputes beyond freedom of navigation and abuse of human rights. They do not threaten our sovereignty in any way.

Concern about China’s growing influence in the Pacific region sounds more like guilt at our neglect as we slashed foreign aid and ignored pleas to act on climate change. If we don’t want our neighbours to be indebted to China then we need to offer the help they need, not some righteous anger at them accepting it from someone else.

When it comes to Putin and the Ukraine, the difference in rhetoric from Scott Morrison about how, no matter how small we are, we must join together to stand up to the bullies, and his assertion that our emissions are too small to matter, is stark. In both areas, we speak loudly but carry a tiny little stick.

Morrison and his band of miscreants have deliberately stirred up mistrust in the very institutions that are designed to protect our freedom and way of life.

In October 2019, Morrison told the Lowy Institute that the world needs to avoid “negative globalism” and eschew an “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy”. He said it did not serve the national interest “when international institutions demand conformity rather than independent cooperation on global issues. The world works best when the character and distinctiveness of independent nations is preserved within a framework of mutual respect.”

Morrison contended that international engagement was “being challenged by a new variant of globalism that seeks to elevate global institutions above the authority of nation states to direct national policies. We will decide our interests and the circumstances in which we seek to pursue them.”

That Trumpian logic could be quoted back at Scotty by Putin and Xi.

Government ministers have also launched into criticism of our courts, so much so that three of them were forced into making an “unreserved apology” to avoid being found in contempt.

An increasingly shrill Tim Wilson said that legislation aimed at establishing an independent climate change commission to provide advice to the government on the appropriate policy mechanisms and interim targets needed to achieve this target amounted to “subversion and treason”. Presumably because Tim knows best how to protect us from this existential threat?

Morrison’s mob have repeatedly told us that bleeding-heart socialist lefties have taken over not only the courts but the education system, the non-Murdoch media, the scientific bodies warning about catastrophic climate change, the unions (who are also thugs and criminals…or mum and dad investors depending on the topic at hand), the Human Rights Commission, the universities, the AMA – pretty much everything except the Minerals Council whose pragmatic independent advice is apparently a shining light for the nation’s best interests.

It’s not just undermining institutions and organisations, they have also sought to pit us against each other, exploiting fears and stoking suspicion.

As shadow immigration minister, Morrison thought it would be a good election strategy to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about “Muslim immigration“, “Muslims in Australia” and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate.

Peter Dutton claimed Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”, prompting a twitter storm of people posting shots of themselves not being attacked whilst eating dinner in Melbourne.

He had previously claimed that Malcolm Fraser made a mistake resettling refugees from the war in Lebanon because second and third generation Lebanese-Australians were being charged with terrorist-related offences.

Morrison, Dutton and Barnaby Joyce all dismissed the Uluru Statement from the Heart saying we didn’t need a third chamber of parliament, which it never was. Instead, we have seen the government champion the free speech of people like Bill Leak with attempts to enshrine the rights of bigots receiving more government attention and support than the rights of the traditional custodians of the land to some input into the policies that directly affect them.

Their divisive tactics don’t just exploit ethnic differences.

Barnaby loves to pour fuel on the rural/urban divide bemoaning the “denearing (?) sneer towards the people of the great city of Gladstone and the people of Central Queensland.”

“It follows their usual line of thinking that regional people are somehow below contempt,” says Barnaby, looking for relevance…and a dictionary.

Our live and let live attitude to religion has also taken a battering at the hands of a government who seems to think the religious need to be compensated for marriage equality. The freedom of people to marry whomever they love has to be balanced with the freedom of religious institutions to abhor and discriminate against them.

Why is this government so perturbed about people’s gender identity and sexuality? Is the fact that many of them went to single sex schools a factor? Or is it, once again, manufactured division in the hope of buying a few votes?

And it’s not like you can rely on them in an emergency. When the bushfires hit, Scotty went on holidays because he doesn’t hold a hose. When the pandemic hit, it wasn’t a race to protect people. When the floods hit, it was up to the states to ask for help and kids on kayaks to be first responders. And apparently aged care is managing just fine.

Australia’s national security will never be assured by the amassing of weapons. Our social cohesion will not be achieved by stoking division for political gain.

We should be a good global citizen who respects and upholds the rule of law and who co-operates on combined action to tackle shared challenges. We should be a thoughtful neighbour, there in times of need but also aware that our actions affect others. And we should be a cohesive community that embraces our diversity as an asset that strengthens our freedom.

Instead, we have ScottyFromMarketing and the Beetrooter with a chorus line of swinging dicks, wolverines, climate change deniers and homophobic happy clappers, all beholden to vested interests whose only motive is to expand their wealth and power.

When Scotty left his job with Tourism New Zealand, then sports minister Trevor Mallard laid the blame for problems at the Office of Tourism and Sport squarely with Morrison.

Australian standards of public sector behaviour “are lower than ours,” Mallard told the NZ Herald.

“My experience with Australian politicians is that rules and ethics are not as important to them as they are to New Zealanders.”

Sorry, but this lot make me feel far from secure.

I don’t profess to understand how other countries operate but, in Australia, we rely on our government to make things work.

Or we used to. Until politicians decided that the private sector, whose survival depends on making a profit, could do things better for cheaper.

And where has that got us?

The royal commission into the aged care sector described it as “a shocking tale of neglect” and “a sad and shocking system that diminishes Australia as a nation.”

That was before COVID hit which led to hundreds of deaths and required the government sending in the army to help provide minimal care to residents.

Also pre-COVID, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability was established in April 2019. The title is an apt description of the evidence that has been presented and a shameful indictment on our society.

I remember when the Commonwealth Employment Service hooked people up with jobs. Nothing demeaning about it – if you were unemployed, they would find you a job or give you a payment in the meantime. We now have the Jobactive system which participants describe as “broken” and which is beset with countless allegations of rorting.

We used to own stuff. Until politicians decided that selling assets to give a sugar hit to the budget bottom line was a good idea.

We used to own Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas and Medibank Private. We used to own our sea and air ports, our energy infrastructure, and the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. We used to have a tax on the mining superprofits made by those who have approval to mine the resources that we own. We sold government buildings and now lease them back from the new owners.

Instead of a public service with the collective experience, expertise and continuity to advise the government of the day, we have political appointees who use consultants to justify whatever position they choose to take. Cue Brian Fisher.

The COVID pandemic has starkly illustrated the dangers of the small government approach. From using hotels and untrained security guards for quarantine to suddenly expecting people to source their own Rapid Antigen Tests, the whole thing has been a reactionary debacle rather than anything resembling preparedness and co-ordination of a planned response.

For a government who prides itself on cutting red tape to have to wait for letters from premiers asking for help and then a meeting with the governor-general to, weeks later, approve the idea that we are suffering a national emergency before they can mobilise help is Pythonesque. I don’t think they thought through the significance of the word ‘emergency’.

We have more army personnel thrown into emergency roles than a military junta but none of them know the local areas they are dealing with or the resources they have or need. Hence the constant meetings – or photographs of them anyway – as locals head out in their tinnies and on jet-skis and kayaks to save people’s lives. Because the small government acted too slowly. Again.

Ask yourself, would you trust these two in a crisis?

The kids are sharing this on TicToc Mr Speaker #Auspol #Climatecrisis pic.twitter.com/7SHVdoNE8y

— ruthenium 🌿 (@RErbium) March 9, 2022

Merry Christmas pic.twitter.com/QGYPv51pTN

— Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) December 24, 2019

Parts of NSW and Queensland are suffering unprecedented floods. At the same time, they are experiencing an unprecedented pandemic.

Before that, they were dealing with unprecedented bushfires, following unprecedented heatwaves causing unprecedented drought.

The loss of biodiversity is being labelled an extinction event as we clear land and destroy habitats. More pandemics are inevitable as we further crowd the planet.

Despite decades of warning from every credible expert about the inevitable consequences of constant growth with no regard for the environment, our politicians assume surprise when their unbridled fetish for wealth and power wreaks havoc on the world.

We have to sell coal because it increases our GDP. Temporarily. Until the next unprecedented “natural” disaster comes along.

We have to have an arms industry to employ people to make weapons so young men can kill each other and destroy the homes and lives of the women and children caught in the middle of men’s power games.

We have to accumulate more wealth because that equates to success. For an increasingly few.

Knowledge has become private property and disinformation a tool to be used.

Politicians oppose what their opposition suggests purely for political purposes wasting decades, halting progress, and ignoring risk management and prevention planning.

Stop with the Fight Club, the Wolverines, and the Big Swinging Dicks. Stop with the fixation on GDP growth. Stop with the fossil fuel protection gang and the Make-Gina-Richer mentality.

Until you realise that it is going to take an all-hands-on-deck concerted effort to save this planet from the wanton destruction caused by “unprecedented” pollution, we will continue to suffer the unprecedented consequences of your hubris.

On June 26, 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a “major foreign policy address” at Asialink, in the lead-up to the 14th G20 Summit. Ttled “Where we live”, it outlined “our plan to foster an open, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific, consistent with our national interests.”

The following is an excerpt from that speech:

“We share a comprehensive strategic partnership and free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China, with a broad and deep relationship underpinned by people-to-people ties; evidenced by the fact we are home to 1.2 million ethnic Chinese and are host to 1.4 million Chinese visitors and 205,000 Chinese students each year.

China’s conscious decision to pursue prosperity as a strategy for national unity and stability launched one of the world’s greatest economic miracles.

Now China is a significant power, with vast military, global interests and the biggest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity.

It is important to acknowledge that this success was made possible by the active and strategic engagement of the United States and the wider global community.

Firstly, through enthusiastic bilateral exchange and then by supporting access to the global rules-based trading system through China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, gave it much better access to the markets of 154 member economies.

This also required reforms from China that supported its rapid economic expansion.

China is now the major trading partner of more than 50 countries.

In 1980, China’s trade with the outside world amounted to less than $40 billion. By 2015, it had increased one hundredfold, to $4 trillion

China is the largest holder of foreign US currency reserves.

China’s economic rise has not been a zero sum game. This has been especially true in Australia’s case, but also for the United States.

This is why Australia has always, and will continue to, welcome China’s economic growth.

However, the ground has now shifted. It is now evident that the US believes that the rule-based trading system – in its current form – is not capable of dealing with China’s economic structure and policy practices.

Our prosperity, and that of our Indo-Pacific partners, depends strongly on the maintenance of an open global economy and a rules-based trading system.

It will also depend on a positive, productive and cooperative bilateral relationship between China and the US.

This will require the exercise of special responsibilities by these “Great Powers” to resist a narrow view of their interests.

In 1951 George Kennan wrote, in American Diplomacy:

“If our purposes and undertakings here at home are decent ones, unsullied by arrogance or hostility towards other people or delusions of superiority, then the pursuit of our national interest can never fail to be conducive to a better world.”

As a rising global power, China also now has additional responsibilities.

It is therefore important that US-China trade tensions are resolved in the broader context of their special power responsibilities, in a way that is WTO-consistent and does not undermine the interests of other parties, including Australia.

The accumulation of issues that have led to these tensions must be acknowledged, addressed and resolved at the negotiating table in a way that reinforces our open and inclusive global trading system.

Like all of us, China and the US have a strong interest, and a special responsibility, to modernise and support the system that has delivered unprecedented growth in national wealth and living standards over the last two decades.

We can support these efforts and outcomes by rejecting the fatalism of increased polarisation and resisting the analysis that only sees these issues through a binary prism.

It is in no-one’s interest in the Indo-Pacific to see an inevitably more competitive US-China relationship become adversarial in character.

All nations in our region, not just Australia, are having to adjust to this period of great power competition.

Like others who live here, Australia simply seeks the freedom to be ourselves, peacefully pursue our national interests, consistent with our values, appreciating our history and being transparent and honest about our aspirations for the future.

These shared challenges create important common ground, which is where I see Australia continuing to play an important role.

So we won’t be fazed, intimidated or fatalistic.

Of course the international environment is difficult.

Of course there are risks of further deterioration in key relationships and consequent collateral impacts on the global economy and regional stability.

There are alsopressures to decouple the Chinese and American economic systems, whether this be in technology, payments systems, financial services or other areas.

But these are not insurmountable obstacles. To think they are not does not amount to some modern form of appeasement. This is a straw man argument.

And what’s the alternative?

These risks not only can but must be mitigated, and this comes more possible when we work together.

We should not just sit back and passively await our fate in the wake of a major power contest.

This underestimates and gives up on the power of human, state and multilateral agency.

There are practical steps that we can pursue.

So we will play our part. We will not be passive bystanders.

Our approach will be based on key principles.

A commitment to open markets with trade relationships based on rules, not coercion.

An approach which builds resilience and sovereignty.

Respect for international law and the resolution of disputes peacefully, without the threat or use of coercive power.

And a commitment to cooperation and burden-sharing within strong and resilient regional architecture.

None of those principles is inconsistent with the natural instinct of sovereign nations to compete.

And It is not inevitable that competition leads to conflict.

We have already demonstrated that like-minded nations can take measures to help shape their own destiny.

We will continue to lead by example, developing our close web of relationships across and within the Indo-Pacific.

This year we hope to conclude the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, an agreement that includes 16 economies and accounts for about one-third of global GDP.

It would be the first regional free trade agreement to include India and has the 10 nations of ASEAN at its core.

RCEP’s membership includes 10 out of Australia’s top 15 trading partners, account forover 60 per cent of Australia’s two-way trade, andover 70 per cent of Australia’s goods and services exports.

To conclude the agreement when leaders meet in Bangkok in November this year, I would urge leaders to send their Trade Ministers to the meeting next month in Beijing with a clear mandate to deal.

While continuing to work with other partners in the region we will also deal directly with our great and powerful friends.

Our relationship with the US has never been stronger.

Ours is a resolute and mutually beneficial alliance partnership where neither party has the need to prove anything to each other.

My Government is also committed to further enhancing our relationship with China.

Our relationship with China has many strengths.

Our trading relationship is flourishing, with two-way trade reaching a remarkable $215 billion in 2018, which benefits both countries.

Our cooperation with China through our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership goes well beyond economic issues.

We are working together across fields including health, education, and taxation, where Australia offers world-class expertise.

We’ve also been cooperating successfully to counter drug trafficking through Taskforce Blaze.

There is more we can do. That’s why we established the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations earlier this year.

The Foundation will strengthen areas where we already cooperate, deepen the already rich links across our communities, and help identify new areas for practical cooperation.

While we will be clear-eyed that our political differences will affect aspects of our engagement, we are determined that our relationship not be dominated by areas of disagreement.

The decisions we make in relation to China are based solely on our national interests, just as theirs are towards Australia, and these are sometimes hard calls to make.

But they are designed always to leave large scope for cooperation on common interests and recognise the importance of China’s economic success.

This success is good for China, it is good for Australia.

McKinsey estimates that 2.6 per cent of consumption in the rest of the world is imported from China, compared with 0.8 per cent in 2000.

Chinese imports now account for 2.0 per cent of the gross output of the rest of the world, compared with 0.4 per cent in 2000.

We welcome Chinese investment.

We have welcomed it for decades.

The stock of Chinese investment in Australia in 2018 was more than 8 times larger than a decade ago, and China is our ninth largest investor behind the USA, Japan, UK and the Netherlands.

Australia has the most liberal foreign investment regime in our region. It is not possible for Australians to invest in China in the way Chinese investments are made here. Perhaps this will change, but our policy is not framed in the context of reciprocity, but national interest.

We retain our sovereignty over these investments, especially in relation to strategic and national security considerations, but where such issues are satisfied, we would be only harming our own economic interests if we were to deny our economy access to this capital.

That is why we operate a non-discriminatory approach to investment screening.

And I note that all nations, including China, screen foreign investment.

The infrastructure needs of the region are enormous and Australia welcomes the contribution that the Belt and Road Initiative can make to regional infrastructure investment and to regional development.

Let me close by making the following observations.

There are gathering clouds in the global economy.

The trading relationship between the world’s two most important economies is under serious strain.

But an ever-worsening trajectory in this relationship is not inevitable.

We all have responsibilities to deepen patterns of co-operation, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

Australia is ready to play its part.

We embrace free trade, global engagement and an international system where we agree rules, stick to them and honour our commitments.

That is the surest path to an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”