Scott Morrison worships at a church that deems homosexuality as a “broken-ness”, something that can be fixed with conversion therapy.

When the country overwhelmingly voted for marriage equality, Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce, the men who lead this country, both abstained despite their electorates instructing them to vote in favour.

When Israel Folau insisted that gay people would go to Hell, Scott Morrison said “He’s a good man. Good on him for standing up for his faith.”

In fact, Morrison made it his “signature” legislation to enshrine the right of the religious to vilify and actively discriminate against the queer community.

Tonight, we are going to hear how upset Jen and the girls were to hear Scotty called mean names by his colleagues and how unfair that was to read those texts out in public.

Well, Jen, how do you think gay/trans kids feel when your church preaches from the pulpit that they are an abomination who will burn in hell forever unless they give up their evil and unnatural ways? How do you think that affects gay people of faith? How must it feel to have your very identity debated by strangers? How do you think it feels to have parliament vote on who you are and what you can do?

If your husband stopped condoning and facilitating such persecution, it would do a lot more to improve his standing than cooking curries, playing the ukelele (badly – seriously whose idea was that), and shoving his wife and kids in front of him to say ‘please like me’.

Like everyone else, politicians have private lives. Unlike everyone else, increasingly they have been sharing these with us during the course of their work.

Brittany Higgins made a powerful statement during her address to the National Press Club about Scott Morrison’s response to allegations that she was raped in a minister’s office.

“I didn’t want his sympathy as a father… I wanted him to use his power as Prime Minister. I wanted him to wield the weight of his office to drive change.”

Scott’s concerned dad persona wasn’t going to cut it.

No-one could have failed to be touched by Labor MP Stephen Jones when he shared the story of his nephew and son and the harmful affect that the debate about religious freedom has on kids. Surely it doesn’t take having a transgender child to realise that?

Whenever voluntary euthanasia is discussed, we hear politicians recount stories of the passing of an elderly relative regardless of which side of the debate they are on. This is something that everyone faces and everyone’s story is individual. This should be about choice, not competing stories of what happened to every politician’s nan and pop.

Discussion of the NDIS causes the same thing – they tell us about someone they know. Whilst hearing about someone else’s struggles might make people realise they are not alone, it does nothing to assuage the despair that so many carers are feeling. There’s no room left to hear the story of someone who can easily afford to pay for the support they need and the connections to access it.

Sadly, when it comes to domestic violence or sexual harassment or bullying, too many politicians also have personal stories to share.

Should this be necessary? Is it even helpful? Do you have to be personally affected to be able to deliver fair and just legislation? Does using your platform as a politician to tell your own story raise awareness or does it take over? Is listening to individual stories more important than hearing expert advice?

Empathy is great but what we need from politicians is action.

But where the line really gets crossed is when politicians deliberately use their families for image making or political campaigning.

As with everything, Tony Abbott was openly crass in the exploitation of his daughters.

‘If you want to know who to vote for, I’m the guy with the not bad-looking daughters.’

Scott Morrison’s daughters are much younger. Like many young kids, they often seem excited by the cameras and the attention, though I am sensing less so as time passes and they get to the ‘you’re embarrassing me’ stage.

Photos of dad building cubby houses and chicken coops are one thing. Sharing poetry on a very important day when the whole country is listening is another. It’s great to be proud of your kids but it is a parent’s job to also protect them. Morrison’s constant stream of family photos on social media is, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, a shameful disregard for his daughters’ well-being in pursuit of political advantage. Every time he drags them into the spotlight to try to soften his public image, he risks them copping the consequences of his unpopularity.

I cringe in anticipation of Sunday night’s hard-hitting episode of Karl at Kirribilli where Jen and the girls save the day for the celebrity PM before he gets kicked off the island.

This campaign is not going to be good for anyone’s mental health – perhaps best to leave the families out of it and stick to the issues.

It was August 2014 when then assistant defence minister, Stuart Robert, took a “private” trip to Beijing to oversee a mining deal involving a major Liberal donor and meet a Chinese vice-minister.

Robert had a shareholding in Metallum Holdings, which had an interest in Paul Marks’ Nimrod Resources. The Liberal Party declared Mr Marks donated $250,000 as an individual and $500,000 from his company Nimrod Resources in 2013-14.

Robert did not inform anyone in the government that he was going, later insisting he was there in a private capacity. Apparently, he didn’t tell that to the Chinese as detailed in the Guardian:

A media release issued by China MinMetals Corporation said Robert had extended his congratulations “on behalf of the Australian Department of Defence” and had presented “a medal bestowed to him by Australian prime minister in honour of remembrance and blessing”.

This was followed by a meeting with the Chinese vice-minister of land and resources in the reported presence of Nimrod Resources the next day.

This was far from Robert’s only dealing with influential Chinese.

In 2013 he hosted a dinner in his Parliament House office for Chinese businessman Li Ruipeng, Tony Abbott, Ian McFarlane and Paul Marks after which Li gave them all Rolex watches valued at about $250,000. After “advice from the clerk”, the watches were returned.

And Robert isn’t the only one with close links.

Two years after clinching a historic free trade deal with Beijing, in October 2016, it was announced that former trade minister Andrew Robb had joined the Landbridge Group, a Chinese company which had been granted a 99-year lease on Port Darwin in 2015, as a “high-level economic consultant”. It was reported that Robb had accepted the $73,000 per month position before leaving Parliament. Landbridge Group is chaired by Ye Cheng, a billionaire with links to the Communist Party of China.

ASIO warned the major parties about taking donations from two Chinese property developers because of links to the Chinese Communist Party. The warnings have been ignored. One of these men donated $50,000 to Andrew Robb’s campaign financing vehicle, the Bayside Forum, on the day the Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2014.

To underscore how ridiculous Peter Dutton’s baseless claims about the Chinese wanting to instal Anthony Albanese, and the whole reds under the bed scare campaign, Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, has millions invested in a Chinese state-controlled weapons manufacturer. We also host survival training exercises for Chinese military personnel in Queensland and the NT.

I know you are auditioning for the top job, Peter, but this is weirder than your bikie joke and scarier than when you tried out smiling the last time you were undermining a leader.

There is nothing like an election campaign to forcibly ram home how desperately disappointing politics has become.

Ridiculous photo shoots, leaked texts, pork-barrelling, character assassination, gotcha questions, drum beating and distraction – this is what we are dished up when we are asked to judge the performance of our government.

Legislative priority is decided by perceived political advantage rather than good governance. How else could you explain trying to bring on a severely flawed religious freedom bill before enacting the recommendations from the Aged Care Royal Commission?

Our aged care system is in crisis and yet @ScottMorrisonMP has put the Religious Discrimination Bill ahead of a Bill to implement some of the Aged Care Royal Commission recommendations. The Senate rarely gets to Bills listed for Thursday. His priorities are totally wrong! #auspol pic.twitter.com/YTRbfFOHLd

— Rex Patrick (@MrRexPatrick) February 5, 2022

Money is thrown around with gay abandon.

$222K per carpark is hardly value for money. But I guess when you’re buying votes with taxpayer money @JoshFrydenberg, any price is a good price, especially when it’s your own electorate. #FederalICAC now! #auspol #unethical https://t.co/F6zhv0FTyb

— Rex Patrick (@MrRexPatrick) February 6, 2022

Outright lies are deliberately told. Before the last election, a misinformation campaign that Labor had an agreement with the Greens and the unions to introduce a 40% death tax went viral. The source was our very own work experience Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in a thoroughly dishonest media release titled DEATH TAXES – YOU DON’T SAY, BILL!

In response to the current leaked texts fiasco, Coalition politicians are dismissing it as a media beat up, that everyone sends nasty texts after a bad day, it’s normal to disagree sometimes.

What rot! There is nothing normal about the whole business and it underlines just what a toxic workplace culture exists in our parliaments.

Blowing off steam to a partner or close friend might be one thing – nasty name-calling in print sent to people who live by leaking to the media is not how any management team should behave.

So why do our politicians do all this? Because their staffers and media advisers think it’s a good idea?

The marketing approach is delivering increasingly worse results in terms of personnel and outcomes. Politicians can’t be experts at everything but they could listen to people who are.

How about we leave the hairdressing to hairdressers, get rid of the personal photographer and image consultants, and get some policy experts on board instead.

The Coalition stakes a lot on the perception of them as better managers of the economy. In the past, they have relied on ‘debt and deficit disaster’ rhetoric with promises of surpluses. That’s out for the foreseeable future.

They are now spruiking a low unemployment rate without ever acknowledging the impact that no foreign workers may have had on that. Nor do they ever speak of the precarious nature of employment and stagnant wages. They speak proudly of growth in GDP, not admitting that government spending (read debt) is driving it, and glossing over the increasing cost of living that inflation brings.

Another tactic they persistently use to undermine Labor policies is asking how much they will cost and how are they going to pay for them.

At the last election, Labor had excellent policies for taxation reform that a misinformed electorate rejected. It was too much for people to comprehend and, as such, was easily weaponised with the old adage about Labor will tax you more even though what they were mainly doing was closing loopholes and distortions thrust on us by the profligate Howard government.

The Coalition were able to get away with asking how much action on climate change would cost while never answering how much inaction would cost.

Well this time around, Labor could have an easy answer to how they will pay for policies whilst reducing debt if they are brave enough to use it – delay/abandon the stage 3 tax cuts.

The cuts, set to come into effect in 2024, apply a standard 30 per cent income tax rate to those who earn between $45,000 and $200,000 a year.

The reason given for this is to reverse bracket creep – where a pay rise puts an individual’s income over the threshold for the next tax bracket. (It should be stressed that the higher rate only applies to the excess over that threshold, not your whole income.)

The only way to truly eliminate bracket creep is to make annual adjustments to the thresholds as explained by a very interesting paper from the Parliamentary Budget Office, Bracket creep and its fiscal impact, released in September last year.

“In the absence of the Stage 3 tax cuts, bracket creep over the next decade would be projected to reduce net debt in 2031‑32 by $276 billion.”

What the government is proposing is “projected to add around $197 billion to net debt in 2031‑32.”

That’s a $473 billion difference in net debt, and it doesn’t keep up with bracket creep anyway.

“The impact of the Stage 3 tax cuts will be more than offset by bracket creep by 2031-32. In that year, the tax cuts are estimated to cost just over $30 billion, while bracket creep is projected to have added $57 billion in additional revenue.”

Research by The Australia Institute shows the benefit from the cuts would predominantly go to high income earners.

“In 2024-25, when stage 3(a) first comes into effect, almost a third of the benefit goes to the top 10 per cent of taxpayers and the top 20 per cent will get more than half of the benefit. At the other end of the distribution the bottom 10 per cent gets none of the benefit while the bottom 20 per cent gets less than one per cent of the benefit.”

As most women are middle to low income earners, these cuts disproportionately favour men according to analysis prepared by the parliamentary budget office for the Greens.

“Men will receive about $2 for every $1 women receive between 2024 and 2031 under the tax plan, receiving a total of an extra $121.7bn compared with $62.4bn for women over the period.”

The wealthy have already been doing quite well out of the pandemic with property and share prices ballooning. Low interest rates and government stimulus have made an ideal environment for those able to take advantage.

Giving the rich more isn’t necessary to stimulate an economy with low unemployment and growth in the target range.

Lifting the tax-free threshold would have a far more beneficial flow-on effect giving assistance where it is most needed, knowing it will be spent, and saving more people from having to fill in a tax return for the ATO to process.

Governments face a trade-off between returning bracket creep and allowing bracket creep to reduce debt faster.

With December’s MYEFO projecting net debt will peak in 2025 at $915 billion, it would be fiscally responsible for Labor to say now is not the time for this tax cut, which would then put their second term budget in far better shape than the Coalition’s.

As the Coalition goes to an election promising to spend hundreds of billions on obsolete and inappropriate armaments and hundreds more on tax cuts for the wealthy, perhaps it’s time to ask them about everything else they promise…

How are you going to pay for it?

When the Prime Minister chooses his Ministry, he has many things to consider – reward for support, factions, states, urban/country, diversity, longevity of service.

Merit doesn’t get a look in.

Or perhaps this bunch are the best the Coalition has?

“If you vote Coalition, you get Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister” has become a campaign on its own and, for mine, that alone is sufficient reason to change government.

Until recently, we had an Attorney-General who thought it was fine to take anonymous donations to fund a private lawsuit against the national broadcaster.

He has been replaced by a woman who threatened to slut shame parliamentary staff, to “noim noims”, a Minister who refused to co-operate with police regarding the illegal tipping off of the media about an impending raid on union headquarters.

The Minister for Education and Youth has been stood down pending an investigation into allegations of domestic violence by a staffer he admits to having had an affair with.

Not that being stood down means much.

Bridget McKenzie was stood down for using sports rorts to give money to her gun club in 2020. In 2021 she was promoted to Minister for Regionalisation, Regional Communications and Regional Education plus Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience.

Likewise Sussan Ley, who was forced to quit as Health Minister amid investigations into expense claims which included billing taxpayers to attend two New Year’s Eve events hosted by a prominent Queensland businesswoman and donor and the “impulse purchase” of a luxury Gold Coast apartment while on a taxpayer funded trip. She is now Minister for the Environment.

Her predecessor in the portfolio, Melissa Price, will be remembered for insulting the former President of Kiribati by saying, when introduced to him at dinner by Pat Dodson, “I know why you are here, it’s for the cash. For the Pacific, it’s always about the cash. I have my chequebook here, how much do you want?” After being dubbed the “Invisible Minister” for her obvious disinterest in the environment, Price was “demoted” to Minister for Defence Industry and Minister for Science and Technology. Because that’s what happens when you do a crap job?

Take Linda Reynolds, who had to give Peter Dutton Defence after calling Brittany Higgins a lying cow. She only got the gig to keep her quiet after she made a speech in the Senate about the bullying during the leadership spill which she completely forgot about with her short-lived promotion. She is now Minister for Government Services and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Which I thought was Stuart Robert’s portfolio but I am so yesterday. Since the 2013 federal election, Robert has been appointed the Assistant Minister for Defence, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Minister for Human Services, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Minister for Government Services and, most recently, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, with responsibility for whole-of-government technology through the Digital Transformation Agency.

He is most remembered for Robodebt and charging us tens of thousands for his home internet. Oh and being a fellow Pentacostal who, along with Hillsong attendee Alex Hawke, did the numbers for Morrison’s leadership coup.

Hawke, who has only ever worked for the Liberal party (unless you count Woollies in uni holidays), was rewarded with Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. Alex has the certainty that being a religious conservative Young Liberal bestows, which didn’t go over so well in his previous gig when he tried to convince Pacific leaders that Australia was doing more than enough on climate change.

I mean look who we have taking care of it for us – Angus Taylor who entered politics to protect his family’s view from wind farms and their right to poison whatever damn grass they please. Angus, who writes Facebook messages congratulating himself (whilst forgetting to change his name), will be most remembered for giving a forged document to the Murdoch press, and quoting it in parliament, to try and belittle an opponent’s attempt to reduce emissions. The police couldn’t work out where Angus got the document because they didn’t ask him. Case over.

As Assistant Minister to the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction, we have the archetypal dilettante Tim Wison, well suited for the job after his apprenticeship with the IPA where he penned a glowing review of Ian Plimer’s climate denial book. Tim now wanders around the country having his photo taken with solar panels.

Keith Pitt’s combined water and resources portfolio is presumably to make sure the coal mines, and nuclear power plants if the Minister gets his way, have all the water they need.

We have a health Minister who tells us that Australia has done the bestest in the whole wide world in dealing with the pandemic as our infection rate surges past the US, UK and India, RATs become rarer than numbats, and daily deaths hit new highs.

We have a Treasurer who thinks the most important part of his job is a slide show of cherry-picked graphs and smiling photo ops with the latest brochure.

We have a defence Minister, who talks very loudly and carries a tiny widdle stick, eagerly agreeing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to take obsolete weapons off the hands of the US and UK armaments industries.

The Minister for Aged Care has given up all pretence of knowing or caring what he is doing and gone to the cricket instead.

If, as the old Gillette ad goes, these are “the best a man can get”, a change of government isn’t just desirable, it’s a national imperative.

In 2015, the Climate Change Authority recommended emissions reduction targets for the government to take to the Paris climate conference:

• a 2025 target of 30 per cent below 2000 levels
• further reductions by 2030 of 40 to 60 per cent below 2000 levels

In response, Labor proposed an emissions reduction target of 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, zero net emissions by 2050, and ongoing 5-yearly reviews to assess progress and to adjust commitments over time.

The move to 2005 as a base year, made by Abbott and adopted by Labor, made a significant difference to how big the promises sound. To illustrate how much, Australia’s annual emissions for the year to June 2021 were estimated to be 10.4% below emissions in the year to June 2000 but a whopping 20.4% below emissions in the year to June 2005. Hey presto, an extra 10% reduction towards our target already achieved just by changing years.

The seven years since 2015 have been the hottest on record and they have all been more than 1℃ above pre-industrial levels. With back-to-back La Niña events resulting in the sixth hottest year on record, some are suggesting that 2021 may well be the coldest year we’ll ever experience again. Australia has already experienced warming of 1.4C.

In October 2020, the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements tabled their report in parliament. It makes for scary reading about the increased risk Australia is facing from the effects of global warming.

“We can also expect more concurrent and consecutive hazard events. For example, in the last 12 months there was drought, heatwaves and bushfires, followed by severe storms, flooding and a pandemic.”

Last year, a report from the Climate Council warned that Australian governments, businesses, industries and communities can and must cut emissions deeply, aiming to reduce emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2035.

“Australia, as an advanced economy and major emitter, and one with unrivalled potential for renewable energy and other climate solutions, should be a leader not a laggard, and reduce its emissions even faster than the required global average. Every tonne of emissions avoided matters, and every delay has an escalating cost. We urge you all to take this report seriously and respond accordingly.” — Professor Christopher Field and Dr Kevin Trenberth

In this context, Labor made the unique decision to weaken their emissions reduction target.

They looked at the policies they were willing to take to an election, added up what reductions they would bring about, and made that their target – 43% below 2005 levels. It seems a pedantic change, perhaps typical of new shadow minister for such things, Chris Bowen.

A better approach would be to set the target the scientists tell us we must achieve, devise or ramp up the policies to get there, and adequately communicate with the public and business to bring them along.

Labor’s plan for the electricity sector shows penetration of renewables over 80% by 2030 with better transmission networks, community batteries and ‘shared solar banks’ for apartments. These are great ideas.

But in projected transport emissions, there is minuscule reduction. They are too scared to have combustion engine phaseout targets and they recently dropped a fuel emissions standard.

Labor will keep the Coalition’s (not so) Safeguard Mechanism but are claiming large reductions from putting downward pressure on the currently too-high “baselines”.

Allowing polluters to earn ‘credits’ based on emissions intensity rather than absolute emissions lets them increase emissions with impunity, in fact, rewards them for doing so, provided the emissions per unit produced have decreased.

If businesses pollute too much, they can purchase carbon offsets thus avoiding real, substantial short term emissions reductions.

As Ketan Joshi writes in Renew Economy:

“The details shed so much light on why big business and industry are openly supportive of the plan. Being free to scribble out emissions using ultra-cheap offsets instead of real-world reductions is extremely popular among high polluters, at the moment. Corporate net zero plans are currently incredibly hollow shells that provide no downward force on emissions today, but serve as a tool for easing public pressure for companies to act on climate. Labor is leaning into this extremely troubled, loophole ridden system and doesn’t seem to be proposing any substantial reform.”

Labor doing anything radical to cut emissions in agriculture is most unlikely with the Coalition always ready to stoke the city-country divide.

Whilst Labor’s policies are preferable to the Coalition’s, they fall far short of what must be done. We cannot afford the timidity shown by the two major parties who bow to pressure from vested interests and are paralysed by fear of reprisal from their colleagues as much as from the electorate. Nor can we afford the denial from Barnaby’s mob and the Pauline and Clive cults.

When Labor form government, the necessity for action will only be greater and the voices demanding it even louder.

I hope they are ready.

When Barnaby Joyce regained the leadership of the Nationals in June last year, no-one could have been happier than his dear friend and supporter, Gina Rinehart.

She immediately offered to host a party for him. Those VIPs lucky enough to secure an invitation to spend an evening with Barnaby and Gina at her palatial coastal hideaway in Noosa could secure their spot for a mere $10,000 a head.

At a fundraiser for Wide Bay MP Llew O’Brien shortly after their soiree, Barnaby sang Gina’s praises, which Ms Rinehart has graciously shared with us on her website.

Mr Joyce spoke of the LNP’s belief in the importance of the individual to be master of their own game as opposed to being controlled by the state.

He praised the efforts of his long-time “mate”, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who attended the event.

“Gina is one of the most powerful women in the world,” he said. “If we had more Gina’s we’d have a more powerful nation,” he said.

Barnaby holds a special place in the wallet that occupies the space where Ms Rinehart’s heart should be.

In 2011, Joyce was one of three Coalition MPs flown on Rinehart’s private jet to Hyderabad in India for the wedding of the granddaughter of a coal-mining associate.

In 2013, she donated $50,000 to his election campaign for the lower house seat of New England.

In 2017, pursuant to personal correspondence with Ms Rinehart, Barnaby’s department donated $60,000 towards hosting National Agricultural and Related Industries Day. Imagine his surprise when, at said event, he was named a “champion of farming” and awarded a $40,000 personal cheque from Gina.

After being initially “humbled” and saying he was going to use it to fix up his farm, Barnaby later returned the cheque following a perhaps predictable public backlash.

Gina is not the only mate Barnaby looks after, as revealed by his conversation with irrigators in a Shepparton pub.

Responsibility for water was handed to the Nationals as part of the party’s coalition agreement with the Liberal Party in 2015.

After a Four Corners program showing alleged (must we really keep saying that?) water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin, Joyce rushed to reassure irrigators that he was there to protect their interests.

“We have taken water, put it back into agriculture, so we could look after you and make sure we don’t have the greenies running the show basically sending you out the back door, and that was a hard ask,” he said in the recording.

“A couple of nights ago on Four Corners, you know what that’s all about? It’s about them trying to take more water off you, trying to create a calamity. A calamity for which the solution is to take more water off you, shut more of your towns down.”

In Joyce’s mind, it is the ABC creating the calamity. Tell that to the fish.

According to Barnaby, “One of the most effective forms of recycling of capital is in water infrastructure, because water is wealth and a dam is a bank.”

Even talking about water infrastructure can make some people wealthy.

Take Urannah dam, for example.

In July 2021, Barnaby Joyce issued a press release about delivering funds to keep the idea moving:

“The Australian Government is fully funding the $22.65 million business case and approvals project, which is expected to be completed in mid-2022. The Australian Government also previously committed $3 million to fund a feasibility study for the project.”

In fact, he missed another $2 million grant given to the project by Angus Taylor in 2020.

Without going into exhaustive detail, since 2016, this project has received 4 different grants from 3 different ministers and 3 different funds.

The grants have ostensibly been given to different companies except, via non-transparent funding and subcontracting arrangements, they all come back to Bowen River Utilities – a company that, according to the Guardian, is worth $100 on paper and whose sole director is John Cotter Jr, a former member of the LNP executive and active fundraiser and donor, who employs Jason Frecklington, husband of former Queensland LNP leader Deb Frecklington.

Bowen River Utilities also happens to be the proponent of the Urannah dam though it is unclear how they could possibly come up with the multi-billion-dollar price tag to build it. They also have no expertise to do the required studies. Or do they just get $27.65 million of taxpayer funds to do their business case to sell to prospective investors?

Additonal to the dam, the proposal also includes a 22,500 hectare agricultural precinct, as well as water for mining projects and urban areas, and a hydro-electric power station.

Documents submitted by Bowen River Utilities to the federal government for environmental assessment show they have consulted major coalmine operators in the Bowen Basin about buying water from Urannah.

Gina wants more dams, among other things like more land-clearing, special economic zones in northern Australia, the elimination of payroll tax and stamp duty, and for pensioners to be able to fill the labour shortage without losing part of their pension. Always on the lookout for cheap labour, our Gina.

Barnaby and Gina are mates – what Gina wants, Barnaby will find a way to make us pay for.

Scott Morrison has an arrogant certainty about him. Whether this comes from his self-perceived divine ordination, his devotion to ideology, an inflated view of his own merit, or a fear of appearing weak, it is an increasingly dangerous trait.

He just won’t listen.

ScoMo perceives advice as criticism. If he didn’t think of it, and announce it first, then it’s not worth doing.

Like procuring and providing free rapid antigen tests to the community when you decide to “push through” with no restrictions and send everyone back to work and school as we approach the peak of a pandemic we have worked so hard to slow for two years.

Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine told ABC News Breakfast this morning that “there is no plan” to address supply and staff shortages in the sector.

“We wrote to Scott Morrison in September with a follow-up in October last year, saying it was critical, amongst other things, that road transport supply chains, were flooded with rapid antigen tests because we could see in the context of the Delta outbreak that if we intended to reopen, we needed to ensure that workers were testing negative and we were maximising the number of healthy people in supply chains or we would have a problem.

That was dismissed by the Morrison government. They don’t listen to the voices of workers… His approach here is to send back into the work force those people that we have deemed for the last two years close contacts, are most likely to be carrying the virus without knowing it. That means that we could actually be making matters worse.”

Similarly, there is still no plan on how to staff schools on short notice when teachers inevitably ring in sick.

The pattern was the same when former fire chiefs implored the Morrison government to act on climate change and better prepare the nation for extreme fire seasons ahead. The government would not meet the experts to hear the advice, let alone implement it.

When disaster struck, the excuses flowed. It was the Greens fault for stopping hazard reduction burns. It was just those “raving inner-city lunatics” and “woke capital-city greenies” who thought climate change had anything to do with it. It was arsonists setting the fires. And apparrently we had enough people to hold hoses so Scotty could take a well-earned morale-boosting rest.

Advice that Robodebt was illegal was also ignored, presumably because they thought poor people wouldn’t have the resources to challenge it.

Having subsequently been forced to repay $1.8 billion to over 400,000 people, the government is now appealing a FOI direction to release documents regarding how the scheme came about, claiming there is “strong public interest” in preserving the secrecy of “business case” documents because “ministers would not receive full and frank information if there was concern any deliberations would be made public”.

The Sanctity of the Cabinet?

Senior ministers between 2015 and 2016 included the former social services ministers, Scott Morrison and Christian Porter, who were members of cabinet, and the former human services ministers, Marise Payne and Alan Tudge, who were not.

Instead of listening to experts about the parlous state of the Great Barrier Reef, the government bribed delegates with resort holidays to get them to keep it off the World Heritage Endangered list. Conflict of interest was ignored as money was given to kill a few crown of thorn starfish and attention focused on plastics. Anything but climate change. Land clearing and coastal development continue apace.

The idea of formalising a mechanism to listen to Indigenous Australians sent the government into a hissy fit. A third Chamber! A usurping of power! Racist!

When several Liberal Party women spoke out about the bullying and intimidation they endured during the leadership spill that installed Scott Morrison, he said he would investigate internally. A week later, he informed us that South Australian Liberal senator Lucy Gichuhi had told him she was not bullied by anyone in Canberra and no names of any perpetrators had been provided to him.

Morrison said politics was a very “torrid” business and his inquiries to date had not yielded evidence of “gender-specific actions” in relation to what some people would characterise as “very intense lobbying which is fairly normal in the political process, albeit not edifying”.

Having been in parliament for almost fifteen years, it’s hard to believe that Morrison hadn’t observed any “gender-specific actions” for himself since the place is a hotbed of sexual harassment, abuse and coercion. Apparently, the only woman he listens to is Jen.

The flooding of the media by the Djokovic case has tangentially drawn attention to Australia’s draconian border enforcement and the plight of the refugees who have been held hostage for nine years.

When Morrison was told about the declining health and the neglect and abuse of children in detention, he denied it and accused advocates of promoting self-harm. When told that refugees are suffering torture, he claimed our strong borders make that necessary. Which makes his newfound concern about the mental health issues caused by state border closures sound very hollow.

It really doesn’t matter what issue is facing the nation, risk assessment and expert advice are ignored in favour of tame consultants, ministerial decree, contracts without tender, grants without due process, and appointments without merit. We have panels and departments and commissions and reviews to make recommendations – all routinely ignored. To have such unerring confidence that you know better is foolhardy.

Australia is paying a high price for Morrison’s hubris.

We will never know the full extent of what our government has signed up to with their AUKUS deal but it is increasingly looking like we are to become the dumping ground for obsolete armaments.

On Monday, Peter Dutton issued a press release announcing that Australia has locked in the purchase of more than 120 tanks and other armoured vehicles from the United States, at a cost of $3.5 billion.

“Army will receive up to 75 M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams tanks, 29 M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicles, 17 M1074 Joint Assault Bridge Vehicles and an additional six M88A2 Armoured Recovery Vehicles.”

One wonders why Dutton waited till now to make that announcement since the US government let the cat out of the bag last year, as reported on June 1 in The Australian.

“The only reason any of this is known is because major US arms exports have to be notified to Congress – and on April 29 the world learnt of a possible sale to Australia of 160 M1A1 hulls and a great deal of related hardware.”

To give some context, Australia’s last deployment of tanks was in the Vietnam War. In 2007, we bought 59 Abrams M1A1s which have never seen combat. As one commentator quipped, “It is almost as if army buys these things and then doesn’t want to scratch the paint.”

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Abrams tanks are too heavy for our amphibious landing boats and for many of the underdeveloped or degraded roads and bridges in our near region, as well as in large parts of northern Australia. Which begs the question, how would these tanks be used? Should there be a major conflict in the Asia–Pacific region, it would likely be fought mainly by air and naval assets.

Marcus Hellyer, a senior analyst with ASPI, said the Australian government had decided that it wants to maintain the ability to engage in “close combat” in urban environments as part of counter-insurgency operations. If they didn’t use them in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, how likely are we to be doing that in the future?

But the real kicker is that, rather than being new builds, these tanks will be made up of various refurbished and overhauled items in the US inventory.

This is because the production line for the Abrams series ended in 2013, but with 3000 of them in storage since the end of the Cold War, there is plenty of hardware around that can be rebirthed by American companies for customers such as Australia.

Meanwhile, other countries are developing unmanned tanks with drone launching capability and autoloaders, or opting for lighter alternatives, such as the US Army’s light tank ‘mobile protected firepower’ program.

Instead of just upgrading our current fleet, as South Korea is doing, whilst new technology is further developed, we have chosen to buy fully imported refurbished and upgraded platforms that are nearing the end of life-of-type, with billions of dollars heading to the US.

How good is AUKUS.

PS: Just a thought for Peter Dutton. Is there any good reason why we are not using the army to help distribute supplies at the moment? That would be a more welcome announcement.

As the beginning of the new school year approaches, politicians, doctors and journalists are racing to tell us all that school must go back on time and stay open regardless.

They rightly talk about the effect that school closures have had on kids – none of us would disagree. It’s been a devastating time for all of us.

But the idea that, as we approach what will be a calamitous peak in infections, schools can carry on as normal is ludicrous.

SMH education editor, Jordan Baker, penned a piece today on “How to keep schools open in the age of Omicron.”

According to Jordan, who has patently never been employed as an educator, “schools will have to work out ways to operate with significantly fewer staff until the wave of disease peaks, and case numbers begin to fall.”

“Teachers, even those who are double vaccinated and boostered, are likely to fall ill (although the vaccination will protect most from severe illness) and this poses serious workforce issues for their bosses.”

This is not just some sort of esoteric issue for school principals to solve. You cannot open schools unless there are sufficient well teachers to staff them.

“In the United Kingdom, there have been predictions that around a quarter of teachers at any given school could be off sick or furloughed at once. NSW’s school system is already suffering a chronic shortage of casual teachers, so this could make operating schools difficult,” Jordan concedes.

Paediatrician and epidemiologist Fiona Russell says the education sector would, like all sectors, need a workforce plan.

“The UK has asked retired teachers to return. The Australian health sector is using medical students. If teachers have COVID but are asymptomatic, they could still deliver lessons remotely.”

That’s fab. Except retired teachers would presumably be older making them in the more vulnerable cohort for infection, and would be unlikely to have current ‘working with children’ accreditation. Trainee teachers, one or two years out of school themselves, cannot be expected to leave their studies to fill in for absent staff, and who is going to supervise students when infected teachers are delivering lessons remotely? Does she think the class will sit there nicely on their own listening to a talking head on a tv screen?

Russell’s colleague at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Professor Sharon Goldfeld, said children have “carried the can for adults. We’ve kept them away from school and childcare. Now that COVID is in the community, they can no longer carry the can for adults. Schools are the epicentre for children’s health, wellbeing and learning.”

Yup. But where is the concern for the teachers who look after your children every day? Where is the regard for their expertise? You can’t just drag people off the street to replace them if they get sick.

These non-education experts talk about “keeping cohorts together” to minimise the spread. Have they forgotten that a high school teacher’s cohort is everybody who does that subject? 150 different kids a day? They talk about combining classes like it’s no problemo. Do they understand how hard it is to teach maths to 30 adolescents? Make it 60, make it 100…and carry on?

We all want our kids to be back at school, learning and playing and doing all the normal kid stuff. But these are not normal times and teachers are not easily replaceable babysitters.

Just over three weeks ago, on December 14, NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, held a press conference to confirm that the next day pretty much all restrictions would be lifted regardless of the emergence of the Omicron strain and rising case numbers.

“At the moment, our government here … is very keen to get us all back to normality, to our previous life,” he said. “We’re not going to start backflipping on issues we promised the community we’ll do.”

That day, there were 804 new cases in NSW, 168 people being treated in hospital and 21 in ICU.

On December 15, QR codes and vaccine certificates were dropped. The unvaccinated were free to join the rest of us with masks only required on public transport and in airports, or for indoors front-of-house hospitality staff who aren’t fully vaccinated. Close contacts no longer had to isolate for 7 days. Density limits no longer applied with no limit to the number of people allowed in your home, at outdoor public gatherings and at hospitality venues. Borders reopened to vaccinated skilled migrants and foreign students.

Hazzard cited research from the Public Health Unit at the University of New South Wales which suggested a possible surge of up to 25,000 COVID cases a day by the end of January but suggested that was unlikely if we all continued to take personal responsibility.

On that same day, modelling from the Doherty Institute showing a possible scenario of 200,000 cases a day was leaked to the media, and summarily dismissed by the Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.

Prof Kelly said the 200,000 figure “presents one of the worst case of all potential scenarios including assumptions that the Omicron variant is as severe as the Delta variant, an absence of hospital surge capacity, a highly limited booster program, no change to baseline public health and social measures and an absence of spontaneous behaviour change in the face of rising case numbers. None of these five assumptions represent the likely state of events, let alone all of them together, therefore presenting that scenario as the likely scenario that will occur is highly misleading.”

By December 24, with 5,715 new cases reported that day and 1500 healthcare workers furloughed either because of Covid-induced illness or as a result of isolation orders, Perrottet was forced to backflip on his “personal responsibility” approach to mask-wearing by reintroducing a mandate requiring them to be worn indoors while also reinstating social distancing measures in hospitality venues and a return to mandatory QR code check-ins at some retail venues.

But by then, the horse had bolted.

NSW has reported over 70,000 new cases in the last two days but the real number is undoubtedly significantly higher as the testing regime has been overwhelmed. Yesterday, there were 1609 people in hospital and 131 in ICU with these numbers growing significantly each day.

We keep being told that the hospitals have adequate surge capacity but the truth is, whilst they might have enough beds and ventilators, that means nothing if you don’t have sufficient staff. More than 3800 health staff were furloughed in NSW due to COVID-19 exposure on Wednesday

For some totally obscure reason, Scott Morrison has tasked the Secretary of PM&C, Phil Gaetjens, with coming up with the plan for how to get kids back to school and keep them there. I am fairly certain this man has zero experience of staffing a school so it will be interesting to see what he comes up with to cover the teachers who are going to inevitably get sick.

No wonder Morrison keeps telling us to look out the windscreen and focus on moving forward because the rear-view mirror is full of wreckage with a runaway train barrelling towards us.

Australia did well when we followed the advice of the health experts. Then the politicians took over and here we are.

BREAKING: The SMH is reporting that the NSW government is preparing to announce a major reversal of COVID-19 restrictions by shutting nightclubs, banning singing and dancing in pubs, discouraging “vertical consumption”, and pausing major events and some elective surgery in response to the state’s surging Omicron caseload. Major events would be risk-assessed by NSW Health and postponed where necessary. Restrictions will be branded as “safety measures” rather than a lockdown