There’s a bit in the film “Casablanca” where the local police chief, Louis, is ordered to shut down Rick’s Cafe by the Nazis which goes like this:

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?

Louis: I’m shocked! Shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here.

Employee (approaching, to Louis): Your winnings, sir.

Louis: Oh, thank you…

 

 

For some reason, the recent kerfuffle about the CFMEU remind me of that scene.

As far as I can work it out the narrative seems to be that Labor must have known about the links to bikies and organised crime because, well, didn’t everyone?

Of course, this does beg the question, why didn’t Labor do something about it? Of course it also begs the question, why didn’t the Coalition?

And, of course, the answer is that it pretty much suited Labor to just ignore it and give them some good deals to ensure that projects went ahead with a minimum of disruption and, if the union made a few donations to party, well, isn’t this a win-win situation?

To look too closely at something like this could open up a whole can of worms and before you know where you are, you could be looking at things like developers paying bribes to all sorts of people and you wouldn’t just be looking at links to organised crime, you’d also have to look at some of the disorganised crime that puts money in the pockets of parties that don’t have links to unions and then where would we be.

After all, those people with a long memory may recall that the Royal Commission into the Painters and Dockers led Costigan to discover evidence of the “bottom of the harbour” tax evasion scheme which implicated the sort of fine, upstanding people that were liable to be friends of the Liberal Party, as well as causing some people to make scurrilous accusations against someone that was referred to as the “Goanna”, until goannas objected to being compared to Kerry Packer. Packer denied all charges and told the Commission that he asked to be paid in cash because he liked cash, adding that he had “a squirrel-like mentality”. (In order to protect his anonyminity, the Commission referred to him as Goanna instead of Squirrel because the latter would have made it obvious who they were referring to… Sort of like the current situation where everybody knows but some people are pretending it’s a shock!)

In all fairness, I do have to point out that the Coalition did call a double dissolution in order to establish the ABCC in order to curtail the activities of the CFMEU, even though Bridget Mackenzie is shocked, shocked that there could be corruption going on in Australia. This dedicated body did manage to bring charges against a couple of union officials for having a cup of tea (no seriously!), but the judge ruled that they were allowed to do that even if latte-sipping is considered a crime by those on Sky After Dark. As for successful prosecutions and a cleaning up of the building industry, the ABCC was about as effective as a think tank involving Rowan Dean, Malcolm Roberts and Ralph Babet: there was a lot of noise, but in the end, there’s nothing there!

At to what happens now, who knows? The Albanese government has appointed an administrator and a number of union officials have been removed, which isn’t enough according to Petey Dutton who wants the completely ineffective ABCC returned so he can complain that Labor’s version isn’t as good as the Coalition one which achieved nothing. Dutton has also called for the donations to Labor from CFMEU to be returned… presumably so he can accuse Labor of giving money to an organisation with criminal links.

Whatever, I suspect that this won’t be the main issue for voters by the time the election comes around.

The trouble – as you may remember me saying on numerous occasions – with any half-decent conspiracy theory is that it’s impossible to use facts to counter it because any fact that contradicts it has clearly been contaminated by those people who are behind the conspiracy.

So in the aftermath of the bullet that whistled past the ear of Donald Trump, we had various people reacting with complete certainty about what had happened with all the confidence of an economist predicting the direction of the next interest rate move. Some of them even make Andrew Bolt’s take this morning look like the voice of reason if one accepts that reason don’t have to stick to the truth and is allowed to write things that are completely inaccurate because one is an opinion writer and one’s opinion can’t be held down by things like what actually happened on January 6th!

Let me be quite clear: I have no idea of the truth about what happened on the weekend. I have found all the conspiracy theories equally compelling and I’m left totally sure that it was both a staged attempt to enable a great photo as well as being an attempt by Deep State to take out the one threat to the WEF and the Washington Swamp and I’m pretty sure that Netanyahu was behind it as well as suspecting that Biden ordered it. This is before I’ve even stopped to consider the possibility that this is why Elvis has been hiding all these years, or even whether this may have been a warning to Trump not to continue with his speech because he was about to reveal that the moon landing was… completely real. I don’t want any trouble!

Anyway, in among all the lunacy there are some really good questions about how a shooter could get so close. Of course, using Occam’s Razor and the old saying that if it’s a choice between a well-organised, hidden conspiracy and a fuck-up, go for the latter most times because there are almost no organisations capable of a well-organised anything whether it’s in a brewery or a brothel… (I am referring to the idea that some people couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brothel or however the saying goes!)

Now don’t go arguing with me here! In all likelihood, you’re right. If you believe that it was organised by Joe Biden, you’ll have to admit that it’s a damn fine reason for re-electing him on the grounds that he’s still more capable than we’ve been led to believe. And if you’re concerned about him using the Secret Service to take out an opponent, well, doesn’t that make it “an official act” as President, giving him impunity according the 6-3 ruling of the Supreme Court?

And while I understand that the reasons for shooting the guy on the rooftop, is taking his gun off him still an infringement of his 2nd Amendment Rights even though he’s dead?

Whatever, the fact that Trump could stand in spite of those troublesome bone spurs should make us look at him in a whole new light!

The United Kingdom election had a terribly unfair voting system which meant that while Farage’s Reform Party received 14.3% of the vote but only ended up with five seats. This is because the UK uses a simple majority system, which is often referred to as first past the post.

The great advantage of the simple majority is that it’s simple enough that even Rowan Dean can understand it; the great disadvantage is that it can throw up some strange results when you have candidates with similar views all contesting the same seat. For example, if you had a vote between the best PM in the past ten years your choices would be between Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese. Obviously, while some Labor voters may not choose Albanese, the Liberal vote is going to be split between the other three meaning that a figure as low as 32% might be enough to get him over the line…

If, on the other hand, it was a preferential system like we have in Australia, then assuming the same 32% for Albanese wouldn’t be enough to get him elected. We’d eliminate the candidate with the lowest number and distribute his preferences. If no candidate had more than fifty percent after that, we’d keep going until that happened.

While this would appear to be a fairer system to all those – like Andrew Bolt – who were outraged that the simple majority system delivered Labour a landslide victory, this is not as simple as it first appears, because we DO have a preferential system in Australia and, if you remember the 2022 election, this was also unfair because Labor were elected with only 32% of the first preferences meaning that most people voted for somebody else. From this, many commentators concluded that if most people voted for somebody else, then somebody else should be the government and not Labor.

Yes, it would seem that they support a simple majority in Australia because preferences led to Labor being elected, many of the same people argue that a simple majority is unfair because it led to Labour being elected in the UK.

I guess a better system would be proportional representation which is how the Senate is elected. The problem here, of course, is not that this gets Labor senators elected… Although that is a big problem… The problem is that people are sometimes elected when they get less first preferences than words in this paragraph.

So it seems that no system of voting is ever going to be perfect and not just because it enables Labo(u)r governments. Every system will throw up anomalies and the best we can do is to be aware of them and try to ensure that people vote with full awareness of the likely consequences. When the results don’t go the way we want, however, there’s very little point in complaining about the system if you haven’t spent any time trying to improve it BEFORE the election. That just looks like you’re throwing your toys out of the cot because things didn’t go your way.

Speaking of Peter Dutton, have you noticed that the Coalition have suddenly forgotten all their Voice rhetoric about how we shouldn’t enshrine race in the Constitution because it is imperative that we treat all people equally? Suddenly they’re jumping a report to argue that the cashless welfare card needs to be brought back into Indigenous communities because there’s been an increase in poor behaviour. The report didn’t exactly put this down to the removal of income management, but don’t ever let the facts get in the way of what you want to argue. I mean, the fact that the Coalition always argue that taxation is bad because people should get a choice over how they spend their money can be ignored when they decide it’s appropriate.

I guess consistency is too much to ask. It would be nice if people who complain about cancel culture didn’t turn around and call for a boycott of Woolworths. It would be nice if the people who argued for the presumption of innocence in various other situations where a person was accused of a crime didn’t refer to dropped charges of rape against Julian Assange as though only people they agreed with had this innocent until proven guilty thing. It would be nice if people who chanted “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton didn’t react with outrage that someone they voted for should actually go to court and be convicted. It would be nice if people who complained about their freedom being stifled didn’t go around banning books or insisting that woke ideology shouldn’t be allowed. It would be nice if…

It would be nice if people could just accept that while not everyone will agree with them, they should at least find a way that they at least agree with the position they had just a few days ago.

That’s actually the title of a book I’m reading at the moment…

On a side note, it’s a really good book and I’d recommend it if you like non-fiction. It’s about this guy who was responsible for a certain amount of the British propaganda and if you can raise a few million then I’m sure that it would make an excellent film… One of the people in the book is Ian Fleming of James Bond fame and, although he only has a minor role, it would probably be enough to make it a selling point and…

Anyway, I was staring at the book and thinking I should open it and finish when I suddenly went: “Yep, that’s it! That’s the whole problem in a nutshell…”

It’s not about the truth anymore; it’s about winning the information war. “Flood the zone with shit,” said Steve Bannon and it’s one of the few things he got right.

The issue, of course, isn’t about whether I’m the best-looking man in Australia. The issue is that you have wasted your time pointing out that almost nobody agrees with that statement and while you’re pointing out that obvious fact, I’ll respond with looks are just a matter of opinion and who are you to impose your ideas on me when… And even though you’ve interrupted me as soon as you think of a good response to that, the fact is you are engaging with me in a pointless debate instead of doing something useful.

Speaking of pointless debates, at what point do we all acknowledge that there’s something of a blood sport quality about political debates. I mean, surely it would be better to have just put Joe and Donald into the Coliseum and let them wrestle in some sort of tag team where they just tag when they run out of energy… Ok, that would put Donald at a disadvantage because he hasn’t named his running mate yet but surely Rupert would be prepared to stand by and jump into the ring when tagged.

Political debates are a bit like job interviews. I can think of several where I was awesome but it was pretty clear that they’d already made up their mind to give it to someone else; I can also think of several where I wasn’t so impressive but the job was mine for the taking because they knew me and knew that I’d do a good job so what did it matter if I paused too long when they asked me how I handled conflict in the workplace before saying, “What have you been told and which bastard was it?” Of course we all laughed and pretended it was a joke, but I knew that it was Dave and I made a mental note to…

But back to political debates… They make about as much sense as picking your team for this week’s AFL game by asking the various players what they offer and why they should be selected. It might give you something to think about but it’s probably more relevant to consider the fact that the player failed to lay a single tackle even though he had plenty of opportunities when his direct opponent had the ball so many times compared to his three possessions…

Anyway, we’ve moved on from US politics and we’ve had the amazingly impressive performance in the UK election of the Reform Party. Nigel Farage – one of the driving forces behind Brexit – managed to do outstandingly well and to help his party to deliver a massive 13 seats which is a big number compared to their zero seats beforehand. If they could repeat this every election for the next few elections, they’d have nearly as many as the Tory party and they could be the main opposition party by the year 2060. But it was impressive because a few of the papers were more impressed with that than Labour winning in a landslide. Of course, it’s really clear that Labour didn’t do anything all that impressive. This was an example of the Conservative Party showing their financial acumen because clearly every one of them from Boris to Liz Truss to Rishi had placed a large bet on Labour winning and worked every day to ensure that happened!!

Remember when the LNP were in government and Peter Dutton set up a GoFundMe for Queensland flood relief?

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing something like that. I mean, it’s a good thing, isn’t it, that he gave people the opportunity to help support those who were flood victims because he knew that many people did want that… Ok, maybe not his colleagues in the LNP who think that people should stand on their own two feet and not rely on others for support and if people didn’t want to be flood victims why don’t they just live somewhere that doesn’t flood? After all, Scott “Plans For Your Good” Morrison would undoubtedly argue that God helps those who aren’t wicked so if you didn’t have enough sense to build an ark when you were living amongst all that wickedness, you’d should have Noahed better…

Anyway, I know that there’s been some concern about the cost of building nuclear in Australia and there’s been even more concern that the Liberals have gone all socialist and suggested that the taxpayer should build and own nuclear facilities because – unlike everything Telstra and everything else they’ve sold off over the past few decades – there’s a good reason for that. Exactly what the good reason is will – like the cost, the amount of power the seven reactors will put into the system, their plans for who will build it, the timeline for which is built when and just about everything apart from the location – be released in Due Course… a phrase I’m sure that you’ve heard already, but in case you haven’t, I suspect that you’ll hear it before the week is out.

Some people have suggested that the reason is actually that private industry wouldn’t touch nuclear because it’s uneconomic but that’s not the reason. When it comes to something that government actually wants to provide, then the economics becomes simple: You tell them that you’ll walk away and leave them holding the baby unless they fork out more cash and so you have a cost blowout, a delay and a healthy bottom line. In return the government of the day gets a healthy donation to their political party of choice…

A number of things have been asserted by Dutton and the Duds:

• A large number of people support nuclear.
• The proposed sites are just fine with the people in the area where they’re supposed to go.
• They’ll make things cheaper.

Some GoFundMe campaigns offer you things like a free ticket to the show or a copy of the book, so maybe Peter could put his skills to work and come up with a GoFundMe campaign where those of us who fund the nuclear plants could get our power directly from there, while those who don’t would have to rely on those “expensive” renewables and batteries. I mean, if the plants are going to create thousands of jobs in the electorates where they’re going, doesn’t it seem only fair that these places should put up a large percentage of the money, given the benefits that will accrue to them in the form of economic benefits like jobs and cheaper housing given the suggestion that house prices will fall in those areas?

Whatever, it’s worth a thought… which is more than most of the policies that Peter Dutton has announced have been given.

On another matter, Simon Birmingham was extremely critical of the PM for phoning Julian Assange. From what I can gather the people on his side of politics never thought that Assange was worth any sort of phone call while they were in power – including one to the United States to ask what was going on – so why should he be given one now? And it’s not like Assange being returned to Australia was any great achievement because if he’d been worth a phone call they would have made one and got him some sort of a deal years ago, but they had more important things to do, like work on an energy policy…

Well, in the most exciting news since Josh Frydenberg announced that he wasn’t going to push that Hamer woman aside just because he couldn’t, the Reserve Bank announced that it wasn’t raising interest rates today… However, it also announced that it wasn’t ruling out that it wouldn’t raise them at some time in the future if it was felt to be necessary. In other words, even though nothing is happening today, they won’t rule out something happening at some unspecified point in the future if circumstances change!

The significance of this is easy to overlook, so the various media outlets deemed it necessary to point out that Michelle Bullock said this and so we can infer that she isn’t doing a Phil Lowe and telling us that rates won’t be going up any time soon. No, she said that if things are different in the future, then the RBA isn’t ruling out the possibility that they won’t do the same thing as they did today.

This is quite a significant thing because there are so many people who are quite prepared to demonstrate that they won’t do anything different no matter what happens.

For example, I read an article from Phil Coorey about how the Coalition’s nuclear policy might be released “in days”…

I could infer that the source for the article may have meant that it would be released during the daytime, as opposed to releasing it “in nights”, when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, but that might sound like I’m being deliberately obtuse.

This is an amazing development. We are told that they might release a policy which was to be released “in due course” like all their policies… Or should that be “Indue Course”?

Whatever, Phil seems to think that he got a scoop because someone told him that a policy that is forever being promised but never delivered will be delivered within days. Unlike Bullock, he might as well announce that he’s prepared to his same old thing of just reproducing whatever his Liberal source told him whatever happens and no matter how silly he’ll seem if it’s wrong.

Of course, the man is very likely right this time. After all, how many times can they leak to the media that an announcement is imminent and not look like they have no idea what they’re going to say without announcing that they had something but the dog ate our homework?

Still, it’s good to know that David Littleproud is such a believer in the free market that he’s suggesting that a future Coalition government will put a cap on renewables. You know what they say: If the cap fits… Although in this case, they’ll make it fit because who wants to be forced to have an unsightly wind farm when you could have a gleaming nuclear reactor using all that excess water that farmers just waste by pouring it into the ground?

But I digress. Let’s get back to the significant announcement by the RBA that they’re not ruling out a future interest rate rise if inflation isn’t in control. That is quite a surprise because most thinking people would expect them to say: “Look, if the past rate rises aren’t enough, I think we should just give up and accept the fact that we don’t have any answers and so we’ll just go to lunch and hope that something happens to bring down inflation but it clearly won’t be anything we do…”

In a similar vein, I expect to hear the following stories in tomorrow’s news:

• PUTIN REFUSES TO RULE OUT FUTURE ATTACKS ON UKRAINE
• TRUMP ANNOUNCES THAT HE MAY RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2025 EVEN THOUGH THERE’S NO PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION THAT YEAR BECAUSE OF A RIGGED SYSTEM
• GREG SHERIDAN REFUSES TO ACCEPT THAT CARDIGANS WON’T GET HIM NOMINATED AS A FASHION ICON
• BIDEN IS CONCERNED THAT HE MAY NEED A DIFFERENT STRATEGY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
• JOHN HOWARD ACCEPTS THAT HIS TIME AS PM IS OVER

Some things are just obvious and don’t need to be said…

I once wrote that the Liberals would be releasing their policies closer to the election and, by closer, I mean a few weeks AFTER the election.

Of course I was being facetious and I never expected that a Liberal leader would think that it was a fantastic way to avoid scrutiny of his policy but then this is the party that’s been trying to prove lefties wrong every time they say, “Well, they can’t have a leader who’s worse than Tony Abbott/Wishywashy Turnbull/ScottyfromMarketing…”

Yes, Peter Dutton actually thinks that it’s…

I got halfway through writing that sentence and I realised that the first five words would be controversial. Let me try again.

Yes, Peter Dutton actually expects people to buy the idea that it’s entirely reasonable to go to the election with a “Don’t you worry about the detail, you can trust us on climate change!”

You know, Pete with his “Don’t Know, Vote No” on the Voice because THERE WAS NO DETAIL… according to him.

Well, I think I know what his strategy is. The first part is to retain the leadership and the surest way to do that is to not worry about the opinion polls or what people think and just please the people who elect the leader who won’t worry about the opinion polls until they realise that the most recent one put them in danger of losing their seat. While he’s not under immediate threat, Holly Hughes sort of let the cat out of the bag when she said that she’d still be around until July next year and she wouldn’t be voting for that incompetent, Angus Taylor.

This would be a strange thing to say – even for Senator Hughes – and it must make one wonder whether the Shadow Treasurer has been thinking about numbers that don’t just relate to the economy. And when I say “thinking”, I also mean sharing his thoughts…

It would seem that Dutton’s theory is that, if he can just hold onto the leadership till the election, the cost of living and the high immigration numbers will deliver some of those traditional Labor seats in the outer suburbs. He’s clearly given up on the ones lost to the “teals”. I mean, you can’t really see telling those electorates: “You thought that we weren’t doing enough on climate change, but now we have a policy that we can’t tell you about but it doesn’t involve setting targets like Labor have that we have no hope of meeting. We think it’s silly to set a target we have no intention of aiming for! Whatever you can see by the nuclear policy that we are fully committed to doing something about climate change even if the exact thing is a little vague but you can trust us to have a policy in place in due course.”

So, I guess you’re wondering why I called this the potential Labor landslide. Well, that’s because nobody seems to looking at how this is all going to play out. Let’s take things one at a time.

1. Dutton has all but conceded certain once blue ribbon Liberal seats to the independents. (Goldstein Liberals are giving Tim Wilson another crack. Enough said.)
2. He is therefore hoping that he’ll pick up votes from a number of areas where people are disappointed in Labor: Coal and gas approvals, Gaza, help for the unemployed, border security, inflation and housing supply.
3. However the first items on the list would more likely result votes leaking to The Greens and independents rather than the Coalition, so that’s more like to lead to a larger cross bench. After all, can you really see people saying that Albanese should be condemning the horrific situation in Gaza more strongly, so we’re going to vote for Dutton because at least he’s fully supportive of the people doing it. At worst Albanese will lose seats to the cross bench; at best, he’ll still hold on to enough seats via preferences.
4. However, if the inflation continues to trend down and there’s even one drop in interest rates, that will blunt Dutton’s attack. Yes, there will still be people thinking that the Liberals are better economic managers because every time Labor gets in there’s a world-wide crisis: the oil shocks of the 70s, the GFC, the current inflation, but most people will just decide that they shouldn’t rock the boat now things are getting better.
5. While the opinion polls have gone up and down for Labor, I don’t remember too many where their vote was lower than the at the 2022 election… ok, I don’t remember any but then some smartarse is bound to tell me that there was one that appeared in “The Congupna Times” where Labor were well behind their election result. In other words – if you took polls as being 100% accurate – you’d only have two scenarios: Labor gets the same as 2022 OR Labor increases its numbers in House of Reps.
6. Labor are facing a state election in Queensland. From what we’re told, they’re on the nose there and an LNP victory is an even bigger certainty than John Hewson was in 1993 or Bill Shorten was in 2019. While this seems like a good thing for the Liberals, it must also be remembered that Labor hold fewer Queensland seats than Scott Morrison had ministries. (FACT CHECK: It was 5 in each case so, that’s equal not fewer!!) If the LNP take over then you can imagine them a) announcing that state is in a deep financial mess which needs b) lots and lots of cuts to services and c) the end of all those bribes you were promised by Miles! All this undoubtedly will win them praise from important people like newspaper editors, and when you have their praise and a whole government term ahead of you, who cares about the people who lost their services and their fifty cent fares. They might – unfairly – think that Dutton is the sort of man to say one thing, one day and another thing, another day, when he usually says one thing and then somebody else comes out and tells us that not only did he not mean it the way we’re taking it, but he didn’t even say it all. All of which, doesn’t lead to LNP picking up any seats in the next federal election, and leaves the real possibility that Labor could end up with an increased majority.

Of course, it’s always remembering that politics is like a cricket match. A side can be batting along smoothly and a couple of wickets changes everything. On the other hand, if Dutton keeps bowling the same rubbish, he may find that the game is over before he knows it…

In news this week Peter Costello was accused of knocking a journalist to the ground. Some disputed this account, arguing that Liam Mendes works for “The Australian” and therefore can’t be considered a journalist. People in the Liberal Party asserted that they knew Peter very well and, in all their experience of him, he would have the capacity to force a spill, so the poor man must have tripped up on something invisible…

And speaking of invisible, we have the imminent release of Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy. Of course, when I say “imminent”, I mean in his own good time because he won’t be rushed into an early release – or even a late one – just because Labor and the media are demanding it. No, Petey will decide on his own timeline! And then ignore that because he won’t be rushed into releasing it just because he said that he would. After all, the Liberals had nine years in government, and they didn’t allow anyone to force them into announcing an energy policy.

To be fair, that’s just a cheap shot and, in fact, the Liberals did announce an energy policy while they were in government. In fact, they announced several. It was the actual implementation of any of them that gave them trouble.

Sources tell me that Labor are considering changing their renewables target to: “We promise to have 90% renewables before Peter Dutton announces any detail on his nuclear policy.”

Whatever, Dutton has announced that he intends to pull out of Paris which, while sounding like something the Nazis would do or a video circulating on the internet, seems a rather strange way to win back the seats lost to the so-called Teals (or indeed any seats). Most people – even some lifelong Liberal voters – think that something needs to be done about climate change and the Coalition’s inability to commit to Net Zero was a big factor in people voting for other candidates.

Yes, I know that they passed legislation committing to Net Zero but they didn’t actually propose to do anything about it. They were a bit like the person who complained that they read the book they were given on losing weight and told the person who promised that it would help: “No, I’m sorry. You told me that reading this book would help but now I find that I’ve actually got to do the things the book suggested and that takes too much effort…”

The Coalition committed to Net Zero in the sort of way that Trump committed to his marriage vows.

It seems to me that Dutton’s announcement is a strange strategy. While it might appeal to his Murdoch Masters, most people would prefer a party who’s attempting to achieve a target, even if they’re not totally succeeding, rather than one who says that there’s no point in committing to something that you can’t achieve, so we’re not even going to try.

Whether that’s true or not, the fact that he added that he’d pause the rollout of wind and solar farms clearly shows that he needs to zip it because his agenda is showing. Why pause things that will actually bring us closer to a target, even if we’re not going to meet it? I mean you wouldn’t expect to hear a politician say, “We’re not going to meet our target for reducing the road toll this year, so we’re going to pause our rollout of booze buses and speed restrictions.” Every little bit helps, doesn’t it? Unless you don’t actually have any intention of even trying to…

Oh wait… yeah, that’s what he said, isn’t it? There’s no point in trying to meet a target if you’ve got no hope of achieving it.

Mm, maybe that’s what he’s decided about trying to win back seats. As he said about the government’s renewable energy target, ““There’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”, so if he’s got no hope of winning back seats then why not just say whatever’s on your mind, no matter how disconnected from reality that may be.

But speaking of disconnected, someone reported that Sussan Ley said that allowing New Zealanders to join our armed forces would devalue ANZAC day… Mm, not sure that even she could be so stupid as to think that it’s AAC day and that NZ in it is silent.

Yes, lest we forget that Peter Dutton was the one who launched a spill against Turnbull but got the numbers wrong and his colleagues – who knew them both – preferred Scott Morrison.

At least he’s safe from a spill for the simple reason that nobody wants the job. And at least he can content himself that he’ll be able to run a better campaign than Rishi Sunak, who announced the election in the rain and managed to get himself photographed standing under an exit sign.

Part of the trouble with the human brain is that we tend to make emotional decisions and then use our rational side to justify our position. This means that Trump supporters can scream: “Lock her up!” about Hillary Clinton before she’s been charged with a crime but turn around and complain that the case against Trump is some sort of political witch-hunt, while failing to see the contradiction. And, even if it were pointed out to them, they’d be able to mount a case to explain that there was a real difference. Hillary, for example, was involved in Pizzagate, while Trump has is the second son of Mary…

So I’d like to put Donald to one side for a moment… Actually, I’d like to put him to one side permanently, but that’s my emotional side coming out and the points I want to make have nothing to do with whether he’s actually committed any of the hundreds of crimes he’s been charged with, or whether it really is a giant conspiracy. The basic point is that what some people are saying makes no sense if you take away the emotion of the moment.

Except that it does show something about certain politicians’ value systems but I’ll get to that later.

Let’s consider a totally fictional example:

After years of investigation, the FBI have gathered enough evidence to charge Tiny Supremo# with racketeering, extortion, murder, drug importation and an overdue library book. They are interviewing him but his lawyer interrupts and tells them: “You can’t charge my client!”

“Why not?” they ask.

“My client has just announced his candidacy for President, and it’s a well established principle that we don’t jail our political opponents in this country.”

“Democrat or Republican?”

“Neither. He’ll be standing as an independent candidate, but the protection remains…”

“Damn. You’ve got us. Ok, well, you’re free to go, but don’t think you’ve got my vote.”

#(I was going to call him Tony Soprano but I was worried that I’d be sued for defamation. Yes, I know that he’s fictional but so is Donald Trump and I have to watch what I say about him…)

Yes, that sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, but isn’t that exactly what the people who suggest that prosecuting one’s political opponents would turn the USA into one of those banana republic countries which use the courts against their opposition? Aren’t they saying that your rival should be free to do what he or she likes and under no circumstances should the justice system be involved…

At this point I think that it might be helpful to consider that little thing which we call the separation of powers. In simple terms, the people making the laws aren’t responsible for enforcing the laws, so if the Whitehouse was involved in the prosecution of Trump, we’d have a breakdown of that concept and there would be a real problem. However, at no has there been a link shown between the people who have decided to charge Trump and the Biden administration. Such a link is just asserted, assumed or hinted at. In reality, if there were such a link, there would be a significant breakdown in the way justice is meant to work.

But let’s come back to what I said about what politicians value. A number of Coalition MPs and ex-MPs have said that it’s a bad idea to charge Trump with anything because that resembles some of those countries where they organise coups and then jail the opposition… Ok, they may have missed the whole attempted coup on January 6th which sort of negates their case that it’s the ones who opposed that and argued that we should accept the results of the election who are doing the wrong thing.

When I suggest that their values need examining, I’m talking more about the inferences I can draw from what they’re saying.

First, when they suggest that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted they’re suggesting that there is no separation of power and that when they are in government, they are quite happy to decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t.

Second, when they say that political opponents shouldn’t be prosecuted what they’re saying is that political opponents are really people like us and that people like us shouldn’t be charged with criminal offences because rules are for other people.

Third, they seem to have forgotten the Royal Commissions that Abbott called in order to find some criminal misconduct in the Labor Party.

Perhaps one could draw a further inference that it’s only one side of politics that shouldn’t be held to account. Certainly that seems to be the view of the Murdoch Merde.

Yes, all political parties have their faults and they all should be held to account for their actions. However, there doesn’t seem to be enough balance in the media with how this works. For example, there was the recent moaning about the millions spent on jets to ferry around Federal ministers, but when it was pointed out that it was the Liberals who’d ordered them, the story sort of died.

According to some sections of the media, when Labor are in power they are responsible for every bad thing that happens. But, of course, there is a consistency because when the Coalition is returned to power, Labor are still responsible for every bad thing that happens!

Ok, to be clear here, Jane Hume is one of the most articulate Liberals and possibly one of the most intelligent…

This, of course, is one of the reasons that one cannot seriously entertain voting for the Liberal Party any time in the foreseeable future…

It’s a great phrase, isn’t it? “The foreseeable future”… I mean, all Phil Lowe had to do was use it when he was predicting future interest rate rises instead of his silly prediction that they wouldn’t go up before 2024 and he’s have been completely in the clear. After all, if you say foreseeable future and something happens, then clearly it WASN’T foreseeable!!

Actually, even if he’d said that he couldn’t see interest rates going up IN 2024, he’d still have a chance of being right.

Yes, and as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, being wrong never matters to media people who are more likely to interview someone who’s been wrong on the grounds that they are one of those INSIDERS who gets it wrong but with the best of the sort of knowledge that enabled them to get in wrong in ways that an uninformed person would have been so lacking in knowledge that they may have got it right…

Yes, one article I read was still telling us that Phil Lowe’s prediction was that inflation wasn’t tamed and we may need another interest rate or two… And we should listen to Phil because he was once the RBA head who told us something that was so completely inaccurate that some people felt like he was taking the blame for getting his prediction so wrong when – after all – it was only the fact that circumstances turned out differently, otherwise he’d have been correct in his call.

Anyway, I find the commentary around the future of interest rates fascinating in the same way that I find horoscopes that tell some star signs to go to the races and put money on certain numbers while telling other star signs to put money on different horses… I mean, surely it’s going to be a particular number that gives you the best return on investment and the fact that I’m a Gemini shouldn’t bar me from getting some of that $37 from that winner you told Scorpio to back…

To sum up the interest rate and political situation as simply as I can:

• A few days ago, the RBA told us that they had no idea what would happen with interest rates because they didn’t know lots of things including what would happen with the Federal Budget so the next rate move could be up or down and they weren’t ruling anything IN or OUT… which – after Lucky Phil’s: no rate rises before 2024; oh, whoops 13, that’s unlucky – seems prudent!
• Various economists announced that this confirmed their prediction that their latest prediction was much better than their previous completely opposite prediction.
• The Treasury announced/leaked that they did know what was in the Budget so their prediction was that inflation would come down much quicker than forecast by the RBA who didn’t know what they were going to do and so this is one time when we can get it right… Ha ha!
• Financial markets – and Jane Hume – are concerned that the Budget may fuel inflation by giving money to people and the Coalition are all about putting money back into people’s pockets unless it’s inflationary or if Labor is suggesting doing it. Reducing the cost of prescriptions or childcare or something else will add to inflation in the long term because people will have money to pay their mortgage and we won’t have a fire sale of properties reducing the cost of houses thanks to people living in their cars or the streets.
• Finding all the hidden “Back in Black” mugs and selling them may reduce inflation because they’ll have to be sold cheaply owing to the Liberals inability to deliver a surplus. On the other hand, they may be a collector’s item which would make them more expensive and do nothing for inflation which Labor should have known about before enticing us to find them in ScoMoses’ garage.
• Angus Taylor went on “Insiders” and suggested that Jim Chalmers should adopt the fiscal strategies of Peter Costello, which begs the question – even from David Speers – “Why not any of the Liberal Treasurers since, such as Hockey, Morrison or Fryenberg?”

All of which leads me to remind everyone yet again that Jane Hume is one of the best media performers that the Liberals have. This, and the fact that Dutton and that woman who changed her name because of numerology and who bought an apartment on a whim, Suss Ley, are leader and deputy are the reasons that nobody could possibly entertain a vote for them…

Yes, Labor aren’t perfect and it was certainly true that being better than Coalition government was a low bar to get over, and yes, it’s so low that they may have tripped on it occasionally, but I don’t see that you can’t say that they’re no better than the Opposition… to be perfectly honest, I tend to think that the Abbott front bench had more quality than the current shadow cabinet. I mean, at least you knew the Mysoginist For Women (Tony himself) was just going to do nothing, while the current shadow minister for women, Sussan Ley, can’t even spell her first name properly…

I’d be a fool to try and predict the next election this far out, but it’s hard to see Dutton winning!

Then again, I thought that about more unelectable bastards than I care to remember…