Ok, I’ve heard the phrase, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!” far too many times for me to take it seriously.

What – in the end – does it mean? Apart from you should just roll over and let us do what we want…

Of course, I’m not actually referring to the deal that Labor and The Greens failed to strike back in 2009 because we all know that it didn’t work out well and I would like to speak generally and not about anything specific…

HOWEVER…

I do have a tendency to go where the idea leads me and I may end up talking a wee bit specifically…

Generally…

I don’t see why the perfect would want to be the enemy of the good, given that it’s perfect and all. I mean, why would the perfect go around making enemies? It’s like all those annoying people who are just to good to be true but then you find that they are and you have to re-assess your whole life because you always thought…

Anyway, implicit in the phrase is the idea that if one makes the perfect the enemy of the good, then it’s because of something that the good has done and not because of the perfect’s holier than thou attitude…

Not that the perfect doesn’t have a right to be holier than thou because it’s fuckin’ perfect after all…

Look, you probably know where all this is going: The Liberal Party, in one of the biggest surprises since they voted against censuring Scott Morrison over his multiple ministries because they all understand that the boss should be able to take over whenever his decides that his underlings aren’t God’s chosen, announced their decision of the Voice.

And, I do understand that you can be concerned about the Voice without being a racist. After all, as I pointed out last week, we didn’t get a clear answer on Julian the Lesser’s question about whether the Voice could give advice to the Reserve Bank, and let me be quite clear that I don’t want any Indigenous body telling the Independent Body that they can’t raise interest rates and have Phil Lowe called a racist when he ignores it. I want those interest rate rises because they’re good for us and, like the Liberal Party, I presume that the Voice giving advice to the Bank about not raising rates would be because they don’t know what’s good for them… Just like most of us who don’t seem to understand that it’s better to get inflation under control now, even if it means that we lose our house, because we can surely pick one up cheaper and we’ll have saved so much sleeping in our cars…

I’m not expert. I assume that Peter Dutton has many experts telling him what to do: The National Party who assured us that they were the ones on the ground and apparently, Littleproud wasn’t just talking about Barnaby Joyce there; the Murdoch experts; and that guy in the Senate… Um, I always get Anick and Rentuck confused because it’s hard to follow their deep understandings of all things science.

After all, why waste time being indoctrinated with Year 9 Science when you’ve learned all you need to know out of the Disney book, “Our Friend The Atom” (That’s a link to the tv show, not the book, because I was worried that anyone wanting to read it wouldn’t be able to…)

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the senator who argued that global warming was caused by gravity would have watched this and thought…

No, you’re right it’s a pretty bold statement that Rennick actually thought but anyway…

I’m not making this up. Look I know that it gets a bit confusing at times but I want to make it very clear that these things are not satire:

1. Rupert Murdoch’s engagement ended two weeks after he said that he hoped to spend the rest of his life with this woman…
2. Peter Dutton actually spent several months pretending that he was considering his position on the Voice before adopting the position that he wanted practical things so that an apology to the Stolen Generation… Oh no, sorry, wrong one… a Voice isn’t what the indigenous people who said that they wanted a Voice actually meant; they meant that they’d like the Liberal Party to follow the Nationals and tell them what they really wanted because nobody should listen to people in Canberra unless it’s us.
3. Not only did this man actually do this but he spread it far and wide as though he comes off well by boasting about his grasp of Year 8 Science to people who have university degrees at the very least.

Ok, I know what some of you are thinking about number 1 and shame on you. Rupert Murdoch is the symptom, not the cause and his death wouldn’t solve all the problems of the world…

But I think it’s important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good!!

I’m old enough to remember Gough Whitlam winning in 1972… I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I was nearly old enough to be sent off to Vietnam as a 20 year old.

That was one of those strange little bits of hypocrisy that the Liberals are so good at: in 1972 they opposed lowering the voting age because people under 21 weren’t mature enough to consider the issues but they were old enough to be conscripted into a war… or rather, “police action” because there was no war declared so that’s why it took so long for the Vietnam vets to get recognition from the government for many of their issues…

Of course, that’s the past and I only bring it up because, after the Liberals lost the election they were sensible enough to change the policies that they’d only been clinging to because they owned them and by the time they were voted out, only a handful of voters agreed with them. For example, they didn’t go to the next election promising to return National Service and send troops back to Vietnam. Neither have they ever suggested raising the voting age. As for the recognition of China, it’s only in the past few years that they’ve gone back to arguing that Labor are the captives of the CCP.

Jettisoning these policies meant that – by the time Labor had been attacked relentlessly by Murdoch and had started to fall apart at the seams – they could present themselves as a reasonable alternative… even if that reasonable alternative was the party that blocked supply and worked with the Governor-General to organise the closest thing to a coup d’état that this country has seen.

Now when we compare that to the Liberals of today what we find is that Peter Dutton is quite content to argue that they don’t need to change their values and that it’s quite ok, to be a policy free zone because they’re in opposition and that means saying no to everything because that worked for Tony Abbott and you don’t expect anyone in the Liberal Party to come up with any new ideas.

Of course, I could be pedantic and point out that the Liberals in government frequently demanded policy of the Labor Party but, as Dutton said, they intend to stay true to their values and one of the most consistent values of the Liberals has been hypocrisy.

As I may have mentioned before, I once cast a play with a group of students and one of the girls wasn’t happy that she didn’t get the lead. Being a reasonable sort of chap, I met with her and listened to her grievances which, in summary, was that she thought that she was best and so did her friend and that she thought she was better then the girl who got the role and there must be something wrong with my judgement. After listening to her, I didn’t point out that not only wasn’t she the best but she wasn’t the second best or third best or even in the top six. I merely pointed out the obvious fact that she hadn’t been in the room when the others auditioned and neither had her friend so while they formed a consensus they really weren’t in possession of any information that would inform a sensible decision. I merely bring this up because it reminds me of Liberals appearing on Sky After Dark.

The basic trouble with Dutton saying that sooner or later they’ll have to fix up the mess that Labor created is that the subtext is that you voters are all stupid and you’ve voted for the wrong party and it’ll be up to us to repay the enormous debt that Labor has run up when they didn’t pay off the debt that we ran up and interest rates have caught them out and…

Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to play well until we all forget that Josh gave away JobKeeper money to companies whether they needed it or not.

And when Peter Dutton suggests that part of the trouble was that Aston was in Victoria and the Liberals aren’t doing well there… then, the rest of his party can relax because Victoria is a fairly insignificant part of the country and not at all relevant in general election…

And when the Liberals say that they’re no longer expecting business to back them because big business has become a little too woke…

And when they tell us that there was nothing wrong with anything they did. And inquiries into Robodebt and Scotty the MegaMinister and just about anything is just a witch hunt…

And when they say that our policies are just fine because we like them and we don’t need our time in opposition to let everyone forget exactly how bad we were by not making the same mistakes…

I don’t think that they’re going to getting the lead role any time soon.

Ok, a few weeks ago I wrote about how the idea that Labor was a strong chance to win the Aston by-election was ignoring history…

Of course, I was also aware of Black Swan events. These are the events that we think are impossible until they happen and then we re-write history as though they were inevitable and it’s quite remarkable that some people didn’t see them before they happened. For example, the ubiquitous nature of the internet or the GFC.

My point here is that I thought it extremely difficult for Labor to win but I wanted to point that out because – at the time – people were talking as though it was a 50/50 thing.

Let’s be clear here: This is not unprecedented, but the only people who can remember the last time the government won a seat off the opposition in a by-election probably can’t, because they’d be over 103… And that’s assuming that they can remember something that happened a few weeks after their birth…

So why did Labor win?… assuming that they do win because at the time of writing Antony Green is only suggesting that it’s a 99.99999% probability.

I think there are a few factors:

• Dutton keeps trying to make a big thing about broken election promises. People expect politicians to break promises; they only care about the ones that affect them personally. As I’ve said many times, there aren’t a lot of Labor voters with $3 million in super.
• Dutton tells the public things that are demonstrably untrue. This is different from broken election promises because it’s treating you like an even bigger fool. It’s one thing to break your promise because you can always argue that you meant to keep it but things have changed since you made it, but it’s another thing to say that the sky is purple and you need to pay me for the unicorn you just bought. When Dutts tries to tell us that Mary Doyle, who campaigned for the seat just ten months ago, isn’t a local but Roshena Campbell is. because she’s managed to rent a property that she plans to move into if she wins, not only do people think it sounds dodgy, but a number of people trying to find a rental property in the area probably think that if she loses, that gives them another possible home.
• John Howard wrote a letter that was sent to the voters in Aston. There are two things wrong with this. 1) A large number of voters are too young to remember Howard and 2) the Liberals seem to forget that he lost the last election he fought and that even some of those who remember him think of him as a man whose time had come.
• Anthony Albanese isn’t Scotty Morrison. He’s not perfect and there are quite a few things where Labor needs to improve but this is going to be a big tick for him until people start saying, “Scott Who?”
• Anthony Albanese isn’t Peter Dutton either.

There are probably more factors but if I try to list them all, there’s a real possibility that the bit of Antony Green’s probability which gives the Liberals the win will have reared its head and I’ll feel silly for trusting him.

Whatever, I’m looking forward to Peter Dutton’s appearance on “Insiders” tomorrow… unless his cold gets worse/he has a meeting that he forgot about/he’s staging a protest against the bias of the ABC and he, unfortunately, has had to cancel.

Sussan is counting the numbers and the numbers tell her that the extra “s” in her name has led her to this moment and if she can just an extra zero to those who support her then she’ll be leader before the week is out.

Last week I heard a commentator make a wonderful statement along the lines of if the NSW election was close then we may not know the result on the night.

Which is fine but it’s rather like telling us that unless a sporting team has an insurmountable lead with a minute to go, then the result is still up for grabs.

I guess that I shouldn’t be too hard on the mainstream media; after all they have to fill a lot of air-time and they frequently have nothing new to say, so the fact that they sometimes state the obvious should be no surprise.

I guess that I should be impressed by the fact that the speaker had the intelligence to use the word “if”. After all, various media outlets were telling us that the election was “neck and neck” and that there was a real question about whether Labor would be able to form government, even as a minority. Nobody was pointing out that the Perrottet government was already in minority, had a series of scandals apart from Gladys, as well as a series of questionable decisions such as knocking down stadiums and trains that didn’t fit in the tunnels.

But according to the Murdoch media, the Liberals lost – not because of any of these factors, but rather because they didn’t follow the agenda of Sky After Dark.

Like the federal election, it was all this woke nonsense about inclusivity and climate action and expecting a government to actually do something, that was their undoing. If only they were prepared to say that climate change is wrong, and if anyone is being picked on it’s their own fault for not being someone who isn’t the sort of person that people pick on, and if you don’t have enough money to afford a lawyer then you probably owe a Robodebt, then they’d be the sort of government that people could elect. Yes, people don’t want what Labor and the Greens are offering: People want cheap, reliable energy and low-interest rates and they’d rather a job than one that paid them enough to afford luxuries like food and shelter.

So the answer isn’t to change any policies to make the party more mainstream. The answer is to have the sort of platform that would make John Howard say, “Ah, are we sure that we want to go that far, it seems a little right-wing to me…”

In spite of the commentary, the fact remains that we now have wall-to-wall Labor governments in Australia… (I’m ignoring Tasmania because there’s no wall, but rather a gulf between it and the rest of Australia). This is in spite of the push from the media to ignore just about everything the Coalition do wrong and magnify every mistake the other parties make. And the push from people isn’t for nuclear power or for more Matt Canavan-powered electricity. People just want to feel that they’re going be under less pressure next year than this and that we’re not screwing up the world for the future.

Regardless of the truth, when the Coalition accuse Labor of doing too much, too quickly in relation to climate action and The Greens and the Teals accuse them of doing too little, then it has the effect of making many people think that it must be about right. Pushing for the wins of yesteryear in an election is only going to make the Coalition irrelevant to all but the people who already vote for them.

It’s not good for a democracy to lack a strong opposition, but the way the Liberals are going, it’s becoming increasingly likely that The Greens will end up being the main opposition party and the Liberals will be a fringe group who have their newsletter published by Rupert Murdoch.

I’m a Gemini so I’m always in two minds about everything. Of course, on the one hand, I think Astrology is bunkum but, on the other hand, I would say that because I’m a Gemini…

Anyway, I do get that when governments become the arbiters of what’s right and wrong in terms of values then we’re on a slippery slide towards a dictatorship…

On the other hand, surely that’s the reason we have governments: to legislate about what’s right and wrong in terms of values.

After all, sovereign citizens notwithstanding, governments decide that there’s a general consensus in the community that theft is wrong, so they pass laws against it and we’re all happy with that because we don’t want our property stolen… And I’m not sure that even the sovereign citizens argue that the police don’t have a right to stop someone from stealing their property…

So when it comes to the Nazi salute, we have to balance out the rights of different people. Most people in the general community find the whole Nazi ideology repugnant and feel like any outward displays of something that caused so much devastation is offensive and should be banned. On the other hand, it’s argued, we have to consider the rights of Nazis to be Nazis. Although, strangely, nobody at the ABC – in the interests of balance – has had anyone telling us about how good Nazis are…

I remember someone, when talking about a person’s sexual preference, saying they didn’t mind what they did at home, but they shouldn’t be doing it in the Main Street and scaring the horses. And I suppose a compromise could be that the Neo-Nazis could be allowed to march around their own lounge room, doing “Seig Heil” salutes before invading the kitchen. I suspect that wouldn’t make them happy because part of their joy is getting together and doing those choreographed routines which finish with them raising their arms so that they can smell each other’s armpits without getting too close to their comrades.

Is “comrade” the correct word here? I’ve read various commentators try to say that Hitler was a socialist because of the word “socialist” in the name “National Socialists”. Of course, “Democratic” is in the official name of North Korea and “Sea” is in the name of the city of Sea Lake which is midway between Bendigo and Mildura and “Liberal” is in the name of the Liberal Party. As for the Nationals, it seems an inappropriate title given they only stand in a handful of electorates. Then we have Pauline Hanson’s One Nation which seems to want to exclude most of us from the nation…

Anyway, I do think it’s pretty hard to argue that the Nazis were socialist when they were aligned with Italy’s fascist party who actually called themselves the “National Fascist Party” to save any confusion.

Of course, we can argue semantics for ages and I’m sure that some of the more right-wing commentators will still say that you can’t blame us for the Nazis because they were socialists, completely overlooking the fact that the thing that makes a government good or bad isn’t its economic ideology alone. The fact is that both capitalist and communist governments have unleashed horrors on their people. What makes a government good is the extent to which its laws and regulations protect the rights of everyday citizens to go about their daily business without harm or harassment. Sometimes a balance needs to be struck between the rights of one person over the rights of another, and sometimes this balance isn’t easy, but I think we can all agree that people don’t have the right to shit in a city street because of how it affects the people around them.

Similarly, I’d be happy with the banning of the Nazi salute. But if you have some sort of freedom argument, how do you argue against other people shitting in the street?

After years of confusion, we’ve finally worked out our order.

And no, we haven’t decided to go with the 12-inch sub because it’s a better value than the six-inch one. I’m talking about the AUKUS deal where we’re buying enough submarines to frighten a certain unnamed country from starting a war. And when I say a certain unnamed country, I mean unnamed by anyone making any announcement on what we’re buying and why. Apart from that, plenty of people have been speculating about war with China with some even suggesting that it’s inevitable.

Of course, if you go around saying something is inevitable, there could be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if you say to your partner that you think it’s inevitable that you split up in the next twelve months, you can hardly be surprised if you come home one day and find that the locks have changed.

All the talk of war with China makes me wonder how we’d be reacting if China was indulging in the same rhetoric. If we had members of the CCP and the media in China announcing that they think that war with Australia was highly likely, we’d probably regard it as a pretty aggressive act but when we do it, we’re just thinking out loud… Or perhaps, not thinking out loud because it’s pretty silly to think out loud when the very thing that you’re thinking is made more likely by the fact that you say it out loud.

Anyway, like I said we’ve worked out our subs order after many years of false starts. At first, we were going with the Japanese but then we decided to go with the French before Scott Morrison scuttled that deal, and as he proudly tells us, he managed to keep the whole thing secret from everyone from the media to Labor to his own Cabinet. He also tried to keep it secret from the Americans and the British until Jen explained to him that you can’t actually have a deal unless the other parties know about it, which led him to ask her if this applied to ministerial appointments before being distracted by a photo opportunity…

We’re going with a deal where the submarines need more submariners to operate them than we have, which will save money in the long run because we can subcontract the running of the subs out to private industry, thereby making it more efficient.

And speaking of more efficient, have you been following the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case? I need to be careful what I say here because after his time in the witness box, I’m worried that it might be defamatory to accuse him of being Bruce Lehrmann.

Anyway, he seems to have been even more efficient than Ben Roberts-Smith in establishing why one should always think twice before launching defamation action. Because it’s an ongoing trial I won’t say much more except to add that I’m not sure telling the court that they can ignore what you texted because you were fabricating a story for your girlfriend is the best way to establish your credentials as an impeccably honest witness.

While it’s true that the submarines will cost an enormous amount of money, I can’t help but feel that we have a tendency to look at too long a timeline with some things. The fact that this deal is over so many years means that the billions of dollars seems like a lot, in fact, by the time we get the actual submarines we’ll think that it would have been a bargain to have got them for that price instead of the trillion dollars that they end up costing.

Whatever, it’s good to see Dom Perrottet coming up with a scheme to help young people manage the future with his plan to give them all $400 upfront, with the government matching any future contributions from the parents up to $400 each year, until the child turns 18 when they can spend it on either a house or education. In line with Liberal philosophy, those who have a go, get a go, so if you’re poor and can’t afford to put in money for your kid then it serves you right when you don’t get anything from the government because taxes are meant to go to the lifters and not the learners.

I did have a few questions, like how much interest is this “future fund” getting and what happens if the $29,000 (or $49,000 if your parents put in the maximum amount each year) isn’t quite enough for a housing deposit in ten years’ time and you’re working so you can’t use if for education, and how ripped off are the kids who are over the cutoff age and get nothing when their younger sibling will get $400 just for being born later.

Of course, Mr Perrottet has seven children and while that’s his choice, it does seem that this future fund thing for kids does risk the charge of an enormous conflict of interest and I feel that ICAC should definitely look at it.

In a moment that’s stranger than something I’d write, during a debate the Opposition Leader and the Premier were asked to name their children in order of their ages. Given Chris Minns has less than half the number of children, this was a far bigger challenge for Perrottet and, if it had happened on the ABC it would have led to charges of bias.

Now, I’d like to be able to concentrate on the actual government. I’d like to be inspired enough to make mention of all the things they’ve done that don’t go quite far enough. However, most of what they’re doing seems like a step in the right direction and – after the years of the Liberals saying “Hold my beer,” when somebody says that it can’t be worse than this – Labor seems like a small step in the right direction.

And every time I think I should write something about how they should be taking big bold steps, along come the Liberals with something that I just can’t ignore.

I want to be very clear here. I’m making a comment on the politics of this and not whether it’s right or wrong.

The politics of the Liberals on the proposed changes to superannuation make me wonder if they are actually enjoying being the Opposition because they can just complain and nobody blames them for anything.

I just can’t believe that they were jumping up and down and saying, “See, while the proposed super changes only affect 0.5% of people now, in thirty years time they’ll affect ten percent!”

Let me just repeat that in case you weren’t paying attention.

“See, while the proposed super changes only affect 0.5% of people now, in thirty years time they’ll affect ten per cent!“

Now the first point I’d make is that most people don’t think that they’ll be in that ten per cent so it’s hardly likely to cause them to join a protest where they demand that the three million is raised to four million so that they won’t be affected. I doubt that few would be moved to even write to their MP demanding action.

The second point is that nobody in their thirties is thinking thirty years ahead…

Actually, I don’t think anybody thinks thirty years ahead because it’s generally just too depressing. I mean, getting there is a great triumph and we all feel pleased and we don’t go, “I’m 43 and I’ve had a long and fruitful life but I’m too old now and I hope that I’m given a merciful release before I turn 44.” Of course, if you’d asked the same person as a 13-year-old what life would be like for them in thirty years, they’d have said: “All over!”

When it comes to superannuation, I remember organising a guest speaker for the staff once. I’d heard the man speak and, as well as being informative, he was entertaining and managed to actually make people laugh. Do you think I could convince anyone under forty to give up their lunchtime to hear him speak?

Nah, they said that they didn’t believe that super would still be around by then or that they’d worry about when they were older or what’s superannuation…

So the idea that in thirty years’ time, the number will have increased so that it’s more but probably still not them, do you think that anyone… I mean, anyone, is going to feel so deeply concerned that they actually take action. It was hard enough to convince people to do something about climate change and that has the potential to wipe out humanity as well as several other more usual species. “Climate change? Look, ok, we’ll agree to net zero providing we can wait until somebody invents something that means that we can get there by starting in 2045. There, you can’t accuse us of not taking it seriously just because we don’t agree with The Greens who seem to think that action is urgent and we need to actually do something now and not just promise to act long after we’re no longer the government…”

Yes, while the media chatters away and complains – particularly those who actually have super balances of $3 million plus – the rest of us are more concerned about interest rates and the future prospects for our children.

Still, I guess it takes the media’s attention away from Robodebt and the slim chance that they’d report the obfuscation, the inability of people to recall basic information and the obvious fact that it wasn’t incompetence that led to legal advice not being attached or passed on: it was a design feature of the standover merchant tactics that were employed by almost everyone involved.

When Public Image Limited sang: “Anger is an energy,” they certainly had a point.

I mean sometimes things only happen when you’re angry.

However…

This is a big HOWEVER and I’m not sure how to make it any bigger.

I remember reading this book by Rutger Bergman and thinking, yeah, most of us are just trying to be good people and help all the others around us… It’s why I find it strange that it’s newsworthy when some celebrity does exactly what most people would do if they had the time and/or money to actually help. So I don’t understand when people get angry…

Apart from a handful of people that we get really, really angry at. And when I say ‘we’, I am usually the Royal “We” which means that I’m speaking on behalf of my entire kingdom of one…

And that anger is, of course, justified because well, LOOK AT WHAT THEY’RE DOING…

And yes, I can point out the things that one should be angry about and I can say that Rupert Murdoch is a truly objectionable human who should make us all angry because of the way he wields power and…

I stop.

I consider the testimony of the people in certain places and I realise what Rupert just admitted which only makes one less angry – or more angry – if one actually stops and thinks.

Ok, folks, I admit it. Actually stopping and thinking has not been one of mankind’s strong points over the evolutionary process, but try it for a moment and you’ll see that it’s a good thing to do.

Rupert told a committee that they all knew that Trump was talking bullshit and they would have called him out but they were afraid that they’d lose their audience…

Now, I think this is important to understand in a way that makes you think rather than get angry because I sure-as-shit think that it’s pretty fucking outrageous that someone like that could keep peddling such guff in order to make money when they’re meant to be telling us what’s going on…

But if I pause, I have to say it’s not because that Trump character demanded it, or even because Rupert believed that it was right to support Donald that they felt they couldn’t tell the truth, it was because of THEIR AUDIENCE!

Their fucking audience. This folks may not be their first rodeo, but, gee, they’re not game to jump off the bull and they’re sending out the clowns to inform us that the bull is completely out of control and if you’d all just look the other way, we’d find a way to dismount but not while you’re looking, so I need to just hang on and show that I know how to ride this bull that’s about to trample all over me even though I’ve been the bull expert since forever…

Or to sum so that even PeeDutty could understand: Sometimes when you decide to ride the bull, you have no way of getting off, even though you know that you’re meant to be the powerful one and you can probably get someone to write something about how the bull was…

Aw fuck, that landing hurt!!

Now, when it comes to Robodebt and the Royal Commission, we have Stuart “Nosferatu”*# Robert telling us that it wasn’t so much that he liked it but when you’re part of a group you just go along with it even if you have personal misgivings and as for checking the legal advice, well, of course, and of course, I’d do exactly what I did just as soon I got the Cabinet to… Sorry, what was the question, that you’re accusing me of not answering… I think that anyone in the government has the presumption of innocence… unless it’s a Labor one because we all know that they’re going to leave the super tax thing at $3 million so that it’ll take away your grandchild’s super…

Anyway, the book I was referring to earlier was certainly worth a read. It was “Mankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregman and he explained how people – generally – just want to do a good job and if they’re given a job like rounding up people and sending them to the showers then they do it as well as they can without thinking. This paragraph has nothing to do with Robodebt and the previous one because I’m not suggesting that anyone involved with the whole process was a Nazi… I’m just suggesting that they – by their own admission – had no desire to do their job efficiently or check anything or give advice or tie their shoelaces or…

And while the previous paragraph that I referred to in the previous paragraph, might have nothing to do with Robodebt, it might have a lot to do with how badly the Coalition is handling being on the Opposition benches…

I did notice Timmy Wilson (who still has the Twitter handle @TimWilsonMP) pop again, reprising his one of his greatest hits, where he argues against any changes to super on the grounds that it’ll hurt the battlers who have been battling to avoid paying tax on any of their earnings.

Although I must say, I’m pretty upset about the $3 million super thing cause I’m only about $3 million away from it give or take a few thousand. However, I’m pretty sure all those in their 20s and 30s are saying, “Fuck, I’ll have $3 million in super one day, Awesome!”

#Just like “The Project”, I feel that I should offer an apology. People can’t help the way that they look and if Nosferatu is offended by being compared to Stuart Robert, I must say that I’m sorry.

Ok, I had trouble with the punctuation for the title. I thought of several possibilities.

• What is Scott Morrison planning?
• What? Is Scott Morrison planning?
• What is? Scott Morrison planning!
• What! I S-scott Morr is on planning…

Just too many possible ways to punctuate it so I just decided to write…

Now, just in case you don’t know me, I’m a very circumspect kind of guy…

I mean, I can actually consider the possibility that it may have been better if the Germans had won World War Two because it would have meant that all military uniforms would have been better designed and there’d be a bigger market for Australian wool, but I digress…

Ok, it would have been bad for my Jewish friends… but if Hitler had won I wouldn’t have had any Jewish friends and – just like those non-racist people who say that the Indigenous population should thank their lucky stars that it was the British who brought disease and guns to their country because the French would have brought them disease and guns in a much less considerate way… And when I say their country, I have to be careful not to offend people who want us to declare our allegiance to the Crown every day but don’t like the Acknowledgement of Country being recited ever…

Which reminds me, this was meant to be about Scotty from Irrelevancy…

Now, I should be careful because apparently God has a plan for him and I may be jumping the gun when I call him Sooty From Irrelevancy because he may be just going through his Book of Job# moment, so when he says that he’s not in a foetal position in an interview I suspect that he’s just trying to tell God that he’s fine with His plan and that he’s happy that he’s been able to help by getting rid of those people in the Liberal Party who don’t abide by Him…

Sooty… that was a typo but sometimes God moves in mysterious ways and who is to tell us that that it wasn’t part of God’s plan to have me make that typo and lead to SootyfromIrrevelancy being forever known by that #hashtag… Amen!

To cut to the chase, I’ve been reading “Bulldozed” by Niki Savva (autocorrect made that “Niki Savage” which means that sometimes autocorrect has a point…).

When you put it all together it’s hard to decide if Scotty was just a poor, deluded man who succeeded by lying when nobody had records of anything he said* and he didn’t adapt to the big stage where there were records and film, or whether he was happy to endorse Katherine Deves – in spite of warnings that this could ruin the chances of people like Sharma and Zimmerman – because he believed that by endorsing her that he was helping rid the Liberal Party of those heathen moderates and one day soon, God will deliver him back the leadership and he will dwell in the House of Righteousness forever. (I’m paraphrasing the 23rd Psalm but isn’t it ironic that House of Representatives and House of Righteousness are completely the same apart from the different letters after the R?)

So, is he sitting in Parliament waiting for the call to arms where he sits in his Rightful spot? Or is he just waiting till he can use his vote to deliver the next chosen leader?

Like I said before: Punctuation can be hard and sometimes people don’t know where the full stop should go. !

#In the Book of Job, Satan bets God that Job is only good because good things happen to him and God says I’ll take that bet… which makes all the hullabaloo about betting advertising a bit anti-religious… I mean, it’s bad enough that God showed Noah a rainbow and told him that it was a covenant that he’d never flood the Earth again… God doesn’t seem to be the sort of person that the Lyle Sheltons of the world like…check your Genesis, Lyle and friends…

*I used to work with someone like that. He could just insist that his version of events was the right one and eventually people would give up because he didn’t and it just wasn’t worth the stress of trying to prove that their recollection of events was somehow accurate just because his was full of contradictions. I mean that works when there’s no film of you saying the complete opposite of what you just said. Sometimes… No, I never said that it worked all the time… in fact, I’m pretty sure that I never said that it worked…

“Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.”

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

A few weeks ago I hit on a great money making scheme where I go round to people’s houses, knock on the door and tell the person that they owe me $20 bucks and if they don’t pay up when I come back I’m going to toss a brick through their window.

My wife did suggest that she thought that this might be illegal but as she’s no lawyer, I thought it best to get legal advice and, according to the advice I received it would be illegal to throw a brick through their window but, as I hadn’t actually done it there was no problem there. Of course, demanding money that they didn’t owe could be considered fraud but, as I had no evidence that they didn’t owe it, I’d have to say that it can’t be considered illegal unless they can prove that they don’t owe me the money. I didn’t ask the lawyer about the threats to their window, so I’m a little unsure as to whether that’s legal or not.

So, as you see, I have the all clear to continue.

Yes, I have been following the Robodebt Royal Commission. Not closely, mind you, but enough to notice a consistent pattern of: “No, nobody actually thought about the legality… or rather nobody was sure… and nobody was authorised to actually think… and I certainly didn’t do anything that I knew was wrong… Ah, yes, that is my handwriting suggesting we change the word there and, no, I can’t imagine why I’d want to change that completely clear statement to something ambiguous…”

And while the Robodebt testimony sounds like it’s been scripted by Joseph Heller (writer of Catch-22), I think it’s important to pause and to remember that people died. Maybe it wasn’t as high as the highest estimates, and maybe we can all just take comfort – as Alan Tudge did – by reminding ourselves that nobody can really know that it was the demand for an enormous sum of money that led to their suicide… And maybe Alan Tudge was always going to resign and that the public embarrassment he became had nothing to do with it.

Juxtaposition can be quite exquisite sometimes and I’d have to say that there’s something worthy of a satirical show like “Utopia” when the Liberals are resurrecting the slogan, “When Labor run out of money, they come after yours,” at a time that it’s been shown that Morrison, Tudge, Porter and all were actually coming after people’s money because they had, in fact, failed to deliver the promised budget surplus “in their first year and every year after.”

As a side-note, it’s always intrigued me that the party that argues that money is better in the hands of people, also argue that it’s better when the government takes more back in revenue than it gives back in services, but there you go!

So now that there are rumours that there may be some changes to the taxation benefits to people with superannuation balances of over $3 million, it’s Labor who’ve run out money and not the Liberals who doubled the debt BEFORE Covid hit and tripled it after. No, Labor have run out of money and they’re looking to raise revenue to balance the budget! Outrageous. The Liberals never worry about balancing it; they just tell us that they intend to because that’s what good housekeepers do.

Of course, their success in 2019 probably makes them think that talking about tax grabs is a great move and that we’ll all just go, “Yeah, those thieving bastards trying to take my super”, but the big difference here is that in 2019, there were a range of things that they could attack. The Coalition managed to argue that changes to negative gearing were going to lead to a crash in property prices but houses weren’t going to get cheaper for first home buyers. Franking credits were going to take away from Nanna’s meagre income from shares and she was going to lose $150,000 in franking credits thanks to Labor. And, with their insistence that we all ruin our weekends by buying an electric vehicle, Nanna would have to sell her house – at a loss – and move in with you.

While all that made a coherent, well-laid out attack on the Labor Opposition, the big difference with the rumoured superannuation changes is that once they do it, the capacity for a scare campaign is significantly dulled. Yes, reality doesn’t stop people from attempting to scare you, but most people aren’t going to be too worried about being taxed if their super hits $3 million. It’s like telling someone to rip up their lotto ticket because, if they win the record jackpot, they won’t be eligible for the aged pension or unemployment benefits if they lose their job.

Yes, a lot of people with super balances of $3 million plus will be telling you that it’s a bad thing and that the pushback will make Labor backdown, but I suspect that it won’t lead to the sort of hit in the polls that the Liberals romp home in Aston.

Speaking of Aston, I heard a clip from Roshena Campbell where she referred to independent candidates “squatting” in Liberal electorates. I suppose she realises that once a “squatter” has been in a place long enough they can claim it through adverse possession.