Turnbull’s budget is almost identical to Abbott’s 2014 monstrosity. Let’s just bed down that fact right up front. All the hopeful expectations of change, of the turd being polished good, of a more grown up, less nasty, spiteful government, of economic literacy, environmental friendless and social progressiveness have all been washed away with Turnbull’s ideological tide. Of course the press gallery are not saying any of this, but they wouldn’t, would they? They didn’t exactly complain about Abbott’s budget either.

Rather than focus on the terribleness and unfairness of Turnbull’s budget, since I’ve already been there and done that in May 2014, I want to pay particular attention to one of the new, back of the envelope policies announced this year: the work-for-the-dole $4 an hour intern program. Or, what I will henceforth be referring to as modern slavery.

This policy treats unemployed young people like pets in a pet store. Actually, that’s unfair because pets are paid for by their owners. I’m trying to think of a circumstance where someone is paid to take a pet on, but I can’t think of one, so no, it’s actually worse than treating young people as pets.

The employer is getting paid at least $1,000 per modern slave. The young person only has to be unemployed for a very short time (6 months) to then be forced to take lessons in presentation skills and punctuality. And then they are ‘placed’ in a workplace and paid $4 an hour on top of their Newstart Allowance.

So what does this tell us about the Liberal government’s perception of the young unemployed? Does it tell us that they understand young people just want their start in life, and are desperate to be given an opportunity to work in a company who values their contribution? No. Does it imply that the Liberal government understands that young people need access to quality education, whether it be at university or at a credible vocational education provider in order to have the skills an employer is going to value? Nope. Does it show us that the Liberal government recognises that the economy isn’t providing young people with enough jobs for each of them to find their place? Again, no. What does it tell us exactly?

It tells us this: that the Liberals think there are plenty of jobs for all the young people in society, but that those young people are too dirty, badly dressed, lazy and running late to be bothered taking those jobs. It tells us that the Liberals think that $4 an hour is fair compensation for hard work, and that the young person should be grateful to the employer for letting their badly presented, smelly, can’t tell the time sack of hopelessness into an employer’s shiny gift of a company. It also tells us that the Liberals think young people should take any job they are given, whether it is in the industry they want to work in or not, and that if they complain they’re just job snobs who would prefer to be at home on the Playstation shoving Cheezles in their mouths.

Think about this for a moment. What sort of choice will these modern slaves have in the workplace they get placed into? Will they be able to specify that the workplace needs to be close to their home or will they be travelling for hours, at cost to themselves, to turn up wherever they’re told to? Will they be given experience in a job-type of their interest, or will they be expected to work in a field they never plan to work in again, which provides them with zero useful experience for the rest of their careers? What if they’re trying to care for children or other family members, or trying to study while they work? Will they have the choice of the hours they take or should they be grateful to the employer deeming to give them access to whatever hours the employer chooses, whether the young person is available at that time or not? What about the job seeker who actually wants the position that is filled by a modern slave? If there is work to be done, why the hell isn’t there someone doing it, and being paid for it already? Is this just a plot by the Liberal government to undermine, and eventually destroy the minimum wage altogether, along with workers’ rights, including to health and safety legislation, and of course, unions, until employees lose any sort of agency whatsoever in their work, and for employers to get paid as nice-little-earner-for-the-boys bonus to take on modern slaves? Yes, I would say it is.

Why the hell aren’t I hearing these questions being asked of Michaelia screeching-Cash and Malcolm turd-face-Turnbull by our hopeless, complicit mainstream media? So many questions and we’re not getting any answers.

Young people aren’t slaves who can be bought, traded and ‘placed’ by the government and their rich mates. Young people have hopes and dreams and aspirations and the drive to contribute. Young people are Australia’s future. I guess the only answer is to get rid of this policy by getting rid of this awful government. Let’s kick this mob out.

Point Piper PM is giving people the booms all over the place. Promising an ideas boom, but delivering instead a booming stinky mess, you can see the disappointment written all over the faces of Australians as their worst fears are realised: Turnbull is the same Abbott. But now, instead of just having a turd of a PM, we have a turd covered in glitter and polished into a giant skid mark across the country.

Boom! The sound of the hopes of a generation destroyed when they realise $100,000 degrees are back on. The Turnbull government has literally admitted they think it’s a really bad thing that Labor opened up university places to young people who would never have had a chance at social mobility without higher education. Kick that ladder out! How dare those poor kids try to better their lot. Don’t they realise it’s their fault they were born poor and they should put up it and that if there’s no longer a manufacturing industry to employ them, then that’s their fault for not being able to afford to get an education, and if they dare go on the dole because they can’t find a job, then that’s their fault too and they’re really just lazy, dole bludging leaners. Or something like that.

Boom! The sounds of the cash registers filling up at private colleges. At the same time, Turnbull is keen to encourage more dodgy private education providers to open their doors to profit-making ventures which make money by saddling vulnerable aspirants with debts they have no chance of repaying, who have no interest in actually educating, and instead put all their effort into rorting government-funding and moving all their money to offshore tax-havens before any of their students even have a chance to graduate. Ain’t profit grand! Point Piper PM sure thinks so.

Boom! The sound of the public education system hitting the floor as Turnbull drop-punts it out-of-bounds-on-the-full, rejecting the notion that his government has any responsibility to fund public schools. At the same time, he cosets private schools safely into his bosom, ever determined to ensure they remain the privileged enclave of those entitled to the right connections to make lots of money. Point Piper PM is showing his true colours and no doubt there’s more of this public education bashing to come in the May budget. At least he’s honest!

Boom! The sound of wannabe expectant mothers’ hearts sinking as they realise that Point Piper PM wants to destroy the Paid Parental Leave scheme. He is schmaringly-smart enough not to actually use the term ‘double-dipping’, but will treat parents as double-dippers anyway. Just to add to the general anxiety of bringing a new future-taxpayer into the world, mothers who are expecting right now have already been told by Centrelink that their PPL is at-risk, even though this nefarious policy hasn’t actually gone through the Senate and therefore is just an aspiration, most unhappily for the government. You can guarantee, however, the wrecking will happen if the Libs win another term. Christian Porter confirmed this on RN this week. So, even though a mother’s employee-negotiated-maternity-leave-scheme is none of the government’s business, and is something she’s likely had to compromise in other areas of her employment contract to get in the first place, Point Piper PM is determined to penalise everyone who has an employer funded scheme, no doubt with the end-goal of encouraging employers to scrap their schemes altogether, destroying a system an entire generation of feminists fought for, and won, and if we lose, we will never get again. Thanks a lot turd face!

Boom! The sound of the nation’s heart breaking at the realisation that Point Piper PM has no plan, is making things up as he goes along, doesn’t know how to develop policy, has no interest in a social safety net, doesn’t believe in public education, doesn’t encourage social mobility, would prefer tax cuts for rich businesses than investment in nation building, is all talk when it comes to technological innovation while at the same time destroying Australia’s chance to leap-forward with high speed internet and is more interested in Cory Bernardi and George Christensen than he is in gay marriage and climate change. Perhaps Turnbull just isn’t as smart as he claims to be. Maybe his one real skill is white-anting and bitching and sniping and winning leadership spills. Maybe, that’s as good as he gets. I mean, did he really think Abbott’s unpopularity was just due to Knights and Dames and onion-eating and undeniable-unsuitability-for-the-job? Did he miss that we were all a little upset about Abbott’s budget and we would get just as upset about it if it was shoved down our throats for a third time? Apparently so.

Boom! The sound of me saying ‘I told you so’, and to be fair, the sound of Point Piper PM also saying, ‘I told you so’, because he has told us many times that he is a free-marketeer and anyone who understands what a free-marketeer is wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised at Turnbull’s political priorities.

Boom! The sound of Australia’s boot hitting Malcolm Turnbull’s bum as we kick him out of office at the yet-to-be-specified-when election. Never has there been a more exciting time for Australia to rid ourselves of another wrecking ball PM. And let’s hope we’re never to be fooled again.

There’s a reason why Donald Trump’s rallies amount to hate-fest pep-talks empty of any actual policy ideas. It’s the same reason his Republican opponents are finding it difficult to differentiate themselves from each other, or from Trump. And it’s also why our very own Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has become chief-ditherer, the-dog-ate-my-home-work, ‘I’ll-get-back-to-you-about-that-budget’, culture-wars-advocate without any actual economic policy ideas to contribute. The reason is that, world-wide, the right side of politics is out of ideas. They literally don’t know what to do with either the power they already have, or the power they’re campaigning to win. So instead of contributing anything new, they’re filling this policy-void with hate and fear in an attempt to legitimise their power, in order to distract voters from realising the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

But the game is up! We can see you’re naked. You’ve got nothing!

When you’re arguing with someone and they start flinging personal insults, you know they’ve lost. This is where the right is at. Literally the only thing Trump is promising a Trump President would do is to build a wall to stop Mexicans ruining the country. Not just Mexicans. Rapist Mexicans. But Trump isn’t alone in this petty game. Malcolm Turnbull is building his own wall to keep his conservative backers safe from teenagers who need counselling to deal with being bullied about their sexual orientation. See what I mean about petty cultural wars replacing productive, effective government?

This type of infantile, destructive and divisive behaviour is just a symptom of the disease suffered by conservatives and neoliberals across the globe who have served up policies time and time again which only benefit the richest of the rich. As this privileged little enclave gets richer and richer, and fewer and fewer in number, as their wealth becomes more concentrated, the rest of us, the 99.9% who thankfully get one vote per person and not one vote per dollar, are starting to awaken to the absurdity of the right’s bald-face-lies about their policies supposedly benefiting everyone. Because their policies don’t benefit everyone. Clearly. The right’s policies only benefit a tiny number of influential, yet democratically scrawny, greed machines. I recall an Occupy Wall Street placard which read: ‘the rich have had your tax cuts. Now where the f*ck are our jobs?’ The jobs never materialised. Without jobs, there is less consumer spending, which in turn means less business investment, therefore less growth, less income tax going to the government, less company tax and in the end, less government. This might sound like a great idea to the right, who have always strived for small government, but they’re starting to realise small government comes with a catch. When government can’t actually do anything, because they have no revenue, they’re left with an impossible situation to sell electorally. Not only do the masses actually need government services like health, education and social security, and get a tad upset when they’re taken away from them (remember the reaction to Abbott’s first budget?), but the right also can’t bribe voters with tax cuts and middle class welfare when they’ve got no tax revenue to hand-out. So they’re stuck between an ideological hard place and the reality of their previous bad policy rocks.

For decades now, the right has been arguing that the free market will solve all our problems. They have been stripping away regulation in an effort to free-up markets, when in reality this cutting of red tape has let greed run selfishly rampant, at the expense of everyone – both the rich and the poor. The world felt the full force of the right’s sham through the slap-in-the-face Global Financial Crisis and learned the hard way that the free market isn’t actually the messiah the right have always claimed it to be. I can’t imagine how it feels to find your ideological heaven isn’t as profitable as you always hoped it would be. But I can guess it’s not a fun realisation to not only feel wrong, but also poorer for it. To add insult to injury, the left is finally waking up too, to realise they can argue for their policies using the ‘wealth inequality is bad for everyone’ narrative, where everyone really can see benefit in a well-resourced government equipped to tackle societal problems a free-market not only fails to solve, but also makes worse. Climate change, education, health, social welfare, job creation, technological advancement, the continuation of our species – all problems the right have no solutions for and the left have aplenty.

My guess is that Turnbull has political-writer’s-block with his budget, and is arm-wrestling with his Treasurer because of it, due to the little voice in his head telling him the only way to retain his power is to use left-wing policy to grow the economy through stimulus, to at least have a go at delivering this ‘never been a more exciting time’ promise which is so far as hollow as a full-of-hot-air-balloon. The truth is, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a progressive watching the right crumble, and to know the left’s time has come. It’s time (again). Pass the popcorn.

I am terrified of Donald Trump. If he wins the Republican nomination, which he looks likely to do, he will no longer be able to be sidelined as the ‘joke’ candidate, as someone not representative of mainstream views. So what does Trump’s rise tell us about modern American values? How has a country who used to hold themselves up as the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’ fallen so ashamedly to their knees, exposing the bigotry, racism, fear, hatred and misery of average Americans?

There is no shortage of analysis of this type being contributed by writers across the globe. Many blame the Republicans for harvesting the hate and fear that Trump is now exploiting, whereas others say Trump has just tapped into the hate and fear that lay dormant, waiting for a voice, through the marginalisation and undermining of poor Americans. I would like to look at two sides to this argument which could roughly be coined the ‘chicken and egg’ question: what came first; do millions of white Americans really hate people who don’t look like them so much that they yearned for a President who would give them permission to say out loud what they’ve always thought, who promises to not-just-figuratively-but-literally build a wall to keep ‘others’ out? Or did Trump put these ideas in the heads of the poor, the repressed, the under-appreciated, the resentful by blaming the ‘others’ for everything that has gone wrong in these peoples’ lives?

Bernie Sanders will always draw his argument back to income inequality because that is his very successful platform, and I applaud him to sticking like glue to his narrative. As he explained to Rachel Maddow, he thinks Trump has tapped into the anger felt by the hollowed out middle class, the anger at feeling completely powerless in the face of growing inequality, where the pie keeps getting greedily consumed by the richest of the rich, leaving nothing but crumbs for everyone else and has diverted this everyone-one-else anger from its real enemy – the system that caused this inequality in the first place. Trump has instead pointed the finger of blame at the easiest of soft targets – non-white Americans. Sanders argues the solution to this problem is to educate the masses about not only the real reason for their simmering anger, which he sees at completely justified, but also to show them that their insecurity is caused by a problem they are powerful enough to solve. But the only way they can solve it is together in a big group hug, rather than behaving like spiteful, divisive haters. This big group hug translates to voting for Bernie Sanders.

I like Sanders’s argument. The Republicans, in fact the right side of politics the world over, have always used fear and loathing as their favourite election-winning tactic. They know scared people don’t think straight. Scared people are easy to manipulate. Scared people are easy to convince to vote against their best interests. Like the screaming person in a horror movie being chased by the knife-wielding-psychopath, who chooses to be cornered by running up the stairs rather than choosing the obvious path to safety – the open front door. Sanders is the one out on the street, through that open door, ready to embrace the scared-out-of-their-wits electorate, to give them a way to solve their problems. Trump is the knife-wielding-psychopath who just so happens to be a member of the richest 1% of the richest 1% who would coincidentally find it very inconvenient if the frightened voters saw past his ‘look over there, it’s a coloured person’ scare-tactic and instead bore their anger down on his entrenched privilege. The fact that many Trump supporters respect Trump for no other reason than because he is rich is head-exploding dark irony at its best.

Then there’s the other argument which is far less sanitary. The other argument is that racism is alive and well in America, and that it’s always been alive and well, and that there is absolutely no surprise that Trump is able to use racism to win votes because the country may have had a black President and the world might have thought this represented a moment where America could no longer be perceived as a racist country, but that we then find we were wrong and that not only do the KKK still exist, but the Republican front-runner nominee refuses to criticise a clan leader through fear that this will lose him votes and that this culture is the real secret to Trump’s success. From this perspective, no matter how many good Americans there are who are absolutely mortified by Trump’s popularity, this popularity reveals undeniably that there is widespread racism in a country who have previously held themselves up as the welcoming home of immigrants looking for a better life; for opportunity, hope and optimism. In this argument, there is no excuse for the bad-behaviour of Trump supporters because there is no excuse for hatred and racism, with a big serving of sexism sprinkled throughout, and pardon my language but they can all go to hell, a place most of them claim to believe in, but also seem not to fear.

I don’t think there is a simple chicken and egg solution to this debate, and rather, as is often the case in politics the problem is caused by ‘a little from column A and a little from column B’. All I know is that whatever the underlying reasons for Trump’s rise, the world is watching on hoping and urging America will wake up to their better angels before it’s too late.

Dear Landlords,

It’s time to admit it. You’ve been on a pretty good wicket with negative gearing. I don’t want to hear you complaining about Labor’s changes because let’s face it; you’re taking the piss to expect Australian tax payers to keep subsidising your lifestyles.

I’m hoping most of you will keep quiet and continue to fly under the tax office radar since Labor’s grandparenting their proposed changes, and you’ll therefore be able to keep using your accumulated wealth as a tax-dodge strategy. I’ve got nothing against you doing this, because it has been totally legal. But what I have got something against is the idea of you complaining about changes to end the legality of what really constitutes a massive rort causing structural wealth inequality that is bad for our entire society. You heard me. Wealth inequality is bad for all of us and that’s why it’s time you came to terms with the fact that this policy is going to change and that you should just be pleased you will continue to get away with it because you were lucky enough to start doing it before everyone realised how unfairly your wealth was accumulating. And realise we have!

We have a Prime Minister who claims it’s never been a more exciting time to be Australian. But what he really meant was that it’s never been a more exciting time than in the past 30 years to be a property-investing-Australian. Rolling equity into more and more wealth. Making money by literally just sitting on your arse, watching the rent go into your account, and the property value go up, and then using this wealth to reduce how much tax you pay. Scott Morrison showed off his economic-illiteracy this week by claiming property investors mostly earn less than $80,000 a year, when we all know the only reason the tax office has you in the ‘earning less than $80,000 a year’ bucket is because you use negative gearing to reduce your taxable income down to less than $80,000. We all know you have a tax accountant showing you how to legally reduce your taxable income to a fraction of what average workers have to pay, who own a fraction of the wealth that you own.

I am not going to sit back and accept your scare-campaign to fight these changes, because we’ve all had enough of the rich using fear to stop everyone else getting a fair deal. The mining tax fear campaign was based on lies. The carbon price fear campaign was vested interests paying to fix the result. One of Australia’s largest beneficiaries of Australia’s property speculation boom, real estate agent turned mogul John McGrath, apparently isn’t doing stand-up comedy when he ‘warned of a WEALTH KILLER TAX‘. Wealth killer? Get a grip John. For every established home sold to a first time owner-occupier, there is one less renter in the market and one less renter means one less property investment needed and at the end of this change, there is still one property, one family living in it, one family benefiting from the wealth that owning this property brings them and zero-net change in overall property wealth of the country. It’s just that the wealth is shared amongst more people, rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few. But you knew that didn’t you. Because that’s exactly what landlords are scared off. Property investors hate the idea of reducing wealth inequality because wealth inequality has been so beneficial to them. At the expense of everyone else. Well everyone else is sick of it. The party’s over. Quit your whining.

I am proud of Australia when we can have mature discussions about problems that need fixing, when we can talk about the best way to fix them. Landlords will still exist under Labor’s plans, but you will have to build new homes and if that sounds like too much effort to you, then fine, don’t do it. Becoming wealthy and building wealth, in a productive, growing economy, shouldn’t be as easy as turning up to an auction and signing a cheque. Wealth should be built through hard work, through ingenuity, through patience, innovation, entrepreneurialism, risk-taking, careful management of income and savings, doing something you love, having a career, creating jobs. Imagine how beneficial to the economy it would be if you all invested in new and established businesses rather than another negatively-geared investment property?

Professional landlords who build personal wealth by owning so many investment properties that they don’t even bother with negative gearing because they don’t have an actual job, and instead just gather rents, are the very definition of rent-seekers – the term used to describe those who take from the pie but don’t grow it. A smart country doesn’t encourage such unproductive behaviour. A smart country doesn’t stand for vested-interests fighting against smart policies and a smart country therefore gets rid of the scare-campaign Liberal government run by vested-interests who don’t want to see their privileged inequity addressed.

Labor is brave to take on the threat of another Liberal scare campaign to fight for the little guy. Landlords are not the little guys in this fight. The young family who rent your fourth investment property, who have been asking you for 6 months to fix the air-conditioning unit, which you refuse to do until your accountant confirms you can reduce your tax by doing it, who move houses every time your financial advisor tells you to sell and speculate on bigger profits elsewhere, who can’t even put a hook in the wall to hang a family portrait without your permission, who have been saving for five years for a deposit, but the longer they save, the quicker house prices rise beyond their reach, who compete on an unequal playing field with you at auctions, who just want a house for their family to get attached to, who aren’t interested in how much equity will return them when they sell, who just want a place to call home, are the little guys. I am proud to get behind Labor to fight this good fight for the little guys. I hope you can see it’s a fight you’ll lose.

Yours sincerely
Victoria Rollison

Careful what you wish for. I wonder if anyone ever said this to Turnbull while he scurried around courting leadership votes from his Liberal and National colleagues? There are lots of metaphors you can throw at his current predicament. He’s sipped on Abbott’s poison chalice. His Teflon glean is sticky. His shine has worn off. Voters thought a Turnbull government would look like the cake on the left, but in reality, it’s just the Abbott cake with different colour icing – underneath it still tastes exactly the same.

Reality not meeting expectations is usually disappointing rather than pleasantly surprising. I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand why on earth voters chose Abbott in the first place since I spent years advising against this terrible decision and was completely unsurprised when PM Abbott turned out to be just as big a disaster as I predicted he would be. But presumably Abbott won the last election because voters thought he would do a better job of running the country than the Labor government. It only took a few months for them to realise their terrible mistake. This realisation and corresponding dissatisfaction with Abbott gave Turnbull his chance to pounce. And pounce he did.

In the blink of an eye, Turnbull became Prime Minister of Australia, a job he was never elected for, which, as Gillard proved, had he been a woman and a Labor MP he would have paid dearly for with the label of back-stabbing-illegitimate-swine. But Turnbull slid in scot-free, proclaiming there was never a more exciting time to be an Australian voter who hadn’t voted for him to be PM.

There are good arguments to say Turnbull got away with his coup because voters hated Abbott and were pleased to see him go. It makes sense they were willing to accept whatever had to happen to remove the most embarrassing, incompetent Prime Minister Australia has ever had. But I think there’s more to Turnbull’s free ride and corresponding honey-moon popularity in the polls than meets the eye. I think it’s possible that voters’ acceptance of Turnbull is their silent, shameful, never-to-be-admitted relief that their Abbott mistake went away without them having to admit this mistake was their doing in the first place.

There’s a theory in marketing called Post-Purchase Dissonance which describes the tensions a consumer feels after buying something which they invested time and energy choosing, when they’re not 100% sure they’ve made the right decision. Usually attributed to making large purchases such as a house or a car, buyers apparently often go out of their way to justify their purchases in order to calm their Post-Purchase Dissonance, even when there is rational evidence in front of them that their decision was a poor one. For instance, if the car they bought was a lemon.

You see the same irrational behaviour when people make all sorts of huge life decisions which turn out to be bad ones; it is very rare that the decision maker ever publically admits their mistake. Have you ever met someone who has been through a messy divorce from a man who was clearly a terrible choice for a husband, who everyone always knew was a dickhead, but the best his ex-wife can do to explain why she married him in the first place is to say ‘he changed after we got married’. The divorcee will very rarely say ‘I was a fool for marrying him’ because it’s human nature to justify important decisions in our life as good ones, even when all evidence contradicts this.

For most voters, the decision of who to vote for is not one they invest much time in, but nevertheless, there must be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Australian voters who, while watching Abbott swing a wrecking ball through Australian culture, society and economy had a little voice in the back of their mind saying ‘you chose this outcome… oops’. Imagine their relief when Turnbull erased this mistake?

But this isn’t where the story ends. No, Turnbull really should have been careful what he wished for, and what deals he made with the devil to get what he wanted. All those relieved Abbott-mistake-makers who wanted Turnbull to undo their guilt are now slowly, yet surely, coming to the even more disappointing realisation that Turnbull hasn’t actually undone anything. Because nothing has substantially changed since Abbott was deposed. The car is still a lemon. The husband is still a dickhead. The budget is still a disaster. The NBN has been ruined. The ABC gagged. There is no legitimate climate policy. Social security is still on the chopping block. Gonski is a goner. There’s a risk of a GST rise. Super contributions might be frozen where they are. Australian born babies are being sent to a concentration camp on Nauru. Penalty rates could be a thing of the past. Unions are being bashed. Turnbull is willing to fight an election on zombie-like WorkChoices industrial relations policies. States are being bullied to raise taxes. There will be no Australian Republic under a PM who led the Republic movement. Marriage equality won’t happen. Therefore the decision Abbott voters made at the 2014 election is still haunting them.

These are the sort of emotions that don’t show up in polls. These are the sort of thought processes that people don’t speak out loud. Labor would do well to understand the voices-in-the-heads of the ashamed Abbott voters. The 2016 election is Labor’s best chance to give these voters an opportunity to properly reverse their mistakes and to get it right once and for all.

Dear Cool Kids

This is a letter from all the tweeps and bloggers you describe as ‘brokens’. I know how much you hate open letters so I chose this form of communication particularly to piss you off. Not that I have to try very hard to piss you off because clearly us ‘brokens’ piss you off just by our very existence.

Before I go on, I should explain this school-yard scenario to those unfamiliar.

My first experience of being called a ‘broken’ was this exchange on Twitter after I posted an article I wrote on the Labor Herald:

If this looks a bit like one writer making herself feel good by putting down another, that’s because it is. This is Paula Matthewson (@Drag0nista) laughing behind my back in the locker room because I’m not wearing trendy enough clothes. Or I care too much about the things I write about. Or I don’t earn money for writing. Or something. Note that since Paula is one of the meaner of the Cool Kids, she is being especially nasty-cool by misspelling broken as ‘broekens’. I’m guessing that’s because I’m extra-broken.

At the time, I was so uncool, I didn’t even know what language this Cool Kid was speaking, so I just assumed Paula had mis-typed some rude put-down and moved on. But then over the last week, I’ve seen the phrase ‘brokens’ popping up all over Twitter and it’s become a bit of a pile-on bully fest of the Cool Kids asserting their authority over those who dare use social media and blogging to write about topics the Cool Kids deem to be laughably uncool.

One of my favourite Tweeps, aptly named @geeksrulz, who, like me, comes from the clan of broken, has laid out the whole story eloquently here. The reason it’s funny he’s done it Buzzfeed style is because Mark Di Stefano, political reporter from Buzzfeed, one of the chief Cool Kids, ignited much of the ‘broken’ sledging with this tweet:

If you’re a little confused by now about how Mark Di Stefano, who is ridiculed by the Coolest of the Cool Kids in the mainstream media, came to be chief bully-boy, you only have to remember back to year 9 when the kid that was picked on the most had a growth spurt over Summer and went to the gym and got muscly and came back as the bully-from-hell due to his misguided belief that to stop being bullied one must become a bully.

Leaving out of Mark’s list ‘Schapelle truthers’, which was only put in there for extra-ridicule, it should beggar belief that a so-called political journalist, albeit using a new form of media in Buzzfeed list form, but journalist nevertheless, would laugh at people who write about, discuss and generally care about newsworthy stories such as Ashbygate and the NBN story from this week, which independent news site New Matilda expertly delivered.

What Mark is basically saying on behalf of the Cool Kids, is that stories about a plot to topple a government and to destroy the career of an elected MP and Speaker, and another story about our public broadcaster directing a tech journalist not to publish a piece critical of a potential future Liberal government’s NBN policy due to political pressure, is not the type of journalism that proper journalists like him are interested in. And so when the journalistic void this attitude creates is filled by independent writers, and discussed by independent voices on social media, like paying out the kids who are nerdy enough to do their maths homework and actually care about passing high-school, there is something wrong with the void-filling brokens. Sadly this is not unbelievable because it’s oh so typical of the way our media operates.

The good news for the brokens, and the bad news for the Cool Kids, is the brokens are going to be on the right side of history in this Twitter-feud. I don’t just mean that we’re on the right side of history because anyone who is working in the public interest, whether for money or just because they can, is doing the right thing. I also mean that we brokens are the Uber drivers taking over the taxi industry because the taxi drivers have been offering a bad service with poor air-conditioning and not letting us choose the radio station for too long. Consumers of media don’t have to put up with taxi drivers who don’t turn up because there are us brokens offering them the information they need, disseminated for free over the internet and accessible by everyone.

Remember when the Geek from highschool turned up at the 10 year reunion with a better career than the Cool Kids who used to laugh at her behind the bike sheds? Laugh all you like Cool Kids. It’s water off a duck’s back to us brokens. Never has it been so cool to be so broken.

Yours sincerely.
Victoria Rollison

Dear Malcolm Turnbull

As we head into 2016, many people are reflecting on the year that has passed. But I’ve had enough of looking back at 2015, so instead I’m looking ahead. And while I do this, I just wanted to check with you if you’re sure about what you said about it never being a more exciting time to be Australian? I’ll admit now, I don’t feel excited about our future. I feel a sense of trepidation and doubt. Just like your government told me to.

To give you some context, I am a 34 year old with a husband and one child. My husband and I have careers that we enjoy, a comfortable home and a great lifestyle. We have all the ingredients for this exciting time you keep harping on about. But what is missing is optimism about the future. I don’t think I’m alone amongst my generation in my sense of doom and gloom about what the future holds for us. But can you really blame us after the last 7 years we’ve had? Let’s have a look at what might have dented the optimism of Australia’s young families over the last few years so you’ll understand why we’re struggling with understanding why on earth you think we should be excited.

Just as our careers were being established, the Global Financial Crisis hit. We were lucky enough to live in a country with a government at the time who acted quickly to avert disaster, and a recession was avoided. The rest of the world weren’t so lucky. Of course world financial crises are bad for everyone in a globalised market; it’s hard to think of many industries in Australia who didn’t take a hit. Nevertheless, our economy chugged along and didn’t go backwards, and we avoided devastating unemployment and its associated social problems far better than most other developed economies. So why didn’t we feel excited? I’ll tell you why. It’s because your Liberal Party – while in opposition and in government – turned Australia’s death-defying-recession-avoiding stimulus package into a bad thing for the economy and told everyone that the Labor government were wrong for doing it. And guess what? When you tell everyone the economy is ruined and that debt and deficit monsters are hiding under the bed and that the country is going to-hell-in-a-handbasket because we spent money saving the economy from ruin, guess how everyone feels when they’ve seen this all on the news every day for 7 years? Everyone feels a bit nervous! And then what happens? The economy feels a bit nervous and there is no optimism. See how your party’s political games cost this country 7 years of hope and optimism?

So now you’re here, telling us to be happy, to be excited, to get out there and invest in new businesses and to be entrepreneurs and to create the future jobs and to make a bright future for ourselves. But how are we meant to do this when you’ve spent all this time telling us the economy is a debt-ridden, risky, job-less mess? How are we meant to do this when you and your Liberal mates have turned this economy into a debt-ridden, risky, job-less mess? Hardly any of us have had a proper pay rise in 7 years and house prices are just getting more and more unobtainable on our stagnant wages. Jobs are disappearing too, even in new industries that were just getting started, like in the renewable energy sector. Do you see how your political games have hurt our country and how throwing around a few phrases about ‘exciting times’ is about as little too late as thinking you can eat a birthday cake after it’s already been flushed down a toilet?

But it’s not only the economy we’ve all been told is a big, scary, mess, thereby having any optimism and confidence kicked out of us. It is climate change too. Sorry to have to remind you again, but you’re the Prime Minister so you can do something about climate change now. You’re not just a white-anting, back-stabbing, sniggering-behind-Abbott’s-back never-crossed-the-floor-and-therefore-just-as-responsible-for-this-mess-of-a-government-as-the-rest-of-the-bastards Minister in the Abbott government anymore. You’re the new Prime Minister in the Abbott-Turnbull government. Adelaide is having the earliest, hottest December heatwave we’ve ever had, and across the world there is evidence of climate change expressing itself in natural disasters everywhere. Our generation, who were told by your government that the Carbon Price was an unnecessary extravagance the economy couldn’t afford, is now really scared by the knowledge that even with agreement in Paris, it is likely too late to undo a lot of the damage inaction by governments like yours has caused. What’s exciting about that?

And then of course we have the social policies your government is busily being very anti-social about. Eating away at universal healthcare. Taking family tax benefits from families, paid parental leave from new mothers, making it harder for the poorest in society to make ends meet. And we’re told we can never retire because the government piggy bank won’t have any money in it for us once the baby boomer generation has been cared for well into their 90s. And what about tax policies – when you could be going after the richest of the richest companies to pay only what they legally should be paying, but you refuse to do that and instead are driving up our cost of living by ‘talking about’ increasing the GST. We know you’re going to do it so just get it over and done with already. The impact of that decision on consumer confidence (and by consumer I mean everyone who lives here), will be another dagger in the heart of the economy.

I have absolutely no doubt it’s always been a very exciting time to be Malcolm Turnbull with your little white fluffy dogs in your harbour side mansion. But ‘excited’ is not a word I would use to describe the overarching vibe of my generation who has been pummelled by your political party for political purposes for far too long. In fact, the only thing that excites me about the future in 2016 is the chance to vote you and your excitement-killing government out with you. That is something to be optimistic about.

Yours Sincerely
Victoria Rollison

Wasn’t it brilliant to wake up to the news of a global deal to address climate change? This is cause for celebration. We have a goal and the world is working towards it. I feel proud to be part of a planet ready to battle this problem together. My six month old daughter will be told about this day when she is older; an important moment in history; the moment we, as a humanity, decided to help each other. This is the good news.

The bad news is, as usual, Australia’s Liberal National government who, despite the fact they seem to be wanting to take credit for being part of this deal, despite Julie Bishop’s smiling face being plastered all over the positive news stories about the Paris conference, are actually the exact opposite of helpful. This deal was done despite Australia’s hindrance of pathetic climate change Direct Action bullshit. This deal was done despite Australia being an early adopter of a Carbon Price, a world leader, and then reversing this action by becoming the world first in destroying it. If the Paris conference was a meeting of vegetarians, Australia is in the awkward position of having brought a lamb roast. A burned, tough on the teeth, inedible lamb roast that not even the dog is interested in picking out of the bin.

So sit down Malcolm Turnbull. You’re not part of the standing ovation welcoming this climate deal. Sit down Julie Bishop and go away Greg Hunt. You’re all an embarrassment. After all the talk about innovation and technological advances and new economy, it’s time you were held to account for the crap you have pulled on Australia and in turn, the world.

Don’t pretend your government isn’t chocked full of climate change deniers. Don’t pretend your government wasn’t elected on a platform of lies about carbon pricing. Remember how many times we heard ‘Axe the Tax’ out of the mouth of your previous leader, Tony Abbott? Remember the anti-carbon price rallies, where Abbott stood in front of ‘Ditch the Witch’ signs, where your whole party told the Australian public that Gillard had done the wrong thing in pricing carbon, when in fact she had done exactly the right thing? And don’t forget Abbott actually won the leadership of your party back during the Emissions Trading Scheme policy debate. We all know the deniers run your party, run your government and no fuzzy language from Turnbull about the need for action is going to change the history of what your government has actually done.

Your government, your cheer-squad in the Murdoch Press, your donors in the fossil fuel industries are part of the reason it’s taken so long for the world to reach agreement. We’re not going to let you forget this. You took us backwards. You delayed action. This is your legacy. No one should be congratulating you now.

So what’s going to happen now that there is an agreement? Firstly, you’re not going to get away with pretending Direct Action is going to make any difference to Australia’s carbon emissions. The world is watching and will be very keen to scrutinise the results of this crap, expensive waste of space policy in a way that Australia’s own media have been totally incapable of doing. In fact, there is a very good argument that the only way we’re going to meet our obligations from the Paris agreement is to reinstate a Carbon Price. So how that’s going to work? I’ll tell you how. You’re going to have to suck it up and admit to the Australian people that you misled them when you said the Carbon Price was bad for the economy. You are going to have to suck it up and admit Abbott, and everyone in his party who agreed with him and never crossed the floor to stop him destroying the Carbon Price, lied when they said the Carbon Price was bad for Australia. It’s not going to be easy, but you’re going to have to do it. The world is going to force you to do it.

So finally, finally today we have someone holding you to account. Australia’s media might think the sun shines out of the Turnbull government’s collective you-know-where and collectively refuse to point out the contradictory position Direct Action holds against the Paris agreement. But who cares about Australia’s pathetic media when we have a world agreement. Flaff all you like Turnbull. You’re being held to account. You’re being held to account by the world. You might think you’re Teflon Turnbull but you’re no longer Mr-smooth. And I can’t wait to see the mud finally stick.

This is one of comments Clementine Ford put on her blog to display the type of cyberviolence she endures.

Just in the past week, I’ve been upset about the behaviour of three groups of people. After watching Sarah Ferguson’s harrowing investigation into Australia’s domestic violence epidemic, Hitting Home, I am upset at the hundreds of thousands of Australian men who are abusing their partners and families. As I wrote last week, I am also upset with the racist and bigoted people who preach hatred in the streets under the anti-Islamic banner of Reclaim Australia. And over the last two days, my outrage has been directed at the perpetrators of ‘cyberviolence’, as called out by Clementine Ford and Van Badham. While thinking about these groups, and wondering to myself ‘who on earth are these people?’, it suddenly struck me. Surely there is an overlap? Surely there are people who belong to all three groups?

The more I thought about it, the more real this Venn diagram became. Perhaps the overlap is bigger than I imagine.

All these groups share common characteristics. None of them are ‘decent’ people. The problem with concepts like ‘decent’ is that they are defined by the shared cultural values of a society, and if society’s expectations of decency aren’t very high, it’s unsurprising that there is little value placed on the expectation of people acting decently. For instance, if we have a Prime Minister who doesn’t do the decent thing of calling out groups like Reclaim Australia, we, as a society, are tolerating this type of indecent behaviour. If we have a government who doesn’t bat an eyelid at children being raped in government detention centres, decency is something from a bygone era. Another example is the Navy’s decision to give Elliot Coulson, a perpetrator of domestic violence who stalked and killed his girlfriend before killing himself, a military funeral (which they’ve belatedly apologised for). And then we have the mainstream media, which is peppered with PhotoShopping Daily Telegraphs and angry shock jocks and columnists who, through their own indecency, give society a free-pass to their shared indecency. So our society isn’t decent, and in turn the members of that society aren’t decent. This is not rocket science.

Another shared feature of these groups is that they all blame their victims for their anti-social and violent behaviour; it’s their wife’s fault for making them angry, or their girlfriend has lied about being hit, or they blame Islamic people for making them hateful towards them, and they blame the Clems and Vans of the world for daring to call them out and to have opinions they disagree with. Nothing is ever their fault. They take no responsibility for anything. And why would they take responsibility when they’re not decent people and there’s never been any consequences in the past? No one has ever expected them to be decent, nor called them out when they aren’t. They even have a government who fights to defend their right to be bigots, their right to be discriminatory, and then joins in with them when they take up this right. But rights have responsibilities. Or so I was brought up to believe. Yet when you scroll the Facebook accounts of the men who are cyber-violent, such as those abusing Clementine Ford, or Twitter accounts of members of Reclaim Australia, it’s incredible to realise these people have absolutely no shame in saying the most vile, hateful, nasty and even criminal things (yes, death threats are a criminal offence), with their real names on their profiles, for all their friends and family (and employers!) to see. So not only are these people indecent, they are shouting their indecency from the rooftops as a proud part of their identities.

If I am right (and I suspect I am) that there is an overlap, and therefore a slippery slope between public indecency and physical violence, shouldn’t we, as a society, be treating any evidence of hate, bigotry, racism, misogyny, sexism as a red-flag that this person is dangerous? I remember being told once that children who are violent towards animals often grow up to be violent towards humans. So if a teenage boy is abusing women on his Facebook page at age 16, might he, without any intervention, be the very same person who will control or bash his girlfriend, his wife, his children, and join in violent hate rallies against peace-loving Australians, just because he thinks this is his right? As suggested by the eloquent Ken Lay, Former Victorian Police chief commissioner, it’s time for us, as a society, to stop justifying bad behaviour as ‘boys will be boys’. And perhaps it is also time to reassess what counts as ‘decent’ in our society and hold everyone up to this expectation before our civilisation becomes completely uncivil. Perhaps it’s time to take seriously the warning signs that we have a problem, and intervene before more people get hurt, or indeed, killed.