Bored or panicked?
Is the Abbott government bored or panicked? It’s hard to tell.
Here’s the case for bored: they’ve done everything they promised to do and they hate the idea of a government who actually does stuff so they’ve got no idea what to actually do. There’s nothing on the agenda. Literally. In my professional experience, when you have a committee that meets regularly and gets to a point where there’s nothing on the agenda, there is usually a consensus acceptance that the committee has run its course and can be disbanded. What’s the point of meetings without agendas? That’s what the Abbott government is finding their whole government has become. A meeting without an agenda. When they were elected, they promised to ditch the Carbon Price, axe the mining tax and stop the boats. And presumably, having done all of this (well, if you count stopping the boats as just not telling us about the boats), they’re now devoid of a purpose.
Of course there is no narrative, because there are no ideas. Stories don’t exist without at least a ‘once upon a time…’. And there sure isn’t a ‘…happily live ever after’ with these morons in charge. They don’t want to reform, they just want to wreck. Much of their wrecking is being blocked, thank fully, by the Senate, so the wrecking ball hangs idle and there’s no future plans going into or coming out of Credlin’s office. A small, ineffectual government is boring. Being in government when you don’t actually like the idea of government is sort of like having a car but not having any interest in learning to drive it. You can sit in it in your driveway, you can wash it and admire it and use it to make yourself feel good about yourself. But you can’t do anything with it. It’s boring.
Hence why this week Dutton, ex-policeman and current-potato-head was presumably responsible for the latest farce: Border Farce. The scare machine has got boring; no one cares about the ‘death cult’ anymore and the promises to bomb Syria are not having the desired effect of persuading Australians to back a war. Wars are a good way to pass the time in government, and to whip up fear, but when the electorate is just ‘meh’ about the whole thing, it’s no wonder Dutton and Abbott are keen to flick the idea around of perhaps having a civil war. Checking visas in the street is a good way to divide the masses into those who belong in Team Australia and those who don’t. It’s just a game to these crazy cats.
So, like a child who has many books, but hasn’t learned to read them, who has the attention span of a flea and has smashed up all their toys so they don’t work anymore, the Abbott government is so bored they’re playing games, fighting amongst themselves and are taking expensive helicopter rides to party fundraisers because, frankly, they have nothing better to do.
Here’s the case for panicked: the Canning by-election polls. People’s jobs are on the line. Not just jobs, obviously, but salaries and, shock horror, entitlements. The panic must be worsening every time they see another poll, and they realise that the Canning by-election swing, if played out across the country, puts many of them in the unemployment queue come the next election. That’s when it becomes every blue-tie-wearing man (and a few women) for themselves. That’s when Joe Hockey decides he’s interested in the Republic Movement for its two advantages of being a potential poll boost for him personally, and to differentiate him against Monarchist Abbott. Panicked is when there are slogans without policies and they can’t even get the three words in the right order (Jobs and Growth, Growth and Jobs, Jobs and Jobs, Growth and Growth, Green Eggs and Ham, I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere). Panic is when talking points reminding people not to leak are immediately leaked, and then there are leaks about the displeasure Abbott has had in learning of leaks. Leaking from every pore is a sure sign that the government is a dysfunctional, disunited, chaotic train wreck. That’s what they said about Labor wasn’t it? That’s what they are. They don’t care about the economy, they don’t care about people out there in their electorates losing their jobs, they don’t care if climate change is getting worse and there’s no plan to address the health and education needs of the community, there’s no infrastructure plan, there’s no jobs plan, there’s no growth plan. There are anti-Labor-attack-ads being produced. There is a Royal Commission into Trade Unions (designed to destroy the Labor Party) which has descended into comedy. There is a delusional hatred of wind farms. And of course there’s a violent-gun-nut change to gun laws to bring back deadly weapons. But there is no plan. There is just panic.
So I think I’ve answered my question. Clearly there is an eerie mixture of both: the Abbott government is both bored and panicked. Every day is a new day ready to stuff things up. Amusing to watch, I must admit. Like a slow motion car-crash, and the car is packed full of clowns doped up on valium. Someone pass the popcorn!
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Return to home pageWay too true Victoria.They are a joke.
One minor correction. The RCTU is not a comedy, it is a farce. I looked them up.
Comedy : “A play, movie, etc., of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.”
Farce : “A comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.”
A one trick Tony…
News Flash!
BORDER FORCE ARRESTS CANNING
As a kid I used to be perplexed by some of the other kids who had a fear of clowns. Coulrophobia as it’s known.
Now I get it.
Now I’ve got it too.
Was that farce of a comedy in Melbourne the shortest policy implementation ever? No wonder they want to keep it an “operational secret”.
Perhaps they will think no one has noticed and will try to implement it in another city in Australia, perhaps under another name.
It was interesting to hear a journalist, who thought the whole thing was ridiculous – but was upset by the fact that the social media, the “Twitterati”, had actually had an influence on shutting the operation down. The rabble had an influence? How dare they!
He said what?
Abbott what’s a national security event each week up until the election. This weeks effort was a beauty, I wonder whose turn its going to be next week?
Or maybe it will just be we are going to stop the baddies , the death cult from coming to get you, we will bomb Syria.
Should we be worried that the official in Melbourne passed it off as “it wasn’t fatal”? Was that the original intention then?
If only one of you writing here could explain to me how it is that people actually SUPPORT these dangerous madmen, I could sleep at night. And how come there are msm reporters who do so with pride ? – don’t they know that ‘journalists’ are meant to be impartial ?
Why do they WANT to state their political bias ?
What’s it all about, Alfie …?
As you say Victoria, pass the popcorn. I keep thinking they can’t get any worse, but then they not only do, but they take it to a whole new level of stupidity. Unfortunately the stupidity highlights that there is a significant minority who actually thought the Operation Fartitude was an excellent idea! I know, I read their comments on social media – and that is a serious concern, because I don’t believe that Murdoch has prompted them this way, they’ve worked out that it seemed a good idea all by themselves. I suspect it’s just a manifestation of being anti-foreigner, but they don’t seem to realise that many visa out stayers are no different from large swathes of our general population. Like this government, they just don’t seem to be able to think it through, and this is a worry.
@Steve Laing…. it’s astounding how may of our fellow citizens refuse to think further than… “if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”. Of course their definition of “nothing wrong” is rather limited.
The Abbott Government has broken every commandment of their US masters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpUX-e8RZ7U
They certainly will because in a sense they’ve doing it for years. I’ve experienced these ‘raids’ on two occasions, once in Kununurra and also in Tully. They are looking for people who have overstayed their visas or who are working when they shouldn’t. In Tully and surrounding areas, it’s all about bananas, the picking, packing and ripening of same. The ‘pick up’ starts before dawn and the return happens before sunset. In Kununurra, it’s pretty much the same story, with a greater variety of fruit and vegetables as options. (Stay away from picking ‘melons’ if you value your back.)
After, or sometimes during, the ‘raids’, the Caravan Parks empty rapidly One bloke I spoke to had overstayed his visa for something above 4 years because he travelled very lightly and was always on the look out, ever prepared to abandon his one person tent and the like. These ‘raids’ are very, very unpopular with the locals. The park owners hate it for obvious financial reasons. The farmers hate it because labour is in short supply and the ‘locals’ including Aborigines (particularly in Kununurra) are not interested. This dislike of ‘raids’ extends to all the other service providers in towns as well because, without the back packer workers, economic activity falls.
As I understand it, there is always something above 60 000 people who are ‘illegals’ in the sense that they have over stayed their visa. And for some in the community at least, that’s a good thing. After all, they are nothing like those nasty, nasty people who come by boat.