There’s something very strange about the nature of what news organisations actually do. I mean you may have once thought it odd that the news takes up exactly the same amount of time each night but as you grew older, you probably worked out that it’s because there are people who are selective about what actually gets broadcast…
And, of course, when Scott Morrison invited the media to follow him and take photos while he got a haircut, then that’s big news. Imagine if you decided to go and have a cup of coffee instead and all the other news outlets had the scoop of Scott Morrison’s trip to the barber and you were left with something less significant.
Personally, I’ve spent the day anxiously waiting for the updates on the hair situation. How did Jen react? What’s Labor’s position? Will they release it or will we have to wait to closer to the election? Will we hear about his shave this morning?
I couldn’t help but wonder if Morrison will invite the media if makes a trip to a proctologist… Although, I suspect that he won’t need to… The proctologist is highly likely to discover a number of them during the examination.
Whatever, a few valiant souls are trying to point out Morrison’s backflip on electric vehicles, while the PM tries to confuse them about exactly what he said in the hope that we’ll have forgotten and that all footage of him saying it will be banned under the official secrets act.
“No, no,” says Scotty, “I was never against them. I was merely against Bill Shorten’s policy which mandated that everyone would have to have one, and anyway, the technology’s come a long way since then… why, they have a much longer range owing to the fact that they now use batteries and the car doesn’t stop once you reach the limit of the extension cord…”
Ok, he didn’t actually say that but it’s a lot closer to what he said than anything he’s pretending that Labor said. Labor’s aim, if you remember was for 50% of all NEW cars sold by 2030 would be electric. Given the way vehicle manufacturers are getting out of combustion engines, this seems like buying anything but electric might be difficult by 2030. We’ll have to rely on the Australian car industry to make the ones with grunt that Scotty assured us that Australians all loved… Oh, that’s right. Joe Hockey told the remnants of our car makers that the country wasn’t big enough for the both of them and that they had until sundown to get out of town.
And his latest thought bubble about subsidising chargers at people’s homes is another fine sounding proposal, if you don’t actually think about it. Why don’t I get an electric car? Price. Does the lack of a charger at my house put me off? No, because if I could afford the car, then installing the charger would be the least of my worries. Charging it away from my home is a consideration but this doesn’t really do much to fix that.
But Morrison is against the idea of mandating things, which is pretty funny even if you don’t have the wit to ask him what the Indue card’s all about. The idea that the government shouldn’t mandate things is a nonsense. The only question for any non-anarchist is what should a government be mandating and what should be a matter of choice? After all, the government has no problem mandating work for the dole, asylum seekers being held off-shore, unions obeying certain laws and whole range of things.
Similarly, I can’t quite understand why none of the media have pointed out that there’s an absurdity to the “technology not taxes” mantra. When the government tells you that it’s going to subsidise the private sector to come up with the solution… But won’t the government be giving them taxpayer money? And won’t they have to tax people to do that? (Ok, not necessarily… I get Modern Monetary Theory!)
I think it’s very much a case of what Scotty said about how problems would be solved by “can-do capitalism; not don’t-do governments”. Yes, well, just as he doesn’t hold a hose, he can now add that his party “don’t-do government”.
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