By Andrew Wicks  

The last time Richard Colbeck made headlines was the discovery that no one knew how many aged care workers were vaccinated.

Richard Colbeck has done it again. As reported by Josh Butler of The Guardian, “Scott Morrison has backed the embattled aged care minister despite saying he can ‘understand the criticism’ of Colbeck, who attended the Ashes cricket match in Hobart on the same day he failed to front a parliamentary inquiry into the Covid crisis. The finance minister, Simon Birmingham, also defended Colbeck on Friday, saying people could ‘walk and chew gum at the same time’. He noted the aged care minister – who is also the sports minister – had held Covid meetings earlier in the day before attending the Test match a fortnight ago.

“Colbeck declined to attend the Senate Covid-19 committee on 14 January. He cited the need not to divert health department officials from their “urgent and critical” work but it was revealed this week he attended three days of the Hobart Test from Friday 14 January to Sunday 16 January.”

In June of last year, Colbeck hit the headlines, as the nation realised that we didn’t know how many aged care workers had been vaccinated, as there was no one keeping track of who has received the vaccine, and who hasn’t. After sustained backlash, the Department of Health said that work was “underway” to survey aged care workers at the nation’s facilities (read: literally counting heads).

At the time, we wanted to know who was responsible for this monumental cock up. According to Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck, it’s not him. Fronting a senate committee this morning, Colbeck was asked by Senator Katy Gallagher whether he thought he was responsible, yes or no. Colbeck proclaimed that it wasn’t “a yes or no answer.”

Interestingly, Birmingham appeared in this issue as well, telling ABC News Breakfast, “I do accept that it has not gone as we would have hoped.”

However, Birmingham was quick to shift blame, stating that the rollout was primarily hampered by the availability of vaccines. Birmingham took it further, claiming that the reason why 600 aged care facilities haven’t been vaccinated was primarily down the 12 weeks period between jabs with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Yet, prior to the rollout, residents and workers in aged and disability care were told that they’d receive the vaccine within the first six weeks.

As journalist Christopher Knaus noted, “…a key area of responsibility for the federal government is vaccinating aged care staff and residents who are both in the highest priority group for vaccinations – phase 1a. Initially, the government said it had planned to complete phase 1a within roughly six weeks of the program’s commencement on 22 February. That included vaccinating 190,000 aged and disability care residents and 318,000 aged care and disability staff.”

“We know we aren’t where we want to be but we don’t know where we are,” Gerard Hayes, secretary of the Health Services Union in NSW, said of record-keeping in the sector’s “haphazard” rollout last year.

In early April, Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the program was “accelerating as intended” and “We were conservative in our estimates.”

Hunt also mentioned at that time that “we remain on track to complete first doses for all Australians who seek it by the end of October.”

As The Big Smoke reported, “Pre-rollout, Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested the rollout capacity will start at around 80,000 doses per week and increase from there. That’s 16,000 a day (over five-day weeks), well short of the required 200,000 a day. The planned peak capacity hasn’t been announced, but even back-of-the-beer-mat calculation would suggest a minimum of 167,000 vaccines per day to give two doses each to 20 million Australians in the eight months between March and October 2021. The longer it takes to reach such capacity, the higher that daily number will get – or we will not reach the target vaccination percentage this year.”

In conversation with The Guardian, The Council on the Ageing chief executive, Ian Yates, claimed that the government overpromised, and underdelivered the vaccine. Yates also highlighted the lack of a plan for vaccinating aged care workers a month into the rollout.

Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

The media has made much of ‘that photograph’ of 2021 Australian of The Year Grace Tame glaring daggers through The Lodge Occupant. The Good Dr. Jennifer Wilson has penned a great piece for this website about the photo and the amazing cultural subtext, and I encourage you to check it out here. I want to focus on the media reaction, and discuss the breathtaking hypocrisy on display from those on the right. I also want to look at an excellent piece by Samantha Maiden on news.com.au (of all places). Maiden rightly puts Tame’s critics in their place.

The response from the media, by and large, has been to condemn Ms Tame as ‘uncivil’ (consider Peter Van Obsolete as Dr Wilson called him). Essentially, this photo-op is a yearly tradition and Ms Tame ruined it by refusing to be a good girl and ‘give us a smile, sweetheart’. It is worth noting that neither Ms Tame, nor anyone else, is obligated to give Scotty from Marketing a good photo-op. She, like most people, has a political stance, specifically an opinion on The Lodge Occupant. She conveyed that opinion and it is somehow a problem.

First, Have No Standards: The Hypocritic Oath, Part One: Free Speech

Many of Ms Tame’s most vocal critics on the right (including Miranda Divine) are part of the ‘free speech’ crowd. As is becoming increasingly clear, the conservative definition of this ‘right’ (which Australia does not have by the by, we never quite got to the whole ‘bill of rights’ thing) is ‘we get to say what we want and the rest of you fall in line’. In other words, for me and mine, not thee and thine. Standard practice? Maybe, but it still reeks.

Ms Tame expressed her political opinion of The Lodge Occupant in the most public and viral way possible. As we will see in the Samantha Maiden piece, Ms Tame knew exactly what she was doing. But back to the point: Ms Tame does not have ‘muh freeze peach’? Or does that sacred concept only apply to certain opinions? That consistency has never been the strong suit of the right is well known, but this gives whiplash.

First, Have No Standards: The Hypocritic Oath, Part Two: The Media and The Office of The Prime Minister

The Murdoch Media Menagerie has made much in the last day or so of ‘respect for the office of The Prime Minister’. The idea here is that even if you dislike the occupant, you show respect for the office. Anyone inclined to make such a suggestion regarding Ms Tame I direct to the following image, borrowed from the Facebook page of a Mr. Kevin Rudd:

Seems the ‘respect’ due to the office of The Prime Minister changes according to whether or not the occupant is from the right party. The brass b*lls it takes to bellyache about ‘disrespecting the office of The Prime Minister’ only when your guy is in there is something to behold. There is a real sense of ‘know your role, shut your mouth’ here that is most unbecoming. Now, am I suggesting that, as a sexual assault survivor and advocate that Ms Tame is insulated from any and all criticism? No. But of all the things to criticise someone with her past about, smiling? Seriously?

But Why So ‘Untamed’?  

It should be clear that Ms Tame’s actions do not need ‘justification’ from me or anyone else. But I thought it might be useful to look at history for some motivation for her giving The Lodge Occupant the evil eye. One possible explanation for her ‘icy’ demeanour toward The Lodge Occupant might be his utter lack of action around sexual assault and family violence, specifically his defense (before the facts were known) of Non-Christian Porter around the rape of Brittany Higgins. A little detail here worth recalling is The Lodge Occupant discussing the rape of Ms Higgins with his wife, who encouraged him to think about the incident as ‘the father of two daughters’. Ms Tame rightly obliterated this nonsense when she said:

It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience

Ms Tame does not evidently understand how the conservative mind works: something has to affect them before they care.

Now, this is but one incident, and it is not the whole story of course. But sexual assault advocacy was her issue. The Let Her Speak campaign was what brought her to prominence in the first place. Of all the issues for The Lodge Occupant not to act on, this was likely to poke the bear

Play it Again, Sam: Samantha Maiden to The Rescue

In a fantastic piece for news.com.au, actual journalist Samantha Maiden eviscerates the right wing narrative around this incident. She notes the hypocrisy of the government by pointing out (with photos) times when LNP cabinet members were playing on their phones while turning their backs on Tanya Plibersek as she addressed the House. Maiden also notes the utter non-issue that was Justice Kenneth Hayne of the Banking Royal Commission saying ‘nope’ when asked to shake hands with Treasurer Josh Frydenburg in 2019. But Grace Tame is the issue because she refused to ‘be a good girl and give us a smile, love’ to The Lodge Occupant? Spare me.

Maiden notes that the critics of Ms Tame are actually attempting to control her behaviour, a harkening back to the abuse she suffered as a child. I had not thought of it this way, and the suggestion is intriguing. But what is the most interesting part of Maiden’s piece is the comment that, through her facial expressions, Ms Tame has taught us something about activism.

The suggestion seems to be that activism comes in many forms, and this was a powerful one for Ms Tame. Her knowledge of how much The Lodge Occupant loves his photo-ops doubtless made this a tempting target. Maiden comments that Ms Tame ‘knew exactly what she was doing’ and I am inclined to agree. She hit The Lodge Occupant where she knew it would hurt him: public image. His obsession with marketing (despite his seeming incompetence at it) made him vulnerable there. She exploited that.

Conclusion: Nous Sommes Grace Tame

The lesson from this is that activism need not be bricks through windows, or even fiery rhetoric. Through her simple facial expressions and the fire in her eyes, Grace Tame has conveyed the outrage of the considerable segment of the population that has, to put it mildly, an unfavourable opinion of The Lodge Occupant. As much as her critics like to complain about her ‘lack of civility’, it is precisely that lack of civility, the idea of not being ‘the good little girl’ that makes her statement so powerful.

2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame yesterday met with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and she did not smile at him.

In fact, Ms Tame used powerful body language and a steely side-eye to convey her disdain and contempt for the man.

Watching this act of subversion from Ms Tame was liberating. Like many other women, I recall, with equal parts rage and sorrow, the times in my life I have smiled when my true feeling was fury, or hurt, or shock or despair, or even just excruciating boredom with the men. To smile in such circumstances always cost me because it was a denial of my truth, and my authenticity. Nobody can deny their truth and authenticity without paying a price, and this particular price is extracted from girls and women from the moment we are born, and does not cease until the day we die.

Predictably, Ms Tame’s stance aroused the self-righteous ire of the civility police, notably academic and Murdoch hack Peter van Onselen, best known for using the intimate writings of the deceased alleged victim of his best friend, alleged rapist Christian Porter, in a most uncivil attempt to invalidate allegations of anal rape by the former federal Attorney-General. This gives you some indication of the man’s ethics.

Pete van Obsolete rushed to produce a thundering column in The Australian ($) decrying Ms Tame’s refusal to play the game a woman is expected to play when encountering the Prime Minister, or just about any man, to be honest. Juvenile, lacking in manners, childish, attention seeking, brazen, are just some of the adjectives Pearl Clutcher Pete used to condemn Ms Tame. He then went on to state in an interview later that evening that if Ms Tame couldn’t smile she shouldn’t have gone, and there we have it, in a nutshell.

What is required of a woman if she wants a seat at the powerful men’s table? That she smile.

This knowledge comes as no surprise to most women. What is surprising is that a man actually says it out loud. Thanks, Petey. You’ve confirmed what we’ve always known and now we can quote you.

Certain men require that women perform their ideal of femininity, an ideal that has at its centre a compliant woman. If we smile (though our hearts are aching), smile (even though they’re breaking) our smile reassures these men that whatever vile thing they’ve done to us is not really that bad because look, we are smiling!

A woman’s smile is an essential tool in the ongoing patriarchal project to minimise and deny the rampant misogyny that continues to control the lives of women and girls.  A refusal to smile is a refusal to accept the status quo. It is a refusal to play the game. It is a refusal to enable and minimise our own mistreatment and the suffering it brings. That is why they want us to smile, and that is why they are so enraged when we don’t. The refusal to smile is the refusal to be complicit in our own oppression.

Ms Tame campaigned last year for the recognition of victims of sexual assault. Scott campaigned last year for the protection of alleged rapist Christian Porter whom he (erroneously) declared to be “an innocent man under the law” Scott has also been accused of covering up the alleged rape of Ms Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. I can’t think of one reason for Ms Tame to smile at Scott.

What Ms Tame demonstrated is that it is not necessary for women to play nice with powerful misogynists. With one gesture, she smashed through conventions that only serve to keep women subjugated. The outpouring of support for her stance only proves that we are more than ready for this moment.

Those men (and women) condemning Ms Tame for what they perceive as her incivility, her lack of manners, and her impoliteness need to get out of the way, because their opinions are obsolete. Women increasingly understand how demands that we smile (and I use this as a metonym throughout this piece) work to oppress us, and are indeed designed for that outcome.

I’m not smiling. I’m baring my teeth.

Election Diary No7, Wednesday, January 26 2022

People need to wake up to the fact that Government affects every part of their lives and should be more interested. But there is a deep-seated political malaise that is counter to representative democracy.

Less informed voters, unfortunately, outnumber the more politically aware. Therefore, conservatives feed them all the bullshit they can. And the menu generally contains a fair portion of hypocrisy and lies.

Hypocrisy is one area where conservatives dwell on the unthinking individual who has no idea of the ideological beliefs of different parties: the hundreds of thousands of people that take little notice of politics.

The word hypocrisy means a pretence to have a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not possess. A façade of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude. Or a situation where someone pretends to believe in something they don’t, or the opposite of what they do or say at another time.

1 When as Treasurer Scott Morrison repeatedly said of negative gearing that there were “excesses in the system” and decided to do nothing about them, it would be reasonable to conclude that he is a hypocrite.

Not long ago, former Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull co-wrote a paper that suggested that negative gearing skewed “national investment away from wealth-creating pursuits, towards housing.”

Could we be blamed for saying “bloody hypocrite” when he did an about-turn on climate change policies that he had assured the people he believed in to attain the leadership over a long period?

Like when you profess to be fixing a problem when you are doing the opposite. Examples are many. In 2016 Malcolm Turnbull said that negative gearing was “tax avoidance”; it could be seen as gross hypocrisy in light of his support for it later on.

Another example of hypocrisy: In 2015, 500 workers who benefited from Gillard’s edict that non-faith-based workers be allowed in our schools were replaced by chaplains sourced predominantly from big Christian organisations. It is a secular public school system, and it is fundamentally wrong be you religious or not.

In 2016 it seemed that Evangelical Christians were gaining most from the National School Chaplaincy scheme, earning millions of dollars. Kirsty Needham, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald that year reported that:

Generate Ministries has won $4 million to provide chaplains to 202 of the 438 NSW schools participating in the scheme in 2016.

The Hillsong-linked Your Dream will earn $1.4 million for 70 schools (up from 50 last year), while Macquarie Life Church will provide chaplains in 20 regional schools.

We are supposed to have a secular public school system. Religious Chaplains in secular schools was hypocritical.

When in his maiden speech, the present Prime Minister alludes to good Christian commonplace values of compassion and love for his fellow humans and then behaves entirely differently toward asylum seekers; then again, I suggest he is being hypocritical:

“From my faith I derive the values of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness; to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the welfare of others; to fight for a fair go for everyone to fulfil their human potential and to remove whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way, including diminishing their personal responsibility for their own wellbeing; and to do what is right, to respect the rule of law, the sanctity of human life and the moral integrity of marriage and the family. We must recognise an unchanging and absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Desmond Tutu put it this way: … we expect Christians … to be those who stand up for the truth, to stand up for justice, to stand on the side of the poor and the hungry, the homeless and the naked, and when that happens, then Christians will be trustworthy believable witnesses. These are my principles. My vision for Australia is for a nation that is strong, prosperous and generous: strong in our values and our freedoms, strong in our family and community life, strong in our sense of nationhood and in the institutions that protect and preserve our democracy; prosperous in our enterprise and the careful stewardship of our opportunities, our natural environment and our resources; and, above all, generous in spirit, to share our good fortune with others, both at home and overseas, out of compassion and a desire for justice.”

A close observation of his words reveals the narrowness and simplicity of his thinking; his views seem to be closed to other people’s values, thoughts and ideas. His standards are those he thinks others should have, his family, church, and the community, so everyone should have them. His words seem to represent a world long gone without considering what the future offers. “Well, that’s what my father believed in, and he was a good bloke” seems to be what he is trying to tell people, but society is changing quicker than he can think. The hypocrisy of not seeing it is blinding.

2 When will an election be held?

The Government has issued a parliamentary sitting calendar indicating that it intends to hold the federal Budget on 29 March 2022. The Government can change the sitting calendar, and there is no guarantee that the Budget will be held on that day however if it is that only leaves 3 possible election days (7, 14 and 21 May).

Any 2022 election held before 7 May 2022, would, according to the proposed sitting calendar, only have the Parliament sit during the February sitting weeks (and only the first week for a 19 March election). This means that any legislation the Government wants to pass in the current term would need to be passed by both Houses by the end of that sitting. An election on 14 or 21 May would potentially allow the March and April sitting periods to also go ahead.

A total of 10 sitting days before the election. Isn’t that deplorable?

The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, and sidekick senator Malcolm Roberts say the Coalition should not expect their votes until the Government rolls back the state-based vaccination mandates and border restrictions. It has never meant much in the past.

So, May 21 looks to be the date we will vote to see who will lead us into the future. One way or the other.

3 Weight problems.

Clive Palmer’s mind, like his body mass, is highly inflated, but he does carry a lot of weight into this election. I read recently that he plans an even bigger spend for the 2022 election. It will exceed $80 million. Yes, it is a lot of money to prevent the Labor Party you dislike from gaining power and electing a known fool instead.

As reported in the Brisbane Times, the unvaccinated mining billionaire says the United Australia Party “will run the most expensive political campaign in Australian history” at the next election. He would also lead the UAP’s Queensland Senate ticket.

4 Speaking of a strange character who is a member of the Coalition, George Christensen, as reported in The Guardian, will not be standing at the upcoming election. Still, it looks as though he will turn up the volume on his conspiracy theory and anti-vaccination commentary.

The Prime Minister has described his commentary as dangerous; however, nothing seems to discourage this thick head from his own stupidity.

In recent months, Christensen’s commentary has varied from the ludicrous to the idiotic.

His public commentary has included pushing anti-vaccination messages, climate change denial, conspiracy theories, and comments that have vandalised his own Government’s public health messaging. One headline in The Guardian read; “George Christensen advocates for civil disobedience as vaccine mandates rock Coalition.” Not a nice person.

5 On top of that, the other nutter Craig Kelly who thinks he knows more than those with the brightest minds, is set to join others to make the first sitting week of the Parliament a misery for the Prime Minister.

Neither of these (Christensen and Kelly) represent their respective parties in the usual way, speaking out against it at every opportunity. However, today’s circumstance dictates that Morrison cannot dismiss them without using some principle.

It remains to be seen who the nutters are who will replace them.

The time has come to expose the great fraud that has been perpetrated on the West in the last forty years. Once we have even a surface-level understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the great lie that is Neoliberalism will come crashing down.

Now, this has been outlined and discussed in detail by far greater minds than my own; this is not original to me. But I thought it might be useful to offer a brief description of MMT, how it works and then use these basics to expose the great Neoliberal fraud.

MMT, Part One: Currency and Its Relationships

In every economy that has its own currency (Australia, the US, the UK etc), every entity in that economy has one of two relationships to that currency. One is either a user or an issuer. Obviously, the federal government is the monopoly issuer of currency (hence counterfeit money laws). So the government issues the currency, and everyone else (including state and local governments and the citizenry) uses the currency.

Currencies such as the Australian Dollar, the US Dollar, the Pound etc are called Sovereign Currencies or Fiat Currencies. This means that when the government goes to do something, it simply goes to the central bank (the Reserve Bank in Australia or The Federal Reserve in the US) and says ‘we need this amount of money to be created’ and the bank, through several keystrokes, brings that currency into existence. Similarly, the relevant bank accounts of the recipients are also augmented using keystrokes. This may seem counterintuitive, but think about it this way. Consider the recent spending of $3.5b on tanks. Are we to believe that the government went to a physical bank vault filled with stacks of $100 notes? In light of the amount of money spent by the government on the regular, this would be impractical. Government spending is essentially EFTPOS on a grand scale.

MMT, Part Two: Tax Does Not Fund the Government

Since the government simply creates (issues) the currency it uses, government spending is not ‘paid for’ in that sense. It does not need tax to fund its spending since it is spending currency it issued itself. Tax revenue, I say again, does not fund the government. This lays to rest the zombie lie that a government has to ‘live within its means’ or ‘has a budget like a household’. Households do not issue their own currency, so this statement is a lie. Government ‘living within its means’ is naught but a lie designed to justify cutting funding for things neoliberals do not like, such as universal healthcare, education, pensions and generally anything that benefits anyone making less than $250k per year.

I should be clear: taxation does not fund federal government spending. It is true that tax does fund state and local government since these entities are still currency users (recall it is the federal government that issues the currency).

MMT, Part Three: The Purpose of Taxation

A natural follow-up might be to ask

If  tax does not fund [federal] government spending, why have tax at all?

I think the best answer to this was provided in a New Economic Perspectives article

[Another] reason to have taxes is to reduce aggregate demand. If we look at the United States today, the federal government spending is somewhat over 20% of GDP, while tax revenue is somewhat less—say 17%. The net injection coming from the federal government is thus about 3% of GDP. If we eliminated taxes (and held all else constant) the net injection might rise toward 20% of GDP. That is a huge increase of aggregate demand, and could cause inflation

What this seems to mean is that the act of ‘taxing’ a unit of currency serves to eliminate it from the economy. Taxation seems to have the purpose of being a sort of ‘inflation break’, removing a certain amount of currency from the economy to prevent too much currency from flying around which could lead to inflation.

The Other Great Zombie Lie: How Will You Pay For It?

You have doubtless heard some version of this whenever a policy is proposed that would help the peasants. Any talk of, for instance, raising Newstart is met with loud screams of ‘HOWYIGONPAYFRIIIIIIIIIIT’ (how are you going to pay for it) or ‘we cannot afford it’. It is unclear whether those asking making these asinine statements are not aware of the fiat currency the Australian Federal Government uses, or if they are being deliberately deceptive. I leave that decision up to you all individually.

Not only is ‘how will you pay for it’ a ridiculous statement, but its application is also highly selective. Have you ever heard this question, or some variant of it, asked around, say, the military budget (pick your country, but the Americans are the most egregious)? How about corporate subsidies? How about politicians’ own outrageous perks and entitlements?

It is almost like they know that they have a fiat currency and intentionally lie to the people about ‘debt and deficit’ whenever they do not like something, typically for ideological (or corrupt) reasons. Whether it is funding Medicare (consider Mr Morrison’s recent removal of more than 900 items), investment in renewables or anything else the Liberal National Coalition is (in my opinion) paid to oppose, they become penny-pinchers when their ideology gets in the way. Yet hypocritically when it comes to war, corporate looting of the treasury and their own perks, they are reckless. Enough.

Conclusion: The Great Fraud

Since the advent of Reagan and Thatcher, politics in the west has taken a very selfish, individualistic turn. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a popular Neoliberal mantra. Government has to live within its means is another. MMT shows that the very idea that a government has ‘limited means’ has narrow basis in reality. It is a monopoly currency issuer. It is, in a very real sense, not possible for a government with a fiat currency to ‘run out of money’.

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating: When it comes to helping the people, it is not money these sociopaths lack, it is the will to do it.

Governments with fiat currencies have all the money they could ever need. They could do so many wonderful things to improve society in so many ways. Means is not the issue. Conviction is. MMT, with its focus on fiat currencies, helps to expose the great hypocrisy at the core of the Neoliberal disaster of the last four decades. In an economy with a fiat currency, the use of fear-mongering about ‘debt and deficit’ to suppress policies that could help broad swaths of the population is dishonest beyond measure.

Epilogue: Still Learning

I am very much still learning about MMT, and doubtless, I have gotten some things wrong here. I encourage you to check out this podcast for detailed discussion of the theory and its applications. I hope this piece has provided a basic discussion of MMT and given some insight into the rot that is Neoliberalism.

Give the man credit where it’s due. Few could possibly be congratulated for selling the sovereignty of a country in full view of its citizenry, but Peter Dutton, former Queensland copper turned sadistic Home Affairs minister turned Defence Minister, is very capable of it. Australia promises to become a throbbing bordello for the strategic affairs of other states (to a large extent, it already is), awaiting submarine insertions, naval manoeuvres, and more troop rotations.

With the AUKUS arrangements being firmed up, US and UK sailors, personnel and miscellaneous staff are being readied for more time Down Under, ensuring that Australia becomes a staging ground for future forward military operations. Canberra has relinquished much say in this; the song sheets and blueprints are coming from elsewhere.

The UK, reprising its long history of using Australia for its own military adventurism, is keen to massage the recently minted AUKUS agreement. Last week, the UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met Dutton and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne in Sydney for annual AUKMIN talks. The meeting had a distinctly nostalgic note to it: maternal Britannia, dropping in to see its rather (territorially) large offspring.

The joint media release prior to the meeting was prosaic but had all the signs of greater UK military involvement in the region, though much of it is likely to be modest. Discussions promised to “focus on strategic challenges and identify areas in which Australia and the United Kingdom can work to support an open, inclusive and resilient Indo-Pacific region where the sovereignty of all nations is respected.” Pity that Australian sovereignty is being whittled away in this transaction.

While plans to place British “defence assets” in Australia were not inked at the meeting, the idea has received much interest. After ministerial discussions Dutton told reporters that he was not averse to the idea. “In terms of basing [assets in Australia], there’s no proposal on the table to provide additional basing [but] it could be something that we discuss at the appropriate time if it’s suitable to both parties.”

Payne got into the spirit of “shared values” between the countries, noting “an interest in maintaining the international rule-based order underpinning stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.”

The most commonly used word used in that regard, notably in Australian strategic lingo, is “complex.” The world has become more complex, as if it was somehow simpler before. The region has also evolved into components of complexity, necessitating more defence expenditure for the next war. And if there was conflict, the countries of the Anglosphere would not be aggressors, nor endorsers of it.

Payne’s wittering kept the theme alive. “The international environment is becoming more complex and challenging. AUKMIN 2022 will consider ways to strengthen our partnership in order to meet new and emerging threats and seize the many opportunities that this era presents.”

Dutton similarly looked “forward to discussing how we can work together in support of a safe and secure Indo-Pacific region.” This promises greater militarisation. In the words of the statement, the meeting “will consider ways to strengthen collaboration in defence capability, cyber security, critical technology, deterrence and sustainable investment in infrastructure.”

What could be expected, stated Dutton was “a greater regularity of visits [of UK ships and submarines], in training, in people being embedded in both services, and certainly a greater cooperation in exercises.”

Showing his usual wooden spoon understanding of history, the defence minister saw parallels in current strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific to the dangerous world of the 1930s and 1940s. “We know as a world today that we would be in a very different situation if […] the United Kingdom had not stood up to malign forces and had not represented the values that they adhere to even to this day.”

Were these the values of predatory colonisation and understanding of international rules that received such excoriation from Indian Justice Radhabinod Pal? Pal, as a member of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East established by the Allied powers to try Japan’s leaders for war crimes in 1946, acquitted the high-ranking parties of all charges. In doing so, he trained his judicial mind on Western imperialism, claiming that Japan had been subject to a “sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge.” The United Kingdom, he noted, had seized Burma and India; the Netherlands, Indonesia; the United States, the Philippines.

You do not have to agree with the entire stretch of Pal’s dissenting judgment of 1,235 pages to appreciate his puncturing of the canard that has come to be known as the rule-based international order. Behind such neat declarations are not so much legal briefs as guns and gunboats.

After the meeting, Wallace promised that the countries would “lay foundations for training” between Australian and British forces, stressing that “nothing was off the table.” The defence secretary had an eye towards the submarine element of the security arrangement. Britain would “certainly make sure that submarines, when we have availability or we wish to deploy in conjunction with Australia” would do so.

The Australian defence minister was more forthcoming with the details. “In terms of additional visits we will see greater rotation, as we’ve already seen from the strike carrier group and from the nuclear sub visit out of the UK.”

As for Australia’s promised nuclear-powered submarines, which will only see the light of day, if at all, in two decades, Wallace was ceremonial in promise and encouraging to swollen heads in Canberra. “What is absolutely clear is that the United States, Britain and Australia are joined at the hip on delivering this program, that the strategic capability that Australia wishes is a step change that will absolutely set them apart as a leader in their field in this part of the world.”

This statement is accurate on one level. Australia will certainly be set apart as a leader in the field of poor defence acquisitions of suspect military value and in permitting countries such as the US and UK to treat it as both client state and butler. How richly jarring to then hear that the countries of AUKUS are all very keen to defend the sovereign sanctity of such states as Ukraine.

By Denis Bright  

When Australia was the land of hope, our best political leaders could inspire the electorate with occasional commitments to longer-term community welfare and peaceful international relations. The federation era prior to 1914 brought real debate about the best priorities for the new social market. Even during the wartime emergency, Curtin and later Chifley focused on post-war reconstruction. The Whitlam Government broke out of the sabre-rattling of the Cold War with new patronage for community development and more peaceful international relations to be re-endorsed in the Hawke-Keating era.

After the scourges of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the COVID-pandemic and the threats to humanity from global warning, the time is ripe for new policy positive paradigm changes. The COVID-crisis has provided opportunities to re-set the conventional policy buttons.

For senior federal LNP leaders in 2022, there is a back to the future plan for recovery from these multiple crises. This is the new era of a Return to Normalcy which was already fraying prior to the arrival of COVID. From the Wizard of Oz himself, commitments to a return to the normal are a regular feature of our prime minister’s media releases in the presence of the Chief Health Officer and of course General Frewin (PM’s Press Conference 5 January 2022):

So, if it’s not an essential test, you’re not a close contact, you’re not symptomatic, you shouldn’t be in those lines. In most cases, people in that situation don’t require a test at all and they should go to the beach, go with their family or be at work or wherever, whatever their normal course of business is. So, all states are moving away from that RAT test requirement for travel.

Alas, these are not normal times despite the PM’s daily assurances to viewers of nightly news services.

The next edition of Australian National Accounts for the December Quarter is due for release on 2 March 2022 with the March Quarter following on 1 June 2022.

Percentage Quarterly Changes in Australian Private Capital Expenditure (Image from tradingeconomics.com)

During the worst months of the COVID-crisis, the Australian economy was kept going by Commonwealth fiscal stimulus programmes and higher deficit spending by the states and territories. This approach received largely bipartisan support from the federal Labor Opposition and at meetings of national cabinet.

The graph shows the effects of the federal stimulus packages on levels of Australian Private Capital Expenditure during the worst months of the COVID-crisis in 2021.

The value of a return to old ways as The New Normalcy might still triumph over federal LNP fear strategies about the dangers of paradigm changes in difficult times when householders are under great financial stresses from mortgage payments, high rents and uncertainty in longer-term employment trends in the midst of the usual domestic family tensions. Beyond the official unemployment rate for December 2021 of 4.2 percent with the addition of an underemployment rate of 6.6 per cent with a youth employment rate of 9.4 per cent. Expect to hear more of this magic 4.2 per cent punchline which is based on a definition of work as one hour within the business surveys conducted by ABS in the monthly survey week. Our LNP leaders intentionally do not explain the caveats.

How employment is measured: The one-hour rule (ABS Explanation)

Less than 50 people in the sample of 50,000 report they only work one hour. That works out to be 15,000 people out of around 12 million employed (or 0.1%) and movements in this number are not large enough to affect total employment.

The ABS defines people as ’employed’ if they work one hour or more in the reference week. The vast majority of part-time employed people work more than 15 hours.

The ‘one hour rule’ is used internationally and allows employment figures to be compared with other countries. It has been used in Australia since the Labour Force Survey began, enabling comparisons to be made over a long period of time.

The ABS also has a range of other measures, such as underemployment, that help to understand how many people are fully employed, and how many would like to be working more.

Public opinion has shifted against the excesses of unconvincing media appearances by LNP leaders.

Recent national polling trends have been communicated by William Bowe for Poll Bludger from Resolve Strategic Polling (18 January 2022):

The Coalition primary vote is down fully five points since the last poll in mid-November to 34%, with Labor up three to 35%, the Greens steady on 11% and One Nation steady on 3%. The pollster’s already high ratings for independents and “others” are up still further, by two points to 11% and one point to 6%. As ever, no two-party preferred result is provided, but applying 2019 preference flows produces a Labor lead of around 53-47.

However, Queensland is the aberrant state and shows an erosion of the primary votes for the two major parties by 12 per cent since the last Resolve Strategic Polling in mid-November 2021. This is highly significant as there are thirty federal electorates in Queensland and most are helped by the federal LNP.

The last federal election brought Wall to Wall Coverage for federal electorates across Queensland beyond the six Labor electorates along the Brisbane-Ipswich corridor. Even on this corridor, the LNP can balance the remaining Labor seats with LNP seats in Longman, Petrie, Brisbane, Bowman, Bonner and Ryan. State-wide in Queensland, the federal LNP currently holds twenty-three of Queensland’s seats. The remaining federal seat of Kennedy in North Queensland is held by the Katter Australia Party (KAP).

Shortfalls in federal government grants have been a real challenge to Palaszczuk Government.

For outer metropolitan urban growth areas like the Beaudesert Corridor in Brisbane South, the federal LNP’s concept of the 30 Minute City is a property developers’ delight to justify more investment in shopping centres, suburban offices or workshops and new housing estates.

In Australia, regional shopping centres like the Logan Hyperdome are social hubs with a huge food court, cinemas and a wide choice of retail outlets accessible from extensive carparks. Unlike other major corporate shopping centres, the Logan Hyperdome is managed by the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) operating as the QIC Logan Hyperdome Pty Ltd. This is a corporatized entity within the Queensland Government’s portfolio of investment properties within Australia and overseas.

Company Description: QIC LOGAN HYPERDOME PTY LTD is located in Brisbane, QUEENSLAND, Australia and is part of the Other Investment Pools and Funds Industry. QIC LOGAN HYPERDOME PTY LTD has 1,000 employees at this location and generates $6.68 million in sales (USD). (Employees figure is estimated, Sales figure is modelled). There are 119 companies in the QIC LOGAN HYPERDOME PTY LTD corporate family.

These favourable outcomes of the QIC’s use of the investment multiplier generated a welcome profit of $6.7 billion for the Queensland Government in 2020-21. This is 10 percent of the entire Queensland state revenue. This is a most welcome windfall at a time of austerity in the distribution of grants by the federal LNP. The Queensland Investment Corporation Act 1991 (s.2.6) uses its property portfolios to protect Queenslanders from the effects of austerity in the allocation of Commonwealth Grants which combine with GST revenues to generate more than half of the total revenue base of the Queensland Government. In Tasmania, over 60 percent of all state revenue is derived from these federal revenue sources.

The mainstream state investment funds and the national Future Fund could be supported by investment subsidiaries which are independent of the mainstream funds to specialise in the delivery of new infrastructure, public health and community development options from investments by the Australian and especially overseas corporate sectors for delivery through public-private partnership arrangements. All dividends at the discretion of the investment funds as with our own personal superannuation investments.

Use of the Future Fund to generate investment in affordable housing was canvassed in Anthony Albanese Budget Reply Speech (7 News 13 May 2021):

“Labor has pledged to build 30,000 social and affordable houses over five years through a $10 billion future fund if the party wins the next federal election.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese used Thursday’s budget reply speech to reveal his plans to create the kitty from borrowed money.

In its first five years, investment returns would build 20,000 social houses with 4000 allocated for women and children fleeing domestic violence, and older women on low incomes at risk of homelessness.”

Already US style trailer parks are on the rise in the outer suburbs as housing and rents become more unaffordable. Some caravan parks offer long-term caravan and cabin sites such as the Galaxy Caravan Park near the Pacific Highway at Tanah Merah.

Although seldom publicised in the mainstream media, trailer parks are a feature of the urban landscapes of the USA as shown by this waterfront site in San Diego (Image: De Anza Trailer Park):

Waterfront Views from the De Anza Trailer Park in San Diego (Image from sandiegouniontribune.com : Photo by Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The reality of trailer parks in neoliberal societies are of little concern to the LNP’s team of ministers and their assistants who help Barnaby Joyce as Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development.

Minor far-right parties like Clive Palmer’s UAP are poised to assist in the re-election of the Morrison Government through the disciplined distribution of preferences in Outer Suburban Areas where financial stresses have frustrated the delivery of affordable housing dreams. In the Outer Brisbane South Electorate of Forde, the combined vote for One Nation, the UAP and Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party approached 20 per cent of the primary vote and was highest in the most disadvantaged polling booths.

The alternative measures being offered by Barnaby Joyce’s ministerial networks are token measures like business studies of the possibilities of new transport infrastructure on the Beaudesert Corridor in Brisbane Outer South. The northern terminus of the much-publicised Inland Railway will be at Bromelton near Beaudesert in the LNP electorate of Wright where Scott Buchholz is Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport.

Rail connections from Bromelton to the Port of Brisbane (approximately 80 kms) are not finalised. Freight not being by road from Bromelton may one day rattle through the southside suburbs of Brisbane. To raise the hopes of the southside electorates on the Beaudesert Corridor for suburban rail connections for this urban growth area, the federal government will be paying for half the token costs of a business study of this initiative.

Planning is now underway to confirm the need, timing and land requirements for a future rail line and services to support population, employment and economic growth in the south-west corridor of Queensland’s capital city region.

North of Brisbane, the proposed federally funded Sunshine Coast Railway is likely to be resurrected to assist in holding the LNP’s northside seats as leading property developers proceed to recycle wetlands and grazing land into new home sites at Aura.

The vast resources available to the Queensland Government through Forestry Plantations Queensland were sold off to the Hancock Timber Resources Group by a previous state government. The possibilities of using harvested pine plantations as affordable housing sites in the Sunshine Coast hinterland is no longer a policy option.

Alternative economic options are difficult to promote in more disadvantaged electorates where many residents are under siege from financial pressures of mortgage payments or high rentals. These stresses have generated a fair share of scepticism about national politics and the relevance of the old two-party divide in Australian politics.

Electorate profiling of constituents has become so intricate that political insiders in the federal LNP can exploit these financial and social tensions in Australian households to make use of the outrageous levels of opportunistic political communication from both federal LNP and minor far-right parties who are offering a disciplined distribution of preferences to the Morrison Government.

Due to the COVID-crisis, there will be paper trails to encouraging the use of postal and pre-polling voting are becoming mainstream mechanisms during the current COVID-crisis. In outer-suburban electorates, there is no long traditions of political participation to challenge the saturated levels of political communication from sitting members through strategic use of electorate allowances.

During my research for this article, I found little interest in political futures on Brisbane’s Outer Southside when I completed some light-hearted impromptu vox populis at shopping centres and bus stops. Many constituents detest formal political processes as opportunistic rhetoric. Only some more risk-taking about policy solutions can change this situation. The alternatives have to be very outstanding to gain attention and involve a degree of political risk-taking which brought Labor leaders close to power in 1961 in a shock result for the LNP and sent them off into Opposition in the Hawke-Keating and Rudd-Gillard eras.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test has been the mainstay of COVID-19 testing. But reliance upon such a regime, which requires the administration of middlingly competent personnel at appropriate testing sites, has caused its fair share of global disruption.  

The dreaded queue, where one waits for hours only to be possibly turned away for capacity reasons, is one such manifestation. During this latest phase of COVID-19 infections – that of Omicron – these human lines have spawned with inexorable force. In Australia, where the queue is worshipped by the country’s good burghers, something near a paralysis is being experienced in terms of time taken to do the test, await the result and be in isolation.

Omicron’s arrival on the virology scene has caused a shift in public health strategy across numerous countries. As the Washington Post remarks, the world’s nations “are making a subtle but consequential pivot in their war against the coronavirus: Crushing the virus is no longer the strategy. Many countries are just hoping for a draw.” Zero-covid strategists still lurk, but they are mainly found in the halls of power in Beijing, which still insists that cities can be locked down with violent spontaneity.

The popular mantra now is that of living with SARS-CoV-2, as if it were a difficult neighbour prone to throwing rubbish over the fence from time to time or steal low hanging fruit. There will be difficulties; there will be disputes. The nastier effects will be ameliorated, or at the very least moderated.

This was certainly the long-held approach of the financially minded policymakers, who tended to see public health in terms of tolerable deaths (if the elderly shuffle off the mortal coil, that’s no great loss, their time having come) and tolerable, self-assessed risk. The Swedish model became something of an exemplar on this, keeping some restrictions in place while permitting the society and economy to remain, for the most part, open.  

Many European states also adopted such a policy by stealth, even before the advent of vaccines. In September 2020, bioethicist Effy Vayena of ETH Zurich noticed “a big shift in focus. What we’re seeing now in Switzerland is people getting used to the idea of living in a risk society. We’re asking: ‘how do we live with this?’”

The arrival of vaccines added impetus to arguments from market planners and open society preachers that the shackles had to be removed, and the virus, to some degree, received with caution. Finally, there was a viral exit strategy. There was just one problem: no COVID-19 vaccine guarantees immunity. Infections and transmissibility remain realities.

While the easing of the clenched fist in response to COVID-19 is hard to dismiss given the mind-numbing exhaustion and enervation of lockdowns and social restrictions since the early part of 2020, complacency remains the most looming threat: letting down one’s guard, abandoning the prudence of sanitation, the wearing of masks, or physically distancing.  

For Maria Van Kerkhove, epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, the issue is almost melodramatically clear. “This notion of learning to live with it, to me, has always meant a surrendering, a giving up.” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist based at the University of Saskatchewan, also looks at the issue in terms of battles and games. “I understand the temptation to say, ‘I give up, it’s too much.’ Two years is a lot. Everybody’s sick of it. I hate this. But it doesn’t mean actually the game is lost.”

In Australia, the government, as part of its philosophy of making people more tolerant of the virus, is pressing for a more flexible testing regime regarding COVID-19. The flawed, somewhat presumptuous practice of relying on people to be independent and sound on the issue of their health, has become popular. Leave it to them, for instance, to conduct their own COVID-19 tests at home with unnerving accuracy.

Sociologist Alan Peterson is rather gloomy about the whole shift of responsibility from barely competent State to the overly burdened citizenry. “Making individuals responsible for testing (or ‘home-testing’) with RATs [rapid antigen tests], with little knowledge of when best and how to test, and the limitations of testing, leaves much scope for interpretation and error.”

The effectiveness of RATs, notably on the issue of picking up traces of Omicron, has also become a source of unwanted excitement. The US Food and Drug Administration did much to stir the pot with a statement released at the end of last December: “Early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.”

With such hope vested in rapid antigen tests, there has been a run on the market. As with the initial problems with acquiring adequate mask fittings, supplies are snapped up at a moment’s notice. There have been price hikes of such order as to concern the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), with RATs retailing anywhere from AU$20 to $30 to an extortionate $AU70. (The wholesale costs for the tests range from $AU3.95 to AU$11.45.)

In the United States, that hefty bosom of private enterprise, money is being made on bogus at-home testing kits. The FDA warned this month that “fake and unauthorized at-home testing kits are popping up online as opportunistic scammers take advantage of a spike in demand.”

Certain countries have averted that problem by imposing price caps and providing RATs gratis to the populace in massive numbers, but Australia, where a certain predatory will to extort the highest price for the most menial service reigns, the matter is more muddled. Hope can prove costly.

In 2015, the Climate Change Authority recommended emissions reduction targets for the government to take to the Paris climate conference:

• a 2025 target of 30 per cent below 2000 levels
• further reductions by 2030 of 40 to 60 per cent below 2000 levels

In response, Labor proposed an emissions reduction target of 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, zero net emissions by 2050, and ongoing 5-yearly reviews to assess progress and to adjust commitments over time.

The move to 2005 as a base year, made by Abbott and adopted by Labor, made a significant difference to how big the promises sound. To illustrate how much, Australia’s annual emissions for the year to June 2021 were estimated to be 10.4% below emissions in the year to June 2000 but a whopping 20.4% below emissions in the year to June 2005. Hey presto, an extra 10% reduction towards our target already achieved just by changing years.

The seven years since 2015 have been the hottest on record and they have all been more than 1℃ above pre-industrial levels. With back-to-back La Niña events resulting in the sixth hottest year on record, some are suggesting that 2021 may well be the coldest year we’ll ever experience again. Australia has already experienced warming of 1.4C.

In October 2020, the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements tabled their report in parliament. It makes for scary reading about the increased risk Australia is facing from the effects of global warming.

“We can also expect more concurrent and consecutive hazard events. For example, in the last 12 months there was drought, heatwaves and bushfires, followed by severe storms, flooding and a pandemic.”

Last year, a report from the Climate Council warned that Australian governments, businesses, industries and communities can and must cut emissions deeply, aiming to reduce emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2035.

“Australia, as an advanced economy and major emitter, and one with unrivalled potential for renewable energy and other climate solutions, should be a leader not a laggard, and reduce its emissions even faster than the required global average. Every tonne of emissions avoided matters, and every delay has an escalating cost. We urge you all to take this report seriously and respond accordingly.” — Professor Christopher Field and Dr Kevin Trenberth

In this context, Labor made the unique decision to weaken their emissions reduction target.

They looked at the policies they were willing to take to an election, added up what reductions they would bring about, and made that their target – 43% below 2005 levels.  It seems a pedantic change, perhaps typical of new shadow minister for such things, Chris Bowen.

A better approach would be to set the target the scientists tell us we must achieve, devise or ramp up the policies to get there, and adequately communicate with the public and business to bring them along.

Labor’s plan for the electricity sector shows penetration of renewables over 80% by 2030 with better transmission networks, community batteries and ‘shared solar banks’ for apartments. These are great ideas.

But in projected transport emissions, there is minuscule reduction. They are too scared to have combustion engine phaseout targets and they recently dropped a fuel emissions standard.

Labor will keep the Coalition’s (not so) Safeguard Mechanism but are claiming large reductions from putting downward pressure on the currently too-high “baselines”.

Allowing polluters to earn ‘credits’ based on emissions intensity rather than absolute emissions lets them increase emissions with impunity, in fact, rewards them for doing so, provided the emissions per unit produced have decreased.

If businesses pollute too much, they can purchase carbon offsets thus avoiding real, substantial short term emissions reductions.

As Ketan Joshi writes in Renew Economy:

“The details shed so much light on why big business and industry are openly supportive of the plan. Being free to scribble out emissions using ultra-cheap offsets instead of real-world reductions is extremely popular among high polluters, at the moment. Corporate net zero plans are currently incredibly hollow shells that provide no downward force on emissions today, but serve as a tool for easing public pressure for companies to act on climate. Labor is leaning into this extremely troubled, loophole ridden system and doesn’t seem to be proposing any substantial reform.”

Labor doing anything radical to cut emissions in agriculture is most unlikely with the Coalition always ready to stoke the city-country divide.

Whilst Labor’s policies are preferable to the Coalition’s, they fall far short of what must be done. We cannot afford the timidity shown by the two major parties who bow to pressure from vested interests and are paralysed by fear of reprisal from their colleagues as much as from the electorate. Nor can we afford the denial from Barnaby’s mob and the Pauline and Clive cults.

When Labor form government, the necessity for action will only be greater and the voices demanding it even louder.

I hope they are ready.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed on Tuesday that he and his government were “blindsided” by the virulence of the COVID-19 variant, Omicron.

This claim is referred to in most news reports as an “admission,” which implies that the government really didn’t know Omicron’s potential for mass infection, despite it being already proven in Africa, the UK, the US, Canada, and much of Europe.

“Claim” infers they did know, and chose wilful ignorance over rapid intervention. They also encouraged opening up & in the case of NSW, the abandoning of all TTIQ precautions at the same time as the highly infectious variant hit.

If the Scott government was unaware of Omicron’s potential this suggests that its members dwell in a rarefied atmosphere, untroubled by events on the rest of the planet, which is surely not a useful or desirable habitat from which to govern a country. But in truth, it is impossible to accept that Morrison and his lackeys were unaware of the infectious nature of the new COVID-19 variant. Making this outrageous claim only serves to emphasise his catastrophic incompetence and his arrogant disregard for the welfare of the country and its people.

If the Scott government was, as its leader claims, “blindsided” by Omicron’s contagious capacity it is because the Prime Minister wilfully ignored expert advice and the evidence of his own senses as the variant rampaged overseas before landing here. A highly infectious variant did not suit the government narrative of opening up, enjoying Christmas and putting the pandemic behind us in the new year.

So Morrison, aided by complicit lackeys, did his best to ignore the virus that was spoiling his vision and we now face previously unheard of infection and death rates, food shortages, vaccine shortages, booster shortages, overwhelmed hospitals, sick essential workers, a dearth of Rapid Antigen Tests, the collapse of systems set up to record and monitor infections, and the closure of businesses because people have instigated their own personal lockdowns in an attempt to avoid infection.

All this because Scott Morrison insisted on having his story, despite overwhelming evidence that it was wrong.

In fact, this is exactly what we should expect from a man who believes he was chosen by God to run this country. Morrison has incontestable faith in his own stories. He will go to every length to see them realised. He doesn’t listen to voices that might challenge the trajectory of his narrative. He deliberately failed to inform himself on the new variant, despite being surrounded by experts, because their advice did not accord with the story he wanted to tell.

And here we are.

Is there any other leader in the world who has told their country that they “didn’t know” how severely contagious Omicron could be? Is there any other leader who would plead ignorance of Omicron as an explanation for their abject failure to address it? It’s the leader’s job to know more than we do, he has at his disposal resources we can only dream of yet “ordinary” people on social media apparently knew long before the Australian government that the variant causes havoc.

At least Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was forthright enough to declare that he found the topic of COVID-19 “boring.”

“In which country did people not die? Tell me!” he responded. “Look, I didn’t come here to be bored.”

Meanwhile in Australia:

“The Prime Minister said despite hundreds of deaths in the last week, that the death rate overseas was even higher.”

It’s alarming enough that the Prime Minister believes “admitting” wilful ignorance is a reasonable political strategy. What he’s actually admitting is that he lives in a bubble of protection from global events, medical and scientific research, and any information that does not coincide with the stories he tells himself which must be right, according to his reasoning, because God chose him to tell them.  

History’s annals are filled with war profiteers and hustlers for the opportunistic return. They come in the form of hoarders, arms manufacturers and wily business folk making a steal on slaughter and mayhem. But the other conflict – that of battling a pandemic – has also shown that profits exist for those willing to exploit the crisis.

With the global surge of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, there were early signs that saving money, notably for large corporations, and earning greater revenue from such a lethal crisis, was possible. Work remotely as Zoom zombies – if you can. Retreat to the second or third abode, preferably in a remote location – if you have them. The sardine-packed proles toiling and providing essential services could endure the heavier burden of suffering.

Other historical periods also suggest sharp social inequalities in the face of disease and despair. That sublime Italian writer, Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote The Decameron, a collection of 100 tales, gives us more than just a bird’s eye view into the horror of plague and affliction. The Black Death gathered somewhere between 40% to 50% of the European populace between 1347 and 1351. While Boccaccio cites the proverb that, “It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted”, his colourful spread of characters suggests something quite different. The wealthy find fine seclusion amidst their provisions; the essential workers of the time go about their doomed labours, contracting the plague and dying in the process.

In October 2021, Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS) found that billionaires in the US had seen their wealth balloon by 70%, or a mighty $2.1 trillion. The number of billionaires in the country had also spiked: from 614 to 745. During that same time, there were 89 million job losses among the less fortunate, 44.9 million attributable to COVID-19 illness, not to mention 724,000 deaths.  

The culprits for such a huge wealth distortion are now familiar to us. The burgeoning online market during times of lockdown and stay-at-home orders enormously enriched the megalomaniacs of Silicon Valley and other industries.  

There were some in the same income bracket who did not even need to lift a finger before seeing eye-wateringly improved accounts; asset prices shot up with jittery regularity, occasioned by enormous injections of taxpayer cash. In some cases, with the knowledge of government financial support, figures such as Australian billionaire Kerry Stokes could rake in corporate welfare while cutting the wages of workers. The spirit of pandemic generosity is rarely invoked.

In December 2021, the World Inequality Report, authored by a number of social scientists, estimated that the share of global household wealth owned by billionaires had risen that year from 2% at the start of the pandemic to 3.5% that year. “Contemporary global inequalities,” the authors of the report suggest, “are close to early 20th century levels, at the peak of Western imperialism.”

The one ray of reassurance in the otherwise discouraging report is the fact that government support, notably in wealthier states, did mitigate the more brutal effects of impoverishment. As lead author of the report, Lucas Chancel remarks, “in rich countries, government intervention prevented a massive rise in poverty.” The pandemic had demonstrated “the importance of social states in the fight against poverty.”

Oxfam has now added more material to the heaving shelves of inequality with a report released to coincide with that gathering of wealthy natterers known as the World Economic Forum. Not a smidgen of Oxfam’s dark revelations are original, but this does not make them any less relevant. The picture, filled in, shows a world of brutal, stratified inequality that promises to grow.

The opening is dramatic enough. “The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19.” Good to throw the men into this, but it is also worth noting that there are some worthy representatives of the female sex, not least Australia’s wealthiest figure, iron ore magnate Gina Rinehart. This most unsympathetic of characters saw her own wealth soar from AU$16 billion to AU$36 billion. Not a bad return for someone who specialises in ruthlessly renting the earth while attributing this to hard work and genetic ingenuity.

All in all, 2,755 billionaires are raking it in globally, having received more in terms of their fortunes in the past two years than the previous 14 combined. “This is the biggest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began,” the Oxfam report notes glumly. No wonder the hot-headed conspiracy theorists are champing at the bit, feverish at the prospect that plots have been hatched, and are being acted upon, in Davos and other champagne drenched venues.  

The Oxfam account adds more texture to the arguments. As with other accounts about the increasing wealth disparity in pandemic times, the rise in revenues have occurred because of dizzying rises in stock market prices, “a boom of unregulated entities,” a greater prevalence of monopoly power, ongoing privatisation and that ongoing pattern of lower corporate tax rates and easing regulations. Workers’ rights and wages have also suffered, though Oxfam also makes the point that “the weaponization of racism” has its role to play.

Another parallel of the Black Death is worthy of note. The plague was so disruptive as to cause its own alterations of the feudal order. The wealthy might have scurried to their places of ornate and padded seclusion, but they were by no means guaranteed survival. Around them, aggressive depopulation fed the fulcrum of change. It emboldened the peasantry, resulting in a range of riots and a challenge to social and economic circumstances.  

The likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have yet to see a modern version of a peasant insurrection. Perhaps it’s time they did.

NSW Government, Perrottet and Hazzard totally out of line bullying nurses and the people of NSW over hospital staffing, $1000 fines over RAT tests and Pharmacies buckling not booming – How the liberals in NSW, like their Federal mates have lost the plot, declare their true colours!

Straight from the ABC – Our Liberal government public broadcaster mouthpiece?

NSW NURSES PROTESTING OVER EXCESSIVE SHIFTS, WORKLOADS & DEMANDS OF NSW HEALTH – ABC reports: ‘Westmead nursing staff protest over excessive overtime – Intensive care nurses will protest this morning at Westmead Hospital in Sydney’s west due to staffing issues. The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association [NSWNMA] said the COVID-19 outbreak had put pressure on fatigued nurses to work excessive overtime. NSWNMA Acting General Secretary Shaye Candish said staff and patient safety was being compromised and called on the state government for immediate support. “The NSW government needs be up-front with the community and concede the health system is not coping,” she said’.

PUBLIC COMMENT – So all those daily briefings where Perrottet, Hazzard and Berejiklian before them, thanked and praised nurses, and told the people of NSW how well our hospitals and NSW Health are coping was all lies. Meanwhile behind the scenes, not only is NSW Health not coping but they are attacking nurses, forcing them off hard-earned planned annual leave, back to work while still COVID +ve jeopardising patient care, infection control procedures, standards and staffing, and bullying them into excessive overtime.

Hello – Now the NSW government and Health resort to excessive measures and bullying, showing their true colours. Not grateful or supportive of nurses at all, but then we knew that already since they had to repeat it every day to the press in public briefings to convince themselves with their own lies, deceit and denials. NSW Health clearly is buckling and the government resorts to further excessive force on its own long–suffering workforce. So tell us where are those tens of thousands of nurses promised by Greg Hunt yesterday from the private sector? Where are they? Don’t these Liberal governments talk to each other at all? Would that not be supportive? Is that too hard for Mr Hazzard and Perrottet?

Who gives a RATS? Clearly not Perrottet or Hazzard, and not Morrison.

Source: ABC NEWS LIVE: NSW Now – 19 January 2022 – https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-19/westmead-nursing-staff-protest-over-excessive-overtime/100763994