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Category Archives: Rossleigh

An Interview With Miss Information

“Good afternoon, today we are fortunate to have the pleasure of interviewing, Miss Information, who works for the Proper Gander Party. First question, why do you have a problem with the proposed laws threatening to ban you from being heard?”

”Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

”Can you elaborate?”

”It’s perfectly clear that this is the government’s way of trying to shut me up. I have as much right to be heard as anyone…”

”Some people are suggesting that you never tell the truth?”

”What’s truth? I mean what you consider truth, I might consider is nonsense.”

”But certain things are facts, aren’t they?”

”That’s true but what if I have alternative facts?”

”Are you referring to Kellyanne Conway’s statement where she defended the lies about the crowd numbers at Trump’s inauguration?”

”Not specifically but that gives me a case in point. If you ban misinformation, how would she have been able to counter what the people were saying about the numbers being lower?”

”Er… she wouldn’t because they weren’t!”

”Exactly. If you banned people from making things up, then you’re giving an unfair advantage to those political parties who are telling the truth.”

”Is that a problem?”

”Well it is for me.”

”But shouldn’t political parties who tell the truth be given credit?”

”I don’t see why? Can you show me one example of the truth doing anyone any good?”

”Lies certainly don’t help.”

”Who says? I mean Tony Abbott lied about his views on climate change and that helped him get elected.”

”They may have helped him but they didn’t help the country.”

”So you’re saying that we’d have been better off with a Labor government. It’s clear where your political leanings are.”

”I just meant that we’d be better off with a government that didn’t say one thing to get elected then do something else when they were in power.”

”You mean like the current Labor government? After all, Albanese promised on four hundred occasions that he’d end the war in Ukraine and provide a yacht for every family but did he keep that promise?”

”He didn’t do either of those things.”

”But that’s the problem with the proposed law. You’d be banned from saying what you just said.”

”No, you’d be the one who’d have to justify what you said because it isn’t true!”

”Wouldn’t that be the problem? Deciding which of us had the right to speak.”

”Look, some things are clearly facts and some things are matters of opinion…”

”But isn’t it a matter of opinion what things are clearly facts?”

”Not always. If we take the cricket, for example, people can argue about whether Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal was in the spirit of the game, but everyone agrees that he was given out.”

”That’s just a point of view. I can find plenty of people who have not only have no idea about whether he was out or not, but they don’t even know who Bairstow is, and their opinion is just as good as anyone else’s.”

”But they won’t have an opinion because they don’t know what we’re talking about.”

”You’ve got an opinion and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

”I do know what I’m talking about!”

”That’s your opinion.”

”So you would have no problem if someone were to say that interest rates have gone up every week since Labor got in and that it’s all their fault?”

”I don’t think people should be censored.”

”Even if they’re saying something that is demonstrably untrue?”

”Again, who is to say what’s untrue?”

”I do agree that that’s the question, however, some things are clearly disprovable.”

”Such as?”

“You say: ‘Peter Dutton is an intelligent man who’d make an excellent PM’ and you also say: ‘Peter Dutton has a policy of introducing slavery into Australia’, one is a matter of opinion and the other is clearly a lie.”

”Yes, but which?”

“Look, are you against misinformation laws in principle or is it just because you’re worried about how they’ll hamper you?”

”I don’t understand what you mean by ‘in principle’.”

”I see. Well that’s all we have time for. Thanks for being here.”

”I wasn’t.”

”Whatever!”

 

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Why Mr Albanese Needs To Go To Israel And Other Just So Stories…

One thing that I’ve come to believe about politics is that it helps to have a strong narrative. Note that I said “strong” and not “plausible”. And the reason for that is simple. Think of all the successful Hollywood blockbusters of the past few decades. For every one of them that’s had a completely plausible storyline, then there’d be several others that fail the pub test. Even allowing for willing suspension of disbelief and accepting that a spider bite gives you special powers or that we can bring dinosaurs back from the dead or there’s a school for wizards where they play Quidditch, the behaviour of the humans in most of those movies would be completely implausible if it were not for the fact that Trump is the front runner for the Republicans or that neither Scotty nor Boris thought it would be embarrassing to be hanging out with the other one.

Notwithstanding Donald, Scotty and Boris, one has to ask why people in movies always run away from crowds instead of calling for help when being chased by the villain, or why they always make the same mistake in the sequel that they did in the first movie…

Like I said, you need a strong storyline, not a plausible one which gets me back to Airbus Albo. It’s the sort of storyline that could do damage politically because some people will buy it. However, when you’re running that line, it sort of weakens the line that you’re trying to run when some of the Liberals – like two-time loser, Shave Darma – suggest that he should be going to Israel. (Ok, Dave lost out and isn’t one of the current mob but surely they’ll give him the vacant Senate seat to spare him the embarrassment of another loss). It also dents their credibility when they’re doing it from London… After all, the most senior Liberal left in Australia was Sussan Ley and that was just because nobody’s talking to her after her recent failed attempt to muster the numbers and people are worried that Dutton will use his Border Force mates to check who’s taking the calls…

See, I just made that bit up about Ley… and the bit about Dutton actually having mates. But it doesn’t matter because it sounds plausible… Ok, maybe not the bit about Dutton having mates, but the bit about Sussan doing the numbers sounds plausible until you realise that she’s in the party that had Josh Frydenberg as Treasurer and he was only $60 billion out on his estimates.

Anyway, it seems that the Liberals have abandoned any attempt at winning the thinking voter…

Yes, I know I’m only saying that because I’m one of these elites who’s had an education and I don’t understand how the real-world works… or doesn’t work. And I should be more understanding that it’s only thanks to the Labor Party that we have the war in Ukraine and the Middle East driving up the price of oil which contributes to inflation and that interest rates will bring peace in our time

Anyway, as I was saying, the Liberals have abandoned any attempt to win the thinking voter, and this is not to say that there couldn’t be a great pitch to the thinking voter based on what Labor are actually getting wrong. However, when behave like that Coalition MP who was complaining that the government weren’t doing enough to fix the problem with the Optus outage, you know you aren’t going to win over someone who can go: “Hang on, this is a private company and aren’t you the ones who believe that governments should just step aside and let the market fix things?”

It’s always worth remembering that Pauline Hanson was the Liberal Party candidate until she was dis-endorsed for revealing the Howard government’s strategy before the election. This, of course, raises a number of questions:

  1. Why were the Liberals the sort of party that Pauline felt comfortable joining?
  2. Why was Pauline the sort of candidate that they felt comfortable endorsing?
  3. When was the last time the Liberals attacked anything that Pauline said?
  4. Why doesn’t Pauline sue them for copyright every time they adopt one of her policies?
  5. How many overseas trips has Scott Morrison had as backbencher since losing and why is there no Airbrush Scotty memes? (Sorry this one belonged somewhere else but if you want quality arguments that follow logically, you must be one of those inner-city elites that likes evidence-based writing that makes sense…)
  6. The Airbrush was deliberate; don’t feel superior pointing out my mistakes. This isn’t Twitter! Neither is Twitter.
  7. Can Albo trust Xi JinPing? But if he can’t, should we ask Peter Dutton if he can trust him also? And while on the subject, can Dutton trust Netanyahu not to endorse Scott Morrison as the future leader?
  8. Can the journalists asking the gotcha questions trust the Liberal MP sending them the questions to arrange for their release if they get arrested for asking such a question in China?

I had several other questions but I’m having to go and prepare for the war on Christmas because apparently some people are refusing to say, “Merry Christmas”, just because it’s November, while others are attacking the Christian tradition of having hot cross buns in the shops for Halloween suggesting that they should be confined to Easter which is a violation of religious freedom…

Anyway, it’s time that Albo went to Israel so they can use the term Airbus Albo again. Or else it’s time that he didn’t so they can complain that he’s staying home…

 

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John Howard Goes Overboard With His Support For Abbott!

“Good morning, Mr Howard, now before I continue I’d just like to establish that you’re a work of fiction for satirical purposes and as such I have a fair bit of leeway with what I can get you to do or say.”

“Certainly, but you’ve got nothing on George W. He could twist me into almost anything with the right amount of heat… That ‘man of steel’ comment was all about the shapes I could be bent into in order to please him.”

“Yes, but we’re more concerned with recent events. You’ve recently said that you don’t have much time for multiculturalism.”

“That’s right. I think that if someone comes here then they should be prepared to leave their old culture behind and immediately embrace Australia and its values.”

“Is that why we took so many years before we stopped singing ‘God Save The King’ and decided to have our own anthem?”

“Well, I need to pick you up on that. For most of my life it was ‘God Save The Queen’ and may I say that we were lucky to have such a fine lady as our head of state…”

“But she’s not Australian!”

“I know that. Of course she’s not Australian. I don’t understand what…”

“Back to your comments on multiculturalism. You seem to be suggesting that you feel that people don’t have a right to keep their own values and culture.”

“I don’t mind if it’s the same values and culture that we have in Australia but when you have Labor allowing the sort of people who threw their children overboard…”

“Hang on, nobody threw their children overboard! That claim was proved to be false.”

“Was it? I don’t remember any court of law that said that so the claim is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

“That’s not how presumption of innocence works. A person is entitled to that but claims need to be proven before they…”

“Look, Peter Reith said that he had video but unfortunately he taped over it by mistake when he wanted to record an episode of The Sopranos…”

“Returning to multiculturalism, what are you actually suggesting? For example, is an ex-pat Englishman booing the Australians in an Ashes test not embracing our culture?”

“No that would be personal choice.”

“What about someone from China cheering their national team against the Socceroos?”

“Well, soccer’s a very divisive sport, but I think that if we’ve been good enough to let you in, then you should back us all the way…”

“Why the difference?”

“Ah, obviously one is a proper country that has a long history that we share, while China is communist.”

“It’s got nothing to do with your comments in the 1980s about your concern about the Asianization of Australia.”

“I don’t think that I ever used those exact words… but I did think that it was a concern that we were in danger of too many people migrating here that wouldn’t assimilate. However, I changed my mind when I discovered that many of them were likely to vote for our party.”

“So it was all about getting elected?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that but one does have to consider that unless one is in government one can’t do anything, so if we’re going to stop Labor from pursuing their agenda then we have to be in government.”

“Stopping Labor? But what about the Liberal Party’s own agenda?”

“Stopping Labor IS our agenda. As long as we can stop them, then we can let the market decide which industries to keep in Australia and which to send overseas.”

“On another matter, you’ve no doubt heard that Tony Abbott has told a gathering that anthropogenic global warming was ‘ahistorical and implausible’?”

“Quite right. I did say that my intuition told me that climate change wasn’t real and…

“You back your intuition over science?”

“Of course, when was the last time a scientist was made Prime Minister? Anyway I have a lot of time for Tony. He’s someone who always speaks his mind…”

“But how can you say that he speaks his mind after he lied when he said that he believed in climate change and that he never said that the science was crap.”

“It’s not really a lie if you say it because you have to. I mean he only said those things in order to get elected and you can’t really count them as lies. It’s like marriage vows… there’s certain things that you’re expected to say and if you were to say that you’d forsake all others apart from the odd staff person on a cold Canberra night… well, it just wouldn’t sit right, would it? I mean everyone knows who’s cheating on their partners but papers still run those happy family puff pieces. Not everyone has the same happy marriage that Jenny and I have…”

“You mean Janette?”

“Yes, that’s the one… Slip of the tongue. Ha ha…That can get you into a lot of trouble these days but once it was just the way things were…”

“But surely Abbott’s admission raises a whole lot of problems for Peter Dutton. I mean isn’t someone going to ask him about his commitment to climate change or whether he really meant it when he said that he was sorry for boycotting the Stolen Generation Apology?”

“Of course they won’t. I mean has anyone asked Tony how Margie feels about him spending all that time overseas without her? Has anyone asked those calling for an audit into how money is being spent on certain things if they’re concerned that it might find out that it was really poorly targeted while they were in charge? Did anyone think to ask Peter Dutton if he really thought that Albanese should go to Israel when they’ve been attacking him for his overseas trips? And nobody will point out that Abbott is admitting that he wasn’t committed to doing anything about climate change because we all knew that at the time and if the media stop pretending that they don’t know what’s really happening then people may ask them why they’re not reporting it… Look what happened when people discovered that Simon Benson knew about Morrison’s five ministries even though Scott hadn’t told the relevant ministers. People started rambling on about transparency and the like and nobody asked if Benson had told Bridget or whether he really did keep it to himself and if he told her then who else knew and if he didn’t… Sorry, I’ve forgotten the question.”

“I think we all have.”

 

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The Middle East Explained As Simply As Possible…

Ok, for those of you confused about the situation in the Middle East it’s pretty similar to what’s been happening in the world since things began.

There was one group of people who went somewhere and did unspeakable things to innocent people, so those who identified with the innocent people got very cross and decided to teach the first group a lesson, leading to them retaliating and also doing awful things to innocent people, which meant that the first group felt justified in what they did and so they decided to do more of it, leading to the second group feeling all the more justified in doing even more things and this normally leads eventually to a shortage of people prepared to do unspeakable things instead of just ordering them, leading to some form of peace agreement.

Of course, in the case of the Middle East, it’s different. There’s a tale about a scorpion and a frog which I’ll get to later, but I want to take a few moments to tell you why I feel qualified to talk about the situation when I have no links to the area. Neither have I studied the situation in any detail.

As such, nobody can refer to me as an “elite” or “one of those academics”, and I’m therefore the sort of person we should listen to. Although I have just finished my afternoon nap, so one could say that I was “woke” by the phone call that reminded me to take the washing from the line, although I’m not sure that is actually what people mean when they refer to someone as “woke”. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of the people using the word, don’t have any idea what it means either…

Although we did have one of the anti-woke crusaders, Mr Howard, telling us: “I have my doubts about multiculturalism, I believe that when you migrate to another country you should be expected to absorb the mainstream culture of that country!” So I guess that means that if he were to have moved to certain islands of Vanuatu, he would have renounced his suit and tie and dressed in nothing but a namba (penis sheath). Two tribes on one island were respectively named as either Big Nambas or Smol. I suspect Little Johnny would join the Smol tribe in order to absorb the culture.

Anyway, the story of the Scorpion and The Frog:

One day, a scorpion needs to cross a river but because he cannot swim, he asks a frog if he could ride on the frog’s back. “No,” says the frog, “you’ll sting me and I’ll die!”

The scorpion says to the frog: “But if I did that I’d drown and we’d both die.”

The frog considered and decided that what the scorpion said made sense so he allowed the scorpion onto his back and they began to cross. Halfway across the scorpion stung the frog and they began to sink.

“Why did you do that?” asked the frog. “Now we’ll both die.”

The scorpion replied: “Hey, it’s the Middle East, you expect things to make sense!”

 

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Why Labor’s Misinformation Laws Will Turn Your Children Into Communists!

As someone once said, “There are always two ways of looking at things!” which could be considered misinformation because sometimes there are more than two ways of looking at things. However, the recent proposal by the Labor government to introduce misinformation laws has some people a little concerned.

I have to say right at the outset that I do understand that concern. After all, one person’s misinformation is another party’s electoral platform.

On a side note, I do find it interesting that it’s Advance Australia that have announced their opposition to any misinformation laws. After all, they were heavily involved in the “No” to the Voice campaign. Surely there’s no connection there.

The big problem with misinformation laws is quite simple: Who decides what’s misinformation?

While it’s easy to use that concern to conjure up images of 1984 and totalitarian regimes using it to crack down on dissent, the reality would be less dangerous. Political parties would be unlikely to use it against their opponents unless they were certain of a successful prosecution. Why give your opponent all the publicity that a court case would involve only to have your case was dismissed because you failed to prove that calling you a lying scoundrel wasn’t misinformation.

Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely that Fred from Ferntree Gully’s post on the platform that used to be known as Twitter telling us that Bob Hawke was a Martian would be the subject of a major court case. In the unlikely event that he were prosecuted, it wouldn’t be the government deciding on the case but a judge and/or jury. Under such circumstances, Fred would be able to defend himself by producing all the evidence and when he produced a Martian birth certificate in Bob Hawke’s name then, not only would he be found not guilty, but his trial would have helped him to spread the truth. (Ok, I don’t actually think that Bob Hawke was a Martian, but I’m happy to consider any evidence without calling it misinformation.)

In many cases, a political party would decide that rather than trying to use misinformation laws to suppress something they know to be true, they decide that they’re better off ignoring it and hoping that nobody pays any attention to the claim. You may have heard of the Streisand effect where an attempt to suppress information has the opposite effect by drawing attention to it. This effect is named after Barbra whose attempt to stop people taking photos of her clifftop house led more people to be aware of the photos of her house. You can see the photo here. but please don’t look because Barbra wants it private. I can’t give you any more recent Australian examples here because a number of high-profile people decided to sue people rather than take this onboard.

Of course the other major concern is when does something cease to be a difference of opinion and became misinformation?

Obviously there are areas where there are professional differences and it’s generally accepted that a number of theories are plausible and, within reasonable limits, nobody has a right to shut down alternative points of view. Economists, scientists, educationalist, doctors and whole range of professions accept that people have other ideas and that they have a right to express them no matter how wrong they are when everyone should just accept that what I am saying is an incontrovertible fact and the others have been brainwashed or misled.

While professional differences are fine, there does come a point where you can clearly say that something is misinformation. For example, if I put a sign on an office which says: “Doctor Rossleigh – I can treat whatever ails you!”, one might ask where I got my medical training. If I were to reply that I had none, you’d be tempted ask what I studied in order to get my Ph.D. When I say that I’ve simply changed my name to “Doctor”, you can see that I am attempting to deliberately mislead and, as such, I could be liable for prosecution under a whole range of laws that already exist.

When it comes to misinformation laws we also have the problem of things which are factually correct but suggest something other than actual events. For example, if you say that Gerry got a Covid injection and died two days later, it might be relevant to add the fact that he was hit by truck crossing the road, so any inference that it was related to his choice to get vaccinated is drawing a very long bow… (Yes, yes, I know that Craig Kelly will tell you that it was probably the injection that caused him to cross the road without looking…)

Anyway, while thinking about all the problems of misinformation laws and how they’re going to turn us all into a Communist state, I suddenly had this obvious thought about the stock exchange.

Publicly listed companies have all sorts of rules about disclosure and timely reporting. If I tell the stock exchange that I’m in discussions with Warren Buffet about a potential merger, there’ll be requirements that I keep investors updated and I’ll be expected to publish the email from Mr Buffett which says: “Stop emailing me, you snivelling little toad, I’m not interested in your company!”

And I need to keep the exchange updated about the company’s financial situation, letting everyone know that profits are likely to be down owing to our decision to put Scott Morrison on the board. (Obviously I’m joking. No company is silly enough to employ Morrison… even the Liberal Party sacked him from Tourism Australia… Mm, makes one wonder how they could have chosen him over Dutton… Makes one wonder how bad they must have thought Dutton would be as PM)

Of course this doesn’t mean that no company has ever engaged in insider trading or tried to mislead the public; it simply means that if they’re found to be doing that, then there are legal consequences.

The point is that if we can have laws that prevent companies from peddling misinformation to the ASX, why is it such a threat to hold political entities to the same standards?

 

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The Strange Case Of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Politics is a strange game…

Now, I realise a lot of people are going to tell me that it’s not a game and that political decisions have real and profound impacts on people and calling it a game is offensive… which is why I added the word strange.

I don’t want to use the words “Canberra bubble” because it suggests that it’s confined to one city and that it could be popped at any time by a simple prick. And if that last point were true then it would have been popped a long time ago, even before Scott Morrison became PM.

Part of the trouble is that people who focus on politics all the time start to resemble elite sports people and commentators where they forget that what they’re doing is only a game and that most people have more important things to do, even if they do check the results from time to time. While the player who missed that simple shot may feel a whole range of emotions and the people who analyse his miss may wonder about his fitness as a human being, most people – apart from the diehard fans – will shrug and say, “Well it’s not like he killed someone.” In fact, if he had killed someone the commentary around it may be less critical and certainly less sustained.

So when it comes to politics, there’s a tendency from some to burrow down and look deeply into various moments, completely overlooking the fact that the electorate is made up of millions of people who all have different reasons for why they voted the way they did… even when they vote for the same party. For example, I’ve often made the point that the infamous handshake where Mark Latham aggressively shook John Howard’s hand was explained by many as the moment that lost Labor the election. It makes for a convenient narrative, but it would also have worked as a narrative that this was the moment when the young bull shows that he has more strength than the old bull who is past his used by date. The only trouble with that is that Latham lost and Howard won. Has anyone ever heard anyone say that they were going to vote for Labor until that moment but that the handshake changed their mind?

And so, this week after the Voice Referendum we return to politics because the Voice shouldn’t have been about politics but apparently Labor made it about politics because they didn’t get a consensus from the Coalition who didn’t want them to have a successful referendum. Now, I am aware that there’s so much to unpack from what happened that I think it’ll take several pages of newsprint and lots of opinion pieces and I don’t want to say anything intelligent at this point because – in the interests of balance – if I do say anything like that, then some broadcaster will find it necessary to give someone’s nonsensical conspiracy theory equal time.

Of course, one of the criticisms made of Albanese by the Opposition is that he’s been obsessed with the Voice and done nothing about the cost-of-living pressures facing ordinary Australians… I don’t know why you have to be “ordinary” to get some attention from the Coalition. Ok, they don’t like elites if they come from the inner city but most of the time the Liberal Party are telling us that we should be “aspirational” or “successful” and if we’re not, then we should just “get a better job”, as Joe Hockey once told us.

So, it does seem strange to me that the week after the Voice was defeated that the Coalition should turn their attention to pushing for a Royal Commission and an audit of spending rather than talking about the cost-of-living issues. I mean, is this an attempt to keep the Labor government talking about Indigenous issues so that the Opposition can say that they should be talking about something else? Or is it just that they feel like there are more votes to be won from Pauline Hanson’s supporters? Or is Peter Dutton just as stupid as the person who asked if Jacinta Nampijinpa Price should run for PM?

To be clear here, I’m not suggesting that person who suggested that she run for PM is stupid because I disagree with her politics; I’m suggesting that there are several problems that are functional:

  • She’s a senator and would need to find a House of Representatives seat. (Not impossible but would take time.)
  • She’s a National Party member, so she’d have to switch to the Liberals. (Again not impossible but it would need to worked out so that the Nationals didn’t get upset.)
  • She’s a woman and she’d have problems in the Liberals with the Big Swinging Dicks club. (Although they may not be swinging as wildly now they’re in Opposition.)
  • And, of course, the obvious point that nobody “runs for PM”. They become leader of their party and – if their party gets enough House of Representative seats to form government, their party appoints the PM.

Now when it comes to her performance, we have a whole strange series of alternative facts here. While it may seem like just getting media attention is the name of the game when you’re not in power, the fact remains that Pauline has managed to get media attention since last century but she’s still a long way from forming government and some of the comments Senator Price have made don’t make your average voter think that she has a strong grip on what needs to be done. Her attacks on the AEC and her comments on how great colonisation was are the sort of things that make the daily news, but they don’t make most people immediately go: “Wow, there’s a future leader!” And it begs the question, “What’s wrong with the current Liberal talent that you have to go outside the party and outside the House of Reps to find a worthy candidate?”

So in answer to the question that a newspaper recently asked, “Should Jacinta Nampijinpa Price run for PM?”, I’d merely say: I don’t know, so I’ll say no.

 

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Why It Would Be A Mistake To Call Peter Dutton A Racist

Yesterday, the Coalition called for a Royal Commission into spending on Indigenous people and child abuse in Indigenous communities.

Normally, I don’t comment on how best to solve any problems in these areas because I have no expertise… Well, apart from being an old, white male which is usually enough to make one an expert on just about anything.

But I was slightly confused because all through the Voice Referendum, we had Dutton and various others tell us that it would be wrong to “put race into the Constitution” because we shouldn’t be treating one race any differently from the others but now we need to audit how this money is being spent… Because well, it’s important to get value for money for the taxpayer and it’s not racist when you only want to audit how it’s spent in one area, any more than it’s racist to suggest that it’s only worth holding a Royal Commission into child abuse in Indigenous communities because, well, as Dutton told us:

“The depth and feeling when you speak to people in Alice Springs, as I’ve done with Jacinta Price, it is palpable. When you speak with people who are involved in community services, in policing – they are heartbroken. They are exhausted,”

Those poor people involved in policing and community services! If they’re exhausted and heartbroken we need to do something about it. And they have depth and feeling, so when people have depth and feeling we should listen to them… It means that they’re speaking from the heart and when people speak from the heart then we should take it on board.

Yes, there’s an urgent need for action and what better way to deal with something urgently can there be than to appoint a judge and let him speak to lots and lots of people and then go away and write a report which tells us all what needs to happen. The government can then consider this report urgently, but not in a rushed way, because that would be a mistake.

Yes, apparently a Royal Commission is what’s needed because – while it was wrong to waste money on a referendum – establishing a Royal Commission is an excellent use of money because at the end of the process, we’ll have a range of recommendations that’ll fix the problems just like the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody fixed everything. Or at least, it made a series of recommendations about how things could be fixed.

Or rather than waste money on a Royal Commission, perhaps we could send the army in again just like Mal “Who?” Brough did when John Howard was PM. That certainly fixed everything in much the same way that the invasion of Iraq removed all the Weapons of Mass Destruction: Once they got there they discovered that the alleged reason for the invasion was greatly exaggerated but it enabled them to say that they’d fixed the problem.

Yes, it would be a mistake to call Peter Dutton a racist. Ok, he did walk out on the Apology to the Stolen Generation but he’s admitted that was a mistake. And yes, he did talk specifically about African gangs frightening the people of Melbourne as though they were somehow more frightening than Collingwood supporters. All right, he did accuse that Biloela family of having children as “anchor babies” because foreign people who get married don’t normally have children for any other reason. And he opposed the Indigenous Voice to Parliament but lots of people did that so it would be a mistake to call him racist for that…

No, it would be a mistake to call him a racist because then we’ll get bogged down talking about how much evidence has to be there before it’s clear that they are, instead of sticking to the one basic fact that should be clear to everyone:

Dutton is adopting the same approach that Tony Abbott used where you just disagree with everything the government does and makes it impossible for them to achieve anything. Of course, this might work well in Opposition but, as Tony showed, it means that once you take charge, you have no idea what to do, because just about the only thing that Abbott did was set up a number of Royal Commissions.

 

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The Definitive Guide To Economics And Other Things To Help You Sleep…

Let’s start with a decision by a future Australian government to build zoos in order to ensure that biodiversity isn’t lost. This plan involves building 500 zoos in regional centres and, as part of the attempt to save threatened species, they promise a Giant Panda in every zoo.

While this would undoubtedly by attacked as a shocking waste of money by some, that’s not the main problem with the idea. I’ll get back to the zoos later but first I’d like to concentrate on their second proposal which also includes plans to get the regional centres moving by announcing that there will be at least one Taylor Swift concerts in each of these 500 centres and tickets will be $25 each with a concession for students, the unemployed and pensioners.

Again, some will be overjoyed by this decision while others will attack the outrageous waste of money.

Now let me make the point here and now that it’s very hard for a federal government to totally waste money. Of course we can argue about whether the money could have been better spent but, when it comes to governments wasting money, they control the money so it’s the equivalent of arguing that you wasted a cheque from your cheque book when you ripped it up because you made a mistake. You still have the money in your account and you can still spend it. Governments create the money when they spend it so they can continue to create it until… well, this is where it gets interesting.

Of course, it’s hard to know how much it would cost to get Taylor Swift to agree to holding so many concerts in Australia but let’s put it down as one of the costs and just ignore it because it doesn’t suit the rest of the explanation. In doing this I am following a path frequently used by economists where you ignore something which doesn’t suit your argument.

The obvious point is that – at $25 a ticket – you’ll be sold out but given you’ll have to hire stadiums or put up temporary stages as well as paying to have tickets printed and sold, employing people for front of house and security and whole range of things, it’s likely that the whole thing will be a loss making venture.

This would be a problem for anyone in private industry but let me point out something that’s frequently forgotten in this day of privatisation of government services: Governments aren’t there to make a profit!

Yes, I know. That be communist talk and if we were in America then they’d be using their Second Arm-end-meant rights to rip off their sleeves and bare their arms and deal with me... unless I was Putin who seems to be ok with a large number of US citizens these days.

But it’s true. It’s not socialism. It’s just one of the reasons we have governments: to do what isn’t profitable but seems like a good idea. It covers things like defence and once upon a time it would have even covered the Post Office because we thought the idea of being able to cheaply send things from one place to another was of benefit to society. Governments were expected to do what wasn’t profitable but helpful to the smooth running of society. (On the other hand, I did hear a Liberal politician complain a few years ago that social housing wasn’t making a profit but that’s a whole other story.)

Anyway, back to Taylor Swift concerts. there’s plenty of arguments you can raise about how the money could have been better spent but none of them defeat the basic point that it’s not wasted. All the extra work that was created as a result of the exercise has given people extra money and some of them are very glad of it. Just like with the recent Voice Referendum where some are complaining about the money spent when there’s a cost of living crisis, the argument about wasted money completely ignores the fact that some people who got a boost to their bank balance as a result of work created.

But, I hear you say, surely if the government had enough money to create all these concerts then they could have spent it on things like health or education. Or energy. We need cheaper energy costs. These are all areas that desperately need money and while I accept that the concerts weren’t all bad what about the areas of great need?

Yes, well, this is where we get back to the promise of a Giant Panda in every zoo. Currently there aren’t enough pandas in the world to fulfil that promise, so it really doesn’t matter how much the government says it’s prepared to spend. Unless it has access to some radical panda breeding program, it’ll never be able to honour that promise so it’s not about the money. A trillion dollars still won’t put the pandas in the zoos.

Which is the current problem with health and education and energy: there are shortages that can’t be solved by money in the short term. Spending money might help but fixing the problem needs a plan. And the time for making that plan is several years ago.

As someone said the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now.

 

 

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Three Cheers For Albanese For Stopping The Voice!

Trying to find a consistent pattern to the Liberals has been difficult over the years, but I’d have to say that Dutton has raised it to a whole new level.

Let’s take their position on the repeal of 18C. Georgie Brandis asserted that people had a right to be bigots and the general position of the Coalition was that if anyone got offended by anything then that was the price of free speech in a robust democracy and we should all stop being snowflakes and just accept that people could say whatever and, as long as you weren’t saying that Andrew Bolt or Sam Newman was racist then you were allowed to say whatever you liked.

Ok, they didn’t get around to repealing 18C but the position has pretty much remained the same. Political correctness has gone mad and we’ve got to stop all these woke people from policing everything we do and say…

However when some protesters started chanting some anti-semitic things and generally being offensive, Peter Dutton suggested that they should have their visas cancelled and be deported.

Don’t get me wrong here: I’m part of those politically correct woke folk who think that people are responsible for what they say. I just find it strange that a person can go from dismissing that to deportation rather than education and/or fines for offensive racist behaviour.

Still consistency has never been Dutton’s strong point. We’re very tough on borders unless it involves au pairs or Liberal Party donors who may have had a colourful past where nothing was ever proven.

When it comes to the Voice, Dutton was against inserting race into the Constitution. Although he also said that he would have backed inserting race into the Constitution if it had just involved recognition and not the Voice. So it’s ok to have race there so long as it’s only an acknowledgment that First Nations people existed here before us, but it’s not ok if it says that we have to listen to what they say… unless they’re Jacinta or Warren in which case we should listen to everything they say.

Of course, we were told that this was Albanese’s Voice and that it was his referendum and that it was a Canberra Voice and whole lot of other things that were wrong with it. We were told that it would be a terrible thing because it was causing division and that it was all Albo that was causing that division and that he wasn’t giving us the detail and that if only he’d done this or that then Dutton and friends could have supported it because they’re not racists no matter how many apologies they walk out on or how many times they tell us that the solution to closing the gap is to send in the army.

So if – as looks likely – it’s defeated, then I’m sure we’ll hear from Mr Dutton that it was because of Labor and that Albanese should step down because…

Because the Voice was defeated?

But wasn’t the Voice a bad thing?

And if it’s Albanese’s fault then shouldn’t all those people who voted against it be giving him three cheers?

Or was Dutton’s stance against the Voice just a cheap attempt to gain a win against Labor by taking the low hanging fruit of ensuring that a Constitutional Referendum is defeated?

 

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The RBA, The Middle East And Taylor Swift… Just The Obvious Connections!

The recent problems in the Middle East have led a number of commentators to speculate that this may lead to higher fuel prices which will undoubtedly lead to higher inflation. Higher inflation will put pressure on the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates with a view to controlling inflation.

Now I know what some of you are thinking… how will raising interest rates help the situation in the Middle East?

Well, the simple answer is that it won’t but – as was pointed out many times when the Ukraine situation led to higher prices – when you only have a hammer then all you can do is hit things and pretend that people with a mortgage are a nail.

Part of the problem with economics is that people don’t understand how it works and the reason for that is: it doesn’t. Or to put it another way, there are many economic theories that are beautiful in their simplicity and they explain quite well the way that things would work in an ideal world that didn’t have other economists or people to stuff up the theory.

Let’s start with the simple idea of supply and demand. In theory, prices move toward a point where demand equals supply. For example, if I’m standing outside a Taylor Swift concert selling autographed photos and I only have ten, I’d be silly to charge $2 for them because I’m pretty sure that I could get more. On the other hand, I’ll have a very long evening if I try to charge $1000 for them. So – according to economic theory – I should be adjusting my price until I find the price at which demand equals supply.

There are only two things wrong here. If I’d started with a price that was too low, then I may have sold them all before they hit the top price I could get for them. On the other hand, if I started at a $1000, I may not care that I’ve only sold one and I’m happy to go home content that I haven’t had to waste a lot of time trying to work out that magical spot where demand meets supply.

Of course, when it comes to Taylor Swift we need to understand that phenomena of inelasticity of demand. Surprising as this may be to all those fans who said that they’d pay anything for a ticket, going to a Taylor Swift concert comes under the heading of discretionary spending which means that you can choose not to go… Yes, this may be a shock to a number of people, but I assure you that even people who aren’t economists will back me on that.

Various other items aren’t discretionary. For example, you can’t say to your landlord that you’re a bit short of money so you’ll only sleep in your home six out of seven nights and you expect your rent to reflect this. You only have a choice of paying your rent in full or moving into your car which is pretty tough choice, particularly for those who don’t own a car. As Joe Hockey famously told us: “Poor people don’t drive!”

So when the RBA puts interest rates up, it’s trying to reduce demand. The only problem is that when the factors pushing interest rates up are items that people don’t have a lot of choice about such as mortgage repayments, petrol, rent, energy and food then the increase in interest rates will drive down discretionary items but overall demand for rest will be relatively unchanged.

Or to put it as simply as I can: putting less petrol in your car won’t change the overall world demand for oil and it won’t drive the price down, so an interest rate hike won’t solve inflation in fuel prices. It may, however, put people out of work in other areas such as hospitality and retail which means that they don’t have to worry about the cost of fuel as they have no job to go to.

If this all sounds a little insensitive it’s because I’m talking about economics and if there’s one thing I’ve learned while reading The Australian Financial Review it’s that there’s only one thing to consider when talking about economics and that’s whether there’s money to be made. It’s one paper that tries to give you good information about what’s actually happening because unlike the rest of the media, people who lose money because they were given incorrect information get far more upset than when politicians tell you that there’ll be no cuts to the ABC, education or health. Of course, you do have to ignore the fact that many of the writers are the sorts of people who’d try to keep their parents out of aged care. Not because of concerns about the welfare of their parents but because they’d have to sell their home and the market should be making a strong recovery next year and their inheritance would be considerably more…

Anyway, the basic problem is that Australia’s inflation problem won’t be solved by the Reserve Bank. In fact, the only thing that we can really do is rely on the federal government to come up with creative solutions to the problems that inflation causes. And, of course, any creative solution will be attacked by the Liberals and the media without coming up with any other solution. It’s only a matter of time before the old “Look at the debt!” resurfaces.

I intend to address the issue of government debt at some future date and to explain how it only matters when they promise to give every zoo in Australia a giant panda, but I’ll save that for another time…

 

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The Admirable Demonstration of Dan Tehan And Other Cunning Liberal Plans!

Apparently, Dan Tehan was on QandA last night. I only know this because I’ve picked it up on social media because I’ve been forbidden to watch the show for the past ten years or so, owing to my tendency to shout verbal obscenities at some of the guests and my wife convinced me that this was a) a potential problem for our neighbours, b) bad for my blood pressure and c) a serious risk that I’d throw something at the TV.

Just in case you don’t know who he is, Dan Tehan is the shadow minister for Immigration and Citizenship. Don’t bother checking Wikipedia for that because it’s not there. Apparently something like that isn’t worth updating. As for his other roles, he’s held various ministries including education where his major contribution was to change the fee structure to encourage “job ready” graduates. This meant that courses such as a Bachelor of Arts would be increased while STEM courses would be cheaper. Obviously, Tehan knows that an Arts graduate isn’t “job ready” and has few skills because that’s the course that he took at Melbourne University.

Anyway, Dan was on QandA and he made some very interesting claims such as the one about any changes to the structure of the Voice would need another referendum. While he was challenged on this, it did seem rather strange that someone who’d been in Parliament for years didn’t seem to understand how the system worked, particularly when it’s been debated at length:

“Before we agree to the Voice we want to see the detail of what it will look like!”

“The Referendum is just to establish the principle of the Voice and the actual form will be decided by Parliament…”

“Yeah, but we want to see what it’ll be like before we enshrine it in the Constitution.”

“But that isn’t what we’ll be putting in the Constitution. It’s like when it says that the Federal Government will have responsibility for defence; that doesn’t dictate how many ships and planes we have…”

And so on…

But Mr Tehan seemed unable to grasp the simple fact that the Referendum -if successful – will only embed the fact of an Indigenous Voice. How it’s established would be a matter for the Parliament and if Tony Mundine (and his second cousin) Warren have any input the composition of the Voice will be made up of the winners after several rounds in a boxing ring… Mind you, I can’t see that getting through the Parliament now that Tony Abbott is no longer there.

Whatever the end result of the Referendum, I’d have to give Dan Tehan full marks for his display. When you’re supporting a campaign whose chief message is: “If you don’t know, Vote No!”, Mr Tehan was a shining example of someone who seemed to be totally ignorant of just about anything he spoke about.

Mind you, I didn’t watch the full program. I’ve only gone back and watched bits and he may have been taken out of context… Although it’s hard to be taken out context when what you’ve said is just plain ignorant. Like when he called for Albanese to stop the Referendum a few days ago which is not within the Prime Minister’s power now that the writs have gone out. This means that either Tehan was playing some sort of political game here or else he really is as silly as he sounds.

Let me be quite clear here: Just as not all those working at Auschwitz were anti-Semitic, not everyone opposing the Voice is racist. Some were simply doing a job and following orders because they’re part of the Shadow Cabinet and, similarly, some have been told to Vote No because they don’t know and they’re doing just that. And yes, some have totally different reasons for voting No, and they’re neither racist nor ignorant.

HOWEVER…

I believe there is a special place in Hell…

(Ok, it may be a surprise that I’m talking about Hell but I saw the cover of Scotty Morrison’s upcoming book: “PLANS FOR YOUR FUTURE”, which had the subheading: “A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness”, and I thought if a Prime Minister gives the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe a thumbs up, who am I to discount the possibility of Hell?)

So I believe that there should be a special place in Hell for those who know that they’re doing the wrong thing by siding with a campaign of misinformation that will potentially do incredible damage to our nation and just idly sit by claiming Cabinet solidarity or some sort of journalistic both sides nonsense. While it’s admirable for the media to try and be fair, that doesn’t mean that if you present information, you have to treat misinformation with the same respect.

Nobody is discussing the flow-on effect of the Voice falling to get up. If we put the Indigenous issues aside for one moment – or a few decades, as John Howard managed to do – there are all sorts of other consequences. For example, any appetite for a Referendum on the Republic will be dead for the life of this government and probably several future ones.

But whatever happens, I can’t see much of an upside for Peter Dutton. His prevarication about whether he’d support the Voice always looked phoney and, if it is defeated, it actually won’t be because people have suddenly found the ugly, racist side of Australia appealing; it’ll be because there was a lot of confusion.

We can analyse and cast blame all day long, but if we have Hanson and Bolt and various others celebrating the defeat with the sort of hyperbolic nonsense about apartheid, then it probably doesn’t actually help Dutton win support for the next election. His cunning plan may hurt Albanese, but it will also leave him in a limbo with nowhere really to go. Will he support a legislated Voice that isn’t in the Constitution? Will he support “practical solutions”? Will he call for the army to go Alice Springs?

In a few months’ time, will Dutton’s Liberals look as silly as those embracing on the floor of Parliament after the repeal of the carbon “tax”?

 

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Dictator Dan Quits And Victoria Is Free…

With the resignation of Dan Andrews, Victorians can once again go to coffee shops and cafe owners will undoubtedly be offering free coffee in celebration… Strangely the little bit of Sky News I watched didn’t even go to them, but chose to interview journalists about how they found the Premier combative and evasive as he stood there refusing to give them the answers that they were after, particularly during Covid lockdowns when he failed to acknowledge the fact that Gladys had been unfairly treated by the ABC when she was merely canonised when she should have been deified…

Of course, I have to admit that all those people who predicted that Dan Andrews would stand down were right, even if they got the timing wrong by something like two years. I know how frustrating it is when my wife won’t accept that when I say there’s no need to water the garden because it’s going to rain that I was right because it did rain… Ok, all the plants are dead because it’s three months after I predicted it, but I was basically correct, even if the timing was a little out.

All right, I should just stop and acknowledge that whatever else, Andrews did a lot right as Premier. Nobody’s perfect and during his time as leader, Victoria has done a whole range of things that I thought were too progressive for any government to risk. From assisted dying to safe injecting rooms to laws preventing protestors from harassing women seeking an abortion to attempting to improve public transport to… Well, there’s been a lot which is why he’s upset so many conservatives and pretend conservatives who like to feign outrage and complain about the fabric of society being destroyed while they demonstrate their commitment to family values by only having an affair and not breaking up the family.

Of course, there were a number of articles this morning about what a shocking job he’d done and how the voters were just idiots who didn’t know how oppressed they were. Phil Coorey who is best remembered for his article on how Gladys saved Australia wrote in this morning’s Financial Review that his government came “stone motherless last on every metric in terms of handling the pandemic”. Interesting that the paper he writes for was also critical of Mark McGowan for closing off his state and streeting the rest of Australia in every metric and lost very few people to Covid meaning that he can’t be accused of being stone motherless last. Surprisingly, Coorey was terribly impressed with Gladys in spite of the Ruby Princess, the untested chauffeur setting off a wave and various other things that one would have thought rivalled any alleged mistakes that Andrews made.

Credlin, Bolt and various other Murdoch commentators seemed to be genuinely aggrieved that Dan had managed to leave on his own terms, rather than being dragged out by the ugly mobs marching on the Victorian Parliament and strung up on the gallows that someone had erected.

Rachel Baxendale, journalist for The Australian, was on the ABC telling viewers that Andrews avoided scrutiny by ignoring the media. Strange that she should forget that, during the pandemic, Andrews fronted the cameras day after day, answering the questions that she managed to skillfully read from her phone without ever letting it slip that they were from a prominent Liberal.

How dare Andrews use social media and speak directly to the public, is the subtext of Baxendale’s complaint. It must be frustrating for these people who, in days gone by, would have been the gatekeepers of information and carefully filtered what we got to see and hear. Well, yes, they still try to do that but these days, you can also read what I have to say. And not just me, there are lots of other people who can blog, post, tweet… sorry X, or whatever takes their fancy. And, by and large, they’re unfiltered…

Which, of course, raises the obvious question: Does information filtered through a respected media that people just presume is telling the truth represent a bigger threat to democracy than unfiltered information from unverified sources that don’t follow any rules?

And, of course, that would be an interesting question to pursue were it not for the simple fact that thanks to the advent of the Murdoch media, there is no longer any concern with rules or the facts or fairness. “Fair and balanced” was only adopted by Fox News after it was realised that “Fair and Right” made them sound a little too much like the Nazis.

As Steve Bannon said: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real enemy is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Next time Peter Dutton announces on Sunday that he’ll hold another referendum if elected, only to say that he won’t on Thursday, or Dan Tehan tells us that Albanese should call off the referendum (which can’t happen without the approval of Parliament which won’t sit before the vote), then ask yourself if they haven’t decided to take Bannon’s advice.

P.S. I wonder if Dan Andrews thought about making a comment about how Rupert Murdoch quit before he did.

 

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“This Is All A Giant Push By (INSERT NAME) To Trick You Into (INSERT PARANOID FANTASY)

“Beer?”

“Thanks”

“So what you been up to this week?”

“I went on a march to support the No Campaign.”

“Really, why?”

“Look there’s no need to attack me just because I don’t support apartheid in Australia and I want to stop aboriginals being given my house.”

“I wasn’t attacking you, I just wondered why you were marching when you’ve never been political before.”

“Yeah, well, most political causes rely on you knowing what you’re talking about and some smart-arse will tie you up in knots, but this time it’s great because the whole case behind No is about knowing nothing. They said: “If you don’t know, vote No!” and I thought that sounds like me, so…”

“I just worry that some of the people who were telling us to us to “do our own research” during the pandemic are now telling us that we shouldn’t do any and just vote accordingly…”

“Look mate, there were a whole range of different people marching. Men, women, black, white, old, young. There were all sorts.”

“Nazis?”

“Yeah, like I said, there were all sorts.”

“It doesn’t worry you that you’re on the same side as the Nazis?”

“Why should it? I mean we didn’t invite them and if they choose to come and march with us, why can’t they. It’s a free country.”

“Yeah but doesn’t it worry you that you’re on the same side as them.”

“Nah, you got that wrong. It’s them who are on the same side as us. We don’t support their views, they just happen to support ours.”

“I don’t really see the difference.”

“Look, if someone’s walking down the road and you start going in the same direction, then you’re following them, but if you start walking before they do, then it’s them that’s following you…”

“Yeah but if you’re both going in the same direction, isn’t that a worry?”

“Nah, why should it be?”

“Well, if you don’t wonder why you’re both going to the same place… I mean, it’d worry me if I was in a group and I found that we were all going to line up to get tickets to a Rolf Harris tribute band…”

“Is there a Rolf Harris tribute band?”

“No I was just… Anyway, let’s change the subject. Did you hear that Tony Abbott’s been appointed to the News Corp board?”

“Yeah, great move. Whether you agree with him or not, he’s a man who always says what he thinks. He was one of the few leaders to tell us that this climate change stuff is all crap.”

“But he said he didn’t say that!”

“Well, he had to say that to get elected, didn’t he?”

“You just said that he was a man who always says what he thinks and now…”

“You can’t always say what you think when you’re in politics, but I always knew what he was thinking.”

“I never he knew when he was thinking.”

“Ha ha. No Tony was one of those who really stuck it to the inner-city elites who keep trying to tell us what to do.”

“How exactly?”

“Well, by becoming Prime Minister and pissing them all off by stopping all that politically correct, cancel culture nonsense.”

“And then the Liberal Party cancelled him, followed by his own electorate.”

“Yeah, that’s the trouble: people don’t know what’s good for them.”

“So they should be told what to do?”

“Yeah!”

“But not by inner city elites. I see.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Look people get sick of being told what to do by people who think that they’re superior. Take Sam Newman. All he said was that people should boo the welcome to country and all these virtue signallers said that he was an old fart who’s had too much botox and it’s gone to his brain. I mean who are they to tell Sam what to do. He’s got as much right as anyone to come out and tell people to boo. That’s the trouble with the country today people who think that they’re always right and feel that they should be able to dictate to others and I don’t think that it should be allowed!”

“But you’re just contradicting yourself. It’s like all those people who complained that Russell Brand is innocent until proven guilty and that they know that all the people making accusations are part of some giant conspiracy.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, if Brand has the right to the presumption of innocence, don’t his accusers have the same right?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re probably guilty.”

“But… Never mind. Do you want another beer?”

“Nah, I better be getting back to work. I’ve got an opinion piece to write on how schools are dumbing down the curriculum and making our kids stupider.”

“Ah, are you for or against?”

“Against. How could anyone be in favour of people being dumber?”

“Yeah, I wonder that myself sometimes.”

 

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Elon Musk And The Terrible Brand X…

Lately I’ve started reading a book called, “The End Of Reality” by Jonathan Taplin which has the tagline: “How Four Billionaires Are Selling Out Our Future.”

While the book has been interesting so far, there was a section about Elon Musk which grabbed my attention. He was driving Peter Thiel, his partner in PayPal, to a meeting and demonstrating “the awesome acceleration” of his $150,000 McLaren sports car when he plowed into an embankment. Apparently Musk told Thiel: “You know, I read all these stories about people who made money and bought sports cars and crashed them. But I knew it would never happened to me, so I didn’t get insurance.”

Musk had the controlling interest in the company at the time and he wanted to drop the name PayPal in favour of X.com, even though there was some suggestion that sounded more like a porn site and it was likely to confuse existing customers.

Of course, the money men were a wee bit concerned about Musk’s erratic behaviour, so they forced him to step aside as CEO and, as we know, PayPal still exists as PayPal and the only things that have the name “X” are one of his children and the site that used to be known as Twitter.

Musk resembles a child whose parents won’t let him name their pet “Fartin’ Martin”, so he grows up and names his first child that to show that he’s now an adult and he can do what he likes, so there!

For anyone who’s noticed how business normally works, it’s pretty usual to try and keep your customers happy and if you have a recognisable brand and name then it’s a good idea to keep it. Frequently the reason people change the name of a business is so that unsuspecting people won’t realise that it’s the same company that has been annoying their friends and family.

And speaking of Brands, you’ve probably heard about Russell’s troubles…

Well, I want to make it clear here that I support the concept of the legal process which includes the whole we need presume innocence until guilt is proven.

HOWEVER…

I would just like to point out that it’s rather strange when people start down the path of the whole innocent until proven guilty thing, only to then start to suggest that various other people are guilty of various other misdeeds.

For example, when someone asks why they didn’t report it at the time, it shows not only a misunderstanding of how intimidating it can be to report a crime and how it may take time to process what’s happened and to summon up the strength to see it through. Add to that the fear that they may not be believed. Strangely that last point is dismissed by the very people who are doubting the person who has come forward.

The other strange idea is that this whole thing has been manufactured because good old Russell is presenting alternative views and has upset certain people and that it’s all part of some conspiracy. Well, of course there is a possibility that certain people have been upset by some the things he’s said and they’re more than happy to let the story run. But again, this sort of makes it sound like Mr Brand has only just lately started saying the sort of things that upset the powers that be and that this is how they’re going to shut him up.

Notwithstanding the idea that everyone has a potential influence, it would be easier to shut someone up by not giving them any airtime, the fact remains that something like this is more likely to give Russell Brand an audience than no publicity at all. This gives him the perfect platform to announce that he’s being stopped from speaking in much the same way that Andrew Bolt frequently uses his colon to complain about censorship. (The “colon” was initially a spellcheck error but it sounds more appropriate than “column” so I let it stand.)

Of course Russell has previously had the support of Elon Musk: “I watched some of his videos. Ironically, he seemed more balanced & insightful than those condemning him! The groupthink among major media companies is more troubling. There should be more dissent.” We’ll probably find Musk tweeting… sorry, Xing, something that will give an even bigger boost to Russell even though they may have seemingly different political philosophies.

In some ways, they don’t differ all that much. Musk espouses an anti-government libertarian philosophy and some of you may remember a number of years ago when he was guest-editing “The New Statesman”, Russell Brand announced that he didn’t vote because the system was ineffectual and encouraged others to do the same, because by not voting then politicians would somehow feel the pressure and lift their game.

It seems to have worked a treat because in the intervening years, the British have had Conservatives elected a number of times and the Brexit referendum passed. It’s easy to say that the other party are no better when you’re not the one relying on the government to actually provide funding for your wheelchair. Those Communists in the British Labour Party may not have the same enthusiasm for lining the millionaire up against the wall as we’ve come to expect in the 20th Century, but they still spend a touch more on things like Health and Education.

And, devotees of Russell’s Revolution not voting in the United States may have helped Trump to become President where he managed to appoint enough judges to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade.

Even if you don’t like the alternatives being presented, simply not voting isn’t really likely to change the system. If enough people turn up and vote for the “Let’s Have A Party” Party or the “May The Fourth Be With You” Party, then, at the very least politicians will start to wonder what ideas they need to steal from them.

But like I said, let’s not presume guilt just because a handful of women who don’t know each other all make a claim against someone. After all, it could be that Big Pharma is so upset that Russ is complaining about them and they regard him as so influential that they feel the need to make up this whole thing instead of just having him arrested by planting drugs on him… which being Big Pharma, they could manufacture quite easily…

 

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The Clear Bias Of The Labor Government!

For years, we’ve heard the Murdoch Malevolents complain about the bias of the ABC and, when anyone suggests that they themselves are biased, the response is: “We’re a private company; we’re allowed to be biased.” The ABC, on the other hand, don’t have that right and the Murdoch press complains that it presents a different point of view to them so therefore, it’s far too left-wing.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed the odd comment about how the Labor government is showing a bias towards the Voice and how dare they not be impartial when it’s there’s an upcoming Referendum…

Let’s stop and think about that for a moment.

A political party showing bias. You know, actually have a point of view and not being impartial. Why that’s unheard of. It’s outrageous. I can’t see why the Governor-General doesn’t sack them and install the army to rule…

Of course, the people complaining about the bias of Labor on the Voice aren’t the slightest bit concerned that the Liberal Party have adopted a position. Neither are they concerned about the National Party’s decision to oppose it. Or Pauline Hanson’s One Notion. Or…

No, it’s only the government who are meant to be unbiased.

Let me be clear here. The complaints weren’t that the government was funding one side and not the other, or that the Yes case was first in that little booklet that we got and that the No case was on the opposite page. No, the complaint was that members of the government were expressing an opinion.

How dare they? Senator Neville Bonner would be turning in his grave because, as George Brandis, assured us, the first Indigenous Liberal senator would have been dead set against a Voice to Parliament, and if there’s one thing that the Liberal Party has shown over the years, it’s that they are in the best place to speak for people who can’t speak for themselves like women and other minority groups… Yes, well women may not be a minority group in the general community but that one woman in Tony Abbott’s first Cabinet must have felt like real progress was being made when he made one of the biggest percentage increases when it went up by 200% with another one added!

I guess Senator Bonner went to Canberra in order to say nothing because he was so against this “Canberra Voice” being proposed by Anthony Albanese who isn’t listening to the everyday Indigenous people like Price and Mundine… Mundine organised the recent CPAC so there’s no way you could think of him as being part of the elites.

There haven’t been many referendums that have successfully changed the Australian Constitution. Successful ones have generally had bipartisan support and even that doesn’t guarantee success. Peter Dutton’s opportunism to have the Liberals oppose it was an attempt to gain the low-hanging fruit of scuttling its success and making people think he could actually achieve something, even if that something is actually nothing. It should be a slam dunk and we shouldn’t even think that there’s a chance of success. And that’s before all the misinformation, disinformation and attempt to play on people’s fear of change.

Now I’ve prattled on for years about this, but we have to accept that either the media is just this passive receptacle which just reports everything without filter or else we have to understand that everything is an active choice and part of that active choice is saying, “Actually, Mr Smedley, I don’t know that you can assert the idea that the Australian Constitution has been declared null and void by the High Court without producing some sort of evidence… and no, it’s just not fucking true that the evidence you have has been suppressed by Putin acting in concert with Obama and the Chinese who had this all planned from the time they managed to get your granny to put out the good china when you came over for afternoon tea…”

The media have a role to educate… but I guess that’s hard for them when they’re populated with people who don’t know very much beyond the fact that if they make people angry then they’re more likely to engage with them the next day because it’s easy to get people to come back out of anger than to come back to learn something new…

If you don’t know, come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you more things that I don’t know and you can get very, very angry about the fact that one of those people who aren’t you are trying to take my Jaguar that I’ve worked hard for and you can have one too if you just agree that I should have it and not someone who’s angry about something else and part of the outrage industry which is… Oh, yeah, well, it’s wrong to suggest that I’m part of an outrage industry even though we’re perpetually outraged…I’m outraged for good reason and don’t we need to agree with that property developer, Tim Gurner, who said that the workers are getting a bit uppity and a dose of unemployment will put them back in their place where they need to say, “Please sir, can I have some more?”, so we can bundle them off like Oliver Twist was along with all those unions in the glorious days past!

Yes, it’s getting very strange. I was out walking my dog and whenever he does his business, I give him a little treat. I guess that’s the business model of Murdoch. Whenever Andrew Bolt or whoever puts out some shit, they get a little treat.

 

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