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Crash goes his character as pressure rises on Scotty from marketing

Our prime minister has returned from Scotland with his tail between his legs and his character shot to pieces. If his arrogant behaviour and shouty mouth on the international stage annoyed you, we are as one.

After copping a mauling from President Macron of France and a slap over the wrist from President Biden, the Australian Prime Minister then did the unthinkable. After being called a liar by Macron (it is scarce for one head of state to call another a liar), he decided to leak an American national security document against an international leader. It was tactically and typically Morrison.

By this, I mean that it is typical of the man to create another lie to divert attention from the one he is defending. He said he wouldn’t accept the President’s sledging of the Australian people, which the President never uttered. His defence was to embrace nationalism:

“Australia’s integrity, and the slurs that had been placed on Australia – not me, I’ve got broad shoulders, I can deal with that – but those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging of Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of other Australians.”

The mistake had been made. President Macron, in fact, went out of his way to praise the Australian people, and his beef was with the Prime Minister. He arrived in Scotland willing to tell lies about Australia’s commitment to climate change on a global level but found himself telling them about submarines.

French President Emmanuel Macron accused Morrison of lying. While in Rome for the G20, reporters had asked the French President if he thought Scott Morrison had lied to him about the submarine deal’s future, Macron was asked by reporters in Rome. “I don’t think, I know,” he had replied.

By the time Morrison got to Glasgow, his demeanour was as low as a man who told lies about which sporting clubs he followed.

Macron called him a liar on a stage that Morrison wasn’t used to performing on. He played his part as the bearer of bad news then exited stage left with disastrous reviews of his performance.

Yet again, in typical Morrison fashion, he had quickly changed from a weak leader, climate denier, to don the cloak of nationalism and become the defender of our pride, whereas, in truth, he is in the world’s view a leader not to be trusted.

Finding the truth and reporting it should be more important than creating a narrative where controversy matters more.

That Morrison is a peddler of half-truths and lies is beyond dispute. When he apologises, Scott Morrison usually precedes it with an avalanche of indulgent words of self-praise intended to compliment him and his government. He told Channel 9 news that:

“Australia made the decision not to go ahead with the contract for submarine that was not going to do the job that Australia needed to do, and I’ll never make any apologies for that decision.”

Then referring to former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull – one of his COP26 critics – he added.

“As you know, I always treat all former Prime Ministers with respect, and I’m going to continue to do that.”

Which, of course, brings back images of Morrison with hand on Turnbull’s shoulder saying, “My leader” while stabbing him in the back to replace him.

In the recipe of good leadership there are many ingredients. Popularity is but one. Character is another. It however ranks far below getting things done for the common good.

Character is a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a life, governing moral choices and infusing personal and professional conduct. It’s an elusive thing, easily cloaked or submerged by the theatrics of politics. But unexpected moments can sometimes reveal the fibres from which it is woven.

His answers are so pathetic and simultaneously self-congratulatory about a fall in our emissions. He neglects to mention that we have met our targets because there have been fewer cars on the road, businesses closed, and no planes in the air.

He reluctantly went to the COP26 Glasgow conference to achieve two things: to set down Australia’s position on our efforts to combat climate change. On that front, we now know that our mediocre results, since the climate conference in Paris (2015), prove that Morrison is more interested in retaining power than preserving the planet’s life. The other reason was to try to appease Macron and allay any misgivings. Instead, it packed a suitcase full of policy decisions to Glasgow perfectly entrapped in wedge politics and internal government political problems.

 

Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)

 

Instead of this flat-earth thinking, a leader with any character would slap down members of his cabinet who roamed the road of lying with all the force of a heavy roller. At the same time, he would restrict himself from doing the same thing and, just as significantly, refrain from insulting every international leader above his station.

In January 2021, journalist Dennis Atkins tweeted:

Morrison’s been unmasked. His refusal to openly condemn Trump’s behaviour & legacy is the deliberate act of a weak, spineless & character free Prime Minister. At a pivotal time, Morrison retreated. He didn’t want to tell the truth (because of) politics.

It is no wonder we have diplomatic problems with China; his diplomacy stinks. This again was another Morrison diversion against the appalling governance of his government and the daily crisis that confronted him.

Of the conference itself, one can only conclude that it was mostly a flop, except that it looks as though business and state governments will be left to pick up the baton that our government found too hot to handle.

I remain of the view that something so catastrophic will occur that will force us to act. Something incomprehensible to us now, unforeseeable, dark and sinister. Instead of being proactive, we tend to wait for disaster to receive us. Then and only then do we react.

My thought for the day

Have we reached the point in politics where TRUTH is something that politicians have persuaded us to believe, “Like alternative facts” rather than TRUTH based on factual evidence, arguments and assertions.

 

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27 comments

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  1. pierre wilkinson

    “I remain of the view that something so catastrophic will occur that will force us to act. Something incomprehensible to us now, unforeseeable, dark and sinister. Instead of being proactive, we tend to wait for disaster to receive us. Then and only then do we react.”
    how soon we forget the bushfires that ravaged our country

  2. Max Gross

    Character? Morrison??? Two words. Charlatan. Creep.

  3. Terence Mills

    “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend”. Speaking to reporters in Melbourne, he said: “[An electric vehicle] won’t tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family.”

    Scott Morrison May 2019

    Morrison for purely base political reasons chose to attack Labor and EV’s in the last election and effectively set back our transition to low emissions vehicles by another three years.

    They did the same under Abbott calling carbon pricing a tax which they ultimately conceded was just political spin and in the process they set us back years on putting a price on carbon.

    They condemned moves to remove distortions from our housing market by insisting on keeping negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions for property ‘flippers’. In doing so they fueled the unsustainable price rises in housing around the nation : they adopted this stubborn obstinacy purely for political purposes.

    This coalition of laggards are holding back Australia !

    Can Australia afford another three years of this ?

  4. Harry Lime

    Another excellent article John.Everyone on this forum is well aware of Morrison’s total lack of character and his incessant ,sleazy ways,and I agree that only when the shit well and truly hits the fan will enough people react.However, by then it may well be too late.If they are not voted out next time, we are well and truly fucked.I can scarcely believe that this travesty of humanity has lasted this long.When, and if we manage to dump this horror,Labor will have a long and arduous list of urgent corrections to set in train,not the least of which is to dismantle Murdoch’s evil empire,the chief enabler of the bulk of our troubles.Will enough of the population break out of their selfish,introspective apathy?We’ll see.

  5. BB

    Thanks John Lord. Morrison is a liability, an insult and an utter disgrace to the office of the PM of Australia.
    Excellent summation of the train wreck that is Morrison. Truth and Morrison are the same as chalk and cheese.
    Morrison’s real character is a lack of any, no backbone, he’s an impostor, a pseudo ‘leader’, a pathetic blatant liar.
    The linked article by Junkee on flip flopping in sports reveals what a crawler Morrison is, never to be trusted!
    The cartoon by Alan Moir is spot on. Bananaboy & Scumo. What did we do to deserve such morons in office?

  6. Henry Rodrigues

    Why has this fool been able to cling on to government for so long and despite his clear inability to satisfy even the most mundane requirements of the job ???? The answer in my view is, as Mr. Lord has succinctly observed, ” we tend to wait until disaster receives us, then and only then do we react”

    The braindead brainless brainwashed Australian voter is smugly complacent, watching his 45inch LED TV, and Foxtel and the footy, content to swallow the easy lies of the media, ignore all the warning signs from around the world and closer to home in the Pacific, without giving any further thought to climate change, just as long as it doesn’t affect them and their precious weekend and their gas guzzling $60,000 utes, comfortable with view that its not their problem, and therefore not their responsibility.

    This is what Murdoch and the rest of the corrupt media, relentlessly present and eventually some of the propaganda sinks in. Scummo and the Coalition know this and that’s how they frame their tactics. The Nationals are only interested in maintaining the status quo, because that what they donors and the shortsighted coal industry want.

  7. John Hermann

    A weak and hollow man, devoid of character, and the worst PM we have ever had.

  8. David Baird

    And the most dangerous aspect of all of this is that he’s god-driven and smugly cocky with it. He just knows his god is behind him in every little thing he does, will forgive him all his lies, deceit, distortion and general bullshit bragging. He’s stacked his ministry with as many fellow god-botherers as possible. I comfort myself that if there were a god it’d be distinctly unimpressed with the duplicitous little sleazebag and damn him to hell.

  9. New England Cocky

    SCUMMO IN SUMMARY
    .
    @ Max Gross: ”Character” and ”Morrison” in the same sentence is an oxymoron …..on a moron.
    .
    @ Terence Mills: ”Can Australia afford another three years of this”? – NO!!
    .
    @ Harry Lime: ”Will enough of the population break out of their selfish, introspective apathy?” – Probably not until their personal finances are hurt.
    .
    @ BB: ”What did we do to deserve such morons in office?” – Australian voters made a self-inflicted wound and elected them to office on a campaign of lies and deceit, adultery and alcoholism.
    .
    @ henry Rodrigues: “Why has this fool been able to cling on to government for so long …” – Because too few Australian voters read AIMN.
    .
    @ John Hermann: ”A weak and hollow man, devoid of character, and the worst PM we have ever had.” Definitely agreed.

  10. BB

    Aye NEC.
    Let’s hope that enough voters, (the “quiet Australians”), wake the F up and PUT the L/NP LAST on their ballot paper…

  11. Phil Pryor

    Our ,P M (a prick massager??) is off on the morning workout, delivering on his new calling as manager of Garbage Capture and Storage, has sent out one A Taylor, the only surrogate pet maggot on a lead and collar, to explain how select but private donors will be assuaged and pleased with the new fraud of carbon capture and storage, shown to be uneconomic in the extreme, in fact TEN times more expensive, but a bribe to patrons, than the replanting of economically useful TREES, the way to actually go. But, B Joyce, the bedbug of the bush, would have to be threatened with grog withdrawal and sex deprivation to convince him. How low (sub bug’s balls?) can a socalled free enterprise government go to be a shiny hypocrite? We actually know that one, for Scott Knob-Polisha needs to survive, his backstabbing and bullshitting lifestyle has made him a SOMEONE, commonly in French newspaper, and thus destined to be peasant arsewipe resources, giving terminal pleasure… Let’s all buy an overpriced, imported, dodgy car to stuff up the weekend permanently, just for the poor turdy turncoat. If filthy lying were a heavenly command, Morrison would be SAVED, FOREVER…!!! Halleluckingfuja…

  12. Ill fares the land

    All absolutely spot on and, by any logical measure, Morrison (“Promo Hairbuff-McSmirky”) should be turfed out of office at the next election. Except that his lies in 2019 were believed by his most rabid barrackers – the new and comparatively poorly educated and uninformed entrants into the middle class. Many of these new entrants are hard working folks, with very simple if completely dogmatic views, but they drive dual cab utes, for a plethora of reasons, but mostly because they resonate with the image of themselves they want others to see – it is no surprise that as ever bigger utes are now imported from the US (you know, the ones that “eat other utes for breakfast”), they readily convince themselves they need those even bigger utes, in much the same way we convince ourselves that we now need a much bigger house, fridge or TV. And Promo’s lies in 2021 about his lies in 2019 will also be believed by that same group. He didn’t gain the PM role in 2019 by much, but the support of that group was enough to tip the balance and since then, he has bought more votes amongst that group by giving them a chance to trade up to even bigger dual cab ute and get a 100% tax deduction if they are in business. Apparently, that depreciation write-off isn’t a subsidy, so “we” can afford it – but a subsidy on EV’s is bad policy!! Promo is so moronic, so bumptious, mediocre in every respect and incapable of any astute and intelligent response on any issue – he has only one tactic. When it works, as it did with such horrific results in 2019, his arrogance is palpable. When it fails so consistently, as it has since the bushfire crisis, he has no idea how to construct and implement a better strategy – he merely doubles down on his lies and his innate belligerence surfaces. In truth, he has an amazing gift – the capacity to so steadfastly believe his own lies that he thinks he can’t ever be caught out.

  13. Roswell

    But, but but … some in the MSM are calling his trip to COP36 a howling success.

    They’re close. It was a howler.

  14. Henry Rodrigues

    Phil P….I am in awe at your power of the descriptive language. So we are now governed by a Prick massager and knob polisher extraordinaire, and the deputy pm, the perpetually inebriated, self confessed barnyard fornicator, who leads with his dick, (he prefers to take matters in his own hands)
    Ah, the wonders of OZ.

  15. Terence Mills

    His latest slogan :

    Can Do Capitalism not Don’t do Governments

    What does that even mean ?

  16. Roswell

    Terence, can’t say I know what he’s on about, which is par for the course with Morrison.

    I saw a photo of him yesterday eating a chip. What sort of bloke takes a chip off a kid, offered or not? Taking a chip is a new low. 😁

  17. Henry Rodrigues

    Roswell… taking something off others is par for the course for this idiot, like the $550,000 of taxpayers money he’s been sucking up for the last few years, and doing bugger all to deserve it.

  18. leefe

    “He neglects to mention that we have met our targets because there have been fewer cars on the road, businesses closed, and no planes in the air.”

    We have met out targets on paper principally because the year chosen for our baseline measurement was one with far greater than average land-clearing. A reduction to more usual levels means the numbers can be massaged to look good. In practice, however, they are meaningless.

    This is all part of the con of “net zero”. We need real zero and real action, not more fancy accounting.

  19. Kathryn

    Everything Morrison does, or fails to do, drags our nation’s (once) good name into the dirt! He is a deplorable, two thumbs-up BOGAN who is now an internationally condemned pariah! Morrison ticks EVERY box as a totally corrupt, power-obsessed, lying, conniving, inhumane psychopath with narcissistic delusions of grandeur! The fact that he is a signed-up member of the notorious paedophile-protecting CULT of Hillsong and attempts to hide his appalling depravity behind a condescending smirk and a phoney veneer of nauseating bible-thumping hypocrisy makes this obnoxious sociopath even MORE offensive!

    Morrison is the original HOLLOW MAN; a vacuous, disingenuous career political parasite who is as shallow as a car park puddle with ZERO integrity, not one ounce of credibility, no vision, no imagination and NOTHING to offer but a mediocre and very limited set of meaningless slogans delivered with an insincere level of condescending contempt that is BEYOND intolerable!

  20. New England Cocky

    @ Terence Mills: ”Can do Capitalism not don’t do governments”. Let me attempt an explanation of this cryptic nonsense.

    ”Can do Capitalism” means the Liarbals have learned from the Nazional$ that the capitalist economic system only stays afloat only when profits are privatised and losses are publicised. This requires subsidies to be paid to corporations willing to contribute to Liarbral Party on a regular basis, like every year or more frequently if more concessions are sought.

    ”Don’t do governments” means that taking the lead from Scummo Sacked from Marketing (and every other job in Tourism) not holding a hose during the 2019-2020 national bushfire emergency, the Liarbrals have absolutely no idea what is required to build an economy that benefits ALL AUSTRALIAN VOTERS and follow the example of the Nazional$ of buying votes and political donations aka political bribes from broad acre water users distant from the cities, employing executives from foreign owned multinational mining corporations because over-funded Australian private schools cannot produce alumni capable of thinking and managing at the necessary level of corruption, while writing policies favouring those foreign corporations.
    .
    Or put simply, for eight (8) too long years Australia has been screwed over by the bosses for their own benefit,

  21. wam

    Glad I missed this cut and paste this morning, lord or I would be back in the cool pool. haha TRUTH
    Love the true lie of the $billion investment the ABC and media happily brandish the lie over and over making sure scummo is at the top.
    You and I know if the CSIRO had been given a few million since 1996 we would be sitting on an renewables goldmine. Rather than sitting with the wooden spoon.
    The PM is a man full of jokes.
    He said there was no problems with the french submarine contract and he was unaware of delays and cost overruns but then cancelled the contract?
    In 2019 just before the election he joked with the murdoch journalists how
    “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend, an electric vehicle] won’t tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family.”
    Today he joked about $178m for electric cars.
    This, on top of his last week’s joke, on the world stage, about zero emission by 2050 and although his $1b is merely his repeat of an earlier ‘announcement’ which was destroyed by the nats, the lie of only $500m government input being manefested as the billion on the media with the ABC the most prominent spreader of the lie, suggests he is about to take his comedy show on tour?

  22. Terence Mills

    The announcement by the US and China as reported by the SMH this morning :

    Glasgow: China and the United States have unveiled a shock new pact at the Glasgow climate talks, declaring global warming an existential crisis which demands co-operation between the superpowers.

    In a boost to the flagging COP26 talks and sign of a possible thawing in the fractured relationship between both countries, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and his US counterpart John Kerry stunned observers by unveiling the joint declaration pledging tougher action this decade.

    The agreement between the world’s two largest emitters was negotiated in secret for months during about 30 virtual meetings and negotiation sessions in Shanghai, London and Washington before final terms were settled in Glasgow on Wednesday night local-time.

    This coming together of the major emitters leaves Scott Morrison even more out in the cold (heat ?) not only on climate change but the possibility of the US and China restarting dialogue in other areas : Morrison had logged in his cold war rhetoric against China as a re-election strategy but it may not work out so well and we may need to stop our anti China narrative and try some diplomacy.

  23. GL

    Terence,

    What’s the bet that Rubber Spine Scotty suddenly starts to bend over backwards at that news and says meaningless words about how great the deal between the US and China is for the world?

  24. Michael Taylor

    Wow, Terry, that’s huge and welcoming news.

    And as you noted, this leaves Morrison stranded. He really has played the wrong hand.

  25. GL

    Michael,

    Scummo and the rest of Crony Co. Inc. will do what they have done all the way down the line (and will continue to do as the election looms), LIE! LIE! LIE…ad nauseam. It’s all they have because they are totally bereft of anything that even vaguely resembles good governance.

  26. margcal

    David Baird November 10, 2021 at 10:39 am
    And the most dangerous aspect of all of this is that he’s god-driven and smugly cocky with it. He just knows his god is behind him in every little thing he does, will forgive him all his lies, deceit, distortion and general bullshit bragging

    David Baird, you don’t know your gods.
    The Christian god is the one that forgives – if sinners repent.
    When it comes to Prosperity Gospel cults, one of which our Dear Leader belongs to, that god is very easy to understand. Nothing to do with lying, deceit, etc. – such ‘flaws’ are not even a consideration. If you’re making money, you are good. If you’re not making money, you are bad. They wave the Christian bible around as a guide to what ‘not’ to do – such as feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit prisoners, be good stewards of creation, etc. That’s why income support is way below the poverty line, why refugees are imprisoned for years, why climate change isn’t an issue – they all get in the way of the good cult people making money.

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