Day to Day Politics: 2016 – What can one say, but f…?
29 November 2016
As is my custom on Sunday mornings I watch the ABC’s Insiders program while enjoying a hot mug of tea. Barry Cassidy was interviewing Liberal recurrent interviewee, Matthias Cormann, when it occurred to me just how much he and Scott Morrison are alike in so much as they both have the capacity to say a lot without making sense of anything.
I honestly thought it was one of the worst interviews I had seen. But it wasn’t entirely his fault. It’s just that he really has nothing positive to say. The Conservatives have governed us for 14 of the past 20 years and they are still blaming the other side.
Then Cassidy mentioned that it was the second last show for the year and it dawned on me that the year was almost over. Soon it will be Christmas, the Australian Open in January, followed by the start of the football season and then, another Budget. Oh, I forgot the MYEFO report 19 December.
“Where has 2016 gone?”, I thought. They say it goes quicker when you are older and I can testify to the truth of it. So I began reflecting on the year. I must have written over 300 pieces for The AIMN. Goodness knows how many comments from our loyal supporters the blog has acquired.
As I began to jot down events, people and things that mattered ,or somehow didn’t, my inner judgement was that it had been a manifestly horrible year for the world and its inhabitants. We haven’t progressed in terms of making it a better place. The young are so busy discovering themselves, the world they live in and their place in it that they are apt to neglect the fact that it is they who are the custodians of tomorrow. The old are tired, concerned and disillusioned. Those in-between are angry and brainwashed on capitalism’s greed.
Wars are still being fought by men who have never grown up. Any meaningful resolution to the problems in the Middle East (and elsewhere for that matter) will not be resolved without the transformation of the minds of men. Millions upon millions of men women and children have been made refugees as a result of the cruel intensity of continuous bombing that creates even more.
Answers seem non-existent so we plod on in our ignorance thinking that the unwinnable struggles only possible victory ‘peace’ seemingly conceals itself in the labyrinth of the hearts of men.
All of this fighting has its origins in religion and I have come to the conclusion that one of the truly bad effects religion (any religion) has on people is that it teaches that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
Besides those who have lost their lives to perpetuate the hard-headedness of man’s inhumanity to man this year has seen the death of truth and the subversion of the English language as we understand it.
The new norm has become “take me seriously but not literally”.
And a new threat has emerged. It will take time to digest and process the fact that the citizenry of America either in their wisdom or lack of it, elected as their leader a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, full of racial hatred, bile and misogyny. A deluded pathetic liar and sexual predator who I would have thought unsuitable for the highest office in the world. A person who sees complex problems and impregnates them with populism and implausible black and white solutions.
His leadership will affect every country in every corner of the globe and if he were to carry through with the derisory policies he spruiked during the campaign then the world might end up in a lengthy recession.
At a time when what the world needs is less nationalism and more internationalism we witnessed the election of Trump, the British exit from the European Union and the return of Hanson. They were but a reflection of the dissatisfaction people have with. Institutionalised, neoliberal politics. The politics of the past.
The electorate is not in the mood for parties who ignore their concerns. Concerns it has to be said perpetrated by a propagandist Murdoch press.
The result has been that the people’s of all the nations of the world increasingly seem to be having less to say about their destiny.
In Australia we have a democracy in crisis. It is not a democracy of the people for the people, noble and transparent-for the common good. We have government corrupted by the ambition of politicians crawling over each other to obtain self-gratification through self-entitlement. Service is but a forgotten word.
The now self-serving Government when in Opposition was found guilty of deliberately trying to overthrow the government of the day. On appeal the charge was dismissed but the stench of it still lingers in the halls of parliament. Corruption like rust spreads itself throughout parliament.
It is a government who has abdicated its responsibility to make decisions like in the case of marriage equality it wanted to ask the public to make judgements it was elected to arrive at.
A government with no imagination with a Deputy Prime Minister who is prone to brain explosions and is intellectually out of his depth leading a party with too much power relative to its vote.
An Immigration Minister who places innocent people in incarceration for life to deter others from seeking asylum. The cruelty is astonishing. last week he couldn’t bring himself to describe second and third generation Lebanese immigrants as Australian. Mind you, he walked out on Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generation too.
An Attorney General consistently embroiled in scandal. One who is currently alleged to have abused the constitution. He has adopted the time-honoured course of conservatives of blaming others and this time it’s Joe Hockey.
A Treasurer who talks down to people, always with an answer given with raised over speak voice and questionable reason. He and his government have long criticised Labor’s debt and deficit when in power but it’s almost certain that on 19 November the MYEFO update will show that its performance will surpass Labor’s by $50 billion or so.
He is also a Treasurer totality ideologically inflexible. So much so that the Australian taxpayer will continue to fund people with many negatively geared properties to the tune of $7billion.Everyone knows it is just plain wrong.
It is a government full of MPs ideologically unrepresentative of its party’s original philosophical platform, full of right-wing tea party American republican types, who don’t believe in science, are racist in their outlook and intent on legislating people’s right to hate one another.
A government where corruption and incompetence flourish. Internal fighting rife, with leadership, devoid of any vision for the country. It simply governs for those who have when inequality is rife, and opportunity scarce. It continually looks back to a time when people knew their place and occupied it, never realising that the danger in looking back to often is that you lose the will to go forward.
Malcolm Turnbull obtained the office of Prime Minister with a calculated mixture of personal charm, reasonableness, and consummate diplomacy. He presented a façade of calm confidence and understanding in stark contrast to Abbott, the man he replaced, who showed all of the traits of someone who has lost control of his thought processes.
As it turned out we elected a hypocrite who was prepared to give up all that we thought he stood for, for the sake of power. He was to learn that power is a malevolent possession when you are prepared to forgo your principles and your country’s well-being for the sake of it and hung on by only a seat in the consequent July election. He has ended up as only a puppet to the party’s extreme right.
For his part Abbott has taken it upon himself to recreate Turnbull in his own image and in his frequent interludes into Prime Ministerial business via any interview he can get, more or less, gives a commentary on his conversion.
We are expected to put to one side the old Malcolm Turnbull and embrace the new one with unbridled fondness.
The trouble is that ”when we look at Malcolm Turnbull, we hear Tony Abbott”.
In the information age, those who control the dissemination of news have more power than government. The Australian media has delivered us yet another year of biased mediocre propaganda telling us that poverty is the fault of the victim but wealth comes from virtue and both are the natural order of things. Unregulated capitalism is still king. The economic merry-go-round will continue unabated. Drip down theory will never be obsolete so long as the rich get rich but the poor never get richer.
All in all 2016 has been an absolutely disastrous year for the world and for Australia. With Trump in power we can only look forward with trepidation. Uncertainty will rule for some time to come or until such time as men and women of intellectual sagacity, wisdom and judiciousness come forward prepared to turn institutionalized philosophical politics on its head and govern for the common good.
We are in the throes of great change and there is a revolution in the making. People are both confused and concerned about national identity, equality, the place of religion, climate change, over population, open or closed society, nationalism versus internationalism and why the rich are becoming absurdly richer at their expense.
My thought for the day.
“The ability of thinking human beings to blindly embrace what they are being told without referring to evaluation and the consideration of scientific fact, truth and reason, never ceases to amaze me. It is tantamount to the rejection of rational explanation”.
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Return to home pageJohn, as ever, you sum it all up very well. With the government elected by the non thinking part of our population, we are just one stop short of a DJT outcome. When I see the (on media reports) destruction wrought by the savage & senseless bombing in the meddle east, brought about by the three amigo’s, Bush Blair and Howard, I wonder just how they will ever rebuild any of those cities and townships, and the world will have an ongoing refugee crisis. What have we elected as leaders in so called civilised countries are self centered and self serving, with no thoughts for the people who put them there and no plans for a future, other than a bleak one.
John, I agree but this post hasn’t exactly made my day, or my morning cuppa for that matter. Like most of your readers I’ve enjoyed your thoughts because you crystalise my frustrations and articulate them so much better than I can. Thanks for the year’s thoughts. Stay well and please keep posting.
“The Australian media has delivered us yet another year of biased mediocre propaganda telling us that poverty is the fault of the victim but wealth comes from virtue and both are the natural order of things. Unregulated capitalism is still king. The economic merry-go-round will continue unabated. Drip down theory will never be obsolete so long as the rich get rich but the poor never get richer.”
To me all of our problems centre around the economics. Until we address those issues not just by ridding ourselves of the neo Liberal cancer but revisiting the whole economic dialogue!
Mr. Lord, a very real and sad read.
“Abbott has taken it on himself to recreate Turnbull in his own image”,
I would go further than this ,having watched Question Time yesterday.
Our PM , Hon. Dutton, Hon Morrison, Hon . Joyce, Hon Pyne ie the front bench, gave me the impression that they have all morphed into Abbott like “attack dogs”. All fury , very loud …but no substance.
I find it hard to swallow their bellowing about the “lying destructive” opposition when as with Abbot their answers to questions are full of evasion, half truths and outright lies.
Perhaps we should call them the “Abbott” party.
They seem to feel the need to yell to the point where they are almost chocking., as if their yelling would make all crap they come out with truth.
What baffles me is that the PM is still seen as the best person for PM! Any thoughts on this?
So why do we need armed guards in Parliament…is it to remind us we are unsafe? No children on the lawns!!! Whose house is it any way??? Obviously not ours.
Thank you for your informative posts..we need them.
thankyou John, for your watchful morning cuppa & comments. It’s strangely comforting to see your sentiments & reflections on an asylum of greed, corruption, mis-information & ignorance.
“What baffles me is that the PM is still seen as the best person for PM! Any thoughts on this?”
I don’t think it has anything to do with policy or performance – in fact I am sure it doesn’t. I think partly it is due to the very superficial look thing – he looks and sounds more like a PM – or he used to. Nowadays he vascillates between deer in the headlights vacuous smiling as he tells us how happy he is, and attempting to do Abbott attack dog unconvincingly.
But I also think it is the baggage that Bill brings to the job. There is that nagging doubt that all the leadership machinations were stepping stones. There is also doubt from his union time where he undoubtedly did good things for workers but also seemed to already be on his self-promotion path.
Bill does well when in the right setting. His solo performance on Q&A comes to mind and they say his town hall meetings went well too. He is much better unscripted, without the rehearsed pauses and practised eye contact and expressions.
Talking about Insiders on the ABC last Sunday. In case anybody missed it, the Talking Pictures segment with Mike Bowers and eating the raw onion was hilarius ; http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/
The Federal Govt with its “budget repair” (which the ALP seems to be repeating) has keen eyesight in one direction (downwards) and wilful blindness (upwards). The tax gatherer is like a camper, looking for firewood and goes looking for thin starved twigs and ignoring fat rich logs. The twigs are easy to bring back and the fat logs are difficult. The fire provides little warmth. The new French right wing contender has just come up with a brand new idea: reducing corporate taxes sharply. The wealth will trickle down, no doubt. Why not try for the coup de grace for Joe Average. REMOVE corporate taxes altogether. This would reduce corporate tax avoidance by 100%. Isn’t that great? I’m sure Murdoch could convince the average Terror/Hun reader that this would result in largesse showering on the underclass. They are the same ones who ring up shock jocks to suck up to the usual right wing agenda, Average Joes (and Joelenes) all. I note that despite Trump’s populist noises, he seems to be quietly coming up with suspiciously neo-con economic agenda items such as a tax reduction for the rich tapering off to not very much at all (further down the income brackets). I’m sure that all the sheep heading into the Trump abattoir bleating enthusiastically will be untroubled by this, reassured by the various agencies that Trump affected to despise, grudgingly falling into line to enthuse with “jobs and growth” murmurings. The more things change… We’ve been sold this mendacious nonsense for 30+ years now and trickle down economics have never been demonstrated by those in power but they have no other alternatives. If their car was bogged, they’d put the foot on the accelerator, burying their wheels deeper and deeper. TINA. There Is No Alternative. There are occasional gleams of light from Labor, but they subside, exhausted, after elections. It must be tiring keeping up a convincing facade. What do you do when you have low to middle wage stagnation? Give more to the rich. Of course.
You ain’t seen nothing yet. The mining industry continues to shed jobs, the car manufacturing industry closes at the end of 2017, the FTA’s have ensured the rapid decline of most of the manufacturing industry, the job opportunities associated with clean energy and transitioning to environmental sustainability are being deliberately stalled, government services and employment are being cut, agriculture struggles to provide well paid jobs and invariably seeks to use temporary visa workers, the real estate bubble in the major cities could burst at any time which will badly effect construction activity and wealth disparity continues to increase that further suppresses consumption demand and sales.
Where are the promised jobs? Some jobs will be created in defence but the cost management of projects is truly appalling and far too much equipment is imported as our governments do not have the good sense to build up capabilities over the decades required.
The top few percent are however happy and so the Liberal/National Coalition has done what it has been paid to do.
Dear Lord,
Your piece today summed up the situation by what was missing from your page:
43 male references with 3 female references and two of those “men and women” leaving ” hanson” as the lone woman.
Kaye,
This morning had a piece on brandis who spoke on camera and the snippet finished with the female journalist’s throw away line, a snide reference to shorten’s calling brandis corrupt. A word that since the bjelke days has meant a brown paper bag. It shows how desperate these autocue journalists are for a stoush.
Until billy is brave enough to front sunrise and today to stir the pot and to show his face he will forever languish in the shadow of beasley nice bloke but not a leader..
2016 has been a bad year for Aus politics. Coz we know the LNP buffoons are interested only in themselves, we need Greens and Labor working together for us
Kay Lee , thank you…it makes sense.
The other thing I noticed watching that ridiculous Question Time is that Labor , appear to be more respectful, quiet whilst still getting their point across.
Perhaps it is the influence of the leader.
The LNP act like Abbott did when he was leader …so who is the LNP’s leader?
Hmmm, that was a pretty good article.
John Lord writes an article for us almost daily, I don’t expect perfection from any writer here, every time….perfection is boring methinks.
I have to say though, I missed John yesterday, it was ‘Orchid Jars’ all over the place, no matter were I looked…
As for Turnbull , ‘Malcolm Turnbull obtained the office of Prime Minister with a calculated mixture of personal charm, reasonableness, and consummate diplomacy.’…Yes , all calculated, not genuine; the man is not charming nor diplomatic, and as Keating said: he has no judgement…
The unrelenting pursuit of growth in our finite world will ensure that John Lord will have a lot more and more severe political and economic failures to write about in 2017.
The ABCC shows that brandis is a man able to request compliance and agree to requests for compliance.
Great to see the dixxxbransims pointing out the sillyness of this government and getting a run on karl baby’s show.
Fortunately the disrespectful attacks by Penny Wong were not exposed,
Shorten’s respect for malcolm is reflected by his reluctance to use the rabbott in question time. His answer would be interesting.
Perhaps on the morning shows, Labor could laugh at the rabbott with a little byeline ‘in 2013 you called a debt crisis, is the tripling of the debt by trunbull a disaster?’
They say that the legislative process is a bit like making sausages : you really don’t want to see how your snag was made.
the Backpacker Tax is a classic case of a very dodgy salami but one that would be well received at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
I still cannot believe that we have passed into law the 95% tax on superannuation savings. If I were a backpacker being told that 9.5% of my earnings had by law to be placed into a superannuation savings account. Then, when I was preparing to leave Australia and draw down on “my savings” to be told that the Australian government would take 95 cents in the dollar, it would leave a very nasty taste in my mouth.
Seems our bush-ranger heritage is alive and well !
Thanks John, another good article. Sums up the edifice of what is politely called “government” well. We have in Turnbull an almost perfect clone of Abbott.
Agree with your thoughts John, democracies around the world are in trouble. We face huge issues like climate change and massive inequalities the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. Our media is now post truth our democracy has been sold to the highest bidder. We are in transition, where change is inevitable, but the forces that are trying to prevent change seem overwhelming.
Hi John, you still haven’t learned. There was no old Malcolm. There is only Malcolm, a man who desires power (because in his own judgment he is a vastly superior being to all commoners) above all. If there was a change in the LNP, for crying out loud a true left shift, he would be Mr. Ober-Communist. If the LNP was to swing to hate the coal industry tomorrow (god forbid ;-)), he would be the Ober-Enemy of the coal industry.
Malcolm has no conviction other than power at all costs. Character traits are conveniences to befuddle the masses. One set of character traits is easily dropped for another. Whatever it takes.
That is the real Malcolm. There was no other. The other will not return, unless the law of clinging to power demands yet another shift.
The forces trying to prevent trunbull’s changes, labor and the loonies, are hardly overwhelming with a minority in both houses??
Totally agree John,… Matthias Cormann and Scott Morrison are alike in so much as they both have the capacity to say a lot without making sense of anything. Agreed, and not just on one occasion at times they sound like blithering eejiots.
And, The Conservatives have governed us for 14 of the past 20 years and they are still blaming the other side.But assisted by our right wing LNP biased media it seems like Labor has been in government more than them.
The many democratic transgressions of by our current LNP government should be a clarion call to us all. We must resist this concentration of power in the hands of a government who actively conspires to keep the truth from us and who silences those who would speak it.
Klaus, John writes that Turnbull obtained the office of Prime Minister with a CALCULATED mixture of personal charm, reasonableness, and……etc.
To me that says that John knows Malcolm pretty well. As for myself, I naively thought he’d be better than Tones, I have come to realise that he is worse.
Both Mal and Tones are basically interested in BEING the PM, it’s about them, not us, not about the country..
to helvityni,
I posted twice yesterday on the same thread. Twice. Hardly what one would call “OrchidJar’s all over the place”.
I was trying to make a contribution. You should try it some time.
to John,
Yes, people are very confused. I’d like to add a corollary to your wonderful summation:
“And a new threat has emerged. It will take time to digest and process the fact that the citizenry of America either in their wisdom or lack of it, elected as their leader a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, full of racial hatred, bile and misogyny. A deluded pathetic liar and sexual predator who I would have thought unsuitable for the highest office in the world. A person who sees complex problems and impregnates them with populism and implausible black and white solutions.”
And his election has made visible the deep fissures running through, not just the Republcans who were said pre eelction to be in a state of near collapse, but the Democrats (and by implication, all of us on the left).
Right wing politics have us surrounded, from the US to Europe, and our homefont under the stewardship of high school boys.
I would be quite depressed if I hadnt read this line from some lark yeserday:
Brandis throws Hockey under a bus.
Bus in serious condition.
“You should try it some time”.
helvityni has been a regular commenter here for quite a while. Her opinions are respected and she is highly regarded.
Michael, that may well be case. However I don’t appreciate the suggestion that
I’ve carpet bombed this blog.
I will also not let those kinds of underhanded slurs go without redress.
Agree with Shevill Mathers 100% the “geed is Good” mob are still streaking the world and Australia follows this mob like cowards with no guts whatsoever……little Johnny Howard the “man of steel” bush reiterated on the MSM makes me puke just thinking about it.
I have to confess that once I realised Cormansplain was the guest on Insiders, I recorded the show and fast-forwarded over the interview. In 3 years of government, I have yet to hear ANY comment from Cormann or Scomo that I was remotely interested in listening to, or was not utterly sickened by. Mind you, while Wong was Finance Minister, she also displayed a phenomenal ability to say a lot but never actually answer any questions – now in Opposition, she is much more blunt and to the point with her responses and I guess that is simply because she doesn’t have to explain her actions. Of course, Scomo and Cormann can’t explain their actions because they are largely inexplicable when subjected to even moderate scrutiny or analysis..
What is really interesting to me is that in the present sick political system, the Republicans were so desperate to damage Obama that they essentially denied their own citizens measures that might have actually benefited many Americans – including Republicans. In Australia, we have dolts like Scomo and Cormann, Pyne and Joyce (and they are not, in my view, as bad as Brandis, Sinodinos, Dutton and O’Dwyer) who will lie about their performance and lie to protect the interests of those who hold the reins of power in the Coalition and to keep power rather than simply aiming to do their jobs better – for the good of all. And yet on a weekly basis, their latest screw-up is being announced in the media.
But one thought about the disaffected. I wonder how many of them are grumpy in their McMansions. How many are grumpy behind the wheel of their SUV or dual-cab ute (the latter usually packaged under a novated lease) while they threaten other road users but in the meantime use untold fossil fuel. Grumpy when they pay substantial power bills but don’t ever think that they now have more appliances than ever before, all draining massive amounts of power – charging mobiles, tablets, running air-con 24/7 in summer, running 5 or 6 computers and TV’s at once). They are grumpy all of the time, but the problems of society are never caused by them – Scomo, Cormann, Hanson, Trump, et alia are telling them it is Muslims and Asians to blame and they like that, because for the most part they lack the capacity to examine themselves in the context of the greater scheme. Millions of Germans believed Hitler too, but a mere 10 years later, sitting in the ruins of their cities, they realised that their sons, husbands, fathers, mothers, daughters, sisters had died fighting for the vision of a madman – but then it was too late. The sad fact is most voters are incapable of deep thought, so when a Hanson or a Trump gives a message in what seems like “plain speak”, the “thinking” of the masses, or what passes for thought, is done – their beliefs have formed their opinion.
As long as we don’t start looking after those bastard Australian citizens. How dare they want to look after their own before they look after others. Give Australia to other countries who need it. Good on you John!
Thank you John, all too true.
“The now self-serving Government when in Opposition was found guilty of deliberately trying to overthrow the government of the day. On appeal the charge was dismissed but the stench of it still lingers in the halls of parliament. Corruption like rust spreads itself throughout parliament.”
Have you noticed how their brazenness (Federal and State) appears to be borne of abject desperation? Like they’re painfully aware that time isn’t on their side, so they’ve set a course to pillage all and sundry as quickly (and quietly) as they can? I think they’ve realized even their ‘voting base’ are a little weary, so we are blessed with LNP Looters, instead of Leaders.