Politics in Australia has descended into the pit of the abyss.
Take note! The conservative forces in politics are about to unleash one massively negative campaign upon an unsuspecting Australian electorate. The Liberal/National Coalition, devoid of any remaining life-saving credentials, will be unrelenting in their efforts to demonise and defecate on the Opposition, all in the name of winning at any cost.
They will employ all manner of fear, skullduggery, deceit, confusion, wedging and sheer deviousness, in a desperate effort to regain lost ground and minimise the damage their behaviour over the past five years, has created.
Take note! We can expect that they will say anything, claim anything, make full use of their sympathetic right-wing media attack dogs, misuse their departmental offices, produce misleading reports and make desperate, unsubstantiated claims about any issue they feel might reflect poorly on Bill Shorten and the Labor Party.
In doing so, they will try every known trick in the book and beyond, to deflect attention from their own shortcomings, their disunity, their own disgraceful behaviour. They will do everything they can to ensure all the media attention is concentrated on Labor.
As sad and pathetic as that might sound right now, that is the state of play. The Coalition has its back to the wall. They realise only too well, that their only hope of winning the election in May, is to paint the Opposition in the darkest possible light and to aim their artillery directly at Bill Shorten. One can only imagine how low they will stoop and the depths of deceit they are willing to go.
We are witnessing it already being played out in a warm-up run, if you will, with outrageous claims by Christopher Pyne and Peter Dutton about all refugees on Manus and Nauru being brought here on medical grounds within weeks.
Pyne, Dutton and others are claiming that the boats (not those bloody boats again) will be cranking up their wobbly, unserviced engines, as if they are already lined up, full of asylum seekers, just waiting to leave some undisclosed Indonesian port, once this week’s Storer, or Phelps Medivac bill has been passed.
Those bloody boats. Really? This pathetic mantra has been played and played and played now for nearly twenty years. The Coalition believes its venom is still virile enough to strike fear into the hearts and minds of a gullible electorate. One wonders though, whether Australians are not so heartily sick of it today that they have turned off already and wonder why Morrison et al bother.
Then there is the economy and this obsession with producing a budget surplus. Are we not also sick to death of that as well? But sick of it or not, it is about to be thrust down our throats once more. All this and more because, for the Coalition, the thought of losing the election, makes them shudder. For them, it is Armageddon.
Not for them a turn on the Opposition benches. That’s no fun. That’s too hard.
Never mind the failures they refuse to own; the underutilisation of our workforce, their soft pedal on the banks, their inability to develop a sustainable national energy platform, not to mention any semblance of a climate change policy, a properly funded health service or a cutting edge education standard.
For the Coalition, it is all about winning, not governing, just winning. Christopher Pyne has said as much. “Politics is trapped in a self-obsessed and panic-prone spiral that is damaging Parliament’s ability to work for the good of voters.” That is code for not being able to get anything of substance done.
He also explained (finally), some of the thinking inside the party room meeting that saw Malcolm Turnbull sacked.
David Wroe in Sunday’s Sydney Morning Herald wrote, “Opening up on last year’s leadership turmoil, Mr Pyne also said Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton was “electorally unpopular” outside his home state of Queensland and would have damaged the Liberal Party’s chances of winning the federal election had he been installed as leader.”
One suspects that’s all the Liberal party thinks about….It’s all about winning. Not governing, just winning. Let government take care of itself. Any idiot can govern, but better us idiots than some other idiots.
But here’s the kicker. Never underestimate the ability of the electorate to fall for their rhetoric and vote against its own best interests. For a party devoid of policies and effective leadership, a negative campaign by the Coalition is all they have and for them, as lazy as they are, it’s the path of least resistance, one in which they have form. Remember the ‘debt and deficit’ farce?
But, the results can be devastating for an Opposition. Take note! The election is not won, until it’s won.
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