It is a truth universally acknowledged that should anything go wrong while a Labor government is in power it’s their fault but Liberal governments are always the victim of unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances.
However little known the causes for such a disaster, the columnists and shock jocks will undoubtedly ascribe said catastrophe to Labor’s lack of attention, as in the Pink Batts scheme, or to Labor’s desire for a nanny state, as in any time they attempt to pass any legislation to protect people.
“My dear Mr Morrison,” said Gladys one fine day, “have you heard that there is an outbreak of Covid-19 in my state?”
“No,” replied Mr Morrison, “but I’m sure you’ll manage to keep it under control without relying on those silly lockdowns.”
“Yes, but we may need some financial assistance and you’ve just said that Victoria won’t be getting any, so…”
“My dear Gladys, how can you even compare yourself to Victoria. Why you only have to ask and I shall get young Joshua to open up the purse and give you whatever assistance you need.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gladys as she gave a delightful little curtsy.
All right, I know some of you aren’t Jane Austen fans so you probably won’t appreciate my attempts to turn the whole absurdity of NSW into some ironic novel… Although it is tempting to keep going until I work out whether to make Daryl into a modern-day Darcy…
But other events caught up before I could finish the whole novel.
For example, there was Matt Canavan’s tweet asking if the Taliban were going to commit to net-zero. This was so offensive that even his colleagues tried to distance themselves from it. Personally, I couldn’t understand the point he was trying to make. Was he suggesting that the Taliban would commit to net zero, so we shouldn’t be like them, or was he suggesting that they wouldn’t, so we should copy them?
Either way, the whole tweet was overshadowed by the chaos of the withdrawal, which was always going to be messy, according to President Biden. Nobody could have predicted that an army, which had previously been unable to defeat the Taliban with US help would think that it was better to run away than stay and be slaughtered.
Whatever, there was nothing Scotty and the team could have done, unless they’d known the future but they didn’t so the idea that they could have prepared a contingency plan where they tried to get those who’d helped the Aussies out prior to the pull-out assumes a level of thinking about the future that seems beyond this government. “Water bombers to fight bushfires? But why would need them when the fires were last year. We need to be sourcing vaccines which we meant to get but we weren’t aware. it was a race until someone pointed out that the big noise was the starter’s pistol. and Australia was about to get lapped, but never mind because we’re doing just fine now and look at how many vaccines we’ve delivered/how many Afghans we’ve taken/how much money we’ve saved by not building all the car parks we promised!”
On a personal note, today marks two weeks since my second Astra Zeneca injection, but like so much of Australia, I’m in lockdown. For many Victorians, this is particularly hard and am aware of the toll that lockdown can have on one’s mental health.
Having said that, I must say that I find it disturbing how concerned some pundits are with mental health and depression when they’ve never seemed to give a toss about it previously and anyone who’s brought it up has been labelled a “bleeding heart lefty” and told that they should harden up because this younger generation has had it too easy and a dose of national service in the army would do them all a world of good.
Yes, it’s the contradiction that gets me. I’m not suggesting that lockdown is easy, nor am I saying that kids unable to go to the playground won’t find it tough. I’m just wondering why now the same people who’ve been saying “Harden up, princess!” whenever anyone has talked about asylum seekers in detention, or the unemployed or any marginalised group, now suddenly find the fact that people are doing it hard a cause to be embraced.
It’s almost like they’re pushing an « open up the economy and consequences be damned » agenda!
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