Ok, it’s not a joke. I’ve checked.
First we hear that Phil Ruddock is to be made Special Envoy For Human Rights. I did think that maybe the word “for” was meant to be “against” and that bloody autocorrect had done its worst again, but no, Phil Ruddock is leaving Parliament to be the Special Envoy For Human Rights. You remember, fabulous Phil who declared that sleep deprivation wasn’t torture. The man who wore an Amnesty International badge while locking up asylum seekers.
And today I wake up to the news that Greg Hunt has been named “Best Minister in The World” and not in true Liberal fashion by Greg Hunt, himself. It was done by the World Government Summit. And no, before anyone asks this is not some organisation linked to wrestling or a satiric site. It’s a genuine, bona fide, ridgy didge, fair dinkum summit which includes President Obama as one of the speakers. And some of its ideas even sound worthwhile.
But if Greg Hunt is truly the best minister in the world, what sort of a mess must the other countries be in?
When you look at the published scoring methodology, the report becomes even more mystifying:
Scoring Methodology:
The methodology for scoring the applications will be based on the following criteria:
- Innovation & Leadership The solution that was introduced by the candidate will have revolutionized the utilization of Government Services by its citizens. This work of true innovation will have increased productivity, reduced costs and improve the citizen’s opinion of the Government.
- Quality & Impact The solution should address the needs of the citizens and must demonstrate a significant social impact. Significant social impact includes but is not limited to easily accessible government services for all citizens, efficiency in execution, human development impact, job creation, etc.
- Replication The solution must have the quality of being easily replicated in multiple geographies. The solution should demonstrate propensity for impact beyond the local level, either nationally, regionally or globally.
- Reputation The candidate must be highly credible amongst his peers and the general public. The candidate must have a proven record amongst his peers of developing innovative solutions that have positively impacted the citizens.
So one has to ask, was Hunt the only person nominated, or did they confuse him with someone else?
Did the people scoring the award really think that turning away from an emissions trading scheme to the Liberals Direct Hand Back The Money To Your Backers Scheme was better? Or was it for his wonderfully innovative idea that you can protect the Great Barrier Reef by arguing that it doesn’t need protecting.
Whatever, I’m looking forward to seeing Tony Abbott being given the role of Sex Discrimination, Andrew Bolt being made head of the CSIRO and Clive Palmer being given the role of Auditor-General (Bronwyn Bishop can’t have it because she intends to stay in Parliament no matter what happens and that includes her losing her seat in an election).
The strange thing is that if I’d written this yesterday I could have put the respective appointments of Greg Hunt and Philip Ruddock on that list and it wouldn’t have looked out of place.
But lots of things happen that we don’t expect. Like the Liberals speculating about an increase to the GST when they’d assured us all before the election that talk of a GST rise was just a Labor scare campaign. And then, even more surprisingly, having risked electoral backlash by raising the subject, Malcolm suggests that it’s not really something that they intend to do.
So, having ruled out an increase to the GST – at least until after the election – Mr Turnbull is turning his attention to another area likely cause problems: outsourcing Medicare.
Why?
One theory is that he wants to whittle away his lead so that Labor don’t replace Shorten, but that seems about as likely as Tony Abbott sticking around because Murdoch promised that he could get rid of Turnbull and make him PM again.
But I think that the more likely idea is that he wants to get us talking about things that aren’t actual policy so we don’t notice that since becoming PM, he hasn’t actually done anything apart from pose for photos and say how committed he is to something, even if like innovation and the CSIRO, the commitment seems about as long lasting as a Britney Spears wedding.
Whatever, if Greg Hunt IS the best it certainly explains the world’s inability to solve some of the really complex problems like Syria and wealth inequality.
Come to think of it, it explains the world’s inability to solve some of our simplist problems.
