Josh and Scotty’s excellent adventure can have no happy ending.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr’s snap lockdown forces PM fan-boy, Josh Frydenberg to doss-down at The Lodge, in ScoMo ‘n Frydo’s Canberra Sleepover, a lightweight sitcom pilot about mateship, relatability and who does the washing-up.
In Episode One – An Odd Coupling – scripted by professionally coached, empath and noted folk-orator, Scott “Demosthenes” Morrison, the PM puts up his Treasurer in the now, largely vacant, forty-room, 1927, Georgian revival mansion, the PM’s, Deakin bolt-hole, which, like Old Parliament House, was, wisely, never intended to be a permanent residence. Buoyed by a landmark oration, he preps Josh to flog his vision.
Only Frydenberg could lead by arguing in The Australian that we must open up because we’re all going stir-crazy and our economy is up shit-creek.
Embrace fear, the dark or the dawn – it’s still not clear which – Morrison tells a mystified House of Reps. His pitch includes the idea that The Croods, a 2013 DreamWorks animated movie about cave dwellers, is an allegory for our times. Some MPs are reminded, instead, of the PM’s modest intellectual horizons, which a wag reckons you could easily stroll up to and back before breakfast. Horizons, were all the rage, in June, when the PM flourished a document, coyly entitled Covid Vaccination Horizons.
Leigh Sales made fun of his evasiveness. “One of the grandest euphemisms I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist.”
And his ear of tin – this is a PM who, lamely, defends his decision to take a family holiday in Hawaii, at the height of the bushfires, a year ago, as equivalent to “a plumber taking that extra contract on a Friday afternoon.”
“Well, gee, I bet it felt good to get that out,” he tells Grace Tame after her moving and powerful speech, detailing her experience of abuse and her determination not to remain silent, at the Australian of the Year Awards.
“Are you better off now than you were 4 million years ago?’ is similarly crass tagline from The Croods, which our PM sees as a parable to help him pitch his proposal that we sacrifice our health, well-being and security in “learning to live with” the Coronavirus pandemic; a “National Plan” of his own devising, which he sprung on the states in July. It’s worked so well, after all, in the UK and in Trump’s USA.
Morrison’s “plan” is a punt; a political gamble with all risk of infection, chronic illness, death and the collapse of the NSW hospital system falling on everyone but himself. Doherty is the fall guy. He’ll do or say anything to secure his own dull, political survival.
A “safe plan,” urges a man who is so desperate to be “the man with a plan” that he invents thousands of lives, (which miraculously become “millions upon millions” in Question Time, Monday), – of lives which we’ve saved already. The concept of extrapolating a figure from other OECD countries is flimsy, if not patently absurd. But the PM spruiks his plan with a reckless desperation. He morphs into your crazy punter mate, the coat tugger, who’s done his all dough but won’t leave you alone; insisting that you put all the money you’ve got left on Dead Certainty in the 4:35 at Doomben.
But Morrison is more malignant than a mug punter. He does not have agreement from the premiers. It’s neither national nor a plan at all. Worse. It’s a white flag of surrender to the virus, an abdication of duty of care and a shameful capitulation to the corporate sociopaths and fat-cat-Liberal Party, mega-donors who call the shots, helped by a servile media; a tamed fourth estate. And Sky all over your web browser.
“We can’t live in lockdown for ever,” Frydenberg smirks, setting up yet another straw man. As if anyone proposes that lockdown is anything but a prudent interim measure.
Tuesday the PM talks up Team Australia, an Abbott era hangover, which ignores the fact that we are neither all of one accord, nor should we ever aspire to be. Nor are we all in this together. The pandemic hurts most those who have fewest resources, the elderly, the poor, recent migrants and first nations’ communities such as Wilcannia.
COVID-19 is rampaging through First Nations communities In western NSW, where, 11.6% if Indigenous Australians are fully vaccinated in contrast to 28.9% of non-Indigenous Australians report Anne Kavanagh, Helen Dickinson and Nancy Baxter in The Conversation. But it’s not as if the federal government did not time to act.
“Our indigenous people”, he shouts, The Great White Bwana of Question Time, patronising and glossing over his government’s abuse and neglect, seen most recently in report of a letter, written eighteen months ago, warning Ken Wyatt, the Morrison government’s Minister for Indigenous Australians of the grave risks faced by Wilcannia.
The Maari Ma Aboriginal health corporation writes to the Minister pleading with him to take action to prevent an outbreak. “Basic mathematics says that by the time our first hospital patient presents, around 100 cases will already exist in the community, and this is based on best case modelling.”
Yet the Morrison government’s response has been “chaotic, substandard and services are vulnerable to collapse” reports The Guardian Australia’s Lorena Allam. By Monday, Wilcannia records sixty-nine coronavirus cases in a population of 720, the highest transmission rate in NSW.
Despite its team rhetoric, inequality has increased during the pandemic, under a Coalition addicted to the myth of trickle-down economics and the lie that tax breaks for the rich lead to a prosperous community. More jobs. Instead, the nation gets a revealing demonstration of how a ruling class looks after its own, as ScoMo puts up Frydo.
Canberra Sleepover is a limited episode, series, artisan-crafted by PM Puffery™ to be a PR repair-patch for FIGJAM Frydenberg, who is overdue for an image upgrade since Julia Banks outed him as one of Scotty’s “bully-boys.”
Monday, Frydenberg’s all over the airwaves droning low, slow and ponderous; talking over those who know the plan is toxic bullshit. Beyond the public coercion of state premiers and chief ministers is a wilful misreading of the flawed Doherty report which is based on small numbers of community infection and a better standard of testing, tracing intervention and quarantine than NSW, the pariah state, will ever muster now after its fatal delay and its failure to take the pandemic seriously, even today.
Showing just how in touch he is with the average Australian, Frydenberg warns ABC Radio National listeners that residents in NSW and Victoria may be able to travel to Canada before Cairns, or Bali, before Perth. Planning an overseas trip may not be the first priority for the twenty-eight percent of NSW’s workforce, now underemployed.
Hours worked in New South Wales in July fell 7%, reports The Guardian’s Greg Jericho, taking a reliable measure of employment. It’s 40.5 million fewer hours in total, the third biggest drop in NSW history. A 0.9% drop in the number of people employed in the state is accompanied by a huge 28% increase in the number of people underemployed.
Rather than overseas flights, Australians will be faced with a health system in crisis. It’s possible that NSW doctors will have to extend their triage to exclude those over seventy from ICU. Already, they are forced to triage to preserve a hospital system, rapidly stretched to capacity. Since 30 July all non-urgent ,elective surgery is postponed.
Morrison also needs a reboot, given recent reports he continues to be rude, crude and abusive towards premiers and their staff, especially when anyone has the hide to seek genuine consultation, or ask what happened to the vax. And while the latest News Poll shows he’s up one per cent in the fatuous preferred PM question, his government is increasingly on the nose.
There is the smell of political death about the PM writes The Canberra Times’ Jack Waterford. The veteran joins Niki Savva in noting the unprecedented shift of power from the commonwealth to the states, a direct function of a weak, untrustworthy PM who increasingly reveals his lack of leadership in National Cabinet meetings. It may take the federation decades to recover from the collapse in Prime Ministerial leadership.
The Coalition’s primary vote drops to 36 per cent, according to News Poll – the party’s lowest since March 2019 and over two points below its May 2019, election result. Yet Labor support rises to 40 per cent – its best result in the poll since December 2018.
As Frydo and ScoMo buddy up, imagine a McCain Man Size Chicken Kiev pinging in the microwave, a few games of pool and Yes Minister on widescreen TV. Frydo, the 26 billion-dollar dill, sets out to regale ScoMo with his hilarious JobKeeper SNAFU. Peta Credlin’s $12 million reno, the cost of two new builds, makes The Lodge almost liveable.
But Credlin’s eye-watering overspend, helped by thirty changes to the original redesign brief, for a pad Albo never got to crash in, is dwarfed by Frydo’s free money plan. Labor’s Andrew Leigh, who says the Morrison government knew and did nothing about the massive overspend, commissions a report by the Parliamentary Budget Office, (PBO).
“By mid-2020, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg already had a report from Treasury warning that billions of dollars of JobKeeper were going to firms with rising revenue,” Dr Leigh says. “The Morrison government is yet to explain how it saved jobs by giving money to firms such as Best & Less, AP Eagers, Premier Investments and Accent Group.”
Frydenberg was gulled by wily business types – who were only too happy to forecast losses due to Covid – into doling out $25 billion in as many weeks, the PBO reports to the ATO.
A tidy $13 billion goes to firms which increase their profits, reports John Kehoe in the AFR. Laugh? Any other treasurer would get the ATO to raise a debit in their tax return. Bake it into JobKeeper law. It’s already a standard ATO procedure.
But not “business-friendly” Frydenberg. He leaves it up to hard-nosed tycoons to decide. If they want to pay back a lazy $13 billion, they can. Or not, as the case may be. Or so he says. Besides it’s the law, now. His own bad law. It’s an incomprehensible error. A colossal stuff-up, even for a Morrison government, whose pandemic response, alone, combines criminal negligence with a catastrophic failure in quarantine, aged care and vaccine supply and distribution.
For $13 billion, you could build a solar farm covering all of Far North Queensland, the AFR’s Joe Aston, estimates. He’s talking quality German panels not “the cheap Uighur slave ones on Fortescue’s solar plant at Chichester.“
But let’s not be too harsh. Glad-handed Frydo may be channelling his idol, Ronald Reagan, who, in two terms, took the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor. Reagan also falsely believed he’d served his country in wartime, as he confused his B-grade movie roles with reality, or what vaguely approximates reality, for any US President.
Reagan also helped the US de-industrialise, increased inequality, pushed personal savings into the red and increased government indebtedness, expressed as debt to GDP ratio. Sounds familiar? That’s because we make the same errors. Frydenberg’s certainly doing his bit. Team Australia? It’s a tale of two cities in Sydney, especially.
But $25 billion? It took the ADF fifteen, long, years to get Treasury to blow $25 billion on submarines, AFR’s Joe Aston notes. But that’s a bit unfair. Overnight, February 2015, military genius, Abbott, decreed a new “competitive evaluation process. Instead of tenders for contracts being based on suitability, time and place were the only criteria. Could subs be built in SA? And could a deal be announced in time for his next election campaign? Tony needed to win over a few Liberal MPs to shore up the budgie-smuggler’s waning popularity. A challenge from Fizza Turnbull was in the wind.
But let’s not take away from Frydo’s Olympic gold medal standard stuff-up. No wonder there’s no JobKeeper 2.0.
Fellow incompetent, “Photo-Opp” Morrison whose government is run by Mad Men; spin doctors and fixers, such as “The Butler”, Phil Gaetjens, a personal manservant, who cooks up a fix when the bell rings, as Labor’s Katy Gallagher has it, could swap his shaggy dog story of how he failed to buy vaccine, squibbed his quarantine responsibilities and let over eight hundred old folks die in a privatised aged care system, built to be fit for profit -not fit for purpose.
Phil’s just announced another delay into his investigation into who-knew-what about you-know-who and the Liberal staffer’s alleged, March 2019, rape of Brittany Higgins, who was the junior staffer, her former boss, Linda Reynolds supported by calling “a lying bitch.” Ms Higgins later receives a creepy “sleep tight” voicemail from Michaelia Cash.
ACT DPP, a superbly named, Shane Drumgold, says Gaetjens’ private and top secret inquiry “could be prejudicial” to the case being brought by an ACT police (AFP Canberra Office) with zero experience in bringing a rape case. Yet it’s very hard to see how and why. Morrison is pointedly refusing to guarantee that he will ever release his man-servant’s report. Perhaps it would make sense if we knew what Gaetjens asked Drumgold. Regardless, justice delayed is justice denied.
Still, Phil’s decision, taken after legal advice, will make doubly sure nothing comes out before the next election. It’s the same theme with Christian Porter who was going to clear his name in court, you remember, opting instead to make twenty-three pages of testimony off limits to journalists – held in a special, sealed envelope by the court.
Five weeks ago, ABC’s 7:30 Report challenged Frydo. But the Treasurer hasn’t got back. Because there is no explanation. Scott and Josh have a bit of a giggle over an Ableour single malt. Morrison riffs on his speech. Brags about his plan for an October election, or perhaps the following January, another miracle victory, with Clive’s help, in which he casts himself as setting the nation free from Labor lockdowns.
Cue the PM’s coercive control of the states. How good is taking Peter Doherty’s name in vain so often that the phrase Doherty Report now bears no relation to the original, nuanced, scientific modelling of the same name?
Morrison’s redefined Doherty as a licence to let ‘er rip when we’ve vaccinated 70-80% of the eligible population. Or 56% or 64 % of us, unless you include children in your duty of care and your calculation of risk. Yet he’s counting on our having short memories. It was only last year, August 2020, “Dr Morrison” was telling Sunrise audiences that 95 per cent of Australians would need to be vaccinated for a national immunisation program to be effective.
“You have got to get to herd immunity with any vaccines, and for those who are unable for absolute medical reasons, not able to take vaccines … they are the ones who rely on everybody taking it even more.”
But in July of that year, the PM was going to the footy, watching his Cronulla Sharks play the Penrith Panthers in an NRL match at the Kogarah Oval. In fact, forget the words, “Doherty” or “Plan”, Morrison has done a series of Olympic-standard backflips to arrive at the very place he began. Behind the thicket of verbiage, it’s “let ‘er rip”.
What Morrison’s urging on the state premiers is that they follow BoJo whose Freedom Day fiasco is followed now by a rise in UK cases, to a total of 6.6 million since February 2020 with 132,376 deaths. But, fear not, fellow cave-dwellers, our bogan with the slogan is also a word-salad wizard and he has twenty-twenty fortune-cookie vision.
“It is always darkest before the dawn, and I think these lockdowns are [a] demonstration of that, but the dawn is not far away and we are working towards that dawn and we are hastening towards the dawn. We should not delay it. We should prepare for it. We should not fear it. We should embrace it. And we should move forward together.”
Morrison’s Delta Dawn won’t go down in history as his finest hour, nor, even earn him an Andy Warhol five minutes of fame. It’s too long for starters. (Anything over five is the province of petty notoriety or infamy – and the hall of shame is already stuffed full with politicians and petty tyrants.) But he’s not bluffing anyone in his National Cabinet hoax.
The PM’s seen as an “evil bully” by Gladys Berejiklian, reports Peter Hartcher, who adds that the NSW Premier’s colleagues reject Dan Andrews’ PM for NSW gibe, in favour of “The PM for Morrison” in a piece which is a clue that just possibly, maybe, the premiers have had a gutful of The Prime Minister for Appearances and Announcements on whom you can rely only for his failure to deliver on his promises – his arrogance and his contempt for accountability.
Nowhere is this better seen in his government’s quarantine debacle. Hotel quarantine has led to twenty-seven outbreaks of Coronavirus, including the current NSW disaster, which quickly spreads across Victoria’s border where by Tuesday, seventy-six cases are reported out of a total of 841 and more mystery cases mean that the state-wide lockdown will not be lifted Thursday.
Cue another anti-Dan pile-on from our Murdoch-led media claque. Expect more anti-lockdown, Dictator Dan sniping. Look over there. Let’s not dwell on the 16 thousand, nine hundred active cases in NSW or its 137 deaths and 1164 cases since the pandemic began, Tuesday. Pollyanna Gladys is upbeat about the good times just around the corner. Or after October. Or whenever. She appears on Sky News urging other premiers to support the bogus national plan repeating the Morrison lie that they have “signed off” on it. All they have is a Clayton’s “agreement in principle.”
There is no corresponding clamour to rush to end lockdown from states such as South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, or territories such as the ACT and NT where the virus is yet to run rampant.
“There is simply no way Queensland or Western Australia are going to open their borders to people from NSW while the virus is running rampant in that state, and nor will Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania or SA commit to any course of action that will obviously endanger their populations,” notes The Monthly’s Nick Feik.
Scotty’s Office wonks are slaving to depict The Blue-Tongued Lizard of Oz, as our heroic liberator, battling Labor premiers who white-ant a national agreement -and also at war with Labor HQ, Federal Opposition’s yellow-bellied snakes -and what’s left of the left – after Labor’s tax and carbon abatement concessions and The Murdoch Empire’s jihad on Labor, joined by mining and media billionaire, Kerry Stokes’ Seven, a Liberal Party COMM’s Department outlet. And don’t forget Sky over everything networked.
The federal government pitch is you choose between its safe plan or you lose your freedoms, your jobs, your picnics, weddings, parties, everything and business goes bust. St Peter (Doherty) says. Amen. It’s a travesty of the real report.
Everywhere in our Vaccination Plan we’re hitting our marks, the PM claims. Yet as with fan-girl, Typhoid Mary Berejiklian, the PM over promises and under-delivers; he’s more your Uber Eats than Ubermensch.
A freedom Deliveroo will be heard ringing his bicycle bell to give us back our libertarian birthright. Never mind that federal government will soon legally “hack into or alter” your online communication, as its Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) became law, last Wednesday.
Neoliberals commodify everything and each other, as freedom rider, Auntie Gladys B, NSW’s lame duck Liberal Premier, makes clear in bizarre attempts, this week, to equate getting your hair or nails done with emancipation. Weddings with up to five guests are permitted as of Saturday, she says, but you’ll have to do your own hair and nails.
NSW schools will open late October in a staggered start plan which includes wishful thinking about younger children wearing masks, if they wish, and overlooks the fact that even “fully vaccinated teachers” can still carry a full viral load.
In this rosy-tinted perspective, there is no room for the fact that the world is a giant petri dish of eight billion people and that as fast we get vax into arms, the virus is mutating. Our current Pfizer and AZ may be become less effective, after four or five months, according to recent studies. There already is excellent medical advice advocating a booster but there is also evidence that new variants of concern in South Africa, such as B1.351 for example, pose a challenge in being fifty per cent more transmissible and possibly, less susceptible to existing vaccines.
But the dominant narrative in our media monopoly is simplistic. Scotty’s gold standard Premier helps turn NSW into ground zero of the Delta wave sweeping Australia, but Gladys promises the full nail bar, wax , tan and hair salon extravaganza as a reward for good behaviour. We will get through this, she claims, citing vaccination rates as cause for celebration when the bigger picture is far more complex.
But just for now, it would be refreshing to hear some acceptance of responsibility. The state was too slow to get its lockdown act together and its efforts are hampered by a shortage of vaccine and a reliance on hotel quarantine despite the federal government having had more than enough time to construct dedicated facilities. In frustration, Queensland and Victoria are building their own, but it’s a federal responsibility.
The gracious granting of spurious freedoms in exchange for nominated rates of vaccination compliance is a crass PR stunt. The 70-80 but effectively 56% -64% rates are too low and the freedoms do nothing to alter the fact that had her government acted in a timely and effective manner, the virus would not have got out of hand. Failing to exercise duty of care is not repaired by easing restrictions when It is unsafe to do so.
Blue tongue? NSW Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, won’t deny that Morrison drops the “F” bomb to make clear there would be no JobKeeper for NSW workers in a “National Cabinet” exchange reported by Niki Savva whose sources inform her that the “tired and cranky” PM let his temper get the better of him – as bullies do.
Readers will recall, as Peter Gutwein, must, when the PM is reported to have called him a “fucking mendicant” in 2018, in a meeting convened to reach agreement over sharing the GST, a report, the Tassie premier, now disputes. Begs off.
Poor Mr Gutwein is rushed to hospital, after a recent bad turn at work, but latest report is of no serious condition, other than being a member of National Cabinet, which is less a consultative body than a screen for a PM who can’t lead. Increasingly, leaks depict premiers telling the PM what they think of him and what they plan to do in their states.
Of course, none of this sits well with a PM who not only has tin ear but also a glass jaw.
Government sources, quickly, point out that “if anyone had a go at Perrottet he probably deserved it” – which is the type of blame-the-victim response you’d expect from a party with a toxic culture as Julia Banks puts it.
Our glorious and noble rout in Kabul triggers a round of Anzackery, flatulent claptrap and patriotic humbug from MPs behind newly-erected Perspex pandemic barricades giving a novel spit level transparency to parliamentary proceedings. And an eviction.
“There are thousands of Australians and their loved ones who are only in Afghanistan because you haven’t processed their visas for years and now you are leaving them to die,” Labor MP Julian Hill shouts, accusing the Morrison government of “killing my constituents” before Speaker, Tony Smith throws Hill out, along with truth and compassion. While Hill’s electorate has a high percentage of Afghan refugees and migrants, you would hope others abhor the cruel injustice.
There is little in MPs responses that acknowledge the failure of our foreign adventure but, instead, they relegate the complex issues of foreign policy failure and the human tragedy of our ill-fated intervention to the ANZAC level of veneration of lofty ideals and noble rhetoric that misses the grotesque obscenities of imperialist warmongery.
Doubtless the Morrison government’s decision to cut and run will be lauded as an heroic rescue, despite the leaving of thousands of Afghan collaborators behind. No heed will be paid to our abrupt closing of the Australian Embassy in Kabul in May, which would send an unambiguous signal of commitment to retreat – to both Taliban and groups of terrorists, harboured in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s big supporter, Pakistan.
Hope surges in a nation’s heart, however, as independent, Craig Kelly, claims he’ll lead mining billionaire Clive Palmer’s UAP, a type of Trojan virus or even a political hack registered as a political party. Kelly’s also got an anti-vax bill he’d like to introduce.
And with Kelly on the team, Clive need not fret about having enough members. On the other hand, he’s already had to undermine Kelly who as party leader had the odd notion he’d be able to dictate policy, such as running anti-lockdown candidates. Palmer says instead that Kelly will have “input into policy,” as part of the Party Executive.
Politics is show biz for ugly people – and UAP does provide an exhibitionist outlet for Palmer’s pals and extended family clan, but UAP’s main purpose is to let Clive tell targeted anti-Labor lies on social media and older media next election.
UAP won’t win a seat, but its preferences go to the pro-mining Liberals. How good is gaming our electoral system? And there’s a poetic justice in Kelly’s new career, too.
Who better to inspire the flagging spirits of an ailing nation than “Wellness” Kelly, another mountebank peddling snake oil? Yet these are dangerous fake cures for coronavirus, such as the de-wormer, Ivermectin and malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Nothing can be done, of course, because the government needs his vote.
Bonus points. A former Liberal energy and climate guru, Kelly is also a former small businessman, the sainted backbone of the nation. Amen. But a flawed saint.
Kelly, who appears in Kiwi court documents as a listed director of DVK International – and, therefore, liable for $4 million, his family furniture sales business owed staff and creditors when it went bankrupt. Luckily, it’s all a mistake as Kelly says, because the constitution does not permit undischarged bankrupts to be MPs.
Moral bankruptcy doesn’t count. An increasingly unpopular, unscrupulous and devious Morrison omnishambles may spring a General Election upon unwary voters as early as October, or if not, Australia Day, as MPs peddle their Crosby Textor stable of spin-doctors’ myth of an heroic PM standing up for our freedom, against a gang of bolshie lockdown state premiers, especially the Labor traitors.
Premiers and Chief Ministers just don’t get that a National Agreement exists just because Morrison says it does. Nor do they understand that we’ve got to learn to live with Covid and not be bullied into lockdowns; ruining the economy. In Friday’s faux national cabinet, state leaders learn that the nation may well be able to increase intensive care beds by 944 places – but has staff to operate only 346, at best, reports Rick Morton in The Saturday Paper.
Together with the smell of political death, there is a desperation about the Morrison government as it gambles on being able to politicise the pandemic before victims of its own failure to provide enough vaccine or quarantine in time, to say nothing of its aged care failure confront it – before it is forced by the suffering it inflicts on a nation becomes too widespread even for this government to deny. Or evade. Or explain away, poorly with its straw men or its spurious statistics from pandemic deaths in other countries.
In the meantime, Josh and Scotty’s excellent adventure in the Lodge is a bromance or even a type of marriage of convenience which illustrates vividly the values of a government which has spent years refining its objective, which is simply to stay in power by whatever means available. Look after its donor class come what may.
Politicising the pandemic, however, is a risky business and the PM’s desperate gamble against time may backfire as his mind-numbing rhetoric of bumper-sticker slogans fails to gain traction amidst a nightmare world of real pain, fear, suffering and rampaging contagion, his inept, ill-prepared government for a rich and powerful corporate oligarchy by a rich, privileged and entirely self-centred elite, has unerringly helped bring about.
Above all, it’s hard to pose as the nation’s saviour when you’ve lied and backstabbed your way to power so openly that no-one in their right mind would ever trust you.
In the end, however, what will count the most against Morrison’s chances will be when CEOs realise that his government’s plan to end lockdown and let the pandemic rage will, in fact, end up costing them a lot of money. It has everywhere else in the world.
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
29 comments
Login here Register hereIs Josh Frydengerg claiming travelling allowance whilst staying at the Prime Minister’s Lodge?
Is he paying for the accommodation and food he is getting at this taxpayer owned facility?
Are the Lodge staff at his beck and Call?
Is he triple dipping, free accommodation, free service of meals and other staff provided activities, including washing dishes, cleaning etc, and claiming Ministerial Travelling Expenses?
David Tyler: Phew!!!! And that is only the competence of the Prim Monster and the Treasurer without a mention of the Nazional$ Barnyard Beetrooter and David Little-to-be proud-of.
NO wonder my Kiwi friends giggle when I suggest swapping a month with Jacinta Ardern in OZ for the entire Wannabes Rugby team with the Australian Liarbral Nazional$ COALiiton misgovernment given in.
Lovely analysis, if only the Labor party would involve you as a back room person to counter the protégés of Textor and Gordon but they won’t and may well be surprised to find themselves bridesmaids yet again after the next general election.
I was thinking the duo’s lodge gig is more one of survival. Libspill is the smell from the incense burner and the smirking joker is hiding the ace of clubs up his sleeve. He can’t be got at. It’s simple herd instinct from the bellowing bull. His spin doctors have almost come to a standstill.
Very well written David. Morrison’s shitfuckery, skulduggery never ends!
“The world is a giant petri dish of eight billion people and that as fast we get vax into arms, the virus is mutating.”
Morrison’s National Cabinet is a Notional Cabinet. Even the kids know it…. “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at Ikea” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/students-strike-ikea-cabinet/10904108?nw=0
Reality does not sit well with Morrison’s tin ear and glass jaw. Josh & Scotty’s bullshit adventure can have no happy ending. Good!
Imagery or analogy of mid ’40s Berlin (apologies to Mr. F’burg’s faith) in the ‘bunker’ awaiting the enemy or their ‘downfall’; worse than emerging criticism from media will be if Murdoch throws the LNP under a bus due to being on the nose with many voters… allowing any Labor government a brief or non existent ‘honeymoon’ period.
I thoroughly enjoyed that comprehensive skewering,alternatively laughing my arse off and gnashing my teeth.Bring on the election,I say,or failing that ,the Rapture…either way we get rid of Australia’s reigning arsehole.
These two arseholes can appear smug and confident for the pictures but I’m sure they must be shitting their pants, because it cannot escape even their own myopic vision of the political landscape, despite the support of Murdoch and his chaff bag full of maggots, and Kerry Stokes and that biggest arsewipe of all, Costello, that many more people are now seeing than for what they really are, incompetent dickheads with only one aim, to continue to somehow lie their way into government again.
Gladys Bin chicken will be the one they throw under the bus, but no loss to NSW there. For them its just another body to climb over.
Now watching Fraudberg explaining his graphs showing how good is our economy in the June quarter. I don’t understand economics and I can’t follow graphs, but I do know that being locked down has led to my massive on line purchases that may have contributed to these figures. Morriscum and Joshie the Simpleton have had plenty of time cosied up in the Lodge at our expense, to work out a way to spin the figures for their own benefit. In reality, we can’t believe a word they say, a figure they write or a prediction they make. Looking forward to analysis of this announcement.
It’s pretty (not) simple:
Terrorisms for profit
Drones for profit
Facial spying for profit
Bombs for profit
Prisons for profit
Police goons for profit
Guns for profit
GMO for profit
Coal for profit
Fracking for profit
Glyphosphate for profit
Cancer for profit
Diabetes for profit
Obesity for profit
Poverty for profit
And now . . . .
Compulsory endless mystrey Injections for PROFIT!!!!
The Fizzer Corporate PharmaCom Hell.
FOR PROFIT, CONTROL, SUBJUGATION, TORTURE & IMPRISONMENT & DEATH.
Have a nice Day.Gotcha FackSeen passport do ya?? Don’t test posiveeve U WILL GO TO THE CAMPS . . . like WellCamp . . .
Goops dee dew . . . Blackbird singing…. RESIST!!!
The closet pair can share their stories over the pork/brisket barrel and laugh at the zealous rupert editors whose headlines, features and editorials screamed the rabbott’s bullshit about debt and the economy day after day but are now silent. Fair play, like truth, cannot beat cash.
ps
skip
unlimited money corrupts and skims into back pockets.
Skip,
Maybe you should consider taking a break from whatever it is you are inhaling because it seems to be enhancing your paranoia. Just a suggestion.
The 1 page “national plan” covering 16+ year-olds, has 4 columns with headings of “Measures may include:”, which in project planning parlance equals “nice to haves” that usually don’t get delivered. Whatever the states have “signed up for” is rigidly bolted down by a tissue. The Vaccination Consolidation Phase has 11 bullet points, 5 of which deal with international travel. Something fishy going on here. There isn’t a single word about schools or the under 16 y/o infection vector/cases. It is insulting to have this POS offered up as a “plan” by the PM. I now understand his continual references to get out of the cave – clearly he has been secretly living in one most of his adult life and has never seen a plan.
Um, er, uh…
“Last week, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne announced Australia would ship 400,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam — the first batch of a total 1.5 million to be donated by the end of this year.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-02/chau-van-kham-vietnam-political-prisoner-vaccine-covid-19/100422786
We’re sending vaccines overseas AND accepting vaccines from Singapore? Er, er…someone send for Dr. Gumby the brain surgeon I now…my brain hurts.
Skip, you are speaking over the heads of children here who cannot yet see that their desire to become ‘safe’ via compulsory vaccination will likely lead to the situation where people will be required to get a booster shot every 6 months. Once the Vaccine Passport or Graphene Oxide Passport or whatever they end up calling it is up and running, people will be advised by text it is time for the next jab and they will have a week to comply and then they are on the outer- with no access to workplaces, shops, transport or bank accounts. And it won’t matter if the last booster made you feel as sick as a dog or you have on-going brain fog, you are it! If enough people decide not to value freedom then that is the end of the experiment that we used to call democracy. Next.
Bill,
Why don’t you and Skip go and create your conspiracies and anti-vax blog and feed each other’s paranoia and the added bonus is you block anyone that does not agree with your lunacy. The pair of you have become tiresome.
A warning on quack idiotic covid non-cures and other life threatening bullshit!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/02/sydney-covid-patient-in-westmead-hospital-after-overdosing-on-ivermectin-and-other-online-cures
Certain posters could do well to reflect on such ignorance, but I doubt they have enough common sense to do so.
No different than leading a horse to water… (or in this case a pair of donkeys!)
As posted here a few days ago, people are dying after refusing conventional CV19 vaccines and choosing instead to believe the bullshit that circulates on the web promoting animal worming products, bleach, prayer, hydroxychloroquine and other ineffective and likely lethal alternatives.
It is astounding that in an age where there is literally no restriction on access to information, whether on this pandemic and our response to it in terms of protecting ourselves intelligently or on myriad other issues that also challenge our capacity to respond in a way befitting a unique mammal with our linguistic and intellectual capacities to evaluate risk and reward that there persists a significant percentage of people who refuse to believe the science & statistics on managing an out-of-control virulent viral epidemic.
As I previously stated, magical thinking is a ‘reality’ for many people; the willingness to believe in anything that reinforces one’s biases. If one is naturally suspicious, paranoid, distrusting, one is hardly likely to welcome information that contradicts one’s inherent outlook. The Roman church tried this on with Galileo, insisting the centricity of the Earth in the heavenly panalopy in spite of the big G’s careful observations, just as they cruelly tortured those who held contrary views regarding their religion. The introduction of Christianity into Korea in 1785 met enormous resistance and much bloodshed committed against early converts. All three examples, a miniscule slice of similar phenomena, were perfect examples of the power of magical thinking… a psychological disease if ever there was one to blight the human race.
Well said, GL. Let’s stick to the sharing of information and I’ll do my best to be accurate and interesting. On that note …
Frydenberg on 7:30 Report again still can’t explain what Leigh Sales calls a “clawback” provision in the even that JobKeeper were overpaid. He’s quick to open another issue and discourse on talking points but all this does is signal the fact that he’s in retreat. He can’t answer the question because there is no answer. It is a very elementary but hugely expensive mistake. The only plus from Frydenberg’s point of view is that the overpayments will have gone to many firms which are Liberal Party donors. A small fraction will be returned in the myriad of ways in which it’s possible to disguise political donations.
Yes common sense has a history as well. Aristotle was perhaps the first person known to have discussed “common sense”. He described it as the ability with which animals (including humans) process sense-perceptions, memories and imagination (φρονεῖν, phroneîn) in order to reach many types of basic judgments.
Circa 1718 witnessed François-Marie Arouet, (now known as Voltaire), who wrote:
These days sociologists proceed on the understanding(s) that common sense is not only somewhat uncommon (indeed rather rare) but when analysed isn’t that sensible either. Seems like it differs from person to person even within a particular society and it certainly isn’t a useful concept when employed cross-culturally.
Here we go again with Morrison’s nasty underhand skulduggery bullshit at keeping all of the governments shitfuckery secret. One has to ask the question. What is the bastard trying to hide? Obviously Morrison knows he is guilty way over his head!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/02/a-sore-loser-scott-morrison-attacked-over-move-to-keep-national-cabinet-deliberations-secret
Canguro, yes magical thinking (sometimes known as magical constructions of reality or magical interpretations of reality) presents problems. And as the Thomas Theorem states If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. Thus we have a plethora of crackpot remedies endangering peoples’ lives in addition to their mental well-being.
Citizens have lost trust in institutions (sometimes deservedly so) but seek solace in those based on faith with rationality and science left far behind. And the rise of social media which promised so much has proven to be counter-productive.
Yet in schools we still devote so much time to minutiae accompanied by an excess of rote learning. What is to be done?
@ Mark
Yawn……
BB,
Scotty and Crony Co. Inc. are terrified that their, so far hidden from view, secrets, entrenched ongoing corruption and dirty dealings could be out there for all to see.
Aye GL
There is a’reckonin’ on the horizon for Scrotum &co, closing in fast, and it will be ugly ugly ugly. I’ve ordered extra popcorn. 😁
GL:
“The pair of you have become tiresome.”
I hesitate to argue with my learned colleague, but they were tiresome as soon as they started spouting their conspiracy theory garbage which, as far as I can tell, was from Day One.
David T: “A small fraction will be returned in the myriad of ways in which it’s possible to disguise political donations.”
That was probably the hidden intention but was not so well hidden. However, the uninformed gullibles will not notice, and that is what counts on election day. Sadly.
So what is the definition of political donations? Suspect that most people see the donation purely in terms of cash/dollars. But perhaps that’s far too limited and therefore misleading.
Political organisations invariably use donated moneys to buy media space in an effort to get their message across. But that particular avenue is the mere tip of a rather large donation and message iceberg.
What’s a positive Editorial worth? What about a negative article or two? What about a positive ‘photo shoot’? How should we value such contributions? What about a ‘photo’ or a series of ‘photos’ (and/or ‘cartoons’) that paint a political Leader or Party in a ‘positive/negative’ light? Clearly they matter.
Should we put a monetary value on such (crucial) contributions? And if not then why not? Perhaps it’s all too hard?
Remember, there’s a particular Citizen of the United States who makes no dollar contribution/donation to an Australian political Party but it’s widely believed that he makes one hell of a difference.
So what should we do?
Let me guess. We can think up all sorts of derogatory (and childish) names to hurl. As though they matter.
Surely we can do better than that?
@Mark.
Yawn….
You ask questions, based on others comments, then “answer” yourself as though it’s a mind boggling revelation, lol!
Completely illogical, you have zero originality and add zero to the conversation!
Surely you can do better than that!
Let me guess…
Nope…
Mark, You make a valid point regarding political contributions beyond the financial (economic ‘externalities’)
What monetary value should be put on a publicly displayed masthead screaming “AUSTRALIA NEEDS TONY!” at every passerby?
Ps, I may have missed some previous exchanges (I don’t visit here much anymore) but I do not understand the hostility you are receiving.