With the frenetic pace of reporting nowadays, yesterday’s news is quickly forgotten. The sheer volume of information overwhelms us with the result that the government can quickly move attention away from anything they do not want scrutinised.
For example…
When Reza Barati was murdered on Manus Island by the staff we employed to care for the asylum seekers we had incarcerated there, Scott Morrison told us that it was the refugees’ fault for leaving the centre and going on a violent rampage. That was proven false.
Reza was killed inside the centre and the subsequent review commissioned by the government found that Reza was “a very gentle man” who was not involved in the unrest. Two Australian guards allegedly involved in the murder were immediately brought home and have never faced charges.
When Scott Morrison’s ridiculous allegation that Save the Children staff on Nauru were encouraging children to self-harm was proven false, he refused to apologise despite the government having to pay compensation to the staff he wrongly accused and removed.
When there was a shooting incident on Manus, Peter Dutton said it occurred after local people witnessed asylum seekers leading a five-year-old boy towards the centre suggesting they were luring him away to sexually assault him. This was, once again, completely wrong.
The shooting came from drunken sailors in an argument over a soccer field. A couple of weeks earlier, asylum seekers had given a ten year old child food after he asked for some. The incidents were entirely unrelated and misrepresented by Dutton.
Barnaby Joyce would have us believe that the woman he got pregnant was not his partner when he secured jobs for her in other MPs’ offices. The spike in the number of non-sitting nights he spent in Canberra were ‘work-related’ according to Barnaby. In response to multiple allegations of sexual harassment from other women, Barnaby basically said ‘prove it’.
Michaelia Cash still contends that her referral to the ROC of a ten year old donation by the AWU was not political and that she had nothing to do with tipping off the media about AFP raids. Uh huh…
And then we have Angus Taylor, the man who congratulates himself on facebook forgetting to change accounts first. Angus is racking up a lot of very questionable dealings where the truth seems to get lost in his bluster.
There was his involvement in an $80 million water buyback scheme/scam, his meetings with the Environment Minister to ‘raise concerns from farmers in his electorate’ about endangered grasslands (producing a letter that was written months after the meeting), and now his unbelievable attack on Clover Moore using a fraudulent document.
The death taxes campaign at the last election was the government at its manipulative, dishonest worst.
In some cases, such as Craig Kelly, the disinformation is due to stupidity but that didn’t stop the PM from interceding to make sure this dill was preselected against the wishes of the local Liberals and awarding him, of all people, the job of chairing the environment committee. Kelly is so full of crap that he has been banned from appearing on the ABC but he is given open slather on Sky After Dark to spin his bullshit.
Time and again, government MPs get away with telling blatant untruths with no adverse consequences – for them at least.
The consequence for the rest of us is the undermining of trust in the institutions that govern our country and a tawdry decline into a political world where winning is all that counts and transparency and accountability are to be avoided at any cost.
When there is no penalty for lying, we get leaders like Donald Trump and his Billy Bunter groupie, ScoMo, who think having their photo taken with thumbs up saying “how good are we” substitutes for competence, honesty and integrity.
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With ALL of this and a mass of other watertight evidence of rorting, outright theft, collusion, receiving jobs for the boys and girls who awarded massive contracts in exchange for future employment- STILL they were voted in. Where ARE the people who cannot be silenced by Murky Murdoch?. We NEED a group of NON-POLITICIANS to form a working group to run this country FOR AUSTRALIANS.Robertson, Burnside, Bill Mitchell (Emeritus Prof. Newcastle Uni), Triggs, etc who would actually guide this country BACK into being a top five country in the world we currently languish in, ruing the days of yore.
Roy Edwards.
Good article shame that most younger people wouldn ot know who billy bunter is.
Kaye,
And how is it that a fake document is published in the msm as if it is genuine?
All Taylor had to do was say sorry, I have obviously been misled and I have advised the police of who gave the fraudulent document to me. I have learned a timely lesson to check my sources and I apologise unreservedly for inadvertently misleading the parliament and the public.
The fact that he won’t, or can’t, puts the suspicion right back on him and his office. If this is not pursued then we may as well give up.
guest,
The Telegraph doesn’t even pretend to be a source of credible news. It’s Sky After Dark in print form.
Unhappily, we are seeing the same political model being implemented throughout the world. Right-wing, populist governments who rely on promoting “targets” – those who are really responsible for everything that has gone and is going wrong; lying, squashing dissent (some just throw them in jail, but in Australia we have to be a bit more subtle, but however nuanced the techniques are, the goal is the same – avoiding scrutiny). Then there is the corruption and incompetence. Strategies for maintaining government by trying to wedge the opponents and by creating the supporter “tribe” (Morrison’s raison d’etre), but no actual policies.
Roy Edwards – it is painful to read your comment, because you hit the nail on the head. How on earth did 50% of the people who vote in this country manage to ignore 6 years of lies, weekly scandals and corruption, not to mention the debasing of our democracy and re-elect the worst government in living memory, led by the most incompetent, devious and vacuous PM in decades. History isn’t kind to Billy McMahon, but the records suggest he at least managed some achievements. That is utterly beyond Morrison, but still he is favoured as the PM. How is it conceivable that Shorten would have been worse? Shorten, for all his failings, would at least have led a team, whereas Morrison’s history shows that he can’t stand being subordinate, can’t stand people challenging him and craves the power and insulation of being the sole decision maker.
And they wonder why there’s not a skerrick of trust or respect for pollies. I could name perhaps 2 in the whole parliament who have our interests at heart and that of the environment and planet generally. Two who I believe don’t/won’t accept bribes. Two who don’t rort their expenses. What does that say about the Australians who vote these ferals back in?
Baby Jewels, would you share their names? As far as I can tell, everyone of those arsewipe, traitorous, lying, deceitful, self serving scum suckers are the same. Politics are dead. Totally incapable of competency. Totally unable to believe the science of climate change. We are most definitely on the wrong path, deluded, disgusted, despairing also braindead hate filled comatose, too blind, too exhausted to know everything we are told are lies. And this shitty labor fascist movement, masquerading as the qld state government, insist it is imperative we lock up the climate protesters. A change of government will change nothing.
A mud drenched mind, a kakopygeous and kinabrous farcical face, an evil excrementive exterior, a mattoid mentality, a superstitious suppository of strumpeting, a truth trashing turpid tupper, fantasy fixated, a merkinous misfit, this is our burden, our curse, our P M.
I fcking HATE lyres, no matter who they are!
Lies come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes, one side of the aisle sees a potential political advantage and loudly accuses the other of telling untruths. Sometimes, both sides peddle the same deceit. Worse still, they boast about it .
Take needs based funding for education as a classic example. Like motherhood and apple pie, everyone’s for it and certainly there’s none agin’. So we have The King’s School at Parramatta, with fees of $36 000 per annum for day pupils, still receiving monies from both State and Federal governments under the rubric of need.
But it’s not considered a lie. Wouldn’t even be referred to an ICAC. Just part of ‘common sense’. Nothing to see here. Just move along.
(Check out how some worthy boys are treated.)
https://www.kings.edu.au/facilities/
Lying won them the 2001 election.
The Tampa had terrorists. Children overboard.
Howard played 9/11 beautifully.
The greed and corruption of the ruling Liberal Party in Queensland has gone to a new level –
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-29/electoral-reforms-queensland-donations-and-public-funding/11649220?section=politics
Women supporting adultery support nat$ and screw us all.
Wonderful contribution from Indigenous man on Q&A who is in no doubt about the role greed and corruption has played in the death of his river.
What part of ” Thou shalt not bear false witness” do Christian politicians not understand?
But, I’m beginning to believe that the secrecy, obfuscation and lies are a strategy to turn the electorate off taking an interest in politics. It helps in getting away with too much.
Somewhere today I read the distinction between kindergarten children and politicians is that kindergarten children are punished for lying, whereas, lying is expected from politicians.
Kindergarten children are also taught that it is not acceptable to call out or interrupt or call others bad names. They are taught that everybody matters.
Our politicians could learn a lot from our kids.
Kronomex @ 2:06 pm. It’s Labor that currently occupies the Queensland treasury benches so is it legitimate to label their actions (referred to above) as being ‘greedy and corrupt’? Or …
Sadly, most people are totally occupied either avoiding losing a job or trying to find one – or more – to drag them out of poverty. Trust in politicians is abysmally low, yet when the media promotes. their lies, people still believe them.
Being convinced that urgent action on global warming is required, and knowing not enough governments share my conviction, I have a sinking feeling that our political woes will most likely be solved by our extinction!
The prices are down and staying down.
I can’t take this caca serious anymore.
“how is it that a fake document was published in the MSM as if it was genuine?
Firstly one must abandoned the idea of homogeneous MSM which is a similar oversimplification to the meme of the LNP/Labor duopoly (‘they’re all just as bad as each other’).
The Daily Tellcrap is part of Murdoch’s newscorpse, and they are a case apart when it comes to levels of media bullshit.
The fraudulent input of political liars like Angus Taylor is not required to create a false story, the Murdoch monolith are perfectly capable of generating their own bullshit strictly in house.ooo
An illustrative example would be story a few years back involving, funnily enough, climate science.
The day before the release of a major scientific report on the state of our planet’s climate, the Daily Mail in the UK ran a completely false story claiming that a leaked copy of the report had painted a relatively rosy picture (when in actuality the climate report that was released was rather alarming in it’s summations) .
The UK story was retracted (in small print on page 17) after official complaints were made, but not before the ‘Australian’ had regurgitated the bullshit verbatim.
The Australian story was retracted (in small print on page 17) after official complaints were made, but not before the tabloids (daily telegraph, courier mail and herald sun) had repeated the bullshit verbatim.
The shouted lie followed by the whispered retraction is a standard newscorpse play.
A pertinent example of how Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire can create and persistently disseminate patently false stories without the need for input from lying creeps like Angus Taylor
Angus Taylor has now written to Clover Moore “unreservedly” apologising for the false statements he made about SCC travel expenses and he has included in that apology not having “clarified” the matter before making the claims and before forwarding the intended smear to the Daily Telegraph.
Interesting word ‘clarify’ which has a dictionary definition :
Surely he means ‘verify’ :
Or is he apologising at all ?