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Now let’s get this straight: We don’t have the best…

Election Diary. 2022. No2. Saturday, January 8 2022. “Now let’s get this straight: We don’t have the best…”

1 Who is paying for our Covid programme? Socialism is. The Government is borrowing money that the people will have to pay back. It is the public debt. At the same time, the rich and privileged are getting a tax cut. Work that out.

What do we want from this election?

2 Have we listened to the stories in the Child Abuse report? Of those in aged care. Those who have died or are dying from Covid. Or the treatment of women – we cannot escape their anger.

The horror that is our national shame. The dead are many. When will we govern with some form of proactive planning instead of reactive negativity? Did we imagine another variant would never rear its ugly head.? Has the cost spooked them? Rapid antigen tests (RATs) should be free to everyone who requires one. There are many questions.

3 I find it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a fourth term a government that has performed so miserably in the previous three, and is becoming worse. And it has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and possibly corrupt men and women in its ranks.

It seems to me that for some time now the electorate has been giving Morrison more than just a cursory going over. Instead, they have become more analytical of the man and his policies. Forensically so.

4 A fascination of mine has always been the “we have the best whatever” statement. We have the best army, the best political system, firefighters, police force. It goes on and on. It’s impossible to have the best everything all the time.

Before the upcoming election, we must do our very best to counter the Government’s claims about these matters.

Now let’s get this straight: We don’t have the best…

5 We are the best managers of the economy, the Coalition would have us believe. Well, the simple fact is that they are not. This link to a post I wrote on the subject affirms it.

The myth created by the Coalition as long back as I care to remember and memorialised for many years since is nothing more or nothing less, a myth.

Of course, those of a conservative bent won’t have a word of it. They simply insist that the tale has God’s word of truth attached to it.

6 John Menadue, always a good read, in The myth that the Liberals are better economic managers? writes that:

“The Coalition is handicapped and hidebound by an out-dated ideology about markets and private enterprise. The tide has turned in the world that now sees the failures of the market system. The Coalition has failed to catch up. That is why we are seeing the failure of the Liberal Party in economic and business management. Its ideology has passed its use-by date.”

7 The consummate liar and How do you trust a liar? are but two articles I have written on the subject of the Government’ s propensity toward telling lies, which you may wish to revisit.

8 Scotty, in his great wisdom, has decided that Rapid Antigen Tests should remain limited to people in close contact with symptoms, pensioners etc., despite growing pressure to provide free tests.

9 On Tuesday on 7.30 Albo faced a load of questions, looking and speaking Prime Ministerial. Like every inch the man you want to lead the country.

I had read earlier in The Guardian that:

“The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, criticised the government for failing to secure enough RATs, accusing Morrison of again offering “too little too late”.

“This has been an example of something that has characterised Scott Morrison’s prime ministership. He identifies a problem only after it becomes a crisis, and then he doesn’t act. He just seems to blame someone else,” Albanese said at a press conference in Newcastle on Monday.”

No wonder the PM, and many of his associates refused an invite to appear on 7.30.

10 I have been trying to summarise or get my head around what Scomo is talking about on any subject. You see, now he is saying that what I thought he said is only a figment of my imagination. That what I think I thought he meant is not what he meant at all. When he says something, and I take it to mean one thing, he has the option of saying that what I thought I heard was not what I heard.

Or was it only my interpretation of what he meant? I mean, did he say what he meant, or did he mean to say what he meant or was what he meant really what he meant?

Well, that’s politics. And that’s Morrison.

11 And I thought that vaccinating the public was supposed to fix everything. It’s not as if answers aren’t available. The man is totality out of touch with what the problem requires. A man without any qualities of leadership. He should resign. Given his present form, he may take the option of a half-Senate election in May with a general election in August if that’s possible.

12 Here is something you may have missed. We had our coolest year since 2012, but it was still half a degree hotter than the average.

13 Did the panel (whoever they may be) consider that the Tennis Professional Novak Djokovic is a Covid denier and anti-vaccination freak. In my view, the Australian Tennis Open will have its reputation greatly diminished by his presence in the draw. Or booing a champion on the centre court will not do our international reputation much good.

By 6 am, Thursday, the world No.1 was still dealing with Border Force officials at Melbourne Airport.

Note: I will address this update in the comments section.

14 Would you be surprised if I told you that 21 schools received $90 million in JobKeeper payments while making profits of $97 million. Of course, you wouldn’t. Most of them serve highly advantaged families.

My thought for the day

We live in dark times where horrible things are being perpetrated on us. The shame is that we have normalised them and adjusted accordingly.

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26 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    The only solution for this self-inflicted wound is for ALL Australian voters at every election
    .
    VOTE ANYONE BUT LIARBRALS IN CITY ELECTORATES;
    .
    VOTECREDIBLE INDEPENDENT OR SAFF IN COUNTRY ELECTORATES;
    .
    VOTE BELOW THE LINE FOR EVERY CANDIDATE IN MY ORDER OF PREFERENCE &
    .
    maybe we can rescue Australian democracy for our kids.

  2. corvusboreus

    NEC,
    Whilst I understand both the situational urgency and pragmatic compromises necessary in voting out entrenched nat incumbents,
    and acknowledge some laudable policy moderations made in recent years (eg precautionary attitude to CSG),
    I remain way too conservation minded to cast first vote to the shooters party.

  3. Keitha Granville

    the only sure way to be certain we get rid of this government is to VOTE LABOR.

    No other vote is safe, no independent or minor party is safe.

    If they are re-elected, the country is doomed.

  4. Terence Mills

    The plight of Djokovic doesn’t worry me at all : he has declared his anti vaccination status and he will have to live with that – unfortunately for him he is dealing with the Dad’s Army (no disrespect to that excellent TV production – why don’t we have reruns of that show ?) at Australian Border Force who don’t seems to know if they are coming or going.

    What does concern me is Djokovic’s fellow guests at the Park Hotel in Carlton. Some of them have been confined to their hotel rooms for three years and they don’t get access to the swimming pool or tennis courts – they are the flotsam of our botched immigration detention system largely designed by the man who calls himself prime minister and his incompetent assistant, Igor also known as Spudley Dutton.

    These detainees, you will recall, were brought to Australia from Manus Island for medical attention not available in PNG. The Australian government fully intended returning these men to PNG to continue their indefinite detention . But, PNG pointed out that the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea – they have a functioning democracy – had determined that it was unconstitutional to detain people who had not committed any crime and who had never been sentenced by a court of law to a term of detention. Thus the men in question had no standing in the PNG immigration system (they were not tourists, or guest workers or returning citizens) so they could not get a visa to return them to PNG.

    So we have held them in the Park Hotel (and other locations around Australia) while the immigration department does precisely SFA.

    It is these men that our thoughts should be with not the very privileged tennis player who will probably be deported shortly – on his executive jet !

  5. corvusboreus

    Keitha,
    Reality tends to reject absolution.

    As things stood last time in my electorate,
    A vote 1 for either ALP or GRN was a slight shift in a percentage on a number starting with 1.
    There was an IND option of proven performance with a plausible chance of winning.
    I chose the latter, who lost to foundational coalition incumbency by an unprecedentedly narrow margin (for around here).
    Please explain to me why my choice was either unethical or unwise.

    Also,
    whilst nailing one’s pennant to a party flagpole gives great advantage in terms terms of brand recognition, pre-articulated policies and logistical support,
    campaign enlistment under party banner binds conduct to orders and impedimentia (aka ‘baggage’).

    As for the senate, all i can advise is get to know the individual resumes of the faces in the field as best you can, the number every underline box until uncertainty descends.

  6. wam

    Good to read you again, lord, after the coolth of the pool and my 3 day RAT, (Gunner gave my darling and I, 4 pkts on wed when we got off the adelaide plane.) Your 3 seems odd? When you use your thought, amongst other indicators, who needs imagination? Sadly, all it will take is a little error by labor or a blow out by extremists, and these pricks will get both houses. There are many people, thinking they unaffected by scummo, who believe those affected by scummo deserve their treatment. Albo has to show, on any media except the ABCM how your no. 5 is correct. The lie that labor is the spender and the libs are the saviour needs to be defeated. Alb could go for howard as treasurer and PM. Then the rabbott and joey. Leading into the current bullshit artist. spot on corvus. An independent with a good profile and the guts to stand usually gets my AEC/NTEC money. The last two labor candidates for solomon and the senate have been excellent so labor was no.1. Marlandirri McCarthy and Luke Gosling will again get my cash.

  7. leefe

    Re point 13: The assessment was supposedly anonymised, but it relied on claims made by Novax and his support staff, and was subject to later supply of supporting documents. That paperwork has not been forthcoming because, guess what, it doesn’t actually exist.
    Feds then tried to pressure the Vic government into sponsoring him, Vic gov refused, so the visa had to be revoked. Of course, that revocation only occured because of all the noise over the issue; if we plebs hadn’t shown ourselves so pissed off over it, Novax would have been au paired.

    The whole Liberals/Coalition better financial managers trope doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. But there are too many people who treat politics as a team sport and will never reconsider their allegiance.

  8. Kaye Lee

    Atagi says temporary exemptions can be granted in the case of “PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, where vaccination can be deferred until 6 months after the infection.”

    Djokovic tested positive for Covid in June 2020. Even if he WAS relying on the Atagi advice about infection in the last six months, June 2020 is way more than six months ago. If he has had another bout of COVID since, it hasn’t been reported on.

  9. Phil Lloyd

    Always a good read, thank you John Lord.
    A quibble with one point: “Government is borrowing money that the people will have to pay back. It is the public debt.”
    I am one who doesn’t believe the “deficits are bad” line of orthodox, and particularly neo-liberal, economics. Deficits are neither good nor bad. And therefore debt (if it is to be repaid (by the federal government to itself)) is not a burden on current or future generations. Repeating this myth just reinforces the neo-liberal fallacies that balanced budgets and austerity to repay national debt are good and necessary. Please read (and review?) Stephanie Kelton’s excellent “The Deficit Myth”.

  10. Kaye Lee

    Phil,

    I agree in the main – debt in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, whether public or private, the proviso being that the money is invested wisely. Our government is more than happy to spend billions on war toys but they can’t afford RATs?

  11. John Lord

    Congratulations to all involved in the debacle that is Novak Djokovic The outcome is in the hands of Border Force and the courts. It reminded me of Australia’s Bob Hawk’s unions v. Frank Sinatra in 1974.

  12. ELFord

    The Novak saga could have been staged just so the PM could make some ludicrous statement about protecting Australians, which he did right on cue. Allows his smug mug to dominate the images in MSM stealing the oxygen in the room.

  13. corvusboreus

    ELF,
    Discussion of policy around public health issues is always heartily improved by some passionate input from the sportfanz! 👍😉

  14. corvusboreus

    Disclosure notification: i think straya remains an ulcerous carbuncle upon the body international whilst we continue to keep people, especially children, in conditions of indefinite detention without justification in charge.
    (that applies whether it be in 4star hotel or mouldy tent surrounded by razorwire).

  15. corvusboreus

    That said…

    So much sympathy for Doko.
    Tearing of shirts, thumping of chests, beating of brows, clutching of pearls.

    For a vax-scep millionaire who is very good at running around and whacking balls.

    Little-to-no thought is spared for his catatonised neighbours down the hall.

    “inhuman conditions”

    That came from Doko’s dad.
    Back home in Serbia.

    For anyone missing the situational irony, consider the terms ‘balkanised’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’.

    Consider the sequences of recent geo-historical events that have so firmly branded those terms into our collective brains,
    what images accompanied those words as they blared from our TVs.

    I believe that engaging in hyperbolically inflammatory rhetoric based on arbitrary nationalistic or tribalistic groupings is a generally bad idea.

    I also think that historical literacy and self-awareness are generally good ones.

  16. GL

    A record that Scummo (and DoPe to a lesser extent) should be very proud of because we strive to be Number One and the bestest at everything in the world. Stand up and take a bow Saint Scummo and bathe in the glory.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-09/covid-omicron-cases-testing-a-million-cases/100744678

    I forsee more National Cabinet meetings looming as he desperately tries to spin it into a more favourable light. Ah well, he can always blame Dan.

  17. Kaye Lee

    Greg Hunt this morning…..

    Australia has “one of the highest vaccination rate, one of the lower rates of loss of life, and we have one of the strongest economic recoveries and we have provided as a government enormous support to businesses, to health and to the community”.

    Cause we’re just the bestest ever!!

  18. Terence Mills

    Kaye

    Did he mention that in the last couple of weeks, Australia has gone from having one of the lowest rates of new Covid cases per 1000 of the population anywhere in the world to being in the top 20 of countries with a population over 500,000. By the same measure if NSW were a country it would be sitting in the top 10.

    He may have overlooked the fact that NSW at 2.59 infection per thousand people exceeds the US at 1.47 per one thousand.

    You can do anything with numbers if nobody is watching closely.

    Before Frydenberg went down with COVID (there’s irony for you) he was saying that the Morrison government had added 500,000 new jobs to the economy : that is just crazy and deceptive use of data.

    They have to be called out !

  19. Jack sprat

    Ah,but we do have the best politicians that money can buy

  20. Kaye Lee

    Ted Mack: “The (major) parties are rife with careerists, cronyism, nepotism and the fostering of corruption. They have become like two Mafia gangs vying for power to gain control of the Australian treasury to distribute benefits to those who fund them and their `mates’. Elections become multi-million dollar competitions between two advertising agencies offering false promises and election bribes.

    There is certainly no evidence that the massive increases of salary packages in recent years has increased benefits to the public or improved the quality of members or ministers compared to governments of the past. Far from paying peanuts and getting monkeys, paying more peanuts seems to attract gorillas.”

  21. Kaye Lee

    Terence,

    Those figures don’t mention that there are hundreds of thousands less foreign workers here. When they open the borders up again, unemployment is likely to rise.

    They also don’t mention that you have to create > 300,000 new jobs a year just to keep up with population increase.

    As you say, you can do anything with numbers.

  22. Michael Taylor

    I love numbers, but yes, they can be manipulated any way you want. It was a great trick used by the Howard govt when I was one of the poor sods who had to provide them with reports on Newstart and DSP data each month. All you had to do was change the business rules, ie, change a few variables.

  23. David Baird

    Yes, but we’re all forgetting that his god appointed this useless fucker and his useless minions.

  24. Sir ScotchMistery

    After the amount of looking forward that occurred prior to the last election and the work of national living treasure Fat Clive (no, I’m not joking. Some sycophant put him up as a national living treasure FFS), I will not be lulled into a false sense of security by elections that can’t be lost by ALP. As has been proven by both fat Clive and that yank tosser, Rupert, nothing is sure.

    I am still challenged by the question from a woman in my village who I thought was likely to be among the illuminati of the residents before the last election; “what do you think of the death tax the ALP are bringing in?”

    I was unable to find words to respond, but did suggest that the next time she thought of teaching anyone anything to first ensure she had at least a spoonful of knowledge of the subject being taught.

    The day after the next election, if Scotty from Eugenics is removed, and his place at the head of the LNP is taken by Mr Potato Head, then I will celebrate, and not one second before.

    As LNP nay-sayers, we all need to be responsible for what the Americans appear to call “water cooler conversations”, in our own space. Force conversations on the issue of Covid mismanagement, deceitful ministers, alleged rapists in cabinet or nearby, corruption at every level of LNP including on councils and every other damn thing that’s needed to get older Australians particularly, to at least ask a question at the Ladies Church Aid, or whilst getting a new blue rinse with 2 girlfriends.

    What have they done for us as older Australians. The answer, surprisingly enough, is four fifths of fuck all.

  25. Michael Taylor

    Yo, Scotchy. How you been?

    You’ll be pleased to learn that since the last time we spoke I’ve discovered Scotch.

  26. corvusboreus

    Sir Scotch Mistery,
    Welcome back, i am happy to be reading your words again.

    Robodebt is another nugget well worth wedging into any conversations touching on politics and economics.

    Many folks seem unaware of the basic facts of how dumb-phuqqed evil-stoopid that scam was.

    Robodebt was conceived to take money from people who were already struggling financially.

    Robodebt was based on an incompetently erroneous algorithm (aggregated annual equation retroactively applied to fortnightly calculated welfare payments) and pursued by illegal means of enforcement (‘prove you aren’t guilty!’), so adjudged the Supreme Court of straya.

    Robodebt was supposed to bring beaucoups profit to consolidated revenue, but ended up costing the commonwealth (aka ‘us’) over $1.6 billion in compensation & costs.

    The coalition broke laws to defraud citizens by leveeing patently false debts with automated presumption of guilt, then, when called to account under the highest law of the land, slugged taxpayers for the legal bills.

    Worth mentioning, methinks.

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