For anyone in a managerial position, the ability to plan is important – as is the ability to recognise when plans must be changed.
When that position is as Prime Minister, there are actually far more important events than elections to worry about!
We came into the COVID-19 pandemic ill-prepared to handle the challenge.
Over the months since the Coalition selected Morrison as their leader, I have gained the impression that he has a very limited idea of what his role really is.
He has spent an enormous amount of time ensuring that he is photographed, in high-vis when appropriate, at every possible opportunity. He basically acts like a flamboyant pop star!
Behind the wheel of a truck, the controls of a ship or in any other innovative and eye catching situation is good for his self-promotional purposes.
He has had the red carpet rolled out at airports as if he were a President rather than only the current political leader – not even the Governor General – of a not very significant country.
Yes – we all love our country, but when you really examine the ranking of Australia, it is not that high up the list.
The people who have done most to help their fellow Australians are not our politicians.
They are our medical personnel, our carers in medical facilities and in aged care accommodation. Few of these get reimbursed or supported as they should be.
Not to overlook our volunteers in services like the fire brigades. who literally put their own lives on the line to help to save ours, and their families have to cope without their assistance when they are called out.
Since the initial concentration on the pandemic, the government has tried to introduce legislation to restrict the ability of registered charitable organisations to actually advocate where they perceive injustice. So far they have failed.
The introduction of JobKeeper was primarily for the benefit of employers. Those who claimed the benefit and were proved to have not really qualified for it have not been required to repay it – unlike the false claims for payments wrongly demanded from those who suffered through the illegal Robodebt campaign.
And hundreds of people were not eligible for JobKeeper and have had very limited – if any – assistance.
Education is clearly a bête noir for this government – despite the fact that many of them, thanks to Gough Whitlam, have never had to repay a HECS debt! Our universities have lost skilled staff and will take time to recover, and yet education is a major foundation of life!
Along with a growing number of people, most of them far more knowledgable than am I when it comes to climate change, I have agonised over our government’s repudiation of even the most basic attempts to make drastic changes in their plans.
I have absolutely no doubt that we have nearly wasted all the time which we should have spent planning to limit the damage we will most certainly incur from climate change.
Since 5 February, 2020, with possibly 4 or 5 exceptions, mainly due to weather, I have sat outside the NT Parliament House for 2 hours every Wednesday afternoon, protesting at the continued support for extracting, exporting and using fossil fuels.
Accepting the need for change is not readily available, and we are digging our own graves by refusing to take the necessary action.
PLEASE make this New Year’s Resolution:
I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO ENSURE THAT OUR GOVERNMENTS IN AUSTRALIA TAKE URGENT ACTION TO ELIMINATE THE USE IN ANY WAY OF FOSSIL FUELS, AND WORK WITH OTHER COUNTRY’S GOVERNMENTS TO ALSO TAKE ACTION.
This also means we have to think very carefully about how our views on the importance of politics or people’s lives should guide our vote at the next Federal Election!
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Unfortunately, Labor’s current climate change policy is not much better than the Coalition’s. They are too scared to oppose new mines or talk about winding back fossil fuels and they are relying on the purchase of offsets rather than actual emissions reduction.
And the job in front of us is much much worse than we are letting on because we have been lying about land-clearing and claiming it as a carbon sink.
Yesterday, the SLATS data from Queensland came out. In 2018-19, landholders cleared 680,688 hectares in Qld yet Australia’s national greenhouse gas inventory estimated landclearing in 2018 calendar year was about 370,000 hectares nationwide. In that year, the Commonwealth government also claimed the land sector was a net sink in the order of more than 20 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide.
But hey, let’s spend our time on voter ID and religious freedom bills……
This LIarbral Nazional$ Scummo misgovernment is a self-inflicted wound that only Australian voters can heal. In every election
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VOTE ANYONE BUT LIARBRALS IN CITY ELECTORATES
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VOTE CREDIBLE LOCAL INDEPENDENT OR SFF IN COUNTRY ELECTORATES
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VOTE BELOW THE LINE FOR EVERY CANDIDATE GIVING MY PREFERENCE IN ORDER
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and just maybe we will win sufficient support to sav Australian democracy for our kids.
This repulsive P M, a Pamphlet Manufacturer, is totally and disastrously ill-equipped for life, let alone a position of trust (hah) and responsibility. If he managed a shop nearby, I’d go elsewhere. He has never worked, never succeeded, never told the clear truth, lives in selfdrenched fantasy, cannot be believed, trusted, supported, so that professional treatment is required, not committal from greedy, deluded fools who are devotees of thieving, robbing neoliberal extortion of most of us. The P M’s team of equally lying, misbehaving, untrustworthy substandard grubs is contemptible also, a national disaster in matters such as debt, climate policy, openness, honesty. It s a pox worse than a viral setback. It is a national disgrace.
Very well said RosemaryJ36! I fear for ALL Australians if this lying fucking dick head & his rabble of a party get reelected!
There is only ONE way to improve the quality of life for ordinary working- and middle-class Australians who are NOT part of the entitled Top 1%;
only ONE way to vastly improve the education, health and future for our children and grandchildren;
only ONE way to STOP the continual vilificaton, harassment and cowardly attacks against the most vulnerable members of our society (including defenceless asylum seekers escaping the tyranny of wars that the LNP helped to create)!
only ONE way to guarantee that the insidious political interference, manipulation and total defundment of OUR taxpayer-funded ABC does not continue;
only ONE way to prevent the total defundment and eventual privatisation of MEDICARE;
only ONE way to improve the (now) shameful international reputation of our nation which is currently in freefall;
only ONE way to prevent the thoroughly malignant and undemocratic relationship that this regime has with the appalling, totally corrupt, biased Murdoch press who will stoop to ANY level of lies or criminality in order to ensure their political “mates” in the LNP attain and maintain autocratic power;
only ONE way to prevent the absolute decimation of our environment by the current vandals in the LNP who are slaves to their billionaire non-taxpaying donors in the filthy polluting oil, gas and coal-mining industries;
only ONE way to ensure that we are no longer governed by a pack of criminally corrupt, totally self-serving, stratospherically arrogant megalomaniacal narcissists, remorseless inveterate liars, skirt-lifting misogynists, smug, sanctimonious bible-thumping hypocrites and lunatic Hillsong cultists and that is:
KICK THE LNP TO THE KERB AT THE NEXT STATE AND FEDERAL ELECTIONS!!! THE MORRISON REGIME ARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST, MOST DEPRAVED, UNDEMOCRATIC AND INEPT COLLECTION OF POLITICAL PSYCHOPATHS IN LIVING MEMORY!
I wonder how much most people actually KNOW about how climate change is affecting us?
We all understood the need to reduce the use of the CFC gases in refrigerators which affected the ozone, yet we turn a blind eye to the use of fossil fuels which will destroy our climate!
I still have no confidence in the people to remove this government, I think they may even be re elected with an increased majority. I truly hope not as alot of people, except the selfish. Are going to be hurt badly.
Morrison’s mantra of “small government “ misses one of his aims…… big salary!
While he tries to convince us all that we need less government in our lives we need to convince him that he needs less taxpayer money in his!
Who are the top-paid leaders of the developed world?
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong $2.29m
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam $946,938
US President Donald Trump $614,175
German Chancellor Angela Merkel $568,132
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison $549,250
It’s a bit out of date but still relevant.
Politicians generally are letting us down, at the top of the pile is Australia’s LNP.
https://www.theenergymix.com/2021/12/29/year-in-review-unimaginable-unforgiving-world-without-drastic-emission-cuts-ipcc-warned/
There is no concern about children, including the children of politicians .
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext?fbclid=IwAR0PXFIGQWLEG6UrPYxK-yQwZmzLkYmH8E6YrNv6_hnZgQC5QJ5deWqy-NE
Emissions of methane emissions from coal mines in the Bowen Basin are equivalent to those emitted by Austria or the Czech Republic.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-03/satellites-are-challenging-australias-coal-mining-industry/100663676?fbclid=IwAR2dBRLgA9Tj5IHRGNVcT2lGjGd88PzJgB0YYcUF4uauur8leN09fJ_QYRc
I am resigned to the fact that the world is doomed.
And – Kerri – we are far too generous to our politicians who treat us like dirt.
Rosemary,
Disagree (kinda).
I reckon life on Earth will continue until her orbit changes drastically or the sun explodes.
Humanity, on the other hand, have more than likely already locked in our own extinction and doomed a broad swathe of Earthly biota to go down with us.
However, despite our vigorous efforts at engineering a complete bio-apocalypse, simple resilient organisms will survive, then thrive and diversify through evolutionary processes.
Our petrochemically driven mass extinction event will eventually be just another anomalous layer in the geological record.
Happy new year.
CB – I guess I was using ‘the world’ in terms of its human inhabitants. I am sure the rest of life would manage much better for the absence of human beings and their interference! So – yes – I agree with your summary!