By Allan Richardson
Make no mistake, we’ve been here before. No sooner did Kevin Rudd and Labor gain power in November 2007 than they were confronted by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) which kicked off three months earlier, and threatened the banking industry just two months after the poll.
Rudd and Wayne Swan and the team were rated as achieving the best result in the world in managing the GFC, and Swan rated the best Treasurer in the world by his peers. Australia fared better than every other country in the OECD, because the Labor cohort were the “superior money managers.” That’s a term we’ve heard many times since, but attributed to the wrong party!
Labor cleaned up that mess, and for some unaccountable reason, the Australian people decided that installing a delusional incompetent gym-junkie in 2013 might be an amusing distraction, after internal political struggles inside the Labor Party. (Like the LNP are immune from internecine warfare?) For nine years the country endured the most incompetent, unstable governments we’ve seen, and yet they scored three consecutive terms in office! WTAF?
And here we go again. The LNP screwed the country for almost a decade, mishandled every single thing they touched, created nothing, ran up a trillion dollars of debt after inheriting a modest debt in 2013, and distributed our money to their friends and supporters until they were finally ditched in ‘the only real poll’ when it became clear to everyone except close family (in most cases), the LNP faithful and the entire MSM that they were well and truly useless!
Not that the LNP alone was on the nose by itself this year; Labor lost ground as well, though not as significantly as the LNP. The Greens did very well, and the Indies won big time. (As an aside, I believe that the federal electorate cast Labor largely in the same mould as the LNP when decrying the horror of our national situation, which I think was unfair. Labor hadn’t been in government since 2013, and were not considered even significant enough to invite to the National Cabinet during the Covid pandemic, despite scoring 46.5 Two Party Preferred in the 2016 election, and being supported by almost half the country (49.64 2PP) and picking up 14 seats in the Pentecostal miracle of 2019).
So here we go again. Behind the starting line once more; a massive debt, the gas and petroleum industries being savaged by Putin personally (Yes, I meant personally), critical climate action urgently needed for decades, and cost of living pressure, now and potentially, as bad as most of us have seen it. And already Two Flags Taylor (Angus Taylor) starts the savaging by explaining why Labor will do everything wrong. Hey, Swanny, did you get a plaque you can show this inept clown? (Sorry to clowns, and to be fair to the Shadowy Treasure-Hunter, he is good at siphoning water. Where it goes, nobody knows. (Until the NIC or NACC; what’s in a name?).
The good that comes out of this is the enormous support for the Indies, and an increase in votes and seats for the Greens. I don’t favour the politics played in any of the parties, but at least the Greens have the integrity to refuse any fossil fuel donations, (though I’m not sure they were offered any lol). People have been shunning the majors, but now Albo has a chance to collaborate with the cross bench and emphatically make his mark. I think he’s just the man for this insanely difficult job! And most importantly, Albo, don’t leave a tidy home for an unruly tenant. Stay in power, listen to the Greens and Indies, and keep out the filth. Until our parliament can be democratically elected. You know what I mean.
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The last election could have been fatal for democracy in Australia with the main stream media and big money doing its best to convince voters to vote against their best interests and for the best interests of big business. We do need to pay attention to the cold reality that Australia came the closest it has been since federation to closing the door on a democratic future worthy of the name. With the defeat of Morrison Australia has dodged the abyss of Trumpism. This may acknowledge the fact that Morrison was the architect but what is now left of the L/NP, particularly under opposition leader
Peter “loose lips sinks ships” Dutton is the hard fascist right of the L/NP rump who were Morrisons deft builders of division and derision. The mainstream media in Australia is currently whitewashing fascist politics. It is not just sycophantic, or lazy, journalism. It is dangerous. When Peter Dutton was named the leader of the LNP opposition, a number of poor puff pieces emerged about giving the “hard man a go” to prove who he is. One of the most supine was from Jacqueline Maley at Fairfax. What these articles have not detailed is Dutton’s appalling record as head of Immigration. In 2017, the government paid out $70 million to refugees and asylum seekers to avoid having the lawyers’ meticulously documented trail of abuse of innocent people laid out in court. The solicitors described it as the largest human rights class action settlement in Australian history. The life of refugees on Manus and Nauru is indeed well documented in its horror. Women coerced by guards to provide sexual favours to have enough water to wash out their shampoo or clean their children in the overwhelming heat. Women forced to queue for each issue of a sanitary item. People abused for taking a piece of fruit for later from the nursery-hour dinner. Tents smeared in black mould found to be “highly toxic,” with only a small fan to make the heat less intolerable. Utterly inadequate medical care. The point of this vile and vengeful treatment, under Morrison as well as Dutton, was to make the Taliban or the genocidal Sri Lankan army or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard less horrific than Australia. What it achieved was the trashing of Australia’s once good international reputation while funneling billions of hardworking taxpayers monies into L/NP donors pockets. Loose lips Dutton repeatedly misled the public about the conditions under which people lived, the quality of healthcare to which they had access, or suggested that the people living in harsh conditions were of criminal character and deserved it. Without a strong unbiased news media, Australia faces a clouded future. Albanese’s government may be able to repair our Rule of Law protections adequately to protect us into the future from the international far right’s divisive doctrine, flawed dogma, corrosive ideology and destructive authoritarian games that challenge democracy itself but can the Albanese government and the we the people be protected from a politically biased legacy media. We have seen in America, however, that this form of the right is prepared to play the long game. Journalists that help them whitewash their cruelest actions aid them in this plan. Dutton’s cruelty is indisputable as is his benevolent support of the fascist far right’s agenda. The Dutton Coalition will be hoping that the Trump Republicans return to power, and that there can be a revival of the politics of fear and hate, a revival of anti-secularism and renewed attacks on inclusiveness and
human rights and democracy itself.
To meet this challenge it is vital the media should not be a cheer squad for one side of politics. Doing so cripples our democracy.
Clearly, this election was a victory in that all the Murdoch bias and sh!t was to almost no avail. They will sink into irrelevance on this showing – not before time. Which might mean, with luck, the non Murdoch press might not be so Murdoch-lite in the race to “be competitive”.
This is instructive when it comes to use of social media. Clearly a team who know what they are doing is behind Monique Ryan. https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/factlab/kooyong-frydenberg-ryan-social-media
Albo stay alert, be inclusive and make us laugh at the LNP’s and scummo’s inept handling of the last 9 years.
Expose and prepare to submit cases to the ICAC.
ps
All through 2013, Gillard and Swan lost an opportunity to embarrass the rabbott.
I wrote to labor my rep, swan, gillard, torpid tanya, jones pointing out that the rabbott just bought a #m+ house his salary was????<$200k his debt was 500% of income. Labor’s debt was @ 25% of income. The poms and japan were over 90%. If we were a disaster what was the rabbott, the poms and the Japanese?
The arithmetic was too hard for labor. I sent it to the chasers who approached the rabbott but it wasn’t a 3 word slogan and he is ‘no techhead’.
Rust never sleeps.
They have not gone away.
High fives all round in the Dutton Liberal party as their first policy initiative starts to bear fruit.
The frantic dog whistling to offshore people smugglers by Morrison initially and now Dutton has been getting through and it is reported that eight boats of asylum seekers have been turned around in the last two weeks.
Fortunately the new Labor government were awake to this cynical political ploy and have increased maritime patrols to foil the Liberal’s main policy objective.