ScoMo’s Mandate
At the time of writing, Corangamite looks like being a Labor win. This marginal seat was given electoral bribes of almost $34 million by Labor which sounds a lot until you compare it to the $3 billion worth of promises made by the Coalition. Of course, this begs the question that if it falls to Labor, will Scott Morrison deliver?
People are making comparisons to 1993, where Hewson lost the “unlosable” election by outlining a broad agenda. While I’m sure many people are suffering shock and disbelief that the polls and betting markets could get it so wrong and are calling for Queensland to be removed from country, it’s worth looking at history and remembering that following Keating’s amazing win in that year, he was soundly defeated just three years later by John Howard.
Another three years of this mob, some of you are saying, I’d rather move to New Zealand. Unfortunately, I suspect that their offer to take 150 refugees from Australia only applies to those poor souls languishing on Manus and Nauru… Mm, what’s the Liberal’s plan for them? Leave them there forever as a deterrent?
I’m comforting myself by remembering a book on quantum physics I’m reading; it suggested that inside atoms there were billions of new universes being created all the time. This morning, I’m imagining that there is a universe somewhere else where everything has worked out well for the country and the Liberals have split into two groups: People with a different world view from Labor and the Greens, but who don’t think that they know more than just about anybody on any topic and are prepared to debate consider and find bipartisan solutions, and those who decided to join Fraser Anning’s new party. That way, I can tell myself that this is the world where Scott Morrison has to justify himself and live up to all he promised while presiding over an economy that’s turning to mush. Take that ridiculous first home buyer’s guarantee. Apart from destroying the mortgage insurance business, how will it work in practice? And how will first home buyers respond when they discover that the banks won’t lend them the money anyway because they still don’t have the sort of income to service the debt?
Yes, I know. Politicians get away with breaking election promises all the time, so what if Corangamite doesn’t get its fast train? I mean, Bronwyn just took a helicopter so why don’t they all do that if they’re in a hurry?
Not to mention, Morrison’s promise to pay for the East-West link without any contribution from the Victorian government. Premier Andrews copped a lot of flak for tearing up the contract and “wasting a billion dollars”. Ignoring all the political ins and outs and the whole idea of sunk costs, one certainly has to say that tearing up the contract looks like pure genius. Now we get the road and it’s all paid for by ScoMo. A bargain at a billion dollars.
And your power bills? They’ve started coming down, haven’t they? Oh, maybe not yet. But once the brand new coal-fired power station is built, we’ll practically be paid for using power. I mean, surely they have a mandate for that. We just elected a PM who took a lump of coal to Parliament and passed it around like it was something that wouldn’t get your hands dirty.
Of course, it seems those signs from the Greens which said, “Stop Labor’s Adani mine” worked a treat, now it’s certainly the Liberal’s Adani mine and I think the Queensland government should approve it straight away and ask them when they’ll start providing the jobs that Queenslanders seemed to think would be forthcoming from a mine that’s going to be fully automated.
Personally, I’ll be writing to Josh Frydenberg to ask when construction will start on removing the rail crossing at Glenferrie Road so I can get home to my family quicker. As I never use the road when coming home from work, I don’t really understand how that’s going to work, but there’s a lot I don’t understand at the moment. If Joshie has said that removing this crossing will enable me to get home to my family quicker then who am I to dispute that.
It’s just like when the Reserve Bank revised down the growth forecast, Morrison explained that they were wrong because he’s using a figure that enables him to predict a Budget surplus and to revise it down would mean that the surplus would be like the world I’m imagining where everything worked out well and we elected a government which was actually committed to doing something about the problems that we face and not simply pretending that climate change doesn’t exist, that the NDIS doesn’t need the $1.7 billion that they banked in the Budget, that they have an Environment Minister, that cancer treatment is free and that dealing with Clive Palmer isn’t the sort of thing that will come back to bite them.
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Return to home pageIn a Presidential race you need a President or someone who looks and sounds like one.
I think the Queensland result is affecting ScuMo already! His pic at the top of this article has him looking more like a cane toad than usual!
It would be interesting to look at the amount and direction of swing with the ownership of media coverage for any correlation. I don’t feel that I am living in a democracy when fake news and falsehoods are given the same airtime as actual policy. It feels more the China where the media is colt rolled by the government and the people live in ignorance of world issues.
Scott Morrison’s final words at his victory speech last night were “God Bless Australia” two thoughts came to mind-a ‘Trump-ism’, and that Australia will need all the help it can get-including God’s, as Australia heads nowhere (backwards !) over the coming 3 plus years.
Judith: Agree, Australia lacks breadth and depth of media, neither diverse nor outward looking, with a split between traditional and new media backgrounded by profound demographic dynamics of less diverse upper median age vote vs. younger and diverse.
This dynamic is being manipulated e.g. US, UK and fringes of Europe, for political and corporate purposes promoting sentiments and beliefs described as ‘values’ (with dollops of nativism, fear and anger), while other views are invisible or attacked.
sad use of physics for scummos mandate is a further downgrade of science. What does dutton’s mandate say to asylum seekers?
Hewson’s loss was a fluke and due to the timing of a cake. Labor loss was an underhand negative fear campaign that was exemplified, in my view, by the yellow shirt footage and the perception of labor talking but not doing, saying but not explaining during a long 6 years.
More of the same will see another 6 years and if they control the senate scummo becomes pig-iron bob2
ps give the loonies the flick they are a millstone.
Having picked my jaw up from the floor last night, I had a few thoughts.
1) Where do I get a real telly. This one is broken. F’ing free trade agreements should include quality clauses ?
2) CONGRATULATIONS Zali Steggall. The mad monk is finally out of parliament. He was the worst thing to happen to Australian politics excluding Whitlam’s dismissal.
3) Am I to believe that more than 1/2 of Australia can’t see that our “new” pm is a lying, bullying, back-stabbing, self-serving, misogynistic god-bothering flat earth believing dickhead who has just sold Australia’s soul, again, for a chance to sit in the bog chair by doing nothing but slagging off his opponents ideas, again ?
4) How many $$’s do I have to commit to my side of “A fair go for those who have a go” ?
$100 ? $1000 $1,000,000 ? I print T-shirts part time in my garage, sometimes, when I can get the work, to try and get away from C’Link, but getting any aid is like getting blood out of a stone, and when I declare what I am doing it costs me more than I make plus newstart. Plus the accountant.
5) Can we call yesterday a practice run, and have another election next Saturday ?
Hmmm. A “presidential” style election, where the “winner” isn’t even remotely “presidential” – unless you assess him by the lows to which Trump has dragged the US, the globe, civil discourse, any chance of unity in his country and any chance of the simmering aggression and rage that bubbles beneath the surface of way too many people in a nasty world, made the more nasty by social media and nasty leaders; a world where it is not enough to come to consensus. Oh no, there must be a clear winner and even worse, there must be a vanquished loser.
Well done Australia. The idiots have delivered a further 3 years of the inmates running the asylum. We get Lambie doing her “I’ll tell you what – I’m tough and they hate me, but I’m going to fight” bile: Dutton’s talk of voters taking baseball bats to Labor (moronic language for moronic supporters); a PM that preaches unity but promotes division; Barnyard calling Labor idiots ( are you kidding me – the rusted pot calling the kettle black?). The re-election, with a swing, of prize buffoon Christensen – who is so repulsive and desperate he has fallen for the Philippino bride trap – like that always ends well). A PM whose total work history shows that he is no more than a failed corporate hack – and he failed for the reason he is an appalling PM – his conviction that his promotion means he is the saviour, the messiah, a genius when his history shows he is not at all collegiate, is abrasive and dismissive of colleagues (after all, he is a genius – just ask him) and is, like Latham, a boofhead who will resort to using his size to try and intimidate – and I am sure that resonated favourably with a section of the voting public (most of whom will, I suspect, drive a very particular type of vehicle). The LNP will see him as the messiah, but he is too flawed.
Bob Hawke did some awful things but is so revered because he still showed how to be a leader and to exhibit courage and we forgave him his flaws. Morriosn is just flawed and lacks the intellect and grandeur of vision Hawke possessed. Granted, he did run rings around Labor, who were simply not adroit enough to change tack during the campaign, even when there was every reason to doubt Labor’s message – I had major doubts for many weeks, and expressed them in this forum and others. But he had the mainstream media campaigning for him and even the ABC, I believe were unreasonably biased against Shorten and the corpulent and repulsive Palmer with his virulent anti-Labor campaign. How could the LNP lose?
But my question after this election campaign is how the hell will Labor ever get itself back into office?
I am an Atheist up until now. But maybe there is a god after all.
Killing “negative gearing” is still on the agenda for me.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
So is the future, if we will have any… What happened to the much touted progressive youth vote….?
“When will we ever learn?” , sang Marlene Dietrich.
Is Oz going to be the country from the past forever…?
Moving across the ditch might be okay in the short term but I’m sure Jacinda has her work cut out with the nationals baying at the gates for another crack.
Helvityni, yes, what happened to the youth vote? I was amazed at my Queensland voting booth yesterday by the number of young people handing out How to Vote cards for One Nation. Where do young idealistic people get these regressive right-wing conservative values? Certainly did not happen during my younger years.
I fear for the ABC now – I see it being cut and dumbed down just the way that Murdoch has always dreamed of.
And where were all those mothers who would have benefited immensely from Labor’s child care package? I had expected that policy offering to be very attractive to women voters.
The “miracle” of Scotty only took billions of dollars in handouts to regional electorates, private schools, gun clubs, etc. I think the “Drought” will suddenly just go away, there is another miracle.
Something the LNP are good at exploiting, but is never even acknowledged, is the quaint lower-middle class belief that buying a house is an heroic, patriotic sacrifice and they should be subsidized and supported by the Government in their pursuit of Real Estate.
Bruce: Am I to believe that more than 1/2 of Australia can’t see that our “new” pm is a lying, bullying, back-stabbing, self-serving, misogynistic god-bothering flat earth believing dickhead who has just sold Australia’s soul, again, for a chance to sit in the bog chair by doing nothing but slagging off his opponents ideas, again ?
Share your pain, bro. Yes is the answer to your rhetorical.
Your vote is a privilege and, with compulsory voting, there should include the requirement that you should effing well pay attention to what is going on. That’s the problem when the MSM is biased toward business and corporate friendly policies. Most people don’t have the time or the intelligence to come here for perspective…
Beyond disappointed, all ALP had to do was shut the fck up
If Labor had gained power it would have faced commercial media agitprop from Monday am campaigning against them till the next electio.
Conversely the LNP still have the same issues of splits BTW MPs, small l vs. Conservatives while Libs in Melbourne etc. will be forced to accommodate QLD Conservative Nativist Christianity hijacking the party and/or policies, along with corporates.
Maybe this will be a hollow victory giving the LNP enough rope…
I hear commentary that Scummo now has a mandate to adopt whatever policies he wishes and, in so doing, will have broad support in “The Party”. The argument seems to be that Scummo now has the authority to over-ride the right wing/moderate divide and, Messiah like, bring the Party together. I cannot see the logic in this as it will be a Coalition Government so Scummo still has to negotiate and sign the secret “Coalition Agreement” – he does not have authority over the Nationals, many of whom are gung-ho on right wing policies. Remember how the Coalition Agreement kept Turnbull from adopting more moderate policies, including the NEG – it will be so for Scummo too.
And the shit-show carries on. Wanna bet the opinion polls will swing further towards the ALP in the coming months as the shit-show gets shittier and the punters realise they were sold a package of lies. No…wait….Scomo will tell you the shit tastes good and you will believe it. Just like the USA……life is good when you have someone to hate.
I despair for Australia
I am bereft. Am I to assume that 50% of us are brainless idiots for reelecting a government (supposedly good money managers) who squandered millions on opening Xmas Island, engaging some obscure Barrier Reef Authority and employed a mob for immigrant security without tender whose head office was in a tent somewhere at the end of a dirt road? The other half of us bucolic backwater dwellers apparently believed the polls and the bookies that it was all over bar the shouting. Message for the ALP let Tasmania drift towards Antarctic and cut Quuensland off at Brisbane. Anywhere north of there let them secede, speak their own gibberish and welcome Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews and Eric Abetz as they cycle past the only remaining coal mines in the country. Too much sun is ideal for solar power but it also can be very detrimental to whatever passes for brainpower up there.
Once more my cherished imaginings of “Australia, the greatest country in the world” are dashed, and only by a little more than 50% of my fellow Australians who voted the most divided, dishonest, unethical, immoral government back into power for another three years of climate change inaction, environmental vandalism, demonization of non-whites, increased draconian security legislation to protect whithering liberties, sexual and racial discriminations for religious freedom, trickle down economics, wage stagnation and decreasing fulltime employment, privatised social services, a fully corporatised national broadcaster and the usual endless lies, arrogance and corruption from Parliament and the Senate.
My vote was wasted in a safe Liberal seat, so my thanks to the aimn, I just got more patriotic satisfaction in this rare online rant.
In three years there will be even less left of the Australia I grew up to rejoice in, politically, environmentally or fundamentally.
Hang onto your seats, the bullshit resumes Monday. I am done.
Someone just commented on another outlet that we should have a Quexit. In other words leave them north of the border to the unique machinations that pervade that particular part of the country. Being Queensland, so called, perhaps once the rest of the country becomes a republic they could also remain part of the commonwealth with the royal family confined to visits there to open the various fossil fuel outlets espoused by the fossil fuels in situ.
Frank SmithMay 19, 2019 at 1:02 pm
“Where do young idealistic people get these regressive right-wing conservative values?”
Ideals, ideas, thoughts, presumptions all start with something.
This link below wouldn’t have anything to do with it, Hey!
https://www.tr.news/islamic-attack-what-really-happened-yesterday-in-oldham/?mc_cid=0a2179073a&mc_eid=53d405fea1
Truth always will out.
Tommy Robinson? Truth? Thug! Right wing nut job! Racist! Mark, you know where can jam that crap.