With conservative governments one only needs to leave one’s fingers off the keyboards for a day or two and the gloom of their governance seems to crush the validity of one’s thinking.
So with a bit of positive thinking I will try to put my slant on what has been taking place in the world around us.
In no particular order of course, just as they come to mind.
1 Morrison’s trip to the US of course heads the list and my first thought is why would he invite our Prime Minister and I can only conclude that amongst the world leaders he is the only one that match’s Donald’s propensity for untruth and the phoney side of life. What Donald calls fake.
He sat through a press conference with the President in the oval office listening to the craziest politician in the world ramble inane words of war and peace as though he were the self-elected arbitrator of all things good and bad.
2 I don’t think it unreasonable to ask, but the Dept of Home Affairs has refused to say just how many warrants police agencies have sought to investigate journalists, claiming to do so would be an “unreasonable diversion of resources”.
What a joke. Day by day our freedoms are being taken away.
3 The schools protest last Friday was a huge success and many other concerned citizens joined them. The ratbaggery of our nation said the usual disparaging things and made themselves look foolishly under educated in the process.
So here’s a shout out to the Magritte fan holding a placard with a picture of a hammer labelled; “this is not a drill”
“Heat Is Murder” is the second-best slogan I spotted
And a special sign at the rally read, “If you were doing your job, I would be at school.”
Young Greta Thunberg followed up on Monday with a passionate speech at the UN condoning world leader for their inaction.
At the same time 250 academics at Australian universities say the federal government’s inaction on the climate crisis requires civil disobedience in response and they feel a “moral duty” to rebel and “defend life itself”.
4 The Biloela Tamil family were given permission to stay until the final hearing of their deportation case. Fingers crossed for them. If Dutton and Morrison win it will only confirm the extent of their miserable cruelty.
5 There has been a lot of conjecture about those attending the White House state dinner and why Pastor Brian Houston was rejected. Well given that Mr. Houston, the founder of the Hillsong Church, was censured by the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse may yet face the courts, this isn’t surprising.
However, over and above this anomaly there is another of even greater importance. Here is a clue. If you were selecting a list to attend this function who do you think would represent Australia better than anyone else?
A colorless list
Kerry Stokes
Andrew “Twiggy’’ Forrest
Anthony Pratt
Gina Rinehart
Rupert Murdoch
Lachlan Murdoch
Greg Norman
Nicole Kidman
Andy Penn
Shemara Wikramanayake (Macq. Group)
Mark Vassella (Bluescope)
Andy Thomas (Astronaut)
6 A $3.5B under-spend in the NDIS budget to aid placing the national budget in surplus is an immoral unjust imposition on those in need of life improving assistance.
Again, it is only to improve the government’s economic image in the electorate. 3.5 billion is a hell of a lot of money. The Minister would have known about the underspend for some time in order to work on his own budget.
Sad as it is this is pure government propaganda of the worst kind and yet again proves that they are not the best managers of our money. The best manipulators of it but certainly not the best managers.
They never will be until they understand that economics and society are interwoven.
One cannot exist without the other. We don’t have a government at the moment. We have a bunch of individuals hell-bent on the retention of power above all else and will do things like the aforementioned, or worse, to stay in power.
Any surplus comes on the back of a lot of hardship and sleight of hand economics.
7 This was sent to me by a Facebook friend:
Living in rural NSW, Northern Rivers, where politics is substantive only as action – we rarely take notice of Canberra and Sydney wafflers, who do little to nothing for us, and what little they do is often destructive.
Our northern rivers are nearly dry and the air is heavy with a deep haze of smoke.
The crisis we face is far reaching. There are mass fish kills along the Darling River, Dubbo, is running out of water, inflows into the Macquarie River are at an historic low, the huge Burrendong dam on the Macquarie is nearly empty, Nyngan in rich red soil country has had no rain since 2016, the country on the way to Bourke is turning into desert, Girilambone is dying, Warwick and Stanthorpe in Queensland have had no rain for month upon month and might run out of water completely, Stanthorpe deep in drought will need to truck in drinking water, towns in Queensland’s Southern Downs and Granite Belt are deep in drought … city dwellers have no idea how devastating climate change is to our fragile country and to the people who struggle to live thereon.
While outback fire fighters are fighting to contain 70 or more fires our politicians are squabbling and the media is gossiping – I wonder how they would react if the water out of their tap was mud brown and stank of things rotting. How would city folk enjoy living in country ruined by cotton, farming, coal seam gas and mining?
Politics is substantive as an action that is helping kill Australia. Not only is Australia suffering its worst drought ever, there is the additional fact that Australians are systematically trashing what remains of the fragile natural environment. Heavy clouds of smoke that I see from my study window are testament to that.
8 Now who would have thought that the Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the Liberal Party would suggest that the Labor Party was racist because it dared to question the credibility of a Chinese member of the House of Representatives?
In Question Time in an answer to a question from Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus he doubled down on his accusation making it blatantly clear that Labor was engaged in the character assassination of MP Gladys Liu.
I would have thought that the PM should be taking these matters more seriously.
However, the absurdity of this Christian Prime Minister is that he is making a fool of himself in making such a claim.
There is much water yet to run under the China Bridge so the Prime Minister should temper his reactions with an understanding that it is legitimate to ask questions. Many of them.
The integrity of many people is at stake here.
9 This song from Les Misérables keeps repeating in my ears
♫ Do you hear the people sing,
singing a song of angry men
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again,
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. ♫
10 Why would you front the Government Senate Enquiry into domestic violence when one of the co chairs, Pauline Hanson, has prejudged you to be a liar?
We have had many deeply flawed people in our parliament over the decades but none more so than her.
Like everything else this government touches it is filled with political advantage regardless of the ethics.
This time it is to gain the vote of Pauline Hanson in the Senate. The most recent valuable enquiry on the subject is lying in a drawer somewhere with the words “look at me” emblazoned on the front page.
The deeply religious deeply conservative deeply excruciating Kevin Andrews and the deeply preposterous Pauline Hanson are to co chair the enquiry. Think deeply about that.
11 In an open letter, professors, researchers and lecturers from more than a dozen institutions have declared support for the Extinction Rebellion movement and its global week of non-violent civil disobedience in October.
12 The government appointed Barnaby Joyce its special drought envoy, yet he failed to write a report. Said he was busy cleaning up his act for the next series of Australia’s got talent.
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My thought for the day
In terms of social activism, the word wait should never mean never.
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