By James Moore

When the video appears on TVs and computer screens, it will, initially, be shocking. Men in uniforms, wearing sidearms or guns drawn, will walk up and knock on the front doors of modest homes. An unanswered door will be battered down with a heavy ram. The people hiding inside will be dragged out to waiting vans, crying, children screaming for their parents. They will be loaded up and driven down their neighborhood’s street and taken to a fenced compound, likely to be called a deportation center or camp. Family members will probably be separated as they wait for mass transportation to the border, where they will be frog-walked back to a country many of them had never even experienced. Possibly, to complete the tableau, long trains with box cars will wait on sidings to take passengers to unknown destinations.

Assuming the new administration can pull off mass deportation, there will be varying types of raids. Cameras will be invited to watch as immigration agents sweep into meat packing plants and small manufacturing facilities and reduce to custody the entire workforce. Buses will be parked nearby and people, many with blood still dripping from their work aprons in an abattoir, will be herded aboard and driven off to unknown locations to await deportation. Their families will not know why they did not return from work that evening. Troops from the U.S. Army will patrol barbed wire fence lines of these internment camps spread across the American landscape, which will also serve, symbolically as graveyards of our “better angels.”

Whether the Trump administration is competent enough to even deport 500 immigrants is worth contemplating. The only endeavor he has not failed at in his life is getting low-information and low-intellect voters to believe his bullshit. According to the president-elect, he plans to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to authorize the deportation of immigrants. The last time the measure was used occurred during World War II when the land of the free rounded up 100,000 ethnic Japanese and placed them in internment camps. Two-thirds of the detained were American citizens. The law is supposed to be used only when this nation is involved in a declared war, but such technicalities are not likely to restrain Trump and the racist administrators of his xenophobic fantasies.

If Trump’s incompetence can overcome the deportation logistics, the consequences of losing lower-wage labor will almost certainly have a sweeping downward impact on the U.S. economy. Crops on the truck farms of California’s fertile Central Valley, which feed much of this country, will surely rot in the fields or never be planted. There is no rush of Americans demanding they be given jobs bending their backs to pull vegetables from the ground or picking and loading the sweet cantaloupes from the Pecos River Valley of West Texas. Jobs on farms and ranches across the country will go unfilled, prompting less production on family operations and force many to surrender to the spreading power of agribusiness corporations. Home construction, too, in a thriving economic climate will shrivel to almost nothing without Mexican labor, documented or illegal.

Anger appears to be more important to the American electorate than information. Trump was mad and that translated into voters who did not believe that inflation was under control, the country was adding jobs every month, wages were rising, and the U.S. economy was the “envy of the world.” Robust may not be an adequate word for how well the economy has performed under the Biden administration. Figures indicate the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has risen 12.6 percent during the president’s tenure and that more than 44,000 applications per month were filed for new businesses, a figure without equal in the country’s history, and according to the White House, about 90 percent faster than applications prior to the pandemic. The African American and Hispanic voters who crossed over to vote for Republican distemper must have been oblivious to the fact that, under Mr. Biden, black ownership of companies doubled and Hispanic businesses rose 40 percent.

People were grousing about the cost of groceries, and, in some locations, the price of gasoline, but the economic engine of the nation was thrumming along and there was no apparent need to change political leadership, which may be precisely why the Democrats lost the presidential campaign. According to a new study by the University of Chicago, a healthy economy always accrues to the political benefit of Republican candidates, even when they are not incumbents. The Booth School of Business analysis appears to prove Trump won because the economy is thriving. I consider this more of an indictment of the failed historic messaging of Democrats than voter ignorance, though there was certainly no shortage of vacuous decision making in the voting booth. Americans are convinced, wrongly, that taxes are lower and more jobs are created when a Republican holds office, and obviously, are not sophisticated enough thinkers to link current economic success to the Democrat who has held the office the past four years. Republicans are in fact, as demonstrated by the chart below, bad for the economy, and Trump has been the worst.

The Booth School analyzed 89 years of data on elections and the economy and discovered that, regardless of the incumbent, a weak economy favors Democrats and a strong economy augurs to the benefit of Republicans. The study points to the two biggest economic crises of the past century, which are the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to turn the economy around in 1932, and, in 2008, Americans chose Democrat Barack Obama to undo the crisis caused by Wall Street’s speculative practices. Voters picked John Kennedy in the midst of the 1960-61 recession, Jimmy Carter to fix a similar problem with the 1973-75 recession, and Bill Clinton when the economy got bumpy in 1990-91. The Booth School model effectively predicted Trump to win with a good economy in 2016 and Biden to be elected during the Covid-19 crisis, which was bad for more than just the economy. Predictably, then, Biden’s vibrant economy meant that Republican Trump would be restored to office.

The most disturbing revelation of these outcomes is the rationale used by voters; it is also a condemnation of messaging by Democrats and their inability to get out from under their brand image. The public believes Democrats are best to hold office in trying times because they will indulge in redistribution of resources and raise taxes to solve problems and provide social safety nets. Republicans get votes during strong economies because, as the authors of the study wrote, “voters are more willing to take risks and therefore more likely to elect Republicans, who favor lower taxes.” As facile as that sounds, it is true; Americans believe the myth that Republicans are better for jobs, economy, and taxes and that Democrats are big spenders and bigger taxers.

Was there not enough reason, though, to break the model with Trump? Had he not tried to overthrow an election? Was he not convicted of 34 felonies and adjudicated to be a rapist? Had he not bragged about groping women against their will? Did he not mock a disabled journalist during a televised speech? Had he not told the country that Covid would go away “in the warmer weather,” a falsehood that was the partial cause of 1.1 million dead Americans? Voting for him was, I suppose, proof that presidential politics have become strictly transactional. Vote for me and here’s what you will get in return. Trump promised a secure border and a better economy, which meant his supporters had to believe Biden’s was bad even when it was not. Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to offer something a tad more amorphous, which was “joy,” and a renewal of women’s rights regarding abortion.

Other dynamics included the fact that not enough men could bring themselves to vote for a woman, maybe especially one who is of color, and an insufficient number of women were willing to cast a ballot for Harris. Trump gained in almost every demographic, including Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians, and college-educated Whites. Babbling on about batteries and sharks and Hannibal Lecter seemed not to have impacted his constituency. The man was mad, about something, as was the electorate. They shared his anger but could not articulate why any more than their candidate. Nonetheless, America has spoken, and we have chosen disaster. The Republican dream of shrinking the size of government down until it can fit in a bathtub is about to be realized.

But Trump and his acolytes will also finish the job and drown it.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Weird, creepy or just plain nasty?

What I find truly weird is that when Kamala Harris’s campaign labelled bleach boy Donny T and his douche coupers as weird it cut through, yet insurrection, treason, rape, 39 proven felonies, a history of criminality, blatant grifting, daughter fondling, despot fawning and gibbering idiocies did not.

Trump is a spittoon for the overflow of every human personality defect housed within an orange-stuccoed pumpkin head topped by a bleached, road kill comb-over so by definition he’s also a weirdo but in his case weirdness is a comparative virtue. Anyway, his millions of thralls and cultists are anonymous, massed useful idiots but are far too numerous to qualify as freaks and exceptions but does quantity disqualify them as weirdos rather than somewhat offbeat normies? You decide.

Who are the notable weirdos in Trump world with whom we can compare our own?

Discount the grifters and sycophants. They may be egregious arseholes but their motivation is clearer than their weirdness – self-interest:

Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz. Ol’ Jellyback who kissed Trump’s ring after Trump publicly called his wife ugly.

Rudolph William Louis (Rudy) Giuliani. Hair dye leaking, public sphincter loosening, nudger exposing Trump lawyer and victim of “everything Trump touches dies” (ETTD) syndrome. Too bad so sad, Rudy.

Alex Jones – conspiracy theory and Infowars fake news website creator is scum who exploits outrage for clicks. Karma kicked Jones in the plums when juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded a total of $1.487 billion in damages to a Sandy Hook shooting first responder and families of victims. Jones is worse than weird – he’s evil.

Ignore the dumb as a box of hair, noxious effluvia who are more accurately described as deeply, deeply and irredeemably stupid. And nasty:

She’s so far right she’s come full circle and disappeared up her own secessionist arsehole. She’s sporky minger Marjorie Taylor-Green of peach tree dish, Gazpacho police and Jewish space laser fame,

and

37 year old grandmother, Skanks-R-Us franchisee and public hand-job afficianado Lauren Bobert whose hubby was want to flash his frightener in bowling alleys.

Leading the way for the prominent and most committed of freaks is Elon Musk – Twitter troll and Howard Hughes-level, super rich weirdo.

“In 2018 Musk’s tweets were become (sic) so erratic and bizarre that Tesla investors had to tell him to basically ‘shut up’ as he was costing them money.” On Musk and his sale of Tesla shares.

He paid $44B to single-handedly destroy the value of the Twitter brand.

Musk’s son is called X Æ A-XII and his second child Exa Dark Sideræl. Three cars in the Tesla Model 3 series were going to be called Model S, Model E and Model X. He “likes to live-tweet his poops”. He accused one of the divers who rescued the Thai football team marooned in a cave in Thailand of being a paedophile.

He’s insecure; desperate for approval from the tech bros, the RWNJ Twitterati, the Heritage Foundation nutters and establishment media tycoons.

He’s a conspiracy spreading tinfoil hatter – tweeting that illegal immigrants are being shipped into the US so that they can vote Democrat. He’s an extremist existential threat to democracy

JDVance, the opportunistic, wannabe Trump Veep has been unfairly but believably accused of fornicating with furniture, becoming a viral meme and a drag on the Republican campaign as a result. That and his Handmaid’s Tale breeder weirdness. Vance’s boosting from Uday and Qusay Trump should’ve been warning enough for Donny Snr.

Steve Bannon, “The Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”¹, populism’s grand strategist whose wardrobe was rescued from a trailer park dumpster. Virulently anti-establishment, impulsive and attention-seeking Bannon is an anarchist, a weirdo and a weirdo whisperer. (¹Andrew Breitbart, founder of Breitbart News).

Roger Stone, My Pillow guy Mike Lindell, Trump lawyer and co-conspirator Sidney Powell, failed GOP presidential hopeful Pudding Fingers Ron DeSantis of the creepy forced smiles and arch-villain Stephen Miller are all prominent weirdos.

House Speaker and hence 3rd in line for the Presidency, Mike Johnson, (tautology alert) a self-righteous christo-fascist shares a porn-monitor phone app with his son. Interrupting each other’s solo displays of affection? Weird.

* * * * *

How do our own RWNJs stand up to the competition posed by these American weirdos?

They’re nasty and they’re hateful. They are mendacious, grubby, bullying and incompetent and they’re world-leading hypocrites and pecksniffs but are they weird and are they creepy? Can they match the grotesqueries who populate Trumpistan? Who are they?

Barmy Joyce, the Englebert Humpastaffer and menace to sobriety from New England, emerges frequently from a wobbley-booted haze of hairy dogs and pink elephants to gormlessly opine on any and all matters, ranging from the effect of gay marriage on the beef trade to the coronavirus being less threatening than snakes (please know® that there have been 9 deaths attributed to snake bites in Australia in the 2020s so far and 9,859 deaths due to COVID-19 registered in 2022). Barmy is not weird, he’s just a fucking idiot. (®Gladdy Two-shoes Berejiklian).

Clive Palmer’s $100M senator and libido-suppressant Ralphie Babet, when not badgering the witness or answering to criminal damage and unlawful assault charges is desperately trying to raise his social media profile in the niche cooker market and to get noticed by the heavies within the MAGAe cult. Ralphie’s a bit of a tragic, look-at-me kinda non-achiever who fanboys Andrew Tate. Pathetic, creepy and yes, a fully-fledged weirdo. But easily ignored.

A “most powerful, divisive, and yet indestructible bureaucrat²” Mike Pezzullo the now sacked swarthy bard wrote in his 2021 Anzac Day speech “In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer”. An anti-China hawker, a practitioner of dark political arts and a fan of black-uniformed, armed goon squads Pezzullo is one weird dude. Rasputin or Machiavelli? Doesn’t matter anymore. (²A seasoned observer of Federal politics. Michael West Media).

Brother Stuie Robert. Less appealing than guiding Alan Jones into a glory hole this Nosferatu replicant is your run-of-the-mill happy clapping hypocrite. No weirder than venal, evangelizing prosperity gospellers everywhere. His inability to form an image in a mirror perhaps explains his lack of self-awareness.

Image coutesy of Craig Kelly. LOL.

Cray Cray Kelly – persona au gratin. When Clive Palmer was looking for potential UAP candidates he despatched a flunkey for a fact hunt. He returned with a picture of Craig Kelly. And so the whole “Our Next Prime Minister” weird farce was born.

Screwloose Lautrec, the homunculus Malcolm Roberts of One Notion made the short list 😎. He’s a weirdo’s weirdo, a RWNJ’s FRWNJ. He would’ve better served the country as sandwich spread for noted person of girth Gorgeous George Christensen but that shit has sailed. Roberts has identified himself as “Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul”. A sovereign citizen yet somehow at the same time a federal senator. Interesting mental gymnastics in that. Anti-vaxxer, climate denier, UN conspiracy believer and fervent weirdo, Malcolm’s the diminutive yet real deal.

Eric Abetz. He’s baaack… he didn’t die in a Berlin bunker. He’s been re-elected, this time to the Tasmanian House of Assembly, possibly due to Tassie’s weird Hare-Clark multi-member system. Eric is a relic, a coprolitic throw-back to the good old days of Anschluss and Liebenstraum. Royalist Abetz wants to keep the Windsors – he likes to think that’s one way the Germans will still be in charge. Is he weird? Who cares – he’s irrelevant. His Hitler Youth rosette-bedecked mini-me James Paterson is a bigger worry.

Within the Tory pantheon of wombat-headed, trainer-wheeled, bottom-feeding, mono-browed, hairy-palmed, goose-stepping, bobble-headed, undie-sniffing, pecker-headed, bottle shouldered detritus the three most consequential weirdos were each chosen to represent the clunge collective’s values to the voting public as worthy of national stewardship:

Captain Catholic the mad Abbott, a blatant, unapologetic sexist who appointed himself Minister For Women, was weirdly submissive to Mistress Cruella his dominatrix chief of staff, yet he affected a persona of sluggo-wearing machismo and a bow-legged amble that suggested his nutsack was badly prickled by nettles. Tones applied his LOTO style to the PMship and wondered why constant, carping negativity didn’t work when he was the government.

Easily out-weirding The Monk is of course Skiddy Morrison – self-described as God’s appointed representative. As the country and the world moved on around him The Great Schmo flattered himself with the title of ‘leader’. In his mind possibly The Great Leader or The Dear Leader; mistaking control freakery as leadership.

Cast your mind back to the images of Skiddy adoringly licking Trump’s earlobe, of his furtive fondling of strangers as some sort of creepy, evangelical conversion therapy. Recall his undergoing of Covid isolation with just his personal photographer, his hair washing as photo op, his “Great South Land of The Holy Spirit” dominionism, his self-congratulations at not having women protesters shot and his robust self-regard that withstood copious evidence that he was incompetent, and scandal riddled and weird.

“Morrison was only the harbinger of a worse politics to come.” (Bernard Keane, Crikey).

Spud Dutton, El Chippo, Herr Shickltuber, Adolph Kipfler, Gruppenfritter, Dick Tater… the potato-themed epithets are endless. A misanthrope’s dream – the man has the personality of a tuber and the warmth of a cold cup of sick. That he’s nasty is indisputable – an autocratic self-styled strong man who, Morrison-like, disappears when Tory-centred controversy arises, a truncheon-headed tough guy with a thin skin, a tormentor of the powerless and the dusky toned, a Bjelke-Peterson acolyte, a Gina Rinehart gofer.

His monotone drone, a blowie slowy circling the lounge room, reminds us he heads an ideas free zone, an Opposition defined by what it’s against. A thought bubble got out of hand and so he hoped that he could then use nuclear energy as a wedge on Labor’s energy policy. He has no intention of ever implementing such an unworkable boondoggle of course but it’s cheap politics over the national interest every time.

Spud as PM is like leaving the cat to guard your sashimi. A return to the Tories will reanimate their manifesto of blatant graft and favouritism that would give pause to Saudi royalty while the traditional Tory practices of incompetence and bastardry continue in the background.

OK, that’s all nasty and creepy but it’s standard Tory practice. Where’s the weird? I get a real sense that this bloke would get a kick from pulling the wings off butterflies. Let us hope that he doesn’t last long enough for us to find out.

* * * * *

Click the Like, post a comment, share the post. Encourage me to keep this shit going.

References

UAP Senator Ralph Babet was always quite weird. But lately he seems to be heading further down the MAGA-hole. Rachel Withers, Crikey. ($)

Mike Pezzullo. The demise of a Canberra’s “most powerful, divisive, and yet indestructible bureaucrat”. Michael West Media.

Mr Roberts has also written numerous reports claiming climate change is an international conspiracy fostered by the United Nations and international banks to impose a socialist world order. At least one report cites several anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, including notorious Holocaust denier Eustace Mullins among its “primary references”.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts wrote bizarre ‘sovereign citizen’ letter to Julia Gillard. Michael Koziol. SMH 6/8/16. ($)

Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake. Rolling Stone.

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is on a mission. The mission is to get the keys to the PM’s office at the next election. To achieve the objective, he will do or say whatever is necessary to garner as many votes as possible. The business plan is to say whatever he thinks is necessary – with his fingers tightly crossed behind his back.

We have recent experience with Dutton’s promise anything to get a vote strategy. On 9 September 2023, Dutton promised (assuming he is elected at the next election) to hold a second referendum on the recognition of first nations peoples in Australia, somehow getting done what the Albanese Government attempted to do without the malice and hatred. By 16 October 2023, conveniently a few days after the referendum failed, he (in that terminology so loved by the media to describe what is in essence a lie) ‘walked back’ the promise and was quoted as saying Australians were ‘probably over the referendum process for some time’.

The Dutton shadow cabinet has been highly vocal about wind turbines in general and in particular offshore wind farms. Some of the claims made are that marine animals will become disoriented because of the poles in the ocean, the poles will be damaged due to impacts with large aquatic mammals such as whales and they will be a blight on the coast line. If that were to be the case, why are these ill-effects only caused by wind turbines and not for example bridge pylons, oil rigs or jetties? The obvious answer is the claim is bollocks and similar to demonstrably false claims made by the only ex-president of the USA that is a convicted criminal. To make the claims even more laughable, guess who put the legislation through the Australian Parliament that allows for the installation of offshore wind turbines? Hint – it wasn’t the ALP. Angus Taylor (then Energy Minister) went as far as to say

An offshore electricity industry in Australia will further strengthen our economy. …Offshore generation and transmission can deliver significant benefits to all Australians through a more secure and reliable electricity system, and create thousands of new jobs and business opportunities in regional Australia.

Was Taylor wrong then or is Dutton wrong now?

Which brings us to Dutton’s nuclear future. Dutton and his shadow ministers are serving up claims that the government has no interest in the reduction of the cost of living for ‘ordinary Australians’. Apart from not defining ‘ordinary Australians’ so meaningful comparisons can be made, they were in power when a lot of the decisions were taken that created the current problems. However he is actively spruiking nuclear power as a better, cheaper and more reliable alternative to a ‘net zero’ future than renewable energy. The problem is that it isn’t.

Let’s look at cost. according to Peter Martin writing for The Conversation, respected magazine, The Economist recently produces a special edition that discussed the dawn of the solar age, arguing that solar energy production is growing exponentially. In fact

Installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years. The Economist says the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.

To give an idea of the standing start the industry has grown from, The Economist reports that in 2004 it took the world an entire year to install one gigawatt of solar capacity (about enough to power a small city). This year, that’s expected to happen every day.

Energy experts didn’t see it coming. The Economist includes a chart showing that every single forecast the International Energy Agency has made for the growth of the growth of solar since 2009 has been wrong. What the agency said would take 20 years happened in only six.

Ironically, the group that made the best estimate of the growth of solar energy is Greenpeace – although they also woefully underestimated the shift.

OK – so renewables are cheaper – how about reliability? Certainly solar panels are useless when the sun isn’t shining and wind turbines don’t do much when there is no wind

But the efficiency of batteries is soaring and the price is plummeting, meaning that on one estimate the cost of a kilowatt-hour of battery storage has fallen by 99% over the past 30 years.

In the United States, plans are being drawn up to use batteries to transport solar energy as well as store it. Why build high-voltage transmission cables when you can use train carriages full of batteries to move power from the remote sunny places that collect it to the cities that need it?

And why not move trainloads of batteries around? We’ve been moving coal, flammable fuels, oil and dangerous chemicals by rail and road for decades, with minimal risk. Australia is also investing in pumped hydro. This is designed to make money at night by supplying power when renewables can’t. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (an investor in pumped hydro) responds to the opposition’s claims here.

Ok – so renewables are cheaper and reliable – is nuclear better? Not really. Apart from having to safety store the life-threatening waste from nuclear plants for a extremely long time using extremely well built and secure storage sites, there is the cost of establishing a nuclear industry in Australia. The recent experiences of the UK and USA who already have the processes in place to manage nuclear power generation are telling. The USA’s Voglte power plant is 6 years late and $33Billion over budget. If that’s concerning, it’s nothing in comparison to the UK’s Hinkley Nuclear power station is currently 13 years late (originally expected online in 2017 – now possibly 2029) and $55 Billion over budget. The cost of the power generated is expensive in comparison to renewables as well.

If all of the problems above are surmountable, the killer blow is that nuclear power doesn’t work well with rooftop solar – despite Nationals Leader David Littleproud’s apparently support

The Nationals, he said, were not against renewable energy, only large-scale projects such as wind farms and transmission lines that were “tearing up the environment”.

Quite the opposite – the National Party wanted as many Australian households to get solar and batteries as would have them.

Like coal fired power stations, nuclear power stations work better and more efficiently if they are running at a constant rate. They are expensive to build, operate and maintain. It’s the real meaning of the term baseload and explains why power traditionally has been cheaper at night or on the weekend when the coal stations are still running and the power retailers have to find someone who will purchase the product. In contrast, installing solar panels is very quick, relatively inexpensive and can be used to store energy in a battery. But energy production is variable and depends on the environmental conditions on the day. The problem is explained by the ABC like this

… there are times in South Australia when rooftop solar alone can account for more than the entire demand for electricity in the state.

To ensure South Australia’s electricity system doesn’t blow up, virtually all other generators have to pare back their output to a bare minimum or switch off entirely.

And even then, South Australia’s surplus rooftop solar generation has to be exported to other states or wasted.

Rooftop solar can do this because it’s largely uncontrolled and flows simply by dint of the sun shining.

It was partly for this reason that South Australia’s only base-load coal plant retired in 2016.

Of course, there are many more times when rooftop solar provides precisely 0 per cent of South Australia’s power needs.

Which does nothing for the economics of a coal or nuclear power plant which operates best at a constant (flat out) rate.

In short Dutton cannot be trusted. His support for the second referendum evaporated almost before the claim was made. He would have been sitting around the Cabinet Table when the legislation to allow offshore wind turbines was discussed and approved and he is now making claims that he will sort out Australia’s transition to ‘net zero’ after the election proffering a solution that doesn’t stack up environmentally or economically.

Dutton wants to burden the country with an uncosted, untried energy system that is many times more expensive than the logical alternative, while harping about the cost of living. Talk about champagne tastes on beer budgets!

A most disturbing revelation, with profound repercussions for victims of rape and sexual assault, was made by former Channel Seven Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach in his evidence in the defamation action brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.

Lehrmann is alleged to have raped staffer Brittany Higgins in the parliament house office of then Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, in March 2019. His criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct.

Auerbach alleged that Lehrmann supplied Seven with privileged material given by Ms Higgins to the AFP, material that was not used in his criminal trial. It is also alleged that Lehrmann airdropped the entire police E-brief to Auerbach, while the two were on a golfing trip.

According to a News.com report:

“Network 10’s barrister Dr Matt Collins has told the court that Bruce Lehrmann breached legal principles by providing Seven with documents from his ACT Supreme Court trial.

Mr Auerbach, in an affidavit tendered to the court, said Mr Lehrmann provided him with the AFP “statement of facts” from Mr Lehrmann’s criminal trial.”

The police statement of facts was provided to the defendant and his lawyers by the AFP, as is customary. Lehrmann and his legal team were then obliged by their responsibilities to the Harman Undertaking to use the documents “only for the purposes for which they were disclosed, and not for collateral or ulterior purposes.”

In short, the text messages, phone records and diary extracts supplied by Ms Higgins to the AFP, included in the brief of evidence and not used in the trial, should never have been released to the media. To do so was to breach the Harman Undertaking.

In theory such a breach can lead to a charge of contempt of court and, if you are a lawyer, a complaint to the Legal Services Commission.

As Ms Higgins stated in late July 2023, she provided the material to the AFP to assist in the prosecution of her alleged rapist:

“Reminder – this is my phone data I provided to the AFP to prosecute my rape case.

“None of it was tabled in court.

“And now, it continues to be leaked to the media without my consent.”

She said that the leaks represented “such a dangerous precedent to tolerate a victim’s private data to be weaponised in this manner without any recourse.”

Mr Auerbach alleged in April 2024 that Mr Lehrmann was responsible for supplying the privileged material to Seven. It is unclear who first released the privileged information to Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian in the middle of 2023.

It is important to note here that Mr Lehrmann has consistently and vigorously denied the rape allegations and denied that he is the source of the information from the police brief.

It’s telling that while there’s been a steady leak of evidence not used in Lehrmann’s criminal trial, there has been a remarkable lack of protest about the leak of that privileged material and the breach of the Harman Undertaking the leaking represents. There’s no shortage of salacious coverage of the content of the leaks, but considerably less commentary on the illegality of the act of leaking them.

Unless penalties are imposed on those who abuse their privileged access to police evidence such breaches will continue, to the detriment of victims, particularly in rape and sexual assault cases. As things stand, a complainant would do well to hurl her phone into the nearest body of water rather than give it to investigating police for inclusion in a brief to which her alleged perpetrator has access.

It seems an entirely untenable situation and one that can only be addressed if there is the legal and political will to address it. There is a clear framework in place for the prosecution of offenders, however, so far, nobody seems particularly interested in using it.

So when in September 2023 I was informed that the police brief of evidence in the Lehrmann Toowoomba matter had been obtained by an individual with no standing in that matter, who did not meet the criteria for access to that brief under Queensland law, I decided to do something about it.

Bruce Lehrmann was charged with of with two counts of raping a woman in Toowoomba, Queensland in 2021, shortly after he appeared in court in the ACT on charges of allegedly raping Brittany Higgins. Witnesses in the Toowoomba matter will be cross examined by Lehrmann’s counsel in a committal hearing in June 2024.

The individual who obtained the Toowoomba police brief relayed chunks of information from the brief to two other individuals, who, without knowledge of the other’s involvement, passed on the information to me. Both parties named the same individual as their source.

I have of course no evidence of who leaked the brief, and no knowledge of the intentions of the individual who benefitted from the leak. However, I was and remain sufficiently horrified by this breach occurring for the second time in two separate matters concerning the same accused person, that I decided to take whatever action I could.

On September 14, 2023, I lodged a complaint with the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission about the leak of the Toowoomba police brief to the individual.

On 26 October 2023, the Daily Mail published an article headlined: “Full details of rape accusations against Bruce Lehrmann after meeting alleged victim at a Toowoomba strip club – and when she came forward.”

Journalist Kylie Stevens attributes as her source a court brief she states was “obtained exclusively by The Australian“:

“According to a court brief obtained exclusively by The Australian newspaper [paywalled], the pair used cocaine during the night.’

The Australian headline is upfront about its source:

Cocaine, unprotected sex: Police brief reveals new charges.

Details of allegations against former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann can be revealed…”

Journalist Samantha Maiden also wrote a piece for News.com on October 26, detailing some of the police allegations without naming a source.

On 2 November 2023, I updated my complaint to the Queensland CCC to include these three articles.

Several weeks later, the Queensland CCC advised me that they would not be pursuing my complaint.

I’ve now decided to make the complaint again, in the light of current evidence provided by Mr Auerbach and concerns expressed by Dr Collins at the breaching of the Harman Undertaking in Lehrmann’s first trial. It appears that the Undertaking may have already been breached in the Toowoomba matter, before it has even come to trial.

We are talking about what is supposed to be a fundamental protection for victims of rape and sexual assault who choose to make a complaint to police, being used by the perpetrator, or someone who has privileged access to the police brief, to intimidate, harass, and humiliate complainants. It is astounding that this abuse of the legal system has not received anything like the attention it deserves. It is one more obstacle in a field filled with obstacles that can and do deter women from seeking justice after enduring rape and sexual assault.

Why are authorities such as the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission, and the relevant body in the ACT, failing to investigate these leaks?

Skiddy leaves his mark

Full of shit and full of himself, Scooter has left the building.

His greatest contribution to Australian governance is his departure from it. A vacuous blowhard given to bovine slogans, a Pentecostal nutter convinced of celestial endorsement from a deity whose prosperity ethos luckily aligns with his own, yet he was also sufficiently self-aware as to disguise his odious actuality with his daggy dad artiface and endless photo-op dress-ups.

The ever-present, punchable smirk belied any of his claims to humility; rather it underlined his belief in his own devine exceptionalism – a would-be theocrat thwarted by secular reason:

“God’s kingdom will come. It is in his hands, we trust in Him. We don’t trust in governments.” (Preaching at the Victory Life Centre in Perth, 2022).

Following the electorate’s clear gag reflex at the notion of this disingenuous gobshite continuing to represent the values of our country the image of a now forlorn figure on the Opposition’s backbench nose-bleed seats ironically elicited some entirely undeserved empathy. Scrolling his phone hoping someone had returned his calls, his “if you’re good at your job, you’ll get a job” banality taking its time to manifest itself, he was due instead the forensic grilling by a no-nonsense Catherine Holmes at the Robodebt Royal Commission where he distinguished himself as a practised sophist and blame shifter. And, due also, the ignominy of his too-clever-by-half ‘secret ministries’ parliamentary censure – a loose equivalent to the impeachment of his orange BFF and fellow twatwaffle Dorito Donny.

History will record, and many will now recall his many failings – his cravenness and inaction in the face of adversity, his ducking of accountability, his claiming of the success of others, his malice and bullying, repurposing taxpayers’ money to cronies and right-wing supplicants – all manifestations of his lack of character.

A shrivelled, one-dimensional intellect, a light-weight incapable of reflection or forethought with underlying smarm and personality defects, mentored by a proselytizing grifter and informed by an eagle painting he was impervious to self-reflection – comfortable in the belief he was the Chosen One.

In his departing sermon presented as a valedictory speech he professed “faith in Jesus Christ, which gives me the faith to both forgive but also to be honest about my own failings and shortcomings” which he then failed to be honest about by neglecting to mention any.

Manifestly unsuited to the job he is a study in how megalomania, verbal diarrhea, treachery and happenstance can reward a shameless fabulist and serial failure.

A creationist’s literal belief in biblical fables and his related, rampaging case of gynophobia are the 2 standouts in his compendium of personality defects.

He was visibly confused by the notion that women are equal.

He referred to females, including ministers, by their 1st names, men by their titles.

He mansplained over the top of his senior minister Anne Ruston when she was asked about the Lib government’s treatment of women.

Women to him were packaging:

“1st party room as PM. B4 media came he requested all women MPs move seats & sit in front of him. As props. For the cameras. When media left, Scott’s men took their seats” (Julia Banks, former member for Chisholm).

Counsel for all things female, the eponymous “Jenny”, was required to alert him to the unacceptability of rape via reference to his own daughters.

“I’ve had plenty of mates who have asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort the issue out with Pamela Anderson” he told Gold Coast radio station Hot Tomato FM. Wink, snerk, guffaw, eh? eh? Imagine that pasty slug pawing a woman. No actually. Don’t do that.

He did get handsy with unsuspecting disaster victims, admitting to copping a quick feel as some sort of subliminal, evangelical healing process by his God’s emissary – himself.

Inanity and beyond was a feature of the slogan bogan – each facile declaration followed by the smirk as if he’d passed on an inspirational maxim. The restraint shown by not shooting women protesters is a standout for the clueless galoot as was his spittle-flecked tirade against Christine Holgate who had the audacity to be a strong female role model as chief postie.

Which brings me to his trademark malice and bullying:

“The pattern is that if you attack Scott Morrison… he will lash out and background against you in the most vicious of ways.” (Samantha Maiden, The Drum).

This godly man, this humble servant of a benevolent divinity was ever eager to punch down, to victimise, torment, ignore and defame. Toddlers, Kopika, and Tharnicaa, asylum seekers, grannies,the unemployed. If some died, they died – his conscience was clear.

The black hole of honesty (truth bends around him) cultivated a regime where rorting was not a crime but a credential. The open disdain he held for established and trusted institutions went beyond the traditional Tory aversion to acountability – his God’s will over-ruled any and all. Science? Evidence? Proof? Veracity? Phhht!

When he needed to step up he stepped out; when opportunity arose to show true leadership he hid behind the curtains. He was anti-anti-corruption, aesthetically unpleasant, duplicitous and wantonly cruel.

His loyalty is transactional – Brother Brian? Who? Brother Stuie? Who? His most valuable gofer was his photographer. His closest confidante fled for the exit as an integrity commission was coming to fruition.

He claims credit for two issues as stand-out big wins for his legacy – the response to Covid and the AUKUS pact. Let us remain mindful of the context:

Australia came through the worst of Covid better than most. This is not due to The Galoot who was tardy with vaccines – worsening lockdowns and blaming the premiers. He, and cherubic Rubbery Figures Frydenberg were dragged kicking and screaming by the premiers (and, FFS, Igor Mortis John Howard) to implement the JobKeeper initiative of Greg Combet and Sally McManus.

AUKUS cedes our residual sovereignty to the Americans for decades and for a brain-bleeding price. Delivery is on the never-never and we can be sure the Seppos will bill us for every one of their inevitable FUBARS.

It looked for too long a while that we’d never be rid of The Galoot – stuck like a clock spring on the soap. Now to be referred to in the past tense, his name should become a verb synonymous with opportunistic duplicity – “That car yard sold me a lemon. I was Morrisoned.”

 

 

“He departs the parliament having scarred democracy, diminished trust in government, creating a legacy of shallow politics and photo op policies, of raising the individual above the collective, of switching the story to fit the circumstances; of above all, advancing Scott Morrison.” (Amy Remeikis, The Guardian).

 

Worst ever PM. Fuck off!

References

As Scott Morrison leaves Parliament, where does he rank among Australian prime ministers? The New Daily

Decoding ScoMo: the hidden story and messages in his Pentecostal mashup. Crikey ($)

 

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

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The headline conveys a tale of acquisition, narcissism, and unimaginable wealth. The world is overflowing with money inherited, earned honestly or obtained through corrupt means. Nevertheless, little is acquired through equal opportunities. It is a world where the rich have a significant advantage. It is a rich man’s world.

Let’s begin our investigation with some sobering statistics.

Last year, before legislation to fix the problem, research by the Australia Institute showed that:

“… the cost to the federal budget of generous superannuation tax concessions was on par with the cost of the entire aged pension and more significant than the total cost of the NDIS as a whole in 2022-2023.”

And Oxfam’s latest report, “Inequality Inc.,” said that the income of Australia’s 47 billionaires doubled in the last two years to $255 million.”

If you are amazed by those numbers, you are not alone. I am, too. Never before have the wealthy been so well taken care of.

Tax avoidance through family trusts is also an industry unto itself.

“Earnings can be allocated to family members with low income from other sources so that the taxable income attracts the lowest tax rate possible.

In some circumstances it is possible to reduce the tax bill to almost zero.”

As if that’s not enough:

“The rich also get rewarded with tax concessions to employ armies of lawyers, financial consultants, and accountants to arrange their tax affaires to avoid tax.”

While Australians face a cost-of-living crisis, billionaires have been raking it in. One report said that 897 self-managed super funds produced $1 million or more in income.

We now have “more wealth in the hands of 47 people than around 7.7 million Australians,” – just absurd.

And the wealth of:

“… the three wealthiest Australians, Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Harry Triguboff, has more than doubled since 2020 at a staggering $1.5 million per hour.”

That inequality of such magnitude should exist in a wealthy country like Australia should open our thinking toward a wealth tax.

SOS Australia rightly points out that:

“… the rest of the community bears the “cost of these tax concessions. It siphons off revenue that would be better used to fund schools, TAFE and universities, as well as other services such as health care, mental health, public housing, unemployment benefits and so on. As the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have observed, tax avoidance is ‘the triumph of injustice‘.”

They add that:

“To compound the injustice, the wealthiest families in Australia also benefit from over $1 billion a year in government funding for the elite private schools they send their kids to. Figures published on My School show that 126 of the wealthiest schools in Australia received $1.25 billion in government funding in 2020. Not only do the rich avoid paying taxes, but they get massive subsidies from the taxes paid by the rest of the community. The sheer scale of the avarice is gobsmacking.”

The Australia Institute also points out that tax concessions for super items “such as medical benefits are $31.3 billion, and assistance to the states for hospitals is $26.6 billion.”

You have to wonder how individuals accumulate large sums in superannuation while receiving such generous tax benefits, not to mention negative gearing, franking credits, and CGT (capital gains) discounts.

When you stop to consider it, the situation is quite scandalous. How did we get here? Is it the result of consecutive conservative governments being too generous while in power? Or is it due to the Labor government’s reluctance to take action? Once you’ve given something, it’s tough to take it back.

I wanted to understand why significant wealth inequality exists in our society. I wondered why both conservative and left-leaning governments tend to reward those who already have a lot of money rather than support those with less. It seems counterintuitive that this pattern persists across different political ideologies.

A conservative philosophy might suggest they should, but it doesn’t say it should be unfair. Conversely, Labor philosophy unequivocally supports the less well-off.

I typed into my search engine, “Why do the rich in Australia receive so many tax breaks?” Google provided a multitude of headlines to peruse.

As I wrote this, news hit the airwaves that the stage three tax alterations would advance more equitably. The Opposition is now up in arms, of course, but logic has won over politics. They will shout broken promises, but Labor can hardly go against its philosophy and still maintain respect with its supporters.

The Australian started its salvo with six stories on its front page about the tax cuts the day after the announcement – none with equality in mind.

Another article I read was by Aimee Picchi, from December 17, 2020, for MoneyWatch. Although it wasn’t Australian and a little dated, it contained a thread to what I sought. Picchi wrote that:

“The new paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, examines 18 developed countries – from Australia to the United States – over 50 years from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes for the wealthy, with those that didn’t, and then examined their economic outcomes.”

The analysis discovered one significant change:

“The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries such as the USA, where tax rates were lowered, but instead of trickling down to the middle class, the tax cuts for the rich accomplished much more. Reagan inadvertently or deliberately helped the rich become more wealthy and exacerbated income inequality.”

Although the report doesn’t cover the period of Trump’s Presidency, his tax cuts lifted the ultra-rich’s fortunes even further.

A piece by The Guardian’s Stephanie Convery from 2023 tells us that the:

“Australian data showed that a wealth tax of just 2% on the country’s millionaires with wealth over $7m, 3% on those with wealth over $67m, and 5% on billionaires would raise $29.1bn annually, enough to increase income support payments to the Henderson poverty line of $88 a day for 1.44 million people.”