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Tag Archives: Voice to parliament

Conservative parties have become post-democratic: the Voice No campaign is another blow.

The 21st century international Right which has hijacked the old conservative parties is post-democratic. The use that the Coalition parties are making of the Voice debate shows the Australian inflection of this trend.

In the USA, the MAGA wing has taken over the already radicalising Republican Party. The conservatives of old tried to ride the tiger of popular grievance. They needed to in order to garner enough votes to win government for plutocrat policies. Now the big cat is eating the party’s face. A Trump (or copycat) win in the 2024 election would mean dire outcomes for America’s battered democratic systems. Trump is forecasting executing generals and shoplifters, sending the National Guard into cities to “combat crime,” mass militarised deportations and purging the civil service of anyone not strictly devoted to his cult. As many as 50,000 employees would be targeted. He has threatened to investigate news organisations for treason if he wins.

Directly after a violent mob invaded their workplace in 2021, 147 Republican congresspeople continued to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory despite the fact that almost all of them knew it was the most secure election in US history.

The UK Tories threw their country over a cliff with Brexit built on lies and bigotry. The economy is savaged. The living standard is declining. The attempt to implement ideological-extreme economic policy was a catastrophe. Like the Republicans, they are forced to foment deadly culture war hatreds to distract the public from their failures.

Both the Republicans and the Tories have the advantage of deeply flawed electoral systems to maintain their hold on power. The absence of compulsory voting is the plutocrat’s friend.

The Republicans have the electoral college, a long history of suppressing the vote, and gerrymandered states with ever more partisan control of voting. The diligent work to subvert representation is well established.

The Tories worked to damage the independence of their electoral commission and introduced the unnecessary obstacle of voter ID in echo of Republican anti-democratic gambits. They simultaneously introduced suppression of the media, protest, and whistleblowers.

Australia is blessed by comparison. Our independent system of Electoral Commissions is critical to maintaining faith in the integrity of the system. Our compulsory voting and compulsory preferential voting are both protections from the machinations of oligarchs.

In the pandemic era, the mass inequalities of neoliberal capitalism have been exposed in much greater clarity. “Essential” workers were sacrificed while the white collar class worked from home in much greater comfort. The savings and reliable income of the upper cohort protected them from the terror of losing everything. Governments around the affluent world were forced to look at measures to stop the precariat becoming homeless and starved.

Voters are less tolerant of the old narratives that keep us in our place having seen so glaringly the chasm in pandemic experience.

The Australian Liberal Party has no interest in returning to its more moderate past where it balanced the needs of money with that of the worker and role of government. That version of itself has a chance to win government, but it can no longer acknowledge that the three forces have a legitimate voice. Workers are slackers. Government is the problem. “Woke” forces – like the Labor Party and and an independent media – are an impediment to their goals. The current Right no longer believes their opposition has a legitimate right to govern.

The NSW Liberals managed the first Australian attack on an electoral system that forces parties to campaign on viable platforms. Stripping the preferential system of the “compulsory” aspect gave them a leg up at the last election, although it wasn’t enough.

It will take much more work for the parties of the Right to cut away at the democratic processes in Australia that impede their push towards a more illiberal democracy.

The Voice to Parliament is being used as one of their tools.

Peta Credlin admitted in 2017 on Sky News that there had been no “carbon tax.” She explained, “It wasn’t a carbon tax, as you know. It was many other things in nomenclature terms but we made it a carbon tax.” She described this reframing as “brutal retail politics.” And, she pointed out, that Tony Abbott used that perversion of the truth to overthrow Julia Gillard within six months.

The Voice is being used in precisely this deceitful “wedge issue” role to damage Albanese. Credlin is herself one of the generals directing the battle against a mere advisory body intended to help raise the wellbeing of First Nations people. And the wedge is fracturing the nation.

The use of culture war topics can be relatively trivial – such as the battle against induction cooktops. It can also be devastating, literally life and death, in the vindictive campaigns against First Nations people, refugees and trans people (as the vanguard for reversing marriage equality reforms). The point is to forge an anti-“woke” identity within the base: those coopted will never be able to vote for the demonised centre, let alone the Left. They will have lost the ability to see the facts to be debated, with all educated “elites” despised as the enemy dedicated to deception. Compassion and nuance are portrayed as weakness.

The No campaign, as a tool against democracy, has another facet. This role is a much longer-term gameplay. (And we see in almost a century of work against egalitarian reforms how long-term the vision on the international Right actually is.)

The second goal is to break faith in the democratic project itself. The base longs for the “honesty” of post-democratic authoritarianism where “elites” no longer deceive the populace about having a say. Trump’s MAGA crowds bay for the blood of military leaders and even Republican politicians who have not paid obeisance to their cult leader assiduously enough.

Around the Australian federal and state elections in 2022, the radicalised base spread conspiracies borrowed from the American sphere. Dominion voting machines were skewing the vote, even though those Trump-myth machines are not in use here. We vote on paper, in case they hadn’t noticed. Votes were, the Australian conspiracists claimed, thrown out or brought in.

The AEC’s Twitter/X account is tirelessly battling the cascade of lies on social media that are spreading saying that the AEC itself and the referendum processes are fraudulent. Peter Dutton exacerbated that conspiracy thinking in his declarations about the use of ticks not crosses meaning the referendum was “rigged.”

The latest polls suggest that while Dutton’s inexcusable decision to turn the Voice referendum into a wedge issue might prevent the referendum passing, it has damaged his own standing with voters. We must resist these culture war distractions wielded by divisive politicians and their spin doctors.

If the referendum fails, the Right – from parliament to the media and the social media swamps – will have caused great harm to First Nations people and the populace more broadly. The reiteration of voter fraud theories will have augmented the idea that voting is corrupted and the government is illegitimate. If the referendum succeeds, that latter message will gain in volume.

It is imperative that Liberal Party leaders contradict those rumours of a broken democratic process firmly if they want to prove the claim that they are post-democratic wrong.

 

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Why I am voting ‘Yes’

8.6.

I shall subsequently return to 8.6 in a moment, but there are some other matters I wish to initially address.

The excerpt (below) from the Sydney Morning Herald journalist David Crowe is putting politics in its place about #TheVoice, particularly Mr Dutton’s ongoing Trump like blast of misinformation.

#TheVoice is not about politics. #TheVoice is about a simple constitutional change, and there is enough judicial and legal opinion to put to bed the argument about legal challenges. As the retired High Court of Australia (‘HCA’) justice Kenneth Hayne KC AC (‘Justice Hayne’) said in June of this year, the words of #TheVoice are spare and lacking in complexity. 12 retired Supreme Court judges from each Australian state have publicly endorsed #TheVoice along with the retired former HCA chief justice Robert French AC (‘French CJ’). The Victorian and New South Wales Bar Associations support #TheVoice, as does the Law Council of Australia. As Justice Hayne also stated, even if there was a future legal challenge to a Commonwealth law it would be only on the grounds of judicial review because #TheVoice representations were excluded, and the HCA would simply say go back and receive the representations. Parliament and the Executive are not bound by the representations. As French CJ also said a few months ago, common sense will prevail.

#TheVoice addresses two issues in the Commonwealth Constitution (‘CC’). The first issue is the recognition of First Nations as the first people of Australia. The second issue is the provision for a First Nations body to make representations to the Parliament and the Executive. #TheVoice does not have any powers of veto over Parliament or the Executive. To quell some of the disinformation on social media, you will not lose your backyards, and First Nations will not hold superior constitutional rights over non-First Nations. S.51xxvi of the CC allows Parliament to make beneficial and detrimental laws specifically about First Nations, therefore it is only fair they have CC recognition of making mere representations about those laws. 1967 did not cure the race problem in the CC regarding s.51xxvi of the CC. 1967 was an amendment to give Parliament legislative supremacy over the state parliaments regarding First Nations, particularly as Queensland and Western Australia would not close their First Nations reservations. First Nations were not even recognised in the Census at that time. However, 1967 did not provide for the necessary CC provision of at the very least representations being received from First Nations when the CC still permitted a special racial legislative power to make laws only about them.

The necessity for such a simple amendment to include #TheVoice in the CC is because federal politicians of all brands have not over the past 56 years either consulted with First Nations properly about the special laws they have made for them, nor have they properly received representations from First Nations about those special laws. This failure also extends to the execution of policy by the Executive (of any political brand).

Now I shall return to 8.6. The federal legislative and administrative history regarding the treatment of First Nations in Australia has still been unsatisfactory since 1967. That is why we have an average life expectancy for non-First Nations exceeding the life expectancy of First Nations in the case of males by 8.6 years and females by 7.8 years. #TheVoice is a positive step forward to cure the CC and socioeconomic disadvantages First Nations face. A legislative voice alone can be easily torn down by the vicissitudes of either opportunistic or knee jerk politics. The former Howard Government Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone has admitted it was a mistake to have abolished the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) in its entirety (source The Australian). Notwithstanding any internal administrative problems with ATSIC, it was delivering regional solutions for First Nations disadvantage. The tearing down of ATSIC sufficiently illustrates the inadequacy of there being only a legislative voice.

When I read the data about life expectancy alone, I know there is a federal legislative and administrative problem.

#TheVoice is a positive step forward for Australia, and #TheVoice unifies us a nation. #TheVoice is a small step for non-First Nations Australians, but it is a major step for the hearts of First Nations.

8.6. That is why I am voting #Yes.

 

 

 

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Whither Constitutional Change?

Within a very short space of time, we are going to be embroiled in a national discussion on constitutional change: namely, we are going to be asked if we favour First Nations people having a voice to our national parliament enshrined in our Constitution. The purpose of this article is not to take sides or to push one argument over another. Rather, it is to explore the options and the processes that contribute to a national constitutional referendum and to generate discussion.

Constitutional change in this country is fraught as the Constitution can only be amended by referendum, through the procedure set out in section 128. A successful referendum requires a ‘double majority’: a national majority of voters plus a federal majority of states (i.e. four of the six states).

The votes of those living in the ACT, the NT and any of Australia’s external territories count towards the national majority only.

Since 1901 there have been 19 referendums but of the forty-four referendum questions posed only eight have passed: The last constitutional referendum was for an Australian Republic held on 6 November 1999 – it failed. Usually, there are multiple questions to be resolved at each referendum – this time it appears there will only be one although it could be argued that there is some serious housekeeping necessary to tidy up our Constitution – perhaps that’s a question for another day.

Timing for a referendum is critical as is political consensus. Labor have already said that they favour a referendum in their first term and Pat Dodson, the special envoy for reconciliation and implementation of the Uluru Statement from the heart, favours a referendum on 27 May, 2023 – that is the 56th anniversary of the successful 1967 referendum allowing the commonwealth to make laws for Indigenous people and count them in the census, and the sixth anniversary of the Uluru statement.

So far the coalition has only said that it is open to supporting a referendum but wants to see more detail and the model to be put to the Australian people. This is a change in the position of the Morrison government. Indeed, Morrison ruled out a referendum quite specifically in the lead-up to the 2022 election; “It’s not our policy to have a referendum on the Voice” he told us. His minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, had favoured legislation for a voice and intimated that this would go before the parliament prior to the 2022 election but clearly, this didn’t occur as there was limited interest from coalition members and the then leadership.

The suggestion by Wyatt that a legislated voice, even as an interim measure, was shouted down by Aboriginal groups who generally considered that legislation was unsatisfactory and could be changed at a political whim and only an entrenchment in our Constitution would give any long-term certainty and continuity.

The road to constitutional change is not an easy one and the enabling legislation for a referendum has first to be passed by both houses of our parliament to set the process in motion. Already there are fears that not all parties are on the same page. Newly elected Country Liberal Party senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price a self-described Warlpiri-Celtic woman is suggesting caution on what she considers to be Labor’s policy on the Voice. She said recently that she was taking a cautious approach:

“We’ve got to understand what Labor proposes through this Voice process, and we’ve got to take a look at that before we take a clearer position on it, but I would certainly urge my colleagues to prioritise [more critical] issues,” she said.

“[The Voice] she said doesn’t clearly outline how in fact we’re going to solve some of our really critical issues, issues that I’ve been very much campaigning on for many years around family and domestic violence, around child sexual abuse, around education.”

The Greens are also taking a wait-and-see attitude and are suggesting that they would prefer to see “a truth-telling and treaty process begin before action on an Indigenous Voice”.

There has been considerable consultation over the past five years since the Uluru statement and this has produced the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process report.

This report recommends that the Voice should comprise 24 elected members, with two drawn from each of the states and territories, two from the Torres Strait Islands, five additional remote representatives drawn from the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales, and one member representing Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland.

How much power, influence or authority this group would have on our government and parliament is not yet established but it is an advisory body and would not have a veto on our legislative process and would not be an additional chamber to our parliament as suggested by Malcolm Turnbull initially.

The Turnbull and Morrison governments demonstrated their then objection to a constitutional voice in saying:

“Our democracy is built on the foundation of all Australian citizens having equal civic rights … a constitutionally enshrined additional representative assembly for which only Indigenous Australians could vote for or serve in is inconsistent with this fundamental principle.”

If the Dutton opposition were to maintain this fundamental argument then, the referendum would have little chance of passing.

The form of question to be put to the Australian people will obviously be critical to the success of the referendum but it seems probable that the question will be posed in general terms with the detail and structure to follow in the form of legislation enacted through the parliament: ideally, this draft legislation would be available prior to the referendum so, there is a lot of work to be done if the May 2023 date it to be met.

The legislation governing the process for referendums in Australia is laid down in the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1994. Among other provisions, this legislation, by section 8, sets out the procedure for presenting the ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments which need to be communicated to each elector prior to the referendum.

There are, of course, political risks for the Albanese government in the whole process and already some in the opposition are labelling the process as ‘Labor’s referendum’ which, of course, it isn’t. However, if the referendum were to fail or not receive bipartisan support the political fallout for the Albanese government could be damaging in its first term.

We shall see!

 

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Dutton: pedophile hysteria and child protection

Dutton is the right politician for the post-QAnon age: in fact the radical right zeitgeist caught up with him. His decision to drum up (another) pedophilia crisis to stain the referendum on the Voice to parliament is both grotesque and on trend.

In the QAnon conspiracy everyone in power on the progressive side is a pedophile – or pedophile cannibal – running a massive child abduction and persecution ring. As it has diffused into radical right and religious right politics, the accusations have centred on anyone not-heterosexual being a groomer of small children.

It’s a rare politician that believes the QAnon conspiracy, but many have exploited the underlying ideas to co-opt its adherents. It is easy to draw in a wider “conservative” audience to believe in threats posed to children by, say, LGBTQI+ people. Disdain for people who allegedly hurt children is quick to muster.

Threatening people’s children is the most visceral threat that can be made and one likely to promote violence. The ludicrous Blood Libel (that Jewish people sacrificed children) was used to promote violence through the centuries. One would like to say culminating in the Holocaust, but the same tropes are linking Jewish people into the threatening “elites” demonised by the International radical right. The use of the Blood Libel remains in play with the QAnon conspiracy.

The threat to children in general is one of the most powerful that people can use. Harm to children is far more emotional than harm to adults; no retribution is excessive for people who harm children.

This is why, when children were being desperately harmed by our immigration policies, Australia’s contractors mostly executed it on small islands far out of sight. The Coalition government knew that if Australians saw what was truly happening on those distant places, there would be outrage. Instead complicit media was sent to take staged photographs and tell offensive fairy tales about island paradise.

Until arguably tortured children were finally dying of Resignation Syndrome, immigration minister Dutton’s immigration contested (almost) every evacuation case in court. The risk of too many children dying overwhelmed the commitment to reject mercy. Families were split during these terrifying illnesses with the intention to force the family to reunite again on Nauru after the child was “cured.”

When stories of abuse of adult refugees and asylum seekers made it into the press, immigration minister Dutton made vague allegations about the cohort containing pedophiles, rapists and murderers. Clearly any number of people seeking safety from genocide and persecution could be further harmed to keep out any individual cases of apparently identified criminals.

The video clip of Barrie Cassidy pressing Dutton on stories of asylum seekers causing a “disturbance” by tempting a Manus child into their compound is circulating once again on social media. It is clear from Cassidy’s fine interview technique that Dutton’s story bears no relation to the facts supplied by Manus’s police commander. It is also clear that the facts will not be allowed to get in the way of his narrative.

Dutton does not have a good record on First Nation’s children either.

In 2008, he boycotted the apology to the harmed children of the Stolen Generation and their descendants. He has now apologised for this.

Dutton was part of the Abbott Cabinet that “cut more than $500 million in funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services, and another nearly $80 million to Aboriginal and Child Family Centres that supported our vulnerable children and families.”

The harmful Northern Territory intervention, was based on later debunked claims of pedophile rings operating in Indigenous communities. The government of which Dutton was a minister did little to fix the problems that underlay the hyperbolic propaganda that provoked it. The social cost outweighed the few benefits that it brought: the rates of youth suicide and self harm spiked by 500% under it. (Labor governments made small changes but did not overall improve the damaging Intervention.)

We continue taking Indigenous children from their parents rather than working hard to help solve the problems that cause family dysfunction. It is hard to imagine the pain of Indigenous parents in the Intervention, fully aware of the Stolen Generation past, watching their children over-policed and taken away in greater numbers again. This new colonial project aimed to integrate Indigenous Australians into the capitalist project or punish them for wanting self-determination.

Now Dutton has decided to oppose the Voice to parliament, a body supported by 80% of First Nations Australians. Given that it’s a rare policy indeed that has 100% support by a population, that’s a strong showing in its favour.

The Voice aims to bring together the advice of the accumulated groups representing and working with First Nations people around the country so that any policy or program that affects them is designed with them, not in their absence as the destructive Intervention was.

The problems of a community harmed by colonialism, poverty and marginalisation in Alice Springs are the very reason we need a Voice to make sure that the best possible ideas are brought to bear to help the young people in trouble and ease the crises that lead to problems.

It is appalling that Peter Dutton has chosen to drum up another pedophilia scandal, condemned widely by relevant authorities, to discredit the Voice to parliament. The Intervention showed how much more damage such “moral” panics inflict on young Indigenous Australians.

You should be the one to judge his record on protecting children.

This was first published at Pearls and Irritations as Grotesque Dutton drums up another pedophilia crisis

 

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Morrison’s Coup De Grâce

“Human beings are social beings, who need to be able to rely on each other. That requires trust, and trust requires truth-telling.” (Quassim Cassam).

Grace Tame looks daggers as the PM fakes cordiality and avuncular affability for the camera. A black belt in subterfuge, deception and betrayal, ScoMo™ has also mastered the dark political art of baring his top teeth whilst feigning conviviality, positively radiating goodwill and patent insincerity. His office invites 2022 finalists for Australian of the Year for a cup of tea and photo opportunity at The Lodge, his Canberra pad – on occasions when his main place of residence Kirribilli doesn’t suit.

It also sets ScoMo™ up to pretend to Brisbane 4BC, later, that Ms Tame’s an ingrate who’s abused his hospitality whilst he and Jen have invited her into their own home. A farrago of lies of course. Passive-aggressive and patronising, he diminishes and demeans her.

“Grace is a passionate person who’s raised important issues. She’s had a terrible life ordeal, you know, things happen to her, her ordeals, the abuse. It’s just awful.”

Back at the Lodge, Morrison’s toothy rictus evokes the look he had for press gallery cameras just before he knifed Malcolm Turnbull in August 2018, declaring “this is my leader and I’m ambitious for him.”

With no policy achievements and a catastrophic failure to protect us from the pandemic, The Coalition knows the election campaign must be a horse race between ScoMo™ and Albo. Of course, as Paul Bongiorno warns, the Coalition may hold the half senate election in May as it is obliged to. Leave the lower house until September. Punt on the pandemic receding. But odds are long.

For now, it’s character. Whom do you prefer? And therein lies the problem. As Laura Tingle implies, whilst Murdoch’s claque is busy with the myth that we don’t know who Albo is, Faux-Mo’s problem, as a public figure made entirely of smirk and mirrors, is that we do know who he is.

Tame’s face, moreover, evokes some of the ways we know, notes Laura Tingle:

“… other unfortunate handshaking incidents during the bushfires; the excruciating moment when banking royal commissioner Justice Kenneth Hayne refused to be part of Josh Frydenberg’s photo opportunity by shaking hands and smiling with him; the widely circulated photo of Scott Morrison looking at his phone in the Parliament, having turned his back on Labor’s Tanya Plibersek as she addressed him across the chamber.”

There are many others. It’s Cobargo 2.0. Cue the NSW south coast, destroyed by freak bushfire fanned by his government’s policies of climate change denial. Local mother, Zoey asks questions only to have the PM turn his back and walk away from her in early January 2020.

“I have lost everything I own,” Zoey says in a social media post, with footage of the destruction. “My house is burnt to the ground and the prime minister turned his back on me.”

Given his government treats women as second-class citizens and worse, Ms Tame is in no frame of mind to be called into Morrison’s shonky photo-op. Be compromised. She’s brave. On cue, boys’ club commentators and big swinging dick club apologists, rush to attack her display of integrity.

“Sourpuss” sneers Miranda Devine. The News Limited flack, currently based in New York, accuses “Graceless” Tame of “ignorance, petulance” and “churlishness”. And a great deal more.

Morrison is “a leader of a middle power”, Devine ventures, as well as “our elected representative” who is owed respect for his high office alone, a gibe based on a lie about how we choose our PM, whilst she claims a former Australian of the Year (AOTY) is just an ambassador for a specific cause.

The “historic” Lodge also is defiled in Devine’s view. Sacrilege? Clearly, in the next phase of Murdoch’s Americanisation of our politics, it will be sacred. Our White House. A sacred shrine.

Devine’s rant in The Daily Telegraph, also trashes AOTY in a swinging denunciation, a hatchet job worthy of a PMO in full campaign mode. She dog-whistles culture warriors and the hard right.

“The AOTY is rarely representative of the Australian people but instead caters to a tiny base of Twitter brokens obsessed with prosecuting boutique ideological issues borrowed from overseas, usually to do with identity politics, “existential” climate alarm, the evil patriarchy, “toxic masculinity” and “systemic” racism.

Even if the AOTY were to start off as a normal person, by the end of their year in the spotlight they will have been thoroughly shaped into a left-wing activist by the media.”

“Ungracious”, Professor Peter Van Onselen also puns on her name, “rude” and “childish”. James McGrath, dropped in 2008 from Team BoJo for his comments in The Spectator calling African-Caribbean immigrants, “picaninnies” weighs in with “partisan, political and childish.”

There’s much more in this vein but a wave of approval far outweighs the sexist carping and character assassination, rejects Devine’s grotesque exaltation of our least trustworthy PM into an iconic national leader. Devine claims that to snub ScoMo is to insult the Australian people.

Most observers applaud Tame’s integrity. And how would Murdoch’s partisan hacks know what integrity looks like? ScoMo represents everything Ms Tame opposes. Such a pile-on, does, however, suggest a PMO aware that Tame is a major threat to their campaign to re-elect Morrison. A shonky product, which never really passed the sniff test, now smells well past its use-by date.

Perhaps Tame recalls ScoMo™’s office leaking against Brittany Higgins’ partner, David Sharaz. Or Chief of Staff John Kunkel’s “review” that found he was “not in a position to make a finding that the alleged activity took place”. (Sue Gray, take note for your Boris’ knees-up report.)

A helpless young woman is allegedly raped near his office, but the PM doesn’t know, let alone take any responsibility. God forefend he owes any duty of care. Or honesty.

But Morrison’s lies are world-renowned, largely thanks to Emmanuel Macron, and, for him, everything is someone else’s responsibility.

Almost. He’s a dab hand at captain’s calls and gratuitous cruelty. His appointing Amanda Stoker as Marise Payne’s underling, assistant Minister for Women to an invisible Minister for Women looks like an act of sadistic revenge.

The Queensland senator supported a “fake rape crisis tour” that inflicted great suffering on survivors, such as Ms Tame.

Or is it his failure to provide a safe workplace? Tame may have had in mind, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins’ finding that sexual harassment and assault were so pervasive in Parliament with its toxic workplace culture that, “women told us they felt ‘lucky’ if they had not directly experienced sexual harassment and assault.”

Who’d want to shake the hand of a PM who pats women on the head and tells the nation “we are dealing with this as no other government has done before”?

Saying “she’s had a terrible life” is the most condescending, ignorant & utterly disempowering comment to make about Grace Tame.

Grace’s whole message is that as survivors, we are not defined by our experiences of sexual violence,” tweets Nina Funnell who worked with Grace Tame on her original campaign #LetHerSpeak,

ScoMo’s government’s record is of evasion, inaction, lies and leaking against victims and their families. Contempt is only part of its orchestrated disempowerment of women.

Dealing with? Jenkins, in a separate process, recommends imposing a duty of care on employers to stamp out sexual harassment – only to have this rejected by the Morrison government.

Senator Jenny McAllister reminds us that, in 2013, Tony Abbott appointed himself Minister for Women. Eight years later, the contempt continues. ScoMo says women who march on parliament to publicly call for justice, equality and safety are lucky not to be shot. He snubs them anyway.

“This is a vibrant liberal democracy, Mr Speaker, not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country, Mr Speaker,” Morrison says to boos, jeers and looks of total incredulity.

Why should Ms Tame, a passionate advocate for victims of sexual violence compromise everything she stands for by being a prop in the PM’s propaganda photo? Even in his words to those invited to the Lodge, ScoMo acknowledges Tame’s engagement to her fiancé, Max Heerey, not her work.

As with his struggle to understand that rape is a crime, ScoMo might need his Jen to clarify his slight – on all women. He’ll have plenty of time after May. Or September, should he take the punt.

Labor’s Jenny McAllister does acknowledge Grace Tame’s work, “together with other survivor advocates, she has driven a lasting national conversation about the treatment of women, and the prevalence of physical, emotional and sexual violence against women and children.”

It’s the eve of Invasion Day or ‘Straya Day as Morrison’s Ocker avatar outside The Lodge would have it. ScoMo’s™ moved on, prompted by focus groups. Sixty per cent of Australians support a change of date, according to a Guardian Essential Poll, taken a few days ago. Meanwhile, his commentary shifts to that of some didactic voiceover to a whitewashing of war and dispossession.

“A story,” he pens for Nine’s claque, mustering his typical fog of abstraction, cluttered with buzzwords and double-speak, “of strength and resilience that spans 65,000 years, of a continent that we love and contend with, and of a free and fair people who live in relative harmony.”

“Remarkable” would have been better than “relative”. And speaking of relatives, Morrison’s great-great-aunt, utopian socialist, poet and former Paraguayan commune member (in 1896), Mary Gilmore, a Dame who wrote for a communist newspaper, would turn in her grave.

Yet only his pet rag, The Daily Telegraph, runs the line that “the arrival in Australia of the First Fleet in 1788 was the initial step towards multiculturalism.” Shades of Tony Abbott’s defining moment.

Grace Tame’s “side-eye” defines our times. Why collude in a photo-op to normalise our criminally, negligent MPs with their hands in the till or doing favours for rich mates? Why approve of skiving off to Hawaii, padding travel allowances or taking a few days off to watch the cricket. Sam Maiden reports Tim Wilson Liberal MP Tim Wilson leaves Victoria for 95 nights, charging taxpayers $37k.

A vibrant liberal democracy does not normalise corruption while it disenfranchises women, the aged, the poor and first nations. It is not a regime of coercive control by old white men that opposes constitutional recognition of first peoples and rejects The Uluru Statement from the Heart.

A voice to parliament enshrined in the Constitution is not only long overdue, it would also enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the Parliament on policies and projects that impact their lives. Instead, ScoMo™ & Co. come up with a co-design report. What does it do? It sets up further consultations to establish regional and local voices.

“The only thing the government has managed to achieve is more delays and more processes. What the government is proposing gives the Voice no security. They even banned their co-design committee from speaking about constitutional recognition,” Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney calls out the time-wasting duplicity inherent in the process.

Why help normalise a clown? The PM’s “vibrant liberal democracy” allows Clive Palmer to boast he’ll outspend his $93m last election, lying about Labor’s policies. Paul Bongiorno reports Labor strategists who call out Australia’s Clown Prince of Politics for what he is – a way of extending the Liberals’ media campaign budget, which, scandalously, remains uncapped.

“He’s a Liberal and will shovel votes back to them at the end of the day.”

Bongiorno is outraged:

“…the government has done nothing to contain the obscenity of a billionaire being able to distort the democratic political contest in such a blatant way.”

Australia’s reputation for corruption is at its lowest level since ratings began in 1995, reports Transparency International. Morrison’s Covid Commission is a sterling example. A mob assembled by the PM, ostensibly for Covid crisis management turns out to be a gas industry support group.

The scandal of our RATs instant millionaires is another.

Pandemic rages, with at least ninety-eight deaths, Friday, as a government, “getting out of peoples’ lives,” stops sitting on its hands only to point the finger of blame.

Omicron spreads to more than 700 aged-care homes, Rachel Withers reports for The Monthly. Staff struggle to cope in over half of all facilities in NSW. A grieving daughter tells SBS News that her father died of COVID-19 alone in his locked-down aged-care home, while waiting for an overdue booster shot, on the day after Aged Care Minister Colbeck takes three days off to watch a cricket game. Morrison defends Colbeck by telling us we don’t know how hard the Minister works.

Lives have been lost but Colbeck will “take this on the chin,” he adds obliquely. Accountability is not part of his vocabulary. An incompetent spared, ScoMo hopes is a future ally; bound to him in gratitude.

Students will return to school so parents can get back to work. Teachers are put at risk and their value impugned by being seen solely as babysitters in a post-industrial society. And expendable. Vulnerable retired teachers and inexperienced graduates are said to be ready to fill the gaps.

It’s an era of personal responsibility, ScoMo and Perrottet claim. But just try to buy a RAT. Unless you happen to be Motion One, a firm run out of a two-roomed apartment in Sydney’s Elizabeth Bay where Pilates franchise CEO, Austyn Campbell secures a $26 million contract to import RATs.

She flogs them online for $12.50. Identical tests are purchased by importers and sold to Australian retailers for as little as $5 per unit.

A former Liberal Party “digital strategist”, Campbell runs a communications firm, Agenda C, with Parnell Palme McGuiness, another lucky punter who’s also done work for the Liberal Party.

Also doing nicely is Julie Bishop’s beau, David Panton, formerly an all-night chemist in Mornington, Victoria, who with his daughters runs Pantonic, a pharmaceutical supply company. Tests start at $11.

Will it be a RAT-led economic recovery? An overvalued stock market totters, tech stocks shedding value first – Barnaby fan, Georgina Hope Rinehart gets a gong for services to mining, community and sport, just before she’s declared an Olympic sponsor.

Hang on. Help is on its way from BoJo.

So touching to discover that the mother country still loves her delinquent ex-colony. Or not so ex.

Thank God, Queen and her palace that John Kerr, her GG could keep the con in our constitutional monarchy as we were weaning ourselves off the breast of empire, onto a neo-colonial formula.

Our co-dependence helps us feel relaxed and comfortable about the capitulation of national sovereignty that is AUKUS, a pact yet to be defined, but which has a very colonial nostalgia vibe.

Not everyone loves Kerr. A ”rorty old, farting Falstaff …” an elderly lizard” is Patrick White’s vivid impressions of the Governor-General, a respected jurist and former Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court, who invoked his “reserve powers” to dismiss Whitlam’s Labor government in 1975, to the immense good fortune of Liberal Malcolm Fraser, a Western Districts grazier. How we miss such giants.

Mal is the last farmer to become Prime Minister, something the Nats have never got over and the only PM to visit to a seedy Memphis hotel, only to lose his trousers – just one leg of which, could be pressed into service as a shroud for his chief legacy, his treasurer. John Winston Howard, monarchist, devout Neoliberal and US lickspittle, who did so much to dash the hopes of voters who sought enlightened, progressive, federal policies which might heal division, promote equality and independence.

As for the AUKUS submarine plan, it’s a fiasco. Eight nuclear subs we cannot crew, or fuel, which need a whole new industry to maintain, with a price tag of at least possibly $170 billion, allowing for inflation, are thrust upon us much to Macron’s chagrin, or emmerdement, a word our prissy press pretend is “piss off” but any Frenchman will tell you means shat upon.

Macron hates our PM for lying to him that the sub deal was real until one day before it wasn’t. It’s a breach of good faith which will set back our trade with the EU circus, of which La Belle France is 2022’s ringmaster. Carbon tariffs could be slapped on our exports. Also, we alienate another power with a presence in the Pacific.

In the meantime, we may have to retire the Collins class subs which will be rust buckets well before our “new” nuclear submarines are ready in the early 2040s. By then, crewless subs and drones will have superseded anything AUKUS hawks us.

But all is not lost. Diplomatic genius, carbon tariff expert and Joke PM, Tony Abbott has been seconded to the BOT, Board of Trade, an outfit long dead in the water until revived by Teresa May as something she could announce that might offset the stench of a hard Brexit.

Tony’s bound to come up with something. Always does. Even if it’s only shirt-fronting Macron.

His work is cut out for him. Career liar, Boris Johnson brags that:

“… our ambitious trade deal with Australia will include a substantive article on climate change which reaffirms both parties’ commitments to the Paris Agreement and achieving its goals, including limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.”

Tony’s carbon tax expertise will add a bit of finesse to the UK Australia Free Trade Deal virtually inked last month. It’s worthless according to Moody’s. Our beef and veal are more likely to go to more accessible markets which offer higher prices. As Moody’s puts it:

“Australian exporters garner higher prices for their beef products in countries like South Korea, Japan and the US. Also, Australian beef exports recently dipped because of drought conditions. Such conditions are expected to occur more regularly in the future and could restrict exports.”

Glen Dyer and Bernard Keane note that the Coalition refuses to allow the Productivity Commission or any other objective body to analyse the agreement because the benefits are minuscule. Even these dwindle in the light of the extra paperwork required to meet bureaucratic country-of-origin requirements for accessing the deal.

“Given the trivial economic impact of the UK-Australia free trade agreement, we won’t be updating our growth forecasts for the UK economy,” Moody’s conclude.

But it’s worse than nothing. Boris gets rolled. Barnaby Joyce’s carve-out means Morrison won’t have a bar of any deal that breathes a word about net-zero.

Australia’s negotiators demand that temperature targets have no part in the trade deal. When the Brits insist that The Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees, and preferably to 1.5 degrees at least gets a mention, that’s all it gets and only over Morrison government objections.

But who’s going to notice the cave-in when the party’s all agog at revelations that Boris has lied about at least eleven parties that broke Covid isolation rules?

Party piece of party gate is surely BoJo’s glorious anniversary of his own birth, alas, another mental blankety-blank which he either can’t recall or, like fellow amateur casuist, ScoMo, argue wasn’t a party at all.

Boris’ colleagues are a riot of goodwill, a British ten-minute effusion of camaraderie, a happy birthday dirge and a cake with a Sue Gray file in it.

BoJo’s birthday party that his (fairly) newly-wed, a May bride, organised for him is the latest episode of Carrie On Upstairs, a fitting sequel to the mystery of who paid for the 840 pound a roll golden wallpaper in the refurbishing of Boris and Carrie’s flat over number eleven Downing Street, traditionally reserved for the chancellor of the exchequer except when Boris needs it for himself, his partner and growing family.

If we are conned on trade and it looks as if we’re roped into buying obsolete subs we won’t have any time for our war on Beijing, Keane suggests we just tell China to hold off for a couple of decades while we get our nuclear underwater shit together. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s not clear which of our neo-colonial masters will actually supply the ships. Morrison loves secrecy as much as indecision. DFAT tells us that by 2020’s end, Australian investments in the US totalled $864 billion – almost as much as the Great Satan – as America is revered in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan whose peoples it has liberated, with our assistance – the USA has invested in the Land of Oz while our investment in the UK was $615 billion – and the Old Dart has $737.6 billion invested here.

All of this is a prelude to hope. Amidst the amazing Grace Tame’s refusal to grin and bear the PM’s charm offensive, a perfunctory line congratulating her on her engagement rather than her work as Australian of the Year, the shortage of RATs and ScoMo™ & Co’s abandonment of all pretence at protecting us from Omicron, the arrival, Friday, of UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, aboard a Global Britain private Airbus jet is a cunningly orchestrated stunt that gets BoJos rival out of his hair while providing audio-visual proof of ScoMo and Cos trade deals.

True, Little Britain’s Labour Party is outraged at the A$1 million price ticket but wait until they discover that the Free Trade Deal with the land Downunder is just another bit of window dressing.

Hawk Talk is also a big part of Truss’ mission. Eager to be Boris’ replacement and one of our neo-colonial mistress’ Britannia’s debauched ruling elite, Truss pops in to warn us that the Chinese Panda is plotting with the Russian Bear to blow us all up, a warning that Paul Keating calls demented.

Truss attacked Dan Tehan last year, because she felt slighted but now, she is practically one of us after being made honorary Ocker of the Year, last year by The Australia Day Foundation.

The dodgy Foundation is a cabal of climate deniers, mining shills and lobbyists with links to the ultra-right Policy Exchange, a group affiliated with those who spread disinformation on climate change and covid.

Many see Liz as Little Britain’s next Tory PM, if only party animal and pants-man, Boris Johnson would admit the carnival is over. Or Sue Gray busts him for breaking his own social distancing rules by holding parties. Seriously.

Her man bag, Ben Wallace, is a Boris-follower, too, over-promoted for his loyalty to Defence Secretary.

Ben and Liz are AUKUS hawks who talk up a Blairite WMD-type case for declaring war on Russia, just because America wants them to, a scenario, the invisible Marise Payne and Minister for Defence, Peter Dutton find incredibly compelling and not just as an election campaign stunt.

All is well in the Land of Oz, even “a smoking ruin” of democracy as Guy Rundle praises us. Deputy PM and MP for Santos, Barnaby Joyce tells ABC RN Breakfast’s Patricia Karvelas that “people aren’t dying” in the Lucky Country of Covid. Rats are wrecking his government’s superbly orchestrated pandemic testing kit rollout by hoarding their RATs (Rapid Antigen Tests) – or flogging them at prices to rival the can-do capitalism of professional gougers and your local Chemist Warehouse portal.

Finally, Labor’s leader responds to Andrew Probyn asking who he is:

“My first campaign, I was 12 years old,” Albo tells the Press Club. “We organised a rent strike. We took petitions around to everyone. That was my experience of that. That drove me. That was my first political campaign. And, by the way, we won.”

“Just ‘pushing through’ this pandemic is not enough,” he argues. “We need to learn from it, we need to use what the last two years have taught us to build a better future.”

We need “a government that steps up to its responsibilities and fulfils its most fundamental roles: to protect our people, to act as a force for good, and to change people’s lives for the better.”

No wonder Morrison’s running scared. But pumping social media with Clive$’ lies about Labor’s failings is unlikely to cut it when your record reeks of corruption, ineptitude, dud deals and untrustworthiness. The worst PM of the century can’t even show some grace under friendly fire at a reception for Australian of the Year, a miserable morning tea, brightened only by a bevy of nominees for awards, any one of which is likely to show up his own inadequacies as a man and as a leader.

To pick a fight with Grace Tame, moreover, and to go on radio, later, to belittle her, may cost Morrison any last skerrick of credibility. His pot-shot at Grace Tame, Australian of the Year 2021 is by extension an attack on all women and every woman’s right to expect a government that offers equality, justice and safety for all Australians, instead of a racket run to benefit a privileged few.

Given his lies, his stunts, his broken promises, his empty promises, his protection of incompetent ministers and worse, together with his government’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, his pot-shot at Ms Tame maybe his coup de grace.

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