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The baggage they have lugged from one year to the next means 2020 will be a hard slog (part 1)

It is of course usually impossible to predict just how a government is likely to perform one year to the next. However, this government given its form of almost 7 years has considerable form to back any forecasts.

But pathetic as they have been, one would think that our government could at least tidy up their mess just a little.

But no. Take a look at this carry over mess from 2019: The baggage they carry.

1 The secret holiday of the Prime Minister has revealed a soft spot in the belly of a man who never stops talking. Marketing men are normally full of ideas. You would think that a marketing man who is also a politician would be overflowing with them, but such is not the case.

When you look at the nation’s mounting problems you realise that 2020 is going to be a hard slog.

If there is one thing that the government is good at it is the art of doing nothing, and if you look at the economy, climate change, stimulus, constitutional recognition etc it becomes clear how little is being done with ministers completely unqualified for the job.

Other than negative thoughts, Scott Morrison isn’t a deep thinker. I think people are coming to realise that.

On the subject of climate change he has talked himself into an ambush of his own making. It has become the major issue of our time. With fires across our nation people have become genuinely scared of what is happening to our climate.

Now is the time for the Prime Minister to confront those who would, as Malcolm Turnbull puts it, bring the government down and show a bit of leadership.

Early this year he must positively respond to the public’s concern about our efforts on climate change.

Now that everyone knows that his comments about reaching our Paris targets in a canter are just fraudulent talk; that the only way we would do so is with carry over credits, which would make up half of our commitment.

The International Energy Commission who aren’t a group of pot smoking lefties are now saying that we are on track for 2.7c to 3.5c.

In other words the public now knows that Morrison intended cheating, that Australia wasn’t pulling its weight. Now he needs to explain why and what he intends doing about it.

The people are fed up with this decades long assault on the science and now that we are starting to feel the heat of its findings conservatives are now finding themselves obliged to say what their intentions are.

Angus Taylor should be removed from the portfolio before the end of January.

This cannot continue into 2020:

“Heads up re grasslands. Minister keen to see [if] he can accommodate Angus Taylor’s requests,” the note says. “Want a how to for Minister in event he wished to amend or delete thresholds.”

The “thresholds” he refers to are definitions of how much native grass has to be present for it to be protected under federal law.

A spokesman for Taylor said he “has never asked Mr Frydenberg to change laws governing the clearing of native grasslands”.

2 What ever happened to that investigation into the doings of Angus? It was going to be cleared up before Christmas but it never happened.

3 One of the many criticisms coming out of an interview with Martin Parkinson, former head of the Department of Prime Ministers by Katherine Murphy, was this:

“Parkinson is scathing about the Greens’ decision to vote down Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme in 2009 – admitting to a “visceral dislike” of the minor party – and believes Tony Abbott as incoming prime minister in 2013 had political debts, which meant he was obliged to get rid of anything to do with climate change.

That included Parkinson, who was then Treasury secretary but was formerly head of the climate change department that developed the Rudd emissions trading scheme, which was in turn based on work he’d done on the Shergold review under the Howard government, at a point where there was a major-party consensus on the best way to address climate change.“

Another observation was this from Paddy Manning in The Monthly: 

“… the ANU Australian Election Study revealed trust in government had sunk to an all-time low, with 75 per cent of people agreeing that “people in government look after themselves”. Crikey’s Bernard Keane argued [$] that it showed Australia’s political class was “no longer fit for purpose”. The Australia Institute’s chief economist, Richard Dennis, put a fine point on it last week, tweeting that “Morrison’s denial re the need to do more to fight bushfires is consistent with his denial of the need to stimulate the economy, reduce emissions or fight corruption in Canberra. His government isn’t just post-truth, it’s post governing.”

4 Do you recall in mid December former fire chiefs Greg Mullins, from NSW, and Lee Johnson, from Queensland, called for a national summit on how the country should prepare for and resource bushfire emergencies in a changed climate?

Well, so disappointed were they with the government’s response that they have decided to go it alone.

One of the group’s leaders, Greg Mullins, had this to say:

“What we feel is that there’s just still this denial of the problem and where we have denial of the problem, there’s not going to be any action,” he said.

“So we’ll go it alone. We’ll arrange a national summit that will look at building standards, fuel management practices, response capability and national coordination arrangements.

“We’ll invite the prime minister and we hope that he comes too.”

Be warned. Still on climate and the Prime Ministers cunning creation of yet another deception:

“Our greenhouse gas records have been altered to show that emissions were significantly higher than previously believed for the years when Labor was in power, and no longer rise each year since the Coalition repealed the carbon price.”

Most of the revisions are due to a change in how the amount of carbon dioxide released from or absorbed by soil in grazing land is estimated.

Are they legitimate? Yes and no. Some experts said they were an improvement while others said they warranted further examination because of the way they fitted into the coalitions narrative.

One thing is for certain: It smacks at yet further manipulation of climate heating figures and smoke and mirrors politics. You will hear the Prime Minister shouting the revised figures as absolute.

This is but part one of my post on the luggage the government carries with it into 2020. And that’s before they think of any new ideas that might further the common good!

Part two will be published on Wednesday.

My thought for the day

At the last G7 conference the Prime Minister described himself as a “conservationist”. In Australia we know that all the evidence suggests he is an environmental vandal.

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28 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    Geez JL you are an optimist. The ANU election study, Crickey’s Bernard Keane and Australia Institute Richard Dennis are far closer to the mark.

    Yet in New England there are bogan voters who are jealous that they have missed any opportunity to rip off the Parliamentary Allowances Scheme, trade job opportunities for sexual favours with the Parliamentary bike and travel around the country and overseas at taxpayer expense practising alcoholism at every pub where touching up local sheilas is an added bonus.

    Australia voters get the government that holds the majority of seats in the House of Reps, so this situation remains a self inflicted wound, like shooting yourself in both feet then complaining you cannot walk.

    Where are your politicians during this unprecedented bush-fire emergency? Hold them to account!!

  2. Pilot

    Hear Hear NEC!!!!!
    Nothin’ more to add except:
    #NeverVoteLiberal and #NeverVoteNationals
    And don’t forget to add #OkScotty to any tweets by #BullshitBoy aka #ScottFromMarketing aka #ScottyFromMarketing aka #LiarFromTheShire aka #ShoutyMcShoutFace aka #ScumMo, #Smoko, #Slomo, #Moron

  3. Arthur Tarry

    I struggle to put into words my absolute contempt for this rabble of a government in Canberra. I do not have any respect or regard for any of the ministers, and in reality, any of the backbenchers I know. They are all totally bereft of integrity, empathy, ideas, and understanding – as Kaye Lee says a waste of space. And this bereftness is across all areas of government, they are just completely incompetent. How did it come to this ?

  4. Terence Mills

    Lest We Forget !

    Priya, Nadesalingam and their children, Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were sent to Christmas Island in August last year after the federal court granted an injunction preventing the government deporting them until the court application had been heard.

    Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that the family, who had lived and contributed to the Biloela community for some years, had established a prima facie case to remain in Australia until the case goes to a final hearing at a date still yet to be determined.

    The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has said that, in the interim, the family should not be released back into the Biloela community and would stay on Christmas Island. Mr Dutton said that they were not in detention but “effectively” living in the community [of Christmas island] whilst in detention.

    Mr Dutton had previously identified the two little girls who were born in Australia as “anchor babies” .

    What has happened to us ?

  5. Keitha Granville

    Richard Flanagan wrote an excellent piece for the NY Times. I feel deeply ashamed, and totally terrified, to be Australia.

    Millions and millions of native animals are disappearing, some may never recover. Do we want to be the generation that forced the extinction of the koala? The wallaby? Pygmy possums? Any of those unique creatures that make our country so special?
    I can assure I don’t, but it seems our government would rather continue on its current path than listen to ANYONE or try ANYTHING to fight this carnage.

    Houses can be rebuilt, businesses, roads, schools.

    But people are dead, and the bush and its creatures – the very heart of Australia – may be gone forever.

  6. Arthur Tarry

    Warringhi wreckus (courtesy of the Grumphy Geezer), the ever madder Mad Monk, mumbled recently that there is a climate change cult in the world. This from the intellectual powerhouse of the conservative parties – science has now morphed into a cult. I don’t know where this lot came from but I certainly know where they should go !

  7. Henry Rodrigues

    I am afraid that all the sentiments expressed are just that, because nothing will change until Australia rids itself, once and for all, of the evil influence of Murdoch and his minions and the rest of the MSM, who to a man and woman, support this government of climate vandals, liars.
    Does anyone really believe that Murdoch cares about the koala or the bilby or the variety of parrots or any wildlife that is unique to Australia ? The most evil person ever to be born in Australia, cares the least about Australia. No prizes for guessing what he really cares about, power and the ability to use it to amass more money.
    Murdoch control the minds of the pollies and Gina provides the backup. Scummo is a mindless self preservative nincompoop just as Abbott and the majority of the coalition are. No principles, no morals, but plenty of hypocrisy which they use every time they are forced to face up to the facts on the ground. Scummo is just the latest exponent of that trait. Pity the country and its wildlife.

  8. Phil Pryor

    More than two years of this suppurating conservative shit to come..! VOMIT! The Head Moron may be replaced, and soon, as the survival infatuated cockroaches scurry around with lies and propaganda, and P R and camouflages, all supported by Murdoch’s Maggots, the great lying, whoring, domineering, opinioneering scheme of filth in operation, but Australia has been crippled now by their self centred filth. A level of ignorance, saturated by superstition, devoted to fantasy, maggoted by myths, rotten with rubbish, is the core of cancerous conservatism, the lay catholic ratbags like Abbott and Joyce at the front, the fore, the tip. Two more years of active distortions…it is beyond decency, civilised behaviour, common sense, required action, forward planning…Anarchy by Arseholes!!!

  9. Arthur Tarry

    I totally agree with HR. However, will any government, whatever colour, dismantle Murdoch’s evil empire even though it is perfectly obvious that this needs to be done ?

  10. wam

    2020 a great big happy new year!! An extra special for you???
    wowowo, lord,quoting boobby’s 2009 xmas present to the rabbott which cemented the worst ever prime minister’s position is like scummo’s sincere admission that climate change is part of the bushfire.
    crisis(notice bushfire gets a red line but the septic wildfire is acceptable. Wonder when the morning shows and rupert’s journalists will use wildfire??) both of dragged kicking into submission by circumstances and pressure. Any thoughts on boobby’s and narrownose’s choice of timing for the caravan???
    rodrigues
    The mainstream media, like here, has costs and employs people, it does that by selling advertising. Sex, violence and controversy sells. Editors are often zealous in the interpretation of rupert’s thoughts.
    There are many many conservatives, especially in conservative communes, like armed services, police, the lnp and the white house who consider the media left wing.
    ps
    Start soon albo, then you can keep refreshing the minds of the autocue journalists like silly sam and karl baby they are watched and sell adverts for their daily bread sex, violence and controversy could be labor’s only hope.

  11. Aortic

    How good is Bette Midler?

  12. Andrew Smith

    Arthur Tarry re. Abbott and cults, climate science denialism is only one part. Abbott along with other Lib and/or NewsCorp sock puppets i.e. Greg Sheridan, Alexander Downer and Kevin Andrews visited Hungary in 2019 for conferences hosted by the ‘illiberal democrat’ Viktor Orban on white Christian nationalism masquerading as Christian family values with Opus Dei and other extreme groups in the background including characters such as Steve Bannon et al. (has been reporting from the US and European media).

    This is about eugenics, autocracy, oligarchs, science denialism and their own (mostly) Catholic Christian cult which despises Pope Francis, Angela Merkel, the EU etc. and anyone not like them, or have the wherewithal to constrain them and their masters.

    If Oz journalists, rather than superficial local reporting via MP office press releases, could be bothered to scratch round they would recognise these wacko networks established via the US, running through UK and Oz with links to Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia etc. trying to transform societies by szalami tactics to entrench their preferred form of govt.

    Seems more about ageing pale and male types in their own death cult except they think they will go to heaven……

  13. Henry Rodrigues

    Aortic……that description by Bette Midler was timely and devastating, Scummo will be burning inside for a long time.Because he knows it was seen by thousands thanks to SBS. She’s my kind of person.

  14. DrakeN

    Arthur Tarry, The ALP missed the opportunity to geld the foul mainstream commercial media during its tenure post 2007.
    Out of fear, no less, of their other donors joining a massed withdrawal of financial support.
    An opportunity to insist on “The truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth” in news reporting and journalistic opinionism was allowed to fade into oblivion.

  15. Pilot

    Will Never happen Arthur. Murdoch has already won a case in the US Courts after he was sued for printing lies and propaganda. His argument was that his news stories, by law did not have to print truth or facts. News is news whether or not it is true. These clowns would scream “Freedom of the press” and “Freedom of speech”. Remember back when either Rudd or Gillard fired a shot across their bows, declaring that “the least they (MSM) could print the facts presented and the truth”. This was when the conservative liars had front page and the real story of the government was never printed. Any wonder the dullards for voted for the liars were confused.

    As far as I’m concerned, as soon as these current mugs are thrown out, Murdoch should be declared an enemy of the State and banned from owning any businesses or property in Australia. The bastard is a TRAITOR ffs! He conspired with the then opposition, the CIA and Nugan Hand bank to have Whitlam dismissed! And he boasted about it. Being a TRAITOR is why our conservatives love the bastard so much. When we look at it, every insurrection in Australia has been led by the conservatives of the day, the rise of the Old Guard, the New Guard who both attempted unsuccessfully to retake power in Australia by force. Both failed, but it shows our conservatives cannot, under any circumstances be TRUSTED! Betrayal is part of their DNA.

  16. Arthur Tarry

    Andrew Smith. Please add Kevin Donnelly and a host of overweight aged white-male couch potatoes in my neighbourhood to your list of autocrats, authoritarians, know-alls and know-nothings. There is an unrecognised virus spreading in our community causing symptoms, mainly in males, of blankness, dullness, dogmatism, and in extreme cases the death of the thinking and reasoning part of the brain. Nothing seems to be able to be done about this affliction, there is no cure on the horizon, and vaccination, if available, would be anathema to these arrogant turds.

  17. Kaye Lee

    And George Pell, Abbott’s mentor….

    “Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”

    “Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don’t need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense….. I am certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Uncertainties on climate change abound … my task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people’s minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes.”

    Tin foil mitre

  18. corvus boreus

    Kaye Lee,
    I assume that when you refer to Abbott’s mentor, you mean the ‘multiple-convicted-child-sex-offender’?

  19. Kaye Lee

    Among other crimes….

  20. David Stakes

    And the New World Order continues to grow, supported by that Demon Murdoch.

  21. Henry Rodrigues

    Kaye Lee
    Thanks for that gem of information about Abbott’s mentor. In retrospect, I’m glad he’s locked up and disgraced. How dare he condemn any of nature’s creatures to such a horrible fate and do nothing to protect them. Maybe we light a fire under his backside and see how he feels.

  22. TuffGuy

    ScottyFromMarketing’s mentor is not much better than the pairing of Abbott and Pell, perhaps worse

  23. corvus boreus

    TuffGuy,
    Quoth Tim Minchin (F*ck the Pope)
    ‘If you cover for another mother-phuqqen kiddy-phuqqer then phuq you you’re no better than the mother-phuqqen rapist’

  24. Andrew Smith

    Arthur Tarry, of course Donnelly constantly attacks education curricula (like Andrews) and one could add ‘Australia’s best demographer’ Bob Birrell, plus Abbott’s mentor Pell.

    Pell warrants inclusion in Desmog’s blog (Canada) database, but Abbott is missing

    https://www.desmogblog.com/cardinal-george-pell

    These guys are central in contributing to media talking points, mostly unchallenged… to aid confusion and opinionated noise….

  25. RosemaryJ36

    PLEASE!
    We go round in circles repeating our contempt for a government we did not vote for and which we sincerely believe is damaging this country.
    STOP TALKING, JOIN EXTINCTION REBELLION AND GET OUT ON THE STREETS IN DROVES AND STOP THE TRAFFIC IN EVERY MAJOR CITY CENTRE!

  26. johno

    John Lord, re your thought for the day, that is exactly a Trumpesque thing to say. Really, Scotty just can’t think for himself.

  27. John Lord

    Thank you for all your comments. Might l say that Richard Flanagan’s article for the New York Times is just one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on the subject l have ever read.

  28. Pingback: The baggage they have lugged from one year to the next means 2020 will be a hard slog (part 2) - » The Australian Independent Media Network

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