The dog ate my homework
By 2353NM
When you were a toddler and those responsible for looking after you asked you to do something you didn’t want to do, you probably threw a tantrum. A couple of years later when you had learnt to communicate, you probably expressed your disapproval (then threw a tantrum when your disapproval was noted but made no difference). By the time you got to school, you were used to people telling you what to do, but you had a number of ‘reasonable’ excuses at hand such as ‘the dog ate my homework’, ’s/he made me do it’, ‘I wasn’t told’, ‘I didn’t hear you’, ‘I didn’t understand’ or simply ‘I don’t want to’. At the time, you probably considered the responses to be absolutely logical, argued rationally, clear and indisputable. In short, they were (in your opinion at the time) world class responses to external events.
It’s a bit like Prime Minister Morrison’s claims around the ‘world leading’ management of the pandemic response by his government. To date, Australia has been relatively successful at ensuring the virus didn’t get more than a toehold in the community. In spite of Morrison’s claims, the state and territory leaders have done the heavy lifting through building their contact tracing capability, isolating areas within their states where necessary to prevent the virus spreading and managing a quarantine process (on behalf of the federal government) for people coming into the country from overseas. While Morrison claims success, in reality the only two items in the pandemic response that have been left to the federal government were vaccine procurement and distribution as well as finding a better alternative to quarantine than that offered by the stop gap use of large hotels in our major cities. The ‘dog’ didn’t get to the Morrison Government’s homework – it seems the work was never done. As we entered the 2021/2022 financial year, there were lockdowns in 3 states and one territory, with other states telling their residents to exercise extreme caution, wear masks and observe various restrictions.
On July 2 2021, following a National Cabinet meeting apparently called to bring the state leaders on board, Morrison fronted a press conference and announced Australia’s four stage plan to return to something like ‘pre-COVID’ normality – where the virus is treated like any other seasonal virus such as the flu. All well and good in theory, but the COVID-19 ‘emergency’ is now 18 months old and according to Morrison we as a nation had a ‘world leading’ response. Had Morrison’s government started to develop a plan to exit the pandemic in January 2020, he could rightly claim to have a ‘world leading’ response. It’s not like they weren’t warned by the World Health Organisation that there was a highly contagious virus on the way and it was the ideal time to accumulate test kits, medical equipment and supplies and make arrangements for the isolation of people that were affected.
In March 2020, The Saturday Paper interviewed Dr Bill Bowtell, who was scathing in his criticism of the COVID-19 response. As he had a considerable role in this nation’s management of the HIV crisis in the 1980s, he probably had some idea of what he was talking about. Frankly, a lot of his predictions have come to pass. Particularly telling is the discussion around a March 2020 press conference with Morrison, Health Minister Hunt and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly where
Between them the three men said the word “plan” 32 times, but in reality it was more like a blueprint for bureaucratic consultation. There were no concrete actions mentioned. None of the three men uttered the words hygiene, handwashing or social distancing.
By September 2020, we were going to have a ‘gas fired’ economic recovery from the COIVD pandemic. According to a report in The Guardian, Morrison’s announcement at a speech in the Hunter Valley claimed that there was no credible transition strategy for our energy requirements that didn’t rely on the burning of gas
He announced steps that could expand the gas industry, but few measures designed to boost the economy in the short-term – most were little more than commitments to coming up with a plan.
Morrison acknowledged the rise of cheap solar and wind energy, but beyond a passing reference, there was no discussion of a transition plan or dealing with climate change. The destination set out in the speech was an expansion of gas that could last for decades.
A little light on the detail, which coincidentally is a little like Morrison’s four stage plan to return to something like a pre-COVID normal that he announced on July 2. The first stage is ‘Vaccinate, Prepare and Pilot’ which requires a reduction in overseas arrivals into the country while we all go and get vaccinated when the vaccine is available (weren’t we supposed to be at the ‘front of the queue’?). As The New Daily reminds us,
Moving on to the next phases relies heavily on the rate of vaccination.
As of Thursday [1 July 2021], 7.9 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated while 29.6 per cent have received at least one shot.
To see how we rate in comparison to the rest of the world, click here.
In the ‘Post Vaccination’ phase, lock downs will become less frequent and those who have been fully vaccinated will have less restriction than others. Arrival numbers from overseas will increase and those who can demonstrate full vaccination may be able to arrive in this country without quotas. Again, as The New Daily suggests
Phase Two of the plan will commence when enough Australians have been vaccinated, though we don’t yet know what number that is.
Mr Morrison said it will be determined by a “scientific number” in agreement with each state and territory.
Again, little detail. Apparently no-one knows how many of us have to be vaccinated before we move to ‘Stage 2’. But once we get there, ‘the plan’ suggests we then move through a consolidation phase to an ongoing process where COVID infections are treated like we treat the seasonal flu with some additional requirements around arrivals from overseas.
Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)
The Morrison government’s COVID-19 management process is similar to his management of many of the challenges in government, long on rhetoric and short on achievement. Certainly, he should be guided by the medical evidence to determine a response to a problem that has a medical root cause, but aren’t we paying him to be thinking of the potential issues before he is forced to address them by the state leaders and have the information to hand? Telling us all, 18 months into the pandemic, that the Australian Government has yet to determine an appropriate level of herd immunity to a virus because they haven’t asked the question until now is insulting to us all. You might recall that vaccination was always seen as the way out of the pandemic.
Most of us are well aware it’s far more likely that a 7-year-old hasn’t done their homework than the dog actually ate it. Morrison hasn’t even attempted to give us a reason why his government’s homework hasn’t been done. Fortunately for us, the state leaders have demonstrated they have the real power, time and time again.
What do you think?
This article was originally published on The Political Sword
For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
19 comments
Login here Register here-
Kevin
-
Phil Pryor
-
Phil Pryor
-
Michael Taylor
-
pierre wilkinson
-
Phil Pryor
-
Michael Taylor
-
Harry Lime
-
BB
-
BB
-
Michael Taylor
-
BB
-
Florence Howarth
-
New England Cocky
-
Michael Taylor
-
Williambtm
-
ajogrady
-
BB
-
Kathryn
Return to home page“Short on achievement” is far to generous a summation. How about “promise the world, deliver nothing”?
We have a rotten, foreign bowing, submissive, brainless, disgusting, heartless, inadequate, gutless, deficient, bumbaringdonordriven government of conservative Der Sturmer lowtypes, Un-Australian, treacherous, selfcentred, egofixated, swollen, pustular, erectile miniscule nobodies.
This disappearing comment chronic problem would give a pig’s arse the heartburn.
Phil, I’ve just received instructions on how to fix that issue of the delay in comments appearing. It looks complicated, so I’ll tackle it with a fresh head in the morning. Bear with me.
Morrison, the minister for announceables, has never had any intention on delivering on any of his promises, so it is unsurprising that he is miffed that the great unwashed populace expects any actual achievements from his misgovernment.
Bouyed and protected by the MSM generally and the murdochcracy continuously, he quite happily continues on his merry way, lying, rorting, hiding and announcing how good everything is without any qualms, conscience or empathy.
Embalmed in secrecy, denying FOI requests, failing to address any concerns, in fact, resenting and not accepting the very premise of any criticisms, he unfailingly resorts to lambasting Labor, Dan Andrews and the ABC.
And lying.
well, that is what I think anyway, for what it is worth.
I wonder how Herr Kipfer is taking the latest polls?
and Phil, it seems that it takes a while for our comments to be seen, but seen they eventually are
– unlike Scott’s promises of results
Thank you Michael and others, for an impetuous old anus (me?) needs some awareness…how unlikely…
Phil, if I run into problems during the fix (I have a habit of breaking things on computers I try to fix) just know that your comments will get through, but will take a few minutes longer.
I don’t know why the system is picking on you (plus it’s happening to a few other commenters). It must have been something you said. 😜
Three word, meaningless slogans are the peak of the lying fuckwit Morrison’s achievements.We can only hope the interregnum of the Pangolin’s revenge will penetrate enough skulls to reveal the gross failure of this absurd fake.
The earthly departure of that sack of repulsive ordure in his New York eyrie would not hurt the cause.If nothing else, the world would be a better place.
Conceited vain ego driven scumo & his rotten gang of rorting crooks, this pathetic excuse for a so called government for Australia just makes me puke they are all so duplicitous. RW neocon selfish greedy pricks. I tried to watch 4 corners tonight but gave up half way, grrrrrr, just want to reach out with my hands into the TV screen and throttle the lying cretinous pretentious bunch of miserable liberal creeps, evading all responsibility and accountability for their disastrous handling of the purchasing of the vaccines, their infantile excuses that go far beyond “the dog ate my homework”. scumo and his penny pinching bullshit fucked up the purchase of the Pfizer vaccine, ending up with only 10 mil doses, then put all the eggs in the AZ basket… What really pisses me off is he was 1st in the queue for the Pfizer vaccine, so why not the AZ jab? Because the glossolalian forked brown tongue spouting bastard knew there was a nasty blood clotting problem with the AZ vaccine and was not prepared to take that risk. BUT expects older aussies to become collateral damage to make up for his 100% total incompetence… But wait there is more, and on with the never ending shit show… Change the advice as the narrative demands to make scumo look good, now all Aussies can have the AZ jab, but check with your GP 1st, and bla bla bla bla.. Then blame “mistakes” on folks being either anti vaxxers or vaccine hesitant, yep indeed blame the fucking dog, and blame the baby who ate the homework as well, and the “illegal” migrants from next door are also to blame.. Oh yes and of course it’s also Labor’s fault. Then we have other disingenuous obfuscating “bullshit news” from the gross willful ignorance and lies from News Corpse gutter cretins after dark. Courtesy from the old decrepit yankee viagra addict murdoch with various nuts and bolts, dolts and cretins who crawl out from that chamber of slime. Other fat hydroxychloroquine freaks and morons that crawl around kowtowing up Scott’s shitty dacks. Australia is just about FUBAR.
I give up with any more comment because the simple truth is that mere words cannot fully express my utter contempt.
Hi Michael.
Many thanks for all your efforts to track down the evasive comment gremlins, my comment above appeared at once, but alas still no edit function… But that’s ok. I don’t need to edit any of it as I didn’t go far enough in my condemnation of scumo’s shit show!
Hi BB, that one has me stumped, and is only happening (or not happening) for certain people. I thought I’d fixed it – and presumed I had – so I’m glad you gave me some feedback.
It’ll be one of my morning jobs.
Mmm I feel special now, singled out along with Phil, lol.
Anyway Michael, whilst you wrap your head around the issue, here’s some light entertainment.
100% Morrison.
The states & Federals are equal sovereign governments. We are seeing a federal government that are an utter failure in all they do. The states & territories gave taken up the slack. For the first time in my nearly fourscore years, I realise the founding fathers got it right. The inbuilt checks & balances saved the day.
Oh dear Michael, having difficulties with the puta is obviously a wides spread concern, but only half as important as losing articles by John Lord, Grumpy Geezer and Phil Pryor. My own meagre losses have been returned but consider the bewildering effect of a day without the accurate, pithy, forthright observations from each of these three contributors for readers trapped under COVID health restrictions, and the impact is too horrendous to contemplate. Why it would make a Scummo press release seem like manna from heaven.
NEC, not sure what you mean by posts disappearing.
Michael, with respect, all new adaptations in our electronic troposphere need to be adapted to by the new handlers.
Your patrons, authors, commenters et al will remain loyal in the continuum.
By crikey I like the dazzling expansive lexicon of wordage donated by Mr. Phil Pryor.
Scovid Morriscum and the Fools Gold Standard Premier are throwing all caution to the wind and in doing so are throwing young peoples future health outcomes under the bus by prioritising AZ vaccine so as to placate peoples anger and cover their political arses for their total incompetence. The big question is why did the Morriscum government have to indemnify GP’s from administering the AZ vaccine so as to coerce GP’s into using it. Is there any other vaccine or pharmaceutical drug that needed to have federal government intervention so as to indemnify it for its use? If there is none then questions need to be answered about the fanatical use of power that is in reality a political ploy to protect and enrich the guilty rather then to benefit the best health outcomes for the innocent. Is this just another example of L/NP political expediency or in plain English a cover up to protect the guilty. We need a Royal Commission and questions need to be answered into this. Was it for financial gain for members of the L/NP?
How many L/NP members have shares in CSL so that greed became their motivator.
ajogrady
Good post, good questions.
Was it for financial gain for members of the L/NP?
What else….
Phil Pryor, you are, indeed, very insightful and we thank you for listing all of Morrison’s more virtuous traits, however, many of us believe that you treated this callously inhumane, diabolical, unconscionable, sociopathic piece of human filth far too kindly! C’mon darling, let’s get STUCK IN – Morrison is a —————————————— (NB: This section of the comment has been censured, then deleted, in the pubic, we mean public interests of Sloth Morrison who, as usual – when the going gets tough – cannot be found anywhere to defend himself) ———————————————————————————————————————————————————