The Morrison government is our greatest threat to national security
The Coalition’s boast to being stronger on national security is based purely on throwing so much money at defence that they are wasting it in their haste to spend it.
The government’s ham-fisted megaphone diplomacy “shirt-fronting” in the Australian media has seen our relationship with China go from a standing ovation in parliament for Xi Jinping as he spoke about our free trade agreement to trade sanctions from China and warnings to their citizens not to travel or study here.
The hyping up of the threat that China poses to Australia is deliberate and dangerous. That is not to ignore the threat they may pose to Hong Kong or Taiwan, or their claim to islands in the South China Sea, but we have no stake in those disputes beyond freedom of navigation and abuse of human rights. They do not threaten our sovereignty in any way.
Concern about China’s growing influence in the Pacific region sounds more like guilt at our neglect as we slashed foreign aid and ignored pleas to act on climate change. If we don’t want our neighbours to be indebted to China then we need to offer the help they need, not some righteous anger at them accepting it from someone else.
When it comes to Putin and the Ukraine, the difference in rhetoric from Scott Morrison about how, no matter how small we are, we must join together to stand up to the bullies, and his assertion that our emissions are too small to matter, is stark. In both areas, we speak loudly but carry a tiny little stick.
Morrison and his band of miscreants have deliberately stirred up mistrust in the very institutions that are designed to protect our freedom and way of life.
In October 2019, Morrison told the Lowy Institute that the world needs to avoid “negative globalism” and eschew an “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy”. He said it did not serve the national interest “when international institutions demand conformity rather than independent cooperation on global issues. The world works best when the character and distinctiveness of independent nations is preserved within a framework of mutual respect.”
Morrison contended that international engagement was “being challenged by a new variant of globalism that seeks to elevate global institutions above the authority of nation states to direct national policies. We will decide our interests and the circumstances in which we seek to pursue them.”
That Trumpian logic could be quoted back at Scotty by Putin and Xi.
Government ministers have also launched into criticism of our courts, so much so that three of them were forced into making an “unreserved apology” to avoid being found in contempt.
An increasingly shrill Tim Wilson said that legislation aimed at establishing an independent climate change commission to provide advice to the government on the appropriate policy mechanisms and interim targets needed to achieve this target amounted to “subversion and treason”. Presumably because Tim knows best how to protect us from this existential threat?
Morrison’s mob have repeatedly told us that bleeding-heart socialist lefties have taken over not only the courts but the education system, the non-Murdoch media, the scientific bodies warning about catastrophic climate change, the unions (who are also thugs and criminals…or mum and dad investors depending on the topic at hand), the Human Rights Commission, the universities, the AMA – pretty much everything except the Minerals Council whose pragmatic independent advice is apparently a shining light for the nation’s best interests.
It’s not just undermining institutions and organisations, they have also sought to pit us against each other, exploiting fears and stoking suspicion.
As shadow immigration minister, Morrison thought it would be a good election strategy to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about “Muslim immigration“, “Muslims in Australia” and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate.
Peter Dutton claimed Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”, prompting a twitter storm of people posting shots of themselves not being attacked whilst eating dinner in Melbourne.
He had previously claimed that Malcolm Fraser made a mistake resettling refugees from the war in Lebanon because second and third generation Lebanese-Australians were being charged with terrorist-related offences.
Morrison, Dutton and Barnaby Joyce all dismissed the Uluru Statement from the Heart saying we didn’t need a third chamber of parliament, which it never was. Instead, we have seen the government champion the free speech of people like Bill Leak with attempts to enshrine the rights of bigots receiving more government attention and support than the rights of the traditional custodians of the land to some input into the policies that directly affect them.
Their divisive tactics don’t just exploit ethnic differences.
Barnaby loves to pour fuel on the rural/urban divide bemoaning the “denearing (?) sneer towards the people of the great city of Gladstone and the people of Central Queensland.”
“It follows their usual line of thinking that regional people are somehow below contempt,” says Barnaby, looking for relevance…and a dictionary.
Our live and let live attitude to religion has also taken a battering at the hands of a government who seems to think the religious need to be compensated for marriage equality. The freedom of people to marry whomever they love has to be balanced with the freedom of religious institutions to abhor and discriminate against them.
Why is this government so perturbed about people’s gender identity and sexuality? Is the fact that many of them went to single sex schools a factor? Or is it, once again, manufactured division in the hope of buying a few votes?
And it’s not like you can rely on them in an emergency. When the bushfires hit, Scotty went on holidays because he doesn’t hold a hose. When the pandemic hit, it wasn’t a race to protect people. When the floods hit, it was up to the states to ask for help and kids on kayaks to be first responders. And apparently aged care is managing just fine.
Australia’s national security will never be assured by the amassing of weapons. Our social cohesion will not be achieved by stoking division for political gain.
We should be a good global citizen who respects and upholds the rule of law and who co-operates on combined action to tackle shared challenges. We should be a thoughtful neighbour, there in times of need but also aware that our actions affect others. And we should be a cohesive community that embraces our diversity as an asset that strengthens our freedom.
Instead, we have ScottyFromMarketing and the Beetrooter with a chorus line of swinging dicks, wolverines, climate change deniers and homophobic happy clappers, all beholden to vested interests whose only motive is to expand their wealth and power.
When Scotty left his job with Tourism New Zealand, then sports minister Trevor Mallard laid the blame for problems at the Office of Tourism and Sport squarely with Morrison.
Australian standards of public sector behaviour “are lower than ours,” Mallard told the NZ Herald.
“My experience with Australian politicians is that rules and ethics are not as important to them as they are to New Zealanders.”
Sorry, but this lot make me feel far from secure.
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Return to home pageScummo is playing the external threat card for all he is worth attempting to con unthinking Australian voters into believing that he is competent, empathetic and caring. Scummo’s only cares are for himself and retaining his position as the worst Prim Monster in Australia political history. He likes the financial perks and constructing his personal digest of ”Look at me I must be important!”
Naturally he has found his natural infamy among the least good members of the Liarbal Nazional$ COALition.
And his failures in NZ and Aust tourism and his sacking has never been fully explained.
At the present time Dutton and Morrison are asking us to accept that an East Coast submarine base for our new nuclear submarines should be established either at Newcastle, Port Kembla or Brisbane.
OK, there will be jobs and that is the lure that they are throwing out to these locations. As somebody suggested the other day, don’t forget Pearl Harbour. If there were to be an international rumble the first thing that our adversary is going to do is hit our submarine base.
I don’t know what happens when you blow up a nuclear submarine but I imagine that radioactive contamination becomes a risk factor.
I’m still disgusted at what Dutton said about second and third generation Lebanese-Australians.
I had family members who were first generation Lebanese-Australians who fought for Australia in WW2. I am a second generation Lebanese-Australian. I have a brother who served his country, as did I.
I don’t have a problem with second or third generation Lebanese-Australians, but I do have a problem with racist, ex-cop Defence Ministers who like beating the drums of war.
Disgusting LNP poster:
FFS! We need to integrate a New means of Trading! We need a new Market which recognises Non-Violent participants who are willing to trade with other Non-Violent traders, SUCH AS THE ORGANIC/BIODYNAMIC world of suppliers?
What if the Organic world of fruit and vegetable suppliers managed to out-supply the major commercial chains of Fruit/Vegetable supply, without delivery costs?
Could we perhaps deliver fresh fruit and vegetable to all continents on Earth without Middleman taxes?
If we created a Global Chain of Charity, this might actually happen! A GLOBAL CHAIN OF CHARITY MIGHT JUST MAKE IT HAPPEN!
I’m pretty fed up with our local voters’ ignorance. But after all, we basic Convicts, with no intelligence have not much information to go on with: have not much to offer our cultural future.
This antipathy encouraged towards international organisations and treaties is not new to US nativist conservative libertarians of the right. The fossil fuel/auto sponsored Club of Rome ’72 was used to promote ‘limits to growth’ and ‘population bomb’ constructs, while another flew under the radar.
Good old boy Herman Daly’s ‘steady-state economy’ theory based on ‘limits to growth’ to demand an end to multilateral trade agreements aka EU, no migration, strong national borders, stable population etc. economic nationalism masquerading as green ‘equilibrium’ requiring autocratic management; also promoted by Breitbart, Rebel Media, Bannon, white nationalists etc.
Who is left standing at the end of the day? Global and/or multinational corporates with existing cross border assets and infrastructure, esp. fossil fuels, finance and auto, who fall outside national legal and regulatory constraints; the radical right ‘libertarian trap’ aka Brexit and Trump, though for many it’s simply Anglo exceptionalism or white nativism.
If the current federal government was at all SERIOUS about defence and not just reelection they would be going hard at fixing food and fuel sovereignty.
The ADBlue fiasco revealed Australian food and fuel security to be an absolute house of cards incapable of reliably feeding citizens let alone underpinning a prolonged national defence effort.
There are no ‘limits to growth’.
Exponential growth in human population, combined with ever-increasing individual consumption can be indefinitely continued within our finite resourse base so long as you acknowledge that concepts like ‘resourse preservation’ & ‘sustainability’ are merely a smokescreen for racist genocide masquerading under ‘the green agenda’.
Since our rapid progression to 8 billion humans has done so little biospheric damage thus far, we should be able to continue to up the ante to just under10 billion people by 2050 without our natural environs manifesting much further detriment.
Make the pie higher!
Ps, Breitbart are ‘green equalibrium’ propagandists!
Excellent article, Kaye Lee.
“Those of us who do hold hoses know just how dangerous climate change has become. Australia is under-prepared, and Canberra has no answers to how it will rapidly slash emissions this decade.” – former NSW fire and rescue commissioner Greg Mullins
The royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements in October 2020 said Australia was likely to see compounding disasters, with cascading effects that not only threaten lives and homes “but also the nation’s economy, critical infrastructure and essential services, such as our electricity, telecommunications and water supply, and our roads, railways and airports.”
…the government was warned in October last year about the prospect of massive flooding over summer, and did not adequately prepare for the devastation that has resulted in New South Wales and Queensland.
“The government knew what was coming and it did not adequately prepare our communities or first responders,” Mullins said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/14/emergency-chiefs-slam-coalitions-fumbling-response-to-floods-claiming-they-were-warned-of-a-potential-crisis
While they stockpile weapons for wars we won’t fight, they have abandoned the fight that is actually killing people and causing untold damage right here right now..
UD, correct, on food / transport – by 2010 Australia became a net importer of food by value. Since then, Australia has exported primary produce for $xB/yr while importing processed food for $x+yB/yr. We outsourced a relatively simple process like value-adding of local fresh food to 3rd world countries. National cabinets puts no value on food security. But it gets better. Both Labor and the LNP have let fuel stocks slip to the point where we have a month or so of supply should the imports be halted. Maybe they are channeling their version of a Zero Carbon policy – no petrol, no need car, problem solved.
For a bloke who should never have been allowed to play with anything other than toy tanks and tin soldiers,the Dutton thing is sure burning a heap of our money on his imagined war.Given that he is an idiot,all this defence spending bullshit is aimed purely at outmuscling Labor on National security,while at the same time goading the Liar to ramp up the insults to China.To him, it’s a win-win.Except it is not only dumb,it’s exceedingly dangerous.They’re in shit steet on every other domestic front,so extreme desperation has them wanting a ‘khaki’ election.Let’s face it,winning is everything and damn the consequences….it’s actually Morrison’s MO.
The next Party Room meeting should be entertaining.
Meanwhile, the Liar has just concluded a press conference in Wyong, in which he managed to negotiate by lying through his arse…as usual.The fake’s Lizard Brain is running amok.
Scummo is a fucking cretin! With what’s going in Europe the brainless deadshit decides to pull this stunt at this time? Words that don’t involve a lot more swearing fail me.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-launches-legal-action-against-russia-over-mh17-20220314-p5a4l2.html
As has been pointed out elsewhere (“The small government experiment has been an abject failure”)
Neo liberalism is NOT about getting pen- pushers out of the public’s hair, but removing democratic safeguards for the People, on the Road to Serfdom, neo lib style.
Morrison’s latest callous dismissal of Emergency Services funding, for example, is NOT accidental; it is ideological fascist with a feudalistic goal.
There’s some hot talk of rebellion here, welldeserved, as we have low intellectuality and no ethics, morals, decency, prudence in this shitload of conservatives posing as humans, (hah). Morrison has never worked , never succeeded, even in the liars empire of advertising, has been jobbed in to insiders positions within his party, coddled, force fed, and finally offered assistance by back passage operators to backstab his way in and up. A complete shower of dysentery posing as a human has gone up the top, to shower on all of us. What hope is there in this plotted filth?
“If the current federal government was at all SERIOUS about defence and not just reelection they would be going hard at fixing food and fuel sovereignty.”
Spot on, UD.
An excellent piece, Kaye. One of your best.
OINK! OINK! Look at me, I’m flying. OINK! OINK!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-15/scott-morrison-funding-dry-dock-henderson-aukus/100911050
We will decide our interests and the circumstances in which we seek to pursue them.”No mate your American buddies will decide Australia’s fate,as they have done for many years,i guess the only difference between your government and previous ones,is you are a much better groveler and ass licker than the rest,im guessing when your career finishes in May,your American buddies will have a very nice cosy million dollar job waiting for you.I think people now understand you don’t really give a dam about the hard working Australians struggling to survive,you will never have to worry about feeding your family or a roof over their heads,no body believes you anymore.Your time is up,let history show what a real wanker you were