Ok, let’s start with a couple of simple dialogues:
Number 1:
“Twelve year old Gilbert has been sentenced to eight years for his car theft which seems a little harsh as it was his first offence.”
“No, adult crime, adult time.”
“Will he be allowed to have access to any social media while in detention so that he can keep in contact with his family and friends?”
“Of course not! Social media could leave him vulnerable to bullying and deprive him of a childhood!”
Number 2:
“Are you really going to have your leg amputated?”
“Yes, well, the doctor said that it was gangrenous and that if I didn’t have it removed I’d be dead within a couple of years.”
“Are you sure he’s right? I mean, it’s a pretty big step. Shouldn’t you get a second opinion?”
“I did. And a third. All the doctors told me the same thing…”
“It’s probably a scam by doctors to get money…”
“I don’t think so…”
“I know someone who’s selling a special tonic which is meant to fix anything and they say that doctors are only in it for the money… Besides have you considered the cost of the operation, not to mention a prosthetic leg… Have you considered the enormous costs?
“Well, what option do I have if I want to live?”
“And there’s another cost. Living past the next two years is bound to add up. All told I reckon your decision to amputate could cost you millions!”
Ok, I think it’s pretty obvious that the first is meant to point out the absurdity of Albanese’s social media ban for those under sixteen, while the second is meant to point out the obvious absurdity of Chris Uhlmann and others…
We’re going to hear a lot about the cost of renewables, the unreliability of renewables, the concern about when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow and the river doesn’t run and the whales don’t notice a wind turbine because whales can’t navigate around objects which is why you constantly see whales on rocks. All these things will ignore some basic things about renewables and climate change because we don’t have to worry about climate change now that Elon has plans to colonise Mars and take all the worthwhile people with him.
Strangely, I find most of this propaganda. It sounds good to say that you can’t use your solar panels at night and that batteries are too inefficient to power all our needs. And it sounds good to complain that people had to switch off appliances to save power because of the unreliability of renewables… A strange argument when it was the coal-fired power stations that had broken down. And it sounds good to suggest that nuclear power stations will last eighty years while wind turbines and solar panels will need to replaced every year or so, completely ignoring the fact that no nuclear power station is that old so on what is that based?
So before you tell me that I’m just a Labor stooge, I’d like to point out that I think the social media ban for those under sixteen is rather silly. I also think that there a number of other areas where Labor need to lift their game. Support for those on the dole, for a start. And playing footsie with the Coalition when it comes to asylum seekers is another. I could go on and make a long list even before I raise the dual charges of being both antisemitic AND being too afraid to criticise Israel, which is a bit like when both sides agree that the umpire was bad.
However, I have to say that there are a number of areas where the current situation is typical of what happens with all Labor governments. It’s a constant: Whatever happens while Labor was in power is their responsibility and they should do more to fix it, while anything that happens when the Coalition is in power was either out of their control or the fault of the previous Labor government.
When the oil shocks occurred in the 70s the Whitlam government needed to fix things because it wasn’t like this under the Coalition. When the GFC hit, the Rudd government spent too much to keep us out of recession and we didn’t need to because we were one of the few countries that didn’t have one. And so, the Albanese government is responsible for the inflation because no other country in the world experienced that… oh wait, yes they did.
Ok, take two: Labor is responsible for the high interest rates because it’s only government spending that’s stopping us from being in a recession and we’d all much prefer that we were in a recession so people could lose their jobs and…
Right. Well, the spending from the federal government is why interest rates can’t come down because the RBA is worried that inflation might go up again. Ok, ok, the headline rate of inflation is within their target by December just like Treasury predicted which the RBA disputed, but there’s another way of measuring inflation which the RBA can point to and say, “See we were right and you can rely on us because Phil “no interest rate rises before 2024″ Lowe is gone and our predictions will be perfect from here on so we’re not going to do anything until it’s clear that we should have cut rates a few months ago just like we should have raised them in February 2022…”
Yeah, Labor ain’t perfect and to say that they’re not Scott Morrison is a pretty low bar. But they’re also not Peter Dutton and I suspect that could be an even lower one.
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