Yes, yes, I know, all right! I was channelling Donald Trump who, this week, referred to Biden as a “week president” even though he’s been there for years now, which is much longer than a week. Unfortunately, it turns out that another post where one-time Trump lawyer was called a “cereal liar” was not one of Humpty Trumpty’s at all. It was, in fact, a parody. However, these days parody is just as plausible as reality.
For example, take Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s praise for Lachlan Murdoch:
“Of course Lachlan Murdoch, whose family have provided a beacon of light in a sea of woke darkness, via the necessary media platforms that deliver genuine, common sense and fact-driven News reporting for our benefit.”
Admittedly this was prior to the defamation settlement with Dominion, where in a victory not seen since Christian Porter took on the ABC, Rupert and Lachlan managed to not only have a massive win, but they also managed to save Dominion from embarrassment in court by settling and offering to pay them a figure in excess of a billion dollars… Of course, when it’s converted to US dollars, it’s a lot less. And if you think that it’s not that much less, let me say that I would be more than happy to live on it.
Anyway, I didn’t want to focus on the Murdochs because, as we all know, their days as a significant news organisation are over and they’ve been reduced to publishing the local newsletter for the Liberal Party. I was more concerned about the sins of the Labor Party today.
I could start with Dan Andrews. For those of you not in Victoria, there was recently an IBAC inquiry into the awarding of a contract to a union before the 2018 election because it was suggested that there was pressure put on the public servants to ensure that the union got the million-dollar gig. While I’m sure some of you remember that the Morrison government assured us that ministers should be making the decisions rather than public servants and that it was perfectly fine to give billion dollar contracts without tender to companies that had nothing more than an office in a bathing box at an unspecific location, this was given to a union, which is different because while unions are dodgy, no company in the history of the world has ever been involved in corrupt behaviour, including the one who paid me to write that sentence.
Anyway, the inquiry found that, while the approaches by certain staff may have put undue pressure on public servants, the pressure fell short of corruption as IBAC defined it. This was outrageous… Of course, when I say that it was outrageous, that’s because lots of Liberals and fellow travellers were outraged because when they set up the rules governing IBAC, they were in power and so they set rules that made it almost impossible to find a politician guilty of anything unless they’d already been charged, convicted and written a memoir where they admitted everything. This high bar was not meant for the Labor Party and it’s outrageous that the same rules apply to them.
The trouble with politics is, of course, that we don’t apply the same standards to everyone and that we tend to approach it rather like our support for a football team. We don’t think that there’s a problem when our team gets away with something that should have been penalised, but when the opposition do it, then the whole system is corrupt and the officials are probably in cahoots with the opposing coach.
Speaking of sport though, I must say that I used this analogy today and that I was rather pleased with myself: The Liberals are like a team that’s at the bottom of the ladder and losing badly, but content themselves with the idea that other teams have been there and played finals just a short time later. However when asked whether they need a new coach or better recruiting or a new game plan, they tell us that it’s all fine and they may even get their past captain out of retirement because he was the one who led them to all those wins back in… what year was it again? Anyway, he’s an icon…
And while sport is a game, politics is about people’s lives. While some have the luxury of saying that both sides of politics are just as bad as each other, I’d like to point out that the very phrase “both sides of politics” shows just how much we treat it like a sporting contest. There are a lot more than two sides and it’s about time we started insisting that politicians stop trying to win and we get a bit more bipartisan consensus… Yes, I know it’s those other ones who are causing division; I’m on the same side as me…
Labor were foolish to go into the last election promising to preserve the Stage 3 tax cuts but it’s too late to be wise in retrospect. Now they’re stuck between the desirability of – at the very least – tinkering with them, and the inevitability that if they do something as simple as say we’ll stagger them over the next three years, they’ll be attacked by the Opposition with support from some in the media who are currently saying that the tax cuts are unaffordable and inflationary, and if Labor can’t balance the Budget then they should give up and give the Coalition a chance because they’re such sound economic managers that they’ve… oh, did I mention that the Coalition stopped the boats… or at least, Scott Morrison stopped any news about boats…
When it comes to raising the rate of unemployment benefits, there’s not really a case against it. Ok, I can think of several but then I can also think of several arguments for getting someone to wander into a meeting of the NRA and shouting that there’s a shooter loose with a gun and can someone just take him out?
I mean, it would be nice to balance the Budget, but given that it hasn’t happened lately and I’ve been completely incapable of balancing my own budget since secondary school when I spent my lunch money on Twisties and kept the balance, you can sort of see that there’s an argument that somehow balancing a budget may not be the healthiest option – either personally or for the nation as a whole.
Yeah, I guess we don’t want the unemployed living on Twisties…
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