Thoughts And Prayers Have Been Sent So Let’s Not Get Political!
You know the way it goes: SIEV X sinks and hundreds of people drown, but we shouldn’t get political about it because it would be wrong to blame John Howard, because making political capital out of personal tragedy is just offensive opportunism. Fast forward a few years and Labor are responsible for all the drownings at sea and there’s no problem.
Or when people die installing the pink batts, it’s brought up at every opportunity by the Liberals because they argue that the scheme should have had better planning and more oversight… This was, of course, at the same time as they were arguing for a reduction in red-tape because such things just slow down projects. We never hear of all the workplace deaths that this may have caused because death shouldn’t be used for political reasons.
And so, we have the current fires raging in NSW and Queensland but, hey, don’t mention climate change because we’ve always had droughts and flooding rains, and it’s not the time. Just like in the United States when there’s another shooting, it’s not the time for a discussion on gun control. It’s a time for thoughts and prayers.
If you don’t believe me, just check out the Prime Minister’s tweet.
So let’s not politicise things. Let’s not talk about how the NSW government cut funding to fire services. Let’s follow the lead of Campbell Newman who contradicted someone by tweeting that there have been worse bushfires in the past and then posted a link to a story from last century about a number of bushfires that covered almost as much territory as the current ones, in much the same way that I’m nearly as tall as the tallest man in the world when you compare us to a wombat. This is not being political this is just being factual with alternative facts.
And certainly, let’s not have a look at this from last week’s “The Guardian”:
Mr Mullins is one of 23 former senior emergency figures trying to get the Australian Government to listen to their concerns about climate change and the missing capacity to fight fires in a new era.
“It’s up to the retired fire chiefs who are unconstrained to tell it like it is and say this is really dangerous,” he said.
However, his written requests for a meeting with Prime Minister Scott Morrison have failed.
“We were fobbed off to Minister [Angus] Taylor who is not the right minister to speak to,” Mr Mullins said.
“We wanted to speak to the Natural Disasters Minister and the PM. We asked for help with that, we never got a reply.
“You had 23 experts willing to sit down with a PM and come up with solutions, but he’s just fobbed us off.
“What does it take to wake these people up in Canberra? I don’t know.”
No, let’s do what the meme on Facebook says and ask those protestors why they’re not out fighting the fires. After all, isn’t it better to deal with a problem after it’s happened than to suggest remedies to prevent it happening in the first place? Complaining about these protestors is ok, because they’re the ones who are making things political with their constant whining about the government’s lack of meaningful action.
Let’s say that this is not unprecedented and that Australia has always had droughts and flooding rains because the poem tells us so and don’t you love Australia and its wide brown land? And let’s pretend that it’s just bad manners to even say the words “climate change” in the midst of such unprecedented disaster because we should be thinking about the victims and hey, how good is the government response, with the army reserve on standby and the coordination and no, we don’t need help from overseas and that’s not because they have none to spare because their fighting their own fires.
How good are thoughts and prayers?
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David Fitzpatrick -
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Kaye Lee -
paul walter -
New England Cocky -
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Ill fares the land -
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Karen Joyce -
Kaye Lee -
wam -
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Mike Jubow
Return to home pageSuperb. Well said.
When you have ingrained idiots and political perverts in office, by a totally corrupted chain system of fellatio friendly old boy networks with corporate thieving , backing, infiltrating, controlling and planning, you have a foul and filthy collective organised committee conspiracy despotism, Adolf by agreement, Benito by bonding, executive thieves, robbers, murderers, by the orders and actions and behaviour and attitudes they exude. It is primitive hunnery, savagery, uncivilised uncouth poxed politics.
So, so typical of the self-serving head-in-the-sand, distractionary politics of the LNP. The annoying, obtuse and arrogant style of Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and, especially, the pious, sanctimonious hypocrite, Morrison, goes BEYOND hypocritical! Everything the LNP does is illogical, everything they say is a lie and when things go wrong (which they inevitably do), the coal-loving, climate-change-denying fascists in the LNP desperately look around for someone else – ANYBODY else – to blame. Inevitably, it is usually the Greens or, preferably, Labor DESPITE the fact that the ALP have not been in power for six long, catastrophic years of LNP ineptitude and waste. Despite the fact that the LNP have driven our economy into the worst national debt in history – now standing at over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS – they are STILL harking back to the Rudd/Gillard’s modest national deficit of only $250 billion without one iota of insight that they have QUADRUPED that figure in less than six years! Morrison seems deaf, dumb and blind to the pleas of Australians to DO SOMETHING about climate change but, instead, the LNP will do what THEY want to do and to hell with everyone else!
Furthermore, nothing is being said (certainly NOT in the gutter rags of Murdoch, the LNP’s Propaganda Minister) about the increasing and very worrying level of fascism undertaken by the Morrison regime (and his brutal, sadistic henchman, Peter Dutton): the brutally cruel, inhumane and indefinite ILLEGAL incarceration of legal asylum seekers in off-shore concentration camps – Australia is the ONLY country in the world to undertake this horrendous practise that goes against EVERY LAW to protect asylum seekers; the undemocratic arrest of journalists, the prosecution and jailing of whistleblowers, the virulent attacks and harassment of unions, the arrest and persecution of protesters practising their legal and constitutional rights to protest, the infiltration of OUR ABC by the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance by placing high level ex-Murdoch sycophants on the Board of the ABC (eg Janet Albrechstein) who go on and on influencing, manipulating and controlling the content of what is presented on our taxpayer-owned national broadcaster so that it no longer presents impartial news, reviews or comment that, in any way, presents the LNP in a bad light!
The people of Australia should be SCREAMING from the rooftops to demand the immediate dismissal of this notorious, nefarious government – the worst, most inept fascist regime in our history. Once again, apathy rules and our nation is sinking into a terrifying level of inequality, stone cold inhumanity, worsening corruption and depravity.
Under this NSW Coalition Government, the capital budgets of both Fire and Rescue NSW and the Rural Fire Service have been cut by 35.4 per cent and 75.2 per cent respectively – the equivalent to axing the jobs of at least 100 firefighters and 50 new firefighting trucks. This whilst spruiking their surplus.
There you go!
Neoliberalism.
Let any one who criticises political parties who subscribe to fantasy alibis for lazy looting and watch the ill informed and ignorant come down on them like a ton of bricks;
Fancy not knowing enviro v jobs is a false binary after all this time, or that cutting public spending doesn’t mean failing public services!
Mean while public debt increases, the billionaires continue to privatise whatever wealth they can lay hands on, to offshore it, who caused it andwho stood by and cheered the rubbish on in the feeble name of “bipartisanship”.
Here is the link to NSW RFS website. Check out the areas of these fires. You should be able to move throughout the website from this link. There may be some congestion on this site during the day (101119).
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/major-fire-updates
It is part of the Liarbral Nat$ COALiiton policy to support the clearances of regional NSW to allow foreign owned multinational corporations to take our Australian natural resources for manufacturing into useful products overseas and selling back to Australian voters for enormous profits that will be sent off-shore to avoid paying any taxation in Australia. Well you cannot provide any jobs in Australia for Australians because they are not part of the foreign owned corporation.
These fires are a perfect opportunity to progress that policy.
Simply defund each and every public service organisation and government service, sell off each and every public infrastructure asset in regional areas and spend the proceeds building metropolitan concentration camps that have poisonous air quality, personal over-crowding and inadequate planning for the increasing population. Then fund your political mates with taxpayer dollars to plan and fix the problem at enormous profits to their corporations that will be sent off-shore to avoid any Australian taxation benefits.
tamworth women supporting adultery support national$ & we all get screwed
I had two cats that were named “thoughts and prayers” – because they were useless
So, if Morrison is so awful and his government so corrupt, how do we still keep talking, on a daily basis, about Albanese’s failings as a leader and potential PM and how untrustworthy Shorten was and still is.
Don’t misunderstand me – I am not trying to defend the LNP. Even if I were, one would be left to wonder how I could defend the indefensible.
But the message that gets traction and cuts through is the story that Albanese is weak and a policy flip-flop and Labor is a broken party instead of the real issue, which is that the LNP has been and continues to be the worst, most corrupt, most inept, the most untruthful, devious, defensive, hypocritical government this country has ever had. But it is still “Shorten this, Shorten that, Albanese this, Albanese that…. “. Are we for real? What is true is Morrison’s disgraceful behaviour and his government’s failures – the rest is just making up a story to divert attention from the truth.
I feel a bit vindicated now , having read this helpful article. I feel sick when after the mass shootings and wildfires in the US these past few years well meaning but not very bright women set up touchy-feely crying and praying circles so that god is induced to comfort the bereaved via their wailing and singing. Rather like praying to god in an epidemic rather than getting myself vaccinated.
Thank you.
I love your light touch.
It’s very effective and thought provoking, judging by the heat in some of the replies to this article.
Appropriate heat. So much really has to change.
Still, I do like the way you place these matters coolly in front of us.
We can choose our responses, each according to our own character.
Karen,
I so agree about Rossleigh’s skill at making us think without ever resorting to the pointless angry to and fro that too many of us (me included) are guilty of.
It sounds good but it’s just a right wing slogan.
We have no idea how many volunteers are real or virtual protesters.
Oldies, like me, would be a hindrance and most young protesters are welcome to make sandwiches like the other untrained women.
ps
It seems like there are millions for rebuilding private schools.(effall for public) Wow, the religious rorters are drooling at the prospect of free access to cash.
Their prayers have been answered and their singing ‘from little classrooms big schools grow.” echoes throughout queensland and nsw
Thoughts and Prayers – a way of seeming to be involved in and contributing to something without actually doing anything at all.
“Those that just pray don’t think and those that think don’t tend to pray. For all the practical good it does you may as well write a letter to Santa and ask him for help”.
Hope ScuMo doesn’t think too much or we will get another brain fart?
BTW what happened to the aerial fire fighting tanker aircraft the governments were reported to be leasing?
A very well written article – again, Rossleigh.
In it you mention the SM ratbag in Canberra spruiking about the ‘army on standby ‘ …. I saw him say it yesterday, word for word.
ON STANDBY ?????
They should have been deployed LAST WEEK !! They would definitely have the know-how. There are specially trained Army Emergency Responders.
They are ” soldier(s) in the Royal Australian Engineers that provides initial emergency response to the combat force in order to minimise loss of life, destruction of material, capability and environment by accident, fire or hazardous material. ”
The main job functions include:
Provide a deployable emergency response capability to the deployed force
Provide an emergency response capability to military airfields
Control and co-ordinate emergency response operations
Provide a response role in aircraft crash rescue, vehicle accident rescue, vertical (height or depths) or horizontal (confined space) extraction
Respond to hazardous material/ CBRN incident in an operational environment
Provide first aid and resuscitation to the injured
What the hell is wrong with this creep that calls himself a PM. ? ( Don’t bother answering that ! )
It could have been so easy to avoid all these catastrophic fires if everyone in the fire risk areas had been given a rake and a broom to clear the fire risk material between the trees.