There’s no roadmap out, wails NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, Typhoid Mary of our Delta blues, parroting Scott Morrison, the PM for NSW, who savages his gold-standard, open for business poster-girl; turns on her to save his own hide. Hand-ball Morrison gets JJ Frewen to fire the bullets in Friday’s national cabinet. It’s like the scene in Apocalypse Now where the water buffalo is hacked to death.
There’s no exit for Gladys. Yet there are plenty of entrances and an upstaging – notably from JJ – not The Beatles’ (Get back JoJo (to where you once belonged) – Lt General JJ Frewen, the Grim Dig who rips into a woman Premier, ostensibly, for having the hide to ask for more vax in a cabal a big-noting PM calls his “national cabinet” – a COAG of competent, experienced, leaders who have long since taken over the controls, carrying a PM poseur who is just not up to the job as Crikey’s Bernard Keane puts it, a verdict which skips the Machiavellian in Morrison and his theatre of cruelty.
That Morrison’s not up to the job is something Keane’s been saying since 2018. And many others, not part of a sycophantic, Pravda-like media which blankets Australia.
Is Scott a dangerous incompetent? It’s a view that is rapidly taking hold even amongst Quiet Australians who vote purely for self-interest. Anyone can see ScoMo & Co™ are artless dodgers. Incompetent. Fail vaccination supply, distribution and quarantine – but excel in creating confusion and vaccine hesitancy, yet always with a nod to their tin god ATAGI which Morrison says he bends to his will, like Yuri Geller with spoons.
The virus is in control. And out. When it comes to anyone doing anything useful, you have to applaud most premiers. Morrison’s on the nose with voters. July 19, Newspoll shows Morrison’s handling of the pandemic fell nine points in the past three weeks to 52%, far below the 85% rating at the previous peak of the pandemic in April last year. Confidence in the vaccine rollout slumped to 40%.
57% of respondents are dissatisfied while even Coalition voter support is lukewarm.
Other pollsters agree. Since March 2021, when the attributes questions were last put to respondents in the Essential poll, Morrison is down eight points on voter trust, nine points down on being seen to be in control of his team and a nine point drop on vision.
Rating the PM as good in a crisis drops 15%, while increasingly, Morrison appears out of touch with ordinary people (up eight points since March); a PM who avoids responsibility (up six points). And (well-done pollsters), 73%, also believes that Morrison plays politics. It’s the only game he knows.
Newspoll gives a six-point lead to Labor – 53-47, two-party preferred – a shocking result for those all government MPs, especially those in key Victorian electorates.
Last Friday, premiers and chief ministers are on the job telling a lame duck PM to pipe down while they get on with practicalities over a crook NBN hook-up when our PM turns his back and stokes the fire. He’s peeved to be upstaged; redundant, but as always, it’s a calculated gesture. That he delegates much of the wrangling and arm-twisting business of the meeting to Frewen is alarming.
But getting JJ to blast Berejiklian is petty, vindictive, bullying.
Later, Morrison, Sorcerer of out-sourcing, stumbles as he reads out something the Doherty Institute whipped up for him earlier. He clearly is not across the detail of his own “National Plan to transition Australia’s National COVID-19 Response” which proclaims “early, stringent and short lockdowns” to be central to the current phase. Phase? A meaningless obligatory three-word slogan “vaccinate, prepare and pilot.”
When we reach 70% or 80%, the good times will roll or something. Not counting children. His word-salad is impossible to follow. The plan it’s so hedged about with provisos it’s impossible to follow. Besides, it’s bound to change next week.
The road map Glad can’t see is in Victoria, where the Andrews’ government has successfully dealt with Delta, twice in what shapes to be a long guerrilla war, as Covid re-infects us with ever new strains. Monday brings further evidence NSW is ignoring any lessons from Victoria’s experience. Sydney’s inner west sees a nursing home hotspot traced to a “superspreading”, Christmas in July party. An infected nurse at the centre works at several aged care facilities.
Shocked by polls suggesting poor leadership and a federal government that has let the nation down badly, Morrison resorts to a stunt. Fellow Hillsong congregation member, and Morrison’s neighbourly, curly-haired, bin retriever, NSW Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller, calls in the army.
No. Not the ARMY, PMO press drops quickly quash that idea, but, instead, lads and lasses in uniform carrying hampers of health-foods to the needy as they sing We Are Family. It’s a fetching image but no-one in Western Sydney is fooled. Enforcing compliance is the name of the game. Making you do what you are told. It’s tricky. Instructions are unclear, changeable. Fuller shuns community leaders.
It’s nigh impossible, writes Paul Daley in The Guardian Australia for “non-Indigenous Australians whose families have been in Australia for generations to fathom the fear some former asylum seekers – from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, for example – have towards police and the military.”
But the NSW police have things all under control. What could possibly go wrong?
Enter a three hundred “civilian police-led armed forces operation” as it’s dubbed by a defensive Dave Elliott NSW Minister for Police-and-strip-searching-twelve-year-old-girls, (3919 searches in four years up, to last year, according to Redfern Legal Centre data). Monday, Job well-done-Dave’s keen to let us all know that it is not as if the army are being sent in alone. His cops will keep them in line. The NSW Police? Phew. Everyone’s at ease already. Last year, Elliott placated everyone,
“I’ve got young children and if I thought the police felt they were at risk of doing something wrong I’d want them strip-searched. Having been minister for juvenile justice, we have 10-year-olds involved in terrorism activity.”
Leaving Dave’s arresting turn of phrase with dangling participle to one side, the Premier is boxed in like Tulloch; Gladys is wedged betwixt Police Minister and PM and Lieutenant General JJ Frewen, who becomes “apoplectic” as he bawls her out over Zoom, a derisive -and utterly out of order- attack by an unelected public servant upon an elected premier. At least one state leader tells colleagues he would have “stopped the meeting had he been spoken to in that manner,” reports The Saturday Paper‘s Rick Morton. His sources tell him Friday’s atmosphere is “venomous.”
Morrison gives his take on the traditional Māori gesture of contempt, turning his back on premiers and chief ministers, as he bends down to poke The Lodge’s fire. Whilst he does not drop his dacks, Friday’s semi-whakapohane or bare arsed snub, may just be Morrison’s homage to his Kiwi heritage or his troubled two years as inaugural Director of Aotearoa’s new Office of Tourism and Sport, where he warred with the NZ Tourism Board. And lost. Got sacked. It’s the Morrison career paradigm.
Or it may just be another, calculated, gesture of contempt, like Phil Gaetjens’ inquiry into who knew what on or about 23 March 2019, when Brittany Higgins alleges she was raped by a senior staffer who worked for Linda Reynolds’ office. Justice delayed is justice denied. Two years later, she is still being denied justice.
A further show of contempt for due process is the PM’s decision to allow Porter to be leader of the house when Dutto texts in to say he won’t attend parliament next week, (so he’ll stay home plotting a Lib-spill, his revenge on Morrison)? Dutton’s had Covid. But he’s got to lockdown with his sons, is his message.
Is Christian Porter really the right choice? A fit and proper person to lead the house? Morrison’s career of serial failure suggests yet another dud judgement – even if the Machiavellian sociopath in him will have control at any price. Next week’s sitting will win him no friends, however. Labor may wonder aloud what is in the sealed envelope of testimony that is Porter’s bizarre condition of settlement in his botched attempt to bring a defamation suit against the ABC.
As Crikey’s legal expert, Michael Bradley points out “there could be myriad reasons for Christian Porter dropping his defamation case against the ABC, none of which appear to vindicate the former attorney-general.”
And before Porter moves that the member may no longer be heard, Labor may challenge his fitness to be a cabinet minister. But if this runs through Morrison’s mind, he is not distracted from enjoying the dressing down of Gladys. It’s got the works: misogyny, scapegoating and abuse of authority.
When it’s his turn at the conch, after JJ’s blast, Morrison says nothing. Silence is equivalent to applause here. Furthermore, he takes up from where Frewen leaves off, echoing the case of the man he’s just promoted to head the National Covid Vaccine Task Force. Like Oliver, Gladys asks for more. More vaccine, of course, but the idea of diverting precious resources sends Frewen into a frenzy.
Or does it? Has Frewen been worded up to publicly chastise Berejiklian? Help push her under a bus. Too much damage is done already to the Morrison brand for him to continue the public association? Besides, if Gladys continues to ask for more, it will reveal there is none, thanks to the reckless improvidence of a federal government which was equivocal about vaccination from the start and which was cut right down to size by Pfizer when a junior bureaucrat tried to haggle over the price.
Gladys is in an existential nightmare. She could be a character in No Exit (Huis Clos), Sartre’s drama where three damned souls are ushered into the same room in hell by a mysterious figure (wearing a Covid-Shield mask?). None at first will admit the reason for their damnation, a gambit adopted today by Prime Denialist, Scott Morrison, Greg Hunt and Gladys Berejiklian – and when they do things get a whole lot worse.
No Exit postulates that hell is not some place a cruel God knocked up in his spare time on the seventh day, after a hectic week at the creation works; hell is other people.
NSW records its fifteenth Covid death, Monday, a man in his nineties who had received one shot of AstraZeneca. 207 new local COVID-19 cases are recorded; fifty-one are infectious in the community. Tuesday there are 199 locally acquired cases. Suppression? The virus is rampaging out of control.
Ten children under nine years old have COVID among Queensland’s 15 new cases, Monday. Tuesday, brings another sixteen new cases.
“There’s no roadmap for Delta, there’s no perfect way to deal with it,” Berejiklian tells Sky TV, which deserves an Olympic medal for fewest viewers while continuing to metastasize all over real news websites. And beyond. On Monday, in the UK, Reverend Tim Hewes, 71, sews his lips up and stands outside News Corp’s London offices in protest at the climate emergency across the world which Murdoch completely ignores.
Australia’s FOX News, which is to be commended on providing a warm place out of the rain for RWNJ’s and other notorious fabulists, with no hope of gainful employ, can now deceive, mislead and disinform regional viewers -24/7.
The boss likes to keep his shock-jocks desperate for attention; last year, talking heads were told they could appear for nothing, or not at all. With Sky, Murdoch gets what he pays for, although some heads, such as Andrew Bolt, are on his payroll as columnists in his failing newspapers. Does the ABC still pay journos to do spots on Insiders? Each week, David Speers echoes Morrison’s framing of the news.
But it’s not just ABC Insiders looking through Rupert’s portal. Outpourings of grief clog ABC news airwaves, as young tanned, owners of coffee-bars, waxing salons, travel agents and other small businesses in NSW are cast in their own melodrama; encouraged to vent by a media obsessed with the epic battle of the poor little sole trader against the cruel state facing certain ruin under lockdown. It’s a moral fable, nurtured by the myth that small business is the backbone of economy.
This is as false as the claim that NSW is the engine room of the national economy, a claim which is used to boost NSW exceptionalism but one also made Friday for WA by Premier Mark McGowan. Victoria also makes the same claim.
“Victoria is proud of being the engine room of the Australian economy, occupying just 3 per cent of this vast continent, it is nevertheless responsible for a quarter of the nation’s economic activity … In fact, Victoria has maintained its AAA ratings (Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s) throughout and beyond the crisis.”
Whilst small biz employs 45% of the workforce it accounts for only 5% of job growth.
It’s a resonant, deceptive and dangerous narrative. If lockdown were lifted, prosperity would return tomorrow. Businesses would hum; hives of industry where wage theft, overwork and underpayment would disappear. Implied also in the myth, is the notion that – after a little dose of ‘Rona – our two nations, rich and poor will bounce back. Because … freedom to exploit our fellow man and woman is divinely ordained or a human right or in the constitution.
Or something. It’s a narrative flogged to death on our middle-class middle brow ABC News which uses the Murdoch or the Morrison frame to peer through as it dons its Rose Bay spectacles. All that’s missing from the Sole Trader Tale of Woe is its unofficial anthem, Moving Pictures’ What About Me?
Auntie’s comfort-zone-only perspective clouds its view of Sydney’s workers; its less telegenic, “multicultural” precariat who face an even greater battle to survive. Or be valorised. Instead, they are patronised by Hazzard using othering terms “vibrant” and “multicultural” – code for strangers in silos we’d rather fear, blame and coerce, than reach out to; try to support and understand.
Western and South-Western Sydney residents are blamed, directly and indirectly, for not following unclear, contradictory – and at times half-baked – instructions for breaking lockdown. Berejiklian doesn’t help by telling a whopper.
Thursday, she claims that in NSW,
“We have harsher restrictions than any other state has ever had.”
It’s a shambles writes David Milner, in The Shot:
“… no curfew in place, in-person real estate inspections underway, no specified time limit on being outdoors, travel to holiday homes totally legal, day cares as open as Bunnings, golf courses still actually used by golfers and not yet taken over by BMX gangs and Northcote hippies. Masks were only made mandatory outdoors on Thursday, and only in eight local government areas.”
Yet some government MPs barrack for the anti-lockdown brigade. Like Trump, hard-nosed opportunists see votes in any dissenting group. Dissenters are alienated from the major parties or just government of any stripe and need only your star to hitch themselves to. Tuesday in the house, George Christensen gives a huge ninety second speech on the anti-lockdown “freedom” protest.
He says he won’t hesitate to stand with them again.
Always back a nag named Self Interest. You know it’ll run on its merits. Covid-cowboy-MPs aid and abet conspiracy theorists, QAnon and a range of others organised by the “Free Citizens of Kassel” in Germany, whose Worldwide Demonstration (WD) organise 129 co-ordinated rallies in May alone. WD also is a big help with anti-lockdown rallies Down Under in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney 24 July. Things don’t turn ugly all by themselves. They help organise our own keen mob of paranoid conspiracy theorists, Antivaxxers, rogue MPs and others.
WD gets a lot of local help, reports Rick Morton, from Australians vs The Agenda and Harrison McLean, an IT worker from Wantirna, whose two groups have 30,000 followers. This is probably double the National Party’s total membership across all states. Little wonder then that LNP poster-boy and Member for Manila, George Christensen leaps aboard, along with the MP, who quit the Liberals but votes with them anyway, Craig Kelly.
Jason Falinski appears on Patricia Karvelas’ show busting with bluff and bluster, protesting far too much that he has nothing to do with anti-vaxxers. For him, a semantic quibble gets you off the hook. He doesn’t oppose lockdowns, but he supports the free speech which allows other people who do – along with their toxic lies and delusions about herd immunity and how it’s no worse than the flu. Let’s not get to 5G, microchips, or how Covid was deliberately cooked up in a lab.
Always quick to spot potential voters and promising alt-right trends to nurture, former furniture salesman, and loyal employer and defender of staffer Frank Zumbo, now charged with sex offences, Craig “Hydroxychloroquine” Kelly who poses as a medical authority when he isn’t giving character references, joins gorgeous George Christensen in wooing the loopy consumers of the lockdown vs liberty false narrative.
Similarly confused notions of “freedom” dog Berejiklian’s rhetoric. Perhaps she could upgrade and substitute the word survival. And offer some real support. Sydney, the backbone of the state’s economy, has an underclass precariat of at least a tenth of the NSW workforce on temporary working Visas. Yet construction is shut down in her belated and ineffectual lockdown.
Instead, workers cop a serve from NSW’s Health Minister, Brad Hazzard who is mad keen to put the boot into the poor and vulnerable whom he patronises as multicultural and vibrant, Lib-speak for un-Australian and therefore a public health hazard.
Despite not consulting community leaders, Mick Fuller, the PM’s fellow Hill singer and former neighbour and wheelie bin retriever, is happy to send in the troops to in a shoot-first-ask questions after approach that’s worked splendidly in other tin pot despotic states for decades.
“Boots on the ground” is a phrase helpfully offered by Health Minister Hunt.
It’s not just language that is a barrier to his target audience heeding his government’s injunctions to get vaccinated and stay at home. Stay at home? These are people who need to work to survive. For many of them there is not even an inadequate Centrelink “safety-net”.
Mick’s decision to butch up his police team baffles those compressed by necessity into extended family survival units or cramming “bijou gem” apartments where there isn’t room for Gran to take her teeth out or powder her nose without dipping her elbow in a grandchild’s nappy bucket. Families far and wide in LGAs across the nation are gob-smacked; “reeling” as the pandemic rages in NSW infects other states. Anti-lockdown lunatics, condoned if not urged on by George Christensen, play with fire in the street.
A man punches a police horse.
Whilst the Emerald City has colonised our popular culture and dominates a tamed, depleted and declining national media, its plight illuminates our two nations, rich and poor and the yawning gap between them, widened by a federal government obsessed with depressing real wages while boosting business profits and tax cuts for the wealthy. To which of course, Labor has dropped its opposition as it saddles up for the last long stretch before a May election.
What is certain is that those in federal parliament, who are able to travel, return this week for its winter sitting, but it’s no longer the springboard to an October election. Even The Australian‘s Dennis Shanahan concedes that Labor has the upper hand. Morrison’s made sure he’s there in person by quarantining in The Lodge, but he may have to contend with being upstaged by MPs in lockdown zooming in.
It’s a pincer movement. Covid advances crab-like from the right under a Coalition kakistocracy of dills, duds and drones which sells itself as Keeping Australia Safe while it keeps its mates out of jail and attacks workers in the name of an invisible hand, Adam Smith’s vision of market forces, or the power of accumulated self-interest to achieve public good.
Or not. At odds with its Let It Be songbook of laissez-faire, the Morrison government’s is a paid up member of The Game of Mates where favours bleed the country and its catastrophic ineptitude.
Add a dollop of state socialism. Even Michelle Grattan concedes that its decision to build a 660-megawatt gas-fired power station in the NSW Hunter Valley further shows a government preferring state control, to markets, in its bid to appease its mining donors on energy and climate change.
Let’s not pretend it’s got any real policies on either.
“Australia’s calamitous energy and climate policy is going from bad to worse with the government decision to build a $600m gas-fired power plant that will deter private investment,” warns the Financial Review’s Economics Editor, John Kehoe.
Labor says it is On Our Side but gives up opposing tax breaks for the rich. Negative gearing. Capital gains tax, both pet projects of former leader, Bill Shorten. It’s a policy of small target opposition. Don’t promise anything which a Morrison misgovernment with a Murdoch megaphone can trash.
Good luck. Already, as with Bill Shorten, Antony Albanese’s name is now a term of derision with our media. Or treated as if it were the punchline to some snide in-joke about hopeless incompetents in politics, by ABC’s The Drum‘s Ellen Fanning.
On the right are our Tories, the corporate-small business and aspirational tradies’ alliance led by The Swinging Big-Dicks, the Liberals in an unmade bed with The Nationals, Big Mining’s flea circus. It’s a dangerous liaison, spruiked as a coalition which is founded on victim blaming. Yet, it is still a shock to see the army sent in to quell Western Sydney; assist the police with Covid compliance – so desperate is the PMO to find scapegoats for its abject failure to protect us from a pandemic.
Covid is not spread by people being disobedient. Nor is NSW made any safer by its Premier’s pathetic pleading. Sending in the army is calculated to create confusion, anger and resentment.
On the centre-but somewhat-leftward (leaning in) is a Labor Party, which once held a torch for the poor. Labor’s sick of being a soft target; Labor will tax you to death, and now runs up the white flag on a fair and just income tax system.
But of course, there are more than two parties, even before we get into the division and disunity within a twin-set, the ABC loves to call “Both Major Parties”, or even Joel Fitzgibbon’s Hunter for Coal ginger group.
Greens’ leader, Adam Bandt does bag Labor for being gutless. Top income earners get up to 400 times the benefit of median income earners, he also quickly points out.
Labor’s backflip on high-end income tax cuts, notes Paul Bongiorno, has one aim. It seeks to make Morrison and his catastrophic bungling of the pandemic the key focus of the election campaign. The Australian Financial Review, reports an Utting Research poll, supporting Albanese’s tactic.
Greg Jericho reports that if Labor wants to fix the regressive tax regime they’ve agreed to they should implement a Warren Buffet Rule tax strategy where high income earners pay a minimum rate of tax on their earnings before any deductions are claimed – proposal by The Australia Institute.
There’s no anodyne for grinding poverty. A decent minimum wage and adequate pensions for the aged and those looking for work would, however, be a start.
As for part-time PM and moralist Scott Morrison’s self-help philosophy – his have a go to get a go – it’s a kick in the teeth, a wanton disregard for the causes and consequences of poverty. You do have to work hard to acquire his level of ignorance and prejudice. Like most of his maxims, it is a patently absurd lie – hurtful in times of economic recession measured by hours worked and underemployment, however much neoliberal treasury boffins choose to define it as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. Rick Morton reflects,
What is a recession but surplus insecurity, the loss of opportunity and scarcity of hope?
Three and a quarter million people in Australia are poor; more than one in eight adults and one in six children live below the poverty line. How do they cope with half the population in lockdown due to the federal government’s catastrophic failure to buy vaccines, set up a quarantine system – let alone look after the elderly or provide for those out of work or underemployed?
“No poverty” is the first of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Australia is a signatory yet it has the 16th highest poverty rate out of the 34 wealthiest countries in the OECD.
Labor’s decision to agree to the Coalition’s third tier of its fat-cat, flat tax, policy with its tax cuts for the rich to be paid for by the needy is distressing. Those earning between $45,000 and $200,000 will all pay thirty cents in the dollar.
It’s a volte-face, “a political triple backflip”, Paul Bongiorno calls it, from Albo; Anthony Albanese, the leader of a party that once, famously, sought the light on the hill, as former Labor PM and engine-driver, Ben Chifley put it, seventy two years’ ago, after four years as leader to the 1949 NSW ALP Conference.
“I try to think of the Labour movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket, or making somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people.”
The Whitlam spirit has gone from the Labor Party, laments Crikey’s Guy Rundle, who notes that the party’s base is fractured and reflects that a progressive tax policy may as well be just a Chifley a pipe dream for a political party whose voters are now as much knowledge class as working class.
Gone? That may be a little premature. And Whitlam did own up to his own pragmatism: only the impotent are pure. He understood that vision without executive power is the prerogative of protest groups, not of a party wanting to govern.
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No contribution to the already damning critique of Scummo et al provided by other comments. Damning, amusing, and true, they all are, but perhaps a little repetitive of theme. The pollies are not listening anyway … My two-penneth: The author’s reference to the Australian MSM and Pravda reminded me of a saying of my apprentice master, an old Latvian chemist who had escaped the Stalinist horrors. He reckoned, “There is no truth in Pravda and no information in Izvestia”.
Something rotten in the state of Denmark, it is now starting to stink big time.
Disappointingly, I remember the good times in Australia pre-1996, the year when Howard had beguilingly claimed the Prime Ministerial chair.
When I say beguilingly, I refer to the lies and boastings of Howard prior to his election. Howard’s core promises and non-core promises were staged as his defense to “mass of his lies” hurled upon the people of Australia.
I heard on the grapevine that a kindly person has already dug the grave for the treacherous Howard, only he dug the grave far deeper than regulation, as he had claimed, this was to ensure a greater amount of difficulty to Howard possibly re-emerging after the 7th day.
I wonder, does a graveyard or cemetery have a partitioned off area for the burial of the devil-spawned no-goodniks in the form of a typical Howardite stinko, or hopefully a gibbet where the devil-spawned miscreants would be hooked up thereto then left to rot and to swing and sway until all is devoured during the fullness of one’s lifetime?
Well, that was weird. When I first tried accessing this, I was blocked on security grounds: “bad bot access attempt”. What did I do to upset you?
Anyone else had an issue like that?
“Scott Morrison, the PM for NSW, who savages his gold-standard, open for business poster-girl; turns on her to save his own hide”
’twas ever thus. Women are only good for three things in ScoMoFo’s world: domestic servitude, breeding and as scapegoats.
Please correct “Lieutenant JJ Frewen” in this otherwise excellent article to “Lieutenant General JJ Frewen”. It’s quite a different rank!
leefe, yes I got the same thing
leefe, Roscoe – that would have been caused by me when trying to fiddle with our new security system.
It should be OK now, but if it does happen again could you kindly take a screenshot of the message about the bad bot access (or whatever message pops up) and email it to me at theaimn@internode.on.net
I’ll then be able take it to the next level up the admin ladder (ie, someone who knows more than me 😁).
92 Receiving a vaccination or treatment
An individual may be required by a human biosecurity control order to receive, at a specified medical facility:(a) a specified vaccination; or
(b) a specified form of treatment;
in order to manage the listed human disease specified in the order, and any other listed human disease.
Note: For the manner in which this biosecurity measure must be carried out, see section 94.
93 Receiving medication
(1) An individual may be required by a human biosecurity control order to receive specified medication in order to manage the listed human disease specified in the order, and any other listed human disease.
Note: For the manner in which this biosecurity measure must be carried out, see section 94.
(2) The order must specify:(a) how much medication is to be taken; and
(b) how long the medication is to be taken for.
94 Appropriate medical or other standards to be applied
A biosecurity measure set out in section 90 (examination), 91 (body samples), 92 (vaccination or treatment) or 93 (medication) must be carried out in a manner consistent with either or both of the following (as the case requires):(a) appropriate medical standards;
(b) appropriate other relevant professional standards.
95 No use of force to require compliance with certain biosecurity measures
Force must not be used against an individual to require the individual to comply with a biosecurity measure imposed under any of sections 85 to 93.
Note: Force may be used in preventing an individual leaving Australian territory in contravention of a traveller movement measure (see section 101) or in detaining a person who fails to comply with an isolation measure (see section 104).
96 Traveller movement measure
(1) An individual may, for a specified period of no more than 28 days, be required by a human biosecurity control order not to leave Australian territory on an outgoing passenger aircraft or vessel.
Note: For provisions relating to traveller movement measures, see Subdivision C.
Traveller movement measure ceasing to be in force before human biosecurity control order
(2) If a traveller movement measure ceases to be in force, subsection (1) does not prevent another traveller movement measure from being included in the same human biosecurity control order.
When traveller movement measure ceases to be in force
(3) A traveller movement measure ceases to be in force at the earliest of the following times:(a) at the end of the period specified under subsection (1);
(b) the time when the human biosecurity control order ceases to be in force;
(c) the time when the order is varied to remove the measure;
(d) the time when the order is revoked.
97 Isolation measure
(1) An individual may be required by a human biosecurity control order to remain isolated at a specified medical facility.
Note 1: A non‑Australian citizen who is required to remain isolated is entitled to consular assistance under section 102.
Note 2: A person who does not comply with an isolation measure that the person is required to comply with may be detained under Subdivision B of Division 4.
(2) An isolation measure included in a human biosecurity control order under subsection (1) may be made conditional on a person refusing to consent to another biosecurity measure included in the human biosecurity control order.
What a great mug shot of Gladys, talk about tight lipped, goodness, and the profile, why even Pinocchio would approve.
I guess Gladys is not impressed with having a toy soldier telling her how to run her shit show. “Come back Daryl…”
And if looks could kill Morrison would be a dead man.
Excellent article David. This afternoon’s Question Time was an utter disgrace (from both sides of the chamber). Our parliamentary institution has been so degraded that I fear for our hard won democracy. Has anyone added up how many times ScumMo referenced “Mr Speaker” during Question Time today – it was endless. What bloody nonsense!!!! And all this immediatey after he “man-handling” the presentation from the Doherty Institute that supposedy puts some rubbery numbers on his magic “Four Phase Plan” for our recovery from this pandemic. Oh, what a mess! Just get up and admit that you, Scummo, along with the Ghunt and your loyal bureaucrats absolutely stuffed up the ordering, delivery and logistics required to vaccinate the population in a timely manner. Stop the spin and bullshit – YOU STUFFED UP BIG TIME! ADMIT IT and let us move on.
Phew!! David Tyller … After those repeating broadsides of damnation for Scummo PM (Puerile Mediocrity) I need a small wine to calm down and collect my thoughts … certainly a comprehensive list of voter disappointments in the PM (Probably Missing) Scummo.
Scummo has certainly won the trifecta for serial failure;
1) Failed Quarantine provision;
2) Failed Vaccine procurement;
3) Failed Vaccine rollout.
But worst is bending over for Barnyard Beetrooter Joke, the Monster for New England, best known for adultery, alcoholism, bigotry, groping, harassment and misogyny to name a few of his repulsive attributes.
Indeed, some rural political sceptics may consider that those ”endearing” Beetrooter qualities are preferred to dangerously incompetent, out of touch with ordinary people and contempt for political ”mates”.
After all, Nazional$ membership has dropped to about 3,300 Australia wide with the majority still clinging to the dream of a 19th century future of entitlement in Queensland and NSW. Perhaps PM (Poor Manager) of NSW Scummo can do better by remaining on a five day holiday schedule to allow the competent Labor state premiers to get on with the job of bringing COVID-19 under control.
Well said, Frank. And thank you. Time they dropped both The Honorable and the quaint convention that Mr Speaker is anything but a stooge who may be leaned upon rhetorically as PM gathers his addled wits. Best thing about Morrison’s oratory is when he stops. As for the Doherty Institute doing the government’s job for it, I’m dismayed by the lack of clarity. I know the very idea of a recovery plan is fraught with qualification but it’s clear that this is just another example of Morrison wanting to be seen to do something. It’s a hoax.
Dixers should go immediately. As it is, government MPs give little thought to replying to questions, preferring to slip into some anti-Labor diatribe or lying about the great progress it’s making with everything. Tedious waste of time.
That’s about it, David. Governing – Liberal style – means spending the term blaming Labor for the un-blameable.
A pinot noir, perhaps NEC? Nationals are very coy about their membership which is not only tiny, it is in steep decline. Joyce’s ascent is helping with this. All the promises he made to his backers have proved hollow. He was gunna get Trade etc – get another Nat in cabinet. Morrison just froze him out. Ignored him. Doubt they’ve even had a face to face meeting. The old secret covenant which is the foundation of the coalition remains top secret. Somewhere it must say that if you are the deputy PM it’s still OK to be a Santos shill. Or Gina’s BFF. Is the inland rail boondoggle still going ahead? Perhaps BJ will pull something out of his high-crowned hat.
ScoMo is so adept at the hand-ball and getting others to do his job and evading responsibility for it all that he makes Abbott look like a novice. He is making a grave mistake, however, by putting the Lieutenant-General JJ Frewen into a politicised role.
No contribution, Dr Wu? Rather unkind. Could we compromise on another contribution? And I’m not a defeatist. Pollies are surprisingly attentive to public criticism – and even engage staff to read independent media.
I do like the old Pravda Izvestia joke. It’s good to encounter it again. Pravda means “truth” and Izvestia translates as “news”.
There is no news in truth and no truth in news – is still a pretty good rule of thumb for all mass media.
We get a very limited diet of both from our media oligarchs. It’s why independent publications such as The AIMN are vital.
Albanese and Labor are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they openly oppose the planned flatter income tax regime they would be pilloried by our mostly compliant right wing media. Like Biden and the Democrats, Albanese and Labor need to be a small target when campaigning so they can win an election.
Therefore, rather than being accused of reneging and/or breaking a promise by the LNP, media and IPA, they can simply claim ‘budget emergency’ and withdraw support for the LNP’s flat taxes for reasons of budget discipline, economic management, maintaining and funding public services and pensions (using the LNP’s own language).
A great read, David!
A favourite whine of mine, gross income, gets a welcome run.
Our medicare system would be powerful, IF the levy was on gross income.
Imagine the pollies with heaps of investment properties voting for this or the ceos, frankers and business owners? Of course PAYE would save but the rich would not be able to avoid paying and so would their ‘in wife’s name’ and overseas rorts??
Why am I being blocked from commenting ??????????
Henry, you have not been blocked from commenting. The problem is at our end in that some comments haven’t been loading as quick as they should be.
Until I can fix the problem, try refreshing the page after you post your comment, and it will be there.
leefe, Roscoe, Phil – see above suggestion.
@David Tyler Can you recommend a suitable pinot noir?
The Northern Inland Railway (NIR) continues to crawl across the western NSW landscape, edging towards the black soil plains north of Moree NSW where the axle loads are LESS than that required for double stacked 40 foot container loads. So far the cost paid by the COALition misgovernment largess is about $700 MILLION, but more government handouts may have been made since my last knowledge.
The NIR is a pet project of John Anderson, former Nazional$ representative in the now defunct electorate of Gwydir and former leader of the Nazional$, that began with driving in the first peg in 2005 at the NSW – Qld border. He has a personal interest in this project as it passes close to the two ”Pilliga Scrub grazing properties”” purchased by Barnyard Beetrooter Joke before the 2013 feral elections which Beetrooter declined to dispose of then when challenged about conflict of interest.
Since retiring from politics in 2013, Anderson has been the Campaign Manager for Beetrooter in the last two feral elections as the representative of Beetrooter and now DPM (Deputy Puerile Mediocrity).. So, to guarantee the continuing supply of generous government funding to the NIR, John Anderson has nominated for the NSW Senate ticket being granted the Number 2 position for a six (6) year term.
Given that too many Australian voters in the country wrongly believe that the Nazional$ represent Australian voters in the country there is a too high possibility that he will be elected. Funny how broadacre farmers in the N MDB are the principal donors to the Nazional$ and agricultural enterprises in the S MDB are suffering while N MDB is producing bumper cotton crops … during the worst drought in living memory?
The loyalty of Australian voters in the S MDB to the Nazional$ is astonishing. They appear to be prepared to allow corruption to destroy their family agricultural enterprises because it is not nice to accurately label a fellow farmer as uncaring, unthinking, greedy & an environmentally vandal.
The sad thing is that local Council elections are being held on 04 December 2021 and all but one of the candidates to date for Armidale Regional Council are supporting the destruction of the Great Northern Railway north of Armidale NSW to give the NIR a monopoly over south to north bulk freight out of Melbourne.
So, not only are we losing population due to successive government failing to de-centralise government jobs but sheep numbers are declining because too many entities have their hand in the hip pocket of graziers and stolen their brains.
Thanks Michael. I’ll try that remedy.
From news.com.au –
“Lieutenant General Frewen has confirmed Australia was on track to be free by December, insisting “we can get there” and meet our vaccination target of 70 to 80 per cent by the end of the year.
“Potentially being able to hit 70 per cent or 80 per cent, mathematically we can get there,” he said.
“…but it is about people in Australia coming forward with some urgency to get vaccinated.
“Really, I think we will be everything in place to be able to get to those sorts of numbers by the end of the above public willingness is key and I encourage everybody to get that vaccination is booked.””
Anyone really believe this steaming pile of bs? Three sentences and all he did was go from “On track” to “potentially” to, basically, “…er, we might get there.” Jeez, I think I’ll stop here it’s not worth getting to worked up.
Ahoy there Michael, refreshing does the trick. Thanks.
Happy to hear that, Henry. Next time you try it have a look to see if the comment edit timer is working. My guess is that it should be working, but you’ll lose a few seconds because of the few seconds lost due to the reload.
PS: My apologies for this mess-up giving you the horrid thought that we’d blocked you. It would never happen, mate. 👍
Scummo and Gladys, what a substitution for the real comics. They’ve practically abrogated all responsibility for fighting the virus to the grave looking uniformed ‘gentleman’, more used to fighting with guns and ammo. Why not go further and let the general run the whole government, he’s pretty much doing that now, barking orders at the craggy faced useless Gladys and her braindead counterpart. Scumbag.
An update:
I’ve increased the time that you can edit your own comments from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. That should compensate the small amount of time lost if you had to reload the page in order for your comment to appear.
NEC – Yarra Valley’s, Innocent Bystander 2019 Pinot Noir would be an appropriate drop for this topic.
A couple of quick comments in reply. Here’s a deputy PM who has declared his membership of the National Party as a conflict of interest!
Yet he owns two properties at Gwabegar, west of Narrabri, which have increased in value as a result of key federal government decisions. He joined the two blocks together into one 1015 hectare property. He’s been making noises about selling since 2013.
In 2018, he was in the news because he was flogging off rural NSW farmland for $878,000 to fund his divorce settlement. Yet he still has the land. Santos and Comet Ridge are said to be pushing to explore for gas under a licence which he says he knew nothing about when he bought the land. His lack of due diligence is odd for a certified practising accountant.
Again when the Narrabri gas project got the green light from the NSW government in October 2020, Joyce was just an innocent bystander.
Joyce always maintained that he did not know of the exploration licence when he purchased two blocks for a combined $572,000 in 2006 and 2007. He said there was no prospect of gas being extracted from the land and according to reports at the time, denied categorically he had any knowledge of anything that could drive up the value of the land at the time he bought it.
The inland rail boondoggle could swallow up 10 billion dollars for starters but John Anderson, former chair of Eastern Star gas who headed the government’s “implementation group” makes it clear in 2015 that the railway will not pay its way for fifty years.
“the expected operating revenue over 50 years will not cover the initial capital investment required to build the railway — hence, a substantial public funding contribution is required to deliver Inland Rail.”
Yet the federal government has ploughed right ahead. It will create jobs, it says.
Anderson’s 2015 report predicts that the project will create “an annual average of 800 jobs during construction and 600 operational jobs each year.” Bernard Keane comments: “Let’s round that up to 800 jobs ongoing. That means the taxpayer is spending $10.5 million per job — or about 128 times average annual earnings.”
That buys a lot of pinot noir.
@David Tyler: John Anderson owned Eastern Star Gas at the time Barnyard Beetrooter purchased those two properties. it is strong circumstantial evidence that the knowledge of the exploration licence was passed on. Certainly it was searchable in the appropriate websites.
It was alleged that his divorce required he sell off the Pilliga Scrub properties for the settlement. Given the 20+ year duration of the marriage producing four (4) children, I am surprised that the required settlement was not between 50-70% of his aggregated wealth, including real property held under corporate structures.
But then we are overlooking his friendly billionaire whose role, if any, is presently unknown.
So I am not surprised that those two PIlliga properties, described by Beetrooter as ”grazing properties” remain in his hands. After all, the about 1,000 hectares has a carrying capacity of about 1sheep per 4 hectares, so as a grazing venture 250 sheep will almost cover council rates.
I am advised that Beetrooter was an accountant in two firms in small country towns, and those firms of his went broke.
John Anderson has a too long history of self-entitlement. He prevented the pre-selection of Tony Windsor as a Nazional$ candidate for the NSW Tamworth electorate, so a disgruntled group of Tamworth business persons financed his election campaign and called in a few favours. Windsor’s campaign rally drew supporters from across the North West, overflowing the 800 seat Tamworth Town Hall into the streets on a cold night, resulting in Windsor being one of four Independents in the Greiner led Liarbral Nazional$ misgovernment. Windsor held the seat for about a decade before entering the 2000 feral election where he polled 62% of the first preference vote and was the first elected MP for that Parliament.
The Northern Inland Railway (NIR) is a scam that Anderson took up in 2005. The NIR cost benefit analysis shows that the initial investment will take at least 50 years to break even, which is likely why private enterprise would not fund it. Anderson, in 2013 now retired from feral politics on a huge overly generous Parliamentary allowance, appears to have used his political connections to get feral COALiiton funding.
Of course the great advantage of the NIR is that it passed about 20km from Beetrooter’s properties and through Narrabri which will be a gas hub for the SANTOS CSG destruction of the Great Artesian Basin water.
Always vote for anybody but Nazional$ at every election.
Anderson..the toxins given life by the Lying Rodent continue to poison our ailing democracy,and it has been supercharged by the blatant corruption of the current Liar who seems determined to kill it off.The next election campaign has been under way since 2019,and is showing every sign of being even worse than the last one,Morrison already starting to behave like a cornered animal,as well as suffering from terminal self regard.
Before the next elections, Scummo is being groomed and assisted and protected by Murdoch’s maggots, the rest of the media whores and those very shrill obnoxious harlots passing themselves off as ‘recognized authoritative commentators’. If they’re listening they know whom I am referring to. Shameless to the very end, they would sell their minds and bodies for any filthy lucre.
Poor old Saint Scotty of the Marketing, he just can’t handle being forced to move away from his carefully scripted responses. Has an attack of the childish shits and storms off. The epitome of a vainglorious little man of no talent.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2021/aug/05/australia-politics-covid-berejiklian-sydney-melbourne-perth-queensland-lockdown-vaccine-delta