Undermining trust in institutions is a dangerous game to play
The longer the Coalition remain in power, the greater their arrogance and disregard for our institutions grows.
I don’t expect any better from that idiot George Christensen who recently appeared on the far right wing conspiracy show Infowars spruiking a whole lot of anti-government crap. He is as mad as a hatter and will be gone at the next election. Likewise Criag Kelly hopefully. Good riddance.
The fact that Morrison and Joyce are too scared to “poke the bear” and tell him to pull his head in, their failure to decisively denounce the misinformation, is yet another example of the problems caused by the lack of leadership in our government.
Parents know that children must be taught to respect boundaries and that they themselves must set a good example for their children to follow.
We now find ourselves in a position where both the Prime Minister and his Deputy are telling us that we need to get government out of our lives. They give approval to protests demanding that health orders be overturned in the name of freedom. They ignore the warnings from security agencies that far right-wing groups are infiltrating and leading these protests and the threats to health staff and politicians, and are deliberately fuelling anger towards state premiers.
We also have our leaders waging a shameful attack on the NSW ICAC, describing it as a kangaroo court and pre-empting the results of their investigation into Gladys Berejiklian, presumptuously suggesting that no evidence of wrongdoing had been found.
This disdain for the legal system isn’t an isolated case.
Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar barely escaped contempt charges after they criticised the highest court in Victoria during an active terrorism appeal. In comments published in the Australian, they described the court as an “ideological experiment” run by “hard-left activist judges”.
Peter Dutton, as Home Affairs Minister, launched a similar attack on the Victorian judicial system, blaming the state’s street crime on the appointment of “civil libertarians” to the courts. Dutton also claimed Victorians were “bemused” when they looked “at the jokes of sentences being handed down” due to “political correctness that’s taken hold”.
Attacks on statutory bodies began very early on with the evisceration of Gillian Triggs for being the face of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report on children in detention which Tony Abbott described as a “blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself. it would be a lot easier to respect the Human Rights Commission if it did not engage in what are transparent stitch ups.”
There have also been unrelenting attacks on the ABC, now described as the “Ultimo wokehive”. The really galling part is the government’s reliance on the ABC’s investigative work for so much of their policing and evidence for Royal Commissions. They also rely on it every time there is a disaster. Yet they want to sell it off because they sometimes expose government failings too.
The Freedom of Information Office and the Auditor-General have both had their funding slashed because answering questions about what you are doing is way too inconvenient.
Equally unrelenting has been their attack on unions. The demise of union membership and power has coincided with erosion of workplace entitlements, loss of job security and increased casualisation of the workforce, countless examples of exploitation and underpayment, a rise in workplace accidents, and flat lining of wages. The workers no longer have the right to withdraw their labour without incurring significant penalty.
Public education has been undermined with culture wars waged about the curriculum. Stop wasting time on critical thinking and get back to rote learning.
The hysterical reaction to, and demonisation of, the anti-bullying respectful relationships Safe Schools program was beyond ridiculous. Teachers had asked for advice and professional development on making LGBTI kids safe and reducing their profound distress and social isolation. But according to then Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, the program instead “indoctrinates kids with a Marxist cultural relativism”, with George Christensen stating it is tantamount to a “paedophile grooming a child”.
Climate change deniers in parliament have eroded confidence in our scientific institutions like the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Their tireless efforts to present us with evidence are dismissed as alarmism or fake news. Their ongoing research into mitigation and adaptation is ignored in favour of support for pollution as usual.
It seems the only people we can trust are ScoMo and Barnaby, backed up by the church, the police and Dutton’s army, any criticism of whom will be seen as unpatriotic heresy.
That all of this is done for purely political purposes is quite legitimate apparently, though it does inevitably lead to humiliating backflips and apologies. The real worry is that, having let the dogs off the chain, this government is rapidly losing control of the pack.
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Return to home pageKaye Lovely piece, and no argument could be raised against the points you made. But – and I keep referring to this unpalatable truth – everything you wrote was ‘bleedin’ obvious’ to the electorates that sent these repellent creatures to the parliament to represent them in 2019, some of them with resounding, increased margins. So I hold very little hope of the ‘land of the fair go’ (which it has always claimed it is but probably never was) redeeming itself in 2022. The state of Queensland virtually gave these people government unaided, and it’s populace still gives Morriscum a 60% approval rating. In fact, the PM and his deputy likely agree with the likes of the member for ‘Manila Red Light’ just as Howard probably approved of Hanson. Like Howard, they just make meaningless and powder puff protests, knowing full well that they have to appear decent to the world in general, but are safe in the knowledge that Christensen and his ilk actually speak for Thatcher’s famous ‘people like us’. There is an awful lot of them…
A “kangaroo court” is what the Myanmar junta government set up in its trial of Aung San Suu Kyi where no evidence was produced.
Scott Morrison description of the NSW ICAC as a “kangaroo court” in his defence of Gladys Berejiklian while he has no plan to instigate a Federal Integrity Commission
is in reality saying that NSW ICAC is the same as that in Myanmar. How desperate can Morrison and his ministers get.
Agree Jack….. Its a bit of a mystery to many why voters would willingly and deliberately endorse such an unworthy party to form government. Do they identify with dishonesty, with absence of remorse, with tawdry filthy immoral scams that pass for political tactics ?
The MSM are the facilitators and enablers of the sorry state of governance that we have had for the past 8 years. That’s why there seems little hope of change on the horizon.
Scummo keeps going on ad nauseam about people wanting governments out of their lives. If that’s the case why are they attempting to entrench more control over the population with that sickening travesty called Indue?
Undermining trust in institutions is the LNP’s modus operandi, notably as an election approaches and they are sitting on the Opposition benches.
I saw how they attacked the Public Service in 1996, 2010 and 2013 (yes, the Public Service is an Australian institution according to one of my uni text books).
All eyes turned to that lazy, inefficient, inadequate and waste of the taxpayer’s money: the Public Service. But don’t despair! Howard or Abbott were going to be the taxpayer’s saviours.
They created problems that didn’t exist, and promised to fix what didn’t need fixing.
Thanks, Kaye. You present the situation so powerfully.
We are at the crossroads. As far as Australia is concerned, and even for the sake of the entire planet, the LNP must be swept aside at this next election. We need to put a stop to this dangerous government before it is too late – which it very nearly is. And we need to send a genuine message to the rest of the world that the Australian people intend to take up their responsibilities and get with the programme.
Instead of being among the worst polluters, we can be among the least. Instead of eroding the rights of our most vulnerable citizens, we can lead the way into a more just and inclusive society. If the planet is going to survive the existential threat that now hangs in a poisonous smog over all our heads, the time for ‘blah, blah, blah’, as Greta Thunberg puts it, is over. We don’t need to be capturing carbon; we just need not to be emitting the stuff in the first place.
If our federal government won’t step up to the plate, then state and local governments, communities, families and individuals, corporations and small businesses need to find their own ways around it. We need to find ways to say, ‘Enough!’
Each step that we take on the road to perdition, is a step that has to be retraced, assuming that it’s not too late. And we need to put a rocket under the Labor Party. Where the LNP has no plan, we need the Opposition to have a sound and sensible plan. Where the LNP tells lies, we need Labor to insist on telling the truth. Where the LNP thrives on corruption, we need Labor, the Greens and the Independents to be squeaky clean. We need to turn this ship around – not to return to the past, but to turn to the future!
Many go back to hating memories of past declines, from Howard and Abbott, so often. The Post-Menzies decline (and he was actually useless enough) was severe, with Fraser personally useless, then the Snedden, Peacock, Howard types, then Downer (Yukkypoo) , show ponies, shitskulls, shysters, simian, thespian and antediluvian all of them, with so little talent, qualifications, experience, common sense. Jack Howard is still marking time mentally in the spot where he was fifteen and useless. But, this run of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison would drain the bowels of a big bullosaurus. Institutional crimmy crookedness is the go, and enlisted lobbyists, law people, accountants, ad con men, media maggots, mystery fixers, they all set it up for the insider faithful and loyal. Truth is OUT, self is IN. Fat George the Manila masturbator is a mere support clown, one who would have to be coached to become a dill. As for Bananaboy Joyce, what can be done about this fraud except complete excision from public life? There would be a queue to follow that…
Just catching up on the incredible antics of faux journalist Peta Credlin and her four minute apology on SKY after she had been caught out telling lies about the South Sudanese community.
Credlin had claimed on air that Victorian government’s health orders could not be understood by the South Sudanese community because many of them did not speak English. She claimed while South Sudanese migrants could speak Dinka, many of them – especially women – could not read it because they were banned from attending school in their homeland.She also said the Covid outbreak had been caused by Ramadan dinners within the community, despite the vast majority of the community being Christian, not Muslim.
Pretty well everything Credlin had said was false unresearched drivel seeking to place blame on the South Sudaese community and incite hatred within the broader community against these immigrants.
Sky after Dark make no attempts or claims of being a news organisation. They will frequently refer to their presenters as providing opinions (Alan Jones was a classic example). The trouble is that people believe this nonsense and Murdoch keeps on pumping it through FOX in the US and SKY in Australia.
You would expect that Credlin would now be sacked for making up this inflammatory racist rubbish in what purports to be a current affairs program : maybe she will be removed but don’t hold your breath.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/dec/06/peta-credlins-apology-to-south-sudanese-community-result-of-human-rights-commission-complaint
Terry, well done for sitting through the full apology.
I didn’t even make it to half way. But full marks to her for trying to look and sound sincere. However, it didn’t work on me.
That wasn’t the only apology Credlin had to make for making stuff up.
Former part-term PM Abbott has endorsed a person currently under ICAC investigation as an ideal candidate to rewin the ‘blue ribbon’ seat that he personally løst.
Always gööd to hear from a discarded suppository.
Simultaneously, Abbotts former CoS Peta Credlin has had to do some legally mandated grovelling to atone for telling blatant racebaiting lies on pay-to-view telly.
But for me the benthic slime award goes to gov MP Christensen for going on the putrid rump of loony-fringe Internet Media (Alex Jones infowars nö less) to agree that Australian quarantine facilities resemble nazi death Camps, and to call on mobs of radical militants to gather and protest at our embassies.
I would point out that Jones has been permanent barred from mainstream servers for not only spreading foul lies, but using those lies to encourage deadly violence (including against the parentes of school shooting victims and the 2IC of the FBI).
This får neither PM nor the Nats leader have censured or condemned Christensen, or even offered comment.
Petinent to the topic, Peta Credlin’s apology to the South Sudanese community came as the result of a human rights commission complaint.
Let’s not forget, in June this year, Credlin was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for her “distinguished service to parliament and politics, to policy development, and to the executive function of government.”
She has admitted to lying about the carbon tax and was instrumental in getting her boss kicked out by his own party. She bullied and intimidated staff and MPs. I’m surprised she hasn’t been preselected for the electorate of her choice or gifted a casual senate vacancy. She would fit in well with this lot.
Morrison’s office has just responded to the Christensen fiasco.
“I denounce the comments in the strongest possible terms. The Holocaust was an evil abomination. Respect for the victims requires that it never be referenced in such a trivial and insensitive manner.”
Apparently all the rest of the stuff George said, like encouraging people overseas to protest at our embassies, wasn’t worthy of censure.
Kaye Lee,
He’s terrified of upsetting the Nationals (think brown trousers scared) because of what they could do to his one seat majority gubmint.
“Most people in NSW have discounted the ICAC,” Jason Falinski, the member for the adjacent seat of Mackellar, said on Monday. “Our focus is on the people of Australia, not side games about whether [the ICAC] has discredited itself – it did that years ago. The only people who seem to give the ICAC any credibility are the media who enjoy the front page stories.”
This sort of language is absolutely unacceptable.
“Our focus is on rorting the people of Australia.”
There, I fixed it for him.
Strange, there appears to be no mention in Rupert/9/Fairfax of that Lib. wanker Alex Antic appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room: Pandemic going off his one brain cell mind. Most peculiar.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/07/nationals-warn-george-christensen-after-he-calls-for-embassy-protests-on-us-conspiracy-show
By crikey wtf is going on with the world…..here in the ‘hill’, the supposed, heartland of the left, a guy whom I jokingly call.. Pauline’s.😤 soccer hooligan…an..’mayhap’ climate change denier…an “so, it’s been, anecdotally, said ” anti–mayhap— -vaxxer has, so, well deservedly..😲.. been elected as….I can’t sayit unlessen I choke….HELP!!!!!
Poor fella my town…..💩 WT, actual,F…
If’n the hills been ‘tainted’ it might be a sign for the ALP to start being “Preppers” …..the end is nigh.. 😮……..mayhap 😉….it’s time
LOVO, what happened?
Migs, a, seemingly, some say, Trump (ultra light) got voted in as Mayor ( ‘n Co., with an majority) 😯 …and in saying that I want it to be known that I’m not saying anything about swamps or brown paper bags..nope, not at all…it’s democracy at work…….and so it goes… sigh
One wonders if’n this ‘spiritual home’ of the Labor movement has lost it’s way and if so…extrapolate that Albo…sigh……poor fella etc 😦
It was rigged, I tells ya, LOVO. Rigged. Election fraud. Trump woz right all along.
Miglo, If’n ya haven’t been told today…consider it done 😛
Wouldn’t consider this modus operandi as organic but again, more imported GOP permanent electoral tactics, informed by and for radical right libertarians who despise democracy, and most voters; the trick is to get more of them to vote the ‘right way’.
As cited, undermining trust in institutions is a tactic. highlighted by Thomas Franks in ‘The Wrecking Crew’ as a reason to defund institutions or services, lower budgets. eventually lower taxes and smaller government, permanently led by nativist and/or conservative libertarians.
However, more disturbing is the general distrust being encouraged aka UK and US (esp. towards the EU, thanks Rupert & Kochs) amongst society against any target the powers that be deem to be a threat. As Tory Party head Baroness Warsi and dog whistling expert Prof. Ian Haney-Lopez claim that it destroys both the middle class and the nation… if that doesn’t work, then old fashioned autocracy against their own…..
On the latter, why is it that the GOP, Tories and LNP seem to be having eternal internal civil wars, only kept in check by right wing media?
The excellent judge pointed out ICAC is not a court, let alone a kangaroo one.
Is Petulant Cretin still on Australian television? I thought she had accepted a role as the Wicked Witch of the West in a touring company spreading the joys of parasitic capitalism to under-resourced Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. You know, getting first hand experience of the consequences of the neglect of Aborigines by the Toxic RAbbott misgovernment.
I see that Morrison has followed the US in announcing a Diplomatic Boycott of the Beijing Winter Games !
What does that actually mean ? He didn’t enlarge but it seems that some Canberra desk jockeys who had hoped to get a guernsey will have to watch it on TV like the rest of us.
Oh dear, what a pity, never mind !
great image of scummo with his hounds and a good song, kaye, But they tell me, “Hey, man, it’s part of the party? Yippie yi yo You put a woman in front and her man behind I heard woman shout out Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who? Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who?
ps
Waltz, even the china based dippos are out of live action.