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Whatever it takes

By 2353NM

Some years ago, a plumber was telling me when they came back from the local pie shop with lunch to that day’s worksite, they heard someone inside. The plumber and his trades assistant were the only people scheduled to be on site that day, so they split up, covered both entrances to the building and discovered someone removing the copper pipe the plumber had spent the morning installing. The Plumber called the Police and detained the intruder. While waiting for the Police, the plumber asked the intruder what he was doing stealing copper pipe from building sites and was flabbergasted by the response, “I was recently made redundant and taking copper pipe and selling it was the only way I could think of to make an honest living”.

The mindset of the intruder seems similar to that of a number of conservative political leaders – the ends justify the means. An investigation by the Department of Home Affairs determined that former Prime Minister Morrison

pressured public servants to publicise the interception of an asylum seeker boat on the day of the May 2022 federal election, a damning report has found.

But the officials in Home Affairs had acted with integrity and refused to amplify a media statement they were forced to write about the Border Force operation unfolding on the high seas.

The report into the extraordinary circumstances surrounding one of the last acts of the previous Morrison government was prepared by the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo AO.

The Liberal Party then sent text messages to ‘undecided’ voters early in the afternoon urging a vote for the Liberals and Nationals to ‘stop the boats’. Apart from the obscene use again of human suffering to make a political argument – something all Australians should be ashamed of – the action breached the Coalition’s 8-year facade of not commenting on ‘on water matters’.

Former Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews claims that no ‘caretaker’ conventions were breached, something that the investigation questions. According to media reports, the Coalition was pressuring public servants to upload a ministerial statement by Andrews, promote the boat arrival on social media as well as briefing ‘selected’ reporters.

A departmental statement was eventually issued minutes after Mr Morrison announced the interception in his final press conference as prime minister, but the report concluded officials refused requests to post it on social media or send it directly to journalists.

The report also reveals public servants were pressured to upload the statement online, with a publishing delay leading one ministerial staffer to write “a lot of people are furious”.

Fortunately, the public servants understood impartiality.

Alan Kohler recently wrote in The New Daily about a discussion he had with US Economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Stilglitz has apparently never been a supporter of the conservative ‘freedom’ and ‘small government’ ideology

“This is a revolution. We are at a juncture in history where the tide has turned. Forty years of ideology of markets and experiments in many countries has failed. The last straw was COVID-19.”

By which he meant, among other things, that America’s market-based economy was unable to supply its citizens with masks and they had to get them from China. And the mRNA vaccine breakthrough was the result of government money, not private enterprise.

Other market failures cited by Kohler are Germany’s reliance on gas from Russia, currently subject to supply restrictions due to ‘maintenance issues’ and the USA importing baby formula as the company that had half their market was forced to close down until product safety could be improved.

Kohler then considered other options and wondered if the small government ideology was religious after all. He quotes a small part of Morrison’s recent 50 minute ‘sermon’ at a Pentecostal Church service in Perth

“God’s kingdom will come. It is in his hands. We trust in him; we don’t trust in governments. We don’t trust in the United Nations. We don’t trust in all of these things, fine as they might be, and as important as the role that they play. Believe me, I’ve worked in it, and they are important. But, as someone who’s been in it, if you are putting your faith in those things, like I put my faith in the Lord, you are making a mistake. They’re earthly. They are fallible. I’m so glad we have a bigger hope.”

A concerning statement from a current Member of Parliament and on a par with a lot of conservative politicians from the USA. According to Kohler, discussions with unnamed members of the Morrison cabinet suggested Morrison was a ‘believer’ when it suited him, so that wasn’t the reason for Morrison’s behaviours either.

Morrison – like Abbott and Howard – attempted to remake the ‘broad church’ of Menzies’ Liberal Party into a far more conservative and narrowly focused organisation. Current Opposition Leader Dutton shows no sign of encouraging greater diversity of thought or action in the current Parliament than Morrison did when Prime Minister. Is this due to a religious belief that God rewards those that trust in him or is it a case of doing whatever it takes to gain and retain power along with the trappings that are afforded to the powerful?

What do you think?

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

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11 comments

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  1. Kathryn

    Has anyone EVER seen a trio of more repugnant, self-satisfied, totally corrupt and entitled sociopaths as the three insufferably arrogant political psychopaths pictured above! The manner in which these three smug, self-serving elitists and pathological liars have attempted to destroy our egalitarian society, defund EVERYTHING that Australians value, openly favour the richest, most powerful parasites in the nation and “normalise” corporate greed, political entitlement, dishonesty, elitism and corruption goes BEYOND depraved! Thank God, the huge majority of Australians finally had the foresight, intelligence and good discernment to kick these appalling, corrupt, alpha male misogynists and unconscionable prosperity-driven miscreants to the kerb.

  2. New England Cocky

    Thank you Kathryn, my thoughts exactly.

  3. Stephengb

    I fear a simple fact, a good 30% of the electorate voted for these parasitical phsycopaths ?

  4. RoadKillCafe

    Never fear, 2353, climate change will solve all of these peripheral problems, the consequences of our greed and blind obedience are here, now, we have well and truly fucked up, now the piper wants paying. One only needs to look, worldwide, on the elected representatives, to realise we are fucked, the fossil fuel parasites are determined to go on, to prosper, more money, we need more money, they say, so we subsidise, we pander, in thrall we are, blinded by bullshit with an inability to know shit from custard, all good, an intellectual exercise is this climate change, yes, let’s talk of it, question the science, lap up the bullshit from the likes of News Corpse — Where The Truth Goes To Die, oh yes, we say, not in my lifetime.

    What a fucking tragedy, an absolute, complete fucking tragedy. In our brilliance, our supreme intelligence, our ignorance, we have fucked paradise. Do you fucking well understand that? To live on this planet of infinite beauty is a gift, was a gift and what have we done? Shit on it.

    Well fucking done us

  5. Canguro

    RKC, have you ever seen those images that get thrown at us of the animals left in what remains of wilderness after the harbingers of the future have visited: the solitary orangutan clinging to a wrecked tree surrounded by a wasteland, the burnt koala in a south-eastern forest in the midst of ash and black, the polar bear on a solitary ice floe, seemingly forlorn, the waterbirds, saturated in oil from yet another marine disaster, or for that matter, whales and other marine wildlife trapped within the netting of discarded fishing gear?

    Now that almost every person on the planet has a camera in his pocket, we’re guaranteed to get saturated coverage (as long as the media medium continues to operate functionally) of the disaster as it unfolds. Not as if we don’t already, but we’re only at the prelude phase; the capital D disaster yet to enter stage left, and once it does – when? – in three years, five, ten? – it’s gonna be one helluva show. Buckle up. It’ll be a wild ride.

    I’m looking forward – hah! – to how the political classes, globally, will eventually, and too lately, respond. And, out of sheer curiosity, the fossil fuel corporations.

    Greenpeace, as you’d be aware, had a well-known maxim: Think globally, act locally. Fine words, in principle, but we’re beyond their effectiveness, use-by date now long expired.

  6. Alasdair M Wardle

    A group of politicians who are systematically putting their interests above the interests of the electorate. Grants to sporting clubs favouring the areas where they want votes. Stitching up jobs for their career after politics, while quietly pocketing a hefty pension. Using their contacts after politics while claiming that technically they are not lobbyists (Christopher Pyne). Getting the public to pay for their ‘job search’, while still in politics (Mathias Cormann). Buying a flat on the Gold Coast while getting the taxpayer to cover the cost of the trip up there (Sussan Ley). Criticising people on social security for having a sense of ‘entitlement’, while their own snouts are deep in the trough. Treasurers who are aggrieved about losing a blue-ribbon seat. Barilaro and Porter, claiming to be the victims. What a rotten bunch.

  7. Max Gross

    If there is any justice, most if not all of the previous government’ front bench will end up in prison (Preferably on Christmas Island or Nauru).

  8. Doug Burkett

    To Max Gross
    Manus is the better option the locals might appreciate the target practice.

  9. wam

    Role models?
    In a TV show i saw toni colette, as a mother, punch a high school student to the ground and her young son slid around his mum and sunk his boot into the prostrate boy. Yesterday I saw a fast food ad where a skateboarder steals food and laughingly disappears. Our rupert’s front page showed a student caught with thousands of child porn and he is released, after 20 days gaol, for home detention. 70 years ago I was unable to negotiate the stairs at darwin high and I was asked to establish a school in the gaol. One prisoner was taking a tertiary course and he graduated after a 4 year effort. But this nice white boy is an engineering student. QED.
    ps
    I am still blanching at those named as being affected by greenhouse gases because they are not white??

  10. Arnd

    … if you are putting your faith in those things, like I put my faith in the Lord, you are making a mistake. They’re earthly. They are fallible. I’m so glad we have a bigger hope.

    Spoken like a true Christian anarchist. Only trouble being that Scotty ain’t no Christian anarchist.

    We don’t trust in the United Nations.

    Did any of you watch yesterday’s Four Corners? Enough to eradicate the very last vestiges of trust in government integrity.

    Oh, wait – I got there thirty years ago. Sort of, anyways: I did recognise that, for identifiable technical reasons, the institutions and processes of western style liberal democratic governance really are not sustainable. But I thought, back then, that better educated and more astute thinkers than myself would also recognise this simple, yet inescapable fact, and start working on formulating and implementing the necessary improvements.

    Well, I was wrong. Public policy discussion and implementation since then has not been improved upon, but has gone to shit in a big way. And there seems no turn-around in sight.

    What do I think?

    I think Scotty has a point!

  11. RoadKillCafe

    Canguro, yes and to me it just another heartbreaking moment in time. How we have come to this level of fuckedupness stuns me. All the major fossil fuel corporations have announced enormous profits, nothing like a good war to boost the bottom line.

    Canguro, do you really think the political classes will admit the error of their ways, do a hey, sorry guys, we were totally, utterly wrong, we placed greed above all else, we believed the fossil fuel destroyers, weren’t prepared to think, to care, we were very happy to facilitate the rape of a finite planet, money to be made, life after politics taken care of.
    These morally deficient scum admitting their guilt when it is much too late, no, can’t see it happening and I hear the fossil fuel fuckers are working on “green” petrol, so no fucking worries, business as usual.

    What to do? Love the one you’re with, leave nothing unsaid, enjoy every moment as best you can, find a forest, walk in it; find a National Park, get lost in it; show gratitude to nature, to the planet. Just care.

    Who knows, if enough of us can find a different way, fill our hearts with love and gratitude, change our ways, pursue “sanity” whatever that may be, could we deserve that miracle we so urgently need. There are quite a few climate scientists shit scared over the rapidity of environmental destruction, exceeding past modelling. Time is short, gang, collectively we need to do, to change. How that is achieved I have no idea.

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