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“Who do you trust?” asks the Liar from the Shire

Scott Morrison is asking the Australian people “Who do you trust?” – a gutsy approach from a man who has earned the sobriquet ‘Liar from the Shire’.

Do you trust the man who draped his arm around his leader, grinning innocently as he proclaimed “I’m ambitious for this guy” whilst his backroom boys were organising a coup?

Do you trust the man who left the country in flames to sip cocktails poolside in Hawaii, had his office deny it, and then excused it by saying he doesn’t hold a hose, mate?

Morrison claims he is the better economic manager. This was initially based on false claims of having delivered a surplus. Instead, we got the first recession in thirty years and debt levels unprecedented outside of wars.

After having said “governments don’t create jobs, businesses do”, Morrison is now claiming credit for creating 1.9 million jobs since they were elected in 2013.

Between September 2013 and February 2022, Australia’s population increased by 2.7 million people so that growth in jobs is basically just population growth.

Morrison also claims credit for an unemployment rate of 4%.

Antipoverty Centre analysis of ABS and Department of Social Services data shows that while the unemployment rate has not been this low since before the global financial crisis in 2008 when it was also 4%, the proportion of working age people who rely on an unemployment payment has nearly doubled – from 3.3% in mid-2008 compared to about 5.9% today.

The lack of skilled migration and temporary visas due to the borders being closed as well as the neglect of domestic skills training has led to a labour shortage. This, combined with supply chain disruptions, pent up demand after lockdowns, soaring energy prices, and huge government spending, has led to inflation rising quicker than expected.

The ongoing spending in the budget was a contributing factor in a larger than expected interest rate rise – the first of many according to the RBA signalling bad news to those who overcommitted to get into a red-hot housing market.

Morrison’s government has overestimated wages growth in 53 out of 55 predictions. Three years ago, then Federal Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, described low wage growth as “a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture.” And now we find real wages going backwards.

Do you trust the man who advocated for getting rid of penalty rates but says he can’t advocate for wage rises in the care sector or a rise in the minimum wage?

Do you trust the man who oversaw the illegal Robodebt program but who wouldn’t recoup JobKeeper paid to profitable businesses?

And then there’s national security.

Do you trust the man who has alienated Pacific leaders due to his arrogant dismissal of their concerns on climate change and patriarchal assumption that we are their best friend?

Do you trust the man who has chosen to declare a hairy-chested media war on our biggest trading partner?

Do you trust the man that has spent billions on cancelled defence contracts?

Do you trust the man that the French leader labelled a liar?

We are told that Morrison’s strength is his confident focus on message. But which message?

Do we trust the man who, in April 2018 told us that “The days of subsidising energy are over whether it’s for coal, wind solar, any of them. That is the way I think you get the best functioning energy market with the lowest possible price for businesses and for households and that is what the national energy guarantee and our energy policies are deigned to achieve.”

Or do we trust the man who, less than five months later, said “The Neg is dead, long live reliability guarantee, long live default prices, long live backing new power generation,” and promptly started throwing money at gas companies, even deciding to build his own gas-powered generator.

Do we trust the man who said electric vehicles would “end the weekend” because they would not “tow your trailer”?

“It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family… I mean if you have an electric car and you live in an apartment, are you going to run the extension cord down from your fourth floor window?”

Or do we trust the man who, when he rolled out his own policy two years later, denied he attacked electric vehicles before the last election, stating “new technology” led to his newfound interest?

Do we trust the man who said equity loans were a good thing, or the one who rubbished the scheme saying “every time you go to Bunnings” to improve the home you would need to inform Canberra?

Morrison certainly has chutzpah, I’ll give him that.

But trust him?

YGBSM

 

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33 comments

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  1. Consume Less

    Was wondering what was going on, with all those extension leads hanging from windows. Now I know, thanks Scomo.

  2. eric ter laare

    do you trust the man that locks you out of your own country?

  3. Kaye Lee

    In Morrison’s government, a lack of accountability has become systemic

    Scandals are nothing new in Australian politics, but the way they have piled up in the recent years of Coalition government points to a critical shift in our governance. Acts of malfeasance and impropriety have become more than isolated episodes, more than egregious slips or embarrassing failures. Unexplained and unresolved, they are open wounds on the body politic, overlapping and now chronic.

    The next time a scandal breaks – and one will break soon – the public might be outraged, but will be neither shocked nor surprised. This is simply what happens with a government that pursues those who keep it accountable, ignores ministerial codes of conduct, is unconcerned by conflicts of interest, is intent on shielding its workings from the public, and distrusts its own agencies and institutions. To the Coalition government, citizens are, as the saying goes, like mushrooms: to be kept in the dark and fed bullshit.

    https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2021/february/1612098000/nick-feik/scandals-he-walks-past#mtr

  4. wam

    I’m with you, kaye, he cannot be trusted. His government must go.
    What is the alternative?
    Labor and the greens.
    Let me have another look at scummo.

  5. Phil Pryor

    Mor(ris)on, a shitcoated turd, rolled in pooflakes, deepfried in burning bowels, and served up by Murdoch’s maggoty meatmunching misfits, tasty. Never ever trust a chroniclying stained soul, lazy, never worked, always shirked, egosmirked, slyly tells us getfurked, unbelievably repulsive.

  6. Kathy

    He has got to be the most conniving, deceitful, nasty and untrustworthy individual to ever walk this earth.

  7. Michael Taylor

    I’m gathering that people here don’t like him much.

    That makes you all my kind of people.

  8. BigKat

    Scotty was right,if you have a go you will get a go.Aspen medical had a go,totally failed but then they got a real go,in fact they got a billion dollar go,how good is shoveling tax payers money to your mates.Expecting a special position to be soon created for our amazing retiring health minister Greg Hunt at Aspen Medical or am I just being a wee bit cynical?

  9. wam

    WOW Kaye, Are you reading the bandit or coming around to why labor lost in 2019? your link: “Three years after heated clashes between Adani coalmine supporters and environmental groups created a lingering climate of “fear and scepticism”,… The Next Economy held a summit in Gladstone last year after hearing concerns from industries, energy companies, local and state governments that they felt unable to have an “open and productive discussion” about the need to plan for a transition…” I suppose you have rejected the glossy pamphlets from the other extremists: “Currently Australian pensioners are paid less than what asylum seekers are paid a fortnight. This is a disgrace and by increasing the aged pension by 20 per cent the Palmer United Party will provide pensioners with an additional $150 a fortnight.” ” health and hospital treatment issues“… the Palmer United Party will inject $80 billion into the health budget right across Australia so that all Australians have access to a first class health system wherever they may live.” PHON: https://www.onenation.org.au/issues “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation acknowledges the scientific fact that a human being’s life begins in the womb” and many others
    ps
    I missed the input of the greens in the last 3 years. Have they done anything since christine gave the rabbott unlimited access to cash?
    pps
    I watch for hunt’s payout in Aspen

  10. New England Cocky

    Another accurate, objective account of why Australian voters have been ripped off by this coterie of crooks masquerading as a misgovernment. Thank you Kaye Lee, as if regular readers at AIMN need any reminding of the dearth of concern shown by these self-serving philanderers.
    .
    @wam: Without a doubt you display all the symptoms of Liarbral lunacy …. I mean, why would any Australian voter in their sane mind ”have another look at Scummo”.
    .
    A bit of Greens gossip for you ….. Ms Carol Sparks, former Mayor and sitting Councillor at Glen Innes Severn Shire Council is the Greens candidate in New England who appears to be ”incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a member of the House of Representatives” because her position as Councillor means that she is holding ”an office of profit under the Crown” and so in contravention of the Australian Constitution s44 (vi).
    .
    Moreover, Ms Sparks claims a Victorian Court has made a decision over-riding the Constitution (are you kidding me????) that she is relying upon for her improper nomination.
    .
    However, she refuses to disclose the appropriate legal reference for scrutiny.
    .
    My mate Blind Freddie is a political sceptic who believes that this may be either a personal or Greens Party attempt at scamming the funds for achieving the minimal vote of four percent (4%??) in the electorate where presently Barnyard ”Beetrooter” Joyce holds a 16+% margin.

  11. Canguro

    Barnaby Joyce doing what Barnaby does best… having another brain-fart dummy spit…

    “Mr Turnbull’s form of politics is because he doesn’t get every present he wants, he throws teddy in the dirt and says, ‘well, to hell with that’,” he said.

    “He knows full well. He understands politics. That he is inherently going to inspire a process that makes our nation weaker. And I’d say to Mr Turnbull: have a little bit more consideration and do something statesman like”.

    Turnbull encourages voters to back independents.

  12. wam

    NEC
    I am having a go at an intelligent women who intones the green’s glossy policy over party politics, without considering that the bandit’s plays politics by being being free from responsibility for his policy pamphlet in the same way as the big Ps who, currently have the influence of the balance.
    By way of explanation for my oblique references.
    The queens corgi got run over by a steam roller and charlie prayed to god to save it god explained how that was impossible and asked if he had another wish and charlie said could he make camilla beautiful. NEC, not heard that joke? Any idea of the punchline???
    ps
    No sane voter should look at scummo is that a strong arguable fact?
    But millions do and their votes are immutable.
    I am not one, although I have friends both personal and through family who are.
    They all have a fear of the green’s policies and no matter how often I say and share evidence that labor is NOT connected to the greens, they shake their head and look down.
    (I cannot think of anything the loonies have done since the bandit except wedge labor. The two references here, is michael’s young man and he quotes the change with dinatali and kaye’s husband’s view of the greens in the diludbansimkims era. Has his view of the loonies changed, kaye??)
    All tv interviewers and radio shock jocks overtly favour the government and universally disparage labor and the greens.
    On occasions I give my cash to an independent whose bio is impressive but my vote is always for labor..Thousands more vote by gut on saturday and they select the gov.
    pps
    I am unnerved by people here, seemingly not having a similar composition of friends and acquaintances to mine.
    no matter my poor skills are unlikely to influence the dumb or the clever

  13. Kaye Lee

    “I am having a go at an intelligent women who intones the green’s glossy policy over party politics,”

    Do NOT tell me what I think, what I endorse, or what I “intone”. Your obsessive hatred of the Greens makes your “intonations” incomprehensible and your assertion that I am taken in by “glossy pamphlets” is insulting.

    The article I linked to shows that the people of Gladstone felt intimidated by the pro-Adani supporters, and that they, in fact, agree with the Greens that they must transition away from fossil fuels.

    “We have everything we need to manage this change well. The only thing missing is clear and decisive leadership at a national level.”

    My husband knows nothing about the Greens or their policies and freely admits that, unlike you who base your ignorance on personal hatred because of some perceived slight to your wife many years ago and a vote by the Greens against poor policy back in 2009. That poor policy was replaced by much better policy the next year thanks to Windsor, Oakeshott and Bandt. That’s why a hung parliament is not a scary prospect to many of us. Labor need the courage of the crossbench to make meaningful change.

    https://greens.org.au/cprs

  14. Bob

    Watching the antics of Labor and Liberal is like watching two gummy dinosaurs thrash it out. If they were aware of the value they are adding to the community at this point in time they might decide to exit the field of play. Their day is done, the Time of Fossils is well and truly over, they both have nothing further to contribute. Just retire gracefully you idiots.

    I hope readers of this blog understand there are other parties in this election, although I can see why many people haven’t cottoned on to this fact given the zero coverage by msm of anything other than Laberals. It’s underwhelming to contemplate 3 yrs more Laberalism.

  15. Kaye Lee

    Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer aren’t parties – they are identity cults. In Pauline’s case, she has been living off the money she gets from running candidates she doesn’t even know for decades. It’s a money-making scam that has delivered her a motza. Palmer is purely a disrupter making ridiculous promises that he has zero chance of ever being able to deliver on. He has no power to cap interest rates, he just talks rot. Neither party will win any seats in the HoR so will have nothing to do with forming government. We will either have a Labor government or a Coalition government. That is an inescapable fact.

  16. Albos Elbow

    If you don’t trust politicians to take action on climate change join one of the growing number of local community energy providers.

    The Energy Market is Changing for the Better
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    Would you like to support emissions reduction and help reduce global warming as we move to net zero sooner, while at the same time making huge savings on your electricity bill?

    To make positive changes for a better future, there is rapid growth happening in local, community based, peer-to-peer energy cooperatives, who are fully licensed to buy electricity at wholesale prices and share the savings with their community.

    You don’t necessarily need to have solar panels or battery storage to get the same savings that renewable energy users do. You are welcomed as part of a community that buys electricity at the lowest prices and sells your excess electricity for you or organises to share it within your community.

    This gives you the control to bypass governments, to support a faster move to renewables, reduce wastage by buying locally and support local community groups and projects directly for them to raise funds and save money on their energy, so they can spend more in your communities, arts and sporting groups and other associations.

    One of those community energy companies is localvolts.

    Because you are buying wholesale and not retail any more, your electricity consumption price will fall to about 7 cents per KWh (which is the average wholesale energy cost in NSW in 2022).

    You are also able to share your excess solar energy with your community directly or sell it back to the market if you wish.

    As more and more people join the peer-to-peer energy community and more renewable energy comes onto the grid, they expect to save even more on wholesale prices.

    For more information, please visit the localvolts.com website or contact info@localvolts.com and get started on saving hundreds of dollars on your energy bills, reducing your carbon emissions and helping us move to net zero sooner, without any government interference.

    Please help spread the news about the growing positive change in energy.

  17. Bob

    Kaye, a Senate monopolized with freedom-friendly parties might be a good wake-up to the Laberals. They might begin working for the people and not against them, assuming they still have the ability to listen to anything other than their own self-centered thinking.

  18. Kaye Lee

    Hanson and Palmer are two of the most self-centred people ever elected to parliament. And two of the most incompetent. I am not sure what you mean by “freedom-friendly” parties. I really do not want to go down an anti-vaxx rabbit hole.

  19. leefe

    sigh

    Three immutable things in life: death, taxes and wam’s obsessive hatred for the Greens.

    ps: the only things I trust ScoMoFo to produce are lies, incompetence, corruption, scandals and distraction.

  20. Canguro

    ‘Freedom’ is one of those magical words; it can mean many things, but basically, it connotes not much at all. Freedom from what? And for whom? It’s not as if we’re living under an autocratic regime like North Korea, or Belarus, where there is real actual repression of the citizenry.

    And it’s not as if we’re living in a hellish society like the USA which laughingly calls itself the ‘Land of the Free’ while practicing the most egregious surveillance of its citizens and promulgating a two-tier societal structure whereby if you’ve got wealth you’re encouraged to use it to accumulate more and if you haven’t you’re pretty much screwed and condemned to a life of hardship and marginal poverty.

    I think it’s kind of a dangler; a word like ‘fairy-floss’, a come-hither and I promise you something you’ll enjoy word; but what’s promised is never specified; there’s never any acuity to the expression, no boundary; just a vague hint of something ‘better’ than what is, whatever that is.

    I guess that’s its power; it attracts the doughy-minded, the gullible, those who can’t or won’t make the effort to define their dissatisfaction.

    A good word for carpetbaggers and snake-oil salesmen (& women).

    I’m reminded of GW Bush’s oxymoronic statement made after bombing the crap out of Iraq; “They hate us for our freedom”. Hahaha… what a jerk.

  21. Pete Petrass

    Could have just said “do you trust a pathological liar?”

  22. wam

    kaye, YOU wrote that the election should be about policies that is fact YOU wrote about the greens policies versus the major parties politics not policy. that is fact. I presume you’d accessed the policies. YOU wrote how you were surprised by the anti-labor comments by green supporters. YOU wrote that your husband, like me, was suspicious of the greens and added ‘it may be a man’s thing”? All I am saying is that, in my opinion, a glossy policy pamphlet, in whatever form you accessed, IS the greens playing politics because they can write what they like to attract votes and cash. For NEC I am pointing out phon and palmer employ the same tactic to attract votes and cash. If I am making up my assertions then you have the right to “Do NOT tell me what I think, what I endorse, or what I “intone”. Your obsessive hatred of the Greens makes your “intonations” incomprehensible and your assertion that I am taken in by “glossy pamphlets” is insulting.” As for hating the greens, you, leefe et al are misinterpreting my words(not a difficult thing because I am a poor writer) It is not the case that I hate the greens; my family and I have supported the greens for nearly 50 years, especially during pedder and the franklin and continue to support idealist like SHY despite the diludbansimlim episodes in gagging women. My beefs are the lack of discussion of the ambition of the bandit, the achievement or lack of, of the greens in federal policy and the acceptance of them as more than an extreme party intent of become the ‘balance’. I consider the comparison of a group, whose candidates are mainly unsupported volunteers, spread over the whole 151 seats, with another group with a fraction of the candidates, is, IMHO, unfair. I am too lazy to count the seats and votes but I believe the comparison is strongly in favour of the 3rd party. I am not sorry for offending you with your own words, kaye, but will apologise abjectly if I have been mistaken in remembering them.
    ps michael rossleigh and jack(and any footie tragic) I wrote this 3 weeks ago and they must have had a space left because they published it today: “This is my 9th decade as a port Adelaide supporter. Picture this: We are in front of the crows, boak has the ball and seconds to go. Not one port leads, 17 stand like dummies. Boak, not smart enough to kick it high to time waste gives the ball to the crows and we lose. Then this: The youngster has the ball out of range of the goal. 17 ports stand like dummies not one leads. Amon tries a torpie and fails. Port lose. We could be 2/3 not 0/5 The committee want to keep the coach They must be ex-players to be that thick.”

  23. Kaye Lee

    wam,

    Let’s make this simple. If you continue to try to speak for me, to tell me what I think or what I mean, I will remove your comment. Is that clear?

  24. New England Cocky

    @wam: Uhm ….. Have you ever tried using paragraphs to make your contributions easier to read? Paragraphs allow you to separate ideas rather than embedding explanations to me among your ranting excuse to Kaye Lee.

    Porelein is reported as charging aspiring politicians as much as $20,000 to become a candidate for Only Nutters demonstrating that ”a fool and their money are soon parted”. But there again, it takes a minimal percentage of the vote to be elected to the Senate for a seven year incumbency with full access to the Parliamentary Allowances public funding trough.

    Palmer has large coal interests that he wishes to develop with Australian taxpayers bearing all the cost while he takes all the profits. This is the conservative ”mining capitalism” copy of rural socialism where farmers ”publicise costs and privatise profits”.

    Writing in paragraphs keeps the author focused and logical. It is not difficult.

    As for your repeated distasteful misogynistic attacks on Kaye Lee, IMHO you have about the same chance as a snow-flake in the fires of Hell of making any impression on anyone who has personally faced down an angry Toxic RAbbott. Still, as Humphrey Appleby famously said, ”That is a brave decision, Prime Minister”.

  25. Consume Less

    Well said Kaye, I haven’t read a wam comment for such a long time now. Got completely over the anti green obsession.

  26. Kaye Lee

    Tribal politics leads to good ideas being lost.

    Bob,

    Before I vote for a candidate in any election, I need to assess whether that person is competent and capable. of the work before them. Hanson and Palmer are dishing up a menagerie of weirdos who no-one knows and who, in some cases, live in different states to the electorate they are contesting.. That’s just absurd.

    For those in NSW, I would suggest considering a vote for Jane Caro in the Senate. She is running for the Reason Party.

  27. Bob

    Canguro, you thought about ‘freedom’ and began dreaming of GWB. Freedom from dumb thoughts would be a good skill to have. Freedom is prior to any attempt to define it, a sense of freedom shows up when it shows up. How will the Laberal anti-freedom control freaks act post-election? What value will the electorate place on the concept of the individuals right to free choice, eg. bodily autonomy?
    Kaye, absurd? That pretty well sums it up – politics is theatre of the absurd.

  28. Kaye Lee

    No-one is forcibly vaccinated. Everyone has that choice. They then must bear the consequences of their choice.

    If you choose not to get a flu vaccine, you cannot visit people in aged care. If you choose not to have a vaccination against whooping cough, you cannot visit newborns. If you choose not to get your child vaccinated, they may not be able to attend childcare and eligibility for Family Tax Benefit Part A or child care fee assistance may be at risk.

    https://www.ncirs.org.au/public/no-jab-no-play-no-jab-no-pay

    Certain occupations have always had mandatory vaccination requirements. This latest lot of protesting is utterly ill-informed and nothing to do with freedom.

    https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/immunisation/health-professionals/immunisations-for-health-care-workers

    https://immunisationhandbook.health.gov.au/vaccination-for-special-risk-groups/vaccination-for-people-at-occupational-risk

  29. totaram

    “Freedom is prior to any attempt to define it, a sense of freedom shows up when it shows up.”
    The ultimate in gobbledegook.
    “Freedom from dumb thoughts would be a good skill to have”. Indeed, indeed!

  30. PeterF

    “Scandals are nothing new in Australian politics”. True, but nothing can match the ‘Paddington Bear’ scandal.

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