There’s been a definite change from some of the commentators with respect to our Prime Minister over the past couple of weeks. People who were criticising Scott Morrison just a few weeks ago are now comparing him to Hawke, Curtin and even Winston Churchill. Personally I find the comparison to Churchill the most apt but more on that later. First, let’s take a few moments to remind ourselves of all that’s praiseworthy in our leader.
- After the 2019 election, he admitted that there was no earthly reason for him to win by announcing that he believed in miracles.
- He delivered a budget surplus before it happened.
- He declared his ambition for Malcolm Turnbull when he could have easily talked about himself and his own ambition.
- He put his family before his job, taking his daughters to Hawaii even though this drew criticism from people who thought that he should be leading the country just because it was on fire.
- He compared himself to Moses which explains why the whole country has been lost without direction for a generation.
- He was very concerned about girls changing behind trees and in cars, citing that as the reason for giving grants to organisations that no longer existed or who had no female teams attached to them.
- He shows confidence in his underlings right up until the time that something goes wrong and it’s their fault.
- He’s not afraid to share his personal life, telling journalists that he’d spent a lot of time on his knees lately.
- He always keeps smiling, no matter how bad the news is.
Ok, there’s probably a whole lot I’m forgetting, but we need to talk about Covid-19 and not live in the past because, well, there’s a lot in the past that would just annoy the Coalition and wipe the smile off even ScoMoses’s face.
Some people have been critical of the effusive praise for Morrison, but they’re obviously not worth worrying about because they’re clearly anti-Morrison which is clear by the fact that they keep wanting to bring up the past. However, I would like such people to imagine the following scenario:
There is a factory worker which we’ll call Moe. He gets given the job of keeping people out of the factory. He announces that this has been causing a distraction, so he’ll keep them out but he won’t say how he’s doing it. In fact, he won’t give you any information about it. People are generally happy with this, so he’s given a promotion which is to look after the factory’s accounts. He announces that the accounts were in a mess, but he’s fixing them. He has a plan. This seems to satisfy some people but others want to know what the plan is and why he keeps wanting to shut down various parts of the factory. When someone suggests putting solar panels on the roof to keep energy costs down, Moe tells everyone that’ll be too expensive but he has a plan to keep energy costs down and thanks to his sound management the factory only owes twice as much debt as when the old boss was sacked. In spite of everything running so smoothly, there’s a bit of an outbreak of discontent and suggestions that there needs to a new boss. After a week of turmoil, Moe is installed as boss. A few months later, a fire breaks out in the factory and while people are fighting it, Moe goes on holiday, explaining that the fire brigade had been called and he’d planned the holiday before the fire broke out. Many people are appalled at this explanation, but when he returns he explains that he’ll give lots and lots of money to people affected by the fire. There is much shaking of the head and even more people are doubting Moe. It then comes to light that bribes were paid by one of Moe’s associates, but he insists that the bribes were nothing to do with him. Some people start to ask about the money that’s meant to be going to those affected by the fire, but it’s pointed out that these things take time because there’s a need to make sure that the money is going to the right place.
At this low point, a virus breaks out in the factory which threatens the life of many of the workers. At first, Moe says it’s nothing to worry about, before telling everyone that he’ll be at the firm’s football match. Then he has a rethink and says that nobody should be at the football, or anywhere with more than a handful of people. People start to die.
Moe shuts down the factory and says that he’ll pay the workers their wages in a month or so, and because of this, people say how great he is and how it takes a great boss to do something as difficult as shutting down the factory when you were allegedly just about to make a profit for the first time in over ten years.
Of course, credit where credit’s due. Although many would normally prefer cash, we now have a situation where lots of shops won’t take cash. Anyway, yes, I have to admit that not everything Morrison has done in the past two weeks has been wrong, and while I thought that comparisons to that wartime leader Winston Churchill were a little over the top, I’ve been forced to reconsider.
After all, Churchill did oversee the Gallipoli disaster and, in spite of this and a few other fiascos, managed to do a good job of inspiring Britain when they faced the threat of being defeated by Hitler. Yes, Churchill was such a very good wartime leader that it’s hard to understand why his Conservatives were defeated in 1945.
Maybe it was the fact that just because you do something right in a time of crisis, it doesn’t mean that people are prepared to trust you when things get back to normal.
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On The Insiders just now, a journo from ‘The Australian’ lauded Morrison as a truly great Prime Minister.
Have we sunk that low?
In 1945, People in the U K voted for a future free of conservative austerity and selfish stupidity. In 1918, they’s voted to return to an imaginary past of some glory and prosperity, actually founded on theft, greed, murder, occupation, acquisition, oppression, assault, slavery in full or part, and denial of a decent life to U K workers. Churchill was part of the worst, with the black and tans, in sneering exploitations in the general strike, in bombing civilians in Iraq and other places of imperial conquest, in utter stupidity as Chancellor of the exchequer in restoring the gold standard and ruining the economy, in endless interfering, knowalling, smartarseing, posing and speechifying, yet his leadership in W W @ when a barking mad dog was needed to oppose the equally horrible dictators, is remembered fondly for its positive good. In 1945, a better future beckoned from wreckage, a shattered world as memorial to the pestilence of conservative militarism and mad dog political egofixation. Does the P M, the Pathetic Moron, fancy himself as the Churchill of Dardanelles incompetence, of black and tan murder and worse, or does he see himself arising from the dead of conservative stupidities and incrowd backslapping? Millions died in Bengal in W W 2, of starvation, and Churchill will not escape his part in that.
Yup. Churchill was an arch-racist, an imperialist, and never met a military solution he didn’t like. As James “Mad Dog” Mattis said over here: “It’s a hoot to shoot some people.” Conservatives always love evoking him in times of crisis. A “projection” thing. It seems ScoMo prefers the economic firing squad. More plausible denial available.
Jack Cade,
I was horrified to see Coalition fanboy and mailbox Benson on Insiders and furious with his final comment which was that Morrison is the greatest PM we have ever seen and how wonderful it was to have a panel of Newscorp past and present employees there to tell us so.
Last February, Benson met up with Abbott for dinner where he was overheard saying Abbott just “had to stop reading Fairfax and listening to the bloody ABC”.
He also told Abbott that “The only people who give a shit about the kids on Nauru are in Kooyong and Wentworth.”
Abbott told Benson about three Liberal Party branch officeholders in Warringah covertly working against the re-election of their local member. “Those three should be expelled, shouldn’t they?” Benson asked. “Named and expelled. I want to write a story about them.”
A partisan bully.
https://www.afr.com/rear-window/what-tony-abbott-said-to-simon-benson-20190207-h1azpo
Speers is obviously determined to turn Insiders into yet another platform for Murdoch hacks. I won’t be watching in the future.
“…just because you do something right in a time of crisis”
So…. what….. has he actually done something right since CV appeared?
Kaye Lee.
The ABC is truly ‘their ABC’. I am sick and tired of EVERY programme aimed at news analysis having a Liberal MP or former Liberal MP on the panel. Every single one. The Insiders, The Drum, you name it. And as you pointed out, this mornings Insiders panel consisted entirely of former Murdoch minions plus Speers. I used to watch The Insiders every week; these days I watch it only for the analysis of the weeks cartoons, which I did this morning.
Phil Pryor
After WW2 the Labour Party acknowledged Churchill’s part by urging people to cheer him but to vote Labour. But the electorate reverted to the Conservatives very quickly, probably on the ‘Reds Under The Bed’ attitude adopted by them, aping the USA, which was actually in the throes of dismantling and adopting the British Empire – in another guise – as areas of US influence.
It didn’t dawn on the Brits until the Yanks knifed them over Suez – the right thing actually, but with sinister US motives, evidenced by the US installing the puppet Shah in Iran.
I didn’t even watch Insiders this morning?intended to but was reading paper nothing happened on it to sharpen my interest! How easily people are fooled by bit money here there!
wonder if they realize pay dearly for it later with increased tax you can depend on GST 15per cent catch all! no pressure to make big end town pay tax so many pay nothing if they clamped down on them nobody would have to feel sting in the tail! especially unfortunate vulnerable society will suffer greatly would have really hurt all those “BELIEVERS” helping all those not EXTREMELY WEALTHY! So against devout belief never to be assisted! Personally fear outcome if live through this crises?
The sycophantic adulation of the “New Morrison”, Scotty from Marketing on Steroids” (or “Scomonstero”?) is, as might be expected form a Morrison critic, palpably nauseating. Morrison has, at best, been adequate – as might or should be expected from a man who has never displayed any signs of possessing even the beginnings of greatness.
His supporters all proclaim that Morrison the Messiah will lead us out the darkness and into the light and that if Labor had been in charge, there would be rioting in the streets. At least in the case of Morrison, we have been shown all the evidence we need to know his failings and that his failings outweigh whatever strengths he might possess (perhaps the only one is that he is good at reading from a script), but there is zero evidence that Labor would have been massive screw ups – and yet the view prevails.
Little things give Morrison away. One is his abject confusion and mixed messages, admittedly in the early stages when the facts were less than clear, but he certainly struggled to get a genuine, intuitive sense of what was happening. His resort to bellicose belligerence when he was challenged. The speed with which he dismantled any semblance of democratic process when he suspended the Parliament – hardly unexpected from a person whose instinct, if not neurotic pathology mandates autocracy (or absolute, unchallenged power). That the LNP voted against Rudd’s stimulus package in 2008 and 2009 and continue to snipe at Rudd’s package and insist theirs is better. Again no evidence can be introduced to support that view, but it prevails amongst Scomonstero’s supporter base. That the LNP want to change the Fair Work Act. Most of the other stimulus measures are self-contained in acts that can easily be repealed and will be in due course. But the history of conservatives is that when they want to change the Fair Work Act, it is never to increase the rights of workers and those changes, like others, would remain embedded in the system. That Morrison is more worried about rebuilding his shattered brand and therefore his actions are not motivated by us, but by how he can use this crisis to his own political advantage.
By all means applaud Morrison for doing his job, but let’s also not forget that what he shows us at the moment is a product of his marketing tendencies, so it is a manufactured facade. We have seen the real Morrison at work when he couldn’t read from a script and it showed someone floundering in a morass brought about by his palpable limitations as a man, a person and a “leader”.
Ha ha, compare the difference. Wait till he ‘snaps back’, despite the fact that people are actually beginning to see the benefits of democratic socialism – a rare breed these days after it has been maligned so much by this ignorant bastard and many other parasitic narcissists of this Liberal and corporate world.
Democratic socialism is a win-win for all and something to be proud if you are a lucky or more likely clever and courageous country to have it… still Churchill wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, he was quite the privileged tyrant himself which the history books written by the victors have twisted into benevolent fiction – And yes he did lose the general election after the war, as should Morrison and the Liberals. Why because after any great crisis society needs to heal and it can only do so under democratic socialism, where honesty, truth and a fair go are essential ingredients to the re-build and success .
Watch this space, he is doing what he is doing because in truth he has no choice, if he wishes to have any chance of surviving politically, economically or socially – and show his face in the street. Who’d want to go down in history for stuffing this one up – Dutton, ah well yes of course! But watch this space for the twist, the ‘snap back’, he is already talking about it so he can reap the rewards and profit from this crisis – The next election and his life style secured, not ours!
And he can do this on his own now, without Parliament and blame Labor later – AGAIN!
The ABC.
It’s the Australian Brainwashing Corporation and has been for about four years now. Ever since they closed down the Drum comments section.
Jon Chesterton
You are correct. But we are in a country which can accept congregations chanting ‘ditch the witch’. Can you see us hosting congregations chanting ‘Pan the Pentecostals’?
As I’ve said before, elsewhere, we are not in The Castle’, we are in Wake In Fright.
I too was dismayed and angered by the fatuous and gratuitous dig at the ABC by NewsCorps’ journalist Benson at the end of the program ‘ Congratulations to the ABC ….. etc ‘. following his ‘ journalistic ‘ accolade of, ‘ Morrison is a great Prime Minister ‘
The colonisation of the ABC continues !
Fortunately, the Sally McManus interview, mainly Sally’s direct and articulate style, did make the program watchable. But my complaint to the ABC will proceed.
I find the praises being heaped in particular on Morrison, Frydenberg and Hunt to be rather over the top. Anyone would think that this triumvirate has invented all the responses to the current virus crisis without any help from anyone else. They have merely followed expert advice, as they should. It is a pity they have not been able to heed the advice of the IPCC experts with regard to climate change.
What we do remember is the way the present government through years of media lies and big money spent on trawling for preferences in the election has stolen office. We remember, too, how Morrison was surprised and unprepared for office, claiming it was a miracle. And during the fires he was treated with distain by some who had lost everything.
Twice now, he has closed down Parliament.
Even in the Murdoch press are criticisms of the “police state” which has been created and an ideological questioning of the welfare response, from the IPA, for example. And no surprise.
What Morrison tells us he reads from notes which must make him feel like a hypocrite, so opposite are these pronouncements to anything espoused by this Coalition, which divides the populace into “lifters” and “leaders” and which has pilloried Labor for years over Labor’s response to the GFC which the Coalition claims never really affected Australia. Yet elements of the entrepreneurial business sector exploited Labor’s response to the GFC with fly by nighters, excessive charges and neglect of workers, especially those in the insulation industry which was unregulated at first (regulatory red tape being anathema to neo-liberal ideology and market forces).
That this virus changes everything has been suggested by many. How much Morrison will be able to un-do the progressive changes he has made temporarily in the country’s policies will be interesting to see.
And if the Coalition is re-elected at the next election after the effects of years of drought, massive damage done to so much of Australia in the bushfires – and now the virus – it will be interesting to see how they cope, if at all. It is a job which will take years if not decades. Just dealing with the growing effects of climate change, the decline of coal as leading commodity and the establishing of renewable energy, and greater care for the underprivileged – whom they appear to be caring for now, but for how long when the virus has gone?
Are we willing to let them try, if the real solutions are progressive, not neo-liberal?
As they say a leopard does not change it’s spots, it can merely disguise it’s true self.
If morrison is a leopard and has changed his spots, I would suggest that he is merely covered in mud from wallowing.
When the rains come, the mud will rapidly wash off to reveal the leopard again
I’m getting an uneasy feeling about how all this so called “socialism” is being described in the media,after all,if the Economy (Morrison’s no. 1 aim) and “jobs ” are to be saved,he has no choice.It’s hardly surprising that every big business think it’s a helluva good idea to throw billions of public money at them,(who would have thought?)
I seriously doubt that any of Morrison’s public announcements are his idea,he’s been given his talking points and his script to read from,and has been instructed to appear convincing(he,s not),we all know what a frightful hypocrite he is.It’s hard to say who has the most influence on him, the other happy clapping bretheren or the corporate vultures,and he has conveniently stacked his government and advisory board full of them,maybe there’s a jostling for position.
For all our wishful thinking about a new dawn beckoning, I have a dread feeling that on the “other side”, the monster will have grown another head.
Rossleigh, I think I’ve spent half the day telling people to read the article and don’t judge it on the title. They’ve been going nuts at me on Facebook.
Mm, how do you you’d go if I title the next one: “Scott Morrison now more important than Jesus and closing in on The Beatles”?
Oh rosco a thoughtslinging happy read this man is the consummate Christian, the best believer they have ever had a real bloodless heart with a cheshire willow. We are just disappearing down the hole with Alice and those behind are prepared to believe a man with the persona of a messiah, the thoughts of John Winston, and the knowing smirk of the competent. He is the saviour of wonderland from the ravages of labor and the greens. Pig iron bob reincarnated and the potentially the man who will establish the new Australia where we will wish we had an ABC even with speers not just a publicly funded propaganda.
It is so disappointing to be of an age where this self indoctrinated ruthless clapper will see me out.
Thanks boobby and the diludbransimkims for your songs
it wasn’t me babe who voted for the rabbott babe
A Panchira aquatica for me
Lucy the coal for diamonds
Rossleigh, that made me laugh. Just do it!
I used to think Rossleigh wrote satire. I smiled nervously as I read with a kind of uncomfortable feeling at his unerring ability to point out the inconsistencies and hypocrisy in his own astute way. Now I think he is more along the Nostradamus lines. And that scares me.
Kaye, do remember the fundamental truths which the mediaeval Court Jester was able to tell in that early version of satire.
There was always a strong undercurrent of unconventional wisdom involved, bringing awareness to his Monarch of things which the average courtier would never dare.
“Maybe it was the fact that just because you do something right in a time of crisis, it doesn’t mean that people are prepared to trust you when things get back to normal.”
We live in hope.
@Rossleigh: Your excellent exposition over-looked the 1920s White Russian Invasion of USSR and his influence on US WWII strategy to invade Germany through Italy, the weak underbelly of Europe. Phil Pryor above has some interesting thoughts.
@Phil Pryor: Before the Ayatollahs in Iran the USA (United States of Apartheid) installed Nasser in Egypt who in turn conducted purges of about 100,000 middle class educated persons, organised well rigged elections and maintained political control of Suez for the benefit of foreign owned multinational oil corporations up to the present.
@sophiechoice: Be fair to the ABC under real threat of privatisation to that long standing financial benefactor of the IPA, Rupert Mulock. There are now fewer job opportunities for journalists and the ABC still threatens the corporate community with the excellent investigative skills of the journalists.
Look how ABC management sold out Insiders to a News Ltd sporn. Simply blatant bending over to save the ABC!!
@Kaye Lee: Surely you have noticed how Rossleigh articles quietly surface a few weeks after publication as COALition policy?
Christian Porter: “This is our Dunkirk moment”
Not only that, NEC, but I told you back in 2014 about Malcolm Turnbull becoming PM before the election and suggested that Morrison would “do a Bradbury” and skate through unnoticed while all the attention was on the others.
If I don’t post again in the next few days, it’s because I’m working on the Tattslotto nummers.
Our “Dunkirk moment” – where they used all the smaller boats in order to evacuate the soldiers unnoticed by the enemy? Is this the plan for getting ministerial relatives and Hillsong followers off the cruise ships?
They are “pushing out the lifeboats” according to our AG. Christian Porter has embraced your idea Rossleigh. Ask not what your country can do for you.
Mind you, we are doing slightly better than the US who have put Jared Kushner in charge of their response.
“Early this year, Kushner reportedly advised Donald Trump that the coronavirus was not that dangerous – more a threat to public confidence, and the markets, than to public health. Trump stuck with that message for six tragic weeks, between the confirmation of the first US case and a belated federal decision to speed the development of test kits.
And it was Kushner who helped write a disastrous Trump Oval Office speech on 12 March announcing a European travel ban that sent markets into a tailspin and travelers crowding into airports. It was Kushner who solicited help from the father of the fashion model Karlie Kloss, his sister-in-law, to ask a Facebook group of doctors what should be done about the virus.
It was Kushner who reportedly spread the word that Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, was being alarmist when Cuomo asked the federal government for 30,000 emergency ventilators for the state.
And it was Kushner who urged Trump to overrule the health experts on staff and declare that America would be “open for business” on Easter with “packed churches all over our country”, in Trump’s words.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/jared-kushner-coronavirus-aid-trump-governors
Kushner has ongoing form:
Not good with understanding the role of government either.
An first class dill.
It is always comforting to read AIMN, and know that there are still pockets of people who are sane, I don’t feel so alone.
But – like the Yanks with Trump, there are too many bucketfuls of morons out there who DO think Scummo is the greatest since sliced bread and will continue to follow him and vote for him. I surmise it is because, like Trump, he speaks nonsense, uses lots of words like wonderful and great and amazing, in reference to their own selves. The bulk of the electorate can understand them, and therefore believe they are of the people and will do the best job. They care nothing for facts, figures, models, actual truth.
We are doomed. If the virus spares us, the government will finish us.
Just saw a post on FB that seems to be going viral, saying to give Scott Morrison (the Prime Minister) a break because he’s got a tough job… And then came across this article 🙂
I do get the sentiment, – they’re actually trying to be empathic, and yes, he does have a tough job – but what scares me is what I’m seeing in the US, where they have a culture of ‘rally around the leader’ in times of crisis. It seems they do this in the absence of a ‘royal’, because human nature seems to crave the personality cult of leaders. Sorry, I’m a bit non-neuro-typical, so this cult seems absurd to me.
It is the kind of culture that will drag us back into a feudal society, if the leaders aren’t constantly under scrutiny. They do NOT deserve, or, in a democracy, should expect, ‘loyalty’ – that is a feudal concept that actually sickens me.
They’re (in the USA) doing this leader-cult rally-around with a guy (Donald Trump) who is patently certifiable – he so obviously has a clinical personality disorder, that before he got elected, he was being used as a perfect NPD example in psychology classes.
Incidentally – it’s high time our political parties, as open and transparent policy, started applying clinical personality profiling to all candidates!
Anyhow, to finish my rant…
The guy in charge, here, (Scott Morrison) has been dragged kicking and screaming to his current ‘leadership’ position, because he got jumped by all the Premiers stepping up to the plate, and doing the right thing, when he obviously was trying to make-like-Trump and play it down “for the sake of the economy”.
And god help us if it means our short memories lead us to vote him in, again.
He is a Marketing Man through and through, and just realised he had to change his spin.
People rise to the occasion. Arguably the premier of Victoria is an example. Morrison MIGHT, if he was a ordinary human being, rise to the occasion, but his religious beliefs absolutely prevent him from doing so, because Pentecostals differ from Yeshua bar Joseph in their absolute conviction that being poor is your own fault and rich people CAN go to heaven – sod the gospels!