This is an edited version of the original posted on Independent Australia on 13 November 2019
Looking across the media landscape this morning, it seems I was on the money yesterday with this piece in @independentaus proving, once again, that we know what we're doing. You should consider subscribing so @davrosz can up my wages! đhttps://t.co/lBAihSK9zQ
Has lying become the new normal for our elected officials? Dr Martin Hirst argues that events of this week prove it has.
Stop me if youâve heard this before.
Thereâs an old joke about politicians and porkies and it goes like this:
Q: How can you tell if a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.
Once upon a time, we could laugh at a corny joke like that because it was implicitly understood that most politicians were sometimes a little loose with the truth. We knew that they tended to exaggerate their good points and over-egg their opponents’ alleged defects, but we could live with it.
Lying on this level was tolerable because we trusted most politicians to be honest when it came to the big stuff, like budgets and defence spending and taking us into a war halfway around the world.
There was a general acceptance that politicians were genuine, capable and straightforward. We might have voted for the other team, but the consensus was that whoever was in government would generally do a good job and look after the country. We believed in the quaint notion of national stewardship.
But thatâs all changed
Lying is the new default position for many politicians. So much so that Scott Morrison has earned the nickname âLiar from the Shireâ, at least on social media. Nobody in the MSM has yet had the courage to put this to his face or commit it to the page. We can no longer have an innocent laugh about the truth-defying qualities of our pollies.
In my view, Barnaby Joyce has this week hit the bottom of the lying barrel with a widely quoted statement, made initially on Sky News (of course), claiming that two victims of the fires on the NSW north coast were probably Greens voters:
âI acknowledge that the two people who died were most likely people who voted for the Green party so I am not going to start attacking them, that’s the last thing I want to do.â
See what happened here? Joyce has learned the not-so-subtle art of indirect inference in order to cover his tracks. There is no way he would actually know how the fire victims â Vivian Chaplain and George Nole â actually voted but by couching his statement in terms of probability, he can essentially get away with it.
But, more importantly, there was a bigger, more sinister lie embedded in Joyceâs interview with Sky (which of course became a lead story in the rest of the MSM). He basically blamed the Greens for the lack of hazard reduction backburning over winter.
This alarming claim was, of course, quickly picked up by the Murdoch media and noted intellectual and New York-based columnist Miranda Devine was among the first (but not the last) to repeat this lie as fact and use it as the basis for an anti-Greens opinion piece.
Thankfully, The Guardian gave space to ecologist Graeme Redfearn to fact-check Barnabyâs claims and â surprise, surprise â they are false.
Of course they are. The Greens are not in a position nationally or at a State level to impose any anti backburn policy. Nor do they actually have an anti-hazard reduction policy in any council area where there is an overlap between them holding any power on council and where the fires occurred.
Barnabyâs goal was not to stick to the facts but to make an outrageous and half-credible claim and then let the sympathetic Greek chorus in the Murdoch media amplify and solidify the lie into something that susceptible voters are more likely to accept.
Essential reading if you want to counter the lies of Barnaby and the rest about the Greens and hazard reduction burning.
Dr Martin Hirst has lost his sense of humour when it comes to the Morrison Government. Instead, he argues, we need to be angry, not silently sniggering up our sleeves.
THE JOKES come thick and fast from ScoMo. This week, weâve had the undignified crack that he’s going to name the taxpayer-funded RAAF jet that flies him around âShark Oneâ at great expense.
Thatâs our plane, not Morrisonâs, but his complete lack of shame and his forced cornpoke humour are two of his better qualities.
Thankfully, Twitter chastised him over this idiocy.
Despite the PMâs attempt at portraying the blokey-jokey good guy, it’s getting harder to see the funny side of Australian politics. Iâm not cracking a smile, Iâm seething with rage.
The stark reality of a new Morrison government is about to hit Australia between the eyes and it will change Australia for ever from what was once a caring nation to one that only a few will enjoy the fruits of the country. 1984 will seem like heaven compared to what is to come.
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I have come to the terrible but sober conclusion that we can no longer laugh off the Morrison horror show. The clowns are actually ideological axe murderers in pancake makeup and funny shoes.
Are you asleep, or are you Chris Uhlmann?
Seriously, if youâre not disturbed and angry by the direction the Morrison Government is taking Australia today, you are either asleep or youâre Chris Uhlmann writing in the Nine stable ânewsâ rags.
Uhlmann applauds âthe sound of silence out of Canberraâ and claims that the âsilent majorityâ of Morrisonâs so-called âquiet Australiansâ would also be quietly getting on with their quiet, boring lives.
âNormal people would rather get on with the task of, hopefully, making an uneventful path from sunrise to sunset. For many that isnât easy and their simple wish of the Government is it not make the task any harder.â
The whole idea of a âsilent majorityâ is a discredited Nixonian talking point from the late 1960s and has no basis in sociology, political science or peopleâs lived experience. For Uhlmann, it is a convenient meme on which to hang his barely-literate gaslighting of the electorate. For Trump and Morrison â and enablers like Uhlmann â the idea of a silent majority supporting their populist rhetoric is a convenient political myth.
Personally, Iâd rather engage with outrage on Twitter than spend any money, time or effort arguing with Chris Uhlmann and, it seems, so would plenty of others.
Why Iâm not laughing anymore
I have had several swings of mood since the May Election. You may recall that in early July I wrote about the deep grief I was feeling at the time and how I was almost immobilised with depression.
Since then, Iâve cheered up and been amused by the stuff-ups, the malapropisms and goofy, daggy dad schtick that weâve been enduring from Morrison. The Governmentâs lack of policies and ham-fisted management of just about everything actually gave me a false sense of hope that things really wouldnât get any worse.
Two weeks ago, as we approached Morrisonâs first full year in the PMâs office, the scales fell from my eyes and it became apparent that these jokers were deadly serious. The lack of clear policy and the absence of a mandate following the close Election result are not an obstacle to achieving the Governmentâs ideological mission.
It is the mission itself that motivates Morrison, his cabinet colleagues and his power-hungry backbenchers like âFreedom Boyâ Tim Wilson. The mission is to remake Australia as a nation without compassion, empathy and opposition to Morrison and Duttonâs authoritarian instincts. Itâs a change that started under Abbott, was briefly disrupted by Turnbullâs obsequious vacuity, but is now back in full battle dress.
The mission goal is an impoverished, embittered, divided Australia; a country where âhaving a go to get a goâ means wealthy Liberal and National Party donors standing by the back door waiting for handouts, kickbacks and sinecures paid for by the reduction of everyone else to the status of serfs. It’s as if Morrison and company (thatâs how they view the Government) are wanting to return Australia to the status of a penal colony.
The gulags on Manus and Nauru and the locking up of refugees in a PNG gaol are one obvious symbol of this. Sending the Tamil family from Biloela, Priya and Nadesalingam Murugappan and their two Australian-born children to exile on Christmas Island under heavy, expensive and ridiculous armed guard is another potent sign of where we are headed.
Dutton has all but confirmed this with his casual use of the awful Trumpian term âanchor babiesâ to describe the Murugappan children. Itâs a racist lie coming out of Trumpâs mouth and itâs racist when Dutton drops it into our language. Unfortunately, most of our political journalists are so shallow and compromised they started normalising it within hours.
However, it is not yet possible for Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison to send Australian citizens into exile so easily. Instead, we are facing imprisonment in our own homes â a permanent lockdown of our rights as citizens and constant surveillance of our lives, both public and private.
I donât need to give chapter and verse on all of the outrages. If youâre reading Independent Australia, you are very much aware of them.
Letâs just summarise the issues in these headlines:
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has referred to the children in a Tamil asylum-seeker family facing deportation as “anchor babies”. #9Newshttps://t.co/wTOqtVFHhx
I donât want to sound overly melodramatic, but I think we can now see the outline of our future if Scott Morrison wins the current rounds of the culture war against the rest of us.
Our civil society is being hollowed out and replaced with a 24/7 panopticon in which our rights are gradually and forcefully taken from us.
Everyone who works for a living or who is currently on any kind of welfare payment is under threat here. The attacks on workersâ rights donât begin and end with attempts to clamp down on union action. The Governmentâs refusal to lift the poverty-level rate for Newstart and other benefits and plans to drug test unemployed people are further ways that Morrison and company want to impose workhouse levels of discipline on working people.
As for action on climate change, we are facing an existential crisis; the planet is dying, the eastern coast of Australia is going up in flames and once-flowing rivers are so dry that the Government has a crazy scheme to relocate fish in the outback. At the same time, the Morrison Government is refusing to take climate change seriously.
The less said about the disgraceful performance of this Government the better. At least a handful of ministers should be resigning over this deliberate lack of action. Start with David Littleproud and Angus Taylor.
I could go on, but Iâm out of time, space and words to play with.
Australia was once known for its open and egalitarian ethos â it is being stolen from us. The time for laughing is over. We can no longer âgrin and bear itâ, itâs time to fight back.
“Taylor has repeatedly stated he sought the briefing because of the impact of the listing on farmers in his electorate of Hume.”
The only farmer facing action was his own company!https://t.co/4vTiRQdVfq
Thereâs a well-founded belief among recovering addicts and alcoholics that you have to hit rock bottom before you start to get better.
I certainly believe it to be true. I bounced along the bottom for quite a while between 2014 and 2016. I didnât truly begin my recovery until I left behind the toxic circumstances of my employment.
Iâve been mostly clean and relatively sober for nearly three years. Iâve had a lapse here and there, but usually got myself back on track pretty quickly. I still go to meetings and I have regular sessions with a therapist, but overall, Iâm definitely much happier, stronger and more stable than I was three years ago.
So, it was with some horror that I found myself picking up a narcotic a few days ago. Exactly what the substance was is irrelevant; suffice to say it exists in a grey zone of legality and is readily available in a certain kind of adult store.
Iâm glad to say I had a really bad reaction to the stuff. After a few moments of delirium, I became violently ill. I hope I donât do it again.
However, what I have learned about myself through three years of counselling and involvement in both NA and AA is that there is a cause for my lapsing and if I can get to the bottom of it, Iâm less likely to do it again.
Wednesday morning choices… Go to an AA meeting or vacuum the house?
— đŁđ¸Martin Hirst (@ethicalmartini) July 2, 2019
What caused me to pick up again?
So, what do I know about this weekâs episode?
Well, the first thing to note is that Iâve been suffering writerâs block. This article is the first thing Iâve written since the federal election on 18 May. Outside of a handful of tweets, Iâve said nothing about the Morrison victory, or the disappointing postures adopted by the Labor opposition under the doubly-disappointing Albo. I have a book deadline looming, but Iâve been unable to write a paragraph, despite all the juicy media and journalism controversy swirling around us.
Having writerâs block is not normally associated with me having a lapse or finding an excuse to drink more than I should, but I think thereâs something intrinsic to my situation that created this recent blockage and then began to spiral me down to a bust.
Iâve been consciously participating in Australian politics since I first voted in 1974 and I canât recall any campaign period thatâs been more shambolic than this one.
Most have been struck down since nominations closed a week ago, so theyâll still be on the ballot paper.
What an omnishambles wrapped in a clusterf*ck and dipped in glitter-infused turds!
I donât think even 1975 came close to being this bad and that was a bitter campaign on both sides that eventually saw Malcolm Fraser elected and Whitlam vanquished.
The Murdoch press played a role then in demonising the ALP and helping Fraser win. The Murdoch papers and Sky News are playing a similar role today â as they have in almost every election since the late 1960s â this time, though, their preferred Prime Minister is looking like a cooked goose.
As a rule, I don’t mind election campaigns but this one already feels like stale pizza sitting in the bottom of the fridge. I’m hungry, but I really don’t want to eat it.
So, we got through the first couple of the of five election campaign weeks relatively unscathed. Good Friday provided a respite day even though we still got footage of a smirking Prime Minister bothering God and small children.
Bill Shorten went to Luna Park in Melbourne, an apt metaphor for the swings and round-abouts of campaigning and the roller-coaster ride of chaos that has characterised federal politics over the last four years.
The âcircusâ analogy gets over-used, but if itâs OK for Michelle Grattan to double-down on it, who am I to be picky.
We may have had a short break from the campaign over Easter, but are we any closer to having a clear front-runner for the only poll that counts on 18 May?
Well, I thought it was pretty clear from the last gazillion Newspoll results that the ALP was going to win the election in a canter.
However, Michelle Grattan (no, Iâm not picking on her) reckons it was a âscratchyâ first week for Shorten because of a small gaffe on superannuation and because heâs âvulnerableâ on Laborâs ambitious carbon emission reduction policies.
Well, Iâm Okay with that because at least the ALP has some policies to quibble about. The Liberals, on the other hand, are in such confusion they donât even know what their own policies are â like on electric cars, for example.
But some scribes even reckon Morrison is somehow making a comeback.
Thatâs like saying a man on life-support in a palliative care ward is going to make a full recovery.
I’m really not sure how they reach such fanciful conclusions.
Ah well, I suppose anything is possible inside the Canberra âbubbleâ.
So how is Morrison going to stage this political miracle?
Well he is, after all, Scott the âdisruptorâ according the Katharine Murphy writing in The Guardian:
Scott Morrisonâs strategy is to run over the top of the trench firing bullets every which way, in an effort to disrupt Shortenâs rhythm.
Well, he has to, doesnât he?
Morrison has no choice but to act like a demented and stupid-brave World War One sapper high on the fumes of battle. There is nothing else there.
The Liberal Party has been totally devoid of ideas, imagination, initiative and innovation ever since Peta Credlin and Tony Abbott were running the country after trashing the joint in the 2013 election.
Turnbull had nothing in 2016 and only just hung on because Labor started from a long way behind after the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd omnishambles and the deceitful âcarbon taxâ campaigning masterminded by the discredited Credlin.
Three years later and Morrison has had a chance to prove to the Australian public that heâs an empty vessel. Well, not exactly empty, heâs actually full to overflowing with bombastic populism, smug ego and meaningless fury.
Letâs take the electric cars policy as an example.
The COALition began the campaign bagging Laborâs pledge to have 50 per cent of all new car sales converted to electric vehicles by 2030. Thatâs a whopping decade away and its only half of the average 1.1 million new cars sold each year, according to industry figures.
So thatâs 500,000 electric vehicles added to the national fleet, on average from 2030 onwards.
It is an ambitious policy given that there are less than 10,000 electric vehicles currently on Australian roads, including about 4000 Tesla models. This is about 0.3 per cent of the total number of cars on the road.
So, it seems that the Liberals might have been right to poke holes in Laborâs policy. The only problem was, the COALition had an almost identical policy on the books.
Morrison and his ministerial colleagues looked stupid when they were warning Australian petrol-heads that Bill Shorten was coming for their petrol utes and big-engined cars, in a bid to wreck their enjoyment of the traditional Aussie weekend pursuits, like boat and caravan towing and driving illegally off the beaten track through national parks.
Morrison looked stupid, but then Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor stepped up and gave Scotty their beers.
Peter Dutton is on a knife-edge margin in his Queensland electorate of Dickson, so he made the excellent decision to attack his Labor opponent for not living in the electorate.
Fair enough, if you conveniently forget that Dutton owns several luxurious multi-million dollar properties outside of Dickson himself.
But the attack focused on Ali Franceâs disability. She has a prosthetic leg because of a horrific car accident. She lives close to Dickson in a home she spent over $100,000 on to modify in order to make it convenient for her.
So what did Dutton do? Well, heâs well-known for his sensitivity to less-fortunate people and promised us when challenging Turnbull that we would see more of his engaging human side.
Thanks Peter, youâre doing well.
He said â in an engaging and human way â that Ms France was milking her disability in order to win the sympathy vote in Dickson. His grovelling apology was equally engaging and human.
Peter Dutton targets Laborâs candidate, accusing amputee Ali France of using her disability âas an excuseââ for not moving into the seat. https://t.co/2mnYT8FGnJ
I guess we should also not be surprised that this story was first run in The Australian. The Murdoch media is going all out to help the coalition.
Senior kool-aid dispenser Piers Akerman was photographed out on a door-knocking campaign walk with Tony Abbott in Warringah. He looked really happy to be there just standing âin the backgroundâ, but the candid snap confirmed what we have been saying all along.
The Liberal Party is a subsidiary of NewsCorpse.
News Corp columnist Piers Akerman, in Tony Abbott tee shirt, campaigning for Abbott in pic tweeted by Abbott but now deleted. Not even pretending theyâre balanced now are they? pic.twitter.com/aNPrqpu6m9
And what about poor old Angus Taylor. Taylor is the Energy Minister in Morrisonâs government and he has previous form as a nasty, spiteful dickhead. He was famously sacked by British Tory knob, Boris Johnson, while he was mayor of London.
In that instance Taylor was accused of making insensitive racist comments. Heâs right at home in the modern Liberal Party where he has languished for the last five years.
Taylor must have been thinking that the Liberal campaign could do with a boost in the past week, so he thought it the right time to grab the headlines with a poorly-timed and ill-conceived threat of legal action against two independent journalists over their retweet of a now infamous Twitter thread on the ministerâs involvement in the snowballing water scandal that brewing away nicely in the background.
There is no better way to draw the spotlight onto yourself and your possibly dodgy dealings than issuing threatening legal letters to journalists who donât have a lot to lose.
Given Mr Taylorâs propensity to launch his lawyers at anyone suggesting he acted with impropriety we are making no comment on the water sales issue, but we canât help but think that firing off a defamation threat in the middle of an election campaign is a distraction Scott Morrison could do without.
As an aside, we can note that the other senior COALition figure allegedly in the centre of the water sales scandal is the delightful family man and member for New England, Barnaby Joyce.
Question for Barnaby and Angus. Who owns the other 90pc of the shares in the Caymans entity which benefitted from the sale of Aus water rights? #Watergatehttps://t.co/1Wpt7KLuMU
Itâs a short week this week with the Easter Monday and ANZAC Day holidays. Both Morrison and Shorten have said they wonât officially campaign on those two days, but we can be sure that their faces will grace the nightly news and dominate the front pages because itâs much easier for the journalists to just follow the leaders than attempt to cover actual policies.
My favourite burn moment of the campaign so far has been the start of a television advertising campaign for the global launch of the all-electric Hyundai Kona, a compact SUV that will retail for around $37,500.
This is an affordable and smart-looking option for people wanting to go into the EV market.
It may not be deliberate, but the Hyundai advert feels like a giant FU to the Liberals this week.
Itâs quite funny to think that the COALition might get run down by a fleet of electric cars.
In the wake of the Christchurch massacre, Scott Morrison has called for an end to âtoxic tribalismâ, but this doesnât mean he wonât exploit it in the federal election.
Two things are fairly certain in the wake of the Christchurch massacre and the NSW state election: Scott Morrison will not let go of his commitment to toxic white nationalism and the Coalition will preference One Nation and other racist factions above Labor and the Greens in the federal election.
The third predictable leg of this tripod of tribalism is that most of the news media and commentariat will go along with Morrisonâs decisions and ideology because they treat politics as a game of appearances rather than a matter of real consequences for real people.
Perhaps we all thought that the shock of a self-confessed âeco-fascistâ who was groomed into murderous violence by his connections to Australiaâs home-grown white supremacists would shift the political debate decisively.
It hasnât. Maybe it did for a few too short days and hours, but by the end of last week it was back to the same old same old, just as I predicted in IA on Thursday last week.
Just six days after Christchurch I wrote that ânormal transmissionsâ would be resumed quickly and that Morrison would lead the way by:
âŚreturning to the rhetoric of border security and community safety as quickly as possible and spinning the Christchurch attacks into the Governmentâs re-election strategy. The media plays along with this because that is the game they know well and are most comfortable with. But thereâs also another reason that the news media plays along â journalists share the broad world view of the Government.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what has happened.
It has taken less than two-weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our region since 88 Australians died in the Bali bombings of October 2002, for the COALition to work out how to adjust its rhetoric and get its re-election strategy back on track. The key shift has only been in the messaging, not in the policy direction and not in Morrisonâs intent.
For all his bluster in the interview with Waleed Aly, in which he sought to re-frame the now infamous 2010 cabinet discussion, Morrison is a leopard who cannot and will not change his spots.
The Prime Minister stands accused of seeking to inflame divisions by using Australiaâs Muslim community as a political punching bag in order to connect to voters still stuck in the racist dialectic of Australia being a white, European country.
In the interview he attempted to deflect criticism by claiming that he had merely been âaddressingâ the issue. This mealy-mouthed response dodged the central question about whether Morrison was seeking to inflame the issue or calm it down and it was delivered with all the shouty arrogance that weâve come to expect from this hollow tin barrel of a man.
That Morrison is his own aggressive and endless echo chamber on legs is not the issue. As Katherine Murphy wrote in The Guardian over the weekend, we already know this about the Prime Minister; he will be judged on his record, not on some cardboard cut-out reinvention of a person with empathy.
Like most things with Morrison his empathy is as fake as his glad-handing and his smiling jocular public persona. He is indeed a shallow pond, full of scum and toxic algea blooms.
In this vein we can confidently say that Morrisonâs new-found concerns with âtribalismâ is just as fake and transactional. He is not interested in healing wounds in our national psyche, he is still intent on stoking division for political gain. Invoking âtribalismâ is just a slight modification of his earlier very explicit anti-Muslim dog-whistling. That is why I am so disappointed that the commentariat Press Gallery opinion writers have fallen for it.
Letâs return for a moment to Katherine Murphyâs Saturday column. Most of it was pretty good. She rightly saw through Morrisonâs attempt to bluster and bully Waleed Aly and his pathetic plea to be given a second chance. âDonât pre-judge me,â he pleaded, and Murphy skewered him with precision:
You cannot outrun your record as a public figure, because you are still that public figure, and your identity is the sum of your record.
But there is also a problem in Murphyâs analysis. When Morrison talks about trying to end âtribalismâ as he did early last week, Murphy agrees with him.
Now, Morrison, prime minister of Australia, believes there is too much tribalism, and the current excess of tribalism is corrosive to social cohesion⌠Heâs absolutely correct; I applaud this sentiment.
This is disturbing, but not surprising. By conceding this point to Morrison, Katherine Murphy reveals, again, that there is far too much ideological agreement between supposedly independent journalists and government figures. Instead of critical distance and critique the political agenda of the government is endorsed.
Importantly, it also allows Morrison to continue setting the agenda. Funnily enough â though itâs not at all funny â this is precisely what happened.
"5 mins ago Morrison was laying up another toxic election fight on asylum seekers deploying the same exclusionary tropes as the immigration days & now he wants credit for being devoted to soothing & synthesis"…nope…good read KM https://t.co/vRCpp7kmEl
The idea that Australia is riven by tribal division has now become the media narrative, even though in terms of sociology and political science it is, at best, a nebulous concept that displaces other important categories of analysis, such as class, economic division, ethnicity and gender.
âTribalismâ is an appealing trope of pop psychology and by invoking it Morrison is only after one result â to signal to One Nation voters and supporters of the conservative fringe that he is still on their side.
This is what he is reported to have said in a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, just days after Christchurch:
âI see every Australian as an individual, not part of some tribal group to be traded off against another.â
While denouncing racism and âtribalismâ, Morrison also said the community needed to be free to hold âlegitimate policy debatesâ on issues such as migrant intake and border security without the conversations being âhijackedâ by accusations of intolerance or racial hatred. This betrays Morrisonâs true intentions. He is signalling to the hardcore racist rump that they are free to continue their slander of Muslims because both âtribesâ are as bad as each other. And, it was confirmed by further remarks in the same speech reported in the Nine newspapers:
âThis is true of the left and the right, and even more so from those shouting from the fringes to a mainstream of quiet Australians that just want to get on with their lives.â
This is the same âboth sidesâ language that Donald Trump deployed after white supremacists marched through Charlottesville and Heather Heyer was murdered by a maniac Nazi in August 2017. Even conservative US commentator Christopher Chantrill correctly describes nationalism of figures like Trump and Morrison as âfake tribalismâ.
Patriotism is when the ruling class keeps tribal feeling in reserve, to crank it up only when it is necessary to send a generation of young men onto the killing fields against an enemy. Nationalism is when the ruling class loses control of the narrative to some yahoo like Trump.
Morrison is using âtribalismâ to the same effect. The use of both-sides are bad rhetoric is an attempt by the PM to place himself in the middle ground and the mainstream media amplify it because they are in synch with the ideology behind it.
After Gladys: To boldly go where racists have gone before
The re-election of the Berejiklian government in NSW on 23 March will only embolden Morrison to continue down this path.
In the Waleed Aly interview he refused to commit to putting the racist fringe elements last on the Liberalsâ preference allocation. This was a âwait and seeâ decision and, now that itâs clear that One Nation has a sizeable base in NSW, the wait is over.
Liberal Party strategists know that the coalition needs to harvest the seven to 10 per cent of voters who are willing to cast a ballot for out-and-out racism if it is to have any chance at all of winning the federal election in May.
When asked about preference deals with One Nation on Sundayâs Insiders, Liberal senator Arthur Sinodonis also refused to commit to putting them last. He managed to get around the question by saying that he personally would ârepudiateâ the racists but didnât go so far as saying he wouldnât accept their preferences.
Morrison knows his only option is to continue to play the race card, he is carefully recrafting the message post-Christchurch, but the message has not changed.
I have no doubt that the COALition will do preference deals with One Nation, Morrison cannot even come close to winning the election without them.
I woke up this morning with a slight headache. Maybe it was the blackbird singing outside my bedroom well before dawn; maybe it was a disturbed sleep because the cat kept jumping on my head.
Nah, it was the celebration of the middle of the beginning of the end of Scott Morrison’s interim occupation of the Prime Minister’s comfy leather couch.
I admit it. I probably had too much to drink, but who didn’t?
COALition supporters were either drowning their sorrows or drinking angrily whilst plotting revenge against someone — anyone really — on the other side of the factional fence.
Labor supporters were celebrating their guy losing so convincingly in a winning kind of way; while the Greens will find an excuse to drink at any time.
Kerryn Phelps deserves to nurse her own hangover this morning too. She has woken up to the aftermath of a political tsunami that rose up out of Double Bay on Saturday morning and came crashing down along the sandy coastline from Bronte to the Sydney Heads in the evening twilight.
It feels delicious to write this morning that Skid has led his tory scum to their worst EVER defeat in a by-election. It is historic and has captured attention from the international media.
Somebody needs to get interim Prime Minister Scott Morrison a mirror. I didn’t get a chance to watch Question Time this week, I was usefully engaged at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, but I noticed that at one point on Wednesday afternoon Skid Toryscum cleverly called across the chamber to the Opposition leader that he was “just another politician in a suit”.
Really, Skid; is that the best you can do?
Of course Bill Shorten’s a politician in a suit. You are all politicians in suits; you are cookie-cutter copies of each other. You are one of them despite your apparent blindness.
Mate, just take a look around you; or even better, use the mirror in the bathroom.
Mirror in the bathroom recompense
For all my crimes of self defense
Cures you whisper make no sense
Drift gently into mental illness.
And yes, it seems the Morrison government is gently drifting into mental illness.
At least we might expect something like “We were suffering a nervous breakdown,” to be the next idiotic defence they slide into when the inevitable steaming pile of their own excrement leaks out of their sagging arses and flies into the rotating blades of the aero-oscilator that’s just around the corner.
Why? Because this week their fallback position was that they are in fact incompetent and make silly “administrative errors” that lead a majority of coalition senators to vote for Pauline Hanson’s white supremacist call sign.
On days like this it is seriously embarrassing to be a white Australian. Of course, none of us can be held responsible for the colour of our skin; that is a simple accident of genetics and parental hook-ups; but we can be held responsible for our attitudes.
We need to hold these useless seat-warmers to account; preferably by holding their feet to a very hot fire.
The senators who voted for Hanson’s racist rubbish had plenty of time to work out what it was about. The motion was on the Senate notice paper since 19 September.
Morrison and Cormann had more than three weeks to consider the “It’s OK to be white” motion. And yet *now* they regret it. How could they not realise “it’s OK to be white” is a neo-nazi meme when provided with three weeks notice? #Greenspic.twitter.com/QUtBodBgNQ
Nobody who voted “Yes” to the neo-Nazi meme can hide behind the lame excuse that they didn’t know.
As for those Senators who said — on the floor of the chamber — that they didn’t care, or that they were just “following orders”; well how can they sit there without remorse and not resign in shame?
Their excuses are pathetic, like this one from Senator Nigel Scullion, Minister for Indigenous Affairs.
“As acknowledged by Matthias there was an error in the Senate vote yesterday.
“In fact, my own understanding was that the Government would be voting against this motion.
“I was unaware that when we entered the Senate to vote that it was on this particular motion.
“I am sorry for any suggestion that either I, my colleagues or the Government supports any form of racism and I categorically reject any implication contained in yesterday’s motion that downplays racism and historic injustices against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.”
He has once again proven himself unfit for the job. His apology is meaningless; this is a time when “Sorry” doesn’t cut it.
Nah, piss off Nigel. You should resign your ministry.
As for Senator Lucy Gichuhi. Well, she’s there because of a countback and she was a candidate for some horrible right-wing ginger group [Bob Day’s Family First party, which is now defunct]; but FFS what was she thinking?
We should not be surprised if Senator Fraser Anning of the Mad Katter Party gets up next week and moves a motion along the lines of “The Senate approves of the fourteen words, that 88 is Australia’s national number and, henceforth 20 April is declared National Australian Zeppelin Inspector’s Day.”
I have no doubt that, given the propensity for creating their own perpetual omnishambles, we could easily see 25 coalition senators voting for the motion and then blame it on a “slight mix-up in scheduling” when someone points out the horror of what they’ve just done.
To make sure the “It’s Alright to be WHITE” issue doesnt die in the 24hr news cycle.
Please LOOK & REMEMBER – paid $200k+ to represent YOU – on 15/10/18 like sheep voted YES to a racist statement in the Australian Senate in what they claim was a MISTAKE#Auspol#NotMyAustraliapic.twitter.com/8oosCuPJzA
this image has gone around the world and has attracted positive comments about our country from many people including legend @Evra This makes me very proud to be Australian pic.twitter.com/njZRxjmdt2
Mabil and his good friend Thomas Deng shared the excitement of playing their first game together for Australia’s national team. They are refugees from Sudan and they have more Australian spirit in their hearts, their souls and soles of their tricky feet than the entire Morrison Senate team.
The problem is that Skid Toryscum can’t see these great young Australians. He’s too busy gazing at his own lilywhite projection of racist fear to notice that the country has changed around him.
Morrison is looking to the past, Thomas and Awer are the future, I can’t wait to get there.
It was a difficult couple of months that closed out 2014. In fact, you could say I had a bit of a crisis. I was not entirely sure what I should be panicking about more: the threat from Ebola; being blown up in my sleep by a âdeath cultâ, or the hordes of black-clad anarchists that were allegedly threatening Brisbane during the meeting of the G20 group of rich nations.
Most of us are not prone to panic attacks, but all of us lead our stress-filled lives just one little incident away from the panic threshold. It seems at the moment like a tsunami of panic-inducing threats is rolling towards us.
Doctors and scientists will tell you that a feeling of panic occurs when our normal âfight or flightâ reaction to danger is over-stimulated and triggers in response to âfalse alarmsâ. In other words, we tend to panic when there is actually no real danger present. Of course, panicking in the face of a real and present danger is a psychological response to a âtrue alarmâ. Under such circumstances fighting back or running away might seem like totally logical reaction to threats.
According to researchers, the âfight or flightâ response to imminent danger (real or imagined) is based on three possible scenarios:
some of us have a biological vulnerability to anxiety, which can lead to a nervous over-reaction to events in everyday life;
some have a generalized psychological vulnerability, which the experts say can be a reaction to being over-parented and can lead us to think that the world is a dangerous place, best avoided;
then, thereâs a more specific type of psychological vulnerability which leads to a learned fear of certain objects or situations that are, in fact, not dangerous at all.
It seems to be that, being human, all of us are perhaps subject to each of these vulnerabilities at some point in our lives, or in response to a persistent external stimulus. We can also learn to overcome our anxieties and to lessen our fear of external events or situations that might lead us to panic. But what can we do when all the information coming into our cerebral cortex from the media points at panic being the only rational response to a world careening out of control?
You see, itâs rational to think that beyond the chemical processes in our brains there are probably social causes to the psychological distress that can lead us to panic. And, to my mind, three of them relate to fear of epidemic (Ebola); fear of imminent attack (âdeath cultsâ) and fear of social breakdown (the nightmare of anarchists running loose in a major city).
But how do we know that these are things we should fear? Well, if you read certain newspapers; listen to or watch enough broadcast news, or get sucked into the vortex of unreliable rumours in social media channels, it seems like the reasons to panic are multiplying on a daily basis.
I have a friend in Brisbane and in the build up to the G20 heâs described it me as the âCity of Fearâ. My friend has become so alarmed by life in the âCity of Fearâ that he asked me not to use his name: so Iâll call him Melcure.
Melcure was watching closely as Brisbane went into âlockdownâ ahead of the November G20 meeting of world leaders. He sent me daily email missives relating stories of low-flying helicopters and widening prohibitions on residents moving around the CBD as the police and armed forces practiced their counter-terrorism moves.
However, the real target of the police action appeared not to be âdeath cultâ terrorists, but a shadowy international anarchist group known as âBlack Blocâ. Luckily, the ever-vigilant news media was all over this story. The danger was talked up to such an extent that it seemed as if every anarchist on the planet was going to descend on Brisbane.
A year of worry, but the anarchists stayed away
But, think about it for a minute. What single prominent feature might define the worldâs most dedicated anarchists? In my mind itâs the fact that they probably havenât got a lot of money. Travelling to Australia from Europe or North America, just to throw rocks at dignitaries, seems like it would be low on their list of priorities. And also consider this; anarchists are notoriously lackadaisical about organizing. The idea that they might coordinate themselves to land in Brisbane in large enough numbers to be effective against 20,000 trained and armed riot police is laughable.
Iâve been in the political left for 40 years and to my knowledge the number of identifiable anarchists in Australia is measured in the low hundreds, not the 10s of thousands. My rational mind tells me not to panic about anarchist hordes burning down Brisbane.
If the anarchists were not going to be a threat then perhaps the âdeath cultâ terrorists of Dâaesh (ISIS) might target Brisbane. Should we have been worried about a secret operation by an Ebola-infected âdeath cultâ adherent to infiltrate the G20 to spread even more panic and destruction?
I wasnât sure until I heard and saw the news that PUP senator Jacquie Lambie was worried about just such an eventuality.
Let Senator Lambie do the worrying for you. That’s what she was elected to do.
This suggestion cleverly combines two panic-inducing thoughts: epidemic and terrorism. Surely here is something that we can sensibly worry about. You know it makes sense: Ebola is out there and itâs killing people; so to are the âdeath cultâ lunatics in northern Iraq and in the eastern parts of Syria. Surely theyâve got the resources to fly one Ebola-infected suicide bomber into Australia â specifically Brisbane during the G20 gabfest â so as to cause mass casualties and mayhem.
Yeah, I know, your rational mind (mine too) says this is a bit far-fetched and Jacquie Lambie is not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox. So, perhaps we can put this one aside. However, that doesnât mean we can relax when it comes to Ebola.
The deadly virus may not get to Australia incubating inside a âdeath cultâ terrorist, but it could still be on its way. So thatâs why Iâm grateful that my government has once again demonstrated its commitment to Fortress Australia and locked the arrivals gate to people from Ebola-affected parts of Africa.
It is the logical humanitarian response; after all we are more important and our lives more precious than theirs.
Scott Morrison is keeping Ebola under lock and key
Never mind that this could be construed as racist; never mind that the worldâs leading epidemiologists have condemned Australiaâs poor response to the Ebola crisis and never mind that brave individual Australian medical workers have volunteered to help contain the outbreak at source as recommended by the World Health Organisation. WHO are they to tell us how and why and over what we should panic?
Really, the global busybodies should leave that to our government and our media. After all, it is they who know best what is in our national interest and therefore it is them who should direct our nervous energy into the right sorts of panic.
Donât panic unless we tell you to
The lesson of the modern media is that we should only panic when they tell us to.
That is, the appropriate form of hysteria-inducing âmoral panicâ; the fear of the irrational that can be stirred by rousing speeches, three word slogans and a news media hungry for sensationalist headlines. A good moral panic does wonders for an unpopular leaderâs approval rating and it leads to improved ratings for the news media too. That is why we see such sterling collaboration between politicians and journalists and why we see such wonderful leadership on issues like fighting âdeath cultsâ, stopping anarchist hordes, tackling a deadly virus and ending world poverty (that last oneâs a joke).
The clear message is that thereâs no need to panic, unless the government and the media tell you to.
Thatâs the only rational explanation for this recent headline on the ânewspaper of the yearâ, The Courier-Mail. On Monday October 27, the Brisbane tabloid carried a fantastic, calming front-page story about the Ebola crisis. The message comes across loud and clear.
What, me worry?
This is a clever front-page and one designed to make us not panic even more. Just look at that horrible virus, itâs the size of a large double-headed tapeworm and itâs heading our way. The take-out from this is that we need to learn to panic only in response to the right stimulus, such as scary and misleading front-page stories about epidemics, âdeath cultsâ and anarchist hordes.
Well, so far these panic-inducing problems have only affected Brisbane, so no need for me, living in Melbourne, to panic; But for the sake of Melcure in the âCity of Fearâ, who’s made more anxious by what he reads in the always restrained and accurate Courier-Mail, Iâll just keep calm and pass him the worry beads.
Posted by Ethical Martini 
Two things are fairly certain in the wake of the Christchurch massacre and the NSW state election: Scott Morrison will not let go of his commitment to toxic white nationalism and the Coalition will preference One Nation and other racist factions above Labor and the Greens in the federal election.
Ethical Martini 