At some point, even under the optimistic scenario offered by the Doherty Institute and released by the government yesterday, Australian governments will decide to allow tens of thousands of cases of COVID and a surge in the number of deaths from it as the level of vaccination reaches a point where it starts reopening the economy.
That’s dramatically at odds with the current position of all governments — which took more than a year to reach — that even a tiny number of cases is good cause for a sharp lockdown. The policy goal is to reach a state where COVID is treated like influenza, not the society-stopping pandemic we’ve been told it is for 18 months.
Achieving this transition in perception without causing some fairly spectacular whiplash in the electorate — particularly if gloomier scenarios of tens of thousands of deaths turn out to be correct — will be quite a feat of leadership.
How did Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg go in their first step in that process yesterday?
They’re not coming from a strong position. First is their handling of the process so far — a refusal to release the modelling when the latest iteration of the plan for transitioning out of the pandemic was released last week, then dropping it during a media conference yesterday, preventing journalists and experts from examining it properly before they got the opportunity to ask questions. This is a Morrison tactic, even used on issues as important as the aged care royal commission report, because he hates the idea of being held accountable by anyone, particularly journalists.
Second is the pretence that the government hasn’t been compelled to abandon the partisan tactic of attacking Labor states for locking down as early as possible in response to new cases. “Early interventions, short, sharp lockdowns are the most cost effective way to handle the virus,” Frydenberg declared yesterday, as if he had never accused the Victorian government of “callous indifference” to business and “bloody mindedness”, or that the government had never refused to provide support to Victoria because it argued it would create an incentive for Labor states to go into lockdown too quickly.
Third is the general perception, even among its usual allies in the media, that it has badly botched the rollout, on top of its quarantine and COVIDSafe failures, and that Morrison’s all-PR-no-substance style of governing has been badly exposed during a crisis.
Fourth is Morrison’s burgeoning reputation for constant lying and evasion of responsibility, and the diminishing trust of the electorate in him, as evidenced by significant falls in his approval ratings and falling levels of trust in his capacity to handle the pandemic.
So with that rock-solid foundation, how did Morrison go? He spoke, in long preamble, about “clear learnings”, of “a pathway on vaccination that provides the protection necessary to ensure the many tools we have to suppress the virus”, of how “the tools that have helped us so much over the course of the last 18 months and more have indeed been blunted by the Delta strain”.
But most of all, he spoke of Australia: “Australia is not alone in this battle”; “Australia also is joined in this battle”; “We have charted our own Australian way through this pandemic. An Australian way with Australian results … An Australian way that has delivered Australian results … always finding our Australian way through this pandemic to get the Australian results … We are making our own Australian way through it.”
Get the message?
“Australian way” was devised by the PMO last summer for the prime minister to sprinkle through his statements but never with the logorrheic intensity of yesterday, and not with the neologism from the PMO of “Australian results”. And on and on it went:
Australians understand the challenge. Australians want to get on this path … Australians are in no doubt … Australia has achieved … I have great faith in Australians to do that … Mr Albanese is a vote of no confidence in Australians … Doing it for the cash, I don’t think is what would motivate an Australian to do this … Our plan is backing in Australians … This is a serious public health crisis. It’s not a game show …
So Morrison’s approach to preparing Australians for a whiplash from zero COVID to maybe scores of deaths a day as an accepted policy outcome is cheap nationalism. What next? A revived “C’mon Aussie C’mon” ad campaign? Fighting a war — did you like the Churchill-esque “joined in this battle”? — in an Australian way with Australian results with Australians getting on the path without doubt, having faith in Australians unlike that unAustralian Albanese who dares suggest people might act on the basis of self-interest … etc etc etc.
This is a serious public health crisis, to state the obvious. What we don’t have is a serious leader who’s up to the job. Damaged goods, incapable of striking the right note, uncomprehending of how to lead, Morrison can only dip into a now fairly tattered bag of spin and slogans. Oi oi oi.
What a strangely incomplete human he seems to be. I find myself asking why he wanted to be Prime Minister. Does he enjoy it? Is it really all about the nice address in Sydney and the free plane rides? It is a weird world he inhabits which seems to float untethered from the mundane world of facts.
No different to the cult to which he fervently belongs and which is busily infiltrating the SA Liberals.
Yes, it’s an avowed strategy of the cult to get members in positions of power, from School Boards upwards. It is often claimed that he is faking his religion, because of the immoral behavior (lying, locking up refugees, persecuting the unemployed etc), but those behaviors are not incompatible with the specific Pentecostal cult. I think he really does believe, hence the smug look of superiority as he blatantly lies.
It must be awful looking at himself in the mirror each morning – there must be a very shrivelled, smelly Dorian Gray-like portrait in the closet.
Perhaps it is in that photo op. Wendy house he pretended to be erecting?
Nah, I doubt he knows who Dorian Gray is. I reckon he looks, poses and gives himself a ‘how good is that’ thumbs up.
Probably true.
He’s like Liberace who had one of his lovers undergo plastic surgery to look like him so that he could indulge his desire to make love to himself.
That may be weird but surely weirder is the other person who acquiesced.
Rather as we, the electorate, did in 2019.
Morrison has more than a passing similarity to Colonel Cargill, a character from Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch 22.
Besides allowing us to marvel at Heller’s perceptiveness regarding marketing types, this extract from from the novel might also ring a few bells for Crikey readers:
https://www.warriorforum.com/copywriting/179804-do-you-know-colonel-cargill.html
Thanks for that reminder – it really is a prescient description of Morrison yet written 7 years before he was born.
Maybe he read it and though “”a role model”?
Maybe he read it and thought “great role model”?
https://www.thejuicemedia.com/honest-government-ads/
Labor should make ones like this
Unfortunately for us, he believes that God put him into power and that when he opens his mouth he is speaking god’s words.
This actually makes him a delusional creature with a god complex.
I suspect that the reason why he made no effort to obtain good vaccines for us all, is that he considers it god’s will if we unbelievers die from Covid19 or the side effects of Boris’ Brew.
One of the places to be used as vaccination hubs are designated “places of worship” I am betting Hillsong and Horizon churches will be doing Pfizer.
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2021/08/05/nsw-police-charge-hillsong-pastor-brian-houston-with-concealing-his-fathers-sexual-abuse-of-a-child/
The cult leaders left on a travel exemption before being served
And are now resident in Mexico which has no extradition treaty with this country.
Yeah, fancy that.
a general launching “a savage broadside” in national cabinet against a state premier is important news.
For the Prime Minister to be unconcerned and immediately back up his military man makes it serious business, a marker in the militarisation of government, what the Australia Institute’s Allan Behm calls “Operation Khaki Creep”.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2021/08/03/scott-morrison-military-coronavirus/
I have wondered this too. Imagine becoming PM entirely so you can prop up the rich and privileged. What’s the point?
There’s a Tom Lehrer song with a long rambling introduction about someone who makes a few false starts to his professional life before choosing medicine, where he “specialised in diseases of the rich”.
The same thinking would lead a politician to specialise in propping up the rich and privileged. It’s so rewarding.
Never ending cushy employment.
And a yooog, indexed (not to the CPI but future serving MP salaries), gold plated pension + perks such as free domestic 1st class & international business class air travel (HA!), office & staff so long as he lives.
Then all the sinecures, board spots and consultancies – which will probably be paid for him to STFA from anything he could screw up, as has been his wont since he was doing Vicks Vapour Rub ads as a child.
Morri$sin dumping Australian made for cheaper and dodgy PPE for health care workers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-20/australian-mask-manufacturer-dumped-for-cheaper-suppliers/100304530
Excess PPE is akin to excess rivets in a plane wing but bean counters gonna count the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
When you’ve convinced yourself that God has selected you as PM then everything you do or say is ok, you are doing God’s work. Therefore Smirko thinks that he is always right and the rest of us are always wrong. We are not privy to the exalted nature of his being. This is madness and probably verging on insanity.
Blair too. Anti-nomianism – see here –
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/06/the-tragedy-of-tony-blair/302979/
But Blair is not only Manichaean, he is Antinomian. The quaint sixteenth-century heretics who took that name believed that “to the pure all things are pure,” so if you were of the elect, you could eat, drink, and merrily fornicate in the certainty of salvation.
Very often Blair is like that—not in the eating and so forth, but in his belief that his inner virtue justifies whatever means he chooses to employ. Few Prime Ministers have ever been more sincere in their piety, and few have been capable of greater deviousness or even unscrupulousness.
‘Strangely incomplete human…’. How nice of you Griselda, how civilised. The phrase that came to my mind was ‘godawful turd’, but I may have had a less cultured upbringing. Your question is the sort of question a grown human being would ask. Why? Why bother? He didn’t get there with any beliefs, convictions, policies. He just wanted to get there, the chosen one. The second of the last three PMs the Libs have put up who got there because it was apparently ordained by their god.
What a shallow god they must follow.
It’s the god referred to in the Bible as Mammon.
Matthew 6:24 does not suggest that he is a god but a debased spirit which is the PM down pat or, as Milton puts it in Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 678 –
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven: for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy.
It is a weird world he inhabits, GL. I think he has grown strangely comfortable in that world of farkking things up, but never really consciously notices as he invariably fails upward. The inevitability of the Peter Principle explains how Morrison rose to a position beyond his competence; what puzzles me is that he’s proved the principle so many times in the last 25 years, moving from one incompetent performance up to another without anyone ever saying, ‘Hold on a minute…’
Yes I have wondered why he wanted the job. Most aspirants to PM want to achieve some policy objectives while in office but he doesn’t have any. Theyvalos realize if you want the status, being responsible is part of the job description but he doesn’t even seem to know how to do that.
Didnt proof-read. ‘They also realize’.
“Lieutenant-General John Frewen, an unelected public servant, had just listened to a desperate plea from the premier about redirecting Commonwealth-controlled vaccines from GP clinics into the most affected Sydney local government areas,”
“Frewen was apoplectic. According to those present in the virtual meeting, he spoke with such derision that it left other premiers and chief ministers stunned. At least one state leader told colleagues: ‘I would have stopped the meeting if he had spoken to me like that’.”
Morton also reported Scott Morrison handballed much of the negotiating in the virtual meeting to General Frewen and periodically stood up from his desk “turned his back to the camera and bent down to literally stoke a fire with a poker”.
The reported performance of the military at that level is important, used by the Prime Minister to conduct national cabinet affairs, tackling a premier, rather than the supposed role of being a public servant of the federation in running the vaccination program.
And knocking the military, questioning Operation Khaki Creep, has been turned into something a Committee for Un-Australian Activities might investigate.
That’s been both the aim and result of politicians increasingly wrapping themselves in the flag and surrounding themselves with people in military uniform, none more so than Scott Morrison…. and surrounding themselves with people in military uniform, none more so than Scott Morrison.
The use of the military for props is a natural extension of the flag lapel pin – “it reminds me every single day whose side I’m on” – and the flag face mask and whenever possible, multi-flag backgrounds for announcements and photo ops.
Scott Morrison kept uniforms close during Operation Sovereign Borders and when his polling dived during the bushfire crisis.
Now there’s Operation COVID Shield with a Royal Australian Navy commodore appointed in April to manage the logistics of the vaccine rollout.
And now we have the military not just providing service backup to civilian roles, but on the street creeping closer to policing.
It’s the military, the flag – we must be in good hands.
But the evidence suggests we’re not. Whatever happened in national cabinet on Friday, there was nothing of substance to show for it at the end….Michael Pascoe The New Daily
“Morrison is entering the Billy McMahon free-fire mockery zone. And not before time. Can’t recall a more incompetent, deceitful, do-nothing PM.” Morrison and his government are well ahead of Billy McMahon’s government in terms of incompetence and John Howard’s in terms of venality
Bernard Keane on Morrison’s lying in hyperdrive this week.
That’s come on top of Morrison bizarrely claiming Berejiklian never raised the issue of additional vaccines for NSW in national cabinet when she said she had “argued my little heart out” on the issue and been rejected — with Frewen fingered as having spoken to her with “derision”, an outrageous insult to a democratically elected leader by a bureaucrat and a military man to boot — sufficient that, if true, the general should have been sacked on the spot and kicked out of the meeting.
We are so lucky to see a lot of ribbons and medals on the optics, it’s so soothing and comforting.
Yeah, I was astounded to read that a General would talk to an elected Premier like that. I’m quite surprised that any of the other Premiers didn’t get up and tell him to pull his head in. While Morrison stoked the fireplace. He has no interest in being there, which takes us back to Griselda’s question.
I assumed that “poking the fireplace” was a euphemism for another activity.
“General Nose Best”? Apparently Frewen’s also an “epidemiologist”? Dismissing McLaws concerns like he did? …. Lucky Scotty, lucky us – having such a dab hand at the tiller?
Except of course, in our army, whenever things go SNAFU, “No officer is ever to blame”?
“If it don’t move, paint it. If it does, salute.”
And he’s now blaming others for politicising his position, FFS we should be scare, this man comes from another arm of the clandestine nasties.
By Job, at least he’s not blaming his doG, yet?
How did Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg go in their first step in that process yesterday?
Absolutely terribly badly. Maybe they cannot remember what they said and did but it is insulting to think they think that the rest of us have no memory.
It is insulting to be lied, to on a daily basis, since he became PM.
who leaked the top secret ‘Wilkie’ document?
Josh from accounts.
The man who oversaw the bugging of a near neighbour, Downer.
Lord Bunter the Downer was far too grand to soil himself associating with the likes of Blot – that’s what aides such as Josh were for – deniability when the only copy signed out of the ONAist registry at the time was to Bunter.
Being his mate, at the time.
There are some degenerates called conservatives who prefer lies to facts, even if they know their version of ‘reality’ is inaccurate or Trumpesque.
Like all conservatives there is a diagnosable condition evident
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information.
It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds.
In fact, quite the opposite.
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds.
In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs.
Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates.
They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds.
The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed.
Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.
“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study.
The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”
And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs.
This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information.
In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.
For the most part, it didn’t.
In this leadership crisis, would the though ever have crossed the mind of the GG that someone else may be better for the country? If so, can he do anything about it?
I have this deep seated fear that we’ll have an election and they’ll win!
More than likely actually.
The bookies say that the coalition will win – although they got it wrong last time. That said, if the punters are still backing this current lying, dishonest, corrupt and shambolic crew when they surely have to be at their nadir, then not only the oppositions prospects are sunk, but so are Australia’s.
We have biased media in Australia. Morrison won the last election just by kicking balls all round the place and get Palmer and Hanson to support him in QLD. There was no critical analysis of his proposals – none, zero. Media was very critical of Shorten’s policies and made a big deal about the costings for climate change proposals. Media including Criker will change their tune come elections.
And spending $8.1 billion of taxpayer-funded cash on ‘giveaways’ (particularly in QueenslandL) ‘Luckyduck’ during pre-2019
The reason that “There was no critical analysis of his proposals…” in 2019 is that there were none, zero, nada.
It’s hard not to win when there is no opponent.
Keating might still be alive to see Australia become a banana republic after all.
I hope so as he started the ball rolling in that direction
The GG is not that powerful. The sacking of Gough Whitlam and the elected Labor government was a political coup, by Sir John Kerr, GG, Sir Garfield Barwick, Chief Justice, Sir Anthony Mason, High Court Justice, in secret, with Malcolm Fraser across everything plotted. The plotters sacked the elected Labor Government after sacking Gough. Never want to see anything like the dismissal in a democracy again.
Not much! Who would you replace him with?
A randomly selected adult Australian citizen would, I am sure, be very likely an improvement. Not guaranteed, but let’s go with the probability, it’s worth a punt.
A class of schoolies would do well. After all, they practice…
An elected, not selected, GG. The title could be changed.
But who would that someone be? One job Albanese of Sydney University and the labor party?
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2021/08/05/covid-recession-nsw-gladys-morrison/
Your gold standard of debauchery
Albo is untainted, but your man Morri$sin is covered in filth in every job he’s had and from thich he’s been sacked, a proud moment for you to contemplate.
In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.
There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/
Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) as general manager.
The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).
Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament.
By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government.
“The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.
HANSARD Tuesday, 28 November 2000 Page: 19895
”Tourism Council of Australia: Funding
Senator SCHACHT (2:14 PM) —My question is addressed to Senator Kemp, the Assistant Treasurer. How does the Assistant Treasurer justify the $2.3 million GST start-up assistance grant which was given to the Tourism Council when that organisation was insolvent? Is he aware that the general manager of the GST Start-Up Assistance Office has stated that the office would not have contracted the council if they had been aware of the facts? Why weren’t they aware of the facts? Is it true that the council breached its contract by charging for attendance at its GST seminars? What role did the director of the New South Wales Liberal Party, Mr Scott Morrison, or the former managing director of the council, Liberal MP Mr Bruce Baird, play in securing the $2.3 million grant?
Minister, in particular, will you carry out an investigation to ensure that all the money has been properly acquitted? Secondly, will you also investigate why the Tourism Council apparently was permitted to breach its contract by charging tourist businesses $40 each to attend the supposedly free GST seminars?”
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:”chamber/hansards/2000-11-28/0007″;src1=sm1
In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully.
The NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board.
See The Saturday Paper.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/11/17/morrison-hijacked-nz-tourism-review/15423732007158
Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.
The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998).
Clark was John Howard’s golfing partner and supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner.
Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission.
By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party.
Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.
Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison?
“He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.
Albo is untainted, but your man Morri$sin is covered in filth in every job he’s had and from thich he’s been sacked, a proud moment for you to contemplate.
In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.
There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/
See The Saturday Paper.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/11/17/morrison-hijacked-nz-tourism-review/15423732007158
Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.
Scott Morrison’s illustrious careers – some of them – a sample of his abilities
1998-2000 The New Zealand Jaunt
In 1998 -2000 Scott Morrison went to New Zealand to run the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Sport answering directly to Tourism Minister, Murray McCully.
He became known as Murray’s Rottweiler in a battle between the Minister and the Tourism Board.
When the dust settled the casualties included the Board’s chairman and chief executive, as well as McCully himself.
A Wellington newspaper reported that in the ensuring inquiry, Morrison emerged as “a cross between Rasputin and Crocodile Dundee.”
From NZ Hansard in a debate on a matter of public importance.
PM Helen Clark said:
“I mean we are talking hush money here. We are talking allegations that people, when they left the board, had their silence bought because Mr McCully found it too serious for them to be speaking freely.”
“What we need to know is what were they being paid to keep quiet about.”
PM of NZ Helen Clark said,
“We now have a report from the Controller and Auditor-General that outlines what happened through that process. We have received this afternoon a press release from the Tourism Board. That press release states quite clearly, as is stated in the report, that Mr Mogridge and Mr Wall had done nothing wrong, hence the Minister’s inability to shift them from their positions.
Scott Morrison followed Bruce Baird into the seat of COOK following the 2007 Federal Election.
2010 – 2012 Public Grubbiness Begins
2013 The Grubbiness Grows
October 2014 – The Ego Takes Over
https://archiearchive.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/the-public-life-of-scott-morrison/
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was sacked as Managing Director of Tourism Australia in 2006 and he has always refused to say why. One thing is for certain, it had to be massive wrongdoing by Morrison. Why? Because Scott Morrison, who was State Director of the New South Wales Liberal Party from 2000 to 2004, was sacked by a Liberal Party Minister in the Liberal Party John Howard government and they don’t sack one of their own for a minor reason or even a major reason. Morrison’s sacking had to be something, at the very least, bordering on criminal and more than likely actual criminal conduct.
Since 2006 Scott Morrison has refused to answer questions about his sacking and little has been known about the reasons for it until now. Journalist Karen Middleton published an article on Saturday (8/6/19) which she spent 6 months investigating and to me it makes it clear Mossison was likely sacked for deliberate lies and deception in relation to the awarding of government contracts worth $184 million.