One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, the cliché goes.
While the union movement is divided over the Andrews government’s vaccine mandate in the construction industry and its decision to shut the industry down for widespread non-compliance with public health orders, it’s unanimous in its condemnation of this week’s violent protests in Melbourne directed at the CFMMEU, the Andrews government and pretty much anyone else nearby.
The ACTU supports the mandate and the shutdown, while the CFMMEU opposes the mandate and insists much of vaccine hesitancy among construction workers is due to confusion over AstraZeneca and the lack of a vaccination information campaign from the government (at least the union put its money where its mouth is and funded its own media campaign).
The divisions among unions, however, have their parallel in a much starker division between elements of the Coalition. Liberal MP Fiona Martin — who is actually from Sydney, not Melbourne — condemned the violent protests as “Lawless unions. Wrecking the vaccine rollout” — accompanied, inconveniently, by a photo of CFMMEU officials being attacked by rioters.
The Australian Financial Review today tried to get around that inconvenience by arguing that CFMMEU officials being attacked was simply payback for its tactics and violence. If this wasn’t union thuggery, it must be the result of union thuggery. Either way, it was the traditional business narrative of lawless unions.
But it was a very different message from elsewhere in the Coalition, where the rioters were cheered on. George Christensen supports the rioters so strongly he has called for police to be arrested — prompting fury from his Nationals colleagues. So much so that former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack criticised new Nats leader Barnaby Joyce for not pulling the Queensland MP into line.
No lawless unions or CFMMEU blowback for Christensen — just brave freedom fighters. But Christensen is an outlier, surely — an extremist even among his own crowd?
Cue Victorian Liberal Alan Tudge — he of robodebt, an affair with his staffer and, most famously carpark rorts — to cry freedom. “I do not recognise our city or state anymore. The normal democratic checks and balances are gone. Basic freedoms are denied. The community is fracturing… It is not right and cannot go on.”
Tudge’s message was more in tune with the feckless “Dictator Dan” line of the Victorian opposition, which has embraced conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric in an effort to undermine lockdowns throughout 2020 and 2021, rather than successfully focusing on Andrews’ colossal quarantine failures in 2020.
As Cam Wilson has shown here at Crikey, Christensen has watched the way far-right political figures have exploited communities online in the United States to build support, and sought to ape their business model, albeit so far with less success. Christensen has followed the path of numerous extremist figures in the US in attacking lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination and promoting unproved COVID cures.
The bigger story in the US is the extent to which that manipulation and embrace of extremist, violent politics has shifted from fringe elements of the Republican Party to now dominate that party, which even after Trump’s defeat is slowly but surely purging itself of non-extremists, let alone whatever few remaining moderates might be left.
The lesson from the GOP appears to be that if you let the extremist infection into your own ranks, it can end up dominating you.
Is the same thing starting to happen to the Liberals? Far from Craig Kelly and Christensen representing a kind of fading populism, are they just the start?
The likes of Martin and the Berejiklian government in New South Wales represent a more traditional Liberal Party — pro-business donor, anti-union, pro-investment — which, on issues like a vaccine mandate, are directly at odds with the extremists, but which might find their populism handy if it delivers traditional goals like deregulation.
That was the devil’s deal that American business made with Trump — let him ride populism to victory so he could deliver their agenda of deregulation and tax cuts. As the GOP becomes ever more extreme and loses elections, it doesn’t look like such a great bargain.
The Liberal Party is a different beast with a different structure and, compared with the Republican Party, its grassroots have less power. But the LNP, where the grassroots have more say, might prove a vector for infection that will last longer than COVID.
George Christensen supports the rioters so strongly he has called for police to be arrested… so much so that former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack criticised new Nats leader Barnaby Joyce for not pulling the Queensland MP into line.
Morrison is in New York and we have Joyce, McCormack and Christensen to fill his shoes.
I do not know whether to laugh or cry – hysterically in either case.
Alan Tudge : “I do not recognise our city or state anymore.”
What a coincidence, I don’t recognise this nation anymore due to the self-interested Coalition policies & woeful lack of leadership & cockups by Tudge’s mate, Morrison.
Somebody please tell Morrison that a photo of him with Biden is no evidence of competence or statesmanship. In fact it’s alarmingly reminiscent of Chauncey Gardiner in ‘Being There’.
agree – the reason Tudge has lost the his ability for recognition of his city and state is due to the Liberal governments policy decisions Federal and State
Same here zut. I don’t recognise this country anymore. The world has always been a basket case, but I don’t recognise the basket any more. Not yet 60, but I may have been around too long.
Well said BK. We have to remember that the riots are in Melbourne rather than Sydney becaus of the continuous narrative of the hated Dictoator Dan, led by Murdoch and these hard right reactionaries. Of course Morrison and their ilk are delighted that it is Dan’s state being stuffed around, and not precious Gladys’s. And the3se Right wing loonies are extremely active on social media – infintely more so than the left or moderate voice. however, I have faith that the great majority of us will watch the s–tshow going on in all aspects of the Morrison world and vote accordingly.
If you really want to avoid high blood pressure, don’t watch Sky Noise After Dark and Peta Credlin’s alternative reality…..which I suspect aligns with hubby’s.
No – never watch Murdoch stuff. Even glancing at one of his rags gives me high blood pressure. Strictly an ABC / SMH follower, but even they are being gradiually dragged to the far side. And as someone said earlier, The Guardian has gone to water and you only see isolated god articles in the NewDaily. Crikey gives us our only real critical voice . . .
Rupert Murdoch has been creating the very extremism that he is also exploiting and the ‘humanities’ media are complicit in his downplaying of scientific fact based output, that denies alternative realities and false equivalence, as ‘balanced’ reporting.
We all suffer……but his empire rolls on.
Rupert ‘Mockingbird’ Murdoch will eventually die, that is a certainty. For most of the rest of us (except Smiko and his mates) the only certainties and ‘taxes and death’ (currently in that order). If Melbourne community was actually ‘fracturing’ there would have been one hundred thousand or more residents on The Bridge yesterday. We do love our ‘mass gatherings’ aka ‘the footy’!
are ‘taxes and death’ not and. The earthquake has got to me.
Unfortunately Lachlan has indicated his intention to follow faithfully the old man’s formula of divide for profit.
Decades of demeaning behaviour ahead unfortunately.
Andrews’ colossal quarantine failures in 2020.
Bernard Keane keeps repeating this. But there have been over a dozen lapses in hotel quarantine, in various states. Perhaps Victoria was just unlucky being the first and caught on the hop.
After all, wasn’t the failure to make sure airport limosine drivers were fully protected the cause of all the current problems?
And that was in Gladys’s state.
Isn’t the real failure not creating quarantine camps in every state. Could have easily been done in conjunction with the ADF, could still.
Yes and yes. A few of Victoria’s shutdowns were caused by quarantine lapses in SA and NSW. They have been unlucky for sure, and Gladys up till this latest episode has been lucky. And incompetent.
Unlucky?? Seriously??
This failure occurred because the left have been taken over the educated uni class. Any true working class person knows the hotel and security industry very well. We knew it was shonky and insecure. Ask any real working class person and they’d laugh at the idea of putting a private security guard in charge of pretty much anything.
The security and hotel industry is just another example of the left’s failure. When was the last time the progressive media or the Labor politicians ever told you what was going on in these industries? Ugly ugly. These industries were taken over about 15 years ago and run into the ground. Not that the educated uni classes care because it involves a bunch of poor people. Ew, poor people! I’m all for climate but they’re a little too busy with climate and gender to worry about security guards.