We pick up where we left off, with the Morrison government lurching from one bungle to another, not merely stuffing up the simple deportation of an unvaccinated tennis player who should never have been let in the country, but the altogether more serious challenges of ensuring sufficient COVID testing capacity and preventing the inevitable consequences of its own national reopening plan from wrecking supply chains and service industries.
The result is a national shortage of rapid antigen tests (RATs) in a world awash with the things, kilometres of empty supermarket shelves around the country, and a continuing crisis in aged care due to lack of staff, with a permanent state of lockdown for tens of thousands of seniors across the country for the foreseeable future.
If the vaccination rollout debacle was, in the words of Malcolm Turnbull, “the biggest failure of public administration I can recall”, then the RAT and supply chain debacles have to be in consideration for that title as well.
The failures are breathtaking for the simple fact that they reflect a failure to think through the obvious consequences of the national reopening plan agreed, amid much debate, in mid-2021: a surge in infection numbers, but with a dramatic lowering of intensity of symptoms and rates of hospitalisation and death due to vaccination. While the Omicron variant may have changed the numbers at the margin, Australia’s plan was always to accept a massive increase in infections, while serious cases remained low and primarily confined to the unvaccinated.
Yet no one within the Morrison government undertook any planning for exactly the scenario we were relying on to transition back to something vaguely approaching normal — how do we deal with large numbers of infected workers, how long do they isolate, if at all, how do they get tested, how long are they required to be absent from the workplace, how long might they be absent because they’re ill, and how will industries with already significant workforce issues, or serving vulnerable communities, or both, cope with a large number of infections?
That failure of planning echoes the failure to avoid overreliance on one source of vaccines and the failure to properly plan the rollout of vaccinations, particularly to aged care and disability residential facilities in 2020-21, with the difference that the government has had an extra year to get planning right.
We’ve previously connected the routine incompetence of the Morrison government to Scott Morrison’s obsessive lying, and to the fact that Morrison by his own admission runs government for his mates i.e. as a protection racket, in which corporations purchase policy outcomes in exchange for donations and post-political jobs. Morrison’s preference for media conferences and press releases over actual substance is obviously another factor.
But it’s time to look beyond just the personal characteristics of Morrison’s government to see if this repeated failure is becoming systemic in Canberra. Will better government be delivered by a different prime minister or a different party? Or has something structural happened to the federal government’s capacity to function effectively?
This is a much more complex issue than simply criticising Morrison as incompetent, as even some of the most banal, centrist press gallery types have finally begun doing. Virtually no one has been trying to examine it as a public policy problem, rather than a political one: only Michael Pascoe and, today, Alan Kohler, both at The New Daily, have tried to fathom exactly what is going wrong within the people charged with running the country.
Kohler argues that the failures represent the consequences of neoliberalism and its prevailing ethic of government withdrawal in favour of markets. There’s much that is true in that analysis. If you believe governments shouldn’t do things, the muscle memory of actually doing things and doing them effectively vanishes, and when time comes for government intervention, particularly of any complexity, it involves relearning some very basic skills all over again.
Remember, this is a government that, as the car park rorts scandal shows, can’t even pork-barrel effectively, so it’s unsurprising that it struggles with more substantive policy challenges.
What specifically has gone wrong within the government, and within the public service, that has seen a withering of capacity for effective intervention? Is it readily remediable, or are we stuck with the consequences for some time to come?
Tomorrow: the decline of functional government in the Commonwealth…
Do you think Scott Morrison is the main issue with the federal government, or do the problems run deeper? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
In my opinion.
The decades of public disparagement of the Public Service has come back to bite.
Utilising consultancies such as McKinsey and KPMG for vaccination rollouts is a red flag.
There has been in my observation a long term strategy to remove expertise so that there are little to no gatekeepers between public money and politicians/private enterprise.
Thank goodness for the clinical side of state health departments which are to some degree of the old school where public services were valued.
I used to be an IT manager (30 years experience, no gaps in my step by step progression from software engineer to management) of a payroll that paid $100M a week (in 2010) and sat in another department to a well known Health Payroll failure (this was a shared services disaster and does not reflect on the very professional clinical side of the state health department). My department had kept its key payroll business and IT expertise ( and was benchmarked at the most efficient cost per pay of both private and public payrolls) so it avoided the disaster of a project that was staffed by contractors, consultants, vendors and content free executives. The government of the day was voted out. The incoming Premier organised a commission that was oriented to getting the now opposition and missed the underlying causes of a hollowed out workforce and ideologically driven and incapable executive.
The Health Payroll burnt our annual operational budget in about 11 days. We paid much the same numbers (with less rostering requirements).
One of the witnesses in the commission had a ideology of outsourcing and using the big names ( I know, I battled with him before he moved to shared services). This made serious problems in my view. Line staff who really know what needs to be done get pushed aside or circumnavigated at key points – they just can’t see the “idelogical correct path,”.
Unless someone has held real responsibility in an area of serious public sector service delivery, it’s very hard to convey some of these issues. Our “master for payroll”, 70,000 people waiting for their fortnightly pay to turn up correct and on time. Of those 70,000 quite a few happy to go to private media for a story. Quite a lynch mob if you want to think about it – we faced this “public external exam” of our work/changes/fixes each and every fortnight, we were wary to say the least and any idiots were quickly washed out – the survivors became the cohesive and knowledgeable “muscle memory”. Any outsiders had to work their way in and prove themselves. Domain knowledge could not be downloaded and had to be built individually by really hard and persistent work and cooperation with others.
There was no glory in it so those outsiders who were careful, capable and willing to work as part of a team were carefully and incrementally included. This comment is not about me but the service I left years ago. I suspect the lack of such a team is a reason why the aged care booster program is slow.
I suspect some of these agencies have become so hollowed out and infested by opportunists, that they have become deskilled, demoralised, disrespected and have lost the previous paragraphs ethos.
Public Hospital and other staff face in my view particular challenges.
People might think it’s just payroll, well it’s hundreds of central and regional staff, millions of lines of code, dozens of interfaces, servers, networks etc. A vaccine in an arm probably looks simple to some.
I don’t even bother to discuss this sort of thing with many people who really have been brainwashed by decades of disparagement of the public sector and don’t have the life experiences to understand large scale serious Operations (payroll, vaccinations)
I would encourage Crikey to keep exploring the why are we now so third world in our ability to do what should be quite achievable initiatives. In my opinion, you would do us all a great service if you could get some traction on this question.
Singapore for one see the value in a highly skilled Public Sector, and don’t engage in our self destructive behaviour. They also see value in Ministers developing an adequate understanding of their agency. But then they are first world.
As a closing note, I grew up on an outback sheep and cattle station, spent many weeks of 13 hour days in the saddle. I also worked remotely as a private enterprise exploration geologist on 7 day a week multi month stints – working day around 11+ hours, eventually became so tired it could be difficult to tie my bootlaces. Nothing special, I know people that have worked harder. My point, the hardest, most responsible and most complex work I have ever done was in the public sector. Again this comment is not about me.
My son was a public ED doctor, his worst run was 6 hours sleep in 72 hours, if he didn’t go to work, no one to replace him. He looked like a cancer patient. His story is very common – the front line staff are often better than the executive and administration. He now has a much better life in private enterprise.
My wife had cancer, the private specialist kept prescribing PET-CT scans with high doses of radiation. My son intervened and sent her to an extremely busy public hospital outpatients, their goal was to fix her and not milk her for money. I am glady state still has a good clinical service delivery.
I also know there are pockets of the public service that need to be cleaned up – but it’s not in the public interest to judge the whole by its parts.
So for those of you who don’t have a Singaporean type attitude/expectation to what a professional and skilled public service could be. Guess we have little to talk about. If Crikey want to hear more of my experiences, you are welcome to contact me – but hopefully you have much much better sources than me.
Thank you Bill. Operations – actually getting things done – requires a deep understanding of mechanics. Policy needs conversation with operations people: can we do it? How do we do it?
Temporary consultants can’t have the deep networks to ask questions at the coal face. So their policy ideas don’t connect to reality.
I have collaborated with the likes of McKinsey and PWC in large private and government owned corporations. The best of them made connections with operations – but by the time messages got to the top they always had a best-case, over optimistic spin.
Sad thing is those consultants these days know more, as they are ex-public servants wandering the floors talking to people looking for opportunities, whereas the public servants who remain are less skilled, and are left just reviewing the work of the contractors.
Yes,, when MD of a medium sized company I had a distrust of consultants – they would come in, ask you all the questions about your business, then parrot back the same to you at a huge cost.
“Consultants ask to borrow your watch to tell you the time, and then walk off with your watch!” (Geoff Parcell and Chris Collison. No More Consultants. We know more than we think. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009}
Thanks so much Bill for your service and commitment. Interesting to read your reference to ‘first world’ Singapore who ‘see the value in a highly skilled Public Sector, and don’t engage in our self destructive behaviour’. On the weekend l spoke to a friend who visited Singapore a few weeks ago. They remarked upon how pleasant it was to leave behind the chaos and ineptitude of Australia for a short time and enjoy the benefits and peace of mind provided by an organised and effective Singaporean government. A stark example of current policy failure is the Federal Government in Australia failing to secure and provide RATs tests and provide free masks to all Australian’s to limit the spread of Covid 29. The US is well known for its poor resourcing of public health and the absence of a universal healthcare scheme such as Medicare. Yet the SMH reported on Thursday that Biden is planning to provide free N95 masks across the US and currently has a stockpile of 750 million and RATs tests are available for free too.
Worth reading: https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/the-smart-companies-that-avoided-rat-trap-by-bulk-ordering-kits-last-year-20220113-p59nz8.html#comments
The voice. Bill’s voice. A Voice and others like him, prepared to speak out. Even more so, offer to participate, contribute. If our Nation is to re-focus, fight to retain essential skills that have built an envied Australian democratic community; Bill’s voice and others need be heard.
Australia is facing up-coming May Election. And we all, facing potential loss of national equity.
Thanks for speaking out Bill. I’m glad people are being encouraging. Systematic outsourcing has always been false economy that comes back and bites the user on the butt. The knowhow is always in the wrong place when it’s most needed.
Lived with a paramedic. She said that incompetent people get sent on training courses to get them out of the way. But those people come back with superior qualifications and stuff everything up.
Lived in Singapore as an expat for 4 years. They really valued theri public servce. They identified the brightest kids at school level, then coached them through the susystem, and then paid them very well once in the servive. Reading Lee Kwan You’s book, you see that he claimed th ecurrent president, BG Lee as we knew him then, was the brightest rbain in all of Singapore. Huge contrast with Scotty!
I doubt that there are ‘better sources than’ you.
I am grateful to you for sharing your experience, and alos for the cogent delivery.
Yeah, thanks Bill, I similarly have had a career in IT stemming back to the 70s. I look at the debacle of the Service NSW site and just shake my head. The mixture of passwords, PIN numbers and messaged codes, even when you’re already logged in, is ludicrous and totally indicative of management out of their depth.
Thank you for your straight talking.
I thought KPMG WAS the public service now.
In my opinion,
Bill, what’s your experience with the politicisation of the public service executive?
My understanding was that it started in the Hawke-Keating era, the instigators of neoliberalism. Short term contracts (3-5 years) rather than life tenure were introduced to snap leadership of government departments out of their bureaucratic inertia. Are we now experiencing the unintended consequences of those processes?
Politicians want an executive that will roll out their policies more than the politicians want frank and fearless advice that their policies are suboptimal.
Ironically, Yes Minister was prime viewing in that era. Are the days of Sir Humphrey Appleby keeping his master in check with frank and fearless advice gone? The Hollowmen showed the spirit of inertia is surviving and thriving in the big Humphrey Nest west of Synney somewhere.
Two of the reasons that China has time limitations on leadership roles are firstly, it stops or slows down corruption, and secondly, it is a means of constantly keeping leadership on their toes because there is a surfeit of ambition being constantly trained and groomed as the official succession planning. Depth of talent.
I used to say that China has a plan. Now, it had a plan. Xi is right man right time for the West because his demand for extended tenure weakens the potentially indomitable machine that is China Inc. Authoritarianism has a demonstrated historical failure rate of 100%, since forever. So all we can do is keep them onside diplomatically, be unified with the rest of the world on human rights, territorial claims, all the conflict stuff and avoid military conflict beyond the black ops we don’t know. Bloody conspiracy theorist.
By contrast, our system produces style over substance. Why?
And Why is progressive a dirty word?
I agree.
I worked in the Department of Employment, Education and Training when it was merged with Social Security. Having never had any other job I did not appreciate the unbelievable professionalism of Centrelink. The workers were trained to abide by privacy laws and it was a massive success. People could apply for an emergency pay in Tasmania and then head to QLD and ask for another one and the people there would know all about the application in Tasmania. I took it all for granted.
Then I saw what the Victorian public service and community organisations were like and I realised how amazing the capacity of Centrelink really was/is. All it ever gets is a bagging in the press. But when you think about what they do every single week, day after day, paying a huge section of the population with very few scandals, it is quite amazing. Centrelink would have a dedicated body of workers who investigated their own workforce who looked up people’s files without cause. I remember two people from my office being sacked for looking up a celebrity.
Since then I have seen community sectors and state public service workers without any awareness of the Privacy Laws. It is like they don’t even know they exist. I realise how amazing Centrelink really was, and how professional.
If you just read the papers you would think Centrelink was doing a terrible job. But every single day of the year millions of people are paid money without hiccup and without fanfare and it is all just taken for granted as if it is nothing.
It is not nothing.
I have never seen professionalism like the professionalism I saw in the federal public service. They ran a tight ship, and you knew not only that people would be paid on time, but most importantly, people’s private information was tightly held and protected. I have not witnessed professionalism like that since.
I completely agree – thems was the daze when P/S meant ‘servant’ of the ‘public’ which was itself an unnecessary po-mo rebranding of the concept of civil servant – a servant of the civis, the citizenry.
Now an utterly forgotten when not denigrated concept.
As per Joni Mitchell, ♪♪you don’t know what you got ’till it’s gone♪♪.
Have you ever had to deal with Centrelink as a customer. From lived experience it is far from a sleek process. At the age of 65 I have health issues but can’t get sickness benefits. On jobseeker I have to deal with Centrelink, an employment service and do a training course through a third company for a job I will never get as a result of my health issues. How much does that cost to pay me $650 per fortnight? And let’s not forget Robodebt.
I think there’s a huge difference between what Centrelink used to be (when it was part of the Department of Social Security) and what it is now. It used to be the place where people who were unemployed went to get assistance in finding a job, and now it’s the place where people are treated as malingerers or worse and made to jump through all sorts of hoops. I’m writing as an 81-year-old former teacher who had to retire early from ill health in the mid 1990s, when the transition was happening from Keating to Howard and I bear the scars.
I too worked at the then Department of Social Security for 12 years. It was very well run with the latest up to date technology and the level of training received was second to none. Privacy was emphasised to the nth degree. It wasn’t even up for discussion.
But of course it’s now another agency that has been hollowed out. The experience has been allowed to depart and has been replaced by poorly trained (by comparison) casuals and contractors with no buy in to the ethos.
The act has been tinkered with over and over again and more draconian policies have been introduced. As a result it’s now an organisation in crisis. Robodebt a case in point.
Who though it was a good idea to do data matching without human oversight? We did data matching back in the 1980’s but we always investigated the results. Wasn’t difficult. But it did require people power and human oversight.
i have no doubt the cost cutting that has gone on in Centrelink has been far more expensive than keeping a well trained invested workforce would have been.
And paying private providers to try to find non existent work for people in their 60’s, or those with the ubiquitous underlying health conditions is a waste of money.
And don’t even get me started with the Cashless Debit Cards and government coercive control.
A hideous expense for an unnecessary and draconian system that only benefits the private provider of the scheme.
The entire system need a complete root and branch reform including the act.
It’s been said to death, but with the major silos of public information – the mainstream media – largely providing the government a buffer of insulation that minimises every failure or breathlessly redirects to some fatuous announcement – there was the security that allowed a minimal approach to public works, public health and a meanness of spirit. What do most people know or care about carparks or general incompetence? However, this pandemic has given the Governments faults a painfully real world sting for the entire population – it’s literally impossible to not be aware of the LNPs staggering ineptitude. The media still provides cover but this time it’s transparently thin and utterly useless. The Government has no clothes.
Even on Crikey, a significant portion of the articles are bagging out Federal Labor… a party that hasn’t been in power for almost a decade.
Guy Rundle would have to be the worst.
A complete hack.
There also now seems to be a lack, at least in the government’s mind and from the perspective of much of the media, of any distinction between the ruling party and the government. If the LNP wins, they rule entirely for the benefit of their donors and favoured interests groups and against those groups and institutions they perceive as the enemy. For instance, can you imagine the Howard government hanging the entire university sector out to dry in a crisis the way the Morrison/Joyce cabal has done? In other words, the notion of governing for all seems to have gone completely out the window.
As well, the principles of good governance – integrity, accountability, transparency and a clear understanding of each person’s roles and responsibilities – appear to have been entirely shredded. No-one seems to have any notion of what government is, what it is for – beyond keeping the other side out.
As to structural drivers of the malfunctioning, the breakdown of federalism appears to be having a key role. There has been much criticism of state leaders for being stubbornly parochial over closed borders. But given healthcare is a frontline state responsibility and given the incompetence and lack of good faith from the Morrison federal government every step of the way, who can blame them for locking down longer than might have been necessary?
Finally, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don’t think you can mount any credible critique of the failings of Australian democracy without pointing the finger at the obscenely disproportionate power of News Corp. When you have the two big city tabloids actively running propaganda for the government dressed up as news, you have a problem.
‘City tabloids’, worse than that . . . ! For Murdoch oligarchical Media Empire now moving, having decimated regional, local ‘print’; to further tighten noose by swallowing ‘Radio’ networks. Thereby ensuring we will hear, see and comment upon only what an other, wants “for us”?
And stuffed up democracy in the three countries they publish oin – US, UK adn here . . .sigh…….
Yes I can. The Poison Dwarf hated universities.
The problem with Morrisons ineptitude is the fact that it drags the rest of Australia down.
Look at the submarine deal and how reverberated around the world, look ar Djovik and how that was peceived also the bushfires along with the covid.
Since he has held the reins it has been shambolic and made Australia a joke, also look at the inept crew that is ” allegedly” his Government,how was the likes of Joyce, Cash, Porter perceived.
I know for a fact that the New York times wrote a article on it as i submitted a response.
Morrison is a clown and Australia is seen as a circus!
Yes. The ABC has to give air time to these turkeys, so we get Frydo, Birminghsm, Hunt all doing nothing but parroting their party lines . . . They are truly out of their respective depths.
And where is our beloved Minster for Foreign and affairs and Women Marise Payne, last time I think I heard from her as on an important ministerial assignment in London, and that was months ago!
“If you believe governments shouldn’t do things, the muscle memory of actually doing things and doing them effectively vanishes…”
The fundamental point or origin is that our current government is ideologically committed to the belief that government is bad, and to prove its point it governs badly.
Instead of governing in the national interest it provides a service for its pay-masters and finds ways to divert as much tax-payer money into private pockets as possible. It also does all it can to avoid or remove accountability. The media has spent decades supporting this. The opposition has surrendered. Labor, except for some fiddling around the edges, follows the same path of crony capitalism, tax-cutting, consultants replacing public servants, reduced government services and immiseration of the vulnerable. After several decades of this it is the only sort of government anyone under the age of 50 or so has ever known, never mind the exceptionally bad performance of this one. I doubt there are enough voters who think competent government is possible to make a difference at an election. Any opposition party that says it will govern competently has no credibility with the public.
Agreed. So what’s the answer do you think? A large cohort of independents with integrity who are loosely aligned into a party but allowed to vote with their conscience instead of having to vote party lines? Is it the passing of integrity laws that forbid people to work in industries where they had government influence for x number of years? Is it that list of integrity things that Zali Stegal tried to get through, like no lying in political advertising? No political donations allowed. All the ways of getting corporate influence out of politics. I can’t remember all of them, but remember thinking at the time “amen to all of that”. maybe what’s happening in the last few years is so bad that people would vote for that?
The best way to get a competent government is not a realistic proposition, unfortunately, because it would take power away from those who currently benefit from their ability to buy influence. All the faults of the current system could be eliminated by not having elections for Parliament. Elections guarantee corruption and the emergence of political parties that prevent elected representives acting according to their conscience. Our representatives should be chosen at random from the entire adult population, in the same way as a jury. They should be well rewarded for this, on some multiple of median earnings. There should be very heavy penalties for attempting to bribe or otherwise improperly influence them, but anyway that would very difficult to do on a scale capable of ensuring a majority when they are not aggregated into parties. They would serve limited terms and it would probably be better to change out only a fraction of them each year rather than swapping them all out together at the end of their terms.
The executive government might still be elected but would be solely responsible for the executive without being able to control parliament or use patronage to corrupt it. This would improve the executive because it would be able to pick anyone at all as ministers, presumably on merit and qualification, instead of the present system limited to choosing only among ruling party MPs. But the executive government would have to persuade the randomly selected Parliament to pass any legislation it proposed. This would make it very probable all legislation that had any chance of passing would be broadly acceptable to the Australian people, rather than serving some narrow vested interests or extreme ideology against the public good, as at present. Some people argue that ordinary citizens would lack the required skills to sit in Parliament but this is laughable. They could not possible be less engaged or capable than the bulk of our current MPs who do not read the bills put before them, do not study the reports, do not attend the debates and always vote robotically as their party directs.
I’m not suggesting this system would be perfect or anything close to it. I’m only arguing it would be a hell of a lot better than the current system which seems mostly to elevate the worst available to government.
“They could not possibly be less engaged or capable than the bulk of our current MPs…” Agree one-thousand per cent!
Agree about random selection – as has been demonstrated with chimps, octopuses or darts to play the stock market, no worse and often a great deal better than the ‘experts’ but without the concomitant costs & obvious corruption.
I would go further and say that, as anyone who wants a gun should, by definition not be allowed within cooee of one, so anyone who seeks to rule should be excluded.
And, if they persist, failing branding on the forehead, given a new shiny ankle bracelet.
Obviously you know nothing of life on the land, where firearms are a necessity for keeping feral animals, mostly not indigenous, under some sort of control.
The added consideration is that farmers need firearms in situations of emergency – sudden drought where poor-condition animals can’t be given away, or the ravages of fire, when the only humane action is to destroy affected livestock and wildlife. What about livestock half-eaten alive by dingoes or wild dogs, or live new-born lambs having their eyes picked out by crows ?
Citified armchair critics should learn about such subjects before expressing such ignorant views.
If our soil/water miners were true farmers and capable of animal husbandry there would be more of them, on smaller acreages and might thus take better care of their soil, water, animals and landscape.
Spare me the macho need for guns, the ultimate penis substitute.
We could just make it illegal for any politician to accept any gifts or ‘scholarships’ from anyone.
Our Constitution tried to sort this out (s 44(v) by stopping politicians from receiving a benefit from anyone while in government but somehow, that is not actually working. For example; How is Peter Dutton getting away with having a child care centre that receives money from the government?
If we could just ensure these types of rules were followed, we would not be in such a bad state.
The child care centre is in his wife’s name, as with Krudd whose wife became a millionaire through employment consultancy that relied on government funding.
All perfectly legal, wives no longer being fiscal appendages.
NB “…wives no longer being fiscal appendages” except in the case of the lower orders seeking welfare – then it’s full-on joint income/asset test.
Interesting proposition, though somewhat Utopian.
The first Australian parliaments comprised no political parties, but soon caused people with common interests to band together to form parties, if only to get their own interests passed into law. Thus the Labor party, formed as a result of the depression following the ‘Shearers strike”. and the subsequent formation of the toffs into conservative parties with the sole stated goal of countering Labor.
There is no saying that such would not again happen within the life of a parliament, leaving it either ineffectual or rabidly partisan. Of course, limited terms of (say ) 5 years for each parliament could enable the passing of good as well as bad laws with the inability of the parliamentarians to carry their ideologies forward.
Given the ability of individual ministers to be sacked by the parliament, along with other provisos, it is an idea worth considering. It would also stop this incestuous practice of lawyers and political interns as well as ‘hereditary’ goats like Fitzgibbon ( translates to illegitimate son of an ape ) and ‘Fish nets’ Downer
( aka ‘Bummer’ ) from clogging up the serious business of government.
While we’re at it, the provisions for the senate ( 10 members for every state ) could be looked at.
It would seem that the few good parliamentarians that have evidenced outside or have shucked the party system have been the ones keeping or attempting to keep the bastards honest -Jacquie Lambie, Ricky Muir, Rex Patrick, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott et al.
The principle is – go the independents !
So true Rat this Government is so low that it is in the gutter. It can only step up from there as this lot have sunk as low as they can go and even whale poop could not find them.
The problem now is though is that independents are coming onboard and we seen how that goes with most aligning themselves to the L/NP (except for) Jaqui Lambie and love her or hate her at least she has courage of conviction and maybe a few others.
All that needs be pushed is Morrison on his lies in mainstream media along with his ineptitude up until next election and mask it as I tried pushing it in news forums and was moderated.
Sorry Crikey, I said a bad word and moderated
I’d suggest the very targeted transfer of public money into ‘selected’ private hands is so that much of that money comes back to the Liberal party coffers as donations. Money laundering at its best.