Desperate to avoid the toxic fallout from the resignation of his friend and mentor Brian Houston from Hillsong, Scott Morrison has told an astonishing lie today, claiming he hasn’t been to Hillsong for “15 years” when pressed on the scandal by journalists.
“I haven’t been at Hillsong now for over, about 15 years, I go to a local church,” Morrison said this morning, professing himself “disappointed and shocked to hear the news”.
But his efforts to dissociate himself from Hillsong are profoundly at odds with his enthusiastic support for Houston and Hillsong in recent years, as Crikey’s David Hardaker has documented.
Morrison’s most recent and high-profile visit to Hillsong was in July 2019 when the prime minister — triumphant from his surprise election win — and his wife joined tens of thousands of Hillsong worshippers onstage for the corporation’s annual conference (an event Morrison regularly attends) to discuss his faith and religious freedom. Morrison “prayed for Australia” at the conference.
Morrison was interviewed on stage — interrupted by wild cheering and applause from Hillsong devotees — by none other than Brian Houston himself.
Indeed, that conference attended by Morrison — held at Homebush in Sydney — was the occasion when Houston (affected, he claims, by alcohol and anti-anxiety medication) entered the hotel room of a woman and didn’t leave for 40 minutes.
Morrison has a history of lying when under political pressure, with many of his scores of documented lies coming in moments of stress — for example: lying that he’d told Anthony Albanese he was going to Hawaii, lying about his claim that the vaccine rollout “wasn’t a race”, and lying about harassment claims within Sky News when under pressure in relation to workplace issues in Parliament House.
The disgrace of his friend and mentor Brian Houston, a relationship both Morrison and Hillsong were once happy to promote, is another moment of political pressure that has once again prompted a prime ministerial lie — the most blatant one of all.
Is the Prime Marketting Intern aware that his lies are documented in real time?
He seems profoundly disconnected from reality.
Trusted less than Putin or Trump by Aussies according to Roy Morgan, but that polling doesn’t exist according to the ABC.
Neither did he try to get this sin-is-messy mega-sleaze into the White House in 2019.
Neither did he lie about it either.
Scotty’s garden of Gethsemane moment
This one? : Mathew 26:34,74-75, “Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a cock crows, you shall deny Me three times…74 Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a cock crowed. 75 And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, “Before a cock crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.”
“Wept bitterly”?
Probably doesn’t taste as nice as Lacrimae Christo,hey?
Haha..the wine of the same name is probably to blame! Anxiety pills have been known to cause a grown preacher man to go into a woman’s hotel room for 40 minutes.We obviously just don’t appreciate the danger so it could even be OUR fault! Watch this space….
I had nasty moment recalling James Tiptree Jnr’s unsettling work “Out of Everywhere.” with an interstellar corp. waxing fat on tortured child angels’ tears.
Correction, it should have been “Darkness Falls from Above“.
Luckily he had some pills for anxiety
I would hope a married preacher entering a woman’s hotel room was anxious, so he knew he needed to take those pills!
Viagra?
LOL…must have been poetic license!
Like the bitter tears Jesus wept when he realised he was just a social construct.
That is a statement of certainty .Until science can answer the questions of the universe nothing is certain
Perhaps he is disconnected as you say. But alternatively perhaps his life so far has taught him that truth and reality are irrelevant. His disregard or contempt for such concepts goes back many years and has, so far, served him well, taking him all the way to the position of party leader and PM. And he is not an aberration in his party. He is surrounded by many colleagues who are only different in degrees of self-serving delusion and dishonesty.
There is something profoundly sick about a society and political system makes this possible. How can it be fixed?
An advisor to Pres GW Bush famously said, regarding the invasion of Iraq:
”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”Morrison may think truth and reality are irrelevant, he may even think they’re not the same thing. But he may also believe, as he lies his way through a very ordinary life – full of failure – that he creates his own reality whenever he lies. Sadly for him, the notion of creating your own reality is balderdash.
It was also then that Andrew Sullivan a conservative, gay, Catholic author and blogger in 2003 used the term Christianist concerning the then President, Dubya, The Faux Texan and his push concerning a “Faith Based Administration”, as we can see now here in Australia with The Happy Clapper and his Brethren.
“I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists.
Interestingly Sullivan first used the word “Christianist” in 2003 to describe Eric Rudolph, the US religious terrorist, convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed three people and injured 150 others. Rudolph also planted the bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
“Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. …It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”
“But any pretense of a religious foundation for Christianism breaks down on many of the issues Christianists now consider their highest priority — cutting social services, blocking access to health care, lowering taxes, undermining public education, repealing restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms, endorsing harsh law enforcement methods and restrictions on the right to vote in communities of color, defending the Mexican border, and closing the door to refugees, to name a few.”
“Sadly for
himUS…” TFIFY.So far, like Wiley E Coyote plunging earthward followed by an Acme anvil, it’s all good – for the moment.
As the H2g2 Whale said, of the ground, “I wonder if it will be friendly?”
SPLAT!
I usually get minus likes with my theory that we have to stop voting for men, dismantle the patriarchy and start again. Men have had their opportunity for oooh, quite a few centuries now and they have resisted any change, so they can come back into the fold once they pass the grub test. The first thing women ( not misogynists) will have to do is ‘ get rid of the lawyers’ ( and the judges).
Yay for the Lysistrata League, with a Jael & Judith youth wing to deal with the hard of hearing.
Males between the ages of 15-25 should be placed on a smallish island, preferably a tidal one, until considered – by other than their mothers – fit to join community.
You write the best comments..always love ’em. My idea was to give ( nay, GIVE) any male from the age of 15 a vasectomy.That should satisfy all the ‘right to lifer’s and their misogynistic moral panic about abortions. It can be reversed once they have undergone at least one year of an Arts Degree which must include ‘Women’s Studies’ or equivalent, a feminist bootcamp if one year at uni isn’t enough, and a 6 month ‘ early childhood development’ course. The latter attended by both intending parents.A foolproof Vasectomy Certificate to be shown on demand. All overseen by a team made up of 100% women until men display signs of ‘ merit’. Not sure how this comment will go for the ‘likes ( LOL) but thanks all, for the 20 further above!! That was very amusing!
Start over.
Read Noam Chomsky Chomsky’s Pragmatic influence. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered!
His discussion about how governments control the conversation is excellent. He said it long before FB and Twit.If only people knew just how manipulated they are.
Our PM is deluded .Show him the door .Call ICAC.
He’s following in in the footsteps of Howard (core and non-core promises), Abbott (budget 2013) and his time as PM, Turnbull to a lesser degree (and look what happened to him the day after our current PM laid just one hand on him!).
I feel a song coming on: ‘ Just One Hand, Lord, just one hand. That’s all it took, Lord, just one hand’
Sack the lot Libs and Nats >.ICAC >.New prison.> Confiscate the proceeds of crime>Job done.
There would need to be a fairly large wing for ‘Labor’ as well.
I’ll vote for Scott Morrison (and that is a lie too)
Surprise Surprise the Teflon coated Prime Minister resorts to lying when cornered.Believe not a word he says
Well Jaquie Lambie did, and there is a bit of a pile-on to her on Twitter this morning.
As Kitching-gate rolls on with Albo reluctant to fight back with home truths about her behaviours, let’s hope Lambie sticks to her guns and gives Smirko some grief over his bullying and coercive behaviours.
A thief can be trusted sometimes but a liar can never be trusted . Our PM is a “Gold Standard “liar and time has shown he can never be trusted.
I was told by a bloke that he never trusted honest people. I asked, incredulously,why? He replied ‘ because they always tell on you’. Even this goody two shoes laughed at that!.
If something is written in Scripture can it ever really be trusted?
When in Rome
“…do as the pederasts do.”?
It’s worked fine for two millennia.
Morrison is simply in the Boris de Pfeffel Johnson mould of blatant lying for the maintenance of power above all else.
Would Pinocchio fit through the eye of a needle ?
As to Pinocchios the record holder for that is The Trump, that is going by the WaPo Fact Checker.
30,000 plus lies with so many repeated earn the Pinocchio Status
U.S. economy has never been stronger, he repeated some version of this 493 times.
Trump tax cut was the biggest in history, he repeated some version of this 296 times
The U.S. has started building the wall, he repeated some version of this 258 times.
And on and on and on went the mendacity.
The Moloch and His minions have much to do with this, for NewsCorpse, FauxNews and their spawn here in Australia, including The Sky After Dark Comedy Show are culpable in their support of such mendacity across Australia , UK and USA.
But it has always been so with the Lying Nasty Party, Ming the Mendacious with the lies concerning The Viet Nam Farrago and more, The Lying Rodent©Senator George Brandis with a list of such published in Hansard and The Mad Monk who again brought much mendacity to the fore, through to Smirko and His Brethren.
I accidentally saw an ad on Fox Footy promoting a Mad Monk/Incredulous Credlin investigation into the possibility of rational behaviour threatening us all, by way of Murdoch’s man-in-Moscow losing his prayer beads.
And on!
Not even worth listening to his election promises now as you cant believe a word he says, and his delivery in this last 3 years on the old promises hasn’t been crash hot.
Is the prime Ministership the only job in Australia that Morrison could occupy as there’s no-one to sack him short of an election wipe-out?
This is a bit picky, but all ministers are appointed by the GG on behalf of the Crown, so there is someone who can sack him. You might recall we learned about it the hard way in 1975. (For what it’s worth I’d much rather the GG kept out of it except when Parliament has decided the PM must go.)
True, but the powers the GG has to sack him are very limited. Being an inveterate liar isn’t among them. Yet!
‘Very limited’ is still open to debate. The exact extent of the Reserve Powers held by the GG is not a settled matter and quite a lot besides still depends on convention. Deciding exactly how things stand between the GG and any PM is not made any clearer by the constitution omitting to mention of any such creature as a PM.
As well as Whitlam’s defenestration by Kerr and other conspirators, there is also the dismissal of Jack Lang, Premier of NSW, in 1932, after the state Governor Sir Philip Game formed the opinion Lang was acting in contravention of the laws of the Commonwealth. Game said in justification, ‘I did not at all relish being forced to dismiss him. But I felt faced with the alternative of doing so or reducing the job of Governor all over the Empire to a farce.’ If it is reasonable for a Governor to dismiss a Premier over the perceived risk of the job otherwise being a farce, it is not entirely obvious why the GG must tolerate the continued presence of the desperate dysfunctional grub Morrison. But it would still be wise to do so.
Some say Lang thought about arresting the Governor before the Governor could dismiss him. No doubt that would have led to some excitement.
Are you familiar with Marshall Green ?
Hmm, yes, Marshall Green.1. 1961 USA Deputy Chief of Mission to South Korea (during a coup), 2. Ambassador to Indonesia June 1965 to March 1969 (coup that ousted Sukarno started a few weeks after he arrived, mass killings occurred) 4. USA Ambassador to Australia June 1973 to July 1975, our coup occurred in Nov 1975,the coup in Chile took place in Sept 1975 (some Aussies were ‘helping’ the CIA on that one : no longer a secret). WHAT A GUY!
Oops! 3. USA Ambassador to Nauru Oct 1975 to July 1975.
Oct 1974 to July 1975. I need another coffee.
It’s the Curse of Muphry‘s Law – every correction has an error.
Another name to conjure is that of the very strange James Jesus Angleton…
What has come to light recently is that the then chief of CIA Counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975, James Jesus Angleton, in the year before the Dismissal had already wanted to have the Whitlam Government removed from power.
Brian Toohey relates this in his recent book, SECRET.
Toohey obtained such information from John Denley Walker, the CIA chief of station in Australia during the Whitlam years.
Which is also confirmed when Angleton said so in an interview with the ABC’s Correspondent’s Report in 1977.
SECRET The Making of Australia’s Security State
Brian Toohey
Melbourne University Press. 2019
ISBN 9780522872804
LC:JQ4029.S4 T66 2019
The Dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 it is very clear for Governor General Kerr, who was not only the Queen’s representative, but part of the Anglo American intelligence establishment.
He was leading light in the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, “The Crimes of Patriots: as “an elite, invitation-only group.
Exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA.
“The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA
Jonathan Kwitny
W. W. Norton & Company: New York, NY; 1987
ISBN:9780393336658
LC: HG3448.N846 K95 1987
LC:JQ4029.S4 T66 2019
ICAC Now
If only we had a GG. I think this one’s been raptured.
The GG has no ticker for this. Nice pay packet on top of a huge pension, being GG. Quite a useless role. Write a few letters to the Queen, sign some laws, cut ribbons and wave to the crowds while you are waited hand on foot by a bunch of servants.
He’s being disingenuous. Didn’t say “I haven’t been TO Hillsong”, but “I haven’t been AT Hillsong”, meaning he’s now AT another church. Too cute by half. He’s allergic to the truth, always has been.
Scarcely different if he claimed not to have been ‘AT’ The Lodge/Kirribilli for the past 3 years, too.
Such accomplished casuistry suggests a Jesuitical streak in Morrison, along with all the evangelistic hoo-ha.
Shorten had it also, as he demonstrated a couple of years back at the GetLabor RC – talking about egg hatching trays as a symbol of branch stacking.
Is God throwing his chosen one under a bus because he or she now believes they backed a lying loser?
He seems to have major issues with determining the passage of time. First he seemed to believe that unemployment rates haven’t been this low since he was 5 (they were actually this low back around 2008). Now he claims he wasn’t at Hillsong in 15 years, despite very publicly being there back in 2019.
He lives in the moment, truly believes the shit he is sprouting. No self-reflection.