Let’s start with Scott Morrison and the culture war. Today the prime minister once again defended Katherine Deves, his candidate for Warringah, after she called gender reassignment surgery “mutilation”.
Morrison said he wouldn’t use the same language as Deves, but continues to stand by her. The Liberal candidate came under fire during the early stages of the campaign after a series of now-deleted tweets attacking transgender people emerged.
They included false claims that half of trans men are sex offenders, and comparisons between anti-trans activism and opposing the Holocaust.
Since then, Deves has largely shied away from media (despite Morrison’s claims she would not be “cancelled”), until she appeared on Sky News last night to walk back earlier apologies for calling trans people “surgically mutilated and sterilised”.
Facing a grilling from reporters today, the PM claimed gender reversal surgery was “a serious, significant issue” for young adolescents, before being reminded the procedure isn’t available to minors in Australia.
“I’m not a surgeon, I’m not the chief medical officer,” he said.
Amid all that, Morrison managed to find another constituency to fall out with: barristers.
“I don’t care if barristers and lawyers and others up there in Macquarie Street — not in the Parliament but in the barristers’ chambers — disagree with me,” he said, during one of his now frequent attacks on the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). (Of course, real Sydney-heads know the barristers are mainly on Phillip St, while Macquarie St is for the pollies, but I digress).
That drew a swift rebuke from Australian Bar Association boss Matt Collins, who said he was deeply concerned by Morrison’s comments.
“Any person who has no truck with barristers cannot have made a conscientious effort to understand their indispensable contribution to civic society,” he said. Ouch.
Morrison was out in Bennelong today, once held by John Howard. With popular local MP John Alexander retiring, Labor has grown increasingly optimistic about its chances of clawing back the 6.9% margin.
Appearing alongside the prime minister was NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. In a bit of symmetry, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese campaigned with Victorian Premier Dan Andrews in Melbourne today.
Neither state leader has featured much during their parties’ respective federal campaigns, despite state premiers’ unprecedented prominence during the past two years, and Perrottet and Andrews in particular essentially leading Australia through the latest phase of the pandemic.
There are a few political and strategic reasons for this. Morrison and Perrottet have famously clashed in the past. During the course of the campaign, the NSW premier has criticised Morrison’s comments on the state’s ICAC and distanced himself from the PM’s comments on minority government.
And at today’s press conference Perrottet refused to join the PM in attacking Labor’s housing equity scheme, saying he was “open-minded” about new policy.
The distance between Andrews, meanwhile, could be about avoiding what some Labor strategists worry is a rumble of “anti-Dan” sentiment, particularly in Melbourne’s outer suburbs among voters wearied by two years of pandemic restrictions.
Certainly the Liberals think that vote is out there for the taking, running attack billboards with Andrews and Albanese together, alongside the words “Higher taxes. Mandates. Lockdowns”.
But equally, both Perrottet and Andrews have their own elections to fight within the next 12 months, and might feel it best to have some clear air between their own brands and the current shitshow.
In other news, Alan Tudge has been found. The cabinet minister-cum-backbencher (somehow he’s been both during this campaign), stood down in December following allegations he had an abusive relationship with former staffer Rachelle Miller, which he denies.
Tudge, who has essentially been in hiding during the campaign, was tracked down by a Sky News reporter in his safe seat of Aston. He said he intended to return as education minister if the government is reelected.
“The prime minister has made clear that should we be reelected and I’m in a position to step back up, I will do so,” he said.
It’s bemusing just how far behind the international debate in trans management Australia is. In the UK this frothing reactionary need to shut down conversation, so revealingly full of hate, got left behind yonks ago. Those of good will and good faith on all sides – ie those worth paying attention to – are having a decent conversation at last about some of the genuinely complex and urgent issues in play. The interim Cass Report has recently come out. It’s publicly available, well worth reading if you do care about the trans community, and especially gender-uncertain kids.
The Report – even in interim form – is pretty sobering, and from ALL perspectives. Already it’s clear that this clinical field and provider sector has lately expanded with a rapidity and degree of organic improvisation that has left the management of gender fluidity significantly inconsistent, disjointed, resource-poor and desperately short on proper data, sustained, open research and longitudinal case follow-up. The polarised debate has played a huge part in what is pretty clearly a too-stunted, too-secretive clinical evolution. A well-meaning but clumsy, lopsided embrace of the ‘affirmation only’ framework hasn’t helped. The report talks about clinical staff, even senior expert clinicians, feeling reluctant to even discuss the trickier aspects of transition, often collaterally pressured by precisely the kind of ideological/politicised wider public attacks Neves has copped. What’s clear more than anything else from Cass is that…well, we don’t really know what we’re doing yet. Not nearly well enough.
So, you’re all just going to have to toughen up a bit. A word like ‘mutilate’ is just a word; it isn’t going to kill you. It isn’t going to kill anyone. Some women who support female ‘circumcision’ object to me calling that ‘mutilation’. I’m not going to stop, just to spare their feelings. I’m circumcised; some women call that ‘mutilation’ these days, too. I don’t think my willy is ‘mutilated’…but I’m not going to angst myself into a state over it. It’s all just someone’s different opinion. It’s not going to hurt anyone in the trans community, whether trans or still just gender uncertain.
What will hurt people is us not talking more openly and plainly about trans issues than we’ve generally been allowed to so far. As the interim Cass Report also says: this is everybody’s business.
What a disgraceful human being! Barristers can probably stick up for themselves, but to punch down and keep punching down on vulnerable trans kids is disgusting. A pox on his dreadful man!
Remember Morrison is a Hillsong maniac. Their religion bans ,& looks down on these people. as if they are from another planet that are born that way. Also please remember, half or more of Morrison Liberal members are from Hillsong. Won’t be long & they will be running our once great country. Does anyone want that ???. Vote this dangerous, vile person out completely this election.
Curious comment from Morrison
He seems very happy to use lotsa barristers to cover up various LNP misdeeds or to look after his mates, to say nothing of punching down on NDIS claimants and any Robodebt victims who have yet to commit suicide.
All this with your hard-earned and mine
“Curious comment from Morrison”. Not really, So long as it diverts the attention, it has done it’s job. No need to make sense
Has anyone in Australian politics ever held fewer hoses than Scummo – “I’m not a surgeon, I’m not the chief medical officer,” he said.”?
Laughing… I thought the same thing! It had the same energy as ” I don’t hold a hose mate”. lol!
“I don’t hold a scalpel, either”??
“I don’t wear a wig mate”?
Yes, he keeps telling us what he is not, but on the other hand, through multitudinous Photo ops, all the jobs he is reputedly proficient at, but none of which are the one he is paid handsomely to actually do.
Morrison is just our nations “leader” who has the power to determine what firefighters can do and how they can do it, what medical officers and how can do it etc etc. Morrison is failed leader and a bad-joke.
I just read this essay on Morrison. It’s well worth a read.
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/amen-snorter-rotten-fish/
Holy s…h… I don’t hink I’ve every read such vitriole about a prime minister – EVER! here’s some excerpts.
” no one has ever praised the current prime minister for his intellect….”
“Morrison’s political career provides no grounds for believing that he will ever give a straight answer to any question, offer a cogent and consistent argument, explain himself in any way, or do anything he says he will do. He has never baulked at any hypocrisy, small or large. He speaks in order to make the very act of questioning him an exercise in futility, addressing no concrete reality beyond the immediate imperative to generate static. It is a form of anti-oratory: the rhetorical equivalent of avoiding an awkward conversation by starting up a leaf blower.
“He has proved himself, over and over again, to be an abuser of executive power, a substantive policy vacuum, and a legislator of surpassing ineptitude. His ideological stance is little better than a collection of antipathies pursued in a spirit of vindictiveness. He is as dogmatic as he is shallow.
The defining feature of his political career is that he always seeks to use his position of power to disadvantage and, in many cases, actively punish sections of the populace he regards with disfavour. These include but are not limited to academics and university students (those studying the humanities, in particular), public school students, aged-care residents, Indigenous Australians, women, people with disabilities, anyone who relies on the public health system, Muslims, the entire populations of Victoria and Western Australia, gay and transgender people, everyone who works in the arts sector, everyone who lives in a safe Labor seat, and everyone who understands that climate change is a serious problem. Hands down the most disgusting and shameful piece of maladministration in recent Australian history was the Robodebt debacle, which weaponised the federal bureaucracy against the citizens it was supposed to be serving, targeting the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. The scheme was a shakedown, carried out with such calculated menace that it drove a number of its victims to suicide. It was subsequently found to be illegal. Morrison was its chief instigator.”
Far out. I wonder if he read that it would make him think?
My guess would be, that Morrison wouldn’t be all that concerned, as the people that influence Morrison are generally those with power in society: mining magnates, media chiefs, corporate donors to the LNP, etc. Although, if he was made aware of it, he almost certainly is petty and vindictive enough, to ensure that the writer and publisher were punished in some way.
The Prime Minister’s ability to “think” (or otherwise), appears to be at the root of the problem.
No he would not worry one iota.
Remember he shafted the original guy who was nominated for the seat of Cook because he was a Muslim – which was not as he is a Catholic.
He was sacked by his own side of politics from the job at tourism of Australia.
He was sacked and run out of NZ for his actions at Tourism NZ.
I could go on as the list is long – ever since he left university.
Yep, the spectacular and salient thing about Morrison’s career is that at every stage he has failed upwards – somehow – well beyond the point where the Peter Principle comes into play, all the way up to PM, at which job he’s failed consumately before even losing the election. Let us hope that electoral defeat won’t lead on to a massively remunerated sinecure. Do the pentecostal churches do ecclesisastical benefices?
Oooo that was a satisfying read, thank you Bosch
Yes, and I think that the author would have been justified in taking it a bit further, by pointing out that everything described, is typical of a high functioning psychopath.
I think it is to the author’s credit that he stuck to the argument he was making, which is excellent (thanks for providing the link), rather than spoil it by straying into making a trite pop-psychology diagnosis I doubt he is qualified for.
Well, no. A while back, the person who’s largely regarded as the world’s leading expert on psychopaths, Robert Hare, and organisational psychologist, Paul Babiak, teamed up to write a book, Snakes in Suits. Essentially it’s a guide for HR departments, on how to recognise high functioning psychopaths, before they do too much damage to their organisation.
They stress that there are number of things to look out for. Constant and seemingly effortless lying. Superficial charm. Emotional responses that seem a bit off. An obsession with creating a positive image of themselves, that hides a darker inner self. Relentless petty politicking. A lick and kick personality, in that they tend to lick the backsides of those with more power, but kick those with less power. Because all that image creation, politicking and brown nosing, is so time consuming, they tend not to do the tasks that they’re supposed to do. This leads them to take credit for the work of others and to blame others for their own mistakes. Which means that they create a toxic workplace, divided between those still taken in by the superficial charm and those that have been screwed over. And Babiak and Hare even mention, that psychopaths often have an attraction to born again type religions. This is both because they can outwardly claim morality, while being essentially amoral, and because religion gives them ready access to easily manipulated believers.
And there’s probably a few more warning signs that I’ve forgotten. And while having one or two of those traits obviously doesn’t make a person a psychopath, people really shouldn’t be handing over positions of responsibility, to someone who has pretty well every one.
But you are missing the point. The essay was about the Morrison’s weird version of religion and his failure to know or care about such essential concepts as the secular as a protection for all religious beliefs, including none. It would not have been improved by wittering on about psychopathology. It would have been diluted by the introduction of a an irrelevant argument. As your reply ably illustrates, although I doubt that was your intent.
Sure, an author shouldn’t be criticised for not writing an opinion, that they’re probably not qualified to justify (or even contemplating writing). And I wasn’t actually criticising the author. However, I do think mentioning psychopathy would have been quite justifiable, both when writing about someone like Morrison and when discussing pentecostalism, because I tend to view modern, born again, fund-raising obsessed religions, largely as psychopaths and narcissists playing roles, in order to take advantage of the genuine believers.
And I sincerely doubt if he’s a genuine believer.
Thats the hard one isn’t it?. Personally I do think he is. The hate he exudes toward those “lesser” than his exalted view of himself is of such extremity that to me, it can only come from beliefs such as the ones expressed in his prosperity gospel or theology. His denials of being a liar also seem more based in religious mantra than in political chicanery. That in particular to me is because off his belief of being “called” by God to the position of Prime Minister proves that he must be the embodiment of god himself in him, so therefore, proof of his perfectness and incapable of anything sinful. Truly he is insane, just like Trump. And therefore the most dangerous of specimens to ever have in control of a nation. My blood runs cold when I think of what he might cause to come upon us.
I don’t know if I agree with the “high functioning” tag, but psychopath fits.
Thank you, Anonymous Bosch.
Worth a read just for the term “amen snorter” – a perfect epithet for Morrison and his ilk.