It’s been a busy week for the prime minister and opposition leader as both men travel the country to promote their respective views on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
It’s not easy to pin either of them down: messages to Anthony Albanese’s office about what major campaign events he has planned for the final two days of the referendum campaign have gone without a clear answer. This morning, Albanese was in Sydney, and he planned to fly to Western Australia later in the day. Crikey is told the schedule is somewhat fluid but he plans to visit Adelaide and Tasmania too.
Those visits come after Albanese spruiked the Voice in Uluru, in the Northern Territory, and Melbourne, on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, he went to Port Lincoln and Adelaide in South Australia, and to Broken Hill and Queanbeyan in NSW.
Peter Dutton doesn’t appear to have logged quite as many kilometres, but he’s done a fair bit of travelling this week, including to Elliott in Tasmania, Glynde in SA, and Brisbane. There were rumours in the Alice Springs press corps he would visit on Wednesday but that did not eventuate. He was in Sydney on Wednesday.
His office has not responded to phone calls and emails, so what he has in store for the coming days remains a mystery.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney’s office reports that she visited Melbourne on Wednesday and will be in Sydney today, including in her electorate of Barton where she’ll be attending various early polling centres.
I’m feeling quite depressed by too many things happening in too many places. The Voice to Parliament, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Middle East, the state of US politics, China’s claims over the South China Sea – the list goes on – even the idiocy of Brexit.
The post WW2 consensus is unravelling. The democracies who fought in that war, and then held the line during the Cold War, are beginning to adopt the same policies regarding freedom of thought, speech and assembly as those of the governments they fought against. Populism and nationalism are on the rise, providing space for extremists and agents provocateurs to entice the gullible and aggrieved to their egregious aims.
I remember the great optimism of the days of my youth in the late 60s and 70s – it was going to be a better world. What the f-u-c-k happened?
Gradually, then suddenly – this has been years in the making.
Reality check. For those that thought politicians had the balls to change the rules. And trusted them to hold onto their ethical principles to do so… as DAAS once said, “good intentions pave the road to hell, high ideals do the same”…. I concur with your it’s depressing assessment. Perhaps someone can write a sociology/political science/psychology thesis on the subject (the irony of a university degree in political science being a “thang” doesn’t escape me). If someone has a solution up their sleeve, please put your hand up…. Oh wait, they did, with the Uluṟu statement from the heart, but…. Politics, ya know. After all, why would anyone listen to a continuous culture for 60,000+ years as to how to survive….
Excuse the general comment above – it was meant as a reply to your heartfelt cry of “wot happened…?”
It is clearly illustrated here where the ‘editors’ seem intent on going for the all time, undisputed world champeeen in pusillanimous poltroonery – a dozen times or more in the last 4 days articles published then ALL comments purged within hours.
Brilliant way to treat subscribers as mugs – which I was happy to report in the risible “Want to help shape the future of Crikey and go in the running to win a $1K gift card?” as to why I am so disgusted with the partisan tripe.
Perhaps Crikey needs to do what other websites do and remove just the offensive remake with a comment to the effect that the comment breached guidelines.
Right-wing party’s are behind all the unrest across the globe. THEY are deliberately destroying democracy for power. They don’t govern for their peoples but for themselves and their donors…big business.
Conservatism.
It is, unfortunately, a reversion to the mean. The long run history of humanity is largely the complete opposite of the last few generations.
I fear, and worry, that you’re right. But they’re not conservatives, they are right-wing radicals.
“Elliott in Tasmania”? I used to live in Tasmania and had never heard of Elliott. Wikipedia tells me it is a “suburb” of Wynyard – only 21 kms away – so not actually in Wynyard’s CBD. It has a population of about 400. Dutton really pulling out all stops now.
Clearly going for the all time, undisputed world champeeen in pusillanimus poltroonery – a dozen times or more in the last 4 days articles published then ALL comments purged within hours.
Way to treat subscribers as mugs – which I was happy to report in the risible “Want to help shape the future of Crikey and go in the running to win a $1K gift card?” as to why I am so disgusted with the partisan tripe.