Friday 29th of March 2024

indestructible hubris provider...

why...why...

It's been a year of bad behaviour and short-lived policies — so, why aren't more people predicting a Coalition election loss?

Political journalists are often accused — sometimes quite correctly — of being too obsessed with how the political game is played, rather than with what the political system is delivering.

And we are accused of spending too much time on "race calling" — reporting on policies purely in terms of how they might affect the political prospects of the major parties.

There is an argument to be made that those rules have been upended this year, as has so much in an era of pandemic, but not because journalists have necessarily mended their ways.

They have been upended because pandemic politics has rewritten so many rules; the politics of the relationship between the federal and state governments, for starters, but also of the language of fiscal rectitude.

  By Laura Tingle  

But they have also been upended this year because politics, at least at a federal level, has been dominated by such an unrelenting and appalling daily diet of bad behaviour, a questionable grasp of the concept of accountability, repeated and spectacular revelations of rorting of taxpayers funds for political gain, and an almost puerile calendar of media stunts and short-lived policy positions.

It says much that the gap between the information we have about how voters are feeling about our politicians, derived from published polls and focus groups, and the utter lack of quality governance served up to us has not, until now, translated into any confident predictions that the Morrison government is at serious risk of being turfed out of office — when it eventually goes to the polls — as its poor record this year might normally suggest.

 

Is change afoot?

Federal parliament rose after a week in which it was officially reported that the economy had once again contracted due to lockdowns that many — including not just the opposition but state governments — have blamed on the federal government's handling of the vaccine rollout.

 

The fact that "strollout" — the term that became popular to describe the government's apparently relaxed "it's not a race" approach to getting the population vaccinated — was officially designated as the word of the year by the Macquarie Dictionary suggests a certain pervasiveness of that perception.

Parliament also rose with one cabinet minister having been obliged to stand aside, facing allegations of abusive behaviour in a relationship with a staffer, and another cabinet minister announcing his departure from politics after a year of appalling allegations and a dismal record on the oversight of policy as both social services minister and attorney-general. Both men deny the allegations.

A plethora of other MPs, including the health minister, are also leaving, and a number of Coalition ministers and MPs finish the year feeling a very real threat to their seats from independent candidates running on platforms focused on climate change and anti-corruption.

Yet the pundits have seemed less sure than they have for years that any change is afoot.

Labor enters the climate debate

In all the dramas of 2021, the federal opposition has rarely featured.

That's been partly because the Prime Minister's major brawls have been with the premiers, partly because the discord within the government itself has so often been the story, and partly, Labor says, because it has been waiting for the Prime Minister to destroy himself and his credibility.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-04/in-a-year-of-bad-behaviour-pundits-wary-of-election-predictions/100673160

  

the fly-shit on the wall...

There is no polite way to express this. The Morrison government is a mess. These last two weeks the coalition lurched from crisis to crisis, staggering over the finish line of the parliamentary year.

Meanwhile, in Spring Street, the Andrews government ignored the conspiracists and saboteurs on the steps of Parliament House and out-strategised the opponents to their new health laws in the chamber and on the street.

The Prime Minister is unlikely to call the Victorian premier for tactical advice, but Morrison’s inability to find support for key policies is a stark reminder of how shallow is his hold on power. The absence of Matthias Cormann in the Senate is heavily felt. A new Speaker with all the gravitas of Mickey Mouse is not helping.

The Andrews government’s negotiation of the new health law through the Upper House was led by the new Attorney General Jaclyn Symes.

 

Armed with submissions from the Law Institute President Tania Wolff and the Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass, the AG forged common ground among independents and micro parties in the Upper House. The all-night filibustering by the opposition succeeded only in generating animus, making the crossbenchers more cross.

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/expect-an-implosion-if-the-morrison-government-loses-the-next-election-20211203-p59egm.html

 

Here we must remember "The Dismissal"... We'll post something (again) about this, sooner than later... The Americans HATE Labor. Except for the "fatherly" (he was a shocking father) Bob Hawke (Labor) who made all the right moves to the point of being suspected of being a CIA mole, the only ones coming close to him were Liberals (CONservatives) and now it is ... DRUMROLL ... Scott Morrison...

 

But ScoMo isn't in the "intelligence" league — he's just a blah blah blah man — though he is trying to be big honcho. Unfortunately, ScoMo has more chances of being reelected than a dead cat survive a fall from the 9th floor...  Despite the shambolic sucker ScoMo is, because of the CIA (proving the Americans are mad) and of course, because of Rupert Murdoch, the elections for the next Prime Minister of Australia will be a nasty run to the toilet bowls. 

 

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