The contrived nonchalance with which federal ministers are attempting to ignore or belittle the ruckus caused by an outbreak of text message frankness is an indicator of how seriously the matter is being taken.

And so it should be.

Senior people within the embrace of the Liberal and Nationals parties have said nasty things about Scott Morrison, then someone within that same embrace has made the insults public.

The texts used the type of language you might expect around the front bar at closing time. Calling the prime minister a “psycho”, “horrible, horrible” and a “hypocrite” is not what US Republicans in another context would classify as civil discourse.

There is a brutality within the messages and their paths to public awareness which cannot be ignored or belittled.

Deputy Nationals leader David Littleproud Monday on ABC radio acknowledged party MPs would have a “candid conversation” about leader Barnaby Joyce’s role in the text tumult but then argued only press gallery journalists were “excited” by the issue.

And it is instructive to note what the prime minister’s office has done, as opposed to what ministers may be saying.

When the Sydney Morning Herald last Friday afternoon revealed it had the contents of the Barnaby Joyce text, the prime minister’s office moved swiftly into a damage minimisation strategy. It marshalled a cringing apology from Joyce and a statement of saintly forgiveness from Morrison, and arranged an early Saturday morning Joyce press conference to get his contrition on TV and radio news services.

Much out of character – and not just for apologising – Joyce readily accepted being told what to do, because he knew he and the government were in trouble.

That Friday evening, the PMO gave the updated package of statements to the Australian – not the SMH – possibly in the belief the package would receive a treatment more comforting for the government.

This was not the reaction of a government which would like you to think the two sets of texts are a bit of a yawn – of interest only to reporters thriving on the sweepings of politics, not the issues of substance.

It’s important to put the incendiary texts into perspective.

The messages and their unflattering assessments of Scott Morrison by colleagues are a variation of the old practice of passing notes in school.

Instead of the class show-off getting a pasting with sniggering and insults, it is the prime minister, but the similarities are rife.

The contents of the messages were from the heart and probably at least marginally accurate, and were a form of reprisal or revenge within a restricted circuit of consensus. It was never intended for the subject of the terse evaluations to know about them.

And it’s that point which highlights the importance of revelation of the two sets of text messages – one allegedly between former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and an unidentified senior Liberal, the other from deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and intended to be passed on to former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, and leaked by a third party not yet named.

Like those scribbled classroom notes and associated sniggers they were not meant to be shared with the subject of the comments.

Other prime ministers have suffered from unwanted assessments. Paul Keating didn’t go to much trouble hiding his nickname for Bob Hawke of “Old Jelly Back”, which spread without the need for SMS technology. Former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello occasionally had descriptions of John Howard the former Liberal prime minister might have considered unkind.

Read more:  

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/07/its-one-thing-for-macron-to-call-morrison-a-liar-but-quite-another-when-the-accusation-comes-from-inside-the-coalition

READ FROM TOP.

THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS THAT LYING SCOMO IS TRYING TO DO HIS UTMOST NOT TO APPEAR LIKE A PSYCHOPATH...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW TODAY ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞#!

Scott Morrison’s press club address did the opposite of what he intended, leaving open the question of whether he’s fit to lead Australia..

By Jack Waterford

Scott Morrison may have surrendered the election this week. In a speech meant to re-set the government’s path to victory in May, he effectively permissioned Labor to claim that the election would be a referendum on pandemic management, particularly over the past few months.

He made it virtually certain that the focus of the campaign will be on the past, rather than the future, because he doesn’t have a future to describe. And he left open a more fundamental issue — his own character, his personal record, and his fitness for the task of leading Australia over the next three years.

Each of the consequences was the exact opposite of what his speech had intended. He had reviewed his government’s management of the pandemic, and awarded himself high marks with some allowances for mistakes. But he did it only to make the issue a general non-event. He created three mini-narratives to show himself as listening and forward thinking — bonuses for full-time aged-care workers working in an industry dominated by casuals, band-aids on the Great Barrier Reef, incentives for entrepreneurs trying to develop their high-technology ideas, and the hope, as he put it, of having unemployment numbers with a three in front of it. Once having raised such aspirations, he pretended they were, in effect, already achieved, just like his projected budget surplus for the year ahead just before the last election. Here, we were being invited to say, was a dynamic man with a plan.

But by the time his performance was over, he had failed to put the past into a comfy coffin, or to do anything much to paint a rosy picture of the future, or to turn the agenda on to both the shortcomings of Anthony Albanese, and the Labor Party, and his party’s sterling qualities, including his own leadership, and the calibre of his ministers. By default — or by his incapacity to close any of his sales — he made himself, his performance and his record — all matters of the past — as the glittering things voters were being asked to admire. None are strong selling points — least of all from a spruiker who can no longer seem to make luck or words work for him.

He could blame only himself by becoming bogged down by questions about apologising for his own actions or omissions, or simply regretting they occurred. Combative non-answers, at this point, are code words for “yes”. Likewise with his customary prevarication and evasions, and refusal to give ground, on other questions. And  by setting the stage for blaming any failings of the campaign against Covid on the federal Health Department (he thinks he should have had the ADF involved from the start). In due course, depending on where he is and what is currently happening with virus variants that are hard to predict, we can confidently expect that he will also blame state health departments, premiers and chief ministers, and even some carefully chosen scapegoat federal ministers, in efforts to deflect blame from himself.

Only a complete makeover (Scott not being Scott) and a new frankness and directness with voters could make a difference now. I doubt he has it in him.

The mongrel question came at the end. Morrison was asked to comment on remarks attributed to former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian in an email to a Liberal minister saying that Morrison was a horrible horrible man, given to seeing matters only in party partisan terms. An exchange, going back to the bushfire times (when Morrison had openly clashed with Berejiklian) to which the unnamed Liberal minister had responded by suggesting that Morrison was “psycho”. In politics, one hears worse, in strictly off-the-record observations, whoever the leader might be. But this was, or was said to be, an exchange evidenced in email, deliberately leaked at the worst possible moment so as to humiliate and embarrass a leader in trouble with his party and the electorate. It was a hit job, consciously timed, and an epic piece of bastardry, deliberately designed to shake and undermine confidence in his leadership. It was playing with his head. Morrison may have a tough hide, not to mention the capacity to shrug off bitter attacks. But he knows when his enemies are manoeuvring and that most of his enemies are behind him, not in the other party he is facing in the House of Representatives.

The NSW Liberal Party is in a very embarrassing factional war, not only about which candidates should represent the party at the next federal election, (and even the state election that follows after). Morrison has always been an intense player in the party power struggles of his home state, not least from the time that he was the party’s state director, and his personal coup in snatching a pre-selection after the chosen candidate was anonymously defamed. The allegations, leaked to a newspaper which will always do the Liberal Party machine a favour, were false, but able to be refuted only after the party had taken fright, called a new contest excluding the previous winner, and selected the “safe” Morrison instead. It has been Morrison’s faction which has been making most of the trouble recently, or, at least, doing the most to disturb an uneasy peace between the moderate faction (from which Berejiklian came) and the hard right faction (from which her successor, Dominic Perrottet comes). Morrison belongs to a second right-wing grouping with close ties to the Pentecostal movement. Its chieftain, Alex Hawke, is a Morrison government minister.

This faction is accused of having been holding up party pre-selections for so long that it might be too late for them to have them carried out according to party rules before the federal election is upon us. In that case, the factional daleks can sort out by themselves — without the unpredictable inconvenience of branch plebiscites — who should get the nod. Not only would this resolve the unfortunate situation of three sitting members — one a minister, Sussan Ley, the minister for the environment — who might actually lose party endorsement if it were up to a vote of local members, but it would allow particular friends and relations of some of the factional chiefs to apportion the vacancies by agreement among each other. In most cases, those the factional chieftains — or Morrison himself — would like would be unlikely to have won their place by normal processes. Morrison has been threatening intervention by the federal branch of the party, but he also lacks the numbers there.

One can see the email leaks as a carefully chosen hand grenade thrown into this messy fight. Those who see it explode will always have theories — if only by the cui bono rule — about who leaked it. It was not necessarily the unnamed minister, or even on his or her behalf, given that such correspondence, in politics, is almost always seen by more than sender and receiver. Likewise, as carefully worded denials by players — including Berejiklian herself — demonstrate, many will have reasons for not wanting to be conscripted into the front-line of defence.  Everyone suspects that the unknown mischief-maker has more ammunition, some for secondary targets.

It is not clear if the attack was on him personally — as Liberal leader and prime minister, soon to be involved in an election campaign — or as a warning to players, and a particular faction, in a bitter struggle for power in the NSW branch of the party. Given the way that some factional daleks play — that they would rather lose an election than surrender a piece of practical power in their own arena, or to allow a rival to be one-up — the idea of its being a power play, with Morrison only as a collateral casualty cannot be discounted. But it was certainly a major act of disloyalty. And it certainly had the effect of taking all the attention away from the goods and the inspiration on offer — such as it was — and on to issues of his personality, his character and the solidarity, loyalty and unity of purpose of his team.

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/pm-bogged-and-vulnerable-in-the-face-of-the-enemys-guns/

READ FROM TOP.

THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS THAT LYING SCOMO IS TRYING TO DO HIS UTMOST NOT TO APPEAR LIKE A PSYCHOPATH...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW TODAY ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞#!

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has emphatically denied allegations a Chinese spy ring tried to bankroll Labor candidates in the upcoming federal election, declaring “total confidence” in his party.

Mr Albanese also lashed the Coalition after allegations about China and Labor were first aired in parliament on Thursday.

“I understand the government’s desperate for distractions at the moment,” he said.

“But I say to them that national security is too important to engage in
game-playing, such as what we saw on the floor of the Parliament yesterday.”

Mr Albanese said Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general Mike Burgess had raised no concerns with him about Chinese interference in the ALP.

“The ASIO director-general has publicly stated that if he had concerns about attempts at foreign interference in political parties, he’ll raise them directly with the party leader,” he said.

“I have total confidence in all of my candidates and the director-general of ASIO has never raised a concern about any of my candidates.”

In a speech on Wednesday, Mr Burgess confirmed that ASIO had recently detected and disrupted a foreign interference plot in the lead-up to an Australian election. He refused to identify the jurisdiction.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2022/02/11/anthony-albanese-china-labor/

MEANWHILE

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has repeated claims that the Chinese government has chosen Labor leader Anthony Albanese as its preferred prime ministerial candidate ahead of the upcoming federal election.

Mr Dutton made the original allegation in federal parliament on Thursday, claiming there was “evidence” of the Chinese decision.

Labor deputy leader Richard Marles branded the remarks as shameful, while former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled the comments as a “reds under the bed” sledge.

When asked about the remarks on ABC Radio on Friday, Mr Dutton did not provide his evidence, but said there was “open-source information” about it.

“There’s no doubt in my mind about the statement that I made yesterday,” Mr Dutton said.

“There needs to be a greater awareness, frankly, particularly from the Labor Party about the engagement of people who don’t have our national interest,” he added.

Despite the comments drawing criticism as being inflammatory or unfounded, Mr Dutton said the situation with China had changed in the past decade.

“If you look at the facts in this case, I think certainly from what I see, both open source and other intelligence, that I see it’s a statement of the obvious,” he said.

“We’re dealing with a very different China, the Chinese government or the Communist Party now than they were five or 10 years ago.”

Mr Marles said Mr Dutton’s comments were a disgraceful attempt to politicise our national security.

READ MORE:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2022/02/11/peter-dutton-anthony-albanese-china/

Read from top.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!