Congratulations Australia! You cowering clowder of fraidy cats have capitulated in the face of a blatant fear campaign and negative, deceitful sloganeering from Smirker and his coprolytic Luddites and drongos. Frightened? Now you should be; we face three more years of regressive zealotry, incompetence and appalling behaviour because you voters have endorsed it all as being acceptable. Deplorable!
We've had six years of a grim regime of cranks, liars, humbugs, religious nutters, bellicose bullies, autocrats and self-interested, dodgy carpet-baggers. Tumult reigned, idiocy prevailed over logic and reason, sabotage and wrecking substituted for policy vision and yet they were returned to wreak further havoc. WTF Australia? Seriously, WTF?
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous." Goebbels
The Lying Nasty Party implemented a scare campaign for the 2019 election given they could not run on their abysmal track record and are bereft of plans, imagination and ideas. Their intention to play their cherished terrorism card was kyboshed by events in Christchurch - you could read the disappointment on ScoMo's face as he pretended to care about the brownish victims. Ersatzgruppenfuhrer Dutton didn't pretend at all - empathy not being characteristic of psycopaths.
So, Kill Bill and the Lib mythology of better economic management was overlaid on Chicken Little panic marketing of lies and distortions on tax. And it worked. Ironically the facile spruiking by Morrison the failed marketing man finally succeeded.
No-one ever lost an election by underestimating the intelligence of the general public was FauxMo's effective take on the old H L Mencken aphorism.
So what are we in for?
The conservatives believe they now have a licence from the electorate to ramp up their beligerance and artiface. Self-satisfied, smug arrogance was on full display as Scotty FauxMo Morrison assembled his grinning claque of second-raters slathering and cheering with relief that their FUD campaign has delivered them three more years in control of the hen house.
That salty, yellow trickle-down will be the effluent from the affluent as FauxMo & Co pass more of the tax burden across to those least able to afford it. The Slogan Bogan's "a fair go for those who have a go" is an opaque variation of Sloppy Joe Hockey's "lifters and leaners" and his advice to first home hopefuls to "get a good job that pays good money". What they really mean of course is that they'll look after the wealthy and comfortable at the expense of the undeserving "others". The wealthy bankers have already broken out the Krug and Cubans to celebrate the likely resurrection of $billions in tax breaks and rising share values as self-funded retirees jump aboard the now loudly advertised gravy train of franking credits. "The Bill You Can't Afford"? You bet they can't, you bet you can't.
The "poverty is a choice, winner takes all, for some to win others have to lose" mindset of the mammon-worshipping neo-liberals was grafted into the Liberal Party's genes by the mean and tricky government of John The Lying Rodent Howard and nurtured by Abbott the egregious eclesiastic and his supercilious sidekick Hockey. A glimmer of hope in a top hat was brutally extinguished with the political assassination of Malcolm Turnbull as the knuckle-draggers returned to BAU via the connivance of Spud-Dutton and his goon squad whose innumeracy played into the hands of the manufactured guilelessness of FauxMo, their default right-wing saviour.
Dr Heckle and Mr Edward 'Shouty' Hyde
The hectoring Mr Shouty, disguised as Mr Fair Dinkum Geniality during the election campaign, will return. That condescending, trademark smirk will be on full display as his pea-and-thimble responses to scrutiny get a full workout. Scotty will be answerable to no-one other than his personal, negatively geared, Mercedes-driving Jesus.
Shouty's many co-religionists (sans the feral friar from Warringah) have been given licence to reopen the throttle on science-denial, bigotry and dogma. Fear and loathing of "the others" will be encouraged, enthusiastically megaphoned by the Murdoch propaganda machine. The nutters will demand their god-given right to discriminate and stigmatise in the cause of freedom of religion and in service to their homophobic, omnipotent invisible friend in the sky.
Cartoon used with the permission of Mark David
And, when you have a friend in Jesus you don't want evidence, facts and proofs to interfere with your superstitions. Science is just a belief system to be ignored and denigrated. The planet was gifted to these folk by their deity for them to exploit. Climate emergency, mass extinctions? Phhhht!
Our secular democracy has endorsed a creationist - a man with a literal belief in hell, Armageddon and the imminent end of times. Our man in charge thinks it's all going to end soon and that he and his prosperity-gospelling freaky friends will ascend to the heavens while the rest of us burn for eternity. Good call Australia.
I wonder whether the brethren of Horizon Church sign up for extended warranties on their new Beemer SUVs.
Calling in the favours
Clive Palmer did not spend $60million on his campaign thinking he'd pick up a swathe of seats for the UAP. The blobulous Clive spent that dough to further his interests in opening up the Galilee Basin for his coal mine aspirations via tax-payer funded rail and infrastructure. He'll be calling in the L/NP IOU that the coal adulators will enthusiastically pay. The deplorable Matt King Coal Canavan and dodgy Well Done Angus Taylor took to the streets almost immediately to trash the ideological foundations of their free enterprise party by insisting we all underwrite the grifters and shonks like Palmer and Adani to further pollute our planet.
The scrotum-headed Rupert Murdoch will expect his flagrant anti-Labor propaganda to be paid for through continuing undermining of the ABC because rampaging free-marketeers hate competition. And the Libs hate scrutiny, seeing any questioning of their dogma or behaviour as some sort of lefty-conspiracy. These are the freaks who voted 2:1 to sell off the ABC at the party’s 2018 annual council. Expect three more years of attacks and undermining of our nation's most trusted institution.
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Pandering to venality, looking the other way on dodgy practices, further privatisation of government to squeeze private profits from essential services, accelerated politicisation and evisceration of the public service, uncontested government contracts handed to mates, stripping assets and outsourcing facilities to opaque Cayman Islands entities, avoidance of scrutiny with a toothless integrity commission, conflicts of interest, in-fighting and backstabbing ... all this and more from a cabal of crooks, short-bus passengers, grifters and poltroons. All of it OK'd by an apathetic/ignorant/selfish/scared public who, despite six years warning, decided this rabble was the safest option.
I fucking despair, yet every cloud etc. The village idiot Abbott is gone, defrocked in his Liberal stronghold and providing a glimmer of hope when even the rusted-ons show that they are not prepared to tolerate the climate crazies.
The puce goose from New England has been stripped of any authority and is likely now to remain in his rightful place, if not a jail cell, then as a backbench laughing stock.
An indigenous Australian has been given ministerial responsibility for aboriginal affairs.
Science and the marketplace will by-pass the climate-denial idiocy as renewables continue their inexorable rise in energy generation. The Canavans and Taylors in this government will be sidelined by circumstances.
“Unfortunately today there is no carbon price. And unfortunately it is free to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It doesn’t feel right and it shouldn’t be like that. There needs to be a cost to change people’s behaviour.”
BP’s global head of carbon management Gardiner Hill, on the sidelines of the APPEA oil and gas conference, defying calls from Resources Minister Matt Canavan for industry to abandon support for a carbon price.
And just as the Coalition government ramps up its efforts to push through the Adani coal mine, and potentially new investments in coal generation, BHP has declared that thermal coal is likely to make a quicker exit than most people expect, and it is getting ready for a decarbonised economy.
BHP’s landmark strategy briefing, delivered by CEO Peter Beaven to analysts ... highlights the growing gulf between what individual companies see as the future of renewables and electric vehicles, and the self-interested rhetoric of the business lobbies that represent them and the Coalition government that slavishly adheres to conservative nay-sayers. Renew Economy.com.au
Frightened? I'm not frightened, just disgusted and deeply disappointed. You've got three years Australia. Wake up!
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This post is also published on the Australian Independent Media Network.
Five aspects of Pentecostalism that shed light on Scott Morrison’s politics - The Conversation
The myth that the Liberals are better economic managers - John Menadue
Scott Morrison, the opportunist. Mungo MacCallum
Scott Morrison is not an ‘accidental’ Prime Minister. - Peter Hartcher