Scott Morrison and Stuart Robert presided over a gross policy failure that brutally harmed vulnerable Australians and cost the nation $1.2 billion in compensation. Yet they still have their jobs, writes Belinda Jones.
Referendum- Does the Constitution need to be changed? Or remain racial?
Peter Dutton and his media cabal notwithstanding, The Voice is a well-considered and “detailed” proposition put forward by Indigenous Australians — just respect it. Managing editor Michelle Pini provides the “detail”.
The abandonment of the Bruce Lehrmann trial, the man accused of raping Brittany Higgins, is a devastating blow for all women who dare to speak out. Managing editor Michelle Pini reports.
It’s budget time under a new Albanese Labor Government and never will there be a better time to gauge the media reset from pro to anti-government than now.
A few recent examples of the media gang – unfortunately all from the national broadcaster – going into mass hysteria with their “analysis” over Labor’s first budget include:
David Speers to Jim Chalmers:“You can’t keep blaming the Coalition.”
Andrew Probyn to Sarah Ferguson: ‘One clear winner … and millions of losers.’
And the current front-runner in baseless and nonsensical beat-ups, Stan Grant, to no one in particular:
‘The dirty secret at the heart of the Federal Budget…’
The latter is the title of an article by ABC’s Stan Grant, in which he discovers a sudden and most compelling urge to consider Australia’s poor and disadvantaged. It is a new and shocking experience that has clearly eluded Grant and most of his media mates for the past decade.
One of the key tasks of the media – for any younger readers who may never have experienced it – is to hold governments to account. But this, like the key function of governments being to govern, seems to have been AWOL for over nine, very long and dysfunctional years under Coalition reign.
The conservative side of politics may have Australia’s mainstream media on its side but the Andrews Government’s secret weapon is the Victorian Liberal Party Opposition.
One needs to ask why is IA so readily flailing away at another independent media publisher rather than putting up a united stand against mainstream white man’s media? Why aren’t the other Independents responding and supporting them in their attack on Crikey? They don’t seem to feel Donavan and Pini have an argument worth backing.
Is IA just the sound of a single mouse roaring? Wailing against a competitor in a small Independent alternative market? They seem to have taken their eyes off the ball, the greater Australian media system? Or is this simply the sound of sour grapes? Do you really have to be poor to have both integrity and Independence?
Despite its claims of being small and independent, Crikey uses its cronies in the mainstream media, including ABC Media Watch, to promote itself and its funding campaigns and attack its competitors. Another eye-opening exposé by Dave Donovan and Michelle Pini.
Israeli attacks on Palestinians have received widespread condemnation while also inspiring unity and solidarity, writes Dr Ibrahim Natil.
Israel is not worried about accountability before the international community and it believes it is protected and above international law. Israel targets journalists, reporters and human rights in a systematic policy to frighten and terrify them to hide the expanding Israeli apartheid system every day in Palestine.
Is this a fight between two competitors where one, IA, fears it’s about to lose, and lose out big-time, the pot of gold- subscription money? According to them the crowdfunding of Crikey needs to be stopped why? Because they are already well funded? Well, there goes the Monthly or any other Independent publisher fighting to deliver better quality REAL News and Information. Are Murdochs funding IA or has AI merely jumped ship and joined the Murdochs of their own accord? What value is there when IA have turned to play the man and has taken it’s eyes off the ball and the man happens to be on their own team?
CRIKEY … “INDEPENDENT”?
Long before Crikey decided to stick its head above the parapet and issue this challenge to Lachlan Murdoch, Independent Australia was being mauled by Murdoch’s minions. We were being attacked, scorned and subjected to almost innumerable legal letters from News Corp, practically all of which threatened our very continuation as a publication. That’s because we were actually broke — not pretend poor, like Crikey. IA
The deeper you dig into Crikey’s crowdfunding in its defamation case against the Murdochs, the muddier it becomes.
Consequently, the matter has become a shitshow and is all but impossible to discuss frankly in the public arena. But I’m concerned that if we don’t try, we’ll leave a vacuum that rash people might feel the need to fill.
It’s undoubtedly been made worse by media outlets like The Herald Sun. Journalist Brianna Travers will not be collecting Walkleys for her article: ‘The Irish Times pub fires workers for spitting in neo-Nazi’s beer’. Her article begins with ‘A neo-Nazi has revealed what allegedly prompted an Irish pub’s bartender to spit in his beer’, making it sound like Brianna bravely gave voice to a neo-Nazi about what the extremist bartender did to him.
Australia’s media is back-snapped broken — but don’t expect the most concentrated media industry in the world to fix itself, writes founder and publisher Dave Donovan and managing editor Michelle Pini.
The press pack are acting as though the Coalition is temporarily exiled rather than categorically defeated, flooding the news cycle with the Dutton-led losing side and ignoring the Albanese Government, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
Will the News Corpse business model change? Not at all because the money and wealth that they feed off is not Democratically distributed. Harvey Norman still advertises with them and remembers Frydenberg gave him the money.
Australia has voted for a new government as Labor’s Anthony Albanese gained enough seats to form a minority government and stop Murdoch’s Liberal-National Party Coalition’s attempt at governing for a fourth consecutive term.
The Publicly owned broadcaster of our media News and Information service is the conservative’s enemy as far Morrison, the LNP, the IPA and Murdoch media are concerned. They are a coalition in Australia that simply view the ABC as the enemy of government rule. As far as they are concerned the ABC as News and Information service shouldn’t exist. Morrison’s and Abbott’s relationship with the ABC has been fractious and so for the past decade, their primary aim has been to extract revenue via an annual “efficiency review” which translates to always breaking the LNP promise of no cuts.
Scott Morrison has shown an aversion to appearing in ABC interviews, preferring to be represented by the right-wing mainstream media, writes Jeremy Epstein.
The covering up of corruption and scandals by the mainstream media is highlighting the importance of independent journalism more than ever, writes Paul Begley.
Faced with a tsunami of complaints Morrison foldsFaced with a tsunami of complaints Morrison folds
Scott Morrison has deserted Queensland flood victims, refusing to co-fund our $741million flood recovery package. This package would have helped thousands of Queenslanders rebuild their lives. The Prime Minister’s response: that’s not my problem.
Whether anyone seriously believes ScoMo’s claims of copping criticism for helping flood victims, this ridiculous sideshow manoeuvre by the PM can hardly be considered a credible excuse for the leader of a nation to refuse help to people in a catastrophe. Regardless, it should only be viewed with disgust and may well seal his fate. Because, hopefully, it will not only be the victims of floods, or the victims of bushfires who remember this Prime Minister’s callous disregard for his fellow Australians but voters nationwide.
The same universe where budget pledges, along with most other promises, are simply empty announcements that never come to fruition. And the one where the ever-faithful establishment media will do their darndest to ensure we all focus on the trinkets and any rumours about the Opposition and forget about the facts. Perhaps the $1.16 billion being spent on future space travel within the universe in question is really an insurance measure for the Government in case they get booted out of office and beyond the stratosphere?
Not being Scott Morrison, and being the real Barnaby Joyce “I’m not pretending to be anyone else, I’m still wearing the same glasses, sadly the same suits, and I weigh about the same, and I don’t mind a bit of Italian cake either. So, I’m happy in my own skin.” (Scott Morrison pretending he’s not a pretender). When you’re Scott Morrison you need to pretend that you’re not Scott Morrison In Latin the name ‘Scott Morrison’ translates as ‘Gobshiteus Ad Nauseum’. OK, it doesn’t but it should. Morrison is, however, a human ambigram – a condition known as Zachary disease, a symptom of which is the discharges from either end being indistinguishable. “When you’re prime minister, you can’t pretend to be anyone else” effluviated the originator of the ScoMo® artifice in all of its manifestations:
We are not ashamed to admit that at our last meeting with the Labor strategist, we were unconvinced that this slow, steady and largely uneventful approach by Labor would reap rewards. It has also sometimes been unpopular with their base. But if it is true that opposition parties don’t win elections but governments lose them and since, more than ever before, Australia’s establishment media fails to hold this Government to account, Labor’s strategy appears sound. Of course, whether it succeeds in unseating the Morrison Government remains to be seen.
We are being sold Fake Product. Propaganda dressed as News. Why do Murdoch, Costello and Stokes get away with what Peter Foster was jailed for? FALSE PRETENCES IS FRAUD any way you spell it.
The Perrottet Government’s shutdown of the NSW rail network was mislabeled a ‘train strike’ by a compliant mainstream media, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
ON MONDAY 21 FEBRUARY, trains in the Sydney network were cancelled by the NSW Government, causing chaos and fury amongst the millions of people dependent on the services to get them to where they needed to be. The situation was described, inaccurately, by Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields as a ‘Sydney train strike’.
Morrison’s distraction is the Bill to “punt people out”. It’s bringing back a cherry he knows “Border Control” He’s des[erate for difference as the ALP are stealing the ground from under him. It’s not his fault the law doesn’t protect the family from the domestic violence of aliens, non Australians, refugees and asylum seekers. Judges are protecting them and they need clearer guidance and not be able to make any “subjective or sympathetic decisions”. Like the boats and like Trump he is the only one to keep us safe and “punt them out” Meanwhile Immigration is in a state of collapse.
Despite all its tough talk on border control, the Government is overwhelmed with a backlog of visas that has built up over the years. Dr Abul Rizvi reports. WHEN BRIDGING VISAS were first introduced in the early 1990s, around the same time as mandatory detention and ministerial discretion, the expectation was that the number of people on bridging visas in Australia would rarely exceed 20,000 to 30,000. That we now have over 330,000 people on bridging visas in Australia is indicative of a visa system in gridlock — paralysed to a degree no one anticipated.
After a humiliating defeat in the Senate, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was described as ‘lighter than helium’ and having ‘no agenda’ by one staunchly pro-Coalition media outlet, as Alan Austin reports. ONE OF THE MOST sycophantic pro-Liberal Party newspapers, The Australian Financial Review (AFR), labelled Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ‘the dolt from Kooyong’ last Thursday, claiming his ‘humiliation is total’ and ‘his complete lack of political judgment has been exposed for all to see’.
I believe Michelle is being too generous in her description on the current state and mindset of our mainstream media. Their long term investment and profit moving forward depends on a one sided quid pro quo relationship with the Big Swinging Dicks in the LNP Club in Canberra. The Election fix is in and has been for the whole of this century their rewards in cash flow due every election cycle. But it can’t be allowed to be that obvious or the punters just might bring their House of Cards down and become aware of the sting.The sting that we are an Oligarch Corporate Capitalist Democracy far far removed from a Socially Democratic one.
Elections don’t depend on what the majority of Australian’s think and the ALP, the most democratic of all the major parties with the broadest views, knows that. Yet, every election since Keating lost has been a battle with one arm tied behind their backs. A battle fought against concentrated spearhead of the IPA, undeclared corporate support their MSM state media message the muszak in our ears louder than our dimwitted L-NP leadership. Tony Abbott was an example he was little more than a student brawler all his political life backed by the LNP office whose mindset was to serve their donors. Morrison on the other hand is more the two-faced huckster, the ad man, who believes he can soft sell anything and anyone as long as he leads from behind and not out front. It only takes a small swing among voters not the whole nation. For Morrison “style is meaning” in Marshal McCluhan’s “media has to be cool not hot” and the MSM and Clive Palmer provide that. It’s media without detail, the constant photo-op, pictures without detail and where the MSM don’t give Albo elbow room. Morrison runs into hiccups when photos turn out like the one with Grace and Australians have access to social media and can spoil Morrison’s vaccuous I’m just an ordinary guy message. The Troll then panics and has to control the digital world by trying push through bills allowing MPs to sue and curtail the flow of Independant media and “facts”.
When the Big Swinging Dicks Club starts to turn against you, is your time at the helm numbered? And when you’ve burned so many bridges, what cushy roles will be offered once you’re ejected? Can it be that the majority of Australians (and much of the world)have joined Grace Tame in giving you the side-eye?
The Department of Finance was warned by one of its own staffers that waiving a $41,000 debt owed by a senior official was likely illegal but it fully waived the debt anyway.
RAT TRAP Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt have publicly denied this is the case. A spokesperson from Mr Hunt’s office informed IA that the Minister for Health categorically denies mandatorily requisitioning, redistributing or otherwise appropriating stocks meant for retailers.
Morrison has died a thousand political deaths only to be spawned again yelling “don’t look in the rear vision mirror. Don’t look at the history of his government his political life is reborn and starts again today and he has the media Murdoch, Costello, and Stokes paid to back him up. Look how well Harvey Norman, Housing and the stock exchange are doing. Unfortunately we have a leader whose been playing whack-a-mole, without any concept of the past or future merely trying to stay alive today with no real direction. 18 months ago the Government was approached by an Australian RTA mfger and rejected. Yes rejected by our Government. No need for such trivia.
Meanwhile the nation is systematically sinking at an accelerated pace because what Morrison has in fact been doing is nothing. Nothing to stave off the collapse of the essential workers in health, industry, retail, transport or education why because the unions just might have some advice. What he is doing is trying to change the laws to allow infectious workers to keep on working and spreading the virus. A virus that can be caught no just once but multiple times to a point of collapse. How the fuck did this happen? Because Morrison believes a healthy economy produces a healthy nation and not that healthy nation produces a healthy economy. Morrison said “It was China’s fault”,”it’s not a race”,”lockdowns aren’t necessary”, and it’s “our fault” never his. What has he been doing? He’s been ” doing a Trump and like a camp follower has brought us to where we are today. He’s even pulled the RATs out from the Pharmacies reach that not so “free market” because the fucker can’t deliver the ones he promised. Yes it’s Morrison playing whack-a-mole with our lives.
He’s given us the most expensive government in Australia’s history. He has taxed us more invidually than the ALP, cut welfare, while subsidising and lowering corporate taxes as if there were no tomorrow. Our standing in the world has plummetted on every social metric while allowing only 1% of the nation to prosper and government debt increase by 200% to a $1Trn. Now that’s not leader. Thats not for the common good of this nation by any measure imaginable that’s a snake oil huckster a vampire sucking the very marrow out of us by simply doing nothing or when doing something it’s far too late. Good Onya ScaMo
The answer to all the above questions is that this Morrison Government is not interested in rules. It’s not even concerned with the welfare of its own people in the midst of a global pandemic. Its interests lie only in getting re-elected and appeasing its donors so this can happen.
Save the ABC! Improve Internet Freedom! Increase Media Diversity. While the LNP attacks the ABC, wants to control the Internet and rejects media diversity the MSM have his back. They supports their current quid pro quo arrangement with Murdoch Costello and Stokes but are certainly pissed at the way he zig zags them on a daily basis forcing their editors to play “Scotty Says”.
The mainstream media has eschewed objectivity in favouring the Liberal Party’s “let it rip” pandemic strategy, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
LNP supports privatized Prisons for Profit and Prisons for Profit support the LNP. Isn’t that a perfect Quid pro Quo policy? The LNP’s urgency in privatizing all government services is not just a Quid pro Quo movement described by Mussolini as the ideal state. He called it Fascism. However quite the opposite of the ideal Australians strive for called Democracy. Save Our Public Service
The immigration detention industry in Australia profits from imprisoning refugees. The Australian Government outsources the day-to-day management of its cruel immigration detention system to private corporations who, in turn, make political donations to them. One of the largest beneficiaries of Australian Government contracts is Serco Group, which has an octopus-like grip on many former government and community services in the UK and across the globe that are now privatised for profit. This human rights-abusing “profit before people” approach must be stopped and the rights of asylum seekers upheld everywhere.
A division of the Proud Boys in Albury has resorted to harassing social media commenters and elderly residents who they don’t agree with, writes Tom Tanuki. THIS TALE ends with a group of MMA fighters hunting an elderly Albury man. Bear with me.
BUILDING MULTIPLE PEARL HARBOURS TO KEEP US AND THE LNP’S ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT SAFE. SURE SOUNDS LIKE A MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY TO ME. “WANTED” A SHORT TERM BOGEY MAN FOR HIRE. A FUTURE APOLOGY GUARANTEED ALONG WITH BENEFICIAL TRADE AND MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES AT A LATER DATE.
ONCE UPON A TIME, our political masters announced economic plans and industry policies. Defence and military spending were not central planks of industry policy. Something changed. In the Alice in Wonderland world of late capitalism, militarisation, war preparations and defence spending have, apparently, become central to our economic welfare.
Preferences and power of Billionaire Clive’s money are all for the benefit of the LNP and assured and underpinned by a quietly understood transactional Quid pro Quo arrangement.
Members of the anti-vax movement have been showing support for the United Australia Party, two factions that share similar characteristics, writes Tom Tanuki.
But things have devolved rather rapidly of late. And now, the greatest letdown of the “freedom” movement – not to me but to itself, a great letdown of its own potential – is the eagerness with which it has rolled over for one Clive Palmer.
Over the year, guest journalists made 133 appearances on the 44 Insiders programs. If we count presenter David Speers, that is 177 contributions. Of these, 92 were current or former employees of Murdoch’s News Corporation, the most untruthful and discredited “news” organisation in the English-speaking world. That’s 52%. Another 32 journalists, or 18%, were from the pro-Coalition Nine Entertainment network. There is no need for the public broadcaster to engage employees of organisations with proven records of falsifying data, suppressing vital information and blatant political manipulation. Australia has many journalists with excellent credentials Insiders could have used.
Substitute “faith” or “god” for wherever, and the number of times Morrison says “Plan”, and you find yourself listening to a religious zealot and not a Prime Minister. There is no substance only a promise of a Morrison Miracle coming. You only need be a true believer. He’s more a Trump with MAGA becoming “The Australian Way” and at worst a QAnon totally backed Murdoch prepared liar’s PR package prepared months beforehand saying we were never Climate Change deniers.
More amusing and light relief is that Australia’s Trump even has his own Rudy Giuliani backing him. It’s Deputy Barnaby Joyce whose running around by trying to get in on the act and bring the French President Emmanual Macron down saying. ” Mate its only a contract get over it. It’s just a commercial contract for christ sake”. We all supposed to know they have no real or moral standing in Australia. So mate sue us!! After all he signed an $80mill one with Angus’s mates and got nothing for it.
As Prime Minister Scott Morrison met world leaders in Rome on Saturday, he represented a country a shadow of its former self. Alan Austin reports. THE CONTRAST could hardly be more glaring. A decade ago, Australia was the greatest country on the planet. Today, Australia is the stand-out loser — on climate policy, on economic outcomes, on corruption, on military procurement, on infrastructure, on democracy and on good global citizenship. Collapse in economic performance
“Money makes the world go around?” As Gladys Berejiklian fronts the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, ICAC – only to be told to stop her pre-rehearsed pleas of innocence and virtue and just answer the question, taped phone calls reveal former love- buddy, Daryl Maguire, had a virtual key to the public treasure chest, along with a key to her home as part of her swinging “Love-circle” – as she fondly dubs her retinue of friends with benefits. It’s going very badly for gold standard Gladys and mentor Scott Morrison. Especially Morrison, who’s betrayed by protégé Mathias Cormann whom the PM worked maniacally to make his OECD mole. Then the world mocks his absurd energy “Plan”. Morrison also loses his pin-up girl to what sounds unmistakably like corruption on taped calls, allegedly between the ex-premier and her former paramour. Worse, it’s an ill-timed reminder of the government’s promise of a federal ICAC, impotent, unworkable and now three years’ old. The PM doesn’t want any type of ICAC at all, least of all one with teeth, Rachel Withers notes because most of his government’s ministers would be hauled in to answer to it. Like a squid squirting ink,the Coalition quickly exudes a noxious miasma of lies to discredit the state integrity body and to cloud our view of its own transgressions.
Pundits and politicians today are being accused of stochastic terrorism. The most obvious example is Donald Trump, whose rhetoric has inspired violence from supporters, writes Dr Gerard Gill.
It is not just Scott Morrison and his ministers disseminating dubious data. The head of at least one federal department is making factually questionable assertions of a political nature, writes Alan Austin.
Bishop gives the Chinese broadcasting to the Pacific Island Nations a freebie. Ports, Air bases come with sphere of influence and friendship don’t they?
Faced with a tsunami of complaints Morrison folds
What makes hard-working IA political editor Dr Martin Hirst tick? This Telum Media interview paints the picture.
olddogthoughts 