Tag: LNP Government
Not laughing now (ODT)
Under the Coalition’s “responsible budget management”, net debt has increased from $161,253 million at 31 August 2013, a week before the election, to $424,164 million at the end of February this year.
Still stuck in slogan land, Coalition language is changing.
We have gone from a “targeted, modest and scalable” response to “targeted, measured and scalable” and now Frydenberg is calling for “quick, strong and co-ordinated action” from the G20 countries.
The self-satisfied smirks, the ridiculing of the idea of well-being, and the draconian persecution of the unemployed have disappeared.
After more than a decade of their bullshit, all of a sudden, “we are all in this together”.
Irresponsible lending created the GFC (ODT)
The Morrison Government’s emergency measures to protect the economy are another massive subsidy from embattled taxpayers to Australia’s largest corporations. They are a failure of government to govern. Michael West reports.
Question: why would a bank lend money to a business with no customers?
Answer: it wouldn’t.
Question: who will benefit from the Reserve Bank’s massive loan and money-printing program?
Answer: banks, bond traders and corporate customers.
Australia’s attorney general Christian Porter has pooh-poohed concerns about the fate of casual workers caught up in the coronavirus crisis, saying they would have “already made provisions” if they have to take time off work.
“If you could find out when you were going to die would you want to know?”
My personal answer to this was no but, given none of us are getting out of this life alive, what are some of the real sudden death health risks to worry about? Around the world, every year, the number of people:
killed by car crash ~1,250,000
killed by their own hand ~800,000
killed by influenza ~375,000
killed by (non war) gun violence ~250,000
killed by war ~200,000
killed by terrorists ~20,000
killed by lightning ~6,000
killed by coconut falling on head ~150
eaten by shark < 10
Car crash v Coronavirus: doctor puts pandemic in perspective – Michael West
Sports rorts. Unlawful robo-debts. More than $80m in election donations. Is this the governance we want?
LNP Shame up close and personal with the USA and down distant and who gives a fuck with it’s citizens. America constructed crimes to fit Assange and our LNP has done nothing but applaud. (ODT)
IN A WATERSHED CASE for journalistic freedom, the hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition to the U.S. begins in London on 24 February 2020. If extradited to the U.S., Assange will face 18 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and a potential sentence of 175 years in prison for “crimes” that include some of the greatest pieces of citizen journalism of the 21st century: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, Cablegate and the famous collateral murder video.
Oh you mean like when Labor steered us through the Global Financial Crisis emerging as the strongest economy in the world?
An example of the planet, the best of possible worlds the LNP government has been leading us into this century. (ODT)
The AQI hit 4,650 on New Year’s Day in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. That was the day that fires chased us home from the beach. When we got to our house, I stuffed paper towels in the crevices of the doors, but it was wasn’t enough. That night, I didn’t sleep. It was sweltering. And every breath tasted like sticky tar.
There is no link between droughts and climate change is the argument posited by News Corp pundits like Andrew Bolt and the LNP government’s right wing who Morrison says has “no influence”. It’s the same argument put by Big Tobacco smoking and cancer that there is no direct link. But Kelly Morrison and News Corp pundits keep silent on that score and I’m sure don’t encourage their kids to smoke.
After 40+ years of scientific research the evidence is clear that there is a correlation between the rate rise of CO2 and global warming records. That warming has intensified lengthened and changed the nature of droughts and lengthened the fire danger periods changing the nature of the fuels readily burnt. Climate change has in fact significantly impacted the consequences experienced of the bushfires we see today. Predictions to this effect were made by climatologists more than 10 years ago ignored and scoffed at.
The biggest response in 2013 was heard by ex LNP PM Tony Abbott who said science of global warming was crap. Today we hear Scott Morrison declaring it’s no time for politics. We need to deal with the new reality and we are doing that but forget the cause. (ODT)
“There is no link, the facts that cause the fires are the drought and the drying of the environment,”
“I follow the science,” lies Craig Kelly, MP for Hughes, who lobs on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, a pulpit for Piers Morgan, a Daily Mirror, former editor, sacked in 2004, for publishing fake images purporting to show British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners.
via As straw men in a firestorm. – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The neoliberal trickle-down story is a myth. It never shows up. It fails because the wealthy put much of their wealth into unproductive asset speculation and luxuries for themselves, not into productive investment. This keeps the financial markets and housing prices high, but our economy has been hollowed out. We are left with being China’s quarry.
The right-wing neoliberal parties of Margaret Thatcher and John Howard set upon the industrial unions with a vengeance, so it is almost comical now to see the Morrison Government’s continuing obsession with the last feeble vestiges of union power. But Labor and Labour also undermined and defanged the unions, and allowed industries to wither and collapse with little help for displaced workers.
In place of real jobs, people are offered the gig economy, with no security and a likelihood their wages will be stolen as well. Yes, the nature of the economy has changed, but the employed still have a common interest against the owners of capital, as Adam Smith himself well understood in his day.
Meanwhile, Morrison is cutting funds to the ABC (ODT)
An Excuse for a PM (ODT
When our accidental-Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, took office, he swore an oath to ‘be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors according to law.’
No mention of his duties to his wife and daughters. They are a private matter and, as long as he remains Prime Minister, his duties lie to the high office to which he has (sadly) been elected, and for which it appears he totally lacks competence!
Prime Minister – this is not all about you.
You really don’t have a clue, do you?
It is not about your promises to your daughters.
It is not about sharing the grief of people whom you have let down.
It is not about getting a few more photo ops, showing the caring Prime Minister comforting the distraught property owner who has lost everything.
Or the grieving widow with a young family whose partner died fighting the fires because he cared about his community.
That is all hypocritical flim-flam which highlights your failings.
Australia, along with all inhabitants of this planet, is facing an existential crisis.
The Coalition climate deniers have also been denying their country the ability to take actions which might have – at least to some extent – mitigated the current catastrophic conditions, and without which we can guarantee this is not the end but the beginning of a growing disaster.
Yes – we are not the only country needing to take action – but we are the developed country with the highest per capita level of emissions of greenhouse gases.
Yes – countries like China, India and the USA are lagging behind in taking action, but that does not give us licence to do nothing. Instead it gives us an obligation to put them to shame by showing how a relatively small country can rapidly become carbon neutral.
via Scott Morrison should resign – » The Australian Independent Media Network
LNP Government, Murdoch Media have all declared this as JUST WEATHER (ODT)
When warmongers become politicians all they know is mongering more war rather than self reflection on why they are assisting in the failure of Democracy. (ODT)
The chairman of Parliament’s joint committee on intelligence and security, Andrew Hastie, says Western nations must wage their own political warfare campaigns “to preserve peace and avoid war” and stop rival authoritarian states from undermining democracy.
“We have returned to an era of great power competition, even constant conflict,” he told Whitehall think tank the Royal United Services Institute.
“The challenge for us in the West is that the character of that competition, being conducted by authoritarian opponents, is attacking our way of life and our freedom in a manner that is remarkably difficult to defeat without undermining the very freedoms we seek to protect.”
via Andrew Hastie essay urges democracies to engage in political warfare to ‘preserve peace’
As catastrophe engulfs us, what is our government doing?
Union-bashing.
Refugee-bashing.
Labor-bashing.
Decimating the public service.
“Refusing to apologise” for blatant misdeeds by Angus Taylor.
It’s business as usual for the do-nothing Coalition sticking to their age-old ideological vendettas.
via Ensuring there will be no integrity – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The LNP have been in control for most of the past 20 years and have successfully created disadvantage for most of the nation compared with the rest of the world. But then it’s easier to control the disadvantaged isn’t it? (ODT)
The declining performance of Australian school students is in the spotlight again. But is there anything governments can do to arrest the decline?
According to the latest results from PISA 2018, the average reading levels of Australian 15-year-olds fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of school since 2000. Mathematics levels fell by one-and-a-quarter years of school since 2003. And science levels fell by almost a year of school since 2006. Very few countries recorded such large falls in performance.
Focus on basics leaves schoolkids short in essential deep thinking
My thought for the day
At some time in the future history will record that even though they should have known better the people of Australia made, in May 2019, a monumental mistake in electing a Morrison government. Subsequently some lessons will be learned the hard way. (JOHN LORD)
via Politically illiterate, or just plain dumb – » The Australian Independent Media Network
When a Surplus is more important than Australians in need. (ODT)
via NDIS funds ‘repurposed’ for drought relief under Scott Morrison’s plan
Association for International Broadcasting is convening to explore the challenges faced by media organisations as they react to increasing infringements on media freedom in an ever greater number of territories. What is extraordinary is that alongside the usual suspects of Iran, states in Central Asia and dictatorships across Africa where media freedom is a distant dream, Australia will feature prominently in our discussions, and for all the wrong reasons.
via ‘Extraordinary’: There’s a new name on the list of media-unfriendly nations
It would not make any sense to have the competition build overlapping fibre infrastructure. However, when the Government changed the game and went for its second-rate multi-mix technology version, I agree with Telstra that at that stage it would have been better for the Government to abandon the NBN altogether and leave it to the industry. We would have had, in many areas, a far better network at lower costs than the one we have today. Thanks to Tony Abbott (ODT)
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.