Another year has passed, 2020 more horrific than most in recent times. Except for politicians and cronyism - which has done exceedingly well for the majority of the year. I hear business profits in Australia were up over 50% in the latter half of 2020 - primarily because of a nice government earner called Jobkeeper - which allowed some less scrupulous companies and CEOs to rort and profit from share dividends. Amidst the backslapping and caviar at Christmas lunch, unemployment hit well over 12% if you factor in the under-employed and hidden unemployed - while wages remain stagnant.
This shift in wealth, which is constant, hasn't stopped business harping in the ear of the government about the raw deal they've been getting throughout Covid. Apparently they need more time - and new legislation - to get back on their feet post-Covid. Morrison and Porter are only too happy to oblige with a draft bill that would allow employers to have greater say over their workers' hours, duties and locations. Porter says it's to negate the effects of Covid on business and would only be a temporary two-year measure. So in effect, business would get to do what they please for the next two years and make a profit at the expense of fleecing their workers.
The constant attack on workers and unions by the government is deliberate and part of the greater ideological dream of neoliberalism - the processes of deregulating the market and lowering trade barriers while encouraging privatisation and austerity. Stepping back from a "responsible" and direct role regarding welfare and social health is also high on their agenda - as evidenced by their continual outsourcing to manage welfare recipients, their employment, their incomes and their lives.
This is merely the tip of the iceberg and has been a long time in the making. John Howard would be a good place to start, although the journey to where we are now started before he was ever prime minister.
Howard was the prime minister of reform - particularly tax reform and industrial relations reform. Howard had never met a reform he didn't like. He was primarily responsible for the aged care system we have today - introducing the Aged Care Act soon after winning the election in 1997. He increased privatisation in aged care and decreased funding, changing legislation to suit more and more private providers and changed staff-to-patient ratios. The scandals Howard and his ministers were involved in were many and far reaching, including the children overboard affair, the AWB oil-for-wheat scandal, the Muhamed Haneef affair and the waterfront dispute of 1998. The Timor-Leste spy scandal gets a special mention, as it is still ongoing today for the many who were involved, including Alexander Downer. The government in 2021 are still embroiled in controversy with Bernard Collaery and Witness K and are determined that the information - extremely damaging to the Liberals themselves - remains secreted from the public eye.
The only good thing about John Howard, as far as I'm concerned, is that he lost his seat in the 2007 election. There have only been two prime ministers since Federation who have lost their seats in an election. The other was Stanley Bruce in 1929. Both lost to the Labor party.
Tony Abbott became prime minister in 2013. Even before he was prime minister he managed to create controversy by appearing at a carbon tax protest using the signage "Ditch the witch" and "JuLiar.. Bob Brown's B*tch" as a backdrop against the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, to air his grievances. To say that Tony Abbott is a sexist swine would be an understatement. During his creeping tenure as PM he managed to wink, smirk, lick his lips often & display his budgie smuggling tendencies whenever an opportunity arose. Abbott was a classic homophobe and a horrific misogynist. Some of his noted comments over time have included "I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons", "Virginity is the greatest gift you can give someone" and "I probably feel a bit threatened" by homosexuals.
Abbott's dubious career was pockmarked by scandal and controversy. When Abbott's daughter received a $60,000 scholarship to a prestigious design school, the poo hit the blender. The chair of the board of governors for the aforementioned design school was a big donor to the Liberal party and a teacher at the school was "constructively dismissed" for leaking details regarding Abbott's daughter's scholarship. Abbott was also of the opinion that climate change was "crap". He "abolished Australia's climate commission and defunded scientific research".
And who could forget the knighting of Prince Philip? Abbott almost lost his PM'ship over that master gaffe.
The Abbottisms abound, but I will keep it short. There was the hot mic incident in 2015, spying on Indonesia, smokin' Joe Hockey's disastrous first budget, "shirtfronting" Putin and the offshore detention crisis. The onion-eating, toilet-loitering misfit should be confined rather than consigned to the blackened annals of history in a permanent pair of spiky budgie smugglers.
Malcolm Turnbull might have been a better representation of his government as a moderate Liberal had he had the support from the right people, instead of the extreme angst of the extreme right of the party. Turnbull will probably be remembered for the NBN FUBAR, while it was Abbott who initially downgraded the NBN project from FTTP to the dismal and unexpectedly expensive FTTN. There was, of course, the memorable parliamentary eligibility crisis during Turnbull's PM'ship where parliamentarians were dropping like flies due to Section 44 of the Constitution which prohibits dual citizens from sitting in parliament. There was the Helloworld scandal with Cormann and Hockey and the "bonk ban" featuring the featureless Barnaby Joyce. There was also the National Energy Guarantee - which in part brought about the downfall of Turnbull's political career as PM. As per Turnbull's words ..."The NEG had strong support within the cabinet... a right-wing minority in the party room refused to accept the majority decision and threatened to cross the floor and defeat their own government". It was this right-wing minority that also agitated for Turnbull's removal and as a consequence, Scott Morrison's eventual coup as prime minister. Which is where the rot began to set in - again.
Morrison had a murky past and high ambitions. Even before he was a Liberal party MP, his aspirations were high and his methods questionable. He was known as a bully by colleagues and quick to anger. Morrison favoured lack of transparency in the workplace and, in fact, anything he wanted to keep hidden in or out of the workplace. He has been in numerous places of employment - many ending in sackings, secrecy and cancelled contracts - some of which have been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page - one for KPMG and another as the strategic director for Liberal, Peter Debnam. During that time Morrison was more interested in networking through various Liberal contacts to find his way into the Liberal party itself.
Morrison started out in the tourism industry during the 1990s. His first stint was as deputy chief executive of Australian Tourism Taskforce. He later left to become general manager of the Tourism Council of Australia. Before the 1990s were over the TCA had become insolvent despite a "start-up loan of $2.3 million from the Howard government". Morrison was one of the employees blamed for the insolvency by a former employee. Morrison then moved to New Zealand to become the director of the Office of Tourism and Sport. He didn't last until the end of his contract and returned to Australia. In 2004, after courting favour with John Howard, Morrison found himself in the position of managing director of Tourism Australia, of the "where the bloody Hell are you" fame. Morrison was also known in Tourism Australia as the "invisible MD" as he was never around. He was sacked by the board of Tourism Australia in what even today remains mystery and conjecture. Recent revelations from redacted information after successful FOI requests regarding this have uncovered many issues regarding Morrison's performance as MD, particularly as the guidelines regarding contractual obligations of Tourism Australia were breached "and private companies engaged before paperwork had been signed without appropriate value-for-money assessments".
Morrison once again escaped virtually unscathed and "Scott-free" to continue his campaign to engage with the Liberal party as often as possible.
Morrison started his rise in government the same way he has continued in parliament - nefariously. Michael Towke, who won preselection 82 to 8 against Scott Morrison for the seat of Cook in 2007, found himself on the receiving end of a slur campaign when two senior members of the Liberal party began leaking defamatory and misleading information to the Daily Telegraph regarding him. Afterwards, the second ballot gave the preselection to Morrison. For all intents and purposes, Morrison should not even be in government.
The list of scandals since Morrison entered parliament have been long, but more so since he has managed to gain footholds and influence within the party. As the social services minister, he was the chief instigator of the complete automation of Robodebt which led to the loss of over 2000 lives. As treasurer, Morrison continued to "crack down" and cut payments for welfare recipients. As prime minister, his list of rorts and indiscretions are long and varied, including the Robodebt class action, the "it's okay to be white" parliamentary faux pas, the Chinese election signage, the failed bush fire aid and the missing bush fire funding, the sports rorts, the regional rorts, the land rorts, destruction of Aboriginal cultural sites, entitlement rorts, visa corruption, government stacking of the AAT, penalty rate cuts, jingoism, gutting of ASIC, cutting of the ANAO budget, Hawaiian bush fire holiday, CovidSafe app and attempting to get Brian Houston into the White House.
Indeed, with Morrison as prime minister, it seemed to become a licence for ministers to act with impunity in every imaginable and unimaginable scenario. Short of murder, and they've virtually committed that with regard to Robodebt, there is nothing that will pry the Morrison-government barnacle off the bottom of the taxpayer trough.
Cases in point are Angus Taylor and his many indiscretions - including grassgate, watergate and recent forged documentation regarding the Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. Tudge and Porter survived a sex scandal widely reported in the media. Tudge once again, was accused of criminal conduct in an immigration case by a judge. Tim Wilson - his franking credit fiasco and his recent "illegal" advice on social media - according to the ATO - to encourage future home owners to gain access to their super for a home deposit - all go unquestioned by Morrison. McCormack's private jet ride courtesy of taxpayer's remains a mystery. Downer and Abbot travel overseas during the Covid lock down and Cormann utilises a private jet to the tune of more than $4000 per hour, crisscrossing Europe in an attempt to campaign for the job of secretary-general of the OECD - all while not even a member of parliament and courtesy of the taxpayer.
This is barely a mark in the sand for Morrison. He has enabled his entire shambolic government simply by being himself. As prime minister, it is his duty to enforce and correct the behaviour of his party in government. It is his job to lead and lead well, which he is incapable of. The idea of being prime minister for Morrison is not what the job entails but the power and prestige the title brings with it. It is about ego, narcissism and it is all about him. Morrison has an entire department dedicated to creating an image of himself to project to the public at any given time to suit any given situation. He has unlimited marketing power at his disposal and he has used it without conscience or limitation since the 2019 federal election. He utilises the marketing expertise of his "team" rather than really engaging with the voting public. He skirts around issues of importance, using avoidance and deflection strategies - promoting the positives of his leadership while using the backing of the mainstream media to achieve his goals. With the mainstream media a clear and partisan arm of the government rather than a separate entity, Morrison is able to disrupt reality, change history, repeat a lie often enough for it to become a truth and blacken the opposition at regular intervals.
Morrison's motivation lies in his arrogance and his willingness to do anything it takes to remain in power for as long as possible. What we have before us is not a democracy. Morrison is shaping our government into something else - where the few have the power over the many and the wealthy prosper at the expense of the poor. This is where we circle back to neoliberalism with austerity the golden rule and "surplus" the golden goose.
I doubt very much, however, that we will see that "back in black" mug featured in any future advertisements for some time, despite Morrison's attempts post-2020 to keep public expenditure down with regard to health, education and welfare. He will continue to pander to business interests while embarking on a campaign to reduce workers' rights, keep wages low, abolish awards and conditions and attack the unions to reduce their power.
Morrison and his government want to punish the poor and reward the rich but it shouldn't be that way. Democracies are more likely to succeed by rewarding the poor and taxing the rich accordingly to create a more balanced and effective economy. Morrison's "Liberal" vision doomed to fail. But he's not in the business of government to be democratic, he's in the business of government for business.
By world standards Australia is still considered a democracy, but our corruption ranking slipped to 13 in 2013 and has remained there without improvement. Denmark is number 1 in ranking and New Zealand is number 2. This says a lot about our ranking in comparison to one of our closest neighbours.
A federal ICAC is desperately needed. There has been pressure on the government to introduce legislation for an ICAC but has presented instead a watered-down version called the Commonwealth Integrity Commission and it will "facilitate in covering up corruption, not expose it".
As we move into 2021 there is much to be done. The government continues to suppress, prevent the dissemination of information, vilify, attack the vulnerable and attack our working population. While the majority of our population flounder, the government continue to change the goalposts to enable further freedom for themselves and the chosen few with a compromised 4th estate onside to help them. I have never seen a more corrupt government in my lifetime but as I have mentioned, this has been building for some time.
It's time people began to realise that it's not just up to those who are continually standing up against the government - it's up to the rest of us to stand up with them and support their cause. The government is intent on division and confusion. Only with the unity of the many can a controlling entity be finally defeated, regardless of the price.
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