Because COVID has had such a distortive effect on time.
It's difficult to believe that less than two and a half years ago
Australia was engulfed in a natural disaster
that dwarfed what we as a nation endured in World War Two.
It would be known both ominously and accurately as the Black Summer Bushfires.
3 billion animals dead.
Hundreds of people dead.
$100 Billion in damage.
Many of our most biodiverse ecosystems permanently wrecked.
A thick, foreboding fog choking our cities as the public continued on with
Silence of the Lambs glances at one another through eyes watering from the smoke.
The fleeting glance was all the communication that was needed to be said.
Black Summer could not be explained away with the usual
"land of fires and floods" jingoisms.
Black Summer redefined what catastrophic was. Every natural disaster preceding it
felt like little more than an unfavourable weather report by comparison.
And it was in that thick of that apocalypse that our leader in name only:
the dishonourable Scott John Morrison, decided to abandon the country
he swore an oath to protect
for a holiday
in a five star resort
on the other side of the planet.
After all, he discovered in his Nero-like ignorance while taking a photo
with the Australian cricket team from his harbour mansion.
As the country very visibly burned behind him, a nation on fire
doesn't make for the best backdrop.
Covering politics for a living, it is frequently crossed my mind
how someone who had reached
the zenith of government, a man whose only concern or training is PR,
how he could possibly think he could get away with not just abandoning
the country he's responsible for in quite literally its darkest hour,
but doing so after
spending the better part of a decade crippling our emergency services
through relentless and callous cuts,
ignoring dozens of former emergency services chiefs, begging
not just Scott, numerous senior members of his government to at least have a plan
for such predictable, catastrophic seasons.
To which they responded with more cuts.
It is impossible for a human being that has anything close to a sound mind
to fathom the solipsism required to think that he, of all people, deserved
to use the money of the parents of the children
who were buoyed helplessly at sea as their communities were set ablaze
while wearing masks so as not to choke on their home's ashes.
That that parasite could possibly believe that
he had earned a five star holiday on their dollar.
I can only think he rationalised it as some sort of dividend for the money
saved from not buying the fleet of planes that Bill Shorten would have
had he become Prime Minister.
But then how would he justify the outdated submarines his government bought
that were never built
That cost a hundred times more.
It had become clear well before the smoke it aperated, that Scott Morrison
deliberately went to Herculean efforts to permanently dishonour his most crucial
of duties in order to satisfy the mildest of his personal whims.
If you think there's any other explanation for this horrendous scar
on the office of Prime Minister I ask you,
why else would he have attempted to hide this vacation from the public
if he didn't know that it was deeply, deeply wrong?
Why would he go to the length of outright denying he was on holiday right up until
he was photographed sitting in a resort in another hemisphere with a cocktail?
Why else would he on return,
which he only bothered to do because of the metaphorical heat on him.
Why would he attempt to shift the blame of his vacation
somehow on the leader of the Opposition? Claiming Anthony Albanese knew,
lying about something as provable as a text message.
And when all else failed, attempted to shrug off his role
as the head of government.
The final say on how all government services are managed
and dispersed that that role in a disaster of that magnitude
was somehow disposable because he doesn't hold a hose.
Anthony Albanese doesn't hold a hose either.
Unlike Scott Morrison, he was not the head of government.
He had no jurisdiction over the government.
He could have very easily taken a holiday.
It would have made no difference at all to how these vital apparatus functions.
And yet in that most horrific of times,
he did not spend your money on a cocktail for himself in a five star resort.
He spent it on food for those that do hold a hose.
He spent his time listening to what resources those that do hold a hose need
so he could return to Canberra and lobby for it.
The most he could possibly do in his position,
that was regrettably removed from the levers of power.
And as such it is one of the sickest jokes of this election that the only work
is sly leech of the public purse had done was to ensure that he could avoid work.
And yet he has the gall to base his entire campaign around the question:
“is Anthony Albanese ready to lead?”
It's an old cliché, but a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Never forget that while Scott Morrison was doing this,
Anthony Albanese was doing this.
That's a public servant.
This is a man, on the other hand, who clearly believes the public
is there to serve him.
No matter how the commentariat attempted to massage this photo's impact.
No matter how the public relations officer in chief himself attempted to reframe
his appalling character.
Caught on camera, there wasn't a frame in the world
pleasing enough to hide the ugliness of that picture.
No words could rewrite the hundreds of thousands of years
of human coding that was shrieking inside us all, that that man.
Ironic, given the circumstances, is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Can anyone, even the most blue blooded voter of the most blue ribbon seat,
honestly say that
Scott John Morrison would sink with his ship if he were the captain of the Titanic?
Can you imagine him removing his imperial garb and running at
the Turks who had breached the walls of Constantinople to give its citizens
a second longer to find refuge.
The president of Afghanistan received
global reprehension for leaving his country during an invasion.
His life was at least in danger.
Scott Morrison abandoned you for a view.
Fortunately for Mr Morrison, the world was engulfed in a pandemic
just a few months later.
He would have been one of the few winners of it.
Which is surprising given his actual performance,
which the media sanitised
just about the only thing that was sanitised during the pandemic.
But that's another story covered in this 40 minute video.
I'll spare you the bulk of it, but just know:
$40 Billion in JobKeeper handed to big business who didn't need it.
$1 Trillion of debt,
and nothing to show for it because all that money was siphoned
out of the country and into multinational companies' bank accounts.
Creating the exact conditions that caused the GFC
because having avoided it in 2008
the Liberals wanted us to feel included of course.
Yet the press were able to weave a manipulation of a crisis
that contemptible, that black and white into a story of redemption for Scott Morrison
precisely because it wasn't visibly grey, when it's facts and figures
the press will hide those facts and figures,
and thus it shouldn't be enlightening to discover
that the public actually thinks Scott Morrison handled COVID well.
This is only because there was no chance of a firefighter
refusing to shake his hand as no one could shake hands.
And that means Scott Morrison got to take a lot of photos of him
writing behind a desk.
A much more suited environment for Scott as it's easy to hide the board shorts.
Well, if the press is so interested in narrative over fact,
if they want to pretend Scott Morrison had some sort of character arc.
That's a great photo to springboard from
That’s the stage
where he'd learn from adversity not to actually govern, god no.
As one of the most prominent health experts in the country
so simply put it:
What Scott learned was to half hide his pathological pursuit of laziness
by referring to his vacations as working holidays.
Perfect encapsulations of how Scott Morrison
handled these most grave of challenges.
But the third and final photo I personally believe isn't given it's dues.
This, taken in the third and final disaster
the floods, which Scott Morrison wouldn't even call a disaster
until almost two weeks after the event, let alone
send in the only government corps he had increased the funding of.
While all the other frontline services had been so hollowed out by their cuts
that the rescue operations in an area larger than what was hit by
Hurricane Katrina was almost solely co-ordinated by local government
and locals using their dinghies.
I remember speaking to a doctor who'd worked in disaster zones in Third World
nations, telling me that their governments had far superior responses
to Scott Morrison's. And doesn't that photo say it all?
If there's a better summary of a Prime Minister and his impact, I haven't seen it
protected from the protesters by envoys of police,
no citizens allowed near him,
just his friends in the press that he schmoozes in events
with your money, doesn't want that filmed though.
What he does want in
the press is the third and final stage of Scott Morrison's redemption arc,
cleaning up his image of an uncaring, self-serving tit
that is concerned with his leisure first,
his perception second,
and that's it.
This is the product of character moulded by leading a country
through three of the worst years in living memory.
The absolute limits of growth he's capable of...
a better photo op
taken far away from areas like this.
A carefully staged once over of his stage to assure the natural voting base
of his wretched party that their memories of his performance
in the bushfires now as hazy as the air at the time.
Maybe it wasn't so soulless after all.
Maybe where this smoke isn't fire.
After all, Scott Morrison has finally learned to hold a mop.
Now permit me to reverse the rhetorical catchphrase of the Murdoch press by asking
if a Labor Prime Minister was responsible for even one of these vile acts,
let alone the tawdry pantomime of image control that follows just one.
Do you think Australia would have even a possibility of a hung parliament?
It is our regrettable misfortune as a nation that we can answer
that question with clarity as look at who owns the press.
News Corp is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
If you need to know who he supports, he makes it
fairly obvious every day on the headlines that he controls
that are splayed across the nation,
virtually all of them.
The very few headlines that are run by another company are run by Nine Fairfax.
The chairman of Nine Fairfax is Peter Costello, which gee,
I wonder who a former Liberal treasurer of 11 years
who allows Liberal Party fund raisers at his Nine headquarters votes for?
And if you think the ABC is somehow biased towards the Labor Party,
it's purely because you don't watch it.
The chairwoman is a long time Liberal Party fundraiser.
The board is littered with proud Liberal Party members
and hosting roles are infested with News Corp alumni.
If you truly think the ABC is biased towards Labor,
answer this simple question:
The ABC is government funded, the government is the Liberal Party.
You think they're handing out
$1 Billion of your tax money to fund a pro-Labor media outlet do you?
Just to cancel out the billions in pork barreling.
They charge marginal seats, perhaps?
The only other outlet that hosted a debate, Channel 7,
Scott Morrison was leaked debate questions beforehand.
There's an old saying that
“the media doesn't tell us what to think, but what to think about”
In this election with that level of rank, obvious, unapologetic ownership with a clear
as day agenda like that dictating what the public does and doesn't see.
Do you think a third of the population came to the conclusion
that they'll be voting for an independent or minor party by themselves?
Independently, of course.
Or do you think that the tail might wag the dog?
My job is to focus on media bias.
I've done it for nearly ten years, nearly every day,
and yet I'm frequently tricked by the narratives they weave as they are
weaved by people much smarter than you or I with unlimited resources
at their disposal.
The reason people are thinking of voting independent
this election is because not even a
salesman as good as Scott Morrison can sell a product that rank.
As such, the elite have decided to make the public look through the ABC arch window this election.
The frame is that they're both terrible.
Scott Morrison only sending flood relief to Coalition seats
as some sort of perverse blackmail with our own money.
Somehow that man is as bad as this man.
Because of: choose whatever vague, contradictory slur the press of concocted that day
He's too small target. He's too risky.
He's too inexperienced. He's been in politics too long...
You'd better vote for Clive Palmer.
Let's suck up as many disenfranchised voters as possible.
So if the Liberals can't get in,
the government will be as weak as possible so that in the next election cycle
we can get back to the “party of adults” within one term instead of two.
In no functioning democracy, should Scott Morrison a man with that
abhorrent a record be fearing anywhere near as well as he is in the polls?
The Liberals should have had to have disbanded
and rebranded as they did in World War Two
because the damage they have done is worse than what they did in World War Two.
And in World War Two, they sold iron to the Japanese
so they could manufacture weapons and fire those weapons at us.
That was less damaging than Scott Morrison's performance
Black Summer Fires.
The reason he is not on the ropes is because this is not a democracy.
This is what is known in academic classifications as a
guided democracy.
The reason he was able to get away with something that,
if you'll pardon the phrase is, is as crystal clear as
this
is because the lens you are fed it through
is smoke and mirrors.