The Muppet Show

 Flashback - article written in March, 2021.

In 2018, Scott Morrison described his squabbling band of gaffe-prone grifters as a "Muppet Show". On taking the Prime Ministership, he assured breakfast television that "the curtain's come down on that Muppet Show - and an absolute new curtain has lifted up!"

The unintentional implication that the nation was about to witness the launch of Scotty's All-New Muppet Show was reinforced by his next miscalculated response:

Presenter: "How do you unite a bunch of Muppets?"

Morrison: "Well, I'm doing exactly that in terms of my colleagues."

In the two and a half years since, the volume of corruption and ineptitude has become so great as to make the compilation of a complete list near-impossible.

But just to refresh, here's some of the show's notable lowlights:

Robodebt theft, deaths & $1.2 billion settlement; $100 million Sports Rorts plus Gaetjen's whitewash; slashing funding to the scandal-exposing National Audit Office; Angus Taylor's document forgery; the IR Omnibus Bill setting up Worse Off Overall workplace deals; Murray-Darling maladministration, water theft & mass fish-kills; Barnaby Joyce's $675 000 Drought Envoy text-message “report”; Christian Porter's proposed corruption-concealing “anti-corruption” body; $220 million Regional Job Investment rorts; “There Was No Slavery In Australia”; $150 million Female Facilities & Water Safety Stream pork-barrelling; Mathias Cormann's $4300 per-hour jet-propelled OECD sabotage; $500 million War Memorial expansion including all-new weapons-company promotions; the CovidSafe App fail; “The Best Protection Against The Virus Is To Live With The Virus And Open Up Your Economy”; dumping COAG so the new National Cabinet can operate under Federal Cabinet secrecy rules; excluding universities from Covid assistance & maliciously hiking arts degree fees; the fossil-stacked Covid Commission's climate-trashing gaslit recovery; Morrison's protocol-breaching appearance as a speaker at a Trump rally; the Trump-pleasing China trade-war losing barley, beef, cotton, & wine exports; NBN fibre backflip; the Indue “cashless welfare” card's padded-private-profit shonkery & social toll; $783 million of Cuts-Ain't-Cuts at the ABC; Joyce & Taylor's $80 million water buyback racket; Taylor's Caymen company; Taylor's “Grassgate” illegal land-clearing & attack on the EPBC; fake AEC-style election signage; the $30 million “bargain” for airport land worth $3 million; Peter Dutton's visas for mate's au pairs; the $432 million no-tender Manus contract for the Paladin beach-shack company; George “Member For Manila” Christensen; Matt "Black Coal Matters" Canavan; the party-connected Helloworld company donations & gifts for gov contracts; Gladys Liu's dodgy fundraising; Dutton's African gangs fantasy; Craig Kelly's conspiracy-fest & climate denial; loosened political-donation rules; tax-cuts directing 58% of benefit to the rich & totalling $189 billion by 2031; ongoing asylum-seeker abuse breaching international law; Morrison's declared intent to ignore “stupid” legislation ensuring medical care for detainees; refusal of a Senate order to release detention camp costings; raids on journalists plus secret trials of whistle-blowers; JobActive network fraud; Morrison's attempt to have his mentor Hillsong-founder Brian Houston invited to the White House despite a Royal Commission having found Houston covered-up his father's child sex-abuse; Morrison's QAnon friend Tim Stewart's wife scoring a job as companion to Jenny Morrison, reportedly salaried at $85 000; the Media Bargaining Code designed to funnel max dollars to Murdoch & the Costello Nine company; Minister Fletcher's $10 million no-strings gift to Foxtel; prohibition of public servants liking social-media posts that disagree with gov policy; refusal to allow any environment reporters into the budget lock-up; 233 parliamentary divisions to gag speakers just since July 2019; attempting privatisation of the ASIC database to make corporate structures & corruption harder to trace; Liberal Party Mormon & Catholic right-faction branch-stacking; paying TV handyman Scott Cam $347 000 to be “Trades Ambassador” delivering just 4 social-media posts & 3 videos; the bushfire fail including Hawaiian holiday, forced handshakes & “I Don't Hold A Hose” policy response; $190 000 “empathy consultant”; the aged care privatisation-oversight disaster leading to neglect, abuse and Covid deaths; ongoing anti-union-driven attacks on superannuation; independent bodies stacked with party mates, leaving the AAT missing 92% of FOI deadlines; billions blown on dubious military contracts for submarines and aircraft; dumping the disliked findings of the Banking Royal Commission & pushing for unsafe lending; demonization of the unemployed paired with endorsement of JobKeeper rorts by big business; abolition of the family court... and parliamentary rape cover-up.

So, just as promised in 2018, the replacement PM did indeed bring unity to his team - in as much as they were uniformly dedicated to trashing all accepted standards of governance. Under the new management, consequences were simply not a thing, and a gang of miscreants and deadbeats were given licence to do their worst. This they then did - and it's provided parliamentary muppeting on a scale previously undreamt of.

Scotty From Muppeting, take a long, low bow.

NB: As noted at the outset, this article was written in March of 2021 - in the year since, many, many more listworthy scandals have occurred. It's no exaggeration to say that every single day produces more. The above gives the rancid flavour though. Also, the tally kept by Matthew Davis of the "achievements" of the Coalition government since 2013 (www.mdavis.xyz/govlist/) is well worth a look, as it's not only extensive but also well-referenced, with links for each item. Sadly - but understandably given the sheer volume of horrors - his work concludes in November of 2021, but it's an excellent resource.

(Scotty From Muppeting illustration tickling your fancy? It's available on shirts, mugs, stickers and such, over at Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Scotty-From-Muppeting-by-CrankInstitute/72592466.WFLAH)