The Gravy Train Express

On Thursday, April 14, the Fin Review ran both an opinion piece and an article based around Ipsos focus-group work which the Fin said showed undecided voters were leaning toward Scott Morrison. The paper described that voter-group's feeling as "better the devil you know". The Guardian's economics correspondent, Peter Hannam, noticed that no numbers were mentioned. When he contacted Ipsos to check, it turned out that two groups of voters had participated, with each group consisting of... five people. Yes - the work was indicative of the leanings of fully ten individuals. The journalist responsible for hyping this junk was Phil Coorey, who in recent years has been the AFR's contact-of-choice for leaks and briefings from the Prime Minister's Office, and who memorably penned the fawning "Woman Who Saved Australia" profile of Gladys Berejiklian just 5 months before her exit under a corruption cloud. The AFR was once a Fairfax publication. Then Malcolm T...

"Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is coal! Don't be afraid, don't be scared, won't hurt you, it's coal! " That's Scott Morrison in parliament in 2017, brandishing a chunk of lacquered coal, given to him by his beloved organ-grinder, The Minerals Council. In his speech, Morrison went on to praise the "prosperity" delivered by his pet rock, and to dismiss attempts to enact science-based climate-policy as simply "pathological...coal-a-phobia". Seated behind him, Barnaby Joyce laughed with the joy of a particularly thick-headed child as he fondled the prop. One month after this performance, Lismore flooded. At that point it was the most destructive flood the town had ever had. In 2008 the Garnaut Climate Change Review examined the scientific studies outlining climate impacts on Australia, and concluded in part that without concerted action the nation would be facing longer and more intense fire seasons - by 2020. Right on time in 2019/20, an es...

A huge stretch of the Qld and NSW coast is flood-devastated. Scott Morrison gives a special address announcing... ten billion dollars for a nuclear submarine base. Deputy Barnaby declares we could never have anticipated the flooding - despite repeated, detailed warnings from all the relevant experts. Morrison's hand-picked head of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency, vintage Liberal Party seat-warmer Shane Stone, complains about how expensive it'll be to fix the flood damage - and actually says out loud that it's the fault of victims for "(living) among the gum trees". Australia continues to have no climate policy, and to expand fossil-fuel projects. This is a government laughing in the public's face. Their contempt is absolute.

When this happened a couple of days ago, I had to quadruple-check it was real. But yes - as though he were a powerless cash-strapped individual citizen, this nation's potato-headed defence minister really did start a Go Fund Me calling on the public to donate their own flood relief. Peter Dutton's department has wasted literally hundreds of billions of public dollars on military junk, and the Morrison administration has yet to spend a single cent of its dodgy $4 billion Emergency Response Fund. (The ERF was built from money syphoned out of education infrastructure, and buried in the legislative fine-print - unmentioned at its loud 2019 launch - was the proviso that it only be touched when all other emergency funds were exhausted. It was a classic PR "announceable", cobbled together on the run, and never truly intended to be used for anything but press releases.) The record $16 billion of "decisions taken but not yet announced" in last December's MYEFO u...

Just to recap, i n 2013 Joe Hockey pretended outrage at domestic car-industry subsidies (while having no issue with the multibillion dollar public assistance lavished on mining) and expended a lot of energy in parliament mocking GM Holden and daring them to leave. A few months later, the car industry packed up and left. For the next 5 years, the Coalition did everything they could to suppress clean energy and keep Australia dependent on the dirty fossil-products of the party's biggest donors. Then in the leadup to the 2019 election, Scott Morrison undertook a smirking scare campaign attacking electric vehicles, ludicrously asserting that their introduction would "end the weekend". ("Tell ya what, it's not gonna tow ya trailer, it's not gonna tow ya boat, it's not gonna get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family", he lied, merrily.) By the end of that year half the country was burning in the Black Summer megafires, and while nature, p...

  On Friday the 18th, the Morrison government rejected the recommendation of the bipartisan parliamentary committee enquiring into homelessness, that Australia should develop a 10-year national plan. The government's written response refused any new funding (including for provision of accommodation to women and children facing domestic violence), described homelessness as a matter for the states, and only agreed to fully support two of the 35 recommendations in the committee report. The following Monday, the government confirmed it would continue funding the hiring of private eyes by Services Australia, as part of its welfare "crackdown". (In 2019, with the post-election rush-of-blood-to-the-head, Services Australia was the agency created by Scott Morrison to replace and clean out the Department of Human Services.) Investigators are given the power to follow, photograph, film and bug recipients of social assistance, despite previous audits and department stats confirming ...

Extract from The Saturday Paper article by Rick Morton: "The centrepiece of the federal government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience. A cache of documents and testimony obtained by The Saturday Paper reveals the inner workings of the National Coronavirus Helpline, which is being run by private-equity owned Probe Group and its subsidiaries, on contracts worth more than $270 million." Morton's article discloses that the national helpline - listed as the first point of contact by multiple government departments - has been staffed by Probe with a small, badly-paid band of random recruits, who're tasked with triaging, despite often having only 2 hours training and no background in health care. Morton reports that the highly-stressed workers are overwhelmed by the volume, complexity and variety of calls - and that when problems arise they're tol...

Scott Morrison, Saturday January 29, while clasping an unlucky koala in front of assembled cameras: "We love to throw our arms around koalas. And they love to throw their bear arms around us when we get to have a cuddle. What this is about is continuing to throw our arms around our koala population". Continuing? In the last 20 years, Koala numbers have halved in Queensland & dropped 60% in NSW. Land-clearing, drought, and fire mean koalas are currently on track for extinction by 2050. The $50 million announced by the Prime Minister yesterday - should it ever eventuate - is earmarked for monitoring, research, and habitat restoration. The latter is near-pointless without climate action, and the previous two will confirm we need climate action. There are no mysteries as to why koalas are dying. Australia's climate, farming, and "development" policies are killing them. Setting aside the accounting tricks, carbon emissions in Australia have risen 7% since 2005. S...

  Snipped from The Guardian Australia's excellent Weekly Beast column, by Amanda Meade: "Long-term Santos spinner Tom Baddeley has represented the oil and gas producer as the Manager of Government and Community Relations in WA & NT for 12 years. Before that he was WA’s director for the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the peak national body representing the oil and gas industry. A former journalist who left the ABC in 2005, Baddeley starts on 7 February as ABC Radio Perth’s new Breakfast presenter, replacing Russell Woolf, who died suddenly last October. Some environmental campaigners are concerned about the appointment given Santos is a powerful player – it was the fossil fuel company which the government hosted at its pavilion at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last year." (Or is it the other way 'round?) "Baddeley, who has appeared before the NT’s fracking inquiry, will now have to present an objective journalistic voice on ...

She declared school climate education "propaganda". Brought climate-deniers on speaking tours. Donated millions to the professional water-muddiers at the Institute of Public Affairs. Lamented that Australian workers cost too much while "Africans want to work & its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day". In December 2021 she complained that under-developed Australia didn't have enough large marinas for super-yachts. She said this while actually speaking from the deck of her own super-yacht. In 2018 she advised women who wanted executive positions to "work harder". In 2012, she declared Aust should cut corporate tax, and also lower the minimum wage. This from an individual currently valued at well over $30 billion. Now, mining magnate Gina Rinehart - Australia's richest person and largest landowner - has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia. The office of Governor Gen says the Order of Australia gongs are given “for disti...

Written Wednesday, January 12, 2022: On Monday, the government told Australia's ragged parents that there was no shortage of vaccines for kids. This, despite tight restrictions being placed on the number of child-doses allowed to GPs, and vax appointments being cancelled all over the country. The slippery fine print was that supply-chain failures arising from Covid-spread meant the shots existed - they just weren't being distributed. (Although another report said we were indeed still awaiting some overseas shipments - but either way, that's a shortage.) Over and over again in his Monday presser, the PM said the country just had to "push through" and "ride the wave", as though that meant something other than just getting used to the sick and the dead. He vowed to ensure small-to-medium business wouldn't have to test its staff, on the basis of there being "no exposure sites anymore". (This, he said, was thanks in part to his 4-hour redefiniti...

Just as the scandal-wracked government in Australia has punitively frozen ABC funding for years (while denying with a smirk that any cuts have been made), Boris Johnson's ultracons in the UK will now freeze BBC funding for the next 2 years, then go further and abolish the licence fee which funds the broadcaster, and use the introduction of a new funding model as a threat to hold over the organisation. Part-privatisation and subscription models are on the table. This comes after a decade of cuts (a drop of around 30%, inflation adjusted) and calculating conservative political attacks. It's a major step forward in the right-wing project to undermine trusted sources of information and public services. The latest cuts are part of "Operation Red Meat" (no, really), Boris Johnson's plan to save his skin by appealing to "populist" MPs and voters. After repeatedly breaking his own Covid rules, the British PM is under intense pressure, including from within the c...