Saturday 17 February 2018

Politics in Australia: The Dark Ages


It seems that we are falling into line with the USofA in terms of the way federal politics goes. We've got a Treasurer - Scott Morrison - and a Finance Minister - Mattias Cormann - who want us to adopt Trump's policy of slashing corporate tax rates despite all the evidence pointing to this as being a bad move for our economy. This blatant snubbing of the interests of the nation as a whole takes me back to the infamous budget cooked up by Cormann and Joe Hockey when he was Treasurer ...


In the place of Hockey, we've just exchanged one dangerous, self-serving buffoon for another ...


And now it emerges that Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister - a title he holds solely as a result of being the leader of the National Party (which, to the "Coalition" government, is kind of akin to the leg that has been cut off by Morrison in the cartoon above before it's been cut off) has been having an affair with one of his employees for quite some time ...


In response Malcolm Turnbull, our not-so-illustrious Prime Minister, eventually came out and said that Joyce made a serious error of judgement and "is considering his position" while taking leave when he should have been acting Prime Minister in Turnbull's absence from the country. Joyce, by the way, has "sincerely" apologised to his wife of 23 years and four daughters, who it turns out he had only visited a couple of nights over the past six months. And oh yeah - he was one of the politicians who had to vacate his seat because he was never entitled to be elected in the first place, being a dual citizen. Of course, his affair with a staffer - who is now going to have his child - was well covered up and he was reinstated in a by-election where he won a huge majority of the primary vote. This sort of abuse of power has been seen as taboo throughout workplaces and industry in general for a very long time but not, apparently in Australian federal politics or at least not on one side of it. The fact that Turnbull only came out and made a public statement long after he should have raises questions about what he really thinks about a man in Joyce's position bonking one of underlings. Eventually he put a ban of senior government ministers having affairs with staffers. But only of course, when the tide of public opinion showed he had to do something to save face.

This is the state of the government we've got. What remains to be seen is for how much longer. Not much, one would hope. The only worry is what alternative does the Opposition offer? They seem to be as much beholden to the union movement as the "Coalition" (I use inverted commas because in reality they are just another minority government but masquerade as a unified force) are to big business and the far right.