Clean Shaven Men Unfit for Office -- Politics with Stubble

There is a saying, if you are old enough to remember, which went something along the lines of “Don’t trust / vote for a man with a beard. They have something to hide”. Most would have heard this from a parent, grandparent, other relative or an educator. From memory I first heard my Nana utter it, which struck me as odd given all her sons were sporting beards at the time. Being too young to have any hair excepting that on top of my head, let alone vote, I didn’t pay her much heed but recently after pondering the statement I have a question to ask.

 

What the fuck have the clean chins done that was any good?

 

I can hear the cheer squads on all sides of Politics from around the globe proselytising the virtue of their particular golden boy who decided that they had enough time every day to shave their beard because it was more important than running their country, but I don’t care.

 

The USA tends towards JFK or Reagan when it comes to Presidents’ in living memory, depending on which side of the aisle you sit on. Obama will probably get a nod from the younger generations as a decent President, but that’s all they’ve got going for themselves.

 

The bloke who started The American War in Viet Nam before getting himself shot in Texas, another bloke who let Bush Sr. begin to conduct (possibly) the most racist policy since slavery or segregation, the “War on Drugs”, which by all accounts was and continues to be ineffective in all aspects aside from incarcerating more and more people of colour in US prisons, aren’t really denizens of The Office to laud. Which brings me to Obama.

 

Probably the best POTUS in my lifetime, President Obama had some significant achievements, such as his “controversial” healthcare reforms, but he also oversaw troop surges into Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither of these wars were of his making, but his actions in office did little to correct the destabilisation that was occurring in The Middle East.

 

Not that Trump has managed to do any better. Which should be of no surprise to anyone given he’s hell bent on a second American Civil War. While that’s going on China will invade so Donald can unite the people he has been willing to sacrifice to a virus that he won’t take accountability for a shit response to, in order to become President for life.

 

If this prick doesn’t declare war against China before Inauguration, I’ll be surprised that he didn’t wait for the uprising of his own citizens who remember their Second Amendment Rights but vote Democrat. When he refuses to leave office after Biden’s win and everyone that he has, so far, referred to as an Anarchist decide to forcibly remove him from The Whitehouse, there will be chaos on the streets. Not that there isn’t already, but I’m sure you can grant me some licence here, because it brings me back to beards.

 

Ask someone to name a President of the USA who was bearded and they’re most likely to say Abraham Lincoln. I, personally, could not be bothered to find out if any of the others wore a beard and The Old Man couldn’t think of one off the top of his head, so that works for me because Lincoln is a rarity in Politics, in so much as he is generally respected on both sides of The Aisle.

 

Democrats like him because of The Emancipation Proclamation and Republicans like him because he was a Republican, but that isn’t the point. The point is that even after a hundred and fifty plus years since Lincoln’s Presidency, he is still portrayed as an exemplary leader, despite not doing much for The Race Divide in the long run, Honest Abe has managed to maintain an air of dignity long after his death. If this is due to his service or that he wore a beard will long be debated by Philosophers after we are gone. I wish them well in this task, but it is not my burden to bear.

 

I am here to argue that clean shaven men have held the top jobs in almost every industry for too long and they’ve made a bloody mess of the lot. There are exceptions of course, Bob Hawke springs to mind, so does Kevin Rudd (but he has gotten so much better after losing his office and his razor) and we can’t ignore Dan Andrews, but it is becoming obvious, to me at least, that beards need to be given a chance.

 

This is not a radical or new idea, but I am sure some of you will draw parallels with The Taliban’s “beard large enough to fill a fist” rule. That is a foolish assumption for you to make. My own beard can’t fill a fist but some of our great leaders and politicians have beards that would fill several fists, Gandalf and Pat Dodson are two notable examples. What I am suggesting is that those men who are able to grow a beard are often wise and have better things to dedicate their time to than shaving. Even Chris Bowen makes more sense when he forgets to shave, while Ed Husic and Adam Bandt aren’t useless either.

 

Now before anyone decides to come at me suggesting that I am promoting only men that can grow beards should hold positions of power, you are wrong. If I’d applied for my get out of jail free card and could’ve voted in Aotearoa, I would’ve voted for Jacinda. I’m also pleased Annastacia won in Queensland, even though I voted for Amy MacMahon from the Greens above former Labor Deputy Premier Jackie Trad. As far as I know, none of these women can grow a beard and if they can, they choose not to, but if they decide to, I will fully support them in their decision. But this is not a discussion about whether or not women should grow beards, it is about why we have left clean shaven men run the world for too long.

 

One need only look at mythology and history to realise that blokes with beards are clearly better leaders than those who decide to waste ten minutes scraping whiskers off their faces every day. This is where I must apologise to any Indigenous readers – I’m about to go all Eurocentric on this one because white kids in Australia have never been taught the true history of these lands (I’m trying to learn. Please trust me that I’m trying), but more importantly, of the little knowledge I have been able to acquire, I am in no way qualified to speak about it in an educated manner, so I won’t.

 

What I will do is remind you that most European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures held the beard in high regard for thousands of years. As far back as the interesting gods like Odin and Zeus, right up to the figureheads of the three main modern religions of those regions were bearded. Abraham, Moses and Jesus who are usually depicted as white (they weren’t) with beards. Mohammed certainly had a beard, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so keen on telling blokes to grow them.  But it doesn’t stop there, damn near everyone in The Iliad with testicles had a beard as did a raft of Shakespeare’s main players.

 

Beards were once viewed as a mark of maturity and wisdom. The fuller, the better and when it started going grey, you were proper respected. Especially if you could still formulate a cogent argument regarding whatever topic was under discussion.

 

Which brings me back to why clean-shaven men should remove themselves from public life. They’ve had their chance and they’ve failed. Some of them will attempt to gain favour by growing a moustache over November, but I have some bad news for them – a moustache is not a beard.

 

Most of our Politicians, at a Commonwealth level at least, look as if they struggle to grow stubble, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to distinguish between those who can’t grow a beard and those who choose not to. From there it will only be a matter of time for those of worth to come to the fore while those who are found lacking and continue to take a blade to their face on a daily basis are hounded from office.

 

To fully appreciate the power of the beard in Politics we must cast our minds back to the twentieth century, when three bearded men, for a brief period of time were probably the most recognisable and arguably the most important Politicians in the world. I am speaking of course, of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, all of whom were relentlessly harassed by beardless men. You can argue the political differences all you like, but deep down you have to admit it was actually about the beards.

 

While Kennedy failed in his invasion of Cuba and was dead before his failed invasion of Viet Nam was over, Fidel’s beard was specifically targeted, but he is the only one of the four to have lived long enough to see the twenty-first century. The infamous CIA plot to administer a substance that would defoliate his face was obviously the idea of clean-shaven men. Anyone with a beard will tell you that if you can somehow manage to get any substance consumed by your enemy, you might as well just poison them to death.

 

Ho Chi Minh succumbed to diabetes and Che was Killed In Action but their images have been immortalised to the point that companies in developed countries pay sweat shop wages in developing countries to have the faces of these men adorn their products and charge exorbitant prices for the product so privileged people can pretend they are rebelling. Hypocrisy is never more evident than seeing a private school kid wearing a Che T-shirt.

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I went to a private school. I have also never worn anything with any of the aforementioned bearded warriors depicted on it. I drew an Anarchist armband on the shirt that you get other kids to sign on the last day, but I never descended to the level of denying my privilege by paying eighty bucks for a shirt made by a kid in Bangladesh who is paid three bucks a week to make hundreds of them.

 

However, this does bring me back on point about the significance of beards in Politics because at that school was a bloke who is of Chinese heritage, a very good friend, he’s an Engineer of some sort now and I’d vote for him if he ran for elected office. The problem is that he couldn’t grow a beard. Not even the bum-fluff that some of us attempted to sport in our final years and he was jealous that he didn’t have to shave. Ever.

 

Those of us that were forced to, advised him that he was much better off not having to scrape a razor over his face every morning but he refused to believe us. This is why I must make the point that a beard is not and should not be a prerequisite for elected office. If anyone is unable to grow a beard it should not preclude them from public office, but if a man can grow a beard yet insists on wasting taxpayers money on the time and materiel to remove it every day before attending to their duties, they are clearly unfit for office.

 

Look around the world. Outside of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Sub-Continent you aren’t going to find a bearded Head of State, except Trudeau sometimes, maybe somewhere in the Pacific, but they’re rare as hen’s teeth in the grand scheme of things.

 

Xi, Putin, Trump, Bolsanaro, Johnson, Morrison, Jokowi and the list goes on, all beardless men who hold the rest of us in contempt and have all presided over serious human rights violations, inaction on climate change and, excluding Xi, an absolutely piss poor response to COVID-19. How they were elected differs from country to country but what unites them is the lack of facial hair and they’re all a bunch of narcissistic pricks. If you want to see good beardless leadership, I recommend Germany, Finland and New Zealand.

 

Now I’m not saying that those countries are perfect, nor would I imply that all countries currently governed by bearded men are exemplars of good governance, but they do have something in common. They get shit done. Tiny Island Nation doesn’t want COVID? Lock the whole country down. Don’t like a journalist who will be visiting your embassy in another country? Murder him, dismember the corpse and dispose of it. Simple. While these examples are at different ends on the spectrum of getting shit done, they do demonstrate the capacity of women and bearded men to accomplish what they set out to do.

 

Compare that effectiveness with Morrison pissing off to Hawaii while the East Coast of Australia was on fire and Trump playing golf as the death toll from the virus surpassed the number of American fatalities in Kennedy’s War. Morrison came back and committed common assault on bushfire victims whereas Trump caught COVID and hosted a bunch of super-spreader events. On the other hand Jacinda Ardern united her country after a terrorist attack, worse than anything New Zealand had ever seen, dealt with a volcano blowing up and had a child before instituting what is arguably the best response to COVID-19 in the world.

 

I won’t detail Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, nor do I condone it. I mention it only as a recent example of how a bearded head of state can move swiftly and decisively to deal with something they perceive as a problem. This trait is something that is lacking in the clean-shaven men who run the Anglosphere, East Asia and Europe. I’m not talking about the killing people bit, because they are all guilty or complicit of that, I’m talking about the ability to make a decision, knowing full well that there was going to be a kick-back, but doing it anyway.

 

Imagine if Turnbull had just told Abbot, Kelly, Christensen, Canavan and Joyce to piss off and vote against his climate policies that Labor, The Greens and most of the crossbench agreed with.  Even left-wing voters had a little tingle in their pants when Malcolm knifed Tony, hoping that it might be time for a return to sensible climate policy but Turnbull lacked the beard or the vagina that would have given him a backbone to stand up to The Ignorati in his own party. It was a failed opportunity and something that contributed to The Morrison Fires over the last summer.

 

A bearded man would have sent Abbot to a triathlon somewhere far away, Kelly down a coal shaft so he could figure out what mining is all about, Christensen to Mackay instead of Manila, Canavan to a housekeeping course so he can learn how to wash his own clothes and realise “gifting” a clothesline to your wife on mother’s day is a proper shit misogynist move, whereas Joyce who is far too busy struggling to feed 2(+?) families, as well as his sheep, while jacked up on goofballs and talking to sky fairies, is beyond my ken as to why he wasn’t redeployed elsewhere to sort his shit out.

 

This is only a handful of clean-shaven Australian Politicians’ but I think they are an appropriate group to demonstrate the collective failure of bare chinned men in public life, of course I could rail hard on Trump and his massive man sook but that would detract from the central point because he is to be replaced by another beardless man. At least Biden is smart enough to have picked a woman as his deputy and Labor has now announced that the aforementioned Ed Husic, of bearded fame, has been returned to the Labor front bench. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but these moves are both in the right direction.

 

For those who argue that shaving is an indicator of discipline I will simply remind you that the three most recent Australian Parliamentary infidelity scandals have all involved clean shaven married male Ministers cheating on their wives. If this is a measure of discipline it would imply that Trump and Boris are the most disciplined world leaders in the history of history. Even JFK wasn’t as disciplined as that pair (The Ghost of Marilyn told me), neither was Hawke (his ghost told me) but despite their philandering both men are lauded as exemplars of decency in their respective countries and both were beardless. This is not to say a bearded man can’t be unfaithful, but we haven’t elected enough to have a measurable sample group.

 

That The Age of The Shaved Chin must come to an end is something we cannot afford to argue about any longer. The damage and destruction that has been wrought by these lathered razor worshippers has gone on for far too long. Now is the time to act. I am setting myself a standard for all future voting in so much as if the candidate from my preferred party is not a woman, or a man who can grow a beard and wears it with pride, I will be putting my second preferred party first. I’m not saying I won’t vote for an independent but in recent elections both beards and talent have been missing from that option. What I’m saying is don’t vote for a clean-shaven man, they lie and they don’t care and they don’t try to hide it.

Writer's Blockdown -- or -- When Any News is Too Much News

It’s the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m trying to write three (maybe more) different things and I’m sick of it. I won’t blame the Pangolin nor the Bat for my current malaise. I blame there being too much shit going on right now that I can’t focus on any specific subject.

Which is probably why Fat Bottomed Girls started playing on the other computer as I reread and rewrote the sentences above.

I plant my flag on this hill to declare that song as the best song ever recorded by Queen.

Ever.

Bring it.

Seriously, please do.

I’m bored.

And sad.

I could do with a fight.

And a light.

Time for a joint.

A month after my mate decided to kill himself rather than come sleep on my couch, I still haven’t finished writing the thing that I am writing about him. Nor have I worked on the fantasy novel I started a couple of days before he decided to kill himself. Or my main work in progress about how my Uncle killed a bunch of people. There are four unsaved Word documents on this computer right now. All are stalled attempts to write something relevant. Only the one about my mate amongst them. I haven’t bothered to open the major projects.

It would be easy to blame a friend’s suicide or the lockdown (which hasn’t significantly changed my day-to-day life) for my inability to get any words down which would be nothing more than bullshit excuses. Even if I went down that path, and it would probably be accepted by many people as normal to do so, I would know I was lying. Only three funerals I have attended in my life have been as a result of natural causes.

Suicide and I are not strangers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been proper upset. Crying more than usual, thinking about doing it myself (I’m NOT going to. DON’T call the authorities. I’m NOT going to do it), bought a bottle of Rum (didn’t drink the whole thing in one sitting), played with The Cat to the point of pissing her off and yelled at the TV more than is healthy. You know, normal sort of shit.

Usually a friend’s suicide prompts a furious flurry of words. Chapters are finished, random rants run free and ideas for future projects are scrawled on the nearest available surface (my filing system is shithouse). But not this time. This time has led to little more than false starts and procrastination.

It isn’t as if the ideas aren’t there, I’m getting shitloads but I’m not putting anything down. These days I sit for hours staring at an empty page or sentences half written.

Writer’s Block is nothing new to me, but it usually hits when poverty is at its worst. No food, rolling dumpers for a smoke and borrowing money to cover an overdue power bill. With The Dole raised to a level on which it is actually possible to feed one’s self, the anxiety of being so broke that I’d feed The Cat instead of myself has been temporarily lifted and for the first time in years I’ve been able to cook one actual meal every single day.

Sometime back, I gave up alcohol for a few months (having drunk myself into hospital). Even then, without that expense I couldn’t afford to make myself a wholesome dinner each night. The longer I have been on The Dole, the more frequently my daily meals have been comprised of beans and toast.

Raising the Rate was beginning to gain traction before COVID-19 presented as a pandemic. Even The Business Council of Australia and former Crime Minister John “Those parents proper chucked their kids into the ocean and Saddam has nukes” Howard have said that forty bucks a day is not enough for any Australian to live on.

What I find intriguing is that it takes politicians to suffer the ignominy of being turfed from office to develop a backbone before calling out the former allies who tore them down. To be honest, it’s fucking laughable for someone who refuses to exercise any measure of authority when they have the Power of The Second Highest Post on The Continent then wait until they’ve been dropped from the team to voice their opinions from the sideline.

I’m speaking here, mainly of Krudd and Trumbull (Hewson gets a pass because he was never PM) and while I agree with a lot of what they have been saying of late but like many Australians I have yelled at the TV asking why they didn’t do anything about it when they were in charge.

Knowing enough about the machinations of party politics I understand that the Prime Minister is not bestowed absolute power when it comes to policy and legislation, but for fucks sake people can you use the position to call out dissenters in your ranks and work with the other side?

Bipartisan is a word that Australian politicians like to use whenever The Opposition is too weak to challenge The Government on policy or the issue at hand has overwhelming public support to be resolved.

What we really need is Multi-partisan policy and Prime Ministers with the courage to tell those in their own party to vote against the motion on the floor of Parliament if they disagree with it.

The term “conscience vote” is a joke. Every vote should be based on the conscience of the Parliamentarian and if that conscience differs from the majority of their constituents, the question to be asked is -- How did they get elected in the first place?

A Democratically elected Parliament is expected to represent the majority opinion of the populace. When politicians retreat behind party lines and vote against what both their own (as the elected member) and their constituent’s wishes are -- Democracy is diminished. That we were forced to a Plebiscite, of all things, so that our elected representatives could legalise Same Sex Marriage is fucking pathetic. But nowhere near as pathetic as those MP’s who abstained from voting when their constituents had overwhelmingly cast a ballot in favour of Human Rights.

Australia has now had to, twice, overwhelmingly -- by vote -- tell our politicians that we prefer it when humans are treated as humans. First, in nineteen sixty-seven when a Referendum We Shouldn’t Have had to Have demonstrated that ninety odd percent of ninety percent of the voting population recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People as People.

Actual Human Beings.

In the lands they have occupied since time immemorial.

Lands where Sovereignty has never been ceded.

Now, fifty-three years later, we are still debating whether or not to acknowledge these facts in The Constitution. Unlike Same Sex Marriage, which was an easy amendment to an Act that could have been achieved without an unnecessary and expensive Plebiscite, Constitutional change will require a Referendum.

When forced into a corner, people who claim to support Recognition will point out Australia’s poor record when it comes to passing Referenda, but that is a piss weak excuse for not doing it. Even a cursory glance at the Australian Electoral Commission website shows that most were on issues such as whether Senators should have the same term length as MPs or blatant attempts by The Commonwealth to remove powers from The States. Many other Referenda not carried were bullshit ideas in the first place and most Australians recognised them as such before voting appropriately.

In the middle of a pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century, a cop in America decided to kill George Floyd on camera and shit got real. After the video went viral and the USA remembered while they may not be The Land of The Free, they can sometimes be The Home of The Brave, cities across their country were flooded with protestors demanding change.

Somehow, this reminded Australia that since the conclusion of The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987-1991), four hundred and thirty-seven Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have died in custody. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of state capitals, smaller marches were held in regional centres and the first Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt decided it would be a good time to tell The Nation that a Recognition Referendum won’t be happening this year because of COVID-19.

As a tenant on Yuggera Country, I’ve already voted in one election mid-pandemic and will do so again in October for the state election. Voters on Ngarigo, Ngunawal, Gundungurra and Yuin land, on the day that the USA usually celebrate their independence from the English, voted to elect a new member for the seat of Eden-Monaro -- Kristy McBain. By blaming the virus for any delay to a Referendum, is nothing more than a Coalition cop-out.

In stark contrast to the numpties who flouted quarantine laws to remind us that Bill Gates uses 5G technology and vaccines to spread corona via contrails (assisted by Deep State actors) in open defiance of the orders of The Lizard People, Black Lives Matter protests have been conducted in relatively virus safe conditions. To suggests that we can’t get off our arses and vote for Constitutional Recognition before the end of calendar year twenty-twenty is insulting and I’m a White man. I can’t imagine what this feels like for Indigenous Australians.

Empathy, however, can only go so far.

It might sound strange for a writer to say that words are useless, but it’s true when they are used to make empty promises. ‘Committed to “Closing the Gap”’ is a phrase spouted by both of the major parties, but every time the report comes out, it shows that nothing has changed.

In nineteen ninety-two, then Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered his famous Redfern Speech (which, if you can’t remember or are too young, you need to read), before thanking the crowd, the final line uttered is - ‘I am confident that we will succeed in this decade’. It is an incredibly powerful speech and Keating did make some reforms before he was ousted by Howard in ninety-six (who worked hard to reverse as many as possible), but regarding deaths in custody, the actual responsibility is that of the States and Territories.

Policing and Prisons are the remit of the colonies, so it is at their doors that grievances should be made regarding Deaths in Custody, but when it comes to the underlying issues that create the circumstances for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, The Commonwealth has a lot to answer for. Not only Howard’s military “Intervention” in the Northern Territory (relying on evidence that stacked up about as well as asylum seekers throwing their children overboard and Iraq having a bunch of Weapons of Mass Destruction), but Kevin Rudd allowing it to continue while he was apologising to the Stolen Generations and their families. This time it was an official apology, delivered on the floor of Parliament that didn’t accomplish much in a practical sense but certainly made a whole bunch of people feel better about themselves.

It can be argued that Rudd was knifed by Gillard so couldn’t get anything done before he decided to knife her so she couldn’t get anything done either. By the time that was over, Australia decided to elect Tony “Budgies? What Budgies?” Abbot, who is more apeshit than a Chimpanzee detoxing off hard drugs and any chance of anything constructive happening was tossed out the window. After Abbott was knifed by Turnbull, The Uluru Statement From The Heart was released and Turnbull told Indigenous Australia to fuck right off. Now we have Smirking Scott Morrison in charge and he truly doesn’t give a shit.

Our Paedophile Protecting Pentecostal Peddling Prime Minister actually believes that the plight of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is of their own making because the cult he belongs to tells him so. Scotty from Marketing is a slogan man and one of his favourites is something about having a go if you want to get a go, which implies that everyone is starting from the same place. The PM’s disdain for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should not surprise anyone given he’s the son of a copper.

I can picture a young Scotty on the knee of his father being regaled with stories of Kooris locked up for breaking curfew. Or Indigenous kids removed from family “for their own good”, thereby enabling a bunch of paedophiles to rape countless numbers of children. You know, fun stories after church on a Sunday.

There are many valid reasons why Scott Morrison should not be Prime Minister and they have been widely reported. Not only are there questions about his eligibility for NZ citizenship (In the spirit of full disclosure I’m eligible. Don’t judge. I’m not the PM) and therefore should have been s44’d, he is also a Fundamentalist Evangelical Happy Clapper. If a Fundamentalist Muslim attained the highest elected office on this stolen continent they would have been assassinated within a week.

Australia is a secular nation, or at least that’s what our Constitution tells us, yet the lord’s prayer is still recited at the opening of Parliament. According to the last census, a third of us have ‘no religion.

Islam came first in the ‘non-Christian’ category, but the plethora of other religions the ABS notes are indicative of the importance of a Politicians religion being left at the door. To not do so corrupts Government.

Separation of Powers is one of the most important pillars of a healthy Democracy, but we have a card-carrying member of a cult failing to run the joint and half the country doesn’t even give a shit.

The apathy of Australians’ when it comes to everyday Politics plays out at each election as vacant eyed electors file into polling booths, take the “How to Vote” card from the party their parents always voted for and follow orders. It is those who don’t that change the outcome of elections.

Compulsory voting is both a blessing and a curse. By forcing every enrolled voter to the polls, the vast majority off the population have the right to criticise, complain about and protest the actions of Government, something that appears to be lost on some people who live in countries with voluntary voting systems. I’ll say it again – If You CHOOSE Not To Vote You Cannot Have A Cry About The Results Afterwards. If you were PREVENTED from voting, then get the fuck out there with your signs and slogans.

The flipside of compulsory voting is a significant percentage of the population are Politically disengaged and have little knowledge of how the electoral system works. In Australia, this dilemma is compounded by the preferential voting system we use. Again, a more egalitarian system of electing officials that is diminished by a lack of understanding regarding the machinations of where one’s vote will eventually end up after the final count. Political Literacy is generally poor across most of The Continent and we pay for it at every election. Regardless of which major party wins, it is too often because the electorate have been influenced to vote for something that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t benefit them in any significant way. SportsRorts being the most obvious recent example, but I will let others detail that farce as I’m nearing my self-imposed word count.

The number of words I could write regarding what could be (adequately) represented as an informed and detailed assessment of The State of The World right now will forever be a subject of conjecture, but I can say – in all honesty – The World is fucked.

While everyone has been occupied with COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter protests, Climate Change has quietly disappeared from public debate. Both The Virus and Racial Equality are important issues that need to be addressed which makes me wonder about all those folk (in desperate need of a haircut) who refuse to wear masks while shouting “All Lives Matter”. If all lives truly matter one is forced to question, why they are opposed to eliminating a virus that has killed half a million people, don’t count Black in their definition of All and ignore The Science that proves Humans are responsible for fucking up our planet?

Australia can’t do much to influence the rest of the world unless we stop selling them coal and every other thing we dig up or grow. Spending $270 BILLION on missiles and other useless shit does nothing to improve the safety of citizens. That money could have been well spent fast-tracking our energy transition to renewables and helping "our Pacific Family” prepare for the inevitable sea level rise.

It’s only July but The Year of An Unemployed Palestinian Carpenter, Twenty-Twenty has already proved itself to be a clever little fucker. After figuring out that we use its name to describe good vision, the shit bastard of a human construct decided to show us the level of shit fuckery we have gotten ourselves into.

Kudos where Kudos is due. 1984 didn’t live up to expectations and we haven’t had Aliens, Terminators or Zombies yet, but I’m pretty sure that we are living through what are known as “Interesting Times” which is why, having started this ramble referencing a song, I will offer my nomination for The Anthem of Twenty-Twenty – Worst Day Since Yesterday by Flogging Molly.

Enjoy.

Yeah. Nah.

Yeah.

Nah.

After my last rant against Australia’s Cult Member Prime Minister and the sycophantic gang of narcissists he surrounds himself with, I decided to write something that was Policy, not Political.

I haven’t done too poorly, only 1111 words but a few good points and no swears. I don’t even mention a single politician or party but it’s just ideas and questionable thought bubbles.

Fuck That.

I’m still too bloody angry to be any more constructive than to point out the short comings of The Happy Clapping Cabinet. There are some good arguments in the other one, and I’ll get back to it soon enough, but I find myself with only enough energy to rail on the train wreck that is the Government of Australia.

The current Australian Government will go down in history as the most unhinged, cruel and incompetently corrupt in the nation’s history. One need only look at the litany of scandals even before Scotty nicked off to Hawaii while the country was on fire. Bridget McKenzie and her “Sports Rorts”, Angus Taylor with something new every bloody week, Peter Dutton continuing to imprison The Biloela Family on Christmas Island and the list goes on.

Call me cynical if you like, but most Governments would privately welcome crises like the fires and the virus to deflect attention from their other failings. But not this one, they are happy to fuck up their response to those as well. I’m not diminishing the tragedy that was the Morrison Fires, nor am I downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19, just pointing out that if the Government response had been adequate, the electorate might have forgotten about the rest. Not forgiven, just not remembered, because we had more important things on our plate.

All the bushfires and the pandemic have achieved for the Morrison Government is to remind the country that, for some reason, we elected the glorified clusterfuck that is the Liberal/National Coalition. I say “we” because that’s how democracy is supposed to work. In truth though, Morrison lied, cheated and bribed his way to the top job. It isn’t surprising that he continued such behaviour after attaining office. Citizens of the USA could empathise with us, but they are holding out hope that criminal charges will be laid against the Orange Murderer-in-Chief once he’s booted from office. We have no such hope. Without a Federal ICAC, these thieving pricks will walk free after they are voted out.

If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny to watch this most hate-filled regime paint itself into a corner where the only way out is to show some measure of compassion for the great unwashed. But it isn’t funny, it is just another example of how disconnected from society they are. It was easy to dismiss dole recipients as “bludgers” and spout slogans like “It’s a hand up, not a hand-out” before Liberal Party voters had to queue at Centrelink. Now that their base has been exposed to the harsh reality that is social “security” in Australia, Morrison’s Government have, once again, scrambled to pretend they care.

The blatant attempt to skew unemployment numbers with the invention of the JobKeeper payment won’t serve its intended purpose as it relies on employers to distribute the funds to their employees. Even before it was rolled out reports of business owners attempting to rort the system began to surface. While this is something that shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise it is one more example of the callousness exhibited by the Morrison Government.

That clever accounting tricks would delay any payments until after the March Quarter was expected but waiting until the end of April to cough anything up was just cruel. Again, no one should be surprised that this Government sought to prolong the unnecessary suffering of its citizens in the hope they will be able to lift restrictions before opening the purse. The money should not ever be given to the employer. The ATO has the details of every worker in the nation and operates possibly the most efficient payment system this country has going for it. Had they been given the green light to run the program, money would have hit bank accounts weeks ago and the stress of being unable to pay rent/mortgage/bills while still being able to afford to eat would have been significantly reduced.

Scotty from Marketing is fond of slogans and his most recent favourite is “snap-back”, as in, once this shit is all over, you dickheads are going back to pre-pandemic payment levels. I don’t think the dozy wanker realises that when unemployment reaches ten percent in the space of a few weeks, it won’t revert to pre-crisis levels in a matter of days. Paul Keating’s “Recession we had to have” took three years to get the unemployment rates we are experiencing now and eight-odd years to get back to a pre-recession figure. If this numbnuts Prime Minister seriously thinks the smashed avocado devouring children of the LNP will cop forty bucks a day before returning to their non-existent jobs he’s more delusional than he’s been given credit for.

What has been most enjoyable about watching Morrison fail over and over since he knifed Turnbull is grounded in the appreciation that the dumb fuck thinks a baseball cap and a smirk will solve all his problems. If anyone else was so ignorant to their failings they would have been removed from their position by those who had put them there in the first place. The only problem the Liberal Party has, is that no one in their ranks has a chance of winning public support.

Think about it. There is not a single person in the Lower House Liberal Party ranks that could be deemed a safe option to replace The Great White Shart. Honestly, Dutton, Frydenberg or Porter would have zero to fuck all chance of winning a general election and no one knows who the rest of them are. Mention Dan Tehan or Stuart “I was responsible for Robo-Debt, racked up thirty eight odd grand on an internet bill and for some fucking reason I’m still a Minister” Robert and you will be met with a blank stare, or silence, depending on what social distancing measure you have employed. It will surely be a dark day in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs when they realise The Nationals have a greater proportion of recognisable figures in Parliament than The Libs.

Not to detract from Gladys Liu being a CCP agent and Tim Wilson’s responsibility for more oxygen waste in Australian Political History than Mattias Cormann could ever hope for. But it must be a sad time for The Liberal Party when The Faceless Man, Mick Mack McCormack is more recognised than the rest of the front bench. For fuck’s sake The Nationals BACKBENCH is more prominent than The Liberals Front Bench. Sure, the Libs have some nutjobs from their own backbench to roll out, Craig Kelly has been conspicuous only by his absence, but Andrew Laming has happily stepped up to fill the void. Yet they fail in the proper fuckwit competition when compared to Joyce, Christensen and Canavan, while if you’re looking for Taylor level corruption in The Nats it’s hard to go past Littleproud.

The Nationals. The best party Australia never had. What could have been a truly representative body for the parts of the Nation that produce the bulk of income for the Commonwealth is nothing more than a cabal of self-serving climate-denying fascists. The problem we have now is that the nimrods have figured out that The Liberal Party needs them more than the other way around. Disturbingly, this revelation was not made apparent to The Nationals until Labor started pointing out that the unions have more elected members than any other party in Parliament. Electing Hogan as Deputy Speaker was the most thinly veiled threat they could come up with, but it worked. Until COVID-19 rocked up.

It’s been fun watching The Nats not roll out their heavy hitters since lock down landed. They, of anyone, should know how much the inept response to the outbreak directly affects their base. Fires and floods had fucked a good whack of what hadn’t already been destroyed by drought before the virus was allowed to run roughshod over our borders. Having gained a seat at the last federal election while the Libs lost them all over the country, should have been enough to light a bulb above at least one empty vessel in The Nationals party room. Unfortunately for Australia, they had to led by the hand by Labor only to use the opportunity to double down on Climate Denialism.

How Canavan and Co. can front up to farms and properties crippled by drought and spruik more coal mines and coal fired power stations is fucking beyond me. Before you start on about “Droughts and Flooding Rains”. Fuck Off. So, the fuck, does damn near every other fucking country in the world. I can hear it now, “But we get it more and it’s worse than other places”. That is bullshit. Name one other country that is a continent (Don’t ask Tehan, he’ll say Africa). Australia regularly has some part of the country in drought and another underwater, often at the same time (as do most other continents), given the size of the landmass no one should be surprised. It is the severity and extent of recent events that is of most concern for the future of the planet.

Don’t accuse me of silver lining COVID-19 by pointing out that air travel has all but ceased, there are less cars on the road and demand for fossil fuels has decreased to the point that oil futures were briefly trading in negative territory. We could have done that shit already. That we needed a pandemic which can kill a person now to show us that we can take steps to save millions of lives in the future is fucking embarrassing. That Scotty from Hillsong is hell bent on removing the increase to Jobseeker payments in September is not only sadistic, it’s fucking stupid.

Bear with me for a moment. Think about which industries are going to be hardest hit by the four crises that have affected Australia in 2020 but don’t say Agriculture, that’s too easy and the Nats gave up on farmers years ago. Now consider that it is widely recognised Scott “I believe in miracles” from Marketing won the 2019 election thanks, in a large way to Queensland voting overwhelmingly for the LNP (excluding the Katter Fiefdom of Kennedy), outside of the South-East corner. Except for Warren Entsch, all regional Queensland LNP Members sit in The Nationals Party Room, as do the two regional Senators.

This may come as a surprise to some, but peak tourist season for a fair whack of Queensland is in the cooler months. There are many reasons for this and most of them revolve around the coast. No cyclones, the whales are migrating, there are less Irukandji in the water and the weather is usually better than south of The Tweed. All good things and you can’t blame people wanting to see The Reef, or lay on a beach in The Whitsundays, but these activities require people to fly the plane, pilot the boat, prepare food, serve drinks, provide accommodation and the list goes on.

As of July 16, 2019, tourism employed around 9% of the Qld population directly or indirectly, roughly 217,000 people. A Queensland Government statement dated June 21, 2019 stated that the mining, oil and gas industries directly employed 70,000 people. Given a significant portion of those workforces are Fly or Drive In or Out from tourism centres allows for some crossover with tourism regarding indirect jobs, but the tourism specific and those hospitality jobs that only exist in peak season are in dire straits. International travel had already suffered a major downturn due to international media reporting that the entire country was alight. If not in the body of the bulletins, in the headlines. The virus has only served to compound the problem.

Domestic tourism has suffered with border lockdowns, enforced closures of cafes, bars, restaurants, camping grounds and other places of mass gatherings, serving to cut off the trickle of income that regional towns can usually count on from Grey Nomads and itinerant workers passing through from one location to another, all year round. Jobs will dry up in regional Australia, not just Queensland, when there are no tourists this year. The ski-fields will be shut, Dark MOFO is cancelled and no one is holding their breath in anticipation of any music festivals for the next twelve months. If the tourism industry, and by extension; accommodation, hospitality and the arts, are not included in Government stimulus, The Nationals will feel it.

Small business is often touted as “the backbone of the economy” by both sides of the aisle and rightly so. Many small businesses make up an industry and a lot of those small business are dependent on another industry’s small businesses in order to be viable. This flow on effect, if not recognised by the National Party, may result in a serious backlash if they fail to use their power in the coalition. By not sticking up for their constituents, The Nationals will be complicit in the closure of numerous small regional businesses across the country.

Conservatives, once upon a time, were so concerned about the spread of Communism they used the term “Domino Effect” to justify their wars against The Red Menace but failed to see what it can really look like when applied to Capitalism. A century since the last real pandemic and eighty-odd since The Great Depression can do that to simple minds. What The Nationals can do with their controlling vote for their electorates is force The Liberals to protect small businesses in regional Australia. If the entire National Party crossed the floor to vote with Labor on anything, it would pass even if the cross bench didn’t support it. I’m dealing in fantasy here, I know, but if The Nats were at least half as smart as they tell us they are, they’d be holding Scotty and his Rapture welcoming peons to ransom.

What it really comes down to is – Trev closes his fishing charter business, which means Mary shuts the door on the Bait Shop. Neither of them need to drive as much so the petrol station starts to struggle, with a drop in transient visitors to the hamlet, there is nothing to justify employing one of the local kids who used to work for Trev or Mary. The takeaway is forced to shut not only because of the lack of visitors, but because most everyone in town can’t afford to eat out. The Pub might push through on the back of the bottle-o, as disenchanted residents drink themselves into a stupor, but the numerous troubadours who ply their trade around regional Australia can’t play in everyone’s front yard each Friday.

That the Coalition can spout Dorothea Mackellar whenever they want to deny Climate Change but throw the arts under a bus when it comes to job security because “Science Says” is fucking laughable. Especially when you consider that most artists who have a day job are often employed on a casual basis so are ineligible for JobKeeper payments either way you look at it. Authoritarian regimes often attack artists and intellectuals in the early days of their reign and the LNP are no stranger to cutting arts funding. Still unable to lock us up for fomenting discussion and debate they have decided to starve us out. Being far and away the most likely industry to restart last after the virus is taken care of, the arts may take a generation to recover. So the next time you’re talking to a Nationals voter, remind them of The Tamworth Music Festival, The Gympie Muster and every bloody musician, lighting technician, sound engineer, roadie that works behind the performer that bring entertainment to their RSL, Bowlsie or Surf Club.

Yeah.

Nah.

Whatever.

I’m done.

Rant over.

Took me a bloody month as well.

Note to self: Don’t start writing a novel mid-rant.

If you’re playing at home.

Cheers.

“Unprecedented”

“Flatten the Curve”

“Lock-Down”

“Home-Schooling”

“Remote Learning”

“Snap Back”

COVID-19 and Scotty from The Stables

This will be the third time I try to write something about COVID-19. I put it off for as long as I could. Then I went for it. Then shit accelerated exponentially, I started again and then I lost the second attempt because I haven’t quite worked out the whole having two computers in use thing. Deleted the second one thinking it was the first one and now I find myself attempting to write myself out of procrastination once more.

Quarantine does strange things to people. I can’t remember ever deleting an unsaved piece that I liked. But I also can’t remember ever being told that I needed to stay home for the benefit of the populace.

My first two pieces were attempts at dissecting the abject failure of the Morrison Government’s response to the pandemic. I’ve decided that to detail it once more would be an exercise in futility. All that needs to be said is that following the absolute fail that was Scotty from Marketing’s handling of The Morrison Fires, we should not be surprised that he’s fucked this one up as well.

The Year of Our Unemployed Palestinian Carpenter - Twenty-Twenty – will forever be remembered as the year when the Prime Minister of Australia prayed for those Australians not burnt, to be infected with a potentially fatal disease, while smirking his way through the whole debacle.

Australians need to remember that the PM is a Happy Clapping Evangelical who is praying for The End of Days. He wants this shit. The “Thoughts and Prayers” he was sending out from Hawaii as Australia was on fire were to keep it burning the sinners away while he and Jenny and the girls got safely Raptured up to his sky fairy castle. The inaction around COVID-19 is simply his way of welcoming another Horseman of The Apocalypse.

Once upon a time, we held one principle pillar of Democracy – The Separation of Powers – as being paramount to the successful operation of society. These days we have a Cult-Member failing to run the country.

Politics should never be governed by a Religious Organisation. Not here. Not anywhere.

It’s not as if Morrison is the first PM to publicly acknowledge their alleged adherence to one faith or another, but as far as I can tell, he’s the first to actually think it’s real. In his mind, he’s presiding over The Rapture and is loving it.

I have no problem with individual spiritual beliefs or practices until they are used to the detriment of those who do not share said beliefs. But this where Australia finds itself. Through bribery and deceit, we were delivered a Liberal/National Coalition Government.

The Nation is now paying for its sins. I won’t stoop to the level of disparaging dogs in this rant, but we have certainly made our bed and it is full of fleas. Given the choice between a bloke who wanted to stop the rich rorting the system so we could improve the healthcare system and a bloke who wants us to burn and die choking on our own phlegm, we chose the latter.

Scott Morrison’s acceptance of and aspiration to be present for The End of Days is potentially more of a threat to National Security than the virus itself. A man who cannot deliver clear and concise directives because his religious beliefs are contrary to the overwhelming scientific evidence is not someone fit to lead a Nation. He’d struggle to lead a sportsball team. Which is probably why he is so shit at carrying the drinks… I digress, but think about that for a minute, the bloke who got picked last for playground sports games is running the country.

Now I don’t believe sporting prowess is indicative of competent leadership, but it is interesting to note the enthusiasm with which the PM accepted the duties of Waterboy. Then he pissed himself.

If he isn’t pissing himself now, he should be. His incompetence and inaction has worsened what could have been a little hiccup for us, on this island(s) Don’t worry Tassie, I remember you’re there)) where we happen to find ourselves. The borders could (and should) have been closed in a matter of hours when the first restrictions were placed on China. For every country. The fact that most Australian infections of COVID-19 were originally imported from the USA, is something that cannot be ignored or brushed over.

Anyone who believed Trump had anything nearing a competent response to the inevitable outbreak in the US is delusional and should be locked up for their own safety and that of others. Scott Morrison is one of those people. His sycophantic relationship with The Orange Idiot Child-in-Chief is not only embarrassing but has resulted in preventable cases of COVID-19 infections entering the country. Not to say that most cases of COVID-19 entering the country haven’t been Australian Citizens or Permanent Residents but the response to returning travellers has been sub-standard, if I’m being polite.

Without bothering to go into the clusterfuck that has been The Governments response to floating petri dishes disembarking infected passengers to disperse across the country (and globe), there had been little to no testing at airports until the States took leadership. Border Force, with all its extra funding has failed in their primary purpose – to protect Australia from Foreign Threats – while the Potato Fuhrer got The Rona himself. One does not need to be a medical professional or scientist to appreciate that he was probably asymptomatic while attending Cabinet meetings before he was diagnosed. Which is how we get back to Trump.

Dutton was in The White House only days before a Cabinet meeting and Ivanka decided to self-isolate with her family following her meeting with him. But Morrison decided the best course of action was to postpone a ban on mass gatherings until after he attended his cult’s fundraising event but not “the footy” as he had pledged only a few days prior – an early warning of the inconsistency in messaging that has defined the Government’s response to COVID-19. While not quite at Trumpian levels of incoherence, Scotty from Marketing has tried his best to emulate the self-proclaimed “Chosen One” and pretend that this whole thing isn’t really a big deal.

Once more Scotty was caught short and scrambled to make it look like he was doing something. He jumped the gun by declaring a Pandemic before the WHO yet failed to implement blanket travel bans at the same time. That The Ruby Princess was allowed to leave Australian waters on the fifteenth of March (four days after the WHO had officially declared a pandemic) when public gatherings of over five hundred people were banned is nothing short of negligent. Allowing the ship to disembark passengers on their return, with no restrictions, is possibly criminal. As there is now a police investigation into discovering whose incompetence made this clusterfuck possible, don’t hold your breath waiting for any politician to comment on it.

The rumour mill is back in business, with reports of Hillsong Conference Attendees (allegedly including relatives of Minister Alex Hawke) being present on the cruise. While yet to be confirmed, it is not beyond the realms of possibility given that the conference wrapped up the day prior to the ship’s departure and may go someway to explaining the hasty disembarkation of passengers when the ship docked.

Like every other red-blooded Australian, I am fond of a good conspiracy theory, just more along the lines of how Harold Holt is still living large in a Dacha overlooking the Black Sea, drunk on vodka whilst getting fat on caviar and borscht.

Instead, I find myself coming to terms with the fact that, not only have fundamentalist evangelicals infiltrated the highest elected offices of the land, they have used their positions of power to stack the public service with their Happy Clapping mates. I know I am not alone in having little faith in any blame being apportioned to the Commonwealth Government or Hillsong at the conclusion of any investigation that is ultimately led by Morrison’s mate and bin attendant, Mick Fuller. Any measure of respect he may have held by virtue of his position was diminished when his friendship with Morrison was made public and was destroyed when he handballed the faux investigation into Angus Taylor to the AFP.

Arguments can be made as to the jurisdictional boundaries regarding the location where the offence was committed, and they are reasonable arguments from a purely legal point of view. But the general public perceived it as Fuller passing the buck to the AFP who subsequently fueled community suspicion that they are Government lap dogs by not even conducting a credible investigation.

But if Fuller manages to fulfill his duty this time around and discovers that the original decision by Border Force to deny the Ruby Princess from docking was overturned due to Ministerial pressure will the public ever know about it?

The odds of a Government Minister being charged with a criminal offence are not good. Especially if it happens to be true that Minister Hawke’s relatives were on board. Fuller won’t charge a fellow Happy Clapper and even if he was dismissed, his replacement (and the DPP) will have to face the lawyers funded by the financial behemoth that is Hillsong. It wouldn’t surprise me if they hired Pell’s lawyer, Bret Walker SC. Given he doesn’t seem to give a shit about representing a paedophile, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to defend a cultist charged with using their position to release a deadly virus into Australia.

The Pell decision really fucked with my quarantine and is the reason this rant has taken me a week longer than I wanted it to. When the decision was handed down, I went and bought a carton of Cass Beer and started drinking before looking with any detail into the ruling.  Then I spent the afternoon reassuring people that he got off on a technicality and the fact a jury found him guilty has not changed. It is little succour to the victims of child sexual abuse, but it is The Law and I’m still too angry to go into detail about Pell, but he is just another example of religious influence on Australia’s political elite. Former Prime Ministers Howard and Abbott publicly defended Pell whereas Former Prime Minister Gillard released a heartfelt and reassuring message to victims following the courts decision. Ms Gillard is an Atheist.

As I mentioned earlier, personal beliefs are just that – personal. So, keep them that way. Scotty from Hillsong doesn’t want people to criticise his religious beliefs. No one is attacking him because he belongs to a cult. He is being criticised because he is an incompetent fuckwit who is flaunting his religion from the highest elected office in the land. What ever in fuck made him think it was appropriate to host a fucking prayer meeting, live streamed from the PM’s chambers?

I hope the dozy bastard was pissed. He’d probably be more useful if he was. It might also explain why he teamed up with generally ignored homophobic racist, Margaret Court.

Not only did he appropriate Government resources, (office, electricity, broadband, staff etc.) he appropriated the Prime Minister’s official letterhead and the National Coat of Arms to deliver an “Easter Message” which implies that all Australians are Christians until about halfway through when a staffer might have pointed out the true demographics of this country. But only after expressing disappointment that we wouldn’t be able to go “off to church and our religious services where we can remember the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. He then goes on to mention “our faith” twice before acknowledging other religions exist.

I personally don’t mind that Scott Morrison (and Jenny and the girls) is a Happy Clapping Cultist. Don’t give a shit. Honestly. What pisses me off is that the Prime Minister of Australia is a Happy Clapping Cultist who doesn’t understand Separation of Powers and believes his role is to convert all of us to his twisted world view.

Most Australians assume that the current PM has never done a hard days’ work in his life. They are ill informed. He’s been mucking out the stables for The Four Horseman for years now.

Rant over.

PS

If you’re playing along at home…

“Unprecedented”

“New Normal”

“Flatten the Curve”

“Draw the line”

“Draw lines”

“Drew that line”

That’s a six pack or a bottle of wine covered.

HH

Three Weeks Shouting at The TV

Pushing close to a fortnight of procrastination I find myself forced, once more, to dive into the non-sensical quagmire of Australian Politics. It will long be a subject of debate amongst academics as to why I seek solace from writer’s block by watching the 24-hour news feed in order to shout at the TV. That is their remit and I will leave it to them to discuss my self-imposed torture regime at their leisure.

But I have begun to follow tangents much earlier in my spiel than usual. I attribute it to my (and the general Australian publics) disenchantment in the Australian Government specifically and the Australian Parliament more broadly.

There are many more reasons on this second sitting week of Parliament for the year, as to why the voting public have none to bugger all faith in most politicians of all stripes than before they rose last year following little more than a month of sitting days.

When this first session of Parliament for 2020 rests for a week, they will have sat for almost half the time they sat for all of 2019. Citizens with any other “full-time” job would be sacked for absenteeism of such magnitude.

Not turning up to work when you can’t be stuffed is a well-respected Australian tradition and the practice doesn’t appear to be abating in the general population. That our elected officials chose to lead the way is admirable but turning around and bagging out a few kids for skipping school because they want a planet that will be habitable for their potential broods is hypocritical.

No one really expected that the bloke who didn’t even think he could win the election last year to the point he called his victory a “miracle”, would nick off to Hawaii while rainforests that hadn’t burned in living memory cloaked Brisbane and Sydney in micro-particle full smoke because he had “promised” his daughters.

He was so focused on this alleged “promise” that he forgot The Oath he took after stabbing former PM Turnbull, to serve Australia.

To the dismay of his country and the bewilderment of the world, Scott Morrison decided the most appropriate course of action was to remain ensconced in the US Military run resort to which he had fled while his office scrambled to deny he had even left the country.

It is probably going to be recorded as the greatest Prime Ministerial fail since Harold Holt decided to go for a swim.

That he was Missing In Action on the fiftieth anniversary of Harry’s final dip was not lost to anyone with more than a passing interest in Politics, which is interesting only insofar as neither Scotty from Marketing or anyone from his office failed to realise how quickly it would be leapt upon by commentators.

As would his failed and much maligned Tourism Australia campaign featuring the slogan “Where The Bloody Hell Are You?” It was a gift that critics of Scotty From Marketing eagerly accepted and utilised with glee.

By the time he slunk back to face up to his failure, Canberra and Melbourne had been added to the top ten list of cities with the worst air quality in the world, so he figured the best thing to do was shift blame. First, the daggy dad tried blaming rich white girl privilege and a feeble excuse about all Australians taking holidays.

This from a bloke whose greatest achievements of 2019 (aside from only working for a month) included committing to drown his “Pacific Family” (who broadly offered assistance as Australia burned while Morrison sipped Mai Tai’s); pissing his pants after running water bottles for a sportsball team in Fiji, supplicating himself to the racist rapist in the White House and being ridiculed on the world stage following his speech to the UN on Australia’s inaction regarding Climate Change.

Instead of addressing the reason as to why Australia is experiencing more severe droughts and longer fire seasons, he instead tried to blame (in no particular order) State Governments, The Greens, The RFS (or CFA, or the acronym they use in your State) for not conducting Hazard Reduction Burns… And Arsonists.

His excuses have been rebuffed, rebuked and ridiculed publicly by the experts, from scientists to volunteer firefighters. More than twenty former emergency chiefs, as well as First Australians have criticised the Morrison Government’s response to what can only be described as a National Emergency. Police data shows that while many fires were caused by human action, most of those were not deliberately lit.

Realising that “Thoughts and Prayers” wasn’t quite cutting it in The Electorate, Scotty decided to put on his Politician in The Bush Uniform and tour the firegrounds in order to commit common assault by forcing people to shake his hand when they clearly didn’t want to. His departure from Cobargo will long be remembered as a seminal moment, not only in Morrison’s political career, but as a victory for free speech.

As the footage of his interactions went viral, he scarpered off to Kangaroo Island to try pretending he cared once more, only to forget that two locals had died defending their property and suggest that their sacrifice was less than that of registered firies.

Then the PM doubled down on his denial that Australia is the largest emitter of CO2 per capita in the world, stubbornly sticking to his narrative that we only emit a little over one percent.

By failing to acknowledge that the fossil fuels we export to be burned overseas contribute to Australia’s emissions globally is nothing short of negligence on a criminal scale. Scott Morrison, does not believe in the “Laws of Man”, he believes in cherry picked verses from a book apparently written by a bunch of blokes who spoke to sky fairies or followed an unemployed carpenter around Palestine before making up a load of fibs in order to turn a profit as an organised religion.

These are the sort of people that populate the Australian Parliament generally, but the Liberal and National Parties in particular. One only need watch former Deputy Prime Minister and Member for New England Joyce’s video he released while allegedly off his tits on booze/cocaine/ketamine, perhaps a combination of any or all On the other hand it could simply be explained away as being overwhelmed by the appearance of Baby Yoda in The Heavens. As a Nation, Australia must thank Huw Parkinson for removing the filter and showing us the truth.

While the Minister for Marital Affairs ranted about feeding livestock and shouted into his phone about how Baby Yoda was going to save us all, a billion odd native animals were busy burning, thousands of homes and other properties were being destroyed and people were being killed.

Aside from Darren Chester, The Coalition, to an individual, failed their electorates in not responding to the bushfires. When McCormack realised he was Acting PM and decided he should front the cameras, he didn’t have any clue as to how he should act. But when Morrison got back, Mick Mack got a masterclass in how not to handle a National Emergency, so he’ll be well prepared the next time Scotty decides to shirk his responsibilities.

If he still has his job that is. Barney’s failed tilt at the Nats Leadership will not be the end of this, McCormack is on borrowed time and I’m willing to say the same is probably true for Morrison. While I’d like to see the sacking of both, a very real possibility if that happens, is a Dutton/Joyce Government.

Let that sink in for a moment.

A former Queensland cop and a bloke who gets hopped up on goofballs could be running the country. If there wasn’t a chance of it of becoming a reality, someone could have written a great comedy about it and we would all laugh at how impossible it would be for that to ever come to pass.

The reality Australia finds in front of it, is one of denial and inaction from the highest levels of Government and this will only be worsened if Spud and The Beetroot get the captaincy. For a developed nation to be discussing whether an inept happy clapper and an incompetent faceless man make a better Prime Ministerial couple than a bloke who is only a heartbeat away from becoming a card-carrying member of The Nazi Party and another who campaigns on “Family Values” while cheating on his family beggars belief.

Unless the Governor-General sacks the lot of them, we will be stuck with this rabble until 2022 and until the crossbench decides to grow a spine by refusing Supply and Confidence in The Government, he doesn’t really have a precedent to do so. Granted it will take a couple of Coalition MPs to cross the floor but given the unforeseen rise of Llew O’Brien (who was quickly dubbed “Who O’Brien” before disappearing from public discourse) and the half dozen Nats who crossed the floor to elect him as Deputy Speaker following a Labor nomination shows how shaky the ground Morrison and McCormack are standing on.

If a handful of “Radical” Nationals and “Moderate” Liberals, (hilarious, I know how weird that sounds) cross to vote with Labor, we could once more experience the joys of a double dissolution.

As these combined possibilities become more probable, the pressure mounts on Labor to present as a credible alternative Government and while Albo’s response to the bushfires was one which Scott Morrison should aspire to, his inability to capitalise on his favourable press coverage to hammer the Government on any issue he wanted resulted in a pile of sweet nothing.

While the bushfires abated, the scandals returned. Not satisfied with Angus Taylor’s corruption that was exposed last year, The Coalition were caught out pork barrelling marginal seats with sports grants. Not once, but twice and now we discover they did the same with an infrastructure fund. Bridget McKenzie fell on her sword and Barney lived up to his namesake by having a tiff with McCormack. Canavan quit Cabinet as Gladys Liu disappeared from public view.

Amongst all of this, Zali Steggall decided to introduce a Climate Change Bill that will more likely fail to pass and Adam Bandt became Parliamentary Leader of The Greens. Bob Katter ranted about something and Pauline Hanson blamed a woman for her husband immolating her and their children. Jacqui Lambie has forgotten that she was once an unemployed single mother and has decided to support the Indue card while Andrew Wilkie showed George Christensen there was more outside of Australia’s borders than brothels in Manila.

That Mr Wilkie has allied with Christensen shows how desperate Julian Assange’s plight really is and begs the question - Where are all the Free-Speech advocates in Government when a citizen is being persecuted by two of our historically strongest allies for publishing facts? Even Alan Jones has got on board with the Free Assange movement, but the Government is silent on the issue. As an Australian Citizen I am increasingly concerned by the prolonged imprisonment of Assange, but I am more concerned about our Government’s inaction regarding the persecution of a compatriot. Given that I have admitted publicly to acts punishable by death in certain countries that I still intend on travelling to, I am proper screwed, and I don’t have a public profile like Assange. Possibly because I procrastinate too much.

This has now taken me three weeks to write. I’ve had other shit going on and Parliament has sat and risen once more since I began. I’ve done nothing on The Book, but I’ve paid the rent and am now broke again. Maybe I’ll just go out to the International Arrivals Gate and hug anyone who coughs or is wearing a face mask…

HH

The joys of renting.

Regarding your letter dated 21st January 2020.

I would remind you that I have already committed to removing the couch that has never belonged to me, as it is blocking my parking space.

I will also remove the two broken electric fans and CD rack that belonged to me.

Everything else underneath the property has been discarded by former tenants and it is unreasonable to suggest that the current occupants be financially liable for the acts of others.

As an example, the two broken washing machines.

One has been there since before I signed a lease for this property (19/08/11).

The other was left by the previous tenant of U/2 (about the time the couch appeared in my parking space).

Were I to attempt to move them, I would injure myself.

With diagnosed Arthritis, Bursitis and waiting on verification of Chondromalacia Patellae, I am physically incapable of such a task.

I can manage the couch because it is light enough to drag with one hand.

There have been some rare exceptions, but over the eight years of my residency, most every former tenant of this building has left something in the car park/laundry area.

Some were placed there when tenants moved in and never removed.

Others were dumped when they vacated the property.

To suggest that current tenants clean up after former tenants or be financially punished if they don't is not only unreasonable but borders on ludicrous.

Especially when one considers the Owners building materials (door and window frames, guttering etc.) are stored underneath the house, on pallets that belong to me in some cases (should I remove them?).

At the most recent property inspection (05/09/19) I advised B---- C----- from your office that I would remove the couch (which is not mine) and anything that belonged to me at the next kerbside pickup.

I appreciate the reminder of the upcoming dates but am affronted that you would threaten me to pay for the rubbish of others if I don't remove it.

Given you should still have the contact details of former tenants (and it is their waste), it would be more appropriate to ask former tenants to come and collect their belongings or send the bill to them rather than threaten those who have no claim or connection to the items in question.

Having received legal advice regarding this matter I will recommit to remove the items I have already mentioned but I will not pay for the removal of items that others have been too lazy to do themselves.

Given the comparatively short time that the occupants of Units 1 & 2 have resided at this address I would also suggest that implying they are somehow responsible and therefore liable for the removal of rubbish left by previous occupants of their units is nothing short of a potentially illegal threat.

I hope that this matter can be resolved amicably and in a timely manner.

Regards,