Jobs and Growth for failed LNP politicians.

During the 2016 election campaign Malcolm Turnbull’s mantra was Jobs and Growth.  He repeated it often. He did not go into a lot of detail. Most voters thought he meant he would somehow achieve Jobs and Growth by means of his other policy: 96 Billion Dollar Tax Breaks for Big Business. This practice has never worked in the past, but obviously the Prime Minister thought it would work for him, at least during the election campaign.

Post-election, we now realise that Jobs and Growth really meant highly paid jobs for those LNP candidates who lost their seats in the election. Well, of course, both sides of politics do that, but the LNP are so much better at it. Downer, Hockey, Reith et al, all finished up with very plumb and hugely paid overseas sinecures.

At the same time, the LNP made sure that former Labor politicians like Steve Bracks and latterly, Kevin Rudd, would never be allowed anywhere near that Post Politics Jobs for the Boys Club. In 2013, ex Victorian Labor Premier, Steve Bracks had actually been appointed as Australian Ambassador to some European country when newly appointed Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, withdrew his commission. So there!

Recently, four Liberal members of parliament, who were defeated in the 2016 election, have all been given very highly paid jobs by serving Liberal politicians. Then came the  corker. The Leader of the Senate, finds himself so busy in Canberra attending the opening of one envelope after another, that he cannot get back to his electorate in Hobart. So what did he do? Just like the Queen, God bless her, he decided to appoint somebody to represent him in his own electorate. This person, who also lost his seat in the last election will be the party political equivalent of the Queen’s very own Governor General, who represents her in Australia because she can’t be here as she is actually very busy being the Queen of England. Jobs and Growth. 

This newly appointed official substitute will attend various electorate meetings, flag raisings and bun fights on behalf of that busy, busy LNP Leader of the Senate.This job was specially created. It was not advertised. There were no interviews.By the way, you and I and roughly 16 million other Aussie taxpayers are paying $165 000 for this surrogate party attender to swan around Hobart watching flags go up, sandwiches being served and drinks being sloshed around a lot.

What ever happened to the budget blow out? I guess it comes right after the birthday party candles blow out. Anyhow, we all know it is those lazy, good for nothing bludgers on welfare who are dragging this country down. How lucky are we that the LNP are paying top dollar to these failed politicians, because as Malcolm keeps telling us, all that wealth with trickle down until, eventually, even those welfare spendthrifts with their pockets now filled with trickled down dough, will be gainfully employed once again.

But, that is not all. There is more. Even in these tight financial times, where everyone, except very rich corporations, must all tighten their belts and do the heavy lifting, Attorney General, George Brandis, that marble jawed monument to honesty and integrity, has excelled himself, again! Honest George just appointed a lawyer to some panel. Again, there were no job advertisements. There was no short list. There were no job interviews. George just happened to remember that this fellow was a very good lawyer for some reason or another. Maybe his son reminded him?

It turns out that this lawyer was the one who, a few months ago, got Brandis’ son off a property damages charge that was then before the courts. Brandis, when asked in the Senate Estimates Committee, said he could not remember if he had arranged for this lawyer to provide his services at a discounted rate for his son. After all, it was waaaay back in May of this year. Who can be expected to remember that far back?

Let’s face it, even Simon Gleeson, the Solicitor General, according to George, cannot remember way back in May, just before the last parliament went into caretaker mode, that George had lengthy, deep and meaningful discussions with him. These consultations were allegedly about how George was going to cut the Solicitor General right out of the equation and make it against the law for anybody, even the Governor General or the Prime Minister, from speaking with the Solicitor General, unless they first asked George for permission to do so.

For some reason, the Solicitor-General says these discussions, that were going to affect his traditional role and very reason for being, never took place and he that would never have agreed to such a law. 

George says they did take place. He says they must certainly have taken place because he has said that they took place and he even told the Senate that they had taken place. George says that the Solicitor General must have a bad memory because George would never tell a lie to the parliament about such an important matter.

Anyhow, George Brandis did happen to remember this lawyer who helped his son out of a spot of bother and he gave him the job on the panel. He told the Estimates Committee that, of course, there was no conflict of interest.

Oh, just as a matter of interest and with no conflict of interest whatsoever, this lawyer is being paid $375 000 dollars per year to sit on this panel. Guess who is paying him? You, me and 16 million other Australian taxpayers. Generous aren’t we. Generous to a fault, you may say. Perhaps, George is the fault? Anyhow, it is obviously all part of the Jobs and Growth policy.

The Libs continue to go around proudly proclaiming that they are the only ones who know how to handle money. After all, they keep reminding us how those terrible Labor people left them with such a financial mess to clean up after they came to the treasury benches in 2013. Well, somebody certainly is cleaning up. Those highly paid ex politicians and that terribly good lawyer for starters.

Meanwhile the deficit hasmore than trebled in just over three years of this expert LNP  “good finacial management”.

How lucky are we? Soon we will all be rich. Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had dinner at The Lodge the other night with a couple of Rupert Murdoch’s most senior editors. No doubt we will soon see some far reaching new media laws trickle down. These new trickled down media laws will be very advantageous to somebody rich and famous. I doubt it will be the ABC.

It is really just a case of Tickle, tickle, tickle.

The truth shall set us free. But who will tell us the truth?

Lately the media has quite rightly been focusing on the boorish behaviour of Donald Trump.
On Friday we saw an Australian version of Donald Trump on national television. Unlike Trump, he is not really being castigated by the Australian media for his ignorant and bullying behaviour. He deserves to be.

I refer to Queensland Liberal Senator McDonald. This loudmouthed, outspoken bully is a member of the Senate Committee investigating whether Attorney General, George Brandis, mislead the parliament when he said that he had previously discussed with the Solicitor General of the Commonwealth his decision to make it law that everyone, including the Governor General and the Prime Minister, must first refer to him before they consulted the Solicitor General for legal opinions.
The Solicitor General, Simon Gleeson, says he does not support such a law and there was no  consultation.

Senator McDonald was not interested in finding out the truth of this important matter. He spoke over the top of witnesses and even over the top of Senator Louise Pratt, who was Chairperson of the Committee of Inquiry. Clearly, some LNP politicians have a very hard job trying to deal with females who are placed in positions of authority. In this case, Senator McDonald's boorish behaviour indicated that did not  recognize Senator Pratt as having any authority over him. He was overbearing and rude throughout.  He spent most of his time denigrating the Solicitor General, attempting to make his behaviour the focus if the inquiry.

The media should be highlighting (or would that be lowlighting) this abysmal performance from one of our elected representatives. McDonald has form as an acknowledged bully, especially where women are concerned. You may recall that Senator McDonald was the Chairman of the Senate Committee that hauled Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, before it to grill her on her report about the Forgotten Generation.

Again, McDonald was not interested in the facts. He spent his time as Chairman bullying and attacking Ms Triggs, who remained remarkably calm and composed throughout his verbal assaults.
McDonald roundly criticised her report as biased. When Ms Triggs asked him if he had even read the report he proudly replied that he had not wasted his time reading such a biased, political document.
In doing so, he clearly demonstrated that he, as Chairman of the inquiry, had come to the hearing having already pre-judged the report, without ever bothering to read it.

One can only wonder what was the thinking of the people who appointed McDonald to be chairman of this committee of inquiry. Clearly, he was appointed for one reason only. He was an attack dog who would savage any witness seen as an enemy of the LNP.

Obviously, it was again with that thought in mind that Senator McDonald was placed on the current inquiry into whether the Attorney General, Senator Brandis lied to the Senate.

Unfortunately, Senator McDonald's arrogant and aggressive behaviour has not been highlighted in the mainstream media. Instead, the media has followed McDonald's red herring about Simon Gleeson having a telephone conversation with Shadow Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus during the election campaign.  Mr Brandis says he should have been notified of this conversation.

This telephone call took place during the caretaker, pre election phase, of government, which meant Attorney General Brandis had no role or real authority over the Solicitor General at that time. In any case, Dreyfus rang Gleeson to ask if Brandis had discussed the controversial new law with him before presenting it to the Senate. Gleeson told him that there had been no consultation and that was the end of the conversation.

It was not a call about a matter of law. It was not the case of the Solicitor General being asked to give a legal opinion. There can be no reasonable expectation that Gleeson would notify Senator Brandis, or indeed anybody else of such a conversaton.

But this telephone call was the main topic of the news coverage that night about the inquiry into whether Brandis lied to the Senate or not. The media were either sucked in by McDonald's Trump like tactics of distraction, or they are complicit in keeping the public uninformed of the really important issues. A frightening thought.

Just as frightening is the thought that later that  day, Senator McDonald probably enjoyed a few celebratory drinks in the Members' Bar, with his like minded colleagues congratulating him on how easily he had thrown the question about Senator Brandis' honesty completely off track. The media focus was now fixed, not on  Brandis, but on an respected and hard working public servant whose honesty has never been brought in to question.

A democracy requires more than just freedom of the press. It requires the press to print the facts, all of the facts. It requires the press to highlight shysters like Senator McDonald, who use bullying tactics and bluster to destroy the search for truth.

At present the Australian press does not appear to be serving democracy very well at all.

Trumpism is alive and well in Australia.

I am saddened to say that Trumpism is now alive and well in Australia. Donald Trump thrives on saying outlandish things, which are then widely reported in the media. Trump’s outlandish statements are not refuted by journalists, who should be asking questions and seeking the truth of the matter.

Victoria Rollison, writing for The Australian Independent Media Network on September 29, observed that Trump is allowed to state falsehood without any real media scrutiny. She says of the US media, “They are the Dr Frankenstein to the Trump monster”

Well, in Australia, our media is just as bland and unquestioning. Trumpism is alive and well in Australia. Politicians may say what they like. The media reports, but does not refute, the many falsehood.

On Wednesday, September 28, South Australia suffered the most severe storm in its recorded history. Lightning put a power station out of action and cyclonic winds knocked over several power transmission towers as if they were matchsticks.

With severe outages occurring, the state’s power grid shut down, as it was designed to do, in order to protect life and property. Of course, this resulted in massive disruptions and inconvenience across the state. Brave men and women from the State Emergency Service swung into action, heroically dealing with the situation in fearful weather conditions that were, in many cases, life threatening.

In view of this disaster the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, went on National television to address the nation.

Did he refer to the unprecedented weather event that had shut down South Australia’s power supply? Did he thank the brave SES workers and other volunteers who were working in dangerous circumstances to restore the state’s electricity grid? Did he offer his government’s support to South Australia in what was obviously a national emergency?

No, he did not. Instead he blamed the Labor party and Labor state premiers for having policies that encouraged the establishment of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. This, said Mr Turnbull, was the cause of the South Australian blackout. 

Assuming the role of a populist demagogue like Donald Trump, Prime Minister Turnbull, spoke of people stuck in lifts. People with fridges full of rapidly rotting food. People stuck in traffic because the lights were out. People in their homes huddled around some candles.He did not address the facts, instead, he appealed to people's emotions to make his purely party political points. According to the Prime Minister of Australia, all of this had happened because South Australia produces 40% of its power from renewable energy.

It was pure bunkum. It was Australia's version of Donald Trump. Look at a very bad situation and blame your opponents for it. It was done for crass political purposes. The fact is, it would not have mattered if all of South Australia’s power was produced by coal, gas, oil or nuclear fuel. The storm would still have shut down the power grid. The blackout was not problem of power supply. It was a problem of power transmission. A power house was disabled and several transmission towers had been destroyed.

The media, as it always seems to do these days, repeated Mr Turnbull’s story without any qualifications or questions seeking the truth. Subsequently, the media story was not about the storm and the power blackout, it was about renewable energy being an unreliable power source.

The media reported Mr Turnbull’s blatant politicising of the South Australian storm without any questions.Turnbull’s line was quickly taken up by other self-styled experts. South Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon, quickly jumped on the Turnbull bandwagon saying, “Heads should roll.” Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, also took up the cudgels against Labor’s renewable energy policy,  blaming it for what had happened in South Australia. Australia's  self styled Expert In Chief, Andrew Bolt, also hopped on the band wagon, blaming Labor's renewable energy policies for the blackout.

What is worse, the ABC, which used to value its reputation for objective journalism, followed the barking mob. In an an "Et tu Brutus" moment it joined in the political point scoring. Senior ABC journalist, Chris Uhlmann, reported that renewable energy had caused the problem, as did the usually reliable Sabra Lane, who ended her story by saying in effect that there would be far reaching political ramifications caused by "the renewable energy problem".  The renewable energy problem? Where were the facts? Totally disregarded. Who wants the facts to get in the way of a good old political stoush between the Liberal and Labor sides of politics?

Even the West Australian newspaper editorialised on Friday morning about how right Mr Turnbull had been in highlighting the unreliability of using renewable energy sources. It even mentioned the high cost of power in South Australia, inferring this was also due to the use of renewable energy and Labor mismanagement. However, many would say the high cost of South Australia's power is due to a previous state Liberal government’s decision to privatise the state’s power generation. The West Australian failed to mention South Australia’s privatised power for profit scheme, probably because WA Premier, Colin Barnett, is actively thinking about doing the same thing. Trumpism triumphs when the media plays along.

During the federal election campaign, I wrote about Australia’s Toadying Media. (http://noelswriting.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/the-toadying-media.html).Today’s journalists seem to have no desire to examine the issues and seek out the truth. They seem content to just take whatever the politicians say and print it as if it was from the Gospel of St Luke.

To a large extent the media gives us our world view. We only have to look to the USA to see how a compliant, sensation seeking media has given almost 50% of the voting public an unshakeable belief in Donald Trump, a carpet bagging salesman selling several different brands of snake oil, which he claims will fix all of our problems.

Well, it seems to me that one of the biggest problems you can have in a free society is a media where journalists are too lazy, or too fearful of losing their jobs, to investigate what politicians tell them. Journalist who cut and paste press releases and fail to seek, discover and report the truth

Mr Turnbull’s resorting to cheap political point scoring, in the face of a national emergency, does him no credit whatsoever. The same can be said for those who swallowed his story without question.

The Irish parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, against the bloody backdrop of the French Revolution and growing civil unrest in the American colonies, warned the British House of Commons that, “It is sufficient for the triumph of evil that just men do nothing.”

We can only hope and pray that there are still a few just men and women left in our media who will not enable Trumpism to triumph. Who will not be happy just to peddle populist platitudes and downright untruths. We need journalists who will examine the issues and present the facts of the matter. Otherwise, Trumpism will triumph, to the detriment of us all.

The Invisible Man

When I was about 9 years old my family moved from 7th Avenue Inglewood and went to live in a big double storey boarding house at No 8, Aberdeen Street in Perth. I lived there with my parents and my two younger sisters, Valerie and Kathleen. Also living in that huge house were my Grandma and my mother’s older unmarried siblings, Aunty May and Uncle Ray and my widowed Aunty Millie and her two sons, Maurie and Raymond Carr. Also living in the house for a while were three sisters, the Sinclair girls, Patricia, Clair and Colleen who ranged in age from about 21 to 13. They shared two bedrooms on the second floor.

It was 1947 and in post-World War 2 Perth building materials were in short supply. My parents owned a block of land in Mount Lawley and we were living at Aberdeen Street waiting for my dad to get a permit to build our new house. We finally got the building permit in 1950 and moved to Mt Lawley in July, 1951.

I enjoyed living at Aberdeen Street.  Although I was only young, I could walk into Perth and explore my city playground. My friends and I used to play hide and seek in Boan’s Department Store. Each school day afternoon I used to catch the number 18 tram from  Christian Brothers Highgate, in Harold Street, to go my Aunty May’s Lucky Bunny lottery kiosk at 119 Barrack Street. At about 4-30 each afternoon Aunty May would give me a calico bag containing ticket butts and money to take to the Lottery’s Commission building in St George’s Terrace. She paid me five shillings a week which I thought was very generous of her. I enjoyed running around the streets of Perth so much that I would have done it for nothing. Aunty May told me not to go by the same route each day. In fact, I had about eight ways of navigating between Aunty May’s kiosk and the Lotteries offices, so before long I got to know Perth very well indeed.

My cousins, Maurie and Raymond were 11 years and 8 years older than me and I thought of them fondly as my older brothers. I idolised them and wanted to be in their company at every opportunity. What they thought of me is not so easily defined. I think they thought of me as their pet. At the time they both had dogs but I was the very young blood relative living with them that they could tease, get to run messages or fetch things for them, play cricket or football with them in the backyard, use as punching bag or play tricks upon. Of course I was about ten and they were just on either side of twenty. As I grew older we found that we really did enjoy each others company and throughout our lives we were really all like brothers.

Maurie and Raymond liked boxing and were good at it. At the tail end of the war Maurie was in the RAAF and fought very capably in several inter service boxing matches held at the WACA ground. They had various types of boxing gloves and there was a punching bag hanging from the ceiling in the large outdoor washhouse. However, aftern I started living with them at Number 8, Aberdeen Street, they quickly discovered that what they really liked to do was to get me to hold a pillow or two on my stomach while they took turns at giving me pounding combinations of straight left and right punches followed by a furious flurry of left and right crosses and the occasional right uppercut. They said my grunting as each of their well delivered punches sank into the pillow gave a more realistic touch to their boxing drills. Sometimes it hurt a bit, but I didn’t mind. At least they were paying me some attention. On one occasion Maurie landed an uppercut with such force that it lifted me onto his bed which then banged loudly against the wall. Seconds later my Aunty Millie came rushing into their bedroom.

My Aunty Millie was a beautiful, gentle person. She had been widowed at the start of the Great Depression when Maurie was three and Raymond just six months old. There was no Widow’s Pension in those days but, with some help from her family, she worked hard during the deprivations of the depression and the war years to provide for her boys. However, on this occasion, on hearing the bed crash into the wall she raced in to bedroom and castigated her sons as I sat on the bed, gasping for air, with my back against the wall. “Maurie and Raymond! I have told you before that you are not to be boxing in the bedroom. You are damaging the furniture and the walls. If you want to box, go outside.” Then she left.

I thought that my much loved Aunty Millie could have made some mention of the fact that along with the furniture and the walls, their dear little cousin Noel was also coming off the worse for wear.

When I had been living at Aberdeen Street for about a year I went into town one Saturday afternoon and saw a picture which I think was called The Invisible Man’s Revenge. It was quite a creepy picture but I was fascinated by the concept of making myself invisible. The next afternoon I was in Maurie and Raymond’s bedroom watching them play a game of chess. While they were concentrating on their game I was babbling on about the Invisible Man and how great it would be to be invisible.

After they finished their game Raymond looked at me and said, “Would you really like to be invisible?”

“Would I? You bet I would. It would be great. I could walk in to the shops and take comics and ice creams and drinks and no one would know who it was.”

With that Raymond left the room. He came back about two minutes later with a large white jar and a medium sized mirror that used to hang on some hooks in the bathroom It was about two feet tall by one foot wide (60cms x 30cms).

“Come and sit here,” said Raymond as he placed the jar on the table and Maurie rested the mirror against some books. I sat down. Raymond slowly turned the large white jar around and I was amazed to read on the side of the jar in big black print, “Vanishing Cream.”

“Are you sure that you really want to be invisible?” asked Maurie.

“You can be if you want to,” added Raymond.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. I was looking incredulously at the jar of Vanishing Cream. Raymond and Maurie were telling me that if I smeared it on my face it would disappear. “It is vanishing cream. Just put it on your face,”

Raymond also urged me to “Put on the cream and it will vanish.” Now, though, I was not too sure at all. In the picture the Invisible Man had gone crazy. Maybe this was not such a good idea.

“Well just put some cream on your nose and see what happens,” said Raymond.

“I think he’s too scared to do it,” said Maurie, using what I found out many years later was called reverse psychology. Well, that was true. Maurie was right. Too right, I was scared, but I did not want my idols to think I lacked courage so I put my finger into the vanishing cream and applied it to the tip of my nose.

"Now rub it in,” said Raymond. I rubbed it in, waiting for my nose to disappear. But it didn’t.

Raymond and Maurie were killing themselves laughing.

“See,” said Maurie. “You rubbed it in and now it has vanished.

“No it hasn’t,” I said, putting my finger on my still very visible nose.

“Not your nose. The cream. The cream has vanished. That’s why they call it Vanishing Cream.”

My cousins burst out laughing again. I was glad I had made my cousins happy. I was even more glad that my face had not vanished.

P.S. I am not sure if they still sell Ponds Vanishing Cream but in those days it was what my mother and my aunties used to try and make their wrinkles vanish. It didn’t work for them, either.