Quick Shots - 28/Feb/2015

The Idiocy Of Attacking Gillian Triggs

At this point in time, an appalling government that never had a good moment in the light of latter-day history-to-be-written, is attacking Gillian Triggs, the  Human Rights Commissioner over the report tabled on Children in detention. Not only is the Abbott government incensed that Triggs appears to be very partisan in Tony Abbott's eyes with the timing of tabling the report, his government has managed an own-goal by letting loose that fact that they offered her an inducement to leave her post and thereby not tabling the report.

All of which is manifestly stupid. For one, the ALP were just as guilty of shoving kids into detention centres, so it can't be partisan when it is bipartisan policy to shove asylum seekers who arrive by boat onto Manus Island. If he's angry at the report for making his government look bad, the easy solution is to not do things that would make one look bad. A good start is to not do bad things.

If he's angry that the timing of the report is bad (which seems to be the real tenor of the complaint), again it can be pointed out that if would help not to make so many bad decisions to put one's own government into perpetual news cycle of bad news to begin with. As in, it helps to do a better job in government elsewhere and otherwise because when bad things genuinely do happen, you have some grace with the electorate. Being pathetic at your end of the bargain on a constant basis as this government has been, would put you in an awkward spot where more bad news would make things more difficult.

In any case, he's shooting the messenger and the electorate knows it and it looks bad all round. The intimation of bribery that has emerged from this so called inducement is even worse. It's as if they threw a truck leadoff shit at the wall and none of it stuck - which is yet another instance of mishandling and general incompetence.

Are we surprised? No. Every week brings more stupidity from this government.

Even Big Business Thinks He's Crap

Here's something to add to Atony Abbott's substantial list of woes. The big end of town are not happy with Tony Open-for-Business Abbott because he's ruining consumer sentiment. Earlier in the week it was reported that wage growth was at historic lows.

You have a government that's basically facilitated a collapse in an entire industries (automobile manufacturing and renewable energies), that keeps going on about productivity growth through cutting workers' conditions, and is heading for higher unemployment and probably the first recession 23years, and it wants to privatise even more debt by deregulating universities and compromising Medicare. Government services are being cut, as are government spending in many areas.

There's nothing in what the government is doing that is adding to consumer sentiment. If the government gets what it wants with its austerity measures, they will have less revenue, and thus end up increasing the portion of government debt to the GDP - which is the experience in the PIIGS nations.

So it is rather strange to see the spectre of the business community ragging on the Prime Minister, but there we have it. He's so bad, it is clear he's letting down his own constituency.
To the business leaders who complain, we say, "he's your mate."

Five Years A Miserable Citizen

I guess it beats slavery but the last five years have been in most part, pretty miserable in the policy stakes. Consider that the Rudd government came to power on a landslide with a clarion call for action on Climate Change. When that project ran aground at Copenhagen in late 2009, this turned into the cause that removed Malcolm Turnbull from Opposition Leader and installed Tony Abbott in his stead. The only reason Tony Abbott ran on that spill was because Barnaby Joyce - if ever there was an official diagnosis of dwarfism of intellect, he's the sine qua non - told him they needed an anti-ETS candidate. And stupidly enough, he won.

The anti-intellectual idiocy that has burst forth since then has been quite staggering. Tony Abbott spend the next 4 years essentially running on a campaign of climate change denials. Worse still, the ALP replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard who did not believe Climate Change was an important enough issue, and was willing to sell climate change policy down the river not once but twice.  We all know what followed that one. Five years into this decade, we've managed to put in a Carbon Pricing mechanism and then voted in people to repeal it.

It's all wasted time in a race against time. Especially now that methane clathrates are exploding through the permafrost, It's as if Australia has completely lost its mind. And it's been going on for a good while now.

It is indeed government of misery, by misery, for misery.