Answer The Questions

Part 1 - "We Did What?"

This week's odd burbling news is that our government officials paid people smugglers to take asylum seekers back to Indonesia. It is in many ways unsurprising that such a thing should happen when our government decides that 'Stop the Boats' is some kind of high-minded policy platform instead of an electioneering slogan that it was to begin with. Indonesia are investigating the claims, an their foreign minister has called in the freshly returned Australian ambassador for a "please explain" chat. naturally, the Prime Minister is dodging answering the questions. To not too fine a point on it, it is reported that he is not denying it.

I mean, really? Is that what you've got Tony Abbott?

So what we are now to make of this government is that it doesn't want transparency or scrutiny, it doesn't want to be answerable to the people, it doesn't want to explain its thinking or its methodology, and it sure as hell doesn't want to criticised for the on-arrival of asylum seekers on boats and the manner which it delvers such results.

In short, you have a government that is holding all of us in contempt as it takes us down some very dangerous directions with regards to our human rights record. Honestly, it's a joke that this was good governance promised by this bunch of buffoons.

Part 2 - "You Wouldn't Have Cared Then, And You Don't Really Care Now"

Meanwhile the insidious trawl through the mud of unions has fished upside awkward facts about the stewardship of the AWU by Bill Shorten, back in the day when he was its president, continues. The strange thing about the ALP is that its total symbiosis with the union movement means that it's always going to throw up veterans of union politics as their political candidates - unless you're Kevin Rudd and we all saw what happened to him. The increasing awareness we have of this symbiosis is actually what is driving down the ALP primary vote as the genuinely leftists move to the Greens while educated social democrats are stranded outside of the ALP power structure, unable to help it change - but these are all gripes for another day.

The whole inquiry into union corruption is a cover for the coalition to be using the power of the state to impugn their opponents like some tinpot dictatorship in Africa, but given the depth to which this government is willing to sink, it should come as no surprise then that this kangaroo court wants to interview the leader of the Opposition. Then again, it is the same government that wants to indulge in stripping people of their citizenship,so we shouldn't be surprised that they want to behave in a manner that can only be described as rampant authoritarianism.

We've had patriarchal governments before but this is the first government in my memory that tries to behave like a teenage bully rather than a scolding father, in order to get its way.