Ugh. Sometimes politics selects for psychopaths and puts them on a pedestal. Sometimes it simply allows psychopaths to display their symptoms in public as a warning to all. Sometimes politics simply is the playground for psychopaths. And then there is Sophie Mirabella, a.k.a. Miserabella.
"I had a commitment for a $10 million allocation for the Wangaratta Hospital that, if elected, I was going to announce a week after the election," she said. "That is $10 million that Wangaratta hasn't had because [independent] Cathy [McGowan] was elected."
A confession doesn't need to be intended by the confessor as a confession; confessors often don't realise their words have proved their guilt.
And taking Mirabella at her word, this confession is something else, admitting to a galling example of a political offence rather than a criminal one, the gangrenous pork barrelling which infects Australian politics, which in this case presumably hurt only the sick people of her former electorate. Beyond Indi, the gangrene floods marginal electorates with taxpayers' money, diverting spending on public services according to the political interests of political parties.
That Mirabella felt so comfortable saying what she did on national television indicates how routine it is. Yet the preference for spending based on electoral marginality rather than demonstrated need is utterly improper.The clearest sign that the Liberals have learnt nothing from Mirabella's defeat in the 2013 election where hers was the only seat to go against the trend of voters going towards the LNP Coalition; oblivious to the national trend, they swung hard against La Miserabella. Now the Libs want to trot her out again in the same seat where she was trounced in the hopes that people of Indi have clean-forgotten just what an awful MP she was for their seat, and to sweeten the deal, dangle some pork-barrelling money. If this doesn't sound like an abusive partner, then your electors in Indi have rocks in their heads or are experiencing Stockholm Syndrome.
It's all kind of strange when you consider that the Liberals (presumably) want to win back government. Why in the hell would they want to load up with a liability in this seat? Wouldn't they want a candidate who was strong and presentable than trotting out the same La Miserabella who actively cost them the seat? What has this woman got over the party to let her keep running their good name down like this? It's actually indicative of a party that's really short on talent. Just as it struggled to remove Bronwyn Bishop from her entitlement of the seat of Mackellar, they probably don't have a ready alternative to run in Indi instead of Sophie the Miserable.
Malcolm Turnbull On The Hustings
Here's Malcolm Turnbull out on the hustings saying her won't change Negative Gearing.
Malcolm Turnbull has ventured deep into Sydney suburbia to announce, once and for all, his government will not make any changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax in next week's federal budget.
From the front garden of a family home in the southern neighbourhood of Penshurst on Sunday, he claimed Labor's policy to limit negative gearing to newly built housing and reduce the capital gains tax discount would drive down home values, drive up rents and discourage investment.At least he's consistent - he's taking the side of the investors. In doing so, he's saying he doesn't need the votes of people under 30. Maybe that's a good thing for the Libs who have always courted older stodgier crustier folk. - but you'd thank that was a bit different to actively pissing off the under-30s demographic. Sometimes it seems Malcolm Turnbull is just a different flavour of stupid to that served up under Tony Abbott. For all the people's expectation that he'd be a great Prime Minister, he sold his soul to the rightwing nut jobs of his party and so is incapable of delivering any policy that would help people. There's not a day that goes by that doesn't underline Malcolm's deal with the devil.
"That's why we won't have a bar of it," Mr Turnbull said.
It's pretty bleak in Australia. There's never been a more bleak and underwhelming time to be an Australian than the circumstances we find ourselves in today.
What Was Wrong With Tony Abbott?
There are some days where I don't even know where to begin writing here because there's just so much to bitch about. Try this.
While Mr Abbott stands by his approach to same-sex marriage, climate change, asylum seekers and national security, he admits to failings on economic policy, including his expensive paid parental leave scheme proposal and his decision to abolish the debt ceiling.
However he largely stands by his deeply unpopular 2014 budget, saying there was a "moral purpose" to returning the budget to surplus because it would have allowed the government to create a better society. But he admits the government misjudged the public mood on spending cuts and he accepts responsibility for failing to properly sell the blueprint.
Mr Abbott says his decision to only include one woman - Julie Bishop - in his first cabinet was an "avoidable error". He also admits he misjudged how the public would react to his catastrophic decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood. He also regrets his decision to abandon changes to section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.Tony Abbott is trying to analyse his time in office and ends up assessing so many things incorrectly. What was so wrong about Tony Abbott? - we might ask rhetorically for empty effect. It might be that compared to other leaders in the world, he was incredibly lacking in an understanding of the world around him.
Before I start my castigation of the man again, I'm just going to start with this video clip here.
Yes, that's the Prime Minister of Canada right there showing he understands quantum computing and why it's important. Tony Abbott is still trying to deny climate change. You can't exercise leadership when you don't and won't put yourself at the cutting edge of knowledge. In the 21st century, you can't have a national leader who wants to cut budgets for science and deny climate change. Does Tony Abbott need to understand the basics of Quantum computing to be a better politician? Who knows? But if he did, he might view the entire enterprise of science funding in a different light. The absolute vacuity and meaninglessness of even his mea culpa tells everybody plainly that he simply wasn't a human being of any amount of intellectual integrity to be leading the nation and making decisions about science spending. And if he was so unqualified for science, it is indicative of his lack of consideration for other human endeavours that make up a civilisation; Naturally, it draws the equivalent scepticism that he is unqualified to consider questions about engineering or the arts or town planning or farming or mining or animal husbandry or medicine or law. For a man who has a tertiary education, he looks remarkably like somebody who was untouched by its enlightening effects. Stumbling in the dark as a Prime Minister then, he is still stumbling in the dark of his own making.
Be that as it may, the tragedy isn't just his; it was and remains to this day all of our tragedy that he was even in the office of Prime Minister for as long as he was.