It can be hard to keep up with the leadership changes in Canberra, but for some it's really tough.

Puppet maker Hilary Talbot is forced back to the drawing board every time a government cuts the strings on its prime minister.

Her giant puppet heads have been a regular sight at protests around the country.

They were commissioned after the 2014 budget by activist Matthew Armstrong for a union-organised protest outside Parliament House.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-22/puppets-out-of-pace-with-prime-min...

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And by the way, as ScoMo goes after an issue like Bitzer goes after a bone, he got the Peta Credlin seal of approval in today's ST: This definitely means that Scomo is as bad as Tony Abbott — minimum.

 

How times change! The religious structure was designed to infiltrate the governments rather than be purely "spiritual". 

At the time, Tiberius (16 November 42 BC – 16 March 37 AD) was Roman emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD, succeeding the first emperor, Augustus. It was not till Constantine, that Christianity and the Empire made a "power pact', by then completely flaunting the idea of Christ. It has not changed since. power and religion have run hand in glove, through wars and conquests. It's the same with the other mob, the Muslims. It feels better to claim that god is on your side when you massacre people. 

 

But Aussies do not massacre people... Yep, we supported the war on Saddam, we support the war on Afghanistan, we support the war in Syria, that on Gaddafi, the war on Yemen and we keep refugees in horrid conditions "to stop the boats". All this is done in the Christian spirit of course. Bullshit.

 

 

Phelps, a medical doctor and civil rights activist, said she had made a submission to the Ruddock review, which was established as part of the process of legalising marriage equality. She declared it would be “an incredible act of doublespeak to call this religious freedom, when what this is really about is using religion as an excuse to water down anti-discrimination laws”.

“If somebody on the basis of religion can be given a licence to discriminate and say that’s on the basis of my religion, then we are headed very much down the path of a religious-based rather than a secular government”.

Ruddock handed his report to the then Turnbull government in late May, but it has remained under wraps. Morrison has indicated in a number of interviews he will be taking a proactive approach on protecting religious freedom, but the detail of the prime minister’s plan is not yet clear.

This week’s Guardian Essential poll suggests Australians are divided about whether Australia needs a new law protecting religious freedom, with 37% of the sample supportive, 26% opposing the idea and 37% undecided.

In a wide-ranging conversation as the byelection campaign in Wentworth moves into high gear, Phelps told the podcast she was running because it was time to get an independent voice in the Sydney seat the Liberals currently hold on a 17% margin.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/26/kerryn-phelps-urg...

An opinionator at the ABC, called Anthony Dillon — a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University — has the gall to tell us we should not discredit Tony Abbott and says:

 

"For many years, Mr Abbott has visited Aboriginal communities to sit, talk, share, and laugh with the people, and all for the right reasons — to better understand them.

Working in the academic space of Aboriginal education and psychology, I know that while education is obviously a focus to improving attendance rates, a holistic approach is needed if we are to see Aboriginal children thrive in school.

Having spoken with Mr Abbott about his new role and Aboriginal affairs in general, I know he understands the need to consider the broader contextual factors.

....

Immediately this presents a huge challenge to Mr Abbott and his team, which will require leaders working together — not attacking from the sidelines.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to stop seeing these children as "Indigenous children" and start seeing them as "Australian children" — our children.

While the hate campaigns for Mr Abbott continue, there will be little advancement in the education of Indigenous children, trapping future generations in a cycle of disadvantage."

 

With respect (actually none whatsoever for this silly opinion by Anthony Dillon about what Tony might do or not do for our Aboriginal communities,) Tony Abbott is a double dealing turd at all levels of his political life. He's the one who basically "confirmed" Terra Nullius to the world in regard to Australia:

 

He is an idiot....

Pastor Ray Minniecon, one of the organisers of Sydney's Invasion Day rally, said Mr Abbott was 'an idiot' after the former Prime Minister said the arrival of the First Fleet was a 'good thing' for Indigenous Australians.   

"He's an idiot, he doesn't understand Aboriginal people or the history of this country," he told NITV News. 

Mr Minniecon, a Kabikabi and Gurang-Gurang man from Queensland, said Mr Abbott will "not accept the fact the arrival of the First Fleet meant the massacre and genocide of First Australians."

Speaking to 2GB radio, Mr Abbott said the landing of the First Fleet was a 'good thing' for First Australians. 

"What happened on the 26th of January 1788 was, on balance, for everyone, Aboriginal people included, a good thing because it brought Western civilisation to this country, it brought Australia into the modern world," he said. 

The former Prime Minister's comments praising Australia day followed his Sunday tweet that stated: "This Friday I will gladly join millions of my ­fellow Australians to declare my faith in what, to us, is surely the best country on earth." 

 

Read more:

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2018/01/22/hes-idiot-abbot...

 

See 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29350

 

And not just Gus. Here's one from Moir:

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33975

 

 

 

 

Asked who he meant by "the crazies", he listed the following top five 'crazy' Liberal MPs:

1. Tony Abbott - "a singularly destructive human being"
2. Peter Dutton - "obviously another one"
3. Angus Taylor - the newly appointed Energy Minister who is seen as a champion of fossil fuels and a determined opponent of renewables. "Despite being very intelligent he can't get on the right side of events."
4. (tied) Hard-right faction leaders Kevin Andrews and Eric Abetz

Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/former-prime-ministers-son-alex-turnbull-slams-liberals/


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Many of the rest of them are a bit less crazy, but mad lunatics nonetheless...

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By Katharine Murphy

 

Scott Morrison's political ad is a bizarre act of self-love as firefighters battle to save Australia

The prime minister’s promotional video was staggeringly objectionable and highlights his failure to lead

It really is hard to keep up with a prime minister who declares one minute disaster management is predominantly a state responsibility, and he won’t be running over the top of state premiers, and then, seemingly, five minutes later, calls out the ADF reserve, deploys military assets and procures more water bombers than anyone asked for.

This kind of plot twist is dizzying stuff in normal conditions, let alone in the middle of a disaster, when the prime ministerial norm is generally one of steadiness and consistency.

Perhaps it was Scott Morrison’s own demonstrable lack of clarity about what his government was, or was not, doing, in response to Australia’s catastrophic summer of bushfires that prompted his communications team to pump out a promotional video – on one of the most perilous days of the disaster – outlining today’s initiatives.

Perhaps the boss needed to be reminded, visually, with a soothing backing track called Live Tropical Beat, royalty free, complete with clicking fingers, or a simulation of clicking fingers, about what he’d said five minutes ago.

A visual aid to explain what the position was this particular minute.

Because the alternative explanation is Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, just issued a political ad – a little bit of humblebrag, a little moment of self-love, a short hymn of self-satisfaction – in the middle of the worst bushfire event we’ve seen in our fire-prone continent.

And that behaviour seems ... let me find the word ... wrong.

Yes, wrong is the word.

Wrong.

Utterly objectionable.

Objectionable works, because sensible prime ministers know that in times of national emergency, you show. You don’t tell, at least not with a crude bit of agitprop on the Liberal party website and pumped out on platforms.

You show. Show up, first of all, and you show leadership by actually leading. Not by telling people you are leading. Otherwise you are not a leader. You are an internet meme.

Dear Mr Morrison. You are the prime minister, not the Liberal party spruiker. We really do need you to understand that difference.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/04/scott-morrisons-p...

 

Please, Katharine, do not encourage HisScumSelf to become "more PM like". He would grow taller by ten feet of glorious shit in the mind of the useless pricks at the merde'och media who would plaster his Waterloo as a Napoleonic victory on their front pages.

 

No, we only can demand that he resigns and go back to Hawaiiiiiii to finish his Hollidus interruptus. We demand a new election with a return to decency rather than expediency and deception as promoted by HisScumSelf — and by his troops of devious liars like Gus Taylor, who by now should be out of government, for using fake figures to damage the Council of Sydney, as well as getting his mates to collect cash (millions!) for water than may or may not have existed — and other turnipshit deceptions.

 

 

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By Dennis Atkins

 

Checking the lies and falsehoods of national leaders is part of the territory in modern political journalism and commentary.

By the time Donald Trump grumpily exited the White House in January, The Washington Post’s famous list of presidential lies had reached an astonishing total of 30,537.

In Britain, there’s a range of compilations of Boris Johnson fibs to choose from including his “top 10 lies” from his first year as prime minister and a video of him lying to parliament, which has had more than 10 million viewings.

 

It’s not just in the Anglosphere you can find these lying eyes – Russia’s Vladimir Putin is famous for deploying an old Soviet tactic known as the “firehose of falsehood”, which describes the unleashing of a tsunami of lies and falsehoods to confuse and confound enemies and the public generally.

This makes the release today of Crikey’s A Dossier of Lies and Falsehoods– covering 16 documented lies and 11 falsehoods from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, all backed with referenced source – surprising only because it is overdue.

Crikey has been careful, only picking those matters they can back with documented facts and evidence.

Crikey draws an important distinction between lies, which are used to intentionally mislead, and falsehoods, which were untrue or turned out to be so.

It’s a generous interpretation for a politician who has made avoiding the truth, letting falsehoods slip and bending reality part of his standard operating procedure.

Writing in The New Daily, I argued late last year that Mr Morrison can lie easily because he has the ability to convince himself his untruths are factual.

You can demonstrate he is lying but he believes he’s telling the truth – if he says it’s not raining, grab an umbrella.

It’s a frustrating and infuriating state of affairs but, to quote another famous political purveyor of porkies, Donald Trump, it is what it is.

 

Crikey’s Bernard Keane goes to the heart of why this matters, claiming Mr Morrison lies openly and frequently.

“(He does so) about matters large and small – Australia’s carbon emissions, or an inquiry in relation to a sexual assault within the ministerial wing in Parliament House, or simply whether he spoke to someone who refused to shake his hand,” Keane says.

“Most of his lies are about himself, or his government, and what it has done, or failed to do; often he has lied about things he himself has said or done, as if he wasn’t present when a woman refused to shake his hand and he turned his back on her, or he didn’t carefully explain to Parliament that the secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet had given him no update about his report in relation to Brittany Higgins.”

There are many ways Mr Morrison deploys his falsehoods, but the most common come under four threads.

Most blatantly is that bald-faced denial of reality when he simply says something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist. It’s rolled out with firm conviction making a challenge appear impudent.

Next Mr Morrison quickly changes the subject after a swift, hardly perceptible, denial. A quick “no, but if you look over here” moves the discussion along and is then smothered in a word salad.

Third, is the “I’m too busy” for that tactic, as seen in the false denial he ever called Sam Dastyari “Shanghai Sam” when he deflected by saying “I’ve got to say my focus was on the bushfires”.

Last, Mr Morrison loads his response with numbers and assertions regardless of whether they are related or even relevant.

It does matter when our politicians lie, especially if they’re in positions of leadership. However, it doesn’t seem to matter that much because of COVID cover protecting most politicians.

Historically, record-high approval ratings for the Prime Minister and premiers around the country have given our leaders a measure of unprecedented protection.

While politicians like Mr Morrison fulfil – or even just appear to fulfil – those twin demands of keeping the community safe through proactive health policies and cushioning any economic fallout, the public seems to have otherwise unavailable reserves of tolerance and forgiveness.

Giving politicians a leave pass for bad behaviour – whether it is doing it or lying about it – carries a heavy price.

It tells those politicians they can get away with it and encourages them.

 

This article was first published by InQueensland. Dennis Atkins is a regular contributor for The New Daily

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2021/05/25/scott-morrison-crikey-lies/

 

 

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When Scott Morrison became prime minister, two dimensions of his persona seemed potentially positive: a Christian faith that might have illuminated his leadership with kindness and compassion, to say nothing of integrity, and a widely-touted marketing background (‘Scotty from Marketing’) that might have lifted the standard of political communication and inspired some brilliance in government advertising. Whatever hopes might thus have been raised have long since been dashed.

Had we bothered to reflect on Morrison’s term as immigration minister, and the ever-harsher and tougher line he took on people seeking asylum, we should have known that, in spite of the undertakings he gave in his maiden speech to parliament, compassion was far from being the Morrison hallmark. It wasn’t just the harshness of his rhetoric and the cruelty of his policy administration; it was the pleasure he appeared to take in being so harsh and punitive.

His recent very public claims to be “doing God’s will”, and to be expressing his Christian faith through his prime ministership, sit oddly with Crikey.com’s depressing catalogue of the lies uttered by Morrison since he became PM, with his failure to comprehend the significance of the gender revolution and the very concept of gender equality, with his insensitivity to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and with his shameful lack of empathy and leadership in response to the 2019-20 bushfire crisis – to say nothing of the ruthlessness of his ambition for the top job.

In fact, isn’t there something intriguing – to say the least – about Morrison’s profession of Christian faith? Just across the ditch, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who was raised a Mormon and is now a religious agnostic, consistently demonstrates the Big Five virtues encouraged by Jesus of Nazareth: honesty, integrity, compassion, kindness, fairness.

Does Morrison watch Ardern’s performance and wish he could find a way to emulate it? Does he envy her ability to import her personal values – her ‘soul’ – into her political life? Does he wriggle and writhe with embarrassment over what looks like an indifference to the Big Five?

There’s no evidence of that. The lies keep coming. The cheeky grin is as ubiquitous as ever. The avuncular, “good bloke” style persists and continues to attract the support of men, in particular.

Perhaps saying what he assumes the punters want to hear and relying on his smile to smother the lies are signs of Morrison’s “marketing” approach to politics, along with his personal brand name, ScoMo. If they are, then they suggest he has never mastered the discipline of marketing. We should have guessed that from the appalling “Where the hell are you?” advertising campaign intended to attract international tourists to Australia, conceived in the dying days of Morrison’s run at Tourism Australia.

In the world of commercial product marketing, brand integrity matters. Honesty matters. Sincerity matters. Delivering on your promises matters. And so does some grasp of the psychology of communication. Yet Morrison shows no evidence that he understands any of this.

The pro-vax ads so far revealed – the parade of post-jab arms with dressings on them (“Arm Yourself”), and the portrayal of a COVID patient on a ventilator, struggling for breath – both display a serious ignorance about how advertising actually works.

Effective advertising always holds out the promise of a clear benefit, backed by a strong emotional push to motivate us. In the case of vaccination, yes, there’s a benefit to the individual but the whole point of mass vaccination is societal: it’s something we do for each other. It’s a small sacrifice we make for the common good. Once again, New Zealand got it right with the slogan: “Do it for each other.”

Eighteen months into the pandemic, our sense of our interconnectedness – our interdependency – is more potent than ever. We know we’re in this thing together. We know we have to endure lockdowns, masks, etc, as a way of demonstrating our care for each other.

If ever there was a time for a national advertising campaign – about anything, but especially vaccination – to tap into the national mood of solidarity, mutual care and compassion, this is it! But, no: on the one hand, we’ve got the feeble, and very selfish, idea that you should arm yourself and, on the other, yet another example of the biggest and oldest strategic mistake in advertising: “scare them out of their wits”.

Morrison can’t be personally blamed for this latest government advertising campaign, but it would be remarkable if he hadn’t at least approved it, given his powerfully symbolic role in getting the vaccine rollout sorted. And if he did play any role in the development of this campaign, that would suggest a lamentable lack of marketing insight, let alone flair.

But isn’t there a deeper cause for concern about a man who is living with – and must surely be troubled by – the sense of a yawning chasm between the values he presumably claims to espouse as a Christian and those he demonstrates in the daily practice of his brand of politics?

We look at leaders like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson and assume they are deeply wounded, damaged individuals who behave as they do – the shameless dishonesty in Trump’s case; the recklessness in Johnson’s – because of some negative formative influences over which they had no control. Perhaps for those very reasons, they may both have sought high office as compensation for – and even as a form of denial of – their deep sense of personal inadequacy.

Which raises an even bigger question: how many people seek high office as a way of hiding from some dark, unresolved material in their personal formation? Is this why Plato insisted that “only those who don’t seek power are qualified to hold it”? Of course, Plato can’t have meant that everyone who aspires to a position of leadership should be disqualified from attaining it, since there are two very different ways of interpreting leadership: the power model and the service model.

Some politicians, like Trump, are driven by a Narcissistic desire for raw power: if I become leader, that will satisfy my craving for adulation and prestige. Others, like Ardern, are driven by the desire to serve: if I become leader, I will be in a better position to discern and respond to the needs of the country I lead.

So what about our man Morrison? With a murky back-story, pre-politics – sacked from tourism jobs in both New Zealand and Australia – is he, too, seeking compensation? Are there even deeper sources of inner murk from which he is trying to distance himself by occupying high office, even he does so without distinction? Is he driven by the desire for power or the desire to serve?

If the former, he’ll crash and burn, since the power model of leadership is so flawed. If the latter, then there must surely be a radical transformation on the way. Is there, after all, a kinder, nobler “inner ScoMo” we haven’t yet glimpsed?

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/no-compassion-and-no-marketing-skill-either/

 

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It appears that the CONservative media, mostly led by the Murdoch media, is slowly abandoning Scomo to his own juice. Even the Daily Telegraph today (I only read it when it has be thrown away in a bin) has an article by Alison Reeve "It's time to fire up Australia's electric car market"... Amazing considering the way Scomo treated the idea with contempt at the last elections...

 

See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57747128

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Three years ago this month, Scott Morrison was chosen by his party to succeed a prime minister who had disappointed his constituencies by neither being the leader he wanted to be nor the leader the party wanted him to be. Morrison was chosen ahead of another of similar general philosophy, but somewhat more abrasive personality.

In less than a year, the party’s selection of Morrison was seen to be justified by the surprise re-election of the coalition, against the predictions of the pundits, the opinion polls, and, indeed, the expectation of most of his colleagues. It was a remarkable victory — described by Morrison himself as a miracle — even if we know now that it was assisted by the corrupt and probably illegal conversion of more than $1 billion of public money into Liberal Party campaign money — used by it to featherbed marginal seats, including the seat of the Treasurer, and most likely future leader of the party, Josh Frydenberg.  The public was unaware of the corrupt conduct in question, although the supposed guardian of the consolidated revenue fund, Minister for Finance, Simon Bermingham, has suggested that voters sanctioned the misappropriations by their act of returning the coalition to power. It was a comment that invited questions about his fitness for office, in just the same way that a bogus legal rationalisation of ministerial abuses of funds supposed to go by merit by the then Attorney-General, Christian Porter, invited questions about his.

Did his 2018 Liberal colleagues and the electorate of 2019 over-estimate the abilities and fitness for office of Morrison himself? Was it a mistake they should remedy before May or June next year, when the coalition must again face the voters?  While many colleagues and voters might give him some credit for how he faced the coronavirus pandemic last year, many remain flabbergasted by his seeming incapacity to take charge of the vaccination program, by the sense of a government seriously adrift, and his apparent inability to connect with an increasingly critical electorate.

Most ominously it is becoming clear that the prime minister, otherwise adept in the dark arts of politics, lacks both the flexibility and capacity to learn from mistakes that all of his most successful predecessors have shown. Capacity to learn, for one thing, involves admitting to mistakes and attempting to avoid them in future. For some reason, confession of personal error of judgment or failure to anticipate, understand and respond appropriately to events is almost impossible to extract from Morrison. Instead one sees prevarication, distraction, blame of others — anyone but himself — bluster, threats and positively misleading statements and refusal to answer questions. Loyally supported, of course, by a corrupted process of government by which his office and his department have made a farce of Freedom of Information legislation, and official secrecy is used to hide political error, particularly if the prime minister, or his office, have fingerprints on what has occurred.

Morrison is such a poor organiser of the effort to deflect, distract and deny that the truth is as often as not obvious from his face. But there is an obstinacy that persists long after his blockages are found to be counterproductive. It is not an obstinacy based on any principle, other than one of denying his accountability to the public. It is demonstrated by the high farce of his persistent refusal to say sorry for multiple vaccine disasters this week, followed by a hollow “sorry” the next day when it was clear that everyone was laughing at him. Making him look doubly weak, of course, when he had wanted to sound firm in his expressed determination to look ahead, not backward, in attempts to get matters back on track.

But sudden surrenders on such matters are not new. He ultimately answered questions — albeit from very friendly interrogators after refusing for ages to confirm that the Trump White House had rejected his request that his best friend from the religious cult Hillsong, Brian Houston.  be invited to a dinner with the president. Not only did he make the issue seem more important than it probably was, but he again focused attention — as likely to be as unpleasant for him as for Houston — on the failure of the NSW Police, and the Commonwealth to act over apparent failures by Houston to report paedophilic conduct by Houston’s father.

And it was just the same about his bluster and parsing associated with questions about whether members of his private staff had briefed journalists with negative material about the boyfriend of an alleged rape victim, even as Morrison himself was publicly proclaiming his complete sympathy with her. The prime minister is acquiring a reputation as a liar and a deceiver. Worse, his agenda is usually suspect.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/did-we-all-over-estimate-what-scott-morrison-had-to-offer/

 

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free

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government will investigate claims former prime minister Scott Morrison secretly gave himself powers to jointly run the health, finance and resources ministries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key points:

• Scott Morrison secretly took joint charge of several portfolios during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Cabinet ministers were kept in the dark about the power grab
• The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has referred the issue to the solicitor-general

 

Mr Albanese says the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is seeking legal advice from the solicitor-general.

Governor-General David Hurley confirmed he secretly signed instruments to allow Mr Morrison to administer other portfolios, "consistent with section 64 of the constitution".

The ABC understands then-health minister Greg Hunt agreed to Mr Morrison's joint position as a safeguard to incapacitation from COVID-19, but that Matthias Cormann was not told that Mr Morrison had appointed himself as joint finance minister.

Mr Morrison used his self-appointment to the resources portfolio, which was then held by Keith Pitt, to block a controversial petroleum exploration licence in December 2021.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-15/scott-morrison-secret-ministry-appointments-to-be-investigated/101332916

 

 

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AND THE ANSWER IS YES, SCOMO WAS A TINPOT LEADER....

 

 

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Why is Scott Morrison hanging around? The weekend revelations that Morrison swore himself in to multiple portfolios without notifying the nation has sparked cries of outrage, in the political class at least.

Morrison had himself sworn in as a spare health minister during the first months of the Covid pandemic and also held the finance and resources portfolios during different periods in 2020 and 2021.

He was also running industry and science, according to no less an authority than Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The health post was perhaps defensible as a crisis move to cover Greg Hunt if the health minister was incapacitated. The pandemic was throwing up  challenges never tackled by any living politician, and Hunt was informed. But Nationals MP Keith Pitt, who unknowingly shared the resources portfolio, was not informed, and expressed shock at the revelations. Morrison used this power to reject a gas exploration project off the NSW coast.

The legality of these dual ministry posts is now being examined by the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. On Monday Albanese said that while he had run a shadow cabinet, Morrison had run a ”shadow government”.

He described Morrison’s actions as:

Tinpot activity that we would ridicule if it was in a non-democratic country.

Nationals leader David Littleproud and colleague Bridget McKenzie aren’t happy either.

 

So why is ScoMo hanging round?

Just 12 weeks after the election loss, Morrison is already the second-longest serving ex-PM in Parliament since Billy McMahon departed in 1982. John Howard lost his seat on the way out, while Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Gillard and Turnbull made haste for the exits after vacating The Lodge. So did Kevin Rudd, at least the second time he lost the prime ministership. Only Tony Abbott contested another election in his seat, eventually being defeated by an independent.

Perhaps Morrison is sticking around because the Coalition features dropping yet another seat. It lost 19 in the May 21 disaster, and a 20th loss would pole-axe the Dutton leadership in its early months.

Morrison’s southern Sydney seat of Cook has been held by the Liberal Party since 1975. But the seven electorates won by Teal candidates in May were solid Liberal too. Cook is not quite as affluent as those electorates, but it is not exactly Struggle Street, making it prime real estate for the right person from that well-funded movement.

So don’t be surprised if Scottie Boy elects to carry on until 2025. Even the reduced circumstances of a backbencher pay packet is a gig, and the PM pension for him and Turnbull is less generous than it was for their predecessors, all of whom entered parliament before 2004.

And being ex-prime minister gives him a licence to jump on a plane and hang out with other former world leaders. He has already conducted important statecraft in Tokyo with fellow international feather dusters from Canada, the UK and New Zealand, as well as former US vice-president Mike Pence and and former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad.

This unusually tuned former leader looks set to continue generating good copy. The media habit of flogging ex-PMs for their sins can be tantamount to dragging medieval chieftains out of the ground to draw and quarter them, in other words, slightly pointless. But ScoMo is providing reasons to do just that.

 

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/scott-morrison-pimpernel-pm-is-the-gift-that-keeps-giving/

 

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