What future does PM Morrison guarantee?

We are to face a federal election by May, maybe earlier. Our accidental PM hopes the electorate will then legitimise him as its very own prime minister.

The only reason he’s PM now is that he was foisted on us by a gaggle of Liberals hell-bent on replacing Malcolm Turnbull with Peter Dutton via a poorly organised coup by Dutton’s innumerate mates. The coup became so badly unstuck that it left us stranded with Scomo, as his colleagues choose to tag him.

Never known for taking a backward step in any situation, Morrison seized the prize as if it was his entitlement, and was soon out and about in baseball cap expounding on any issue that came his way in his characteristically voluble Dalek-like style, replete with that knowing smirk we have seen so often, starkly reminiscent of Peter Costello’s infamous grin. Doubt seems never to cross his mind; he behaves as if he is gifted with the omniscience of a sage – just listen to him expound on any subject at all.

Yet he is still to spell out what a Morrison Government will do, what it will guarantee.

What he does spell out though is the disaster that will befall us all should Bill Shorten win and legislate his “fair go action plan”: ”improving schools and hospitals, standing up for workers, easing pressure on family budgets, ensuring a strong economy and investing in cleaner and cheaper energy.” Morrison’s carefully considered comeback was: "Bill Shorten's five-point plan is – more tax, more tax, more tax, more tax, more tax." Clearly, he intends to emit the ‘more tax’ line every time Shorten offers a solution to the nation’s problems. It’ll be as easy as that!

Our newly minted PM wants us to believe that whatever Shorten proposes will cost taxpayers heavily. He paints a picture of money being forcibly extracted from our pockets in hand-fulls. In contrast, whatever he proposes will be free. Money will appear by some mysterious force from cracks and crevices in our burgeoning economy, stimulated by the inspired policies of his government. There will be no shortage of cash – our strong economy will see to that. Only Shorten and his high taxing outfit will screw us into poverty.

What’s astonishing is that Morrison and his sidekicks seem to actually believe that the electorate will swallow this nonsense and rush to vote for the no-taxing Morrison Government. They expect voters will blindly accept that the great economy the Coalition is fuelling every day will lavishly fund all of his initiatives.

So what are his initiatives? What is he guaranteeing?

He hasn’t said.

He insists though that as the economy is going gangbusters, there’s no need to worry. Just let it grind along throwing goodies into the bank like sugar cane into the cane trains ready for the mill. There’s plenty of cash to sweeten anything he wants to do. Indeed so much that just days ahead of the crucial Wentworth by-election, he's brought forward by five years his tax cuts for small and medium businesses at a cost to the budget of $3 billion!

But what is it he wants to do?

It would have been comforting for Liberals to hear him quote Robert Menzies whom he said brought various groups together to form the Liberal Party, to unite them about what they believed in…"Because you can't just be about what you're opposed to. You've got to be about what you're for: as a country, as a political party, as an individual, as a family. It's about what you're for, not just what you're against." What an astonishing utterance from a man who tells us every day what he’s opposed to – and it’s always got Shorten’s name written all over it.

What then does he believe in? Here’s the mystery. Let’s look.

The recent report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which amassed the opinion of thousands of the world’s climate scientists, starkly highlights the perilous state of our climate. Predictions of disaster abound. Look here and here. But what does Morrison believe? What will he do? The heat is now on him. Will he dare ignore their opinions?

Will he still fondle his lump of coal as if its continued use is of no import? Will he try to resuscitate his moribund NEG? How will he keep his promise to reduce household energy bills by ‘around $550’ and still meet his emissions targets? 

Will he ever get round to developing a climate policy that has any chance of reversing our rising emissions and combating escalating global temperatures? You know the answer. He keeps trying to convince us that Australia will meet its emissions targets ‘in a canter’. So why change course when he knows we’ll sprint over the finishing line like Winx, way in front of the field!

If you need any more evidence of the antediluvian views of the Coalition’s climate dinosaurs, read the response to the IPCC report of Melissa Price, his environment minister. Although the report contended that global greenhouse gas emissions must reach zero by about 2050 in order to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that the use of coal must be phased out by 2050, Price (who hasn’t read the report) insisted that the climate scientists were "drawing a long bow" in calling for an end to coal power, and that it would be irresponsible to do so. Morrison agreed. Expect him to do nothing.

If climate change is too hard for him, how will he manage social issues? Now that Philip Ruddock’s review into religious protections has been leaked after five months in hiding, we will see how he tackles its recommendations. Early signs are that he will go along with religious schools being able to reject children based on their sexuality or gender identification, in other words to exclude gay kids. His convoluted response to date is that this is the law anyway – a guarantee that he will vacillate.

On another front, we still have to hear how he intends to tackle the disunity in Coalition ranks, the paucity of females on his benches, the continuing threat posed by the conservative rump that haunts his party, the ghostly presence of Abbott, Dutton, Cormann, and all the other miscreants. How can he purge his party of these disruptors? Will he even try?

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of Morrison’s prime ministership though is the unnerving way he floats from one issue to another, always supremely confident that he has everything under control, ever ready to smother any question, any problem, any matter (even advertising on the Opera House sails), with his obtuse gibberish, always embellished with that all-knowing, just-leave-it-to-me, smirk.

Meanwhile, as we cup our ears straining to hear his vision for our nation, his guarantees for our future, and his plans for the time ahead, all we get is perilous emptiness and sonorous babble: "A fair go for those who have a go".

Therein lies the dilemma.


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Florence Howarth

11/10/2018

Not sure  Dutton was not used by Abbott & Co. All seem happy with Morrison. Frydenberg IMO would have been a better bet. 

Ad Astra

11/10/2018

Folks

Should you question the veracity of what’s written here, listen to the first few minutes of PM Morrison speaking to Sabra Lane on ABC radio this morning.

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/scott-morrison-29-billion-dollar-tax-cut-plan/10363192   

You’ll hear the same old babble, complete with the same old clichés. Note how he never answers her question about how his tax cuts will improve wages. Wages haven’t increased for many years. He knows that, and he knows they won’t, even with his tax cuts. Employers will pocket them, and run. They will invest in their business, maybe employ more people, but none of it will end up in workers’ pockets.

No government minister has ever proved that tax cuts increase wages, because they don’t. So they just repeat their hollow mantra over and again, hoping eventually that voters will swallow their baseless rhetoric.

It’s pathetic; it’s sickening; it's dishonest. Do they really believe their own words?

Ad Astra

11/10/2018

Florence Howarth

It's good to see you again on TPS.

Who really knows what machinations took place within the bowels of the Turnbull coup? Abbott, Dutton, Cormann, Cash, Fifield, and their fellow plotters are such accomplished purveyors of deceit, dishonesty and self-seeking behaviour, that they didn't even trust themselves. What's more, they couldn't count.

Although his ministers seem pleased with Morrison so far, if loses Wentworth, don't be surprised if the knives come out again. The old adage 'There's no honour among thieves' would then apply.

Joe Carli

12/10/2018

“The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than in it. Its relations to industry are of a financial rather than an industrial kind…” Thorsten Veblen

The reckless speculation and resultant economic / political control by those elements of the mining, energy, financial houses has seen political policy follow suite and implement administrative conditions most favourable to those houses, resulting in many areas of mining, financial and energy delivery systems in terrible destructive behaviour to both people and the environment, but very profi to those houses and the people who run them. The unstoppable rise in renewable energy systems, however has thrown into panic some of those houses and time is now being granted to them to divest and “reload” their financial interests from “olde worlde fuel-cost driven” systems coal, gas and even nuclear to “free-energy-source generation” systems solar, wind etc.. The LNP. govt’ will give those houses all the time they need through filibustering and stalling the inevi until the “profit trolley” can be got back onto the rails for the usual suspects."

https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-bogan-empire/

Ad Astra

12/10/2018

Joe Carli

Thank you for your comment.

You and other visitors might find the new Featured Video (up the page) fascinating viewing. The beliefs of Trump's climate denialist are almost unbelievable, but they do show how convinced some are (Trump included) that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by climate scientists. With beliefs like those abroad, what hope have we that we can transition to a low carbon economy?

It's become a battle between those who believe that anthropogenic global warming is threatening our planet and all on it and that we must lower carbon emissions urgently, and those who insist that we must keep on burning fossil fuel, and that this is good for us all!

Joe Carli

12/10/2018

Ah...Ad'...I think most of us who go to social media are only too aware of the lunacy of the "denialists". I used to argue myself pink with both Jennifer Marohasy and her acolytes on her blog before she blocked me years ago about the bleedin' obvious that I could see and did relate to them from out here in the Murray Mallee....A situation even these God-fearing, metwurst curing, dirt-farming fifth generation Krauts STILL grinding their hopes into the Goyder- Line dust will admit has gotten worse over the last fifty or so years...I have the archives..THEY have the ruined ploughs.

There's nothing more to say...and all I am doing now is keeping the veggie beds going and growing as much as we can because if the shite hits the fan in the next decade or so..and I believe it will...I want to be ready to lock the gate against those gormless imbeciles that I know in this district who kept voting for the LNP...and I would suggest any of you others out there do the same...and let me know if you have a surplus of watermelons!

Joe Carli

13/10/2018

The final fall of Delphi.

Tell the king…..

The fair wrought hall is fallen,

No more hut, nor prophetic laurel,

Its waters murmur, sigh and sorrow,

The spring of eloquence is quenched….


Tell the folk :

Delphi ; the house of Apollo is fallen.

The Oracle speaks it’s last,

In stuttering tongue, before dusk,

And cometh now an age of gilded lust.


Tell the people :

The Gods are gone, their whisp’ed scent

From spring and bough wisdom sent

Is barren now….rubble strewn,

once was beauty marble hewn.


Tell them all :

The temple walls are forlorn and broken!

The paths of herb and steps awry,

Beast debased, their perfumes descry!

Man’s heart’s desire…now a banker’s token.


Yes!..Go!..tell the Kings of the world:

Of the thousands who have homaged Delphi,

Now..only two of us stand on the Sybilline Rock

….in the pouring rain….

Two stand ; the merchant and the poet..


….but only one of us is crying.

Ad Astra

13/10/2018

Joe Carli

Profound words!

Joe Carli

13/10/2018

Chaff in the wind now, Ad Astra...Just chaff in the wind....

Jason

14/10/2018

Hi Ad

A thought provoking contribution as always! I tend to think Morrison offers "stability" in the short term until the next election. It has always been my belief that since the 2007 election the coalition didn't rid it's self of the old guard apart from a few high profile members and renew it's self. Instead yesterdays men Abbott hung around the hard right as I understand it in Victoria  and else were stacking branches with yesterdays men/women because they have seen the past and it works.

Morrison's natural instinct would be to placate the hard right and as we've seen in the last few days the religious freedom  bill will be jettisoned in the hope they don't become a minority government and should they form government in 2019 look at it again 

Morrison is from a marketing background so he knows how to sell although the " the bloody hell are you" add for the tourism board he headed wasn't a great hit but we get the picture. Hopefully Labor has a thumping win at the next election although looking at social media and "SKY after dark" the young fogies coming through are as barking mad as those that are there


Ad Astra

14/10/2018

Hi Jason

Thank you for your comment. You are right: "...the young fogies coming through are as barking mad as those that are there". which proves that You can't make a silk purse out of a  sow's ear'. 

How many Rabbits do I have if I have 3 Oranges?