Mr Morrison went to Tokyo and returned empty-handed. But the 24-hour trip was never about Japan, it was all about continuing to avoid scrutiny and land the Prime Minister into a two-week quarantine at the Lodge – just enough to avoid the final Question Time of the year. Very convenient. And, of course, two weeks with the official photographer, ready to snap every pair of board shorts, thongs, exercise bikes and COVID test. It's outright propaganda. Meanwhile, Mathias Cormann is using a taxpayer ...
Nov 26, 2020•48 min
The 2020 US Election has brought in a new President (we think) and the key question will be how an incoming Democrats administration will affect political behaviour in Australia and whether the Morrison government feels the need to do anything at all on climate change. Or change its economic philosophy. Or even feel the need to be more truthful with the Australian public, but we feel this is most unlikely. And will the media turn down the volume on Scott Morrison, as they did with Donald Trump? ...
Nov 13, 2020•48 min
There's far too much corruption in politics but what can be done about it? There's a compliant media that is always at hand to cover over any corruption performed by conservative governments, and they were at their best when it came to the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian. A high stinking pile of corruption is slowing being uncovered at the hearings held at the NSW ICAC but the media decided to ignore all of that, and go for the ‘girl-in-lurve-dudded-by-the-bad-man’ angle, so the allegations of c...
Oct 28, 2020•47 min
It's that time of the year when we look at the federal Budget (seasonally adjusted), and the Treasurer has announced a $213 billion deficit. We have no complaints: Governments need to spend money according to the circumstances and with a national government debt reaching $944 billion, the main benefit the Australian electorate will receive is an end to the maniacal debates about “debts and deficits” and “how ya gonna pay for it”. Don't believe the neoliberalist tripe: governments can always pay ...
Oct 13, 2020•42 min
The mainstream media and the federal government are still making their push to open borders, even though the continuing threat to public health is still there. Border closures are quite popular in the states and territories – 91 per cent support in Western Australia – and it's difficult to understand why vested interests are making this push, when the public support to open up borders is not there. But as we all know, anything is possible when vested interests hold hands with the Liberal governm...
Sep 25, 2020•46 min
What does a government Minister have to do to lose their job? Losing control of aged care homes and allowing coronavirus to cause the death of over 400 people isn't enough these days. How we long for those good ol’ days when a Minister could be stood down for possessing a oversized teddy bear or filling out the wrong form. But that was so 1980s, and it's now the year of the pandemic: 2020. Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck still remains in his job, but we're really not sure why. The tedious and...
Sep 01, 2020•35 min
The public’s patience with Scott Morrison’s constant obfuscation, deflection and outright lies is starting to wear thin. As Abraham Lincoln said “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”. And we think Morrison may have reached the point of no return: once the public image of serial lying is set in stone, there's no turning back. It might not be so evident right now, but this sentiment is starti...
Aug 17, 2020•39 min
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan instigated a brand of neoliberal economics and politics that affected the world for almost four decades. They left the political scene over 30 years ago, and whatever people think about their economic practices and policies – we think they were an absolute disaster for the world – they were major political figures of history steeped in the politics of the Cold War. But they were people of the 1980s and 1990s, and their policies are not the right policies to ev...
Aug 01, 2020•39 min
It's a by-election the Liberal Party should have won, but didn't. Eden-Monaro. Despite all the resources put into the campaign, the Government nudged the margin by just 0.45% – not much and certainly not the massive swing and "brutal lesson to Labor" the New Corporation reported with glowing headlines in their local versions of Pravda and The North Korea Times. For all the glowing support provided to Scott Morrison by the mainstream media, there's an underbelly of electoral negativity that will ...
Jul 18, 2020•48 min
McCarthyism was that awful US syndrome from the 1950s, where the mention of ‘communism’ was like a combination of the bubonic plague, 1918 virus and COVID-19. It was a virus we thought the world might have rid itself of, but it's alive and well in 2020. It's no longer the Soviet Union causing all the trouble, but the Chinese Government, and the conservatives have a problem with them. And the politicised Australian Federal Police is always going to play its part, helping to stitch up a NSW Labor ...
Jul 03, 2020•42 min
The Prime Minister supported radical anti-vaxer/5G/anti-lockdown/Bill Gates protests, saying people have a right to express themselves, but wanted to lockdown the Black Lives Matter and deaths in custody rallies. It’s an obvious duplicity but no one in the media pointed out this discrepancy. Perhaps it's a case where for the Prime Minister – and many in the media – black lives don't really matter that much. After all, Rio Tinto detonated Aboriginal heritage in the Juukan Gorge but police decided...
Jun 19, 2020•52 min
There have been many comparisons made between Scott Morrison and Bob Hawke recently, but Morrison is no Bob Hawke. The Accord was totally different from Morrison’s plans, dubbed "Accord 2.0" by the friendly media. But media management is what the Liberal–National Government does best and at the onset of a recession, what do we get? A HomeBuilder plan that virtually no-one can access, and does very little to stimulate the economy. But the plan did keep the media attention away from talking about ...
Jun 05, 2020•49 min
The Australian economy is falling into a heap, and what better way to provide a cushion to the economy than to start a fruitless diplomatic stoush with China, our largest trading partner. Fresh from celebrating Scott Morrison’s unlikely election victory anniversary, the media championed Australia’s push for a ‘weapons inspectors’ inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 (well, that's not correct, it was actually pushed by the European Union). And if we can remember the last time ‘weapons inspectors’...
May 22, 2020•43 min
Schools have become the new battleground for the Morrison Government and they've started a huge brawl with the Victoria Premier, Daniel Andrews. Morrison and his entourage of Chief Medical Officers are using flimsy evidence to push schools to fully reopen, even though there's international evidence that suggests it's best to go slow and show the abundance of caution that has, so far, been lacking from the Australian Government. Patience is a virtue, but how can we expect patience from a governme...
May 07, 2020•40 min
Just because there's a coronavirus crisis, we can't assume a government will act in the best interests of its people. Trust in governments and authority is at a low level, so why would the public have trust in a Tracing App, when all it's going to do is soak up personal data the government can then on-sell to third parties? No thanks. And especially after the debacles of the 2016 Census, the Centrelink crash and MyHealth. This is not a government that can be trusted to do the right thing. For it...
Apr 22, 2020•45 min
Forget The Dismissal, forget Fine Cotton, the Hilton Bombing and even the Offset Alpine fire. The Ruby Princess is shaping up to be one of the biggest scandals in Australian history. And all under the noses of the NSW and Australian Governments. Sports games are not being played at the moment, but gosh, politicians are fantastic at playing the blame game. And it's an ugly spectacle seeing NSW Health and Australian Border Force blaming each other. We do want to see the blame games continue but on...
Apr 08, 2020•39 min
The coronavirus crisis is likely to be with us for some time to come and governments have been doing their best to manage the crisis, but it seems some countries are doing better than others. The Morrison government has been dragging its feet, on the economic and health fronts, and it seems that it’s directing its actions based on ideological pursuits, rather than putting that all aside, and working out what is the best outcome for the entire community. Economic action has been slow – there are ...
Mar 26, 2020•33 min
Everyone is talking about the coronavirus but, unlike most of the media and most of the government, we'll leave the medical debate to the medical fraternity and discuss the politics and economics of the crisis instead. And it is going to cause a recession in Australia and a wide range of problems for the Liberal–National Government. But stimulus is also occupying a great amount of space and, at long last, the LNP is implementing measures to save the economy. Is it a case of too little, too late?...
Mar 13, 2020•41 min
Another year, another round of political corruption to deal with. Scott Morrison claimed "a miracle" caused him to win the 2019 election but, as with most claims of divine intervention, that old human frailty of vice and corruption proved to be the real answer. The Liberal–National Government had a cash splash fund of almost $500 million dollars to throw at marginal and Coalition-held seats – funding programs that had no guidelines, no application forms, little oversight, and a rorting scheme th...
Feb 11, 2020•45 min
The climate change debate is heating up to a temperature even hotter than the NSW bushfires. Just as the Prime Minister has decided to take a holiday somewhere in the Pacific and instructing the media not to report that he was actually on leave. To their shame, many in media acceded to the Prime Minister's wish: so much for the Your Right To Know campaign. What a facade. People are angry about climate change, but it's not just the conservative side of politics that is suffering the opprobrium: t...
Dec 19, 2019•29 min
Democracy fell down a few rungs when Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, used forged documents to attack an opponent. Did he know they were forged? Did he forge the documents himself? Answers to these questions need to be provided. Why has public trust in the political processes dived so dramatically since 2013? Hint: That's when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, but are there other factors contributing to this demoralising issue? The Labor Party has released its review into the 2019 Federal Electio...
Nov 13, 2019•37 min
Scott Morrison has been to Washington and back, and a State Dinner was held in his honour. While grandstanding and hurling insults at China might not be the best way to protect a $40 billion per year export market, there must be wiser heads within the government providing advice, and they certainly would know what they are doing. Wouldn't they? There was much talk about the entourage at the US State Dinner – it certainly didn't comprise the "quiet Australians" that won the surprise victory at th...
Oct 18, 2019•30 min
There's a disaster facing the Australian economy and, unfortunately, the best the Liberal–National Government can do is blame the Labor Party – even though they haven't been in office since 2013 – or blame the Reserve Bank of Australia, or talk about the Sea of Tranquility which, according to the planetary atlas, is somewhere near the dark side of the moon. Why is Josh Frydenberg talking up the first current account surplus in 44 years? Or the 2.6% increase in employment numbers? Because the eco...
Sep 11, 2019•32 min
We are very impressed to hear there is a new part of the political lexicon: unfunded empathy. It's the bureaucratic way of saying: "get %$knF!!" and we are just wondering how many focus groups were needed to test this one, because it's an absolute beauty. It helped to dismiss calls for a raise in Newstart spontaneously and, simultaneously, protects the Coalition’s golden $7 billion Budget surplus. With, of course, a little help from friends in the media, who were eager to splash the ‘dole bludge...
Aug 06, 2019•40 min
Democracy is being held hostage by the adversarial nature of party politics. The people deserve better and a democracy upgrade is long overdue. Is democracy broken? Do we need a blueprint for change? If it's broken, how do we fix it? Kim Wingerei is an author and political commentator, and discusses his book with the co-host of New Politics, David Lewis. Why Democracy Is Broken: A Blueprint for Change offers directions and solutions that we all need to consider for a better democratic future and...
Jul 16, 2019•17 min
Surprised by their surprise 2019 election victory, the Liberal-National Party is searching for an agenda to implement over the next term of Parliament, and trying to convince the public it's all about religious freedom, industrial relations, cutting red tape, green tape, and every other colour of tape. The only problem is that this is as surprising as their surprise election victory. These are issues barely discussed during the election campaign. The LNP won the election, but do they really need...
Jul 03, 2019•38 min
Apologies if our 2019 Election Wrap-Up special episode is late but we had to wait until every postal vote had been received and counted, and see if there was any sign of a late swing. Of which, there was none. The Liberal–National Party has been returned to government for a third consecutive term and we really cannot think of a more undeserving government. But, that's democracy in action: the electorate chose more of the same, and it seems they couldn't stomach the idea of Bill Shorten as Prime ...
Jun 06, 2019•50 min
It's the final week of Election 2019 and Labor is still in the best position to win the election. We're not saying anything controversial here: Labor has been ahead in the polls for almost three years, the Liberal–National Party is divided and has been an omnishamble in government, and is lacking meaningful policy offerings to the public. And if it's not the polls, have a look at the betting markets: Labor is now paying Winx-like odds to win on Saturday night [and please, gamble responsibly; and...
May 14, 2019•36 min
Contrary to most perceptions from the media about a ‘boring’ campaign, we think the 2019 election is one of the most exciting ever. Why? Because it's a ‘change’ election, where there's a possibility that it could realign conservative parties forever and, if Labor wins, create the conditions for future governments to be more adventurous in policy development. But silly media can't see beyond their noses: they look for stunts and ‘gotcha’ moments, following the Prime Minister on his quest to creat...
May 02, 2019•35 min
The 2019 election is on, but to look forward, we always need to look back, and we go far back into the archives to look at the events of elections from 1992 and 1993. But that's over 25 years ago: are age-old events from history still relevant today? Of course! The similarities between UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1992 and Bill Shorten in 2019 are striking. Like Shorten, Kinnock had been ahead in the polls for almost three years and everyone was backing Labour to win. And he also faced attac...
Apr 24, 2019•13 min
