Butchering a classic pop song from a 1970s Australian band and playing a ukulele might not seem like the best way to prepare for a critical election year, but that’s exactly what Scott Morrison did. It seemed bizarre but there is a method to this madness: it keeps all the bad news away from the headlines and keeps the enemies of the Liberal Party occupied with the unimportant and minute details. It’s the hallmark of a populist politician: distract with stunts and gimmicks, keep your opponents in...
Feb 18, 2022•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast It was an explosive week of Parliament, the first of very few in 2022. The government decided not to schedule too many sitting days this year because, when there’s an election year, a most secretive government doesn’t want too much scrutiny placed upon itself. And, because it’s an election year, a funding freeze for the ABC has been lifted, which is a little bit awkward: the Liberal Party conference in 2015 voted to privatise the ABC (and SBS), and it’s one of the Institute of Public Affair’s to...
Feb 11, 2022•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast An absolute summer of discontent is almost sealing the fate of the Morrison government, one of the most incompetent administrations Australia has ever seen, aided and abetted by a NSW Government which has managed – or mismanaged – the Omicron outbreak in the worst possible way. For many families, Christmas was spent in isolation, either with COVID, or waiting until the results of their PCR tests arrived – and this was in contrast to the message Scott Morrison put out in November, when he promise...
Feb 04, 2022•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Georgia Steele is an independent candidate in the southern Sydney seat of Hughes and is up against the current member Craig Kelly, and candidates from the major political parties. It’s a difficult task for any independent to win any federal seat but there seems to be a groundswell of support for change in the 2022 federal election. There are many key issues not being addressed by the federal government – climate change, women’s safety, the management of the pandemic – and Steele is using these i...
Jan 28, 2022•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jo Dyer is the independent candidate in the South Australia seat of Boothby, the third-most marginal seat in Australia. And she’s running under the banner of the ‘Voices Of’ movement, a loose alliance of independents campaigning all across Australia on the issues of climate change, integrity and women’s safety – all of which the Prime Minister and his team are doing very little about, and seem to care even less about. Which major party forms government at the next election could be determined by...
Jan 21, 2022•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast An incredible year in Australian politics, but the biggest feature was all the issues left behind and the issues that were not managed very well at all: climate change, corruption, the way women are treated within the political system. And the biggest issue of all for 2021: the coronavirus pandemic. It can be argued that at least by the end of the year, high vaccination rates were achieved and we finally got there, but in the meantime, there were two protracted lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne ...
Dec 14, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Independent candidates are set to play a big role in the next federal election. And why are they running for election? Because they’ve had enough of the politics-as-usual approach and feel Australia is being held back by poor leadership, especially on climate change, a lack of action against corruption, and the treatment of women in politics. David Lewis speaks with Kylea Tink, the independent candidate in the seat of North Sydney, to find out why she is running for politics and how she is hopin...
Dec 11, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Political parties love to end the year with momentum and provide a springboard into the new year – especially if there’s an election coming up. Labor is starting to release some policy to address long-term political issues: climate change, skills shortages, university placements – and to combat this, the Prime Minister decided that it was best to ride around Mount Panorama in a race car and announce to Australians that it’s time to put them back into the driver’s seat. The symbolism was strange:...
Dec 07, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The parliamentary year commenced with the revelations of a rape at Parliament House; it ended with a report into sexual harassment at parliamentary workplaces… and a federal minister stepping aside after he was accused of physically abusing a staffer he was having an affair with. When will parliamentarians learn their lessons? And with so many government MPs and Ministers resigning, is it a sign of panic? No, it’s quite normal for MPs to retire and they can’t stay in politics forever. But it cer...
Dec 03, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s the final week of Parliament for 2021 and it’s much the same as all the other ones in recent weeks: chaos and dysfunction, and a peculiar interest in all of the issues that don’t really matter too much. This week’s interest? The anti-troll social media legislation which no one has ever asked for, would be ineffective (in the unlikely event that it was ever actually made into law) – but at least it took up two full days of national debate. Anything to avoid working on the issues that really ...
Nov 30, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast This term of Parliament is descending into chaos, and it’s almost as though the anarchist society has taken over the Senate and House of Representatives. But it’s not the anarchist society: it’s the Liberal–National Coalition which is now resembling a thoroughly disorganised rabble. The Voter ID and Religious Discrimination Bills are in tatters – legislation that is not needed and no-one has asked for – and the national integrity commission is no closer to formation. A new Speaker was installed ...
Nov 26, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s increasingly obvious the Prime Minister is using the final stages of this Parliament to roadtest a number of different election slogans. Last week it was ‘Australians taking back their lives’, followed by ‘Australians have had a gutful of being told what to do’, interspersed with ‘cost of living’ and ‘can-do capitalism’. This week it was ‘moving forward’. But where are we moving forward to? What’s the destination? What happens at this destination? Who’s going to be there when we get there? ...
Nov 23, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Once again, the Liberal–National Coalition is attacking the ABC, and doing the bidding of News Corporation in its quest to remove the ABC from government ownership and sell if off to the highest bidder. And several state divisions of the Liberal Party – and all the Young Liberal branches – have already passed resolutions to privatise the ABC and it’s also one of the key objectives of the Institute of Public Affairs. Yes, the ABC needs to be reformed and it shouldn’t just try to replicate what th...
Nov 19, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Australia is seeking national leadership at this point of time to ward off the threat of extremist behaviour in Melbourne but instead of trying to dampen the enthusiasm of QAnon, neo-Nazis, fascists, sovereign citizens and assorted fringe dwellers, Scott Morrison is hoping to hang onto their votes at the next federal election and he decided the best course of action is to just keep quiet, lest he upset his supporter base. The weekend protests in Melbourne attracted 5,000 people, primarily to voi...
Nov 16, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Paul Keating was a hit at the National Press Club address during the week, but members of the federal government were not so happy about this. Because he spoke positively and realistically about China and Australia’s place in the world: which rubs against the grain of the government’s narrative of depicting China as a massive threat to Australia. And the media is happy to jump in and offer their support, using every negative cliché about China in their reportage – falling short of using the “Yel...
Nov 12, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast There won’t be a federal election in the short term, but that doesn’t mean campaigning can’t start early. It feels like the election campaign has already commenced, with Scott Morrison wanting to ‘move on’ from all the errors from the past and present his best face to the public. But this depends on the fine art of the political lie, of which Morrison is happy to contribute to. In 2004, John Howard opened his campaign with “who do you trust on the economy?”, flushing out memories of continuous ‘...
Nov 10, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Prime Minister was reluctant to go to the COP26 climate change conference and it’s obvious to see why. To say it was a diplomatic disaster is an understatement and the more Scott Morrison makes politics all about him, the more he is exposed as an ineffective prime minister who appears to be severely out of his depth. It’s one thing to create a diplomatic problem with a long-term European ally, but it’s another issue entirely to start leaking private text messages received from the French Pre...
Nov 05, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is Scott Morrison? A brand name? A theme, a hologram, a Prime Minister, an advertisement, a football coach?… or just a person? It’s hard to know, because Morrison reveals so little of who he actually is. But does it really matter? We reveal all in a conversation with Sean Kelly, discussing his brand new book, “The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison”, published by Black Inc. Books. We try to pin Morrison down, but it’s so difficult. So, we start off with the “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” ...
Nov 02, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Plan To Deliver Net Zero is much like the Morrison government: it’s insubstantial, inadequate, filled with political marketing and spin and, ultimately, does very little to act on climate change. It’s all about politics and directed at those people in the electorate who might be thinking about switching their vote away from the Liberal and National parties at the next election, of which there is a substantial number. Morrison lacks intellect and he’s incurious about the world. But he has rat...
Oct 29, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast The latest opinions polls show Scott Morrison is still on the nose and might have reached the point of no return. It’s currently 46% to the LNP and 54% to Labor in the two-party preferred voting and while it’s always possible for governments to make up ground, it is a difficult task. Morrison is looking panicked and a panicked prime minister will always start rolling the dice more erratically, or look to filthy lucre to see if the election victory from May 2019 can be repeated. Lighting rarely s...
Oct 26, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Recent events in NSW have shown that its Independent Commission Against Corruption is doing its job, despite the protests of Scott Morrison: the Obeids and Ian Macdonald have been sentenced to jail for attempting to embezzle $100 million through a coal mine lease licence between 2007-2009. It was the NSW ICAC which commenced proceedings against these former NSW Labor MPs; and it’s the same NSW ICAC which is currently investigating the arrangements between former NSW Liberal Premier, Gladys Berej...
Oct 22, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Scott Morrison has changed his mind and will now attend the COP26 climate change forum in Glasgow. It was obvious Morrison didn’t want to got to COP26 for a number of reasons: it’s all about climate change action, which is anathema to the Liberal–National Coalition; it’s an international meeting where Australia’s embarrassingly poor policies on climate change action – among the worst in the OECD community – will be the focus; it’s the first encounter with the French Prime Minister after the canc...
Oct 19, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast How many times have we been told by conservative business groups in Australia that minimum wages need to be kept low so businesses have more finances to employ more people? And not just minimum wages, but all wages? The only problem is this erstwhile neoliberal pipedream doesn’t actually work and there’s a recent Nobel Prize for Economics out there to prove it’s absolutely false. Since 2013, wages in Australia have stagnated – coinciding with the time of the Liberal–National Coalition government...
Oct 15, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The most surprising part of News Corporation’s greenwashing of the Liberal Party is not so much that it’s occurring right now, but the fact that it’s happening so quickly. The Liberal Party – working hand in glove with the Business Council of Australia, and their erstwhile friends at News Corporation – has resisted all action on climate change ever since they returned to government in 2013: they repealed the carbon price scheme, abolished the Climate Commission, reduced funding programs for rene...
Oct 12, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s continuing fallout from the broken French submarines deal, and a humiliated country will seek retribution in other ways. Australia didn’t learn the lessons given by China, where the Australian government pressured the WHO to investigate the origins of coronavirus and Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, decided to directly blame China for releasing the virus to the rest of the world. The result: China placed tariffs and sanctions on Australian exports and caused billions of dollars of damage ...
Oct 08, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s been far too much adulation from the media for the former Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, who took the decision to resign from Parliament, after the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption declared she is a person of interest in a corruption investigation. Politicians are not rock stars, and journalists are not their groupies, even though that’s how they behave: too close to action; too close to the people they seem to love. And too close to report and analyze witho...
Oct 05, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast It happened quickly but it wasn’t really a shock when the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, resigned after it was revealed that the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption was commenced proceedings to investigate whether she acted corruptly in the award of community grants between 2012 and 2018. There were many tears and Berejiklian resigned reluctantly, giving the impressive that the ICAC was just a minor irritant that shouldn’t be standing in her way. Her greatest supporters – the mainstr...
Oct 01, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast The United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP26 – is coming up soon, but Scott Morrison is toying with the idea of not attending the event in Glasgow. This is the most important climate change conference since 2015 – and possibly ever – but Morrison isn’t interested, too busy fondling the lump of coal he dragged into federal Parliament, a rock which has become symbolic of his prime ministership. Or too busy remembering his trip last week to New York – a UN meeting that he really didn’t need...
Sep 29, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Melbourne has had a big week: it’s long suffering populace had to put up with a barrage of abuse from the Melbourne conservative media, a rent-a-crowd protest dressed up like union members and 74-year-old grandmothers attacked the city and, to top that off, they also had a 5.8 Richter magnitude earthquake. Of course, there were union members within the rent-a-crowd but it wasn’t an event organised, promoted or condoned by the CFMEU: real unionists wouldn’t protest on the West Gate Bridge – a sit...
Sep 24, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Labor factions are at it again, this time creating a preselection problem in South West Sydney. Kristina Keneally is a former NSW Premier and sits in the Senate, but if she wanted to continue in politics, she had to be parachuted into the seat of Fowler, which is specifically a back-up-seat when preselection problems arise. It means whoever has been preselected in the seat of Fowler has to stand aside, because whatever the Labor factions want, they are provided with it. They are hungry beast...
Sep 17, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
