ABETZ MACHT FREI

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, former Minister for Employment in the Abbott Government, wee nyaff, nudnik and vainglorious shtunk, has a degree in law and a curious habit of speaking factitious nonsense on matters he knows nothing about.

Starkly bereft and deficient in experience on anything resembling tangible matters of substance, oblivious to the realities of life in this, our real world, and who has, during his political “career” achieved nothing of benefit for anyone other than himself, this daft, dopey and nescient bed bug on the encrusted, befouled sheets of our nation has lately taken to the habit of inserting his splenetic and choleric self into conversations and issues of national import to hate-vomit his peculiar brand of dead-from-the-neck-up fatuous and asinine fuckwittery almost every day now since he was unceremoniously jettisoned from his ministerial position in September last year.

Herr Abetz is rapidly becoming the political equivalent of Mitchell Pearce, turning up to every party unannounced and uninvited to piss on the furniture, vomit on the rug, root the dog, call the Asian and black guests chinks and niggers and then, when asked to leave, loudly complains that he was just havin’ a laugh and that the world has been hijacked by “atheists, feminazis, homos” and political correctness gone mad.

There is nothing in his life, nothing in his so-called career which will ever be classified achievement enough to rate so much as a footnote to a footnote to a footnote’s footnote to any political history of this nation or time, and if, when the most blessed and hoped for day comes when he pops his clogs and shuffles from this mortal coil, the news of his demise shall probably be met with total silence or something like …

“Who the fuck was he?”

“Dunno. Politician. His uncle was a Nazi.”

Turn page.

Abetz is like a third nipple on a man. We already know that two of them serve no function, but are somewhat mandatory features, so what the fuck and why is this third one here for?

Like a eunuch turning up to a flophouse, prompting all the working girls to exclaim with wide eyes and dropped jaws, “Are you serious?”

He has claimed there is “a link between abortion and breast cancer”. There is not. In 2014, he proposed a plan that would have required the unemployed to apply for 40 jobs every month, and strip them of any benefits for six months, in other words, no income whatsoever, perhaps in the belief that poverty and starvation are character-building, a trait, possibly genetic, inherited from his Jew murdering Nazi uncle Otto.

He continues to rail, wail and whine against and about marriage equality, no doubt labouring under the delusion that if introduced, it will bring about the complete collapse of civilisation as he knows it, city walls will crumble, and towers fall, the sun shall plunge into the ocean, and the earth erupt in flame.

He has written “study after study, time and time again, shows that children benefit from having a father and mother”, and cites no such study because none exist.

He has also said this …

“Most people in a democracy believe social policy should be determined by the people, not by dubious interpretation by an activist judiciary”.

He has recently, however, altered his opinion about the “power of the people”, stating if a plebiscite on the matter is put to the Australian people, and they say “yes” to marriage equality, he will ignore it …

“There will be people in the parliament who could not support the outcome of a plebiscite whichever way it went.”

Eric does not like democracy when democracy does not suit Eric.

Eric is a schmuck.

A yokel.

Science has proven a link between Eric Abetz and total stupidity, and it did not take long.

Zolst zein vi a lomp-am tug sollst di hangen, in der nacht sollst di brenne.*

Don’t be an Eric.

*Yiddish: “He should be like a lamp, hang during the day and burn during the night”.

THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED

“Where is Tony Abbott?” “What is Tony doing?” “What has Tony done?” “What will Tony do?” “What has Tony said?” “Tony said what?”

“What does Eric Abetz think?” “What does Kevin Andrews think?” “What about Cory Bernardi?”

“Let’s write a column about it. Let’s write two. How about a couple hundred?”

“And two dozen editorials. And three hard-boiled eggs”.

The Guardian Australia runs a hagiographic fiction on Abbott by Tom Switzer who writes …

“As unfashionable as it is to say so, there are very few people in public life with finer personal qualities than Abbott.”

And this…

“Sneered at, patronised, condemned, he has battled on. Abbott, at 58, is relatively young and exceedingly fit, he is highly experienced, a man of enormous talent and a magnificent parliamentary performer and an adept and compelling politician.”

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor at “The Australian” Rupert’s broadsheet comic book observes of Abbott …

“No politician in modern ­Australia, at least since Malcolm Fraser in 1975, has been subjected to such sustained, vitriolic and personalised abuse as Abbott.”

Think on that for a moment. There is something very wrong about it.

Sheridan continues …

“If he left politics, this would subside. The former prime minister is a strong and resilient person, but this kind of abuse takes its toll not only on the person ­directly affected but also on their family. It is also the case that the sooner he left, the sooner it was likely his record of substantial, perhaps historic, achievement would be reassessed.

No other prime minister could have stopped the boats.”

It is reported “that Tony Abbott has been “in mourning” after losing the top job and has been urged to remain in politics by his former chief of staff Peta Credlin.

“He appears from what people are saying to be quite bitter, quite resentful, in fact I think it’s got worse,” a Liberal source is quoted as saying.”

Abbott denies this. Of course.

Former Minister for Employment in the Abbott Government, Eric Abetz states “Tony Abbott has always been about one thing – namely the Australian people” and resident parliamentary whackjob Cory Bernardi “says it has been the custom of the party to allow former leaders to choose their next role” and warns “against efforts to “muffle” Tony Abbott’s future contribution in party debates.””

Abbott announced last week that he intends to re-contest his seat in the next federal election, and appears to under the impression this may pave the way for his return to the Prime Ministership.

And this week, Abbott will be jetting off to the United States of Murder to address a group known as The Alliance Defending Freedom, a gay-hate group which describes itself as “an alliance-building legal organisation that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith. Along with our work to defend human rights such as free speech and religious freedom, ADF affirms the good of marriage and the value of strong families around the world, particularly on behalf children, who flourish when society honours and promotes the roles of both mothers and fathers in children’s lives,” and “seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries“.

Read, “defending human rights such as free speech and religious freedom”, as imposing their sexual and religious bigotry on others, abolishing abortion, burning witches at the stake and stoning gays to death in the public square. They probably believe Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” to be a guide on how to go about it.

Since Abbott was thrown from his job last September, and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, the political “news” in our mainstream media (including the ABC) has concerned itself with little else but gasbagging speculation, gossip and rumours about what Tony is going to do with his life, will he stay or will he go, how he feels, how others feel about how he feels, and how we should feel about it all as well. In a country of over 24 million people, this is the political issue that should consume our attention and be of primary concern to us, according to our media and its commentators.

I could not give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut or a wrinkled rat’s arse if the idiot threw himself off a fucking cliff, and I suspect I may not be alone in that.

However, within the closed minds of the ageing anal polyps on the arse of journalism that comprise the Canberra press gallery, this is the best they can come up.

We don’t do policy. We don’t do analysis. We don’t report on the de-funding of TAFE’s across the country, the shrinking pool of teachers and students, the discontinued courses, the ones which remain priced so far out of reach denying a generation of youth who have no wish to attend university to learn a trade. No. We don’t do that. We don’t report on the slow and inexorable dismantling of Medicare. No. We do not report on the cuts to community legal services, family violence prevention centres, charitable organisations and mental health services. No. We don’t do that.

Not on our front pages. Not in our headlines. No.

NSW Premier Mike Baird removes over 40 century old fig trees in Sydney’s Moore Park to make way for a light rail system as a sup to the gambling and racing industry so they may have quick and easy access to their club in order to watch horses run around in fucking circles, and there’s barely any scrutiny of the decision in our media. A couple reports, a column, a few letters to the editor, and it’s over and done with.

Nice work if you can get it. Why not concentrate on Mr. Baird’s chummy tweets instead? Too easy.

Demonise the poor. Stigmatise the single mother. Disenfranchise the young. Reduce penalty rates. Reduce the minimum wage. Axe the aged pension.

We are being hugger-muggered and carom-shotted into a world of black darkness and confusion. The rising of this century will not bring catharsis. The rising of this century shall not bring salvation. The crack is getting deeper, the flames are rising higher, and the political predators of this great divide shall cut our throats, slice our flesh, and drink our blood.*

Existence as we know it is over.

The End of Democracy. Only the illusion remains.

The Ascent of the Idiocratic Oligarchy is here.

Gore Vidal once remarked that the greatest, most grievous error the Ruling Classes ever made was teaching the Underclasses how to read during the Industrial Revolution, essentially so as the Underclasses could comprehend the instructions for operating the machinery of the time, and it is an error the Ruling Classes have been attempting to correct ever since.

He was right.

And they’re winning.

*Apologies to Laibach

BRATS IN THE RANKS

In the decade during which I have been in the employ of a corporate concern, a multinational, I have witnessed people, too many to name, who have suddenly found themselves rudely and unceremoniously shuffled into irrelevancy, unemployment, deemed excess baggage or incompatible with whatever budgetary constraints are constraining the budget at whatever time, after working five, ten, twenty, even thirty years of their lifespan for said “concern”.

“Redundant” is the weasel word applied in such circumstances, which typically come about when a company undergoes or announces it is to undergo a “restructure”, which, as those of us living in the real world know, means one thing and one thing only – they’re going to sack a shitload of people and ship the work offshore where it’s cheaper.

When such news is delivered, recipients can react in a variety of ways. Anger. Resentment. A sense of betrayal; in some cases, even grief, that the work they do, that they’ve done, how they have gone about the doing of it, is no longer required, is no longer useful, and is no longer of value.

It is hard news to take.

Yet none (at least, to the best of my knowledge) ever reacted by trying to wreck the place before they left it.

There was no dancing on tables during spontaneous piss-ups, or breaking of legs, or the removing of shirts and beating of hairy man-boobs with clenched fists whilst bellowing how everyone can all get fucked. No, there was none of this. No foul-tempered, sulky, sooky ‘n’ sour spoilt-brat hissy-fits were sprayed at whoever may have been unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity at the time the news was given.

Most thought it unfair, which of course they would. Some simply shrugged with resignation, having expected it anyway, and some just didn’t care much at all, as they’d been there so long they’d grown sick of it. Some people in management got called “cunts” I suppose (especially the Americans), and a few may well have told a power-that-is on the odd occasion to take his/her job/company and shove it where the sun don’t shine, but everything and everybody soon settles down and gets on with business, either the taking care of it or the leaving of it, and doing so with a necessary modicum of restraint and decorum.

Which brings me to this small knot of squealing dickheads we’ve been hearing of, from and about the last couple months, a small knot of squealing dickheads from the rank of our body politic who were turfed from their jobs not long back because they were shit at them, and they haven’t shut up since.

Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Eric Abetz, and Kevin Andrews.

In less than the two years they held them, these men were sacked because they were crap at their jobs.

Not redundant.

Sacked.

They were incompetent in their work.

In the weeks since those events, we have borne embarrassed witness to the childishness of Abbott in the immediate wake of his usurpation, all glowering scowls and dark, sullen glares; we have listened to Joe Hockey’s specious delusions of grandeur, his sense of self-importance, and we have heard how both men, by their own assessment, were blessedly infallible in their words and actions, all of them, and how their untimely demise sprang not from any faults or failures of their own, but from grim and grubby deeds of treachery done dirt cheap on the sly by forces of pure evil.

Former Minister for Something I Can’t Remember Anymore Because He Was Crap At It, Eric Abetz, has had a few petulant grumbles to make on these shenanigans among other matters, as has former Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, who still hasn’t quite managed to come to terms with the description “former”, and who yesterday saw fit to gift our nation his sage and sound advice – no doubt gleaned from years upon years of arduous study – on how to correctly prosecute a ground war against IS in Syria, advice that shall no doubt be pounced upon and devoured with gusto by the gormless gits currently in charge of the world’s military, because socially conservative, anti-gay, rabidly anti-abortion suburban Christian barristers are really shit hot at planning wars in desert ratholes they can send other people’s children to die in.

It’s the sheer gall of their ego’s, the fictions they’ve fed themselves as facts, the absorption in their own self-righteousness, the wilful ignorance on world matters they insist on showcasing and sharing as hard-won wisdom, the indulgent parade of bruised egos and damaged pride, and the conviction they seem to have that this, that they, still matter to us, and should matter to us, when most of us would prefer they just shut up and leave us all the fuck alone, we’ve been there already, enough, enough.

What a sad and sorry quartet of sore losers are these; graceless, bitter and undignified in defeat, still dishing up the same old hits ‘n’ memories to an audience who’ve long since changed channels.

I rack my brain trying to remember what it was they did when they had their jobs, and can think of nothing significant, nothing of real, tangible, substantive purpose beyond the chanting of clichés and the peddling of stereotypes, of clumsy and bellicose vindictiveness, of cruel judgments made and swingeing corrections imposed; these mutts could dish it out alright, but dish it back, they’re off like a bag of ha’penny crackers.

Here in the real world, where lives, not ideologies are lived, where the work we do is not just an abstract notion or mere statistic under consideration for a report, the likes of Andrews, Abbott, Abetz and Hockey may do well to reflect that, aside from themselves and a few like-minded, mouthy muppets in the media, no one gives a fuck about what they think on a thing anymore or why, nobody wants their opinion, and above all, nobody is in the least concerned about how they felt or still feel about losing their jobs (because they were rubbish at them), so could they suck it up, shut up and shove the fuck off and stop giving us all the shits.

You are no longer in the game.

Stop playing.

Go. Away.

HANDS UP WHO WANTS TO READ ANOTHER FUCKING ARTICLE ABOUT THE FORMER (HOORAY!) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE BRONWYN BLOODY BISHOP AND HER HELICOPTER HABIT BECAUSE I SURE AS SHIT DON’T

No matter how many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of words have been written or spoken about this woman and her history of immoderate extravagance, there is no “sniff test”, no “pub test”, no context one need put it in, no perspective to be applied, there is only this, and always has been only this ….

“You spent $5000 bucks chartering a fucking helicopter to go a ninety minute car drive because you were late to a fete?  OH, DO FUCK OFF, YOU STUPID FUCKING CLOWN!”

If only that were the headline the first time, and for the few days after, we would not have had to endure the last three weeks of front page photographs and footage of the woman, looking like The Joker playing Cruella deVille in a bawdy vaudeville pantomime – “Bite your pillow Australia, I’M STRAPPIN’ ON AND GOIN’ IN DRY!”

“BOOOOOOO!” the audience respond and recoil in unison. Some even flee the theatre.

A few weeks before all these shenanigans, the host of ABC News Breakfast interviews former Liberal leader John Hewson on various things, and asks Hewson if he is disappointed, if he despairs, the current level of policy debate and discussion in politics, its lack of substance.

Hewson replies that he does, and that he has observed its slow and steady degradation over the past twenty years or so, and I think to myself, “Yes, I too have noticed”.

Not too long before this, Creepy Rupert’s stable of News Corp arse-rags were all a-flutter with excitement that Federal Opposition Leader, Mr Brown Paper-Bag, had been summoned before a Royal Commission into something-something unions and asked questions on matters nobody but they seemed to give a flying fuck about, a matter that has since incuriously and understandably disappeared from the news cycle to make way for all these  lurid tales of the aforementioned old bat Bronwyn and her ratty delusions of aristocratic grandeur.

And while Mr. Paper-Bag’s Royal Commission appearance provided the work experience folk at the Photoshop and Pun Departments of Rupert’s papers oodles of jolly good fun for a day or two, a rather subdued announcement was made at that same time that a whopping great open-cut coal mine is to be constructed on a food bowl, and I think to myself, “Are you fucking kidding me? Really?”

Our Prime Minion also declared war on “wind” a while back, but unfortunately for the rest of us, the opening salvo in this war on wind would not consist of blowing his and Joe Hockey’s head off with an air rifle.

Nobody’s perfect.

Tony got the shits with windmills, and he’d like the rest of us to have the shits with them too.

Jesus H. Christ.

Imagine a run-down, dilapidated amusement park.

In that park is an out-of-control carousel, spinning and spinning and spinning, careening this way and then that, a kaleidoscopic frenzy of speed, tawdry colours and bright lights, and on that carousel are the cast of inmates from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, all of them drunk or off their medications and whooping it up something wild, hanging on to their horses for dear life, laughing, screaming, waving their arms, the organ music’s at max volume and it’s always out of tune.

Welcome to Australian politics.

Each day, it lurches from deliriously, impenetrably weird to full-blown shrill psychosis and back again; one moment it sits quietly in a corner cackling to itself in a warm puddle of its own pee, and the next it’s flinging it’s poo at anyone and everyone in  sight, barking at shadows, hollerin’ batshit crazy things at random passers-by, it’s where “Medication Time” never comes, never has and never will, for there are no pills for this.

Waleed Aly writes a column in Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald, observing …

“Labor refuses to prosecute a difficult argument. The Coalition cannot prosecute one without finding an enemy to prosecute along with it. But no one is inviting us into a civil exchange. Perhaps with our instant online outrage and shallowing media cycle we’re not the best guests. Sure, I’ll accept that. But politicians aren’t merely self-interested combatants. They’re custodians of our political culture. And on that score there’s a problem because it’s never been easier to win politically by destroying politics.”

Aly notes that “Our disillusionment with politics is now complete”.

When 70% of Australians polled think leaders of both major political parties are about as useful as a couple eunuchs in a flophouse; when only 8% of Australians get their news from traditional print media, and almost 50% of those do not trust that media; and when the influence of this media is so rapidly declining that its public persuasion factor is almost nil, one may be more inclined to think that it not so much disillusionment with politics, but outright contempt, and a large, sloppy return serve of it to those in government and media who regularly see fit to regard the Australian public with same.

As Rodney Tiffen noted in his Inside Story article from June …

“ … the main medium that picks up on the tabloids’ coverage is commercial talkback radio, which then amplifies the papers’ sense of outrage even further. It should be remembered, though, that their elderly listeners are quite similar to the readers of the tabloid newspapers. Together, the two media form a self-aggrandising and self-referential noise machine, and their volume and bluster should not be mistaken for outreach.”

Tiffen goes on to add …

” … there is an increasing sense of editorial desperation among the Murdoch papers as their commercial plight worsens. Like a one-trick pony, they try ever-bigger versions of the old sensationalist ploys. Politically, the result is even less willingness to report fairly on parties and views they don’t support. Where there was once a populist touch, now there is just a grinding predictability. Where there was once a profitable balance between sensationalism and credibility, now the confected outrage and the beat-ups rarely hit home.”

None of these trends and statistics come as any surprise, for they perfectly reflect my own attitudes toward politics as it is played today, and those in the media who “report” on it, and confirm that I am, most definitely, not alone.

Which begs the question – Who are these people writing for?

Themselves and each other.

And the politicians who still think we’re paying attention to what these alleged “influential” columnists and “opinion-makers” have to say.

As Hadas Gold and Michael Hirsh noted in Politico last year …

“The combination of hyper-polarization and social-media frenzy has created a situation where it seems every spin-meister’s message and TV ad is exaggerated to such absurd lengths that they’ve effectively become meaningless—especially because they’re addressing audiences that are either (a) already fully committed on one side or the other, a choir that doesn’t need preaching to or (b) such sophisticated users of social media that they just don’t buy the crap any more.”

Nobody need read an entire column by anyone in (as Tiffen describes them) “our media’s stable of largely interchangeable and wholly predictable columnists” to know which way they’re whistling and how goes the tune. The headline, the byline, a quick glance at content, reliably daffy keywords are guaranteed to crop up every time, repeatedly, like “leftist” (whatever the fuck that means), and you’re done.

Why bother?

I have often wondered of these so-called “commentators”, the likes of Paul Sheehan or Andrew Bolt or Janet Albrechtson, precisely who they think the fuck they are that their opinions are supposed to matter to anyone who’s not already going to agree with them on a thing, because those who don’t never will.

My opinion on a thing is not fed by the opinions on that thing of others, but by facts, reportage, statistics, peer-reviewed, certified, actual information. WHAT. WE. KNOW.

When Federal Employment Minister Eric Abetz writes a column for Fairfax Media all a-frettin’ and a’fearin’ on the certain moral delinquency that shall arise in the wake of marriage equality (should it ever come to pass), not only shall I not read it, I shall also be inclined to briefly despair at the state of a media whose dearth of talent is such these days, that it would choose to publish such shit.

Or when the likes of Rowan Dean are given space anywhere in a nation’s mainstream press media to air their simple-minded and insubstantive sniggerings, or former political parrots Amanda Vanstone or Peter Reith in The Sydney Morning Herald, and don’t even get me started on Maurice “You Can Call Me The Space Cowboy” Newman in the “The Australian”, not paying attention becomes mandatory.

When “the politics of policy” matters more than the policy to the players, when it becomes nothing but an unending bellowing ululation of frenzied irrationality and fear, when criticism becomes treason, when the tactics are always dirty and the umpire’s always on the make, the audience stop listening, the game is rigged and we know it, it’s a sting, a gyp, a monkeyshines hustle, we know when we’re being diddled and played for patsies and we just ain’t buyin’ this crap no more.

“The Abbott government’s failure to implement so many of its own pre-election promises has contributed to a perception of it as an inefficient government. It has also experienced some very public reversals and botches on policy, including the Medicare co-payment, delaying payments for unemployed young people, cuts to the age pension, race discrimination law, jobseekers applying for 40 jobs a month, deregulation of higher education, and Tony Abbott’s signature paid parental leave policy.” – Sally Young, The Sydney Morning Herald

We do not perceive these things in the context and perspective from which our politicians and their pimps and panders in the mainstream press would like us to, we perceive them in the context and perspectives of our lives as we live them, and as we know others do, and the perception has lead us, has led a great many,  to the conclusion that this government is shit, and there ain’t nothin’ no-one can do or say that will change that as long they continue to keep proving it to us every day by carrying like a pack of full-retard fuckwits.

Goodnight and good luck.

The above image was auto-generated based upon Facebook information, and you can get your very own front page here. I must say when mine turned up, I did laugh. Aloud.

THIS GOVERNMENT IS SHIT

Have I missed anything recently?

Has anything happened?

Excuse the paucity in posts of late, but I have been paying little attention to matters of national import.

Are there any?

Are they dire?

I have come to understand the Federal Government has a Defence Minister and that his name is David Johnston.

It is a name I was most unfamiliar with, and I could not put a face to it, as I was quite unaware as to whether Mr. Johnston had ever made a statement addressing matters in his portfolio during his time in government. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time, or maybe I thought that was Scott Morrison’s job. Scott Morrison often seems to think so.

Anyway, Mr. Johnston said something stupid recently, and found himself in the shit.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott leapt to Johnston’s defence, insisting he said nothing stupid, he’s not in the shit, and everything’s just so.

This is silly.

No one is listening to this shit anymore.

For the political tragics, for those whose job it is to write and comment on or analyse such matters, or those who make it their job, there are rich pickings to be had from the current crop of dunces in this government, although much of it, most of it defies any intelligent analysis, but all of it, the columns, the commentary, the criticism, pretty much all of it, amounts to the same thing, said over and over and over again.

This government is shit.

I don’t need thirty fucking columns by thirty different people inside the space of a week telling me what is, and always has been, plainly self-evident from the get-go to anybody willing to pay even the slightest bit of attention, and that is –

Tony Abbott is a lying cunt, and Tony Abbott has always been a lying cunt, and has spent pretty much his entire time in politics lying through his fucking teeth every time he opens his fucking mouth …

And so it goes.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull may be willing to make a tit of himself on national television twisting Abbott’s “no cuts to the ABC” comments every which way, but nobody, least of all himself, buys it.

Former Victorian Premier Dennis Napthine is told by a random stranger “the bullshit just keeps coming”, and so it does, they keep shoveling it on, we just learn to hold our noses, and walk on by.

No one is listening to this bullshit anymore.

“Spin, as an art, has totally jumped the shark. It’s so overdone, it’s dead. It’s self-parody. Low comedy. Kitsch. For years, as the country and political parties have grown more polarized, we’ve been moving the goal posts of spin-surdity. The farther Republicans and Democrats drifted apart, the more the spin-meisters followed and stretched their rhetoric beyond any recognizable reality. The more wacked-out the rhetoric got, the fewer people listened. Now we’ve gotten the point where even some spin-doctors think that there’s not much point any more. “I think everyone’s kind of caught on to it,” says James Carville, who, once upon a time, was to political spin what Picasso was to rearranged anatomy. “Everybody, the journalists, everybody sees through it.”” Politico, November 2014

When Foreign Minister Julie Bishop “chides” US President Barack Obama for his comments on climate change and its impact on the Great Barrier Reef, and insists “We have demonstrated world’s best practice … to ensure the Great Barrier Reef is preserved for generations to come”, nobody’s buying it because it’s bullshit and everybody knows it …

“Professor Terry Hughes, who is the director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, says there’s an extraordinary disconnect between the government’s position and what scientists across the globe are saying.

Prof Hughes said he couldn’t explain why Ms Bishop’s views were so far removed from the science.

“I think you’ll have to ask her that,” he told AAP.

Government support for the development of the vast Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee basin is also inconsistent with reef protection, he said.

“(The mine) will have a Co2 footprint that’s three times larger than New Zealand’s if it goes ahead,” he said.”

Bishop, like all of Abbott’s timid others, speaks with, and only with, Her Masters Voice, and he speaks for His, and his Masters are a troupe of medieval fools, dumb cunts with money, and not an ounce of common sense between them.

No one is listening to this bullshit anymore.

There is simply too much of it.

Did Bishop and Co honestly think, during the Brisbane G20, that they would be able to insist, or even have the gall to suggest, the President of the United States refrain from any mention of climate change (among other topics) during his address to students, that he would simply acquiesce to such a thing? Nod his nappy head with a “Yowser, masser” and play along like a good little nigger, just so as not to upset the white folk in charge?

Fuck off, you stupid little bastards.

All this and so much more is way too much of nothing to be bothering with.

Which gives rise to a dilemma of sorts.

No matter which way you spin it, no matter how many words you may use, no matter what argument you may mount, and how carefully you may mount it, no matter the detail, the logic, it is simply not possible anymore to attach any substance, any significance to anything anyone in this government has to say about any fucking thing because all of it, from all of them, is fucking nonsense.

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I understand some have said that the government lacks “narrative” or has yet to find “narrative”, but the narrative, to my mind, seems perfectly clear –

“Frankly, you need a mighty lot of unfairness before most people notice. But this one had it all. Make young people wait six months for the dole? Sure. Cut the indexation of the age pension? Sure. Charge people $7 to visit the doctor, and more if they get tests, regardless of how poor they are? Sure.

Charge people up to $42.70 per prescription? Sure. Lumber uni students with hugely increased HECS debts that grow in real terms  even when they’re earning less than $50,000 a year? Sure.” – Ross Gittins, Sydney Morning Herald, November 30, 2014

They want to rape you, kill you, spurt on your corpse, make your skin a lampshade, expect a round of applause for their efforts at making all these tough decisions, and then, just when you think they’re done, they decide to skullfuck your dog and make your cat into a slipper.

What’s not to like?

After a year of achieving little else but pissing the potential votes of whole demographics of people up against the wall in pursuit of God-Only-Knows-What-The-Fuck, we can now say, with safety and certainty in our hearts, and our minds set firm, that anything said by Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Eric Abetz, Joe Hockey, Christopher Pyne, Greg Hunt, Peter Dutton, Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull in the past, present, and the future, can all be dismissed as total bollocks.

No one is listening to this bullshit anymore, boys.

We may be inclined to forgive people for occasionally fucking it up, for screwing the pooch, but when they start beating the pup to death with a fucking mallet and rolling in the viscera, it’s time to look away. For something a little more edifying. For something a little more substantial.

“Twenty years ago, during a long, leisurely lunch conversation about the Liberals and their history, John Howard expressed the view that the party no longer attracted the sort of people it once had. He spoke frankly – at the time, his chances of a comeback looked close to zero – and I pressed him on the issue.

These people, he suggested, wanted something rather than wanting to offer something. It was a big difference.”  Norman Abjorensen, Inside Story, November 2014

There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles and comment and criticism available, of blogs and tweets and Facebook posts, of lengthy essays and features, profiles and analysis out there to be had about this current Abbott government, and all of them now seem to be saying the exact same thing.

This government is shit.

There is your headline for the next twenty-four months.

This government is shit.

And no one is listening anymore.

As for myself, I’m going to have to find some new things to scribble about next year, because these people are too stupid for time.

AUSTRALISCHEN ARBEITERJUGEND

1976.

Three months after leaving High School, I finally land a job. December, couple weeks before Christmas, I’m 17, a month off 18. How many applications I had made in my search for gainful employment I cannot recall, but I do recall the phone ringing on that day, and I remarked to my grandmother upon hearing it, “That’s probably another bloody company ringing to tell me I still don’t have a job.”

I was wrong. I did have the job. At last.

Independence beckoned. Adulthood. My job. My salary. To spend as I saw fit on whatever I damn well pleased. It felt good. It made sense. I had had my fill of “learning”, of examinations, of schoolrooms and blackboards and uniforms, of barely interested teachers, of being expected to write “essays” of substance about the turgid verbal sludge of Thomas fucking Hardy and pretend to care.

“Cliff’s Notes” came in very handy at the time.

I was reading Mailer and Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison, Hunter Thompson, Capote and Joan Didion. Conan Doyle and Arthur C. Clarke. Steinbeck and Poe and Twain. Thinking for myself, my “undeveloped” and so-called “immature” brain abuzz with ideas, with energy and imagination, the possibilities endless and, finally, I am in the world and I am an adult.

We would, a few other recent school leavers and I, gather occasionally at a pub in Sydney’s south-west and we would drink a beer, maybe two, and we would talk of our efforts to find work, how many interviews we had attended, how many applications we had submitted, and, when one of our number was successful in their efforts, we would offer congratulations, smiles, enthusiasms and handshakes all ‘round.

And we would buy another beer. As men now, no longer children.

Now, almost 40 years later, I find myself wondering what part of my working life during this time could be considered by our Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey, “leaning” rather than “lifting”, as he so simply puts it.

Could it be the 6 weeks during 1990, when I was sacked from a job at a music publisher, and didn’t bother registering for unemployment benefits until 3 weeks later because it just didn’t occur to me? I received one cheque. One week later, I had found another job.

Was it, perhaps, the 3 months in 2001 where I chose to be unemployed, having told my then employer after 10 years they could take their fucking job and shove it? I lived off the long service payout. And, when the money began to run out, I found another job.

Such reckless irresponsibility.

Was it the sick leave, just earlier this year, that I was ordered to take by both doctor and employer so that I could deal with what had become at that point, an increasingly unmanageable mental health condition? Panic and anxiety attacks every morning that would leave me drenched in sweat, dry-retching into a sink for thirty minutes and shaking so badly at times I could barely walk, let alone communicate. There are pills for that. I take them now. Two per day, sometimes three if the fear returns with a roiling vengeance to tear at my chest and punch holes in my mind.

Was it that?

I did have three months sick leave owing to me after nine years work, so it’s not as if I had spent those past years farting about, taking and faking sick days on a regular basis so I could go up the pub for a drunken bludge and play the fucking fruit machines.

Do you think?

Was I leaning?

No. I do not think so.

One “welfare” cheque in 38 years of work. One. That is the sum amount of “money for nothing” from the Australian government I have ever received. Single, no kids, no mortgage and fifty-five years old.

Nobody has thrown me a wad (so to speak) of money just for poking girl to make baby.

Nobody has thrown me twenty grand (or whatever it is or was), because I went looking for that “Great Australian Dream” of owning my own home, some over-priced, ratty little shithole of realty to get me “started in the market”.

Fuck your “market”.

One cheque.

But in 1976, there were no “leaners”, no “bludgers” among our small band of brothers gathered around that table at the pub, talking excitedly and enthusiastically about our jobs, our futures, what we wanted.

We wanted our independence. Our financial independence. We craved the freedom that would afford us, and we did get it. All of us. I got it.

I started work in December of that year as a junior clerk in a finance company, looking after the stationery supplies; on the mail-table opening letters and bundling cheques and vouchers; basic accounts work, and four years later, at 21 years of age, I was the company’s NSW State Accountant.

I attended no courses. I attained no “professional” accreditations. I have no diploma. To this day I have not stepped foot inside a classroom since leaving high school.

The company trained me. They recognised in  me an aptitude, an eagerness to learn, and they trained me. They invested their time. They made the effort. They imparted knowledge. And I soaked it up.

Fast forward to the present day.

I am in need of a new assistant. There is a young man – early 20’s – who manages the office supplies and other general duties, including front desk and reception who, I am told by my manager, has expressed an interest in moving onward and upward, seeking something a little more challenging. While I have little to do with this person, my general impression is that he is pleasant, personable and friendly, and from all reports, very good at what he is currently doing.

“Yes”, I say to my manager, “I’d be happy to see if he’d be interested. He strikes me as having a very positive attitude, so that would balance out well with my own”, I continue, having once been described by another manager once as the Most Cynical Man in The Company (I’d like that on a t-shirt, please).

“I’ll mention it to HR”, he says. A few hours later, he returns. “I’ve spoken to HR, and they don’t think he has the necessary skills, so we’ll drop that idea”, he says.

“Ah”, I say, and I am about to say something else, but catch myself, knowing it would be of little use, and I return to my desk. Where I think to myself, “How the fuck is he going to get the necessary skills, if we’re not prepared to give them to him? I’ve worked in my particular field for 35 years, and I would be more than happy to give him the benefit of my experience and knowledge. I would’ve enjoyed that.”

Johanna Wyn and Hernan Cuervo from The Conversation …

“[Youth Research Centre’s longitudinal Life Patterns research program] Following a cohort of secondary school graduates of 1991, this research traced the impact on young people’s lives of two significant policy changes that occurred in the early 1990s: university fees and the Workplace Relations Act. These policies changed the rules of school-to-work transitions, and created the conditions for a new generation (Generation X).

The period that young people spend in educational institutions has extended into their mid-twenties. They have then spent the next 10–15 years seeking secure work before “settling down”.

Although the majority of the participants in the Life Patterns study said they expected to be in stable relationships or married and becoming parents by their late 20s, it was more than ten years later that the majority were economically secure enough to make these commitments.”

I see a letter in Brisbane’s Murdoch tabloid “The Courier-Mail” that “young people don’t know what it’s like to do it tough”, and I’d like to punch the person who wrote it.

We have this …

“One in five young Australians are dealing with mental illness, but more than 60% felt uncomfortable seeking professional help, according to a new report by Mission Australia and the Black Dog Institute.

The study of 15- to 19-year-olds across the country found 21% of the 15,000 surveyed were battling a probable mental illness. The rate among females in that age group was much higher than among young men – 26% compared with 14%.

“The confronting findings in this report illustrate the significant challenges many of our young people are facing when it comes to psychological distress and mental health issues,” Mission Australia’s CEO, Catherine Yeomans, said on Wednesday.

“We know that many of our youth are struggling with complex issues, and it’s impacting on their ability to transition with confidence into adulthood.””

So we do this …

“It is proposed that young people under the age of 30 will have a six-month wait until they can access Newstart or Youth Allowance. The benefit will be available for six months only. The age of eligibility for the Newstart allowance will increase from 22 to 24 years and those aged between 22 and 24 will only be eligible for the Youth Allowance.

This amounts to a loss of just under A$50 a week compared with current arrangements. At the same time, funding has been withdrawn for the organisations that provide career counselling, including Youth Connections and the Local Learning and Employment Networks (in Victoria). Support for young people who are already vulnerable, including those with disabilities, will drop to a new low.” – Wyn and Cuervo, The Conversation

Which gives us this …

“The Life Patterns research also shows that financial hardship and combining work and study are associated with the trend towards declining mental health for young people aged 19 to 25. In other words, even now, many young people struggle against the odds to get educational or skills qualifications and to use these in the labour market. A proportion of those who do experience stress levels that are harmful to their health.” (ibid)

Which makes for more of this …

“In a report to the Australian Senate in 2010, men accounted for over three-quarters (76.9%) of deaths from suicide while an estimated 72% of males with a potentially diagnosable condition don’t seek help for mental illness … Every day, at least six Australians die from suicide and a further thirty people will attempt to take their own lives.” – Kate Richards, “Is There No Place for Me?”

They want to Kill Your Sons.

Not so much the daughters. They will be needing them for breeding (For further information, please contact the Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews. He has pamphlets, dontcha know).

The rules change. The reality changes. The goalposts shift.

Yet in the minds of our current leaders, Abbott, Hockey, Andrews, Abetz, there lingers only fondly held, somewhat dusty, sepia-toned memories as life once was, the life they led and their parents, “back in the day” – Why, they worked hard, harder than anybody has ever worked before, they learnt respect for authority, they did what they were told when they were told to do it, no complaints, no talking back, they endured hardships, they fought against the odds, against consequences, nobody gave them any fucking handouts, there are jobs out there if you want them, that’s what they did, went out and just got one, but these young folk today, they’re too busy with their Playstations and texting, they don’t even bother to fucking look.

In their minds, those of our leaders, it is not the goalposts that have shifted, it is not that the rules or the reality has changed, it’s just that the fucking people are all WRONG, they’re doing it all WRONG!

This world we now live in. This country.

A plutocracy of demagogues. Fear, cruelty, punishment, retribution.

I would not like to be young in it.

So you can’t find a job?

You have sinned. Your sins shall no longer be held as sins, but shall henceforth and from this day forward be regarded as criminal acts of gross negligence and indecency against the standards of the State. We can no longer be expected to tolerate those who would take advantage of us. As you cannot, or will not, find yourself a job, one shall be given to you.

The State is taking care of the protection, cultivation and exploitation of the forests. The State is taking care of the physical education of the nation, especially of the youth, with the aim of improving the nation’s health and national, working and defensive capability.

It is to this end, the State demands that you abide by its Decree.

You are, as of now, conscripted into the service of the State. You will accept this service. You will carry out all and any duties requested of you by the State. You will do so with pride and dedication. You will receive a small allowance for your service, but you will be granted no other rights or benefits. Your blood, your sweat, your tears, the dust of your bones shall fertilise our fields, grow our crops, and help feed our people. Your words shall be whispers to the ears of the deaf, your hopes the vain follies of indolent youth.

Welcome to Our Green Army, Australischen Arbeiterjugend!

As you toil in our lands, our factories, our fields, hold your head high, know that dein Vaterland watches over you, and loves you, be proud of your labours, and let your voice join in unison with those of your fellow labourers, and let it sing a chorus of glory, of celebration, of Victory, “Vorwärts! Vorwärts! schmettern die hellen Fanfaren!”

THE DAY MY WALLET BLEW MY BUM OFF

I am finding it difficult, if not next to nigh on impossible, to write anything intelligent or intelligible about the current Australian government under the stewardship of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

There appears to be, all across the World Wide Web, article after article, analysis after analysis, comment upon comment, all attempting to grapple with the reality of a government that appears incapable of grappling with the reality of being a government, and is, instead, behaving more like a high school debating team who will only agree to enter into the debate on condition the other team doesn’t turn up. There is no sense to be found in any of this. That way madness lies.

Their policies seem less like policies and more like coded slogans scratched into toilet doors, adorned with “Breakfast of Champions” style graphics of wide-open beavers and jism-spurting cocks.

They are not policies but rather statements of an intent to think about what a policy might be if only they could figure out what the word meant.

I cannot be expected to take these people seriously.

Their every statement, their every pronouncement on a thing is in direct contradiction to every previous statement. There is no through-line whatsoever to the thought-processes involved because there are no actual thoughts being had …

“A certain level of government spending is necessary and good.” Tony Abbott, World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 2014.

There’s a deep intellect hard at work on our behalf. Aren’t we lucky?

Down the Rabbit Hole, Through the Looking Glass, and up the Yellow Brick Road we go (we are all Scarecrows now) to AnecdoteLand, where facts, evidence, expertise, experience, professionalism, pragmatism, and peer-reviewed research matter little, if at all, to our new Grand Wizard and his Band of Merry Munchkins in this Brave New World of Magical Thinking where Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” sits next to Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” on the science shelves in the school library …

From The Independent …

“So contemptuous is he of the science behind climate change – of any science, for that matter – that he has not even bothered appointing a science minister.”

These are not intelligent people. These are not smart people. These are people who “believe” and “feel” and offer “thoughts” on things they know nothing of, and then go about making decisions based on these and these alone …

Guy Rundle from New Matilda …

“Two obvious points come out of the recent months. The first is that the Abbott government has no real game plan, apart from killing the carbon tax, and stopping the boats, and then a footling series of culture war maneouvres. The real stuff — going up against the union movement, etc is going to be hard, and they’re not in shape for that yet. Truth is, they can’t even manage a culture war, tripping over themselves as different and contradictory initiatives fly every which way.”

There is also a tendency – a compulsive tendency – for our Grand Wizard and his Munchkins to just make shit up about things, lie through their teeth when called on it, and talk complete nonsense …

From The Guardian …

[Joe] Hockey said he was told by Toyota Australia’s president, Max Yasuda, in December the company could continue if workers agreed to a new set of conditions.

“The fact is they were very concerned about the conditions that existed at Toyota in Australia,” he told Fairfax radio on Wednesday, adding that this included union “militancy”.

But the company had a different version of events. “Toyota Australia has never blamed the union for its decision to close its manufacturing operations by the end of 2017, neither publicly or in private discussions with any stakeholders,” it said …

… The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union said the Toyota statement was a “blow to the government’s credibility”.

“It’s unfortunate that companies should have to continue to correct the government’s slander,” the union said. “The government has to stop blaming workers for their policy failures.”

Fat chance.

The workers are the enemy. Die arbeiter have always been the enemy.

Here is Munchkin Abetz talking nonsense about a “30 year war” …

“Federal Employment Minister Eric Abetz is warning of a wages breakout if unions and employers do not act responsibly in negotiating new agreements …

… “Employers and unions must be encouraged to take responsibility for the cost of their deals; not just the cost to the affected enterprises but the overall cost in relation to our economy efficiency and the creation of opportunities for others,” he said.

“If this is not done, then we risk seeing something akin to the wages explosion of the pre-accord era when unsustainable wage growth simply pushed thousands of Australians out of work.””

David Peetz, Professor of Employment Relations at Griffith University calls bullshit …

“[D]ata show that wage increases under enterprise agreements are falling. At 3.7%, the growth rate is the lowest in 13 years. It sits below the long-term average, since enterprise bargaining was introduced, of 4.0% from 1992 …

… In other circumstances, strange talk of a wage explosion might have been excused as a rush of blood to the head. But this was no off-the-cuff remark, it was the culmination of a carefully scripted speech. And indeed there is nothing new about unsubstantiated talk of wages explosions. In April 2007, former treasurer Peter Costello warned that amending the Workplace Relations Act would lead to a wage explosion. It didn’t. From 2008 News Limited ran stories and regularly editorialised on a forthcoming wages breakout that never materialised.

The reference in the speech to a wage explosion was no more impromptu than the 12 mentions of war littered throughout it. War seems to be a popular word at the moment. Most references in the speech were to the “30 years war” over industrial relations – a “war” it appears Minister Abetz does not yet see as being over.

People may speculate over who is the target of the war. But one possibility is that part of it is a war on facts.”

Never let a fact get in the way of a good war, especially if it’s one being waged by the righteous warriors of the Right. Just don’t mention Iraq.

Here is a fact, courtesy of The Australia Institute –

“The typical full-time employee in Australia works 70 minutes of unpaid overtime a day. This equates to 33 eight-hour days per year, or six and a half standard working weeks. Something for nothing – unpaid overtime in Australia examines the nature, extent and consequences of Australia’s heavy reliance on unpaid overtime. Across the workforce, the 2.14 billion hours of unpaid overtime worked per year is a $72 billion gift to employers, equivalent to 6 per cent of all economic activity in Australia.”

Work is not, as Joe Hockey and Eric Abetz appear to believe, a form of “national service”, a personal sacrifice we citizens make to secure in perpetuity the prosperity of the Ruling Classes.

It is what we do so that we may live.

“You know, I’ve been around the ruling class all my life, and I’ve been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.” Gore Vidal – Interview with Paul Jay, The Real News, July 5, 2009.

This is a Government of Hatred, a Government of Contempt for those who dare to question, to challenge, who dare inquire, who dare to think.

It is a government in thrall to cults of “belief”.

We know they are liars. We know they are hypocrites. We know they are cowards.

We know they are inept, incapable, ignorant. We know they are stupid, shallow, dumb. We know all this.

Yet.

Not one word of criticism, not one syllable, not a whisper will they hear.

“To a conservative, intuition is as important as reasoning, instinct as important as intellect. A way of life has far more demonstrative power to a conservative than a brilliant argument.” – Tony Abbott, “Battlelines”

“While conservatives may preach the dignity of work, their actual agenda is to deny lower-income workers as much dignity – and personal freedom – as possible” Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economics.

They are beyond good. They are beyond evil. They are beyond ethics. They are beyond morality.

It is Kristallnacht in Australia.

For the worker, for the low-paid, for women, for the infirm, the ill, unions, teachers, public schools, public hospitals, Medicare, industry, science , public broadcasting, the arts, public servants, immigrants, refugees, environmentalists, the environment itself, the land, the water.

The end of dissent. The end of truth. The end of society.

Tony Abbott has now become a God.

Of vengeance.