I like Katherine Murphy usually but this is ridiculous:
On Wednesday we were treated to the spectacle of two Riverview old boys – a former prime minister, Tony Abbott, who keeps doggedly prosecuting a battle he has already lost, flogging incendiary populist claptrap as a manifestation of his thwarted greatness – and a deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who seemingly cannot shut his mouth to save himself.
Abbott railed querulously against Scott Morrison, and experts, particularly Treasury shiny bums, and non-integrating migrants in the hope that his former chief of staff, or someone else on the Sky News night shift or 2GB, those being the focus groups of choice, might present him to the world as he sees himself – as a misunderstood political genius, cruelly cut down by lesser mortals.
I’m not here to tell you that that is not a good description of Tony Abbott. It is. But ad hominem attacks aside, Abbott’s points on house prices and wages are not “incendiary populist claptrap” they are exactly right.
This becomes perverse when the story sitting right next to Murphy’s at The Guardian is this:
The number of employed Australians seeking help for homelessness has jumped by almost 30% in three years, sparking concerns that stagnant wage growth and high housing costs are pushing workers to the brink.
The Victorian-based Council to Homeless Persons has released an analysis showing 20,302 employed Australians sought homelessness support in 2016-17, well up from 15,931 in 2013-14.
The council has blamed the rise on a combination of sluggish wage growth and extreme housing costs. On Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest wage data, which showed wages grew by just 2.1% last year. Housing costs grew by 3.4% in the same period.
I mean, cripes, Katherine, talk about all care and no responsibility. You’re prejudices are every bit as bad as Abbott’s.
This follows the same path of shocking hypocrisy the Fake Left Guardian shows on the environment. The paper recently labelled a “national disgrace” the loss of biodiversity across Australia as massive rates of land clearing and urbanisation over-run the natural habitat:
More than 1,800 plant and animal species and ecological communities are at risk of extinction right now…
…The federal government’s most recent State of the Environment report concluded that Australia’s biodiversity had declined further since 2011 and new approaches were needed to address this downward trajectory for many species.
Guardian Australia interviewed scientists, researchers, conservationists and policy analysts whose work across threatened species research and protection spans decades.
They described the situation confronting Australia’s threatened plants and animals as a “national disgrace” and the systems that are supposed to protect them as “broken”…
Yet the paper failed completely to address the key driver of the destruction: population growth and urbanisation.
I mean, fair dinkum, Katherine, The Guardian is supposed to be here to bring journalistic rigour to a dying centrist press yet the paper’s point of view is simply to reinforce the biases of its chosen Fake Left audience. At least Domainfax has the excuse of being addicted realty revenues. What’s yours?
The Guardian has become the Fox News of the Fake Left.
