ScoMo does ‘Mad Gladys’ shoving Australians under the Covid bus – tar and feathers await LNP

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has extolled the ‘Mad Gladys’ line that it is ‘we’ who must ‘Learn to Live’ with the virus – including the latest Omicron variant sweeping the world. With this emphasis ScoMo is walking away from his Government’s responsibility for it being in Australia, and for the health of Australians, after spending more than $300 Billion dollars in economic response to the advent of Covid 19.

On Bribie Island Queensland yesterday the Prime Minister stated:-

‘But we’re not going back to lockdowns, we’re not going back to shutting down people’s lives. We’re going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility. And there will be other variants beyond Omicron. And we have to ensure as a country and as leaders around the country, we have put in place measures that Australians can live with. And what that means is we have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility. That’s how we live with this virus into the future.’

‘But as a country, we’ve got to get past the heavy hand of government and we’ve got to treat Australians like adults, and we all have our own responsibility in our communities and for our own health.’

‘We just need to live with this virus sensibly and practically. From mandates to responsibility. And as governments around the country, because, as you know, the states have the total authority when it comes to public health measures, the Commonwealth does not have the power to direct those state and territory governments. And so what I’ll be saying to them, and I know a number of premiers agree with this, is that we’ve got to move to the next phase of how we live with this virus.’

ScoMo made these comments with modelling suggesting Australia could be looking at 200 thousand cases per day come late January, and with other nations already acting to reinstate quarantine in the face of Omicron.

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For the record…….

  • ScoMo is a Prime Minister of a nation with no land borders, meaning the only way for the virus to enter is via an airport terminal. Despite an overtly stated Constitutional responsibility for Quarantine, ScoMo has failed to build or ensure effective national quarantine facilities for Australia, nearly 2 years after the first Covid case arrived in Australia.
  • ScoMo has prioritised opening Australia’s borders and bringing in visa holders, students, tourists and agricultural workers, despite alienating hundreds of thousands of Australians stranded offshore since the global advent of the virus. His government is openly exhorting, and prioritising the arrival of more than 200 thousand migrants before June next year, despite these people being the biggest single source of risk for people in Australia of the arrival of Covid in Australia.
  • ScoMo is a man who has splashed about billions of Australian tax dollars to help companies posting mega profits post bigger profits via JobKeeper. This has also ensured thousands of often affluent professionals, with scope to structure their finances accordingly, were enabled government funded sabbaticals in what is already being seen as the largest ever cash giveaway by an Australian government.
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  • ScoMo did this while ensuring ordinary working Australians were tied to their employers for support they received, and that the thousands of contracted and casualised Australians who were ‘stood down’ at the drop of a hat when Covid did hit were only begrudgingly and minimally supported. Thousands of these are now being shafted by rapidly rising rental costs or seeing the prospect of them ever being able to afford a home of their own go out the window due to turbocharged housing prices – largely fueled by the economic supports put in place to address Covid.
  • ScoMo exhorted the one State disinclined to lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus in June 2021 when the failed quarantine arrangements in place at Australia’s major international gateway facilitated the spread of Covid delta in Australia. He was openly dismissive of the epic struggle carried out in Victoria in 2021 and 2020 to eliminate the virus, and the hard borders imposed by Queensland, South Australia and West Australia. He cheered on Mad Gladys Berejiklian when she facilitated the entry of the virus in June 2021 by not locking down in Sydney.
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ScoMo is a Prime Minister suggesting the handling of Covid 19 from here is some sort of ‘individual responsibility’ in the face of mounting evidence the Omicron variant is spreading around the world at unprecedented rates.

He seems to be suggesting it is ‘individual responsibility’ when his government controls the quarantine of the hundreds of thousands of people – the biggest single likely source of Covid in the lives of Australians – his government has already started importing into Australia from locations where the Omicron variant is already prevalent and spreading.

He seems to be suggesting that it is ‘individual responsibility’ when the ‘vaccines’ Australians have taken in overwhelming numbers, signing a waiver in the process – in response to the exhortations of his government – are so woeful in terms of their protective effect they are at risk at peak protection – still capable of getting and transmitting the virus – and need boosters within weeks.

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He seems to be suggesting it is ‘individual responsibility’ when his government is ‘mandating’ vaccinations for children as young as 5 when data about the implications for those children is doubtful, the actual benefits of doing so for those children is quite minimal, and where the health impacts of repeated vaccinations (as would be implied by the existing vaccines having such a limited lifespan) on growing children may have considerable risk.

He seems to be suggesting it is a ‘heavy hand’ when State governments determining their responsibility for the protection of their citizens mandate mask wearing, crowd limitations, or lockdowns. He seems to have completely walked away from the position he exhorted countless times about vaccination leading to an ability for Australia to open up safely. He seems completely unable to acknowledge any form of behavioural modification, mask wearing and spacing, or lockdown, in the appropriate management of the virus.

The utterly palsied implications of this are nicely articulated in this piece in the Canberra Times by Professor Ross Gordon at the Queensland University of Technology.

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But health behavioural expert at the Queensland University of Technology Ross Gordon warned Australia’s plans were based on now-defunct assumptions over vaccine efficacy, arguing ongoing “low cost” measures – mask mandates, check-in apps, and indoor density limits – would mitigate spiraling case numbers.

Mask mandates have returned across the northern hemisphere with Omicron growing roots.

Professor Gordon said Australia had so far managed the pandemic in a “much less damaging way” than many European countries, but feared it was now “going in the opposite direction”.

“It’d be great to have a Christmas that we all thought we were going to have, but Omicron has changed things dramatically,” he said.

“[These measures are] not too much of an imposition. It’s not a lockdown. It still allows people to go about their everyday business, but it’s just in a slightly safer way.”

Professor Gordon rejected the Prime Minister’s binary shift to personal responsibility, saying Australians need to be supported by “clear signals” from their leaders.

“It’s hard to suggest that it’s all about personal responsibility. It’s about government and the population working together to try and navigate us through the pandemic,” he said.

“It’s all well and good to say that a lot of responsible Australians might keep using a mask, anyway … [but] it just leaves that lack of clarity about what you should and what you shouldn’t be doing.”

The emergence of Omicron has also raised the prospect of restrictions being reimposed sporadically as new mutations reached Australian shores.

Professor Gordon believed localised lockdowns and mask mandates were “very likely” to continue over the next few years, with vaccines never likely to be a “silver bullet”.

“Our political leaders globally, not just in Australia, have sold this story that all we need to do to get out of this is get double-jabbed, and unfortunately that’s not proving to be the case,” he said.

“I don’t think it was wise to over-egg that argument. It was always going to be the case that vaccines are part of the mix, but behavioural change is important as well.”

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In the face of such well informed concerns about the potential implications for Australia of Covid the Prime Minister seems to be that individual Australians carry the ‘responsibility’ while he sets course for post political career comfort having palpably failed at the core responsibility he has to all Australians.

Well let us all talk about ‘heavy hands’ and ‘responsibility’. Either Covid carries health implications worthy of $300 billion worth of outlays or it doesn’t. If it does then is a government mandate on behaviours to protect people a ‘heavy hand’? If it doesn’t then was the outlay of more than $300 billion an appropriate use of public funds?

  • The people of Australia would like to know if the ScoMo government has been a ‘heavy hand’ for the effective handling of Covid in Australia.
  • The people of Australia would like to know where the ‘responsibility’ of the ScoMo government has been at any level.
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The only way we will get answers to these questions is by a Royal Commission into the advent of Covid19 in Australia.

The only way we get this is by Scott Morrison driving to Yarralumla and seeking writs for a Federal Election.

ScoMo should do this as a Christmas gift to the people of Australia…..And the people of Australia should use their ‘heavy hand’ to get a white hot poker and insert some ‘responsibility’ into this government, and we should do it before the current government hands over a stool in a letterbox to the next government or blows the budget to smithereens with more giveaways to their mates (again).

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It is time for scalps…