The Christine Holgate saga rolls on today as the former Australia Post CEO demands an apology from PM Scott Morrison and he refuses to give it. This is all drama that is thoroughly beside the point. What is really at stake here is the corrupt Morrison Government policy process blown sky-high today by, of all
The drums of war are surrounding Taiwan. Much of it is still the kind of Cold War jousting one would expect yet its tenor is pretty intense: China launched 25 military jets into Tawainese airspace yesterday after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned it for being “increasingly aggressive”. It is the largest incursion in a
Here it is all over again. The Morrison Government unprocess of government. Stack a honey pot with your mates, bully sheilas out of the way, and muzzle the joint for political purposes: The Australian Post board consisted of seven of eight board seats occupied by Coalition cronies feasting on the taxpayer teat. None had any
Some folks just never learn. The fake left for instance: The Greens are ramping up a campaign to increase family visas. They would like to accelerate the entrance of 200k extra visas. The current system is “unfair”. The question is, unfair to whom? Is it unfair to the migrants who knew that were leaving behind
Australians need a vaccine for Morrison Government lies. The rollout of the vaccine is getting worse not better but according to our lying PM it’s keeping us on pace with everybody else: Morrison said Australia’s rollout is “keeping pace” with everybody else. We don’t need to keep up because we “are different” and have “no
I noted last week that the NSW Government had declared war on its Morrison Government Coalition cousin: “7.30 is a very good program, Leigh, a very good program, and we do get a lot of our information from you.” – NSW Health Minister @BradHazzard on where he gets information about the vaccine rollout. #abc730 @leighsales
Paul Kelly was one of the last to join Team Australia versus China. But he’s on board now: Last week’s combined push by the Morrison Government and the Business Council of Australia to diversify trade has created a new anti-China consensus. The CCP’s economic coercion will intensify. Team Australia plans to counter this with a
Australia’s vaccine debacle continues today. The latest leaderboard has us leapfrogging Lebanon and Sri Lanka closing in on the West Indies! But, if you’re a sinking prime minister, you can always manipulate the data: So, the starting point in the race is not when the gun goes off, it’s when you got up after falling
There have not been many who have dared make the comparison between CCP China and Nazi Germany. Both are fascist states governed economically by central planning. Both rely upon ethnic eugenics for political legitimacy. Both are incrementally expansionist to attack competing liberal democracies. Both use powerful economies to buy off and silence opponents. Both are
Desperate to appear to be doing something, the Morrison Government has moved quickly to do nothing. Its latest unsolution is for Australia’s gigantic 2021 vaccine supply hole: The Morrison Government has secured an additional 20m doses of Pfizer vaccine. Sadly, they won’t arrive until Q4 this year. The second point means that the new doses
This is something that I just can’t understand. Both from the perspective of the Morrison Government’s most sacred responsibility and the lassitude in Australians generally. Why have Australia’s 40k overseas citizens been so readily abandoned to their pandemic fates? It raises the question what is the point of “Australia” at all? Alexander Downer takes up
An open letter from a global coalition of eminent global scientists: Reaction to the China-WHO joint study team report CoV-2 origin hypotheses.”Having read the report entitled‘WHO-convenedGlobalStudy of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China part’ and reviewed the statements made in the March 30, 2021 WHO-organized press event announcing the report’s release, we have regrettably concluded that our
With crisis comes opportunity. The Morrison Government’s collapsed vaccination program is a big one. Solutions are being posed: Chief Health Officer says the Government is mulling a deal with Moderna. Domain is calling on the Government to cough up big to get more Pfizer. Recalling that Israel secured its early advantage by paying double. I
God, what a schmozzle. After PM Morrison yesterday reassured Australians that there was no reason to suspend the Astra Zeneca vaccine, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has come down with recommendations of the complete opposite: 4-6 people per million will suffer thrombosis triggered by the AZ vaccine. ATAGI has recommended that the
Thanks to Morrison Government procurement policy, Australia finds itself overly reliant upon the Astra Zeneca vaccine which has had both supply and health issues. Now, after the UK banned the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine for under-30s, Australia’s entire vaccine strategy is at risk. At News: The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI)
Precisely as forecast at MB, China’s trade war on Australia is really upon itself. Commodities are fungible and will always be shipped no matter what China does. It can preference its suppliers but cannot withdraw its demand from global markets so we will fill the supply gaps created by it shifting procurement elsewhere. New charts
More lies and drivel from Prime Minister Morrison yesterday. As usual, he doesn’t hold the hose, mate. Even when he does: “I want to stress that at no time yesterday did I make any comment about the actions of the European Union, nor did I indicate any of the background reasons for the lack of
Courtesy of Bernard Keane at Crikey: Scott Morrison’s story on why the vaccine rollout is a disaster keeps changing. And it has nothing to do with 3.1 million vaccines doses held up by Europe (a claim the EU denies, in any event). Yesterday, when asked why the government was so badly adrift of its initial
The global vaccine rollout is going swimmingly for competent nations. Check out how effective a good vaccine rollout can be in a virus-torn country: That’s with half the population vaccinated but much broader coverage for vulnerable populations. Israel is finished one round and the result is stunning: How did they do it? First, procurement policy
Morrison Government smut covers Australia in infamy worldwide today as the truth comes out at Bloomberg: Few believe Morrison knew nothing of the smut scandals. Canberra is an inescapable cess-pit where pollies and media are locked in incestuous proximity. Washington is much more decentralised, older, and less parochial. Insular blow-ins breed contempt for the polity.
As we know, Prime Minister Scott Morrison “doesn’t hold the hose, mate”. Which is just as well. Because he does hold the syringe and that is not going at all well. State premiers are banding together to attack the Morrison Government in the National Cabinet this week. They are demanding accurate rollout data being withheld
There’s some serious scuttlebutt around Labor’s position on negative gearing reform today. Previously, the media has reported that senior Labor figures had decided to dump negative gearing reforms at its national conference. That happened but according to the AFR it’s not over: House prices are out of control and likely to generate angst in the
Ah Labor, the CCP’s favoured party Downunder: Shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong has succeeded in preventing the Labor policy platform from condemning Chinese “genocide” in Xinjiang. Labor has instead condemned the CCP for crushing Uyghers as “not the actions of a responsible global power”. The excellent Kimberly Kitching did manage to inject the value
From Liberal Party insider Niki Savva: Keeping tarnished MPs will cost the government. Morrison should have sacked Reynolds, Porter to backbench and Laming to crossbench. Should have privately offered to meet Brittany Higgins not publically. Labor sees Josh Frydenberg as a greater threat than Morrison. But no challenge is coming. Morrison sloganeering has cheapened gender
Australian Academy of Science: Full report here. Everybody should read it.
It’s tiny, backwards, gap-toothed, corrupt and failing abysmally in its vaccine rollout. It is Albania. Or is that Australia? Actually, both: By any measure that is an abysmal failure for a developed country with a top-notch health system run by individual states. Sadly, that system was overlooked so that a pack of federal arseholes could
Lordy, Canada has banned the use of Scott Morrison’s politically-connected Astra Zeneca vaccine for under 55s. Now Germany has done so for over 60s! The German health regulator has recommended the ban after data on the thrombosis side-effects. Four Germans states have found new cases of thrombosis. The cases still appear to rare and linked
The news today is the Morrison Government’s marriage of bloke and woke has been comprehensively destroyed by Australia of the Year, Grace Tame: Morrison engaged in distractions without solutions. New assistant Women’s Minister, Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker, previously conducted a “fake rape crisis” tour. Stoker is also a confidant of Bettina Arndt who has previously
The terrible vaccine rollout of the Morrison Government has a new problem today. Having allowed political connections to infect its vaccine procurement policy, we have little or no alternatives to the Astra Zeneca vaccine that has been dogged by problems in Europe. Those have been resolved now but a new problem has emerged in Canada:
In late 2019, Australia’s union movement lashed Labor (here and here) for waving through several wage-crushing with Indonesia, Hong Kong and Peru. The union movement claimed that the trade deals breach Labor’s national policy platform, which outlawed deals with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses and mandated labour market testing. “This is bad for local workers,
