This is me sliding into your inbox on a Monday because nobody should be opening their email this Friday, and I got a powerful hankerin’ for some more smokin’ Dutts-is-doomed tobasco-ass hot takes after the weekend’s byelection.
I’ll keep it brief because there’s already enough chilli in this pot.
Even Peter ‘The Stopped Clock’ Hartcher got in some good licks this morning.
A by-election is a chance for the people to lodge a protest against a government. Instead, the people of Aston on Saturday lodged a protest against the opposition.
Nor should anybody get in the way of any Sky News hosts or Murdoch trollumnists intent on warning the newly bespectacled horror spud and his crew of tiny tubers that what the voters really crave is more bigotry and even spicier crazy.
As much fun as it is watching the Libs multitask at an Olympic level, simultaneously stepping on rakes while punching themselves in the dick, there is the danger that nothing good will come of this otherwise enjoyable omnishambles.
Specifically, I’m now thinking of the Voice Referendum.
I got a lazy ten bucks says the lesson Dutton and his party take from this isn’t to have a good, long look at themselves and sort their shit out. They could, for instance, catch up with the consensus on climate change and accept the reality that dealing with it will create a new energy economy worth a trillion-plus dollars. A party of free enterprise would be all over that. They could even connive and conspire to ensure their fossil fuel donors are given an unfair advantage in transforming themselves into renewable energy giants.
Likely, however, they won’t do this. It’s too easy to keep trousering donations from big coal and gas interests.
For that to continue, you still need to be a viable chance at government. You need a win.
And the only win in prospect for Dutton this year is to tear down the Yes case in the Voice referendum. You can already see him hedging and weasel-wording his way towards it in symbiotic cahootery with Newscorp. Again.
Of course, just because he opposes it doesn’t mean it will go down.
With the marriage equality vote, we saw that you don’t need total unanimity for progress.
And in some ways, the best gains are always hard-won.
But it won’t be pretty.
And if you doubt that this guy is up for bullshitting and smearing his way through, contemplate this classic from the vault.
I am constantly amused by the extreme right who have taken over the Libs. Their solution to everything is to go further right and get more bigoted. They think the way to win elections is to appeal to a smaller and smaller cohort of zealots. I’m happy to see them shrink and shrink their base until they form a black hole of intolerance and hate that they can’t escape from to annoy the rest of us.
That Dutton/Cassidy clip was echoed yesterday when he kept on telling David Speers the Solicitor General has issues with The Voice, even after Speers got him to admit he hadn’t seen the confidential advice – and that his assertion is contradicted by the Attorney General’s department. He lies with confidence
Like that isn't bloody obvious from the rest of what Dutton said. Great how the Spud just brushes aside the presumption of innocence until proven guilty as though it's a minor inconvenience.
If in 2003 you'd asked a bunch of random people "Do you reckon an ex Queensland copper should ever be PM?", the response would've been a resounding "Fuck no!" just as it should be today.
Nyadol Nyuon summed it up perfectly "How News Corp Captured the Liberal Party", The Saturday Paper March 25. Spud has nowhere to go but self destruction in pleasing his masthead. While toasting marshmallows over the bin fire is fun, we're paying the opposition for sweet fuck all.
We haven't had a conservative party or a liberal party (other than in name) for a long, long time, just a bunch of reactionary hypocrites - Dutton, Morrison, Robert, Abbott, Tudge, Cash, Joyce, Canavan.
That Barrie Cassidy interview with Peter Dutton is an absolute clincher. That deserves replaying every night on national news broadcasts! Until Peter Dutton is gone forever from the political scene where he can do no more harm to our country!
Wasn't it Paul Keating who said the Liberal Party had no principles, that it was simply a bunch of vested interests in search of policy. Seems to be proved more and more every day. But I fear you are correct, the referendum is, like the same sex marriage plebiscite going to see even more extreme ugly brutal racism by the reich-wing in Australia.
Poor ol Libs, to push Newscorp's agenda they need enough voters brainwashed by Uncle Rupert, but that number is slowly getting smaller and smaller in Oz, while the voters that reject or downright don't even know about Newscorp get bigger and bigger every year, even the young RWNJ's don't pay attention to Newscorp-(unfortunatly many of them follow even spicier brain rot.)
F*ck me that clip at the end hit me like a 4x2. Absolutely chilling when you think about the Voice "debate".
It's an interesting time. News Corp and the mainstream media that parrots it, including the Canberra-based ABC, is now so irrelevant that controlling the news agenda counts for little. Murdoch kept his influence by repetition outside News Corp, but that's ending.
In the US, things look bad for him in the case brought by voting machine company Dominion: the penalty could be over a billion dollars and Fox is torn apart over Trump.
In the UK, the Tories are trying to recycle our asylum seeker elections from the early 2000s, to distract from the utter clusterfuck Murdoch-sponsored Brexit and Murdoch-sponsored prime ministers have wrought: energy bills going up by factors of 4, inflation well over 10 per cent. I think several Australian political advisor hacks have headed over there as the work here dried up. But Britain is not Queensland.
Murdoch, now ninety-fucking-six years old, is in deep trouble across his empire and that's great news.
Once there was a man who wanted to be leader of the Liberal Party and, in so doing, become PM.
But he didn't understand the way numbers go and lost (a reference to Luke 14:29-30 seems apropos here, in the context. Jesus did warn you, Pete, about the mocking that would follow).
Then he pronounced that a by-election, which on a century of form would be a dead-cert for him to win, would somehow be a judgement on leadership of the two major parties as opposed to, well, what the electorate always does every single time.
But they didn't, making his prophecy true in a meaningful sense.
Finland, the happiest country in the world, has just turfed its leader, Sanna Marin and the centre-left - you know, the party whose policies enabled the Finns to be happy? Wtf is wrong with people! They voted for conservatives who don't want money spent on people's welfare/well-being.
News like that shakes my innate sliver of optimism, so now I can't gleefully anticipate the righteous schadenfreude I'd experience at Dutt's getting mashed by the Voice referendum results. And I so needed that gleeful anticipation.
I am constantly amused by the extreme right who have taken over the Libs. Their solution to everything is to go further right and get more bigoted. They think the way to win elections is to appeal to a smaller and smaller cohort of zealots. I’m happy to see them shrink and shrink their base until they form a black hole of intolerance and hate that they can’t escape from to annoy the rest of us.
That Dutton/Cassidy clip was echoed yesterday when he kept on telling David Speers the Solicitor General has issues with The Voice, even after Speers got him to admit he hadn’t seen the confidential advice – and that his assertion is contradicted by the Attorney General’s department. He lies with confidence
Barrie: "You're an ex Queensland policeman."
Like that isn't bloody obvious from the rest of what Dutton said. Great how the Spud just brushes aside the presumption of innocence until proven guilty as though it's a minor inconvenience.
If in 2003 you'd asked a bunch of random people "Do you reckon an ex Queensland copper should ever be PM?", the response would've been a resounding "Fuck no!" just as it should be today.
Nyadol Nyuon summed it up perfectly "How News Corp Captured the Liberal Party", The Saturday Paper March 25. Spud has nowhere to go but self destruction in pleasing his masthead. While toasting marshmallows over the bin fire is fun, we're paying the opposition for sweet fuck all.
We haven't had a conservative party or a liberal party (other than in name) for a long, long time, just a bunch of reactionary hypocrites - Dutton, Morrison, Robert, Abbott, Tudge, Cash, Joyce, Canavan.
That Barrie Cassidy interview with Peter Dutton is an absolute clincher. That deserves replaying every night on national news broadcasts! Until Peter Dutton is gone forever from the political scene where he can do no more harm to our country!
Wasn't it Paul Keating who said the Liberal Party had no principles, that it was simply a bunch of vested interests in search of policy. Seems to be proved more and more every day. But I fear you are correct, the referendum is, like the same sex marriage plebiscite going to see even more extreme ugly brutal racism by the reich-wing in Australia.
Poor ol Libs, to push Newscorp's agenda they need enough voters brainwashed by Uncle Rupert, but that number is slowly getting smaller and smaller in Oz, while the voters that reject or downright don't even know about Newscorp get bigger and bigger every year, even the young RWNJ's don't pay attention to Newscorp-(unfortunatly many of them follow even spicier brain rot.)
F*ck me that clip at the end hit me like a 4x2. Absolutely chilling when you think about the Voice "debate".
What a fucking turnip 🙄
It's an interesting time. News Corp and the mainstream media that parrots it, including the Canberra-based ABC, is now so irrelevant that controlling the news agenda counts for little. Murdoch kept his influence by repetition outside News Corp, but that's ending.
In the US, things look bad for him in the case brought by voting machine company Dominion: the penalty could be over a billion dollars and Fox is torn apart over Trump.
In the UK, the Tories are trying to recycle our asylum seeker elections from the early 2000s, to distract from the utter clusterfuck Murdoch-sponsored Brexit and Murdoch-sponsored prime ministers have wrought: energy bills going up by factors of 4, inflation well over 10 per cent. I think several Australian political advisor hacks have headed over there as the work here dried up. But Britain is not Queensland.
Murdoch, now ninety-fucking-six years old, is in deep trouble across his empire and that's great news.
Once there was a man who wanted to be leader of the Liberal Party and, in so doing, become PM.
But he didn't understand the way numbers go and lost (a reference to Luke 14:29-30 seems apropos here, in the context. Jesus did warn you, Pete, about the mocking that would follow).
Then he pronounced that a by-election, which on a century of form would be a dead-cert for him to win, would somehow be a judgement on leadership of the two major parties as opposed to, well, what the electorate always does every single time.
But they didn't, making his prophecy true in a meaningful sense.
What's next? Popcorn at the ready.
Finland, the happiest country in the world, has just turfed its leader, Sanna Marin and the centre-left - you know, the party whose policies enabled the Finns to be happy? Wtf is wrong with people! They voted for conservatives who don't want money spent on people's welfare/well-being.
News like that shakes my innate sliver of optimism, so now I can't gleefully anticipate the righteous schadenfreude I'd experience at Dutt's getting mashed by the Voice referendum results. And I so needed that gleeful anticipation.
He’s an “all quiet on the western front”
The Coalition: it would fracture society if the Voice referendum fails.
Also the Coalition: Imma do everything in my power to see the Voice referendum fails.