Friday 29 January 2021

When We Needed Churchill – We Got ScoMo: The Best of 2020. As Editor. A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 December, 2021.

 

When We Needed Churchill – We Got ScoMo: The Best of 2020.

By Paul Collits

We are living through a national crisis.  Things are out of control.  Sitting atop the disaster is a man who shouldn’t be there.

There can be little doubt that Australia, now in a time of crisis and clearly out of control, is run by someone who has no business “being there”.  Like the United Kingdom, we are governed by a chancer.

Scott Morrison chanced upon political power in 2018 in the most bizarre of circumstances – a Liberal Party internal civil war and an ideological implosion – and held on to power following a surreal election in 2019 which the Labor Opposition itself suffered its own ideological implosion, and committed political suicide, thus gifting an utterly mediocre and undeserving Liberal led coalition three more years in government. 

And now, this chancer sits atop an even more bizarre political scenario, the dictatorship of a virus, and somehow continues to prosper electorally, judging by the polls and the sycophantic support of the corporate media. 

This story is little short of incredible

The Government Morrison leads clearly has no idea what it is doing at a time of national crisis.  He personally has no idea what he is doing.  A nation is literally disintegrating before him.  He botched policies relating to the only actual health threat posed by the Covid virus, care for the frail aged, a responsibility held by the Commonwealth. 

Morrison has no answer to the border lockdowns enforced by premiers over whom he clearly wields no influence whatsoever.  He oversees a regime that has shut down international travel, enforcing prohibitions matched only by North Korea and Cuba.

When we needed Churchill, we got ScoMo.

Morrison is the Chauncey Gardner of Australian politics.  For those who have forgotten, or never saw, the 1979 film Being There, starring the incomparable Peter Sellers, here is a reminder. 

Sellers played Chance the gardener, who through a series of bizarre events and no particular merit, came to be a central figure in power politics.  As IMDB notes:

A simpleminded, sheltered gardener becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful businessman and an insider in Washington politics.

Some weeks ago our prime minister uttered the immortal words – “I support Daniel Andrews”. 

This is a man who may well have committed industrial manslaughter for his insane quarantine madness.  A man who has placed a whole state under house arrest. 

A man who rules as a co-dictator with his chief of police and his chief health bureaucrat.  A man who has abandoned any pretence of governing under the rule of law.  A reckless criminal of a premier, whose actions have now been questioned as to their legality.

Victorian curfew invalid according to top QC

Morrison and Andrews need one another

While Andrews exists, Morrison escapes even the merest modicum of scrutiny.  While Morrison exists, with his brand new 2020 toy, the “national cabinet”, Andrews gets protection.

Since Morrison’s pathetic defence of Andrews, things in Victoria have actually got worse. He has extended his astonishing emergency powers for another six months (at least) on the back of deals (no doubt) done with three Victorian sleazy Upper House MPs – to be precise, a former prostitute, an animal rights activist and a greenie.  

Amazingly, the former prostitute claims to be a libertarian.  Aren’t they meant to cherish freedom above all else?

And, far more shockingly, we have seen the arrest by the Vicstapo of a pregnant woman for the crime of posting a social media post about a planned protest in Ballarat against Victoria’s fascist lockdown laws. 

The senior VicPol spokesman, one Luke Cornelius, actually said on television that Zoe was engaged in “serious criminal activity”.  I kid you not.  Serious criminal activity.  Whatever attributes are needed to get a senior position in VicPol, clearly an IQ of over 30 isn’t one of them.  Daniel Andrews claimed not to have seen the video of her arrest.

Ponder the nation we have become, and consider those to whom the power to govern us has been handed.  Chief Health Officers.  Police forces of the calibre of the corrupt cowboys of VicPol.  Bureaucrats behind which scared, clueless politicians cower.

One has to ask – who is Daniel Lenin’s “useful idiot” in all this? 

No one of even the most basic human intelligence and moral character can stand idly by and let this go through to the keeper.  Australia is now run by, and populated with, midwits.  We have a prime minister who famously opined – “how many jobs does freedom of speech create?”  A prime minister who created Australia’s greatest economic crisis since the Depression.  Scotty from marketing.

The other week we saw the following update on the so-called death virus:

… six Victorians died on Tuesday. Five were men in their 80s and one was a man in his 90s. All of the deaths are linked to outbreaks in aged care facilities.

This is what it is all about. 

This truly pathetic faux crisis has delivered Australians rule by Chief Health Officer, corrupt VicPol cowboys who should actually be ashamed to show their faces in public arresting pregnant women who wish to organise peaceful demonstrations, parliamentary deals done with loopy greens and prostitutes to extend martial law in the state of Victoria, hundreds of fines every day, arbitrary arrest, police smashing the car windows of the innocent. 

And sitting atop all of this, doing nothing at all, emerging from his lair every so often to mouth meaningless clichés – like “I support Daniel Andrews” – is the man from marketing.  If only he had stayed there.  Then we might have got someone with the spine and the wit and the morals to actually do something to arrest our slide as a nation into poverty, turpitude and decay.  To actually govern.

The accidental prime minister.  Chauncey Morrison.  We deserve much, much better.

All Oppositions in the Anglosphere has simply given up earning their pay.  They are truly pathetic, none more so than what’s-his-name in Victoria.  They stand for nothing.  The corporate media are simply not doing their jobs.

Until we get the chance to re-consign Scotty the gardener to his former occupation via the electoral process, what is to be done?  The Queensland based Canadian legal academic James Allan has suggested an anti-lockdown party.  I am not sure what this would achieve, but it would at least give people like me someone sensible to vote for.  I would happily support such a party.  I would even help to form it. 

We know already that the Liberal party is beyond useless. 

Neither liberal nor anything else, really.  Motivated by nothing except careerism and wealth post the parliamentary career, it believes in nothing other than gaining and holding office. 

For such an operation, Morrison is the perfect leader. 

The answer in the short term needs to involve direct action.  The situation is that serious.

G, O and D, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 January, 2021.

 G, O and D

By Ian Purdie

The library stood five stories tall,

Looking up from its entrance the children felt small,

Inside they could smell all the musty old books,

And feel the silence enforced by harsh looks,

Off to one side were some tables and chairs,

And beside them there was a set of stairs,

A gaping invitation, the sweet promise of so much more,

Lurking above on the upper floors,

But an old priest was seated at the bottom,

And when the children approached, he leaned forward to stop them.

“I’m sorry but you can’t go up there,

All the books you need are right down here,”

One little boy thought that this wasn’t fair,

He asked the priest, “What’s up those stairs?”

“There’s only three letters, G, O and D,

There really is nothing that you want to see”,

A little girl didn’t listen and snuck round behind,

She ran up the stairs to see what she could find,

There was another big room filled with books at the top, 

But the stairs kept going up so she didn’t stop,

She climbed up further to another big room,

With more books on more shelves heading off in the gloom,

This time she decided to take a good look,

So she went to a shelf and opened a book,

It was all about reincarnation,

And another about alien visitation,

There were books about pyramids and books about karma,

Books about the afterlife and spiritual armour,

There was a book about dreams and one about hate,

And another that simply called itself ‘Fate’,

She put them all back and returned to the stairs,

They kept going up so she swallowed her fears,

And up she climbed till she reached the fourth floor,

Where, if she hadn’t seen enough books already, were more,

She took another book from another shelf,

But this one was about herself.

In shock she dropped it on the floor,

And ran up more stairs to escape what she’d just saw,

The top floor was different, it was bathed in light,

She stopped on the stairs amazed at the sight,

She could make out some people and asked “Who are you?”

A man stepped forward and said “Hi, I’m Lao Tsu,

And these are my friends, Jesus, Plato and Mohamad,”

“Wait a minute” said the girl, “I thought you were dead,”

“We’re all just fine but they murdered our words,

And made our messages completely absurd,”

Another man stepped forward to greet her with his smile,

“I’m Gautama the Buddha, welcome my child,

Take this with you so you never forget,”

And he gave her a lotus as their eyes met,

Suddenly the girl woke up in her bed,

It was all just a dream, it was all in her head,

But as she got up, she couldn’t but notice,

That in her hand she still held the lotus.


Other stories by Ian Purdie in A Sense of Place Magazine can be found here.

And So Much More, Unfolding Catastrophe: Part III. A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 january, 2021.

 And So Much More

Unfolding Catastrophe: Part III.

Early in the “pandemic”, or “plandemic” as sceptics were already calling it, both mainstream and independent commentators queued to attack Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose mishandling of Covid-19 was likely to be derided by historians for generations to come.

Katharine Murphy, a senior political reporter with Guardian Australia, inside the beltway if anyone was, wrote that as her nephew, a teacher, texted her the previous night, he was still allowed to teach a class of 30 children but if he died from the virus caught there only 10 can come to his funeral. If he remarried only four others could be there but if he called it a boot camp 10 could come. Which makes for a clear message.

“This pandemic has plunged us all into whitewater, but there are some certainties.

“The first rock solid certainty is 10pm media conferences unveiling fundamental changes to people’s livelihoods and freedom of movement really don’t work. At the risk of being blunt, they need to stop, and stop now, because the chaos risks being counterproductive.

“Tuesday night’s cascading instructions from Scott Morrison’s podium were stay home everyone, but if you have a job, you are an essential worker, so make sure you keep working. Go to school, but don’t go to the food court. Five at a wedding, 10 at a funeral, 10 at a bootcamp, but no yoga. No waxing, but a hairdresser for 30 minutes is still OK.

“A thread of logic ran through the various delineations — or some of them anyway — but holding onto that thread was really challenging.

“The dull thud that could be heard in the distance as Morrison spoke at a fiendish clip was the sound of a million Australian heads exploding in their lounge rooms.”

Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia

An old sociology professor of his, Allan Patience, piled on the scathing commentary with a piece titled “Australia: The Leaderless Nation”. 

Australia has been leaderless since the federal election last May.

“The Morrison government has shown itself to be woefully unprepared for the policy challenges now facing the country. It is a government that bumbles and reacts, while constantly being on the backfoot. And all the prime minister seems capable of is shouty blathering in the parliament, while alternating between his trademark smirk and staring nervously into TV cameras like a rabbit caught in a spotlight.

“It is now painfully clear that, as prime minister, Scott Morrison is way out of his depth. 

“In short, Morrison lacks the wily intelligence and political acumen of a Bob Hawke or the principled conservatism of a Malcolm Fraser. 

“Morrison articulates his politics in slogans with which he tries to bludgeon his opponents. There is no nuancing, no subtlety in this approach. 

“Scotty from Marketing is absolutely the appropriate moniker for him. 

“What exactly does he stand for? What is his vision for a secure and prosperous Australia? It’s very hard to sort the blather from the substance because it seems there is no substance there at all. Intellectually, morally and as a politician, he is a very shallow man.”

Bondi Beach, Australia Day

The “father of the nation”, as his acolytes in Australia’s sadly neutered media would have it, had just put more than 700,000 people on the dole queues and yet there were some commentators who were praising him to the sky. Go figure. Their support, like the public’s, would vanish as rapidly as it came. Or so Old Alex believed at the time.

It did not come to pass.

A year on from this blizzard of contempt from the nation’s intellectual hoi polloi, Morrison was still doing well in the polls, defying gravity, certainly in defiance of all reason. To look back and see what he was saying in March of 2020 is a surreal experience.

For none of it came to pass. Or some of it never went away, but continued to grow more and more absurd on the back of one sacrifice after another. Acrimony and incoherence set in. Morrison’s exceptionally long and confusing press conferences, far from laying calm into a disturbed and frightened public, added to the panic. 

Paradoxically after his press conferences, the opposite of effective messaging, his polling went up. The nation had switched off to the detail, and assumed that all that talk was a sign someone was in control. That the government was doing something. That the nation’s leaders were acting in the best interests of the population.  

None of it, in retrospect, sounded the least bit sincere. 

Lake Illawara, NSW, Australia

On the 25 March, in a lengthy statement to the nation, Morrison declared: 

“I said in the Parliament that 2020, for most Australians, was going to be their toughest year. And what we have seen unfold just this week has been demonstrating just that. 

“Australians who have lost their jobs, lost hours of work, businesses that have been forced to close their business — these are heartbreaking events in our nation’s history and story.

“And I want to assure all Australians the National Cabinet has been meeting, and state governments also, and we’ve considered the many, many difficult issues we’re having to address. We are not unconscious of the real impacts that these measures are having on the daily lives of Australians and so we will continue to do everything we can, both as a federal government and as state and territory governments around the country, to do all we can to support our people through what is going to be an incredibly difficult time.

“The queues that we saw outside Centrelink, the challenges and frustrations people have had in gaining access is a sheer function of the extraordinary and overwhelming demand, and we will work night and day to ensure that we can get more capacity into these systems. But what this reflects is the size of the need and the size of that need is demonstrated by the impacts of what the coronavirus and the many things that governments are having to do to limit its health impacts across the country and to ensure that we can protect the lives of Australians.

The working class suburb of St. Mary’s, Sydney, Australia

“But our goal is to get through this together and by following common sense rules, and doing the right thing, that’s how we slow the spread of this virus and that’s how we save lives.

“And so, from midnight tomorrow night, all of these following activities, and they include some I have already announced from earlier, will no longer be taking place. Cafes, I have already said, but for takeaway, that will continue. So, no change to the issues around cafes. Food courts and* shopping centres will not be allowed to continue. But getting takeaway from those food outlets in those shopping centres, that can continue because take away is able to be done.”

*Editor’s note: the Prime Minister later clarified to say only food courts in shopping centres would cease operation, and shopping centres could remain open.

There was so much more: 

“So with those changes, there was still a lot more we needed to deal with tonight, but we knew we needed to report tonight and the National Cabinet will meet again tomorrow evening at the same time to work through a series of other issues which includes further considering possible measures down the track. So, we’re well prepared should we have to move to that stage and the thresholds that would be necessary to move to those other arrangements. And there will be other matters that have been raised by Premiers and Chief Ministers that we’ll address as we go forward as well. I apologise for the length. It has been a busy night and hopefully that’s been very clear.”

And more. So much much more.


This is an extract from the upcoming book Unfolding Catastrophe by John Stapleton.

A collection of his journalism is being constructed here.

Photography by the author.


COVID-19 and the Global Shift Towards Authoritarian Governance, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 January, 2021.

 

COVID-19 and the Global Shift Towards Authoritarian Governance

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog.

Despite recurring lockdowns globally, COVID-19 continues to plague the planet. The pandemic toll on 29 January 2021 stands at 101 million cases worldwide, 56 million recoveries, and 2.19 million deaths as a result of the virus.

On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organisation announced a pneumonia of unknown kind had been detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. While on 11 March last year, the WHO declared that the outbreak of highly contagious COVID-19 had become a global pandemic.

This crisis has led to mass unemployment and economic downturn, resulting from governments enforcing restrictions to curb transmission. And while human rights treaties permit the emergency limiting of certain freedoms, a recent paper warns that the COVID-19 response has surpassed this.

“As governments attempt to deal with the many adversities that the pandemic presents, there are alarming regressions toward authoritarian governance,” two Hong Kong University professors write.

“A public health emergency does not, however, give license to governments to cast aside their obligations to uphold fundamental rights and liberties.”

Indeed, the academics posit that the pandemic has led governments, including liberal democracies, to enforce draconian measures that often overstep any public health need.

And this has been marked by breaches of civil liberties, highly concentrated decision-making and “vertical, paternalistic power”.

Questionable responses

Published last September by Oxford University’s Journal of Law and Biosciences, the COVID-19 Emergency Measures and the Impending Authoritarian Pandemic is written by associate professor of law Stephen Thomson and associate professor of medical ethics and law Eric C Ip.

The authors explain that the WHO was expecting a “disease X”, however it’s “abundantly clear” that governments weren’t. And the scramble to deal with the virus has seen authoritarianism manifest in three ways: restrictions on personal movement, surveillance, and regression in healthcare ethics.

On movement restrictions, the paper focuses on the prohibition against being permitted out of one’s house without “a reasonable excuse”. Similar to the Australian experience, the UK had police enforcing this restriction with a list of excuses that applied.

This situation led to widespread confusion amongst the enforcers and the public, regarding what was actually permissible within the realm of stipulated excuses, especially when the illegal restrictions were coupled with pandemic measures, such as social distancing, that weren’t unlawful.

A much more extreme form of this reasonable excuse scenario occurred in France, where a person had to carry a typed note around with them outlining their excuse for being outside of their home, along with the details of the time that they’d left.

In terms of surveillance, the report turns to South Korea, where a website was created displaying the movements of an infectious person prior to diagnosis. Complied via electronic data, the site provided enough details to identify a person and led to widespread stigmatisation.

And regarding a decline in healthcare ethics, the academics point to a case in Wales where a clinic sent out a letter to patients with serious conditions asking them to sign a form advising medical staff not to attempt to resuscitate them if their health deteriorated as a result of contracting COVID-19.

Excessive measures

“The adoption of excessive and disproportionate emergency measures” have been a hallmark of the pandemic, according to the report authors. These have undermined human rights, and have been rolled out within semi-authoritarian states, as well as liberal democracies.

On the authoritarian side, Cambodia enacted emergency powers that allowed for the surveillance of all telecommunications and the control of media broadcasts. It created offences with steep penalties around obstructing operations and left it open for these measures to be applied again in the future.

While Bosnia and Herzegovina implemented curfews on an indefinite basis, the online publication of the names of those isolating, as well as the quarantining of migrant centres, based on claims they were hotspots, despite no reported cases of a migrant having been diagnosed with COVID-19.

On the democratic side, the Scottish government attempted to dispense with the requirement of a jury to hear serious criminal cases. Although, the use of video links saw this measure dropped. And it’s noted that provisions within Scottish law would likely have prevented the proposal in the end.

Concentrated decision-making

Another distinct feature of the pandemic response has been the “suspension of effective democratic controls on government”, which has left the very few in a position to make decisions for all.

The UK government has claimed its been making decisions based on “following the science”. But the report authors counter this by pointing out that a scientific consensus doesn’t exist, the government hasn’t consulted experts in other fields, while other elected officials haven’t been consulted.

In this country, the Morrison government closed down parliament. It established the national cabinet, made up of the PM, state premiers and territory chief ministers, which has deliberated on national responses.

And the prime minister also created a non-elected corporate body to oversee the economic recovery.

While over in Hungary, the government enacted a law that permitted the suspension of the enforcement of existing laws and statutory requirements in order to implement extraordinary measures by decree for the purposes of eliminating the virus. And this law had no sunset clause.

Creeping authoritarianism

The Hong Kong law professors further note that the onset of the pandemic coincided with a downturn in freedoms globally. In January last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2019 Democracy Index recorded the worst global democratic score since it was established in 2006.

The Oxford University Press paper also takes aim at the WHO, condemning the international body for making no judgements upon the pandemic measures being taken and their human rights implications.

The concern is that the measures that have been rolled out for the prevention of the virus may not be pulled back. This includes the increasing reliance on electronic surveillance, the denial of human autonomy, as well as the sacrifice of the individual for the national interest.

Australian citizens are well aware of the enhanced presence of police on the streets during the pandemic, which has been accompanied by a rise in incidents involving the use of force by officers.

There was the decking out of the Victoria police riot squad in military-style gear at the Queen Victoria Markets in response to anti-lockdown protesters. And the silencing of dissenting demonstrations in general by NSW police long after other restrictions had been removed.

Lockdowns Hurt Small Business and Young Australians. Meanwhile Public Servants Flourish

A constitutional pandemic

The report warns that “a transnational constitutional pandemic is coming of age”, which is marked by the prioritisation of the containment of COVID-19, regardless of any resulting reduction in healthcare ethics and human dignity, as well as rights violations.

The professors emphasise that they are not suggesting a complete laissez-faire approach to the pandemic as has been the case in Sweden, but rather they’re calling for a more measured response that does not involve the erosion of liberal democratic values and institutions.

“An authoritarian response to a biomedical pandemic is not, and never will be, a humanitarian solution,” the authors conclude the paper.


Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He has a focus on human rights issues, encroachments on civil liberties, drug law reform, gender diversity and First Nations rights. Prior to Sydney Criminal Lawyers®, he wrote for VICE and was the news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.