You wouldn’t necessarily know it from a media obsessed with posturing about Facebook, but it’s hard to overstate just what a disastrous week Scott Morrison and the rotten — in all senses of the adjective — government he leads has just had.
Overlooked this week in the focus on Brittany Higgins and the implosion of the news media bargaining code was how deeply and bitterly divided the Coalition is. Scott Morrison was forced into the humiliating position of withdrawing a key bill — his legislation to push the Clean Energy Finance Corporation into funding gas projects — because his own backbenchers, led by former cabinet ministers Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, intended to make it a vehicle for government funding of coal-fired power stations.
By yesterday the entire Nationals Senate team, led by sports rorter Bridget McKenzie, decided to go further and used the use the bill to pave the way for nuclear power in Australia. (The Nats, bears of little brain, presumably are unaware that if we started building a nuclear power plant tomorrow it would come on line sometime in the late 2030s).
A government so divided it has to withdraw major legislation at the last minute for fear it will be mutilated or blocked by its own backbench is a rare thing indeed. One can only imagine the screaming headlines if it happened under a Labor government.
So the legislation to extend “clean energy” to fossil fuels like gas is off the agenda — for how long, it isn’t clear. Possibly until Barnaby Joyce becomes leader again and is bound by cabinet solidarity to vote for legislation.
On that front, Joe Aston did some pot-stirring today suggesting Joyce almost had the numbers to knock off interim leader Michael McCormack.
Never forget that Joyce is an accused sexual harasser. His party has never had the fortitude to properly investigate and resolve the complaints about his alleged behaviour. How on earth people think this man should be a leader of anything is testimony to the extraordinary and convenient amnesia of both politicians and press gallery journalists.
The government was busying itself with other matters. In lieu of actually vaccinating anyone, Morrison and his thin-skinned health minister have been doing a press announcement every day about every trivial aspect of the vaccine process — down, seemingly, to the signing of the first customs form for a shipment.
Morrison was the one who, without prompting, told Australians they would be “at the top of the queue” for vaccines last year. According to the latest data “top of the queue” means around 190 millionth in the queue, but who’s counting. An endless series of non-announcements about vaccinations that weren’t happening was, believe it or not, what the government was hoping to focus on this week.
Instead, the gutsy Brittany Higgins derailed any plans the government had and in doing so exposed the weak, venal and self-interested nature of Scott Morrison and his government.
Accepting for a moment Morrison’s claim that he was unaware of any of these events until this week — which if true, is bad enough — at no stage in the last five days has Morrison and his office reacted with a modicum of the humanity the situation demands. Instead, it’s been pure politics.
Thus the appalling invocation of his wife and children; the lazy announcement of an inquiry by a female MP; yet another review by a public servant; careful word choice to emphasise he’s relying on advisers who may yet have to be thrown under a bus; the smearing of Higgins’ partner on background by the PMO; and yesterday, inevitably, the “independent review” by PM&C head and Liberal staffer Phil Gaetjens into who knew what and when.
Based on Gatejens’ risible review of the sports rorts scandal that devoted considerable effort to trying and failing to argue there was no rorting, his efforts may well end up disputing whether there was any rape in the first place.
Meantime, the revelations have continued to emerge about the apparently extraordinarily widespread knowledge of what happened to Higgins, including within the PMO. This is directly at odds with Morrison’s insistence his staff were completely in the dark until the media contacted them last week.
Each revelation brings evidence of a cover-up closer and closer to Morrison himself and his closest advisers.
This has long been a shabby, shallow and corrupt government, led by a man with a talent for spin and a lack of policy substance or genuine leadership capacity. This week exposed both that government’s deep divisions and something altogether more unsettling: a rottenness that has corroded not only its capacity to govern in the national interest but even the most basic sense of morality.
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Thank you for this piece outlining some of the moral failings of Morrison, and others, so succinctly
Ditto!
I wonder if this week’s declarations and denials about the PMO’s knowledge of the alleged rape will become “inoperative” some time soon.
The Nats don’t really support nuclear power – it’s just a way to annoy the Libs. Like “if our efforts to support so-called clean coal get you upset, we raise you nuclear power”. In return just propose a feasibility study into a reactor at Dubbo and see what happens. We have not even been able to settle on a nuclear waste site after how many years so this stuff about nuclear power is just posing.
Just what is the volume of waste Robert? Similarly for a coal station. Then there is the difference between Pu and Th as product.
Waste from coal is in the order of thousands of tonnes. For a Thorium reactor for QLD, NSW, & VIC expect about two large bean bags per decade with the ongoing technology to convert all nuclear traces (from the reside) to energy; thus to zero effect.
So, are you going to subsidise the nuclear power plant in 2040 when it is finally built? It definitely won’t be able to sell its power on the open market or will the owner expect the taxpayer to amortise the costs of building the plant and managing it?
Eastern NSW is prone to earthquakes and tremors.. good luck with that.
Such a plant would be ok in NZ. The seismic sensors could shut the plant down or offer semaphores to shut the plant down within hours of the quake.
Besides, location is a separate matter. Take a look at the physical characteristics of the most recent noble gas. Given its atomic structure it is a candidate to transmit electricity!
Watched a report on Fukushima, ten years after the earthquake and tsunami. Still not cleaned up and running out of space to store contaminated waste. They reckon it may be never be cleaned up… and the plan is to dump radioactive water into the ocean… wow..
But nuclear is so clean.
I also notice you ignore the cost of the energy to be produced and the subsidisation by the taxpayer, but of course you do. Nuclear is unviable as a future energy source and belongs in last century.. except.. if they finally solve the containment problem with nuclear fusion.
All of the faults are a function of poor to nill maintenance yet there is a good deal of FUD.
Ah Erasmus, as a person with an interest in the safe storage/ disposal of radioactive waste, you seem to attempt to minimize the problems involved with dealing with the dangerously and mostly invisible to the naked eye radioactive waste.
The just plain filthy and toxic waste that has not been poured into the air we breathe from coal fired power stations, is manageable. No pleasant and certainly not inert.
To consider that the safe storage or disposal of radioactive wastes is as “simple” as the Finns find it to be, currently seems problematic..
The sealing of small amounts of high level radioactive waste in glass placed into currently geographically stable deep salt mines, under constant surveillance with armed services ready to dispatch any terrorist/ group who manages to attempt to gain access to the storage facility, sounds a little too hard for Australia.
And yet, we have the Womera Base, Mary Kathleen mine and other sites which are basically geographically stable, could have deep pits and excellent surveillance/ armed response teams from near by Army bases.
Australia currently has far too much low level radioactive waste from nuclear medicine procedures plus live sources used in industrial applications being stored inappropriately.
Maybe it is time to get ourselves a real nuclear waste dump and No, I don’t think a nuclear power plant is a good idea.
The technology is changing and flat earth-ears still exist.
James Lovelock (“The Revenge of Gia”, p. 116 Penguin Ed), a significant climate scientist, supports nuclear power.
Agreed, it is a subject that attracts ignorant knee-jerking by those who cannot distinguish a nuclear equation from a Lewis diagram.
Well said! But still Scomo has the backing of the Murdoch press which controls most of the media these days.
“Based on Gatejens’ risible review of the sports rorts scandal” – an effort that will stand along side Halton’s ‘I don’t remember’ and Moraitis’s ‘I lost my notes’ when the history of “Covering the Minister/Prime Minister’s arse’ is written
And don’t forget Forgetful Arfur – now our ambassador to Washington.