Thread by @David_Ritter

This week at the #NationalPressClub, Australia’s Prime Minister @ScottMorrisonMP outlined his new vision for the nation in the face of catastrophic fires.

Let’s call it the ‘Shonk Doctrine’.

Here’s a thread on the ‘Shonk Doctrine’ and how it works.

#auspol #shonkdoctrine

Morrison’s Shonk Doctrine combines elements of what @NaomiAKlein called ‘Shock Doctrine’ with a whole lot of our Prime Minister’s characteristic shonkiness.

It is a dangerous combination.

Naomi Klein coined the expression ‘Shock Doctrine’ to describe the phenomenon of vested interests using moments of ‘shock’ (eg wars & disasters) to force through aggressive neoliberal policies targeting ordinary people and the public domain:

theguardian.com/books/2007/sep…

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Shonky’ means ‘dishonest, unreliable, or illegal, especially in a devious way”.

The example given in the online dictionary is ‘shonky political goings-on’: lexico.com/definition/sho…

In the ‘Shock Doctrine’, neoliberal ideology was openly used as the justification for harsh measures.

Powerful vested interests claimed there was no alternative to responding to the shock - except to take away from ordinary people and the public domain.

Shock doctrine measures can include getting rid of environmental and community protection laws, selling off public assets, opening up national parks for resource extraction, slashing civil liberties and abolishing progressive taxation systems.

In his #NationalPressClub speech, Morrison used the terrible shock of the catastrophic #AustralianFires to justify a range of things that he wants to do anyway, to satisfy certain business and political vested interests:

pm.gov.au/media/address-…

But unlike the classic shock-doctrinaires, Morrison hasn’t trotted out any neoliberal justifications for these ultra-radical measures that he proposed. Instead, #Scottyfrommarketing prefers shonkiness.

Here are three examples:

1. Morrison tried to flog more fossil gas to the nation.

A bloke trying to sell you gas to avoid climate catastrophe is the equivalent of someone trying to sell you menthol cigarettes as a way of treating your cancer.

2. Morrison deviously used the phrase ‘climate action now’ to describe a range of things that do not reduce emissions - which is the only real climate action.

It’s an ad man trick to try and flog people on fake remedies. He may as well be selling “ice cream for heart disease."

3. Morrison deviously manipulated a bunch of factoids, stats, claims and weasel words to hide the reality that Australia is one of the world’s most important climate reduction battlegrounds and that we are failing miserably to reduce emissions:

theguardian.com/australia-news…

Literally none of the measures that Morrison announced will do anything to address the causes of the climate emergency.

The real climate action that is most urgent is to stop burning coal and other fossil fuels as fast as possible, and to end deforestation.

In the climate emergency the most radical thing is to do nothing at all - to go on with BAU.

It is doing nothing that is killing people, destroying nature and threatens civilization. And this week, under loads of shonk, Morrison promised huge amounts of nothing.

As the piece-de-resistance at the press club, the Prime Minister openly committed to shonkiness when he said that there was nothing wrong with corrupting a community grants program for partisan political purposes:

thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/…

According to @TonyHWindsor Morrison’s outright shonkiness ‘crossed a line’ and that the Prime Minister had effectively ‘endorsed corruption as an acceptable tool of governance’:

https://twitter.com/TonyHWindsor/status/1222483256181833734?s=20

In summary, under Scott Morrison’s ‘Shonk Doctrine’ the climate emergency is being used to try to force through a range of aggressive policies that will hurt Australia and worsen climate change on the basis of a series of dishonest, unreliable and devious justifications.