Thread by @NewtonMark

So here are things that are 100% true in Australia right now, which you can use to adjust your understanding of the Prime Minister's behavior. /1

1. Whether or not a State border is open is the exclusive constitutional purview of the State in question. If Queensland or Tasmania or WA want to keep closed, that's their prerogative, and the Feds don't get a look-in. /2

2. States with closed borders have all given justifications for them, based on a combination of medical advice and local State politics. The Feds don't get a look-in there either. /3

3. The *ONLY* pressure the Feds can bring to bear is through the power of the chequebook. But Morrison is wedged there, because imposing power by cutting funding to a State in a pandemic is politically fraught; Smarter people in his Party will knife him if he tries it. /4

(this is also why JobKeeper will change: Frydenberg and Hunt know they will never be forgotten when Victoria's lockdown ends and 4 million people are thrown to poverty. We don't know what it is yet, but there'll be a solution to that, even if Morrison hates it) /5

4. None of the foregoing features Scott Morrison in a position of decision-making influence or power. He is not in the drivers seat, he is being controlled, mostly by the States but also by elements within his own Party. /6

5. Morrison is an overbearing bully. When he wants to be in control of things but isn't, he lashes out. That's what we're seeing in relation to the Queensland border. Palaszczuk, who is actually in charge, swats him away like an annoying mosquito. /7

6. This diminishes Morrison, so he lashes out more. Expect more petulance, largely driven by the fact that he's too stupid to know how much harm he's inflicting on himself, too intellectually impaired to know when to stop. /8

7. Morrison's angry tantrums will be gushed by the Press Gallery as "PM lays down the law, issues ultimatums to States." The States will continue to ignore him; They're building electoral capital in their State electorates by standing up to him, so why would they stop? /9

8. Return to where Morrison does actually have power: The chequebook. If he wasn't a commensurate idiot, he'd have realized that he can make himself look like a statesman by opening the Treasury, actually helping. But his surplus-lusting party won't let him to do that either. /10

9. That leaves us with a PM who's too impotent to do what would be good, too stupid to stop doing what's actively harmful, too egotistical to retreat from the spotlight. And a Press Gallery who carries water for him by making his excuses. /11

That's Australia's pandemic, in a nutshell. Thank god for competent States, and stop paying attention to the Feds until they start behaving themselves. /end