There's so much lacking in Morrison's latest policy backflip: a quarantine station in the middle of Brisbane. I barely know where to start. After his failures on quarantine, this smells like a political fix aided and abetted by Murdoch's #CourierFail.
A thread.
Morrison has made an unmitigated mess of quarantine, evidenced by the thousands of Aussies still trapped overseas. He promised they'd all be home by last Christmas. Many (including me) called on Morrison to consider regional defence bases for quarantine. He has repeatedly refused
While Albo & Labor Premiers campaigned for national quarantine, Morrison's Liberals scoffed & criticised. They rejected a concrete QLD proposal for Toowoomba, outside Brisbane. Rostered staff could stay on-site to prevent constant interaction between them and the community.
The Brisbane quarantine floated by Morrison would almost inevitably have staff moving around the city in their off-hours, spreading the virus around the community. It's much safer to have properly paid staff staying on-site while rostered on, then going home.
This is one of the biggest problems using hotels - one potentially deadly outbreak every six weeks. At Howard Springs, where staff stay on-site, there have been ZERO breaches. Morrison arrogantly wants us to think he's doing great. But here's what other countries are saying...
Morrison's proposed facility won't even be ready until next year—two years into the pandemic. QLD's completed Wellcamp proposal was on the table 4 months ago. If Morrison had backed it then, it would be running now. At every turn, Morrison slow-walked Labor's solutions to death.
And how has Murdoch aided this shameful backflip?
First, this proposal went to Palaszczuk on Thursday night. But Murdoch's #CourierFail already had it ready to roll for the front page. Do Murdoch's henchmen stop to question their role in this propaganda machine? Not for a moment
Second, Murdoch's papers have personally blamed premiers for outbreaks and border closures in Labor states, but show none of the same ruthlessness when state and federal Liberals are in charge. Relax everyone, it's "Covid calm".
Third, pretending national quarantine is a fresh debate. Experts have called for purpose-built facilities since early last year. Even if Morrison wants to claim ignorance, in October 2020 he was directly advised by Jane Halton AO to build the facility for 'surge capacity'.
And did you ever notice how Murdoch editors love using Morrison’s self-ascribed nickname “ScoMo” to soften his image? Sometimes it’s the very respectable “PM” when he needs a bit of gravitas, but rarely “Morrison”.
This brings us finally to why we're talking about this today. The answer: Morrison knows he's stuffed quarantine and vaccines. He doesn't want to be blamed for Sydney lockdowns so, with Murdoch's backing, he rushes out these wafer-thin proposal as a distraction. Pure politics.
Australians need news that isn’t dominated by a single player. Murdoch functions like a party in coalition with the LNP, advancing their narrow commercial and ideological agenda. It's a rotten protection racket.
Murdoch's NewsCorp can't get its story straight on public apologies. When an ABC Radio host mistakenly names Murdoch as a donor to the far-right IPA,it's newsworthy. But when SkyNews spreads lies to viewers (that #MurdochRoyalCommission petition was "data harvesting") not a peep!
Here's the apology Murdoch’s Peta Credlin would like Australians to forget.
Event 1) Murdoch's SkyNews posted a short, factual clip from its morning news broadcast, lasting only 40 seconds. It reported on UK activist, Sasha Johnson, who is in intensive care after being shot in the head.
This is a dead-set lie by Murdoch’s CEO, Michael Miller, telling senators that I “proactively approached” them to write an article on China last Saturday. Nothing in that statement is true.
Here are the facts... THREAD /1
On February 5, the US magazine @ForeignAffairs published a lengthy essay I had written entitled “Short of War: How to Keep US-Chinese Confrontation from Ending in Calamity”. You can read it here: foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite… /2
On February 9, I sent the essay to literally hundreds of folks in the global policy community for their thoughts & feedback. One of them was Alan Howe, a journalist I’ve known for many years, who’s now at The Australian. We don’t agree on everything but I do value his opinion. /3
The Morrison Government pretends that it cares about the mismanagement of public money, but everywhere you turn you see them splurging on waste and pet projects while cutting services for those in need. Let me share one recent personal experience.
15 months ago, in Sept 2019, I wrote to the Morrison Govt to ask about the new Foreign Influence Transparency Register, which is designed to catch foreign agents trying to influence our politics. It affects everyone, but the rules are tighter for former ministers, as they should.
I have been a supporter of this Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS) legislation from the beginning, because it's important to keep tabs on actual agents of foreign government influence who are trying to affect Australian politics. It's a good and worthy objective.
We see #MurdochsPetitionPanic becoming even more frantic. They appear to be settling on a strategy — personally smear anyone who supports a Royal Commission, rather than face reality of Murdoch’s toxic brand after a decade of abusing monopoly power. Anything to avoid scrutiny.
Something new to #MurdochsPetitionPanic is the broadening of the campaign by co-opting other media. Audio from Thursday’s festival of whinging Murdoch editors was leaked to Fairfax as a warning to others they too will be smeared for publicly backing a #MurdochRoyalCommission.
These kinds of character assassinations are a huge part of Murdoch’s strategy for seeing off threats to his business interests. How many people have been smeared on the front pages for daring to question the validity of Murdoch’s monopoly? Murdoch rules by a climate of fear.
Is anybody else getting a whiff of #MurdochsPetitionPanic? A special meeting of Murdoch editors to spell out their strategy to avoid answering for their conduct before a Royal Commission. smh.com.au/business/compa…
Straight from the Murdoch playbook: they know they can’t win the argument, so they frame it around a couple of individuals and try to demolish them personally. But this isn’t about me or Turnbull — it’s about Australians demanding fairness, accuracy and diversity in their news.
If Murdoch’s editors have nothing to be ashamed of, why are they so afraid of a Royal Commission? Honestly, you’d think we were asking for their firstborn children the way they are so frantically overreacting. #MurdochsPetitionPanic#MurdochRoyalCommission