good morning from unceded Darug lands☀️today on #Insiders are ABC 730 chief political corro and all round CPG legend Laura Tingle, 9fax chief political corro David Crowe, and murdoch politics editor James Campbell.
The interview is with Morrison government minister Stuart Robert.
The interview is with Morrison government minister Stuart Robert.
Robert is currently minister for “employment, workforce, skills, small business and family business” but whatever. His actual tasks are to direct public money to preferred constituencies and take the heat for monumental failures and cruelties like #CensusFail and #Robodebt.
opening spiel: D1 starts with his “states split” narrative. This is the journo favourite about how the federal and NSW governments want one thing and all the other states and territories want another. Vic is the exception here. #Insiders
the montage is text book conflict journalism, to the soundtrack of bad moon rising by Credence Clearwater Revival. It reinforces and amplifies the plan/not plan false binary being pushed by the Morrison and Berejiklian governments and the national press, including #Insiders.
the laughable notion that hope derives from Liberal Party politicians gets a run #Insiders
#MakingNews is all Morrison and Berejiklian #CovidCampaignComms with a small coda mentioning the fact that “NSW hospitals” - small regional and west and south west Sydney hospitals - are buckling under the weight of differential disease burden. #Insiders
#TheCurve is Briggs on NSW hospital admissions, which he differentiates from HITH. My understanding is both groups are reported as “hospitalisations” per Rick Morton’s clarification thread yesterday. #Insiders
the challenge for Victoria will be “to cap” cases while vaccination ramps up. No data on distribution of vaccine supply. #Insiders
there is a dropping of first dose numbers in NSW due to Polish Pfizer? Was that the claim? Speers then editorialises that “Palasczuzk was rightly criticised” this week lmao nobody needs your stamp of approval to criticise a politician, D1. #Insiders
panel. Speers opens by framing the discussion with that ludicrous nonsense conflating Liberal Party politicians - who actively target specific sectors of the population to destroy people’s lives - and the useful political abstraction of “hope”. #Insiders
well Morrison does not control whether state borders open for [hegemonic christian day] David, says Tingle. This will depend on hospitalisations. She refs the Morton article on NSW system strain. Yes yes says Speers hospital strain in NSW is bad but how about Palasczuzk #Insiders
he then plays a clip of Palasczuzk saying kids matter and kids get sick and Speers flicks to Campbell who reliably recites the “inevitability” comms that Berejiklian attaches to her horrendous, fatal, failures. #Insiders
clip of a few federal opposition pollies responding to state Premier Palasczuzk. Fanning state-federal as well as I travel-Labor conflict is Speers happy place. #Insiders
D2 decides to focus on a what Labor MP who represents DISEASE EPICENTRE WESTERN SYDNEY says about a Queensland colleague. He then lectures Palasczuzk about not commissioning a report? Was that his line? A political journo said a politician did not cite research? Wow. #Insiders
D1 says “the other state” under pressure is Victoria. What other pressure? To open borders? Oh, wait sorry he means pressure *from the media*. Tingle says yes Andrews went hard and fast, they are starting from a lower vax rate than NSW… #Insiders
Tingle also says Victoria has provided two real time how-lockdowns-work and cites ACT as well on impacts of particular responses and variables. #Insiders
the state hospital systems? Crowe says Victoria has a large private hospital system and we need to know what more the feds are doing to fund state health systems. #Insiders
the idea that private hospitals be made available to covid response seems to worry AMA because the private hospitals have to keep providing to non-covid (only private?) patients - Crowe #Insiders
clarification from Tingle, who says private hospitals are already taking non-covid patients to relieve the public system. She says “we get this wall of noise about surge capacity” etc she is too polite to name this flood the zone Morrison strategy. #Insiders
Speers then mouths some homilies about hard working people in the health system and asks Campbell about vaccine rollout and Campbell says something dated about waiting for Pfizer I think #Insiders
interview segue is yet another clip on what Queensland wants. Speers bowls up a sitter, Robert walks straight into it by reciting “national plan” straight off the bat and Speers says but the national plan, I have a copy here, says nothing about state borders?😂#Insiders
Speers and Robert go back and forth a bit as Robert tries to walk his un/forced error back (cricket to tennis lol sorry) and Speers lets him flail about until moving on. Hospitals? #Insiders
the minister recites “plan, plan”, as every Morrison government minister always does, on everything. The 80% shorthand is worse than useless at this point imo. Surely we know whether hospitals can cope if we re-open at 80%? asks Speers #Insiders
is your certainty misplaced? asks Speers. The 80% might have to shift? Plan plan plan says Robert. Delta delta. Credit where due, Speers is doing a pretty good job of exposing the fact that Morrison government comms are all plan and no policy. #Insiders
conscientious objection to vaccine “has always been a part of our vaccination program” says Robert. “Always” is a Tory trope, btw. They cite it to mean “legitimate”. #Insiders
should conscientious objection be part of covid vaccine program? Well public health orders, David, says Robert. So that’s a no? Well we should all “lean in” says Robert, which is the opposite of an enforceable order. #Insiders
#PayPeopleToStayHome. Is there going to be federal financial support for people who have to isolate after re-opening?
A: Lots of supports, change over time, blah blah.
Q: So that’s a no? No. What’s the plan? Is there a plan?
Hahaha there will be now. #Insiders
A: Lots of supports, change over time, blah blah.
Q: So that’s a no? No. What’s the plan? Is there a plan?
Hahaha there will be now. #Insiders
an unimplemented campaign comms plan, I mean. The usual Morrison style. Meanwhile the actual policy of extended and sometimes fatal attacks on income support recipients, especially single mums, is before the Parliament RIGHT NOW. #Insiders
jobkeeper. Why are you not requiring repayment of the millions of public dollars that profiteers trousered [paraphrased]? Robert mouths some nonsense about private sector and publicly listed companies. I missed most of it. He seems not across his brief at all. #Insiders
back to panel. Tingle says the interview shed very little light. That she is as confused as Robert. She adds that the coronavirus supplement could have slowed the spread in Sydney because low paid essential workers could have afforded to stay home #Insiders
you could be left with a “permanently embittered class of people” warns Campbell. He says these potentially permanently bitter people are the Liberal Party base. He means small biz men who have been always generously subsidised long before the pandemic hit #Insiders
clip of jobkeeper profiteer Harvey hanging up on Raf Epstein. Gerry is quite the snowflake. He experiences being asked a question in perfectly modular tones as “bullying”. #Insiders
oh Campbell also said the Robert interview was incompetent, I forget the exact word he used but basically agreed with Tingle that Robert is confused and confusing (and not across his purported brief. His actual brief is to protect the prime minister - Ed) #Insiders
when Crowe tries to explain about Morrison government recalcitrance on making profiteers like Harvey repay #JobKeeper Speers interrupts to read out a tweet by independent Sentator Rex Patrick, a bad editorial decision imo #Insiders
this breaks Crowes train of thought. He redirected to what LABOR is doing on the Morrison government policy of giving free money to its client donors. He says Andrew Leigh (an actual economics professor) is doing the hard yards on “clawing back” the corporate handouts. #Insiders
some kind of weird speculative nonsense about Leigh - an actual economics professor - doing the heavy lifting on jobkeeper handouts because he is outside cabinet and Dr Chalmers is not pursuing it every day. God so what. Leigh is the best person for the job. #Insiders
that was Crowe, we then flick to Tingle who also knows her macro economics and points to the difference between economic figures and actual economic conditions. #Insiders
Alex is a back to you David man.
#FinalObservations 1 has a Crowey and a Speersy from D1 and D2 before Crowe mentions the womens safety summit and Speers then says yes the women’s safety summit😑#Insiders
#FinalObservations 2 is Tingle saying yes well on womens safety, women could leave violent partners and get safe if there was income support. INCOME SUPPORT. #Insiders
#FinalObservations 3 is Campbell saying China. Its economy. This is unexpected, and Speers kind of re-sets, because apart from the obligatory amplification of Morrison announcements (the beer for Boris clip) the program was almost all domestic this week. #Insiders
we go out with a quiz clip but I missed the joke. Who is the DPM? Was that it?? #Insiders
this has been another edition of watching #Insiders so you don’t have to👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼
you can donate money and goods (respectively) to Wilcannia here:
I will be paying forward to Maari Ma Health and Hawkesburys Helping Hands this evening.
intra-Labor, this should be, in case anyone was wondering😬
https://twitter.com/imusing/status/1434294622864302081
oh and ICYMI I have just started a full time faculty position after many years of casual insecure employment which is why I have transitioned the #Insiders thread to a weekly fundraiser✌🏼
and a big thank you to thread fact checkers, the outtake was a quiz Q where the A was Josh Frydenberg:
https://twitter.com/SarahJadeHunter/status/1434317860407369728
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