People expecting Adam Bandt to discipline or disavow Lidia Thorpe are kidding themselves.

The truth is that Thorpe is actually an asset to the Greens - She represents the angry, ignorant, nihilistic worldview of a big chunk of Greens voters.

Ie, she’s ‘good for the base’. Same goes for the brouhaha about Adam Bandt cheering on school leavers for hitting the bong for a couple of years. It was no accident - Bandt knows that free media like that will help secure the 10ish % of the vote needed to keep the Greens as a viable political force.

For a brief moment, protesters thought police were laying down their arms and joining them. Lots of cheering, a few in the crowd running to embrace. Turns out they were just taking off equipment to sub in other officers. Police have now beaten back crowd. #MelbourneProtest Police now closing in on protesters, who had been sitting and chanting peacefully on the steps of the Shrine of Remembrance. #MelbourneProtest

"Vaccine hesitancy" - A thread.

So a middle aged couple I know left Melbourne about a week ago for a holiday with two other couples. Six in total - ALL vaccinated.

Yesterday, three hours outside Darwin, their plane was turned back so that they could get immediately tested. The hospital, however, advised that tests were fully booked and that they couldn't get theirs until MONDAY.

At the same time, their hotel indicated that they wouldn't be able to enter the premises until they received a negative test, effectively rendering them homeless.

'Community standards' - A thread ❤️

https://twitter.com/Utopiana/status/1351704364847489027?s=20

Alright Mr Bandt, I'll see your teenager suffering from 'climate anxiety' (leaving aside, of course, the fact that you and your ilk have stoked the hysterical, apocalyptic garbage that is largely responsible for such anxiety) and raise you...

https://twitter.com/AdamBandt/status/1224894272526139393

The pensioner who runs the risk of getting hypothermia in her own home, because when she thinks about Australian electricity prices - among the highest in the world thanks to policies the green movement has inflicted on us - it all gets too much.

Good God, I had a chuckle reading this - A real unhinged, paranoid, Murdoch derangement syndrome-infused, tinfoil territory rant. Then I got to the byline - This bloke is founder of the Australian Press Council and former editor of @theage!

independentaustralia.net/politics/polit… @theage Anyway, most of his grievances are the standard lefty fare: 'Attacks' on the wonderful beacon of truth that is the ABC, the 'threats to democracy' arising from what is clearly opinion programming, and the 'takeover' of Fairfax by the right-wing (yeah, really) Nine Entertainment.

Ah I see - It's not that public institutions are out of step with the community, it's that people are too stupid to realise that a bloke on AM radio is manipulating them into being 'afraid, cynical and distrusting' of the warm embrace of the state.

https://twitter.com/LaTrioli/status/1163996983301832704

And more to the point, the real 'privilege and power' here is vested in the taxpayer-funded, omnipresent media juggernaut.

Jones' voice relies on the goodwill of people voluntarily tuning in. The ABC derives theirs from other people's money obtained by force of law.