I get annoyed with Labor and understand why a lot of supporters feel let down by them. But it is important to recognise that whatever problems they have, they are of a different order to the disgrace that is current Liberal Party. Democracy needs alt views, but the Libs aren't it. They are not a conservative party; they are not liberal. They are a grab-bag of grievances, increasingly extreme, anti-democratic, internally divided & since Morrison, with little interest in governing in the national interest.

One of the key tools of public opinion control in the lead up to the Iraq War was the assertion by the political class that they had available to them information that wasn't available to anyone else and they were thus in a better position to assess the risk posed by Saddam's WMD It all turned out to be bullshit, a lie enabled and perpetrated with the help of the mainstream media, from The NYTimes down. Plenty of people saw through the charade because "they weren't stupid" and could draw reasonable conclusions from publicly available information.

As the whine-fest in the media continues about Keating at the #NPC (with some notable exceptions including @MichaelPascoe01 and @latingle) let me say again: how can you claim to be a 4th estate standing up to power when you are so easily derailed by some unwarranted name calling? How can we trust you to hold power to account when you have spent the week falling into line with it?
open.substack.com/pub/tdunlop/p/…

Australia just delivered one of the most extraordinary election results in our history & within seconds, the msm is running pieces like this, whitewashing the obviously unfit Peter Dutton, continuing the gaslighting that gave us 3 years of "Scomo". smh.com.au/politics/feder… It isn't just the oh-well-sure-he's-done-some-racist-shit-but-he-deserves-a-second-chance nonsense, it is the condescending way in which we are lectured that "it is lazy for the Twitter-focused left to dismiss Dutton as a bogeyman."

Comparisons between the Morrison Govt and the Republicans in the US don't always work, as we operate in very different electoral environments. But they are kindred in one key way: both are post-political in the sense of not governing in the way we tend think of parties governing. They are not governing "for all of us" but in the interests of small subsets of the population, as any follow-the-money exercise will reveal, from pork barrelling to JobKeeper payments. It is about power in service of the few.

Ways in which Scott Morrison has shown "he gets it":

Had to get his wife to explain the Higgins' situation to him
Hasn't met with Higgins
Has suggested she can come see him if she wants.
His office arguably backgrounded against Higgins' partner Called an inquiry into who knew what when in his office then arguably misled parliament about this inquiry
Refused to answer questions in parliament about the behaviour of people in his office.
Inquiry cancelled bc of alleged conflict with police inquiry.

Here’s why I think we need an enquiry and why the ‘natural justice’ ‘presumption of innocence’ claim is not the appropriate, let alone, the overriding consideration. This is not merely about Christian Porter & what he did or didn’t do. It's also about the integrity of our institutions, parliament & cabinet in particular. As citizens, we have a right to expect them operate with the highest ethical standards. Our trust in them must be protected

This is a great piece by Oz & he really has done some important work highlighting failures of the Andrews' Govt.
I'm going to add a 'but' bc there is a further point to be made, and it is something I have been saying for 20 years about the relationship between media & audience.

https://twitter.com/oz_f/status/1320462678175854592

The last para of the article is this:

Most media saw Gladys saga as abt corruption. Ppl 'outside politics' saw a personal matter. Wut?
Thus, ppl don't care abt political integrity
"Perhaps notions of integrity too abstract & pointy-headed, to capture our collective imagination."
Seriously?
tinyurl.com/y34mcrhj This is a classic case of blaming voters for the problems in politics.
"And that is helped when the public falls into the habit of shrugging its way through minor episodes, time after time."

It's our fault because we just aren't bright enough or moral enough to demand better.

The huge mistake the govt made in regard to FB & Google and extracting money from them for news is that they allowed themselves to be trapped in news media's view of the world, most especially News Ltd's view.
They're seeing like a media company instead of seeing like a govt This completely distorts the nature of what G & F are, and it means that the govt is imposing the wrong sort of regulation.
To understand the nature of the mistake, you have to rid yourself of a number of self-serving myths perpetuated by the media.

I'm sure Frydenberg and Morrison think their full-court press on Victoria is brilliant strategy, and no doubt, most of the media will fall in line, but I'm pretty sure most Victorians aren't in the mood for being thrown under the bus like this. You don't have to be a Dan stan to feel annoyed that the Treasurer and PM are shitting all over the state, while most of us are just trying to work our way through a very difficult situation.

The racist cartoon in the Oz today is indicative of a mindset that begins in general unaccountability and ends in provocation.
That is to say, once you are so attuned to ignoring or rejecting nearly all the criticism you receive, you inevitably end up baiting those... ...you sees as your critics. Also known as your audience.

Today's cartoon is an example of such baiting.
As were all those 'let old people die' articles that were around a while ago.
It is completely reflexive, and easily rationalised: "Criticism means we are fearless!"

This week's arguments about the role media have focussed on the treatment of Dan Andrews, but that isn't what this is really about. The concern coming through from citizens is about a deep sense that the media is failing them, a concern that has been building for years. Not just failing them, but abandoning them. The sense from journalists that somehow journalism exists separately from the people who consume it and whom it is meant to benefit, and that those people have no right to a view on how it is undertaken

If you're wondering how history works, how 'winners' get to tell the story that suits them, and build statues to it, then just look at the way the present works. The media, the first draft of history so-called, completely defaults to the status quo and sees what suits it I mean, the number of things you have to elide, to erase, to forget, to fudge, to ignore, to rationalise away, in order to convince yourself that Scott Morrison is doing a good job and is just the well-meaning bumblefuck from central casting, is a masterclass in willed amnesia

The biggest narcotic a politician can offer the media is the semblance of 'cooperation' or 'bipartisanship'. Anything that taps into all those West Wing fantasies of a political class coming together, fulfilling their elite purpose in common cause, is crack to them. To point this out is not cynicism. The cynicism lies in the way politicians manipulate a genuine desire for common ground and a media that constantly plays conflict and the promise of cooperation off against each other, allowing itself to be manipulated in this way

Still trying to get my head around all those hagiographic stories over the last week about the changed, transformed, post-ideological Scott Morrison and team.
Everyone one of those accentuate-the-positive stories is a abrogation of journalistic duty, given what we actually know This govt has presided over the sports-rorts scandal, with still serious and unresolved questions.
It mishandled the response to horrendous fires at the start of the year, including the PM going missing at the height of it, and including the non-payment of promised relief funds

We are not just being managed into reopening the economy prematurely (as I said yesterday) but into thinking more infections, and therefore more deaths, are a price worth paying. Unsurprisingly, the PM didn't mention the death part, but he did say: "The trade off that they're making [is] between people having jobs & the impact on the containment... Now, my view has always been this and I've said it from this podium many times. Just having a low number of cases is not success."
Let that last line sink in as you read the rest

It's hard to stand back and really recognise that we've reached a situation where the US President can suggest people inject disinfectant as a cure for a virus.
You can't be wise about it, funny about it, incredulous of it, dismissive of it, or take it in in the usual way There's no use tracing the path that got us here, the failures that keep us here, the things we need to do to get out of here. There is no use in talking about it or not talking about it, responding to it, or rejecting it.
There is no point in laughing or crying

We began this year with a bushfire emergency, the PM missing in action, and the media telling us his absence was no big deal.
We were treated to a very soft interview between the PM and the ABC in which the PM, virtually unchallenged, was allowed to make his excuses. Then we moved into a pandemic. If the PM eventually took a hit over the bushfires, the media was keen to tell us he had learned his lesson and was back on the front foot. Few in the media saw a problem with him holding out, until the last second, with his plans to go to the footy

Good heavens, journalists. You have to stop hating on your audience. If you can't respond to legit criticism and instead resort to generalisations like 'hyper-partisan tools' and nonsense like 'post-Christian left', you're condemning yourself by your own hand.

https://twitter.com/mjrowland68/status/1120794084354875392

The reason we know you're not serious when you decry partisanship is because you direct all your ire at the powerless on Twitter and almost none of it at the powerful partisans within your own industry. Doesn't that completely fly in the face of your role as a watchdog on power?

Decent people in Australia are sick to their stomachs over the NZ attack, and solace is not available to us. Our politics, our media, our leaders and representatives, are part of the problem. They mightn't pull triggers, but they light fuses.Their business model is lighting fuses Whatever we, or they, as individuals have done to call out the racism, the white supremacy, the dog-whistling, to stand up against the anti-immigration rhetoric of senior politicians, minor parties and Senators, it isn't enough. Not nearly enough. We haven't done enough