Origins Were Sorry

Like Jack Lemmon (bottom left) in Glengarry Glen Ross, Scott Morrison is trying to sell a 'bill of goods' – in the PM'due south case, the re-election of his government through fear. Images (clockwise from elevation left): The Bulletin, Ingram Pinn (Financial Times), The Monthly, New Line Picture palace

Oh Scott, if only that were truthful. Your own Parliamentary Education Office describes the Prime Minister'southward job as chairing meetings, hiring and firing ministers, representing Commonwealth of australia overseas, advising the Governor General, election responsibilities and, aye, "acting as the chief government spokesman".

Only "Prime Minister style" doesn't mean devoting virtually all your time to the last of these duties – the spokesman part, especially before an ballot is called – and spending that fourth dimension ginning up a simulated, 1950s-manner scarlet scare or cosplaying as a welder who skipped OH&Due south training.

Far from looking Prime Ministerial, a desperate Morrison – trailing his Labor opposition by ten points in the latest poll –seems more like wretched salesman Shelley Levene, Jack Lemmon's character in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (higher up, lesser left).

Like Levene, the PM is tasked with selling a sub-standard product (namely, his government) to voters at a probable May election, and seems happy to bend a few rules to get there.

Wildly cycling betwixt scare campaigns in the hope of finding i that works, Morrison can exist expected to traverse hoary old chestnuts like his opponent Anthony Albanese (Albo's) "weakness" on constabulary-and-lodge, his being "appreciative to unions", his xxx-twelvemonth-old, since-reversed support for death duties, a mythical "Labor-Greens coalition" or defence spending cuts during the last Labor authorities which, to put things in perspective, happened effectually a decade ago in very different global circumstances.

It's all part of machinations on Morrison's role which author Sean Kelly calls "the game".

Morrison's vocalization is given sick-deserved volume (and his enthusiasm for "the game" is thus bolstered) by enablers in the corporate media. Like Shelley Levene, Morrison says "to Hell with reality, I've got a bill of goods to sell these suckers; surely I can con them one more time, surely I can pull it off".

Who knows? Maybe Gladys Berejiklian was right when she described Morrison every bit a "horrible, horrible person".

Exhuming the ghosts of the 1850s and 1950s, Scott Morrison has hyped the "threat" posed by Communist-in-name-just China in his latest pre-election scare campaign. Images: HaulOfHistory, World History Archive, Miray Matar.

"Beware the heathen Chinee"; "meliorate dead than scarlet". All-of-a-sudden, the dormant dreads of 1951 (or 1851, if Goldfields racism is more your thing) accept come up alive like long-buried carcasses, exhumed and reanimated past a PM who'll make employ of their scariness until, oh I don't know, May'south expected election.

Cold War cultural references were all the rage in Parliament last week. "(Prc) will not find a fellow traveller when it comes to threats and compulsion confronting Australia in my government," Morrison told the House of Representatives.

Of course, the PM's target wasn't actually Cathay, but Labor. "Swain traveller" is a term straight out of the '50s, literally significant communist sympathiser; like Menzies before him, Morrison unsaid the ALP has a secret cadre of "commies" in the ranks.

Who, specifically, was the government referring to? Defense Minister Peter Dutton said Communist china had "made a decision about who they're going to back in the side by side federal election … and they accept picked (Albo) every bit that candidate", while Morrison himself baselessly accused Labor'due south deputy leader, Richard Marles, of beingness a "Manchurian candidate" for Beijing (he later withdrew the remark).

Tony Wright from "The Age" is already calling information technology a "reds under the bed" scare campaign: a crusade based on a litany of lies, among them unsaid references to "Red Prc", which hasn't been strictly communist for more than than 40 years.

What'due south more, China'due south "threat" to Commonwealth of australia is over-hyped. In a modest muscle flexing, Beijing built a few military facilities in the S China Body of water (more than 3000 kilometres from Darwin) and probed airspace around Taiwan, an island we've acknowledged as Chinese territory for half a century.

While mindful of China'southward eventual forcefulness in the region, contained think tank the Lowy Plant concludes that "Australia's defence interests and territorial integrity volition remain largely unthreatened" during our lifetimes, and that in the meantime, "the prospect of Chinese armed forces action against Australia remains remote".

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Merely, of form, this has zip to do with military machine threats or communist plots. It'southward all nigh politics to Morrison; some other facet of "the game" he plays.

Whether or not this "Xanthous Peril" button turns out to exist the scare campaign that resonates with voters (remember, he has plenty of other chestnuts to deploy if information technology doesn't) last calendar week'due south red scare dovetails into narratives Morrison will rely on in the weeks ahead. One such narrative was given a exam run on Friday: Albo is "the almost left-leaning Labor leader that we have seen since Gough Whitlam", the PM said.

Implied bulletin: 'he's got to exist one of those scary "fellow travellers"'. There'due south just one problem with that: the Albo we've seen as Opposition Leader these past three years is so far removed from the caricature of "radical reformer" that he might besides join the milquetoast Fabian Lodge.

And then at that place's the coded racism in all this China talk. Australians don't need much prodding to exist alarmed by one Asian "threat" or some other; it'due south an electoral well the LNP and its forebears have returned to time and again, virtually recently during the Tampa affair of 2001.

Here's hoping it doesn't work this time.

Who's the "swain traveller"? Scott Morrison shows his close personal affinity with the LNP'southward Chisholm MP, Gladys Liu, who after admitted to having been a fellow member of a Chinese government propaganda unit. Photo: ABC.

Morrison'south latest scare campaign against Labor is a game all right; a dangerous game for Commonwealth of australia, its security and its cohesion as a nation. Many Australians of Chinese heritage – already frightened by attacks against their community over COVID-19 after Morrison questioned the pandemic's origins – are unhappy virtually the PM's latest outbursts.

"Information technology could affect my personal prophylactic here in Australia," Annie, a voter in the marginal Victorian electorate of Chisholm, told the ABC. Australians of Chinese heritage grade a substantial voting bloc in Chisholm, along with the NSW seats of North Sydney, Bennelong, Mackellar, Banks and Reid.

The LNP holds all these seats, some of them by wafer-thin margins.

Meanwhile, our stand against Beijing, formalised in the AUKUS pact with America and Britain, further jeopardises merchandise with Communist china, renders us technologically dependent on the U.s.a. for decades and makes us a nuclear target. On the flip side, we'll air current up with some outdated nuclear submarines in about 20 years, and so there'due south that.
So dangerous is Morrison'south Communist china/Labor scare campaign that ASIO – in a rare foray into controversy – weighed in on the matter, saying information technology was important not to politicise the arrangement by leaking its intelligence, equally the authorities, in contempo weeks, has been accused of doing.

It was as important that MPs kept engaging with Australians of Chinese heritage, despite fears that a Morrison or a Dutton would label them "China's pick", ASIO Director General Mike Burgess said. Were politicians to shun this appointment, it would have a "corrosive bear upon on our republic" and security.

Did Morrison heed any of this? Of course non: Burgess's comments last Monday were immediately followed by the PM pointing beyond at Albanese during Parliamentary Question Fourth dimension, declaring the Chinese government has "picked their horse, and he's sitting right there".

In a recent look at Morrison'south personality, I pointed out at to the lowest degree 14 traits the PM displays (out of a possible 20) that suggest he might be a psychopath (or "psycho", as 1 senior Chiffonier government minister chosen him in a leaked text). Two of those traits involve (i) reckless behaviour, and (two) the absence of a censor.

Antagonising Red china – our largest trading partner and an emerging superpower – for short-term political gain, is utterly reckless on Morrison'due south part. Failing to heed mutual sense warnings about that, no matter the cost to beau Australians, shows his absolute lack of a conscience.

Remember, to Morrison it's all part of "the game".

No words pic.twitter.com/kR8ROQvGgR

— Kailas Wild (@kailaswild) February xix, 2022

Scott Morrison believes that ginning upwards fear almost 1 confected threat or another will erase the tsunami of abuse and incompetence that engulfed Australia on his lookout man. That, with a wave of his magic Cronulla scarf, he can brand us forget sports rorts, Jobkeeper graft, carpark capers, jobs for the boys, the Robodebt debacle, his dragging the chain on a Federal ICAC, his utter incompetence on the vaccine rollout, his lack of action over the systemic abuse of women inside Parliament House, his erosion of Medicare, a procession of ministerial scandals, more than 700 aged intendance deaths from COVID-19 this year lone and, finally, the fact that he can't operate an arc welder without making a complete fool of himself (higher up).

Show him wrong, Australia.

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Source: https://footyology.com.au/china-wants-albo-sorry-pm-so-does-australia/