Scott Morrison
All posts tagged Scott Morrison
Morrison was a weak leader and definitely NOT a conservative PM. He claimed to be a Christian but his time in office, as as I see it, showed otherwise.
If the Police had allowed this truck to just go through all would have been fine. This is the way tyrannical governments rule over the people!
There MUST be a change in government this May and that does not include the LNP, ALP, Greens or those Leftist Independents but it does mean parties such as the UAP, One Nation and Liberal Democrats!
‘‘Disgusting right-wing nut-jobs’, ‘rebels’, ‘populist conservatives’ and of course ‘anti-vaxxers’. These are just some of the politer insults being hurled at those who espouse the once universally accepted concept that it is legally, ethically and morally wrong to mandate medical procedures or vaccinations upon people against their will. Or indeed to coerce or even manipulate people to take any form of medication whatsoever.
Readers of this magazine were made aware many months ago of the political perils of vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination requirements within the workplace and elsewhere.
Back in July we offered this advice to the Prime Minister and his team: ‘Condemn the state lockdowns; make all vaccines and treatments (like ivermectin) available to GPs and pharmacies as swiftly as possible with appropriate risk information; and allow individuals, not bureaucrats, to make the decisions that they feel best protect their families’ health’.
Needless to say, in following the now wearily familiar formula of avoiding any confrontation with the soft-Left and determined to avoid the hard calls that leadership always demands, Team Morrison has tried to get away with a ‘half-pregnant’ strategy of insisting vaccinations are not mandatory and in the very next breath acknowledging that they in effect are. If those who are advising the PM think this is the smart way to go about it, they are in for a rude shock come the next election. Voters elect and reward strong leaders. In the absence of a proven strong leader, they will opt for the untried alternative with fingers crossed behind their backs.
Back in August we offered a clear path forward for the government to defeat Labor at the next election. In fact, we offered two simultaneous pathways. Both of which were ignored. One was the ‘GST’ strategy of going to the next election committed to revoking the ban on nuclear energy to offer a credible path to net zero. Instead, making a fool of himself at Cop 26, the PM offered up Twiggy Forrest’s and Dave Sharma’s ludicrous notion of ‘green hydrogen’ being this nation’s economic and environmental salvation. Within a matter of days, one of the US tech billionaires of the sort we were no doubt hoping to seduce with this plan, Elon Musk, had dismissed ‘green hydrogen’ as ‘mind-bogglingly stupid’. Yet that is what the Liberals and Nationals are pinning our future prosperity on.
The second and most important part of the advice we generously offered was for the Coalition to become the party of freedom. As we pointed out back then, ‘The mood of the electorate is now shifting dramatically and the battle lines of the next federal election are being drawn. The party that offers a credible path to freedom will win. The heavy hand of endless lockdowns should be to Labor what Chris Bowen’s franking credits were at the last election: if you don’t want permanent lockdowns, don’t vote for Labor’.
Again, our advice was ignored. And it’s interesting to note that so-called highly respected ‘centre-right’ commentators in the media went out of their way to dismiss our and similar advice as ‘conservative populism’. The idea of promoting nuclear power was ‘electoral suicide’ and the notion that the government should back freedom of choice in Covid matters was airily dismissed as ‘senseless, indulgent and irresponsible’.
The latter criticism was delivered following the laudable actions of several senators in crossing the floor to support Pauline Hanson’s failed Bill to prevent the states imposing mandatory vaccinations. That the Bill was regarded as flawed by some conservative members of the government – who abstained – is neither here nor there. The point is clear: the government could and should have been out on the front foot proposing legislation of its own, or, at the very least, the PM and his Cabinet could have easily taken the moral high ground weeks ago with a strong condemnation of the states’ vaccination rules. What’s that word again…? Oh, yes, ‘leadership’.
Speaking of which, nowhere in the history of democratic politics is there any shining or even remotely successful example of a government surrendering not only its power but its moral authority to sworn ideological opponents and then benefitting from that surrender. Yet this is precisely what Scott Morrison did with the idiotic ‘National Cabinet’ scheme. Again, as we said all the way back in July, ‘The National Cabinet is a disaster, removing elected federal government MPs from decision-making at a critical time and replacing them with a motley gang of mostly left-wing premiers and bureaucrats who have used fear and over-the-top authoritarian measures to pander to the polls, whilst the humble taxpayer has been left to pick up the tab.’
A strong and unequivocal (as opposed to mealy-mouthed and unconvincing) condemnation of Labor’s mandatory vaccination laws, Labor’s lockdowns and Labor’s closed borders would, in our opinion, see a convincing Coalition federal victory after a successful campaign of painting itself as the party of freedom. Moreover, such a principled stance would be in keeping with what were once core Liberal brand values. What’s that other word, again…? Oh, yes, ‘conviction’.’https://spectator.com.au/2021/11/conservative-populists/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MDS%20%2020211125%20%20GK&utm_content=MDS%20%2020211125%20%20GK+CID_db1a6403cdf58faeaaaf2f8bfa9758de&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Australia&utm_term=Conservative%20populists
‘There were some fine words from the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, this week when he spoke in Melbourne to a Victorian Chamber of Commerce event attended mainly by small business owners. Apparently there are still some left in that long-suffering city, home to the longest-lasting lockdowns in the world and easily the most draconian Covid restrictions in the Western world. After some typically Morrisonian ‘how good is Australia’ blather about getting your hair cut or meeting friends at the pub, he finally got to the point. ‘The taste of freedom,’ he announced; a sentence without a verb as if it were the title of a new book or movie. ‘It must never be taken from us again. That is why I put the national plan together. A plan based on the best possible medical science and economics to ensure we open safely and stay safely open. Australians have kept their side of this deal by getting vaccinated. Governments must now keep theirs and return to Australians their freedoms.’
Full marks for the sentiment. But the detail of his comments reveals the disappointing fact that our Prime Minister not only doesn’t understand the true concept of freedom, but worse, is trying to excuse and paper over the gaping black hole of genuine leadership that has engulfed the nation these last eighteen months.
Let’s start with the taste of freedom. Rather than being an ancient concept that millions of humans have died so that others may experience and cherish it, Mr Morrison instead sees freedom as akin to a new brand of Vegemite or a new Aussie beer (mid-strength, obviously). In the Morrison world view, freedom is as you-beaut-ripper as a Kingswood station wagon packed with the kids heading down to the coast for the summer hols (and about as irritating). Freedom is as convenient and as comfy as your favourite pair of tracksuit pants and thongs (and just as easily discarded).
Morrison’s ‘freedom’ is ‘part of who we are’, much in the same way that a burnt snag at a Bunnings sausage sizzle is.
And as such – and this is the disturbing bit – freedom is actually something the government manufactures, that the government owns and that the government will give you if you’ve been a good boy or a good girl. Indeed, in the Prime Minister’s mind, freedom is very much and very explicitly a bargaining chip. A token in a game of viral tiddlywinks. Freedom in exchange for being vaccinated.
That is a dangerous precedent. Freedom should be the inalienable right of every law-abiding Australian regardless of their health status. The Prime Minister, several months ago, claimed that the vaccines would not be mandatory. Although that may be technically correct in the most legalistic sense, the stark reality is that for the time being to all intents and purposes Covid vaccines are mandatory in Australia. Therefore the Prime Minister has broken his own word either through neglect or on purpose.
Depressingly, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has retreated on his own fine words that freedom was not a gift of any government, and now that he is in power has similarly using denial of freedoms and social isolation as forms of punishment by arbitrarily extending restrictions on the unvaccinated by a fortnight.
Then comes the prime ministerial non-sequitur, and it’s a real doozy. Mr Morrison claims that he put his much-prized ‘national plan’ together in order to ensure that our freedoms will ‘never be taken from us again’. That’s quite the claim! In fact, the self-stated purpose of the national plan was to ‘relink the states’ and ‘connect Australia to the world’. Nothing in there about ensuring our freedoms would ‘never be taken from us again’. In order to achieve that noble goal, the Prime Minister will have to do what he should have done last year when he was offered the chance (you only get one Clive Palmer in your lifetime) to challenge the Constitutional legality of closed borders. That would have been one crucial step towards guaranteeing the permanence and inalienability of individual freedoms. Another would be to legislate – as has been done by the Republican governor of Florida, Ron de Santis – to make it illegal under Australia’s human rights laws to discriminate against any Australian citizen within this country based on their vaccination status.
So – no, Prime Minister, your national plan was not designed to ensure that the taste of freedom will never be taken from us again. That might sound good in the research focus groups, but it is a lie. Australians, and in particular Australian businesses, have no guarantee that their freedoms won’t be ripped from them again the moment that, for example, a new variant of the virus should appear, or even a new virus pops out again from a bowl of bat soup or any other delicacy being conveniently served up adjacent to a Chinese bio-weapons lab, or the efficacy of vaccines wears off or, for whatever reason, the public decides against immunisation boosters or other such measures.
Having ignored freedom when we needed it the Prime Minister is now waving it around on the eve an election. Australians may currently have the illusion of ‘freedom’ but, like that family trip to the coast, we’re definitely not there yet.’https://spectator.com.au/2021/11/are-we-free-yet/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MDS%20%2020211111%20%20SG&utm_content=MDS%20%2020211111%20%20SG+CID_f41c9caec8be7507b2ab2d14a2008fca&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Australia&utm_term=Are%20we%20free%20yet
Once the Liberal Party of Australia was considered conservative. No longer! ‘The Liberal Party’s increasingly unpopular approach to government can be summed up in a single sentence: “we’re 40 per cent less terrible than Labor and the Greens”. The latest example of many is Morrison’s new electric car policy.
Although Bill Shorten – the bloke who calls angry tradies fed up with lockdowns “man-baby Nazis” – was punished for promising 50 per cent of new car sales would be electric by 2030 at the last election, PM Scott Morrison has decided to go down the very same path.
Instead of a 50 per cent electric vehicle target, this morning ScoMo announced he’d aim for 30 per cent of new sales to be electric vehicles by 2030 (that’s a total of 40 per cent lower than Labor’s 2019 policy).
Morrison promised he’ll spend $250 million on public and household electric vehicle charging, electrifying commercial fleets, and heavy and long-distance vehicles – almost five times more than the $57 million Labor committed to developing an electric vehicle industry.
And when questioned about how similar his electric vehicle policy is to Labor’s, Morrison said “I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive” – even though he has no issue with the state telling people what vaccine to get, what jobs are essential/non-essential, and what farmers should/shouldn’t do with their land.
How short do you think our memories are, mate?
Millions of Australians who voted for you in 2019 remember exactly what you said about electric vehicles.
At the time, you asked 2GB radio’s audience, “What about all these charging stations, how much is that going to cost? I mean if you have an electric car and you live in an apartment, are you going to run the extension cord down from your fourth-floor window?”
At a doorstop you said, “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles where you’ve got Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives… [An electric vehicle] won’t tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family.”
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said, “we are going to stand by our tradies and we are going to save their utes” in response to Labor’s policy on electric vehicles.
Even Energy Minister Angus Taylor posted the following on his Twitter page:
This is not the way to run a government, guys, and here’s why:
CEO of energy company Lumea Richard Lowe admits “one electric vehicle, we estimate, consumes about the same electricity as your average household.” In other words, prepare for even higher energy prices after they already went up by over 101 per cent over the last decade.
According to a paper by experts in ecology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Risk Management Laboratory:
- Half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car comes from the energy used to produce the car, especially in the mining and processing of raw materials needed for the battery – roughly double the energy used to manufacture a gasoline-powered car.
- This means that when a new EV appears in the showroom, it has already been responsible for 14,250kg of carbon-dioxide emissions (assuming a vehicle life of 150,000km) while the equivalent amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 6,450kg.
- Once on the road, the emissions of electric vehicles depend on the power-generation fuel used to recharge its battery. If it comes mostly from coal, an electric vehicle will produce 17-27 per cent more carbon-dioxide emission than diesel and gasoline cars.
- If the EV is driven for 90,000 miles and the battery is charged by cleaner natural-gas fuelled power stations, it will cause just 10-24 per cent less carbon-dioxide emission than a diesel or gasoline-powered car.
Even worse, there’s net-zero consideration for the fact that:
- All variants of the 2021 Tesla Model 3 are now made in Chinese factories, which are no doubt running on coal-fired power.
- To replace all the sales of conventional vehicles with electric versions, the world will need a 2898 per cent increase in lithium production; a 1928 per cent increase in cobalt; a 524 per cent increase in graphite; a 105 per cent increase in nickel; a 655 per cent increase in rare-earth minerals; a tripling of copper production; and more coal, diesel and gasoline burning to fuel the work.
- “Two-thirds of all cobalt production” – a key component in the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries – “happens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)” where “40,000 children work in extremely dangerous conditions in the mines for meagre income”.
- The mining of lithium in Chile – another key component required for electric vehicle batteries – “uses nearly 65 per cent of the water in the country’s Salar de Atamaca region, one of the driest desert areas in the world … forcing local quinoa farmers and llama herders to abandon their ancestral settlements.”
- The production of nickel for electric vehicle batteries is centred in Indonesia and the Philippines where clear-felling of tropical forests is required to mine the quantities needed for the so-called “green transition” the Liberals now back.
How progressive, ScoMo!
Good luck trying to spin your way out of this one, mate…’https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/scott_morrison_s_shocking_backflip_on_electric_vehicles?fbclid=IwAR2Aa3MvL0u_siTwlEIpA-iI1O3n55njltwe0P–fTrhgoNln7r1Bq3KyyU
whatyareckon 