Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently visited Williamtown Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base, about 26km north of Newcastle, and a photo was put up on his Instagram account showing him walking from the aircraft on a red carpet with an honour guard of six RAAF personnel on each side of the carpet holding flags and rifles1.
I have often railed against the overall poor quality of journalism in Australia1-4. However, when I refer to journalists, I of course exclude most of those who work for Murdoch’s News Corp, because calling them journalists is an insult to real journalists5-6.
When I was in Tasmania in the late 1970s, a mate’s father died and left him a case of 1976 Penfolds Grange Hermitage. At about the same time, Grange won some prize at a wine show, which I seem to remember was in Paris. Almost overnight, the price of the wine shot up on the strength of that prize. Apparently, the 1976 vintage is considered “one of the most awesome wines ever made at Grange”, and is a blend of 89% shiraz and 11% cabernet sauvignon grapes1.
About a decade ago then leader of the opposition, the incomparably inept Tony Abbott pointed at the Labor government’s budget deficits in dealing with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and the consequent increase in net and gross government debt and claimed that it was a “debt and deficit disaster”. The GFC response by the Rudd government was huge, with stimulus packages totalling well over $50 billion1.
On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) hour-long current affairs panel show, The Drum, a discussion commenced at 48.05 which talked about research that indicated some 40% of “Australians of faith feel that they need to hide their religious beliefs in some way” and were “anxious that they might be judged or misunderstood”. This result was said to be based on a survey of only 1000 people1, so it is difficult to be certain how accurate it is.
It has often been said that we should not be afraid of a politician’s religious belief; that it is their private business and it should concern nobody else; after all, most Australian Prime Ministers have been adherents of one or other sect. However, never in my experience, have I seen anyone so dominated by their religious belief (Pentecostalism) as Scott Morrison.
Morrison flew, at taxpayers’ expense, to the Gold Coast to attend the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) national conference and gave a speech. This led to numerous online discussions about the fact of the speech, that a transcript was not publicly released by the Prime Minister’s Office, and subsequently, the content of the speech.
In an online discussion on April 28, an interlocutor asked of David Crowe (Chief political correspondent, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age):
In response to porkies in the Murdoch media, in the previous essay, I related how comedian and political commentator Jordan Shanks (aka Friendly Jordies) filmed himself rolling up an Azerbaijani flag and walking into Kelly’s home in Illawong in Sydney’s south last month. The Kelly home is up for sale and Shanks visited during an ‘open house’ when it was open to the public for inspection.
On May 1, in Murdoch’s Daily Bellylaugh (reprinted in the Catallaxy Files1), Barnaby Joyce’s paramour, Vikki Campion wrote a piece entitled ‘Cancel culture the real rat’ and opined that it was “the real rats in our media and online that are doing more damage” than the rodent plague in eastern Australia. She accused these media and online rats of taking “control of the narrative and they have crowned themselves a noble species and their diet is any who disagree” (yes, she really said that).