How utterly extraordinary. And how completely unpredictable.
David Marr and Phillip Coorey tell the story of how The Terminator fluffed the chance to claim the scalp of Brother Wayne - who is clearly up to his scapula in quicksand - and now finds himself under siege. Peter Hartcher draws on Paul Keating's surprisingly accurate dissection of the Terminator's character to tell us why.
Yesterday, Laura Tingle wrote a good column in the Financial Review. Clearly, the media is being swamped with 'backgrounders' trying to explain the extraordinary events and spin the coverage their way. I also liked Glenn Milne's piece, and await an essay from John Stone on the subject.
Meanwhile a government which deserves in every way to be copping a beating has, thanks to The Terminator's impetuosity, got its tail up. This is not good news. The ferocity of the government's attack on Turnbull, and the 'Chewbacca/Silly Monkey' defence that they have repeatedly vomited onto the national airways over the past week, demonstrates that they have mastered the arts of modern politics, just as surely as the OzCar matter, the irresponsible spending splurge, the failure of GroceryWatch, BankWatch et al., the re-regulation of employment, the return of the boat people prompted by so-called 'compassionate' policy amendments, etc, demonstrate that they aren't particularly fussed about governing in the national interest.
St Kevin appears to be morphing into the federal equivalent of Boob Carr. Having lived in NSW all my life, I can assure you, that is a terrifying prospect.
Here's an example of why. The Oz's Michael Stutchbury wrote an excellent piece explaining the consequences of St Kevin's economic illiteracy and visceral aversion to market-focused economics.
Although he has shown an effective side-step in the confessional, I still don't think it is too late for Brother Wayne to be called to account for his sins - they are so grievous that The Terminator might still be able to claim his tonsured scalp as a prize. But in the first big and utterly undignified contest between the heavyweights, The Terminator has damaged himself, and this makes him less effective in calling St Kevin and his frontbench to account.
And, given St Kevin's tendencies, that is a poor outcome for the country.
After such a horrible week, both in Australia and around the world, and after over two years of focussing on the shortcomings of our national leader, I feel obliged to introduce some positive elements into the blog. So, apropos of nothing, please enjoy the following pictures of cherry blossoms and jacaranda trees. Here's hoping that the coming week will be better.
0 comments:
Post a Comment