A lot of people are alarmed at the rate at which prime ministers get changed these days.
Personally, I’d be happy to have a new PM every week so long as none of them torture any innocent people in isolated offshore prison camps.
Rotate it constantly, as long as whose ever day it is in charge doesn’t chuck billions in taxpayers’ dollars at fossil fuel companies destroying the capacity of the planet to sustain human civilisation. Give everyone a go who wants to tax large corporations and end homelessness with a program of building affordable public housing.
I feel the same when people insist these politicians stop their squabbling and “do their jobs”. By all available evidence, Liberal politicians think their job is to kick the shit out of the poor while hastening an ecoholocaust. I really don’t mind if they take a break.
When the government voted to shut down the House of Representatives in the midst of the leadership spill, I thought, “Finally, something I can agree with”. My big concern is what’ll happen when it inevitably reopens.
Of course, with the constant changes in prime minister, the problem is that the people elect a government only to find that small numbers of people in closed meetings impose a new leader due to cynical calculations based on self-interest.
Here, the deep instability marked by constant knifings of leaders is related to their broader political actions. If you are so committed to the interests of a corporate elite that basically owns you that you cannot actually met the needs of the vast majority, you will struggle to sell your policies and build a stable base of support.
And given it is hard to sell the failed God of neoliberalism that is worsening all our lives, racism makes a nice excuse. You get to shout about how it's all about those brown people nicking all our stuff.
This, however, only encourages the hard right to think this is its moment to go even further. Next thing you know, the country is literally a handful of Liberal caucus votes away from hearing the phrase: “Prime Minister Peter Dutton”.
Even before the vote, there were questions about whether Dutton could even sit in parliament, due to his interests in a childcare company that benefited from government subsidies. To be honest, I’m less concerned about a potential conflict of interest than the fact we apparently let Peter Dutton run childcare centres.
One of Dutton’s strongest backers was Senator Jim Molan, a former military commander. Because if you want to carry out an ill-advised, bloody regime change that ends in chaos, you want the backing of a guy who literally headed the entire occupation forces of Iraq in 2004.
The leadership spill went just about as well. After much bloodshed, another force came out dominant anyway – Iran in the case of Iraq; Scott Morrison in the case of the Liberals.
Some were relieved we avoided Dutton, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison is bad enough. His record as immigration minister deserves a hearing in The Hague.
Last year, Morrison told shock jock Ray Hadley that he “empathised” with US President Donald Trump over the backlash Trump faced for his ultra-racist Muslim ban. He added that Trump’s immigration policies showed the world was “catching up” to Australia.
Yes, Morrison boasted that Australia beat Trump to it.
He then followed up his immigration reign with a stint as social security minister, where his seemingly endless hatred for the poor burned so intensely it could be a renewable energy source to replace the coal he loves so much.
To judge by the response to all this from progressive people on social media, I feel I should give a heads up to New Zealand that it's definitely time to build a border wall.
I’ve heard a lot of “Let’s move to New Zealand” in recent days. Honestly, I don’t think that is the true Aussie spirit. Rather than running off to New Zealand, we should do things the Australian way — and invade and occupy the bastards. Put anyone who doesn’t like it in isolated prison camps. Senator Molan could probably head the operation.
The point is I do not want these people to “do their jobs”. I don’t think they should have their jobs.
And I don’t care how many times we change leaders, so long as no one gets tortured. I do realise that, in 2018, this seems like a lot to ask.