Bring on the New Year
We are soon to close the doors on 2014. Am I right in presuming that we’ll all be glad to see the back of it?
It hasn’t been too memorable, on the political front at least.
It has been a year where ordinary Australians have been kicked from
pillar to post by an ideology-driven government whose vision clearly
focuses on feathering the nests of the not-so-ordinary Australians.
It has been a year where all social, economic, technological and
ecological issues have been ignored by a government too inept to
confront them. And perhaps too blind to notice.
Sitting at the head of the table of this atrocious government is
possibly the most inept national leader in the Western world. You have
to wonder how such an incompetent, out of depth, out of touch individual
manages to keep his job. He has been lucky, in my opinion, to last as
long as he has.
Yes, it has been some year.
My friends at The Political Sword have summed it up much better than I could, so it is my pleasure to borrow their summary:
It was a year in which we saw Abbott and his cronies
trying to destroy the country and make us a paradise for the
neo-liberals, the neo-cons and the economists that support them — and,
of course, big business. We saw the worst budget in living memory and
have, so far, only been saved from its full ramifications by the senate.
We saw Clive Palmer appear with Al Gore to talk about the importance of
climate change but, at the same time, cave in to support the repeal of
the carbon price. We have seen Abbott, more through luck than design,
deflect the budget issue and ‘bask’ in the glory of the world stage,
taking on the Russian bear and alienating our closest Asian neighbour.
He has ‘stopped the boats’ but also stopped government transparency in
the process. He is undertaking more privatisation of government services
and encouraging the states to do the same. Without openly saying so, he
is pursuing a neo-liberal and economic rationalist agenda backed to the
hilt by the IPA (and, as others have noted, he is, to a significant
extent, following its ‘hit list’).
That says it all!
As does this photo, which tells us a lot about our prime minister even though he’s missing from it.
He had just delivered a speech at the United Nations. I don’t
remember what it was about – it wasn’t important enough to bother
remembering. If it had have been important then I’m sure he would have
delivered his speech to a larger audience than the six people who
actually sat through it.
Image from twitter.com
After delivering his talk that nobody wanted to listen to, jumping to
her feet from the sidelines was a deliriously excited Peta Credlin
giving Tony the thumbs up.
This reminded me of my mother after I sang two lines in a school
concert when I was eight. Nobody, surely, heard me except my mother. But
her rapturous encouragement filled me with the feeling that my
performance was outstanding – that I had a voice like Elvis Presley (my
mother liked Elvis Presley).
Truth is, nobody else in the audience cared whether I was performing or not. The other truth is – I can’t sing.
Our prime minister can’t ‘prime minister’. But he gets the thumbs up.
He needs all the encouragement he can get, even childish encouragement.
* * *
Independent and social media sites who have been prepared to question
and challenge the Abbott Government have, ironically, benefited from
its ineptitude. That there is a growing number of Australians expressing
disgust at the direction the government is taking us, and a growing
discontent in the government and its leader (as reflected in the opinion
polls) has seen numbers turning to independent media as a credible
alternative.
The AIMN certainly has been rewarded. Last year – our first year –
saw us welcome 1.96 million readers. This year (at the time of writing),
4.15 million people have read The AIMN. That’s over double what we
achieved last year. What can we achieve in 2015?
We can only achieve the stellar readership of 4.15 million in a year
if we have the subject matter our readers are after and a group of
outstanding writers with the skills to deliver it. We demonstrably have
both. And of course, without thousands of loyal readers helping to
spread our message we could not have grown as we have.
So all the ingredients are there for us to have a bumper 2015. Bring it on!
I hope every one of you – the writers, the admin team, those who
comment on our articles and to those who simply visit us to read them –
have a fabulous 2015. And I thank you for your efforts in 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment