The kooky Cult of Abbott's end days
It is hard to see the Abbott's Government's bizarre
cult-like denial of reality and meaningless, hairy-goat
expedition lasting another two years, writes Bob Ellis.
Bill Shorten is a million votes ahead of Abbott
as preferred Prime Minister, Labor 1.5 million votes ahead of the
Coalition as preferred Federal government and, in the Westminster
system, there would normally be resignations by now.
Christopher Pyne, for instance, failed to get his university revolution through and, last night, said he was "good friends" with Senator Glenn Lazarus — a man who thinks of him as a perverted stalker.
Scott Morrison was shown to have ordered a delay
for six hours of the disembarkation of heat-stressed asylum-seekers,
endangering some children’s lives, until Australia Day darkened into
night and their arrival could occur in secret. This is a crime and he
should stand down till it is investigated by a royal commission, or his
punishment determined by the Federal Police.
Defence Minister David Johnston committed treason by casting doubt on the ability of our Navy and should be stood down pending his trial for what, in other decades, was a capital crime.
Tony Abbott, also, threatened to fine
a new Premier, Daniel Andrews, $3 billion if he did not go back on a
promise which elected him on Saturday. This is a resignation matter.
Yet these kooks behave as if nothing out of the ordinary were
happening, that this "patient, disciplined government" were going about
their business in a "calm and orderly way".
It is, in fact, a strikingly aberrant government showing signs of being the worst in our history.
A thousand things they have done wrong could be listed by any attentive student. These include our shaming at APEC and the worst deficit in our history.
Some of the signs of Jonestown, or the Branch Davidian burning itself to death in Waco, Texas, are already apparent.
Finding their mutilation of the ABC opposed by eighty per cent of the people, they cut its money by half a billion dollars, after promising no change to it.
After killing car manufacture in this country, they then announced
they were killing submarine manufacture and awarding it, smashing a
whole state’s economy, to our former loathed war foe, Japan.
After opposing the invention of Medicare and abolishing it once, they
are now keen to make it unaffordable for old women who depend on it;
old women who have been, till now, their most reliable voters.
It is hard to see why they are behaving so madly. It may be that the
party of Menzies, Fraser, Peacock, Hamer, Hewson and Chaney is now
nursing and rearing a crazy, Catholic, fundamentalist cuckoo. It may be
that the autocratic rule of Credlin (or 'Meddlin’ Credlin, Queen of the
Kremlin', as she is sometimes known) is nearing its end, and Malcolm
Turnbull will soon be in charge again, and patient, calm civility
restored to an aghast, amazed and shattered nation.
It certainly cannot last.
This cult-like denial of reality and meaningless, hairy-goat
expedition (a billion will be spent on seeking MH370 and it is hard to
imagine why) may stir the Governor-General to initiate, off his own bat,
a Double Dissolution. The Senate, dismayed by our national ruin, may
refuse Supply. Abbott, beset by enemies and half mad anyway, may advise
an election and immolate his enemies along with himself.
It is hard to see it lasting another two years.
It has the smell of Bjelke Petersen and the Moonlight State, about
it. Masters, Fitzgerald and Dempster will be coming soon – or their
equivalent – and the story will soon, very soon, be over.
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