Displaying items by tag: Australian Government

The NSW Government, which trades under the name "liberal", is anything but.  Its Minister for Digital, Victor Dominello, works under the radar.  But his technocratic intentions are evil, for all of us.

The gloves are now off in the vaccine wars, with almost daily attacks on the non-vaccinated and threats of vaccine apartheid.  These attacks are without precedent in this liberal democracy of ours, and constitute the greatest attack on personal freedom in our history.  I will stop writing about it as soon as the attacks on us stop.

The great unvaccinated hordes are not only selfish granny killers.  They (we) are trashing the economy as well.  Treasury says so.

The journalist Niki Savva has been stalking Tony Abbott for what seems like decades.  Suddenly noticing a current absence of political leadership, Savva has broken the habit of a lifetime and actually praised Abbott.  As an Opposition leader.  She still misses plenty.

WB Yeats famously opined, in the dark shadow of the Great War, that "the centre would not hold".  A much quoted line, often tinged with sadness and fear.  The sensible centre of politics might similarly wonder - whither liberal democracy in this land, as we are assailed by the forces of the dark side and there seems no leadership emerging to fight these forces?

This week we remember the election of John Howard's Government, twenty-five years ago.  How the time as flown.  Mostly Howard is remembered with affection.  Some even have suggested that he was our greatest prime minister.  Was he that good?  Was his Government the best?  Sober reflection is required, and hindsight helps.

The current penchant that governments and many citizens have for "Covidocracy" looks like becoming permanent.  This is despite the initial promise of the silver bullet vaccine.  Those who, quite legitimately, question the efficacy of the jab, are prone to made pariahs.  Rather, they should be lauded as the rational ones among us, and thanked for pointing out the massive contradictions of vaccine politics.

A few recent indications suggest that Australians might be fighting back.  Finally.

Losing Trump was just like losing Abbott.  Two feisty conviction politicians with much in common have been lost to the West.  Their many enemies are grinning.  We will miss them both.  (A version of this article appears in the 6 February 2021 edition of The Spectator Australia).

The Covid scare has taken even further the tendency for politicians, ideologues and interest groups of all stripes to politicise death.  Already seen during tragedies and natural disasters, political actors rush to embrace crises, and they now even sometimes make them up.  Death counts are now a part of daily political life, and the new currency of political debate.  This is an unseemly development.