By Mungo MacCallum
According to some distraught commentators, some million conservative voters deserted the coalition for minor parties – some even more distraught commentators put the figure at a million and a half.
It’s a kick in the pants, gloats Eric Abetz. Bring back Tony Abbott, screams Kevin Andrews. Let’s see how we can exploit them, exhorts Cory Bernardi. But the more optimistic types are determined to look on the bright side.
Sure, Malcolm Turnbull’s plea to the electorate to abjure all parties except the Libs and the Nats went largely unheeded: they punters ran off madly in all directions and a lot of the outliers ended up in the senate. But perhaps, just perhaps, that is not so bad because a lot of them will be conservatives – sympathetic to the cause of Right.
Well, up to a point: it depends what you mean by conservative. They may not be progressive, but they may not be too keen on regime that has just scraped home either.
Take, for example, Pauline Hanson – we have to take her because she has been elected, to Turnbull’s very public distaste. And she may easily drag a couple more fellow travellers in with her; she will have to be taken seriously. Hanson is certainly a conservative, but she is a conservative not of the current century but from the first half of the previous one, in a time long before she – or most other people – were born.
Her One Nation is the country of White Australia and terra nullius, an age in which almost every Australian was a committed Christian (or at least professed to be one) and when heterosexual marriage – indeed, any kind of sexual congress – was virtually compulsory.
And it was the age of protectionism; free trade was a dangerous aberration confected by the radicals of New South Wales to undermine the sturdy legacy of the Victorian establishment. And so it is for Hanson: the so-called new economy is anathema, words like transition and agility as incomprehensible as, well, xenophobia.
And along her will sit Nick Xenophon and his team. Xenophon may have little in common with Hanson’s social agenda, but he shares, if not surpasses, her protectionist zeal. He is adamant that the manufacturing industry must be nurtured and, if necessary subsidised: Arrium Steel is only the beginning.
This bunch is hardly likely to commit to the grand National Economic Plan, especially the proposed legislation to enable ten years of corporate tax cuts. And their numbers, combined with Labor and the Greens and the immovable Jacqui Lambie, would be sufficient to strangle the Turnbull budget – which comprises about 95 per cent of the government’s agenda – before it has been detached from its placenta.
Similarly, there is little hope for the plans for a joint sitting. The moves to resurrect the Building and Construction Commission will certainly pass the House of Representatives, but assuming a majority of four, including Cathy McGowan and Rebecca Sharkie (no certainties), Turnbull will still need at least five crossbench senators. He can probably count on two; then it comes down to Xenophon, who is talking about a raft of amendments (which may or may not be acceptable) Hanson and Hinch. Talk about unrepresentative swill.
Turnbull, Morrison and the others will have to approach them with gas masks as well as bribes. Much of the task will fall to the senate leader, George Brandis, Hanson’s fellow Queenslander. He may be made for the job: Brandis has famously proclaimed that people have a right to be bigots. But given his negotiating skills in the last parliament, you wouldn’t put too much money on it.
But if the conservatives in the government are somewhat confused, spare a thought for their supporters in the media. In the aftermath of their deflated predictions, they don’t know what to think.
On the one hand, it has been a welcome rebuff to Turnbull and his team: lazy, out of touch, arrogant and complacent. They had it, and perhaps Tony Abbott, coming to them. But on the other hand the voters were a bunch of mugs – conned by scaremongering and populism, pawns of the GetUp and the CFMEU.
They may well be right about Turnbull but they are completely wrong about Labor; the result was a much needed rebuke and a near disaster. And their thinking is delusional almost to the point of being bipolar.
Hansonism, they thunder, must be respected; the voters have spoken. But apparently it must only be respected by the latte sippers of the inner city left. They themselves, of course, know better.
It is well very well to applaud her attack on political correctness, which they and she deride – others call it simple good manners. But alas, she does not really appreciate the basic theology of economic correctness — the unviolable sacrament of the market.
So the pundits of the right have to fall back on double think. Paul Kelly, the most pompous pontificator of the political elite, is fond of talking about the two realities: the one among the world of the masses, and the one inside the beltway. This is an Americanism of which most people have never heard, and would summarily dismiss if they had, but for Kelly and his fellow insiders it is holy writ.
Inside the beltway you can find the magic formula for, among other things, jobs and growth; productivity is king, and all impediments to it must be expunged. Economic fundamentalism rules; there is, as Margaret Thatcher famously observed, no such thing as society.
Ideas of debt and deficit are anathema; everything must be sacrificed to the god of economic surplus, which may then be used not for the betterment of all, but to procure further incentives to those who truly deserve them – who will use them to reboot the endless cycle of jobs and growth.
Unfortunately, those outside this mythical beltway remain unconvinced. They do not really believe that tax cuts for already profitable corporations will help them pay for their rents and their grocery bills. They would rather spend the money on much needed health and education than further hand outs to the wealthy.
And thus they vote as they do, and as they did this year. We have, of course, to respect their decision – that is (snarl) democracy. But we must also rehabilitate them so they won’t do it again – for their own health, of course. And if they want education, we’ll teach the bastards.
I would like to see the whole system fall down like the pack of cards that this illegal Westminster Law system actually is . It is only kept there by the fact that we turn a blind (most times white superior eye) to the fact that this government which we are meant to take seriously (and in the Uk ) is here governing illegally on account of these facts.
1. They lied when they arrived here in the convict boats. by declaring the place Terra Nullius (empty of people). They were able to justify this because of the belief in the superiority of the White Man and for the next period of time.till 1967 ,the people who’s,land they had occupied were governed under laws relating to Flora and Fauna (flowers and animals for those non latin scholars amongst us. )
With the Mabo high court ruling which overturned Terra Nullius we now have an illegal government and I believe that this interesting situation needs to be talked about,understood ,acknowledged, discussed with all \original \peoples groups \i.e. those whose countries were stolen . Most people in Australia have very little understanding of this history. There were at least 500 language groups , original people living in harmony with the earth in this ancient Land
The public service seem to do a pretty good job of running the country for extended periods of time . For the survival of the planet it is necessary that we come out of our state of denial and ignorance and wake up to the fact that we live on a living body Earth and that there are complex rules and guide lines known by native indigenous people the world over. These laws keep us in balance with all of nature listen to what they have to say .The Planet is severely out of balance and we need to listen to these peoples.
I find it sickening that the majority of talk is about money when we are facing a Planetary Crisis. Old Politics is finished . Time to sit down and pow wow and listen to wisdom from Native people . The thirteen Grand mothers is a good place to start . All of the wisdom keepers who are still teaching right now however Are we listening.?NO. We are arguing about the new god MONEY.
For the legal presentation of the illegality of the government in Australia you can google Mark Mcmurtrie or Sovereigny . Take a good look at what is happening in the u.k. our Mother country,A system caught with its pants down. End of rave from London. Love to all my friends and family in the Byron Shire
bloody great read!,the progressives are all bastards.
The Damien Mantach story requires the analysis of Mungo.
Here is the basic story from the Mercury. It looks like the Conservatives have infested the Prison system and are teaching politics during their spare time.
vis:
Former Liberal Party director Damien Mantach jailed over $1.5m fraud
PADRAIC MURPHY, NICK CLARK and AAP, Mercury
July 19, 2016 9:21pm
DISGRACED former Tasmanian Liberal Party director Damien Mantach has been jailed for five years for stealing $1.55 million from the Victorian branch.
The 42-year-old stole the money amid a collapsing marriage, crushing debts and problems with alcohol, gambling and depression, a Victorian Country Court has heard.
Judge Liz Gaynor said Mantach’s offending was “protracted, deceitful, and deliberate” and sentenced him to a maximum of five years in prison, with a non-parole period of two years and eight months.
“It involved a grave breach of trust inherent in your responsible position which allowed you to camouflage your conduct,” she said.
Mantach diverted $1,558,913 from the Victorian Liberal Party’s coffers using 53 fake invoices for work that was never done.
The thefts started in June 2010, continued until January 2015 and were discovered in August last year.
He resigned a few months before the missing money was detected and has been in custody since November 18 last year.
Damien Mantach leaving his Ocean Grove home, near Geelong, last year. Picture: NICOLE GARMSTON
Mantach grew up in Launceston and worked at McDonalds and the Commonwealth Bank before working as a media advisor for a Tasmanian Liberal Member of Parliament.
He quickly rose up the party’s ranks, becoming Tasmanian director in 2005 but racked up a liability for personal expenses to the Tasmanian division totalling $47,981.78.
The Tasmanian Liberals – in a social media post on August 20 last year – said they considered the matter closed because the debt had been fully settled.
Tasmanian Labor leader Bryan Green said the serious punishment handed down was in stark contrast to the blind eye turned by senior Liberals in this state.
He said the Liberal party should have investigated Mr Mantach’s misappropriation of $48,000 in Tasmania before he went to Victoria and stole $1.5 million.
“We are calling for a proper investigation into what occurred in the Liberal party over the misappropriation of $48,000,” he said.
Following the discovery of the missing $1.55 million from Victorian coffers last year, Mantach made full confessions and he has been in jail since his arrest in November.
Mantach blew the money on shares, an $81,000 car, paying his mortgage and spent $611,031 on a cafe called Gusto to please his wife, who was oblivious to his offending.
His wife Jodie left him the day after he admitted the fraud to Liberal Party investigators, and divorce proceedings are under way, the court heard.
He has repaid $535,000 of the stolen money, and said he hoped to make further reparations when his divorce is finalised.
He is currently teaching politics to prison inmates.