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Byron Shire
March 27, 2024

Opinion: It’s time to kick Morrison out

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Scott Morrison is rattled.

With only days to go to the election, the polls say that the Australian people are preparing to hose this pestilence out of office.

By any rational, humane measure, Morrison has debauched the nation too viciously and too visibly to survive another judgment from the voters.

Only billionaires and bigots will benefit from a Coalition victory, but the billionaires own most of the newspapers and all of the television, the public channels have been cowed into subservience lest they lose more of their funding, and the loudest voices on social media are the craziest.

Echo co-founder and columnist, David Lovejoy.

Morrison could still get his miracle. He has convinced enough people in the past that he is not a lying grifter, despite the pork barrelling rorts, blind trusts, dodgy grants, malicious leaks, blatant misogyny, and the transfers of millions to mates and greedy corporations.

Grifters come in all shapes and sizes, from all kinds of background.

This one is used to skipping just a step ahead of impending disaster and exposure. Many times in marketing and politics, which he sees as identical pursuits, his nimble lies have saved his career.

When all else fails, he wraps his personal inadequacy in wife Jenny, or the smoke and mirrors of religion.

Losing government and leadership of the Liberal Party now looms large in his path, and his only platform has been going the full Trump with lies and alternative facts.

His plan to swamp the Coalition with Pentecostal Christians has not turned out well either, as that brand of gormless God-bothering has proved as prone to financial and sexual scandals as the major faith groupings.

Indeed, Richmond voters should feel insulted to be offered such a shallow candidate by the National Party.

The PM’s inspiration comes from former Hillsong pastor Brian Houston, a man who the ABC reported as having resigned in March after an internal investigation found he behaved inappropriately towards two women.

It followed Mr Houston stepping down in January as the director of all Hillsong boards, to defend a criminal charge that he concealed his father’s child sexual abuse.

Nevertheless, Morrison persists in bullying transgender children and pretending transgender women are lining up to interfere with women’s sport. It may be an electoral dog whistle intended for the ears of right-wing bigots, but the kind of man who puts troubled kids in harm’s way for his personal advantage is precisely who Scott Morrison is.

This man, whose humanity is so withered that he cannot feel the evil of rape without his wife’s guidance, had a moment in the campaign that emphasised his pathological lack of compassion when he was asked about the minimum wage.

For ten years, we have had the Coalition suppressing wages and overseeing a mammoth transfer of wealth from workers to employers.

Pay rises were always on the horizon, but they never arrived, and the finances of poorer people stagnated and went backwards. One reason to deny income increases was the fear of inflation, but inflation has happened anyway, without wage rises.

Inflation hurts everyone, but the wealthier you are the more you lose. If you have a billion dollars and the inflation rate is five per cent, you effectively lose $50 million.

If Morrison prevails, Australia’s influential super-rich assholes will demand the traditional ‘austerity’ remedy for reducing inflation, which requires the poor to endure cuts to social services and wages, while the rich continue to amass more money than they can ever spend.

If there is change of govenrment on Saturday, the turning point may have been Morrison’s instinctive rejection of a tiny rise in the basic wage, based on a bullshit inflation argument.

It’s okay to lose billions reneging on a submarine deal, fine to pour unaudited millions into the pockets of the likes of Gerry Harvey, good policy to spend taxpayers’ money on buying votes for the Coalition, but a dollar an hour rise for our poorest citizens would bring the economy crashing down.

Morrison’s reaction showed how clearly this government has been taken over by interests far removed from the welfare of ordinary Australians.

The mining, gaming, corporate media and financial industries currently support the Coalition in order to control its direction, and they have been spectacularly successful in this project of capturing the Australian state.

The main benefit to these corporations has been to keep their taxes low, to shield them from regulation, to derail attempts at lowering carbon emissions, and to keep gaslighting the public about climate change measures, while the world continues to burn.

Political standards have sunk to new lows.

What is finally so unforgivable about Morrison’s term as Prime Minister is how he has reshaped political standards in Canberra. The trend has been there for decades, but this hopefully outgoing-government has set a new benchmark in destructive selfishness.

The angle has been: if there’s no specific law preventing us from embezzling taxpayer funds, appointing party hacks to public posts, conspiring with media, to deceive the voters, awarding unadvertised contracts, torturing the unemployed, leaking confidential information, etc, etc – then we can do it, without shame.

In the past, the reason these things were not done was the shared concern – by all parties – to preserve parliamentary integrity, together with the knowledge that not every situation can be covered by law, and that sometimes political institutions need a tradition of honourable behaviour in order to survive.

Morrison and his thugs have trashed all that over nine long years. We will soon see whether in trying to destroy democratic norms they have also seriously damaged the Liberal Party.

David Lovejoy is the co-founder of The Echo and a regular columnist 


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15 COMMENTS

  1. Morrison has plenty of form. His sacking from NZ Tourism, sacking from Tourism Australia and the vicious campaign against Michael Towke are just three examples. Look at what those closest to Morrison say about him – Senator Fierravanti-Wells: “an autocrat and a bully.. lacking a moral compass and having no conscience”, and “In my public life I have met ruthless people, Morrison tops the list.” Barnaby Joyce: “a hypocrite and a liar” and Gladys Berejeklian: “a horrible, horrible person”.
    It says a lot about the Liberal Party that such an ethics-free individual rises to the top.

    • Michael indeed, this is our Christian PM in action who unleashed Katherine Deves, his Captain’s Pick, upon the electorate of Warringah so she can unload hate and bigotry upon vulnerable Australians.
      It says it all about Morrison, always at the ready to give a literal kicking, whip up unfounded fear, to seek potential political gain for himself.

      The ‘Bulldozer’ self-descriptor was Morrison’s smokescreen of him being an ‘Evil Wrecking Ball’.

  2. Where’s our Barrow to run defence of President ScamMO, to tell us of those President ScamMO successes; like the success story of Covid Pandemic, that just on lost lives, has so far this year seen Covid kill three times as many Aussies compared to the entire period from the start of Covid / March 2020 to the end of December 2021; like the success story of RoboRobberyDebt that saw ScamMO’s financial terrorism wilfully inflicted upon some 400,000 I N N O C E N T Australians; like the success story of the French subways deal that saw $’s5.5billions sunk to the bottom of the ocean;

    Calling Barrow…

  3. David, this article is balm for my troubled soul. You have said everything I want to say, and you have said it so well!
    I will now try to get the more gullible members of my extended family to read it before election day.

    Let’s hope enough of us have seen through Morrison’s spin, and we succeed in booting him out on Saturday. There is no hope of a decent future for our nation unless we get rid of this ruthless, morally bankrupt liar and his incompetent, corrupt government.

  4. Well done David Lovejoy, this is the best critique of LNP Morrison led government I have seen.

    Now it is up to WE the People to do our part.

  5. Well whats new !! Now David is on par with Ms Tingle..!! The ABC …Albo / Brandt/ Court
    will no doubt put more underprivileged
    and homeless in a worse situation that what they
    Have currently if the above hoist the most racial
    Political policy this country has ever seen .. 😳
    Those policy-makers will make the billionaire Holmes a court & Cannon brookes even more
    Richer if this is at all possible.. talk about the cost of living pressures… those Independent’s have not dealt with any policies that Australians are currently dealing with .. one policy and one policy
    Only ..renewables.. and the Greens ? WTF Joachim
    Want to end all resources industries as of now
    Like yesterday.. !! Yes where is the Revenue going to come from Joachim to pay for Welfare ?
    God Help us..

    • Calling Barrow…….Barrow, is that really you with this fresh scribble?
      I feeling your pain.

      I can feel that it just breaks you that intelligent, successful women Independent candidates would have the gall to stand for election.
      And Barrow my man, you again factually wrong but you do it on purpose anyway – these new women Independent candidates have multiple issues on their to do list.
      Nice that you mention renewables again, more Green Electrons into the Grid each year for you and all of us to enjoy. Unless of course you’ve taken yourself offgrid to “Do as I say” and suck on those hydrocarbon electrons that you so in love with, yeah.
      “Want to end all resources industries…”, another of your lies but then again as well all know, fact and truth never stop you, yeah.

      May well you ask the magic skydaddy for help, another 3 years of Malfeasance Morrison Government can’t be.
      But why pray, you can vote to do the business, Vote Morrison Out!

      Barrow old son, enjoy Sunday 22 May, new beginnings for Australia under the new management of ABC, Albo, Brandt and Court!

      • Joachim you are a dreamer and “what goes around comes around” .. !! Your Green muppet
        Brandt / Albo put one thing out of place …
        or a broken promise.. my reminders will be Relentless.. after all that’s been said prior
        To the election your Guru and albo still have not produced any figures as to how much the Taxpayer’s are going to be lumped with regarding 46% emissions reductions?
        What that really means is 46% of the resources industries GONE !! where is the revenue going to come from Joachim to pay for the NDIS or welfare ? All you latte sipping
        Lefty types are clueless..let’s just see how this country is situated in 12 months from now ?
        Don’t forget Joachim if your Guru Brandt or Albo as much as cough in the wrong direction ..it’s on .. as for the Echo are you going to hold Labor / Greens to account like you obsessively have with the Coalition this past 10 years ? We came through the Pandemic better than country in the world..
        Not one bit of credit you gave them .. your staff receive job keeper ?

  6. Brilliantly said!
    My fear is that our government as an institution has been so trashed that the billionaires and bigots will continue to wield power and prevent any moves towards a more civil society. Their media behemoth out front, fully armed, will shoot down any policy that threatens to bring decency back into the way we are governed. Any Proposal aimed at restoring decency to so many whose lives have diminished on stagnant wages and rising living costs will not survive long in this line of fire.

    • They are moving us towards a more civil society. Compact smart cities and Communitarianism. You will own nothing, you will have nothing, and you had better be happy with it because they are watching you.

  7. And to fund his future rorts, to the tune of 2.5 billion, is to cut 5,500 staff from the public service- how the hell is anyone able to access the already under staffed and under funded services the feds are supposed to provide- centerlink, vets affairs, medicare age care child care ndis etc, at the same time you can bet the stuff they contract out to their mates wont be de-funded or staff cuts

  8. Tweedle Dee out .. & Tweedle bloody Dumb in. Our national politics is a joke. Front page The Australian today. Albo Elbow aka Elmer Fudd “Seizes the reins”. This guy could not seize the reins on a wooden rocking horse. Nationally he is at a loss. Internationally he will make us look that we are a country of knuckle dragging inbreds. What was his major? Economics, well thats a good start, what about financial managment, Balance Sheet? Eh!, what is that, Two a4’s equally balance an A3. I should never had gone near SCU, then I could live with gross ignorance. Good health & enjoy your day.

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