A Splintering Terror
The Red Vineyard. Vincent van Gogh. 1888.
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If, then, we were to speak to you...
If, then, the moment had arrived...
But it was in these frightening moments, when all the old images, the slashing of throats in ancient temples, reaching from behind, slitting them ear to ear, the enemies, the traitorous, those who perpetrated treachery against us, for their own reasons, or no reason but that they did not understand, and that what they did not understand frightened or unsettled them.
And so it was easier to kill.
You cannot do this, not now.
None can be exterminated.
The network opens into a great flower.
A powerful empath had been and gone. Or come again. In the blizzard of contradictory voices, quiet now, stepped aside, stepped away, cautious now, for they knew the images of death and murder were real enough, that they would do what was necessary to twist this fate to their order, to serve their purpose, to save a time not hence.
The country readied for an election.
Almost all discussion was silenced.
None dared speak the truth; that they had all been betrayed, even the perpetrators of this terrible crime, of the greatest fraud in medical history, of the wretched sight of a Prime Minister being flayed in the public square, the carcass of a pig repeatedly whipped by young soldiers, of a flaying which even in that arrogant, unimaginative man's heart was proving a terrible thing, an embarrassment, forced to deny he was not a "horrible, horrible" person, that he was not a liar, that deception was not his forte.
Which of course it was.
These narrow gods who had led these willing participants astray, they were indeed being picked like rotten grubs from the body corpus, while that flayed flesh swung from the gallows in the village square. The nation's leader, the Prime Minister of the day, might have been beyond embarrassment. He might even, in his narrow, stupid, greedy soul, believed he was doing the right thing. But it was not to be; such things were not to be. The greatness of which that man had so feverishly dreamed, the false gods to which he had so fervently prayed, all of it now was coming to a pinnacle as the nation prepared for another ritual of public life, an election.
You have to get rid of one before you get rid of the other; the two old warhorses of left and right, Albanese and Morrison, two grey men jousting verbally on a battlefield prepared by others, a battlefield entirely devoid of genuine sentiment. A war zone built entirely from bureaucratic agendas which bore zero relevance to the lives of almost everyone.
This divorcing from reality would lead to another narrow crash; and then on to a greater disaster, for individuals, for communities, for the country as a whole.
And so he wound through his own solitary demise, or so it sometimes seemed; he did not like being older. He did not like having reached the point where more lay behind than ahead. Where all the hope and promise that had fevered through his chaotic early years now seemed like distant chem trails in the sky; when everything was lost and gained and brought out again, a sumptuous table, a solitary walk, a defenceless path.
But he was not of them; or like them.
And more would be revealed.
A divine duty.
He would pick up his cudgels and move on.
They could not die, even if they had wished. Just as obscure, distant traces of the past ran through him; so too the future selves.
It was a glory unknown, and an extraordinary thing.
And he must do his duty; like it or not.
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What we learned: Friday 8 April
With that, we will wrap up the blog for the evening.
Have a lovely weekend, we’ll be back first thing tomorrow.
Here were today’s major developments:
The high court has refused to hear an appeal against New South Wales preselections, clearing the prime minister’s hand-picked candidates to contest the May federal election. Chief justice Susan Kiefel said the appeal had “insufficient prospects of success”.
The TGA has granted provisional approval for the Pfizer vaccine to be administered as a booster to 12 to 15-year-olds.
Police have issued a statement following the egging of United Nations MP Craig Kelly, confirming they are “investigating” the alleged assault.
Flood warnings have eased in New South Wales with flooding no longer expected in hard-hit northern and southern Sydney, nor on the Parramatta river. Moderate flooding continues at the Hawkesbury and Nepean valley. It comes after more than 2,000 NSW residents were ordered to evacuate amid heavy rainfall.
At least three more asylum seekers have been released from Brisbane detention however Australian Border Force has not confirmed the number of releases, saying they “do not comment on individual cases”.
And the prime minister still hasn’t called the election. But never fear, he assured journalists today that it would be called “soon”, whatever that means.
This election campaign was always destined to get dirty. It was shaping up as one of the dirtiest ever. And so it has come to pass, but in ways not even seasoned operators predicted.
The surprise is that the missiles launched from each side have targeted their own, although it has to be said with much greater precision by Liberals, inflicting potentially fatal wounds on Scott Morrison.
The hits against Labor following Senator Kimberley Kitching’s untimely death while her preselection remained unresolved, succeeded in halting Anthony Albanese’s momentum. Nevertheless, according to every poll, including Resolve in this paper, the election is now his to lose.
Albanese can thank the fusillade of allegations from senior Liberal and National figures, accusing Morrison of bullying, lying, hypocrisy, racism, even politicising flood funding, which have multiplied over time and intensified in the past few weeks, for helping erode Morrison’s standing, drag down the Coalition’s vote and prove another immutable law of politics that no matter how bad it is, it can always get worse.
Their objective has been to destroy Morrison and the government, if necessary, to weaken his grip on the Liberal Party. The strategy by Morrison and his proxy Alex Hawke to delay preselections in NSW to avoid ballots and select or save preferred candidates (including Hawke himself) helped engineer a crisis which engulfed Morrison and ignited a civil war. That will not end with Tuesday’s court decision greenlighting Morrison’s actions. That seems destined to open a new front.
The NSW president, Philip Ruddock, has told me the party’s constitution will almost certainly be reviewed after the election, following a post-mortem on the result, in what promises, win or lose, to be another bitter and divisive battle.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to remain coy on the upcoming federal election date as the unofficial campaign continues for both major parties across the country.
The fact Morrison and Hawke could not foresee the damage they would cause to the fabric of their party, or believed they could use the impending election and the power of incumbency to squash internal unrest, was a measure of their arrogance and their misjudgment.
They stonewalled and steamrolled the party to prevail, then Morrison sought to dismiss the attacks on him as the typical gripes of sore losers, casting himself as the protector of women, ignoring the fact a procession of women and a few blokes – Gladys Berejiklian, Julia Banks, Bridget Archer, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson, Catherine Cusack, Barnaby Joyce, Emmanuel Macron and Michael Towke – had publicly or privately accused him and or his staff of bullying and/or lying.
He wrongly asserted Berejiklian had denied texting a colleague describing Morrison as a “horrible, horrible man” who sought to politicise the Black Summer fires. She did say she couldn’t remember, a perennial response from politicians to avoid inconvenient questions.
Like Ruddock, who now says he has “no recollection” of a shadow ministry meeting a decade ago (where Morrison reportedly thought the Abbott opposition should capitalise on community concerns about Muslim immigration and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate) even though reports at the time said he and Julie Bishop jumped on him during the meeting.
Over the past several days, assorted Liberal MPs, officials and strategists, past and present, have told me they have never seen anything this bad, from the unforgivable delays in the preselections to the premeditated assaults on the leader from their own side so close to an election.