Crimes Against Humanity

The mess of politics was profound, and profoundly grubby. They could hardly have looked worse.

The massive undertow.

It was too late to save many people. 

You who do not believe.

There was on this day, in these very days, a profound disturbance, a flight of angels, a clambering down from the ship; the scale of this catastrophe still mind boggling to contemplate, beyond human ken. We each must play our role. 

His choppy thoughts would settle at the sadness of their fates, laid down at feet for you to contemplate; the rhythm of it all, the scale of it. 

If you were interested in Australian politics, which most people weren't, there would come this time, they had known this time would come, the seers, the prophets; but in any case the minutiae of the politics was enough to make one belly laugh, if it hadn't been so messy, the consequences so far reaching. 

Scomo, or Scumo as he was now frequently referred to, the nation's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was looking lost, confused, as all his certainties, his belief in his god, a dangerously corrupt feudal lord, a mono-eyed spirit of the worst kind, an infestation in this once beautiful place, meant he clung to power as if it was his divine right. The Almighty, as they referred to their fabrications, infestations, manifestations, in their pathetic beliefs, would not see them out. Abandoned as quickly as they had been hijacked. 

The evil that men do lives after them.

So it would be with Morrison.

The present politics was hysterical, and lacking in all dignity. The PM, who lacked all empathy and who's ability to deliver a stump speech was withering before all our eyes, was forced to deny he was a liar and a hypocrite, a "horrible, horrible" person; in a strategy clearly deliberate, as his own party tried to dynamite him out of his position. 

It was a farce, a terrible farce, except the consequences were so profound and so far reaching. 

Surely nobody would ever be able to take this mob seriously again. 

Canberra had become the citadel, or crucible, for this transformative change. As an old saying went, change the Prime Minister and you change the country. 

The corporate rorting, the sledging, the self-aggrandisement, we were coming for you. 

The initial attempts to unseat the man who had become a monster had all failed.

We learn, we learn, here on the planet surface; they move upon the water, and in the end this most beautiful, sacred place would be returned to its rightful owners. The meek shall inherit the Earth. 

But for now, another day heralded, and he was going to go look for himself.

What then the future? All our futures?

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

SKY

Former Victorian Liberal Party President Michael Kroger says the federal government is “clearing the decks” before the election by reversing its decision to freeze funding for the ABC.

“The fewer fights it has, the better for it,” he told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“It doesn’t want to have a fight with the ABC, it doesn’t want to have a fight with people over the Great Barrier Reef, etcetera, etcetera, so it’s clearing the decks.

“But at what costs – do the ABC deserve extra funding? No, they certainly do not.”

ABC

With the countdown now on until the international border reopens to everyone for the first time since 2020, no doubt some people are starting to make travel plans.

The only rule that's different this time around is you need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Vaccines used in other countries can be quite different to the ones here, and only certain jabs are recognised by the government for entry into the country. 

Here's which ones will get you past passport control.

Which vaccines do we accept?

To be allowed to come to Australia and not have to go into quarantine in the states that are accepting international visitors quarantine-free, you need to have had a vaccine that's been approved for use in Australia or one that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has recognised for the purpose of travel.

The ones approved for here include the ones you probably know and have received yourself — Pfizer, Vaxzevria (previously AstraZeneca) and Moderna.

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COVID restrictions have impacted travel to Australia since early 2020 but later this month, the country's borders will finally open to all international visitors again. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the national cabinet has decided "Australia will reopen our borders to all remaining visa holders on February 21 of this year.

SMH

Australia has been “a little bit ridiculed” around the world for its strict COVID-19 border closures and rules and could fail to regain its share of global tourism dollars even when the border reopens in a fortnight, the head of Tourism Australia has warned.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced vaccinated tourists will be able to enter Australia from February 21, Tourism Australia managing director Phillipa Harrison told a Sydney audience the negative sentiment had started to show up in recent market research.

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“We were initially envied and now we’re a little bit ridiculed in terms of how we are managing this,” she said.

“It’s the whole ‘fortress Australia’ concept. People just don’t understand why they’re shut out, why they can’t reconnect with family and friends, why they can’t come here to study. As the rest of the world opens up I think there is even less understanding of that right now,” she told this masthead.

Business and tourism groups welcomed Monday’s border announcement but used it to turn the screws on Western Australia, which delayed plans to open to the rest of the country last week and has no set date for rejoining the world.

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By comparison with the rest of the world, Western Australia remains a mostly COVID-free idyll. Its total active caseload is about 170, it’s had no more than 24 new community cases in any single day this year, and contact tracers are still actively tracking and catching individual cases.

They are features of the pandemic that the eastern states have long left in the rear vision mirror.

But behind the long-closed border, people are worried. The caution of Premier Mark McGowan, a small but persistent outbreak, a mask mandate, and the broadest proof-of-vaccination requirements in the country have many people spooked. Fear of Omicron has become akin to holding a ticking time bomb with a broken timer, never quite knowing when it’s going to go off.

It’s a different story outside the city centre, but in Perth’s CBD, people have been driven off the streets and back into their homes.

The restrictions have won wide public support: a recent poll by the local newspaper, the West Australian, shows 70 per cent of residents think the decision to keep the border closed was the right one. But in some quarters, the consensus is fraying. Big business leaders have had enough: Wesfarmers senior executives have decided to move out of their base in Perth to the east coast while Qantas, Woodside and AFL chairman Richard Goyder has followed suit. They say McGowan’s recent decision to indefinitely postpone the state’s February 5 border opening date has made their jobs unworkable.

But so far, McGowan remains undeterred.

“What we’re trying to do is save West Australian lives in large numbers, especially older West Australians,” he said recently. “Older West Australians: their lives count. Their lives matter.”

SPECTATOR

The rationale that dominates the minds of the mainstream, which for over two years has dictated the dominant discourse, seems to be now moving into very dangerous territory that ought to be horrifying by anyone’s standards. The government has re-framed what it means to be an ‘extremist’ causing eerie echoes of the Orwellian Thought Police to grow unnervingly apparent.

There’s a new extremism; it’s homegrown and has been brewing for a while.

‘Extremists’ are portrayed as anyone who questions or supports a different view of the Covid narrative perpetuated by the government and media. They are seen as threats to national security akin to the Jihad terrorists. Citizens who dare think for themselves, research, and actively engage in critical thinking are targeted.

An SBS report published February 2, 2021 said, ‘The federal government will spend more than $60 million to combat violent extremism, targeting the rapid rise in conspiracy theories during the Covid pandemic.’

Indeed, ‘conspiracy theories’ were rife during the pandemic. Perhaps this was because inquisitive minds and those in possession of logic and reason suspected it was possible they were being lied to by authority figures. The favourite ‘conspiracy theory’ back in 2020 was that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab and not from a bat at the local market. Today, this is seen as the most plausible explanation.

A ‘conspiracy theory’ suggesting that vaccines would become mandatory and that peoples’ livelihoods would be threatened is now a reality.

THE NEW DAILY

“It’s hopeless,” the NSW Liberal said of the centre-right faction’s attempts to stave off preselection challenges.

“Morrison is being torn apart on his right and laughed at on his left.

“You’ve seen the text messages; he’s now the great disappearing Prime Minister; a nothing.”

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Former Labor foreign affairs minister Bob Carr has doubled down on his allegations that Peter Dutton is behind the leaking of explosive texts about the Prime Minister.

The Defence Minister described Mr Carr’s claims as “baseless” on Sunday night – after he tweeted an accusation that Mr Dutton was the serving Liberal cabinet member behind the leak of messages blasting Scott Morrison as a “complete psycho”.

“Bob Carr’s tweet is baseless, untrue and should be deleted,” Mr Dutton tweeted a little over an hour after the allegation was made.

But Mr Carr, who is also a former NSW premier, told Sky News on Monday that he had a “rock solid media source” for his allegations – although he would not reveal who it was.

Mr Carr also claimed that Mr Dutton had the numbers in “an increasingly right wing party room”.

The texts were reportedly sent between another former NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and a so-far-unidentified serving federal cabinet minister. Ms Berejiklian has denied any recollection of the text conversation.

It came amid another messaging scandal engulfing the Coalition – personal texts from Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce describing Mr Morrison as “a hypocrite and a liar”.

The federal government has been in damage control since the texts became public last Friday. Mr Joyce, who apologised to Mr Morrison after the messages were revealed, said he had not worked closely with the Prime Minister at the time he sent them to former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins in March 2021.

“Working one-on-one with him is a completely different scenario, I know him vastly better now,” Mr Joyce told the Seven Network on Monday.

Mr Joyce, the Nationals party leader, said his private views about Mr Morrison had become more positive since he returned as Deputy Prime Minister.

At the weekend, he said he had offered his resignation to Mr Morrison, and it was declined. It is hard to know the practical terms of that offer, as Mr Morrison and Mr Joyce belong to – and lead – different political parties.

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

The contrived nonchalance with which federal ministers are attempting to ignore or belittle the ruckus caused by an outbreak of text message frankness is an indicator of how seriously the matter is being taken.

And so it should be.

Senior people within the embrace of the Liberal and Nationals parties have said nasty things about Scott Morrison, then someone within that same embrace has made the insults public.

The texts used the type of language you might expect around the front bar at closing time. Calling the prime minister a “psycho”, “horrible, horrible” and a “hypocrite” is not what US Republicans in another context would classify as civil discourse.

There is a brutality within the messages and their paths to public awareness which cannot be ignored or belittled.