MY CONSCIENCE IS CLEAR

Garma Festival Pic Courtesy The Australian

They went around in circles.
The surveillance produced its own rabbit holes, so many of them.
"You're not hearing me."
"My conscience is clear," said one of the Watchers on the Watch, not for the first time.
"What am I now, a performing seal?" Old Alex demanded.
"You're not hearing me," came the response.
He had no idea who to trust, and so the psychic theatre thus deliberately created swirled in bubble and toil. There in the mountains of horrors and dreams.
"Because you do not want to destroy your country," Trump had said to Turnbull, now revealed in leaked transcripts, showing his true nature. 
But Turnbull was destroying his own country.

Because you do not want to destroy your country. Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries. These people are crazy to let this happen. I spoke to Merkel today, and believe me, she wishes she did not do it. Germany is a mess because of what happened. Donald Trump. US President.  

"We're sitting around a table."
Murmurs in the ether. Operatives in the bush. Wind swirling around the old stone pile; as if he was back in the cavernous cold estates of his forebears.
There was no answer to any of it.

Knackered. That's how he would have run the front page if he had been boss.
Knackered, knackered, knackered, screaming escalating bold 24/36/72 point, across the cruelest cartoon the talent could muster.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull knackered by the "marriage equality" debate.
As if there was no more important issue in the country. Every hypocrite has his day. Their date with destiny; their own demise.

The federal government will launch a postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage as soon as next week, as Malcolm Turnbull sets a ­December 7 deadline to decide the reform in parliament, backed by Liberal MPs who endorsed the “people’s vote” in a high-stakes showdown last night.
Mr Turnbull — who earlier ­admonished cabinet colleagues over his frustrations that some had played a hand in encouraging MPs who backed same-sex marriage — secured overwhelming support for the plebiscite from the special Liberal meeting in Parliament House after a week of infighting that ­fuelled talk of a threat to his authority from the deep animosities over changing the Marriage Act.
Aiming to stop the internal brawl from deepening the government’s political problems . . .

The Prime Minister sat astride a barbed wire fence, wearing a crown of thorns. 
Where was the poetry in this tedious recitation of domestic concerns?
In this abject wallowing? 
Where was the bullet ploughing through the brain, relieving thought? 
Where were the bodies rotting on the battlefield? Adding a kind of poetry of death, the bombs he was personally responsible for dropping on the Muslims of the Middle East? 
Malcolm Turnbull reared his ugly head, as the barbed wire sliced through his underbelly. Er, privates. Hypocrisy begat hypocrisy. Insanity begat insanity. They rolled from one madness to another, this flailing, incompetent government, steeped high on loose money, on an utter indifference to those who paid for this farce. 
Nothing in the country worked. Standards of living were falling. The prices of everything were rising. 
Step by terrible step, the country marched towards a totalitarian state.
And yet they failed, trapped by Social Justice Warriors. 
Where did it end?
Marriage was a frighteningly brutal and discriminatory institution which marginalised those not caught in its orthodoxies. 
Where were the certificates for outstanding performance at an orgy?
For courage in facing the world alone?
For excellence in serial monogamy?
Where did this madness end?
The Prime Minister had just inconvenienced millions of the travelling public for a piece of security theatre, the implementation of additional measures at the country's airports, recommendations experts, blithely ignored by governments and politicians until now, had been making for a good five years or more.
Would this man do such a thing to protect his own crumbling leadership?
Of course he would. 
A failing Prime Minister, trapped by his own duplicities, was being hollowed out by the winds of change. By harsh realities.

Cursed with  a preening personality that must be loved and admired at all times, used to being a rich man in a rich part of town, surrounded by sycophants, Turnbull simply could not cope with adversity. 

The show must go on; but it did not go on.
The country was failing around him.
They, the public, not to put to fine a point on it, hated his guts. 
He had lost control of the public debate, and therefore of everything. 
So poorly advised.
Heteronormative - one mainstream journalist sneeringly dismissed anyone who disagreed with her. 
Good Lord, that one could even contemplate being such a terrible, oppressive thing. 
We were all the prisoners of diversity now. 
For at the end of the rainbow lay ruined suburbs and escalating tensions. A country groaning under the lash.
The destruction of the Family Court, coming to a circus near you. 
But they're my Barbara Streisand records, they're mine, they're mine.
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of bastards. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

The federal government is struggling to reverse a damaging political slump, despite a significant boost in Malcolm Turnbull’s personal standing, with the Coalition trailing Labor by 47 to 53 per cent in two-party terms.

Mr Turnbull has widened his lead over Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister to reach his strongest position so far this year, backed by 46 per cent of voters compared with 31 per cent who favour the Opposition Leader.

The Prime Minister has also gained ground in voter satisfaction with his performance, posting his strongest results since early last year, despite a week of Liberal infighting over same-sex marriage and speculation of a challenge to his authority on the floor of parliament.

But the government is battling to emerge from a 12-week trough in the opinion polls, with its primary vote unchanged at 36 per cent and its support in two-party terms flatlining in six consecutive surveys since May, when it failed to gain a dividend from the federal budget.

At the height of his power, Malcolm Turnbull excelled at turning nothing into something. He pitched for the Liberal leadership on the back of opinion polls. He justified seizing office from Tony Abbott by comparing his own untested leadership against a set of performance measures that didn’t exist. He sold an innovation agenda like a used-car salesman hawking an empty car lot.

At the nadir of his prime ministership, however, Turnbull has become a master of deconstruction. The party is not ideological. It is not conservative. Its policy agenda is thus liberated from the party’s moorings in classical liberalism and conservatism. The foundations of the Liberal Party’s broad church are quietly coming apart. How much more deconstruction can the Liberal coalition take before its house falls?

Federal politicians are firming battle strategy for the week ahead. The battle lines are being drawn over the proposed plebiscite on same-sex marriage.