Well Well Well: The Scarifying Facts

He dreamt of his life being made into a madness by a deranged Health Minister. Hang on, that was reality. 

The election campaign was surreal. Much of what was happening was surreal. 

He didn't like the commentary. He didn't like being surrounded. He didn't like being watched. We fly through open windows. We watch at winter's door. If there was anything to be caught at in these strange times, the rattling of windows, the gusts of dark air, the clarion voices that were merely rattles in a sea of leaves, if there was anything in the here and now that could be surrendered to a higher cause, all of it moved upon the water and was still; and took form, and shook with anger, a kind of gestalt peace that blanketed everything, well that was Australia today, surreal, utterly surreal.

"I'm surprised people aren't more angry," Anthony at the café said, and it was true. Locked up. Imprisoned. Jobs and businesses destroyed. Their fellows wrested to the ground. Pepper sprayed. Destroyed. Liberties lost. And nobody cared; or nobody seemed to care.

Perhaps purely, simply because their voices were destroyed, or ignored; entirely unreflected in what passed for the mainstream media in Australia; an entirely rigged cohort for a profession he had once been proud to be a part of.

But these things didn't matter anymore.

They had rigged their own doom.

They had sowed the seeds of their own destruction, to jump at clichés, and if he was found wanting far more this derangement of the soul, this prevarication, this loss of integrity; far more this battle for the hearts and minds in a wanton democracy; well, in truth, it wasn't a democracy at all. 

The bureaucrats ran everything; and that amorphous mass held no soul; no regret, no timidity, nothing. They themselves were like a virus, an unthinking life form which would kill its host long before it worked out that it needed the host to survive.

So they destroyed and bred, and populated across the populace. 

And so it was, and so it shall be. 

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

ABC

Election campaign goes so far back to the future it's prehistoric for Morrison and Albanese

Annabel Crabb

Our whole country has been laid waste by a pandemic. Our national budget is a river of gore. Demagogues stalk the earth. Fires and floods have kneed us right in the goolies.

If our collective situation were a Bible book club, it'd be straight to Revelations. The locust plagues are expected any minute.

So why – WHY – are our political leaders campaigning like it's 20 years ago? In recent days, political connoisseurs have had the chance to sample and savour some delightfully well-preserved scare campaigns of yesteryear, including Don’t Vote Labor or The Boats Will Come Back (2001, a lovely year, rereleased in 2013), and The Coalition Wants to Privatise Medicare (eminently quaffable, 2016, notes of fresh-cut grass and panic).

And of course in the middle of all that, we've still somehow made room to have a refreshingly pointless shoutfest about the participation of trans women in women's sport, a matter about which no party seeking election is proposing to legislate or indeed do anything at all, but what a lovely ranty topic it is to be tossed about by opinionated folk, none of whom have to clean up any of the mess this sort of fissile bloviation creates in the real lives of real people.

To recap, the trans-women-in-sport issue has arrived thanks to Katherine Deves, the Warringah candidate panic-bought by the Prime Minister approximately 14 seconds before the election was called.

In an incredibly surprising surprise, it turns out Deves – a campaigner to exclude trans participants from women's sport – has a social media history replete with unexploded ordinance, none of which seems to have been the subject of even rudimentary inquiry by the Liberals before popping her up to contest the formerly safe seat of Australia’s 28th prime minister.

The PM dug in on Saturday, saying he was sticking by his candidate. Earlier in the week he said he agreed with her views if not her way of expressing them.

Interviewed by Insiders' David Speers on Sunday, Foreign Minister and senior NSW Liberal moderate Marise Payne prevaricated talentedly and at length on the question of whether Deves should even be a candidate.

You have to go a fair way to find anyone who thinks the Liberals will win this seat back from Independent Zali Steggall, who this morning told RN Breakfast’s Patricia Karvelas that the Prime Minister was "weaponising" the trans community for political gain.

The rough calculus goes like this: If the PM aligns himself with Deves' views, he alienates a bunch of people who weren't voting for him anyway, but strikes a chord among socially conservative voters in other seats he needs to win. 

SKY

The Coalition and Labor have both suffered a downturn in popularity in the latest Newspoll with both parties looking at the potential of having to negotiate with minor parties and independents.

In the first Newspoll for The Australian of the election campaign the combined support for the Coalition and Labor was at its lowest level for five years and at its lowest on record for a poll during an election campaign.

For the primary vote the Coalition attracted 35 per cent, Labor 36 per cent while the minor parties and independent members collected 29 per cent of the vote.

Five weeks out from polling day both the Coalition and Labor will be considering negotiations with an expanded crossbench due to greater support for the minor parties and independents.

THE NEW DAILY

Scott Morrison was caught out with his own recall-deficit on Monday while being quizzed on JobSeeker payments.

The Prime Minister has had more than a touch of the teacher’s pet about him this past week.

Once Labor leader Anthony Albanese was caught wrongfooted when quizzed about economic indicators, Mr Morrison was quite delighted to flaunt his powers of recall.

“He didn’t know the number, but he didn’t miss it by that much,” Mr Morrison said of his campaign opponent’s much-replayed interview, holding his fingers just so.

Then stretching his arms out wide like a man preparing for an embrace Mr Morrison continued, inexorably, to the punch line.

“He missed it by that much,” he said with obvious satisfaction.

On Monday holding forth on income support programs, Mr Morrison appeared comfortable as he cited the cost to the budget bottom line of Commonwealth rental subsidies while also making sure to account for indexation.

Top form.

But once the PM got to the rate of JobSeeker – for many Australians the most important statistic in national politics – he faltered.

“That continues to be combined with the other payments that we have that people get access to, whether that be in income support through the Job Seeker, which, as you know, we increased from 40 bucks a week to 46 bucks a week since the last election…,” Mr Morrison said.

The rate of JobSeeker is, of course, $46 a day, not a week. Mr Morrison was short by $276.

SMH

Embattled Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves has declared she is “not going anywhere” and lashed her critics for “vile” bullying after more of her inflammatory comments on transgender issues were unearthed and Liberals lobbied privately to dump her.

“My opponents, parts of the left media and twittersphere have been unrelenting in calling for me to be disendorsed because of past statements,” she wrote in an email to party members on Monday evening which was obtained by the Herald and The Age. “I have been bullied in the most vile way and received death threats. I’m not going anywhere, as the prime minister said yesterday.”

The Herald and The Age can reveal that senior NSW Liberals had concerns about Deves in March, when the state division’s executive committee granted her an exemption from rules requiring candidates to have been financial members of the Liberal Party for the preceding six months.

Three executive members voted against her exemption, including at least one who had concerns about Deves’ views on transgender issues.

Another senior Liberal source, who did not want to be identified, said: “We all had concerns. I remember saying at the time, ‘why are we letting this transphobic woman through?’ We all knew about it, the PM knew about it, head office knew about it.”