Australia is not being governed. It’s being gamed.

bushfirebill Uncategorized

As the latest round in the War Against Jihadi Death Cult Zombies weaves its inevitable way into the mill of sensationalist television news promos, and the ever-escalating one-upmanship of competing media organizations churns out “City Under Siege” headlines and the like, we need to pause and wonder just where we are headed after the first year of Abbott Reality Television.

It is becoming almost impossible to tell the difference between promotional material for Dancing With The Stars or The Block and the latest cynical attempt by the Abbott “government” (I use the word advisedly) to claw back some credibility in the polls. Could it be that petty? Just polls? With this mob, you have to go for the lowest common denominator. Of course it can.

What was, just a few months ago, the highly unpleasant but distant beat of a fanatical jihadist drum, has morphed into an existential Threat To The Homeland. In the words of a 10 News promo on Friday night, Australia now faces “the greatest threat to its national security in history”. If you’re going to go the hog, you may as well go the whole hog. Beat that, ABC, 7, 9 and SBS!

The same in-house promotions units who produce, edit and present titillating commercials for “unmissable”, “must see” episodes of dreary soap operas and second rate cooking shows, are now at work beating-up the latest half-dozen arrests of some religious crazies into a Threat To Our Way Of Life. The more ridiculous, the better.

As we watch men of the Press Gallery in suits with carefully coiffed hair looking staunchly into camera telling of how they are bearing up to the latest threat against their workplace, Parliament House, and vulnerable women (equally coiffed and made-up) delivering breathless on-the-spot reports from suburban streets seething with police in paramilitary jackboots and baseball hats, the Prime Minister deprecatingly tells us that he is not afraid for himself, but for his people.

Journalists love a war. The real ones go to battlefields and take their chances. The pretenders do stand-ups for local TV news bulletins, or beaver away Photoshopping front page newspaper graphics to scare the bejesus out of their suggestible readers.

The boundary between fake reality and Real Reality has blurred to the point of disappearance. It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays, and that is precisely the object of the exercise.

Meanwhile the Budget lies in tatters. Consumer and business confidence is approaching all-time lows. Unemployment is soaring. Indigenous Australians have been deserted again… for a photo op with the SAS. Renewable Energy, surely a growth industry if ever there was one, is under threat. Manufacturing industries are closing down, one after the other, dominoes in some ideological game. Prices for commodities that are actually in glut – electricity and gas – are soaring, not falling. Science is on the skids. Politicians are being sin-binned in lots of a dozen. Memories are failing. Debt is soaring. The dollar is tanking. Promises are discarded like used bus tickets. The government that told us “No surprises, no excuses” blames the previous government for everything instead of facing up to the fact that the people elected them to run the country.

When will the Abbott government start governing and stop spinning? The nation really does need to know when they can expect confidence and governance to return, not when the next fanciful beheading is about to take place. Let the regular authorities look after that in the normal way.

Each step along the way from the first announcement of the “Caliphate” to today, with “terror in our midst”, has both fed off the previous step and provides a platform for the next. Instead of attending to the important and pressing matters of state that affect real millions of peoples’ lives, livelihoods and businesses, a cynical promotional campaign is dumped in our laps, willingly propagated by a media obsessed with outdoing its rivals, using trumped-up drama, and narcissistic over-concentration on its own role in the process.

A Prime Minister who, in train with media finger-waggers and tut-tutters, rebuked his predecessors for junketeering has racked up more miles in the air and dollars in jet fuel attending pointless meetings and ingratiating himself with foreign dignitaries than either of the people he criticised. A couple of fawning op-eds declaring him to be “statesmanlike” seem to be the reason for this. That, and 1 or 2 points in the polls. As Abbott realizes that there are virtually no restraints on the treasure he can waste and the photo-ops he can manufacture, his swaggering, testosterone-pumped ego swells to fill the vacuum.

Meanwhile, the nation drifts, rudderless, drunk with hatred for jihadist nonsense that gets its kicks by baiting fools like Abbott. Abbott and ISIS we made for each other. The viewers watch on, hugely entertained. There’s a new thrill every episode.

Behind it all is the certain knowledge that Reality TV rates. What else would the media do but use the same techniques they use in confecting phoney reality, all the better to cheapen actual reality? Somewhere in the middle the two streams meet and the nation, while remaining essentially ungoverned, is gamed instead.

Once upon a time it used to be called “bread and circuses”. The Abbott government has invented a new twist: “bread and circuses… without the bread”… directionless, spin-obsessed, blame-rich posturing, anchored in the grammar and language of Reality TV, run by a media increasingly relevance-deprived, shrinking in size and dumbing-down in intellect (yes, it’s possible).

All the while the nation sinks further into random aimlessness with no-one at the tiller, except the preening Prime Minister and his hapless sidekicks, urgers and sleeve-tuggers..

We cannot keep indulging in this orgy of spin over substance. You can’t run a country on terrorism for another two years. Someone’s got to do some work. Political commentators routinely emphasize the techniques and tricks of politics as indicators of good governance, ignoring reality. Tricks are an amusement, not the main game. Opinionistas tick-off “promises kept” without the slightest consideration of ramifications suffered. Barrie Cassidy nominates Christopher Pyne as “politician of the week” because his wife finally got her B.A. This has something to do with Pyne being education minister. You figure it out. I couldn’t.

Cassidy also cheer-leads for Scott Morrison to take over Homeland defence in one of the most fawning, embarrassing pieces of political analysis written in living memory. In writing this rubbish, fool Cassidy automatically disqualifies himself from further recognition as a serious commentator. After the Old Parliament House scare and the months off from Insiders to ponder his future, Barrie seems to have said, “Yes please” to the political lobotomy option.

Saturday’s Daily Telegraph urged governments to “CAGE THE COWARDS”, meaning lock up anyone arrested in the last day or so by the “terrorism” circus, without further ado.

The Tele’s logic? Some of the people arrested yesterday had been released without charge. The reason? Police didn’t have any evidence against them. Seems reasonable to release prisoners for that, but not to the Tele.

Months of surveillance by “strike forces” and “task groups”, hundreds of police, helicopters in the wee small hours, searchlights, raised terror threat levels, Glock-toting SWAT teams… and it turns out they didn’t have any evidence against most of the rounded-up. It was a stunt, an expensive, overblown one, but a stunt nevertheless. The Tele’s bluster, urging the abandonment of habeas corpus and the rules of natural justice can’t paper that over. They were arrested, so they must be guilty of something, It’s the oldest copper trick in the world. m’lud. The Tele enthusiastically agrees.

The Daily Telegraph is the same newspaper that has been running an anti-Muslim campaign for the past two months. They sent intrepid investigative war journalist and heroic blogger Tim Blair out to the wilds of… Lakemba. While there, Tim discovered that the non-drinking Muslim community didn’t patronize the local pub. They walked around in funny clothes. The men had scary beards. Some of the shops had… gulp… political and religious books in their window displays. You could hear different languages being spoken. There’s none of your “most Muslims are law-abiding” multicultural subtlety in Blair’s two pieces. It’s racial and cultural mockery all the way down to the Tim’s cave, located below a fetid gutter near you. One can’t help but wonder whether it wasn’t all part of a tawdry pre-promotion designed to soften up their readership before the quasi-military early morning raids began a few weeks later. But they wouldn’t do that would they?

Abbott, said to be “running the country” from his undisclosed, tented location in Arnhem Land, pauses only to incongruously put on a suit in the midst of the red dust to sombrely intone that “chatter” (a favourite word of intelligence agencies in circumstances like this, as it implies both sinister communication and reminds us that Muslims talk funny) has been overheard. He gives a blow-by-blow commentary on operational matters, in stark contrast to the object of Cassidy’s political man-love, Morrison, and his ventriloquist’s dummy, a forgettable and forgotten “3-Star General”.

We have F-18s being fuelled up. SAS boots on the ground at the ready. Muslims vilified and caricatured. Screaming headlines urging the abrogation of Magna Carta. Severed heads. Executioner’s swords unearthed from under backyard lawns. Police, lots of them. Uniforms and braid everywhere. Death cults. Pure Evil. The UN Security Council. Po-faced commentary about “leadership”. Arrests. Move over. I wanna be on TV.

In the lingua franca of Reality TV, it’s an “unmissable” episode of Abbott In Power indistinguishable from the spruiking excess of a promo for Big Brother. As he has always done, Abbott relies on standover tactics, threats of violence and intimidation, spin and deception. He gets others, like the Murdoch press and the truly malignant Ray Hadley to megaphone the really nasty stuff while he tells Australian Muslims he’s their friend. The field is strewn with the political and social corpses of Abbott’s “friends”. Start running if he wants to shake your hand (this means you, Warren Mundine). Abbott cannot lie straight in bed. He’s the Whirling Dervish, seeking to bring those around him down so that he might stand a little taller by comparison. It’s pathetic, but Abbott has always been a small man, obsessed by small things. He’d make sure he got a receipt for a slice of banana cake at the local school fete. He did so for a sliver of Peter Slipper’s wedding cake, then stabbed his friend in the back.

Meanwhile the country wanders aimlessly, stressed, terrorised, depressed, under-employed and essentially ungoverned, too full of intolerance and jingoism to realise how egregiously it has been gamed. Businesses fail, jobs are lost, industries wind up… but Tony, the War Prime Minister, will protect them from street-corner beheadings and jihadis at the gate.

The indigenous Australians he abandoned for a photo op with the SAS sit there in their corrugated lean-tos, puzzled. This was supposed to be their week, but the cameras, microphones and strutting ministers have disappeared. The old tribal men and women mutter to themselves, “Poor fella, my country.”

And they are right.

We are going to a war we cannot win, against an ideology we cannot defeat, for a purpose we cannot explain. There will even be an audience vote this weekend. Sound familar? It is self-justifying and pointless, but hugely distracting and entertaining. Government as Reality TV has arrived.

907 thoughts on “Australia is not being governed. It’s being gamed.”

  1. Suddenly, I don’t feel so calm and secure

    Other artists with ME names may feel this way. Their writings, songs, shows and artworks may well be under scrutiny from now on.

  2. I rarely read anything Ms Murphy writes, her name at the head of an article is enough to drive me away. I certainly have no intention of reading anything she has to say about Julia Gillard. I wouldn’t give her a click.

  10. Same feelings when it comes to kangaroo…. On the supermarket shelf this morning, I saw a raw of kangaroo burgers … I thought, how can anyone eat this beautiful animal? I bought myself some salmon … What’s the difference?

  14. http://www.smh.com.au/national/apology-for-incorrect-photograph-20140925-10lsrf.html

    Apology for incorrect photograph
    September 25, 2014 – 12:10PM

    One of the photographs run on this website and Fairfax papers in relation to the death of Numan Haider was published in error. The young man in a suit was not Mr Haider, and we unreservedly apologise to him for the error.

    The young man has no connection whatsoever with any extremist or terrorist group and we deeply regret any such inference arising from the publication of the photograph. The picture has been withdrawn from circulation.

    http://mumbrella.com.au/smh-age-apologise-using-wrong-photo-front-page-253473

    Fairfax apologises for using pic of wrong man for dead teen terror suspect on three front pages

    Fairfax Media has issued an apology for using a picture of the wrong man on three of its front pages today in articles about the teenage terror-suspect shot by police.

    http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/family-outrage-over-incorrect-teenage-terrorist-photo-on-front-page-of-fairfax-papers-the-age-and-sydney-morning-herald/story-fnii5sms-1227070191380

    Family outrage over incorrect ‘teenage terrorist’ photo on front page of Fairfax papers The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
    September 25, 2014 12:55PM
    Andrew Rule
    Herald Sun

    THE family of a heroic Afghan Australian killed by a terrorist suicide bomber is furious that the great man’s grandson has been mistakenly labelled a “teenage terrorist” by Fairfax Media.

    Close relatives of the teenager pictured on the front pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald today are demanding an explanation and apology for what they call a stupid and avoidable error.

    “This isn’t right – they should have checked with someone in the Afghani community,” a close relative told the Herald Sun.

  17. gigalene
    I have no problem with kangaroos (within strict limits) being food. But only the common Red. Not that I eat them. My kids do though.

  19. puffy

    What meat we eat and not eat has to do not only with culture but also with how much affection we have for certain species as opposed to others.

  21. It’s Pyne’s voice I have a problem with. Gawd does it grate. He must win many arguments by people just agreeing with him rather than listen to another word from him.

  23. In an amazing scene, HI was today public praised by her manager in an email.

    We are now currently trying to figure out what this new game is. Probably trying to get something “positive” on the record. Jogging the manager’s conscience is last on the list of possibilities.

  24. Speaking about the loathesome pyne, this just lobbed in my email box :

    “My comments get on the telly, yours don’t. You can’t be heard so you’re just wasting a lot of time” — Christopher Pyne to Labor MPs today in Question Time

    janice,
    These comments in Parliament today show exactly why Christopher Pyne thinks he can get away with his plans to Americanise our universities and introduce $100,000 degrees.

    It’s up to us to show him he’s dead wrong.

    We want to make an ad showing just what an American higher education system looks like. We’ll put it out online, targeting people we know the Liberals will try to win over in 2016. Can you chip in $25 to make this happen?

    In 2013 the Liberals outspent us by more than 30 per cent and we know they want to do it again, and some. That’s why the campaign to get rid of Tony Abbott in 2016 has to start now.

    The Liberal’s changes to university funding is something that all Australians are worried about -– from students to grandparents, people don’t want to see a university education depending on a parent’s bank account instead of hard work and good marks.

    But once the Liberal ad blitz of Campaign 2016 starts, Australians might forget just how harsh these changes are. So we want to make an ad that Australian voters won’t forget. We have a production crew on standby and if we raise $10,000 we can start filming right away.

    We can show Christopher Pyne that together we can get our message out to millions of Australians. Click here to show him just what we think of his arrogant comments and his rotten plans for education in Australia.

    Thanks for standing with me on this,

    Bill

  25. The descent into bedlam is almost complete..with just a little nudge from “the war on terror”, the whole juggernaut of temporal wars, long-standing wars, open wounds, economic disasters and climate change uncertainty and Tony Abbott will turn our lovely nation into an Hieronymus Bosch nightmare !

  28. A 91 year old steals the show at the UK Labor conference. A big reminder of the world the Tories want to return us plebs to

    A 91-year-old writer and campaigner was hailed as the Labour conference star speaker as he brought delegates to tears with recollections of poverty and premature death before the creation of the National Health Service.

    Harry Leslie Smith won two standing ovations and was hugged by Andy Burnham, the shadow Health Secretary, as he delivered an impassioned defence of the welfare state.

    Mr Smith said: “I came into this world in the rough and ready year of 1923. I’m from Barnsley, and I can tell you that my childhood, like so many others from that era, was not like an episode from Downton Abbey.

    “Instead, it was a barbarous time, it was a bleak time and it was an uncivilised time, because public health care didn’t exist.”

    Before the Second World War, he told the conference, hospitals and medical services had been for “the privileged few, because they were run by profit”.

    He said: “My memories stretch back almost 100 years, and if I close my eyes, I can smell the poverty that oozes from the dusty tenement streets of my boyhood.”

    Mr Smith said how his eldest sister, Marion, had wasted and died from tuberculosis at the age of 10 and was “dumped nameless into a pauper’s pit”. He also recalled the “anguished cries” of a woman dying from cancer who could not afford morphine.

    He said that voting for a Labour Government – and the creation of the NHS – after his return from fighting in the war had been “the proudest day of my life”

    He added: “Today we must be vigilant, we must be vocal, we must demand the NHS will always remain an institution for the people and by the people. We must never ever let the NHS free from our grasp because if we do your future will be my past.

    I am not a politician, a member of the elite or a financial guru, but my life is your history – and we should keep it that way. So say it loud and say it clear in this hall and across this country, Mr Cameron keep your mitts off my NHS.”

  30. As a regular lurker and occasional poster, I just wanted to say how heartening I find the analysis here of this government. Not that the analysis is positive, of course, but the clarity and humour of you all helps me feel less alone with my anger and disgust at what is being done, quite deliberately and with malice aforethought, to our poor country.

    As someone passionate about the environment and climate change, the comments by George Christiansen in the below article really chilled me. This is at least part of what the terror laws are really for:

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/coalition-mp-calls-anti-coal-protesters-terrorists-green-germs-14326

  31. Gee Kaffee, the words of Harry Leslie Smith should be blasted across the air waves of this country and wrapped around spoken loudly every time the abbott and dutton open their gobs.

  34. Gongite…rest assured, if G. Christiansen’s head was given a “short back and sides”, it could be easily mistaken for any rear-view pic of the thoroughbred pack racing toward the finish-line of the Mooney Valley cup!

  38. Does one get the impression that the family of Haide cooperated with the police. Even that they asked the police for help. It appears that so called flag had nothing to do with ISIS.

  43. He said, “Puff has a problem with men.” I said I have a problem with violent men, people who hurt kids and animals and women who are violent to men, as I understand happens in domestic violence.” wtte I then overdisclosed in a post that Bilbo deleted for me. Bemused then said I had no greater inside knowledge on the topic than him because a crazed woman bailed him up in a dead end wielding a couple of knives. And today he says he has no problem with me except for my misandry.

    I got really upset.

    It is enough to make you bang your head against a brick wall, which is probably what I was doing. Stupid me.

    Hell, we did not even get to discussing the King Rat KR, as I kept very quiet to avoid a flame war. Anyway, I will see how I go, I may just pick times when Bemused is not there, and comment then, and leave if he comes on board.

    Thank The Flying Spaghetti Monster for The PUB.

  45. Hi All

    Started to read Julia’s book last night (e-book) – bad move, should have waited until the weekend! Was still reading at 2am – almost took a sickie today to keep reading, and catch up on sleep.

    Unputdownable – she has a very easy and natural writing style, you can almost hear her speaking the words.

    My loathing for Krudd even more intense if that were possible, Wilkie not much better.

    JG in Canberra on 23 Dec, Dymocks Canberra Centre 11am for book signing – I’m going to get the hard copy as well just for the autograph, and to proudly display on bookshelf!

    And Hear Hear to Gongite’s comments above – The Pubsters keep me at least partially sane in these increasingly insane political times.

    Cheers

    AB

  47. Well, there is comments 19 and 20. I won’t repost but Bilbo said it was before 9am or in the first 30 or 40 posts.

    But they are innocuous. I can’t see anything in the header post either.

  50. I have enjoyed reasonably good health for so long that I’d forgotten how intimidating it is to be a ‘public’ patient. I came home from an appt with an opthamologist last week, with very raised BP and seething with fury. My Optometrist referred me because he said my cataracts have reached the optimum growth for removal. So, like a lamb to the slaughter…..I took an instant dislike to the miserable-looking man but I didn’t expect him to be so blatant about HIS dislike for public patients. He handed me a brochure saying “This man only charges $1,800 for each eye – read his brochure” and then handed me another brochure which he told me to read carefully to learn about the surgery and the risks involved. “If you still WANT the surgery, then there are a couple of tests we need to do”

    The hairs at the back of my neck were already standing up but I resisted the urge to hit him across his mug with his brochures, swallowed the bile and said “WANT the surgery? I don’t want the surgery, I apparently NEED the surgery, or are you telling me it is not necessary? Well, says he, “you won’t go blind overnight”, a phrase he repeated like an abbott slogan. I told him the optometrist told me that it is better for me and for the surgeon if the cataracts are removed at the optimum time because the surgery is easier and less risky if they are not left too long. The weasel agreed with that but repeated the slogan…..One of his partners does ‘public’ patients.

    So, I went to the front office and forked out the $80 consult fee and got appointments for the two tests that will cost me $120 each. I am left wondering whether medicare will cover these fees and if not, how the hell do other aged pensioners with no other income manage?

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