David wrote:While I do think there is a lot of partisan bullshit being flung around, I do think there are a few genuinely damning things about Morrison’s response to the bushfires. The gravest is his refusal to acknowledge the role of climate change and treat it like the emergency it is by proposing radical action to try to mitigate these disasters in the years and decades to come. Obviously, nobody expects him to do that. But it’s frustrating to see him appear oblivious to the fact that this isn’t a normal bushfire season and that there’s a reason why it isn’t.
Another big part of his failure here is his very real inability to be the kind of leader a country needs in a situation like this. That’s not his fault; some people are born leaders and some aren’t. Morrison just seems like a guy who’s fallen into the job by mistake (which is basically what happened) and is clueless as to how to deal when a major incident lands on his doorstep. I obviously didn’t think much of him before this, but this has been a genuinely pitiful display of leadership. For all their failings, I can’t imagine Howard, Turnbull or Abbott being this inept in their messaging.
It's not just the bushfires although that has brought Scotty from Marketing's lack of judgement into sharp focus, it's a number of issues of this nasty goverment characterised by:
1. Secrecy and lack of accountability (see The Federal Police raids on journalists)
2. The cost of the robo debt fiasco - this goverment has had to pay out gazillions to private contractors for their illegal robo debt policies / practices which were found to be illegal
3. Cuts to public services and the public service
4. Backing his mate Angus (conflict of interest) Taylor who has made foolish decisions and needs to stand aside while this has been referred further to the police (another instance of poor decion making
5. His refusal to say that he invited the head of the Nutter right wing Hillsong Chuch to the Whitehouse but was refused by the US at the time and Scott's refusal to answer basic questions
The list could go on ( this is well before his poor judgment to first refuse to disclose his holiday destination, to go on hols while Australia is burning, to take a selfe with others having coloured drinks in coloured clothes in Hawaii - such poor judgment. The latter is not the worst thing in the world but how much of a dumb insightless f*ck do you have to be?
Even for the contempt I hold the Mad Misogynist Monk, The Abbott would never have made such appaliing decisions as a leader: he just made other appalling decisions.
“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman