Well, looks like an Umbridge

Day 31. 88 pages, 39,492 words.

Good denizens of the Hatstand, allow me to introduce Australia’s new Prime Minister-designate.

Unfortunately, it looks like this bloke is far more of an Umbridge than a nice harmless lunatic. More a Pence than a Trump, but more a Paul Ryan than a Pence, maybe? Peter Dutton would most certainly have been a disaster, but the Australian Liberal Party (weirdly, they’re the conservatives in Australia … what can I tell you, southern hemisphere or something, the toilets also drain clockwise) wasn’t quite insane enough to back their Trump all the way. But Morrison is still definitely bad news. Maybe worse than Dutton, because he would have crashed the Liberal Party into a tree made of turds after about two months and the Labor Party (Australia’s liberals) would have taken over.

dutton

Okay maybe not worse than Dutton.

Here’s a bit of a run-down on Scott Morrison’s political career, courtesy of Wikipedia and a solid list I found and stole from a friend’s Facebook feed (hey, I don’t have a ton of time for research, but I read the sources and it all seems fairly solid):

– As Minister “for” immigration he is the architect of Operation Sovereign Borders, making him the true evil genius behind our current deportation and detention regimes. He also used the excuse of “operational matters” to stop all public scrutiny of the gulag system, including by Parliament.

– He introduced the amendments to the Migration and Maritime Amendments Act to give himself extraordinary new and arbitrary powers (the ones Dutton gets the blame for using), and held children hostage on Christmas Island to get it passed.

– He opposed and still opposes same sex marriage, and claimed to be the victim of bigotry when people called him a bigot. When Australians voted solidly in favour of allowing same-sex marriage, Morrison proposed an amendment allowing parents to remove children from classes if “non-traditional” marriage was discussed.

– He is the plonker who brought a lump of coal into the chamber.

– On the plus side, he apparently once said “the Bible is not a policy handbook, and I get very worried when people try to treat it like one”. Back on the minus side, he’s also promised to defend Christianity in 2018. Which, you know, isn’t bad … as long as Christianity needs defending.

So there we go. I guess it remains to be seen what’s going to happen here.

– Written in the wee hours of the morning (but not too wee: I did get proper sleep last night).

– Posted from my Huawei mobile phone while sitting in the carpark.

About Hatboy

I’m not often driven to introspection or reflection, but the question does come up sometimes. The big question. So big, there’s just no containing it within the puny boundaries of a single set of punctuationary bookends. Who are these mysterious and unsung heroes of obscurity and shadow? What is their origin story? Do they have a prequel trilogy? What are their secret identities? What are their public identities, for that matter? What are their powers? Their abilities? Their haunted pasts and troubled futures? Their modus operandi? Where do they live anyway, and when? What do they do for a living? Do they really have these fantastical adventures, or is it a dazzlingly intellectual and overwrought metaphor? Or is it perhaps a smug and post-modern sort of metaphor? Is it a plain stupid metaphor, hedged around with thick wads of plausible deniability, a soap bubble of illusory plot dependent upon readers who don’t dare question it for fear of looking foolish? A flight of fancy, having dozed off in front of the television during an episode of something suitably spaceship-oriented? Do they have a quest, a handler, a mission statement, a department-level development objective in five stages? I am Hatboy. https://hatboy.blog/2013/12/17/metalude-who-are-creepy-and-hatboy/

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3 Responses to Well, looks like an Umbridge

stchucky says:

August 24, 2018 at 1:27 pm

On the more pessimistic side, and copy-pasted here with no citation or spell-checking, we have this viewpoint:

This is bad, potentially worse than you realise right now, and it’s not just because of his regressive, bigoted, evangelically religious views, or his sociopathic disregard for the wellbeing of the vulnerable.

It’s worse than that; Our new PM is dangerous in a way that most politicians in Canberra can’t hope to hold a candle to, because of a core skill set that makes him uniquely capable of furthering the causes of regressive conservatism in this country.

Morrison is a Marketer.

Before getting elected, he was the head of the Australian Tourism board, is largely credited with the “100% Pure New Zealand” campeign, and as a politician, he has already used these skills to do real and lasting damage.

This may seem like a benign thing to focus on, but trust me, it’s not.

Morrison understands optics. He understands how to sell things to people, on both emotional and intellectual levels, and he now has control of a national platform to push not just his own conservative ideologies, but to sell the Australian public on the worst and most damaging ideas of the Liberal Party and its fiscal masters.

This is the man who sold the torture of children to the nation with a three word slogan – “Stop the boats”.

And he now has control of the nation’s political apparatus.

Dutton was dangerous, yes, but he was also largely unpalatable – an awkward man, with the charisma of a drowning fish, whose vile perspective he wears as a badge of honour.

Our new Prime Minister is a much more cunning beast. His monstrosity can be seen in the history of his actions, but not in his presentation or demeanour. I have already seen several news articles describing him as ‘bland’ and ‘banal’, and the fact that the man who oversaw and championed our Assylum Seeker concentration camps can be described as such is testiment to his skills.

This leads to a very important question – what do we do?

There is no quick and easy way out of this; we have to fight, we have to organise, and work together against this smiling threat to our rights and values.

Voulenteer with your preferred political and activist organisatons, talk to friends, family, associates and even strangers about the importance of building and maintaining an Australia that works for all of our citizens, both present and future. Work to educate people on why conservative neolibralism is toxic, dangerous, and bad for both citizens and the economy, and present a progressive vision of Australia’s future that allows us all to make this nation an even better place to live than it already is.

The fight to win our country back just got a lot harder, and we need to work together to ensure its brighter future.

Which is sort of the danger of electing a non-monster type of monster. Good luck, Australia.

aaronthepatriot says:

August 24, 2018 at 2:24 pm

This is awful. What the fuck is happening to this world.

- stchucky says:
  
  August 24, 2018 at 4:17 pm
  
  With any luck this will just be temporary. He was put in charge of the party because there were various electorates that Labor would apparently lose outright and permanently if Dutton was put there. He might still ultimately lose Labor the next election.
  
  Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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