Another Hung Parliament

The so-called ‘Hung Parliament we are about to endure may be a figment of hope among the despairing Right Wing of Australian politics. A figment leapt upon by the adoring hyena packs who pass as the media in Australia.

Sadly for them, this vague hope is fatally flawed.

In the past, Australian politics was a two-party system and the loss of seats by one party automatically meant a gaining of those seats by the other. That old system has gradually changed this century. Now there is a major segment of the electorate which is choosing to vote for candidates who do not belong to either of the traditional groupings.

The long term ‘Coalition’ of the Liberal Party and the National/Country/Whatnever Party has been in existence for so long they have almost merged into a single Party. A single Party where the strength has now firmly swung to the lesser of the two groups.

In the early years of this century, the Greens began taking votes from the ALP while the Pauline Hanson horror scored some votes from the Right. The outcome was that the ALP lost a few seats, mainly in the Senate and the Coalition lost some seats, again, mainly in the Senate.

Since then while the Right Wing personnel has changed in name but not aim, the left has been fairly stable.

Now, in 2022, nearly a quarter of the way through the century, there is a new factor at work.

Due to the complete ineptness, coupled with its apparent corporate corruption, the Coalition has lost the confidence of many of its lay members. Now there is a new ‘grouping’ of candidates. Not new parties aiming to take seats from both sides of the Parliament but a new breed of candidate, unaligned but with similar aims and a single colour; teal. And the candidates are the women who should have been pre-selected by the Right-wing parties

The effect will be to take the votes of the disaffected Coalition voters.

Should the voting go the way the polls are indicating, those in the general population seem likely to take a minimum of seven seats from the Right to give the Left an outright majority in the House of Representatives.

It is what happens on the Right which becomes really interesting. The seats the Teal candidates win will all be taken from the Coalition which will become severely weakened. Even if the Left only picks up three or four seats from the badly disaffected electorate the seats lost to the Teals will leave the Right as the lesser of the two majors.

The best the Coalition can hope for is a hung Parliament. The best for the Left will be an outright majority. The worst which can happen for the ALP is a hung Parliament.

The Left showed a decade ago that it is skilled enough at Parliamentary politics to manage a hung Parliament. The same cannot be said for the Right who have had all sorts of problems with its own members during this current series of Governments.

No wonder Scott Morrison is so terrified of a hung Parliament. He knows it will lead to a change of Government with its concomitant very toothy ICAC.

It will be a reminder to the Electorate that Governments, like babies, should be changed regularly. And for the same reason!

One Nation

Her brain cell went super nova

Who Creates The Wealth?

Thanks, Rich.

Unemployment in Australia

Much is being spoken about the sudden drop in the ‘post’-COVID unemployment figures. Our Treasurer (who famously lost $60 Billion in his trademarked ‘Jobkeeper’ scheme) is boasting of the fact that unemployment numbers are about to have a 3 in front of them.

The disappearance of around a million or more ‘457 Visa’ Workers and Overseas Students and all those Backpackers is never mentioned. They were, and will be again, the scabs who destroy Australian workers’ wages and conditions. It was those people who kept Australians out of jobs, who removed the need to upskill the Australian population and who enabled greedy employers to keep wages artificially low.

That imported scab labour is what forces so many Australians onto the mis-named ‘Job Seeker’ and into searching for jobs which have been taken by imported scabs. Not that I blame those people. It is the fault of greedy capitalists who have taken Gina Rinehart’s idea to heart. ‘In Africa workers are happy to work for $2 an hour!’

Now all of that is being touted by our numerately challenged Treasurer as a huge plus. This Government, in its pre-election orgasms, is boasting of its economic skills. We are seeing the beginnings of an apparent increase in wages which will disappear as soon as normality is resumed. That normality will be with us when the Covid restrictions on international travel disappear. And unemployment will again go back above 5%! And, with immigration about to be resumed, it will be yet another landmine left behind for the widely expected ALP Government after the election.

What will not disappear is the Trillion Dollar national debt which this genius Government has given us! Never mentioned and totally ignored is that $40,000 debt each one of us; babes in arms, school children, workers and retirees have been saddled with.

Will We Never Learn?

A Sick One

A travelling salesman was opening up new territories in Africa. One day he fell ill.

Being a man of action, he sought immediate medical attention. Even though the only nearby facility was a witch doctor, he went to see the man.

The witch doctor looked him over, then cut a long, thin strip from a leather hide and gave it to the salesman, saying “Chew on this and by the time it’s all gone, you’ll feel better.”

As mentioned, the salesman was a man of action, so he spent the rest of the day chewing on the piece of leather. Nonetheless, he didn’t feel better, in fact, he felt worse.

So he went back to the witch doctor and said, “Doctor, the thong is ended, but the malady lingers on!”

Let It Rip – 6th Mar

Scomo, Speaking in Tongues

Let It Rip; 27th Feb

How to Waste a War Chest

Our esteemed Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) has been spending his $16B election war chest:

$65M to send “an Australian into space”

$86M to create more plantation tree monocultures for the pulp mills.

$50M for the Koala with not one dollar to actually stopping clear felling habitat.

$804.3M for our Antarctica territory including $7.4M to help understand why the ice is melting & seas are rising🤦‍♀️,

$2B in defence contracts with South Korea to build tanks & howitzers – they are to protect our borders or in case we have a civil war.

$678M to seal another 1,000 km of a 2,720km road in the Northern Territory with no full analysis of the issues involved.

$2.6B to complete final stage of 78 kilometres of non-stop Adelaide motorway. Of course, there is a LNP Premier facing a threat at the polling booths.

$2.2B to focus the commercialisation of the six national manufacturing priority areas – resources and critical minerals, food and beverage, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence and space. This is his carefully named and announced ‘Australia’s Economic Accelerator’. WTF?

$150M to the CSIRO including $40M to the McGrath Foundation Breast Care Nurse Program.

It is all pencilled in!

So far that is an estimated $8.57B of his and Friedbrain’s $16B war chest in just 2 months.

There are probably 3 months to go, assuming he chooses not to save the furniture. He is not getting much electoral bounce for his buck.

Rhyming History

As Mark Twain once wrote; “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes”

84 years ago the world watched trustingly while the then growing bully power swallowed up its smaller neighbour.

In that case it led to a meeting between leaders and a conservative Prime Minister waving a piece of paper declaring ‘peace in our time’.

Our Grandparents tell us what happened next.

In this case our leaders are waving the wet lettuce leaf of ‘Sanctions’ at the bully.

Sanctions the Bully knows will only last until the plutocrats begin to lose money.

Vale Ukraine.

And whichever is the Bully’s next target!

Thoughts on Ukraine

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe;

every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,

as well as if a Promontorie were,

as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were;

any mans death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Twilight of the Gods

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Welding

Let it Rip; Feb 20th