John Howard the Agnostic

It was of particular interest to me that Scott Morrison called John Howard seeking advice on how to address the recent bushfire crisis.  Four days after ScottyFromMarketing’s celebrated visit to Cobargo, the ex-Prime Minister was called to refloat a ship with more holes than a cullendar.  I wondered what sort of advice he would give?  So I went looking for “Australia’s Greatest Ever Prime Minister’s” recent contributions to climate policy.   As a man of the people, I am sure that from hereon he won’t mind me calling him John. 

With time to reflect away from the savagery of Parliament, this man of principle and vision would surely be the Aussie Sherpa that our society needed.  It was then that I came across a twenty minute YouTube clip (see below). from August last year where John spoke to a Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum in Kalgoorlie.  This was just a couple of months before the bushfires so we could expect a close parallel between what John told the miners and the advice he gave Scott. 

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We Are An Aspirational Nation

Tax Cut for a Rich Man

Writing for The Saturday Paper in April 2017,
Mike Seccombe gave us a hint of the disappointment Bill Shorten and Labor would suffer two years later.  “[N]ever tell voters they’ve got it good. Speak NOT to their economic reality but to their economic illusions”.  This is a lesson Shorten might’ve learned in an interview with Melbourne’s Neil Mitchell on 3AW around the same time in which the interviewer tried to tie Shorten down on just what defined rich. 

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Are They Quiet or Sneaky?

A quiet man in a chair reading checking his Telstra share price

Who are the Coalition’s quiet Australians?
Are they drawn to Scomo’s circle by the gentle lilt of his “I love Stralia”? Do celebrations like Barnaby Joyce’s on election night, “Sucked in you suckers”, send them into a meditative trance? You can see them in their slippers quietly shuffling out to pick up the morning paper. Perhaps, they get there early to “catch it on the full” and avoid the thud of a hurled Tele or Herald Sun disturbing their quiet neighbours. If they’re retired, it’s probably off to the library where a publicly funded Financial Review let’s them check up on their Telstra or Westpac shares. If they’re workers, it’s always the quiet carriage or SmoothFM just loud enough to conceal the hum of the car that they have worked so hard to pay off in stoic silence.

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