Sydney and part of NSW is back to lockdown again.
This time, instead of criticising and attacking the NSW Government like he did with the Victorian Government, Scott Morrison went on to TV to praise its action. The hypocrisy of his partisan approach to this pandemic has reached a new low.
At first, I thought with his bungled trip to Hawaii while the rest of the country is burning, he would have learnt. He didn’t.
Instead, he threw his family under the bus to establish himself as a good father, because, he made a promise to his family. Whether this trip was with a controversial QAnon leader is another issue, but it shows that he would do anything to protect his own image, including selling his own family out.
Upon his return to the country, he did nothing but trying to maximise photo opportunities to rebuild his image. Forcing people’s hand for photo without actually checking how they are going to get by now that their homes are lost; taking credit for deploying help and used the army as a means for his marketing ploy, and claiming he couldn’t help because he can’t use a hose to put out the fire. Nonetheless, part of the Australian population stayed with him and agreed with him.
Then came the pandemic.
I thought with a global pandemic, he should be able to stand up to the occasion to prove his worth. Nope. Everything for him is about politics and his image.
After the initial NSW Ruby Princess outbreak that spread like a wild fire around the country. Scott Morrison rallied around the NSW Government. I thought that was his way to show leadership and support. That is until Victoria experienced the same. The relentless attacks he and his cabinet exhibited during the Victorian outbreak demonstrated that nothing is spared by his partisan politics for image building. He attacked and attacked, blaming the Victorian government as incapable of managing its hotel quarantine programme, while at the same time shirking the commitment of a federal quarantine facility when border control is a Federal responsibility. He, his cabinet and the Murdoch extremist cohort repeatedly attacked the Victorian government, whether during Parliament time, or TV appearance, or even at press conferences with the likes of Peta Credlin, who cares about nothing but to tear down a government operated by the opposite camp. This demonstration of partisanship across the board from the right in the middle of the pandemic demonstrated that Scott Morrison is happy to govern by division, as long as it makes him look good.
Now it is the NSW’s turn. The ‘golden standard’ approach had failed and Sydney and part of NSW is back to lockdown. This time round, a lockdown in NSW is a necessity according to Scott Morrison, as compared to a lockdown is a failure of the State Government in Victoria. What impressed me about Scott Morrison is his shamelessness and self-gratification when he delivered his so called ‘speech’. When Gladys Berejiklian limited the questions to be asked and left the press event 25 minutes later, as compared to the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and the Acting Premier James Merlino taking tough questions from the press until they are satisfied, for Scott Morrison and the Murdoch crazy cohorts, it is ok.
I am not saying Gladys is bad. I think she had demonstrated immense leadership despite I do not agree with a lot of her politics or governing principles. The most important part is she rose to the occasion. Unlike Scott Morrison, while refusing to spend money on a federal quarantine facility, is willing to spend millions keeping a family in off shore detention when the community they were in wanted them back in Australia, just to wage his ideological warfare. Gladys is here every day to manage the pandemic while fighting the Nationals ideological onslaughts, when Scott Morrison organised a side trip week in advance to explore his family ancestry while claiming it to be an innocent stop over on the way during his G7 Summit. Gladys and Dan Andrews were trying to balance lockdowns with business and economics while Scott Morrison is willing to give away millions to big companies and let them keep the money for dividends while refusing to help universities across the country, leading to job cuts and people losing their livelihood.
I had hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic would bind the country together and have all sides of the government, both Federal and State to work together. However, Scott Morrison is still enjoying his image building without consequence with his do nothing means less missteps approach. The Nationals are more interested in power struggles than helping with the dealing with the pandemic. Labor, I personally do not know what Anthony Albanese had done, if any, nothing was communicated properly to general Australians like me.
If I want to criticise the Scott Morrison government, there is a long list to go on and I can even write a TV show out of it. However, this is not the time.
This is the time that we need a united Federal Government that actually cares about general Australians, from proper vaccine roll outs and messages, to border control and quarantine. If a global pandemic can’t even get our Federal Government’s act together, nothing really would, and I can’t see a future for Australia when partisan and division politics advocated by the Murdoch crazy mob take root.
I might sound pessimistic about this, but there is nothing to make me feel optimistic either.
