Ever thus

It's the politicians I feel sorry for.  Morrison has set up a two billion dollar slush fund for bushfire relief, which means that at $127,000 per giant novelty cheque each of the 16 National members is going to have to hand out four of them in marginal electorates every working day from now to the election (excluding sitting days). That's a killing pace. It won't leave them much time to spend with their families, considering that many of them have several of those, too.

T'was ever

Pea and Thimble Trick

Science Minister Karen Andrews’ talk about climate change being real may be ‘a shift in rhetoric’, but it isn’t ‘a blunt warning’.  The live rail in Coalition politics is, specifically, the word ‘anthropogenic’. After thirty years denialists have now reluctantly come round to agree that climate change is happening, but that doesn’t mean they’ve conceded that humans have caused it. They’ve moved on to talking about adaptation to change only because that doesn’t involve doing anything to stop it, and people like Andrews will happily fight on that front for the next thirty years. When Andrews refers to ‘unnecessary debate’ she means ‘science’. She isn’t actually the Minister for Science: like every other minister in the Morrison Government, she’s the Minister for Coal. The Age shouldn’t enable her evasions. We're well beyond the point where 'a shift in rhetoric' is anything but adding insult to injury. 

Thus

Those who complain about our Prime Minister’s religious biases are surely neglecting the obvious. God is keeping his side of the bargain, in spades.  If this year’s fires had happened last year the Coalition would have lost in a landslide.

Ever

Actually, this is a great opportunity. Make an offer, toss in a few million dollars, do up Yarralumla, and Australia can have a king of its own and an Australian head of state. 

Or, alternatively, if you think it’s stupid to put our governance into the hands of a British upper-class twit of the year then why haven’t we got a republic now? 

T'was

If these fires are spreading even though we’re meeting our carbon targets, that surely means we need more ambitious targets. 

Ages on

Remember when at the last election Bill Shorten couldn’t say exactly how much his climate change policies were going to cost?  Just said that not acting had costs too. As if!  We sure dodged a bullet there. 

From Quiggin

The most fundamental constant in Australian politics is that nothing is going to get better, and we shouldn't waste our time speculating about what would happen if it did.  Between Murdoch, Palmer and the electorate's I'm-all-right Jackism no remotely progressive policy can survive. The government is not going to bend: Morrison has learned from Trump and Johnson that what the electorate really want is a government that can look sincere as it tells them that nothing needs to change and all will be well. They're lying, of course, and we know they're lying, but if the alternative is facing reality then we prefer being lied to.  There's a bit of a fuss now, but he's got God in his pocket and it'll rain the day before the next election and that'll be enough to diffuse the anger.