Crispin Hull

Costly Covid bungles

We should be exercising more Covid caution, on both the financial and health fronts.

Perhaps in 2022 we are a bit bored with Covid compared to 2020 and 2021 when we anxiously awaited the state-by-state figures each day. But the 2022 Covid story is far more serious.

Govt’s persistent low primary vote

Yes, there was a “gaffe” last week and Labor’s wide but shallow support in the opinion polls this week looked a little bit shallower. But this week’s polls did not change one fundamental in this supposed two-horse race – the 6 to 7 percentage point drop in the Coalition primary vote since 2019.

This has been consistent across many polls over at least the past 18 months and cannot be explained by polling margins of error. And it was repeated this week despite Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s meaningless failure to recall the unemployment rate or base interest rate.

More than a fistful of dollars

If this election is to be about economic management and national security, – the Coalition’s supposed strengths – voters should question what those things mean and whether the Coalition does them well or even just better than the other lot.

But even applying the staid old definitions of national security as spending big on military hardware and economic management as being low-tax and frugal with public money, just one stand-out case should put the lie to the myth that the Coalition is better on these scores.

Libs hand Nats too much

While everyone tuned in (either in glee or horror) as Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells delivered her excoriating character reference on Prime Minister Scott Morrison, an underlying equally significant matter was virtually ignored.

Fear and political paralysis

After grabbing as much mileage out of the Budget as possible, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will most like name the election date later in the week or early next week.

It is billed as a contest between a man who doesn’t hold a hose and purports to like Rugby League and beer and a man who has just shed 18kgs and sharpened up his suits and glasses.

It should, of course, be much more than that.

Putin’s crime and need for EV uptake

Personal experience and national statistics tell me that electric cars have taken off in Australia and the trend is unstoppable, despite the resistance of the Federal Coalition which is on the take from fossil industries.

And the take-off is just as well because we can now add national security to economic good sense and better health as reasons for the urgent conversion of fossil fuel fleets to electric and hydrogen power. More on security anon.

Flood of public failure

The fissures in the Australian federal system seemed to widen substantially in the past fortnight. When you connect seemingly disconnected dots Australia seems like a patient whose refusal to change long-standing poor habits portends a breakdown of good health.

The Gladstone Lines moves south

The Gladstone Line is likely to move further south after the catastrophic floods. The Gladstone Line is an imaginary line north of which it is harder to get insurance at what was hitherto a reasonable price or it is impossible to get it at all.

The moving of the Gladstone Line south will cause the Morrison Government a few headaches. Helping out will be a tacit acceptance that adaptation to global heating is necessary, but doing nothing (a favourite Morrison option) could cost a lot of votes.

The parallels of history

Historians, political scientists, military strategists and others have postulated numerous parallels with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most notably Germany’s invasion of the Sudetenland and later the whole of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39.

Putin has been compared to any number of other autocrats. But there is another disarming parallel of a paranoid bully using military might to overturn a democratically elected government in what it saw as its sphere of influence on the basis of trumped-up evidence.

Busting the security and economy myth

Several events in the past week should (but probably won’t) dispel the idiotic belief among voters that the Coalition is better on national security and economic management than Labor.

The first was the great big bucket of cold water poured all over Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton by none other than the head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess. Burgess went public to condemn the politicisation of national security – very rare for an ASIO boss.

Busting the security and economy myth

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