Crispin Hull

Why not good action all the time?

COVID-19 has driven other important issues off the media agenda. But COVID-19 and those things driven off the agenda have something in common: the competency of government.

Notice that whenever governments deliver bad news, such as restrictions of movement, they either have the health expert announce it or at least be present at the announcement and always ensure they say that “we are following the best scientific and medical advice”. Government action that affects people adversely needs expert support. Without it, confidence and votes would be lost.

Australia should just leave

The farce this week of two rivals holding separate presidential inaugurations in Afghanistan should raise questions of why the US ever went there, why Australia followed, and once there why have we stayed so long?

The short answer is that the politicians learned only one lesson from the Vietnam war, instead of the many they should have learned. That lesson was that if you are going to be suckered into a war by the military-industrial complex, avoid conscription.

Lessons from virus and fires

During the bushfires and now the Covid-19 crisis did you notice that when it came to delivering bad news, it was the paid public servants, not the elected politicians, who were put before the cameras?

When there was a macho announcement – calling out the troops or imposing a travel ban – the Prime Minister was in front of the cameras.

Here is another Donald Trump-Richard Nixon comparison. When Nixon sought a second term in 1972, the Democrats nominated Senator George McGovern the most left-wing candidate in US history to challenge him.

The result was disastrous for the Democrats. Nixon won 49 states. So, a nasty, disliked, sociopathic, dishonest Republican President can win easily if the Democrats are stupid enough to nominate as challenger someone who is seen as unacceptably left-wing. And that is what is happening now.

The bear is worse than the dragon

When the US Defence Secretary Mark Esper named China this week as the US’s leading antagonist, followed by Russia, it should have sparked alarm. Not because he is right, but because he is wrong, and possibly deliberately so.

Trump and the people he appointed to his administration have consistently down-played the Russian threat, often using a Chinese “threat” as a decoy or distraction.

Libs should drop the Nats

Why can’t the Liberal Party call the National Party’s bluff and put an end to this dog-wagging blight on the Australian polity?

Without the Liberals showing some spine, it can only get worse. It is now obvious that Barnaby Joyce’s unsuccessful tilt at the leadership is not over. The election this week of Joyce supporter Llew O’Brien as Deputy Speaker over the Nationals’ official candidate – with the help of some deliciously calculated tactical voting by Labor – shows Joyce’s continued profound influence on the party and therefore its policies.

Super rorts must end

Submissions to the Retirement Income Review have now closed. Unlike the usual government or parliamentary inquiry at which the submissions are dominated by the money-makers and vested interests, this one has drawn a huge range of submissions expressing a great range of views.

There should therefore be no excuse for the Treasury Inquiry to avoid recommendations to end the tax rorts in the system.

Big Aussie conflicts must be resolved

Australia Day last weekend, coming amid bushfires and drought that will only get worse, exemplified some major conflicts in Australian society which should not be allowed to fester.

They include: national identity; dealing with carbon emissions; the city-bush divide; growing inequality and the government’s role in worsening it; the row over rights and freedoms; and corruption.

Trump’s re-election prospects

If the impeachment hearings this week are any guide, it will have to be the court of public opinion, not the court of the Senate, that removes President Donald Trump.

Increasingly, though, the pundits and commentariat are saying that Trump will be re-elected. If anything, that could be read as a good sign, seeing how many of them, including me, have got it so wrong in recent elections.

In the critical first full day of the impeachment hearings his week, the Senate voted along strict party lines in favour of Trump on important procedural points. Everything suggests that the party line will hold and Trump will be acquitted.

Fire inquiry must look at political inaction

Bring on the Royal Commission into the fires. Bring on a broad-ranging inquiry and a commissioner who is someone of independence, competence and integrity. This week’s essay from former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull makes this more imperative that ever.

He made sensible conclusions about what Australia must do about climate change but what he DID NOT not say is of more import.

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