By John Stapleton
Want to shut up an Australian?
Just ask them this: “When did you last have a good Prime Minister?”
The incumbent, Anthony Albanese, is turning out to be worse than anyone could possibly have imagined.
His predecessor, Scott Morrison, is widely seen as the worst Prime Minister in Australian history, leading the conservatives to an historic defeat; his side of politics now out of power state and federally in all but the mendicant state of Tasmania.
Morrison’s shocking mismanagement of the Covid scare, which saw the national debt quadrupled and Australia’s reputation damaged around the world, is just one of the many scars he left on the body politic.
Scott Morrison in turn took over as winner of the “Worst Prime Minister Ever” category from his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, whose endless self aggrandisement at taxpayer’s expense also radically damaged the conservative brand.
And so it goes on, back through the decades, encompassing both sides of politics.
But the thing about Scott Morrison is that despite his personal unpopularity and his party’s historic massacring at the hands of a fed up electorate, he remains on the Opposition benches; a fact which the incumbents are exploiting to the full.
His enduring presence, presumably because he can’t get a job out in the real world, means that a rejuvenated Opposition under the leadership of Peter Dutton is eternally on the backfoot. Famous for being as bald as a badger, if he had any hair at all Dutton, would be tearing it out about now.
The revelations last year that as Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly appointed himself to five ministries, including Treasury and Home Affairs, in some cases without even telling the Minister involved, was a beautiful scandal for the newly minted Labor government, and should have been enough to rid the Parliament of Scott Morrison once and for all. No such luck.
There is an Australian term, to gurney, named after a high pressure washer used to clean everything from concrete to verandas.
It’s going to take a very powerful gurneying indeed to rid the Australian parliament of the stench emanating from Scott Morrison and his flaccid flesh.
The latest scandal to envelop the former Prime Minister involves an imbroglio known in Australia as “Robodebt”, an income averaging scheme which bureaucrats warned was illegal and which allowed Morrison and his ilk to look tough on welfare debt while causing enormous pain and suffering amongst those dependent on the country’s meagre welfare payments.
At the time of its inception Scott Morrison, as Social Services Minister, aggressively promoted the scheme as preventing welfare rorting, playing on working Australians contempt for “welfare rorters, known in Australia as “dole bludgers”.
In handing down her report on the scheme, Robodebt Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes described it as “crude and cruel” and “neither fair nor legal”. She said it stemmed from “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
Commissioner Holmes condemned Scott Morrison’s role: “Mr Morrison allowed cabinet to be misled… He took the proposal to cabinet without necessary information as to what it actually entailed… He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed and to ensure that it was lawful.”
Morrison, who has refused to take any responsibility for the multiple fiascos of his dismal prime ministership, hit back, defending the indefensible as per usual: “I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me. They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the commission.
“It is unfortunate that these findings fail to acknowledge the proper functioning of government and cabinet processes in the face of not only my evidence as a former prime minister, and cabinet minister for almost nine years, but also the evidence of other cabinet ministers.”
Long time political opponent and current Government Services Minister Bill Shorten, another odious time server in the Australian parliament, but that’s another story, got this one right, declaring: “Nearly half a million of our fellow Australians received unlawful debt notices, unlawfully raised against them by their own government. They want not just an explanation of how it can happen, but they want to know that the people who made these callous, unlawful decisions face consequences.”
Mr Shorten said any “self-respecting politician” would be “embarrassed and humiliated” by the assessments made in the final report: “He must live in a separate world to the rest of us.”
Scott Morrison, currently on holidays overseas with his family, is reported to be contemplating giving an address to Parliament at the end of this month defending his role in the Robodebt scandal. God spare us all.
It does the country no good not to have an effective Opposition. But for as long as Morrison remains in Parliament, stinking up the Opposition benches, so it will be.
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