One of my strongest memories of 2018 was how I was scoffed at even by friends when I forecast disaster when Scott Morrison became prime minister. Because, I said, he is a Christofascist who will pursue an ideological agenda imported from the lunatic right in the USA.
Watching Nemesis, particularly the final episode, altered my perspective just a little: Morrison turned out to be so bereft of principle and integrity that it would fairer to say he adopted a Christofascist persona when it suited him, and other personas when they suited him better. A true mercenary, with an ego exceeded only by his capacity for betrayal and dishonesty.
I confess I underestimated the importance attached by others to the Christine Holgate affair. My view at the time was that she was just another high-flying executive swimming in champagne while Australia Post’s performance and services failed ordinary Australians. Arrogant, unaccountable, overpaid, and lavishly rewarded CEOs, who fail to achieve any significant performance goals other than padding profits with price gouging and ripping off Australian customers seems to be par for the course these days, but I have no respect for it. Never did. And never will.
What I’m not sorry about at all was that women hung the Holgate affair around Morrison’s neck as yet another proof of his rusted-on misogyny. He was and remains doubtlessly a most undisciplined and unrepentant bigot with an enormous capacity for self-deception and/or dishonesty about this character flaw.
Perhaps most interesting of all the episodes were two almost throw-away comments made in the final episode of the Nemesis documentary.
The first is from former Victorian premier Dan Andrews, to the effect that he thought it was a shame that Morrison’s many flaws would forever overshadow all the good he did. What an extraordinarily generous thing for Andrews to say! I confess I scratched my head to try and think of some of those good things. I’m still at a loss. If Morrison had attacked me the way he attacked Andrews, I would never have forgiven nor forgotten, and I’d waste no opportunity to make him remember how stupid it was to do so. But I’m no public figure or public servant.
The second comment, and possibly the most profound one, came from Malcolm Turnbull. Not profound because he’s a clever bloke. But because it’s so obvious and yet so undervalued it’s enough to make you want to cry. Turnbull said one of the lessons the Liberals should learn from that period was that politics is not an end in itself, but should serve the national interest and the people of Australia.
Is there a single MP today who can say with all honesty they have always striven to make that true? That they have not sunk into the murky, nasty, eye-gouging, genital-ripping mud wrestling that is politics today? That have not excused doing so as expedient ‘because others do it’?
I fear no one in the LNP (meaning Queensland) has heeded that lesson, and I fear that David Crisafulli will lead the LNP to a state election without acknowledging how much his party is hijacked by modern white shoe shonks, and, much worse, the more earnest (than Scott Morrison ever was) Christofascists in the country. These are ‘respectable’ small business owners, accountants, solicitors, doctors, and other professionals beholden to the worst mix of American Pentecostalism, Dominionism, white power nationalism, and the absolute conviction they have the right to force their Bronze Age superstitios on others through the organs of the state, as if democracy is actually just a meaningless byword and winning an election is a blank cheque to descend into Mediaevalist barbarism.
I understand the ALP hasn’t demonstrated to many Queenslanders it should be rewarded with another term in government, but I fear the assault on democracy and even civilized institutions we can expect from people who think Attwood’s Gilead is something to be aimed for rather than a dystopian vision to be avoided.
So, no, I don’t think the LPA/LNP has learnt anything at all from that nine years of disfunction. My one slim hope is that if Queensland wants to punish the ALP for becoming complacent or arrogant in power, voters will choose to do it with independents and Greens rather than with shadowy LNP candidates who are being kept very quiet about their agenda for Queensland. An agenda, I believe, much worse than the disastrous one pursued by Campbell Newman.
Maybe … just maybe … it doesn’t matter so much that the LPA/LNP has learnt nothing from its failures, but that Australian (and Queensland) voters have learnt about voting for independents and Greens instead of the self-interested anachronisms that are still our major parties.
[If you haven’t seen the ABC’s three part Nemesis documentary, catch up on iview. It is quite a revelation to hear from key political players how they really thought and why they did as they did.]
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