Australia: Beta Testing The Apocalypse

Crisis? What Crisis?

If the LNP government has taught us anything over the Christmas period, it is how utterly incompetent it is when it comes to keeping Australia safe.

If it has taught us anything since the new year started, it's that they are utterly corrupt and refuse to be made accountable for their rorting of taxpayer's money.

It's not like Labor is much better. Albanese should be using this to effectively begin his campaign against the LNP toward the next election. They (the coalition) are basically scoring goals for them, and they know he could use it as a platform against them, which is why any press conference he gives is cut off by Morrison.

With no clear policy and no real commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, the ALP are maintaining the status-quo as the country experiences a "new normal" in extreme weather events and mass devastation of wildlife and flora. It is estimated that over a billion animals have now been decimated by fires, while other native animals have been struck down by hail from freak storms tearing up the eastern seaboard.

This bushfire season has shown us that it's the beginning of a new world, for better or worse. Tipping points have been pushed and it feels like the powers that be, whether corporate or government, are going full speed ahead to strip as much profit as they can from a continent now experiencing dangerous weather conditions.

I'm not saying the option is the Greens, either. Di Natale and co do nothing more than pointing the finger and engaging in their trademark absolutism. If they were a comic book character, at the moment they'd resemble Rorschach from Watchmen. No, that's a tad harsh. I'd trust Rorschach with anything sharper than a boiled egg.

The Greens have some good policies, but they think they are more important or have more power than they actually do, and to maintain any connection to their mission statement or ethos, they are bound to at least mostly vote in line with the ALP. Straying from this isn't an option under the LNP, as there's nothing that the LNP would give them that would make them compromise themselves. At least, not yet.

Policies of the past now need to be reassessed and rewritten.

Not even twenty years on from the September 11 attacks, and I will have seen the world change twice. It wasn't a change for the better after 9/11, and the way things are going, I don't think this is going to be something that brings people together under the leadership of a government that has the best intentions and safety of its citizens in mind. Instead it is cruel, duplicitous, and relies on the charity of people within our borders and beyond them to do the heavy lifting in the wake of devastation. How do we even begin to unpack these issues when more are piling up?

Crimes Of The Century

Charities now loaded with donations to help fire affected people and wildlife are holding onto the money after only dispersing a fraction of it. The Australian Red Cross are only allocating a third of the total $95 million in donations received to help those affected by the fires, then released a statement saying that the rest would be spent over a three year period. St Vincent De Paul similarly raised $12.5 million in donations and allocated $1.1 million so far.

Hillsong and ACCI have only spent $78,484 of over $2.8 million, with a portion of the remainder being spent to send "chaplains" into fire affected communities.

The cynic in me (or perhaps, the realist) sees this as nothing more than the most perverse exercises in proselytism; using a disaster to try and frame this as God telling them to repent and come to Jesus and all will be forgiven. It's a type of mission and conversion that's entirely perverse, as there would be the occasional person who would end up becoming a member of the church and being suckered in to the tithe deal, so they make back a portion of what's given over from the donations.

I'm sure I don't need to point out how this flies in the face of the ministry of Jesus. It's possibly the most disgraceful set of actions carried out by a political party claiming to be Christians Australia has seen in recent history.

As this was unfolding, questions started being asked about Georgina Downer and why she was handing out cheques for sporting grants issued by the LNP. Digging revealed that the 100 million dollars allocated for funding sports clubs around the country had been used as a pre-election slush fund to effectively buy the votes of marginal LNP seats, and other grants going to seats that politicians like Scott Morrison, George Christensen, and bigger sums of money going to places that absolutely didn't need it like Mosman Rowing Club. 

The justification for the rowing club's money being that girls didn't have to get changed behind trees or in their cars any longer. But the icing on the cake was when it was discovered that Bridget McKenzie, the deputy leader of the Nationals, was the one who coordinated the whole affair and even the rifle club she belongs to didn't miss out on any of the money from the trough.

At the time of posting this blog, there's been no indication yet that Prime Minister Morrison was involved in this; but it's a big enough orchestration for him not to be involved or even the one who ordered the use of the funds in this manner.

It's been three weeks into the new year, and I haven't even covered the character assassination of Bruce Pascoe over a 15 year old book, Murdoch's media hate machine running overtime on climate denial, Barnaby Joyce and his marvellous Christmas message, and Gina Rinehart's passive aggressive slapback in regards to whether she was contributing to the recovery of Australia.

Usually there is some snippy commentary or a few quips and a couple of gifs. I'll double up on them next time.

This girl is exhausted. 

We deserve better.