Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton are keen to mention the Community Party of China at every opportunity and how terrible they are – ignoring the fact that China is Australia’s number one trading partner and Australian athletes recently competed at the Winter Olympics in Beijing (so surely it can be all that bad) – and making the link between bad China and the Labor Party, especially its leader, Anthony Albanese.
And creating that link between Albanese and pinko-communist-leftist-Maoist-Guevarian-socialist thoughts, all because (allegedly) he glanced at the Communist Party of Australia’s newspaper, The Tribune, at some point in 1992. The Liberal Party support team at News Corporation did fall short of calling for the execution of Albanese for thought crimes against the state, but the sentiment was there.
An incident between an Australian Defence Force aircraft and a Chinese vessel in international waters in the Arafura Sea was magnified in the media and by the federal government – we still are not sure what occurred – but who’s got time for the facts when there’s an election to be won. And if the electorate tires from hearing about ‘China’, there’s always an opportunity to drag Australia into the Russia–Ukraine conflict, even though it’s not within Australia’s field of interest.
Yes, we need to be concerned about Russia’s invasions in Ukraine, but it’s a complex situation based on old Soviet Union politics, history, imperialism, economics and control of resources. But that doesn’t matter: it‘s an opportunity to push Australia towards a ‘khaki’ election, which the Coalition believes it has a stronger chance of winning, as well as being about to promote the idea that Albanese is ‘weak on border protection’. But will it work?
The Liberal Party seems to be at war with everyone and when they’ve cycled through the usual suspects – China, communists, the Greens, Labor, pensioners, welfare recipients, the poor – they return to an old and trusted enemy: the unions. A shutdown of Sydney’s train system was caused by the NSW Government, with the intention of blaming the unions.
Australia is poorly served by its mainstream media, and the Sydney Morning Herald provided a fine example of this when they pushed the idea that it was strike action caused by unions (no, it was a lockout by the NSW Government), and this provided attack points for Morrison over the next few days against unions – it’s a pity that it was all incorrect, but that was never the point.
It allowed Morrison to push the message about life under an Albanese government – train strikes every day of week; misery; inconvenience; something about communism and the left.
In Morrison’s dystopia, there are no shades of grey, just Neanderthal simplicity: Scomo, good. Albo, bad.
And David Lewis catches up with Ryan Bruce, who is the candidate in Aston for The New Liberals: we find out about his campaign, and what The New Liberals are all about and what the future holds for them.
Music interludes:
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