Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

Recent articles by Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scott Morrison, the opportunist.

History, declared Henry Ford, is bunk. And last Saturday, the Australian electorate agreed. Rather than punishing the coalition punishment for nearly six years of civil war, policy inertia, dysfunction and backstabbing, the voters rewarded them.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Finally, the beginning of the end.

Scott Morrisons launch was, ironically, the last of the big set pieces. The remaining mad (and largely irrelevant) days will be scrabbling over a few marginal seats in which the vast majority of those who have not already voted will have already made up their minds.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Those who work for Murdoch know exactly what is expected of them.

It was in 1975 that the Murdoch bias finally pushed the dictatorial moguls journalists jacked up, and went on strike.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. ScoMos campaign is going back to the future -- quite a long way back.

John Howard has been exhumed as the great grey hope and is being paraded among the marginal electorates to enthuse the faithful and woo the undecided assuming, that is, that they know who he is, or at least was.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of the quest for untold, unearned wealth. Treasure Island, was also an acute observer of politics. He once declared: Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The end of the beginning.

The enduring image of the week was that of our prime minister bouncing a soccer ball on his head. Or possibly vice versa.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. What has inevitably been rechristened Watergate is hardly a barbecue stopper.

For most voters, the issue is both too remote and too complicated apparently there are different kinds of water, different ways of harvesting them (whatever that means), elaborate regulations about selling the stuff, deciding what to do with it and evaluating the outcomes and all of that before we have to discuss the ethics of paying a large fortune to deliberately anonymous British tax avoiders based in a secretive tax haven half a world away.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The essence of marketing is constant repetition.

A short week of campaigning and an even shorter one to come which is perhaps why the temperature has ramped up to almost febrile levels.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. ScoMo is happy to keep the campaign as mean and ugly as possible.

The final jobs for the boys and girls have been squared away, the pointless tit for tat over taxpayer advertising and who is closer to the Chinese have been shelved, and Melissa Price has obediently signed off on Adani, as ordered by the Queensland Nats.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Our Leader remains, as so often, in Luddite denial.

According to ScoMo , electric cars are for wimps and latte sippers real Australians want more grunt. Oink oink, vroom vroom! Wheelies, doughnuts, burnouts!

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Sick of Morrison's shilly-shallying

A somewhat exasperated Bill Shorten accuses Scott Morrison of playing games over the election date and so he is.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison reverses gratuitous cruelty.

There was at least one moment of relief after the election spiel masquerading as a budget; the decision exclude the energy supplement hand out from the New Start allowance was reversed in less than twelve hours.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Drunken braggarts get stung.

Lets be clear about the Al Jazeera sting against One Nation: the drunken braggarts who fell for it deserved all they got and more.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. A last minute swing, delivering an improbable victory.

On the eve of the crucial budget, the trailing coalition government finally had a shred of hope: New South Wales.The fairly comfortable re-election of Gladys Berejiklian following nail-biting opinion polls gave them the hope that perhaps their own leader a fellow Cornstalker, no less could pull off the same trick. A last minute swing, delivering an improbable victory.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison has something to clap about.

Scott Morrison would have been happier and clappier than usual when he went to his Horizon Pentecostalist Church last Sunday.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The Right get back to dog-whistling.

It didnt take long for the cultural warriors of the right to revert to form.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The mob will always work you out.

It is not clear who said it first, but it quickly became a catchcry of the long-lived government of Bob Hawke: the mob will always work you out.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Students' strike for climate action - and good on them for it.

The conservatives have got themselves into a terrible lather about last weeks climate change protest.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison a 'fair dinkum' hole in the air.

When the people smugglers see me, they see a brick wall, boasted our great war leader. Well, up to a point; they certainly see someone as thick as a brick and far less transparent and straightforward. But most Australians see him more like a hole in the air a political vacuum feverishly trying to present himself as authentic by relying on the constant repetition of the mantra he adopted from Alan Jones, fair dinkum.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Farmers, miners and failed leadership.

I think it was in 1969 I first predicted that the Country Party (as the Nationals were then called) would wither away.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Reboots,fig leafs and climate wars

Scott Morrison may be shedding minister like the early leaves of autumn, but, as usual, there are distractions and for once he can be profoundly grateful.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Christopher Pyne,The mincing poodle!

The imminent retirement of Christopher Pyne, christened the mincing poodle by Julia Gillard and the most irritating person in Australia by just about everyone else, is not just another deserter from the sinking ship.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Wallowing in the chum bucket

A slur, a smear, grubby tactics, thundered the outraged ScoMo. Labor is getting down into the mud.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Julie Bishop

So that was the great female hope of the Liberal Party that was. Julie Bishop, the only conservative who ever got to a bulls roar of the Lodge, ( the ambitions of her namesake Bronwyn were nevermore than megalomaniac fantasy) has decided to retire her shoes which most of the media thought was by far her most important attribute -- home to Perth.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The marketeer in the Lodge.

In the world of marketing, there are no such things as losses only opportunities; and Scott Morrison, if he is nothing else, is a dedicated marketeer.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Closing the gap.

The biggest gap that needs closing is the lack of an acknowledgement of the past by non-indigenous Australia and a determination that not only will the ignorance and denial not be repeated, but there will be genuine collaboration at every level in future. Morrison has talked the talk; now he needs to walk the walk, and he had better get on with it if he is not to be part of the unhappy legacy of so many previous leaders.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Who could have predicted that Kenneth Hayne would turn out to be such an old softie?

For months the stern, uncompromising judicial figure has presided over his royal commission with imperial authority, a veritable Judge Dredd inspiring fear and trepidation among scores of witnesses ever wary that at any moment he could reach for the black cap. And when his verdict was delivered, it was appropriately full of fire and brimstone, excoriating the pit of depravity that is the banking system and all those associated with it. At least, those were the words, but the reality turned out to be something so reassuring that bank shares across the board leapt in relief. Kenneth Hayne was actually...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Peter Dutton says doctors can't e trusted.

Kerryn Phelps is not just a doctor: according to Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and their Murdoch mouthpieces, she is a shaker of worlds. Her bill or rather her amendments to the governments own bill -- to allow doctors rather than bureaucrats to assess sick asylum seekers for treatment in Australia will not only simply dismantle the entire apparatus of border security.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. From catastrophic to merely awful.

Coalition in new year bounce, screamed The Australian ecstatically. Well, not all that much of a bounce the latest Newspoll showed that the governments position had improved from catastrophic to merely awful.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The Basin plan has become a Basin scam

If you take half the water out of a river, it will affect the river.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Warren Muldine is hardly a lifelong true believer.

Warren Mundine is a serious politician. For most of his life he has been a player in the great game, either directly or more often and perhaps more effectively indirectly, through working in and around his community. His campaigns have not always been successful but he has a solid record of achievement in both advocacy and business. Under normal circumstances he would be seen as a worthy and effective candidate for parliament.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Around the twist or navigating around Australia.

Unlike the National Partys deputy leader. Bridget McKenzie, our Prime Minister presumably knows that James Cook and Arthur Phillip were not the same person. They may have both been dead white male sailors serving the mad King George III, but they did so in different times and different places. Even Scott Morrison learnt that much at school. And he probably also knows that Cook did not actually circumnavigate Austraiia. But what the hell, he could have if hed wanted to and this close to Australia Day, why waste a marketing opportunity?

MUNGO MacCALLUM. ScoMo needs damaging distractions - to distract from even more damaging ones.

However strenuously our Prime Minister insists that he is talking quietly and respectively to constituents about the real issues that concern them, the real ScoMo always lurches shoutily into the headlines. Last week, barely emerging from an estivation all too brief for the weary voters, Morrison the Marketeer flung himself straight into the culture wars, parading what he imagined was his patriotic authenticity but which looked more like just another episode of dog whistling and wedge politics.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The pugnacious potato has done it again.

Having unleashed his innumerate megalomania to destroy Malcolm Turnbull, with the unintended consequence of almost certainly scuttling his government as collateral damage, Peter Dutton has now derailed Scott Morrisons attempt to mend the fractured relationship with the Pacific.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scott Morrison says the bible is not a policy handbook.

There was none of that namby-pamby nonsense about taking a cup of kindness for the sake of auld lang syne, or anyone else for that matter.Scott Morrison went straight on the attack to welcome 2019. My job our governments job -- is to prepare Australia for any opportunity and eventuality, he bellowed.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Kill Bill remains the default option for Scott Morrison.

Scott Morrison, his office informs us, is talking a short break off to the country for a bit of biking, boating and fishing.But not shooting; the image of our easy going prime minister with a lethal weapon in his hands might send the wrong message.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Morrison will not go quietly.

And so this is Christmas; And enough is enough. Another year over And who gives a stuff.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Nightmare draws to a close.

The darkest hour, they say, is just before dawn. And it just may be that a glimmer of light is appearing in the five year nightmare of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison dynasty.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison prepares for the next world.

It appears that Scott Morrison has now given up on this world and is planning to move on to the next.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The great marketeer seems determined to double down on the tactics and double up on the volume.

So that was the parliamentary year that was, finishing in rancour, dysfunction and procrastination, a triumph of politics over policy. This was not a surprise, but the level of hyperbole and hysteria whipped up by the desperate prime minister and his colleagues finally went off the map.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Protecting buffoons.

According to at least one member of the New South Wales Liberal executive, Sally Betts, the member of Hughes, Craig Kelly, is a bully, a thug and a disgrace.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Something important happened on treaty.

You could be forgiven for missing it, but something quite important happened in politics last week.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Vacuous marketeer needs an education

Yet again we are assured that the Adani mine is going ahead Adani Lite, theyll only put it in a little way and if it hurts, well, theyll just see how far they can keep shoving.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison suffers mental congestion.

Scott Morrisons slogan of the week was congestion busting -- he was in favour of it.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Government doesn't get GetUp!

The quest for a right wing opponent to GetUp! has been going on for almost as long as the quest for a right wing Phillip Adams at the ABC and with about as much success.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another week, another stuff-up. Israel and Indonesia.

Bill Shorten and Penny Wong got it right last week: ScoMos pre-Wentworth thought bubble about moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem should be dead, buried and cremated. It was always a bad idea and if there was any doubt the Indonesians have tried to put it out of its misery with the simple tactic of taking Morrisons cherished preferential trade deal with Jakarta off the table until our leader disposes of the remains.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. China, The US and the Manus Island naval base.

APEC, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, was really Bob Hawkes idea.The Prime Minister of the day envisaged it as a purely economic gathering, a meeting of finance ministers to deal with the growing impact of globalism and ensure dialogue and the rule of law between its diverse participants.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Poor Malcolm.

Just because youre paranoid, it doesnt mean people dont hate you. It sometimes seems that Malcolm Turnbull is being pursued by that old Andy Capp character Joe Btfsplk, who brought bad luck to everyone near him.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison drives bus over sincerity.

ScoMos blue bus is the perfect symbol of the man and his government a brash, ostentatious clich, non-functional and completely phony.

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