The current Government seems to be, almost universally, staffed by a large group of impostors. Are they visitors from another planet, passing themselves off as movers and shakers, decision makers? Have they infiltrated the bodies of the incumbents, but are insufficiently programmed to carry off the deception? Are they all zombies, not alive, but not dead. Whatever the explanation, there is an eerie emptiness about them, as if their batteries are running down.
I watched Question Time recently. Perhaps I am suffering from that, but I did not see anyone who resembled a real member of a real Government. I saw absolute non-entities stand up to ask questions, so phrased as to invite disbelief, using terms, from Government member to fellow Government Minister, like “please explain how and why you are doing such a peerless job for the people of Australia, or your electorate”, and please take your time while you do it, so that the taxpayers of this country can be enraged, disgusted, disenchanted, and generally short-changed by their representatives.
The Ministers duly replied to these gently lobbed love-notes. And what a motley crew they are. And who would have thought that Scott Morrison, who constantly reminds us of the irrelevance of “the Canberra bubble” would sit, firmly front and centre of that self-same bubble, smiling his smug smile, as question after question was wasted, so shamelessly?
The Opposition were fixated on asking all their questions about Angus Taylor, that curiously luckless individual, and with such a do-nothing Government, perhaps he is the only action in town. Their questions were all directed at the Prime Minister, who deflected them all, in between taking potshots at the Opposition Leader. Morrison was ducking and weaving, answering unasked questions, using the inside language of his bubble, with “Mr Speaker” thrown in at every second moment, as if it lends a parliamentary gravitas to his essentially juvenile sneering.
Visit the chamber a day later, and the show has become even more bogged down in mediocrity, like a slow motion train crash. While the planet teeters on the brink of climatic ‘tipping points’; as the Government is found to have been gouging those it maybe, possibly, suspected of being overpaid, while on welfare, sometimes as much as a decade ago; as more than sixty Australian citizens, victims of their husbands and/or fathers who dragged them to Syria to fight in a war most of them are too young to understand, cower in terror; as Australia’s international reputation is trashed, and our citizens shamed by the inhumanity shown to the refugees, both onshore, and offshore; the Australian Government was closing ranks to save the political life of an entitled twit, who is currently being slowly roasted for a totally unnecessary own goal.
That is not to mention that well-known political genius, Scott Morrison, who thinks God helped him win the unwinnable election. We are seriously in the hands of idiots! And consider for a moment, the fact that the fate of two almost meaningless, certainly small-minded, nasty pieces of legislation, which are before the Senate, are to be decided by Jacquie Lambie, and Pauline Hanson, respectively. This must be what a mandate looks like, when an elected Government relies on the deciding votes of two such giants of parliamentary tradition.
One is left wondering how we got to this terrible situation. I must fall back on my original thesis: Someone has kidnapped the Government, and replaced it with badly programmed robots.
Mark Buckley is a Melbourne writer, interested in politics and ethics. His writing can be found at www.askbucko.com
Mark Buckley is a writer based in regional Victoria. He has a particular interest in politics, history and ethics in public life. He blogs at www.askbucko.com
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