The A for ABC

As the Q&A episode continues, more government officials threw their gauntlets in to have their say. The invitation of acquitted terrorist Zaky Mallah to the audience and the subsequent verbal confrontation with Steve Ciobo was a spectacular affair from a programming point of view. However, it is eventually the tsunami of abuse on freedom of speech that makes this saga going down as one of most important issues in Australian history.

Tony Abbott kept questioning whose side ABC was on and demanded “heads to be rolled” regarding this incident. Now it is no surprise or secret the Coalition hated ABC since the John Howard years. The Coalition thinks the ABC is never on their side and thus as soon as the current government came into office cut its budget dramatically as a display of power. The end result was innocent working people, whom the Coalition claimed they represent, lost their jobs because of the cuts. Tony Abbott’s continued assaults against ABC reflected a very serious issue here – the Coalition government is trying to control a public Broadcaster that stands for freedom of speech and turn it into a state broadcaster that only propagates government agendas whether they are good for Australia or not. Mark Scott, the managing director of ABC hits back on Tony Abbott by saying him doing so he is not fending for freedom of speech as ABC and all Australians are standing for but controlling speech in the national broadcaster. Strangely enough Tony Abbott stopped talking immediately but left the issue to his cohorts.

The ironic thing is this is the same bunch of people who wanted to change the discrimination law to enhance freedom of speech because according to George Brandis, the Attorney General, “everyone has the right to bigotry”, and this is what freedom of speech represents. If the right to slander other people publicly is a way to protect freedom of speech why couldn’t the same group of people accept the same on the receiving end? If this government is really about protecting freedom of speech, should everyone representing this government be gracefully accepting this on the other end? Should they be the role model to show to the Australian public that they are the real freedom fighters? Why is it every time when someone criticised them or said something they don’t like to hear they have to bring the wrath of their whole political gangster mob to gun these people down?

At the same time, Tony Abbott praised “The Killing Season” also produced by ABC that chronicled power struggles in the Labor government in the last two terms.  I found this extremely disturbing that a Prime Minister of a country could exhibit this kind of childish and bullish behaviour in the Parliament and be proud of it. The program was not made to appease the Coalition government it was just another piece ABC did. The Labor opposition did not take this opportunity to ask whose side is ABC on and did not question ABC’s motive. The same happened when ABC made a comedy series based on the sitting Prime Minister Julia Guillard at the time. Was Julia happy? No she was not. Did she go on to attack ABC? No she didn’t.

The fact that this Coalition government only wants things that suited their political agendas to be portrayed on TV is a definite indication that these people wanted to have a state controlled broadcaster called ABC not a public broadcaster that helped to shape the society and uphold freedom of speech called ABC. By asking their ministers to pull their appearances from ABC programs this government had rendered itself into nothing but a bunch of narrow minded school yard bullies. Is this what all the hard working Australians deserved? Are we for our freedom or are we for a controlled society that people would shiver just by knowing they have different views from the government. Is this Coalition government ran by a bunch of middle aged to elderly white men (and a few white women) a representation of “white terror” in the modern Australian society?

It is quite obvious the current saga is a public display of power from the Coalition government just like George Bush did in America in the past. If you are not with me you are against me. But if Australia became a society that is only run by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, George Brandis, Peter Dutton and even Alan Jones, could Australia still be successful in this 21^st century? Maybe they saw the success and rise to power of China so they thought this is the only way to make Australia a new world order power. But is that what all Australians want considering the convict and migrant history of this county that eventually built Australia?

I personally feel jarring that these people who are not the original owners of this land could become so entitled, especially considering people like Joe Hockey who has a strong migrant history – he would not in this country smoking cigar thinking about budget cuts on defence force and a pay rise for himself if his father did not come to this country as a refugee and worked hard. However, as people always say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is what we are observing in the current Coalition government.

To survive this, we all need to remember the A for ABC is “Australian” not “Abbott”. God bless Australia.

The Brain Tumour of Australian Politics

Another month came and went and the Prime Minister talk still goes on. It is no secret that the current Australian Prime Minister is extremely unpopular. A number of policies introduced along with last year’s budget – which is yet to be passed by the Senate led the government into a nose dive in popularity. A startling contrast to when the Coalition Government went back into office in 2013. Policies such as University fees deregulation, which in my opinion would benefit no one but the already established Group of Eight universities; the Medicare Co-Payment and the sneaky attempt to introduce rebate cuts without consultation; the cuts and eventual layoffs at ABC and SBS, the below inflation rate increase for the Defence Force while MPs enjoy a 7% increase in salary themselves; the non-mean tested parental leave program – they all represent how the Government is completely out of touch with the society while claiming to representing the Australian people. All these fuelled with the Government’s uncompromising stance against climate change, research funding, art funding and bullish ways it exhibited during the Victorian election,  had made the current government one of the most popular in Australian history.

There were leadership spills talks but is it going to happen? It is a time that even backbenchers are not happen while the frontbenchers trying to keep a united front. Tony Abbott has not got much to hang on except for the fact that he can’t be removed or they would become just like the Labor Party whom they replaced and attacked in the past. In fact the promise of a stable leadership and government is only one of the few if anymore, promises the current government has not broken. The Coalition party knows this and this is their last card to draw only in dire situation. The thing is Tony Abbott is now the brain tumour of the Coalition Government. The party room had let this brain tumour grown to a size that is so big that any attempts on surgery could prove to be fatal to the current government. This is not just Tony Abbott, but also all the blood veins attached to the tumour such as Joe Hockey (who said poor people do not own a car or drive very far, and has no understanding about the Australia’s taxation system while being the Treasurer of the country), Christopher Pyne (who said women do not do expensive degrees such as law and thus would not be affected by deregulations); Scott Morris (which thinks he is above all laws when it comes to deal with refugee issues); George Brandis (who has no idea what culture and arts about by relentlessly cutting funding to arts in the country) and the list goes on and on. The truth is if they removed Tony Abbott, all these people will need to go in order to show the government has repented and listened to the Australian public. There will be a lot of bleeding in the government because the question will be “who are going to do these jobs?” The Coalition in the past had been playing the celebrity card instead of credibility card to make them popular and eventually get into the office. The Amy Winehouse Rehab approach (“No no no”) to Labor policies earned them the office in 2013. However, once they used up their popularity there is nothing left and sadly there are no other people trained enough to do those jobs.

So the bottom line is if they removed Tony Abbott they are doing it at high risks. Tony Abbott knows well enough about this as he had made every attempt to disarm any opponents including Malcom Turnbull and Julie Bishop making them the mouthpieces for his unpopular policies. Tony Abbott might look stupid but he definitely knew how to play his game to stay in power. Backbenchers might be unhappy but the frontbenchers are even more scared that such removal would just accelerate the death of the Coalition government and any dashes of hope for getting re-elected will be gone. However at the same time everyone also knew at the current rate the chances of the Coalition government to continue holding office at the next election is minimal, judging what happened in Victoria and Queensland in the last three months. NSW Government is scared. Very scared. As they distanced themselves from the Federal Government as much as possible and put open stances against issues such as GST revisit.

The Prince Philip knighting is perhaps one of the most unconceivable things happened since 2015 started but is it lethal? That still needs time to be proven. However, if Tony Abbott is the brain tumour, this without a doubt represents a haemorrhage that needs to be dealt with in the emergency room. That’s exactly what is happening in the Coalition Party Room. Is Tony Abbott scared? I personally do not think so. He had fulfilled his wish to be the Prime Minister (as he put it when he was still in opposition he would “give his first born for the job”). All he needs to do is to hang on to finish his term. If he failed in the next election, the Coalition comes down, he steps down and that will not be the end of the game for him as he has built up business good will during this Prime Ministership (in how he stands up for the mining industry and put a stop to tax evasion of multinational corporations). He played a spectacular political game that left the rest of his party members in shambles.

The Coalition is definitely in bad shape but in the end it was its own making. They might see Tony Abbott as a potential cancer cell but eventually they let him grew to a size that is not operable and now could possibly only witness its own slow and painful death in a year’s time or so.