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The Final months of 2013 saw exceptionally poor performances from Scott Morrison. The list is long, but the low-lights include: keeping a refugee woman separated from her child who was in intensive care, avoiding media scrutiny through weekly briefings and at those briefings getting the facts wrong, politicising the military through the 'Operation Sovereign Borders' media briefings, and freezing the issuing of visas to refugees (before backtracking due to fears of losing a high court challenge). In a completely cynical move just prior to Xmas, Morrison introduced a 'Catch 22' into the regulations surrounding protection visa application. This was done by changing the regulations (which doesn't require passage through parliament) to ensure that to be eligible for a protection visa you must apply for a visa in Australia having arrived after fleeing your homeland for fear of persecution. But if you arrive in Australia without a visa because you fled your homeland for fear of persecution, you're not eligible for a protection visa.
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It also seems that the weekly media briefings have become too much for the incompetent Morrison to handle. No longer will there be briefings, or those troublesome question and answer session where Morrison often doesn't answer or gives out intentionally misleading or factually incorrect information. Instead, the public will, it seems, remain fully informed through periodic emails.
Our democracy is plumbing new depths.
But Scott Morrison is not acting alone. He is being ably backed by the serial stupidity of our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Julie described the conditions on Nauru as better than mining camps, for it to be revealed that she only visited the staff accommodation.
The heat has also been turned up on Tony Abbott, following the release of the BoM's report which indicated that 2013 was the hottest year on record. Abbott believes climate changes is 'Total Crap', his key advisers such as Maurice Newman believe we have 'been taken hostage to climate change madness' and the government is pushing ahead with trying to dismantle a price on carbon (a policy which is working and is being taken up by more countries around the globe) and replace it with 'Direct Inaction'.
Poor Greg Hunt has been reduced to regurgitating tired old rhetoric: 'we’ll reduce emissions and achieve the 5% target by directly cleaning things up', 'The ALP’s own figures show that under a carbon tax Australia’s domestic emissions rise from 560m to 637m tonnes between 2012 and 2020' (that's very old data Greg), 'the carbon tax is just an electricity tax'. Greg is committed to a 5% reduction but without the funds to achieve it.
We all know what Abbott gave Greg Hunt as a Xmas present... a copy of the Magic Pudding.... a classic Australian Fable.
In fact Abbott announced any Coalition abatement scheme would deliver at most, a 5% reduction by 2020.
The government's own consultation process on the design of an Emissions Reduction Fund received 150 submissions just prior to Xmas. The submissions have leant heavily towards an Emissions Trading Scheme with built in offsets to protect trade exposed industries.... sounds remarkably like Labor's plan.
Interesting.