Which muppet you voting for?

[norbs]

Jesus H Christ. Fucking Morrison and Dutton.

[DarrenM]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-15/ ... /101332916

Gave himself all those roles and still failed to do anything useful.

[norbs]

Is anyone surprised? He was a mini Trump. I wont be surprised if more shit is dragged up in the coming years.

Lets see if these soft Labour bastards get him with their ICAC.

[DarrenM]

[durbster]

Can somebody explain it to us non-Aussies? What's to gain from gaining control of different departments (if I've understood it, which I'm not sure I have)?

Doesn't the PM have overall power over them anyway?

[Cursed]

Not sure. But at a guess there would be direct access to dept. information and staff. Also it's not unusual to have certain powers to over-rule departmental decisions at the minister's descretion as written into many laws, regulations and policies.

[KNAPPO]

All his roles played out by Minister for PR: Scott Morrison.

[norbs]

The replies!

[w00dsy]

Brilliant

[norbs]

Jesus he is getting a drubbing over this. I expect it wont make a fucking jot of difference. He seems to have the same teflon characteristics that Trump has.

[smithcorp]

Can somebody explain it to us non-Aussies? What's to gain from gaining control of different departments (if I've understood it, which I'm not sure I have)?

Doesn't the PM have overall power over them anyway?

Durbs, I think it was so he could over-rule a minister if they wanted to make a decision he didn't like (in Australia it wasn't usual for the PM to make decisions or announcements across a cabinet minister's portfolio, though it did occur sometimes. I think there may also have been an element of being able to allocate funding or sign contracts to benefit mates. I suspect this may come out.

Most of his purported reasons for becoming a parallel minister don't hold water, so I suspect there's more to it. He was/is a very weird unit.

[durbster]

OK thanks.

[DarrenM]

Doing it all secretly really calls into question his given reasons for doing it. Most of his own party and even some of the cabinet whose positions he'd taken weren't even aware he had done it until a recent book publishing. This comes alongside his resistance over the last couple years to establish a federal anti-corruption agency, which was a promise from the previous election.

[Cutter]

Another reason to double up is a bit more sinister.
If he wanted to make an unpopular decision in matters of another ministers portfolio, he could do it.
He could legally sign off and ratify it.
If the real minister objected he could point out he is prime minister and they're not.
Then silence them by having any discussion on the matter as a formal cabinet discussion (i.e. a sub - cabinet committee meeting of 2)
They are legally bound to obey cabinet confidentially, so they might not like it, but cannot mention it.
If / when the public or the press got wind of it, particularly if its unpopular, the prime minister would confront any publicity over it.
He would say "the Minister was compelled to sign of on this for ....blah blah blah ... reasons".
Or, "The Minister felt this was in the best interests of Australia etc etc".

The key word here is "The Minister", using that rhetoric, compelling the real minister ( and any others) to silence,
he is able to make any decision in Health / Resources / Finance / industry / Science / home affairs and in particular Energy that he , or his backers / influencers want to be made.
All hiding behind the now compromised term "the minister."
Knowing the current incumbent will take the flack without being able to defend themselves, while ScoMo is reasonably safe from scrutiny / criticism.

Amongst a few people much cleverer than I, it was felt this was a device to make a whole lot of very unpopular / damaging decisions early on had he won the last election.
In those first few months (assuming he had secretly appointed himself to the ministries) he could weld this power, threaten and cajole the newly appointed "real ministers" then run off and hide behind "the minister" phrase and wait 3 odd years for everyone to forget.
When you look at that list of portfolios (and other possible ones) there is a hell of a lot that could be signed off on without scrutiny, particularly energy.
New Coal mine anyone / Coal seam cracking / The recently embraced Nuclear option steamrolled though. The mind boggles.

[durbster]

Things are going great on this side of the world.

[norbs]

She seems like an absolute idiot.

[Big Kev]

They're all completely clueless at the moment.

She's only been in the job for a month and she's managed to crash the economy and there is already a large number of MP's calling for a vote of no confidence.

[durbster]

She seems like an absolute idiot.

I don't think she's stupid, at least not in the Trump sense. Her oration doesn't do her any favours in this regard but she seems to be academically astute at least.

It seems to me it's more about being consumed by an ideology that's been simmering in the UK for years.

There are a collection of lobby organisations that have been pushing this narrative for a while. They all have very reasonable seeming names and causes, with very obscure funding and motivations. They're all based in or around one London address - 55 Tufton Street.

I kind of stumbled upon all this when arguing with climate change deniers online. I started noticing that all their UK based material came from one place - the Global Warming Policy Foundation who claimed to exist as a check on Government, to lobby for responsible climate change policies. Their funding was hidden, and by pure coincidence, everything they produced was to deny the science and promote views that just so happened to be beneficial to fossil fuel companies.

Because their branding was kind of sarcastic, based on global warming not being real (their website header used to have a graph showing the global temperature, which looked increasingly stupid as it kept going up), they had to rebrand recently and now go under the name Net Zero Watch. Same people saying the same things.

Which brings me to the Institute of Economic Affairs. Another group from the same stable which another serious sounding name that on the surface looks respectable enough. For some reason, they're often invited on to the BBC to discuss economic policies and they've been pushing this kind of economics for years.

They were celebratory after the budget because they finally got one of theirs into the top job who promised to finally deliver their mandate. And look how it went...

Some info about them here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63039558

[norbs]

Sounds like the Institute of Public Affairs out here. Coalition think tank.

https://independentaustralia.net/politi ... whose,8837

Those c**t* have been around for a LONG time. Just check out their hit list in that article. FMD.

[durbster]

That does sound very similar.

[StanDaam]

Very interesting, cheers for the info Durbster!

[norbs]

[norbs]

About time a politician, from either side, said it out loud.

[norbs]

Well Kev and Durbs....

[durbster]

Yep, the lettuce won fair and square.