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Byron Shire
March 28, 2024

A peek at Rupert Murdoch’s revised walking dead cabinet

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Saddle Road group home DA decision this week

Plans to build Byron Shire’s first permanent group home for women and children in housing stress are moving ahead, with the development application for the project coming before Council this week.

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A health check as Medicare turns 40

If you’ll forgive the earnest tone, I’d like to propose a toast. To a friend who’s almost always there when you need them most. To a system that aims to treat people fairly and respectfully. 

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The Save Wallum campaign has been named as a finalist in the Nature Conservation Council of NSW Environment Awards 2024. The award ceremony will be held in Sydney tonight, and Save Wallum spokesperson and ecologist James Barrie will be attending with Tegan Kitt, another founding member of the group.

Richmond MP again called on for immediate Gaza ceasefire 

On Saturday, March 16 Northern Rivers Friends of Palestine unfurled a 20m scroll with the names of murdered children and host a ‘die-in’ action at the office of the federal Member for Richmond, Justine Elliot (Labor).

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Adaptive Surf Pro winds up in Byron

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The walking dead frontbench and their backbench zombies.

Good riddance Turnbull, a PM of massive wealth and ego who left office without much record of accomplishment.

Remember when the Libs scoffed as Labor tore itself apart and then Abbott led us nowhere from 2013?

By comparison, the excretion of Malcolm from deep within the Liberal colon was more spectacular and even dumber. This means Labor will be a shoe-in at the next election, right?

Perhaps. Labor’s leader Bill Shorten consistently polls well below a chicken parmigiana as preferred PM. You would think he would have been replaced by now to ensure a solid victory.

Clearly Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek or even Anthony Albanese would be more appealing than a man who oversaw the knifing of two Labor PMs?

Wrong. Former PM Rudd changed Labor’s rules so it’s now almost impossible to roll their leader. Not so for the Libs, who will probably flail around like a headless chook until the main perpetrator of this chaos  – Abbott – is voted out. 

And while this rabble of self-serving Liberal zombies is not exactly the lineup Alan Jones wanted, it’s close enough to being hopefully the last of its type in modern history. Or is it? Here are a few profiles of the new cabinet. 

God botherer PM

Prime minister Scott Morrison is widely misunderstood as being a Christian, or a person who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ.

While happily clapping in his Sydney mega-rich cheesy church stadium, the planet’s poorest and most wretched languish – and die – in offshore concentration camps he helped to expand. With bipartisan Labor support, these desolate hellscape torture islands are run by evilgovcorp and paid for by your taxpayer money.

Of course, Morrison sleeps like a baby at night.

What would Jesus say?

Invisible minister Michael McCormack (Nationals leader, deputy prime minister, minister for Infrastructure and Transport). The name McCormack is hard to remember because he replaced a colourful drunken beetroot named Barnaby. Being bereft of charisma and substance also helps in remaining obscure.

Christopher Pyne (Defence minister) Whining Pyne is perhaps the most unbearable toffy-nosed privately schooled twerp in the Morrison viper nest. Pyne has such little outside real life experience that a minute of sunlight can crisp his translucent outer shell.   

Coalface Ciobo

Steve Ciobo (minister for Defence Industry).

Last year Ciobo overturned a ban on government-backed loans to domestic miners last year without consulting his department. According to The Guardian, ‘The controversial decision meant the federal government could start funding coalmining projects at a time when Australia’s major banks are increasingly distancing themselves from investing in coal.’

Simon Birmingham (minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment). Birmingham moves from wrecking education to now wrecking Trade, Tourism and Investment. He’s considered a Liberal moderate, which means in real terms hard right, somewhere short of Mussolini and Franco.

Kelly O’Dwyer (minister for Women, minister for Jobs and Industrial Relations). O’Dwyer made headlines for being unable to answer Barry Cassidy’s question: ‘Was the government wrong to stall on calling a royal commission into the banks, given the appalling evidence of last week?’

The Libs constantly resisted the royal commission but were happy for the unions to be burnt on the royal commission stake. Double standards and hypocrisy may be lost on the political class, but surely not on us normal folk?

Mathias Cormann (minister for Finance, special minister of State, leader of the Government in the Senate). While highly regarded as a competent minister by independent media outlet Crikey, isn’t he still part of the problem? The Cormanniator’s expression after being fleeced by ABC’s Emma Alberici last year was priceless.

She asked him on Lateline, ‘Why the sudden obsession with keeping election promises? You didn’t keep the promise when it came to health and education. “No new taxes” was what you said before the 2013 election and you introduced the three per cent deficit repair tax. You promised no cuts to the ABC and took $44m from us. Tony Abbott promised you wouldn’t shut any Medicare locals; all of them are gone. Julie Bishop promised no cuts to foreign aid and that it would grow in line with inflation. Instead it was frozen, which represents a $6 billion real cut, then it was Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave policy that has also been abandoned.’

Mitch Fifield (minister against Communications, minister against the Arts). The government’s unrelenting hostility towards anyone who doesn’t think like themselves extends of course to the national broadcaster. Fifield is no fan. Now Turnbull and his moderates are gone, will the ABC be defunded at an increased rate? Fifield is a proud member of The Institute Of Public Affairs (IPA), which is not so much a think tank but rather a training ground for far-right-wing politicians. The IPA and most of Morrsion’s cabinet hate the ABC. So will Labor restore full ABC funding under a rainbow of sparkles and unicorns…?

Peter Dutton (minister for Home Affairs and Gymps). Peter Plodder lost the leadership spill 45 to 40, which means nearly half of the Liberals are thick enough to think he is electable as PM. Hooray for this quasi-democracy!


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14 COMMENTS

  1. Thank God someone has actually come forth with the Truth!

    Excellent character analysis by the author! Congratulations and well written!

    It is slightly beyond comprehension as to WHY politicians fight over “who will be the train driver”

    Sounds more like preschool play hour.

    As the add for a footy final says “Only two PMs till the grand final!”
    Who knows what is in the pipeline after this?

    It is a worry watching China move ever closer to Australia. Considering the fiasco happening in the Liberal Party at present – gives the Chinese motivation to move even closer!

  2. Murdoch’s stooges have come home to roost. Bereft of social conscience and devoid of any sort of human empathy, this bunch of blinkered fools will blunder around the legislative china shop wrecking everything in sight.

    And we’ll let them, just as we have done in the past. Both sides of our binary political system are equally guilty, although let’s face it, the ALP is by far the better alternative.

    We’re still swallowing the racist bollocks about immigrants and refugees, we’re still believing the fearmongering xenophobia peddled relentlessly by politicians and the Murdoch media. Conflict sells advertising space, the closer the conflict the better, if it bleeds it leads. If it threatens our pristine white values it has the outrage factor thrown in for good measure.

    Election. Now.

    Then please, Australia, grow the guts to take on constitutional reform that will bring us into the current century. So these right wing zealots don’t ever take the wrecking ball to our country again.

  3. At last some common sense. All we need now is a really strong sensible leader to get us out of this mess. Here’s hoping!!! M.Hall.

  4. Excellent comment but…
    The people on Nauru all paid people smugglers lots of cash have all been offered a lot of cash to go away.
    The genuine refugees are the dispossessed whites in South Africa, They have been replaced by black workers and are now destitute. They are the likes of train drivers could come here have jobs and assimilate quickly.
    Charge them $10,000 for a visa payable out of their wages, would cost Australia nothing long term and have loyal appreciative new citizens.
    The people on Nauru came to burgle Australia they are very undesirable.

  5. From memory, when Australia took in white refugees from Rhodesia, racist attacks on coloured people of all persuasions increased in the areas where they predominated, and the Fraser govt thought them unsuitable migrants…

  6. So you have to be white to be a “genuine” refugee. No wonder you can only find them in South Africa.

    It’s OK for South Africans to pay lots of money to get here. Proves they will make “appreciative loyal citizens”.
    But if a Hazara fleeing Afghanistan in fear for his life pays lots of money to get here, he’s coming “to burgle Australia”.

    It all makes sense to those to whom it makes sense. For the rest of us……well, it defies all understanding.

  7. Enjoyed the analysis in the article, not so the racist comment nor the same old “lesser of two evils” spiel to promote the Labor party that follow.
    All Australians should be in no doubt that the only winners from this latest crisis of our supposed democracy are the coal, gas and oil corporations. Any real action to combat climate change has for the umpteenth time been stalled by a crisis in a government that the fossil fools own.
    Poor fella my country? More like poor fella my Earth.

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