Scott Morrison Must Leave

02/01/2020

I don’t care how, he just needs to get the hell out of it. A resignation would be welcome, as would a vote of no confidence – but his criminal gang masquerading as a political party would laugh it down as they did Medevac. He could run off back to Hawaii and leave someone competent in charge, but that wouldn’t be possible because competence isn’t the Coalition’s strong point. I wouldn’t condone it, but I also wouldn’t shed a tear if the man pulled a Harold Holt or JFK.

I have mostly viewed Twitter as a means to an end. I can post my content, occasionally post something else in some vain attempt to generate views and traffic, and that’s that – rarely did I scroll through it for longer than a minute or two.

Until now.

Now, it’s an unfiltered window into hell as countless people share stories, images, and videos of the horrifying bushfires raging throughout the country’s south east. While the Sydney Morning Herald has a senior writer enjoying cricket with Scott Morrison, and the Murdoch press peddles it’s usual bullshit that countless people soak up with nary an original thought in their mind, it’s left to the Guardian, the ABC, and the citizens trapped in a nightmare to bring this catastrophe to our attention.

ABC journalist Laura Tingle got backlash for swearing at a troll on Twitter from the Murdoch press, because apparently that’s a damning indictment of the ABC’s bias and deserves sacking. The Daily Telegraph also blasted the Bureau of Meteorology for not being able to predict recent weather conditions – so says the paper that has been ignoring climate science for decades, which states quite clearly that one of the major concerns is the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and events. I saw a Sky News UK journalist on Twitter, who asked permission to use some photos, get called out by someone suggesting they should do more accurate and sympathetic coverage than their Australian counterparts.

The above Independent Australia article about the fires is from mid-December, so the damage and fatalities are much worse now. Scott Morrison must not have heeded the suggestions in the article, because while a few of them have been kind of attempted, it’s too little too late, or fake.

For starters, Morrison has gone to one of the affected towns, where he forcefully grabbed and shook the hand of an angry woman who clearly did not want to be touched. She reprimanded him by demanding he push to better fund the RFS, which the NSW State government decimated; he walked away from her. The man can’t even do a PR stunt right, which is ironic given his history and the nickname “Scotty from Marketing”.

But he has shown no real empathy for the people there, nor has he made any worthwhile statements or promises to aid them or rethink the country’s climate policies. He went to a funeral and said it was “tremendous” to be there, which is quite the Trump-like phrasing for a sombre occasion his party is indirectly culpable for.

The NSW government has finally called a state of emergency and has talked about bringing in more resources – but these fires have been burning since September, and they’ve been furiously spreading at this level for weeks now without an acceptable response. Sadly, the communities suffering from intense fires must also suffer from criminally negligent governments.

If the useless cretins we call leaders will not step up to manage the country correctly and with the required care, then they should all just disappear. There was a temporary media blackout over Scott Morrison’s holiday – why not refuse to report in a way that is actually beneficial? Don’t talk about his cricket forays, or his transparently manufactured visits to tired communities. Let him languish in the dark, and instead focus on real people, actual humans.

The nation deserves better, especially those on the front lines of this climate emergency.

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