Obviously there have been no shortage of recent appalling revelations about our elected leaders in the past month so I should have had much to write about. Unfortunately I just haven’t had the stomach for writing any more about them. There just doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. The incredibly single-minded hatred and fear of the LNP’s conservative right towards the gay community is mind blowing. It hasn’t just been their continued posturing and failures over marriage equality or unnecessary review into the Safe Schools Program. The arrogance to reject independent analysis and findings (such as the review into Safe Schools or PwC analysis that the non-binding Marriage Equality plebiscite would have a true cost of closer to half a billion dollars), because they don’t fit their personal prejudices is unfitting of those elected to serve their constituents.
Equally appalling has been the continued failure of the government to do anything to get out of the pocket of the coal industry. How we continue to decimate our climate research capabilities and put obstacles in front of the development of clean energy technologies in the face of record hot and dry weather would be unbelievable if we hadn’t already been conditioned to expect it. These are just two policy areas. I haven’t even spoken about the disheartening handling of the economy and the conversation around tax reform or the ongoing farce of offshore detention. The reason I chose the two examples I did was that they highlight Turnbull’s failure to withstand pressure from the extreme right of his party. Something I had hoped he would do better. I was not expecting an immediate landslide in policy changes from our new PM, but had originally been willing to give him some kind of grace period and would have expected much more of him if and when he was re-elected with his own mandate to govern. That optimistic outlook has been pretty much eroded to nothing and I am concerned at what a second term LNP government would do. Not that Bill Shorten has done much to inspire me either. Sigh.
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