Bit of a dad joke I know, but it sums up the situation quite well.
There is certainly good reason for many of us to cheer The High Court’s decision yesterday that determined five of our national parliamentarians were invalidly elected. To the lay-person it seemed hard to believe that a legal defence of not knowing the relevant laws would stand up well- when is it effective in any other area of law, after all- yet I still wondered if they would find a way to weasel out of facing consequences. Aside from this, many people will also cheer this verdict as what they see as a rightly deserved smackdown for the government’s self-righteous hubris and hypocrisy when this scandal originally broke. You will probably recall the gleeful enthusiasm with which Turnbull and other Coalition MPs- along with their media cheerleaders- ripped into the Greens for breaching the Constitution, before suddenly going very quiet on the topic once the focus turned to their own party.
0 Comments
Can something be hard to believe yet predictable at the same time?
Because that was my initial reaction to the Turnbull government’s decision this week to abandon the Clean Energy Target, recommended by its own chief scientist and supported by both the Prime Minister and Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg. It is hard to believe that a government, supposedly governing in the interest of the electorate could make such a decision, but it is also predictable because this government has repeatedly shown itself to be beholden to both its own extremist right wing faction, and the puppeteers in the coal industry who pull their strings. |
Categories |