- The Guardian
- Issue #2158
Delivery
PM Albanese has said that his government is “focused on delivery.” Good-oh, if you make a promise, you might as well keep it. Except for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which Albo promised to commit to “in full,” reducing power bills by $275 per year by 2025, deliver 450 gigalitres of water for South Australia. He seems to feel that he’s all out of delivery there.
Threaten
Threats aren’t vague, we know how they work. The weasellish use of ‘threaten’ is when no actual threat exists. Attempts to put a bit of fairness into school funding in Australia are often criticised for threatening choice (usually by people who aren’t fussed that the vast majority of us don’t have choice when it comes to schooling). By the time you read this, it’s not impossible that Albanese has located his spine and decided to recognise Palestinian statehood come September, but in the meantime one of his excuses for not doing so was that recognition might “threaten the existence of Israel.” We don’t know how that would work either, but he would have cheered the people who think that any let-up in the genocide is an existential threat to the apartheid state.
Genuine
We all like things to be genuine and not fake. In industrial relations, ‘genuine’ reform tends to mean ‘reform I want.’ So it is that some apparatchik from the Institute for Public Affairs has grizzled about wanting a ‘genuine’ reform agenda at the forthcoming Productivity Summit. For good measure, she thought it would be good for the nation if the agenda was ‘led by a balance of opinion.’ It’s a very long-winded way to say that she wants the bosses to go all-out in assaulting workers’ pay and conditions and win, but that’s what the IPA is for.
Pro-aspiration
If anyone is in the mood to criticise Albanese as being a reincarnation of John Howard, here’s some evidence for you. Howard was very fond of ‘aspiration,’ the idea being that people would vote for him in the hope of one day being wealthy enough to be the sort of people he was running the country for.
Now Albanese has ruled out changes to the negative gearing rort, whereby people who own more than one property get a tax break if their rent doesn’t cover the mortgage on property 2, 3, 4 or above. He’s not doing this because he’s terrified of criticism from negative gearers and the Murdoch media, goodness no. Albo has stirred up the masses by saying that the Labor Party “can’t send a message that is anti-aspiration. We have to be pro-aspiration.” It’s a very specific form of aspiration they’re in favour of. If you aspire to not have to choose between eating and heating your home while unemployed, bad luck. Go buy an investment property and the Labor government will be with you all the way.
‘Non-lethal’
After months of unconvincingly telling everyone that Australia does not in any way arm Israel, Foreign Minister Penny Wong finally decided to bite the bullet and admit what everyone knows; parts for the F-35 jets used to bomb Gaza are made here. It’s almost as if she was lying earlier! Ever weaselly, but with no idea how silly she sounds, Wong has insisted that Australia only makes “non-lethal” F-35 parts. She’s been far too busy to explain which parts of an F-35 are non-lethal, or, if the stuff we’re selling Israel isn’t lethal, why they want it at all. The Victorian government proudly announces that over 700 “critical” pieces of the jet are made in the state. If they’re critical, they help the thing be lethal, we don’t just make the fluffy dice the pilot hangs over the rear-view mirror.
