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Frydenberg acknowledges traditional owners and colleagues, with special mention for soon to be former finance minister Mathias Cormann. No military mention. #NPC
oh gawd. I am not going to last long here. Frydenberg attempting oratorical gravity is terribly embarrassing. Like yesterday, he is reciting international infection rates to claim credit for what is mainly a function of geography and the public health system.
this comms strategy of banging on about the effective unemployment rate reminds me of John Howard, whose own colleagues called him a mean and tricky lying rodent, deciding to campaign on trust, and relying on the press to do the rest.
the thing about an elimination strategy is it necessarily lowers inequality. A larger proportion of the population must comply, and a much smaller number of the super rich can evade restrictions.
the treasurer is up to hokey anecdata section of his speech. Looks like somebody told him that the last set piece, when he coughed all over the lectern instead of into his elbow, was too blokey because today we get 84 year old Jenny in the mix. Yesterday it was Lisa.
the point of this thing - his third outing in four days - seems to be retrofitting a semblance of logic to the erratic piecemeal measures that have been scatter-gunned out over the last four months by a panicky prime minister.
heavy emphasis on easing restrictions, as high-wealth low-risk tories everywhere have been aggressively insisting on since early April. For weeks, Morrison government ministers have been acting like the pandemic is over “except for Victoria”. It isn’t.
ah yes, population. The crucial variable, along with defence spending, that has kept growth figures just this side of recession throughout the Turnbull and Morrison governments, having been caused by abject economic management since the Abbott government was elected.
fewer immigrants means the Morrison government will attack workers pay and conditions [paraphrased]. Despite the fact that falling real wages are contractionary. Consumption drops. Consumer confidence collapses. Bosses paying less do not recruit more. But whatever.
cryptic blather about income taxes. Sounds like they are going to bulldoze ahead with tax cuts, which are not stimulus.
more coded crap about red tape. Followed by Morrisonian motormouthery, blurting figures. Frydenberg then reverts to the April 2019 strategy, when the Liberals weaponised the federal budget to launch their election campaign, as they did in 2016, with the same lies and slogans.
worth reiterating that the Liberal Party comms strategy is built around economic indicators, not the actual economy, let alone society. This is possible thanks to the press gallery, who disseminate whatever claims Liberal politicians make, regardless of relationship to reality.
more lies about empowering employers to underpay and undervalue and exploit employees. Nobody asks about falling real wages and growing inequality.
he is still lying about the fact that the federal budget has been in deficit every single year since the GFC. Just straight up lying. They keep doing this, clinging to a fabricated budget bottom line, based largely on #Robodebt ie unlawfully procured projected revenue.
Frydenberg construes people drawing down super as an individual choice, entirely independent of structural conditions. He says “giving people access to their own money is a good thing”.
christ alive he is still repeating Liberal Party lies about the fact that every federal budget since the GFC has been in deficit. All these Morrison ministers seem terribly emotionally attached to an election slogan they tagged to forward estimates in April last year.
ugh males being not funny about the single most important thing to any human society.
this was where I switched off the television and took the dog for a walk. When the treasurer of an aggressively misogynist government - they took income support from the child care sector and gave it to priests - started chortling about having babies.
“I think the best we can do is encourage more children being born” he says. As though children being born is something that just happens. Independently of our lifetimes of unpaid labour. In a society that values economic growth figures more than the lives of women and children.
