Displaying items by tag: Public Policy

Victoria's police are very concerned about "optics".  Like all corporate institutions these days.  Well, it hasn't been a good week for Australia's police state.

The British are surprised at the submissive reaction of Australians and New Zealanders to our governments' vicious lockdown measures in response to what is, for most, a mild Covid challenge.  This invites the question - are we in the Antipodes any more supine before the power of the Covid State than the Brits are?

The Covid episode has brought forth many ironies.  One relates to the way we (don't) look after our aged, especially the frail aged.  Many governments have implemented a euthanasia regime, yet pretend to care now for the health of the aged.  But governments have actually abandoned the aged for whom they claim to care in their efforts to place the rest of us under house arrest.  No dignity - anywhere.  It is almost a soft euthanasia program by another name.

The fear, even hysteria, among the population over Covid is unprecedented.  Yet there is a precedent for the strategies now being used by governments and others to generate the fear we are now witnessing.  We merely need to look back a few years to the great climate change scare to see the parallels.  Indeed, it might be argued that climate change was the perfect dress rehearsal for Covidmania.

Victoria is now a living hell of Covid Fascism, as the vicious lockdown continues.  Yet the people of Victoria seem to think this is all a good thing, or at least a necessary evil.  This is what life in Victoria is like now.

At a time of epic fails by political leaders, oppositions, bureaucracies, and, alas, churches, we need an epic fail by our media like a hole in the head.  Yet that is what we have now.  Amid all the Covid disasters, our media have lost the plot.  They are not doing their core jobs of speaking truth to power and calling out stupidity, and we are all the poorer for it.

It has been said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  Well, on any number of fronts, people in liberal democracies are currently "doing nothing", as our freedoms and the quality of our governance ever decline.  And evil is winning.

The Government's decision to double the cost of a universities arts degree is short-sighted, philistine and utilitarian.

The Covid Crisis has thrown up its own set of "tribes", interest groups with different stakes in the way the thing is playing out.  Understanding the ideologies and the interests of the various players helps us all to make sense of the crazy times in which we live

There is something rotten in the State of New South Wales.  The State is run by paid lobbyists who control the Liberal Party.  And the interests and philosophies of these puppeteers are decidedly not those of mainstream folks who believe, naively, that they control the governments that they vote for.  The governments are puppets.