PRIME Minister Scott Morrison is sometimes unkindly labelled “Scotty from Marketing” in reference to his earlier career.
But his – and Australia’s – ability to “sell” a reputation for excellence in COVID management has suddenly taken a dive. Mind you, Australia’s acquisition of this reputation for “pandemic management” has always been somewhat of a mystery.
- They don’t want you to know just how few verifiable virus deaths there have been.
- The total lack of proportionality in COVID decision-making is most galling.
- If the vaccine doesn’t return freedoms, why would anyone bother joining the queue?
As Tom Woods in the USA and Ivor Cummins in Ireland have compellingly pointed out over and over, non-medical interventions by government have no discernible impact on COVID outcomes. To think otherwise is merely to fall for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Scott Morrison has done four main things since the outbreak of COVID.
DEPRIVING
The first was to shut the borders – too late to have prevented the virus from entering the country, as it happens – thus consigning Australia to joining the likes of North Korea and Cuba in depriving its citizens of their fundamental right to leave the country, except with the permission of bureaucrat tsars.
For a country whose economy is largely a Ponzi scheme propped up by large scale immigration, selling degrees to foreigners and international tourism, this “Fortress Australia” approach is economic madness bordering on suicide.
The government’s second move was to create, overnight, a new form of pandemic governance, called with unwarranted hubris “National Cabinet”. (The fight against a middling virus from which over 99 per cent of sufferers completely recover is nothing remotely like fighting a war).
This awful move immediately gave Australia’s State premiers, a mixture of the barely passable and the clinically insane, a national stage upon which to strut.
And how they have strutted. All of them have been acting way above their station; the actions of one in particular – readers will, most likely, guess which one – have resembled the default methods of a third world dictator.
All of them have closed internal borders on a whim. Mask mandates, internal quarantines, the cancelation of major events and localised lockdowns come and go, and restrictions and bureaucracy now routinely define all public interactions.
All these things are the remit of State premiers. The creation of National Cabinet has also had the effect of creating an endearing yet false policy camaraderie, a “we are all in this together” mindset, and of stifling one channel of opposition to the direction of travel.
And National Cabinet has facilitated the never-announced slide in COVID policy objectives from “live-with-it” to “Zero COVID”. No one ever gave the political class permission to do this.
In Australia, a mere 910 people have died “from COVID”, out of our nearly 26m population. By contrast, the United Kingdom has lost around 128,000 to the virus from its nearly 67m.
VICTORIA
And most of the Australian deaths have been in one State. (Yes, Victoria). There has been only one death in 2021, and a grand total of two since the beginning of summer.
That would be two deaths since December 1, 2020. More people have died as a result of the vaccine this year than from COVID.
The most recent death was an 80-year-old who had been living in the Philippines, got infected in the Philippines, came back to Australia, then died. This was in April. The previous death, in late December 2020, occurred as a result of pneumonia months after a positive COVID test.
Mind you, it is very, very hard to find out anything about the number and nature of COVID deaths.
It is almost as if they don’t want you to know just how few deaths there have been. So, the authorities endlessly bang on about “cases” just like they have done all over the world since the hysteria began.
One might reasonably wonder why, if you lock international borders, you also need to do all the other COVID theatre and ruin everybody’s lives.
Having decided to shut up shop and exclude the world, there is simply no reason here in Australia to be doing anything much at all, apart from treating the (very few) sick with relevant medicines.
It is the total lack of proportionality in Australian COVID decision-making that galls the most.
The third move by the Morrison government was, like Britain, to pay just about everybody not to work, and to encourage the view among public sector agencies and corporates that those still with jobs should be able to work from home.
RESENTMENT
The effect of these two measures has been to make those not already scared to death by government hyperbole simply grateful for a caring government that is looking after the newly supine.
Keeping them “COVID safe”. This makes dictators look benign and has eliminated resentment and anger. It has kept people off the streets.
The fourth move by the Morrison government was to place all the chips on “the jab”.
This was to be the silver bullet, the get-out-of-jail-free card for governments, which had decimated the economy and shrivelled our freedoms almost to nought.
The vaccine would give us back our freedoms. But wait. Then we had the dreaded variants, not entirely unexpected for anyone with even the slimmest familiarity with seasonal coronaviruses.
Not to mention the fact that the vaccine isn’t really a vaccine, and does not guarantee anything close to total immunity.
Not quite the silver political bullet, then, nor an easy pathway to restored freedoms and the old normal.
It is the latter that has been driving much of the utilitarian vaccine compliance behaviour here as elsewhere.
As the scales fall away from the eyes of the punters, the utilitarian motive will weaken and is likely to feed yet more “vaccine hesitancy”.
VACCINATED
If the vaccine doesn’t work and doesn’t guarantee returned freedoms, why would anyone bother joining the jab queues?
Far from being placed on a COVID policy pedestal, however wobbly and ill-deserved, Australia is now coming a lowly 84th globally in terms of vaccine rollout according to Johns Hopkins University, which keeps a running commentary on these things.
A mere 3.2 per cent of Australians have been fully (that is, twice) vaccinated at the time of writing.
Following another recent death from a COVID vaccine, there have now been more deaths in 2021 from the cure than from the disease.
Over a quarter of Australians say they won’t be taking Scotty’s jab, according to one poll.
The incredibly slow rollout – whatever the possibly valid reasons for it – will only reinforce the view of the people that this whole thing is a con job.
This is where reportage of further outbreaks, however miniscule, and new variants come in so handy for the pollies. When “cases” spike, so does demand for the jab. The narrative must be maintained.
Just as farcically, the government and the usual suspects in the media have rushed to denigrate the claim going around that 210 Australians have died from the jab.
They insist that these deaths “followed” the jab and cannot be proven to have been “caused by” the jab.
Err, isn’t there a bit of a counting consistency problem here?
What about all those COVID deaths that “followed” a positive test result? You know, the ones where someone hit by a bus following a positive COVID test became a COVID death.
SUSPECTS
The usual suspects have also jumped all over the recent rumour that the airlines were considering stopping vaccinated people getting on their planes because of the increased risk of blood clots!
This never happened, the fact checkers opined. (If it didn’t, perhaps it should have).
There is one sector, of course, that has actually benefited from the vaccine fiasco, and benefited bigtime.
The charmed life of the vaccine manufacturers is something to be held in awe, and calls to mind the famous dictum of Adam Smith that whenever businessmen meet together, they inevitably get involved in a “conspiracy” – Smith’s term – to defraud the public.
His exact words: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Preferably with the help of the State, one might add.
Here is the vaccine manufacturers’ playbook.
First, create a virus that quickly achieves the status of granny killer and pandemic.
Then convince governments to scare the living daylights out of their populations over the virus.
Then produce vaccines that aren’t really vaccines as we normally know them, and convince these same governments to exempt them from any prosecutions in the event that people who take the vaccine suffer harmful effects.
COERCE
Oh, and get drugs administrations to waive the normal rules about the testing of the vaccines, approving them for use and holding drug companies accountable for any deaths or non-performance.
Then get all the governments to all-but-coerce people into getting the jabs – two jabs, to be precise, no doubt to be followed by more later when the new “scariants” inevitably emerge – by denying them the ability to travel overseas, work in certain jobs, attend large events, and so on.
Then get governments to keep changing the rules about which age cohorts can and should get which vaccines, now almost on a weekly basis.
Finally, label all those who call out this shemozzle for what it is “conspiracy theorists” and have your Surveillance Valley mates stop them from calling this out. Or worse, call the “vaccine hesitant” pariahs and granny killers.
Not a bad commercial wicket for the ever-growing number of vaccine billionaires.
The rollout of the vaccine(s) in Australia, such as it is, has taken on absurd proportions.
We had this announcement only this week past: “The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommends the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine (Comirnaty) as the preferred vaccine for those aged 16 to under 60 years. This updates the previous preferential recommendation for Comirnaty over COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca in those aged 16 to under 50 years. The recommendation is revised due to a higher risk and observed severity of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) related to the use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine observed in Australia in the 50-59-year-old age group than reported internationally and initially estimated in Australia.”
So, there is something to see here, after all.
The recent cases of TTS occurred in people in their fifties. So, we had better change the rules.
An oops moment? No, we just continue to blunder along, never pausing to apologise or explain. Or to take the public into confidence.
Policy on the hoof. Policy that affects people’s lives. People who had been scared half to death over a virus now are being utterly confused and scared about the vaccines.
DISGRACE
Who can you trust when the people supposed to be in charge don’t seem to know what they are talking about, tell porkies and keep changing their story? This has been a disgrace perpetrated by the unelected and unaccountable.
Scotty’s jab looks now more like a grenade stuck in the hand rather than the silver bullet that panicked, clueless lockdowner politicians had hoped for.
Since most people get over COVID anyway, the jab was never going to be anything more than a political placebo.
The three per cent rollout number does look awful for Australia.
A jab that doesn’t even try to guarantee immunity from any version of the virus cannot be taken seriously.
Instead, it is merely a let-out clause for politicians overseeing the destruction of their economies and of civil society.PC
CEO Morrison is a UN puppet ……https://commonlaw.earth/trespass-and-your-rights/ https://cirnow.com.au/
Drop the emotive language and just present the facts. You come over as just nasty.
…..awww…there there diddums …..
You missed the US numbers to date. More than 620,000 from 315 million and still climbing at a rate of about 1,000 a week.
Could not agree more and totally spot on. Morrison is completely devoid of Leadership and has his own agenda that will not change and is not for the benefit of Australia.
Except for the insane utterances of late about ‘net Zero Emissions by 2050’ and the fact that he didn’t give Tony Abbott a Ministerial Portfolio, I – and obviously the majority of Australians, think Morrison is doing a pretty good job as the Prime Minister of Australia and is following well in the footsteps of the best P.M. of the modern era, John Howard! (I’ll add here that Tony Abbott would have proven to be exceptional, but was never given the chance.)
BEING THE LEADER OF A MODERN DEMOCRACY IS ONE OF THE HARDEST JOBS IN THE WORLD! I think Morrison measures up well; he has integrity and character; he speaks well and presents as a strong, influential leader on the World’s stage.
As John W has pointed out, Morrison has held very responsible leadership positions since 1989, he’s worked hard, gained wide experience and honed his management and people skills as he travelled. Now as you pointed out Morrie, it’s not always the person with a stack of honours degrees that makes the best leader!
‘PRIME Minister Scott Morrison is sometimes unkindly labelled “Scotty from Marketing” […]’
Firstly, it’s not unkind at all. Morrison has never had a real job in his life, and to say that impinges in a negative manner on his ability to serve as a politician would be masterful understatement.
Secondly, Morrison is not the Prime Minister. He is a place-holder, a seat warmer – a shallow and vacuous nonentity who is possessed of a cloying manner and a wooden delivery, who serves as a reminder to the Australian people of the complete absence of talent in the “Liberal” party and the utter contempt in which that party holds the voters.
I’m very sorry and unbelievably angered that you and your nastiness are probably right.
What ever happened to the people who once represented us?
“I’m very sorry and unbelievably angered that you and your nastiness are probably right.”
Yes; I am right, and it is indeed a very sad state of affairs in which we find ourselves.
However, it’s not “nastiness”; it’s simply the unvarnished truth. Interestingly, the reason why it might be *perceived* as nastiness is because of social conditioning – the steady drip, drip, drip that says we mustn’t offend, the constant harping about how we must be “tolerant” of others no matter how egregious their conduct, and the hysterical and entirely confected outrage of the thin-skinned hypocrites in the left-wing lynch mobs. Sadly for our would-be masters and thought police, I and many others like me in Australia will always remain steadfast in our refusal to kowtow to or compromise in the slightest with those vile and venomous vituperators whose only goal is to enslave all those who oppose them. I have not forgotten, and I never will forget, that our freedom as Australians to hold and express opinions as we please was not cheaply bought, but was purchased with the blood of our antecedents, who have shown us by their sacrifices how to count the cost of fighting oppression and barbarism.
It was the Labor Party that first referred to “Scotty From Marketing”, like “Little Johnny Howard” who is much taller than Labor PM Hawke was at that time, but the name stuck, Labor are really good at smearing.
So I checked Scott Morrison’s background, Wikipedia;
“After graduating from university, Morrison worked as national policy and research manager for the Property Council of Australia from 1989 to 1995. He then moved into tourism, serving as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force and then general manager of the Tourism Council of Australia; the latter was managed by Bruce Baird, whom he would eventually succeed in federal parliament.
In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand to become director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport. He formed a close relationship with New Zealand’s tourism minister, Murray McCully, and was involved with the creation of the long-running “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign. He left this position in 2000, a year before the contract schedule.
Morrison returned to Australia in 2000, to become state director of the Liberal Party of Australia (New South Wales Division). He oversaw the party’s campaigns in the 2001 federal election and in the 2003 New South Wales state election.”
“[…] Morrison worked as national policy and research manager for the Property Council of Australia […] he then moved into tourism, serving as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force and then general manager of the Tourism Council of Australia […] Morrison moved to New Zealand to become director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport […] Morrison returned to Australia in 2000, to become state director of the Liberal Party of Australia (New South Wales Division).”
Proving my point: he has never had a real job.
Do you know why armed forces find that the best-performing and most respected leaders are not those who are newly-minted graduates of officer training academies, but hard-bitten N.C.O.s who have earned their stripes in combat on the front lines? It’s because experience trumps so-called education every single time, and the place to gain experience in the corporate world is at the coal face where things actually get done, not in the executive suite where people shuffle paper, write emails and attend endless meetings. That’s why Morrison is so completely clueless – he has absolutely *no* experience of real work, and the icing on his rank stupidity is the fact that he is a classless, ill-bred bogan who has never once shown the slightest indication of having any real convictions, much less a spine.
John Howard is not much better than Morrison, presenting as nothing less than a slimy weasel. The reason that the moniker “little” stuck is not because of his physical stature or lack thereof; it is because he is weak-kneed, small-minded, and entirely uncompelling (that is to say, as far as politicians go, he is an exemplar).
I trust that clarifies matters for you.
Well put, Morrie!
We are told, not asked, to accept the advice of experts.
If the 15 illustrious members of ATAGI can’t get it right, I asked myself why not?
Could it be that they cannot collectively agree on anything or that they simply nod to the prepared “officer recommendations” proffered by the faceless and nameless bureaucrats from the Health Department?
According to the Australian Government Department of Health’s latest” Coronavirus (COVID-19) health alert”, this committee hasn’t met since December 2020! Yet, as if by magic, it released it’s “ATAGI 2021 annual statement on immunisation” , on April 2021.
If this statement is meant to be believed, why was it not an agenda item for the December
11 th. 2020 meeting? Furthermore why are the minutes for these meetings not released for public scrutiny?
NSW farmers may be experiencing a mouse plague, but the whole of Australia is gripped by an infestation of rats!
I have researched States and Federal Governments to find Build Back Better references, one for New South Wales is;
https://www.psc.nsw.gov.au/culture-and-inclusion/flexible-working/covid-19/build-back-better-toolkit
Does this answer questions?
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/outsiders/build-back-better-used-to-push-ecomarxist-anticapitalist-un-agenda/video/c9f3f661e721209e79949e7aacba8cc5
LET US OUT PREMIERS! – STOP BEHAVING LIKE TOTALITARIAN MORONS! THE PRISSY VIRGIN IS VERY LATE IN SUCCUMBING!
The truth is that way more people die of the common ‘flu each winter and we must all take mature responsibility for shielding ourselves, or taking extra precautions for a few seasons when Covid 19 is about!
— As with the yearly ‘flu shot, the vaccines DO NOT provide complete immunity but do lessen the symptoms when a person is infected.
— For the over 60’s, risk of a blood clot with the Astra Zeneca is practically nil and it’s also quite safe for those younger, – there’s five times the risk from females taking the birth control pill or from flying.
— There are always some minimal risks from every medication, from every vaccine and the Pfizer, Moderna etc. vaccines are no exception. BUT – any risks are extremely minimal. We take more risks every day, just going out and living!
— So roll up healthy people, – be sensible, – get some sort of jab and let’s achieve some herd immunity to this new Covid Cold Virus, it’s definitely here to stay.
— I will be a warrior, if a fight is needed, to condemn and collar our P.M. – and the Premiers, – they cannot continue to lock our international or state borders once some herd immunity is achieved; THAT WILL BE ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!
I always said that Australia was acting like a prissy Covid virgin, locking itself up and avoiding all contact. AT SOME POINT WE HAD TO BE EXPOSED & – BECAUSE A LARGE PROPORTION OF OUR POPULATION IS QUITE HEALTHY, WE WOULD SUCCUMB, BUT IN A LESS CRITICAL WAY!
EVERYONE SHOULD GET THEIR SHOTS, – OF SOME VARIETY, – IT’S A NO BRAINER!