Christians are a bunch of dills

An excerpt from Gerard Henderson's Media Watchdog blog, that I felt compelled to repost here. A leftist media outlet attempts to give former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, well known for being a Pentecostal Christian, a fair interview. 

 Issue 683 – The Sydney Institute

Dysfunctionality writ large

Some thirty years after Labor in Power, a documentary series about the Hawke-Keating government, that held power in Australia from 1983 to 1996, comes Nemesis, featuring interviews with many of the key protagonists. This should dominate the political news cycle for at least the next couple of weeks.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/nemesis-tells-the-story-of-the-coalition-years-in-its-own-words-some-of-it-will-leave-you-stunned/

Raise your hands

A friend of mine brought this article to my attention, asserting that the recently defeated former Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, well known as a Pentecostal Christian, was a theocrat. In its tone, it reads like the sort of thing you would read in a campus newspaper. Frankly, you'd expect a better level of analysis from someone claiming to be an experienced journalist. 

https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/07/22/morrisons-revelation-australia-lived-under-theocracy/

Fair play to the man

A very timely article about Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's alleged indifference to the current bushfire emergency. The facts are that the federal government has been helping affected communities. A mature assessment of the facts is needed, and not emotionalism and invective.

I also cannot understand why a hard core of mainstream and social media figures are attacking Morrison for taking a holiday with his wife and young daughters. He may be Prime Minister, but his most important job is being a husband and father. The challenge is to appropriately balance these competing priorities. Some of his predecessors have forgotten this. Bob Hawke put his job before his family. Eventually, his marriage broke up, and his relationships with his children were also difficult, even up to his death in May 2019. 

If after leaving office, Scott Morrison has marriage and family problems, I suppose he would be attacked for that as well. Speaking of personal attacks upon Scott Morrison, I don't suppose that any of them are motivated by his being a Christian, because I get that impression from a cursory reading of nasty and vitriolic Facebook and Twitter posts.  

https://thoughthub.com.au/2019/12/21/the-fake-outrage-against-scott-morrison/

Choose your friends carefully

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has managed to pull off a successful state visit to the United States, with announcements of a $150 million investment into the American space programme, and opening a new Visy cardboard plant in Ohio.

It is a pity that media outlets have appeared to create a false story about Scott Morrison allegedly inviting controversial Hillsong pastor Brian Houston to attend the official state dinner at the White House. Despite a strong denial from Houston, the story persists. Furthermore, the author of the ABC article (see link below) is clearly uncomfortable with Morrison's Christianity, and his association with Houston, or the Christian faith of senior Trump Administration officials such as Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, even though it is of dubious relevance to the premise of the story.

Why do some journalists appear to be uncomfortable with politicians or public officials being Christian? I cannot help but speculate that some political journalists, in writing these stories, have a latent fear of Christian politicians or public officials using government power to transform their countries into fundamentalist Christian theocracies. Prime Minister Morrison has clearly said that "the Bible is not a policy handbook." Surely he cannot make it clearer. Quite frankly, this is alarmist nonsense. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-22/scott-morrison-hillsong-pastor-brian-houston-white-house/11536792#

https://www.afr.com/rear-window/sky-news-squanders-trump-exclusive-20190922-p52trc

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/don-bradman-of-job-creation-scott-morrison-donald-trump-visit-pratt-owned-paper-mill

Egg on your face

It must be embarrassing to be one of Australia's most prominent political journalists, and release a book with a glaring error in it. Plots and Prayers by Niki Savva was supposed to be the definitive account of the plot that removed Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister of Australia, replacing him with Scott Morrison, and how this leadership instability lead to the Liberal Party's massive defeat at the 2019 federal election. 

When the Liberal Party unexpectedly and convincingly won the election, forming a majority government, Savva had to hastily revise her book. Evidently, errors weren't picked up, such as the one pictured here, noticed on Twitter. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was Turnbull's predecessor, lost his seat of Warringah to a high profile independent candidate, former Winter Olympian Zali Steggall. Here it is erroneously named as Wentworth. That seat was formerly held by Malcolm Turnbull. 

One hopes that this and other errors will be corrected in a future edition of this book.

The first cut is the deepest

This Labor Party flyer appeared in my letterbox today, featuring sinister looking pictures of former Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, and current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. These images are meant to remind voters of the leadership instability and division that has beset the Liberal Party since it won government in 2013. Fair comment, but I hope that these days are behind us, whoever wins the election in May.

What about the claims of Liberal funding cuts to schools and healthcare services? Are they accurate? It's not that simple. The ABC's fact check unit concludes that these claims are misleading, as are claims of record spending levels, since funding has to increase every year to keep up with population increases.

This campaign tactic relies on the average voter being too time poor to investigate these claims for themselves, or being an apathetic voter who only pays attention to politics during elections, so that they believe anything political parties tell them without questioning it.

As for energy policy, successive governments have mismanaged it. I see little reason to believe that a future government will buck the trend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/when-a-cut-is-not-a-cut-and-a-record-is-nothing-to-brag-about/10419876

I miss John Howard, heck, I even miss Paul Keating

Scott Morrison, 30th Prime Minister of Australia

Australia has a new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, its sixth Prime Minister in six years. After a Liberal Party room meeting, Malcolm Turnbull is no longer leader of the Liberal Party, and therefore no longer Prime Minister. Whoever wins the next federal election, due to be held by mid 2019, I hope that many years of political instability will now come to an end, and we will see a return to federal governments retaining one leader for an entire term. I also want a government that makes tough and sometimes unpopular decisions in the long term interests of Australia,