Comment

To understand the inhumanity of Australia’s position on refugees from Afghanistan, it helps to understand the self-deception at the heart of our immigration policy. Decades spent arguing that any form of compassion would undermine the system have deadened our politics. They have created a kind of moral numbness that puts decisions outside the reach of logic or decency. To question one part of this would collapse all of it, and so no questions are asked.

Morrison defended our 20-year ‘longest war’ as worthwhile in the name of freedom. Australian soldiers dying for freedom is never in vain, he said. But whose freedom is the question? Apparently, it is not the freedom sought by those who flee the Taliban’s tyranny.

It is difficult to understand how the government justifies setting the level of JobSeeker below the poverty line. It appears much of the government’s decision was based on the prime minister’s personal prejudice.

Scott Morrison has an answer for everything and a solution for nothing. Like the neoliberalism of which his party was once so proud, he is all promise and no delivery. His press conferences have long been a masterclass in dictating the terms of debates, dodging accountability and delivering attacks on his rivals.

The argument from the coal lobby is simple. It says that burning Australian coal helps lower carbon emissions. Burning Australian coal is good for the planet.

It seems there’s very little that humanity cannot achieve when we put our mind to it. In the past 100 years we’ve landed on the moon, created a global information superhighway, and crossbred poodles with every animal we could get our hands on. Our greatest achievement yet, however, may be the dedication we have shown to destroying our planet.

Morrison said if others wanted to undermine the government’s job looking after the health of the nation, ‘it’s up to them’. But, he said, ‘We do not support misinformation in any way, shape or form.’ What he does support is Christensen remaining on the government benches.

Before the past couple of years, most Australians were either unaware of Sky News or considered it a bit of a joke. The consensus was that nobody watched it, and the people who did were out on the fringe. Anyone who maintains this today is simply not living in the present.

There are two overriding beliefs that guide Scott Morrison as prime minister: the first is a belief in secrecy, and his right to it when making decisions; the second is Morrison’s belief that his saying something makes it true.

It’s remarkably hard to get banned from YouTube. The platform hosts more than 500 hours of fresh videos a minute. That’s more content than even the most dedicated teenager in Sydney fighting lockdown boredom can watch in a lifetime. Almost all of that video – 720,000 hours’ worth a day – is of children unboxing toys or biting each other. The remainder is video of Alan Jones being sceptical about vaccines on Sky News.