Comment

Citizens of Sydney and nearby parts wake each morning to the smell of their environment going up in smoke. Trees, leaves, animals, fences and homes are ablaze. The sky is a sinister colour, the rivers are empty, the air is dangerous, the oceans are filled with junk, islands are disappearing, the Earth is on its knees and the price of bread has gone up.

Gone in a cloud of bluff and bravado is the compassionate medevac law that gave doctors the major role in transferring sick refugees to Australia for treatment. The senate and the people of Australia were told by the Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie that she had put to the government a proposal ‘to work with me to secure my support’ for the medevac repeal. And then it got very strange.

The recent mea culpa by Woolworths of a decade-long underpayment of thousands of its employees came as an embarrassment to the workplace regulator, the Fair Work Ombudsman. The record-breaking underpayment of $300 million to some 5700 employees appears to have unfolded right in front of the regulator’s eyes. Then this week a class action was launched alleging the figure could be as high as $620 million.

The boys in the photo are still wearing their tuxedo jackets as they dive, arms tangled together, through the bonfire, and crash to the ground, unsinged. Others strip to their underwear to make the leap. One, perhaps not so lucky, is doused with a fire extinguisher by his peers. In the background, their boat is engulfed in flames, embers streaking the black night.

By now the gatekeepers at the entrance to the Rhodes Scholarship must be rewriting the requirements. What a collection of political mugs they have delivered us in recent years: The Mad Monk, Malcolm Trumble and Grassgate Gussy Taylor. All Rhodes, and all terrible at their politics. Old Cecil must be turning in his plot.

Scott Morrison’s handling of the police investigation into Energy Minister Angus Taylor this week brazenly flouted conventions of propriety and integrity. The prime minister actually phoned the New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, and then told parliament based on that call he was not required to stand the minister aside.

Medevac works, medevac is saving lives, limbs and hope. It is a clinical process, led by doctors – robust, orderly – wherein 86 per cent of all successful applications are in fact approved by Peter Dutton himself. Before medevac was enacted, 12 people died in Australia’s care in offshore processing. Since medevac, there have been no deaths.

“There are no climate change deniers around here,” says Rupert Murdoch. “I can assure you.” Except at The Australian: “Yes we have an early fire season, because we are in a drought, a bad drought, in some areas it is the worst since the Federation drought. There’s your clue, we had as bad or worse in the 1890s and 1900s.”

Bushfire and reproductive rights expert Barnaby Joyce, MP, may be onto something with his idea that the sun’s magnetic field is the devil behind the terrible conflagrations sweeping the nation. Citizens who labour under the belief that CO2 is the cause of our problems have clearly not read up on solar magnetic theory. One of the principal proponents of this theory is an Englishman named Piers Corbyn. Yes, the older brother of British election hopeful Jeremy Corbyn.

While politicians, experts and commentators debate the threats and opportunities China poses for Australia, our own government’s behaviour has also come into the frame. In focus: the Department of Human Services’ bullying of at least one million Australians over debts that they, in many cases, did not owe.