Comment

The budget will be Scott Morrison’s attempt to buy his way back to the Treasury benches. But many of his troops believe it is too late. One MP who is battling hard to hold his marginal seat says, ‘Nothing can save us now.’ Not even massive tax cuts, which are sure to be the budget’s centrepiece, nor the promise to build roads, bridges and rail in every marginal seat in the country.

We now have a sharply reduced political agenda. There is a widespread refusal to analyse and explain complex ‘wicked’ problems. On major issues – taxation, national security – we see policy convergence, largely out of fear, while on trivial issues, toxicity abounds – a sideshow of personal attacks and ‘gotcha!’ moments.

There is an urgent desire to blame internet forums for Brenton Tarrant’s bent interpretation of the world. The bigger concern is that many of the thoughts expressed in his manifesto have appeared, in one form or another, on the opinion pages of most mainstream publications in this country. Tarrant is an aberration, as is all terrorism. But he is produced by a culture that has normalised hate, that is built from division, whose politics routinely exploits fear and whose press caters enthusiastically to it.

There’s so much that can make people physically sick. Army wallah and boonies Nasty Party senator Linda Reynolds told ABC viewers she was “almost physically ill” when the medivac legislation was passed by parliament. After all, it was Muslims who were on the attack in Bali, if you follow her drift. She’ll make a fine addition to Team Schmo. Other citizens were just as ill with news from New Zealand.

The cowardly, hate-filled attack has shaken both nations to their core, and exposed the lethal consequences of Australia’s political obsession with playing to people’s fears and prejudices. This is a dramatic shift, more potent than the demonising of the Tampa mercy ship with its cargo of 443 asylum seekers in 2001.

The toppling of a senior Catholic cardinal for child sexual assault no doubt deserves media attention. But we cannot let the news itself suck the oxygen from other critical issues facing survivors. Namely, the uphill battle they continue to face in seeking fair redress for the abuses perpetrated against them.

To the streets, tens of thousands of students went on Friday, picketing for climate action. We cannot wait, their common refrain. There is no time. Meanwhile, unimpassioned, our leaders squabble still over coal. And the deja vu sets in – the climate battles of the past two decades, hashed and rehashed, an endless circular argument as the stakes and the temperatures rise.

Kerri Judd, QC, the Victorian DPP, defender of the faith and protector of the courts, has possibly up to 100 media organisations and reptiles in her sights for alleged contempt. In her possession is a bristling letter from Justin Quill, whose firm, Macpherson Kelley, is acting for 53 potential media parties. This correspondence is a fallout from the Pell trial suppression orders and headlines after the cardinal’s secret conviction for “historic sexual abuse crimes”.

This week began with the Coalition government recording its 50th consecutive Newspoll loss, and that by a margin of eight points. A National Party source has no doubt it was that result that triggered Barnaby Joyce’s declaration of war on metropolitan Liberals, as he demanded the government underwrite a coal-fired power station in north Queensland. Prompting his outburst was his assessment that the government is doomed. It is now everyone for themselves.

In 2001, Victoria’s own inquiry into public drunkenness recommended decriminalisation, citing that ‘for historic, cultural and instrumental reasons the impact of the criminalisation of public drunkenness has a disproportionate effect and impact upon Indigenous communities’. The committee pushed for the establishment of sobering-up centres across the state, including specific centres for Indigenous people, which would form part of a ‘holistic treatment service’.