Comment

I hadn’t realised the depths to which a once proudly independent news organisations had sunk in its attempts to appeal to the right wing. Some have argued this shift to the right is a result of Fairfax’s merger with Nine, a deal that was completed in December last year. But the change in political culture at Fairfax began long before the television network set its sights on establishing a newspaper presence, and my story is just a small example of it.

I am 74 and acutely aware that our planet is hotter than when I was a boy, due to the burning of fossil fuels. Storms, droughts and bushfires are all the worse, as predicted 30 years ago. Yet the rate of burning of fossil fuels is still growing in 2019, as is the consequent heating. Now is not the time to give in to despair. Now is the time to take action.

Let’s try to keep a sense of proportion about the recent performances of a few of our most adorable contenders. First, The Mad Monk, sportsman and all-round fitness freak, who is raring to have another crack at winning Warringah for the Nasty Party, was in the Palm Beach to Whale Beach 2.8-kilometre swim last Sunday, where he finished 1013th out of 1050.

The speech in Brisbane on Tuesday was billed as a “major” announcement, the first for the year from the prime minister. Absent from this manifesto, though, was any mention of climate change, energy policy or stagnating wages – all issues critical to the performance of the economy that are, not surprisingly, weighing strongly on the minds of voters as well. If nothing else, their absence points to the extreme sensitivity these policy areas hold for Morrison.

It seems particularly galling that so much taxpayer money has been spent on a system that cannot improve health unless it is a data source, only to have it fundamentally fail at accurately collecting data in a comprehensive and usable way. For clinicians, it is of little use, as the technologically literate may heavily edit their record while those among us who struggle with technology will likely find it difficult to generate the personal health summaries that are central to the system.

Callers to the prime minister’s Radio 4CA interview weren’t distracted by quibbles about who did what centuries ago, they were more exercised over what’s happening now – to them and their businesses. A businesswoman named Linda rang in to complain about the cost of insurance in extreme-weather-prone Far North Queensland. ‘The flow-on effect,’ she said, is that ‘our economy is going nowhere. It’s been going nowhere since the GFC, which is a decade now.’ The prime minister had nothing much to offer except sympathy.

No other colonised country celebrates its national day on the anniversary of the day its invasion, colonisation and genocide began. At the very least, January 26 as Australia Day should be understood as disrespectful to First Nations people. When looked at less charitably, the choice of the date looks downright white supremacist.

The Prime Minister’s Office insists Morrison only learnt about Broad’s use of a website for ‘sugar daddy’ arrangements on the day New Idea broke the story. It is simply an incredible and grave dereliction of duty on McCormack’s part. He lamely claims he doesn’t ‘tell the prime minister everything about every member of parliament’ because he ‘has enough on his mind’.

Change the date, don’t change the date – I am agnostic. I think a national day could be a valuable tool in the binding of a nation, but only if it finds ways of including the three narratives, as Pearson has described them. I can imagine a three-stage national day of the future, one that stretches from our long First Nations history, through the narrative of the British arrival, to the waves of immigrant arrivals and life here now. Past, present and future.