If each politician is like a character from a book, then journalists are, in effect, the collective authors of that book. Any examination of the character that Morrison had created would have to look closely at the journalistic habits that made his success possible. The notion of objectivity is important, but often is used as an excuse for uncritically repeating what politicians say. Too many in the media too readily treat politics as a game, with political cleverness admired more than substance. (The Guardian, Sunday, 7 November, 2021)
Sean Kelly
November 7, 2021
I’m no clairvoyant, but I can already tell you that the PM’s [Scott Morrison’s] number one strategy in his speech to the international community at COP26 in Glasgow will be to take the world on a Gish Gallop about Australia’s stellar climate change performance. A Gish Gallop is a bad faith rhetorical technique where the speaker strings together a number of false, misleading and out-of-context claims in quick succession. It’s a tactic that’s based on the old adage that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. But in this case, someone opened the top gate and let all of the misdirections, half-truths and sleights-of-hand out at once. The best response to a Gish Gallop is to pre-bunk the claims. That is; to debunk them ahead of time. … One statistic that the federal government has recently been crowing about is that since 2005 is that Australia’s emissions have fallen by 20%. Apparently this far exceeds the OECD average – the average of developed countries – of a 7% reduction over that same period. The problem is that this isn’t just not comparing apples and oranges. The federal government with this statistic is comparing apples and cephalopods. Emissions from historical changes to land management practices – which uniquely privileges Australia and far predates the current federal government - account for about three-quarters of this reduction. And the rest comes from the fact that they’re comparing everyone else’s emissions pre-COVID to Australia’s emissions after a full year of COVID’s economic – and emissions – impact. If you put Australia on like terms with our international peers Australia’s emissions, didn’t just not decrease by 20% in that time, they actually increased by 3% over that period. This is another instance of spreadsheet magic from the federal government while trying to pass that off as climate action. (https://twitter.com/timinclimate/status/1454721807995396099)
Tim Baxter
November 1, 2021
Actually, it [agreement for net zero emissions by 2050] was the uniquely Morrison Way. So many slogans, so little substance. A headline searching for a story. There was a sense that once again the heavy lifting has been left to the states, that it was not born of conversion or conviction but from Morrison’s infinite pragmatism driven by numbers, particularly in inner-urban Liberal seats, once considered impregnable now under threat from independents and Labor. (Sydney Morning Herald, October 28, 2021)
Niki Savva
October 28, 2021
[It] never ceases to amaze me that there exist people who believe that global warming is a hoax, the acidification of the oceans no big deal, COVID a flu ... and that the real menace to humanity is somewhat faster cellphone connections.
David Frum
October 25, 2021
We're talking about it [net zero emissions by 2050] because Morrison is about to go to Glasgow with nothing more than Tony Abbott's warmed-up homework from 2015 … We're going to be an absolute embarrassment when we get there. Glasgow is about the Paris Agreement, and the Paris Agreement is about keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees [Celsius], preferably 1.5, and if we don't manage to do that we may as well say goodbye to the reef. The unprecedented fire events that we've had recently will become every other year and large parts of Australia will become mostly uninsurable and unliveable.
Simon Holmes à Court
October 22, 2021
Vladimir Putin’s disinformation campaigns have sought to exacerbate divisions in western democracies and undermine popular trust in their institutions. By creating and exploiting a market for crazy conspiracy theories untethered from the facts, let alone science, Murdoch has done Putin’s work – better than any Russian intelligence agency could ever imagine possible. (The Guardian, Monday, 18 October, 2021)
Malcolm Turnbull
October 19, 2021
It beggars belief that the Coalition has been in government for 8 years and now, absurdly, has to negotiate with itself to get a climate change policy.
BlotReport
October 15, 2021
It is a baseline responsibility of political journalists to require that politicians tell the truth to the public. If they don’t, more politicians will lie more often, and the public will be more misinformed than they already are. It’s an accountability responsibility of the fourth estate which involves seeking to uncover the truth and insisting that politicians who have not told the truth correct the record and explain the reasons for their falsehoods.
Margo Kingston
October 14, 2021
Having survived the maelstrom of a COVID outbreak in her [Gladys Berejiklian’s] state that had seen its citizens locked down for four months, but finally seeing case numbers falling and vaccination rates rocketing, the NSW Premier was undone by a system designed to uphold standards of public integrity: a system which her federal counterparts will neither countenance, and in a depressingly increasing number of cases, would be lucky to survive.
Laura Tingle
October 6, 2021
One of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief that they’ve found great solutions that experts somehow missed.
