*CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses rape

“I’m the Prime Minister…”  Scott Morrison

Despite its multi-gabled slate roof and ornate, white bargeboards, “rustic gothic” harbourside mansion, Kirribilli, is not our White House, however much Turnbull’s usurper, The Whited Sepulchre, Scott Morrison and his court love make-believe; however much he kids himself that he has the powers of a US president. Or aspires to a Trump-like posturing as some type of populist sage; a pretence that leads him to such ponderous banality as, “Aged care is complex … Life is complex.”

Never have we had a PM whose political career is so unfettered by belief, ideal or principle. Untroubled by deep thought. Ideas. Doyen of the Canberra Press Gallery and black-belt in litotes, Michelle Grattan calls out his near obsession with control.

For Morrison, it’s always all about himself and his grip on power. That’s why he backs ministers who, in any other government, would have been made to pack their Samsonite bags long ago. He’s investing in their loyalty, a quasi-medieval system of patronage rampant in our politics. The result is a court of incompetent crooks.

A brief roll-call is in order, given the twenty-fifth anniversary of lying rodent John Howard’s regime. “Babies overboard!” Forget the Menzies bullshit, Howard’s main legacy was to make us feel comfortable about casual racism. And mendacity.

True, Howard did also go on to fiddle the till; squander the resources’ boom, which began in 2003, on tax cuts – middle class welfare – instead of investing in aged care, for example. Private investment would take up the slack. It was a goldmine for private equity firms, new foreign investors, superannuation and property real estate investment trusts, some of which became big donors to the Liberal Party.

How good is aged care now? It’s a disaster. We’ve failed our elders. How badly? It’s top secret. In a stroke of genius, The Howard government’s Aged Care Act 1997 made top secret all data relating to the safety and well-being of residents in aged care. Kudos, John. The cat is only now out of the bag and the figures are damning. Almost as damning as the number of Morrison’s ministerial scandals.

Speaking of figures, take a bow, Barnaby’s “Flash bit of kit”, Bridget McKenzie, for keeping shtum about $102 million the PMO must explain, in its hands-on rorting of federal funding to 684 clubs for party-political electoral advantage. Amazingly, it added projects, just hours after the election was called, 11 April 2019.

Angus Taylor, where do we begin? Or end. Watergate, grass-gate and the absurdist farce of the forgery of Clover Moore’s air-travel record. Unable to account for what went on in your office? Join the club.

Richard Colbeck, rocks up to a parliamentary inquiry, clueless about how many aged care residents have been infected by COVID-19, or the 800 who’ve died from it. Demoted. Punished by having to work alongside Greg Hunt.

Say this for Dick, on Monday, he’s the only one who seems even dimly aware of the key issues. He got the portfolio in the first place only because Morrison wanted one Tasmanian senator in (the outer) cabinet.

Neither Dick “clueless” Colbeck nor Morrison’s prayer-mate, Stuart, “Gold Rolex“, Robert -a fellow happy-clapper whose online evangelist wife, Chantelle, ran up a $37,975 bill on Stu’s residential internet allowance  – have quit over major stuff-ups in their portfolios of aged care and the “robodebt” scandal.

It’s unconfirmed, but word has it that Robert may even be given Defence.

True, these two cases, alone, cost us over a billion dollars which would be welcomed by the 3.24 million Australians below the poverty line, but Scotty’s OK with that. What matters, boys, is I’ve got your back, you can hear him saying, his way of reminding MPs they owe him a favour. He’ll cut them loose if he has to.

Now we’re waving au revoir to the lovely Linda Reynolds who did everything she could to support Brittany Higgins, before shanghaiing Ms Higgins, in June 2019, into service in the halcyon sanctuary of Michaelia Cash’s office, where the young staffer was immured in a small office, in Perth all day, a sure-fire remedy for PTSD.

Sadly, Reynolds doesn’t know who wrote two references for her alleged rapist. Don’t ask. Is she responsible for the steam cleaning of a sofa in her office?

You’ll have to ask Finance, whose former minister, the climate-denying Belgian Shepherd Matthias Cormann who was readily persuaded to jet OS on a fool’s errand for top dog at the OECD.

Alas, Linda is returned to her sick-bed whence she is unlikely to return – at least not to her Defence post. And not until 1 April. Tragically, this means she’ll miss the ritual of having her department take questions on notice at senate estimates.

Also on sick leave is Christian Porter, who is the subject of rape allegations which he *strenuously denies* a key phrase assiduously repeated ad infinitum. And it’s a police matter. Porter’s off work, recovering bits of his memory that put the lie to his claim that he knew his deceased former debating pal Jane Doe only briefly in 1988. Seems they did renew their acquaintance, twice, subsequently, at least.

Porter’s looking after his mental health. Close ranks, chaps. Were he to subject himself to an inquiry, our society would collapse. Anyone could accuse anyone of anything and the onus of proof would be reversed.

Or so he claims. Is he thinking of Robo-debt; a stand over scam, for which he, as chief architect must take full responsibility? No doubt, the thought of the two thousand Australians who died after receipt of Robo-demands keeps him awake at night. Of course, not all of these committed suicide but it must surely vex his conscience.

Fellow barfly, and Big Swinging Dick, (BSD) acting Immigration Minister, Alan Tudge, also owes Morrison. Both Tudge and Porter were keen to close down an ABC Four Corners investigation, which revealed that both MPs flouted Fizza Turnbull’s bonk ban; to say nothing of Public Bar displays of passion. All dismissed by Morrison because, their alleged actions occurred during the watch of the previous prime minister.

But he’s good at shooting the messenger. Subsequently, Rachelle Millar, who tells ABC Four Corners, that she had an affair with Tudge, and who details Porter’s open dalliances at Public Bar, finds herself without a job because of her media appearance.

In his defence, Fizza Turnbull, does point out, a little after the fact, that he did call Porter on his conduct. Porter strenuously denied public snogging, hard drinking, sleaze-bagging or any other such impropriety. It’s not what Four Corners’ Inside The Canberra Bubble, broadcast last November, shows.

But just when Porter thinks it’s time to have a crack at PM, Niki Sava suggests he confides in “sources close to him” that he may leave politics after this term. The recent loss of his father, his second marriage break up and the proposed redrawing of the electoral boundaries of Pearce, his seat in WA which may either fold into MP for Cowan, Anne Aly’s – or become more marginal may cause him to choose another career.

As Attorney General, a position of public trust, his situation is untenable. His “it just didn’t happen presser” Wednesday is a train-wreck. He sounds more like the gun schoolboy debater he once was – than the AG he is supposed to be. His main slippery slope fallacy that an inquiry, in his case, would enable a flood of false accusations is a wilfully cynical and cheap misrepresentation of the type of inquiry he would face.

Above all, he has failed to meet the expectation that he be a model litigant. Perhaps Twiggy Forrest could fix him up with something. Along with Rio Tinto CEO, Sam Walsh, Twiggy was one of Porter’s referees for Federal Liberal pre-selection.

Are we seeing a tragic and dangerous case of arrested development, the middle-aged party animal frat boy?

Why keep the duds? Morrison sets great stock on buying colleagues’ support by standing by them in public, says insider Niki Savva, although “buying” is not her term. He has to. There’s his pathological lying. His weasel words. His (we owe you nothing) have- a-go-get-a-go? His charisma bypass. His Fixer. Who could trust him?

Especially on the rule of law, a concept  he doesn’t grasp but which he’ll soon render meaningless by abuse.

With the aid of Hale alumnus, The very Christian Porter, whose big achievement so far is to abolish the family court, despite a wealth of experts warning of the great harm this would do women – who vastly outnumber men as victims of what is still misnamed “domestic violence” – Morrison leads a mob notorious for flouting the rule of law whenever it suits its dodgy cause. Take its guilty-until-you-prove-yourself-innocent Robo-debt extortion racket. Or the sheer malice aforethought or sadistic bastardry in the secret trial of witness K who is prevented from even knowing the charges against him. Teach him to blow the whistle on our bugging of East Timor in 2003.

Morrison’s above the rule of law government, acting through its paragon of innocence and virtue – if not Australian citizenship test grade family values – Christian, “I’ll smut my way through law school” Porter has ruined the career of Bernard Collaery who committed the crime of stepping up to be Witness K’s lawyer.

Whilst there’s so much more below the waterline of the Morrison government’s glistening fatberg of illegality and venality, cameras turn, this week, to Kirribilli, Sydney’s bullshit castle. The harsh sun of the first day of autumn reveals glimpses of a glittering waterfront backdrop, while chief of the Liberal tribe acts out his Walter Mitty power-trip. Morrison’s increasingly agitated, discombobulated, to rephrase Oscar Wilde,

“To lose one minister, Mr. Morrison, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Who believes the PM’s even read the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety? Or that he didn’t read the letter and thirty page dossier, anonymously mailed to him, containing names, addresses and other evidence to support the late Jane Doe’s allegation that she was anally raped at sixteen by aspiring Prime Minister, Attorney- General Christian Porter, whose pal, ABC’s Andrew Probyn pities for the burden of his ambition.  Former Costello press secretary and then Howard advisor, Murdoch’s Niki Savva, accuses the PM of using the police as a shield. His response she says, has been appalling. The Murdoch worm is turning.

But then, what can we expect of a post-modern, post-truth, Trumpian, neoliberal anti-hero? A white knight who has to consult the little woman before he can grasp that rape is a crime? Or think of his daughters? Australian of the Year, Grace Tame nails Morrison’s sophistry after her powerful Press Club address,

“It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience. And, actually, on top of that, having children doesn’t guarantee a conscience.”  Others simply dismiss the talk with Jen as another Morrison rhetorical fiction.

Fittingly, Kirribilli’s walls are a fashionable taupe, a dirty off white, a Camelot of rendered stone. But the heritage-listed pile reeks privilege and power, which a squattocratic, Scott Morrison, a Sutherland copper’s son, our uppity, current Prime Minister wilfully confuses with legitimate authority. And cynically exploits to his government’s advantage. Expect more pressers from the bunker. Morrison in decline apes his mentor Trump.

Morrison invokes a Rule Of Law, which he just makes up. It’s embarrassingly inadequate, almost juvenile. Our civil society would collapse into barbarism and mob rule if there were to be a properly constituted judicial inquiry into allegations against his Attorney General, he huffs. Yet the paramount component of the rule of law is that it operates to protect the most vulnerable and underprivileged in our community.

Morrison’s promptly refuted by a slew of legal experts including UNSW’s Professor Fleur Johns who points out that the rule of law is “associated with making power vulnerable to question, especially power derived from office. It is being invoked for precisely the opposite – the harbouring and insulation of power”.

Geoffrey Watson SC in The New Daily, warns that it’s wise to be suspicious when any MP invokes The Rule of Law and concludes by chiding the malignant narcissist in Porter for his solipsism,

“I was especially surprised at the Attorney-General’s claim that if he stood aside the rule of law would be destroyed. Sorry to be the one to tell you Mr Porter, but the rule of law was functioning pretty well before you ever came along, and I am confident that it will be able to survive your departure.”

Canberra University’s Professor Kim Rubenstein quotes Legal philosopher, Lon Fuller, who holds that the rule of law refers to

“legal power over subjects [as] distinguished from mere power over subjects”. Mob rule or brute force, when used by those in power heralds the end of the democracy.

He suggests that Morrison’s “mob rule” is better characterised as democratic will and expectation.

But Scotty’s a hot mess. There would be anarchy, he wails. It’s a Big Lie he repeats, ad nauseam, with the help of his claque in Murdoch’s media monopoly, billionaire Kerry Stokes, and Peter Costello’s Nine. The Big Lie is a tactic commended by Joseph Goebbels, with one proviso.

You have to squash dissent. Nip it in the bud. Disinformation will only take you so far.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Squash dissent by any means at hand. Even if you have to break the law. The first law officer knows this. That’s why Attorney-General, one of our power elite’s self-styled Big Swinging Dicks BSDs, Christian Porter, got the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission (ACNC) to “suss out” which do-gooders are likely to break the law and revoke their charitable status. Stop activists like Father Bob, masquerading as charities.

Porter gives himself away. Experts note that Porter’s proposed Integrity Commission is a ruse designed to trick the public into thinking the Morrison government is tackling corruption when in fact the proposed commission is designed to protect parliamentarians and public servants from investigation and exposure.

It’s sly; cynically hypocritical and, surely, a breach of public trust.

Since 2017, notes Elizabeth Minter, Porter was in breach of Commonwealth legislation for three years by neglecting to table crucial reports documenting his use of secretive national security orders. An administrative oversight, says the Attorney General, who only rectifies his failure after Nick Xenophon exposes it on The ABC’s Q&A. Porter blames his breaking the law on an “administrative oversight”.

Much fawning attention is lavished upon to the costume and especially the caps and the RM Williams Macquarie Street Cowboy rigs that Morrison favours. He’s a brilliant quick change artist, a legacy doubtless of the child actor, The Vicks Love Rub star in him. And he’s in constant quest of reinventing himself as a populist hero.

Morrison is a (piece of) work in progress. But setting, as he shrewdly knows, can upstage even the worst ham and he’s in need of a bit of support because Monday’s the day he’ll play the autocrat, supremely indifferent if not deaf to the entreaties of ABC upstarts such as the brilliant Anne Connolly, who calls him out:

“This report was delivered last Friday. You gave us half an hour to attend a press conference. You tabled the report when we were here. How can we ask questions to know what’s relevant in the report without knowing what’s in it?”

“I’m the Prime Minister.”

Kirribilli is not just bullshit castle, it’s the temple of Morrison’s Jen, his Pythian oracle, who clarifies things to do with women for him. Above all, it’s Vesta to The Girls, his daughters Abbey and Lily, his maids of compassion and Jen’s special friend, Lynelle Stewart, whose QAnon freak husband, Tim, is Scott’s bestie from way back. It’s also a challenging destination for a presser. It’s difficult for the hacks and flacks of the media to get across Sydney traffic, especially when summonsed at short notice.

After announcing the report would be launched mid-week, the PM cunningly brings that forward. To Monday. You get thirty minutes’ notice. Get your skates on.

Not only is it inaccessible and imposing, part of Kirribilli will always be off limits, upstaging proceedings, as our shapeshifting PM shrewdly knows. How good is home advantage?

Morrison and Hunt are always up for a stunt, especially when it means evading scrutiny on another bloody Royal Commission or an inquiry. Morrison’s a master of the dark arts of evasion. But how good is acting? He loves to improvise; indulge his passion for cringeworthy amateur theatrics; get in touch with his inner, provincial thespian.

“This is personal’. Morrison croaks as he squints into the early afternoon sun, his best histrionic voice aquiver. Will he tear up?

Flanked by Hunt and Colbeck, his latest Aged Care sales duo , Morrison postures, frets and soliloquises incoherently about his father John’s final days in five star luxury. Hunt takes up the same theme. See. The system works fine (for wealthy old white men).

It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t read the report. Neither has the media. He’s seen to that.

He’s given the hacks and flacks no time at all to read the eight volumes and 148 recommendations of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, one teal volume of which Scott Morrison holds aloft for the benefit of his official photographer, or to help bolster his outrageous lie that the RC is all his own initiative.

A woman dares to question His Authority? Called publicly to account by ABC’s Anne Connolly, whose awards include a Gold Walkley (Cash for Comment) the 2020 Graham Perkin, Australian journalist of the year, Morrison tries to pull rank.  Connolly’s reporting helped get us a Royal Commission into aged care quality and safety, a report which castigates federal government for its lack of leadership. Morrison spits the dummy.

“I’m the Prime Minister. This is my Minister. Our Cabinet will decide our response to this Royal Commission, OK? So we’ve released it. I think I’ve answered your question, thank you.” 

It’s a put-down. A gag, not an answer. But it’s a risky triple-bluff. Patently absurd. Fobbing off an expert, the notorious buck-passer, Scott, “I don’t hold the hose mate,” Morrison can’t even pretend that the buck stops with him. If only he had the authority.

Worse, the week’s Essential Poll shows nearly half of those sampled (49%) believe the Prime Minister avoids responsibility. It’s a theme Labor is now embracing to some effect.

Two out of three believe the Morrison government puts politics ahead of women who make rape and sexual assault allegations. It reflects the catastrophic failure shown by the PM to discipline Defence Minister Linda Reynolds over her failure to support Brittany Higgins when she reports she’s been raped by another, more senior Liberal staffer. Her shitstorm peaks this week when Reynolds calls Higgins’ a lying cow. But it’s all cool, says Morrison, with trademark sophistry. It was said in private and Reynolds wasn’t talking about the rape allegations. Her remark” involved subsequent commentary”. It’s a desperate (unheld) hosing down.

Behold! The lying cow, as Sissy Jupe, daughter of a circus performer who goes to live with Gradgrind, sage of calculating rational self-interest, learns in Hard Times, turns out to be a recumbent bovine quadruped after all.

Lawyers have to intervene before Reynolds apologises to workers in her open plan office – a public space – in which several clearly hear her call Ms Higgins a liar. Higgins receives no such courtesy because she dares speak out about how she was treated; how she was made to feel she was a problem to be disposed of after she was raped by a staffer who is yet to be questioned. Why? How things have changed since Morrison’s impassioned 2019 advocacy of believing the woman’s story. But that was an attempt to smear Bill Shorten.

For her pains, Brittany Higgins, is now on the receiving end of Gradgrind Morrison’s self-interested backgrounding against her partner, lobbyist David Sharaz. It has also cost Sharaz his job. Last seen, the couple were preparing to move out of Canberra, a transition which may well coincide with International Women’s Day, 8 March.

Oddly, Morrison flouts his own sage counsel.

“One of the things that often happens with [rape] is they’re not believed and their stories are not believed and it’s important that their stories are believed and they know that if they come forward their stories will be believed,” he says in a barb aimed at Shorten at the start of the 2019 election campaign

“Women in those circumstances should have a greater sense of confidence that if they tell their stories they will be believed.”

Women don’t make it up. Why should they? False allegations don’t get you anywhere.

“While men successfully convinced each other and us that women cry rape with ease and glee,” Susan Brownmiller writes, “the reality of rape is that victimised women have always been reluctant to report the crime and seek legal justice – because of the shame of public exposure, because of that complex double standard that makes a female feel culpable, even responsible, for any act of sexual aggression committed against her … their accounts are received with a harsh cynicism that forms the first line of male defence.”

While Morrison is in damage control his delegation of responsibility suffers. France could follow Italy’s lead in blocking supplies of coronavirus vaccine, reports Jess Malcom in The Weekend Australian but do we even need it?  Turns out we didn’t factor it in? Greg Hunt’s got it all under control. Yet when pushed Monday, Morrison’s over eager to pull rank.

“I’m the Prime Minister.” What a crack up. Our mining, Murdoch and business lobby puppet, has a hissy fit. Did the PM pull rank on Craig Kelly before he defected to the cross bench?  Throw his weight around? Last April, he cut ABC’s Andrew Probyn off mid-question. “Andrew, you don’t run the press conference.”

No-one’s really shocked by Morrison’s ego. Or his bullying. Queensland and Victoria know it well. But every day brings signs the PM is losing his grip and with it, his self-control. “Portergate” threatens to undo him.  While in one breath, he’s leader of the pack, in the next, he’s not top dog at all. The week begins badly.

“I am not the police force,” he says. “That is a matter for the police. I am not the commissioner of police.”

Last Sunday, keyboards were busy into the night at the ministerial wing of Parliament House, Canberra, erasing Wikipedia details of Christian Porter’s presence in Sydney 1988, the date of an alleged brutal rape of a sixteen year-old Jane Doe, who later, tragically took her own life. When questioned, Porter says he didn’t even know that there were Wikipedia entries. The scrubbing of internet references parallels that performed for the Liberal staffer whom Brittany Higgins accuses of raping her.

It matters little what Porter says he knows. The fact is that some Fixer is prepared to go to great lengths to engage professionals to remove inculpatory internet evidence; any evidence which may assist those accused of evading justice; hinder the chance that the victims’ allegations can be corroborated.

In the meantime, of course, the PM goes swimming at Bronte Beach, despite promising the nation that he’d spend the weekend reading the eight volume report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care.

Wednesday, The Australian says “the political crisis” is “engulfing the Morrison government.” Mangling metaphors, Australian Financial Review political editor Phillip Coorey says the government is

“reeling from the allegations … the events of this week have highlighted just how quickly the government’s fortunes can run off the rails.”

Phil’s a fabulous fence-sitter. No splinters in his bum. The government’s problems are largely of its own making. The week’s events have found out a government and a Prime Minister who have spectacularly failed to exercise due diligence or duty of care.

Instead, whether it be paying lip-service to reforming its responsibilities in aged care or its handling of allegations of rape by young women working in Parliament House, its response has been to make the problem go away; abuse its power rather than exercise its legitimate authority.

A democratic government in a civil society doesn’t gag its press when faced with difficult questions. The reporter is just doing her job. A young woman who says she is raped in the Defence Minister’s office deserves respect and support. Instead, she is called a “lying cow” and she and her partner are run out of town.

The Prime Minister is too quick to pull rank or handball his responsibility to the police. Or rely on his fixers behind the scenes. He does himself and his government no favours by allowing his ministers to evade responsibility. His behaviour is increasingly despotic and his invocation of a bogus conception of the rule of law is making him a laughing-stock amongst the legal profession, while exposing a disturbing level of desperation.

Morrison is out of his depth. He needs to stand down two ministers and ensure that all rape and sexual assault allegations are investigated by an appropriately constituted independent inquiry.  If he can’t lead from the front he needs to get out of the job. If you really were an effective Prime Minister, Mr Morrison you wouldn’t have to tell us.

I’m the Prime Minister? Really?  All the evidence suggests otherwise.

 

We have to think that we have to work together as a human species to be organized to care for one another, to realize that the health of the most vulnerable people among us is a determining factor for the health of all of us, and, if we aren’t prepared to do that, we’ll never, ever be prepared to confront these devastating challenges to our humanity.

Canadian Bruce Aylward, leader of independent WHO mission to study the spread of the virus in China:

In the dark night of the soul, the pall cast over us all by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, a pandemic virus strain that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19, a respiratory illness, which also triggers fear and despair, there is more than a glimmer of hope.

While the toll is shocking, COVID-19 infects almost 2.5 million and causes over 170,000 to die, (2:00 pm) Tuesday 21 AEST and puts our global economic and social interactions into deep freeze  – and while WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns “the worst is yet ahead” countless acts of kindness, courage, decency and humanity, shine through.

A Sydney local fills a wooden mailbox with books and pantry supplies, urging passers-by: “take what you need.” In the UK, over four thousand doctors and nurses come out of retirement; risking their lives to help in understaffed hospitals.  Dr Alfa Saadu, 68, dies of coronavirus caught while volunteering at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital, in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. He is one of four – all minority ethnic doctors -to lose his life so far.

Rethink Food, a New York local non-profit organisation, launches a pop-up soup kitchen outside Salem Methodist church, forced to close its own kitchen because its volunteers are elderly and at too high a risk from infection, serves 600 to 1,000 meals a day, five days a week.

“We could easily do 5,000 meals a day,” Rethink founder Matt Jozwiak says. And lines would be even longer were it not for fear of infection. Endless numbers of other acts of compassion, altruism and self-sacrifice are taking place around the world as people follow their hearts.

“Tireless healthcare workers and researchers seek medical breakthroughs to prevent and cure this new disease. Countless healthcare providers care for the sick, often putting themselves at risk, particularly before the nature of the disease was known. Even the heartache of families who wait helplessly as a beloved family member dies alone quarantined in a nursing home reminds us of the deep bonds that hold us together,” writes Search Institute’s Eugene C. Roehlkepartain.

 But Donald Trump’s Operation Re-open America is only about following the cash nexus.

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA.” He tweets. Crowds of protestors magically appear for news cameras in the streets of centres in key states. Give me Liberty or Give Me COVID-19 reads a sign held by a young man in a red cap in Austin Texas. He seems to have utilised a torn-up cardboard carton to add credibility to his improvised sign.

It’s certainly no improvised protest. The demonstrations are orchestrated by a group of far-right, pro-gun Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests throughout the US, reports The Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm. The images help skew viewers’ impression away from the reality that most Americans want the shutdown to continue.

Nearly 70 percent of Republicans say they support a national stay-at-home order, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Ninety-five percent of Democrats back such a measure in the survey.

The work of the work of Ben Dorr, “political director” of a group called “Minnesota Gun Rights,” and his brothers, Christopher and Aaron, the groups attract 200,000 members combined. They continue to expand rapidly in the days after Trump endorses such protests by suggesting citizens should “liberate” their states. Expect to see more images.

“Jesus is my vaccine,” reads a message on a tractor, driven past the crowded statehouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Monday. “Shutdown the Shutdown” says a Maryland sign.

Like Scott Morrison’s Pro-Growth Agenda, Trump’s campaign to shut down the shutdown implies a false choice mimicked in Australia and elsewhere; we need to get back to work; back out into social circulation, rather than remain at home for everyone’s safety or we blow up the economy. Trump has his devotees here. Our Prime Minister is a big fan. So, what is going on?

Health crisis or economic crisis? An open letter published Monday is signed by 157 economists who call it a “false distinction”. While the economists, who include RBA board member Ian Harper and former member Warwick McKibbin, back the government’s $200 billion-plus spending measures they oppose prematurely loosening social distancing restrictions.

They also warn of the consequences of a second wave of infections: “We cannot have a functioning economy unless we first comprehensively address the public health crisis.”

Is the President of the United States actively promoting insurrection? A second Civil War? Washington Governor, Jay Inslee, accuses Trump of encouraging “illegal and dangerous acts”.

Or is Trump merely campaigning in his typically gonzo fashion? Each state has a Democrat Governor; Michigan could be crucial to Trump’s re-election campaign in November’s General Election. As a rule, it’s all about Trump. And as another rule you can’t trust a word he says.

“It’s not about me,” Trump says during Sunday’s briefing. Yet he just has to be at the microphone for all but 13 of its 90 minutes. “Nothing’s about me.”

If the Donald doth protest too much, his toxic tirades are over the top.  “He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19. His unhinged rantings and calls for people to “liberate” states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before,” Democrat, Inslee tweets.

 The reality TV star has completely politicised this pandemic, writes Charles M Blow for The New York Times. Blow argues Trump’s “briefings” are his political tool to achieve this. “He is standing on top of … 40,000 dead bodies and using the media to distract attention away from them and instead brag about what a great job he’s done.”

Trump’s call to citizens to rise up against state governors does little to comfort those friends and family mourning over 42 thousand deceased. Nor does it inspire hope in the 792,913 victims of COVID-19 (Tuesday 21, 3:30 pm AEST) yet another scourge of globalisation, the destroyer of space and distance which surged in 2001.

Why? China joined the WTO and modern India forsook its nationalist economic and social ideals to embrace neoliberalism, an ideology which puts the market above the state and which commodifies human relationships. By 2001, global travel and globalisation had ceased to be the privilege of an elite and began to reach deep into the hinterland of these vast populations, as Guy Rundle reminds us. Coronavirus coincides with this new level of globalisation.

The coronavirus is now setting off a cascade of health, economic and social effects that may lead to a collapse of economic globalization, writes Anthea Roberts. This may play out better for Trump than his bungling of America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. He knows his re-election depends on voters’ perceptions of his handling of the crisis. So he has a cure.

The golf-cheat-in-chief, himself, unable to play in lockdown is quick to exploit a snake oil sales opportunity. Trump promotes the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure for COVID-19. It’s untested – clinical trials are too small and inconclusive. Experts warn against it.

Some of the twenty-two million Americans, who are now out of work, doubtless, will rush to be guinea-pigs. In Australia, we’ve fast-tracked it so that it can be used in hospitals. After all, anything Trump is spruiking has to be good. Our Chief Medical Officers appear impotent.

Clive Palmer has invested a lazy million dollars of his own money to a “coronavirus action fund” to develop the anti-malaria drug which has toxic side effects when used inappropriately.

It’s OK when treating malaria or lupus or rheumatoid arthritis but perpetrating the myth that it is a cure for COVID-19 is reckless endangerment. It also has led to stockpiling of the drug with the result that those who genuinely need the treatment cannot obtain it.

“Liberate” is more than a bizarre word for men, women and children who are merely obeying the advice of their public health officials and their state government; citizens who are not being repressed or incarcerated but merely complying with advice to self-isolate for their own sake, their community and the nation.

It is pitched to resonate with the alt-right, a dog whistle to all gun nuts, psychopaths and others who mistakenly believe the Second Amendment was written to enable the citizenry to violently resist the government of the United States.

“Liberate” is an abdication of responsibility, by a malignant narcissist who cannot feel for others but who is acutely attuned to the stock market. Trump is gambling that a return to work will somehow restore the nation’s prosperity. He never ceases to fret about his own.

The Trump Organisation needs to service its debt. With some Trump golf courses and hotels closed in the coronavirus lockdown, the family firm, trading since 1923, is seeking to defer payments on some loans and dues such as its lease payments to Palm Beach County to run its golf course on county land. But it’s all cool. Trump calls himself “the king of debt”.

To safely reopen businesses, shops, schools, more COVID-19 tests need to be done. Because tests are scarce, largely due to Trump’s bungling administration, they are rationed to America’s sickest people. In order to liberate; re-open closed businesses and revive social life, those tested must include all those likely to spread the disease – not just the sickest.

Trump’s option is a type of roulette, a gamble on herd immunity, a phenomenon which first requires a vaccine to be invented, a breakthrough which may never come. Even then, experts warn, herd immunity may not even exist for COVID-19. If the four coronaviruses in the common cold are a clue, immunity may be ephemeral, lasting only a few months to a year.

Too little is known about the novel coronavirus and too much is known about other coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS to make it safe to assume that exposure will confer lasting immunity.  Too little credence is given to the fundamental truth that a healthy population is the key to a prosperous economy. Much time and money are spent in media worldwide prompting us to choose jobs crisis from the false dichotomy jobs or health.

In Canberra, Trump’s satellite of love and public health pioneer, our PM aka “steam me up Scotty”, star of “The Love Rub”, a 1970s Vicks Vaporub commercial, now re-appears as Our Nation’s Saviour, a miracle play from Pandemic Promotions. Scotty’s just busting to follow Trump’s lead. Saviour is a show with two flags, medical experts and regular egging-on from Health Minister, the unctuous Duttonista, Greg Hunt, who patronises us for our obedience; praising our curve-flattening, as if we’re all on some bizarre weight-loss contest.

Saviour makes a beaut distraction from reports of shortages; stories of doctors and nurses who are forced to re-use single-use masks or who are told to wear plastic aprons because there are no gowns. Psychiatrist Karen Williams’ survey of 245 Australian frontline medical workers finds sixty-one per cent of doctors feel pressure from other staff not to wear a mask, and more than half feel guilt or shame for wearing one.

“The chickens have come home to roost” for Tasmania’s healthcare system and a “decade of austerity” explains Tim Jacobsen, Tasmanian state secretary of the Health and Community Services Union, who reports to The Saturday Paper’s Rick Morton of such dire shortages that staff are forced to rob Peter to pay Paul; “strip” supplies from some parts of hospitals in order to plug gaps in more exposed areas.

“No one has said this overtly, but we clearly have national shortages of personal protective equipment,” Jacobson says. “Masks, gloves, the protective jumpsuits: they have all been very, very difficult to source. It is all being rationed. We have seen mixed messages going out to staff over the last three weeks. Reuse your masks, you need to keep your masks, that sort of thing…”

Yet, however much Hunt pats us on the head, for the “sustained and genuine” way we self-isolate, his PM quickly queers his pitch. Morrison shrinks his six-month lockdown into “a four-week minimum”. Saving jobs outweighs saving lives. Besides if Trump’s America is open for business, how can its client-state stay closed?

Helping the Health Minister succeed, former PM, Malcolm “Fizza” Turnbull’s memoir, “A Bigger Picture” doesn’t flatter Hunt; painting him as a potty-mouthed prat whose abusive, vulgar language and overweening ambition helped everyone to hate him, while Morrison is merely untrustworthy. Scotty damaged his government with leaks that put the government on the back foot, Turnbull reports. Yet Morrison was offside with some major players.

“Mathias regarded Scott as emotional, narcissistic and untrustworthy and told me so regularly,” Turnbull writes. Dutton was also hostile to Morrison. “Of course, if Mathias had a poor opinion of Scott, Dutton’s dislike of him was even stronger,” he says. It’s evident in the strained working relationship between the pair in drought and pandemic.

Yet Greg Hunt seems to have made himself universally detested. Turnbull recalls the day his successor, the Machiavellian Morrison, won the Liberal leadership ballot over his challenger Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister.

“If looks could have killed, Hunt would have fallen over dead. He’d been Dutton’s wannabe deputy and had been working towards this day for months. Never liked, he’d never been more despised than he was at that moment.”

“None of us are perfect, I absolutely acknowledge that,” Hunt says archly. Tellingly, no Liberal MP contests Turnbull’s verdict on Scotty. Or Dutto. Or Hunt. Marise Payne, fails to persuade ABC Insiders’ host, David Speers, or any of his viewers, with her lame claim that she “received and deleted” her pirate copy of A Bigger Picture. When she declares she did not receive her emailed copy from the PM’s office, she reveals that other Liberals were emailing, too.

It seems to have been a bit of a hoot. Take the Toff down a peg. But nothing Turnbull says, now, will dent the commanding fictional narrative the Morrison junta has established; how it acted quickly and, in the nation’s, best interests and how citizens have been so compliant that we’ve stopped the toxic pathogen in its tracks. Besides, Hunt rises to the occasion; takes any high road he can salvage by saying he won’t be reading Turnbull’s The Bigger Picture.

A blizzard of electronic copies of Turnbull’s book is pirated by a staff member in the Prime Minister’s Office, publisher, Hardie Grant alleges, Saturday. Recipients obligingly forward them on. For Hardie Grant, it’s malicious conduct and a massive breach of copyright.  Not only were unauthorised copies freely distributed, recipients were urged to forward them to others. Some MPs report receiving five or six copies reports Malcolm Farr for The Guardian Australia.

A letter of complaint is sent on Saturday to senior Morrison adviser Nico Louw by Nicholas Pullen of lawyers HWL Ebsworth, on behalf of Turnbull and his publishers. Louw admits to forwarding 56 copies. Pullen writes that he has been instructed Louw was “responsible for unauthorised distribution of my client’s book” in digital form.

While the publisher threatens to refer potential criminal breaches of the law to the AFP, copyright lawyers advise a civil lawsuit may be more productive. Hilarious. The AFP has never, since its inception in 1979, brought a case that would embarrass a sitting government.

A journalist receives half a dozen. It’s a rip-off on  “a massive scale”, say Turnbull and his publisher’s lawyers, a state of affairs that would trouble legitimate purchasers seeking Turnbull’s explanation of his National Broadband Network (NBN) debacle, a $51 billion catastrophe which has spectacularly failed to deliver.

Readers pay good money expecting to learn Turnbull explain why for at least twenty years, Snowy 2.0 will store coal-fired electricity. Not renewable. Snowy 2.0 will also create additional demand for coal-fired generation; increase greenhouse gas emissions. Why? ABC 7:30 Report’s Leigh Sales fails to put these posers to Tuesday night.

A letter of complaint is sent on Saturday to senior Morrison adviser Nico Louw by Nicholas Pullen of lawyers HWL Ebsworth, on behalf of Turnbull and his publishers. Pullen writes that he has been instructed Louw was “responsible for unauthorised distribution of my client’s book” in digital form.

But amidst Turnbullian threats by the publisher to refer potential criminal breaches to the Australian federal police, copyright law specialists say the company and the former PM might have a better chance of bringing a civil lawsuit. But look over here!

When all else fails, cue the spin-machine. Or the dead cat on the table. Forget quarantine, or social isolation, Scotty’s fellow evangelical, prosperity gospeller and prayer-mate, walking disaster area, Stuart Robert has knocked off a fabulous app from Singapore we can all put on our blue-tooth-enabled phones. Download. If we want to.

It’ll be an opt-in thing, Scotty says, airily, back-flipping only one day after threatening to make it compulsory. He’s working hard at what he does best, stirring up a diversion.

Apart from the ten per cent of us who don’t own a mobile phone. It’s “a big Team Australia moment” says the Services Minister, wowing us with his oratory and his capacity to reference notorious Liberal Party Luddite, a keenly contested title, tiny Tony Abbott.

“There is no geolocation, there is no surveillance, there is no tracking,” Robert promises. Besides, a lot of that stuff can be got from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) which has been spying on citizens for years. As Sally McManus says, you expect your phone to be tapped.

Various other intelligence agencies pitch in. Federal and state police, can also request access to your telephone and internet records. These can reveal information about your whereabouts and whom you talked to, emailed or messaged. As Turnbull boasts in A Bigger Picture, as he takes credit for creating the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), PM had access to the collective wisdom and insights of our 7000-person-strong intelligence community.

Yet as Singapore’s increasing rate of infection shows, either contact tracing is too slow, or SARS-CoV-2 is too fast to enable intervention to slow community transmission.

At least the app will help keep more tabs on us. What could possibly go wrong? Above all, Morrison loves the war-talk his mentor, America’s most revered Vietnam bone-spur deferment veteran, uses to inspire states to rebel.

It’s no less than an … “historic battle against the invisible enemy” that amounts to the “greatest national mobilisation since world war two”, says Trump’s autocue.

It’s rhetorical nonsense, probably penned by slumlord millionaire, and “tier-one predator”, son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s fixer on Middle East peace, or Opioid crisis which may have killed 450,000 Americans since 1999, or winning hearts and minds by dithering with COVID-19.

Six weeks are lost as a result of Trump’s dithering and downplaying of the crisis when the virus first struck. His administration’s initial response is “one of the greatest failures of basic governance and leadership in modern times” says Jeremy Konyndyk, a central figure in the US battle against Ebola. The Morrison government dithered, too, before the secretary of the Treasury, aided by Labor and the Unions pressed for a stimulus package.

Trump’s number one fan Downunder, Aloha Morrison is keen to match his mentor’s rhetoric while basic governance and leadership have eluded him from the start. He’ll never recover from his Hawaiian holiday nor his plan to go to a Rugby League game.

Now he’s channelling Trump in his bullshit that we must put the economic crisis ahead of the pandemic; rush back to the workplace just in time to catch or infect workmates with the ‘rona.

The next few weeks will severely tax the PM. Lacking his party’s trust, unable to delegate, let alone work with others, Morrison’s done well recently out of letting the real leaders, particularly Labor Premiers tell him what to do, especially over schooling.

Now he’ll have to do some work himself; something he can’t abide. Being awarded Turnbull’s Plumber’s mate award for his leaks, is unlikely to deter Scotty from his “front-running” – media leaks that weaken the government during high-stakes cabinet debates. After all, his office leaked advance freebies of Malco’s new e-book.

Being “emotional, narcissistic and untrustworthy” won’t bother Morrison, either. Since when did he give a fig? Besides, he’s already got his revenge. The bootleg preview of A Bigger Picture came from a senior staffer – before being forwarded so eagerly to a cast of thousands – copyright given such a thorough thrashing that the memoir, its author and his entire political career became some sort of electronic piñata.

But pushing Trump’s rush-back-to-work barrow is going to be hard yakka. Especially when there isn’t any work for millions of workers to return to, in an economy bled dry after six years’ Coalition mismanagement – before the virus helps tip it into recession.

Above all, his “pro-growth agenda” which is austerity budgeting under an Orwellian name is nothing but a desperate attempt to walk two sides of the fence. Granted it’s Morrrison’s speciality but no good can ever come of it. The Keynesian stimulus giver cannot reveal himself “on the other side” as a monetarist with a closed fist.

“On the other side of this virus and leading on the way out we are going to have to have economic policy measures that are going to have to be very pro-growth, that is going to enable businesses to employ people, that is going to enable businesses to invest and businesses to move forward”. Scott Morrison

It’s going to take a lot more than stale rhetoric. Or platitudes about growth. Lies about the “other side” don’t cut it either. Australians expect the truth, harsh as it may be, not some pie in the sky. There can be no snap back. The world has changed forever.

Morrison’s hollow words reveal that he has no idea what to do to get Australia open for business again. He knows only how to close things down. The nation deserves better; real leadership – for starters – of the sort we’ve seen from some state premiers.

Humanity is a big part of the leadership required. We see it everyday from extraordinary “ordinary” people just doing their best; doing their jobs. Taking care of one another. That’s where true hope lies. Not in sucking up even more to the business class.

Keep the National Cabinet going until 2022, Scotty; you just keep low in the back seat.