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POLITICS
ANdrEw p STreEt
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C009448
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CONTENTS
Australia, Stop Hitting Yourself
The Gathering Storm
Meet the Motley Crew
Mandate, Mandate, Mandate!
The Right to Be a Bigot
For Those Whove Come Across the Seas . . .
Classified On-Water Matters
Putting the Coal into Coalition
No Cuts to Health
Not Your Average Jo(k)e
Meet the New Senate!
Someones Getting a Shirtfrontin
We All Live in a Competitively Evaluated
Submarine
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad
Spill Motion
Good Government Starts Today
Im a Fixer
Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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INTRODUCTION
AUSTRALIA, STOP
HITTING YOURSELF
In which your humble narrator explains why he stowed
away aboard this scurvy vessel in the first place.
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ANDREW P STREET
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ANDREW P STREET
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ANDREW P STREET
Gillard, and in any case the party was still riven by the leadership coup that had just reinstated him as leader.
Abbott, meanwhile, was declaring that the grown-ups
would be back in charge. By promising near-identical policies
to Labor on education, health, the National Broadband
Network and the National Disability Insurance Scheme,
and assuring electors they would keep a steady hand on the
economic tiller, the LiberalNational Coalition neatly delineated the choice between the parties: Labor offered crisis; the
Coalition offered unity.
However, barely had the new House of Representatives
formed than the government unmasked its neo-conservative
reformist agenda, one wildly different to the steady-as-shegoes government promised during the campaign. In its battle
with Labor, the Coalition under Tony Abbott had pursued
victory with the same tenacity and zeal as a dog pursuing
a carand, similarly, had seemingly not completely thought
through the consequences of victory.
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or unable to do more than run out the clock as the government scored own-goals; of a ragtag bunch of ideologues and
neophytes in the Senate who somehow became the conscience
of a nation, and for which they had to be punished. It is how
political reality came to the major political parties and, for the
most part, gave their legislative gonads a good, solid kicking.
Its the story of a government that turned Australia from
a pioneer in renewable energy and climate change policy to
an international laughing-stock, even being rightfully criticised
by such high-volume polluters as China and the US. Its the
story of how a government destroyed Australias reputation as
a nation of laconic, friendly shell-be-right larrikins and transformed us into small-minded, human rights-averse xenophobes.
Its also the story of a government that was determined
to apply to our enviable systems of socialised healthcare and
education the same free-market policies as the United States, at
exactly the same time as the US was socialising its health and
education infrastructure in a desperate attempt to rectify the
expensive, debt-heavy failures of their bloated, unsustainable,
for-profit systems.
Not a bad effort for less than two years.
Its also a record of a period that I sincerely believeor,
at the very least, anxiously hopewill be looked back on as
a tipping point for the workings of democracy in this wide,
brown, sea-girt land.
For if theres one thing that the Abbott government did do,
it was to teach the world something extraordinary about our
lucky country: that we can never have things so good that we
dont still inexplicably choose to fuck it all up.
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