Over the last two years, despite being assured by our Prime Minister Scott Morrison that “we’re all in this together”, the plain truth is that we are not and have never been “all in this together”. The facts are that all those tyrannical Covid rules and regulations have been applied selectively and specifically, the application has been dependent on one’s sporting prowess, one’s celebrity status and one’s business connections. To put is simply, rules for thee but not for me. Whilst borders have been slammed shut to ordinary Australians, various athletes, celebrities and businessmen and women have been allowed to fly in and out of this country and they’ve been awarded privileges and dispensations denied to other Australians, even during that dark year of 2020 when there was no vaccination available and when the virus was supposedly at its most lethal. Whilst ordinary Australians returning from overseas were compelled to quarantine in small, stuffy and often dingy inner-city hotel rooms for fourteen days, a celebrity like Nicole Kidman was allowed the privilege of quarantining on her rural estate. Only last month, Rebel Wilson arrived from overseas and was conveniently granted an exemption to skip the required 72 hours quarantine so that she could appear at the AACTA Awards. Apparently, Ms Wilson received government permission from the NSW Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard.
Am I missing something?
Is this what you call “we’re all in this together”?
Which brings me to the Novak Djokovic saga. If I thought we were all truly in this together, that from day one all Covid rules and regulations had been rigorously and fairly applied across the board, regardless of one’s sporting fame, celebrity status, business connections etc, I would not particularly care about the Djokovic saga. I’d probably think that it’s the right thing to deport him, after all, fair’s fair, we should not give one particular tennis player any special privileges. But what the Djokovic saga has done over last the ten days is to magnificently and beautifully expose the federal and state government’s nauseating Covid hypocrisy, endless Covid double standards and very sinister totalitarian Covid governance.
Back in August 2021, when the residents of the Sydney suburb of Ashfield were locked down due to the raging Covid strain “Delta”, a special dispensation was given to film a miniseries called “Wolf Like Me” in Ashfield. This miniseries starred the ghastly Isla Fisher (Mrs Baron Cohen) and American actor Josh Gad. Oh, and I wonder where Mr Gad quarantined? Hmm, was it in a small, dingy inner-city hotel room for fourteen days? Why do I think not?
I’ve never ever agreed with a Green politician in my life before (and I probably never will again) but the mayor of the Inner West at the time, Darcy Byrne said: “The army is deployed on the streets and just down the road a miniseries can shoot scenes freely in public. It’s a tale of two cities at the moment.”
Mr Byrne was 100% right.
The mayor of Canterbury Bankstown Khal Asfour said: “While Canterbury Bankstown residents are subject to a curfew and under the harshest restrictions imaginable, only a few hundred metres away you’ve got a film crew doing something which is non-essential”.
Mr Asfour was 100% right.
By the way, for those who don’t know Sydney, the suburb of Ashfield isn’t some tony, tree filled suburb located in Sydney’s eastern suburbs or on Sydney’s north shore nor is it located on a beach or harbour, rather it’s a densely populated and rather ugly inner-west suburb, full of high-rise apartment blocks. Many of Ashfield residents are migrants (Chinese), and the suburb is full of tradies and people who run small businesses. I can guarantee that most of the residents of Ashfield don’t take a computer home to work because their work requires them to leave the unit/house to go to work. So, we had a situation where residents living in Ashfield were locked down and yet a miniseries was deemed essential and allowed to proceed. Talk about rubbing people’s noses in it.
What we have seen over the last twenty-two months is rank selectivity, rank double standards and rank hypocrisy.
Remember what Scott Morrison said back in March 2020…” we’re all in this together”.
Except Scotty, we’re not and we never have been.
Scumo . . . just drop the o . . . for that is what he and his govt. are.
I think it would not be inaccurate to say that Scummo is lying whenever his lips are moving.
So many exceptions to the rule since this began. You could write a book on the ones that Jeanette Young as CHO of QLD allowed.
It’s all OK as long as the right people are getting paid off.
Indeed, Cassie.
All true and valid criticism.
But venting on the Cat and other social media achieves little.
Serious civil disobedience, non-compliance, non-cooperation, and political organisation is necessary.
They don’t care because they have not been made to care.
Obedience to bullies does not stop their bullying, and compliance does not overturn oppression.
Australians’ freedoms have been taken by the govt. They could just say, “Sorry,” and stop. But they keep turning the screws harder, doing untold damage to Australian democracy, freedom, politics, society, culture, economy, and reputation.
The restrictions placed on Australians are not based on science and are medical and epidemiological nonsense, putting aside the relative innocuousness of the disease this is supposed to be all about.
Gandhi’s mass non-compliance and civil disobedience were important in achieving Indian independence, mass non-compliance and civil disobedience were instrumental in the US’s black civil rights movement, mass non-compliance and civil disobedience gave birth to the Solidarity trade union and subsequent societal movement in Poland and was instrumental in bringing down Communism in that country, mass non-compliance and civil disobedience was instrumental in causing _even the East German Stasi-state_ to realise the jig was up and not to oppose ordinary people pulling down the Berlin Wall, to name but a few.
Large numbers of people doing nothing other than venting on social media will achieve little, if anything.
Large numbers of people refusing to comply will see governments change their tune.
Compliance renders the majority irrelevant; collective disobedience of even a significant minority achieves change.
Direct action works.
What would change if we were all in this together.
What’s the point of bagging Scummo?
We have had a case of the master marketer, Scomo, trying to take on a master manipulator, Andrews.
As usual, Andrews was setting up Morrison, and, as usual, Morrison was an idiot.
So now he is doubly proved to be just such, and Andrews has shot himself in the foot.
They may think Djoke is just collateral damage, but the death of 1000 cuts commences for both of them
There are many on YouTube who have been actively highlighting the inequities and bringing them to public attention, such as Aussie Cossack, True Arrow, Avi Yemeni etc. All of them subject to police (nee government) retribution. There is a very large and under-estimated silent majority that is biding their time.
Franx?
Seriously?
Everything. The sort of people who can get exemptions know they can get exemptions, so are perfectly fine with making the rest of us do things they never would. And since they know they can get exemptions if they actually need to do anything, they are happy to play along while its convenient.
A flm crew operated in Melbourne during one of our lockdowns that were far more draconian than lockdowns elsewhere.
However they might not have told lies on their applications.
If Morrison is a gormless, incompetent, hypocritical idiot, then there is no reason that he shouldn’t be criticised on those grounds.
Why should he be given a free pass because some of the Premiers are worse. It is his failure to do his job – which includes upholding Australia’s commitment to Human Rights – that has PERMITTED Andrews, Pallachook and Parrothead to be as bad as they are.
John B
Of course it’s unfair. Crooked business.
Yet if privileges were denied to the bold and the beautiful, nothing would change for the rest of us. (Not that we are not bold and beautiful.) We would then simply be all in this together. And that would not change the ‘this’ other than making it cosier.
And that is where the corrupters have us in a vice.
If we resent the privileged, then we are simply saying they deserve to be in the muck with us.
If we tolerate the privileged, then we are complicit in the unfairness.
Either way we are acceding to the power play.
That was just him doing his Jedi mind-powers.
“These are not the droids you are looking for. We are all in this together.”
Franx – you think that if the “elite” had to put up with something then that something would still be in place?
That’s demonstrably not true given the things that are allowed and have been put back on the menu.
From the get go a very selective pandemic.
Thank goodness we have those State Govenors and the G.G. To protect us from the excesses of the politicians.
Not to forget all those civil liberties organisations.
(Sound of hawking expectoration.)
With special mention to Linda Dessau AC.
And well written Cassie.
“”Yet if privileges were denied to the bold and the beautiful, nothing would change for the rest of us. (Not that we are not bold and beautiful.) We would then simply be all in this together. And that would not change the ‘this’ other than making it cosier.?
And what’s wrong with simply being all in this together, from the PM down. Why couldn’t Ms Kidman spend fourteen days in a dingy hotel room? You know, like those ordinary Australians who finally were able to return home had to.
John B
You’re right.
Things might then change, yet only assuming that the circumstances themselves were not created by the elite.
Here’s an example of men and women during World War II who really were “all in this together”…
1. In 1940 and 1941, at the height of the Blitz, many in England’s upper middle classes and aristocracy sent their children across the Atlantic to safety in the US and Canada. It was suggested to Queen Elizabeth (the current Queen’s mother) that she and the King do the same with the two young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. The Queen refused, saying that “the children won’t go without me. I won’t leave without the King. And the King will never leave.”
2. On September 13, 1940, five bombs were dropped on Buckingham Palace damaging the Royal Chapel, inner quadrangle and the Palace gates were hit, several workmen were injured. The King and Queen were at Buckingham Palace that night. Rather than flee, King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth remained at Buckingham Palace in solidarity with those living through the Blitz. This was a highly symbolic decision and received much attention in the press. The royal couple visited areas of London which had been devastated by air raids, speaking to residents and members of the local emergency services. After Buckingham Palace was bombed, the Queen was reported to have said:
‘I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye.’”
That’s what I call “being all in this together”.
Cassie, yes, good if we could all be in this same boat as the pm. It’s just that someone like the pm is not in any boat, while the rest of us are in a pretty decrepit vessel set afloat by the likes of the pm and his emergency council.
Cassie, about the queen. Noble. She did not create the circumstances whereas what we have now is a product of our own governments.
Late in the war the present Queen trained as a mechanic and driver in the women’s branch of the British Army.
I always admired the story of the Queen Mum saying, after Buckingham Palace had been struck by bombs, that now they could look the people of the East End in the face.
As opposed to scarpering off to Scotland and sending Newsreels back saying you feel their anguish but you (and they) need to stay resolute.
We ALL have a most important, nay, vital choice to make in a few short months at the polls. Then we’ll see who’s all in this together.
Uniparty out for mine. ?
Sadly, and to the surprise of many, the Victorian Constitutions does not allow the Victorian Governor to sack the government except in just two particular circumstances. One is that the Premier asks to be sacked and the second only if an absolute majority (or more?, I forget) votes for the government to be dissolved. The Victorian Constitution also doesn’t constrain the parliamentary powers nor confer any rights upon its citizens. It’s really more like a administrative document describing what government looks like and setting schedules for events such as elections. Been a long time since I “studied” constitutional law but as I recall the other states constitutions were just as pointless.
All the Australian constitutions need to be shredded and rewritten from scratch, grant inalienable civil liberties and define what can, and more importantly, cannot be enacted by parliament.
I should also add that I doubt King George VI would have, on a trip to Cornwall for a supposed world leader’s conference, in a so called Covid era, taken time off to look up stuff about his ancestors and be pictured grinning with some inn owners and workers, not one of them practising social distancing.
Oh, man.
Missed the chance to pun “Scarper Flow”.
It has also exposed Australians’ as a callous and indifferent mob of arseholes.
“Franxsays:
January 17, 2022 at 6:11 pm
Cassie, about the queen. Noble. She did not create the circumstances whereas what we have now is a product of our own governments.”
Franz, do you comprehend what I was trying to say in my post about George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth?
It’ll be the first time in my life I’ll note cast a vote. The incumbents will say they’ve saved millions of lives with their draconian laws and mandates and the opposition will say that the government did do enough and they would have done it better.
All of them have nothing but vaccinations as an answer to any question asked despite the overwhelming evidence that they are not working as described on the packet. They’re all craven, useless and without morals – the lot of them.
There are several things to comprehend, even though what you say about the royals is perfectly valid.
“It is his failure to do his job – which includes upholding Australia’s commitment to Human Rights – that has PERMITTED Andrews, Pallachook and Parrothead to be as bad as they are.”
Just so – for a mob that hammers China and other places as violators of human rights, and despite signing up to the UN Universal Charter on Human Rights, EVERY state government in this country has breached at least one of the human rights listed in that charter (by closing state borders), and certainly NSW has breached three of them (closed state border, denied the right to work, denied the right to bodily autonomy). Since the charter has been agreed to by the federal Gov, it over-rides any and all individual state laws.
All Scomo would need to do is state that and demand that such violations cease forthwith. If the states don’t like it, they can let a court decide it on the merits. Nor would doing this in ANY way reflect badly on the current mob – they are merely enforcing existing international treaty, signed well before they were even elected.
I agree with this caller.
Ha. I just realised Cassie beat me to the anedote.
*Openly smiling*
*Inwardly peering with suspicious eyes*
If say parliament + judiciary and associated staff were exempt from vaccine mandates imagine what sort of uproar that would cause in a society that values justice and egalitarianism.
And of course such exempted people would never be given complimentary ‘vaccine passports’.
I like Simon’s suggestion of ‘mass non-compliance’ but it does require the support of the mass to be a viable thing. Seeing the masses gloat at a tennis player because unvaccinated not sure we are quite there…
@ Franx:
“What would change if we were all in this together.”
The “Titanic” would have had enough lifeboats? (AND launched them MUCH earlier).
Always remember:
“Murphy was an optimist”.
“Interesting times”?
Supply-chain “issues”??
Then is it time to recycle the old Soviet jokes? For example:
“A man goes to a department store and asks, “Don’t you have any shoes here?” The sales Comrade answers, “Oh, no, we don’t have any furniture here. They don’t have any shoes on the third floor!”.
Or:
“Everyone knew that when Pravda started pushing cabbage recipes that the wheat harvest had failed”.
No “news” in TASS, nor “Truth” in Pravda and vice versa.
And, as always, for an update on who is really in charge, find out (one way or another) who you are NOT allowed to openly criticize.
From the get go a very selective pandemic.
And eagerly and ably abbetted by many here.
I doubt anyone here on the Cat will be born Liberal, but what about preferences?
While it seems impossible for things to be worse under Albo, I suspect it will, and considerably so. I suspect Albo will give succour to Andrews and other Labor premiers to put pressure on NSW to follow Victoria. We are seeing overseas escalation against the unvaxxed in spite of Omicron and a full on rush to social credit scores and escalating punishment of the unvaccinated.
The Liberals deserve nothing and are owed nothing, bit neither are Labor. Be careful what you wish for.
FFS, voting, not born. How does autocorrect keep fucking it up??
HT: Dead right. They weren’t going to let a latter day John Kerr or Philip Game step into the fray ever again. So, in Victoria, the governor’s role was neutered, leaving the incumbent with little to do but open fetes, snip ribbons and scratch her Labor-aligned bum.
“areffsays:
January 18, 2022 at 1:01 pm
HT: Dead right. They weren’t going to let a latter day John Kerr or Philip Game step into the fray ever again. So, in Victoria, the governor’s role was neutered, leaving the incumbent with little to do but open fetes, snip ribbons and scratch her Labor-aligned bum.”
Quite so areff and I would argue that it’s worse than that. We now have, across the nation, four year fixed terms…the whole “fixed” notion goes against the grain of the Westminster system. It has rendered oppositions useless (not that the Victorian Liberals needed any assistance). The fact that most state governments are now entrenched for years…often for over a decade, proves this. It contributes to governments being unaccountable and it makes them a whole lot harder to get rid of.
Fatty O’Farrell, when elected premier of NSW back in 2011, promised to explore the idea of “recalls”…….this was after sixteen years of corrupt and venal Labor governments in NSW. But of course, the stupid effing Liberals failed to pursue it…just like they never bothered trying to reform ICAC, a sinister body which, yet again, claimed its third Liberal premier scalp in 2021……ICAC was conveniently missing in action from 1195 through to 2011. Odd that.
I didn’t know ICAC was MIA since 1195 – that was when Richard the Lionheart was King !
Seriously though . . . I have wondered if Malcolm the Turd would have been so gutless and despicable As Scummo these last 2 years.
Don’t get me wrong, I detested Turnbull and what he stood for (and certainly rejoiced when he was rolled for the 2nd time), but I feel his ego would not have allowed the State premiers to run amok as they have.
What do others think ?
A Twitter headline from overseas
“Australia deported the only healthy player – 4th player drops out of Australia Open with Chest pains.”
Now flock ye all to the jabbatoir (/s)
BUT
In comments there
“So they deported the Serbian champ for not taking the jab – and now this.
Watch this poor girl dropped to her knees by chest pains:
You can’t get any clearer than this on wether to jab or not to jab.”
“WolfmanOzsays:
January 18, 2022 at 1:29 pm
I didn’t know ICAC was MIA since 1195 – that was when Richard the Lionheart was King !
Seriously though . . . I have wondered if Malcolm the Turd would have been so gutless and despicable As Scummo these last 2 years.
Don’t get me wrong, I detested Turnbull and what he stood for (and certainly rejoiced when he was rolled for the 2nd time), but I feel his ego would not have allowed the State premiers to run amok as they have.
What do others think ?”
I have thought exactly the same thing.
Great minds think alike !
Morrison is a doormat and everyone knows it.
Spineless and unprincipled doesn’t begin to describe him.
Just about the last person I’d want in the trenches with me.
I recall Prof. James All writing a few months ago (in The Spectator I think) that it would have been much better for the Libs to have lost in 2016.
The humiliation of losing Abbott’s huge majority may have seen a reset for the Libs to be something more palatable.
We think we dodged a bullet with no Shorten but I’m not sure the cost of what Scummo has done (or not done) has bee worth it.
Dover posted this on the OT…
“dover0beachsays:
January 18, 2022 at 12:11 pm
I see a COVID+ ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has been allowed to fly in and avoid quarantine. Rules are rules, people.”
We’re all in this together.
“We think we dodged a bullet with no Shorten but I’m not sure the cost of what Scummo has done (or not done) has bee worth it.”
I don’t believe Shorten would have been any worse than Scumbag. I doubt Shorten would have set up the “National Cabinet”.
“Morrison is a doormat and everyone knows it.
Spineless and unprincipled doesn’t begin to describe him.
Just about the last person I’d want in the trenches with me”
Quite so…just ask Bettina Arndt, Craig Kelly and George Christensen.
Quite so…just ask Bettina Arndt, Craig Kelly and George Christensen.
Interesting isn’t it. Lidia Thorpe can slut shame Holly Hughes, then go on to undermine the very office she sits in but no Senate censure is even being considered. Says it all really.
It has rendered oppositions useless (not that the Victorian Liberals needed any assistance).
As a for-the-moment Victorian, let me refer you to the dictionary illustration of the Victorian Liberal sub-species: Ms Heidi Victoria, Arts Ministerette in the Baillsnafu and NapTime governments. Having lost her seat she gets regular gigs on the newly woke 3AW, where she’ll often lament how the yarts are so vital to a happy state.
Before being booted she’d turn out for gallery openings and other luvvie wankery, hand out money, air kiss the recipients and be driven home in a state car, content and convinced the yarts community were being won over.
Well they took her money, laughed up their sleeves and campaigned against her.
Or consider the premier’s literary awards which Baillsnafu and NapTime authorised the Wheeler Centre, as leftoid as you can get, to judge and award the cheques. No surprises in those lists of recipients.
If the Vic Liberals were racehorses (instead of hacks), the kindest thing you could do would be to erect the green canvas screen and put them out of their misery.
“Interesting isn’t it. Lidia Thorpe can slut shame Holly Hughes, then go on to undermine the very office she sits in but no Senate censure is even being considered. Says it all really.”
Yep…it the Liberals and National had any balls…which of course they don’t…..they would have at least tried to put forward a senate censure against Thorpe.
“ICAC was conveniently missing in action from 1195 through to 2011. Odd that.”
Apologies all, I meant to write 1995!
“As a for-the-moment Victorian, let me refer you to the dictionary illustration of the Victorian Liberal sub-species: Ms Heidi Victoria, Arts Ministerette in the Baillsnafu and NapTime governments. Having lost her seat she gets regular gigs on the newly woke 3AW, where she’ll often lament how the yarts are so vital to a happy state.”
Love your writing areff. Ms Heidi sounds like our very own Liberal failure here in NSW….Ms Kerry Chikarovski….aka Chicko Roll.
Chicko Roll is one of those go to Liberals that their ABC loves….basically because she’s a green. She frequently appears on The Dumb, always sounding like every other panellist. Two years ago, when the Izzy Folau saga was happening, I heard Chicko Roll on television pour scorn on Izzy and stating that she hopes he never plays again. I remember thinking….wow…what a Liberal….so much for those Menzies principles of free speech and religious liberty.
I think he would’ve gotten ahead of the Labor premiers, emboldening them while taking credit, and pressuring NSW to go full fascist. I doubt the unvaccinated would be allowed out in NSW at all.
He’d lead us alright – straight to hell. Just have a look at what Lucy deleted from Twitter.
Areff, I though you were talking the piss, but she is indeed a real person, apparently. Proving yet again that the Victorian gliberals are beyond parody.
Bettina Arndt likes attention, Craig Kelly likes Cream Buns and George Christensen likes Manila.
Meanwhile, Scotty struck a blow for everyone that hates the Uber Elitist Sport of Tennis by booting Joker.
And you know the funniest bit?
His underling told the Court that Joker’s presence in Australia might lead to a rise in AntiVaxxer sentiment.
And the Court bought it
Where’s Albo?
On a listening tour of Queensland Peanut Farms.
How dumb is it to look at unjust and unjustified government exercise of power – an exercise that lessens the quality of life for little or no gain – and focus your anger on those who find a way around it all?
Stockholm syndrome by proxy?
What a great way to fracture the people and guarantee government its continued power. You play right into their hands.
‘… rather it’s a densely populated and rather ugly inner-west suburb, full of high-rise apartment blocks. Many of Ashfield residents are migrants …’
You know, one of those parachute Labor seats in which the elected MP never required to live.