Comrades! After many years of debate on the left on how to win socialism, a clear path has opened in Australia — hack the attorney-general office’s email to instruct federal Coalition MPs to vote for a motion to socialise the means of production.
The email just needs to tell them to vote “yes” for a bill to nationalise mining, banking and energy companies under workers’ and community control as a first step towards reorganising the economy to meet social needs and taking rapid action on climate change.
Then, when asked about this unexpected change of heart, leading members of the government could tweet that this “confirms we oppose all forms of capitalist exploitation” and “we say yes to human liberation”.
You know, sort of like when the attorney-general and Coalition senators tweeted in support of Pauline Hanson’s motion based on a white supremacist KKK-inspired slogan that “it’s OK to be white” after “mistakenly” voting for it.
Their justification for backing such a motion seems to be that they’ll vote for literally anything if a piece of paper tells them to. Yes, this government’s excuse for its senators voting for a fascist motion is they were “just following orders”.
Somehow, this is hardly any less concerning than the thought they deliberately backed a motion deploring “anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation”. It suggests not one of the Coalition’s 31 senators thought anything was amiss about publically backing white supremacy.
I’ll go out on a limb and say this would not be the case for just anything. It wouldn’t even have to be as drastic as socialist revolution.
I’d say that if Coalition senators were told to vote for something even mildly criticising coal companies over climate change, at least a few would start yelling: “Hang on a sec, I didn’t get into politics to not destroy the planet!”
The whole thing was just one of many bizarre “missteps” of late, as the Scott Morrison government stumbles around with all the stability of me trying to open a kebab shop door at 1am. There seems a similar quality of decision making involved, followed by about as much regret.
The biggest irony is the Coalition voting to deplore attacks on Western civilisation, seeing as with its climate policy, this government’s working overtime to destroy all civilisation — Western or otherwise.
It is about the only thing it is doing well. Say what you will about its performance in general, but it is full steam ahead on the irreversible death of the Great Barrier Reef and likely destruction of water supplies due to the actions of mining corporations that pay bugger all tax.
Environment minister Melissa Price responded to the alarming United Nations report insisting on the need for a rapid shift away from fossil fuels by loudly refusing to act and adamantly stating: “We make no apology for the fact that our focus at the moment is getting electricity prices down."
This claim doesn’t even make sense, seeing as over the past decade prices have leapt up by 117% — with prices rising by a fifth since 2016 alone. So not only is the government worsening the ecological crisis, we are paying more for the privilege.
It is like calling 000 in an emergency only to find the operator is in a pub doing shots and insisting they can’t help you because “our focus at the moment is on getting sober”.
So, will this be how the world ends, not with a bang, but an “administrative error”? Probably, if we continue to let such psychotic clowns govern.