Raising Hell: Issue 4: The Buckle Buckles

An “early mark”. That’s how the Prime Minister phrased it. Having seemingly dodged the worst of a global pandemic, Scott Morrison told Australians they had been so well behaved, they deserved an “early mark” and could go to the beach.

When I was looking back at the last fortnight, it was this phrase that stuck with me. For a start, it was another annoying display of the weird “Patriarch of the Nation” shtick Scott Morrison has embraced over the last four months and two crises. Rhetoric aside, it was a curious barometer for a conservative government which tends to operate with a lack of caution. To date, the whole approach to governance has been “she’ll be right” — until she isn’t. If this was true before the crisis, it is now true at this stage. The Australian people may have spent over a month indoors, but then a highly transmittable virus is unlikely to respect human constructs of time in this way. One screw up, one moment of community transmission and it would start over again — and no amount of techie solutioneering will save us.

Sydney’s empty streets. (Source: Wikimedia commons).

Yet it is hard to blame Morrison and his government for being eager to re-open quickly. Time right now is moving at different speeds for different people. To both politicians and the average person, the worst might now be over. Governments are keen to encourage this view as they keep an eye on the bigger picture. The catch is many organisations which were already operating of a knifes-edges before the crisis simply won’t be able to reopen without a vaccine. This speaks to the second-order effects of the pandemic. With the virological threat under control, society may resume as people return to the cafes but now is the time we found out what we have broken in the process of turning the whole economy on and off again. The risk now is an insolvency crisis will open up before us like chasm. This is underscored by news overnight that New South Wales arts institution Carriageworks, like Virgin Australia before it, had entered voluntary administration.

If the only certainty right now is life will go on, the best any of us can do is ensure those calling the shots are kept honest and accountable…

Reporting In

Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …

• “Privacy concerns over tracing app” (2020, The Saturday Paper, 25 April)

  Of the two big publications from the last fortnight, the first was a story published in The Saturday Paper looking at the Covid-19 contact tracing app. The revealing part for me was a conversation I had with LaTrobe University’s Professor David Watts who once served as the former Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection in Victoria. Watts was able to sketch out how information sharing agreements between commonwealth and state governments means what you tell a government agency in South Australia can end up, in a matter of seconds, in an Australian Federal Police database. Now that the app is out in the wild, and it has been confirmed has being “full of holes”, I’m looking to line up a follow-up interview with Watts to get his verdict on it all. If it all works out, I’ll be running it as bonus material through Raising Hell next week. This, my generous subscribers, is your hard-earned dollars at work.

• “Spending the coronavirus bonus: 'I haven't bought my daughter a birthday present since 2012'” (2020, The Guardian, 27 April)

  The second big story from this last fortnight was a feature published with The Guardian. It includes seven brief profiles, written in first person, explaining how each subject will spend the additional money granted from the Coronavirus supplement. In sociological terms, the story had two aspects. The first was the way the time horizon of those I spoke to were gradually opening up as the extra money meant they could plan into next week, or even next month. The other element capture was the deep anomie they experience. Many had been ground down by the social security system for so long, they simply could now allow themselves to feel hope for fear of disappointment. If that isn’t a scathing indictment of a sick society, I don’t know what is.

  As a post-script, after this story ran I was contacted by an optometrist who offered a pair of glasses, Migraines Australia who offered migraine medication, a teacher who wanted to by a printer and a journalist who wanted to make a donation to those who took part. These small gestures of solidarity show how far the government is out-of-step with Australians on this issue — another point highlighted by the recent Senate community affairs committee report that investigated the damage done by the low level of social security payments. The report was released after the story ran in The Guardian with the committee’s chair, Greens Senator Rachel Siewert describing its findings as “scathing”. The TL:DR version is that the committee was told by the Parliamentary Budget Office that social security payments will need to be kept above $1012 a fortnight after the pandemic to stop people being returned to poverty. For anyone wondering what the Coalition government’s thinking on this issue, it is worth reading the Coalition senators dissenting report. In the closing remarks on “recent developments”, the word “temporary” is used six times in twelve paragraphs.

• Welcome to showbiz, kid…

  A little while ago I was tipped by sources that my publisher, the University of Queensland Press had printed a tote bag with my surname repeated alongside authors significantly more reputable than myself. When I followed up, my publisher confirmed this to be true and sent me a couple of the artifacts as proof. My reaction upon receiving them was (and remains) a mix of deep flattery, total awkwardness and an urge to crack jokes at my own expense.

  

You Hate To See It

A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…

• Separate, But EqualIn a clear demonstration that Australia is just as classy as ever, the mining and media mogul Kerry Stokes and his wife were permitted to skip a mandatory 14-day quarantine when they flew into Perth from the US on a private jet. The billionaire owner of Seven-West Media had initially hunkered down in his $15 million penthouse in Beaver, Colorado during the opening stages of the pandemic. Upon coming home, the Stokes’ were graciously allowed by police to retire to their spacious Dalkeith mansion to self-isolate on the basis that Kerry had just undergone a medical procedure.
• Twiggy Confronts Life’s Big QuestionsStokes wasn’t the only Western Australian resources baron in the headlines over the last fortnight. Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, billionaire iron ore magnate, once again leveraged his connections in the Chinese government to secure 10 million Covid-19 test kits for use by Australian labs. The “charitable donation” cost the billionaire’s Minderoo Foundation $320 million, a sum for which it would again be reimbursed by public purse, this time with the Australian federal government footing the bill. The warm glow of a good press did not last however, as Coalition MP’s lined up to attack Twiggy not for his opportunism, but rather interfering in a jingoistic effort by Team Australia to have China “investigated” over the Covid-19 outbreak. The whole absurd drama ended on a unusually thoughtful note for Twiggy who, like Kamahl before him, closed out the fortnight with the lament: why are people so unkind?
• Cooking With GasThe planet might be cooking and the recent bushfire crisis may have left 25,000 Australians internally displaced climate refugees, yet the man responsible for bringing down the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, Angus Taylor, is talking about a“gas-fired” recovery out of the pandemic. In an irony lost of no one, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reductions has spent the last fortnight talking up plans to leverage the oil and gas sector to combat a impending recession. As the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility’s LobbyWatch blog outlined in dizzying detail, this has been underway since mid-April whn the Prime Minister parachuted in a battalion of oil, gas and coal industry executives to oversee the recovery. We can only trust these titans of industry have the best interests of the Australian people at heart and any decisions they make will have absolutely nothing to do with their share price or associated bonuses.
• We Got Any Politics You Want, So Long As It’s RightFederal Labor continues its quest to triangulate its electoral chances into oblivion by attempting to move to the right of the Coalition and One Nation on immigration by calling for Australians to be given “first go at jobs”. In an editorial published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Labor’s pick to replace Peter Dutton as chief border guard, Kristina Keneally, declared the country’s recent approach to immigration “lazy” and said going forward federal Labor will not support “migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis”. Pauline Hanson, predictably, claimed Labor’s move was proof-positive her “Australia First” shtick was right all along.
• Only The Good Die YoungWhen history closes on Donald J Trump, it’s possible his crowning achievement might be considered the moment he told his supporters to drink bleach and so made it possible to describe the United States of America, with complete objectivity, as a “total shitshow”. This now extends to Trump’s domestic political opposition in the Democratic Party who aren’t faring much better. Since Joe Biden — a man who even Osama Bin Laden could see was useless — was chosen as the “safe candidate”, the party has been rocked by allegations he raped Tara Reade in 1993 while she worked for him as a staffer. Biden, who has been looking to leverage the female vote, responded by ignoring the allegations for as long as possible until they gained enough attention he answered them by publishing a (presumably heavily edited and legalled) post to Medium insisting, categorically that “[the allegations] aren’t true. This never happened”. Whether any of this will make an iota of difference in the US is questionable. Still it is unsettling that the the American public are being offered a choice between two functionally conservative parties, both lead by alleged rapists, only one of whom will talk openly about his track record of sexual assault — and it ain’t Biden.

Failing Upward

Where I recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…

The communique issued from the desk of Angus Taylor and dated 22 April 2020 began on something of a hopeful note. Its text made the announcement that in an effort to sure-up Australia’s “long-term” fuel security, the government was about to splash $94 million to “establish its first Government-owned oil reserves”.

“This work is a down payment on a stronger and more secure fuel supply for Australian households, motorists, industry and the national economy,” Taylor said. “Today’s announcement delivers immediate and medium-term measures that form a framework for a highly successful and domestically-centred approach to fuel security, which will underpin our economic prosperity for the next decade and beyond.”

For a Minister who has been subject to a long list of scandals, the moment almost seemed like he had finally done something right. A strategic oil reserve for Australia has been a long time coming. As of December 2020, Australia only had 55 days of petrol in the event of a crisis and the risks to the country had long been known. These were so bleedingly obvious the Defence Department was able to accurately predict events during the opening days of the pandemic a year before they happened.

Anyone curious enough to read deeper than the top pars, however, would find something odd. Under the deal inked with the US — following a phone call between Donald Trump and Prime Minister Scott Morrison — it was agreed the new Australian Strategic Oil Reserve was about to be stored in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve — on the other side of the planet. Buried in all the detail about how a portion the facility was to be carved out for exclusive use by the Australian government, a clear grasp for basic geographic reality seemed to get lost.

Map of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve circa 2018 (Source: Wikimedia commons)

And the Minister didn’t help matters when he failed to explain the logistics for how all that banked oil might actually be transferred to Australia in the event of a war or national crisis. Though perhaps he didn’t need to. Paul Barratt, former secretary of the Australian Department of Defence, told it straight when he said of the story: “I can assure you that when we face the kind of emergency that requires us to draw upon this phantom stockpile, shipping will not be available to bring it to Australia.”

That is, of course, assuming all that fuel we’ve squirreled away in Texas or Louisiana simply isn’t commandeered by the US at the first sign of trouble. Time might be long and memories short right now, but only at the start of this month the US government was accused of “modern piracy” by Germany when it “redirected” a shipment of 200,000 American-made facemasks at the height of the pandemic.

Good Reads, Good Times

• Speaking of geographic realities, if you’re looking for a basic introduction into the delightfully corrupt world of Malaysian politics by a Malaysian-Australian, check this by Jarni Blakkarly. Jarni is a friend and subscriber to this newsletter who wrote on the return of Mahathir, 94-year-old dictator and the jaded idealism of his supporters.

• The Adelaide Review published this feature by Walter Marsh taking aim at how the arts sector has been shafted by a federal government more comfortable weaponising sports metaphors like “Team Australia”. About the only thing Marsh left out was a mention of the weird editorial in The Guardian by federal arts minister Paul Fletcher denying any responsibility.

• Going national, this essay in The Monthly on the evangelical Hillsong is worth a read. As a portrait of Brian Houston, a “Goliath cosplaying as David” and his flock, it captures how has has managed to fuse religion and business by monetising persecution.

• It may be a little stale at this point, but I was recently pointed to this interview in VICE AU with a burglar talking to Mahmood Fazal about what the pandemic is doing to his industry.

• The Atlantic has had a good run of late. The first story I noted is this direct assault on plans by the US federal government to let individual states go bankrupt through the pandemic. The second is this by science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson summing up the moment with refreshing candour:

  Margaret Thatcher said that “there is no such thing as society,” and Ronald Reagan said that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” These stupid slogans marked the turn away from the postwar period of reconstruction and underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years.

They Say The Camera Adds Ten Pounds (Of Pressure)

• For nerds like me who are interested in how things work, I’d recommend checking out this livestream between Professors Mark Blyth and Jeff Colgan on the recent oil shock. After catching this, I threw a few questions Colgan’s way for a longer feature I’m cooking up for The Guardian looking at what the pandemic means for the future of transport.

Before You Go (Go)…

• Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that turns out to be burying toxic waste beneath children’s playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! Download the encrypted message app Wickr Me onto your phone or laptop and contact us securely at my handle: rorok1990.

• If you’re lurking and like what you see, throw me a subscription to get my screeds straight to your inbox every second Tuesday — it’s free. If you like what I do and want to see me do more of it, throw me a paid subscription — it’s $5 a month or $50 a year. If you are already a paying subscriber and think I’m hosing myself — there’s now an option to pay what you think this is worth.

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