The Age newspaper & ABC writer “Casey Briggs” wrote a curious article just before New Years claiming people had regained their trust in politicians due to their handling of the covid-19 virus in 2020.
She must live in a vastly different bubble to the one I roam within and upon further reading of her article, it just confirmed this with opinions from University lecturers & Professors and a reference to a study conducted by the Australian National University. A typical group of sources for a journalist to utilise to promote a narrative from a left perspective. Predictably Briggs goes on to put Daniel Andrews on a pedestal while criticizing Scott Morrison and somehow linking the handling of the covid-19 virus with the left's pet issues of social justice and climate change.
This opinion piece, it can be legitimately argued, may have been written with a partisan view, worse it could even be described as a piece of fiction, but is it a true reflection of community feelings towards our politicians? Do we trust them more? I find that an incredibly hard argument to make.
My resources are not professors or political experts or some expensive study conducted by a University that only references people from their own world bubble. Professors, political analysts, University studies, I would have thought this is the precise group to establish a contrived argument or point of view. An outcome Briggs achieved admirably, but is that the best way to discover the beating pulse of the man, excuse me, the person on the street?
My sources are Mums and Dads, business owners, good friends and family, plus social media contacts, many who have different opinions and politics to my own. I don’t need a study, I rely on a vibe from a variety of sources on both sides of the political aisle. There will be those that downplay this, but this is what the best politicians used to rely on before polling companies and focus groups took over the show destroying the intuitiveness of both politicians and high-level bureaucrats.
Just listen to their press conferences, "we will follow the science" and "we listen to the experts" which is the modern political handball to deflect any accountability upon themselves if things go wrong. In 2020 Daniel Andrews and Scott Morrison gave masterclasses in modern political cowardice that was rewarded with greater popularity if polls can be believed these days. Andrews and Morrison talk about accountability yet throw others under the bus, they talk about doing what's right while setting up useless inquiries or in Morrison's case not setting up one at all. In 2020 eight hundred fellow Australians died due to their State and Federal governments incompetence, yet no justice will be delivered to the victim's families. Compare that to the moralising engaged in by politicians of all persuasions over yet to be proven charges against our military personnel who fought in war zones those same politicians sent them to.
There is as much chance of our politicians understanding the meaning of words like accountability, leadership, ethics and unity as there is of Adam Bandt approving a nuclear power plant in Melbourne's CBD. They speak out of both sides of their mouths, spewing out words they either don't understand or never intend to live up to. They live in a world far removed from what was once a respected if flawed calling. They are trained to mislead to practice deceit, to undermine those they see as a threat, to throw others to the wolves to avoid a mauling for themselves and God help you if you enter their world and speak with some truth and act nobly rather than towing the party line.
The days of politicians who walk amongst us, listen to our thoughts, our opinions, visit our places of worship, sport and business to see what affects us in our daily lives are long gone. The intuitive politician has been replaced by those with no community antenna, no moral base and has been replaced with robots ingrained with talking points and the propaganda of their respective party machinery, little wonder they were so spooked by Trump.
No, the vibe I pick up is not one of trust in our politicians, to me, it is one of despair, as it doesn’t matter who we reward with the privilege of the government benches within our various parliaments across our continent, they continue to fail us as a community. Liberal or Labour over the past twenty years they have increasingly removed our rights, encroached on our lives, increased our taxes, introduced more onerous laws and disgracefully wasted our hard-earned taxes on frivolous and corrupt spending sprees that increasingly were targeted to reward certain groups rather than benefiting the common Australian.
Most politicians, not all, have a born to rule mentality. They have this mentality as nearly every politician is a product of their respective political machine, whether it is a machine of the political left, right or centre. The machinery anoints and promotes those who tow the party line, are good puppets who regurgitate the "what to say to the public" memos that are delivered to them daily. Very few stray from those approved talking points to tell us what they really think on a variety of issues. If you want a political career, as most of them do, then conformity is king. Stray from that lockstep of robotic uniformity in what you say and how you think and you will be vilified, humiliated and publicly crucified.
Increasingly politics is game of them versus us and politicians are not one of us. I know this as I have dealt with many of them, at the local and state level. I communicate with them at least once a month, for nearly no result. Many of our bureaucrats, the ones who remain not only unaffected by the covid-19 crisis are no better. They lecture the public with lines dreamed up by an army of media advisor and marketing types. You know the ones I am referring to, talking points and marketing quotes like "we are all in this together" and " staying apart, keeps us together".
The people who thought up these inane and insulting lines are all in a much better position than most due to wage rises, paid for by the rest of us who now live in the wild west of what was once called middle Australia. They enjoyed their extra privileges while working from home, not having to use pubic transport, getting out of bed when they want and working flexible hours decided by themselves. If you run a business or work for somebody who does, then these people are certainly not one of us. They claim that "we are all in this together" but in reality, they are only concerned with keeping their political masters happy or worse if their job relies on those political masters to keep them in power.
If you think that’s harsh? Then watch the entirety of the testimony given to the Coates inquiry into the Hotel Quarantine fiasco. Our state’s leading politicians and bureaucrats, couldn’t even lie with conviction and none of them could recall a variety of things including who decided to employ private security firms as opposed to using our Army personnel who had been offered for this important job.
The people who gave this testimony under oath at this sham of an inquiry are supposed to be our best and brightest, they are paid accordingly and very handsomely, yet their memory and accountability are worse than what I would expect from the kids I coach in my junior basketball teams. The honesty of my junior players would put these best and brightest to shame and more importantly the kids I coach own up to their mistakes and take accountability when those mistakes are pointed out to them.
I say again these politicians, these bureaucrats, these experts, these people are not us, they are separated from us and they look down upon the common person as a necessary evil to entice for support every four years. After that, well the most sceptical amongst us would say we are convenient ATM’s to fine and oppress at every turn. Remove traffic fines and the government would fall apart, yet they can’t even maintain our roads properly.
Collectively, our politicians have made our lives worse not better, they have placed our nations future in a more tenuous situation than it needed to be in, yet most will walk away with lifetime pensions and perks the average person can only dream about. In a normal situation in a real world business, they would face redundancy for their performance not reward. They are not one of us, they are together with us in this crisis as they like to preach to us.
From my experience trust in politicians, bureaucrats, governments, experts and scientists are at an all-time low and justifiably so. You earn respect, you are not given it. The same applies in regards to trust and on both fronts our respective politicians, our bureaucracies, our experts and governments haven't earned the right to either for some time now.
For the sake of convenience, let's refer to this collective of government as the commonly coined and I believe appropriate phrase of "The Deep State”. I would argue those within the deep state have seen their standing amongst the community fall below that of previously loathed professions such as door to door sales insurance personnel. At least door to door salespeople may have something to help with your day to day life and when they are told to go away and leave you alone, you won’t hear from them again. Can you say that about our politicians?
Until the past two years or so, I have lived most of my life either trusting or wanting to trust our politicians and governments and have been content that they have had our best interests at heart for no other reason than we control their futures through our votes. I don’t believe that anymore, I have little to no trust in these people and I certainly don’t see the actions required to restore that trust being implemented any time soon. Worse, the impression I get is that they don’t care about what we think too much and will continue on their path of lies, deception and manipulation of the citizenship they claim to represent.
As a conservative, never before have I felt less represented. I would even go further and state that as a person who embraces family values, historical fact and traditional values with a touch of progressive advancement and as a person who embraces freedoms and liberties of the individual over the state, that I don’t feel represented at all in any of these areas.
These values should not be shared by just conservatives but every citizen of this nation except for those perpetually determined to enforce their warped ideological thinking on the rest of us.
For a group so enamoured with convincing us to trust them, I find it curious that they go about it by doing everything possible to break that trust. How often have they stood for election on a policy platform to just desert it when elected, to use messaging to convince a demographic that they have their best interest at heart, only to jettison them when in power, to knowingly lie and mislead the public through their press conferences to only then try and justify their lies when they are caught out. They employ an army of media advisors to produce and publish vision and media that portrays themselves as something that they truly are not amd the let that propaganda arm of government ensure that perception or should I say deception,so it is not only maintained but built upon.
I can sense some of you thinking “You;re talking through your hat, Bob?” I wish I was, but I present to you 2020, a year in which the only way you couldn’t see the deep states deception is if you had your mandatory masked pulled up over your eyes.
We have witnessed politicians lie in media press conferences, at state inquiries under oath, we have seen bureaucrats demonize or ignore drug treatments that other health professionals swear by despite these same drugs having been in use for decades but also been shown to be effective treatments across the globe. We have had premiers shut down borders knowing it will destroy businesses, separate families and in the worst-case scenarios cost lives of even the most innocent for the most innocuous of reasons. They have dislayed the fortitude of a wet cabbage leaf.
If you were awake in 2020 you saw media and health bureaucrats flat out lie and mislead their viewership. Just one example I witnessed was when I watched an interview between MSNBC’s Shepherd Smith and the voice of many health alarmists in Dr Anthony Fauci. In this interview, Shepherd Smith made the outrageous claim that Melbourne was suffering over twenty thousand positive covid-19 case tests a day when we went into our harshest lockdowns in 2020. Dr Fauci who claimed in that same interview that he had been in constant communications with our health officials in Melbourne, did not contest this claim, didn’t even bat an eyelid.
Now Dr Fauci may be many things, but he is certainly neither dumb nor ignorant, he would have been across all the facts, but he was deceptive towards the viewership watching this interview in his mad desire for everybody to wear a mask and to give up their lives through lockdowns. Why on earth would anybody trust a man, or in MSNBC’s case, an organisation that would be so deceptive with their agenda? That's just one example. Look at our own Chief Health Officers in this country who initially spoke out against things like masks, but now force them upon the rest of us. Which advice was the one we should trust? The initial advice saying masks weren't necessary or the current advice saying they are?
Our governments and politicians say they listen to the experts and follow their advice, but which experts do they listen to? The one that fits their narrative or the ones who speak up on alternatives strategies only to be demonised, ridiculed, censored and silenced? Is it too much to expect our Deep State, including the media, to be honest with us, to treat us like adults and deliver us all the facts and opinions with a proper analysis? Is it too much to expect to have both sides of an argument to be put to us for consideration? If they want us to trust them shouldn't they return that trust in us?
As kids growing up My parents claimed the television was an idiot box. It took me a while but I have finally come to the realisation that they are correct.
We now have organisations across the globe that control the information we receive, but surrender the responsibility that comes with in preference for messaging that promotes their preferred views and agendas. At the same time they look to censor and ostracize the voices of others. Why not promote all views and engage in debate and discussion that informs the populace instead of attempting to manipulate it's thinking. In this age of information freedom it’s a surprising strategy where all it takes to find the truth is to be able to log on to the internet, have basic keyboard skills and know where to look. Yet they wonder why people don't trust them as they use to.
Another example was when our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was asked in a press conference about 
Hydroxychloroquine. He wrote it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, despite having some of his backbenchers promoting it as an effective treatment. Our current Chief Health Officer Paul Kelly who was the acting Chief Health Officer at the time was standing alongside the Prime Minister at this press conference and claimed that “the jury was pretty much out in terms of its use for treating covid-19”.
This despite Professor Kelly also conceding he had previously taken the drug as a precaution to malaria and that is was a safe drug to take. The question that comes to mind straight is that if the drug is safe, then why is it now banned in Australia?
Also which jury was he referring to? While there are medical professionals that are opposed to its use, there are also many like Dr Harvey Rich from Yale University who support it as an effective treatment. If you read enough reports, you will find some very qualified minds also promoting this drug and Ivermectin as drugs that are effective if given early on in the identification of a positive covid-19 test combined with appropriate doses of zinc and an anti-biotic.
Chief Health Officer, Paul Kelly, was relying on a report published in the medical journal called the lancet report. In this report, it included trials that only used hydroxychloroquine. In one of these trials from Oxford, they also used dosages of hydroxychloroquine between four and six times above the levels recommended. The report was eventually so discredited that the Lancet report removed it from its publications. Yet there have been no retractions from our government or health bureaucrats and Hydrocholoquine remains banned and Ivermectin demonised as a conspiracy theory. How many of those who have died due to covid-19 could have been saved with these treatments? How many passed from us unnecessarily through being denied these treatments? Even if it was only one life lost that could have been saved, isn't that one loss too many?
Our politicians and bureaucrats rather than concede they may be wrong, prefer to double down on the initial deception, yet according to some, we need to trust them? Why?
In what can be only described as political hysteria, we have premiers across the continent shutting down borders at the emergence of single-digit covid-19 cases. They have had nine months to put in place arrangements to deal with covid-19 outbreaks, yet the best they have is lockdowns, closed borders, mandatory masks and the separation of families across Australia. Now they are talking about banning us from transport, places of business, worship and employment and even pubs and clubs if we refuse the rushed vaccines. This despite Prime Minister Morrison and federal health minister sayingassuring is that the vaccine would not be mandatory. Yes, let's trust those politicians.
While I disagree with Gladys Berejiklian on many fronts, through her leadership and handling of the covid-19 situation she has given the other political leaders across this continent a master class in dealing with this virus. It must be said though that she hasn’t had much competition in the political leadership stakes across our continent. It’s like a powerhouse AFL football team taking the field only to see the Buln Buln Seconds at the other end warming up. No offence intended to the mighty Lyrebirds.
Disappointingly she has this week raise the prospect of banning people who choose not to take the vaccine from entering pubs and clubs. She seems to have been infected with the hysteria virus that has so affected her fellow Premiers
At least she wasn't as bad as Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who justified denying health services to her fellow Australians, by stating that Queensland hospitals are “for their people". What kind of person denies fellow Australians access to hospitals and medical care in such a manner?
Imagine if our first Aussie diggers on the Gallipoli peninsula had of had that attitude?
In the past few weeks after encouraging people to travel over the Christmas and New Years period, our Victorian Premier, in his wisdom, decided to not only close borders once more but introduced a permit system stranding thousands of fellow Victorians out of their home state. The result of this hysteria was tens of thousands of his fellow Victorians engaging a mad rush on our roads back to their home state before the borders closed and they were left stranded. This rush resulted in traffic conditions far more dangerous that the covid-19 virus itself, so much for protecting lives, but let's trust our politicians.
As an example of this a friend of mine was driving to Queensland with his young family when he received news of the borders being closed. They had to turn around and drive back or face the inconvenience, expense and and anxiety of being a refugees in another Australian state. The chaos, disruption, hours of driving in heavy traffic along with all the associated stress was imposed upon them all because their political leaders can’t keep their heads in a crisis.
Are these the leaders that we are supposed to trust? to have faith in? to believe in? Not for me, I choose to be better than that, I choose to demand more from them, to expect more from them and to hold them accountable when they fall short of the mark.
As if there weren’t enough reasons not to trust our “Deep State” the double standards and hypocrisy of our politicians were exposed once more again this week when they allowing 1200 tennis players, coaches and officials to fly in from across the globe for the Australian Tennis Open. All this while Victorians were still stranded interstate incurring more costs and raised anxiety levels. Our politicians had created a refugee class amongst its own citizenship while importing people from some of the worst covid-19 hot spots on the globe.
Remarkable!
I make this judgement with personal experience as well. Through my business, I have lobbied both our State and Federal politicians on a range of subjects and outside a handful of them, the best I have received back is an auto-response or email response from an office staff member with what can only be described as pathetic talking points response barely related to the issues I had lobbied them about. I have even had politicians block my emails. How they justify blocking emails from a public that finance their privileged and very well paid positions is beyond me.
Without a doubt, the vast bulk of our political class is devoted first and foremost to the political machinery and special interests who have landed them into their parliamentary positions and the immense privileges that they enjoy through those positions.
If you are naive enough to think they are devoted to their voting public, then you are being taken in by their very smart yet deceptive window dressing. The vast bulk of our politicians and our bureaucrats treat the public with contempt and disrespect, they don’t see their time in parliament as a form of public service, but rather as a tool for career advancement. The longer their term the more perks they receive. If you think they are accountable to us at election time, then just look at how many of them land plum diplomatic or corporate jobs once their time in parliament is finished. If you want to see a great example of cronyism, then walk into a chamber of one of our parliaments.
Throughout my time in sport, the continuous theme about trust from numerous coaches, amongst my teammates and through my time as a coach, is that it is an aspect of your life that is earned and not given, this strangely is a concept lost on most of our politicians and bureaucrats.
Not even eight hundred lives lost could bring our Prime Minister to contemplate considering a royal commission into the hotel 
quarantine fiasco in Victoria. When asked about this possibility he arrogantly wrote if off as an issue for the Victorian government and the Victorian people. Good to know he considers that Victorians are a separate class of citizen as opposed to the rest of the nation he governs. Little wonder he said so little through our long and torturous lockdown period. One suspects rather than calling a royal commission, he was simply covering the back of a political colleague who could potentially implicate him in the mess that is Victoria throughout this crisis.
Why other reason is there not to conduct it? What is there to hide?
The major reason given is cost, but these are the same people who give away our money to their mates and associates like its a lottery win. Just look at the $444 million grant our current Prime Minister turned a blind eye to when he was the country’s treasurer. Do you recall treasurer Morrison objecting strongly in public when his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull gave a grant that wasn't even asked for, but instead offered to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation?
Our politicians and bureaucrats can give away our money on a whim, yet when 800 of their fellow Australians lose their lives due to political mismanagement (the Coate inquiry’s position, not mine) all of a sudden cost becomes a factor. Never mind though, as Briggs argues in her article, let’s just trust our politicians, let’s trust our wheels of government, let’s think that somehow they are in positions of power due to their concerns for us, the voting public.
I could go on and on but all you need to do is to watch the news with a healthy dose of scepticism and then follow up with some research and even do as I have done and communicate with them directly. Outside a very, very few such as the Liberal Democrats or even Derryn Hinch's justice party who treat you like a normal human being, you will soon discover that they have no incentive to be entirely truthful or to even respond to you, even when you express reasonable concerns.
Not all hope is lost there remain a very very few who do respond and stand by their convictions, but they are in an eveer shrinking minoroty.
No, the only time you matter to the vast majority of them is when you can help them to be elected or they see you as a threat to that ambition. The only thing you can trust about most of our politicians is that after saying or doing anything to secure your vote, they will forget all about you once the victory speeches are over.
If you believe anything, then believe that.