| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | Final Vol 4 Issue |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 4 Number 14 |
as Australians (the only people in history who volunteered for a regressive tax that would clearly disadvantage those whose entrepreneurial gene is undeveloped or missing) went about their apathetic way. After a few days we noticed that our supermarket bills weren't much changed and the government ran its tape loop: "See? It-is-a-good-thing." Of course with most food items exempt there wasn't going to be much change was there? Then the first pay packets came in and Aussies rejoiced at the extra few dollars per fortnight, some reporting as much as $100. The entrepreneurialy challenged didn't seem to be among the interviewed, nor did Howard's Battlers--those with wages of $100,000 pa or more--whose fortnightly increases would have been too embarrassing to mention. Petrol prices went up straight away (especially leaded, the optionless choice of the entrepreneurialy challenged), but the PM blamed oil companies for being greedy. Strangely, the oil companies gained our sympathy for the first time in recorded history when they pointed out that the government hadn't removed enough excise for the savings to be passed on. We were cautioned by experts not to be rash and spend those newfound bucks on CD's and other stuff we'd been dying to buy when and if we ever had the extra cash. The experts warned us to wait until the utilities bills started coming in. They're coming in all right. All those 10 per cent increases on winter bills, like the electricity it takes to generate the gas heating, will in most cases take care of more than half the increase in compensation. And then there is the 10 per cent increase on clothes and shoes and a plethora of things like rolls of film, movie tickets, tampons, and takeaway food. And all those after school activities and lessons for the kiddies: drama, swimming, karate, music, tennis, you name it. Suddenly they are eating up as much as $20 extra a term. The compensation will never be enough. To make matters infinitely worse, we are all now burdened with the knowledge that the poorer you are the less compensation you have to make up for the increased prices. The poor are doing it harder than ever before. This is indeed a burden and it falls on the national psyche. With all the other international embarrassments generated by the Howard government, this one will insure that Australians may not hold their heads high. To Celebrate Australia's Federation and Reinforce Its Colonial Mentality John Howard took two million taxpayer dollars, a marching band, and a few ex PM-s to see the Queen. Robert Manne called the trip "deeply preposterous," but then John wouldn't want to celebrate it here for fear of the occasion being eclipsed by his GST would he? Over there he and his entourage were mostly free to bask in best that taxpayer's money could buy. Typical of how evil always seems to land on its feet, Tony Blair made an even bigger fool of himself than the ever-blundering John. (You begin to wonder if God's middle name really isn't Schadenfreude). As things drew to a close, there was the Great Photo Opportunity showing Howard, the ex-PMs and John's fantasy squeeze, Queen Liz. (Paul Keating, for whom such an event would have been absurd, was thankfully absent.) It's a photo that encourages despair. From left to right were Malcolm "Coup Leader" Fraser, Bob "Best Forgotten" Hawke, John "The Squidgereen" Howard, Queen "How awful! One is down to One's last 4.5 billion!" Elizabeth, John "How did I get here?" Gorton, and Gough "Rage schmage, pass the caviar" Whitlam. It really is hard to swallow that old adage "You get what you deserve", but there was living proof. In Victoria, Jeff Kennett's Reputation Was Firmly Buried by Bill Russell, professorial fellow in the Public Sector Research Unit at Victoria University of Technology. In his Audit Review of Government Contracts (The Age 7/7/00), he cited "the Kennett government's disregard for social and environmental issues, its contempt for democratic and open governance structures, and, more interestingly, its capacity for commercial and managerial ineptitude," which gave "City Link the concession fee structure it has, that negotiated so poor a contract for automated ticketing, and that led hospital privatisation to the Supreme Court. The Kennett government's willingness to commit billions of dollars without serious economic assessments records a fundamental incompetence and arrogance of astonishing proportions. "Liberal supporters must come to terms with the fact that Kennett and [Alan] Stockdale were not just secretive, arrogant and disdainful of the social and environmental responsibilities of public leadership, and uninterested in any form of public consultation, they were often pretty poor businessmen and sometimes incompetent negotiators." The problem now emerges that the Steve Bracks is apparently no better. As one commentator says, "The only difference between Kennett and Bracks is that Bracks is more unctuous." The ABC May or May Not Be Going Under but it doesn't help when someone as respected as Robin Usher comes up with foolish statements like this: "Long-overdue change [at the ABC] is also likely on metropolitan radio, where the formula of AM has been basically unchanged since 1967. No wonder it seems tired. There is some basis to the criticism that AM, PM (introduced in 1969) and The World Today (1985) exist more to serve the Sydney-based Newscaf empire rather than to enlighten listeners." Quite evidently Usher never listens to these programs. There is nothing remotely "tired" about them; on the contrary, they are exhausting in the information they deliver. As to the age of the formats used, these have proven to be the most effective. Why on earth would you change the format of a current affairs program (which, by its nature has limited options) merely for the sake of change? The best option (used by all three) is to deliver the reports crisply and in depth. There is nothing comparable and for those of us who depend on them, their demise would be nothing short of treason. Usher has made a fool of himself with regard to these programs, and should make a public retraction. is symptomatic of more than differing views in the Labor party; after all, unlike the Stalinist-modelled Liberal party, alternative views are allowed. Unfortunately, it points to Kim Beazley's faulty judgement in surrounding himself with men and women who are more interested in their own agendas than that of Australia as a nation. The blowout itself will soon be forgotten, unless of course the Liberals do what they do best: use taxpayers money to run a "Guilty Party" style misinformation campaign at election time. And even though Peter Reith subsequently did a Della Bosca by admitting that the GST was not written in stone (while Howard said it was just two days before), they are still capable of running such a ruthless campaign as if Reith had said nothing. Della Bosca is one of those NSW Right thugs for whom kicking heads and doing the dirty represents the highest good. He can be likened to a Mafioso hit man held in high esteem by the dons. But he has fucked up seriously here. His blindness in getting some attention over a meal has resulted in the derailment of his career. Unless, of course, he moves over to the Liberal Party, where he belongs. The worry is that Greg Sword, his Victorian counterpart, may be made of the same cloth. The Labor Party is supposed to be an alternative to the ideologically arrogant, anti-social Liberals. Where the Libs scoff at the plight of the wretched of earth, the Labor party is supposed to care about them. If in the end, they don't there is no reason whatsoever to give them a vote. It's as simple as that. Kim Beazley could be a great Prime Minister, as we have said before, but to be that, he must RISE ABOVE the blinkered self-interest of the Party itself. John Howard has volunteered to put himself in Australian History as a mean-spirited disgrace who has no understanding of humanity. True greatness in a leader comes from SERVING THE PEOPLE, not self-interested factions. Kim Beazley has that choice. But to do so he must show that he has the ticker to be great. He has the ticker to be PM, but to be great? Many of us believe that Della Bosca has done Beazley a service by his foolish outburst. The GST is just one of a dozen or more fronts with which Labor can move on the Howard Coalition. A hundred Della Bosca's should not prevent them from winning the next election by a landslide. However, Beazley's dumping of Barry Jones in favour of Greg Della Sword as party president has put a new light on things. The problem is that the Australian Liberal Party is so bad Labor always looks good by comparison. But the Hawke-Keating era must not be forgotten. This was the government that sold Australia to the markets, free trade, globalisation, economic rationalism, in short: the gradual return to a world of masters and servants. Barry Jones represented intellect and integrity in a political world of shameless and shallow opportunism. His departure leaves Australia in a political vacuum not much better than the political farce that is causing chaos in Fiji. Kim Beazley now appears to be rudderless, without a centre, with no political vision capable of withstanding the self-centred wolves snapping at his feet. If we lose Beazley (we've lost the Democrats thanks to Meg Lees) out of disgust for his weakness of character, whom do we have left? The scariest thing of all is that it appears to be a universal trend. There is not one world leader worthy of respect. Below are a few articles we never published because we didn't want to freak out Australia's mainstream media establishment. We needn't have worried for they had buttoned up their drab little cardigans from day one. Perhaps the biggest lie John Howard ever told Australians came at the beginning of his election campaign in 1996 when he said he intended to govern for "all of us." It was the lie that has become his signature and has encompassed and nurtured all the others. John Howard is a humourless, passionless toad who is turning Australia into a pariah state. His cabinet is primarily influenced by fundamentalist Christians under the banner of the Lyons Forum. Ideologically, they are influenced by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Machiavelli. The Coalition must be considered as a rogue government, which governs for a minority who believe themselves born to rule. Beyond that, it relies on the lowest common denominator to feather its bed of misanthropy. It panders to ignorance and racist hatred. John Howard changes his mind with the same psychopathic regularity as George Speight. He has less integrity than his secret idol and former Australian Liberal Party member Pauline Hanson. He no longer has a shred of credibility. Nor do any of his cabinet. His political decisions have demonstrated a vicious disregard for the safeguards of a civilised society. He stands for rigid conformity and the values of a feudal state we had thought were long gone. His confusion over the role of states rights: yes on mandatory sentencing, no on euthanasia, etc., betray the simpleton values of the white picket fence as a gigantic wall barring diversity of thought, religion, race, nationality, opinion. We, who have easily made the transition into the 21st century are being led by a man who has yet to leave the 19th. There is no hope within the current ranks of Australian Liberal Party politicians. Not one has the qualifications to run this country. Too many of them have kept their mouths shut for fear of retaining preselection. What kind of people are they? The worst, simply the worst. To know that your leader is evil and do nothing is worse than believing him to be doing good. The Labor Party may not be much better, but it isn't riddled with the hatred of humanity that so consumes the Coalition. The time has come for an uprising, peaceful if at all possible. Charles Perkins is right. The Olympics must become the focal point for civilised Australians to make a stand. Murrandoo Yanner must come out of hiding. The time has come for people to stop bitching among themselves and take action. John Howard and his antisocial ideology must be must be hounded from government sooner rather than later; the next election is too far away. It is time for protests to begin on a daily level. SCATT calls on anyone who reads this newsletter to devote their energies to ridding Australia of one of the worst governments the free world has ever known. Human dignity demands it. Talk to your spouses, your relatives, your neighbours, your local businessmen and women, talk to anyone who will listen. Organise and take action. This government's interests are not yours or the country's, but only their own. And those interests are traitorous. MOVE! The Australian Liberal Party is Unfit to Govern It's strange (maybe the word is weird) how those who make such a big deal out of espousing "family values" and the "work ethic" are always the ones who flout them. The Howard Government likes to lay it on thick about the sanctity of the white picket fence and all the goodness contained within its perimeters, yet it has no compassion for Kosovar Albanian families who may be facing homelessness or worse upon their forced return to Kosovo. Howard's Government has no compassion for the horrors previous govertnments inflicted on Aboriginals over the last two centuries. He has no compassion whatsoever for the Aboriginal children suffering from a racist mandatory sentencing law. The truth is, the Howard Government is operating in a moral-free zone. As such, they would not know a moral issue or a conflict of interest from a bucket of shit. That is why Richard Alston can suggest there is no confusion of messages over the Liberal Party accepting donations from Phillip Morris while officially touting an anti-tobacco line. That is why Alexander Downer can without any sense of irony or of wrongdoing send an ambassador, cap in hand, to convicted war-crimes renegade Slobodan Milosevic. That is why Senator John Herron can submit that there were no Aboriginal stolen generations because only 10 per cent of them were ever taken away, a figure he admits is wobbly. That is why Emigration Minister Philip Ruddock, wearing that Amnesty International pin, can demand the Kosovar refugees return on the basis of a report from the UNHCR bureaucracy, even though people at the coalface have pleaded with him to wait. That is why John Howard can assure his country cousin, Denis Burke, that not only will the Federal Government not press for the elimination of mandatory sentencing, but they will contribute $5 million of taxpayers money to further subsidise the beer-bellied, thong-wearing racists Burke leads. That is why Howard's Relocation Minister, Tony Abbott, can with fascist fervour label anyone a "job snob" for refusing to work for less wherever and whenever the government tells them to. The list of the Howard Government's crimes against democracy and civilised decency is endless. History will show them, as it has already shown Jeff Kennett's government, to be the worst government this country has ever had. John Howard cannot deal with Australia's history of Aboriginal genocide in the same way many Germans cannot deal with their Nazi past. GST: God Save the Tories, for the voters won't. The next election will be a referendum on social conscience. Those without it will vote for the Australian Liberal Party. Look! There, on the ground, emerging from under a rock! Is it the man with dead eyes? Is it the man with Methodist lips? Is it the smallest, meanest man who ever lived? Yes, it's John Howard! Following is the transcript of "John Howard's Apology" on National Television (well, on ABC TV's satire, "The Games II" episode three). It is reproduced here without permission but with admiration of the network and of John Clarke and Ross Stevenson for their courage under the questionable administration currently appointed by the real John Howard, whose government has entered this country into a genuine dark ages. Visit the ABC site here. APOLOGY MADE BY JOHN HOWARD ON THE 3RD OF JULY ON NATIONAL TV. Any other John Howard who wishes to make this announcement should apply for copyright permission here, which will be granted immediately. Good evening. My name is John Howard and I'm speaking to you from Sydney, Australia, host city of the year 2000 Olympic Games. At this important time, and in an atmosphere of international goodwill and national pride, we here in Australia - all of us - would like to make a statement before all nations. Australia, like many countries in the new world, is intensely proud of what it has achieved in the past 200 years. We are a vibrant and resourceful people. We share a freedom born in the abundance of nature, the richness of the earth, the bounty of the sea. We are the world's biggest island. We have the world's longest coastline. We have more animal species than any other country. Two thirds of the world's birds are native to Australia. We are one of the few countries on earth with our own sky. We are a fabric woven of many colours and it is this that gives us our strength. However, these achievements have come at great cost. We have been here for 200 years but before that, there was a people living here. For 40,000 years they lived in a perfect balance with the land. There were many Aboriginal nations, just as there were many Indian nations in North America and across Canada, as there were many Maori tribes in New Zealand and Incan and Mayan peoples in South America. These indigenous Australians lived in areas as different from one another as Scotland is from Ethiopia. They lived in an area the size of Western Europe. They did not even have a common language. Yet they had their own laws, their own beliefs, their own ways of understanding. We destroyed this world. We often did not mean to do it. Our forebears, fighting to establish themselves in what they saw as a harsh environment, were creating a national economy. But the Aboriginal world was decimated. A pattern of disease and dispossession was established. Alcohol was introduced. Social and racial differences were allowed to become fault-lines. Aboriginal families were broken up. Sadly, Aboriginal health and education are responsibilities we have still yet to address successfully. I speak for all Australians in expressing a profound sorrow to the Aboriginal people. I am sorry. We are sorry. Let the world know and understand, that it is with this sorrow, that we as a nation will grow and seek a better, a fairer and a wiser future. Thank you. John Howard, July 3, 2000 ©2000 John Clarke and Ross Stevenson As SCATT fades into the sunset, polls in The Australian show that Voters back PM on GST. Gee, it's hard not to become a stone cold misanthropist. But, well, you've just got to have compassion for the poor gits, because they must be congenitally incapable of paying attention to events that threaten to eat them alive. Too many years in mind-numbing jobs followed by too many nights with jaws slack before the chump channels have made poor Aussie a dumb fucking cluck. (It's our last issue, we can swear if we want to!) Unable to put two thoughts together to form a third because of a ceaseless onslaught of high decibel adverts blasting the numbness into white noise, they cannot see that the few extra bucks compensation will be wiped out when upcoming bills put paid to those pay packet increases. Poor Aussie is not alone. This wilful refusal to pay attention belongs to the whole of humanity. History shows that for century after century the many have docilely accepted the corrupt rule of the few. It's a sickening history and it proves the Marquis de Sade's point that human beings are incapable of being rational, that truth is elusive, while evil--that which is embraced whenever the mind snaps or governments invite it--is not. The hard slog to remain civilised can be undone with the greatest of ease because "all things of value are defenceless." What is truth? After that most baffling question of all: "What do Women Want?" this question is the most difficult to answer. While we have a pretty good idea what evil is (in its extreme form: Hitler's doctrine of genocide, Martin Bryant's grinning, methodical mass murder in Port Arthur), truth is the "too hard basket" itself. Truth requires thought, and that is what Poor Aussie can't be bothered with. Hey, leave us not get carried away here. A simple, not-at-all profound truth is this: The GST as implemented is unfair to the poor. If you can live with this then you must be without social conscience, incapable of rational thought, and therefore an Australian Liberal Party sympathiser. In short, an entry-level human. "Intelligence will never hold sway in the judgement of our public opinion. False is every idea, false is every passion of this now indifferent people whose suave wisdom helps them live but has never freed them." Pier Paolo Pasolini We recently sent e-mails to some 60 journalists and columnists requesting them to be put on our mailing list or to tell us to get lost. To perform the latter, they merely had to reply to our e-mail with the subject line blank. The response was virtually nil. There can be many reasons for this:
Whatever the reasons, they are paid for what they do and we at SCATT are not. Publishing this newsletter for the love of it has finally gone the way of all loves (especially the ones existing in a vacuum): the thrill is gone. Worse though, far worse, is the realisation that, as this morning's Newspoll shows (Voters back PM on GST), the people themselves, through their wilful ignorance, continue to support legislative evil. Because they clearly don't give a shit about the world that exists beyond the boundaries of their wallets, they confine their humanity to a base level of evolution. They live in a vacuum that the Media keeps trying to fill. It will be hard to give up the fortnightly diatribes, but we've done it before. SCATT will stay on the Net and over the next few months we'll be adding THE RESIGN, JEFF! REVIEW (1994) and THE SUBS 'N' DUDS REPORT (1996) to the archives. We shall return at some future date with a different take on the events that keep occurring with sickening monotony century after century. Meanwhile, it's time to relax and have a little fun; we may even dare to stop reading the newspapers (though we'll never succumb to the chump channels). Hoo-roo, |
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