Friday 29th of March 2024

where will they bloody be in May?

backpackersbackpackers

It sounded a touch desperate – Prime Minister Scott Morrison imploring backpackers to “come on down” to Australia, as the Omicron crisis escalated.

“Enjoy a holiday here”, said the one-time managing director of Tourism Australia, and “at the same time join our workforce and help us”.

The backpacker flow is slow, so there’ll be a $3 million advertising campaign (minus Lara Bingle) to lure them, and they’ll get a rebate on their visas if they come soon.

 

People were quick to see the irony – while Morrison was spruiking working holidays, travel advice in the US was updated to say “avoid travel to Australia”.

“Come on down” wasn’t Morrison’s only trite line.

Another was that “we must respect” Omicron. This accompanies his insistence we shouldn’t “fear” it, part of the pitch for a “balanced” response to the pandemic’s latest ogre.

There’s a lot of fear on the loose. Fear in the health sector about coping in the coming weeks. Families’ fear for relatives shut away in aged-care homes. Fear in some businesses that shortages of workers or customers or both could kill them.

And then there are the people feeling vulnerable to the disease itself, even if it is mild in a majority of cases.

Morrison says he and the government understand the frustration of Australians going through this disrupted summer.

Polling reflects feelings well beyond frustration. Nine’s Resolve poll, published this week, had the Coalition’s primary vote (34 per cent) falling behind Labor’s (35 per cent).

Apart from unforeseen events, the PM’s future will be a gamble on voter volatility. They’re in a very grumpy mood now. But where will they be in May?

 

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scomo weshat...

The chairman of Australia’s parliamentary intelligence committee has accused China of interfering with the country’s democracy after Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s WeChat account was allegedly blocked.

Victoria Senator James Paterson – who serves as chair of Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security – claimed on Monday that Morrison has been unable to access his account on the Chinese social network for several months.

“My view is, given that WeChat is such a closely controlled company by the Chinese Communist Party, that this amounts to foreign interference in our democracy, and in an election year no less,”Paterson said during an interview with 4BC.

“It’s particularly concerning that they’ve sought to punish the prime minister, and prevent him from posting on it, but they’ve continued to allow [Australian opposition leader] Anthony Albanese to post on it, and post his attacks on the government on it, which we now can’t respond to.”

Paterson called on all Australian politicians to boycott WeChat in response, claiming “no one should be legitimizing their censorship and their control over our public debate.”

The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that it was unable to find Morrison’s account on WeChat in China, while Albanese told 4BC that he was concerned by any “national security implications”that the alleged blocking might have.

Albanese did note, however, that Australia hasn’t “heard anything from the prime minister himself about these issues,” and said that he would speak with Morrison directly about the matter “rather than a backbench MP” – an apparent dig against Paterson.

Politicians in Australia reportedly use the Chinese social network to reach Chinese Australians, who represent a significant minority of the Australian population.

Hong Kong-born Liberal Party MP Gladys Liu announced on Monday that she would no longer use WeChat in protest over the alleged blocking, accusing China of “interference” in Australia’s democracy.

Liu’s district of Chisholm has a large Chinese-Australian population, with 19.7% of those in the area reporting Chinese ancestry – thousands more than those in the district with English and Australian ancestry.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/546909-australia-china-wechat-interference/

 

What ScoMo would say on WeChat would be the same crap he dishes out at his daily press conferences which annoy everyone...

 

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