Division but no Joy or vision from Ley’s Liberals

The PM wearing a Joy Division T-shirt is the new topic du jour about which to feign outrage, in case anyone was wondering, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.

WE ARE LIVING in troubling times.

A convicted felon has control of the nuclear codes.

There are currently 123.2 million displaced people around the world. Australia has resettled only 180,073 people who sought asylum over a period of ten years.

The number of homeless has reached a worldwide total of 300 million people, including 122,000 sleeping rough right here in Australia.

As a collective human race, we are deliberately wiping out entire populations through genocide, such as in Gaza today. We are also obliterating wildlife and plant species at rates unprecedented in human history, and burning the Earth to smithereens with our exemplary efforts at accelerating the effects of climate change.

And we haven’t even touched on the dire predictions for global food and water shortages or the consequences of AI dominance here.

These are but some of the pressing issues on which we should perhaps be collaborating to find solutions.

On which matter of most urgency, then, does Australia’s Opposition Party and its media cheer squad focus?

Well, the "issue" of the PM wearing a Joy Division T-shirt as he disembarked from a plane, five days earlier. Of course!

Unfortunately, this is not satire.

According to Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, the PM’s choice of attire represented a

"...profound failure of judgment."

Oh, and:

"...[the T-shirt] is an insult to all, and it fails the basic tests of leadership. [The PM] should apologise immediately and explain why he thought this was acceptable."

Regrettably, it did not even end there.

Yesterday, Ley chose the Parliament chamber to give a full speech (and also issued a transcript) on the topic, in which she opined:

Australians expect their Prime Minister to show judgement, respect and leadership. Instead, we have got the opposite...

...The Prime Minister stepped off the plane proudly wearing a T-shirt with the name of a band, Joy Division, whose origins are steeped in antisemitism.

There was more, but you get the gist.

Interestingly, given the level of importance ascribed to the T-shirt in question, one can only surmise as to why it took Ley five whole days to bring it up.

Could it be because Ley, like her predecessor Peter Dutton, has no alternative policy platform to discuss? Is it this complete void where contemplation and strategy should be that is the reason Ley repeatedly abuses her privileged parliamentary platform to seize on non-issues like T-shirt Gate (or is that Joy Divisionville)?

Absence of thought aside, this non-issue has now been catapulted to the top of the national agenda with the help of the ever-willing Club Media cheer squad.

It was probably completely coincidental that Ley's speech followed a deep dive into the topic of T-shirt choices and music preferences, just a day earlier, by one of the leading journalistic voices of our time, Sky News’ Sharri Markson, who concluded her Joy Divisionville investigation by also taking umbrage with Albo's rock band/T-shirt preferences.

For the benefit of Sky’s audience, Markson explained the origins of the band's name by speaking very slowly, pausing frequently and avoiding big words — no doubt upholding standards set in News Corp editorial meetings:

"Now the band [pause]Joy Division [pause] took its name from a wing [pause] of a Nazi concentration [four syllables!] camp [pause] where women were sex slaves ... [extra-long pause for effect after use of the word sex]."

'Libspill': Hastie and other anti-liberal Antics

Managing editor Michelle Pini takes a look at the Liberal Party's Far-Right takeover from within, simmering beneath the "civilised broad church" facade.

Yes, the party Ley leads (for now) and for which Markson cheerleads is still in the throes of an internal war over climate change, energy policy, immigration, allowing women in the party at all and possibly everything upon which they may have once agreed.

And yes, the Liberals remain in political oblivion around Australia, at both federal and state levels (apart from the three inexplicable state/territory exceptions of Tassie, NT and QLD).

But according to the powers that keep the coal-fired, electric war drums beating over culture, Joy Division, a 1970s post-punk band that used Holocaust imagery to evoke darkness and despair, and to shock and provoke reaction – as post-punk bands are prone to do – is “antisemitic” and any reference to it is simply trauma-inducing.

So, was there at least agreement on this issue among Liberal Party MPs? Nup.

Forget vision, there is no doubt that the Coalition is completely devoid of ideas and currently only focused on its own internal squabbles, seemingly until further notice. There is also a lot wrong with our establishment media and the minutiae it chooses to elevate while simultaneously ignoring anything of substance. This unfortunate state of affairs is well documented on IA.

But the assinine depths to which the Federal Opposition and its Murdoch-led fan club are dragging the political discourse continue to shock this publication more than Joy Division could ever have managed.

Given the logic detailed above, we can no doubt expect Ley to front up in a Midnight Oil T-shirt soon. After all, that Aussie band sang about mining and must therefore agree with the Coalition's anti-Net Zero, down-with-renewables, gas-led recovery "policy".