The Government’s strategy to win the unwinnable election was laid out plainly this week, when Nine-Fairfax splashed a puff piece, saying ‘Morrison ready to fight dirty’.
Just like Morrison was content to cheat and smear to get parachuted into his seat over Michael Towke, who beat him in the 2007 Cook preselection by the slim margin of 88 votes to 6, so will he conduct the next election.
Barnaby Joyce expressed the strategy well, in a since deleted tweet this week:
‘There is no umpire in the political debate. There’s no rule book. What you get away with wins.’
Bullying, lying, cheating, smearing — and that’s just what Barnaby did before the last New England by-election, as you would have read here on IA. What an example for the nation — and his children.
As the late Bob Ellis, one of this country’s most lauded journalists, speechwriters, writers, playwrights and auteurs wrote in these pages, just a few years ago, the Right love to win by cheating. And so they do. And do usually win.
And with a compliant rightwing mainstream media behind them – more so now Fairfax has been swallowed by Nine – the Right have a chance of deluding the populace into voting against their own interests again. Such is our lot.
As for Ellis, he suffered some smears from cowardly and envious lesser writers both before and, particularly, after his demise, but we never lost faith in the great man. Independent Australia stuck with Ellis through his last years, when others tried to destroy him. He wrote some of his most brilliant work for us.
May he still be railing against the lying polls and unscrupulous conservatives, wherever he now may be.
Read Bob Ellis’ first commissioned Independent Australia article, from May 2012, just before that most cheating-est of all Federal elections, the 2013 one, below.
This is only half the story! The unabridged version of this editorial was originally published as part of the Independent Australia weekly newsletter and is also available to subscribers online in the members only area.
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You can follow managing editor Dave Donovan on Twitter @davrosz. Follow Independent Australia on Twitter at @independentaus and on Facebook HERE.
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You can follow managing editor Dave Donovan on Twitter @davrosz. Follow Independent Australia on Twitter at @independentaus and on Facebook HERE.
