It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up bizarro world

As we draw the curtain on 2023, it’s clear government, business and NGOs are doing the opposite of what we expect.

The Albanese Labor government’s Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles. Picture: Getty

In the television sitcoms Seinfeld and Red Dwarf there is hilarious self-parody, so lacking in our political world. In various episodes the main characters meet “bizarro” versions of themselves, enter parallel universes where they meet their better selves, or learn to respond to situations against their best instincts in the hope of delivering superior outcomes.

As we draw the curtain on 2023 it is tempting to think we have entered this bizarro world. In many respects our governments are doing exactly the opposite to what we might expect would deliver the desired outcomes.

For instance, we want the US and Britain to share prized military nuclear technology through AUKUS and we want the US to defend us under the ANZUS alliance should we ever need help. But when the US asked us to send one warship to help protect crucial global shipping routes in the Red Sea, we dithered and then rejected it.

When Islamist terrorist group Hamas slaughtered at least 1200 Israeli men, women and children in the most atrocious circumstances and took an estimated 240 hos­tages, all the while firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians, we condemned it. But when Israel responded by setting out to eliminate Hamas, and the UN pushed a resolution about Palestinian suffering (not Israeli trauma) and calling for a ceasefire that would help the terrorists, Australia voted in favour – despite Britain abstaining and the US opposing it.

Bizarre. The politicians and activists demanding an Israeli ceasefire claim to be resisting an Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet the Palestinian population has grown from 1.7 million to seven million during the time Israel has been formally recognised, and the genocidal aims of Hamas are declared unambiguously in its charter – “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it … The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.”

At home, our federal government pays lip service to the need for productivity growth to underpin inflation-free prosperity. Then it re-regulated the labour market and did a deal with public sector unions to formalise an expectation that federal public servants could work from home – if active wear delivered prosperity we would be home and hosed.

Meanwhile, the Australian Energy Market Operator is charged with designing and running the national electricity grid to deliver reliable and affordable power. In its own words, AEMO helps “ensure that Australian consumers, businesses and industry have access to secure and reliable energy at all times”. Yet it presides over a renewable energy push that has jeopardised the reliability of electricity supplies while pushing prices up to unprecedented levels. And it promises to accelerate the nation down this path, seemingly placing government preferences and net-zero imperatives above those of consumers and the economy.

AEMO also collaborates with the CSIRO periodically to compile a GenCost study that is supposed to evaluate the relative costs of various electricity generation options.

But it dismisses the many tens of billions of dollars spent and being spent on additional transmission infrastructure up to 2030, even though it is adding to consumer costs now and into the foreseeable future – these projects benefit renewable energy investors but are paid for, along with a guaranteed rate of return, by consumers.

If this energy-rich nation wants affordable and reliable energy, we are going about it in the wrong way. We are doing the opposite of what is required.

The equation that underpins all economies is the one where we exchange our labour to earn cash. And in the digital age we use credit and debit cards increasingly to spend with convenience, using our cash without the need for, well, cash. We begrudgingly have become used to paying for these financial services, paying a fee to use our own cash virtually, and we have even become accustomed to paying some of our cash in ATM transactions to get physical access to our legal tender.

But as cards, phones and apps shrink cash transactions by 75 per cent or more, there is discussion in business and banking circles about the need to charge a service fee when we conduct transactions in cash. So, if we choose to avoid the additional costs of cashless financial services by paying cash, we might be forced to pay another fee. Whether we spend our cash physically or virtually, we will be forced to pay service fees for all transactions – we will always pay a service fee for the privilege of spending our own money, no matter how we spend it. Someone is winning here, and it is not consumers.

Still, not to worry. The bankers say it will not happen – yet.

Companies and organisations have taken to allowing staff to ignore the Australia Day public holiday because they may have objections to the historical occurrence it commemorates. Rather than celebrate the nation of which they are part, they are encouraged to focus on the dispossession symbolised by the date. Yet we do not hear from atheists or non-Christian devotees who disagree with the sacred provenance of Christmas and Easter, and demand they should be able to work through those traditional holiday breaks. On the contrary, they seem capable of accepting these public holidays – religious origins and all – and making of them what they choose.

We read this week that the Albanese Labor government’s Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles, is to convene a meeting with the states to formulate a national approach to immigration numbers and categories. Forgive my impertinence but surely most voters would prefer such a meeting had been held before the government allowed a record net migration of 510,000 to occur in the year to June – almost the population of Tasmania added in one year, with zero public consultation.

Is this incompetent government or cynical politicking? Given a choice, always back the stuff-up.

Politicians and activists are always eager to amplify the Bureau of Meteorology’s prognostications on climate trends and the sort of weather we can expect to face in 2050 and beyond. Perhaps we should suspend our faith in BOM’s forecasts until it gets its 24-hour predictions closer to the mark.

Its medium-term efforts are bad enough – this was supposed to be a hot and dry summer but many parts of the country have had heavy rains and some received their summer average rainfall before they got halfway through December.

I am not a fan of Julian Assange, a bloke who recklessly released intelligence material. But I do note he has spent many years in detention, officially or self-imposed. And it seems a little incongruous that our government should release 148 criminal non-citizens – at least one because he could face the death penalty in his own country – while we accept the ongoing detention of Assange and his possible prosecution in the US where his charges could attract the death penalty. Apparently we have extracted an assurance this would not be imposed, but you get the point.

Such contradictions, I suppose, should come as no surprise in a country that is one of the largest exporters of coal, gas and uranium but that is intent on not using of these resources at home. Maybe the New Zealanders should stop eating cheese and the Brazilians should give up bananas.

In all human history we have never had so many media choices or instant access to information through primary sources. Yet the Albanese government has increased funding to the public broadcasters, and some of their hosts tell us “public broadcasting has never been more important” – well maybe to them, but in reality, there has never been less rationale or necessity for Aunty’s existence.

Still, the public broadcasters did schedule Red Dwarf – Seinfeld was probably a little too mainstream and American for them. Red Dwarf gave us a parallel universe where the crew met female versions of themselves – an episode straight out of the ABC’s pronouns policy handbook.

Thanks for reading this year, have a happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year. May this nation, and the Adelaide Crows, have a bountiful 2024 with much less bizarro world and much more sense.