Niccolo Machiavelli and Anthony Albanese… Machiavelli advises the ruler to become “a great liar and deceiver”.
“The election decimated the former Liberal-Nationals Coalition, where the leadership of both parties is so weak they will no longer play a convincing role as the opposition. Albo and his frontbench will laugh them out of question time,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.
If the federal cabinet ministers were animals, Murray Watt would be Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cats – both of them.
He had reason to smile when he was trade minister and figuratively brought home the Chinese bacon – booze and lobsters.
But like Lewis Carroll’s peculiar pussies, only Murray knew the joke when he pridefully announced the extension of Woodside’s NorthWest Shelf gas project until 2070.
In doing so, he committed a crime against humanity. His decision will unleash more than four billion tonnes of climate pollution. This is the equivalent of a decade of Australia’s current emissions. It contributes substantially to our descendants’ struggle with the hellfire of climate change.
It was not Murray Watt’s decision alone. It would not have occurred had Prime Minister Anthony Albanese not backed it to the hilt. In our system of government, the PM is the equivalent of the titleholder in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, which Albo has apparently read, marked and followed.
Niccolo also used animals to illustrate his lessons in political chicanery. He likened the leader’s best qualities among the “beasts” to be those of the lion for force and the fox for deception.
Murray was simply his new minister for the environment and water after the PM decided he’d tortured Tanya Plibersek enough and opened her gate to social services. The Chestnut Pony, albeit with a few grey hairs, gave a whinny of relief and trotted into her big, green paddock.
Moreover, the decision engaged the whole cabinet, not least the lumbering bullock, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles; the Queensland greyhound, Jim Chalmers, and the silky Nanny Goat, Penny Wong. And above them all, softly snarling, was Canis lupus italicus, Albo himself, keeping them in line.
Machiavelli advises the ruler to become “a great liar and deceiver”. Men are so easy to deceive that the ruler won’t have an issue with lying to others, he says. “Men are wicked, and never keep their words, therefore the ruler doesn’t have to keep his. He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.”
That’s Albo to a “T”. This is the man who crowed when first elected to The Lodge that Aboriginal advancement was his first priority, then he turned it into the policy that dare not speak its name. And now he’s ordered his Cheshire Cat to announce the certain destruction of the irreplaceable Aboriginal rock art treasures by Woodside’s pollution.
He chose not to announce it before the election to avoid the protest that might well have saved the Greens’ seats that he so desperately wanted to win.
Indeed, he did it so effectively that they are left with a lone seat in the House of Representatives where Elizabeth Watson-Brown is overwhelmed by Albo’s 94 Labor-seat majority. Instead, he waited until the eve of Reconciliation Week to drop the bombshell on the First Nations’ hopes and dreams.
But here’s the rub: the election decimated the former Liberal-Nationals Coalition, where the leadership of both parties is so weak they will no longer play a convincing role as the opposition.
Albo and his frontbench will laugh them out of question time. And since politics abhors a vacuum, the real opposition will arise from a mix of Labor’s right and left – led by the lumbering bullock with AUKUS branded on his rump. That’s when Albo will re-read Niccolo and play the lion.
Good luck with that.
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