Kevin Rudd’s Nerve on the Bushfires
Kevin Rudd has joined the baying hordes of Twitterazi calling for Scott Morrison to step down. Despite his record, he still believes in big government.
This image is satire.
The social media mob working with the mainstream media is bashing Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s federal response to Australia’s bushfire season at every opportunity.
Scott Morrison’s optics missteps such his brief Hawaiian holiday, his government’s tensions with their NSW counterparts, and an ill-timed political ad regarding bush fire response action they have used as repeating whacking sticks.
A political agenda underlies all of the armchair and keyboard critics of Morrison. That is exploiting the bushfires to hopefully hound him to decarbonize our economy, spent more taxpayer funds on renewable energy in the name of fighting catastrophic climate change.
Bush fire fighting and recovery in the past in Australia have always brought out the generosity and community spirit of the nation through volunteerism and donations. An effort is being made to kill that culture with socialists demanding the government to fund everything, this would be through forced taxation rather than a generous voluntary action on behalf of individuals.
This brings me to the nerve of some people whacking the federal government and Scott Morrison. They believe they know what must be done but are not actively helping in any way to relief the bushfires now.
This is no truer than former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. While another former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been humbly fighting the fires on the frontline since September, including risking his life by entering a burning house, Kevin has been busy tweeting and typing.
On Saturday Kevin on Twitter in response to the information advertisement from Morrison about his government’s bushfire response Kevin decreed that Morrison was no longer fit to be Prime Minister.
For God’s sake! On a day we have catastrophic fire conditions, in the midst of a genuine national crisis, Morrison, the marketing guy, does what? He releases a Liberal Party ad! He is no longer fit to hold the high office of prime minister. https://t.co/1OZqEZalOa
— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) January 4, 2020
Kevin’s previous tweet was to allege the NewsCorp Murdoch family-owned newspapers of covering up the seriousness of the bushfires to defend Scott Morrison. The evidence for this? One front page of the Australian newspaper. The Guardian article he linked to didn’t substantiate this allegation further.
Aaaahh…,The Murdoch Party. Three objectives: a) defend #ScottyFromMarketing at all costs; b) relegate any news that might impede the defence of #ScottyFromMarketing c) attack those who expose a) or b) above. All part of the Rupert playbook for a decade. https://t.co/FE3kMFqI6s
— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) January 3, 2020
The Guardian would now appear to be Kevin’s new favorite news outlet. It had not launched in Australia during his first stint as Prime Minister, he probably believes if it was around then he might still be Prime Minister right now.
On Monday Kevin Rudd expanded on his tweet about Scott Morrison’s fitness for the job into a fully fleshed out opinion piece for the Guardian.
Kevin begins I suppose as he should if he is going to whack a political opponent about a natural disaster with an effort at some moving poetry about the bushfire disasters this season. He suggests staying glued to the ABC for information and praises our firefighters as the new ANZACs (the latter is a fair comment).
Then he moves onto the anger and rage expressed in response to the bushfires. It’s not clear if Rudd is referring to that expressed on social media and the mainstream media, or instances of the of Scott Morrison captured by the TV crews and repeated online endless by residents and firefights in bushfire affected areas.
Kevin claims the federal government response doesn’t pass the pub test. He describes it as “evasive, tepid, tone-deaf and, above all, too late” and more an exercise in “issue management”. His evidence of this is the New South Wales Rural Fire Service chief claim he only heard the call-out of the army reserve through the media.
He cannot point to any examples of gross federal government incompetence that has caused unnecessary deaths. Only optics and imperfect communication.
Kevin Rudd believes the establishment of a National Bushfire Recovery Agency is not complete without legislation. He also calls for nationalized bush fire appeal because apparently the government centralizing charity will avoid waste and duplication.
Even though the federal government has announced financial assistance programs for firefighters and affected residents and communities Kevin believes his government’s disaster recovery allowance from 2009 is the way to go forward.
His last policy solution is for Australia to have the biggest, best national aerial fire-bombing fleet in the world. As if he is the only person to have ever suggested that.
The rest of Kevin’s article is decrying Morrison standing firm that there will no change in his government’s carbon emission reduction policies. For this policy, he blames the “high priest of climate change denial himself, Tony Abbott”.
Kevin Rudd whines about how that “partisan thug” derailed bipartisanship in 2009 over his proposed emissions trading by taking over from Malcolm Turnbull (even though Rudd himself made the political decision to delay the policy for three years).
He accuses the Abbott denialist cult who have taken over the Liberals and Nationals of “sabotaging climate negotiations abroad and a continuing pathology of poisonous fear-mongering”.
Kevin Rudd claims the renewable energy target hasn’t destroyed the economy. Even though we have some of the highest electricity prices in the world, our manufacturing industry has gone overseas and we are on the brink of a recession.
He also makes sure the Murdoch family and their newspapers are blamed for his policy and political failures calling “them a command centre for the entire mission of climate policy obstruction”.
Kevin also believes that by taking drastic action to reduce Australia’s 1.3% of global emissions, leading by example will eventually see the world leaders in emissions China and India take action.
So if Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister today he would know how to administer a national bushfire recovery operation with no waste? His record would suggest otherwise, in fact, his government caused house fires and deaths.
The Rudd Government’s Home Insulation Program aimed to insulate 1.2 million Australian houses with pink batt insulation at a cost of $1 billion in 2009. By 2010 towards the end of the first Kevin Rudd Prime Ministership it was revealed that the installation of the pink batts had killed four tradesmen and caused ninety-four house fires.
Prime Minister Rudd had ignored warnings about the safety risks of the program before the tradesman died. It cost the taxpayer another $1.5 billion to rectify the failure of the scheme including compensation for business which collapsed when the program ended.
The full mismanagement and negligence involved in the scheme were fully documented in the 2013-14 Royal Commission set up by the Abbott Government.
Kevin was known as Prime Minister for his micromanagement, filthy temper and to this day his massive ego. The pink batts fiasco was just one of many examples of his government’s waste and failures which put us into a budget deficit we are now only on the verge of getting out of.
Heaven help Australia if he was in charge of managing the government’s response to this bushfire season. After the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, his only major immediate role was to authorize the deploy Australian Defence Force personnel to the state to assist.
Last year Kevin Rudd thought he had all the answers in how to manage our relationship with China going forward. Like then, like now he is only wanting to remain relevant and attempting to feed his ego. He will never act with the decorum of an Australian statesman.
The Australian voters made their decision clear voting him out in a landslide in 2013 and don’t need any more advice or suggestions from him.
If you liked this article, you may also enjoy my commentary on the media’s attacks on veteran volunteer firefighter and former prime minister Tony Abbott here. You may also enjoy my piece on Kevin Rudd entitled ‘Shut Up Kevin Rudd!‘.
