the troubadour

Great advertising for that product. Trust Trump is on a retainer. Hardly the man to allow a business opportunity to slip away surely? Time to open up Melbourne? Not quite. Time returning travellers could be gradually increased.
'Opening up' should be a distant point. Melbourne deserves a breather from population growth excess of the preceding years.

NJJ

Now his chief of staff (not sure correct term) has quit after it was found out that after denying it at the hotel quarantine enquiry, phone records on the day the decision was made to use private guards show that he did call the chief of police.

Interesting that even though he doesn't remember calling the chief of police, he does remember that he never talked to the chief of police at all about using private securty guards. Selective memory right there.

As for Andrews it seems that he doesn't have a Covid plan other than his 'road map' which set unrealistic targets of not easing restrictions until we get under 5 new cases a day in Melbourne. That doesn't look like happening anytime soon, so for want of any better plan he just keeps the stage 4 lockdown going. The new health minister early on after he was put in was spruiking a new "whizz bang" contact tracing system. However I have seen/heard him being asked about it a couple of times since, and he just does that politician speak thing of evading the question.

Beoz

The truth is the Chairman is going for elimination. Somehow the concept of juggling COVID without destroying everything else is unthinkable for this guy.

We saw his ambition in wave 1. It failed. He doesn't learn.

the troubadour

Not quite. Dan Andrews, please lets get over the Murdoch terminology, has stated clearly, elimination may indeed not be viable. .He certainly has learnt. But best remembered Victoria is unlike elsewhere in Australia, both in fatalities and virus numbers.

abner

Surely repeated memory failure on the part of a senior politician or a senior bureaucrat, in the face of questioning from "counsel assisting" a Royal Commission or an ICAC-like body, and in particular in the face of compromising evidence, should be decisively career-ending. At least Eccles did the decent thing in the end, and resigned.

Now on to Gladys Berejiklian. The legal argument in her defence is apparently that she was never "intimate" with Daryl even when they were bumping uglies, and even though he was trafficking alleged access to her (office) to his mates. But hey presto, Gladys and Daryl never 'commingled' their bank accounts, therefore they were never 'intimate' in ICAC legal terms.

Only in NSW, but hey, whatever.

However, the truly excrutiating part of Gladys' testimony to ICAC was not her denial of "intimacy" with Daryl.. Instead, it was her absolutely astounding and relentlessly repeated loss of memory, when faced with questions about her knowledge of Daryl's financial situation, and his endless schemes to improve upon it, and her potential intersection with those schemes as Premier.

Truly love made her blind (and more conveniently, deaf and forgetful), even though ICAC's counsel assisting did his best to jog her memory with actual recordings of the calls...

bcworld

I like Gladys. The problem for her is she doesn't come from the foaming at the mouth end of the spectrum that is the 'broad church' that is the Liberal party. So the Murdochracy will always be out to get her. They'll be loving this.

Beoz

Where did Glad say she wasn't "intimate" with Daz? That's exactly what she admitted in the hearing.

Either way, Gladys is a goner. With ICAC, if you are a premier, and you forget a detail, its game over. Then there's today where they put big Daz on the stand. There will be some bit of contradictory evidence against what Gladys has said for sure. ICAC is very good at holding back some really big evidence.

So much for democracy. If you put Gladys as the Premier to the people she would win in a landslide. Very very popular, very smart, an outstanding leader, very highly respected and she's lead the state which has got Australia this far through the pandemic which could have been a lot worse. Even if her right hand men are praising her now, give them the slightest sniff and ambition will see her done and dusted.

Bad for NSW, bad for Australia.

Amazulu

The 'Murdochracy' only exists in the minds of the left, but let's imagine that it does exist - what's the agenda then of The Guardian, CNN, Fairfax media and other organisations of their ilk?

abner

So there's something you don't believe actually exists, but you want us to imagine it does, and then you want us to imagine what, on top of that...?
You're on some good drugs, mate. Please share.

Amazulu

I was asking the poster to imagine (think) about a scenario that doesn't exist but to use his nogin to think about it if it did. What's wrong with that Turbo?

If you can't think for yourself then that's your issue

abner

So you're attempting to say that there's no common political agenda across the Murdoch press empire, while implicitly speculating that there must be a common opposing one across a variety of other news outlets that don't share common ownership??

Or were you "imagining" something else??

Amazulu

No I'm not saying that. Every media outlet has a political agenda - none are unbiased (including state-owned outfits like the BBC, ABC etc). I'm saying that the Murdoch organisation does not have the influence that the left would have us believe. But in a scenario where they did have real influence, it would be perfectly true that media outlets on the other side of the political spectrum - The Guardian, CNN etc - would also have a strong influence. What would that influence be?

Every time I read some shite about the agenda of the Murdoch empire, I think, when did people stop thinking for themselves? If some asshole is going to base what they do, how they vote, what they decide after reading something in The Australian, The Sun, Guardian or watching something on Facebook, CNN, BBC or Foxnews then they really are an asshole

Read stuff from every viewpoint, look at the world around you, think for yourself and draw your own conclusions and you'll be sweet

abner

So, the 'Murdochracy' *doesn't* only exist in the minds of the left, then...contrary to what you held out earlier.

You're just speculating that it doesn't have as much political influence as its media market share would suggest. Even in the US, where it's pretty much the Trump Channel (sorry, Fox and Friends).

Amazulu

Exactly

Murdoch didn't cause Brexit, Thatcher or Trump - that's just in the minds of people who didn't get what they wanted and need a scapegoat

abner

Not "exactly" your original attempt at a point, however, to put it mildly...