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Peter Broelman

Cathy Wilcox

Cartoons of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

Peter Broelmann

Rod Emmerson

Matt Golding

Prime Minister Scott Morrison appears to view the very real danger that Australia is heading towards political violence from extremist mobs as all just part of the game to keep him in power

IMAGES: ABC NEWS & Herald Sun

The Monthly, 18 November 2021:

 Scott Morrison is, if nothing else, painfully predictable. As many (including myself) anticipated on Tuesday, the prime minister’s belated condemnation of the threatening mob outside the Victorian Parliament was always going to come with a “but” – a dog whistle to the protesters, an endorsement of their cause, a swipe at overbearing state governments. Today, following the disturbing news that a right-wing extremist had been charged over threats to kill the Victorian premier, and reports that neo-Nazis, seeking to radicalise other protesters, had infiltrated rallies against the state’s pandemic bill (not to mention anti-vaxxers’ rape and death threats forcing the shutdown of the WA premier’s office), Morrison did exactly as expected.

Asked this morning for his response to the violence being incited against politicians, the PM said that threats and intimidation had no place in Australia. But after a few cursory sentences about “civil society” and “respect” (just enough for many media outlets to report it as a rebuke), Morrison pivoted to justification and understanding. “There are many people who are feeling frustrated,” he said, arguing that it was time for governments to stop “telling Australians what to do”. “Australians have done an amazing job when it comes to leading us through this pandemic, but now it’s time for governments to step back. And for Australians to take their lives back,” he added ominously.

Morrison’s sympathy for the “frustrated” protesters has more than a minor whiff of Donald Trump’s “very fine people” comments after the deadly Charlottesville riots, not to mention the “I know how you feel” video during the also-deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. While some media outlets declared that Morrison had “hit out” at the protesters, there’s little doubt that, as with Trump’s comments, the dog whistle was louder than the denunciation.

Eighty per cent of the PM’s answer, in fact, was focused on the protestors’ justified frustrations and state government overreach, with an added pushback against mandates and restrictions for the unvaccinated (policies to which, as Niki Savva notes, he owes the impressive vaccination rates he loves to crow about). People should be able to get a coffee in Brisbane, added Morrison, regardless of whether they’re vaccinated – a swipe at the Queensland government’s newly announced restrictions. (The state government has since labelled Morrison’s comments a “reckless” undermining of its vaccination efforts.) There’s little doubt that Morrison is trying to appease some of his own senators, who are still vowing to withhold their votes unless he pushes back against mandates. But he’s also indulging the “frustrated” protesters, with little concern for the dangerous levels of misinformation flying about......

Guy knows that the Victorian government needs some sort of bill to be able to manage the pandemic – which is very much ongoing – beyond December, and as supporting crossbencher MP Fiona Patten noted on RN Breakfast, the alternative (state of emergency legislation) “is far more draconian than the legislation we were trying to put through”. But once again, the facts don’t really matter to the PM – all that matters is that the very “frustrated” people know he’s in their corner, even if it means encouraging extremists and continuing to confuse those they are seeking to influence.

This is all getting very real and very dangerous, and many fear that we are on a dark path to the kinds of political violence increasingly being seen in the US and the UK. But to Scott Morrison, it is just another game.

Read the full article here.

IMAGE: news.com.au

 

You obviously support this, otherwise you'd be calling on the police to arrest her. pic.twitter.com/oJYOTw1kBy

— Guildford (yes him) 😕🙁😐 (@Guildford) November 16, 2021

Not just Vic Premier being threatened - seems members of his government are possibly being targeted too pic.twitter.com/PJbet14Q9e

— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) November 17, 2021

 

7 News, 17 November 2021:

WA Premier Mark McGowan’s electoral office has been closed due to ongoing security risks.

In a doorstop interview on Wednesday, McGowan revealed that his Rockingham office had been the target of death threats and bomb threats ever since the state government announced mandatory vaccination for much of the state’s workforce.

A week after an armoured tank rolled up outside his electoral office, McGowan has confirmed that his staffers had even been subjected to rape threats.

Australia's violent far-right racism gets read into the parliamentary record in February 2021

 Labor MP for Scullin Andrew Giles in Australian Parliament, House of Representatives, Hansard, Statements by Members, 24 February 2021:

Mr GILES (Scullin) (13:50): A Neo-Nazi assaulting a woman with a homemade flamethrower—this isn't 1930s fascist Europe; this is happening in Australia in 2021. At a Gosnells shopping centre, near Perth, a man with a Nazi symbol on his forehead used a flamethrower to assault an innocent mother who was shopping with her daughter. The WA police said that, after blasting flames at them, the perpetrator said he was doing this because they were Indigenous. This attack is horrific. I hope that the mother and the daughter are doing okay and that they are getting all the support that they need and deserve.

Neo-Nazis are emerging as one of Australia's biggest security threats. ASIO's director-general, Mike Burgess, has said that cells of right-wing extremists are regularly gathering in Australia to salute the Nazi flag and disperse their hateful ideology. Yet this government's response to the threat has been inadequate, to say the very least. This rise of right-wing extremism, this rise of racism—these things are not happening in a vacuum. Not enough is being done to tackle racism and stamp out right-wing extremism. So I once more call on the Morrison government to finally establish a national antiracism strategy with a zero-tolerance approach to racism at its core.

Police identity kit photo of the alleged assailant:

Yet another reason why the Warringah electorate should forcibly retire Tony Abbott at the 2019 federal election

It is an open secret that sacked former prime minister and Liberal MP for Warringah Tony Abbott would not be averse to taking over leadership of the Liberal Party again if it finds itself on the Opposition benches after the May 2019 federal election.

However, it is well to remember that his judgement is flawed and his influence, if it exists at all, is rarely positive.

Take his interaction with Ukraine.......

RT.com, 22 March 2016:

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has joined the list of ex-politicians invited by President Petro Poroshenko to advise him on how to rule Ukraine as a member of the so-called ‘international advisory council'.

Abbott unexpectedly popped up in the Ukrainian capital on Monday.

Comprised mostly of foreigners, the Kiev-based council was officially established last December. Previously called the International Advisory Council on Reforms, it aims to “facilitate the implementation of reforms in Ukraine on the basis of the best international experience.”

While still in office, the ex-PM had the third-lowest career-low approval rating of 24%, according to a February 2015 Newspoll. After losing Liberal leadership challenge back home last September and becoming vacant for political endeavors, Abbott was quickly invited to visit Ukraine.

Abbott and Poroshenko certainly have one thing in common – their dislike of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The former Australian leader said he would “shirtfront” the Russian head of state on the sidelines of 2014 G20 summit over the MH17 tragedy.

According to Poroshenko, Abbott was one of the most popular foreign politicians in Ukraine back in 2014. Abbott even joked about it saying that the “shirt-front must have translated well.” However, Abbott’s threat never materialized and Putin ended up cuddling a koala at the conference.

ABC News, 23 March 2016:

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has stepped up his support for Ukraine, joining a meeting of international figures headed by the country's president, Petro Poroshenko.

Mr Abbott has travelled to Kiev as part of a Ukrainian-led "international advisory council", which includes the former prime ministers of Slovakia and Lithuania.

"It is an honour to be in Kiev, Ukraine as a member of President Poroshenko's International Advisory Council," Mr Abbott said in a Facebook post.

"Also great to see the development of Kiev since I was last here 30 years ago."

The aim of the council is to "help build a strong and prosperous Ukraine", according to a statement on the Ukrainian President's website.

"Each of you were an author of economic or democratic miracle in your countries. You are true friends of Ukraine," the statement said.

"That's why I would like to unite our efforts in order to achieve the results and bring positive things to Ukraine.

"I am sure that this Council will help us outlive the period of dramatic events and Ukraine will become stronger."

The following years......

Times of Israel, 14 October 2017:

An activist against fascism who sued a Ukrainian municipality for naming a street for a Nazi SS officer has come under a campaign of intimidation, he said.

Mikhail Voroniak, a Red Army veteran, in summer sued the western municipality of Kalush near Lviv for deciding to name a street for Dmytro Paliiv, a commander of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician.

Voroniak told the Russian news site Primechaniya that he has come under a “aggressive pressures and threats of murder” since he sued. A local court last month dismissed his motion against the honor to Paliiv but Voroniak appealed to the Lviv Administrative Court of Appeals, which was scheduled to review the appeal last week.....

The Guardian, 2 March 2018:

Neo-Nazi groups involved in the fighting in Ukraine are actively seeking to recruit British far-right activists, a leading anti-fascist watchdog has warned.

At least two Britons are thought to have travelled to the war-torn eastern European country in recent months after encouragement by people linked to the Azov battalion, a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia, according to Hope Not Hate.

The warning comes only four days after the outgoing head of UK counter-terrorism policing, Mark Rowley, revealed that four far-right terror plots had been foiled in 2017 and extreme right groups were seeking to build international networks.

According to Hope Not Hate, a group named the Misanthropic Division, which is linked to the Azov battalion, is working with representatives of UK-based far-right groups, including the proscribed terror organisation National Action and a London-based Polish ultra-nationalist group, to recruit activists to travel to Ukraine.

Reuters, 20 March 2018:

As Ukraine’s struggle against Russia and its proxies continues, Kiev must also contend with a growing problem behind the front lines: far-right vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and even violence to advance their agendas, and who often do so with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies….

A January 28 demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order,” illustrates this threat. While the group’s Kiev launch was peaceful, National Militia members in balaclavas stormed a city council meeting in the central Ukrainian town of Cherkasy the following day, skirmishing with deputies and forcing them to pass a new budget. 

Many of the National Militia's members come from the Azov movement, one of the 30-odd privately-funded “volunteer battalions” that, in the early days of the war, helped the regular army to defend Ukrainian territory against Russia's separatist proxies. 

Although Azov uses Nazi-era symbolism and recruits neo-Nazis into its ranks, a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit condition of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing militias such as Azov and Right Sector stepped into the breach, fending off the Russian-backed separatists while Ukraine’s regular military regrouped. Though, as a result, many Ukrainians continue to regard the militias with gratitude and admiration, the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology that will endanger Ukraine in the long term. Since the Crimean crisis, the militias have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces, but some have resisted full integration: Azov, for example, runs its own children’s training camp, and the careers section instructs recruits who wish to transfer to Azov from a regular military unit.

A set of postage stamps named "Master Sergeants of SS Galician Rifle Division" was printed for the 75th anniversary of the division which took place in April 2018.

#Ukraine post office celebrates Waffen SS nazis.pic.twitter.com/p0HkS2dSZn

— Alex Bukovsky (@BungeeWedgie) January 5, 2019