Status Updates From Heresies

Whatever the lyrics of our funeral dirge of a national anthem are, they are not about us. The national flag doesn’t depict a nation but the colony we will forever remain until we have our own symbols.

….support for coal exports. The prime minister, the conservative Scott Morrison, went on vacation to Hawaii.

And yet, incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the fossil fuel industry, a big donor to both major parties- as if they were willing the country to its doom. While the fires were exploding in mid December, the leader of the opposition Labor party went on a tour of coal mining communities expressing his unequivocal…..

Perhaps it is just his way. Certainly, the prime minister is an unusual issue of two stock types frequently derided in broader Australian culture: the marketing man and the happy-clappy. But in fairness to both tribes, he seems to draw on the worst in both traditions and make of them something at once insincere, sinister and vaguely threatening.

There is something new in all this. Power has always lied, but now it is not simply that it is lying about a particular issue. It is that it is saying the truth is of no consequence.