Does PM Morrison live in a Bubble of Delusions?

Cruelty is perceived to be an outcome of current government cultures. Politicians tell obvious lies, utter meaningless mantras and avoid addressing reality.  Are the governments intrinsically malevolent?  or are they imbalanced between a silent majority and warlike cabals?

Australia, America and Britain have inherited leaders whose communication styles confuse issues and bewilder even allies.

The effects of narcissism and groupthink at corporate level are well-known and widely so.  All three leaders have been profiled, but most extensively, because he has been prominent for so long, Donald Trump.  Narcissism grows in childhood and President Trump has said his head is still 7 years old.  

The most cruel consequences of bad language and actions are beyond the comprehension of a young child.  That is no excuse:  it is the responsibility of friends and peers to protect the child and others at times of crisis, not appease them, through what is called the "rule of law".

PM Morrison is parodied because of the "bubble" avoidance he uses.  Journalists say he has unified the Liberal Party Room but the "infrastructure stimulus" case study shows dysfunctional capriciousness;  while the internecine tension between Libs and Nats is exceptionally high.  The PM's ethical outcomes would not be accepted by the "average person in the street", a Sunday congregation or a BBQ party crowd.

An eminent advocate of personal and corporate "growth" has published in these terms: 

• Trump’s knowledge and understanding remain shallow because he resists reflection and introspection and struggles mightily to focus. 
• His need for instant gratification prevents him from considering the longer-term consequences of his actions. Instead, he simply reacts in the moment. This helps to explain why he moves into overdrive whenever he feels attacked. 
• The negative qualities we ascribe to others are often those we find it most intolerable to see in ourselves. Throughout his adult life, Trump has viewed the world as a dark, dangerous place teeming with enemies out to get him. In the face of potential impeachment, this fear has escalated exponentially. 
• The threat he imagines is no longer just to his fragile sense of self but, realistically, to his future as president. Any capacity Trump ever had to think clearly or calmly has evaporated. Instead, he’s devolved into anger, blame, aggression and sadistic attacks.

Scott Morrison - In Search of The Watchman

• Some attribute Morrison's new steely persona to a desire to advance his career, bleeding-heart moderates being little in demand in Tony Abbott's inner circle. "I think there are different parts to Scott," says a senior Liberal. "One is a genuine, nice guy, a good family man with good instincts. And then there's another part, which is pure ambition."
• He has the chipper air of a man on a mission, the clear eyes and smooth visage of one who sleeps soundly at night. "What you have to do in this portfolio is just be very comfortable in your own skin about the decisions you're taking and why you are taking them," he says. "And I am."
• Morrison's critics say no one has done more to harden Australian hearts to the plight of people who risk their lives trying to reach these shores in leaky, overcrowded boats. The Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher has called him "the greatest grub in the federal parliament", accusing him of scoring political points by deliberately inflaming racism and resentment. A former Liberal leader, John Hewson, has described some of his remarks about asylum seekers as "insensitive, lacking appropriate compassion, even inhumane".
• A devout Christian who worships at Shirelive, an American-style Pentecostal church in his constituency, he doesn't claim that his religion makes him a better politician - only that it inspires him to be a good person. "From my faith, I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness," he said in his first speech in the House of Representatives in 2008.
• Queensland infectious-diseases physician Trent Yarwood responded with an open letter accusing Morrison of stoking anxieties about asylum seekers. Yarwood said the shadow minister had vastly exaggerated the risk of transmission of the diseases, most of which were endemic in Australia anyway. "It was a crass piece of political opportunism," the doctor wrote.  Morrison says he wasn't caremongering. "I simply said that people turned up who had these conditions," he protests. "I made no statement about the broader impact or risk." On this occasion, his memory is faulty: he in fact warned explicitly of the possibility of "an outbreak on Christmas Island or the transfer of these diseases to the mainland". But, in any case, he argues that he was merely acknowledging a reality. "I mean, let's have all the facts on the table."
• ... as a father himself, he will never understand how people can take children on such perilous voyages. "I'm not judging," he says. "I just don't understand."
• News stories blamed his early exit on a falling-out with Fran Bailey, then the federal tourism minister in the Howard government. "I think now is probably quite a good time to say it was not a personal clash between Scott and me," says Bailey, who has since retired from politics. By her account, Morrison lost the confidence of the statutory authority's nine-member board. "They were unanimous in thinking they needed someone else to fill that role," she says. "It was deemed to be better that someone replace Scott who actually worked co-operatively with the board and the minister."
• One afternoon, I ask Morrison if he prays for asylum seekers. "Of course I do," he says. "I think that's part of any Christian's practice." A pause. "I'm not saying I do it every day. I'm not saying I do it every month." But occasionally, yes, he includes them in his prayers.

Cadzow and Kelly pointed to Morrison's ostentatious love of Cronulla, the place and football team.  He has been a consistent advocate of completing the F6 freeway which would remove trucks from his suburbs' streets.  Yet he has not been heard to utter even a sigh as Berejiklian and Baird progressively made truck traffic worse, indefinitely, from both north and south.  The outcome could not have been worse for Morrison's constituents.

There are 42 blocks of 4 hours in each week.  To walk in Jesus's footprints is not a four-hour journey, it is an endless series of 24.  That we learn from the angels who care for spina bifida kids, and doctors, nurses, ambos and firies everywhere;  from Chifley, Curtin and Menzies; from Tutu and Martin Luther King.  

The inspiration is all around us so why is the core of our nation so soul-less?

The Canberra Times journalist Jack Waterford has been at the forefront of systemic truth Vs corruption discussions since the 1970s, when I came in touch when helping Professor Peter Wilenski with the NSW FOI Bill.

Here are some quotes of relevance to the Bubble context:

How can one forget the Herculean efforts, from day one of the Abbott government, of Mathias Cormann to water down legislation intended to avoid conflict of interest in the provision of financial advice? 

It was this – done consciously to advantage big banks and insurance companies - which helped lay the gound for the regular reports from the Hayne Royal Commission about fraud, corruption and theft by some of the major institutions of the land.

Which government defanged the regulators? Which governments resisted, at least until it faced a revolt from within own ranks, the idea of any inquiry into the actions of banks and their super funds and insurance arms. The big three ministerial regulators of the economy, and the small fry, such as Kelly O’Dwyer insisted that there were no problems, and that, if there were, the “tough cops on the block” would catch them. Ministers have now mostly apologised for their resistance to the idea of a royal commission; but not for being the ones who made possible what happened. (https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cronyism-is-a-weeping-sore-in-australian-government-20180914-p503r5.html)

(Terry) Moran commented on declining trust in our institutions. Seventy per cent of Australians do not think their elected members are serving their interests. Three quarters of the population think (rightly) that our politics is fixated on short-term gains rather than long-term challenges. General public support for the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s has dissipated.  “Yet we are in aggregate prosperous and something of a national economic success story. Why then are so many Australians grumpy?” Moran asked.

... the idea of government as regular, principled, ethical and fair to all comers. On paper, modern public administration – and bulwarks of it such as the Financial Management Act – are based on notions of open and transparent dealings with all comers, probity, honesty and integrity. It is not always the fault of bureaucrats, but increasingly, actual administration seems to involve a plethora of “one-off” deals with single businesses, and a significant decline in accountability. 

There is rhetoric about open government and about the transparency of decision-making. Against this comes evidence of paranoia about government secrecy and the use of commercial-in-confidence and other mechanisms to hide details of an ever-larger interface between government and business.

Someone making a fuss about Sydney transport planning is Robert Gibbons, a former executive director of planning in the NSW transport department and former general manager of Newcastle city council.  

We need a serious attack on political cronyism and on the power of insiders and special interests in government. 

The cronyism he says is rampant in infrastructure development is accentuated by mixed Commonwealth-state responsibilities, the provision of enormous sums – in the case of Metro plans $100 million – for private sector consultancies to prepare “business cases” in arrears for projects already decided upon without any real studies.

“Australia, NSW and Sydney have a new style of governance that dumps the Conservatives’ pride in sound financial management and creates a veneer of populist politics to conceal lobbyists’ demands and favours – a cancer that is metastasising through all organs of state,” he says.

“It uses secrecy, not releasing 'Cabinet' documents of technical character and redacting 100 per cent of key data in so-called 'business cases'. They threaten opponents and even insiders who dare to ask ‘why?’… They appoint their acolytes to all advisory posts and filter-out extraneous criticisms and opinions … They similarly devalue outsiders’ intellectual property and steal it without visible moral qualms.

Gibbons has a grievance. He says that successive NSW governments have cherrypicked and plagiarised from advice he has given them. His case for compensation as well as criticisms of waste and poor planning in specific Sydney infrastructure projects can be seen on the rollicking website www.Sydneyscumbagpolitics.com (now sydneyimprovementpolitics.com)

“Royal Commissions are much maligned but there is a lot to be said for the daily reporting of expert views, the open discussion of options and alternatives, and the persuasive influence of leaders, compared with what we have seen since the 1960s. .... Sydney is well overdue for an open, professional and totally consultative approach to urban design, architectural quality, environmental protection, and infrastructure systems improvements.”

That might be a good thing in itself, but students of sound public administration might also be fascinated by such an inquiry for the light it could shed on some of the new informal networks of politicians, bureaucrats and insider business folk, some with mixed responsibilities. (https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/can-thodey-or-shorten-stop-bleeding-in-the-public-service-20190329-p518sq.html)

Professor Matt A Crenson of Johns Hopkins has reviewed much of the Australian infrastructure situation and, of course, all responsibility is the site's author's:

• There's been much talk of an infrastructure program before and during the Trump administration, but nothing substantive has emerged -- possibly because it's the one program that has virtually universal support.  If he embraced it, Trump would do so with the support of Democrats, and they would be able to take credit along with him.  

• Morrison has an infrastructure program on which he's taken some steps but it appears that no one would want to take credit for it. 

Codependency is a broad term for where a person is subjugated by another/s so that he or she draws approval from, and avoids punishment by, the dominator/s, through submissive attitudes.

That is a progressive process for young brains which don't fully form until we are in our 20s.  Trump's comment, that he is the same as when he was seven years old, is literally possible.  Morrison's retreat into his "egosphere spaceship" or bubble could have similar origins.