Well, lo and behold. The vacancy in State Parliament caused by Health minister Jenny Mikakos’ resignation is to be filled, drumroll please, by an indigenous female!
The virtue signalling and pandering is obvious, as well as the clear reverse sexism and racism of the decision. Anyway, congrats to the candidate who’s now got a cushy job for life! (Just like all the other overpaid state govt. appointed Judges, Magistrates, ‘Commissioners’ etc etc).
(Can I just take a moment here to point out that while its perfectly acceptable to shower positions and benefits upon people who identify as indigenous, it is most certainly not permitted, in any way, to ask how much indigenous heritage they have. That would be racist. Thank you.)
But more interestingly, is the way this gesture will be completely misunderstood by Dan Andrew’s friends and enemies.
To his friends (all Fairfax and ABC/SBS journalists and commenters and most Fairfax subscribers) naturally this is a great triumph, as the only people that should be permitted to be in parliament are females, preferably non anglo ones. Nothing sexist or racist about that!
To his enemies (Herald Sun and their commentators etc), they’ll all start spouting off about ‘Socialist Dan’.
But in fact; they are both wrong;; Dan Andrews is a massive fraud. The last thing he is is a ‘socialist’ – he is well to the right of Jeff Kennett, and has privatized things Kennett would never have touched- the port, the land titles office (goodbye land security!), set up PEXA as a (current) monopoly settlement provider.
You are now forced to buy from a private provider for govt services- (ie buying/selling land or importing anything); African level corruption now present in Australia for the first time. The recent hospital quarantine disaster, where, naturally the hopeless Labor govt ‘outsourced’ it to a donor ‘mate’ private contractor (also, interestingly, said to be ‘indigenous owned’), shows just how obsessed they are with private providers over ever doing something properly in house.
Also the ludicrous spin that Dan Andrews is a ‘building Premier’ when his ‘developments’ consist of dodgy private operators like Transurban being invited to build massive projects (which they’ll own and charge tolls for) while their ownership of citylink is extended is also nonsense. And the fact of course that really he (ran) a population ponzi, where the 50k of stamp duty he grabbed off new immigrants is lucky to result in 10k each of new infrastructure actually being built. On a per capita basis, he is, in fact, dramatically underinvesting in new infrastructure.
But both sides will continue to delude themselves based on Dan’s clever snow job indigenous-female-ABC-approved-identity virtue signalling, and continue to miss the true nature of his government: a little club (that you can’t join, by the way); who privatize everything to their mates for personal benefit while walking around with a trembling lip pretending to be ‘progressive’.
But then again, the media aren’t really interested in writing about actual real policies in the real world to begin with; just a load of virtue signalling crap and being emotive and focusing on personalities, trivia and nonsense.