@ScottMorrisonMP Morrison is our statue of unempathic neoliberalism - erected by evangelical and corporate Australia to celebrate their victory over compassion, equality and secular humanism. 

Hopefully it gets pulled down like the statues of dubious heroes of oppression from an earlier age.

@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP The two-party-preferred system in 
Australia politics isn’t working for people, and it sure isn’t working for the planet.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP My collapse of faith in our democracies isn’t an accident. It’s one of the central victories of the neoliberal project, delivered through two generations of privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation, underfunding of government services (locked in by tax cuts),...
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP restricting freedom of information, targeting whistleblowers and raiding the media who report on them, delegitimising and gagging public interest advocacy, and criminalising protest.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Politics in Australia today relies hugely on the fact that most people don’t know most of what’s going on so as to get away with stuff that couldn’t be done under real scrutiny we have seen a clear example of this with the National Coronvirus Cabinet.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Decisions are made for narrow interests at the expense of the common good, and deep reforms necessary to care for people and the planet are shoved off the table.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Even worse, the extreme right capitalises on this by identifying the disenfranchisement and misdirecting public anger away from the real causes and towards some scary “other” ie trans people & “look at the boat People” mentality.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP They give people the cathartic option of kicking out, punching down, messing stuff up for the sake of it. The populist “anti-politics” frame is constructed by the right in this context to further undermine faith in democracy and lead to autocratic answers.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Our task as Australian Citizens is to cultivate a new politics, from the grassroots up, that is capable of re-engaging people because it depends on engaging them instead of pushing them away.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP It’s about seeing democracy as a muscle which we need to exercise in order to build core strength. It’s about cultivating ethics & mechanisms of participation, interdependence, interconnection, resilience,....
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP ...that actively bring the community in, inviting everyone to be part of making the decisions that shape our common future.
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Vitally, this is about more than “consultation”, or “direct democracy” referenda and popular votes on issues. It’s about creating meaningful forums for deliberation, discussing ideas deeply, with expert advice and facilitation,....
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP enabling people to come up with creative solutions which satisfy as many people as possible.
End-
@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP @threadreaderapp please unroll

More from Kirsti Miller

There is little understanding within Australian society of the requirement to and legitimacy of adopting special measures.


Government policy does not acknowledge the applicability to Indigenous people of the right to self-determination. In 1997 the cruel Howard government actively rejected self- determination as the basis of Indigenous policy.

Key reports which make recommendations for redressing Indigenous disadvantage, including the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and Bringing them home, .....

the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, have ’NOT’  been fully implemented.

Many recommendations, particularly those concerning the application of the principle of self-determination, have been actively rejected.

More from For later read

The common understanding of propaganda is that it is intended to brainwash the masses. Supposedly, people get exposed to the same message repeatedly and over time come to believe in whatever nonsense authoritarians want them to believe /1

And yet authoritarians often broadcast silly, unpersuasive propaganda.

Political scientist Haifeng Huang writes that the purpose of propaganda is not to brainwash people, but to instill fear in them /2


When people are bombarded with propaganda everywhere they look, they are reminded of the strength of the regime.

The vast amount of resources authoritarians spend to display their message in every corner of the public square is a costly demonstration of their power /3

In fact, the overt silliness of authoritarian propaganda is part of the point. Propaganda is designed to be silly so that people can instantly recognize it when they see it


Propaganda is intended to instill fear in people, not brainwash them.

The message is: You might not believe in pro-regime values or attitudes. But we will make sure you are too frightened to do anything about it.
I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.

How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.


Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.

I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.

And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.

(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)

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