Yet more Vic Lib drama, WA premier’s wasted energy, and the missing robodebt recommendation

The court of McArthur Anyone whose writing relies on a healthily absurd political scene can only be struck dumb by gratitude for the Victorian Liberals, the political party equivalent of a suicidal clown. According to Federal Court affidavits The Australian got its hands on, Liberal upper house MP Bev Mc­Arthur is suspected of being involved with Real Freedom News, the late gossip site — “salacious” according to the Oz, “scurrilous” per The Age, “grotty” according to the Herald Sun — that has published serious allegations, including accusations of criminality and sexual misconduct, about various state and federal Liberals. McArthur, through her lawyers, strenuously denied any involvement.

The allegation comes as part of a long-running campaign from senior Liberals, led by former state and federal Liberal candidate Sean Armistead, to identify who is behind the blog, which spread damaging gossip from January 2021 to its deactivation in October 2022.

Last we heard of McArthur, she was one of two Liberal MPs — the other being anti-abortion obsessive Bernie Finn — to cross the floor to vote against legislation banning conversion therapy back in 2021, if that gives you a sense of anything. A fun detail is the cameo from Liberal staffer Edward Bourke who, according to Armistead’s affidavit, told the administrative committee about screenshots which allegedly “indicated a backup of the website had been emailed to [McArthur]”. Bourke got his start as a Trump-loving 15-year-old turned Liberal Party member, anti-Dan campaigner and political strategist.

Gas Cooker Western Australian leaders are probably the political group whose plans on the environment are the hardest to take seriously. This is a state where government seems to act as some kind of HR onboarding process for resource industry jobs, and fossil-fuel lobbyists quite openly write government announcements.

So it was always going to take a shaker’s worth of salt to swallow their “ambitious” carbon reduction plans. Still, we were surprised at just how explicit the fossil-fuel-friendly rhetoric was when a tipster drew our attention to a speech by new Labor Premier Roger Cook while on a trip to Japan at the end of October — spruiking WA gas exports, he insisted that “we’re not simply wrapping ourselves in a blanket of self-satisfaction by reaching net zero ourselves if that is going to be at the detriment of the globe”.

Extra marks for Cook’s comments in support of carbon capture and storage (CCS) — Crikey has long catalogued what an ineffective scam that is. Later this month the premier is a keynote speaker at the WA Energy Transition Summit. We’ll keep a close on what he has to say there.

The case of the missing recommendation While the media mostly parroted the government’s claim that it was adopting “all 56” recommendations of the robodebt royal commission (we’ve not read the whole report but if one of them was “make a robot out of papier-mâché and foil and bonk it on the head” they can tick that off…), a few eagle-eyed parties noted a curious point.

The report hadn’t made 56 recommendations — it had made 57. And what was that final recommendation the government was looking to sweep under the carpet (with the help of our biggest news outlets)? Reform of the freedom of information laws, specifically to make it less easy for governments to immediately shield decisions from view simply by describing them as a cabinet document.

We will fight them on the beaches It looks as though the uneasy truce that has held between humans and birds on this continent since the avian victory in the Emu War of 1932 has ended. A tipster has got in touch to let us know that the people of Lorne in Victoria are in battle with local cockatoos:

This has been the biggest societal (and quasi military) issue in Lorne for a decade. Now the humans have opened a new tactical front against their formidable beaked foe, who have won basically every battle and skirmish in the war so far, deflecting each piece of technology and psychology the humans have deployed, year by year, bin by bin. The warfare, and often the rhetoric, has almost been Churchillian.

The sulphur-crested fiends, who have a taste for human food and do not know fear, have taken to opening bins and leaving streets strewn with refuse. After years of failed attempts to combat the attacks — the issuing of bricks to weigh down lids, fines for presumed turncoats who put their bins out early — Surf Coast Council is commencing Operation Lockatoo: “Council will fit locking mechanisms to kerbside bins across Lorne to help stop clever cockatoos from opening bin lids and pulling out rubbish.” We will monitor the situation as it unfolds.