Posted on 10/01/2021 5:34:15 PM PDT by naturalman1975
Australia has lost its only decent political leader just 10 days away from the most critical phase of the coronavirus pandemic.
She wasn't toppled in a party room coup, charged with a crime, diagnosed with a debilitating health condition or hit by a bus.
Gladys Berejiklian was instead effectively knifed by unelected lawyers and bureaucrats from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Her shock resignation as NSW premier on Friday will throw the state's emergence from three months of lockdown into chaos and is a body blow to Australia as a whole.
The country's biggest state is now rudderless with a bloody brawl brewing to replace her and the victor will be weakened, unelected, and without the public trust Ms Berejiklian spent 18 months building.
NSW was headed for a massive Covid vaccination rate and optimism was finally returning through a clear roadmap back to freedom.
Will all this now be derailed?
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I ask that people read the whole article - it isn't paywalled - not just this extract before commenting.
Because you've been told Australia has turned into some fascist police state (which it absolutely has not - there are some problems here but they are nowhere as extreme as some of the exaggerations being peddled in the US and often being shared (possibly in all innocent belief here on FR), Gladys Berejiklian resignation seems to be coming across to people here as some massive victory for freedom. It isn't.
First of all, it has nothing to do with the pandemic at all. Berejiklian is having to resign because she's been accused of being corrupt. I have no way of knowing if those allegations are true or not - but I do know that this is the third time ICAC has accused a conservative Premier of NSW of corruption, and in both those previous cases, further investigation found that they were not.
And in terms of her handling of the pandemic, while this may be hard for Americans who've only been given part of the story to believe, for most of the pandemic, Berejiklian has been the one state Premier who did the most to resist the pressure to impose harsh, strict lockdowns on her state. Until about June this year, she was holding the line in the face of massive pressure to put New South Wales into similar levels of lockdown as Victoria and was constantly being abused for "letting people die" by not locking down all the time. Yes, she finally gave into that pressure but only in the face of the single worst COVID outbreak Australia has experienced and one of the only reasons she did it then was because NSW was feeding the outbreaks across the rest of the country and the other states were threatening savage economic reprisals. Yes, I wish she'd continued to resist but she only gave in in extremis - unlike the other gutless Premiers who have absolutely no compunction about locking down at the tiniest of outbreaks (sometimes because of one case in an entire state (WA) and in one notorious case because there were no cases yet but might be soon (SA). And having finally locked down hard, she has been working far harder than her counterpart in Victoria, to reopen her state as fast as possible - NSW's plan to reopen is about a month ahead of Victoria's.
Imperfect as she is, she's been better than the others. And she's been brought down by an unproven allegation of corruption by an organisation with a history of bringing down conservatives.
She's resigned for the good of her state and her party. Neither of which need the distraction of a leader under a cloud right now. If she'd held on for four more months, she'd have served five years as Premier and become entitled to a hell of a lot more money as well.
Her removal has nothing to do with COVID. In fact, if anything it's likely to embolden the Labor state Premiers, especially Daniel Andrews - who have taken great delight in accusing her of not locking down New South Wales fast enough.
I wonder if it's just a coincidence that all the broke, the day after Victoria where Daniel Andrews has been claiming his totalitarian approach has saved the state, finally overtook New South Wales - the state he claims is a disaster because Gladys Berejiklian didn't do what he did - in daily case numbers.
Actually I don't wonder at all.
You don’t do well calling US conservative outlets liars.
I’m sorry but when they are lying, I’m not going to say otherwise.
Actually, I’m not sorry.
I will not pretend lies are true.
Thank u for those insights. It is difficult enough for those of us Freepers in the USA to keep track of our own country.
It was conservative outlets telling us about the debacle on the streets in the cities, what you call “the narrative a lot of Americans seem to be being spoon fed about what is going on in Australia”. So that’s accusing them of lying. I cannot see where they lied.
The best thing about the demise of Gladys was seeing the postings on Telegram with hundreds of teachers and others protesting yesterday at Parramatta Park in Sydney.
They wore white shirts and joined around the water opposing the coercion to vaccinate.
The protest in the park was not shut down by police like previous protests in Sydney were.
Hope for the future perhaps but we shall see.
A lot of it though isn't deliberate dishonesty - it comes from not understanding things about the country they are trying to write about. It may pain me to say it, but Australia isn't that important a country. We've only got 25 million people and a political influence that comes from being a fairly small country. Most of the time Americans have no particular reason to be all that interested in our politics, so American journalists generally don't understand a lot of things about the place. In this recent situation, I think a lot of the problems with reporting I'm talking about come from Americans not understanding how Australia's constitution makes the state governments more powerful than the Commonwealth government in areas of public health. So the conservative Prime Minister winds up being blamed in America for things he has no power to stop that are actually being done by socialist state Premiers. I also don't think a lot of Americans understand that Australia is eight separate jurisdictions which are radically different from each other in terms of how COVID is being handled. 90% of the bad stuff that is happening in Australia right now is happening in one state - Victoria. 99% of it is happening in two states - Victoria and New South Wales. Most of the rest of the country is largely open and pretty close to business as usual. These are the most populous states, so in terms of population it's about a third of the country - but it's still not the whole country - and if it wasn't for Daniel Andrews in Victoria, who has pretty much infected politics in New South Wales as well - well, we wouldn't be in this mess.
You are always a voice of calm when looking at all of this. Can you say why she resigned in what seems a sudden manner and did not put up a fight. Is there real major substance to the charges, if you know. Thanks.
“If it bleeds...it leads.” Even conservative media engages in this.
I know nothing of Australian politics, but to my ear, that does not sound good.
Seems to me there appears to be a lamentation going on here that the least Fascist of the Fascists running the various states of Australia has been taken out by the efforts of the most Fascist of the Control Freaks running the various other states of Australia. The Ancient Greeks would have referred to this Cluster F__k as a Tragic Comedy.
My question is, where is the organized nationwide outrage toward the Fascist Control Freaks in that country?
The true picture in Australia is not what some on the internet post that is over the top propaganda to get clicks and money for themselves.
But its not what you see my friend if all you get your news from is Seven, Nine, Ten, the ABC, the SBS, Sky etc. the Age, Herald-Sun etc. etc.
They are canning the news on protests and the positions of the protesters also spreading the notion of extremism and Nazism in the ranks of those being driven off the streets by the Victoria Police.
The whole government-media policy at federal and state levels is to coerce and cajole the population into vaccination.
The vaccine not nearly as bad as opponents say it is but not perfect either it has flaws its not for everyone.
Sorry I don’t want to hurt anyone on any side. Its my assessment of things for better or worse.
That headline is completely untrue. It is a lie.
Daniel Andrews has said that Victorians who are not vaccinated will not be allowed to do quite a few things as soon as other Victorians (and hasn't set an end date) but that's things like going to restaurants, cinemas, theatres, sporting events, etc.
He did not say anything about being denied healthcare.
I wouldn't put it past him saying that in the future. But the simple fact is he hasn't said that.
And that's just one lie. Today.
Other lies I've seen on Freerepublic recently - Australia is under martial law. We are not. And that one, by the way, did turn up on Fox News.
A protester was shot in the face and killed during the Melbourne demonstrations. That did not happen.
Schoolchildren are being rounded up and forcibly vaccinated. Not true.
Police have squads of people chasing down people in the street and forcibly vaccinating them. Not true.
Those are all lies.
There are other cases where it's less clear cut and there's some room for interpretation. But those ones are lies.
And there are other real problems that actually are happening and being reported accurately. But the problem is, all the lies make it harder for those of us who are trying to get the real problems addressed to do so. Because in comparison to the lies, the genuinely bad things don't look as bad - which makes opposing them harder. And it also makes it look like we're willing to lie to try and fix things. When I'm certainly not. I insist on the truth because that actually works better in the long run.
But I don't.
I follow those sources. I also follow a lot of others. I am confident I have accurate information on what is and isn't happening in my own state, and reasonable confidence that I know what is happening in other parts of the country as well.
No, Australia's mainstream media isn't giving the whole picture either. Most Australian media is left wing biased. Only some is honest.
But I don't just rely on that.
Well, what we see of what’s happening to your fellow citizens sure doesn’t look good. And this is not from “conservative sources,” but from citizen videos. How can you defend her?
.....if Charley Waite could speak to Australian men, here’s what he would say........”Your men ain’t ya”........
This clip is 4:11 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYyumFphtEQ&t=3s
True or not, I don’t know. But my lying eyes tell me that the Australian Gestapo is performing big beat downs on the citizens who are peacefully protesting the Wuhan/Fauci virus Gulag.
Sure.
I have no idea if Berejiklian is corrupt - genuinely, I don't know. She could be.
But at the very least, even if she isn't corrupt, she's guilty of very bad judgement. Her boyfriend - who was also a Member of Parliament - is corrupt - he's admitted it. And, really, if she didn't know - she probably should have. So on that basis alone, even if she's not corrupt, her position as leader is difficult to defend. She was his girlfriend and his boss while he was engaged in corrupt conduct.
On top of this, ICAC (the Independent Commission Against Corruption) is... well, it does seem to be biased against conservatives. The current NSW government is just over a year away from its next election. Berejiklian resigning probably stops this being an election issue which would have likely cost her party the election. If she hadn't resigned, it's likely she would faced a leadership challenge anyway, which she probably would have lost. It's always considered more honourable to resign rather than be forced out.
And if she isn't corrupt, and she's eventually cleared, she'll look all the more honourable. Despite her poor judgment. She's only 51 - if she's cleared, she could resurrect her career. Probably not as Premier, but something like a Senator in the Federal Parliament might be possible, especially if she's able to argue she resigned to save her party.
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