Let’s be quite clear about what Morrison was doing by secretly appointing himself to five ministries

As background it’s worth understanding that “Morrison’s Christian faith on his prime ministership “drove him, made him immoveable, more resistant to logical explanations”.

“I have been mocked every day because of my faith because I am a Pentecostal,”

“I have surrendered this battle to God now. I have said, over to you.” – Niki Savva, a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, writes in her new book Bulldozed

Morrison believed it was a miracle from God that won him the 2018 election. No doubt, he was expecting another such miracle in 2022.

It’s only a small step from this type of delusional thinking to believing everything he does is God’s will.

From there, any justification he makes for his actions becomes acceptable, at least in his own mind.

The danger to our democracy was the abrogation of these powers to himself constituted the first steps towards the dictatorship.

Had the government won the election, quite possible in Morrison’s mind given God was on his side, the centralisation of power within cabinet would have continued.

As defacto Minister in a number of key Ministries, Morrison would then argue that he was entitled to an extra Cabinet vote for each ministry. Pretty soon, he would have had a personal majority in the Cabinet voting process. His dominance of the Parliamentary party would be complete.

This power grab would be justified by an argument that, with God’s help, he was the only person who could take on the burden of government.

The next stage would be to subvert the public backlash against such actions.

A manufactured crisis around a pandemic, a threatened invasion, or internal terrorism would be sufficient for suspending the next election ostensibly to avoid instability and lack of confidence in the government.

A parallel and orchestrated program of disinformation would discredit the Opposition.

Nothing ever goes quite to plan in politics and Morrison may not have the intellectual and political acumen to have thought events through in this level of detail.

Besides which, when the election came, either God let him down badly or simply wasn’t paying attention.

But we must be clear, what he did was take the first steps towards establishing a dictatorship in Australia.

This map shows the enormity of the task facing the Liberal opposition in Victoria

While all the seats have not yet been called, is likely the Andrews government will returned to a position of strength similar to the one they have occupied for the last term of government. A couple of seats have changed hands, one for each party cancelling out any real gains.

What further consolidates Dan Andrews’ hold on power is that the opposition is in the state of complete disarray both politically and organisationally.

Organisationally, they need to reform the system by which they preselect candidates. This will be a difficult and tortuous process but they need to stop pre-selecting candidates that are so extreme that they have no real connection to any anybody other than like-minded religious extremists and right-wing crackpots.

Politically, they need to be able to select new leader rather than recycling Michael O’Brien who lost his job to a recycled Matthew as leader of the party.

They also need to do something about Treasurer David Davis who has become a walking advertisement for why people should not vote for the Liberal party.

The Greens are celebrating a “Green Wave”. It’s a bit of an exaggeration as they have so far picked up two seats and may possibly pick up a couple more. They are gaining strength in inner Melbourne but it is hardly a wave, more like the tide coming in.

With the Andrews government having a large and comfortable majority, Greens will not be in the position of power they had hoped for a hung parliament.

The Greens are now in the very fortunate position where they are often one of the top two candidates when the votes are counted. This means they benefit from whole range of preferences from people who probably wouldn’t vote for them but preferences are distributed to the last two standing.

This time round the Liberals gave their preferences to the Greens. In Richmond, which the Greens won for the first time, Liberal party voters had a choice between the Greens and Labor for their second last preference which is the one that gets distributed to the top two candidates.

The Greens are now in a position where they will get either Labor preferences or Liberal preferences which means that once they are established in a seat they will be very hard dislodge.

There is one surprising aspect to this election, which didn’t follow the trend in the Federal election. When counting stopped on Saturday night, there were no Teal or independent candidates elected. In fact, a number of independents lost their seats to Nationals in regional electorates.

It remains to be seen, if the final votes are sufficient to elect Teal candidates to Parliament.

Would-be Treasurer David Davis’ plan to privatise Melbourne’s sewage works is a return to the economic stupidity of the Kennett era

Just as the Andrews’s government is planning to return the SEC to public ownership, the Liberal party opposition announces that it is going to privatise Melbourne’s sewerage works to pay down Victoria’s debt.

Werribee lagoons

The idea of the Kennett government in selling off the SEC was that privatisation would lead to greater efficiency and lower electricity prices. Blackouts and rising prices to consumers have proved to be the disaster that sensible economists would have predicted.

In addition, Victoria’s disastrous bushfires were, in part, a result of underinvestment private enterprise in the maintenance of transmission infrastructure.

The idea that adding the profit motive to the costs of supply from public utilities is clearly stupid. It simply adds the cost.

The argument that private enterprise, through competition, is likely to be more efficient is dubious at best. At worst, when the privatised enterprise is effectively a monopoly, there is no competition and hence no improvement.

Clearly, David Davis has learned nothing for as  George Santayana, wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Who were the fictional characters who influenced you as a child?

Some current teenagers told The Age who they think were important to them.

“In the lead-up to the event (next month’s Teen Gala being staged by the Wheeler Centre) participants were asked to write about the characters who helped them find their way. The results might surprise you.”

Fictional heroes (clockwise, from top left): Zuri and her father in Hair Love, Jake the Dog from Adventure Time, Barbie, Robin Buckley from Stranger Things and the title character from Kiki’s Delivery Service.CREDIT:VASHTI HARRISON, CARTOON NETWORK, AP, TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX, STUDIO GHIBLI

In the article, teenagers talk about the influence of these characters.

It got me thinking about who was important to me.

Here are the ones I remember. Looking back to the 1950s, this is probably a fairly representative group. Significantly, no women heroes seem to have appeared to during this time.

My first three are a Superman who really did wear his underpants on the outside, Dan Dare, a space pilot with little understanding of physics and Rockfist Rogan an RAF pilot and boxing champion.

My next three are Robyn Hood (played by Eroll Flynn, who I later found out was a man of dubious character and not really fit to be a childhood hero), Biggles and Deadwood Dick (you wouldn’t get away with a character called that today.) Deadwood spent 15 weekly episodes of a black-and-white serial pursuing a masked villain known as the Skull. The final episode and showdown was shown to a packed matinée audience at the Ngaio Hall in1952.

This is the Ngaio hall which doubled as a picture theatre in the 1950s.

I remember my parents would not let me go to the afternoon matinée pictures if the sun was shining. They told me to go out and play which was hard because most of the other kids had gone to the pictures.

Will the GIMPS hold the balance of power in a hung parliament in Victoria?

The election is getting closer as the primary vote gap closes.

Both Labor and Liberal Parties neck and neck on 36% of the primary vote according to Resolve Strategic for The Age.

But the GIMPS (Greens, Independents, Minor Parties) hold 28%. so preferences will decide who takes power. Greens preferences will overwhelmingly be directed to the Labor Party. Where the other 18% ( Independents and Other in the table) will be crucial to the outcome.

However, the preferential voting system means the GIMPS will not get 28% of the representation. But they may win enough seats to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

Who was in charge while this was going on over the last decade?

Australian colleges identified in allegedly helping women enter country to work in sex industry

“Trafficked is a project led by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, 60 Minutes and Stan’s Revealed documentary program that has exposed the wholesale exploitation of Australia’s border security and immigration system by criminal syndicates involved in human trafficking and other crimes.

None of the 14 Australian colleges identified as corrupt have faced criminal sanction and most remain open.”

Who was responsible at the time?

It must have been the Ministers for Immigration and Border Security.

Photo NICK MOIR

(Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images)