The man who brought a lump of lacquered coal into parliament in early 2017, to wave in the face of the Labor Opposition, was then treasurer, Scott Morrison. He shouted, as he often does: “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared”.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) is an industry association that comprises the chief executives of over a hundred of Australia’s biggest corporations. It was formed in 1983 by the merger of the Business Roundtable – a spin-off of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia and the Australian Industry Development Association. The organisation has its headquarters in Melbourne but has offices in Sydney and Canberra.
Portugal, a nation with a population of just over 10 million, like most countries in Europe, has suffered badly in the pandemic. One in ten of the population have been infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus, and over 18,000 have died. That is 1,773 deaths per million people.
While compilation of this tenth instalment of the listing of corruption by federal and state coalition governments has been a slower process than the previous efforts1-9, it is also a little shorter than usual.
The catch-phrase ‘keeping the bastards honest’ originally came from disaffected former Liberal member of Parliament, Don Chipp, who created the Australian Democrats in 1977, which he led as a senator from 1978 until he retired from parliament in 19861.
It seems likely that a federal election will be held later this year, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison shouting “it’s time to give Australians their lives back”1.