Bring on the New Year December 31, 2014 Written by: Michael Taylor We are soon to close the doors on 2014. Am I right in presuming that we’ll all be glad to see the back of it? It hasn’t been too memorable, on the political front at least. It has been a year where ordinary Australians have been kicked from pillar to post by an ideology-driven government whose vision clearly focuses on feathering the nests of the not-so-ordinary Australians. It has been a year where all social, economic, technological and ecological issues have been ignored by a government too inept to confront them. And perhaps too blind to notice. Sitting at the head of the table of this atrocious government is possibly the most inept national leader in the Western world. You have to wonder how such an incompetent, out of depth, out of touch individual manages to keep his job. He has been lucky, in my opinion, to last as long as he has. Yes, it has been some year. My friends at The Political Sword have summed it up much better than I could, so it is my pleasure to borrow their summary: It was a year in which we saw Abbott and his cronies trying to destroy the country and make us a paradise for the neo-liberals, the neo-cons and the economists that support them — and, of course, big business. We saw the worst budget in living memory and have, so far, only been saved from its full ramifications by the senate. We saw Clive Palmer appear with Al Gore to talk about the importance of climate change but, at the same time, cave in to support the repeal of the carbon price. We have seen Abbott, more through luck than design, deflect the budget issue and ‘bask’ in the glory of the world stage, taking on the Russian bear and alienating our closest Asian neighbour. He has ‘stopped the boats’ but also stopped government transparency in the process. He is undertaking more privatisation of government services and encouraging the states to do the same. Without openly saying so, he is pursuing a neo-liberal and economic rationalist agenda backed to the hilt by the IPA (and, as others have noted, he is, to a significant extent, following its ‘hit list’). That says it all! As does this photo, which tells us a lot about our prime minister even though he’s missing from it. He had just delivered a speech at the United Nations. I don’t remember what it was about – it wasn’t important enough to bother remembering. If it had have been important then I’m sure he would have delivered his speech to a larger audience than the six people who actually sat through it. After delivering his talk that nobody wanted to listen to, jumping to her feet from the sidelines was a deliriously excited Peta Credlin giving Tony the thumbs up. This reminded me of my mother after I sang two lines in a school concert when I was eight. Nobody, surely, heard me except my mother. But her rapturous encouragement filled me with the feeling that my performance was outstanding – that I had a voice like Elvis Presley (my mother liked Elvis Presley). Truth is, nobody else in the audience cared whether I was performing or not. The other truth is – I can’t sing. Our prime minister can’t ‘prime minister’. But he gets the thumbs up. He needs all the encouragement he can get, even childish encouragement. * * * Independent and social media sites who have been prepared to question and challenge the Abbott Government have, ironically, benefited from its ineptitude. That there is a growing number of Australians expressing disgust at the direction the government is taking us, and a growing discontent in the government and its leader (as reflected in the opinion polls) has seen numbers turning to independent media as a credible alternative. The AIMN certainly has been rewarded. Last year – our first year – saw us welcome 1.96 million readers. This year (at the time of writing), 4.15 million people have read The AIMN. That’s over double what we achieved last year. What can we achieve in 2015? We can only achieve the stellar readership of 4.15 million in a year if we have the subject matter our readers are after and a group of outstanding writers with the skills to deliver it. We demonstrably have both. And of course, without thousands of loyal readers helping to spread our message we could not have grown as we have. So all the ingredients are there for us to have a bumper 2015. Bring it on! I hope every one of you – the writers, the admin team, those who comment on our articles and to those who simply visit us to read them – have a fabulous 2015. And I thank you for your efforts in 2014. theaimn/bring-new-year/
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 22:30:00 +0000