Yes. And with the Minister for Home affairs basically only kept in line by loyalty to the Prime Minister, and having an extremely short list of “checks” to bala

Yes. And with the Minister for Home affairs basically only kept in line by loyalty to the Prime Minister, and having an extremely short list of “checks” to balance this power (basically all of which are the various people, committees and groups that have the right to immediately dismiss the minister) it genuinely scares me that this could pass. The coalition have already demonstrated that the aren’t above trying to politically profit from what should have just been a regular apolitical national security investigation. Instead they spin the fact the one person found was a Labour MP as proof the opposition are somehow weak and corruptible on matters of national security. Then when the head of the depart doing the investigation makes an extremely rare rebuke, reminding everyone that such investigations are apolitical and do not reflect any differences between political parties, we get senior ministers outright disagreeing ( “respectfully” ) with the head of ASIO and trying to reaffirm that they are somehow different. These are not the actions of people deserving of trust with power this enormous. I’m not sure I’d trust a genuine could throw thunderbolts and smite me deity with this kind of power, but I definitely don’t trust the current assholes in power and I doubt I’ll trust the next ones or the ones after that… This might actually be my breaking point, I may have to either get into politics and run for office despite knowing I’m unlikely to succeed, or just have all the difficult conversations with friends and relatives and just fucking leave the country before they start mandating the root kits be installed by default.