Occam’s Razor is now a relatively well understood term, coming from the 14th century philosopher and monk William of Ockham. It is a discipline that demands that facts about a situation be distilled down to their simplest form, and the extraneous cut out.

Just prior to the last election that saw #scottyfrommarketing scrape in to retain the government seats by one seat, I wondered at the emergence of ‘Occam’s Broom‘, the phenomenon of anything but facts being shunted around, and any politically unhelpful fact, smelly deal,  or outright dodgy behaviour, ‘broomed’ under the carpet.

Some of my friends thought my association with inner city, soy latte and chardonnay sipping  lefties had finally got to me.

Now we seem to have the broom working double time, sweeping away the things we should be thinking about in a welter of activity seemingly designed to help us settle back and think #scotty and his crew have it all under control, and it is OK to go back to being apathetic.

Let’s look at the list.

• There will be a royal commission on the cause of the fires. Hello, we already know because there have been previous royal commissions and senate reports that told us. We also had Ross Garnaut in 2008 nominate 2020 as the point of great inflexion, when the climate forces he saw would coalesce into an inferno. Our governments response: Activity for the sake of activity to misdirect attention.

• Angus Taylor. Dear Angus, son of the  born to rule class who can do no wrong, except send off dumb, really, really dumb emails based in falsified information designed to throw dirt on a political opponent. The police inquiry has been dropped, and Taylors statement included the words ‘The Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Attorney-General’s pursuit of this matter is a shameful abuse of their office and a waste of our policing agencies’ time.”  What abject hypocrisy when the Federal Police are still investigating several journalists for publishing stuff the pollies  wanted to keep secret, presumably at the direction of those same pollies.

• #Scotty will now meet with the group of former fire commissioners, lambasted as irrelevant just a few months ago. Meanwhile, Scotties language has subtly changed to recognise the reality of climate change, but not enough to do anything more that try and rort the Paris agreement for so called carry over credits. What is he going to do with that pesky and sometimes terminally idiotic group of back benchers who seem hell bent on building a few new coal fired power stations?

• The Royal Commission into the aged seems to have been swept away by the fires, but I am sure will come back to haunt pretty soon. Having an ageing and now frail mother, this item is of close, personal interest.

• Adani has been fined $20,000 for lying to the QLD environmental agencies assessing their applications to dig a big hole in central Queensland, and flog off the coal. It seems they are running true to the form set in India, where Mr Adani is regarded highly as a dodgy dealer, but 20 grand will barely make a dent in petty cash. Laughable. At least their chances of commercial funding appear to be dim to zero after Larry Fink, chairman of Blackrock had his say. This debacle of Yes/No/maybe that  has plagued this project, weather you support it or not, is a symptom of our collective inability to make a decision based on principal and fact, and then stick to it. Federal and State governments duplicate each other endlessly, then point fingers, while capital markets shake their collective heads.

• Then there is the National party. What a party they are, now Mr. Invisible has seen off the challenge (for now) that was never going to happen from Barnaby, hell bent on a resurrection. Meanwhile the Senator who caused the kerfuffle, former Nats deputy Bridget McKenzie, while on the back bench in disgrace, remains the Nat’s leader in the senate, with all the benefits that entails. Go figure.

• Now we have the son of sports rorts, $150 million bucks to the Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream program, details of which are still emerging, but it seems the whole lot went to marginal seats the Libs had to win, sometimes for things they did not know they had asked for, needed, or in a few cases, even wanted. I guess the only saving grace is that the public outcry should be so loud that much of the money allocated will be withdrawn, and put towards saving the Treasurers much vaunted surplus.

• I simply cannot believe that #scotty and his henchmen did  not know intimately of these two ‘sports rorts programs’, as they all seemed to have had their snouts deeply in the trough I am surprised they did not drown. I will admit to being a bit more than usually narky, as a sporting club I chair missed out.  I wonder if it is because we are in a safe Labor seat?

• The economy is in the shitter, and circling. Our trusty treasurer continues to tell us that all will be well, the plan is working, there may be some short term aggravations because of the fires and the money needed to help, but they are on the job. Groan: I suspect they need a new plan!.

• What about the ongoing poor management, seemingly across the board? The NDIS, costing billions, but many of those it was supposed to help are still in desperate need of help. And, what about the submarines, again, billions over budget already, and probably a decade behind, meaning the Collins class will remain in service until well after I am dead. Not only that, the whole sub program as it stands was created to shore up a few seats in Adelaide, which will end up costing probably 10 billion a seat. Puts a few swimming pools and unwanted change rooms to shame, a lousy 250 million, petty cash to this lot. Remember ‘Robodebt’? State and Local government and its agencies are no better, they all seem to think the  tax revenues are for their entertainment and to purchase votes, rather than improving the lives of those from whom it was ripped. Need I go on, I will just depress myself.

Listening to the statements coming from the government about all this, and the other stuff going on, you would think they are utterly confident that it will all be swept under the carpet. Occam’s Broom doing some great work. However, their credibility is so terminally damaged, I cannot see how they can possibly recover. Unless of course, the other lot really stuff it up, as they did last time.

I am reminded again of Churchill’s observation that: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”, but am tempted to reconsider my agreement.