"The Week on Wednesday" with Van Badham & Ben Davison

Weekend Wrap: Morrison goes on Insiders to spin vaccines failures and abandoning Aussies in Afghanistan, COVID doubles in NSW in 10 days, violent fascist recruitment rallies broken up

Ben Davison analyses Morrison's claim he can't (or won't) bring home every Australian stranded in Afghanistan and the implicit promise to abandon our allies as thousands of people try to reach safety.

The bungled vaccine rollout is also dismissed by Morrison as something unforeseeable despite experts, Labor, unions and business all warning his government in 2020 that we needed more Pfizer and more local manufacturing capacity.

The exclusion of children from the vaccine rollout targets and the suggestion that opening up at 70-80% isn't impacted by the tens of thousands of active cases in the community is also broken down.

NSW records three straight days of record cases pushing the active cases well above 10,000 while extending their lockdown until October.

Victoria records 65 new cases, many in the regions around Shepparton, with lockdown extending into regional Victoria.

The ACT records 19 cases, 10-12 of which are in the disability community.  New figures showing only one quarter of NDIS participants have had A dose of vaccine has highlighted the failure of Morrison to deliver on the promise to vaccinate disability support workers and Australian's with a disability.

Fascist recruitment rallies were held in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide as up to 4,000 people marched with "violence in mind".  Many repeated foreign propaganda, used Trumpian slogans, flew foreign flags and littered the streets with Nazi paraphernalia. The violence saw six police officers injured in Melbourne with 218 neo-fascists arrested and a further 47 arrested in Sydney.

Unemployment officially went down, but like the vaccination numbers, Morrison's government has been caught out using statistical fiddles with the real unemployment number closer to 10% than 5% and underemployment sky-rocketing.

Episode 51: Morrison fails allies in Kabul, COVID explodes in NSW, wages go backwards and good news on electric highways

Van Badham and Ben Davison examine the situation in Afghanistan, Morrison's abandonment of our allies, the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, what is happening to the Hazara people and the fears many have for women, girls and minorities.  People are desperate to get out as Taliban leaders declare national pardons but Taliban fighters are reportedly beating up fleeing civilians and the West scrambles to respond to the thousands of people in need of a visa, a flight and a new home.

Van and Ben discuss Trump's poison pill "peace" deal, Morrison's long history of inaction to save the people who helped save so many Australians and the complexity of place known as "The graveyard of empires".

COVID is out of control in NSW with over 8,000 active cases and a new single day record today.  People are angry, frustrated, scared and upset yet the failures of Glady's government to set clear, strong rules and provide the support people need to survive only seems to get worse by the day.  Attempts to make the pandemic about "individuals doing the wrong thing" fail to hold water as mouth pieces for foreign propaganda reveal in the notoriety gained from organising mass exposure events under the guise of "protest" without any serious consequences.

Unions are fighting to expand the number of Australian's who have access to vaccine leave, currently at 1.6M, to ensure everyone who can get vaccinated is supported to get vaccinated.  Union members continue to win better wage outcomes as wage price data out today shows overall wages have declined and the average worker has seen their wages take a real terms cut of 2% over the last 12 months.  The Morrison government pushing the decline with public sector workers taking the biggest hit.

There is good news on an electric vehicle highway in WA, the Kiwi bird and solar powered refrigeration trucks!

Weekend Wrap 15 August 2021

Ben Davison looks at the current COVID crisis, how Morrison and Gladys have helped each other avoid responsibility as Australians die and states are locked down by the Delta variant that was allowed to leak out of Sydney but a Premier and a PM too slow to react, too arrogant to do what was needed and too political to put our health above their polling numbers.

Morrison turned down an open ended offer from Pfizer for vaccines last year becasue, at $20 a dose, he said they were too expensive.  Today he's arranged 1M doses from Poland and refused to say how much they are costing.

Some corporations want to be able to mandate vaccines while Australian Unions make the point there aren't enough to make that work, we should be removing barriers like no paid leave and providing support like paid vaccination leave if we want to help people get vaccinated.

Afghanistan is falling to the Taliban and Australia needs to get our allies out.  Get the safe.  Get them here.  Before more innocent people are murdered as an example to not work with the west.

Unions in NSW win payments for workers who have to take time off to get tested and/or isolate because of the pandemic.  A big win in a state where the government has refused to work with working people and continues to believe "more fines" is the universal answer to every question.

Plus we give a shoutout to our friends over at On The Job!

Episode 50: Houston, Canavan, Christensen and Kelly, The company Morrison keeps. Morrison blames developing countries to avoid climate action. COVID gets worse. Good news is whiskey powered trucks!

Van Badham and Ben Davison explore the company Prime Minister Scott Morrison keeps as his pastor faces charges of concealing a crime, one of his senators spouts Bannon neo-fascism and made up numbers on the ABC and one of his members in the lower house regurgitates foreign conspiracy theories and finally gets called out on it by the parliament. Plus there's Craig Kelly, Gerard Rennick and even a bit of Barnaby!

The IPCC, and reality, says humans are slow cooking our only home but Scott Morrison wants the poorest people on earth to do something or a miracle technology before he'll "write a blank cheque" to save us.  Van and Ben explore how the same mouth pieces for foreign propagandists on COVID are also the same people threatening the government if they do anything to improve our environment.

COVID gets worse in NSW with no real end in sight as more areas enter lockdown and Melbourne extends the 6th lockdown for another week.  Van reports from Sydney and asks the question: Do you want the kind of strong decisive leadership that we've seen in the Labor states or the hopeless failure of Morrison and Gladys to continue?  "Because that's the choice people will have to make."

The good news is that whiskey waste is being used to fuel whiskey delivery trucks in closed manufacturing processes!

Weekend Wrap 8 August 2021

Ben Davison recaps a great Olympics for Australia during a difficult time and discusses some of the highlights that bought the nation together.

COVID remains out of control in Sydney with more deaths, record case numbers, growing hospitalisations and a creeping lockdown that feels piecemeal to the rest of the nation.

Brisbane comes out of lockdown as Cairns goes in and Melbourne is back in lockdown as Tasmania and WA record cases.

Wins for workers at McCains, we acknowledge aged care worker day and the passing of Richard Trumka and Lina Cabaero as workers, in union, keep rejecting pressure to accept pay cuts.

Episode 49: NSW suffers 233 new cases of COVID as man in his 20's dies, Morrison's women problem is a problem for everyone, good news about solar cars!

Van Badham, in lockdown Sydney, and Ben Davison, with a crying dachshund, dive into the mishandling of the Sydney lockdown, the spread of Delta, how Morrison's attacks on the public sector have resulted in needing to use the Army for a health crisis and what we can do to remove barriers to vaccination.

The workers at McCain are back at work following their win over the multinational corporation's attempt to lock them out, workers at Coca-Cola in WA are standing strong against attempts to cut their conditions and Van discusses how our greatest PM, John Curtin, was a unionist even while fighting World War II

The "morality of our current leadership" under the Morrison government has been called into question by Grace Tame, Australian of the year, and Van and Ben explore how scandal after scandal has gone unpunished and doing the wrong thing but avoiding responsibility is being rewarded by Morrison. 

The good news is about solar cars and new battery technology!

Weekend Wrap 1 August 2021

McCain in Tasmania locks out the workers for asking for equal to with other McCain workers denying them wages in a cold Tasmanian winter: Listeners can support the workers with a crowdfunding campaign set up by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU)

Gladys' mockdown continues to fail the people of NSW as 239 new cases of COVID are reported with up to 150 of them active in the community while infectious and over 100 not linked to a known case.  People are starting to die in their homes.

Qld has 9 cases and has locked down 11 local government areas while research from Victoria shows how important vaccinations are to staying alive and why Morrison's strollout is putting Australian's at huge risk.

A big win for 2,000 workers who were unlawfully outcoursed by Qantas in an attempt to cut their wages by a collective $100million.  A court has ruled in a case, led by workers from the Transport Workers Union (TWU), that Qantas was trying to "rid itself of the influence of the union".  An unaustralian act from the so called spirit of Australia.

Episode 48: Gladys locks down for another month, Morrison gives a little more but still no wage subsidy as food prices rise. Canavan and the capitol hill riot link. Good news about plastic and PFAS

Van Badham and Ben Davison, still separated by hard borders and COVID lockdowns, analyse what is happening as Sydney locks down for another four weeks, Victoria starts to cautiously reopen and Morrison decides to let 400,000 Sydneysiders both pay their rent and eat!

Ben breaks down the jump in cost of living and how the failure to see through support for working people may be taking fresh food off many household menus. 

Matt Canavan is appearing on the Bannon show while George Christensen's right to support people being organised by far right groups in Germany is defended by Scott Morrison.  That's right folks, the evidence is in and the marches on the weekend were orchestrated as part of a global far right movement. 

Van and Ben discuss how the Capitol Hill hearings are exposing the dangers of pretending tolerance for the intolerant is anything other than a danger to democracy as both Democrats and Republicans take the stand.

And there is good news about making corporations pay for the environmental cost of plastics and on the elimination of cancer causing PFAS.

Weekend Wrap 25th July

Ben responds to the march of the traitors, COVID updates, the need for Australians to stand together as one Commonwealth against the agents of Murdoch.

Episode 47: Gladys "Mockdown" fails, Morrison's leadership failings continue, Is the UK opening up or giving up? And the good news is about oil and gas in Greenland!

Van Badham (locked down in Sydney) and Ben Davison (locked down in Melbourne) examine how the Glady's "mockdown" failed to stop the spread of the Delta variant and now more than half of Australia is in lockdown with almost 1,500 COVID cases in NSW.  Sadly hospitalisations, ICU admissions and ventilations have almost doubled since last week's episode.

Morrison holds a press conference to tell Australian's what a good job he's doing, lie about vaccination rates and pretend $350 a week from the government is somehow a generous act from a man who lives in a waterfront palace and collects over $500,000 a year.  But he's not going to say sorry for failing to roll out the vaccine.  No matter how many times we ask him, no matter how many cases there are and no matter how clearly he has failed.

Boris Johnson has declared "Freedom Day" by removing all COVID restrictions at the same time his health minister, who is vaccinated, gets COVID in what is widely seen as Boris simply giving up on trying to keep people safe.

The good news is from Greenland.  The new Inuit led government has decided to keep the oil and gas in the ground in an act of global solidarity with genuine consequences for their own sovereign goals.