Not even the tennis can distract us from how badly this government is doing

 ‘The report provides absolutely no joy
for the Abbott-Turnbull governments.’ 

When the news is bad, governments love distractions, and this week the Australian Open has been excellent for diverting voters’ attention from more examples of how badly this government is at governing.

To be fair to Nick Kyrgios and Novak Djokovic, it’s not all their doing. This government – like many others before – has purposefully used the summer holidays to avoid scrutiny.

We would do well to recall that one of the last acts of the government in 2016 was to release the March and June quarterly greenhouse gas emissions reports on the Thursday before Christmas.

The transparent desire to release the report at a time when most of the public were in holiday mode is all you need to know to realise how bad it is for the government.

The report showed that greenhouse gas emissions from electricity have continued to rise since the repeal of the carbon price. Emissions from electricity generation in the June quarter last year were 4.4% higher than in the June 2014 quarter – the last quarter under the carbon price.

Read Greg Jericho’s story on The Guardian - “Not even the tennis can distract us from how badly this government is doing.”