Late last year the federal government was dragged kicking and screaming into holding a Royal Commission into child abuse after several victims came forward and police officers told of how they were forced to abandon investigations into cases due to political pressure. Opinion polls released since the announcement have shown that 97% of Australians support the Royal Commission.
The ABC's Four Corners and 7:30 programs have been highlighting cases for a while now, and the red flags went up recently when they presented the latest disgrace by the Catholic church. It concerned a priest who had molested several victims, but the priest wasn't named. He was referred to continually as "Father F". It highlighted the chief reason why - in this country - child molestation was always referred to as the unspeakable crime and swept under the carpet. Our repressive defamation, and now privacy laws, have prevented a proper discussion about the issue and made the media reluctant to pursue cases.
If the Royal Commission is to make an impact into stopping the crime then action must be taken to grant immunity to media organisations and victims from being sued for defamation or to have other legal or administrative action taken against them. We have some of the most oppressive defamation laws in the world and the imposition of privacy and human rights BS over the top of that is just absurd. The Royal Commission will be effectively neutered if the media cannot name names and go into detail about matters being investigated. The lawyers might not like having a lucrative source of business taken away from them, but we urgently need reform in this area.
The whole issue of child molestation has been muddied over the years by waves of sexual liberation which - at various times - have muddied the water as to what acceptable and unacceptable conduct is all about.
I have experience in this field, not as a victim but as someone who heard first hand about the activities of pedophiles in my workplace. In 1992 as a 33 year old I collected shopping trolleys at a suburban shopping centre. I supervised young teens, and several other kids hung around us while we were doing our work. I started hearing disturbing stories about the bootmaker in the shopping centre, how he'd lure kids to the back of the shop and how a few of them had near misses involving him. There was a familiar pattern to the stories and the usual MO of child molesters was becoming apparent.
After more and more kids told me what was going on I said to one of them over lunch in the centre "Have you told anybody about this? Have you gone to your parents about it?" The kids told me they were too scared to say anything because they had to live in the local area and shop at the centre. I said that I would do something about it. The following morning when I woke up there was a note in my letter box telling me in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut or else I would find myself out of a job and in hospital.
We now live in more enlightened times when child abuse is a relatively open matter. Hopefully the victims and those nearby will not be intimidated and we can see some action taken to bring action to bear on the issue. Hiding behind legalistic niceties and being hidebound by privacy and defamation laws will help nobody and will stymie the work of the Royal Commission and sweep the more serious cases back under the carpet.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Dump this tax on free speech
The summer silly season is usually a time of leisure for most Australians but it is also a time for politicians to announce unpopular or distasteful news. Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve is the favourite time when the newspapers either don't publish or they - and the other media - are on holidays filled with happy snaps and fluff lifted off the wire services or satellite. Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced Internet censorship on New Years Eve 2008, Treasurer Wayne Swan announced that the government would be breaking its promise to deliver a surplus three days before Christmas. One thing which has flown right under the radar is the proposed new federal anti-discrimination act which was announced two days after Ray Hadley and the other so-called shock jocks went on holiday last year.
Over the summer break, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been trying to get the issue into the news, and with journalists returning to work after the summer break a discussion has finally started.
At first glance the intention of the new act is simple. To combine the current five discrimination acts into one. So far, so good. But the bureaucrats in the Attorney-General's Department couldn't resist overstepping the mark and putting in a whole lot of new nasties which pose a very real threat to freedom of speech.
For example, the new act contains proscriptions on speech which is "insulting" or "offensive". I'm not making this up. If you say something which someone else takes offence to in any way, you could be dragged before the courts, be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and have your livelihood destroyed. The obvious example is water cooler conversation at work. If a work colleague mentions that he has bought a new Ford and you say that Holdens are better and you criticise their car, they can take you to court for being insulting or offensive. The possibilities are endless. If you come into work and someone says "good morning" and you reply "What's so good about it?" that could be deemed offensive or insulting. It would be a lawyer's picnic and clog up the courts for years.
The big problem with this sort of thing is that it would descend into "he said, she said", and people taking offence always embellish things and try and make it sound as bad as possible. I was a victim of this when I worked in the public service. A male colleague was taking leave to get married and I said "Your wife, what does he think about all this?" It was originally a quip by Bert Newton on Celebrity Squares in 1976. I was hauled before the director and told that a formal complaint had been lodged, and I was quoted as saying "What's the name of the bloke you are marrying?" Efforts to correct the record were futile, I couldn't defend myself and the complaint was upheld. That was only one of many complaints made against me, all containing supposed direct quotes and all of which were upheld. While this sort of thing might be the norm amongst work-shy bureaucrats with nothing else to do except stab each other in the back, to now have this type of pettiness and nonsense imposed onto the entire population is absolutely disgraceful.
I won't call this proposed law an anti-discrimination bill, I prefer to call it a tax on free speech. It is typical Labor pork barrelling to try and get minorities onside, but it has failed miserably.
Attorney General Nicola Roxon sent copious press releases to the gay media trumpeting that for the first time discrimination based on sexual preference would be outlawed federally. But her efforts to shore up the pink vote were shot down in flames by her boss Julia Gillard who announced that she had been having meetings with Australian Christian Lobby boss Jim Wallace and had agreed to exempt church organisations from the homosexuality clauses. So there you have it - an anti-discrimination law which discriminates. The gay media which initially welcomed the new laws are now up in arms. Not even the gays want it.
The intention of the law is far-reaching and the red flags have gone up that this free speech tax is nothing more than an attempt to stifle any criticism of the government. Alan Jones calling Gillard "Ju-liar", Ray Hadley's satirical songs about government scandals, editorials in The Australian. We haven't seen this sort of thing since Soviet Russia. When I was a kid I said to my mother that the number one song on the Moscow hit parade was called Gromyko Is An Idiot. It was a classic "as if" gag because the Soviets were so oppressive that anybody saying something like that would be either jailed or executed. So now we have the same thing in 21st Century Australia! It is something we thought we'd never see. Rather than beefing up the anti-discrimination/vilification/hate speech laws, there is a strong case for abolishing them altogether. They are a 1970s response to a 1950s problem and have long outlived their usefulness.
Public submissions are currently being sought on the proposed new laws. It is hoped that freedom-loving Aussies will bombard Roxon with negative comment and the free speech tax will be dumped completely and join Internet censorship in the legislative trashcan.
Over the summer break, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been trying to get the issue into the news, and with journalists returning to work after the summer break a discussion has finally started.
At first glance the intention of the new act is simple. To combine the current five discrimination acts into one. So far, so good. But the bureaucrats in the Attorney-General's Department couldn't resist overstepping the mark and putting in a whole lot of new nasties which pose a very real threat to freedom of speech.
For example, the new act contains proscriptions on speech which is "insulting" or "offensive". I'm not making this up. If you say something which someone else takes offence to in any way, you could be dragged before the courts, be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and have your livelihood destroyed. The obvious example is water cooler conversation at work. If a work colleague mentions that he has bought a new Ford and you say that Holdens are better and you criticise their car, they can take you to court for being insulting or offensive. The possibilities are endless. If you come into work and someone says "good morning" and you reply "What's so good about it?" that could be deemed offensive or insulting. It would be a lawyer's picnic and clog up the courts for years.
The big problem with this sort of thing is that it would descend into "he said, she said", and people taking offence always embellish things and try and make it sound as bad as possible. I was a victim of this when I worked in the public service. A male colleague was taking leave to get married and I said "Your wife, what does he think about all this?" It was originally a quip by Bert Newton on Celebrity Squares in 1976. I was hauled before the director and told that a formal complaint had been lodged, and I was quoted as saying "What's the name of the bloke you are marrying?" Efforts to correct the record were futile, I couldn't defend myself and the complaint was upheld. That was only one of many complaints made against me, all containing supposed direct quotes and all of which were upheld. While this sort of thing might be the norm amongst work-shy bureaucrats with nothing else to do except stab each other in the back, to now have this type of pettiness and nonsense imposed onto the entire population is absolutely disgraceful.
I won't call this proposed law an anti-discrimination bill, I prefer to call it a tax on free speech. It is typical Labor pork barrelling to try and get minorities onside, but it has failed miserably.
Attorney General Nicola Roxon sent copious press releases to the gay media trumpeting that for the first time discrimination based on sexual preference would be outlawed federally. But her efforts to shore up the pink vote were shot down in flames by her boss Julia Gillard who announced that she had been having meetings with Australian Christian Lobby boss Jim Wallace and had agreed to exempt church organisations from the homosexuality clauses. So there you have it - an anti-discrimination law which discriminates. The gay media which initially welcomed the new laws are now up in arms. Not even the gays want it.
The intention of the law is far-reaching and the red flags have gone up that this free speech tax is nothing more than an attempt to stifle any criticism of the government. Alan Jones calling Gillard "Ju-liar", Ray Hadley's satirical songs about government scandals, editorials in The Australian. We haven't seen this sort of thing since Soviet Russia. When I was a kid I said to my mother that the number one song on the Moscow hit parade was called Gromyko Is An Idiot. It was a classic "as if" gag because the Soviets were so oppressive that anybody saying something like that would be either jailed or executed. So now we have the same thing in 21st Century Australia! It is something we thought we'd never see. Rather than beefing up the anti-discrimination/vilification/hate speech laws, there is a strong case for abolishing them altogether. They are a 1970s response to a 1950s problem and have long outlived their usefulness.
Public submissions are currently being sought on the proposed new laws. It is hoped that freedom-loving Aussies will bombard Roxon with negative comment and the free speech tax will be dumped completely and join Internet censorship in the legislative trashcan.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Labor's muck-raking has hurt us all
The end of another year of the Gillard government has meant time for reflection on what this country has become and the terrible damage a year of savagery and personal attacks has caused to the national psyche, and how an all-out campaign to divide the community and turn people against each other has almost destroyed this once-proud country and trashed the values we hold so dear.
The year began with Labor unleashing the Abbott Abbott Abbott monster. Anything that went wrong, any bad news that happened to the governmentwas blamed on Tony Abbott and his so-called "negativity". It was extraordinary. It was almost as if the Gillard government was trying to give the impression it was the opposition and Tony Abbott was the prime minister.
These tactics were totally alien to Australia. It was a highly personal, playing the man, not the ball type of politics foreign to this country. And yes, it was foreign - introduced to the political scene by the Scottish spin doctor John MacTernan who was brought in by Gillard to try and turn her fortunes around. It was relentless. Day after day a new low in political discourse was reached. Gillard's ministers jumped onto a caravan of thuggery. Bovver boy politics personified. Mindless attacks on Tony Abbott, highly personal and damaging. Abbott's family has been deeply traumatised by this campaign and Abbott has warned them it will only get worse.
Yet despite all this, members of Gillard's cabinet are trying to deny responsibility and blame Tony Abbott for the personal attacks and the fact that public opinion of politicians has never been lower. The main person trying this on is Treasurer Wayne Swan just a few weeks after calling Abbott a thug.
When all this began, the public were horrified. The LNP won the Qld election with an all-time record majority in April and this should have been the cue to drop the attacks on Abbott. But they intensified and it became much worse. The public were browbeaten by these attacks day after day. It began affecting Abbott's popularity and the left wing Press Gallery jumped onto it with glee recommending the Libs dump Abbott and go back to the failed left wing experiment with Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
Normally US elections don't have much of an effect on Australia, but the recent November election was effectively a dry run for our own election later this year. Labor figures ingratiated themselves with the Democratic Party. They embedded themselves into the party in the leadup to the November election and used the highly personal and divisive tactics MacTernan had brought to this country in the US. Thus, Republican candidates who opposed abortion were "sexist" or "anti-woman". Other Republicans were smeared as racists and their party labelled "a refuge for old white men". "Anti-Hispanic", "WASPISH", Republicans were even called nazis or Hitler-philes.
The Republicans were completely blindsided. In the past, issues such as abortion had worked in their favour as evangelicals and other Christians would vote in vast numbers for anti-abortion candidates. But the Labor imports ruthlessly targeted black and Hispanic women who swamped the polling booths and re-elected Obama. Emboldened by their success in the US, those Labor officials have since returned to Australia and are preparing to unleash the same onslaught here.
The opinion polls have recently become varied after showing the Libs in front by up to 20 points in late 2011. Two Newspolls have shown Labor and Liberal neck and neck and one poll - the Morgan Gallup Poll - has even said that the Gillard government is five points in front and would easily win the election this year. So we can't be complacent, it is no longer a lay-down misiere.
An election won't be held until after July 1st. If it is held earlier than that it will disengage the Senate and House and a separate Senate election will have to be held during the term of the next government, making it a by-election. In the Senate election of 1967 there was a swing against the Liberal government of Harold Holt and two DLP members were elected. Something similar happened in the 1970 Senate election held during John Gorton's government. In 1973, 1974 and 1977, referendums were held to mandate Senate and House elections being both held on the same day. All three referendums were defeated. Since then, Prime Ministers have been careful to select election dates which keep the nexus in place so there will not be separate Senate elections.
A new year brings new hope and this year there is a sense of optimism that the dysfunctional agony of the hung parliament and the plague years of Labor will finally be put behind us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully the electorate will not muff it this time and we can start the long, hard task of getting the country back on its feet and bringing back the good, old traditional Australia we loved so much in days gone by.
The year began with Labor unleashing the Abbott Abbott Abbott monster. Anything that went wrong, any bad news that happened to the governmentwas blamed on Tony Abbott and his so-called "negativity". It was extraordinary. It was almost as if the Gillard government was trying to give the impression it was the opposition and Tony Abbott was the prime minister.
These tactics were totally alien to Australia. It was a highly personal, playing the man, not the ball type of politics foreign to this country. And yes, it was foreign - introduced to the political scene by the Scottish spin doctor John MacTernan who was brought in by Gillard to try and turn her fortunes around. It was relentless. Day after day a new low in political discourse was reached. Gillard's ministers jumped onto a caravan of thuggery. Bovver boy politics personified. Mindless attacks on Tony Abbott, highly personal and damaging. Abbott's family has been deeply traumatised by this campaign and Abbott has warned them it will only get worse.
Yet despite all this, members of Gillard's cabinet are trying to deny responsibility and blame Tony Abbott for the personal attacks and the fact that public opinion of politicians has never been lower. The main person trying this on is Treasurer Wayne Swan just a few weeks after calling Abbott a thug.
When all this began, the public were horrified. The LNP won the Qld election with an all-time record majority in April and this should have been the cue to drop the attacks on Abbott. But they intensified and it became much worse. The public were browbeaten by these attacks day after day. It began affecting Abbott's popularity and the left wing Press Gallery jumped onto it with glee recommending the Libs dump Abbott and go back to the failed left wing experiment with Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
Normally US elections don't have much of an effect on Australia, but the recent November election was effectively a dry run for our own election later this year. Labor figures ingratiated themselves with the Democratic Party. They embedded themselves into the party in the leadup to the November election and used the highly personal and divisive tactics MacTernan had brought to this country in the US. Thus, Republican candidates who opposed abortion were "sexist" or "anti-woman". Other Republicans were smeared as racists and their party labelled "a refuge for old white men". "Anti-Hispanic", "WASPISH", Republicans were even called nazis or Hitler-philes.
The Republicans were completely blindsided. In the past, issues such as abortion had worked in their favour as evangelicals and other Christians would vote in vast numbers for anti-abortion candidates. But the Labor imports ruthlessly targeted black and Hispanic women who swamped the polling booths and re-elected Obama. Emboldened by their success in the US, those Labor officials have since returned to Australia and are preparing to unleash the same onslaught here.
The opinion polls have recently become varied after showing the Libs in front by up to 20 points in late 2011. Two Newspolls have shown Labor and Liberal neck and neck and one poll - the Morgan Gallup Poll - has even said that the Gillard government is five points in front and would easily win the election this year. So we can't be complacent, it is no longer a lay-down misiere.
An election won't be held until after July 1st. If it is held earlier than that it will disengage the Senate and House and a separate Senate election will have to be held during the term of the next government, making it a by-election. In the Senate election of 1967 there was a swing against the Liberal government of Harold Holt and two DLP members were elected. Something similar happened in the 1970 Senate election held during John Gorton's government. In 1973, 1974 and 1977, referendums were held to mandate Senate and House elections being both held on the same day. All three referendums were defeated. Since then, Prime Ministers have been careful to select election dates which keep the nexus in place so there will not be separate Senate elections.
A new year brings new hope and this year there is a sense of optimism that the dysfunctional agony of the hung parliament and the plague years of Labor will finally be put behind us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully the electorate will not muff it this time and we can start the long, hard task of getting the country back on its feet and bringing back the good, old traditional Australia we loved so much in days gone by.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
The phony gun control debate
With the school shootings in the US we have seen a resurgence of the gun control debate. In the past this has been mostly confined to non-US countries with a lot of talk about gun nuts and crazy Americans. Within the US where cooler and more rational heads prevail, the populace has largely been protected from this nonsense and life has continued as normal. This time in the leadup to Christmas the debate has spilled over into the US, largely due to foreigners who have gained a foothold in the US media.
The so-called interviewer, British ex-pat Piers Morgan has featured heavily in this latest debate. Shouting down gun lobbyists on his CNN TV show and provoking a backlash to the extent that a White House petition has been set up to have him shipped out of the country.
The other pocket of support for gun control in the US has come from Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. Many are puzzled by this on a proudly conservative TV news network but his boss - Australian-born Rupert Murdoch - has been a supporter of gun control for many years and formed those opinions in the 1960s and '70s when he aligned his newspapers firmly against the Vietnam War.
Both Morgan and O'Reilly have held up Australia as being some sort of poster boy for gun control, citing the Howard Government's gun buy-back in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The bald figures on paper point to a reduction of guns in the community since then but those figures can best be described as bikini figures. What they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.
Legal gun ownership in Australia was reduced by the gun buy-back and a tightening of the issuing of gun licences but there is little doubt that there are now a record number of guns in this country and more gun crime overall. It has just gone underground. Anybody living in our major capital cities and accessing the media can testify to that. Almost every day we hear about drive-by shootings in Sydney. Bikie gangs and muslims have been arming themselves to the teeth. If anything, the gun control measures in this country have resulted in a minor, manageable situation escalating out of control with very few - if any - checks and balances.
We don't live in an ideal world. Occasionally mass gun deaths occur. But responding with knee-jerk arguments in favour of gun control and misrepresenting the situation in foreign countries which have gone down this path is both unhelpful and will do nobody any good in the cold, hard light of day.
The so-called interviewer, British ex-pat Piers Morgan has featured heavily in this latest debate. Shouting down gun lobbyists on his CNN TV show and provoking a backlash to the extent that a White House petition has been set up to have him shipped out of the country.
The other pocket of support for gun control in the US has come from Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. Many are puzzled by this on a proudly conservative TV news network but his boss - Australian-born Rupert Murdoch - has been a supporter of gun control for many years and formed those opinions in the 1960s and '70s when he aligned his newspapers firmly against the Vietnam War.
Both Morgan and O'Reilly have held up Australia as being some sort of poster boy for gun control, citing the Howard Government's gun buy-back in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The bald figures on paper point to a reduction of guns in the community since then but those figures can best be described as bikini figures. What they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.
Legal gun ownership in Australia was reduced by the gun buy-back and a tightening of the issuing of gun licences but there is little doubt that there are now a record number of guns in this country and more gun crime overall. It has just gone underground. Anybody living in our major capital cities and accessing the media can testify to that. Almost every day we hear about drive-by shootings in Sydney. Bikie gangs and muslims have been arming themselves to the teeth. If anything, the gun control measures in this country have resulted in a minor, manageable situation escalating out of control with very few - if any - checks and balances.
We don't live in an ideal world. Occasionally mass gun deaths occur. But responding with knee-jerk arguments in favour of gun control and misrepresenting the situation in foreign countries which have gone down this path is both unhelpful and will do nobody any good in the cold, hard light of day.
Friday, 7 December 2012
Threat of Aboriginal referendum remains
Following on from the dumping of the hated Internet censorship by Communications minister Stephen Conroy after being put on hold for three years comes the news that the Aboriginal referendum - which was originally slated to coincide with the upcoming Federal election - has now been put on hold for three years as well. The reason given being that with the continuing bad odour caused by the Australia Day riot in Canberra, the referendum might be defeated.
The extraordinary and dismaying thing is the way the media greeted the announcement with disappointment, as if it was a terrible failing of the public that they would even consider voting against such a wonderful and noble gesture. Rather than indulging in an orgy of self-flagellation as the left wing media would like us to do, we should all be thankful that such a threat to our country has been deferred. Yes, deferred, not dumped unfortunately.
Unlike Internet censorship - upon which millions of dollars and countless manhours were spent for nothing - the Gillard government has taken steps to ensure that the Aboriginal referendum will eventually be held. In the final weeks of parliament this year, legislation was pushed through binding any future government into holding the referendum. Very much like how the Keating Labor government in its final year put through legislation forcing the Howard Liberal government to hold the republic referendum in 1999, so too the Gillard government will be forcing Tony Abbott's government to hold the Aboriginal referendum.
You might think there is no threat in this. John Howard campaigned for a No vote in the republic referendum and the public delivered. This time, however, Tony Abbott is apparently in favour of a Yes vote in the Aboriginal referendum, no doubt sensitive to any "Dr No" jibes from Labor. That will make the task of defeating this referendum even harder. No referendum which has received bipartisan support has ever been defeated.
I've previously gone through the reasons why we should vote No to this referendum, the chief one being that in this multicultural and pluralistic society we would be singling out one race of people in the Constitution as somehow being special and superior. Also that the most objectionable features of the Racial Discrimination Act would be written into the Constitution meaning that discrimination cases would no longer just be dealt with by bothersome bureaucrats from the Human Rights Commission, Constitutional lawyers would be dragged into it and cases would gummy up the High Court for years and cost the taxpayer billions of dollars.
It is clear that the Aboriginal referendum will be one of many time bombs laid by the Gillard government before they get the boot in the election. We should all be vigilant and never drop our guard with this mob.
The extraordinary and dismaying thing is the way the media greeted the announcement with disappointment, as if it was a terrible failing of the public that they would even consider voting against such a wonderful and noble gesture. Rather than indulging in an orgy of self-flagellation as the left wing media would like us to do, we should all be thankful that such a threat to our country has been deferred. Yes, deferred, not dumped unfortunately.
Unlike Internet censorship - upon which millions of dollars and countless manhours were spent for nothing - the Gillard government has taken steps to ensure that the Aboriginal referendum will eventually be held. In the final weeks of parliament this year, legislation was pushed through binding any future government into holding the referendum. Very much like how the Keating Labor government in its final year put through legislation forcing the Howard Liberal government to hold the republic referendum in 1999, so too the Gillard government will be forcing Tony Abbott's government to hold the Aboriginal referendum.
You might think there is no threat in this. John Howard campaigned for a No vote in the republic referendum and the public delivered. This time, however, Tony Abbott is apparently in favour of a Yes vote in the Aboriginal referendum, no doubt sensitive to any "Dr No" jibes from Labor. That will make the task of defeating this referendum even harder. No referendum which has received bipartisan support has ever been defeated.
I've previously gone through the reasons why we should vote No to this referendum, the chief one being that in this multicultural and pluralistic society we would be singling out one race of people in the Constitution as somehow being special and superior. Also that the most objectionable features of the Racial Discrimination Act would be written into the Constitution meaning that discrimination cases would no longer just be dealt with by bothersome bureaucrats from the Human Rights Commission, Constitutional lawyers would be dragged into it and cases would gummy up the High Court for years and cost the taxpayer billions of dollars.
It is clear that the Aboriginal referendum will be one of many time bombs laid by the Gillard government before they get the boot in the election. We should all be vigilant and never drop our guard with this mob.
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Gillard's monomania more psychotic than feminist
It has been a remarkable week in federal politics - a nasty, spiteful orgy of name calling and over the top theatrics which has taken political debate to a new level. We are now suffering an unprecedented new level of divisiveness and bitchiness we never thought we'd ever see in this country.
At first it seemed so straightforward. Disgraced speaker Peter Slipper had sent a series of lewd text messages to his gay sex partner referring to women's genitalia and other grubby material. Although his lawyers tried to suppress it, they became public and he had no other course of action but to either resign or be dismissed by the parliament. That afternoon a deal had been done for Slipper to resign. But in an incredible display of ineptitude, Gillard stood by the man who had sent the most appallingly sexist and mysoginistic text messages and launched an extraordinary personal attack on Tony Abbott. She spat the dummy well and truly. To illustrate how low she sank, she even tried to use the death of her father as ammunition in her demented jihad. What we saw was not a feminist tour de force, it was the psychotic rantings of a madwoman, someone who had snapped psychologically and had lost it. As the psychiatrist on Fawlty Towers said, there's enough material here for an entire conference.
Yet despite this pathetic and embarrassing performance we had sections of the media hailing the speech, indeed it has been referred to as a great milestone in feminism and a wonderful day for women. Pardon me but all I saw was a graphic exposition as to why women should not hold powerful positions. When the pressure was on, all sense of rationality and levelheadedness went out the window and short-tempered hysterics took over.
More disturbing than this is the wider context in which this speech was being played out. It has introduced the new wildcard of gender politics into an already divisively bitter and polarised political landscape. The gender war is the ultimate losing game because it can never be won. There are always two points of view - male and female - and if the debate escalates out of control - which it has done - the two sides drift further and further apart.
Many people might think this is a new phenomenon but in reality it is just another front in the ongoing class warfare and divide and rule philosophy of the Labor party. A direct comparison can be made with the Hawke/Keating era of the 1980s and early '90s. During that period several divisive debates about immigration and multiculturalism were prominent. Opinion polls showed as much as 80% of the population wanted an end to immigration and multiculturalism. Faced with this barrage, Labor ministers began labelling anybody who criticised their immigration policy - and indeed anybody who tried to discuss multiculturalism in general - as racist. Indeed back then the word racist was being bandied around much like the words "sexist" and "misogynist" are being used now. It is a last resort tactic - playing the race/sexism card. It didn't work back then and it isn't working now. Since Labor's handbag hit squad began their smears against Tony Abbott and the Liberals, Labor has gone from being in a winning position in the polls to slipping back well behind the Coalition. Gillard's personal popularity - boosted by the sympathy vote following her father's death - has since slumped. Are we to have the spectre of anybody criticising the government being labelled sexist? Is this all Labor can offer? Their policies have been a disaster, the deficit and foreign debt are at record high levels, they have failed on every front so they only shot they have left in the locker is name calling and smears based on sexuality. It is the politics of last resort.
Gillard's speech quickly went viral on the Internet and was hailed on feminist and leftist websites around the world. But beyond the gleeful squealing, the high fiving and the "you go girl" nonsense we have been bombarded with, the reality is that this speech - and indeed the entire tenor of political debate since the last election - has gone down like a lead balloon out in the 'burbs. People are horrified as they receive their carbon tax inflated power bills to see the perpetrators of their misery in Canberra mired in a gender war yelling "sexist" and "misogynist" at their critics. Are we to be forever held hostage by the fact that Gillard's father has died? Will we have Gillard flying off the handle whenever anybody uses the phrase "died of shame"? Can we afford to have as prime minister someone who is so emotionally frail and damaged that she drops her bundle and loses it whenever the going gets tough? This is not the good old traditional Australia that we know so well, this is a dangerous and unstable new frontier which will inflict untold damage to the national psyche and hurt us all no end in the long run.
We are now less than a year out from an election when the experiment with a female prime minister will finally be dumped in the political trashcan. The death rattle of a government is now almost deafening. The gender war is hastening their demise. Some good has to come out of all this. It will be a lesson and a case study for future politicians and governments how not to run their agendas and how not to conduct themselves on the public stage. The gender war cannot continue indefinitely, in a year's time feminist politics and class warfare will end and we can pick our shattered country off the floor, wipe the slate clean and get back to normal again.
At first it seemed so straightforward. Disgraced speaker Peter Slipper had sent a series of lewd text messages to his gay sex partner referring to women's genitalia and other grubby material. Although his lawyers tried to suppress it, they became public and he had no other course of action but to either resign or be dismissed by the parliament. That afternoon a deal had been done for Slipper to resign. But in an incredible display of ineptitude, Gillard stood by the man who had sent the most appallingly sexist and mysoginistic text messages and launched an extraordinary personal attack on Tony Abbott. She spat the dummy well and truly. To illustrate how low she sank, she even tried to use the death of her father as ammunition in her demented jihad. What we saw was not a feminist tour de force, it was the psychotic rantings of a madwoman, someone who had snapped psychologically and had lost it. As the psychiatrist on Fawlty Towers said, there's enough material here for an entire conference.
Yet despite this pathetic and embarrassing performance we had sections of the media hailing the speech, indeed it has been referred to as a great milestone in feminism and a wonderful day for women. Pardon me but all I saw was a graphic exposition as to why women should not hold powerful positions. When the pressure was on, all sense of rationality and levelheadedness went out the window and short-tempered hysterics took over.
More disturbing than this is the wider context in which this speech was being played out. It has introduced the new wildcard of gender politics into an already divisively bitter and polarised political landscape. The gender war is the ultimate losing game because it can never be won. There are always two points of view - male and female - and if the debate escalates out of control - which it has done - the two sides drift further and further apart.
Many people might think this is a new phenomenon but in reality it is just another front in the ongoing class warfare and divide and rule philosophy of the Labor party. A direct comparison can be made with the Hawke/Keating era of the 1980s and early '90s. During that period several divisive debates about immigration and multiculturalism were prominent. Opinion polls showed as much as 80% of the population wanted an end to immigration and multiculturalism. Faced with this barrage, Labor ministers began labelling anybody who criticised their immigration policy - and indeed anybody who tried to discuss multiculturalism in general - as racist. Indeed back then the word racist was being bandied around much like the words "sexist" and "misogynist" are being used now. It is a last resort tactic - playing the race/sexism card. It didn't work back then and it isn't working now. Since Labor's handbag hit squad began their smears against Tony Abbott and the Liberals, Labor has gone from being in a winning position in the polls to slipping back well behind the Coalition. Gillard's personal popularity - boosted by the sympathy vote following her father's death - has since slumped. Are we to have the spectre of anybody criticising the government being labelled sexist? Is this all Labor can offer? Their policies have been a disaster, the deficit and foreign debt are at record high levels, they have failed on every front so they only shot they have left in the locker is name calling and smears based on sexuality. It is the politics of last resort.
Gillard's speech quickly went viral on the Internet and was hailed on feminist and leftist websites around the world. But beyond the gleeful squealing, the high fiving and the "you go girl" nonsense we have been bombarded with, the reality is that this speech - and indeed the entire tenor of political debate since the last election - has gone down like a lead balloon out in the 'burbs. People are horrified as they receive their carbon tax inflated power bills to see the perpetrators of their misery in Canberra mired in a gender war yelling "sexist" and "misogynist" at their critics. Are we to be forever held hostage by the fact that Gillard's father has died? Will we have Gillard flying off the handle whenever anybody uses the phrase "died of shame"? Can we afford to have as prime minister someone who is so emotionally frail and damaged that she drops her bundle and loses it whenever the going gets tough? This is not the good old traditional Australia that we know so well, this is a dangerous and unstable new frontier which will inflict untold damage to the national psyche and hurt us all no end in the long run.
We are now less than a year out from an election when the experiment with a female prime minister will finally be dumped in the political trashcan. The death rattle of a government is now almost deafening. The gender war is hastening their demise. Some good has to come out of all this. It will be a lesson and a case study for future politicians and governments how not to run their agendas and how not to conduct themselves on the public stage. The gender war cannot continue indefinitely, in a year's time feminist politics and class warfare will end and we can pick our shattered country off the floor, wipe the slate clean and get back to normal again.
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Why I said no to The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times is a newspaper I've never really had a high opinion of. Universally left wing, supporting The Greens, refusing to print opinion pieces by climate change sceptics, stacking their letters page with Labor party staffers and blacklisting anybody who dares write in with a contrary opinion (including myself), the paper has been in decline for a number of years. But the paper is the only one in the ACT and those of us who live there have nowhere else to turn if we want to become published writers. The paper is owned by Fairfax and there is a chance that if an item is published it might also be syndicated to their other papers and payment might be forthcoming.
I had four articles published in The Canberra Times's suburban tabloid The Chronicle in early 1994, but a month or so ago I decided to try and get an item published in the main daily. I'd noticed over the past few months that the paper was becoming more balanced. The pathetic Tony Abbott bashers with their infantile comments about budgy smugglers were no longer getting their letters published, there were no longer letters from Labor stooges defending Gillard's government and The Greens, the paper was no longer printing government press releases as the main front page story and they were no longer relentlessly promoting climate change and attacking sceptics and "shock jocks". So I decided that - with the paper making attempts to reform itself - I would submit an article about obesity and my experiences in the so-called gainer scene.
To clarify, a gainer is someone who purposely tries to gain weight and be as fat as possible. It is a movement which has generally flown under the media radar. Although there are frequent articles about obesity, the subject is usually presented as something the sufferer regrets and wants to overcome. But gainers ignore society's disapproval, thumb their noses at common decency and eat as much as possible. Sometimes they react violently at doctors and others who try and tell them the errors of their ways and suggest weight loss. I was part of the gainer scene from 1996 to 2009 with a break of a year in 2001. I was a member of the Bellybuilders website, my ID was The Keg With Legs.
I wrote an article about my experiences and emailed it to The Canberra Times. The article was passed onto the features editor and a few days later I received an email from one of their journalists from the Sunday edition saying they would like to feature an article about the gainer scene and the various websites including the Ana (anorexic) sites. I was asked to submit before and after photographs of myself and to arrange to be interviewed for their proposed feature.
I mulled this over for a few days. I began getting the photos together, I scanned them onto a USB stick and was about to reply to the journalist to arrange an interview. Then came Mad Thursday, May 3rd.
I was reading the paper like I always do and arrived at the letters page. It was just two days after the latest Newspoll which showed an almost record low for the Gillard government, and that if an election was held Tony Abbott would win with a Queensland-style majority. The letters page had not one, not two but EIGHT separate letters either attacking Tony Abbott, supporting the carbon tax and defending the Gillard government. One letter by well-known Labor hack and regular writer Mark Slater said that there was no crisis regarding the Gillard government and things were all just peachy. The rage I felt was palpable, especially in view of the fact that I was put on a permanent blacklist by the letters editor after I dropped my support for the Rudd government in early 2009 and criticised their support for climate change theory. I haven't been able to get a letter published since. It was clear that by publishing these letters, The Canberra Times had dropped their newfound desire to be balanced and had regressed back to their old leftist ways.
At this stage I was still considering co-operating with them regarding the obesity/gainer feature. That was until two days later when - not only did another letter appear, this time by Jack Kershaw claiming that the Gillard government was "working well" - the very same letter by Mark Slater which was published two days earlier was reprinted under Kershaw's letter. It was absolutely shocking, a blatant admission that the paper agreed with the sentiments expressed in the letters. I decided then and there that I would have nothing whatsoever to do with them, that I would not lower myself to be associated with such disgraceful bias and partisanship.
Whether The Canberra Times now goes ahead with the feature is up to them, but I won't be contributing to it. They still have my original article I sent via email, but to mention me now within any article they publish would be a violation of journalistic ethics.
I believe the story still needs to be told. That someone in the media should lift the lid on the gainer and Ana websites and that the whole gainer movement should be shut down. At this stage I'm still considering my options. Maybe I'll sound out 60 Minutes or Sunday Night with the idea, but The Canberra Times has effectively dealt itself out of the picture and missed out due to their blinkered approach and left wing bias. They have only themselves to blame for missing the opportunity to publish an article on one of today's hot-button issues from a survivor's unique viewpoint.
I had four articles published in The Canberra Times's suburban tabloid The Chronicle in early 1994, but a month or so ago I decided to try and get an item published in the main daily. I'd noticed over the past few months that the paper was becoming more balanced. The pathetic Tony Abbott bashers with their infantile comments about budgy smugglers were no longer getting their letters published, there were no longer letters from Labor stooges defending Gillard's government and The Greens, the paper was no longer printing government press releases as the main front page story and they were no longer relentlessly promoting climate change and attacking sceptics and "shock jocks". So I decided that - with the paper making attempts to reform itself - I would submit an article about obesity and my experiences in the so-called gainer scene.
To clarify, a gainer is someone who purposely tries to gain weight and be as fat as possible. It is a movement which has generally flown under the media radar. Although there are frequent articles about obesity, the subject is usually presented as something the sufferer regrets and wants to overcome. But gainers ignore society's disapproval, thumb their noses at common decency and eat as much as possible. Sometimes they react violently at doctors and others who try and tell them the errors of their ways and suggest weight loss. I was part of the gainer scene from 1996 to 2009 with a break of a year in 2001. I was a member of the Bellybuilders website, my ID was The Keg With Legs.
I wrote an article about my experiences and emailed it to The Canberra Times. The article was passed onto the features editor and a few days later I received an email from one of their journalists from the Sunday edition saying they would like to feature an article about the gainer scene and the various websites including the Ana (anorexic) sites. I was asked to submit before and after photographs of myself and to arrange to be interviewed for their proposed feature.
I mulled this over for a few days. I began getting the photos together, I scanned them onto a USB stick and was about to reply to the journalist to arrange an interview. Then came Mad Thursday, May 3rd.
I was reading the paper like I always do and arrived at the letters page. It was just two days after the latest Newspoll which showed an almost record low for the Gillard government, and that if an election was held Tony Abbott would win with a Queensland-style majority. The letters page had not one, not two but EIGHT separate letters either attacking Tony Abbott, supporting the carbon tax and defending the Gillard government. One letter by well-known Labor hack and regular writer Mark Slater said that there was no crisis regarding the Gillard government and things were all just peachy. The rage I felt was palpable, especially in view of the fact that I was put on a permanent blacklist by the letters editor after I dropped my support for the Rudd government in early 2009 and criticised their support for climate change theory. I haven't been able to get a letter published since. It was clear that by publishing these letters, The Canberra Times had dropped their newfound desire to be balanced and had regressed back to their old leftist ways.
At this stage I was still considering co-operating with them regarding the obesity/gainer feature. That was until two days later when - not only did another letter appear, this time by Jack Kershaw claiming that the Gillard government was "working well" - the very same letter by Mark Slater which was published two days earlier was reprinted under Kershaw's letter. It was absolutely shocking, a blatant admission that the paper agreed with the sentiments expressed in the letters. I decided then and there that I would have nothing whatsoever to do with them, that I would not lower myself to be associated with such disgraceful bias and partisanship.
Whether The Canberra Times now goes ahead with the feature is up to them, but I won't be contributing to it. They still have my original article I sent via email, but to mention me now within any article they publish would be a violation of journalistic ethics.
I believe the story still needs to be told. That someone in the media should lift the lid on the gainer and Ana websites and that the whole gainer movement should be shut down. At this stage I'm still considering my options. Maybe I'll sound out 60 Minutes or Sunday Night with the idea, but The Canberra Times has effectively dealt itself out of the picture and missed out due to their blinkered approach and left wing bias. They have only themselves to blame for missing the opportunity to publish an article on one of today's hot-button issues from a survivor's unique viewpoint.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Brown's success - marketing Communism to kids
Greens leader Bob Brown has resigned from parliament after a political career of 30 years. He began as an activist in the Franklin River Dam campaign where he scored his first success in forcing a Labor government to stop construction of the Tasmanian dam, he entered the Tasmanian parliament then the Senate where his party now holds the balance of power.
The Greens were the successors of the Australian Democrats, the centre party started by Don Chipp in 1977. Chipp's party were famous for "keeping the bastards honest". The Greens didn't do that. The Greens themselves are the bastards.
The Greens have never pretended to be a mainstream or centre party, they are a hard left organisation. There are no moderates, no conservatives and no right wing of the party. Indeed there is a factional battle going on between the soft left of the party - led by Brown - and the hard-line Communists led by Lee Rhiannon. And therein lies the success - if you can call it that - of Bob Brown.
Brown was able to appear in the media projecting a dapper, sophisticated image which roped in the voters, especially young people. He appeared to be moderate but this was a facade hiding the party's true intentions and ideology. The Greens under Brown made Communism palatable to a new generation without them even realising it.
The Greens knew early on that you cannot sell Marx, Lenin and Trotsky to kids who regard that sort of thing as old fashioned and passe. But if you dress it up with a veneer of trees, wilderness and furry animals then young people will buy it. And they did. But beneath that warm and fuzzy green image is the same old Leftist tyranny we feared in the 1950s. The Greens and their supporters have been called watermelons - green on the outside and red on the inside - and not a truer word was said.
The Greens used standover tactics to get their demands implemented. They forced a prime minister who was elected on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax to commit political suicide and bring in the tax which will mean crippling increases in the cost of living. And all for nothing. Bob Brown didn't like being put under scrutiny by the Murdoch press so he forced a media enquiry which recommended savage controls by a government body over what can and can't be published even on blogs such as this. Bob Brown was a spiteful and petulant foot stamper who hated the thought that 90% of the public did not share his views and objected to his influence over the government. He has destroyed the Labor brand and turned the entire country against the Labor party and the Left in general.
The Greens claimed to be pro-gay yet they supported the pro-Palestinian, pro-muslim "Boycott Israel" campaign, Israel being the only middle eastern country where homosexuality is not punishable by the death penalty or savage jail terms.
Now that Brown is gone there is hope that the extremists will take over, push the party to the extreme left and thus make themselves so electorally unpalatable that they will lose their seats and follow the Australian Democrats into oblivion. Indeed there are signs that this might have even started with Brown as leader. During the week The Australian Financial Review published a poll saying that Senate voting intentions are closely following the state opinion polls. Under that scenario Labor and The Greens will lose three Senate seats, the coalition will pick up two - one each in NSW and Qld - and Bob Katter's Australian party will pick up one seat in Qld. If that happens - and let's hope it does - The Greens will no longer have the balance of power and there will be a coalition majority in the Senate. Tony Abbott as prime minister will be able to repeal the carbon tax and reverse all of Labor's destructive so-called "reforms" without needing to call a double dissolution and holding a joint sitting. Hopefully Brown's exit will accelerate this process. The flirtation with Left and hard left politics is almost over and things are looking up at long last.
Nobody will be lauding Bob Brown's period of influence and his leadership of The Greens. He split the Labor party hijacking its left base and traditional supporters leaving the Labor party neutered and irrelevant. So-called progressives have had to vote Green even though there are no factional leaders in the party to keep the extremists in line. Without Brown as leader The Greens have now become a lot less appealing and the Communist hard left of the party is now running the show. Not even Leftists will stomach raven haired harridans screeching propaganda and fighting ideological wars we left behind years ago.
The departure of Bob Brown marks a turning point where the national swing to the Right became unstoppable and the Left completed its slide into irrelevance. We can now talk about a post-green society and make concrete plans to get the country back on track leaving the nonsensical and idiotic BS behind. The Greens have left a trail of destruction federally and state and did not achieve anything remotely positive or worthwhile.
That is the legacy of Bob Brown's leadership and influence and it isn't pretty.
The Greens were the successors of the Australian Democrats, the centre party started by Don Chipp in 1977. Chipp's party were famous for "keeping the bastards honest". The Greens didn't do that. The Greens themselves are the bastards.
The Greens have never pretended to be a mainstream or centre party, they are a hard left organisation. There are no moderates, no conservatives and no right wing of the party. Indeed there is a factional battle going on between the soft left of the party - led by Brown - and the hard-line Communists led by Lee Rhiannon. And therein lies the success - if you can call it that - of Bob Brown.
Brown was able to appear in the media projecting a dapper, sophisticated image which roped in the voters, especially young people. He appeared to be moderate but this was a facade hiding the party's true intentions and ideology. The Greens under Brown made Communism palatable to a new generation without them even realising it.
The Greens knew early on that you cannot sell Marx, Lenin and Trotsky to kids who regard that sort of thing as old fashioned and passe. But if you dress it up with a veneer of trees, wilderness and furry animals then young people will buy it. And they did. But beneath that warm and fuzzy green image is the same old Leftist tyranny we feared in the 1950s. The Greens and their supporters have been called watermelons - green on the outside and red on the inside - and not a truer word was said.
The Greens used standover tactics to get their demands implemented. They forced a prime minister who was elected on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax to commit political suicide and bring in the tax which will mean crippling increases in the cost of living. And all for nothing. Bob Brown didn't like being put under scrutiny by the Murdoch press so he forced a media enquiry which recommended savage controls by a government body over what can and can't be published even on blogs such as this. Bob Brown was a spiteful and petulant foot stamper who hated the thought that 90% of the public did not share his views and objected to his influence over the government. He has destroyed the Labor brand and turned the entire country against the Labor party and the Left in general.
The Greens claimed to be pro-gay yet they supported the pro-Palestinian, pro-muslim "Boycott Israel" campaign, Israel being the only middle eastern country where homosexuality is not punishable by the death penalty or savage jail terms.
Now that Brown is gone there is hope that the extremists will take over, push the party to the extreme left and thus make themselves so electorally unpalatable that they will lose their seats and follow the Australian Democrats into oblivion. Indeed there are signs that this might have even started with Brown as leader. During the week The Australian Financial Review published a poll saying that Senate voting intentions are closely following the state opinion polls. Under that scenario Labor and The Greens will lose three Senate seats, the coalition will pick up two - one each in NSW and Qld - and Bob Katter's Australian party will pick up one seat in Qld. If that happens - and let's hope it does - The Greens will no longer have the balance of power and there will be a coalition majority in the Senate. Tony Abbott as prime minister will be able to repeal the carbon tax and reverse all of Labor's destructive so-called "reforms" without needing to call a double dissolution and holding a joint sitting. Hopefully Brown's exit will accelerate this process. The flirtation with Left and hard left politics is almost over and things are looking up at long last.
Nobody will be lauding Bob Brown's period of influence and his leadership of The Greens. He split the Labor party hijacking its left base and traditional supporters leaving the Labor party neutered and irrelevant. So-called progressives have had to vote Green even though there are no factional leaders in the party to keep the extremists in line. Without Brown as leader The Greens have now become a lot less appealing and the Communist hard left of the party is now running the show. Not even Leftists will stomach raven haired harridans screeching propaganda and fighting ideological wars we left behind years ago.
The departure of Bob Brown marks a turning point where the national swing to the Right became unstoppable and the Left completed its slide into irrelevance. We can now talk about a post-green society and make concrete plans to get the country back on track leaving the nonsensical and idiotic BS behind. The Greens have left a trail of destruction federally and state and did not achieve anything remotely positive or worthwhile.
That is the legacy of Bob Brown's leadership and influence and it isn't pretty.
Monday, 26 March 2012
The fat lady has started singing
The conservative Liberal National Party has won the Queensland election by a record Australian margin. The Labor party lies in ruins with just a netball team of seven members. Ten, possibly eleven ministers have lost their seats and premier Anna Bligh has quit politics after almost losing her seat sparking an expensive by-election which Labor will, in all probability, lose.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear before we continue. Right-wingers like myself do not like to see the Left totally rejected, completely destroyed and absolutely humiliated like this. WE LOVE IT!!
The whole Queensland campaign for Labor was a train wreck from go to whoa. They employed cynical, American style personal attacks on LNP leader Campbell Newman. The mud was being slung left, right and centre. At first it seemed to be working. Polls showed the margin between the parties narrowing, and for a while it looked like the LNP would win the election but be denied a leader and the state left without a premier. Labor was willing to cause a political and Constitutional crisis in Qld just because they couldn't stand the thought of losing office. But then it went completely over the top.
Anna Bligh put out a full media alert calling an emergency press conference where she gave details of what she called "explosive new revelations" about Campbell Newman's business dealings. Even the hardened, leftist journalists present knew that it was all Labor spin, that there was no truth in the allegations. The Crime and Misconduct Commission had already been investigating all the allegations and a few days later released a damning report saying that all of Labor's allegations against Newman were completely groundless and that no corrupt or unethical conduct occurred. Labor was dead.
The reaction from federal Labor politicians following the election has been confused and puzzling. Early on the message went onto all their Blackberries to tell the media that the election was fought on state issues and that there were no implications for federal Labor. False bravado personified. They have to say that, don't they? But it was the reaction from Anthony Albanese, that little smartarse bastard from inner Sydney who called last year's anti-carbon tax rallies "the convoy of incontinence" and "the convoy of no consequence" which had everybody shaking their heads with disbelief. On Ten's Meet the Press he said "Well, there you have Tony Abbott out there spinning and spinning hard. Tony Abbott is someone who has substituted policy for just having slogans". He just doesn't get it. Here we have the biggest rout in Australian electoral history. Labor doesn't even qualify anymore as being a political party in Qld, they won't even be able to form opposition or to have proper shadow ministers, yet there was Albanese on national television knocking Tony Abbott again. It should be blindingly obvious to even a moronic, birdbrained pipsqueak like Albanese that the strategy of trying to blame Tony Abbott for everything has been a spectacular failure. It doesn't even play well amongst his trendy, inner Sydney constituents anymore.
Regarding the reaction from Campbell Newman, Tony Abbott and others on the conservative side of politics, you can only admire the dignified and statesmanlike way in which the Qld victory was received. No triumphalism, no putting the boot in, just an acknowledgement that a new era has begun with the difficult uphill task of rebuilding Qld ahead. There won't be time for gloating, the sleeves will be rolled up immediately and the hard work of restoring Qld and wiping out the devastation and heartbreak of the 20 year lost weekend under Labor will begin in earnest.
As much as federal Labor is in denial, the fact remains that where goes Qld, Canberra follows soon after. The second worst Labor defeat in Qld in 1974 was followed by the record victory by Fraser and the Liberal National coalition in 1975. When Qld voters waited on their porches with baseball bats for Paul Keating in 1995 and Wayne Goss arrived first, they turfed out a state Labor government with a big majority and led the charge against Keating the following year putting Howard and the coalition in power federally with a near record majority. Gillard is now in a similar position on death row and the fat lady will soon start singing.
I said on this blog a while back that Labor - as a party - is unsuited for government. More and more people across Australia are reaching the same conclusion. Political experiments rarely work. People want stability and good, soundly based conservative government so they can feel confident about their lives, their jobs and their future security. They don't want glib one-liners, they don't want crisis management, they don't want focus group driven hucksters and they don't want shallow, amorphous leaders who lie their way into office and pull the rug out from under the populace when they are safely ensconced in their ministerial offices drawing their salaries financed by the hard work of taxpayers.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but as the Qld election has demonstrated Labor can't fool all of the people all of the time. The tide is turning with a vengeance and they continue to do ostrich impersonations at their own peril.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear before we continue. Right-wingers like myself do not like to see the Left totally rejected, completely destroyed and absolutely humiliated like this. WE LOVE IT!!
The whole Queensland campaign for Labor was a train wreck from go to whoa. They employed cynical, American style personal attacks on LNP leader Campbell Newman. The mud was being slung left, right and centre. At first it seemed to be working. Polls showed the margin between the parties narrowing, and for a while it looked like the LNP would win the election but be denied a leader and the state left without a premier. Labor was willing to cause a political and Constitutional crisis in Qld just because they couldn't stand the thought of losing office. But then it went completely over the top.
Anna Bligh put out a full media alert calling an emergency press conference where she gave details of what she called "explosive new revelations" about Campbell Newman's business dealings. Even the hardened, leftist journalists present knew that it was all Labor spin, that there was no truth in the allegations. The Crime and Misconduct Commission had already been investigating all the allegations and a few days later released a damning report saying that all of Labor's allegations against Newman were completely groundless and that no corrupt or unethical conduct occurred. Labor was dead.
The reaction from federal Labor politicians following the election has been confused and puzzling. Early on the message went onto all their Blackberries to tell the media that the election was fought on state issues and that there were no implications for federal Labor. False bravado personified. They have to say that, don't they? But it was the reaction from Anthony Albanese, that little smartarse bastard from inner Sydney who called last year's anti-carbon tax rallies "the convoy of incontinence" and "the convoy of no consequence" which had everybody shaking their heads with disbelief. On Ten's Meet the Press he said "Well, there you have Tony Abbott out there spinning and spinning hard. Tony Abbott is someone who has substituted policy for just having slogans". He just doesn't get it. Here we have the biggest rout in Australian electoral history. Labor doesn't even qualify anymore as being a political party in Qld, they won't even be able to form opposition or to have proper shadow ministers, yet there was Albanese on national television knocking Tony Abbott again. It should be blindingly obvious to even a moronic, birdbrained pipsqueak like Albanese that the strategy of trying to blame Tony Abbott for everything has been a spectacular failure. It doesn't even play well amongst his trendy, inner Sydney constituents anymore.
Regarding the reaction from Campbell Newman, Tony Abbott and others on the conservative side of politics, you can only admire the dignified and statesmanlike way in which the Qld victory was received. No triumphalism, no putting the boot in, just an acknowledgement that a new era has begun with the difficult uphill task of rebuilding Qld ahead. There won't be time for gloating, the sleeves will be rolled up immediately and the hard work of restoring Qld and wiping out the devastation and heartbreak of the 20 year lost weekend under Labor will begin in earnest.
As much as federal Labor is in denial, the fact remains that where goes Qld, Canberra follows soon after. The second worst Labor defeat in Qld in 1974 was followed by the record victory by Fraser and the Liberal National coalition in 1975. When Qld voters waited on their porches with baseball bats for Paul Keating in 1995 and Wayne Goss arrived first, they turfed out a state Labor government with a big majority and led the charge against Keating the following year putting Howard and the coalition in power federally with a near record majority. Gillard is now in a similar position on death row and the fat lady will soon start singing.
I said on this blog a while back that Labor - as a party - is unsuited for government. More and more people across Australia are reaching the same conclusion. Political experiments rarely work. People want stability and good, soundly based conservative government so they can feel confident about their lives, their jobs and their future security. They don't want glib one-liners, they don't want crisis management, they don't want focus group driven hucksters and they don't want shallow, amorphous leaders who lie their way into office and pull the rug out from under the populace when they are safely ensconced in their ministerial offices drawing their salaries financed by the hard work of taxpayers.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but as the Qld election has demonstrated Labor can't fool all of the people all of the time. The tide is turning with a vengeance and they continue to do ostrich impersonations at their own peril.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
The truth about that song and those "Industry Super Funds"
"From little things big things grow"
I'm as sick of that song as the recording engineers who had to listen to it over and over during the recording session in 1988. It is impossible to escape the naive, childish nursery rhyme which is blanketing the media, and has been almost non-stop for 24 years. "Twinkle Twinkle little star", "From little things big things grow".
If - like myself - you've stopped to ask yourself why a song released almost a quarter of a century ago, which didn't even make the Top 40 at the time, has received such relentless exposure I have the answer. These are the facts the media don't want you to know.
In 1988 the Aboriginal tent embassy was re-established outside Old Parliament House in Canberra after a break of over ten years. The feral activists behind it needed funding to pay for food and other essentials to keep their illegal camp going. At the time Australia was celebrating the Bicentennial and the Left hated it with a passion. There were violent demonstrations, Aboriginals acted like pigs in the media and the Bicentennial became a lightning rod for Leftist discontent of all manner of things.
As part of all this, Paul Kelly (the singer/songwriter) was enlisted to write a song which would provide funding for the tent embassy. All the royalties and other revenue from the song would go towards funding the tent embassy. The aim was to get the song into the media and played as many times as possible, as each time it was played royalties were generated which went into the pockets of the tent embassy ferals. The media - especially the ABC - took it up with enthusiasm and thousands of dollars were generated.
Paul Kelly himself had many hits over the years. To Her Door, Leaps and Bounds, Forty Miles To Saturday Night, Love Never Runs on Time. Hits which have become part of Australian music history and which still sell many copies today. Yet From Little Things Big Things Grow is conspicuously absent from all the Greatest Hits CD and DVD compilations. You cannot even buy it on iTunes. It is almost as if Paul Kelly himself is ashamed of the song:
Paul Kelly's DVD video collection which omits From Little Things Big Things Grow.
You would imagine that after so much time the relentless flogging of the song would have eased, but the opposite is the case. It has been stepped up, significantly since the mad riot at the tent embassy on Australia Day. The song is now being used in TV advertising for so-called Industry Super Funds. Every time these ads go to air more and more money goes to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
If you've also been wondering about those Industry Super Funds, I have another bit of information for you. These funds are not owned by respectable finance and insurance companies, they are owned by the ACTU. That's right, Hesta, C-Bus, Host Plus and the others are an arm of the union movement, and the many millions of dollars workers are paying into them - often against their will - are used by the ACTU - the industrial wing of the Labor Party - for political activism and advancing class warfare against bosses and conservative Australia. Remember the anti-Workchoices ads in the leadup to the 2007 election? They were funded by the Industry Super Funds. Despite all this money at the ACTU's disposal, they were actually given a grant by the Rudd government in late 2009 to produce and screen highly political ads personally attacking Tony Abbott and the Liberals claiming they would bring back Workchoices. It is fear of the ACTU launching another similar campaign which is preventing Abbott and the Libs from pledging sorely needed industrial reforms. The new head of the ACTU Dave Oliver has pledged more money will be used in the leadup to the next election to attack Tony Abbott and grossly misrepresent Liberal policy on industrial relations.
It is high time the media stopped pulling the wool over the public's eyes by pretending that all of this is somehow ethical or acceptable. We have been deceived, and it is time to call a spade a spade and stop kowtowing to this rubbish and allowing themselves to be used as shills by leftist ratbags and union thugs.
After all, from little things big things grow.
I'm as sick of that song as the recording engineers who had to listen to it over and over during the recording session in 1988. It is impossible to escape the naive, childish nursery rhyme which is blanketing the media, and has been almost non-stop for 24 years. "Twinkle Twinkle little star", "From little things big things grow".
If - like myself - you've stopped to ask yourself why a song released almost a quarter of a century ago, which didn't even make the Top 40 at the time, has received such relentless exposure I have the answer. These are the facts the media don't want you to know.
In 1988 the Aboriginal tent embassy was re-established outside Old Parliament House in Canberra after a break of over ten years. The feral activists behind it needed funding to pay for food and other essentials to keep their illegal camp going. At the time Australia was celebrating the Bicentennial and the Left hated it with a passion. There were violent demonstrations, Aboriginals acted like pigs in the media and the Bicentennial became a lightning rod for Leftist discontent of all manner of things.
As part of all this, Paul Kelly (the singer/songwriter) was enlisted to write a song which would provide funding for the tent embassy. All the royalties and other revenue from the song would go towards funding the tent embassy. The aim was to get the song into the media and played as many times as possible, as each time it was played royalties were generated which went into the pockets of the tent embassy ferals. The media - especially the ABC - took it up with enthusiasm and thousands of dollars were generated.
Paul Kelly himself had many hits over the years. To Her Door, Leaps and Bounds, Forty Miles To Saturday Night, Love Never Runs on Time. Hits which have become part of Australian music history and which still sell many copies today. Yet From Little Things Big Things Grow is conspicuously absent from all the Greatest Hits CD and DVD compilations. You cannot even buy it on iTunes. It is almost as if Paul Kelly himself is ashamed of the song:
Paul Kelly's DVD video collection which omits From Little Things Big Things Grow.
You would imagine that after so much time the relentless flogging of the song would have eased, but the opposite is the case. It has been stepped up, significantly since the mad riot at the tent embassy on Australia Day. The song is now being used in TV advertising for so-called Industry Super Funds. Every time these ads go to air more and more money goes to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
If you've also been wondering about those Industry Super Funds, I have another bit of information for you. These funds are not owned by respectable finance and insurance companies, they are owned by the ACTU. That's right, Hesta, C-Bus, Host Plus and the others are an arm of the union movement, and the many millions of dollars workers are paying into them - often against their will - are used by the ACTU - the industrial wing of the Labor Party - for political activism and advancing class warfare against bosses and conservative Australia. Remember the anti-Workchoices ads in the leadup to the 2007 election? They were funded by the Industry Super Funds. Despite all this money at the ACTU's disposal, they were actually given a grant by the Rudd government in late 2009 to produce and screen highly political ads personally attacking Tony Abbott and the Liberals claiming they would bring back Workchoices. It is fear of the ACTU launching another similar campaign which is preventing Abbott and the Libs from pledging sorely needed industrial reforms. The new head of the ACTU Dave Oliver has pledged more money will be used in the leadup to the next election to attack Tony Abbott and grossly misrepresent Liberal policy on industrial relations.
It is high time the media stopped pulling the wool over the public's eyes by pretending that all of this is somehow ethical or acceptable. We have been deceived, and it is time to call a spade a spade and stop kowtowing to this rubbish and allowing themselves to be used as shills by leftist ratbags and union thugs.
After all, from little things big things grow.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Drop the dead donkey
It is remarkable living through the current fantasyland under the Gillard government. Things are turning sour rapidly, people are losing their jobs, the Global Financial crisis is looming yet the government and Labor party are preoccupied by politically correct peripheral symbolism and trendoid nonsense which is of little interest to the public at large. First it was gay marriage where we saw the issue hijacking the Labor conference last December. That's all very well, gay marriage does not have a direct impact on the majority and can be easily dismissed as a side issue. Far more disturbing is the threatened Aboriginal referendum which has the potential - if passed - to trample on the rights of every non-Aboriginal Australian and end up costing millions - if not billions - of dollars.
Let's look at what is proposed. A new section will be inserted into the constitution saying that Aborigines were the original inhabitants of Australia, that the land is theirs and that all law in Australia is derived from traditional tribal law. Another section will be inserted outlawing racial discrimination - like the Racial Discrimination Act in miniature - but only protecting Aborigines. There is pressure from ethnic groups to incorporate the whole Racial Discrimination Act holus bolus into the constitution.
The bright red danger lights should now be flashing furiously.
For a start, this is just a de facto Bill of Rights, the same legislation Labor has been trying to introduce for many years on a state and federal level. In the ACT the Labor government has actually managed to legislate a Human Rights Act and this has been exploited by savvy lawyers to the hilt. Last year a magistrate was actually sacked when it was found that he spoke to a juvenile offender too harshly in his sentencing, and that the magistrate violated the childrens' rights of the offender under the Human Rights Act. The sentence was overturned and the boy walked free.
Just imagine that happening with Aborigines. They would effectively be immune from all prosecution because of the fear that - under the amendments to the Constitution - any charges would be struck down by Constitutional lawyers in the High Court. It would be a lawyers' picnic. And the worst thing about this is that everybody else in the country would not have that same advantage. Aborigines would become a protected species and everybody else will become second class citizens. Just imagine Aborigines running wild every day committing crimes willy nilly knowing they couldn't be charged because it is unconstitutional.
Why should the Constitution put Aborigines on a pedestal just because "they were here first"? It is an abomination and just another form of discrimination. Reverse discrimination..
The second part about transferring the Racial Discrimination Act into the Constitution - but only applying to Aborigines - is so totally bizarre you have to wonder why this was actually put into the proposal in the first place. Surely they didn't think the public would wear this? The Racial Discrimination Act was used by the infamous white gang of Aborigines to try and silence Andrew Bolt in the court action last year. It almost worked - Bolt shut down his blog temporarily and almost retired from journalism - but was persuaded to keep fighting the good fight by the overwhelming majority of Australians. Rather than extending the idea of racial discrimination into the Constitution we should be abolishing these laws altogether.
So far the only support for a yes vote in the referendum has come from The Canberra Times, specifically editor-at-large Jack Waterford who has an obsession with Aborigines and is on record as describing himself as a former student radical involved in the protest movement in the 1960s and '70s. It is largely due to his presence that The Canberra Times has pushed every trendy lefty issue doing the rounds. The newspaper has even said that if the public votes No to the referendum Australia would be shamed and become the pariah of the world. The good news is that the public - even in left wing Canberra - is just not buying it. Even on The Canberra Times's own website - normally a case of preaching to the converted - 60% of respondents to their online poll voted no to the question "Will you be voting yes to the Aboriginal referendum?"
Any possible support for the referendum was shot down in flames with the disgraceful Australia Day riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy. Just imagine this sort of radical ratbaggery being protected by the Constitution.
This referendum will cost millions of dollars to hold in the first place. It is now clear that it will be comprehensively defeated, so what is the point of the exercise? Why go ahead with it? To make a few feral leftists feel warm and fuzzy? To parade the PC credentials of the instigators? To create work for the Aboriginal industry? A very expensive way to indulge the fantasies and infantile idealism of the Left.
The Gillard government should nip this whole referendum proposal in the bud and stomp on it comprehensively by announcing it will not go ahead. It represents a direct threat to the rights and liberty of the vast majority and has the potential to cost taxpayers billions of dollars in legal fees and tie up the courts for many years with lawyers being the only beneficiaries. We don't want it and we definitely don't need it.
Let's look at what is proposed. A new section will be inserted into the constitution saying that Aborigines were the original inhabitants of Australia, that the land is theirs and that all law in Australia is derived from traditional tribal law. Another section will be inserted outlawing racial discrimination - like the Racial Discrimination Act in miniature - but only protecting Aborigines. There is pressure from ethnic groups to incorporate the whole Racial Discrimination Act holus bolus into the constitution.
The bright red danger lights should now be flashing furiously.
For a start, this is just a de facto Bill of Rights, the same legislation Labor has been trying to introduce for many years on a state and federal level. In the ACT the Labor government has actually managed to legislate a Human Rights Act and this has been exploited by savvy lawyers to the hilt. Last year a magistrate was actually sacked when it was found that he spoke to a juvenile offender too harshly in his sentencing, and that the magistrate violated the childrens' rights of the offender under the Human Rights Act. The sentence was overturned and the boy walked free.
Just imagine that happening with Aborigines. They would effectively be immune from all prosecution because of the fear that - under the amendments to the Constitution - any charges would be struck down by Constitutional lawyers in the High Court. It would be a lawyers' picnic. And the worst thing about this is that everybody else in the country would not have that same advantage. Aborigines would become a protected species and everybody else will become second class citizens. Just imagine Aborigines running wild every day committing crimes willy nilly knowing they couldn't be charged because it is unconstitutional.
Why should the Constitution put Aborigines on a pedestal just because "they were here first"? It is an abomination and just another form of discrimination. Reverse discrimination..
The second part about transferring the Racial Discrimination Act into the Constitution - but only applying to Aborigines - is so totally bizarre you have to wonder why this was actually put into the proposal in the first place. Surely they didn't think the public would wear this? The Racial Discrimination Act was used by the infamous white gang of Aborigines to try and silence Andrew Bolt in the court action last year. It almost worked - Bolt shut down his blog temporarily and almost retired from journalism - but was persuaded to keep fighting the good fight by the overwhelming majority of Australians. Rather than extending the idea of racial discrimination into the Constitution we should be abolishing these laws altogether.
So far the only support for a yes vote in the referendum has come from The Canberra Times, specifically editor-at-large Jack Waterford who has an obsession with Aborigines and is on record as describing himself as a former student radical involved in the protest movement in the 1960s and '70s. It is largely due to his presence that The Canberra Times has pushed every trendy lefty issue doing the rounds. The newspaper has even said that if the public votes No to the referendum Australia would be shamed and become the pariah of the world. The good news is that the public - even in left wing Canberra - is just not buying it. Even on The Canberra Times's own website - normally a case of preaching to the converted - 60% of respondents to their online poll voted no to the question "Will you be voting yes to the Aboriginal referendum?"
Any possible support for the referendum was shot down in flames with the disgraceful Australia Day riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy. Just imagine this sort of radical ratbaggery being protected by the Constitution.
This referendum will cost millions of dollars to hold in the first place. It is now clear that it will be comprehensively defeated, so what is the point of the exercise? Why go ahead with it? To make a few feral leftists feel warm and fuzzy? To parade the PC credentials of the instigators? To create work for the Aboriginal industry? A very expensive way to indulge the fantasies and infantile idealism of the Left.
The Gillard government should nip this whole referendum proposal in the bud and stomp on it comprehensively by announcing it will not go ahead. It represents a direct threat to the rights and liberty of the vast majority and has the potential to cost taxpayers billions of dollars in legal fees and tie up the courts for many years with lawyers being the only beneficiaries. We don't want it and we definitely don't need it.
"Strong economy" is just a mirage
Labor members are becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to cut through due to the continuing leadership speculation. They keep parroting guff to a media - and to the public at large - which long ago lost faith in the Gillard government and can't believe anything they say.
The main message they are trying to push is the so-called "strong economy". They actually believe that economic management is a plus for the government, and that this is a weapon to use against the opposition. Are they out of their minds?
Day after day we are hearing reports of massive job losses. Companies going bust, jobs disappearing or else being relocated overseas, companies pulling up stumps and heading to greener pastures, manufacturing industry closing down, it just goes on and on. We are seeing those headlines and hearing this terrible news day after day yet the government keeps talking about the "strong economy" as if nothing is happening. All of this just goes to show how out of touch the government is with reality and the disconnect between Canberra and the real world. The politicians are being fed a non-stop stream of happy talk from bureaucrats fearful of losing their jobs if they tell their bosses the truth.
All this has eerie similarities to the period between 1989 and 1991 - immediately before the declaration of "the recession we had to have" which extended till 1994. The Hawke government's Industry and Trade minister, the late John Button said on the ABC's 1993 documentary Labor In Power that during this period business leaders kept approaching him talking about how dire things were. Costs were going up, business confidence was non-existent and that they would have to make mass sackings. Button said that he asked the business leaders if they had told Hawke and Keating about this. "We've tried to but they're just not listening" said Button.
During that pre-recession period (when, in fact, the country was already in recession) Treasurer Paul Keating kept saying there would be "a soft landing". He had been told over and over by bureaucrats in Treasury that there would be no recession, that the economy was sound and in good shape - just like the Gillard government is now telling the public. In April 1991 Keating was forced to make his "Recession we had to have" speech when the figures finally caught up with reality and the recession was officially confirmed.
Fast forward to the present day. The economy is going south at a rate of knots. Job losses are escalating and the economic legacy of John Howard and Peter Costello - which kept us out of the Global Financial Crisis during the Rudd government - has been squandered. The spectre of the carbon tax is hanging over the country like a Damocles sword and is destroying the country.
Australia is the only country in the world which has deliberately bought its way into the Global Financial Crisis.
The companies which are shedding jobs and heading into receivership and administration are mostly saying that the carbon tax isn't the reason. They have to say that, don't they? The fact is they cannot blame the carbon tax because they are scared of being left out of any industry compensation from the government when the carbon tax comes in. They are being gagged. When you have a situation where the government has to keep paying out millions in compensation to the victims of its policies then you have to agree that something is terribly wrong.
All in all, the Labor government has created the terrible mess this country is in and is trying to pull the old smoke and mirrors trick by talking up the economy. Well, the public is just not buying it. They know this country has been destroyed by Labor, they know the economy is stuffed and they know that Labor is just a cheap-jack bunch of gratuitious liars and charlatans with the economic expertise of Mickey Mouse. No amount of happy talk about the so-called "strong economy" will ever change that.
The main message they are trying to push is the so-called "strong economy". They actually believe that economic management is a plus for the government, and that this is a weapon to use against the opposition. Are they out of their minds?
Day after day we are hearing reports of massive job losses. Companies going bust, jobs disappearing or else being relocated overseas, companies pulling up stumps and heading to greener pastures, manufacturing industry closing down, it just goes on and on. We are seeing those headlines and hearing this terrible news day after day yet the government keeps talking about the "strong economy" as if nothing is happening. All of this just goes to show how out of touch the government is with reality and the disconnect between Canberra and the real world. The politicians are being fed a non-stop stream of happy talk from bureaucrats fearful of losing their jobs if they tell their bosses the truth.
All this has eerie similarities to the period between 1989 and 1991 - immediately before the declaration of "the recession we had to have" which extended till 1994. The Hawke government's Industry and Trade minister, the late John Button said on the ABC's 1993 documentary Labor In Power that during this period business leaders kept approaching him talking about how dire things were. Costs were going up, business confidence was non-existent and that they would have to make mass sackings. Button said that he asked the business leaders if they had told Hawke and Keating about this. "We've tried to but they're just not listening" said Button.
During that pre-recession period (when, in fact, the country was already in recession) Treasurer Paul Keating kept saying there would be "a soft landing". He had been told over and over by bureaucrats in Treasury that there would be no recession, that the economy was sound and in good shape - just like the Gillard government is now telling the public. In April 1991 Keating was forced to make his "Recession we had to have" speech when the figures finally caught up with reality and the recession was officially confirmed.
Fast forward to the present day. The economy is going south at a rate of knots. Job losses are escalating and the economic legacy of John Howard and Peter Costello - which kept us out of the Global Financial Crisis during the Rudd government - has been squandered. The spectre of the carbon tax is hanging over the country like a Damocles sword and is destroying the country.
Australia is the only country in the world which has deliberately bought its way into the Global Financial Crisis.
The companies which are shedding jobs and heading into receivership and administration are mostly saying that the carbon tax isn't the reason. They have to say that, don't they? The fact is they cannot blame the carbon tax because they are scared of being left out of any industry compensation from the government when the carbon tax comes in. They are being gagged. When you have a situation where the government has to keep paying out millions in compensation to the victims of its policies then you have to agree that something is terribly wrong.
All in all, the Labor government has created the terrible mess this country is in and is trying to pull the old smoke and mirrors trick by talking up the economy. Well, the public is just not buying it. They know this country has been destroyed by Labor, they know the economy is stuffed and they know that Labor is just a cheap-jack bunch of gratuitious liars and charlatans with the economic expertise of Mickey Mouse. No amount of happy talk about the so-called "strong economy" will ever change that.
The problem is Labor - not Gillard
It has been a frantic few days in Canberra politically with the Labor leadership issue erupting following the release of the YouTube video showing Kevin Rudd losing it and using a flurry of four letter words whilst PM in 2009. It has now become clear that the video was posted by a member of Julia Gillard's staff in order to discredit Rudd - the same people who incited the Australia Day riot at the Aboriginal Embassy. The video was left on a computer hard drive by one of Rudd's staff and - with the haste in which Gillard took over in June 2010 - wasn't wiped before Rudd got the heave-ho.
There has been much speculation about Gillard calling a spill and a vote being taken about the leadership. One thing is clear. Gillard has the numbers and will win any leadership ballot easily. Comparisons have been made with the ascention of Paul Keating as PM - challenge the first time, lose then go to the backbench, white-ant the leader, persuade enough to switch sides then challenge again after six months and win. This method also worked in 1974 and 1975 when Malcolm Fraser challenged Billy Snedden for the Liberal leadership. In this case it will be more like Andrew Peacock's challenges to Malcolm Fraser or Peter Costello's desire to be prime minister - it just won't get over the line.
The major fault is that - unlike Keating and Fraser (and Peacock and Costello) - Rudd has already had a term as leader and prime minister and been found wanting. Badly. He was just no good in the job whichever way you look at it. He created such resentment and made so many enemies within the party and general community that the last thing anybody in Labor wants is a return to the nightmare days of Rudd as leader. He will never win.
Never forget that Rudd did such a poor job that the opinion polls - in an election year - were pointing to an embarrassing and devastating defeat for Rudd and Labor, the first time a government would have been defeated after just one term. It was especially telling when you consider that Rudd was elected on such a strong mandate and such goodwill having defeated a sitting prime minister in his own seat, only the second time that had ever happened. The apology to Aborigines at the start of the Rudd government was symbolic in that it marked the beginning of a new era and people really did believe that things had changed - that they would get the strong economic management of the Hawke/Keating era combined with a social concience. As we all know it didn't quite turn out that way. Rudd and Labor squandered their mandate and sent the country spiralling downward at a rate of knots.
Rudd was a control freak calling meetings at 2AM, forcing public servants in disparate departments and bodies to deal directly with his office, allowing ministers to push crazy policies and frequently being reported as having tantrums with hairdressers and airline staff. It wasn't a happy ship at all.
The opinion polls were holding up for more than two years largely due to the Liberals who put up weak and ineffectual leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, but at the end of 2008 Communications minister Stephen Conroy put up the crazy Internet censorship proposal which immediately turned the young and savvy younger generation - the people who voted for Rudd in droves - against him and his government. This flowed through to the general community.
One of the more fanciful media reports claimed that Rudd lost only one opinion poll as PM. That simply isn't true. From mid 2009 each opinion poll showed Labor falling further behind the coalition as Conroy dug in with his Net censorship proposal and poured ever more money into it despite savage opposition in the community. The rot had set in to such an extent that Gillard became PM and saved Labor from a savage defeat in the 2010 election with the infamous lie claiming that there would be no carbon tax.
The scenario painted by the Rudd backers is that Rudd will get back in and everything will be sweetness and light. Of course that will not happen and cannot happen. The problem here is not Gillard or Rudd, the problem is Labor itself. The party - by its very nature and makeup - is dysfunctional and not suited to government. The large left wing of the party makes it unmanageable and any leader has to spent too much time pandering to left wing and trade union sectional interests to be able to run an effective government.
It is true that the Hawke and Keating governments were good governments, but Bob Hawke's success was due to him completely neutering the left and running a presidential style government along with Keating and Treasury. The party conference became nothing but a sideshow and irrelevant debating forum which had nothing to do with influencing the government. Keating was able to get his beneficial economic reforms through which ultimately resulted in the golden era under the Howard government. Keating as PM was initially able to keep things on track but was brought down by the incredibly stupid and moronic Aboriginal secret women's business scandal pushed by one of his ministers Robert Tickner, the Net censorship-style disaster of the 1990s.
Many people made the mistake - when voting for Rudd - of thinking that it would be a return to the Hawke era. How very wrong they were. It was actually a return to the chaos of the Whitlam era. The same goes for the Gillard government. And you cannot blame the influence of The Greens for the crisis we are now in. The blame lies with Labor. The party is just not fit for government at any level. It wouldn't matter if they put in Abraham Lincoln as leader, it is still a Labor government with all its baggage and that is the problem.
At the time of writing, the leadership issue remains unresolved. No matter what happens it will not matter one iota what they do, they will remain on the slippery slope downwards. Meanwhile the country suffers as the public sees political incompetence and economic ruin on display for all to see. It just keeps getting worse. This is the reality of Labor in government and it isn't pretty.
There has been much speculation about Gillard calling a spill and a vote being taken about the leadership. One thing is clear. Gillard has the numbers and will win any leadership ballot easily. Comparisons have been made with the ascention of Paul Keating as PM - challenge the first time, lose then go to the backbench, white-ant the leader, persuade enough to switch sides then challenge again after six months and win. This method also worked in 1974 and 1975 when Malcolm Fraser challenged Billy Snedden for the Liberal leadership. In this case it will be more like Andrew Peacock's challenges to Malcolm Fraser or Peter Costello's desire to be prime minister - it just won't get over the line.
The major fault is that - unlike Keating and Fraser (and Peacock and Costello) - Rudd has already had a term as leader and prime minister and been found wanting. Badly. He was just no good in the job whichever way you look at it. He created such resentment and made so many enemies within the party and general community that the last thing anybody in Labor wants is a return to the nightmare days of Rudd as leader. He will never win.
Never forget that Rudd did such a poor job that the opinion polls - in an election year - were pointing to an embarrassing and devastating defeat for Rudd and Labor, the first time a government would have been defeated after just one term. It was especially telling when you consider that Rudd was elected on such a strong mandate and such goodwill having defeated a sitting prime minister in his own seat, only the second time that had ever happened. The apology to Aborigines at the start of the Rudd government was symbolic in that it marked the beginning of a new era and people really did believe that things had changed - that they would get the strong economic management of the Hawke/Keating era combined with a social concience. As we all know it didn't quite turn out that way. Rudd and Labor squandered their mandate and sent the country spiralling downward at a rate of knots.
Rudd was a control freak calling meetings at 2AM, forcing public servants in disparate departments and bodies to deal directly with his office, allowing ministers to push crazy policies and frequently being reported as having tantrums with hairdressers and airline staff. It wasn't a happy ship at all.
The opinion polls were holding up for more than two years largely due to the Liberals who put up weak and ineffectual leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, but at the end of 2008 Communications minister Stephen Conroy put up the crazy Internet censorship proposal which immediately turned the young and savvy younger generation - the people who voted for Rudd in droves - against him and his government. This flowed through to the general community.
One of the more fanciful media reports claimed that Rudd lost only one opinion poll as PM. That simply isn't true. From mid 2009 each opinion poll showed Labor falling further behind the coalition as Conroy dug in with his Net censorship proposal and poured ever more money into it despite savage opposition in the community. The rot had set in to such an extent that Gillard became PM and saved Labor from a savage defeat in the 2010 election with the infamous lie claiming that there would be no carbon tax.
The scenario painted by the Rudd backers is that Rudd will get back in and everything will be sweetness and light. Of course that will not happen and cannot happen. The problem here is not Gillard or Rudd, the problem is Labor itself. The party - by its very nature and makeup - is dysfunctional and not suited to government. The large left wing of the party makes it unmanageable and any leader has to spent too much time pandering to left wing and trade union sectional interests to be able to run an effective government.
It is true that the Hawke and Keating governments were good governments, but Bob Hawke's success was due to him completely neutering the left and running a presidential style government along with Keating and Treasury. The party conference became nothing but a sideshow and irrelevant debating forum which had nothing to do with influencing the government. Keating was able to get his beneficial economic reforms through which ultimately resulted in the golden era under the Howard government. Keating as PM was initially able to keep things on track but was brought down by the incredibly stupid and moronic Aboriginal secret women's business scandal pushed by one of his ministers Robert Tickner, the Net censorship-style disaster of the 1990s.
Many people made the mistake - when voting for Rudd - of thinking that it would be a return to the Hawke era. How very wrong they were. It was actually a return to the chaos of the Whitlam era. The same goes for the Gillard government. And you cannot blame the influence of The Greens for the crisis we are now in. The blame lies with Labor. The party is just not fit for government at any level. It wouldn't matter if they put in Abraham Lincoln as leader, it is still a Labor government with all its baggage and that is the problem.
At the time of writing, the leadership issue remains unresolved. No matter what happens it will not matter one iota what they do, they will remain on the slippery slope downwards. Meanwhile the country suffers as the public sees political incompetence and economic ruin on display for all to see. It just keeps getting worse. This is the reality of Labor in government and it isn't pretty.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Gillard just can't take a trick
It is probably a sign of how dire the Gillard government's situation is at the moment when things which are supposed to go her way backfire so badly and become political disasters.
First it was the riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy on Australia Day where filthy radicals stormed a restaurant where heroes were being awarded and put the safety of both Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott at serious risk. A terrified Gillard was rushed through the feral mob into a waiting car. That should have evoked sympathy for Gillard and further turned people against the mongrel mob of Aborigines and their supporters. Instead we found out that one of her own staff as well as Unions ACT head Kim Sattler fabricated a story that Abbott wanted to tear down the embassy and incited the riot by telling the scum he was next door in the restaurant. So Gillard's mates stabbed her in the back and further harmed her standing after a Christmas/New Year period where her popularity temporarily rose.
If that wasn't enough, we now see her performance on the ABC's Four Corners which can only be described as bizarre. As the Americans might say "What the sam hill was she thinking?" Once again her attempts to squirm out of the problem and look for scapegoats has been even more embarrassing.
Gillard tried to dump on the ABC saying she was ambushed. She claims she was told the show would be about the achievements of her government and that the interview would be a puff piece where she could wax lyrical without being challenged. As if.
Gillard has been in politics and public life long enough to know that journalism - especially TV journalism - just doesn't work that way. Sure you might have thousands of PR hacks with or without journalism degrees pumping out your press releases putting a positive spin on yourself and your policies, but the media have to provide the public with a bit more substance and critical analysis simply because the average person can see right through one-sided propaganda and spin.
Did she really expect 45 minutes of pro-government pap in a prime time TV slot? Not even the ABC was prepared to do that. She can't claim that she was ambushed by the interviewer because he and the producer of the show have given media interviews stating quite clearly that Gillard was told that the interview would also canvass the government's problems and the leadership question. So she went ahead with the interview anyway and now that it has all gone pear-shaped she is now shooting the messenger.
The Gillard government is now on death row waiting for the executioner. The situation is terminal. Every time her friends and supporters pipe up in the media trying to boost her stocks it harms her politically. The latest example was Greens leader Bob Brown claiming that criticism of Gillard was "sexist". That went down like a lead balloon. The latest Newspoll shows that Labor support fell sharply after the speech and - more telling for Gillard - Tony Abbott has now overtaken her as preferred prime minister, the first time this has happened for three months. It is even more significant when you consider that the most recent Galaxy poll - taken before Brown's speech - showed Labor fast gaining on the coalition and Gillard comfortably in front as preferred prime minister. Indeed, the usual suspects were again writing off Abbott and putting up the failed straw man Malcolm Turnbull as a replacement for Abbott as Liberal leader.
Sadly it would appear that the malaise in Canberra will continue for the foreseeable future. The California system of recall elections where a petition of several thousand people can force a new election seems very attractive indeed. For the next eighteen months we are stuck with a government which no longer has the support of the vast majority of Australians.
First it was the riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy on Australia Day where filthy radicals stormed a restaurant where heroes were being awarded and put the safety of both Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott at serious risk. A terrified Gillard was rushed through the feral mob into a waiting car. That should have evoked sympathy for Gillard and further turned people against the mongrel mob of Aborigines and their supporters. Instead we found out that one of her own staff as well as Unions ACT head Kim Sattler fabricated a story that Abbott wanted to tear down the embassy and incited the riot by telling the scum he was next door in the restaurant. So Gillard's mates stabbed her in the back and further harmed her standing after a Christmas/New Year period where her popularity temporarily rose.
If that wasn't enough, we now see her performance on the ABC's Four Corners which can only be described as bizarre. As the Americans might say "What the sam hill was she thinking?" Once again her attempts to squirm out of the problem and look for scapegoats has been even more embarrassing.
Gillard tried to dump on the ABC saying she was ambushed. She claims she was told the show would be about the achievements of her government and that the interview would be a puff piece where she could wax lyrical without being challenged. As if.
Gillard has been in politics and public life long enough to know that journalism - especially TV journalism - just doesn't work that way. Sure you might have thousands of PR hacks with or without journalism degrees pumping out your press releases putting a positive spin on yourself and your policies, but the media have to provide the public with a bit more substance and critical analysis simply because the average person can see right through one-sided propaganda and spin.
Did she really expect 45 minutes of pro-government pap in a prime time TV slot? Not even the ABC was prepared to do that. She can't claim that she was ambushed by the interviewer because he and the producer of the show have given media interviews stating quite clearly that Gillard was told that the interview would also canvass the government's problems and the leadership question. So she went ahead with the interview anyway and now that it has all gone pear-shaped she is now shooting the messenger.
The Gillard government is now on death row waiting for the executioner. The situation is terminal. Every time her friends and supporters pipe up in the media trying to boost her stocks it harms her politically. The latest example was Greens leader Bob Brown claiming that criticism of Gillard was "sexist". That went down like a lead balloon. The latest Newspoll shows that Labor support fell sharply after the speech and - more telling for Gillard - Tony Abbott has now overtaken her as preferred prime minister, the first time this has happened for three months. It is even more significant when you consider that the most recent Galaxy poll - taken before Brown's speech - showed Labor fast gaining on the coalition and Gillard comfortably in front as preferred prime minister. Indeed, the usual suspects were again writing off Abbott and putting up the failed straw man Malcolm Turnbull as a replacement for Abbott as Liberal leader.
Sadly it would appear that the malaise in Canberra will continue for the foreseeable future. The California system of recall elections where a petition of several thousand people can force a new election seems very attractive indeed. For the next eighteen months we are stuck with a government which no longer has the support of the vast majority of Australians.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Leftist scum should butt out of Australia Day
Today is Australia Day, the 224th anniversary of when we started as a nation. It has been a proud history of nation building, achievement and wealth. An empty continent with nothing going for it has been transformed into the envy of the world.
You would think that such a day would bring out the best in people, that we would all celebrate and be happy. For the most part, that is what happens. But there is a very small minority of moronic leftists and politically correct stooges - aided and abetted by a compliant media - who try and gatecrash the party with stupid, moronic nonsense and idiotic, pea-brained static. Almost every year we have to put up with this crap and the public are increasingly getting fed up with it.
This year the leftist, PC brigade wrung their hands over "racism" (inverted commas intentional). An academic in Perth went to a fireworks display, did a survey and concluded that people who fly the Australian National Flag from their cars are "racist". Many agreed with the statements that people should fit in or go back to where they came from. Also the statement that people not born here are not as Australian as native born Aussies, as well as other quite reasonable propositions.
Pardon me, but I also agree with all those sentiments. What's wrong with it? Nothing.
Academics have always hated Australia Day. They look down their noses at displays of Aussie pride and think there is something wrong with it.
The media lapped all this up as usual, as well as the silly speech by Dr Charlie Teo claiming that Australia is a "racist" country. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic.
The other thing that seems to happen either on or around Australia Day is that one of the left wing broadsheets like The Canberra Times prints a letter or article calling the day Invasion Day and propagating now discredited garbage about what supposedly happened to Aborigines after the arrival of Europeans. I can still remember on Bicentennial Day in 1988, whilst other newspapers had green and gold on the front page and headlines like "Aussies Join the Fun" and "Our Big Day", The Canberra Times had a stark black and white front page with the large banner headline "Aborigines All Set to Protest". It was a disgrace.
Today is not a day for the Left. They have dealt their way out of consideration and are now irrelevant. The public have abandoned their stupid, nonsensical nonsense and they are now a redundant political rump whose time has come and gone. Unfortunately they have the upper hand in Canberra at the moment and are still extremely powerful.
This will be the second last Australia Day under a Labor government, and the shame of the past four years is slowly drawing to a close. We can celebrate our national day today in the knowledge that normalcy and decency is only around 18 months away when Labor/The Greens will be consigned to opposition for a very long time. Then we really would have come of age as a sophisticated, first world democracy.
You would think that such a day would bring out the best in people, that we would all celebrate and be happy. For the most part, that is what happens. But there is a very small minority of moronic leftists and politically correct stooges - aided and abetted by a compliant media - who try and gatecrash the party with stupid, moronic nonsense and idiotic, pea-brained static. Almost every year we have to put up with this crap and the public are increasingly getting fed up with it.
This year the leftist, PC brigade wrung their hands over "racism" (inverted commas intentional). An academic in Perth went to a fireworks display, did a survey and concluded that people who fly the Australian National Flag from their cars are "racist". Many agreed with the statements that people should fit in or go back to where they came from. Also the statement that people not born here are not as Australian as native born Aussies, as well as other quite reasonable propositions.
Pardon me, but I also agree with all those sentiments. What's wrong with it? Nothing.
Academics have always hated Australia Day. They look down their noses at displays of Aussie pride and think there is something wrong with it.
The media lapped all this up as usual, as well as the silly speech by Dr Charlie Teo claiming that Australia is a "racist" country. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic.
The other thing that seems to happen either on or around Australia Day is that one of the left wing broadsheets like The Canberra Times prints a letter or article calling the day Invasion Day and propagating now discredited garbage about what supposedly happened to Aborigines after the arrival of Europeans. I can still remember on Bicentennial Day in 1988, whilst other newspapers had green and gold on the front page and headlines like "Aussies Join the Fun" and "Our Big Day", The Canberra Times had a stark black and white front page with the large banner headline "Aborigines All Set to Protest". It was a disgrace.
Today is not a day for the Left. They have dealt their way out of consideration and are now irrelevant. The public have abandoned their stupid, nonsensical nonsense and they are now a redundant political rump whose time has come and gone. Unfortunately they have the upper hand in Canberra at the moment and are still extremely powerful.
This will be the second last Australia Day under a Labor government, and the shame of the past four years is slowly drawing to a close. We can celebrate our national day today in the knowledge that normalcy and decency is only around 18 months away when Labor/The Greens will be consigned to opposition for a very long time. Then we really would have come of age as a sophisticated, first world democracy.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
New year brings more of the same agony
The year 2011 will not go down in history as one of the better years politically. The Brown/Gillard government limped along aimlessly bringing in Greens legislation like the carbon tax which was violently opposed by the vast majority of the population. Stupid nonsense like poker machine reform was floated and still threatens to become law, Craig Thomson was mired in scandal and was protected by the Labor party which would have been bounced onto the opposition benches if a by-election was held. By years' end the party of corruption and shonky dealings had solved that problem by seducing Liberal turncoat Peter Slipper into becoming speaker, thus giving Labor a two seat buffer. Like it or not, we are stuck with the Gillard government for at least the next 18 months.
The opinion polls were diabolical for Labor during 2011, at one stage giving the Liberals a 62-38 two party preferred lead. Gillard and Labor managed to claw back support somewhat during the latter part of the year with her cosying up to foreign leaders, but all those gains were wiped out dramatically in December following the corrosive gay marriage debate and the hijacking of the Labor conference by the issue along with uranium mining at a time when the rest of the world was dealing with a new Global Financial Crisis. The large photographs on the front pages of newspapers of Finance Minister Penny Wong and her lesbian lover along with their newly born illegitimate IVF baby were also extremely damaging for Labor. Indeed, the only thing remarkable about the backlash over these events is that Labor's ratings didn't drop a whole heap more.
We can't really make spot-on predictions about politics, but the professional clairvoyants have again predicted that Tony Abbott will be rolled as Liberal leader and be replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, undoubtedly the worst opposition leader in history when he last held the position during a period where Kevin Rudd was allowed to become the most popular prime minister since Federation, even overtaking Bob Hawke. Labor experienced a honeymoon period of over two years as the Libs experimented with warm and fuzzy left wing leaders Turnbull and Brendan Nelson before they realised that aping Labor was not the way to go, and that the public wanted a centre right leader who would again connect with traditional, mainstream conservative Aussie values. Tony Abbott was able to turn things around and put the Liberals in front within weeks of becoming Liberal leader, and going back to a failed experiment would be handing the Gillard government reelection next year on a silver platter.
2012 is the year the hated carbon tax comes into effect and the real test will be whether the Liberals are able to keep the public anger over Greens-led massive cost of living rises alive until polling day or whether the public will be beaten into submission with a weary sense of resignation North Korea style.
It is to be hoped that an election will be held during 2012 to bring the agony of the Brown/Gillard government to an end. Unfortunately that looks unlikely. There will be a few political highlights, however. Labor will be swept from office in Queensland and with the renewed swing to the Right, the likelihood of anymore misguided Greens-led "reforms" might be minimised. We live in hope. The only regret about the present situation is that we can't just skip this whole year and much of the next and fast forward to election day 2013. Then it really would be a Happy New Year.
The opinion polls were diabolical for Labor during 2011, at one stage giving the Liberals a 62-38 two party preferred lead. Gillard and Labor managed to claw back support somewhat during the latter part of the year with her cosying up to foreign leaders, but all those gains were wiped out dramatically in December following the corrosive gay marriage debate and the hijacking of the Labor conference by the issue along with uranium mining at a time when the rest of the world was dealing with a new Global Financial Crisis. The large photographs on the front pages of newspapers of Finance Minister Penny Wong and her lesbian lover along with their newly born illegitimate IVF baby were also extremely damaging for Labor. Indeed, the only thing remarkable about the backlash over these events is that Labor's ratings didn't drop a whole heap more.
We can't really make spot-on predictions about politics, but the professional clairvoyants have again predicted that Tony Abbott will be rolled as Liberal leader and be replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, undoubtedly the worst opposition leader in history when he last held the position during a period where Kevin Rudd was allowed to become the most popular prime minister since Federation, even overtaking Bob Hawke. Labor experienced a honeymoon period of over two years as the Libs experimented with warm and fuzzy left wing leaders Turnbull and Brendan Nelson before they realised that aping Labor was not the way to go, and that the public wanted a centre right leader who would again connect with traditional, mainstream conservative Aussie values. Tony Abbott was able to turn things around and put the Liberals in front within weeks of becoming Liberal leader, and going back to a failed experiment would be handing the Gillard government reelection next year on a silver platter.
2012 is the year the hated carbon tax comes into effect and the real test will be whether the Liberals are able to keep the public anger over Greens-led massive cost of living rises alive until polling day or whether the public will be beaten into submission with a weary sense of resignation North Korea style.
It is to be hoped that an election will be held during 2012 to bring the agony of the Brown/Gillard government to an end. Unfortunately that looks unlikely. There will be a few political highlights, however. Labor will be swept from office in Queensland and with the renewed swing to the Right, the likelihood of anymore misguided Greens-led "reforms" might be minimised. We live in hope. The only regret about the present situation is that we can't just skip this whole year and much of the next and fast forward to election day 2013. Then it really would be a Happy New Year.
Monday, 19 December 2011
Boat tragedy a case of Green murder
Over the weekend we saw yet another awful consequence of the implimentation of The Greens' policy on asylum seekers. A refugee boat sank off the coast of Indonesia en route to Australia with the drowning of over 200 people.
The broadsheet press are trying to pin the blame onto a certain people smuggler who is being described as "a snakehead". But aren't they missing the point? The whole people smuggling industry had been closed down by the Howard government in the early 2000s with the Nauru solution and offshore processing. When Labor came to power in 2007 there was one asylum seeker in detention. Only 43% of refugees processed under the Nauru solution came to Australia, the rest were either sent back home or resettled in other countries. All that changed under Labor which dismantled the Nauru solution in 2008 and brought in what they touted as "a more compassionate approach to asylum seekers". Australia was open for business again, a new generation of people smugglers came onto the scene and Australia was swamped.
Under Labor and The Greens over 500 people have drowned trying to come to Australia. My my, what a compassionate approach to asylum seekers!
During the year we saw several silly thought bubbles by Gillard regarding possible "solutions" blurted out before anybody was ever consulted. First she said a detention centre would be built in Timor-Leste. Oh no, said the Timorese, we're not going to wear that. Then she said the Manus Island detention centre would be reopened. The Papua New Guineans quickly put the kybosh on that. Then she came up with the so-called Malaysian solution. The Greens stomped on that by deserting their coalition partners and refusing to vote for it in parliament. In a breathtaking display of failing to see the wood for the trees, she and others in the Labor party tried to blame Tony Abbott. As a consequence we now have The Greens' open door asylum seeker policy in place. Come one, come all. Disappear into the general community, live off Centrelink benefits and bring your relatives in a few months. Is it any wonder the people smugglers are now doing a roaring trade with thousands rushing to get onto the boats?
The awful immaturity and naivety of The Greens and their moronic far-left policies has been exposed by the screams of the latest asylum seekers as they disappeared under the water and their dead bodies floated away from their sunken boat. The Greens are as guilty of mass murder as if they boarded the boat themselves with semi-automatic weapons and opened fire.
The Greens are now the Martin Bryants of politics. How anybody can consider still voting for them after this outrage is totally beyond comprehension.
The broadsheet press are trying to pin the blame onto a certain people smuggler who is being described as "a snakehead". But aren't they missing the point? The whole people smuggling industry had been closed down by the Howard government in the early 2000s with the Nauru solution and offshore processing. When Labor came to power in 2007 there was one asylum seeker in detention. Only 43% of refugees processed under the Nauru solution came to Australia, the rest were either sent back home or resettled in other countries. All that changed under Labor which dismantled the Nauru solution in 2008 and brought in what they touted as "a more compassionate approach to asylum seekers". Australia was open for business again, a new generation of people smugglers came onto the scene and Australia was swamped.
Under Labor and The Greens over 500 people have drowned trying to come to Australia. My my, what a compassionate approach to asylum seekers!
During the year we saw several silly thought bubbles by Gillard regarding possible "solutions" blurted out before anybody was ever consulted. First she said a detention centre would be built in Timor-Leste. Oh no, said the Timorese, we're not going to wear that. Then she said the Manus Island detention centre would be reopened. The Papua New Guineans quickly put the kybosh on that. Then she came up with the so-called Malaysian solution. The Greens stomped on that by deserting their coalition partners and refusing to vote for it in parliament. In a breathtaking display of failing to see the wood for the trees, she and others in the Labor party tried to blame Tony Abbott. As a consequence we now have The Greens' open door asylum seeker policy in place. Come one, come all. Disappear into the general community, live off Centrelink benefits and bring your relatives in a few months. Is it any wonder the people smugglers are now doing a roaring trade with thousands rushing to get onto the boats?
The awful immaturity and naivety of The Greens and their moronic far-left policies has been exposed by the screams of the latest asylum seekers as they disappeared under the water and their dead bodies floated away from their sunken boat. The Greens are as guilty of mass murder as if they boarded the boat themselves with semi-automatic weapons and opened fire.
The Greens are now the Martin Bryants of politics. How anybody can consider still voting for them after this outrage is totally beyond comprehension.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Climate change lobby has really flipped this time
It has been a bit quiet on the climate change front in recent weeks. The hard left and their buddies in GetUp! - the Hitler Youth wing of the Australian green movement - got what they wanted, a savage new tax and a massive bureaucracy to indulge their fantasies. They've been content to sit back smugly and let Gillard divert the public's attention with her sashaying up to foreign dignitaries. All of that was shattered by the release of a new report from the Climate Commission which is nothing short of bizarre.
The report claims that climate change will cause untold medical problems - gastroenteritis, dengue fever, increased suicide rates and even post traumatic stress syndrome. When I heard all this guff I really did believe that the climate change brigade had finally flipped. More and more people are waking up to the climate change hoax so it was necessary to pump up the volume and resort to over the top scare tactics. Nobody is buying it.
The disturbing thing about this report is the reverential way it was treated by the print and television media. The newspapers carried the story and the alarmist findings in the report without critical analysis, but the treatment by the TV stations was staggering. Channel Nine pulled out all the stock footage of smoke stacks, air pollution, signs showing temperatures of 45 degrees, mosquitoes on peoples' arms and any other scary stuff they had in the vaults. Channel Seven had an interview with the government's climate change guru Tim Flannery. Yes, *that* Tim Flannery who has the beach house on the banks of the Hawkesbury River and runs off to ratbag leftist websites like Crikey! misrepresenting anybody who dares criticise him or his views. A very soft interview which even allowed Flannery to attack so-called "climate sceptics" (I prefer to call us climate realists). The ABC as usual trotted out all their typical hard left cliches and had it as the lead story in their news.
By contrast, radio presenters like Ray Hadley and Alan Jones ridiculed the report and gave it the treatment it so richly deserved. It had me thinking that there is a huge gap on TV for a nightly current affairs program similar to The Bolt Report which takes a similar approach to the so-called "shock jocks". It is disturbing that anybody who didn't listen to radio and only watched television received a totally one-sided, supportive view of the climate report and there was no criticism at all of it.
I've written before about the climate change hoax. This is a multi-million dollar, government funded industry with just one aim - the redistribution of wealth in line with socialist principles. Climate scientists are in the government's pocket, being the recipients of lavish research grants to obligingly bring out reports supporting climate change theory. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. The public servants whose salaries are paid for by the government - including the Climate Commission which brought out the latest report - have as their full-time job the promotion of apocalyptic doom caused by climate change. Whole industries have been set up to promote "the clean energy future" - these companies also receive government grants. Left wing unions and green groups - political and financial supporters of the government - are being showered with money to promote climate change and the carbon tax. This is a massive juggernaut, it isn't just concerts and solar panels anymore.
There are very powerful interests ensuring the climate change bandwagon not only stays on the rails but grows ever bigger. A few days ago we saw a very tough economic statement with massive spending cuts including the cutting of family benefits. Incredibly, "action on climate change" was quarantined from the cuts. A staggering ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS (!!) will be spent on another advertising campaign selling the carbon tax, with grants also being given to green groups to distribute supportivepropaganda. Now this is just disgraceful. A totally warped and cockeyed set of priorities.
We should all brace for more of this garbage. Billions of dollars going down the climate change plughole, and all for nothing. Meanwhile we can all reflect on the epidemic of sickness which will supposedly come our way due to "climate change". Perhaps the government might start up another new bureaucracy to advise public servants of exotic new climate change-related diseases they can put on their leave forms when they take sickies. Nothing would surprise me about this government.
The report claims that climate change will cause untold medical problems - gastroenteritis, dengue fever, increased suicide rates and even post traumatic stress syndrome. When I heard all this guff I really did believe that the climate change brigade had finally flipped. More and more people are waking up to the climate change hoax so it was necessary to pump up the volume and resort to over the top scare tactics. Nobody is buying it.
The disturbing thing about this report is the reverential way it was treated by the print and television media. The newspapers carried the story and the alarmist findings in the report without critical analysis, but the treatment by the TV stations was staggering. Channel Nine pulled out all the stock footage of smoke stacks, air pollution, signs showing temperatures of 45 degrees, mosquitoes on peoples' arms and any other scary stuff they had in the vaults. Channel Seven had an interview with the government's climate change guru Tim Flannery. Yes, *that* Tim Flannery who has the beach house on the banks of the Hawkesbury River and runs off to ratbag leftist websites like Crikey! misrepresenting anybody who dares criticise him or his views. A very soft interview which even allowed Flannery to attack so-called "climate sceptics" (I prefer to call us climate realists). The ABC as usual trotted out all their typical hard left cliches and had it as the lead story in their news.
By contrast, radio presenters like Ray Hadley and Alan Jones ridiculed the report and gave it the treatment it so richly deserved. It had me thinking that there is a huge gap on TV for a nightly current affairs program similar to The Bolt Report which takes a similar approach to the so-called "shock jocks". It is disturbing that anybody who didn't listen to radio and only watched television received a totally one-sided, supportive view of the climate report and there was no criticism at all of it.
I've written before about the climate change hoax. This is a multi-million dollar, government funded industry with just one aim - the redistribution of wealth in line with socialist principles. Climate scientists are in the government's pocket, being the recipients of lavish research grants to obligingly bring out reports supporting climate change theory. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. The public servants whose salaries are paid for by the government - including the Climate Commission which brought out the latest report - have as their full-time job the promotion of apocalyptic doom caused by climate change. Whole industries have been set up to promote "the clean energy future" - these companies also receive government grants. Left wing unions and green groups - political and financial supporters of the government - are being showered with money to promote climate change and the carbon tax. This is a massive juggernaut, it isn't just concerts and solar panels anymore.
There are very powerful interests ensuring the climate change bandwagon not only stays on the rails but grows ever bigger. A few days ago we saw a very tough economic statement with massive spending cuts including the cutting of family benefits. Incredibly, "action on climate change" was quarantined from the cuts. A staggering ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS (!!) will be spent on another advertising campaign selling the carbon tax, with grants also being given to green groups to distribute supportivepropaganda. Now this is just disgraceful. A totally warped and cockeyed set of priorities.
We should all brace for more of this garbage. Billions of dollars going down the climate change plughole, and all for nothing. Meanwhile we can all reflect on the epidemic of sickness which will supposedly come our way due to "climate change". Perhaps the government might start up another new bureaucracy to advise public servants of exotic new climate change-related diseases they can put on their leave forms when they take sickies. Nothing would surprise me about this government.
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Slipper's elevation a sign of political decay
The elevation of Peter Slipper to the position of speaker of The House is another sign of moral and political decay under the Gillard government. It is grubby politics at its worst. Here we have a Liberal with an appalling record of dirty, dishonest and shonky dealings, someone who was to have his preselection removed and who will - in all possibility - be facing serious charges in the not too distant future - being elevated to the third highest position in Australia after the Governor-General and the Prime Minister. The government's claim that Harry Jenkins resigned unexpectedly on the morning of the last sitting day of the year is laughable. Factional leader Graham Richardson said on Channel Seven that Labor had been working behind the scenes for months to bring this about. Even Harry Jenkins himself has admitted he was executed by giving a throat-cutting gesture to the cameras as he took his position on the back bench.
We all know why Gillard and Labor lobbied so hard for Slipper to get the job and why the previous Speaker Harry Jenkins was executed so ruthlessly. Gillard and Labor now have an extra vote in the House and the government has been able to step back from the abyss ever so slightly. One heart beat away from losing government is now two. As such the Gillard government will now go its full term until late 2013.
There is one bit of good news to come out of this. Andrew Wilkie and the other independents are now dead. The roosters have become feather dusters. Wilkie's poker machine reforms can now be safely dropped without any threats to the government's survival. Wilkie looked a forlorn and pathetic figure as he sobbed to the media saying the government should not burn the independents "because they might need us". No they don't. The government doesn't need them at all. Nevertheless it was disturbing to hear Gillard say that the government was committed to the poker machine reforms. She should listen to her MPs in marginal seats in NSW and Qld. The pokie reforms are electoral poison in the two biggest states and if they are implimented Labor will be annihilated at the next election in those two states alone.
The elevation of Peter Slipper is the latest in the catalog of shame for the Gillard government. We shouldn't really be surprised that it has come to this. It will be a long and hard road until we finally get our say at the ballot box.
We all know why Gillard and Labor lobbied so hard for Slipper to get the job and why the previous Speaker Harry Jenkins was executed so ruthlessly. Gillard and Labor now have an extra vote in the House and the government has been able to step back from the abyss ever so slightly. One heart beat away from losing government is now two. As such the Gillard government will now go its full term until late 2013.
There is one bit of good news to come out of this. Andrew Wilkie and the other independents are now dead. The roosters have become feather dusters. Wilkie's poker machine reforms can now be safely dropped without any threats to the government's survival. Wilkie looked a forlorn and pathetic figure as he sobbed to the media saying the government should not burn the independents "because they might need us". No they don't. The government doesn't need them at all. Nevertheless it was disturbing to hear Gillard say that the government was committed to the poker machine reforms. She should listen to her MPs in marginal seats in NSW and Qld. The pokie reforms are electoral poison in the two biggest states and if they are implimented Labor will be annihilated at the next election in those two states alone.
The elevation of Peter Slipper is the latest in the catalog of shame for the Gillard government. We shouldn't really be surprised that it has come to this. It will be a long and hard road until we finally get our say at the ballot box.
New Zealand leads the way
The conservative National Party led by John Key has won the New Zealand election with the biggest vote in 60 years. Unfortunately they will not gain an outright majority due to the MMP system of multiple member electorates. Nevertheless it is one in the eye for the Left who thought they had it in the bag due to John Key's pledge to privatise government businesses and assets.
We sometimes like to ridicule out cuzzies across the ditch, but the fact is that policies and political trends across the Tasman are inevitably adopted here in Australia shortly after their implimentation over there. New Zealand introduced the GST in 1986, we brought it in in 2000. NZ introduced an emissions trading scheme last year, we will have it next year. Similarly election victories across the Tasman are usually replicated here shortly after.
If I was Julia Gillard I would be very worried.
The latest Newspoll shows that while Gillard's personal popularity has improved due to the foreign affairs agenda of the past two months, there hasn't been any improvement in Labor's poll ratings. Tony Abbott is still on track to win the next election. There is still a yearning for change in this country as we drift further off the rails and deeper in debt.
In 1985 the Aussie bush band Bullamakanka released a song called New Zealand Leads the Way. The victory by John Key and the conservatives gives hope that Australia's agony will soon be coming to an end.
We sometimes like to ridicule out cuzzies across the ditch, but the fact is that policies and political trends across the Tasman are inevitably adopted here in Australia shortly after their implimentation over there. New Zealand introduced the GST in 1986, we brought it in in 2000. NZ introduced an emissions trading scheme last year, we will have it next year. Similarly election victories across the Tasman are usually replicated here shortly after.
If I was Julia Gillard I would be very worried.
The latest Newspoll shows that while Gillard's personal popularity has improved due to the foreign affairs agenda of the past two months, there hasn't been any improvement in Labor's poll ratings. Tony Abbott is still on track to win the next election. There is still a yearning for change in this country as we drift further off the rails and deeper in debt.
In 1985 the Aussie bush band Bullamakanka released a song called New Zealand Leads the Way. The victory by John Key and the conservatives gives hope that Australia's agony will soon be coming to an end.
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