Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies.
Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.
In the face of Mining companies claiming the ALP are making it to hard to invest in projects Tony Burke has an answer.
Make it harder!
MINING companies could be forced to invest directly in protecting seagrass meadows thousands of kilometres from their own export facilities as a condition of future port developments.
The radical plan to extend seagrass protection will be floated by federal Environment Minister Tony Burke in a landmark speech to the Coast to Coast Conference in Brisbane today. In a speech prepared for the conference, Mr Burke said seagrass covering 95,000sq km, or 1.5 times the size of Tasmania, was under threat and the missing link in coastal protection.
The world reels from Islamic radicals attacking the West once again. A lot of discussion centres around a YouTube clip of a film denigrating Mohammed but personally I just think the clip was an excuse. Let’s face it, the sub-human species that is radical Islam will use any excuse to attack the US and if there isn’t one readily available they will invent it.
I’m appalled that the US Ambassador and his staff were murdered but I’m more appalled that the US didn’t do anything about it. Clinton issues apologies to those offended by the clip but according to the internet
no ammo to those tasked with defending the Embassy.
The Rules of Engagement for the Marine Corps Security detail are such that they can’t do their job as shown by the murders. It used to be that an attack against an Embassy was an attack against the country and thus a warlike act that had serious repercussions. Under Obama and Clinton it doesn’t even attract harsh words. Clinton apologises for the clip; The media is all over the clip’s producer, riots are everywhere and in Sydney 8 year old kids hold up signs saying “Behead those who insult the Prophet”.
And people blame the West. I’m OK with people following the own religion but not when they denigrate others who follow another form and events over the last ten years has led me to believe that Muslims do not assimilate. In Australia, and elsewhere in the West, they will always define themselves by their religion and never by their new nationality.
In a perfect world I would gather up those who shamed us in the streets of Sydney and send them home with their hatreds and kids that encourage others to behead people. Not only that but I would tell Immigration – no Muslims to be accepted until they sort their shit out and join the West in the 21st Century.
BILINGUAL indigenous language education should be introduced to all schools with Aboriginal students, and indigenous languages included as an official Closing the Gap measure, according to a parliamentary report to be released today.
Queensland Labor MP Shayne Neumann, the committee chairman, told The Australian the committee would back the controversial use of bilingual education and criticise its abolition in the Northern Territory by the previous Territory Labor government. He said education should be conducted in both languages to deliver the best outcomes. He said that in communities across the nation where English was not the first language, indigenous students had the right to learn in their own language.
The report calls for an emergency response to save the disappearing languages.
I would rather the report called for an emergency response to educate the kids in maths, science and English and apportioned their own indigenous language to one period a week. Of course I would change my mind the instant I hear that employers across Australia are now accepting job applications with resumes in Yolŋu.
But that isn’t happening soon.
Neuman continues to play Canute;
“There were 250 languages at the time of white settlement with only 18 now spoken by significant numbers of indigenous people,” he said.
And the Brits, our ancestors, once spoke Anglo-Norman French. The world changes for the better and the English language has been a big part of that.
It’s fine that the kids learn about their own history and language but not to the detriment of English. They need their own language to know where they come from but the need English to know where they are going and they aren’t going anywhere without it.
Gee, the ALP Nauru plan
isn’t working!
The linked article points out that under the Howard plan the boats stopped while under Gilllard’s plan it’s business as usual.
The difference? Despite the obvious lack of TPVs the boat people realized Howard really meant to stop the boats while they have clearly interpreted Gillard’s plan as having no teeth. As I have said previously, she only did something to get the boat people off the front page.
It’ll simply get worse as the ALP move onto new innovative and previously unheard of ways of stuffing the economy.
Policy by Twitter seams to be Joe Ludwig’s forte as he
ruins another business based on activists from Greenpeace and Getup! running an email and Twitter campaign. Worked well when Joe shattered the live animal export business and sent hundreds of businesses to the wall so why not run it again.
POLITICAL strategists and social media experts have warned governments not to make policy on the run while MPs are under pressure from co-ordinated online campaigns, saying decisions should not be made on the back of “what someone says on Twitter”.
The caution comes in the wake of yesterday’s last-minute decision by the Gillard government to stop a super-trawler fishing in Australian waters on the back of a Labor caucus revolt that was influenced by Get Up! and Greenpeace.
Burke and Ludwig looked at the law as it stood and OK’d the enterprise until the Greenpeace/Getup! campaign frightened them. The company involved with the super trawler project had ticked all the boxes but that didn’t worry these pair.
They plan to table a new law in the house today just to break the business plan. If you listen carefully you can hear tens of thousands of business plans with associated infrastructure dollars and jobs being put back in the drawers, not to see the sun again until these idiots are well and truly gone.
Greenpeace and Getup! running the country – frightening.
Shorten blames Coalition governments for union unrest, Swan thinks the economy is going gangbusters and Gillard lectures the mining community on education. Elsewhere, the Left claim Gina Reinhart wants to pay Australian workers $2 a day.
If ever a quantum leap in logic has been presented to the Australian public it is Shorten’s spin on union unrest. The Fair Work Act, based on the premise that unions deserve payback for getting the Rudd/Gillard government onto the treasury benches has started to impact badly on the economy as all of us long time ALP observers expected. Man-hours lost on the increase and industry reluctant to invest let alone employ people – overall, a standard ALP/unions in power result.
WORKING days lost due to industrial disputes have hit an eight-year high, with 101,700 working days lost in the June quarter.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said it was the highest level of working days lost in one three-month period since June 2004.
Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu, claims the CFMEU should pay damages – I agree.
THE nation’s most militant building union should be made to pay for the damage to business and the economy caused by its actions, according to Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu.
“Australians have been appalled to see the CFMEU’s behaviour. Thuggish behaviour, unruly behaviour, unlawful behaviour,” he said.
“If they’re going to trash the furniture they’re going to pay the bill.
“I also suggest that others who seem to regard unlawful and violent union practices as just part of the so-called industrial ballgame must also start showing proper respect for the law”.
Gina Rinehart’s comment’s drove everyone from the PM down to attack her over “paying people $2 an hour” statement like she was advocating we import African workers and pay them $2 an hour. They so missed the point, or they saw her point and felt they had to distract from the message in case voters also see the sense in her statement.
ADAM CREIGHTON in today’s Australian addresses the point;
Far from being loopy, Rinehart’s remarks reflect standard, even boring, economic theory, entwined with a classically liberal philosophy that unwieldy government undermines national and individual prosperity.
Rinehart’s observation that Australian wages are high compared with Africa’s prompted fury, but logic points out higher minimum wages and laws hampering businesses hiring and firing decisions bolster unemployment.
The Prime Minister’s response that paying people $2 an hour “is not the Australian way” not only grossly misrepresents Rinehart but is pompous, suggesting Africans pay each other miserly sums by choice, and ignorant, implying the costs of goods and services in Africa are similar to here.
Just another day under a reeling, incompetent government.
Remember this week is
Legacy week made all the more relevant by recent losses in Afghanistan.
You will see soldiers at shopping centres with Legacy Badges for sale. Go to them, buy a badge and commiserate with them over the recent loss of mates.
Don’t forget!
Another two diggers killed giving us a total load of five for the day. The first three, from a Brisbane based unit (6 RAR?) were shot down while relaxing in base at the end of the day by a man dressed in the Afghanistan Army uniform.
Three soldiers from the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment were killed at a forward patrol base in Oruzgan province yesterday by a rogue Afghan soldier who fled the scene. A hunt is underway for the gunman, who opened fire on the Diggers from close range.
The repost has it wrong. They are not from 3RAR. Later in the report it states;
The first soldier was a 40-year-old Lance Corporal posted to the 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment Queensland Mounted Infantry. He was on his second tour to Afghanistan and had previously deployed to Iraq.
The second soldier was a 23-year-old Private posted to the 6th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment.
The third soldier was a 21-year-old Sapper posted to the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment.
All three soldiers were based at Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane.
The second two, listed as special forces, were killed when the chopper they were riding in crashed on landing.
So the guy suing Abbott for referring to him as a thug has been charged with 60 charges leading to dozens of convictions and fines including theft, assault by kicking, criminal damage and assaulting police between 1982 and 1991.
Ie, thuggery.
Setka, the Victorian CFMEU thug in question, typifies the construction union attitudes. They, by themselves, raise the issue of unions running amok in Australia under a union led government. Abbott needs to start talking about reigning them in to mainstream civilized society along with forcing the union leadership to be subject to audit.
The same standards set for business should apply to these guys.
LABOR has moved to assuage business fears about the impact of the carbon tax by dumping the scheme’s controversial floor price, a change that could slash hundreds of millions of dollars from annual company costs.
Stage two of the ALP’s attempts to claw back in the polls and to neuter Abbott – their nemesis; not surprisingly, they still don’t get it. Stage 1, off-shore processing, only comes with some of the expert panel’s recommendations and thus has been set up to fail. That will become apparent soon, if it isn’t already.
This latest attempt isn’t going to help either. They have cut the floor price to calm down business who are not taken in by the government’s promises of limited disadvantage. Now some are happy, Combet is spinning like a top and I presume Wayne Swan is sitting in the dark somewhere wondering what has happened to his much touted ‘surplus’.
He will be working on the spin he needs to make a deficit sound like a surplus – just like he did with the last budget. We know, by precedence, that he won’t be working on fixing the problem.
It’s gone Wayne, on on the Political Expediency bus via Unintended Circumstances – a trade mark clearly owned by the ALP
Tony Abbott’s comment;
“If you can’t take the price for granted, you can’t take the revenue for granted,” the Opposition Leader said. “If you can’t take the revenue for granted you can’t rely on the compensation. No one can count on the compensation this government has promised them.”
No one can can count on any promises this government make
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