Category: Politics

ABC still campaigning for ALP

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Abbott, Bishop and Hockey have been doing their best to repair the damage done by the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government.  Talks with Indonesia failed to start a war as prophesised by Rudd and instead has started the ball rolling in stopping  the boats.  Media photographers stalked the recent ASEAN talks and managed to snap a shot of Putin and Abbott looking away from each other and somehow turned this into a Russian/Australian spat. Boats have slowed, the live cattle trade is coming back on line, business is looking forward to some stability and the Rudd media frenzy has disappeared. Yet you wouldn’t know about it – in fact anything the Coalition do is currently swamped by the ALP/ABC and Fairfax media going on and on about MP travel entitlements.  That’s the only game in town as the Coalition slowly brings the country back into relevance. Slipper still has to acknowledge what he’s done.  On the ABC he claims the only reason he was charged was the publicitycreated by the Coalition.  He ignores the fact that the publicity came about because he deliberately flaunted the rules and then tried to cover it up.

It is alleged that on three separate occasions in the first half of 2010 he filled in Cabcharge vouchers with fabricated details to hide the true nature of his travel to wineries and restaurants outside the capital, to claim parliamentary entitlements. If convicted, Mr Slipper faces a maximum jail sentence of five years.

Abbott is being questioned by the ABC as to his entitlement to travel expenses to appear at events like the Pollie Pedal where he is involved in raising money for charity. Other claims raised by the ABC include all incidences of travel to such events where he is clearly networking, raising money for charity or just campaigning. Slipper, on the other hand was out on a day on the piss and submitted multiple cab vouchers to hide the fact and then denied he had actually done anything wrong. Can’t see any similarities there. The ALP has been notedly absent from the political frey has they hold another election to select who gets the suicide pass but no matter, we have the ABC happy to continue in their role as the Australia’s anti-Coalition party.    

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Politics

Excuse me?

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THE Indonesian navy has slammed the Abbott government’s plans to turn back asylum-seeker boats, warning that the policy is “too risky” and could cost lives at sea.
In the latest of a string of objections coming out of Jakarta, a senior navy official says the Prime Minister’s plan to force boats back would also unfairly shift the burden of dealing with the asylum-seeker problem back on Indonesia. Major Andy Apriyanto, the head of policy for the Indonesian Maritime Security Coordinating Board, said Tony Abbott needed to drop the plan or he would be responsible for risking lives. “What they need to do is to revise their own policy,” Major Andy said. I don’t care what position the Major holds he is not a senior Navy Official – Majors do not get involved in Foreign Affairs and are at best mid level executives.  I know, I was one and if I had been so stupid as to be quoted in the foreign press as slamming another countries policies I would have retired as a Private soldier. Where do the journalists dig up these quotes?  
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Border Control

NBN Board not happy

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The entire NBN Board have reportedly offered their resignation to the government with Turnbull yet to comment.  The ABC have presented the resignations as a vote against the government’s planned optic fibre to the node rather than to the home. The ABC then found a heavily accented chap going on about how a new board could add two or three years to the roll-out. Right… I don’t know whether the board should call too much attention on themselves.  As I see it they are running an enterptrise using public monies without any published plan or believable budget and if reports are to be believed they are way behind in the roll-out. Go and be quiet.      
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Politics

Stanthorpe makes threats

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CHRISTMAS Island administrator Jon Stanhope says he would consider quitting the post if the federal government tried to gag residents from talking about asylum-seeker arrivals. Go now John.  The government aren’t gagging the Christmas Isalnders, in fact they aren’t gagging anyone. They are just slowing down the media frenzy and Mr Morrison and deputy chief of army Angus Campbell will give weekly media briefings about Operation Sovereign Borders, the coalition’s asylum seeker and border protection exercise. The first such briefing is due today. The Abbott government says it won’t constantly update the public on boat arrivals because it wants to starve people smugglers of information. As Morrison says; That way we can say what we have done over the week rather than what we might do a la the ALP That’s how adults do it John but seeing you are an ALP Appointment for Mates you most probably aren’t aware of this and, could I remind, you that you have a new paymaster now and making threats is not a good look.    
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Border Control

Slow down Clive – you’re sounding weird

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MR Palmer says the federal government’s position on not issuing visas to asylum seekers fleeing Indonesia fuelled the people smuggling trade.

The mining tycoon said the government should allow asylum seekers to pay their own plane fare into Australia.

 The government already does this.  After the UN have processed asylum seekers those that are accepted into Australia are issued visas and can fly in.  I know, Clive is talking about the boat people but he shows his confusion here – the boat people, on the whole,  are not asylum seekers.  They are simply people who have decided to migrate to Australia because of our standards of living, not to mention our social security payments, and they have done so without having the manners to ask us if we want them. He waffles on:

“We can say ‘you can buy a ticket if you believe you’re a refugee and you can come to Australia in normal transport at one tenth the cost’,” he told journalists at the Federal Liberal party conference in Melbourne on Saturday.

“The ones that get here, allow them to be processed; the ones that are not legitimate, send them back on the next flight.”

That’s insane!  There would be a rush for airline tickets as hundreds of thousands of potential immigrants booked passage to Australia.  If they can just fly in from Indonesia, why couldn’t they fly in from anywhere.  The message would flash around the world that for the price of an airticket you can get into Australia and when you get there, the country would be so swamped with potential immigrants saying “I feel threatened in my home country of “pick any country and invent horror stories” that the government would lose control. Why is it that people take this man seriously?
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Border Control, Politics

It’s on

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LNP to win 90 to 100 seats is my gestimate based on reading opinion polls and trends. I sincerely hope it is in that order as the ALP need to be forced to go back to basics and work out whether they are for Australia or just the unions. Rudd needs to be sent to Coventry for his repeated lying about the Coalition’s $70…$10…$0 billion black hole, particularly after Treasury, Finance and the PBO said publicly that the whole thing was a lie. He still kept on repeating it. He repeatedly lied about cuts to health and education when the Coalition quite clearly stated that was’t the case. At no stage did he tell us how he was going to fix the huge debt he is about to leaves us with but every hour, on the hour he demanded Coalition costings. He insulted us Queenslanders by resurrecting Beattie to stand in Forde.  Beattie set the state up for bankruptcy and didn’t even have the guts to face the electorate but handed over to Bligh who worked harder on our debt levels nealy crippling the state. Rudd, we remember Beattie only to well and I trust the voters in Forde remember him as well. He’s not going to win and even if he  holds his seat of Griffith he will not be ALP leader for long. Watch Shorten and see if he is still standing after the inevitable night of the long knives. The ALP brought Rudd in because he was a ‘great campaigner” even if he wasn’t a great leader.  Well it is clear now that not only is he a poor leader but he is a poor campaigner as well. He has demonstarted that he has nothing going for him and the sooner gone from public life, the better. Anthony Green predicts 89 seats to 59 but I live in hope.
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Politics

People Smugglers still in business

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LABOR has declared victory over people-smugglers after the arrival of two lightly-loaded asylum boats in the past 24 hours.
“We have broken the back of the people-smuggling trade,” Immigration Minister Tony Burke said
Wow! Only two lighlty loaded asylum boats in the past 24 hours! Oh well, thats it then – fixed…back broken! No, hang on, I seem to recall during the six years of the Pacific Solution, just 24 boats arrived carrying 1129 asylum-seekers and that was too many. Long way to go Burkie but never mind it won’t be your problem next week. You can sit back and watch the problem solved by grown-ups.
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Politics

Coalition Defence Policy notes

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Dan Harrison The Age’s Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent says;
The Coalition has backed away from a pledge to spend $1.5 billion on unmanned drone aircraft and has vowed to take advice from the top brass before going ahead with the purchase Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
No they haven’t! Abbott said they would wait until forming government should they be elected on Saturday and then take Defence advice as to whether the Global Hawke was the best option. He said defence had told them that there may be better options and that it would be ill advised to make very expensive decisions whilst the Coalition were in still opposition. That’s adult talk Dan and might I suggest you stick to Health and indigenous affairs as you can’t seem to understand plain english or Defence. I note that Abbott clarified the sitiuation with DFRBF military superannaunts. For years our superannuation has been fixed at just CPI rises which has little bearing on the cost of living and some time ago gave me an increase of $1.12 a fotnight. The Coalition, on the other hand, have undertaken to adjust the pensions of all those ex-servicemen 55 and over to the more generous formulae based around growth in the CPI, Male Total Average Weekly Earnings (MATWE) and the Beneficiary and Pensioner Living Cost Index. The ALP, on the other hand, has undertaken to do something similar, but only for members over 65 and in doing so Rudd warned Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss; “Don’t bag us. If you do, we’ll pull up the drawbridge and you’ll get nothing.” Five and a wakey!
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Politics

Rudd caught lying again

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Rudd on LNP Costings

‘There is an error of $10 billion in the claimed $30 billion of savings the opposition released yesterday,” he said. ”This is based on advice from the departments of Treasury and Finance and the Parliamentary Budget Office.’

Ms Wong adds

”$1 in every $3 that [the Coalition] counted as savings doesn’t exist”.

Rudd again

”What we’re doing today is calling Mr Abbott on his truthfulness. This is a $10 billion fraud on the Australian people.”

But no, it wasn’t. In an unprecedented rebuke to their ministers, late on Thursday, Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance secretary David Tune issued a joint statement disowning the figures released in their name.

”At no stage … has either department costed opposition policies,” they said, implying that their costings were based on assumptions supplied by the government.

”Different costing assumptions, such as the start date of a policy, take-up assumptions, indexation and the coverage that applies, will inevitably generate different financial outcomes.”

So, the government gave the Treasury figures it wanted the Coalition to present and ask for costings.  They did this before the election campaign even started and the figures given Treasury had no bearing on what the Coalition has now tabled. The moment Rudd said there is a $1o billion dollar hole he lied.  He knew it, Wong knew it and Bowen knew it. They all lied and it has blown up in their faces. All this from a government that has given us a $30 billion deficit and hundreds of billions of debt and all they can find is $10 billion dollar hole that they themselves created. As Abbott says  “They’ve got all their figures wrong and now they are doing the same with ours”  
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Politics
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