Category: Politics

You have to give the ALP credit – they worked hard for this deficit, the worse ever recorded. Their work and dedication in implementing the Carbon Tax has worked a treat. Companies looking to secure their bottom line are shedding workers and future investments to try and stay solvent; the Live Cattle Export industry mostly closed down until adults are in charge due to Ludwigs brilliant response to an unbalanced TV program has suffered an 86% drop in trade and Fair Work Australia has the government governing for maybe 18% of the population. (that part of the population that doesn’t invest billions and pay large taxes on their profits) The Porous Border policy has added billions to the deficit just so Gillard can be different to Howard only to turn around and try and implement most of his answers. Being Gillard, of course she repeatedly stuffed it up costing hundreds of millions for every failure. Laden with a huge deficit they are still talking about Gonski, National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and the NBN powers on, still without any published business plan.

MAJOR contractors handling the rollout of the National Broadband Network are charging the federal government up to 2 1/2 times the amount they are passing on to subcontractors who perform the work.

I don’t know about you but this statement from the Financial Times doesn’t fill me with confidence With education the only point Gillard can still hang her hat on, she is adamant that Gonski goes ahead so she can have the word on her political epithat. Money is not the only answer to education problems – there is more to teaching than interactive whiteboards and quite frankly if the left wing Teachers Union support Gonski then I would look to question exactly how our kids will be better off with it’s implementation. The NDIS, the only insurance scheme I’ve heard of without premiums, is certainly a feel-good idea and lends itself to guaranteed abuse if you don’t wholeheartedly support it. However it is tainted with the same problems as Gonski, NBN and a host of other programs – where’s the money, honey? Henry Ergas in the Australian

Deconstructing Swan’s arguments is as challenging as picking a dead man’s wallet. Shop-worn tropes go round and round, like unclaimed bags on an airport carousel: Labor is the party of opportunity, a sentiment to which Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and John Maitland are presumably living testimony; Tony Abbott, accused of every possible malfeasance short of starting a leprosy pandemic, would destroy what this country retains of good and true; and only Swan and his colleagues stand between Tony Abbott’s Visigoths and the “fair go”.

and just in case you don’t get the point;

As for Swan, he has become the Cheshire cat of Australian treasurers: his predecessors’ smirks linger, but their competence has vanished. Touchy, testy and tetchy, he scratches on; when he rises Tuesday fortnight, however, it will not be to grasp the future, but as the last gasp of the past.

The prize for missing the point has to go to Windsor who, in the middle of a biblical proportioned economic disaster demands a referendum to pacify the Rainbow activists. Tony, you have under 140 days to make your mark on the world that might compensate your electorate for your treachery – think it through man.

How true! From today’s Australian editorial

After a start to the year in which the Prime Minister ditched her surplus promise, named an election date seven months early, presided over record asylum-seeker arrivals, endured a farcical leadership spill, sacked a former leader, accepted resignations from five other cabinet ministers and abandoned draconian changes to media and anti-discrimination laws, some in the Fourth Estate see it as their duty to turn the blowtorch on the Opposition Leader.

HIGH-flying federal bureaucrats have had their wings clipped with the government saving more than $50 million in six months by using many of the methods utilised every day by travellers.

Finance Minister Penny Wong yesterday said the savings were achieved by booking travel further in advance, selecting lower-priced, but less flexible, fares, and using online bookings rather than travel consultants.

That’s wonderful Penny now all you have to do is save another 19 billion plus dollars to try and scrape back to being considered almost sound economic  managers. Blowing the economy but saving on petty cash – yep that’ll do it.

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has defended the federal government’s 2011 ban on live exports, ahead of a possible confrontation with protesters in Perth.

Ms Gillard said the government had to place a temporary ban on live exports after video surfaced of Australian animals being mistreated in Indonesia.

“We faced a situation where if we did nothing and images of this kind of cruelty just came back to Australia time after time after time, then community anxiety would have got to the stage where people would have said ban this industry and ban it for all time,” she told ABC radio on Wednesday.

No, you didn’t have to place a ban on live exports.  There are a lot of degrees between doing nothing and wiping out an industry to garner the votes of animal activists. The government could have spoken to Indonesian abattoirs and helped them lift their game.  They could have spoken to the Indonesian government and offered assistance to the industry. They also could have spoken to the 4Corners producers and the animal activists behind the doco and told them to rack off and stop running campaigns to close down the cattle industry overall.  But no, just these few steps could be construed as helping the industry and all the jobs entailed within and that would be too much for the Gillard government. Picking up votes to stay in power is what it is all about.  It certainly isn’t about managing the country for everyone. From my talking to cattlemen no one is going to invest any more money in the cattle industry until this mob of children are out of power and who could blame them.  

They (the ALP) had a vote for chaos and it was unanimous …………Barnaby Joyce. It would appear that Simon Crean thought Rudd had the numbers and believed something had to be done.  I have a bit of time for Crean and believe he acted in the interests of the party -unfortunately when the bus pulled out he was the only one on it. Don’t be fooled by Kevin Rudd claiming to do the honourable thing and sticking to his word.   It was simply the case that when the bus pulled into the caucus room he saw Crean and no one else. He’s politically dead and good riddance.  He has done considerable damage to the country and if he decides on a career change I for one would support it – so long as it isn’t with any government.  I have been thinking for some time now that Rudd would wait until after the election and then put his hand up and rebuild the party in his image – can’t see that now. So now we have “can’t organize a coup” to add to this dysfunctional mob of union rep’s CVs.  I use to say they couldn’t organize  sex in a brothel with a handful of hundred dollar bills but Craig Thomson put paid to that line! International coverage is cringe worthy and rightly so.  How can we play on the world stage when other country leaders know what goes on here.  How can Bob Carr look anyone in the eye when he is putting across the government’s point of view and the image of Gillard going overseas representing Australia with that handbag bogan Tim (do you know who I am?) Mathieson on her arm will visit my nightmares more often that any combat trauma. Rudd’s tilt at leadership might be dead but the issue isn’t.  What are the party going to be thinking next week when they get flayed in the polls again. Embarrassing to say the least.      

What just happened? I’m starting to think the spill was a set up to kill the leadership question and present a united front. Only Gillard and Swan nominated for the positions of Leader and Deputy so what was it all about? Me, I’m happy that Gillard looks like leading the government to the polls as I want her to pay for the damage she has done to the country. Crean is off to the back bench and Fitzgibbon is thinking about his future as Chief Whip. In the meantime everyone has forgotten about the failure of Conroy’s failed media laws and the litany of other Gillard and ALP stuff-ups. In a day or two we’ll be back to watching the dysfunctional mob bumbling on to September.