While the Olympic torch was being run through Canberra I was otherwise involved in ANZAC Day prep and planning so had little chance to blog on the issue. I thought, given a couple of days the media would be investigating how come so many pro-Chinese Chinese arrived at Canberra in such an organized fashion. It was almost as if the Red Army had provided the convoy to move the troops.
No one has followed it up so I’ll say it. The move of the Chinese students was too slick to have been organized by a bunch of youths. Someone stepped in and organized and paid for the coaches from other cities and considering that the only organization that`stood to benefit is the Chinese government then it is a reasonable deduction that they planned the event.
If this is true then we should all feel very indignant that a foreign power is moving ‘troops’ around Australia for their political gain.
I certainly do.
The saga of the Red Chinese Guards torch minders being allowed on the streets to run with the torch and ‘protect’ it descended into chaos when the government backed down and left the matter to the poor AFP individual who we all witnessed on TV trying to muscle the Chinese away from the torch carrier.
It struck me as undignified and the world witnessed Australia abrogating it’s sovereignty to the Chinese.
Not happy, Kevin.
FEDERAL Health Minister Nicola Roxon has blamed the former
Howard Government for the rise in teenage binge drinking.
Nicola uses some pretty inventive logic to suggest the Howard government is solely to blame for the rate of teenager girls drinking rising from 14% to 60%. Not a mention of state liquor laws, lax club administration or poor parenting.
So now she has established the fact that the wonderful, socially aware ALP are fixing an insidious act of the evil conservative government that is killing our babies; while we watch her right hand conjuring up this image we fail to notice her left hand dropping a new tax on us.
She has come up with a plan to halt binge drinking, a problem amongst kids, that is supposedly rocking the country. I haven’t seen any good stats yet that back that up only anecdotal evidence but lets take it as a given.
The plan? Excise has been almost doubled from $39 to $67 per litre for RDT (ready to drink) products with one paper suggesting that will up the price of a bottle by a dollar. Queensland pubs and clubs currently charge, on average, about $8 per bottle but they can range from $5 specials to $12 rip offs.
So, there are two factors to consider here.
First. The pubs may or may not throw the rise straight back at kids buying RDTs. They could absorb the excise rise elsewhere in the inventory if they feel it to their advantage to keep the premixes cheap.
Even if they simply put up costs by a dollar a drink I can’t see that guaranteeing kids will stop buying them.
So it may or may not work but based on my experience it won’t work. If price was the determining factor I would have stopped drinking when a pot went from .30 cents to 45
Second and most important. The government
will make a couple of billion dollars from the hike.
My Holy Day of Obligation.
I’m back from the Dawn Service at Enoggera Barracks and sadly note that the 500 odd my regiment lost in Vietnam over ten years is less than what my fathers ship, HMAS Sydney, lost in an hour in 1941. (He was taken off the ship and sent to hospital the day before she sailed or there wouldn’t be a Kev!) I will take my Father for a walk through Brisbane shortly, or at least his medals, and then I’ll retire to the Pig and Whistle for a beer with old mates. I feel safe giving the location of the reunion as my other regiment (SASR) also meet there. I doubt any anti-war/soldier type people would be dumb enough to mix it with two line Regiments.
Still…could be lucky.
Lest we forget
Speaking to my son last night who is living in Jordan and has just come back from a trip to Egypt.
Some quotes;
If they put all the Egyptian antiquities on a truck and moved them elsewhere, no one in their right mind would visit Egypt.
My daughter said something similar when she visited years ago. The men have no respect for woman and actually maul female tourists in public. It was a constant fight for her to maintain her dignity.
Nothing surprising in this one either;
I visited the Cairo Military Museum and could not see the word Israel anywhere at all
Wonderful place, the Middle East.
Discounting Left wing sources the general consensus seems to be it was a left-wing talk fest. Many, myself included, feel it smacks of Gorge Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four. As Jeremy Sammut
points out Big Brother (The original Big Brother, not that stupid TV show) is looming.
Treaties before kids, A Bill of Rights before Industry, A Republic before water problems and a host of motherhood statements all culminating in larger government as outlined by
Henry Ergas, CEO of Concept Economics.
The outcomes paper makes this clear, with recommendations for creating more than 20 new government agencies and instrumentalities, without a single agency, instrumentality, spending program or current government function being identified that ought to be cut back.
The weekend is ably summed up by John Capel in his letter to the editor of
The Australian
THE summit showed how carefully contrived questions put to carefully selected participants will result in totally predictable outcomes.
John Capel
Black Rock, Vic
I will waste no more time on the Summit but wait expectantly for actual outcomes that benefit the nation as a whole.
Waiting….waiting….
I have long advocated giving young grads a cut in their HEC debt for service in remote Australia. Young Doctors, nurses and teachers would be welcome in a lot of communities and as we can’t seem to get our quota of older professionals then the young ones will do.
This is one idea to come out of the Canberra gathering of the true believers that I haven’t heard before but the rest is mostly old stuff and/or motherhood statements.
I note Mundine advocates that all Aborigine children should learn English but does anyone else feel there is something basically wrong when he has to say it. Of course kids in Australia should learn English and we don’t need a committee to tell us so. We just need the cultural warriors of the Left to lay of and let governments and agencies work on giving Indigenous kids the same chance at education as the rest of us get.
I can’t get it out of my mind that the whole show has been set up to glorify Rudd and confirm his policies and to bring into public debate those policies of the insane Left that he said he wouldn’t implement when he was looking for votes.
Run ’em up the flag pole, so to speak, and see who salutes. Well, we know who will salute and that’s the worry.
The whole process was set up to provide a set-piece result. How many monarchists were invited I wonder. We know Small Business hardly got a look in, the AMA weren’t represented and was there anyone there to caution against committing to a greener world without at least some semblance of considering the economy as well in the mix – I doubt it.
The Courier Mail’s deadwood edition has a huge headline VOICE OF THE PEOPLE but could I be so bold as to say it is not the voice of the people; it is the voice of a small select group of people who subscribe to a certain set of opinions that are welcomed by the ALP.
If some of the Motherhood statements are turned into reality something may come of it but that’s a big ask and when the activists supporting some of the more zany ideas are confronted with the electorate then reality will bite.
I am not enthused and still wait for the Rudd government to actually do something for the benefit of the country as a whole and not just for those who voted for the greener grass on the other side of the ideological divide….that bright and shiny thing over there – let’s try that out.
Surely some must be looking at the shiny thing a bit closer now and noting it is really is a bit dull, not what they thought or were lead to believe, but a poor copy of the real thing.
BUSINESS leaders are fuming after
only four small-business representatives were accepted for this weekend’s 2020 Summit, far fewer than the red carpet of celebrities attending.
FOUR!
Film stars abound for Rudd/Celebrity photo ops, Union leaders everywhere, Members of the Church of the Latter Day Alarmists (Global warming advocates), Greenies and Academics all queuing up for their fifteen minutes of fame but only .04% representation from a group that employs over four million Australians.
Makes sense in a Lefty/ALP sort of way.
Opposition small business spokesman Steve Ciobo joined in the attack, accusing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of “gagging” the industry.
“I want to know how Mr Rudd plans to have a decent discussion on the future of small business when the people who can bring a real perspective to the table won’t even be there.
Dr Emerson (Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) replies;
“only the Opposition” could continue to be negative about a major summit to discuss the ambitions of the nation.
“From the outset the Government has been clear that people would be selected on merit and not on their ability to represent peak organisations,” he said.
Hence the brace of Union Reps and as a matter on interest, just how does Cate Blanchet fit into that formula?
And it should!
On the day that Rudd pledged to deepen relations between China and Australia, China and East Timor signed a
$28 million deal for East Timor to buy two advanced patrol boats. They can’t afford to maintain and crew the old ones they have now so who benefits most from the deal?
While Rudd castigates the Chinese over Tibet to allow his media circus to report back to Australia just how important Rudd is, the Chinese are busy white anting us in the Pacific. I wonder if this matter came up in discussions between the Chinese Leader and Australia’s Chief Clerk…I doubt it yet I would have thought it should have been foremost in Rudd’s list of things to discuss.
I feel uneasy about China’s increasing influence in our backyard particularly while we have a Sino- centric government.
Last night I deleted 41,000 spam emails from our server. All I have to do now is change the tags of every post and remove the allow pings option. If anyone knows how bulk edit posts please leave a comment as I have about 2,000 posts to edit.
If you have emailed me over the last week, please try again. In the interests of doing the bulk delete as quickly as possible I chose not to check every email…30 seconds x 41,000….obvious choice wasn’t it?
Wouldn’t be Monday without some problem, would it?
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