Bob Brown thinks Howard should have stood down last year but then he would say that wouldn’t he? The fact that Bob Brown doesn’t like Howard is one of the reasons I do. Glen Milne has been agitating for years and in fact is the basis of most of the speculation over that time on Howard’s leadership. Naming angry backbenchers, worried backbenchers, a source from the Liberal Party etc, etc and never, never naming anyone, he has been a one-man ‘Howard out, Costello in’ band.
But he is consistent, I’ll give him that.
Today he states It is in this increasingly pessimistic context that the Liberal Party is convulsed by leadership confusion.
Sorry, don’t see it.
Janet Albrechtsen and
Andrew Bolt have both deserted the ship and are advocating leadership change.
Neal Brown, Melbourne QC and ex Lib politician states the case for sticking with Howard and puts it fairly succinctly.
Some people need reminding of what a great job Howard has done and the fact that Rudd’s ascendancy in the polls relates to his
cliche based policies. When the campaign starts he will be called upon to fill in the detail and then we may well see a different set of polls.
How, for example, does he justify fighting in Afghanistan as ‘good’ and fighting in Iraq as ‘bad’? The Middle East is the core of the problem and has been for thousands of years. Afghanistan is just one of the battle areas of the fight against terror. The Taliban recruit from the Middle East and where does OBL come from?
What will he have to say about the fact that an ALP government will have 75% of it’s front benches manned by union hacks when they only represent maybe 20% of the work force?
What is his stand on defence? Are we going back to the discredited Defence of Australia or at best will we only deploy to the Pacific basin when it is clear that what happens anywhere in the world affects us.
What is his Tax policy? I don’t know but I should and so should anyone thinking of voting for him
I wait with baited breath for some detail.
Rudd was always going to get the media gushing over his linguistic skills when he met the Chinese. In addition to this, he represents the ALP who have always had more rapport with China than our Conservatives politicians . From Gough Whitlam’s rushing to recognize Communist China to Jim Cairns backing anything communist even as they were killing our soldiers, gives the ALP a special place in the Chinese hearts.
I couldn’t help but see similarities between Howard and his ministers in a clinch with Bush and his team and Rudd and his mob in a clinch with the Chinese. One backing the right,the other the left.
It has ever been thus.
I find the Left’s harping about American transgressions in human rights and silence about China’s human rights abuses illuminating but not surprising.
This piece of over-the-top reporting by
Doug Conway in todays
Australian is likewise illuminating.
The Prime Minister’s own speech went down well
But when Mr Rudd started addressing the leader of one quarter of the world’s population, fluently in his own tongue, the effect was stunning.
There was an almost audible intake of breath among the scores of Chinese political and business heavyweights in the audience.
Why was everyone stunned? Why did the business heavyweights take an almost audible intake of breath? Everybody in Australia knows that Rudd is a Mandarin speaker and does Conway imagine the Chinese delegation weren’t aware of this. Does he think the Chinese bureaucrats don’t brief their boss?
Linguistics is a tool and a good one. It will make for easy communications but it is a skill that can always be bought. I was an army linguist at one stage in my junior ranks days and that’s where the army slot linguists initially. Being smart enough to master another language doesn’t make you a leader – it just makes you a word smith.
I’d expect the Chinese and the business leaders to be impressed but not stunned, but when, as a journalist you have an agenda, then hyperbole is the way to go.
I love it, the Prime Minister’s own speech went down well but Rudd’s was stunning accompanied with audible intakes of breath.
Howard has worked hard at Chinese Australian relationships and no one would suggest that he hasn’t been successful but I wonder, as I’m sure Doug Conway does, how on earth he did it without being a Mandarin speaker.
Must be other factors involved.
It is very clear in my mind that the reason Sydney-siders are being inconvenienced by APEC security can be laid directly on the shoulders of the sub-species promising to disrupt proceedings. Greenpeace, the Stop Bush mob of half-wits and every anarchist and radical in town are ready to attack; plans made, marbles purchased (damn! police horses are quarantined), metal inserted in faces and dreadlocks daubed with dirt and grease.
Human rights lawyers are likewise ready, legal notepaper and cameras in-hand, to record the results of some idiot attacking police to the point of reaction, hoping to have their day in court denigrating the system that nurtures them. Believe me, there will have been planning sessions with legal advice suggesting, say, spitting in police officer’s faces – ‘that always invokes a response’ and don’t forget, when you’re thrown in the paddy wagon, scream out some obscenity and resist arrest so the police are forced to physically overpower you – the tabloid cameras will love it and record what we will later call ‘Police brutality’ for all to see.
Tabloid TV are ready to record it all and set lower standards in media responsibility while left-wing journalists are busy penning articles based on Howard/Bush being to blame.
Behind the scenes good men and woman will work hard to make life better for those are deprived, they will look at global warming and develop between them a rapport that will allow for speedier resolutions of world problems. The Police and Military will work long hours to allow them to do this all in a maelstrom of media attention on the wrong issues.
While some of the left will be barracking for theses idiots, some even potential cabinet ministers, I remain hopeful that the NSW police have been given sufficient powers and moral support to lock the bastards up.
I do look forward to the water canon being deployed. The sight of some of these grubs getting their first shower in months is appealing.
Missionaries are still stuffing up the world. Not content with the negative effects of their zeal in South America, South Africa and the Pacific islands over the past 200 odd years they have recently been the source of millions of dollars in funding for the Taliban. Just imagine how many locals and westerners the Taliban can slaughter with 20 plus million dollars
“We went to spread God’s love and carry out his wishes,” freed hostage Lyu Kyung-sik said after arriving. “All of us returned from being on verge of death and have been given our lives back.”
…many harshly criticised the suburban Seoul Saemmul Church that dispatched the group for having a naive world view and putting their Government in a bind. Websites of the country’s main Protestant groups have been flooded with messages saying the group and church were to blame for ignoring government warnings and making an ill-advised mission to an obvious danger spot.
I would’ve left them there.
A senior Taliban leader said Seoul had paid $US20 million ($25 million) for their release. The South Korean Government denied paying any ransom but has been criticised internationally for striking a deal through direct talks with the Taliban.
The Government said it had only agreed to pull out a small contingent of military engineers and medical staff and to end South Korean missionary work in Afghanistan in return for the release of the hostages.
Good result all round – for the Taliban
The unions aren’t going to have access to worksites….yeah right! The unions are making noises of being upset at ALP IR Policy but I can bet they have been told to make a noise and then when the ALP is in power all will OK.
Those earning over $100,000 will be allowed to stay on AWAs. Big deal – that’s only about 5% of workers.
Unfair Dismissal laws being reinstated….catastrophic.
Email doing the rounds. I don’t know for sure if it’s the final front bench but it frightens hell out of me.
Prime Minister: Kevin Rudd
Deputy prime Minister and Minister for Industrial relations: Julia Gillard, former student radical and AUS president
Treasurer: Wayne Swan, former ALP state secretary
Attorney general: Joe Ludwig, former AWU official
Minister for Homeland security: Arch Bevis, former organiser Queensland teachers’ Union
Minister for Trade: Simon Crean, former president, ACTU
Minister for Transport and Tourism: Martin Ferguson, former president, ACTU
Minister for Finance: Lindsay Tanner, former state secretary, Federated Clerk’s Union
Minister for Environment and the Arts: Peter Garrett, lifelong anti-American activist
Minister for Infrastructure and Water: Anthony Albanese. former assistant general secretary, NSW ALP
Minister for Human Services: Tanya Plibersek, former student union official, UTS
Minister for Immigration: Tony Burke, former official Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union
Minister for Resources: Chris Evans, former official Miscellaneous Workers’ Union
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs: Alan Griffin, former official federated Clerks Union
Minister for Primary Industry: Kerry O’Brien, former official Miscellaneous Workers’ Union
Minister for Superannuation: Nick Sherry, former state secretary, Federated Liquor and Allied Trades Union
Minister for Sport: Kate Lundy, former official CFMEU.
and if that wasn’t bad enough, waiting in the wings are:
Greg Combet, candidate for Charlton and former ACTU president
Doug Cameron, NSW Senate candidate and secretary of Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union
Bill Shorten: candidate for Maribyrnong and national secretary, Australian Workers’ Union
Richard Marles: candidate for Corio and former assistant secretary, Transport Workers Union.
With unions representing 15 or 20% of the workforce they could be in a position to run the entire country.
Not good.
Dozens of agendas merge as the proposed Gunn Pulp Mill debate rages. The
Greens who fight against any development, bad for the environment or not, have found a green Barrister to say a decision siting the mill in the Bell Bay industrial area would be invalid – whatever that means. The Greens will be against the mill no matter where it is sited.
The wine industry doesn’t want it in their back yard for obvious reasons and more pragmatic folk say it is an industrial area so what’s the problem?
Such as Susan from Launceston
HOW dare Senator Bill Heffernan and businessman Geoffrey Cousins suggest moving Gunns Ltd’s proposed pulp mill from Bell Bay, an area set aside for heavy industry for 60 years, to a rural part of northwest Tasmania. It’s ridiculous to suggest rezoning agricultural land around Hampshire and alienating it for use for heavy industry, especially so close to the iconic wilderness areas of Tasmania.
The pulp mill debate is fast turning into a farce with the intervention of these Johnny-come-lately experts who have no idea what they’re talking about. Let’s keep Tasmania’s heavy industry where it belongs _ in heavy-industry areas such as Bell Bay.
Sounds reasonable to me but then I don’t hate development.
While some see it as a environment issue others see it as a means of defeating the government
Mr Cousins, one of the most successful advertising men of the 1980s, has personally scripted a full-page advertisement to be published this week in the Wentworth Courier in Mr Turnbull’s inner-Sydney electorate.
It is signed by more than 100 people, including actors Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward and Rebecca Gibney, playwright David Williamson, director Phillip Noyce, performer Mark Lizotte (also known as entertainer Johnny Diesel), arts identity Leo Schofield and chef Kylie Kwong.
No surprises there.
I find this report in the
Australian a bit strange
Confirmation that there would be no change to union right-of-entry rules comes as ABC Radio’s PM program claimed last night that workers earning more than $100,000 a year would be excluded from the minimum conditions contained in awards under Labor’s policy.
Following similar speculation last week, the program said all awards under a Labor government would have a “facilitative provision” allowing individual work arrangements for employees to exclude specific award conditions, providing the overall result met a “no-disadvantage test” for the workers.
The ABC’s report was disputed by Labor sources last night.
I understand that the ABC’s PM is the electronic arm of the Left of the ALP but frankly I don’t believe the ALP will actually state that they intend to deny their members worksite access.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
Letters to the editor or why some people should be disenfranchised
JOHN Howard seems to be entirely serene in regard to the practice of the Exclusive Brethren and its religious brainwashing of young children. And yet this educational practice is no different from brainwashing in Islamic schools. How is it that Howard regards the Brethren practice as benign and the Muslim one as encouraging terrorism?
Paul Drakeford
Kew, Vic
Paul,
How would you know that Howard regards the Brethren as benign – he only met them for a chat for heavens sake.
A couple of points
Howard also meets Muslims, and
There is an element of encouraging suicide bombing, and murdering of innocents within the Islamic religion that is missing in the Brethren propaganda.
The Brethren may be weird, and I think they are, but they are a legitimate organization under the laws of the country so are entitled to chat with the PM.
Even idiots like you have that right.
OK, you hate Howard but at least come up with some rational criticism.
Arguably the drought has broken – I know because I was intimately involved. As I lay sleeping in my tent at
Carnarvon Gorge I heard an express train come up the valley. After gaining full consciousness the train became a gale that heralded a wet arse. With 20 plus Grade 10 boys high up a peak we were somewhat concerned and started plans to pull out before road conditions locked us in for a week or two.
We packed and left about 2.00 pm, drove through the day and got home midnight yesterday. 800 km of drought breaking rain No boys lost, hopefully no influenza cases and all home with their mothers fussing over them.
Having bad memories of striking camp with several hundred reserve soldiers under canvas it was always a Cadre officers nightmare that the event was preceded by rain. This necessitated pulling all stores back to barracks and then re-erecting all the tents and waiting for the weather to clear and dry them before we could hand them back.
deje vu again.
Today, the cleanup…maybe not, it’s still raining and little point in it…..could be dry in the bar though.
Received this email from Defence Media
NAVY FINDS NO EVIDENCE THAT WRECK IS THAT OF HMAS SYDNEY II
The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has concluded its investigation of the area located near Dirk Hartog Island in Western Australia that was claimed to be the site of the wreck of the RAN’s World War II cruiser, HMAS Sydney II.
The Navy Hydrographic survey ship HMAS Leeuwin was diverted from surveying duties earlier in the week and arrived in the area early on Friday morning, 17 August 2007.
The ship examined the prime location of interest with its high definition multi-beam and towed side scan sonar equipment. That work is now complete.
The Leeuwin detected a relatively small wreck that had none of the characteristics normally associated with that of a warship, particularly one the size of Sydney II.
The Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence Bruce Billson said today: “The wreck reportedly detected by the Leeuwin was about 30 metres in length and lacked the overall dimensions and features of a military vessel of the scale of the Sydney.
“The Leeuwin also examined a one-mile radius around the wreck site and found no evidence of additional wreckage or features of interest.”
The locations examined were based on coordinates provided by the Western Australian Maritime Museum, representatives of the amateur research group, which made the initial claims, and other third parties of goodwill.
Data from the investigation will now be sent to the WA Maritime Museum for further analysis. Mr Billson said he welcomed advice that the research group would also provide any imagery or other information it gathered from the wreck site.
“While all the evidence gathered points to what this wreck is not, further analysis by the museum may enable it to formally identify what it actually is,” he said.
“The Howard Government considers solving the mystery of the Sydney II an issue of national importance, particularly to bring closure for relatives of the 645 crew members who died while bravely serving their country.”
Never mind…the media has at least raised public awareness of the ship and her sad demise.
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