CLIVE Palmer is demanding Tony Abbott repeal the carbon tax retrospectively and refund billions in revenue in exchange for his party’s crucial Senate support in a move that would enable the businessman to escape a $6.2 million disputed charge for emissions. That is a conflict of interest and should be stopped right now.  For Palmer to argue that legislation should be tabled to allow for him to personnaly gain a benefit of millions of dollars  is Banana Republic bullshit. Surely there’s a law against that?

Bill Shorten “elected” leader of the ALP with a Caucus majority and a member minority -that should be good for the ALP members out in the community- the “new ALP democracy” has elected a leader they didn’t want. GG Bryce, aka Shorten’s MIL, has offered to resign to avoid conflict of interest and Abbott has said no.  A good call I think – she is due to finish soon anyway. This should get the expenses debate off the front page as we now have an Opposition – seven weeks after the general election!  The ABC and Fairfax will be citing every word Shorten utters as they studiously ignore the Coaltion’s successes.

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.    

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.