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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

107 year old film

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This film was “lost” for many years. It was the first 35mm film ever that has come to light. It was taken by camera mounted on the front of a cable car as it`s traveling down the street. You feel as if your really there, standing at the front looking down the street, amazing piece of historic film. The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. Absolutely amazing! The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is still there. …. How many “street cleaning” people were employed to pick up after the horses? Talk about going green! Great historical film! http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k This film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!).. It was filmed only four days before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th 1906 and shipped by train to NY for processing. Amazing, but true! No wonder there had to be laws created to regulate driving habits. This is insane. Good thing they couldn’t go very fast. Look at the hats the ladies were wearing and the long dresses. Some of the cars had the steering wheels on the right side, I wonder when they standardized on the left? Sure was still a lot of horse drawn vehicles in use. Mass transit looked like the way to get around.. Looks like everybody had the right of way. Perhaps the oldest “home movie” that you will ever see!
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General Musings

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

Good call Julie

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From today’s The Australian ‘Strewth column; DEMOCRACY is a precious gift. The incoming government is just loving it. It has the Labor leadership elections to milk — and boy, it is not going miss an opportunity. Like Julie Bishop yesterday:

“Given that the last two Labor leaders were betrayed by one Bill Shorten, I guess the only way you stop that betrayal going on is for Labor to vote in Bill Shorten. I mean, he can’t stab himself in the back, can he?”

Seems about right to me.
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General Musings

It’s done

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It’s not so much that the ALP are in denial when they say it was disunity that lost them the election, it’s that they say it and expect people to believe. To help them with their debrief I give them some hint of why they were turfed out.
  • The Craig Thomson scandal and the alleged misuse of credit cards;
  • The prime minister openly defending and supporting Craig Thomson in parliament, an additional scandal;
  • Defending Peter Slipper’s behaviour with the hypocritical misogyny speech;
  • Killing the beef live export industry overnight;
  • FBT changes that hit ordinary workers;
  • Introducing vast amounts of red tape for business;
  • Demonising immigrant workers and using the ATO to hound immigrant workers;
  • New regulations that made child care costs skyrocket;
  • The Australia day race riot;
  • The AWU affair;
  • The suppression of reporting of the AWU affair;
  • The Finkelstein attempt to remove free speech;
  • 300 billion in debt with an annual interest bill for us taxpayers of over 10billion;
  • The numerous promises to deliver a surplus;
  • the announcements that a surplus had been delivered when it hadn’t;
  • The attacks on the most profitable sector of the economy and then surprise when that sector slowed down;
  • personal vilification of wealthy individuals such as Gina Rinehart;
  • The hiking of electricity bills;
  • The chaos of border protection;
  • The carbon tax lie;
  • Getting in bed with the Greens when they didn’t have to – the Greens would never have supported Abbott in anything; and
  • Any amount of other debacles.
(List mostly compiled from commenter DD at Catalaxy) Rudd was out of step to the very end I didn’t hear him congratulate Tony Abbott but I did hear this;
It would be un prime ministerial of me to say Bill Glasson eat your heart out, so I won’t.
By far the strangest concession speach I have ever heard. Be gone and be quiet Rudd. Slipper got 920 votes in the election but more importantly, nearly 3,000 people voted for Craig Thomson in Dobel.  What the hell were these people thinking? Worse still, over 29,000 people voted for Swan in my electorate Lilley, indicating they have no concept of debt.  I would hate to see their credit cards. I look forward to a stable and competent government and the wailing of the children of the Left. It will be music to my ears.    
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General Musings

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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