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Rolf Harris in trouble?

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AN Australian man has been arrested by officers from a taskforce investigating possible widespread abuse following the Jimmy Savile sex scandal. The 82-year-old man from Berkshire in south England was arrested on Thursday in Britain and bailed until May pending further police inquiries. This report in The Australian doesn’t name the man but according to this link it is Rolf Harris I then  Googled “Rolf Harris arrested” and got a mob of hits. I’m devastated – I grew up in West Australia when Rolf was starting out there and thought of him as a quaint old fashioned entertainer.  Now I might be forced to accept that I was wrong. I hope not but it doesn’t look good.  
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General Musings

Indigenous money sink

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NOEL Pearson’s Cape York welfare reform trial has been a dealt a blow with the Queensland government refusing federal demands to extend state funding beyond the end of the year.

Queensland Indigenous Affairs Minister Glen Elmes told The Australian the Newman government could no longer justify its expenditure on the program.

The trial in four Cape York communities has cost the state and federal governments more than $100 million.

The government mentions there are only a few thousand people involved altogether so what the hell costs $100 million.  If I went to theses communities would I see anything …roads…new schools..what exactly? The report tells us that school attendance is improving and kid bashing is down;

Last year, preliminary findings of the review of the trial — which links welfare to school attendance, child safety, tenancy and convictions — found the communities were recording improvements in attendance and falling child-protection notifications.

But it doesn’t say what the money was actually spent on but Queensland Indigenous Affairs Minister Glen Elmes questions the value for money;

“We simply can’t justify the rate of expenditure over the past four years in just four communities, with only a few thousand people,”

I’m all for helping Australians in difficult times and I have always agreed with Christopher Pearson and his programs but hell, $100 million for four communities seems over the top to me. Tony Abbott wants to see these indigenous welfare reforms now being tested in Cape York expanded to communities across the country.  I trust any continuation doesn’t involve $25 million per community – he’ll never clear the ALP debt at that rate.  
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Indigenous Affairs

PM defends the indefensible

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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.  
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Politics

Defence role changing?

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AT least 1000 Australian military personnel will be home from Afghanistan by Christmas.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith and Australian Defence Force chief David Hurley announced today that the big coalition base at Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan Province, where most the 1650-strong Australian force is located, will be handed over to the Afghan National Army by the end of 2013.

Which is just as well as apparently defence will lose it’s emphasis on defending the realm and switch over to defending against demons conjured up by The Greens and assorted useful idiots

THE Australian Defence Force must pay much more attention to a future role dealing with the impact of climate change at home and in the region, a key think tank has warned.

So after Gillard’s gutting of defence budgets to dangerous levels, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute throw this suggestion into the mix.  I would think that by the time Abbott has Defence back on target we will have an entirely new view on AGW. It has always been one of Defence’s roles to give aid to the civil community so I can’t imagine anything coming up that they can’t handle without appointing “Green” Generals to advise the government. There is a .pdf at this link
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Defence

Alexander Downer on Iraq

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The Left have been celebrating the 10th anniversary with a litany of what went wrong. Me, I’m more positive and haven’t really changed my opinion since I posted on the subject nearly ten years ago

A democracy in the middle of the shit-hole that is the Middle East would give birth to hope and all the Mullahs and Kings and Princes would be feeling uneasy

More here Today in the Age Alexander Downer, Foreign Affairs minister when adults were playing the game has a piece in The Age We played a worthy role in Saddam’s demise

Let me be blunt: I think we were right to play our own small part in the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a far from perfect operation, mistakes were made and the sectarian violence that followed was appalling. But there are three reasons why the Iraqis, the Middle East and the world are better off for the demise of the Saddam regime.

The first is simple humanity.  Sadam is dead!  That’s a very big plus for the world and particularly Iraqis Secondly, there is the issue of chemical and biological weapons.  He had ’em, he used ’em and now he can’t nor can any other aspiring despot Downer continues;

But if the threshold question is, should we have played a part in getting rid of Saddam a decade ago, my answer is an unequivocal yes.

I’m glad we did. We played a small part in evicting the world’s most brutal dictator who made President Assad of Syria look moderate. We played a tiny part in starting to change theologies of the Middle East from dictatorship to democracy. And we helped spare the region and the world from a dictator who aspired to dominate the Arab world and threaten Israel.

That was the thing about the Howard government: we stood for something. And one of the things we stood for was freedom.

As different from the Gillard government who stand for themselves and the less than 20% of the population who are unionists.
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War on Terror

The morning after

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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.      
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Politics

ALP Leadership Spill

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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.
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Politics

LP Back

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Larvatus Prodeo is  back for the election and to enhance the pleasure of our election night experience. Fran Bailey is in full sail already;

Out on twitter, and elsewhere, there is, predictably, and ‘anyone but Abbott’ style campaign running, and much public angst about how we must stop him at all costs

Yes, it would be a dark day indeed in this country’s affairs were Tony Abbott to become PM.

Well, a dark day for you at least – I revel in your pain Fran.  
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Politics

Complaining Princess

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AUSTRALIA’S defence force has knowingly neglected abuse victims, according to a senior army officer who has revealed he was the target of a gay-hate campaign by colleagues. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Morgan told the ABC’s 7.30 program last night that the failure of Australian Defence Force management to adequately deal with his complaint was indicative of how poorly many victims were treated.

“Every officer in my chain of command, every colonel and general all the way through to the current Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, systematically failed their duty in relation to the management of my complaint.”

Way to go Paul.  That will guarantee you will lose all support amongst your peers and superiors. The Army’s Chain of Command for complaints goes up to and stops at Chief of Army– it  doesn’t include ABCs 7:30 program. ADF chief General David Hurley told the ABC he rejected Colonel Morgan’s claims of widespread inaction on abuse allegations and said numerous programs had been put in place to support victims. How come  Paul is still in the Army?  
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Defence
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