Author: Kev

There is a show on TV where some pretty young thing shows videos of people hurting themselves. A baby falls over and the applause deafens. A man takes a kick in the groin and everyone rolls about laughing. A woman falls over, show her knickers and the audience thinks it’s funny

That’s where I place The Chasers team. Securing laughs by going out of their way to make people look stupid. Anyone with the smallest knowledge of security will know it’s virtually impossible to completely secure a CBD in a democracy like Australia. Someone will aways be able to breach some of the security perimeters but will they be able to do anything when there.

Had the Chasers been real bad guys would they have survived? I doubt it. The chances are they would’ve been targeted by marksmen all the way in and had they shown body language other than that of a group on an undergraduate dare they would’ve been dropped.

Not funny unless your an undergrad, hate police or were just waiting around hoping something happened that would steal any success Howard might have claimed from APEC.

I don’t fit any of those profiles – I just thinks it’s poor form.

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.

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.

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.