Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies. Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.

Australia Day Awards

BY and large I have no argument with Australia Day honours but these two did attract my atenttion.

Public Service Medal (PSM)

Martin Gerard BOWLES, Yarralumla ACT. For outstanding public service in delivering highly successful energy efficiency policies and remediation programs for the Home Insulation and Green Loans programs.

One wonders if he would have been made a saint had the programs actually been successful.

Order of Australia – Officer (AO)

Professor Stuart Forbes MACINTYRE, Brunswick West Vic For distinguished service to the social sciences and to the humanities as a leading academic in the areas of 19th and 20th century Australian history, particularly through advancing the understanding of social and political life, and as an author, researcher and mentor.

All from a Communist perspective.

Turn the boats back

TONY Abbott’s plan to send back all asylum-seeker boats has drawn fire from Indonesia’s police as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as dangerous and in breach of international law.

Presuming the Greens, human rights activists and other assorted left wing bleeders also disagree then that most probably makes it a good plan.

The fact that he says he will turn back the boats doesn’t mean every boat will be turned back. It will depend on how quickly the illegal Social Security applicants can sabotage their boats, but at the very least, this should make for good video.

I am a bit surprised at Admiral Barry being quoted in the media as being against the plan. He may care to look up ‘ethics of service officers’, particularly the bits that refer to how he should be apolitical lest he end up shoveling coal with the other RAN stokers after the next election.

There will be more to Abbott’s plan than ‘turn the boats back’ but by announcing this aspect now it will allow the Social Security applicant’s fan club to wear out their angst and perfect their underestimation of Abbott to a more disillusioned level.

Pokies and Pollies

Like most of the Australian population, Wilkie now has reason to feel dudded by Gillard. Leaving his electorate to get on as best it can while he pursued a personal vendetta on pokies, Wilkie strikes me as a obsessive/compulsive type of guy. Obsessive people really worry me particularly when they have power, however fleeting it may be.

From behind The Australian’s paywall

Tasmanian sources say that the pokies issues has taken up so much of Wilkie’s time that his capacity to perform as a local member has been diminished.

“He doesn’t get a huge amount of press down here to be frank,” another insider said.

The two main issues where Wilkie has had strong local coverage, the insider indicated, have been pokies reform and the agreement he struck with the government as part of his deal to keep Labor in power for extra funds for Hobart Hospital, only to discover the money would come out of other grants to his struggling state.

Local observers say this indicates Wilkie is naive.

Gillard must feel particularly annoyed by Craig Thomson having a go at her. Be quiet Craig…the ALP don’t want any mention of your name in the media lest the public remember that it is alleged you have stolen monies from the poor Health Services Union members.

The Australian Tax Office are also interested in having a chat with Craig.

All this is old news as discerning readers know but it doesn’t hurt to remind others.

Noting how the Fair Work Australia division of the ALP has been investigating this matter for three years I’m sure Abbott will bring it up in parliament when it sits again in a couple of weeks.

The Police are on it as well.

Certainly a shaky start to 2012 for Gillard. Her power rests on Peter Slipper.

Good luck PM!

The Constitution

THE Constitution would be amended to encourage respect for indigenous Australians, and denounce discrimination, if an expert panel’s findings are adopted.

Personally I’m of the “respect is earned” school but I am against race based discrimination.

The report calls for the removal of sections 25 and 51 and the inclusion of a new section 51A that recognises that the continent and its islands now known as Australia “were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

I have just read section 51 and the only mention of race is section xxvi that says The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

-The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws:

Why would the expert panel recommend the removal of all of section 51 rather than just the sub section that deals with race?

Anybody?

Section 25, however, deals explicitly with race;

25. For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of the race resident in that State shall not be counted.

I can see a case to remove section 25 but not to remove all of section 51.

The panel want a new new section 51A that recognises that the continent and its islands now known as Australia “were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

I don’t get the point of that. If you did that in European countries their constitutions would simply be a litany of races that have been through their countries.

On first glance I would be happy to support removal of sections that specifically mention race but not any inclusions of same just to point out they were here before us.

Ferals to cost us big money

THE rescue of three anti-whaling protesters aboard a Japanese ship will cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars”, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says.

Three ferals from the ‘Spike trees and endanger the lives of loggers brigade have joined the ‘ram fishing and whaling ships an endanger the lives of the crew‘ mob and got themselves an invite as guests of the Japanese government. The Australian government has folded and are sending a ship to collect the hippy bastards.

The three ferals are a part of a group in SW West Australia called Forest Rescue who have teamed up with Sea Sheppard’s Paul Watson. Read their poetry page to get a better idea of how sick they are

Sea Sheppard propaganda from their website;

The expense would not have occurred if the government had lived up to its campaign promise of actually doing something to end illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Bullshit! The expense occurred because three hippies illegally boarded a ship at sea

This was not a Sea Shepherd initiative, we merely assisted. This was an Australian grassroots operation by Forest Rescue, an Australian organization, that took place in Australian territorial waters.

Grassroots! A few ferals living in the South West Forrests doesn’t constitute a grassroots operation. They are just a bunch of ferals smoking dope and spiking trees, a practice that is lethal to tree fellers and mill workers. Some of them were involved in the James Point protest that I witnessed earlier this year when I was at Broome

The ferals were trying to stop the James Point Development that the local indigenous guys wanted. My comments then;

What isn’t right is feral hippies coming from all over Australia and overseas to simply stop progress. They couldn’t give a damn about the local aborigines and how they view the project as a way out of their troubles; they couldn’t give a damn about jobs for Aussies or additional infrastructure coming to a remote town and they certainly don’t care about those who want to keep tourism the sole income stream in Broome except, where it suits them to use the locals to hinder progress. They just don’t want any commercial development anywhere to impact on their Utopia that doesn’t include humans other than themselves.

The hippies/feral greens don’t even like Broome. it is to hot, remote and poor country for growing marijuana.

Should be open season on the bastards.

Sea Sheppard continues;

Australia should bill Japan for the costs. The Shonan Maru #2 had no business in Australian territorial waters and had no business detaining Australian nationals onboard a Japanese ship in Australian territorial waters.

The Shonan Maru #2 wasn’t in our territorial waters – it was 40 k off Bunbury and any Captain has the right to detain ferals who climb on board his ship without permission

If the government had acted quickly instead of believing the false coordinates given to them by the Japanese whaling industry then the three men could have been taken off the ship close to shore.

Why should the government react at all to Watson’s script? He planned the forced boarding and had the videos sent to the pliant Australian media who then put pressure on the government.

The Australian government’s deal with the Japanese is to transfer the men while not having the Shonan Maru #2 slow down so they can continue to tail the Steve Irwin. Why would Sea Shepherd be expected to contribute to an operation that undermines our effectiveness and enables the rest of the whaling fleet to avoid us?

You are expected to contribute because your illegal activities are about to cost the Australian taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When a wealthy yachtsman is lost or in trouble in the Southern Ocean, no expense is spared to save him/her and they are not asked to pay for the costs. Why would we be asked to pay when Australians from another organization are simply doing the job that the government said they would do, but are not doing?

the ‘wealthy yachtsman’ line is rubbish. An international agreement exists to save these people going about a legitimate activity. There is no international agreement to save pirates from their illegal and life threatening activities

If the Australian government had a ship on station monitoring the situation, this would not be much of an added expense.

Why should we have to go to that expense and deny such ship’s ability to help where it is relly needed.

The government has blocked and denied our request for tax status in Australia for eight years costing us a great deal in potential resources that would have allowed us to be more effective. In fact, if they had granted us such status we might possibly be in a position to give a donation to the Prime Minister to help her offset the cost of the government’s folly in allowing the Japanese whalers to continue to terrorize the defenceless whales of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Exactly what tax status do you think pirates are entitled to?

We are about to fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars as the media and the government dance to Watson’s choreography. He writes the script for these activities and a good percentage of the country buy it unquestionably without any consideration of his nefarious past. He and his followers are dangerous and should not be allowed port access to Australia. The question of the Japanese whaling is another matter and can only be dealt with through legal international means.

UPDATE: A list of Paul Watson lies

UPDATE II: Visit and read this piece on Panda-Broad, a girlfriend of one of the ferals. Says it all, really

Eco-terrorists on annual crime spree

How can anyone back this lunatic

THREE Australians who boarded a Japanese whaling ship outside Australian waters were likely to suffer the consequences of taking the law into their own hands, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said today.

Good!

The issue isn’t whaling, it’s the fact that Watson is allowed freedom when he clearly should be in jail for his terrorist activities.

UPDATE: Even Greenpeace don’t like him

The Nauru word can now be mentioned

Do leopards change their spots? Not often, in my experience but today’s Australian reports the ALP Left have rolled on Nauru and will allow Chris Bowen to negotiate a deal.

Beaten near to death by a reality stick the Left may have finally concluded that several hundred deaths and 14, 000 illegal boat arrivals throws some doubt on the humanity and rational of stopping Howard’s succesfull deterrent to life style shoppers.

Abbott still rejects the Malaysian ‘knee jerk’ deal saying;

….the Coalition continued to oppose the Malaysian deal, under which 800 asylum-seekers would be swapped for 4000 genuine refugees, because it would not work.

Primary school maths will tell you that wont solve anything.

Maybe, just maybe, we are getting somewhere.

Now they want to drug us

Greens gambling spokesman Richard Di Natale released a discussion paper today that suggests the anti-addiction drug naltrexone be used to help problem gamblers resist the urge to punt on poker machines.

“The effect is basically to reduce the pleasure people get when they get those big wins or when they get some of the more deceptive things the poker machines do – the losses disguised as wins and so on,” Senator Di Natale, a former GP, told ABC Radio today

Talking about denying us life’s simple pleasures. The Nanny state just knows no limits.

The 12-page discussion paper also calls for GPs to be trained to identify problem gamblers.

Who goes to their GP and says “I’ve got a gambling problem?” and if the patient doesn’t raise the issue how the hell can a doctor diagnose the problem? Twitching fingers trying to push buttons or maybe cheap clothes due to no money left?

Must be a terrible existence in the Greens parallel universe.

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