Category: Politics

Howard was awarded an AC in the Queens Birthday Weekend Honours and Awards and I’m pleased for two reasons.

For a start I believe he deserves an award. He was part of a team that brought us out of the financial abyss the ALP left us in; set us up to gain the benefits of the commodity boom; enhanced our international reputation (with governments and people who matter) and generally steered the ship in the manner and direction I would prefer. There were any amount of matters that I disagreed with over the years but I was happy with the general direction.

However, the main reason I am happy he has been so honoured is that it winds up the Left as witnessed by this comment at LP

Doubt very much that Rudd is going to be arraigned for war crimes at the Internatuional Crimimal Court, the way Howard will be. So he won’t have to hand any gongs back, the way Howard will.
Apart from which, apart from his forthcoming war crimes trial, the sad, publicity-hungry little fart is irrelevant. With a little bit of luck and even more courage rhan I think he’s actually got,, Rudd might get rid of everything bad and evil the little pr*ck did over the past 11 years. Though I doubt it.

Does Paul Burns, the author of this strange alignment and sequence of words, actually believe what he writes? One can only wonder.

Mark Bahnisch seems to think the fact that Paul Keating didn’t get an award is relevant and maybe he suggests that Howard shouldn’t have accepted his AC because Keating didn’t.

Doesn’t compute with me. Keating is one-off weirdo who actually did the country considerable damage and he was possibly concerned that an image of the medal may have been impressed on his forehead by all those voters with baseball bats in hand looking to get at him.

While Keating refused his, Kelty didn’t and I for one don’t deny him the honour and recognition but then I never managed to develop ‘hatred’ into such an art form as did the left.

Howard, AC…has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Having fixed up Australia and all her ‘conservative government’ caused problems Rudd is now overseas fixing world problems. In the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto Australia’s Chief Clerk outlines his vision for saving the world.

He plans to set up an Australian answer to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, headed by Cheryl Kernot’s old boyfriend and former Hawke/Keating man, Gareth Evans.

This is a recycled ALP idea as Evans set up an organization called the Canberra Commission on eliminating nuclear weapons during Labour’s last shot at glory. The Commission basically said a lot and achieved nothing and that’s exactly what we can expect from the ‘new’ initiative.

Deja Vu

Greg Sheridan nails Gareth with this line;

Any document written by Evans is bound to be lengthy, well informed, well researched, judicious, professional, comprehensive, pedantic and ineffective.

Which is exactly how I remember Gareth.

All this comes from Rudd’s visit to the bombed out city of Hiroshma where he was so moved as to look ‘subdued’ and ‘found himself reaching for his wifes hand’.

God help us!

Rudd also spoke well of the Kyoto agreement and how much the city had contributed to the world and I guess if you’re a visitor it is incumbent on you to say words of praise but really what has Kyoto achieved other than some left wing votes for dubious governments.

To compliment his Fuel Watch program whereby fuel costs are ‘watched’ and somehow lower themselves under Rudd’s steely gaze he has applied a similar approach to oil. Let’s call it Oil Watch where he accuses oil-producing nations of deliberately distorting the supply of oil to maintain high prices and has demanded the Group of Eight nations intervene. They seem to think that prices have surged because of market speculators putting large amounts of funds into oil, not because of a lack of supply.

But who are they to doubt the wisdom of our own Superman Rudd?

I wonder if Whaling has made the agenda yet?

Probably not but then I think he’s got all the votes he wanted from his previous incursion into whaling where he dispatched a customs ship to take pics to add to the photo gallery of millions of other pics of Japanese whalers going about their legal business.

This government is at risk of being very long on setting up inquiries and Commissions and very short on actually doing anything but in the interim the entertainment value is priceless.

I have reserved my opinion on Lindsay Tanner but now I can state I ‘m not impressed. I saw him on TV last night trying to put Rudd’s attack on the Public Servants into a favourable light

He failed. He said words to the effect that after 11 years of not having any demands placed on them by the Howard government he has no sympathy for them now the Rudd is demanding some hard work.

So Lindsay thinks they have been bludging for eleven years.

Rudd is well down the track to alienate half of Canberra as he takes on the personae of a boss from hell and tells them to stop complaining and be prepared to work harder;

The Prime Minister’s peevish response to the cabinet leak brought on a deluge of defensive calls to talkback radio in Canberra. The attitude was repeated on Friday evening’s edition of the ABC’s Stateline. When the Prime Minister had a second go, he insisted that he had a mandate for reform and therefore could require the public service to work as hard as he believed was necessary.

And Bob McMullan is simply still condescending and offensive;

….public servants should feel privileged to work on a great program of reform.

Yeah, right!

Keep attacking them Kevin and co and we may see something I never thought would happen – a Coaliton supporting public service.

Princess Penny looses her cool;

Senator Wong has told small groups of chief executives from major power and other energy-intensive companies that the Rudd Government’s election promise of a renewable energy target was “not negotiable”.

One of these meetings in Melbourne last Tuesday completely broke down, with Senator Wong reportedly furious at the way she was being treated by the eight business leaders present, telling them “you wouldn’t treat (former Treasurer) Peter Costello the way you are treating me”.

I wonder why? Could it be because Peter Costello would neither start a negotiation with a ‘this is not negotiable‘ statement nor would he have brought up the voodoo economics of carbon trading in the first place.

Kevin Rudd is having all sorts of problems as the gilt tarnishes. In between shuffling piles of paper and spending days trying to justify his theory that watching something makes it cheaper he gives the troops, bound to support him, a morale building message.

Yesterday he said he accepted the consequences of his decision but, in a clear warning to disgruntled public servants, said he was aware some were finding their workloads “a bit much”. “I’ve simply got news for the public service – there’ll be more,” Mr Rudd said. The work ethic of this Government will not decrease, it will increase.”

I wonder what we are talking about here. Are the public servants just using their hours better or are they being forced to burn the midnight oil? The latter I would think. I’ve always been of the opinion that the Canberra bureaucrats have generally voted Labour and this makes me wonder what sort of discussions are going on around the water cooler today – could I suggest regret and remorse at least.

Who leaked? We don’t know yet but Kevin has ordered the AFP to investigate the matter. It is reasonable to assume that some disgruntled public servant is guilty but Kevin wants to hope for exactly that outcome. The other choice would be a disgruntled cabinet minister or staffer and that would bode very poorly for a new government.

THE indigenous people of South Australia’s remote desert country cast their vote on Jenny Mackin’s plan for the disadvantaged Australians.

In a new slap in the face for federal and state Labor, a meeting of more than 100 Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara residents asked Mr Brough to be their agent in dealing with both the federal and state governments.

And the elephant in the room? The words ‘Unions’ and ‘Strikes’ are starting to get more air time.

All you young 30 somethings that voted for Rudd should get used to government under labour and all it’s entertainment value.

Enjoy it while it lasts

FuelWatch warnings ‘ignored’. I’m not surprised that the Rudd government comes up with shaky plans to convince people that they actually have the power, and more importantly, the ability to bring down fuel prices but I am surprised that someone is leaking the negative reports.

Only 6 months into the Rudd government and people are ratting on them – maybe even their own people.

The mind boggles.

Discounting Left wing sources the general consensus seems to be it was a left-wing talk fest. Many, myself included, feel it smacks of Gorge Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. As Jeremy Sammut points out Big Brother (The original Big Brother, not that stupid TV show) is looming.

Treaties before kids, A Bill of Rights before Industry, A Republic before water problems and a host of motherhood statements all culminating in larger government as outlined by Henry Ergas, CEO of Concept Economics.

The outcomes paper makes this clear, with recommendations for creating more than 20 new government agencies and instrumentalities, without a single agency, instrumentality, spending program or current government function being identified that ought to be cut back.

The weekend is ably summed up by John Capel in his letter to the editor of The Australian

THE summit showed how carefully contrived questions put to carefully selected participants will result in totally predictable outcomes.
John Capel
Black Rock, Vic

I will waste no more time on the Summit but wait expectantly for actual outcomes that benefit the nation as a whole.

Waiting….waiting….

I have long advocated giving young grads a cut in their HEC debt for service in remote Australia. Young Doctors, nurses and teachers would be welcome in a lot of communities and as we can’t seem to get our quota of older professionals then the young ones will do.

This is one idea to come out of the Canberra gathering of the true believers that I haven’t heard before but the rest is mostly old stuff and/or motherhood statements.

I note Mundine advocates that all Aborigine children should learn English but does anyone else feel there is something basically wrong when he has to say it. Of course kids in Australia should learn English and we don’t need a committee to tell us so. We just need the cultural warriors of the Left to lay of and let governments and agencies work on giving Indigenous kids the same chance at education as the rest of us get.

I can’t get it out of my mind that the whole show has been set up to glorify Rudd and confirm his policies and to bring into public debate those policies of the insane Left that he said he wouldn’t implement when he was looking for votes.

Run ’em up the flag pole, so to speak, and see who salutes. Well, we know who will salute and that’s the worry.

The whole process was set up to provide a set-piece result. How many monarchists were invited I wonder. We know Small Business hardly got a look in, the AMA weren’t represented and was there anyone there to caution against committing to a greener world without at least some semblance of considering the economy as well in the mix – I doubt it.

The Courier Mail’s deadwood edition has a huge headline VOICE OF THE PEOPLE but could I be so bold as to say it is not the voice of the people; it is the voice of a small select group of people who subscribe to a certain set of opinions that are welcomed by the ALP.

If some of the Motherhood statements are turned into reality something may come of it but that’s a big ask and when the activists supporting some of the more zany ideas are confronted with the electorate then reality will bite.

I am not enthused and still wait for the Rudd government to actually do something for the benefit of the country as a whole and not just for those who voted for the greener grass on the other side of the ideological divide….that bright and shiny thing over there – let’s try that out.

Surely some must be looking at the shiny thing a bit closer now and noting it is really is a bit dull, not what they thought or were lead to believe, but a poor copy of the real thing.

BUSINESS leaders are fuming after only four small-business representatives were accepted for this weekend’s 2020 Summit, far fewer than the red carpet of celebrities attending.

FOUR!

Film stars abound for Rudd/Celebrity photo ops, Union leaders everywhere, Members of the Church of the Latter Day Alarmists (Global warming advocates), Greenies and Academics all queuing up for their fifteen minutes of fame but only .04% representation from a group that employs over four million Australians.

Makes sense in a Lefty/ALP sort of way.

Opposition small business spokesman Steve Ciobo joined in the attack, accusing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of “gagging” the industry.

“I want to know how Mr Rudd plans to have a decent discussion on the future of small business when the people who can bring a real perspective to the table won’t even be there.

Dr Emerson (Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) replies;

“only the Opposition” could continue to be negative about a major summit to discuss the ambitions of the nation.

“From the outset the Government has been clear that people would be selected on merit and not on their ability to represent peak organisations,” he said.

Hence the brace of Union Reps and as a matter on interest, just how does Cate Blanchet fit into that formula?

The man screaming abuse at the taciturn policeman is a Cabinet Minister in the Rudd Government – says it all really.

Pic lifted from Tim Blair’s blog