Watching the Senate on TV last night I can’t see much hope for Labor. They spent their few remaining hours forcing the establishment of a Senate Enquiry into what Scrafton, Howard, General Whatshisface and Commodore Somebodyorother said about people in the water or not in the water or they jumped or were pushed in or….for Gods sake get on with it.
Australia has.
As John Howard said;
“I’m simply saying my recall is different and I’m also saying that what people remember about that issue is that we stopped the boats, we were very strong on border protection, and the Labor Party was weak.”
Meanwhile Terry Hicks is still fighting for his son and that’s fair enough from a paternal point of view but to say;
It would take a change of government to have terror suspect David Hicks returned to Australia for trial
is only stating the obvious and emphasising the fact that Labor are soft on security.
He goes on to say;
“The Howard Liberal government is just not standing by their citizens.”
and in doing so misses the point. The Howard Liberal government is standing by it’s citizens. It’s protecting them from attested/enlisted, trained and deployed Terrorists.
On lateline last night Tony Jones managed to find someone to press the alarm bells by suggesting that terrorists may try and influence the Australian election as they did in Spain.
TONY JONES: (Talking about the Spanish attacks that ended in Spanish withdrawal from Iraq) Do you suspect the same thing would apply here in Australia?
We have a parallel federal election going on with the presidential election?
(Please say yes!)
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, Australia is a bit more like the Spanish case where you have one party saying, “Get out,” and the other party staying the course and the party in power is the one wanting to stay the course.
That’s much closer to the situation that we saw in Spain and so you could understand how Al Qaeda or some terrorist group related to Al Qaeda might think it could affect the outcome.
TONY JONES: Does it make it more dangerous, do you suppose, having a political position like that, opposed political positions like that leading up to an election? (Please say yes so that I can leave the message with my viewers that a vote for Howard will result in a terrorist attack on Australian soil)
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, I think it opens the possibility of some terrorist group related to Al Qaeda wanting to do something which otherwise wouldn’t be the case in an Australian election.
So, oddly enough, I’m saying that I don’t think Al Qaeda will try to affect the US election, but because the Australian election is so similar to what happened in Spain, I would think the possibility does exist here.
If anyone sees any similarity between Australia and Spain then they are ignoring a couple of hundred years of history.
In fact, I reckon the last thing Tony Jones wants is any terrorist activity during the election. It will only emphasise Labor’s soft underbelly on anything other than unions and free books for all and the voters would look to the party with a strong policy on defence – the Coalition.
Update:
TREASURER Peter Costello has raised the spectre of a Madrid-like terrorist attack being mounted by al-Qaeda to disrupt the election campaign.
That’s funny. The way I read the article Costello didn’t raise the spectre – a journalist did and Costello answered.
As in;
When asked if Australians were at increased risk during the election campaign, Mr Costello said:….
It is clear certain elements of the media want to raise the issue and try and frighten the populace.
We don’t frighten easy and when we are, it is because of some fact – not some journalist’s answer wish-list.