This admission on ABC’s Insiders, last Sunday, by left-wing journalist Annabel Crabb about Rudd’s first year in power:
…result free, trouble free. Is that a good outcome?
Rudd is following the classic Public Service philosophy for promotion. Don’t do anything good, don’t do anything bad, just don’t do anything.
The ABC is reporting on Rudd’s glorious first year as PM. You get where they are coming from. Amongst the ‘highlights’ being pushed by Rudd in his self-written report card for this first year in office, are the following:
The report, prepared by Prime Minister Rudd’s department hails tax cuts, the 2020 Summit, the Stolen Generations apology and new trade training centres as major Government initiatives.
The ALP tax cut policy was a copy paste of Costello’s tax cut pledge prior to the last election. The 2020 summit achieved nothing substantial, but was simply a gathering of like minded socialists in the finest traditions of Maoist China. Apart from the lack of evidence for a ‘stolen generation’, the apology has done nothing to improve the lot of those Aboriginals most disadvantaged, but merely appeased Aboriginal elites, who enjoy a standard of living akin to most Australian, and in their elitist minds, strengthened their case for more government hand outs. The trade training centres? Well I’ve never heard of them and they are hardly the basis of a ‘new way of governing’, as Rudd puts it. Of course let’s not forget the much trumpeted FuelWatch, which already failed within the first year.
Let’s compare Rudd with Howard’s first year of achievement. A clean out of what had become a highly politicised public service, his compassionate response to the Port Arthur massacre and associated gun laws, the fixing of the waterfront after 100 years of inefficiency and general IR reforms which provided the basis of lower unemployment, the structural adjustment of the $10 billion Keating budget deficit of FY96/97, the introduction of legislation to ensure the integrity of the Budget prior to elections, the introduction of family tax benefits, the creation of an independent Reserve Bank of Australia, the beginning of the re-building of Australia’s Defence Force – somewhat prophetic given East Timor blew up two – three years later, and that’s all from the top of my head.
From How Obama Got Elected:
I’ve posted three times about how John Howard, in 2007, warned that the terrorist enemies of the USA would be praying for an Obama victory. And still, the evidence backing up that claim keeps on coming, the latest from al Qaeda 2IC Ayman Zawahiri:
…a message of congratulations to the Muslim Ummah on the American people’s admission of defeat in Iraq. Although the evidence of America’s defeat in Iraq appeared years ago, Bush and his administration continued to be stubborn and deny the brilliant midday sun. If Bush has achieved anything, it is in his transfer of America’s disaster and predicament to his successor. But the American people, by electing Obama, declared its anxiety and apprehension about the future towards which the policy of the likes of Bush is leading it, and so it decided to support someone calling for withdrawal from Iraq.
So Obama’s election is seen by al Qaeda as an admission of defeat in Iraq. Make what you will of this statement, but Obama has not changed his policy of early withdrawal from Iraq.
From The Howard Years.
I’d say assiduousness. Upon watching the first installment of the series, I’ve become more impressed with what Howard was able to accomplish in only his first term in office, especially when one makes comparisons to the incumbent PM.
It has been a while since I have read an article on Australian history as bad as this article from The Guardian, on a recent SBS TV series on Aboriginal history:
One comment on the website described the series as polemic, saying it should be taken as such. If the series is polemic, it should make no apologies about it…
Well gee let’s not let the facts get in the way of a tragic story.
Been watching “The Howard Years”. Good series, although if you watch the extra footage it becomes clear that the ABC edited out most the criticism against the Australian left, especially the ALP. Alexander Downer’s assessment of Pauline Hanson is telling, and his critique of how the media left and the ALP went out of their way to promote Hanson in East Asia and their pathetic assertions that some how Hanson’s views on economic nationalism and immigration reflected Howard’s views. Of course none of those commentsmade it into the TV broadcast. They are cutting comments. Downer rates the political left’s promotion of Hanson, as a way to damage Howard and Australia, as equal in shamefulness as their rejection and ridicule of returning Vietnam War veterans in the 1970s.
Having said that, I could never figure out why Howard did not use Hanson and the issue of preferences to get the ALP not to accept Green’s preferences. I’d always felt that One Nation was as radical and as dangerous as the Greens Party, but of course the media gave and continues to give the Greens Party a free pass, but when a radical right-wing figure or party comes to the fore the media attack.
A good example from London of why New South Wales Premier Rees’ congestion charge won’t work. Note also that the $4 fee is only paid for by Northern suburbs drivers, i.e. Liberal voters. Oh and if you think public transport is the answer, then Rees’ will have a hard time explaining why he is not going to build a train line to Sydney’s number one growth area the north-west. Well not really when you understand that they are also Liberal voters. No, instead Rees’ will extend the Tram line a couple of stops into the inner-west, which of course are ALP voters. You get the picture by now I’m sure. Even the SMH has reported on the farce:
ERIC ROOZENDAAL (Treasurer) is right about one thing: this is not a congestion charge.
A congestion charge would be equitable. It would be a streamlined, network-wide measure to encourage motorists to switch to efficient, comfortable public transport.
Instead, what the novice Treasurer and Premier have introduced is a poke-in-the-eye.
The $4 peak-period toll on the Harbour Bridge and Harbour Tunnel is a slug on the blue-ribbon, Liberal-voting northern suburbs that Labor has abandoned.
Congestion charging only works if there is an alternative. A choice. But what choice do north-western residents have when their buses are packed and their journey to work lasts almost two hours?
An extra $5 a week is not going to shift people away from their cars when they’re already paying $116.50 a week to get to the airport – in tolls alone.
This is especially the case now that, for the first time since 1998, the pledge of a rail line to the north-west has been exposed for what it always was: a pantomime.
I’ve been blogging recently on the reaction to Obama’s election from some of the most radical Islamic groups in the world. Time and time again their reactions have justified Howard’s 2007 comments that the enemies of the USA would be praying for an Obama victory. The Australian Conservative has now picked up on the issue, which the media have ignored of course. The latest comes from the New York Times quoting Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq with ties to Al Qaeda:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Baghdadi also used his address to offer Mr. Obama an unlikely deal, one certain to do little to bring any resolution to the conflict between radical Islamic groups and the United States. He offered a truce of sorts in exchange for the removal of all forces from the region.
“On behalf of my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya, I offer you what is better for you and us: you return to your previous era of neutrality, you withdraw your forces, and you return to your homes,” Mr. Baghdadi said. “You do not interfere in the affairs of our countries, directly or indirectly. We in turn will not prevent commerce with you, whether it is in oil or otherwise, but with fairness, not at a loss.”
And further:
Marwan Shehadeh, a Jordanian researcher and expert in radical Islamic groups, said that Al Qaeda leaders outside Iraq might balk at such a relationship, but that jihadis might view Mr. Obama’s election as an opportunity.
…two intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of their work said that they were concerned that any step that could be perceived as a victory for Al Qaeda, like pulling troops out of Iraq right away, would only strengthen its ability to recruit.
“If he withdraws the soldiers from Iraq before the country gets really stable, Al Qaeda will see it as their victory, and they might get stronger again,” one regional intelligence official said. That dynamic was already beginning to play out on Al Hesbah.
I would imagine that Howard probably recieved an intelligence briefing outlining the possible implications of an Obama victory and he was merely speaking out to warn people of the consequences, which we are already seeing:
Interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused the Islamist Hamas movement on Sunday of “shattering” the Gaza truce after two rockets hit Israel, prompting an air strike which killed four Palestinian militants.