Month: June 2009

So much and so little

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 June, 2009

Never in living memory has a PM and a government promised so much but delivered so little. Add to the list the following item. Rudd said on May 25th 2009 in relation to May NSW floods:

Today the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs also activated the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment to provide further assistance to help those in northern New South Wales affected by the flood disaster…I have also today authorised this assistance for people affected by the earlier floods in New South Wales in late March (emphasis added).

However the day after, as pointed out by Akerman, Rudd’s office advised the local member that:

…contrary to what the PM had said on Monday, the victims of the March 31 flood would not be eligible for the one-off cash payment, only those affected by the May event.

So March now means May? Don’t tell me Rudd misled Parliament. What about his integrity? Clearly none of the flood victims own a Ford car dealership.

It’s called having runs on the board

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 June, 2009

In Australia:

There are now only eight AA-rated banks in the world, and the Australian domestic brand names of CBA, NAB, ANZ and Westpac account for half.

Before the financial crisis engulfed the world there were 20 AA-banks.

The robust state of Australia’s banking system has been applauded globally and used as a benchmark for regulatory reform.

In China:

China’s banks are veering out of control. The half-reformed economy of the People’s Republic cannot absorb the $1,000bn (£600bn) blitz of new lending issued since December.

Money is leaking instead into Shanghai’s stock casino, or being used to keep bankrupt builders on life support. It is doing very little to help lift the world economy out of slump.

China’s resort to speculation, protectionism, quasi-price controls and depreciation of its currency are hardly signs of a competitive economy. More like a fairly desperate attempt to avoid market and political reforms.

Australia’s best known Senator

Posted by Chief Blogger – 27 June, 2009

Senator Steve Fielding. That’s right. His stand against the media driven climate change ‘consensus’ and his opposition to Rudd’s carbon legislation is, believe it or not, making world headlines. The WSJ has published an editorial in its US edition on the Senator:

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven’t heard of this politician, it’s because he’s a member of the Australian Senate…

Credit for Australia’s own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published “Heaven and Earth,” a damning critique of the “evidence” underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing.

Real Clear Politics also ran a similar article outlining Fielding’s opposition and questioning:

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian’s disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama’s special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you’re not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull.

Note that Plimer’s book is already ranked 138 on Amazon sales, even though the US edition has not yet been released.

They are not refugees

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 June, 2009

The media has fallen head over heals in love with Gillard’s trip to Israel. The latest is her trip to a Palestinian ‘refugee’ camp. From Powerline back in 2003:

For many years, the Palestinians have argued that the descendants of those Arabs who voluntarily left Israel in 1948 have a “right of return” to that country. The purpose behind this claim is transparent: if all of the descendants of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 were to “return” there, Jews would be a minority and the State of Israel would be destroyed–Israel being, if I am not mistaken, the only country where Arabs can vote.

In order to maintain the Palestinian “refugees” as a political weapon against Israel, they and their descendants have been maintained in “refugee camps” for more than fifty years. There is, of course, such a thing as a genuine refugee camp. After World War II, for example, there were millions of displaced persons, many of whom lived for a time in such camps. But the people soon moved on and the camps were disbanded.

Only in the case of the Palestinians have generations of people lived indefinitely in refugee camps…

66 per cent of the people in the ‘refugee’ camp Gillard visited are under the age of 18. In other words, they were never displaced. The ‘camps’ are maintained for photo opportunities for visiting dignitaries. Just look at this google map of the Dheisheh ‘camp’ that Gillard visited. It is a high density urban area. And the Australian media have been sucked right in to the scam.

They didn’t get the message…

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 June, 2009

…that you can’t criticise Ken Henry’s Treasury forecasts:

THE International Monetary Fund has cautioned against further budget stimulus spending, saying the Reserve Bank should provide the front line of defence against further weakening in the economy with more interest rate cuts.

The IMF has questioned Treasury predictions about the strength of the economic recovery, echoing predictions by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that Australia’s medium-term growth will be slower than predicted in last month’s budget.

And I found this little snippet revealing as to why the budget is in deficit:

Treasury secretary Ken Henry has defended the budget outlook, saying Australia’s terms of trade (which measures the strength of export prices compared with imports) would remain 40 per cent above their average from the 1990s once the “short term” economic weakness subsides…Dr Henry said strong commodity prices would support incomes and government revenues.

Hang on, I thought balancing the budget was all down to luck and the commodity boom?

All feathers, no meat…

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 June, 2009

…was one of Paul Keating’s more infamous sayings. It is in this context that I report the following:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted June 10-14 among 1,502 adults reached on landlines and cell phones, finds that impressions of Sarah Palin have not changed much since the presidential campaign. Palin continues to be a divisive figure among the general public, with about as many saying they have an unfavorable impression (44%) as a favorable view (45%) of the Alaska governor.

Sarah Palin has never struck me as someone that has intellectually prepared herself for US national leadership. Beyond the glib one liners, I don’t think there is much there. Winning elections is not just about winning votes, but winning arguments as well. By contrast:

…Mitt Romney has seen his favorability ratings improve and now enjoys a positive balance of opinion among the general public: 40% rate him favorably, 28% unfavorably.

For ALP voters that’s 32 per cent that don’t know. In political terms that means potential. It is much easier to get the undecided than the decided against to vote for you. For example, at the beginning of the GM crisis MR wrote an article in the NYT in which he argued that GM should move immediately into a managed bankruptcy. An inexperienced Obama and his cronies ignored the call, but $90 billion in US tax-payers money later GM went into bankruptcy. Obama merely delayed the inevitable and wasted tax-payers money in the process while exposing tax-payers to significant risk through taking ownership of the company. After four years of economic downturn under Obama, it will be MR’s type of economic leadership that voters will be looking for.

Gillard outlines her security priorities

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 June, 2009

Gillard is leading an Australian delegation to Israel. As expected, she has been under fire from the looney left of the ALP for even daring to step foot in Israel. Regardless of the typically ALP sympathetic media coverage attempting to portray Gillard as mainstream (the same people that tried to argue that she was an economic conservative before the last election), her true inner feelings are not too far removed from the ALP left, as reveled by her speech to the Australian Israel Leadership Forum. This is what Gillard had to say about Iran, remembering that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said on a number of occasions that Israel should be wiped off the map and at the same time is developing the nuclear weapons to do it:

The events taking place in Iran are a source of worry for us all and a symbol of wider uncertainty about the future of this region.

The events Gillard is referring to is the current political instability in Iran due to recent elections. Not nukes, or Israel’s threatened destruction. At no point does she mention Israel’s strategic security problems. Overall, her comments about Iran are sufficiently vague to render themselves almost meaningless. Gillard then starts to list all of the main challenges facing Israel. And guess which challenge threatens the very survivial of Israel? A nuke trigger happy Ahmadinejad? No:

A world where carbon pollution threatens our viability as nations.

That’s right. So according to Gillard’s speech, human carbon emissions are a greater threat to Israel’s survival than the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of a man who thinks he has been called by Allah to destroy Israel. Gillard is front and center part of the ALP looney left.

Beggars can’t be choosers

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 June, 2009

The Palestinians’ have made themselves beggars:

The Palestinians’ first preference is for Arab troops, but they would be happy to accept Western, specifically Australian, troops as peacekeepers and peace monitors.

“We have said repeatedly we are against all rockets launched (into Israel) from Gaza,” Dr Malki said in his Ramallah office. “How will we solve this?

Double-talk. Having Arab troops acting as ‘peacekeepers’ would have nothing to do with maintaining peace. The force would become a de facto Palestinian occupying force, designed to place strategic pressure on Israel’s defences. That’s why the preference for an Arab force led by Egypt.

China finds new iron ore deposits – foreigners not welcome

Posted by Chief Blogger – 25 June, 2009

China is claiming to have found a substantial low-grade iron deposits in the north of the country:

China News Agency reported a deposit with reserves of more than 3 billion tonnes of iron ore, the biggest in Asia, had been found in the country’s northeastern province of Liaoning….the deposit is better than the reserves of either BHP or Rio in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Earlier this month, BHP and Rio announced a $US116 billion merger of their Pilbara operations — a deal attacked by Chinese steel mills as “monopolistic”.

ANZ senior commodity strategist Mark Pervan said the new discovery could become “a low-cost operation for Chinese supply”. He said reported iron contents grades of 25-62 per cent were high by Chinese standards, which typically produces mines with 20-40 per cent ore.

But, in global terms, “that’s not very high grade. Brazilian ore has a grade of between 65 per cent and 70 per cent,” Mr Pervan said.

BHP and Rio operations also boast grades above 60 per cent.

So will Rio or BHP get to bid to own or mine those deposits like Chinese government companies can do in Australia? Short answer is no.

Rudd: criticise me and I’ll call the cops – Update II

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 June, 2009

Still questions unanswered about why Swan’s office was taking a special interest with a mate and car dealer Mr Grant, who was looking for tax-payers money:

…police interviewed Treasury official Godwin Grech , who suggested in explosive evidence before a Senate committee on Friday that he recalled an email from the Prime Minister’s office about Mr Rudd’s friend, Brisbane car dealer John Grant.

The email is yet to be located, with Mr Rudd saying the email is a fake.

However, the ABC is reporting that Federal Police have the found the email in Treasury’s system and it is fraudulent.

UPDATE I

Interesting how the AFP sees fit to conduct its investigation through the media. I wonder if they are under a directive by the AG to do so, or are they just natural allies of the ALP?

On Monday, the AFP raided Mr Grech’s home, analysing his computer and interviewing the public servant.

Barely three hours later, the AFP issued a statement declaring the email a fake. And, in an ambiguously worded statement the agency has refused to clarify, the AFP indicated Mr Grech had admitted concocting the email.

“It will be alleged that the interview is consistent with preliminary forensic advice,” the AFP said. Yesterday, the former head of the National Crime Authority, John Broome, questioned the AFP’s decision to comment at such an early stage.

Mr Broome said the AFP had a habit of fronting the media in the embryonic stages of high-profile investigations, often to their detriment: “The AFP has often been prepared to make comments about an ongoing investigation at an early stage when it may well be much more prudent and appropriate to delay comment until the investigation is complete.”

UPDATE II

The government is refusing a request for an inquiry into their car manufacture and dealer funding policy, while Swan is also refusing to release all the Treasury emails concerning his mate and car dealer Mr. Grant. While it is now clear that Swan, contrary to his Parliamentary statement, was intimately involved in Mr. Grant’s request for tax-payer money. Some of the relevant and real emails were even sent to Swan’s home fax. To cover themselves, the government has set the AFP onto any dissenters and is leaking details to the media, while asking MT to resign for having the audacity to ask the government concerning statements made under oath by Treasury official Mr. Grech. The fact that the email upon which Grech’s testimony turned out to be fake is not some how MT’s fault. Tony Abbott made the following observation on ABC radio:

The media class in Canberra are allowing themselves to be bluffed and bullied by this type of intimidation…a monumental exercise in media manipulation…an explosive display of the coercive power of government…this is a government using all the agencies of the state as a form of political coercion and intimidation.

More like the ABC is part of the bluffing and bullying. Abbott also made the observation that the government will not release details regarding the circumstances of the deaths of a group of illegal immigrations on a boat bound for Australia - and we still don’t know how they died even though it happened months ago - but are more than happy to leak details surrounding some fake email to suit their political attack dog agenda. Tim Blair has other examples of Labor’s hypocrisy.