Month: October 2009

Gillard’s dirty deals

Posted by Chief Blogger – 21 October, 2009

These are the deals the ALP has to do to keep its number one donor happy:

JULIA Gillard has changed the rules for assessing workplace agreements on taxpayer-funded construction projects, provoking employer claims there will be a return to unproductive work practices throughout the building sector….

Basically, Gillard had secretly instructed her Department to step back from scrutinising workplace deals to give unions free reign. One can imagine the media outcry, especially from the ABC, if the Coalition had some secret deal with Big Oil or the like. But Big Union seem to get a free pass from the main stream media.

How many have died since Rudd went soft on smugglers? 47 – update

Posted by Chief Blogger – 20 October, 2009

Looks like Big People Smuggling have been earning it up since Rudd softened, in 2008, laws dealing with illegal immigrants. It has come at a high price. Andrew Bolt, the National Party and the popular media have been bandying about numbers -  25 to 37 – of the dead that were trying to get to Australia. In my tally, I’ve only included people from likely refugee countries that were known or suspected to be seeking asylum in Australia:

14th January 2009 (14 dead) – off Indonesia. Prisoners attempting a jail break to get to Australia. Includes the two who died as reported by the ABC.

Of the 18 who set out on that trip after a violent escape from a Kupang detention centre, only four people were rescued…

16th April 2009 (5 dead) – off Australia.

THREE asylum seekers have been killed in an explosion on board the latest boat to be intercepted by the Australian Navy….Two other passengers are missing, possibly drowned…

27th April 2009 (9 dead) – off Malaysia.

…nine bodies, eight of them Pakistanis, were found floating in the South China Sea off Pengerang

28th May 2009 (19 dead) – off North Sumatra. Not 15, as previously reported.

…the death toll in the recent Afghan immigrant boat accident in Halang Island waters, Kubu sub district, Rokan Hilir (Rohil) district, Riau Province, has risen to 19.

The boat carrying 36 illegal Afghan immigrants from Malaysia capsized in the waters in Riau, Sumatra, on Thursday (May 28), leaving 19 dead, 16 survivors, and 1 still missing, Ashari, head of the Bagan Bapiapi immigration office, said recently.

29th May 2009 (7 dead) – off Indonesia. UPDATE – i think this entry is referring to the incident above, so I am excluding the figure.

A WOODEN boat that sank off the coast of Indonesia, killing at least seven passengers, was carrying Afghans who were on their way to Australia, an official says.

So 54 47 dead. It’s called Rudd’s new compassionate approach to asylum seekers. Julia Gillard seems to think these people never died:

Mr Truss has done is he appears to have just got on Google and looked in the dark recesses of the internet, cobbled together some figure and then accused the government of causing that loss of life, accuse the government of causing the loss of 25 lives. Well there is no evidence to support this figure.

I hope she was referring to my website. So Julia, where exactly were these poor people going, Hong Kong Disney, or looking for a good time at the Christmas Island casino? Seems though Julia should get her own house in order before she starts attacking the ‘dark recesses of the internet.’

UPDATE

A clarification on my previous comments. The main stream media has basically ignored the above deaths. You’ll notice that the links are to foreign newspapers, and what local coverage there has been is care of  nasty Rupert Murdoch!!! Well you wouldn’t want to tell people the truth. The ABC has shown its capacity to avoid the truth in promoting pro-Rudd propaganda. And its lack of reporting on these deaths is further evidence of this.

Our own subprime crisis in the making

Posted by Chief Blogger – 17 October, 2009

I’ve previously written that Rudd’s $42 broadband network is a sub-prime crisis in the making. We also have Rudd providing mortgage backed loans. From the WSJ:

America’s mortgage meltdown has given a bad name to government intervention in housing finance, but not Down Under. Australia’s Treasurer Wayne Swan announced with no apparent irony this week that Canberra will expand a fledgling program to buy mortgage-backed securities in the name of promoting “competition.” Call it an Aussie Mac in the making.

…”The Reserve Bank does not see a case for government intervention in the mortgage market to address what is a cyclical issue due to the tighter conditions in financial markets, rather than a structural change,” the bank added….

This is pure politics…Nowhere in this discussion is risk that this venture poses to the taxpayer…Washington meddled in private-market mortgages and brought the world the financial crisis. It would be a shame if Australia didn’t learn from that experience.

The whole article is worth the read. It shows how the global downturn is so poorly understood within ALP circles. Gov’t mitigates private risk – moral hazard created – private sector takes on excessive risks – costs not passed on to customers – risk therefore grows – tax payer liabilities grow in parallel - natural business cycle  occurs – high risks come to fruition  – taxpayers wear it – natural downturn turns into a death spiral of debt and loss.

You were saying about WorkChoices?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 17 October, 2009

Meet Australia’s number one workplace bully. He has staff turnover approaching 70 per cent, regularly verbally abuses women, provides no staff feedback, refuses to listen to feedback himself and places his work needs above the personal lives of his staff with long oppressive hours. Meet then:

Despite promising to rid Australia of workplace bullies, the PM – dubbed Kevin 24/7 – has emerged as one of the country’s most demanding employers, with insiders describing him as “manic”.

More left-wing do as I say not as i do.

You can just imagine the left’s political sociopaths salivating

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 October, 2009

The latest from Rudd’s yes man, Treasury SEC Ken Henry suggesting a congestion charge be levied on roads. Another form of big government control – punishing families that need cars and cannot take public transport.

A basic principle of immigration

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 October, 2009

Paul Sheehan exposes Rudd’s complete hypocrisy over illegal immigration:

…Australia has no obligation to accept a single non-citizen not in danger of persecution.

This principle is the bedrock of Australian law and politics. Non-citizens are not entitled to self-select as residents before their bona fides have been established. A government that cannot or will not maintain this principle will eventually fall, because the overwhelming majority of Australians, shown in survey after survey, accepts this bedrock principle.

If there were a viable federal opposition in Canberra, the Rudd Government would be embarrassed. But as there is a distracted opposition, the Government can bluster at will.

So we have the Indonesian Solution, which involves building detention centres in Indonesia to process people’s claims. I think this just encourages illegal immigration, but would things be different if Tony Abbott was the Opposition leader? Possibly.

Rudd attacks RBA Chief

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 October, 2009

Well we all know why Rudd embarked on his cash-a-thon spending spree. It had less to do with protecting the economy and more to do with forming welfare recipient addiction to Rudd’s handouts. So is it any wonder that Rudd is continuing to put the budget into deficit while the RBA raises interest rates:

Reserve’s view that the worst for the economy was over and that “a new stage of expansion”

…Mr Rudd appeared to contradict Mr Stevens, saying that the recovery in the global economy was ”far from certain” and ”that is why calls to end the stimulus are so irresponsible”.

”Economists still point to the possibility of a double-dip recession,” he said.

So in other words the RBA is wrong. If John Howard has said something similar you can imagine the headlines it would make. Clearly the RBA hasn’t taken the right socialist pills. And which economists is Rudd talking about, maybe ones in the USA? This is Rudd once again confusing Australia with what is happening in the USA – subprime market meltdown, extreme capitalism, etc…none of which happened in Australia, but Rudd still attacks the domestic free market.

Even recently Rudd has been out and about spruiking his own brand of economics, still claiming that the financial downturn was the result of greed, without realising that it was a symptom not a cause:

…millions of people around the world have lost their jobs and suffered because of unrestrained and unregulated greed.

Ah no. The source of the downtun can be found in the US mortgage market, which is probably the most highly regulated mortgage market in the developed world. It was the constraining of free market forces and the moral hazard created by the government business enterprises of Mae and Mac that resulted in the meltdown, more than any private sector greed that resulted from the distorted market.

A spare $45 trillion

Posted by Chief Blogger – 15 October, 2009

Senator Wong has been off touting her ETS to the Chinese, and was rewarded with a meeting with Chinese Vice-Premier Li Keqiang. Well good for her. No doubt the Chinese want Australia to embark upon Wong’s competitiveness destroying ETS, to the benefit of Chinese exporters:

The 45-minute meeting, held in the communist leadership’s Zhongnan Hai compound in Beijing, focused on the $US45 trillion ($50 trillion) overhaul of the world economy to counter rising global temperatures.

That $45 trillion figure looks vaguely familiar. Maybe because a similar figure is referenced by a group of economists dealing with the economics of climate change, Bjorn Lomborg:

The centre convened an expert panel of five of the world’s leading economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to consider all of the new research and identify the best – and worst – options.

The panel found that expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option. This finding was based on a groundbreaking research paper that showed that even a highly efficient global CO2 tax aimed at fulfilling the ambitious goal of keeping temperature increases below 2C would reduce annual world GDP by a staggering 12.9per cent, or $US40 trillion ($43.7trillion), in 2100. The total cost would be 50 times that of the avoided climate damage. And if politicians choose less-efficient, less-co-ordinated cap-and-trade policies, the costs could escalate a further 10 to 100 times.

So Wong’s ‘cure’ is worse than the supposed disease, and given the way Rudd has administered other government programmes like Bankwatch, Grocerywatch, private retirement accounts, illegal immigration, etc…expect Treasury to have underestimated the cost to the economy. Is it any wonder that recent polls have shown Australians getting cold feet about the whole issue, from the WSJ:

….the public still isn’t ready to pass a law that would fetter growth by acting as a tax on virtually all human activity, from running an air conditioner to driving a car. That’s why Australia’s attitude toward global warming is cooling, and fast.

It also makes one wonder how blind Turnbull has been in following the climate change dogma. It is partially a result of his marginal seat and that he probably spends too much time listening to ABC Breakfast Radio.

Wise heads

Posted by Chief Blogger – 14 October, 2009

Another reason why wise old heads should not be pushed out of Parliament:

Mr Ruddock said that while he was serving as immigration minister, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees had identified 24 million people as refugees.

“Today they identify 11 million as refugees,” Mr Ruddock told Radio 6PR today.

“What I find absolutely amazing is that people are falling for this line the government is peddling that ‘we have a worse problem to manage than the Howard government’.

Consider the end of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the end of civil war in Sri Lanka….and for the record, as reported by TIME magazine:

In 2001, before Howard’s program was implemented, there were 5,516 arrivals by boat; by 2002, there was just one. The numbers stayed below 60 until 2007, but have been increasing steadily ever since. “When you weaken laws for unauthorized arrivals, you are in fact creating a brilliant marketing scheme for people smugglers,” says Sharman Stone, the immigration spokeswoman the Liberal Party of Australia.

ABC ramps up pro-illegal immigration propaganda – update

Posted by Chief Blogger – 14 October, 2009

So we have 40 people dead, foreign governments inconvenienced, people threatening to blow themselves up, people smugglers getting rich, Defence personnel forced into undertaking a task that saps morale – more than any war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and of course tax-payers are having to pay for all of it thanks to Rudd’s incompetent handling of illegal immigration. What then is the lead article from the ABC about the issue?

Influx prompts Christmas Island bed boost

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has told AM he has got a plan to cope with any further arrivals…200 extra bunk beds…hire portaloos…

So the hiring of portaloos is a lead story. It seems the ABC is doing its best to cover-up the real issues, like they don’t exist. It is also apparent that any ALP media release becomes a lead ABC story and is always framed in the positive. At the bottom of the article there is the token mention of the opposition:

Ms Stone says the Government’s border protection policies are in chaos.

Of course the ABC is not interested in undertaking any critical analysis of the government’s immigration policy – just get those portaloos in!

This little ALP-media protection pact on illegal immigration has been going on for a while now, from Piers Akermann:

THREE boats carrying asylum seekers arrived illegally in Australian waters over the past week making an absolute mockery of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pre-election pledge that he would turn them back. 

That promise, made during an interview with  The Australian’s  senior political staffers Paul Kelly and Dennis Shanahan, was rushed into print on Friday, November 23, 2007, the day before the last federal election.

With just 24 hours before the polls opened, it was an attempt to reassure voters that on border security, as with economic issues, a Rudd Government would not depart from the sound course set by the Howard government.

That the pledge has never been honoured is not surprising to those who saw through the Rudd charade during the election campaign but it should be now apparent to those who ensured that hope triumphed over wisdom in the actual election that this prime minister has habitually misled the Australian people.

UPDATE

Seems the portaloos and demountable houses that are being sent to Christmas Island to ramp up accommodation for more of Rudd’s uninvited guests, were intended for others:

The Opposition’s Immigration Minister Sharman Stone says the demountables had been earmarked for Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

“This is quite extraordinary we have Indigenous Australians making way for these new asylum seekers who are here because they could pay the cash and had the contacts to get on down via the smugglers,” she said.

“This is chaos, no country can afford to continue like this.”

I can just hear Rudd say it: Sorry!