Just substitute France for Christmas Island.
Month: February 2010
More kudos for Tony Abbott
Posted by – 18 February, 2010
This time from the London Times about Abbott’s rise to the top:
Here in Australia, where I’m spending a few days, something very odd has just happened to its right-of-centre opposition coalition. This week’s Spectator Australia is mischievously quoting opinions from mainstream commentators offered a while ago when a group within the Opposition (the Liberal-National Coalition) began complaining that their leader (then Malcolm Turnbull) and his friends had taken the modernisation of their party a step too far, and swallowed too readily the fashionable, government-led consensus on the need for action against global warming.
The national media were as appalled and smug as you can simultaneously be. The (Australian) Daily Telegraph summed it up: “Unless [Malcolm] Turnbull can bring the climate-change dissidents to heel, the Liberals will face humiliation at the polls.” Another national broadcaster called it “signing their own death-warrant”. A commentator in The Age argued that green politics was so obvious a vote winner for Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, that “it is in the [Opposition’s] interests to [support the proposed green measures] and get the climate-change issue as much off the election agenda as possible”. Columnists announced that if the Opposition went on like this, it would face “electoral oblivion” (The Sydney Morning Herald) and “electoral wipeout” (The Australian).
You may know what happened. The rebel faction succeeded in ousting Mr Turnbull and replacing him with one of their own, Tony Abbott, under whom the Coalition has lurched to the Right across a range of issues, especially taxation. Let’s allow Mr Abbott’s team to speak for themselves when I quote Barnaby Joyce, the Shadow Minister for Finance, on loft insulation: “The fluffy stuff you put in your roof for rats to urinate on.” I don’t use the word “hick” (Senator Joyce is much cleverer), but others do. Now the Opposition does look as if it’s blocking the Government’s climate-change Bill.
Oblivion? Electoral wipeout? The Right, until quite recently in the dust behind the Labor Government, is now snapping at its tail.
It’s called infanticide
Posted by – 17 February, 2010
Nasty business – suprisingly from the ABC:
When she was five weeks pregnant, a trainee doctor told Ms Vanderhook she had lost the baby.
The doctor recommended termination using the drug misoprostol, but the drug did not work and a follow-up scan showed the foetus was still alive.
Later scans revealed the baby had fluid on the brain – a condition likely caused by the abortion drug Ms Vanderhook had been given.
Despite six other specialist opinions that the baby would be born normal, Ms Vanderhook says a senior obstetrician at Canberra Hospital continued to press her to terminate the baby, even at 31 weeks, when termination would have involved inducing labour.
“To have a baby induced and to watch him just die and not do anything about it? I was disgusted,” Ms Vanderhook told the ABC.
The Vanderhook’s barrister, Bernard Collaery, believes there is a simple explanation why the hospital was urging her to terminate the pregnancy.
“Away would go the litigation that might in the event of serious deformities produce a multi-million dollar verdict,” he said.
What type of person becomes a doctor so they can administer forms of infanticide? The shocking thing is, that these type of late-term abortions go on all the time in hospitals through out the country.
Republicans play tricky games with constitutional affairs
Posted by – 12 February, 2010
It has been inaccurately reported by the Australian newspaper:
FOLLOWING the triumphant tour of Australia by its potential future king, Prince William, the Queen has reasserted her claim on the title “head of state” of Australia by using it in the announcement of her address to the UN in July.
Actually, the reference to the Queen as the head of state was written by Australia’s ambassador to the UN Gary Quinlan, who previously worked for two ALP Ministers during the 1990s and more recently was a senior advisor in Rudd’s office. The ABC even described Quinlan as someone ‘…trusted and valued by Kevin Rudd.’ In other words, a republican foot soldier doing Rudd’s bidding in playing tricky games to embarrass constitutional monarchists in Australia and in the process undermine the constitution and the 1907 High Court decision that proclaimed the Governor-General as the head of the Commonwealth. Why? Because introducing the Queen as the head of state undermines the key claim made by the status-quo that Australia is a crowned republic with an Australian as the head of state, the G-G, with the Queen as sovereign. Therefore, as argued, there is no need for the ‘politicans’ republic promoted by the left.
The unclassified cable, for wide distribution, was written by Gary Quinlan, Australia’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, and before his appointment last year, the senior adviser on foreign affairs, defence and national security in the Prime Minister’s office…
The title of Mr Quinlan’s cable immediately caught the attention of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials and vice-regal watchers. “When I saw Quinlan’s cable and realised he was talking about the Queen and not the Governor-General, I immediately thought, `That’s muddying the waters’,” a DFAT source said.
This is easily one of the most outrageous and dishonest attack by republicans because they are using a document on the international stage to push a false argument about a domestic issue. One has the strong sense that Rudd has his muddy hands all over this tactic.
Scalp! Scalp! Scalp! – UPDATE
Posted by – 12 February, 2010
Momentum is definitely in Abbott’s favour. The prospect of the Environment Minister resigning over 4 deaths as a result of the government’s speedy attempts to ramp up the home insulation programme, and the Communications Minister Conroy for appointing his mate to head the National Broadband Network may be enough to close the 2pp gap in the polls over the next two months. We’ll see.
Opposition environment minister Greg Hunt told parliament this afternoon: “This minister deserves to go.”
Unions have also savaged the Rudd government’s program today, arguing the deaths of young workers installing home insulation were unacceptable and the program should be halted until it can be demonstrated much tighter safety and training standards are in place…
Mr Garrett conceded today that ss early as February last year officials at an industry consultation meeting heard a proposal for mandatory training for all installers, with a concern that specialist skills would be needed for some tradespeople who would not necessarily have insulation experience.
I doubt either Minister will resign or that Rudd will ask them to. Union mates are good at protecting each other – Ministerial standards just don’t come into it. Now the main reason Rudd is still backing Garrett is because Rudd, in his desire to look like doing something, probably encouraged Garrett to get on with the insulation project with only a cursory concern for the safety risks.
PETER Garrett was warned 13 times of fire and safety risks linked to the $3 billion roof insulation scheme, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said.
Even the bad boys of the CFMEU have come out against Garrett.
“Peter Garrett received warnings from industry groups. He received warnings from state governments, including Labor state governments,” Mr Hockey said.
“It now emerges that he got warnings from the unions. He even got warnings from his own department, and at the end of it four people are dead.”
“It is time for Peter Garrett to go.
“There were 13 smoking guns and there have been four deaths. I don’t know what criteria Kevin Rudd is using to assess the good performance of a minister.”
UPDATE
Would the Minister be happy to have Chinese made insulation laced with formaldehyde in his own home?
On December 18, the Polyester Insulation Manufacturers Association lodged a submission with the Government specifically warning about formaldehyde.
The six-page letter said: “There has been a flood of materials imported to Australia which both do not meet Australian standards for performance materials, and represent a significant respiratory health risk to both installers and householders due to excessive levels of formaldehyde, which is also a known carcinogen.
All paid for by tax-payers of course. Apparently the Minister decided not to do anything about the issue.
Good intentions always trump the dead
Posted by – 11 February, 2010
This is what happens when an ageing rock star tries his hand at home insulation:
Tony Abbott said Mr Garrett had been “utterly incompetent“.
“We have an Environment Minister who has been utterly incompetent in the administration of his portfolio,” Mr Abbott said. “We’ve got spending blowouts in just about every program that he runs. We’ve even had four people die as a result of incompetent work done under his program.”
That’s nearly $3 billion for home insulation. A complete waste of money. With the left intentions are always more important than results, even if people end up dead. Just look at border control. I’ve so far counted 47 dead since Rudd started luring illegal immigrants to Christmas Island. How many other people have so far died as a result of other government policies?
Impressing again
Posted by – 10 February, 2010
Tony Abbott on the Alan Jones Show, again.
It does appear that Jones is doing everything he can to get Abbott across the line. He probably realised how imbalanced the media coverage of the Coalition had been since Rudd’s election. It is also as if over the last 3 months people have started to wake up to the inept fraud that is the Rudd government. Of course I always considered Rudd to be two faced, though the electorate are a little more forgiving. So be it. The ETS and Abbott’s unexpected rise to the leadership - providence fulfilled, destiny, etc… – has reinvigorated Jones and the conservative media, what little there is.
Abbott is a much better communicator than either Rudd or Gillard, and so he makes for a good radio interview. Turnbull is a good communicator as well, he just communicates the wrong message. The hard reality is that Abbott is a far more likable individual than either Rudd or Gillard because he has life experience and is therefore easier to relate too – something clearly lacking in the government make-up of union hacks, public sector slugs and megalomaniac green gestapo private sector rejects. Does Senator Penny Wong come to mind?
I also find it a bit rich for the government to start attacking Barnaby Joyce just because he raised concerns over the level of Federal debt and how we intend to repay it. With tax increases and/or cuts to Federal services? The government should come back with an answer instead of ganging up with their media thugs to bully Barnaby. To laugh off the prospect of our capacity to repay Rudd’s debt misses the point. Lehman Brothers, AIG, entire US and UK banking industry, sub-prime securities, GM, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, eastern Europe, etc… all had great credit ratings until confidence fled. And now we have had continual speculation and warnings by the ratings agencies that they may need in the future to cut the credit rating of the US Federal government and the UK government because of excessive debt levels. Now you may say that our debt levels are far lower than those economies, however we didn’t obtain a AAA rating until we had zero net debt. So clearly our threshold is far smaller than the US in the eyes of investors. So instead of the media attacking Barnaby Joyce, the media might want to start attacking the people that are actually running the show: Rudd, Gillard, Swan and Tanner.
Who would have thought?
Posted by – 9 February, 2010
Finally someone in the ALP fesses up to what they have known all along but been too insecure to admit:
Last night Mr Swan credited the Coalition with helping create a ”most remarkable run” in economic success. ”For those who may not know, who have somehow escaped being told several times already, we are now in the 19th year of uninterrupted economic expansion in Australia.
”Later this year we will begin the 20th year,” he told guests who included Mr Hawke, Mr Howard, Mr Keating and Mr Costello.
”This long run of prosperity … follows more than a quarter century of economic difficulty for Australians. The expansion of the world economy played a part, particularly the strength of the Asian regional economy.
”But decisions made in Canberra played a role too. I think of financial market deregulation, some of which began when John Howard was treasurer…
”We think of the continuation of financial sector reforms carried out by Peter Costello and John Howard when they were in office, in particular the prudential regulation that safeguarded our banking system during the global financial crisis. We honour John and Peter for that.”
Some though continue to be full of pride and just plain ignorance:
His words stand in contrast to those of the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who last year described the Howard decade as ”indolent, perhaps not always opposing the great transformation reforms engineered by Labor during its 13 years in office but barely adding to that reform agenda”.
What a clown…
Our future awaits
Posted by – 9 February, 2010
Where’s Rudd’s anti-market, pro-government, pro-debt neo-liberal conspiracy theories now?
Flow data shows an abrupt withdrawal of German and Asian capital from Club Med debt markets. The EU’s refusal to offer Greece anything beyond stern words and a one-month deadline for harsher austerity – while admirable in one sense – is to misjudge how fast confidence is ebbing. Greece’s drama has already metastasised into a wider systemic crisis. The world risks a replay of the Lehman collapse if this runs unchecked, this time involving sovereign dominoes.
Barclays Capital says the net external liabilities of Greece are 87pc of GDP, or €208bn (£182bn). Spain is worse at 91pc (€950bn), and Portugal worse yet at 108pc (€177bn); Ireland is 68pc (€123bn), Italy is 23pc, (€347bn). Add East Europe’s bubble and foreign debts top €2 trillion.
And its immediate relevance:
Britain, France, Japan, and the US are all vulnerable. All must retrench. The great “reflation trade” of 2009 is over.
Bail-outs, socialist and debt fueled ‘stimulus’ spending are coming back to bite much sooner than I thought possible. Good luck trying to re-finance all that government debt, especially with tighter banking rules covering lending and investment. That means higher taxes to punish the independent and make them government dependent.
Don’t know don’t care
Posted by – 9 February, 2010
Apparently Malcolm Turnbull made a speech in Parliament explaining why he was going to cross the floor to vote for Rudd’s ETS. The ABC of course has made a big deal of the speech in a desperate attempt to make their inside man relevant again. I figured I might as well play their game and go into censorship mode and not link to something I ardently disagree with. I understand now why the ABC does it. Makes life easier. Good times.