Month: September 2010

CDF ignores own Army policy

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2010

The Australian Amry have a policy, as set out in infantry doctrine, that when ever possible they attack an enemy with the odds three to one in their favour. How then did the Taliban manage to out number the Australians recently 100 to 30 men in which one Australian died? Not only that but from reports on MTR this morning most of the 100 got away.

There is something seriously wrong when we can’t win a stand-up engagement with the Taliban. If the CDF Houston thinks this is no big deal he better put away his RAAF hat and think again. It is a major problem when we lose a conventional battle with the Taliban.

Shadow Defence spokesman:

Senator Johnston says a soldier recently told new Defence Minister Stephen Smith face-to-face that troops were under-resourced and out-numbered.

“The dismissal of such a gravely serious complaint in such a manner is neither acceptable nor reasonable,” he said.

“How much more of a wake-up call does this Government really need?”

It is clearly not possible to think that we can segment or demarcate our operations in Afghanistan to simply training Afghan troops. It will likely involve a bigger commitment to do our part in actually defeating the Taliban, as opposed to thinking we can try and stand back in a training role.

Jenkins tells Gillard who’s boss

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2010

HoR Speaker Harry Jenkins just told Gillard to sit down while ‘answering’ a question during QT. Trashing the opposition during QT when asked about government policy is no longer acceptable under the new terms and interpretation of standing orders. Gillard’s attempts to stab Jenkins in the back by wanting independent Rob Oakeshott to be speaker a couple of weeks ago couldn’t have helped the PM’s cause either. Jenkins is not taking any prisoners.

Combined with the ALP losing the vote yesterday over the standing orders, Gillard is off to a bad start in the HoR.

The Gods have spoken

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2010

Yours truely Chief Blogger was in Singapore for the race (missing link):

….it was only after the race that tyre supplier Bridgestone realised how close Webber had been to suffering a puncture – with his tyre millimetres from slipping off the rim.

Evaluation by Bridgestone showed that the collision with Hamilton had pushed the tyre off its normal mounting on the rim. There was approximately 5mm left between the inner edge of the rim and the tyre – and if it had slipped over that small distance it would almost certainly have resulted in the tyre losing its pressure.

Australians by and large provided the track commentary for the audience. V8 Supercar Neil Crompton headed up the commentary team – it was pretty biased all race. Not sure what the locals made of it, but Mark Webber’s pit on the first safety car to change tyres and then quickly over taking two cars gave him third place. Apart from Webber there wasn’t much else to talk about. Holding off Button towards the end of the race with tyres that had gone nearly the whole race and had also bumped into Hamilton says something of Webber’s determination to win.

In a classic case of immovable object meets irresistible force, as Webber refused to yield and Hamilton tried to squeeze across to take the corner, contact was made between the pair – and the latter was out on the spot, making it two accident-induced DNFs in as many races, and dealing a second consecutive blow to his hopes of lifting the laurels.

FIA stewards subsequently concluded that the contretemps had been little more than a racing incident – and the two protagonists seemed to concur…

Earlier on Webber almost came to grief into a concrete wall behind a Williams - I think it was Ruben’s car. He was stuck behind Ruben’s for a while. Ithink red Bull told Webber to back off because of engine temps.

If you consider the totality of what Webber was up against he did very well. Apparently he was also using a new chassis. Not sure of the background. I think it may have been the supposed solution to Webber’s back flip antics during the European Grand Prix in July. Clearly it didn’t work out for Red Bull, but does the move to put Webber in a new chassis make him the number one driver in the team? He seemingly didn’t have any trouble in the old one.

Hardly a ringing endorsement

Posted by Chief Blogger – 30 September, 2010

Transcript here.

Nearly half the 1,000 houses in Midway Point are now connected to the NBN, which means the boxes are attached to buildings. But how many are actually using it is unknown. NBN Tasmania wouldn’t comment, despite repeated requests from Lateline for information.

The major problem with the NBN is a lack of information and transparency.

What parliament is for

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 September, 2010

Simon Crean is complaining:

REGIONAL Australia Minister Simon Crean has had to put off a National Press Club speech because the opposition has rejected his request for a voting pair, so he can leave parliament.

Mr Crean was due to give a major speech on regional Australia at the venue close to Parliament House tomorrow but with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott now taking a harder line on pairing, he won’t be able to.

…”Tony Abbott is not only prepared to rip up agreements but to irresponsibly take a hardline on pairing to cause maximum destruction.”

Hey Crean, try something novel: table in parliament what the government plans to do for regional Australia instead of running off to a sympathetic media pack.

Gillard says no to Christian God, yes to the god of the dream time

Posted by Chief Blogger – 28 September, 2010

Gillard is an atheist. Fine. Everyone is entitled to their own personal choices free of government interference. It’s called individual liberty, something the left do not always subscribed to, but something that should be respected. So it was no surprise that Gillard skipped out on the parliamentary church service to welcome in the new parliament today. Gillard also refused to swear an oath to God in becoming PM. That’s her business, no need for vain hollow acts.

However, in rejecting Christianity and in the customs that follow,why did Gillard (and Abbott!) endorse and attend the aboriginal ‘welcome ceremony’ for the new parliament today? The ‘welcome ceremony’ is a quasi-religious event that has nothing to do with the Constitution or Westminister custom. More to the point, ‘welcome ceremonies’ have nothing to do with Australia: the political idea of the world’s only unified, democratic and free continent-nation, a distinctively non-aboriginal concept. What type gall must a person have to think they can ‘welcome’ Australians to the country they and by implication their ancestors conceived of and built up?!?!

“On the occasion of this opening of the 43rd Parliament I welcome you,”

So said the chief witch doctor:

“With this welcome I express the hope of a united, reconciled nation, the oldest living culture joined with the many diverse cultures of a modern successful Australia.”

Apart from the fact that when Howard was PM no one from the left was calling for unity or political consensus, and also the habitually dubious claim that aboriginal culture is the oldest living today: what aspect of Aboriginal culture are we all meant to be reconciled with at this time?

(pause….silence….crickets chirp)

Gee where to begin, ritual torture and abuse? Welfare and drug dependency? Don’t say happy unified families and communities. This is not an aboriginal idea more an aspirational ideal shared by most Australians.

—–

Now we have Gillard via the GG pushing the ‘first Australian’ mantra.

….the need for constitutional reform to recognise the First Australians and local government were also of “great significance in this term.”

And of course the political elite don’t mean the first people to actually identify and call themselves Australians. The first recorded English usage of the name ‘Australia’ was by Matthew Flinders in 1814. Governor Macquarie began to use the name from 1817 and from then onwards British people born in Australia began to call themselves Australian. The first Australians, a geographic and then a demographic term.

As far as we know aboriginals had no coherent concept of a continent. Supposed mythical dreams and maps interpreted and ‘discovered’ by sympathetic academics are not a substitute for the former. Nor were Aboriginals unified as a common people who identified themselves as Australians or anything of the like.

Federation gave birth to a Australia as a political and economic concept. Aboriginals were by and large separate from the Federation process, and hence debate occurred as to if they were entitled to all the privileges of citizenship, etc…

In any of this how can the political elite claim that aboriginals of today, with all their genealogical and mitochondrial dna complexities, be the ‘first Australians’? It is a claim that simply says, a group of people today, who at times have a tenuous link to another group of people who lived 222 years ago, are the first Australians. If that was all one needed to do to be Australian – just turn up and have a genealogical link – then virtually anyone arriving at any of our international airports would qualify. It make very little historical sense and I’ve yet to see an explanation for it.

Cohabiting tax-payer funded couple move into the Lodge

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 September, 2010

Little better than the de facto living welfare couples on sit down money one can constantly read about in the Daily Mail.

Get ready to be shocked

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 September, 2010

The ABC headlines:

Abbott ‘pressured’ MP to drop speaker deal

Are we meant to be shocked by this? ‘How dare Abbott as the leader of his party convince a party colleague to support the opposition by not becoming deputy speaker!’

I didn’t recall any headline when Gillard tried to strong-arm Abbott into agreeing to the appointment of Oakeshott as speaker.

JGill: It’s not my fault I’m a liar

Posted by Chief Blogger – 26 September, 2010

Julia Gillard’s ‘promise’ not to introduce a carbon tax this election cycle has been dumped.

Ms Gillard said because Labor now shared the balance of power in the lower house with the Australian Greens and independents, the circumstances around her original promise had changed.

“We can’t just go to the House of Representatives and say, `Here is the government’s position’ and five minutes later it’s passed by the house,” she told Network Ten on Sunday.

Ms Gillard said she would use the committee to work towards a carbon tax with the Greens and independents.

This is sort of old news, but it shows how brazen Gillard is and how important it is that Abbott bring down this government.

The Coalition should boycott the committee:

The coalition is welcome to participate in the talks too she added, but committee membership is only extended to those who agree a carbon tax in necessary.

Tony Windsor’s clown act

Posted by Chief Blogger – 24 September, 2010

Is there a bigger clown in Federal politics than Tony Windsor? Rob Oakeshott is not too far behind. I am becoming more and more certain that Windsor is senile. Windsor says he can’t trust Abbott now after he walked away from the speaker’s pairing deal. Did he ever trust him? Unlikely.

For goodness sakes why would Abbott agree to a deal that keeps the independents in power? Where is his incentive? Assuming there is an ALP speaker, the government will still have a voting majority of one – with the independents and Green MP.

The facts of the matter is that there is conflicting legal advice about how constitutionally valid the whole pairing deal is. Even the Solicitor-General in his advice to the ALP seems to indicate that the arrangement would only escape a constitutional challenge if it operated informally.  Until/if the High Court passes a ruling on the issue we just won’t know. Introducing that level of uncertainty into the parliamentary process seems completely unnecessary when the government still retains it majority.

These sorts of rational arguments seem completely lost on Windsor.