Headlines Wednesday 2nd July

Who can tame two arrogant iguanas?
Piers Akerman
WHAT is it with Labor politicians and the law? Why is it that, when given the choice of co-operating with law authorities during an investigation or stonewalling, their default position is to stonewall?

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stopped trying to dismissively laugh-off Belinda Neal’s bad night at Iguanas, he discovered she had what he called “a pattern of unacceptable behaviour”.

But what about the pattern of behaviour that links the late former ALP attorney-general and High Court judge Lionel Murphy, the former WA premier and former federal MP Carmen Lawrence and MP Neal and her husband, NSW MP and suspended education minister John Della Bosca?

In each case, when faced with accusations, they have all gone out of their way to avoid a speedy resolution of the matter or matters alleged and engaged in expensive, drawn-out litigation which has delayed the course of justice.

The late and unlamented Justice Murphy ducked and weaved his way through two trials, two senate select committees and a judicial commission before dying before a decision could be delivered.

That was not the end of Labor’s obfuscation on the issue though. The Hawke government then attempted to seal forever the papers relating to the Murphy case before agreeing to keep them locked away for just 30 years - with the proviso that they would then be released only with the consent of the officers of the Federal Parliament.

Lawrence, when her memory didn’t fail her, was in a state of denial and had to be brought before a fruitless royal commission at which she was unable to recall almost anything.

Labor’s Central Coast dream team have now been in the spotlight for a month.
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Rudd destroys national confidence in record time
A new survey shows that in just six months the Rudd government has managed to complete sap the nation's confidence, according to Alan Jones.
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Neal clashes with TV crew, Della Bosca avoids police interview
The Iguanagate scandal is deepening with John Della Bosca still avoiding police questioning, while Belinda Neal has called police, claiming she's being hounded by the media. Emily Smith is at Gosford Police Station.
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Sack them now
Andrew Bolt
Of course John Della Bosca must now be sacked as NSW Education Minister and his wife dismissed from the federal Labor Caucus:

FEDERAL Labor MP Belinda Neal and her husband, NSW MP John Della Bosca, have declined to be interviewed by police over an argument at a Central Coast restaurant, police say.

The pair, who said they would cooperate with the investigation, have exercised their right not to be interviewed, but have instead submitted written statements on the matter, police said in a statement.

That breaking of promises and refusal to co-operate with police - what an example! - are enough on their own to warrant dismissal. Then consider the threats they allegedly made to Iguanas staff, some involving the perception (at least to me) of a misuse of their power, as well as Neal’s request to her own staff to write possibly sworn statements, and the case is closed. - ignored by Bolt is the reasoning behind the situation. Della Bosca is opposing the sale of NSW power stations. Iemma has to sell power, because otherwise he will have to pay a lot more for Rudd to keep his promises of making power more costly. But, Della Bosca has dirt on Iemma which he will only use as a last resort, because it would bring down the government. So, this situation has been engineered within the ALP. Della Bosca might pull the pin on his grenade, but he cannot throw it anywhere. - ed.
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Al-Dura shooting: credibility wounded
Andrew Bolt
An extraordinary piece by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet into what now seems a likely hoax - the alleged shooting by Israelis of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura:

The (French) appeals court convened last month and asked for-gasp-evidence, namely the famous 27-minute France 2 unedited master footage, which not even Enderlin had seen when he filed his item for the evening news. (His Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rahmeh, had sent him by remote link about 6 minutes from which to make the news segment.) France 2, dragging its feet, eventually produced 18 minutes of film… The showing of this film made for an eerie moment at the trial, when the hitherto blasé judges sat up and started watching with more attention, then took a recess, after which they asked for all of France 2’s footage. It would prove to be the turning point in the proceeding…

You could see Palestinians being carried on stretchers into ambulances, then coming out again unharmed, all in a kind of carnival atmosphere, with kids throwing stones and making faces at the camera, despite what was supposed to be a tense situation. The tape showed occasional gunshots, not continuous firing. From the general horsing around captured on film by Abu Rahmeh, Mena concluded that the whole scene must have been staged.

The original report.


Raw footage part 1


Raw footage pt 2
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Sting stung
Andrew Bolt
Green crusader Sting is in the Al Gore category of hypocrite:

Sting has gone against his usual eco-warrior stance to fly solo on a private jet to Germany.
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Obama now runs for Republican votes
Andrew Bolt
Dominic Lawson on the startling U-turns of Barack Obama
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Damn our good fortune
Andrew Bolt
Bret Stephens marks the 20th anniversary of the global warming scare by rounding up the evidence that the warming has stopped. So why this desperate eagerness to believe we are doomed and must repent?

What is there to be penitent about? As it turns out, a lot, at least if you’re inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature’s great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, “morbid-minded” religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
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Survey shows a crash in Australian confidence
By Dennis Shanahan
AUSTRALIANS' confidence about their jobs and the cost of living has crashed to its lowest since the recession of the 1990s.

Pessimism in the community is at levels last seen two decades ago when Paul Keating warned that the nation could become "a banana republic", The Australian reports.

In the past six months, the percentage of people who fear their living conditions will "get worse" has more than doubled - the biggest jump in the 23-year history of Newspoll's standard-of-living survey - as the percentage of those expecting an improvement almost halved.

Fears about living standards for the next six months are worse than voters experienced before the introduction of the Howard government's GST in July 2000.

According to the latest Newspoll survey on standard-of-living expectations, conducted at the weekend, the percentage of people who think their living conditions will get worse in the next six months has gone from just 18 per cent after the November election of the Rudd Government to 43 per cent.

In December, the percentage who thought it would get better in the next six months was 21 per cent.

That figure has since slumped to just 13 per cent as households have been hit with soaring petrol prices and two interest rate rises, taking rates to a 12-year high of 7.25 per cent.
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Son's death made Cowra grandad John Walsh a recluse
By Clare Masters and Kate Sikora
TO the outside world, John Walsh was a jovial Scotsman, always laughing - a doting grandfather who enjoyed a quiet beer.

But, Cowra locals say, he was also a man of incredible grief, struggling to deal with the death of his son Scott six years ago.

Mr Walsh, a former naval officer, was left devastated after his 24-year-old son committed suicide on December 15, 2002.

The murders of Mr Walsh's wife Mabel and two young grandchildren Jaime and Kevin, of which he stands accused, comes just weeks after what would have been Scott's 30th birthday.

Just like his father, Scott joined the military and was an army corporal and had become an investigator in the military police when he killed himself. -it is clear much is not being revealed about this case, yet. However, it does seem mental illness is involved. - ed.
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Sex lives of Australian women under the microscope
By Nadine Williams
THE average Australian woman has 13 different sex partners in her life, a major online survey has found.

Women are also cheating more on husbands and boyfriends, are becoming more sexually experimental and are exploring porn.

It finds one in three women are forced to have sex, almost always by men they know.
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Rudd now pays the Chinese to pollute
Andrew Bolt
Global warming can wait:

Just two days before the Garnaut report on climate change is handed down, the Victorian Government has given the go-ahead to a new brown-coal power station in Latrobe Valley.
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What would this queue think of Rudd’s plan?
Andrew Bolt
Let’s hear again from the commentators who say Brendan Nelson’s call to slash petrol excise by 5 cents is so small a gesture as to be ”meaningless”:

Hundreds of motorists queued for nearly a kilometre to fill up on fuel for less than $1.50 a litre at a petrol station in Melbourne’s south-east.

McKinnon service station owner Steven Biviano said… more than 200 motorists seized the chance to buy discounted fuel after he slashed the bowser price by 10 cents between 11am and 12pm.

Understand now why Kevin Rudd’s plan to make fuel and power prices rise to “save” the planet is suicide?
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Revolt against the warmists
Andrew Bolt
Global warming alarmists are being held to account for wild claims of rising seas:

RESIDENTS and landowners in a small community on Ninety Mile Beach in Gippsland have won a planning reprieve, with Wellington Shire Council backing down on a proposal to ban development in the hamlet… And the council might face a class action from angry landowners, who argue that speculation about The Honeysuckles being flooded had damaged property values.

We’ve seen the the same in Spain, with developers taking Greenpeace to court.

A word of advice to the council. Warming wailers have found to their cost that courts still generally decide stuff on evidence, so keep clear if you want to keep your shirt.
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Jurors too thick for judge
Andrew Bolt
The judge can see the difference between the facts and the media hype, but presumes jurors are too dumb to do the same:

THE State Government is urgently seeking to appeal a judge’s decision to drop child sex charges against serial pedophile Dennis Raymond Ferguson.

The judge said Ferguson was so notorious he could not get a fair trial.
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Return of the wowser
Andrew Bolt
FROM which circle of hell did all these finger-waggers spring? Never have I seen so many preachers so keen to bully others for their own “good”.

Last week it was Health Minister Nicola Roxon (again) in her Sass and Bide hairshirt, this time warning smokers they may soon need a permit to puff.

A licence for cigarettes, Roxon says, is “one of the types of things” her health taskforce may tell her to impose. Have these people gone mad?

Strained a tolerance muscle in their Pilates class?

For the first time I feel the temptation to light up a cancer-stick. Indeed, I couldn’t think of many nobler causes for which to lay down my wheezing life.

A new breed of puritans is upon us and growing far too puffed up themselves. It’s increasingly urgent they be resisted.

Consider what plans they’ve already unveiled to cramp your life and set it to their stern order.
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Not only tabloid TV honors non-heroes
Andrew Bolt
IT’S easy to attack the commercial current affairs shows for making heroes out of convicted drug-traffickers such as Roberta Williams.

Likewise, there’s no shortage of people - me included - to kick bottom-feeders such as celebrity agent Max Markson for making money for former standover man Mick Gatto, and touting even a line of “Carlton Crew” fashion for wannabe gangsters.

But there’s class snobbery here. Whacking tabloid TV and the anti-heroes they reward with fame is a mark of good taste. But why is there so little criticism of the same tendency among the enlightened to make heroes of bad examples - of drug users, suicides or even terror recruits?

This week, for example, al-Qaida recruit David Hicks was a guest of departing Australian Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja at her hot-ticket farewell drinks in Adelaide.
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Rudd starts to run rough
Andrew Bolt
KEVIN Rudd - unbelievably - may be a one-term wonder.

After its victory last November, rampant Labor seemed sure to win the next two elections, too.

But its loss in Saturday’s Gippsland by-election confirms what I’ve said for weeks: that frantic Rudd has struggled much more than the polls suggest.

Only a couple of weeks ago Labor seemed a good chance to win Gippsland from the National Party.

But a souring against Rudd - especially among journalists - saw the Nationals win Gippsland with a strong swing of 6.4 per cent against Labor. That’s well up on the usual 4 per cent anti-government swing in by-elections.

Then yesterday Newspoll reported Labor’s lead nationally over the Coalition had almost halved from 18 points to 10.
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Not a lavatory, restroom or bathroom
Andrew Bolt
The Dutch Crown Prince has had enough:

Let us call a spade a spade and a toilet a toilet.

But that’s easy for those of us with earthy Dutch backgrounds:
Talk about toilets remains taboo in much of the world, but not in the Netherlands where personal health and hygiene matters are popular topics of conversation.

Which is a delicate way of saying this peasant people likes its poo jokes.