=== Todays Toon ===
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, GCB (7 September 1836 – 22 April 1908) was a British Liberal Party statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage 5 days after he took office.Known as CB, he was a firm believer in free trade, Irish Home Rule and the improvement of social conditions. Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberal Party to a landslide victory over the Conservative Party at the 1906 general election. The government he led introduced legislation to ensure trade unions could not be liable for damages incurred during strike action and to provide free school meals for children.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”- Proverbs 31:30=== Headlines ===
Coalition on track with their budget
The Opposition Leader in his Budget reply last night vowed a Coalition Government would save billions by freezing public service recruitment, privatising Medibank Private and abandoning the National Broadband Network. He also promised to oppose the mining super profit tax if his party won the next election. The Opposition leader used his speech to sharply distinguish his economic policies from those of the Government. It was the first step towards making the super profit tax and the Government's battle with mining giants the central economic issue for the Opposition in the coming federal election campaign.Cabramatta drugs claims a rehash of old news
RUBBISH! - that’s how many have described a television news report which suggested Cabramatta’s dark days of drugs and violence could be about to return. Cabramatta Chamber of Commerce secretary Ken Chapman said those days were long gone. “Cabramatta has come a long way and it has improved for the better,” he said. “We don’t have the drug dealers on every street corner now, we have fantastic restaurants and cafes.” Mr Chapman said drug use in Cabramatta fluctuated, but was still a lot less prevalent than it was in the 1990s. - I was a school teacher locally in the mid 90’s and I wasn’t aware of the full extent of the drug problem then, but I now know some who were behind it. It is no lie that the problem may well be worse now that the NSW government have their watered down laws allowing personal use and experimentation. The signs are not obvious to those who are not part of the problem. However, I have never met a drug sniffer dog before last week, and it revealed I was seated next to a druggie who had thrown away their life and at the age of thirty had no where to live. Instead of proclaiming success, maybe Ngo and Chapman could suggest something useful for the victims of this crime. - ed.
Despite repeatedly voicing concerns about Arizona's new immigration law, Attorney General Eric Holder says he has not read the law yet — which is only 10 pages long.Feds Nab 3 in NYC Plot Probe
Three suspects held in New England raids connected to failed Times Square car bombing
Obama Trying to Have It Both Ways?
While president continues to slam Wall Street, he heads to NYC to co-host swanky fundraiser for Dem lawmakers
Libya Snags Human Rights Post at U.N.
Despite having documented ties to terror organizations, Libya elected to seat on Human Rights Council
Australia's Next Top Model contestant Alison Boxer told to shed kilos as the reality show bows to industry pressure and reverts back to promoting super-slim models / Foxtel'Klan' teacher in murder cover-up
TEACHER and KKK chaplain jailed for helping a student dump the body of his murdered brother.
Aussie virgins auction could be outlawed
AN Aussie film-maker planning to auction off virgins could face legal trouble for human trafficking.
Police 'stole $20 from dead man's wallet'
A GROUP of cops is under investigation for allegedly taking cash from a crash victim's wallet.
Apple leaves Australian iPad fans hanging
APPLE fans in Australia won't get their iPads until two weeks after they were supposed to arrive.
Four-day sting nets war crimes suspect
ACCUSED war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic was arrested by the AFP after he was found hiding out on a boat in northern New South Wales.
Miracle girl fine after run-over by 4WD
THERE'S a little scratch on Hannah Adams' left hand. But the way this beautiful five-year-old got hers is miraculously different to any other. See what happened to her.
Husband stabs wife 250 times, 'eats her'
A MAN killed his wife and ate her liver and lungs, before showing their daughter, 4, the mutilated remains.
Year 9 students get Year 7 exam
PRINTING errors were blamed for an embarrassing blunder in which Year 9 students were handed Year 7 questions in this week's NAPLAN tests. The State Government was forced to admit yesterday that Year 9 students from three schools across NSW had been given reading test booklets that contained pages from the Year 7 exam rather than their own.
Union head office hit by car bomb
A CAR filled with drums of petrol was driven into the CFMEU's NSW head office before being set alight. The union believes its office was the target of last night's firebomb attack on a western Sydney office block. Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) state secretary Andrew Ferguson said a car filled with drums of petrol crashed into the union's Lidcombe office before being set alight. The ground floor of the Railway St premises was extensively damaged in the fire, while upper levels suffered smoke damage. No one is believed to have been injured in the blaze although it is understood a church community group had been using the building an hour before the attack. "This was a very determined attack on our building that caused extreme damage," Mr Ferguson said. - stay away from crime - ed.
=== Journalists Corner ===
A New Nixon in Politics? Who is it, and where is he trying to make his mark?
The Supreme Question!Does America's highest court actually follow the constitution? Bill & Megyn put forth their judgments!
===
Courting Kagan!
Is the mainstream media helping Obama build a case to get his nominee appointed? You be the judge!
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Guest: Rep. John Boehner
He blasts the Dems as irresponsible, failing to lead, and out of control. So, what's the GOP leader's plan?
=== Comments ===
Labor’s crack-up is taxing patiencePiers Akerman
THE whole logical basis of the Rudd Government’s latest Budget is utterly destroyed by the competing claims that it makes about the effects of taxation. - I note ALP backbenchers like the outgoing Julia Irwin (she isn’t an extrovert or competent, she is not seeking re election) and Chris Bowen (he is an ignoramus who told the local press that no one had told him about the BER excess locally) both claiming the budget was a success. The local paper has already posted articles with those headlines. I hope they also print publish my criticism: I just cannot believe what Bowen says because his claims are patently wrong. The budget will fail because the assumed income will not eventuate when the ridiculous mining tax will be blocked. It is not a responsible budget. It is a budget with a trap .. the Liberals cannot accept the bodgy income figures, and so the ALP will outpromise them because of the income lie. And Bowen doesn’t address the problem but instead spins a fantasy. Bowen, if you decide you will speak honestly to your constituents, I will give you the praise due: Julia is bowing out and so it is hard to credit what she claims. This budget is not responsible management of the Australian economy and her constituents will pay a high price for her absurd support for the budget. It has an income based in fantasy land and it will never achieve what it claims partly because the insane Tax hike n mining will fail even if it gets passed in parliament. Even Zambia admits their version of that tax was a failure. Julia, as a former teacher, you have failed those who voted for you. - ed.
===
Ethnic Tension
By Bill O'Reilly
As we've been reporting, there is ethnic tension between students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, outside of San Francisco. The controversy is being driven by the new Arizona law that broadens local police power over illegal aliens.
The fuse was lit on Cinco de Mayo when five students wore clothing bedecked with the American flag and were sent home from school for doing that, while some Hispanic students were allowed to wear Mexican flag apparel. The superintendent has admitted that sending the boys home was a major mistake, but Tuesday night little was resolved:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's always been Hispanics vs. Caucasians. It's been like that in our history. We cannot sugarcoat this. We cannot hide it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The students were not making a political statement. Their goal was simply to show their pride in their country. As parents, we are proud we have raised young men who stand up for what they believe in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now the controversy in Morgan Hill reflects the controversy nationwide. Some Hispanic-Americans believe they are being punished because of the immigration chaos. They think anger over the flood of illegal aliens is race-based.
On the other side, millions of Americans are simply fed up with the failure of the federal government to control the Mexican border and to impose order on the immigration process. Every time a heinous crime is committed by someone in this country illegally, every time a neighborhood is impacted, resentment grows.
And so the kids acted out at Live Oak High and did so using flags, always emotional symbols, to vent their frustrations. That of course, provoked deep reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Regardless of where we came from, when we come to this nation, we adopt this culture and what this nation stands for and the flag. And I personally am getting very, very tired of disrespect to that flag and what this nation actually stands for.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we are proud American citizens, but we are all human first. There is no color. There is no race. There is no religion. And you guys made this segregated by stupidity and ignorance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, years ago, I taught high school in Miami, Florida, and there was some tension on campus between Cuban- and Anglo-Americans. I told the students that was a total waste of time, that we are all Americans and should be looking out for each other. Now some students got it; some didn't want to get it. They wanted trouble, and they found it.
Three decades later, ethnic tension is on the rise again, and it will not diminish until the federal government effectively deals with the illegal alien problem.
===
Killed For Being Pregnant With a Baby Girl
By Phyllis Chesler
What can we conclude from an horrific murder on the West Bank?
Today, near Nablus, on the West Bank, a Palestinian husband killed his wife because an ultrasound test had revealed she was carrying a female fetus. Although this man already had three sons, he was said to envy his brother who had nine sons. Knowing nothing about biology (sperm is responsible for determining the gender of offspring), this as-yet-unnamed man killed his wife for failing to give him what he wanted. “Palestinian police officials said the argument that followed the ultrasound test was just one of many and that it was not the sole reason behind the murder…According to police, abrasions were found on the man’s body, indicating that the wife struggled as he was choking her to death.”
Technically, this poor woman did not “disobey” her husband or their cultural values by talking to another man or by trying to leave the marriage in which she was, allegedly, routinely battered; but she had “disobeyed” the culture’s preference for boys over girls. Thus, we may think of this as the act of a batterer-murderer but also as a specific kind of honor killing, one that does not ostensibly involve the hands-on participation of the victim’s family-of-origin or the husband’s family-of-origin—a more cultural honor killing in which one lone domestic terrorist seeks to enforce his culture’s increasingly misogynist values. As I’ve recently shown in my second study on honor killings world-wide in Middle East Quarterly, there are two kinds of honor killings and/or two distinct victim populations which differ by age, and this honor killing may represent yet a third type of honor killing.
This kind of murder—and the many more classical examples of honor killings which are epidemic and indigenous to the Arab and Muslim Middle East and central Asia—were not studied by the research team which published their findings in The Lancet earlier this year. They sought to blame an increase in husband-wife “intimate partner violence” on the so-called Israeli occupation. I have written about this here and published a letter which condemned the study in The Lancet. These researchers, led by Harvard’s Cari Jo Clark, had a political, not an objective, academic agenda. Indeed, they did not even refer to the recent UN statement about honor killings on the West Bank nor did they cite the dramatic findings of a study published in 2008 by Emma Hansson who worked through the offices of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.
The tragic practice of female infanticide—the murder of newborn girls, or the choice to abort female, but not male fetuses–is practiced elsewhere as well. Historically, China murdered unwanted newborn girls; under Communist rule, families are only allowed to have one child. Ultrasound tests reveal the child-to-be’s gender and girls are aborted. Thus, China now has an abnormal ratio of 120 male live births to 100 female live births. In nature, the male to female gender ratio of newborns is about 105:100. India also indulges in ultrasound tests to determine gender and female fetuses are increasingly aborted.
What may we conclude? First, that impoverished cultures cannot afford to raise a girl who then departs to serve her husband’s family; they also cannot afford the dowries demanded. Second, that female life is still held in contempt and is vulnerable to vicious violence on many continents. This is true despite differences in religion, geographical location, political administration. However, it is also true that when these much-preferred boys finally grow up and seek wives, there will be a shortage of them. Families in certain Chinese provinces have been kidnapping girls from other countries as captive wives for their sons.
It is also true that in polygamous cultures, where wealthy men have multiple wives, and where gender apartheid demands that women be segregated from men, that more and more young men will have not have access to wives or girlfriends—and little money to purchase a "Lady of the Night." They will not have sons. Why live? Thus, this particular demographic may be exceptionally susceptible to jihadic temptation. Seventy-two virgins at their disposal in Paradise versus no girlfriend, no wife, on earth, may seem like the perfect resolution to a psycho-sexual conflict.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D is Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969), the National Women’s Health Network (1975) and the author of thousands of articles and of thirteen books, including Women and Madness (1972), Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman (2002) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She may be reached at her website www.phyllis-chesler.com
===
BLAIRPOLL EXCLUSIVE
Tim Blair
Three Labor-voting friends tell me they won’t be voting Labor in 2010. Now, this is not scientifically-accurate polling data – that would require at least five Labor-ditching friends – but it is interesting that all identified Kevin Rudd as the sole reason for their change of view.
“I’m over him,” said one, a lifetime Laborite who has never voted against the party. “He’s lost me,” said another, who comes from a solid Labor family and who rejoiced at John Howard’s 2007 defeat. “I was wrong,” said the third, who campaigned for Rudd three years ago. All views were offered without prompting, and are reflected by recent polls:
In the poll released by the union-aligned Essential Research, Federal Labor’s primary vote fell 11 points in six months to just 37 per cent and it was now only marginally more popular than the NSW Government …Yet polls showed that support, while sliding away from Rudd, was not drifting towards Tony Abbott. Until now:
In a sign that the Prime Minister is now Labor’s greatest liability, 39 per cent of voters said they could still trust Mr Rudd, a fall of more than 10 per cent in six months.
Secret polling has revealed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is the most popular leader in key marginal seats as support dives for both Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard.And the government is spooked. Now that Kevin Rudd has transformed from cuddly Kevin07 into the tense, glowering, Hyde-like creature that is Kevin7.30, some of his underlings are following the Prime Minister’s example. Observe as Craig Emerson, the Minister for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Small Business, reveals his anxiety during a Lateline interview. Also, formerly Labor-friendly jokesters are now discovering the fun to be had at Kevin Rudd’s expense:
It can be revealed that both Coalition and Labor polling shows that support for Mr Rudd has collapsed in the marginals, with Liberal polling having his standing in negative figures …
Labor sources also confirmed Mr Abbott was now outpolling Mr Rudd as the more popular leader in the selected seats.
The collapse in support for the ALP leadership team in the marginal seats will drive the Coalition’s well-funded pre-election campaign. Liberal sources are reporting a rush of donations.
Brian Dawe: Who is the environment minister?Labor luvvies (ABC folk) and leaguies (my NRL-following Labor mates) seem to share an anti-Rudd attitude. Against all of this, of course, one-term governments just don’t happen. But Kevin Rudd is doing his level best to make it so.
John Clarke: Depends.
Dawe: Correct … other than the language we normally hear from Kevin Rudd, what other language does Kevin Rudd speak?
Clarke: English.
Dawe: Correct. What is the greatest moral challenge of our time?
Clarke: Parking.
Dawe: Correct. What is the Rudd government’s refugee policy?
Clarke: Keep them out and let them in.
Dawe: Correct.
===
RIVERDANCE
Tim Blair
This may quite possibly be genuine. And also perishingly lame:
Via KP, who emails: “And people wonder why Europe’s birth rate is so low.”
===
PREDICTED BACKLASH IS FORWARDLASH
Tim Blair
Reuters claims:
Pakistani merchants and job seekers in the United States, still reeling from economic hardship since the September 11 attacks of 2001, are posing as Indians to avoid discrimination in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt.Once again, “backlash” is cited without any evidence of backlash. Slate‘s Jack Shafer lashes Reuters’ backlash balderdash.
Once again, a man of Pakistani descent is at the center of a security story, leading to backlash against the Pakistani-American community.
(Via long-time reader Shourik, who has always claimed to be Indian.)
===
PRANCERS QUIETED
Tim Blair
Fairfax’s Sunday paper in Sydney has reduced its theatre coverage. This is what happens when you live under an arts-hating conservative regime sworn to crush creative expression. In other arts news, Edmund Capon welcomes the return of a toned-down Bill Henson, now exhibiting photographs of falling water instead of naked kids:
‘’While they are immensely satisfying in their beauty and mystery, they are not common fare,’’ [Capon] said.Damn straight. His shots sell for thirty grand each.
‘’As we all know only too well, they have been the subject of base interpretation, largely thanks to the fact that we live in a society with a political and media mindset of abject simplicity and withering cynicism.
‘’The work of Bill Henson is way above any such impoverished measures.’’
===
HEADLINE OF LAST MONTH
Tim Blair
In fact, reader Nicole nominates this effort – from MSNBC wimps in a panic about Arizona’s new border protection measures – as the Headline of the Century:
Law Makes it a Crime to be Illegal ImmigrantIf they make illegality a crime, only criminals will be illegal. By the way, Australian leftists like to carp over the relatively small numbers of illegals seeking (or gaining) entry into Australia. At what point would numbers be so great as to cause them concern? We get a hint from general leftist rejection here of the Arizona laws. One assumes, then, that they’d be happy with similar levels of illegal immigration in Australia.
There are an estimated 450,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona, which has a total population of just 6.6 million. Were Australia to have a proportionate amount of illegals, we’d be talking in the range of 1.5 million.
===
SAY IT LOUD
Tim Blair
Peter Whittle on the silence of the gays:
Gays are pretty sensitive when it comes to detecting possible future persecution, which makes the relative silence about Islam — whether from denial or simple ignorance — all the more worrying. I’ve certainly found, when bringing up the subject on my travels around gay London, that one is usually met with the response: “Ah, well: it’s those Christian fundamentalists that worry me.”Yes; central London is teeming with them. Whittle continues:
“The gay activist establishment has taught gay men that Christian fundamentalists are their enemies, while members of fellow ‘oppressed’ groups, including Muslims, are their allies in victimhood,” says Bruce Bawer, an Oslo-based gay American writer and author of While Europe Slept (Broadway, 2007). “Solidarity proscribes criticism. Never mind that these ‘allies’ preach that gays should be executed. Under the reigning PC mentality, the only way in which most gays can bring themselves to criticise Islam is to do so as part of a blanket rejection of all religion” …Remain quiet. Surrender your freedoms. Do not denounce anything. That way nobody gets hurt. Well, at least Australian feminists are beginning to man up. Last year ABC newsreader Virginia Haussegger took a stand against burkas:
Bawer fears that on an everyday level, the situation for gay men in cities like Oslo and Amsterdam is becoming more difficult, with an increase in attacks by Muslim youths. In Oslo, reports of assaults on gays by Muslims are increasing, and instead of admitting to this as a problem, prominent Muslims are arguing that in “their” neighbourhoods, Muslim cultural values should reign, meaning that gays who enter their territory should not, for example, hold hands.
In one recent incident, a gay couple exchanged a kiss in an Oslo kebab joint and were chased down the street by a fellow-customer. Later, one of them told a reporter: “It was perhaps a little dumb of us to do that. I don’t like to provoke people.”
I’ve seen it elsewhere around the world, but I didn’t expect to see it here. Certainly not on a hot summer’s afternoon at the Canberra Centre. But there it was. A ghostly figure walking towards me, clad from head to toe in a heavy black niqab, black gloves and dark shoes. She was trailing along behind her husband and four little children.Further from Haussegger:
The sight of this hideously shrouded figure in an Australian shopping mall is confronting and offensive. And it makes me angry, very angry …
There is no place here for the burka. Australians must rally to have the burka banned.
And now the SMH’s Elizabeth Farrelly joins the call:
To cover someone’s face in public, to reduce them to a walking tent, is to declare them lacking such identity, destroying any possibility of their meaningful public existence. It is, literally, to efface them.Brave little Quebec, too.
To hide the face is to hide the person. As Shada Islam, Europe correspondent for the Pakistan paper Dawn, wrote last week, most European Muslim women have little patience with the burqa or its wearers, seeing it as ‘’a sad process of self-isolation and self-imposed exile’’.
And while you could see even exile as a personal right, it does directly contradict a public duty, the duty of public presence. The morality of identity-erasure may be (barely) acceptable, but the ethics are not. Brave little Belgium.
===
Hawke wants Rudd to quit?
Andrew Bolt
Channels 9 and 7 say former Prime Minister Bob Hawke was overheard saying it broke his heart what Kevin Rudd was doing to the country, and he’s speculated on Julia Gillard replacing him before the election.
(Thanks to readers John amd John Mc.)
UPDATE
The alleged comments were overheard by a Liberal staffer, apparently. Which may put some doubt in people’s minds.
UPDATE 2
Hawke didn’t seem too thrilled with Rudd even at the moment of the man’s greatest triumph:
In fact, reader AJG has heard this before:
A former colleague reported to me that Bob Hawke was quite opening voicing similar views at a trade function in a South East Asian capital 2 years ago. The opinion isn’t newly formed, he has always held this view.UPDATE 3
Reports say Hawke claims it was the polling that was breaking his heart.
Let’s see how that rolls around the tongue: “Aaaargh, mate, this polling on Rudd is breaking my heart.”
Or try the alternative: “Aaaargh, mate, what Rudd is doing to the country is breaking my heart.”
One does seem a more likely form of expression.
UPDATE 4
Hawke made his comments to MP Daryl Melham, who Channel 7’s Mark Riley says replied that Gillard did not have the numbers in Caucus to take over.
===
Budget reply speeches: Abbott vs Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Labor sends out the meme that Tony Abbott’s Budget reply speech had far less substance than, say, Kevin Rudd’s own three years ago:
But Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen says Mr Abbott’s speech was too light on detail and still does not provide detailed costings.Really? Is that true?
“If the Labor Party had tried that we would have been laughed out of Parliament House,” he told AM.
Answer: no. I mean, how many journalists laughed Labor out of Parliament House in 2007, when then Oppposition Leader Kevin Rudd gave his own Budget reply speech, in which he gave a grand total of these costings, with absolutely no new detail on how his new promises would be paid for:
That’s why Labor has already identified $3 billion in savings over the forward estimates to help fund our future priorities. Tonight’s announcements are costed and funded...Yet we’re now deep in debt, with huge Budget deficits predicted for at least the next two years.
I am particularly proud of our $450 million policy on early childhood education providing pre-literacy and pre-numeracy play-based learning for all four year olds for 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year, with a fully trained teacherWhat’s happened to that promise, by the way? The last I heard, the spending was later upped to $955 million over five years.
A Labor Government will implement a $2.5 billion Trades in Schools program over ten years to build new Trades Training Centres and upgrade existing facilities and equipment in all of Australia’s 2650 secondary schools – both government and non government. This will mean an investment of $729 million spread over the four years to 2010-11. Each secondary school in Australia will be eligible for capital funding of between $500 thousand up to $1.5 million to build trade workshops, computer laboratories and other facilities to expand vocational education and training opportunities.How far has that got? The Liberals in February could count only one of 2650 trades training centres built.
Labor will also provide $84 million over four years to ensure access to on-the-job training for 20 weeks per year for year nine to 12 vocational education and trades students.I can’t tell if this promise has been kept.
Labor’s Education Revolution is reinforced by our plan to invest up to $4.7 billion in partnership with the private sector to build a high speed National Broadband Network.Another broken promise. Worse, this plan has been replaced by a gigantic new NBN plan costed at $43 billion.
Tonight I announce that Labor will re-establish an Asian languages and studies strategy for Australian schools. This will cost $65 million dollars over four years and will be done in partnership with the states and territories.Nothing concrete yet.
• establishing a $500 million national clean coal fundProbably fools’ gold. No likelihood yet of viable clean coal technology on a commercial scale in the medim future.
Tonight I announce that if elected, we will begin by establishing a modest national fund to start plugging the leaks in the water pipes of our towns and cities. In office, Labor will… · allocate $250 million dollars over the forward estimates to commence this program.Modest is right.
And that’s it. That’s all the costings in Rudd’s own Budget in reply speech. And the few costings there were have since blown out by nearly $40 billion, yet most of the promises remain unfulfilled or unlikely to produce results.
If Rudd wasn’t laughed out of Parliament, he should have been.
Now let’s see the full list of Abbott’s own costings, as revealed in his own Budget reply speech, and see if he’s indicated some savings, too:
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Morgan confirms Rudd’s long fall
Andrew Bolt
The latest Roy Morgan poll traces the further decline of the Rudd Government.UPDATE: Link fixed.
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Strangle our miners to help foreign students
Andrew Bolt
No wonder the mining industry is terrified by Kevin Rudd’s leadership:
KEVIN Rudd confronted mining chiefs over dinner in Perth last week to defend his resources super profits tax from charges it would lead to projects closing down, would restrict expansion, was a flawed design and would push investment overseas…Be very scared yourselves.
Addressing complaints from David Flanagan, head of Atlas Iron, about the effect on investment of having a super profits tax cut in at 6 per cent, Rudd said it was companies such as Atlas that were pushing up the dollar and making it hard for foreign students to live in Australia.
There was a collective gasp, with executives asking Rudd if he “wanted to wipe out the iron ore industry to help foreign students”.
===
When even the Swiss seem scary, we’re in strife
Andrew Bolt
NO one can ever again say our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade didn’t warn they’d be blown up.
Nor can our most eager blame throwers ever again say DFAT didn’t warn they might suffer any other form of disaster in that terrifying place called “Overseas”.
No, no, no. The panic merchants and victimologists have done their worst, and yet another bureaucracy has been battered into backside-covering. And irrelevance.
Read DFAT’s latest dear-God-be-careful travel warnings, and you’ll now see cautions against every kind of hazard, from losing your head in Iraq to catching flu in Paris.
Even Switzerland is now a scary place.
“Be alert to your own security,” DFAT squeaks. The clocks aren’t all that’s cuckoo there: “Look out for suspicious behaviour.”
Stop press! DFAT has just rushed out a fresh warning to anyone planning to go to India for the Commonwealth Games in October.
You face not only “the high risk of terrorist activity”, but such other dangers in New Delhi to make you wish you’d never left this land of padded edges and Slater & Gordon compo lawyers.
For instance: “You should take care on public transport and when crossing the road.”
It’s that last bit - I mean, a warning on crossing the road? - that hints at what’s really going on.
And it’s what has me worrying that poor Raelene Boyle may get robbed again - not by a false start this time but a false stop.
===
Pressure on to let them in
Andrew Bolt
THAT’S six more boats and 300 more people to land here in just this past week.
And 60 boats this year already.
Which means Kevin Rudd’s mild “toughening” of his boat people laws last month isn’t stopping the flood he unleashed by his weakening of those same laws two years ago.
And that means the $1 billion extra Rudd expects to pay over the next four year for his huge mistake - money for extra detention places and processing - may be just a downpayment.
So why haven’t the boat people believed Rudd when he said he’d suspend asylum applications from Afghans and Sri Lankans?
Why are so many still coming?
Peter Katsambanis suspects he knows part of the answer - the politicisation of the Refugee Review Tribunal, whose members are now under pressure to approve refugee claims of people they should send home.
Katsambanis is a lawyer and former Liberal MP who served on the RRT until the election of the Rudd Government, which promised to be more “compassionate” to boat people.
The RRT, which hears appeals from asylum seekers knocked back by the Immigration Department, got with that program, says Katsambanis, and its members, who must reapply for their $168,660 jobs every five years, now operate under “a culture of fear”.
“It was made very clear by management that long-term career prospects would not be enhanced” if they turned down too many claims, he says. Including unworthy claims.
===
Are coal miners and timber workers really this dumb?
Andrew Bolt
Do the members know that their leaders are backing a party that wants their industries decimated?
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s Victorian branch last month said it would back the Greens in the Senate...UPDATE
Do CFMEU coal miners really think it’s in their interests to back a party which has this policy:
Given that coal mined in NSW is a major source of greenhouse gases on a national and global scale, The Greens are committed to phasing out the coal industry...And which opposes the export of what they dig out of the ground:
A massive Australian coal export deal with China, seen as boosting the economy and creating jobs, would ultimately result in enormous greenhouse gas emissions, The Greens political party said yesterday. ..How many other CFMEU miners would lose their jobs if this policy was implemented:
“In one signed contract this single coal export deal with China will produce more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere… than the government’s CPRS scheme, in fact more than double,” (Greens leader Bob) Brown told reporters.
resource extraction decisions must be guided by rigorous environmental and social impact assessment and by the precautionary principle.How many CFMEU foresters would be out of work if the Greens got this wish list in place:
12. end the export of woodchips and whole logs from native forests.How many CFMEU miners will see future work dry up, should the Greens get through its policy to ban these new mines:
13. end the logging of high conservation value native forests and wildlife habitats.
14. end logging in native forests ...
34. prohibit the exploration for, and mining and export of, uranium.Why aren’t CFMEU members in revolt against the union bosses who seem hell-bent on sacrificing members’ jobs to their far-Left ideology?
35. oppose the establishment of new coal mines and the expansion of existing mines.
36. prohibit mineral exploration and mining as well as extraction of petroleum and gas in terrestrial and marine nature conservation reserves, including national parks, wilderness areas and other areas of outstanding nature conservation value.
UPDATE 2
The CFMEU is particularly concerned about emissions from burning fossil fuels:
A CAR filled with drums of petrol was driven into the CFMEU’s NSW head office before being set alight...(Thanks to reader Alan, Brett and Jane.)
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) state secretary Andrew Ferguson ... believed the incident may have been linked to a dispute between the union and a contractor.
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Emerson the next to flounder on the ABC
Andrew Bolt
Small Business Minister Craig Emerson decides blather is the best part of defence on Lateline when confronted with his own words on the danger of choking the mining boom:
TONY JONES: Alright, two years ago, if I can quote your own speech in Western Australia, you said that ‘slowing down the development of Australia’s mining and energy resource industries would be a scandalous wasted opportunity.’Labor is having real trouble now in interviews on the economy and its taxes.
Can you is plain the economic theory that says a 40 per cent tax on mining profits won’t have exactly that scandalous effect you were talking about?
CRAIG EMERSON: Sure, I’m happy to come to that and what I was talking about in that speech which, if Tony Abbott had bothered to read the speech, but he finds economics…
TONY JONES: I’ve read it, I’ve seen…
CRAIG EMERSON: so boring. You’ve already..
TONY JONES: I’ve read it and I’ve seen the context of it.
CRAIG EMERSON: And you would have seen..
TONY JONES: The rationale of what you said…
CRAIG EMERSON: Well, hold on Tony..
TONY JONES: still stands.
CRAIG EMERSON: You say you’ve read the speech. There was not mention, not one mention of taxation in that speech, not one
TONY JONES: No, one presumes…
CRAIG EMERSON: No, no…
TONY JONES: you did not know about it at the time…
CRAIG EMERSON: exactly…
TONY JONES: otherwise you may have mentioned
CRAIG EMERSON: Well, I read the newspapers I, I…
TONY JONES: it to the miners.
CRAIG EMERSON: I read the newspapers too and I expected there would be a resources tax. I was fully aware of that. I was referring to two real constraint on mineral development in this country that would be opposed, imposed, by an Abbott-led government and that is that he said he would very substantially cut back on the immigration intake of this country, including in areas that are very important to the Western Australian mining industry and…
TONY JONES: But the principle is..
CRAIG EMERSON: and…
TONY JONES: it’s the principle, it’s the principle…
CRAIG EMERSON: No, let me finish now…
TONY JONES: it’s the principle we were talking about....
CRAIG EMERSON: You’ve talked about my speech....
TONY JONES: Well, that’s right..
CRAIG EMERSON: You’re talking about my speech. I wrote the speech, I know a bit about the speech, and the second constraint that I was talking about was the Coalition’s unwillingness to invest in infrastructure because the Coalition believes the Commonwealth does not have a significant role in infrastructure in development in Australia.
UPDATE
Still, everything is relative, as James Jeffrey discovers in tracing the fallout of Kevin Rudd’s bruising bout with Kerry O’Brien on Wednesday:
...following the PM’s minor deviation from his regular verbal programming on Wednesday’s The 7.30 Report, his flacks got busy ringing TV reporters asking if they were going to use the footage of it in their news bulletins. Apparently they are overjoyed their boss has shown a bit of passion in public at last…
OTHERS have been less kind about Kerry O’Brien’s performance, remarking that after two years of soft interviews, it was newsworthy when Red Kez put the PM under scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Aunty took a leaf out of the Deputy PM’s book. As Strewth has mentioned before, Julia Gillard’s team follows her weekly screwball slot with Tony Abbott on Today by amusingly, if unsportingly, transcribing each of the Iron Monk’s hesitations and stutters. Now the ABC has done the same to Rudd. To wit, “Well, um, as I said before, Kerry, um, some of the large mining companies and some other companies are going to say all sorts of things as we sort out, um, the detail of this. But, um, again . . .” (Honest, entertainingly vindictive, or a bit like bowling underarm? Discuss.) One of the doors of Aunty’s Canberra bureau was yesterday adorned with a jaunty sign declaring, “Welcome to 7.30 Report Land!” Then, in smaller print, “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.”
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Both sides claim Rudd on the nose in marginals
Andrew Bolt
I don’t trust “internal party polling” since the parties tend only to tell you what they think is in their advantage - and don’t let the reporters check their claims against the real figures. Yet, for what it’s worth:
SECRET polling has revealed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is the most popular leader in key marginal seats as support dives for both Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard.UPDATE
It can be revealed that both Coalition and Labor polling shows that support for Mr Rudd has collapsed in the marginals, with Liberal polling having his standing in negative figures.
Nice debate for the Coalition to now have:
JULIA Gillard’s political rise as an alternative prime minister is dividing the Coalition front bench because its members can’t decide whether to apply the political blowtorch to her now or later.(Thanks to reader Richard.)
The Deputy Prime Minister’s opposite number, Julie Bishop, is urging the Liberals to try to damage Ms Gillard now before it’s too late and she becomes Labor leader.
But opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey is arguing that, with so little time before the election, Kevin Rudd must be the focus of all the Coalition’s efforts to discredit the government.
According to Coalition sources, Ms Bishop, the Liberal deputy leader, wants to take on Ms Gillard early. Other Liberals back her view because they fear the Education Minister could replace the Prime Minister before the election, due this year.
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UN makes Libya our judge
Andrew Bolt
What more need the United Nations do to prove it’s actually the kind of anti-democratic menace it was set up to challenge?
LIBYA was elected overnight to the United Nations Human Rights Council despite numerous complaints that the country was unfit to serve on the international rights body.,, But the appeal fell on deaf ears, and a General Assembly secret ballot produced 155 votes in favor of adding Libya to the council, significantly more than the 97 votes needed.And last month:
Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”
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Rudd’s navy intercepts nothing but the truth
Andrew Bolt
The Age has the photographic evidence here of the latest boat being intercepted by nothing other than the Christmas Island jetty:
ACCORDING to the Rudd government, this is the moment the latest asylum seeker boat was ‘’successfully intercepted’’.(Thanks to reader Phil.)
But, as you can see, authorities were nowhere to be seen when the boat containing 55 people chugged into Christmas Island’s Flying Fish Cove yesterday. ‘’They actually crashed the bow of the boat as it smashed into the jetty,’’ said one islander.
The government tells it differently. ‘’Border Protection Command today successfully intercepted a suspected irregular entry vessel,’’ Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said in a press release. ‘’HMAS Glenelg, operating under the control of Border Protection Command, intercepted the vessel … near Christmas Island.’’
UPDATE
Strange. The Age page no longer exists. But you can still see the picture here. Another strange thing: the Age story named the woman who’d sent the picture, but the West Australian story says only:
Supplied / Name witheld ©
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A Dutch auction requires two leaders with a sense of value, actually
Andrew Bolt
Dutch uncle, going Dutch, Dutch courage ... I put up with a lot. But Peter Hartcher’s jibe at Dutch stinginess has led him to misrepresent the meaning of a very elegant and efficient Dutch innovation perfected in the flower auction hall in which my grandfather and I both worked:
AUSTRALIA’S two main political parties are paying a serious compliment to you, the voter.A Dutch auction is not a miser’s competition, but a form of auction introduced to speed up bidding when time is of the essence - as it is with cut flowers. It’s a first-bid-wins system, with the winning buyer being the first to stop a price clock as it falls from high to low. If anything, it’s an auction in which the foolish, desperate or ill-informed are most likely to pay way above the odds, having no idea how high a competing bid may be. A nice video explanation here.
Instead of the traditional election-year auction to see who can spend more money to buy your vote, they are running a Dutch auction, competing to see who can offer less money.
Next time you’re around Amsterdam (or Aalsmeer, actually), get up at the crack of dawn - or earlier than Rick Steves does here - to see this fabulous show:
UPDATE
Many readers below gloat that I missed one of the most offensive Dutch-vilifying phrases of all.
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Robb contra Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Shadow finance spokesman Andrew Robb has added real heft to the Opposition’s attack. His speech yesterday on the Rudd Government’s extraordinary waste and mismanagement was devastating. An extract:Why is it that Labor’s promised program of computers in schools for every student in years 9 to 12 has so far only delivered 220,000 of the one million computers and a blow-out of $1 billion?I can’t image the Opposition could make a more effective campaign ad than one which starts with Rudd’s “this reckless spending must stop” claim, and then scrolls down a list of his broken promises and failed programs.
Why is it that Labor promised to cut spending on consultancies but have instead awarded $1.2 billion in consultancy contracts since coming to office?
Why is it that Labor promised broadband for $4.7 billion but broke that promise, replacing it with a plan for $43 billion? Of course, in the process, they wasted $20 million on a cancelled tender process and spent another $25 million on yet another report by consultants—all for a white elephant that will put up to $43 billion of taxpayers’ money at risk.
Why is it that Labor claim to have all the answers on climate change and the environment but have dumped the ETS for the cynical purpose of trying to make some of the parameters within a budget work?… It was a very cynical move by this government, despite the Prime Minister on so many occasions saying this is the great moral challenge of this century. They have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
Just think of the money spent on thousands and thousands of hours of work by companies and individuals who took seriously the endless process of Senate committee inquiries, Garnaut reports 1, 2 and 3, the green paper and the white paper—all of that for nothing. There was $50 million worth of climate change advertising; 150 public servants administered the scheme, at a cost of $81 million; and 68 delegates were sent to Copenhagen, at a cost of $1½ million.
On top of this, in the environment area, there was the solar panel blow-out of $850 million and the dumping of $175 million on the Green Loans Program. The pink batts program, costing $2.45 billion, represents one of the monumental policy failures in this country’s history. It has resulted in 240,000 substandard installations, 1,500 electrified roofs, 120 house fires, four deaths and about $1 billion in waste—$1 billion of waste, four deaths and endless fires…
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So far the most notorious example of government waste has been the pink batts, but this is likely to be superseded by the school halls program, which looks to have wasted many billions of its $16.7 billion…
Why is it that border protection is seeing a $1 billion blow-out? The Prime Minister promised to take a very tough line on people-smuggling, promising before the election to turn around the boats, yet we have had 120 boats arrive during this government’s time in office, and that number is growing. Prior to that, under the Howard government, we had 18 boats in six years. This is again a monumental failure of policy, a fundamental failure of courage.
(Cartoon by the brilliant Mark Knight.)
Robb’s full speech here:
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The pocket Windschuttle: wicked child-stealer Sister Kate
Andrew Bolt
Here’s the sixth of reader Tony Thomas’s summations of the key arguments of Keith Windschuttle‘s important new book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History - Vol III: The Stolen Generations.
Today: Sister Kate of Perth, sinister racist.
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