=== Todays Toon ===
Clement Attlee (left) with President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was also the first person to hold the office of Deputy Prime Minister, under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill's Conservative Party in 1945. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term, and the first to command a Labour majority in Parliament. - like Brown, he did much to dismantle the UK - ed.=== Bible Quote ===
“My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,”- James 1:19=== Headlines ===
President plans to deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border amid security concerns but Ariz. Sen. John McCain says more needs to be done.War Zone in Jamaica
Plumes of smoke rise over Kingston, Jamaica, as dozens are killed in bloody fights between cops and those loyal to alleged drug kingpin Christopher 'Dudus' Coke
Oil Slick Eyed in Illnesses
Fishermen hired to help oil spill cleanup experience mysterious symptoms that may spell more trouble for BP
Big Apple 'Chilly' Bowl
NFL owners vote to put the 2014 Super Bowl in the new $1.6 billion home of the New York Giants and Jets
Spooked telco bosses believe 0888 888 888 is cursed after the first person assigned it died of cancer, the second was gunned down and the third was assasinated.AFL in teen pregnancy scandal
SCHOOLGIRL claims she had sex with St Kilda footy players she first met at an AFL coaching clinic.
World markets plummet on debt fears
INVESTORS flee on back of Europe's debt crisis and stand-off between North and South Korea.
Model leaves behind drugs, hitmen
CHARLOTTE Lindstrom on first flight home after three years in prison for "crime of passion".
Baby left on beach suffers horrific burns
POLICE investigate sunbathing mother after boy taken to hospital with 20 per cent burns.
$114m in airfares for public servants
AS FAMILIES are asked to tighten their belts, public servants are flying first class at taxpayer expense.
Hunt for HIV man's partners
AUSTRALIA'S Got Talent contestant triggers a national health scare over his HIV infection.
Battle for kingpin leaves 31 dead
GUN battles rage in Kingston as troops and police hunt for "drug lord" Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who is revered by locals as a hero.
Ex-PM Fraser quits Liberals
Mr Fraser, the prime minister from 1975 to 1983, confirmed his decision to quit yesterday, saying the party was no longer a liberal party but a conservative party. - I'm proud my party doesn't support slavery, murder or corruption. - ed.
=== Comments ===
Obama Dithers over OilBy Bill O'Reilly
After more than a month, that terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico still has not been capped. The pollution is staggering.
President Obama has launched a full investigation, and his administration is briefing the press about measures being taken to control the situation.
But the truth is nobody knows what to do. British Petroleum can't stop the oil flow, and the U.S. government has no solution either.
The disaster is located within U.S. waters, so the president could have taken charge back on April 20 when the well blew. But the president did not do that, allowing BP to deal with the situation, and, of course, BP has not been able to solve the problem.
"Talking Points" believes the reason the president didn't move in right away is that he doesn't know how to stop the oil spill either.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is angry that cleanup efforts are not aggressive enough. But with all that oil spilling 24-7, cleanup measures are stopgap.
Now the issue has become political. Over the weekend, Sarah Palin said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration. If there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, if — if this was President Bush, or if this were a Republican in office who hadn't received as much support even as President Obama has from BP and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And that's true. The media would be pounding a Republican president for being cozy with Big Oil.
But "Talking Points" does not believe President Obama cares about BP money. He has plenty of campaign money, and this disaster is hurting him. If the president knew what to do, he'd do it. But again, he doesn't know what to do.
You may remember that I did not blame President Bush for the horror of Katrina. Yes, Mr. Bush was slow in reacting in the direct aftermath of the storm. But no matter what President Bush did, the outcome would have been pretty much the same: a city destroyed, massive suffering heaped upon its citizens.
It's almost the same thing with the oil spill. The feds were slow in reacting, but the outcome, tragically, would not have been changed.
The no-spin truth: Nobody knows how to stop the damn oil.
===
FUTURE FACED
Tim Blair
Bring on the hobbits:
While the spotlight has been on how humans are altering the Earth through climate change, Sydney TAFE students have been asked to ponder the opposite: how could a drastically different future Earth change humans?The process is already underway.
===
AND STAY OUT
Tim Blair
A graffiti report from 2006:
“Fraser out” can still be seen on Missenden Rd Camperdown.And he finally is. Andrew McIntyre reflects.
===
OBSERVATION JOE
Tim Blair
Stalker-journalist Joe McGinnis, currently writing a book about former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, has rented the house next door to Palin’s property. He plans to be there for five months. That’s Joe on the deck:
Palin’s response is perfect.===
Next she’ll complain jail affects her mental health, too
Andrew Bolt
Think of the taxpayers’ mental health instead:
WA’s prisons chief has defended the decision to allow taxpayer funds to help pay for the removal of a convicted murderer’s tattoo....(Thanks to reader Susan.)
Jacqueline Margaret Neville ... is serving a life jail term with a minimum of 15 years for murdering her former lover, Michael Wright, after he broke off their affair…
Neville is having the tattoo, which reads “Property of Mark Hinchliffe”, removed because she claimed it was affecting her mental health.
UPDATE
Reader Julz:
She was forced with threats of abuse to get that tattoo by her de facto. This would also be the same man who poured boiling water on her face, and physically abused her to the point of needing skin grafts.Yeah, don’t really mind my tax dollars being spent on this. I don’t mind my tax dollars being spent on assisting those recover from the effects of violence inflicted on them - prisoner or not.The jail and the tattoo are completley seperate issues. The tattoo was the result of years of abuse by her partner - she shouldnt have to live with the effects of that. The jail term was the result of her actions - she should, and will, live with those consequences.
===
Costello gives Geldof some aid
Andrew Bolt
Peter Costello gives Bob Geldof a lecture in return:
DURING his recent whistle-stop tour of Australia, Bob Geldof described the treatment of Aborigines as ‘’absurd’’ and ‘’economically stupid’’.
‘’You’ve removed from your society of ‘having a go’ 500,000 of your own.’’ He reckons the entire Aboriginal population has been removed from society.
If Geldof had turned on a television he would have seen Aboriginal footballers having a red hot go in our premier sporting league…
Geldof also had things to say about foreign aid. ‘’Australia is coming up … The Prime Minister said they’d get to 0.5 by 2012 which is necessary for the millennium development goals they all signed up to.”
Er, no. The Prime Minister said Australia would have its aid at 0.5 per cent of gross national income (GNI) by 2015-16. It was a typical Kevin Rudd promise - a promise to do something far away in the future after three or four elections…
What Geldof was not to know was that this year’s budget significantly cut foreign aid - a cut of $1 billion over the forward estimates.
The government did this with a tricky change to the estimate of GNI.
In the budget, it decided it would not use international standards to measure GNI and consequent aid ratios. It decided to use lower estimates of GNI which allowed it to cut $1 billion out of the aid budget and deliver savings to the bottom line…
I would not expect Geldof to know this. But I would expect the aid lobbies that campaigned for Rudd to know it. Mysteriously, there has been hardly a word of criticism from them.
===
Brumby warns Rudd’s tax will hurt
Andrew Bolt
Victoria becomes the fifth state to warn that Kevin Rudd’s super tax on miners is dangerous:
PREMIER John Brumby has raised doubts over whether the resources tax will be positive for the Australian economy, and has predicted the Rudd government will have to make key changes…UPDATE
Mr Brumby said he felt his federal counterparts would need to give ground in applying the tax to existing projects and on the level at which company profits start being taxed at 40 per cent…
Mr Brumby’s concerns about the tax follow those expressed by the Western Australian, Queensland, South Australian and New South Wales governments…
Mr Brumby’s advice means most Labor states - and high-profile economist Ross Garnaut - are advising the government to produce a policy more in line with the tax that already applies to the oil and gas industry, which cuts in at 11 per cent.
Some inside the government agree with that view, notwithstanding the effort being made to defend the basics of the tax.
If the tax is so justified, why does the Rudd Government need to use the dodgiest of studies - even a North Carolina student’s draft paper - to try to justify it? Take the Treasury report it’s now rushed out:
A TREASURY report used by Wayne Swan to justify his claim that the mining industry should pay a 40 per cent tax on profits was based on data that was six years old and appears to have grossly underestimated the sector’s total tax contribution.Terry McCrann smells fraud from this most deceitful government in living memory:
The report, released on Monday, said the mining industry paid a tax rate about 12 per cent lower than the average rate across all industries, mainly because miners were able to write off large deductions based on depreciation of assets.
As the debate over mining taxes intensified yesterday, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto defended their tax payments, saying their ability to claim massive deductions for capital expenditure was fair given the high upfront costs associated with mining projects.
CommSec chief economist Craig James said that if Monday’s Treasury report had used the latest available data, instead of figures from 2004-05, it would have found that the mining industry was “punching above its weight”.
The sector accounted for 7 per cent of total income and 14 per cent of company tax paid in 2007-08, according to CommSec.
THE Treasury analysis rushed out by the Government to ‘prove’ its claim that mining companies paid less tax is an embarrassment. It proves nothing of a sort…UPDATE
What the Treasury analysis did and what the government extrapolated to claim that miners paid an average tax rate of only 17 per cent against the all-industry average of 26 per cent is to compare actual tax paid to the Tax Office with their corporate income measured as GOS (Gross Operating Surplus).
So they are using a financial construct - actual tax paid - as the numerator: the apple; dividing it by a theoretical economic construct - GOS - as the denominator: the orange; to produce the average tax rate (ATR): the lemon.
It is an analytical and policy-relevant nonsense. You need to understand what and why the GOS is - broadly, not wages and salaries.
But to simplify, of course the mining industry has a seemingly low ATR because it is heavily capital intensive and operates with minimal labour. The calculation doesn’t allow it to deduct depreciation to get to profit (GOS).
In the real world, a mining business - indeed any business - has to provide for depreciation of its equipment or go out of business. It’s a real cost just as much as paying wages.
There’s no way you could consider that depreciation allowance as part of profit and so subject to tax. So to say that a mining company ‘only’ pays 17 per cent of its ‘profit’ before depreciation is as meaningless as saying a retailer ‘only’ pays, say, 12 per cent of ‘profit’ before wages…
That would suggest… that the mining average tax rate was around 24 per cent compared with an all-industry average around 27 per cent.
Again, in the case of mining, before adding royalties which would have taken it up to around 34 per cent - way above everybody else.
And that was in 2004-05 - a more contemporary percentage would be higher.
As I said last week, Rudd cannot afford to give in, but the country cannot afford for him not to. Here’s Paul Kelly’s take on that:
This issue is no longer just about resource taxation rates. It is about Labor’s economic reliability and the extent to which it has damaged Australia’s investment standing. There is no point Labor winning its battle with the miners if it loses the larger war over financial credibility. These two issues are now dangerously linked…(Thanks to reader CA.)
Remember, the tax is critical to Labor’s fiscal credentials. The budget shows that in 2012-13 when the $1 billion surplus is projected, the resources tax raises $3bn, and in 2013-14 when a $5.4bn surplus is projected, the tax raises a hefty $9bn. In short, the “return to surplus” strategy depends on the tax. The surplus-resource tax nexus only deepens the stakes. To compromise the budget strategy would be fatal, yet not to compromise on the resources tax may also be fatal. It is Labor’s catch-22.
===
What did Obama know and when did he know it?
Andrew Bolt
Did Obama’s heavies commit a crime?
Republicans and Democrats pressured the White House on Tuesday to disclose whether it had offered a federal job to Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak if he would have dropped his Senate primary challenge against Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter.
Sestak has said repeatedly he received an offer to join the Obama administration if he abandoned the race against Specter, who had switched from Republican to Democrat last year and was the White House’s preferred candidate. Sestak said he rejected the job offer. Last Tuesday, he defeated the five-term Specter, capturing the party nomination.
Whether the conversations might have been illegal is unclear without knowing what precisely was said. The law says an administration official cannot use his authority to interfere with the election of any candidate for office. The law also says no one can promise employment in exchange for political activity.
Even White House senior adviser David Axelrod, speaking Monday night on CNN, said such an offer would constitute a breach of the law. But he said the White House has looked into it and Sestak’s claim is unfounded.
===
Eee ets oop
Andrew Bolt
I thought I knew enough English to get by without a translator.
===
Forged outrage
Andrew Bolt
Apparently Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Julie Bishop has made a terrible gaffe by telling the truth and exposing the hypocrisy behind the Rudd Government’s huffing over Israel:
In an interview with The Age online, Ms Bishop said it would be naive to think ‘’Israel is the only country … that has used forged passports, including Australian passports, for security operations’’. When asked, ‘’What? We do?’’ she said ‘’yes’’.Bishop’s real gaffe is to retreat under fire from what she correctly said. A Paul Keating would have gone in even harder.
Later she said: ‘’Has Australia forged foreign passports before? You’ll have to ask the Foreign Minister.’’ Pressed on what she thought, she said: ‘’I believe that it has occurred.’’
But in a statement later, she denied having told The Age online that Australian intelligence agencies had forged the passports of other nations.
‘’My responses were referring to the fact that forged Australian passports have been used previously … I have no knowledge of any Australian authority forging any passports of any nation.’’
UPDATE
Michelle Grattan displays a touching trust in a Government which has already lied to her about boat people, the super tax, global warming, the rorting of the Building the Education Revolution and so much more:
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer and current opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop suggest the government’s motives (for expelling an Israeli diplomat) are dubious - that it wants to court Arab votes for its campaign to get a United Nations Security Council seat.UPDATE 2
This is a very serious allegation. Is it really credible that Kevin Rudd and Smith would be so irresponsible?
Yes, how shocking it would be to reveal intelligence information. How right it is to demand the sacking of shadow foreign minister:
13 September 2004I mean, someone with such loose lips might blab anything. Even the contents a private chat - highly coloured in the retelling - with the President of the United States:
TONY EASTLEY: Well, the Shadow Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has been listening to those comments by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty
CATHERINE MCGRATH: Kevin Rudd, you were at the press conference in Jakarta where Alexander Downer said and I quote, “the Indonesians received an SMS message about 45 minutes before the terrorists attacked.” Now given what you’ve heard Mick Keelty say there, that he was told it by a business man and he’d heard that third-hand, what do you conclude?
KEVIN RUDD: Well, I was in Jakarta with Mr Downer and Mr Keelty and attended discussions on this subject, both with the Indonesian national police and with another Indonesian intelligence agency. I’ve got to say, based on those discussions, I was a little surprised that Mr Downer was so definitive in the statement he made at that press conference…
CATHERINE MCGRATH: The Foreign Minister said this morning that it’s important that information is shared and having information like that at hand, it was the right thing to share it.
KEVIN RUDD: Well, the Foreign Minister can answer as he judges appropriate, but having been in two relevant meetings with him in Jakarta, both with the Indonesian police head Dai Bachtiar and with another Indonesian intelligence agency, I’ve got to say it was much less clearer than that based on those discussions as to a) was this text message received, b) when was it received if it did exist, c) what exactly did it contain and d) was it actually passed up the line? ...
CATHERINE MCGRATH: So was it your understanding then, it was a third-hand conversation?
KEVIN RUDD: ...All I can say is based on two sets of discussions, in which I participated in personally in Jakarta, with the head of the Indonesian national police and the head of another Indonesian intelligence agency, that these matters were the subject of considerable uncertainty on the part of the Indonesians themselves.
Trying to sell himself as a statesman, (Rudd) blabbed to The Australian all the details of a private talk he’d had with the President of our most important ally.And sometimes, as reader Alan RM Jones notes, you can blab about intelligence when you need to take heat off a mate like then Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon:
Not only that, he betrayed Bush by retelling their conversation in ways to make the President seem a donkey, and Rudd the genius who trained him to behave. And Bush has noticed.
Still not satisfied, Rudd then apparently made things up - to take public credit for a decision Bush had already made.
I can’t recall a greater breach of confidence, a more studied insult to an ally or a more craven attempt at big-noting from an Australian Prime Minister.
ASIO took the unusual step yesterday of dismissing media speculation that Ms Liu may have been the subject of a security investigation by Australian authorities.UPDATE 3
“The Acting Director-General of Security has advised me that ASIO has no information relating to Ms Helen Liu which would have given rise to any security concern regarding her activities or associations,” Attorney-General Robert McClelland said.
Mark Sawyer in The Age wonders why the Left is so jeeringly hard on Israel. And announces he won’t be buying the latest album of Elvis Costello.
UPDATE 4
Actually, the full quote suggests that Julie Bishop did not say what Labor says she said - that Australian spies forge passports:
JULIE BISHOP: It would be naive to think that Israel is the only country in the world that has used forged passports, including Australian passports, for security operations.
TIM LESTER: What, we do?
JULIE BISHOP: Yes.
TIM LESTER: We use, our intelligence agencies forge passports for use in foreign operations?
JULIE BISHOP: Our Australian passports have been used I said, Australian passports have been used by other countries. Has Australia forged passports before? You will have to ask the Foreign Minister.
===
Baa baa, said the writer
Andrew Bolt
Janet Albrechtsen goes to the Sydney Writers Festival:
The festival’s big event at Sydney Town Hall on Saturday evening started and finished as a caricature of all that has gone awry with the Left. Not just the refusal to try for nuance, difference or debate on a panel. Progressives seem to think gathering people of different skin colours can be used as proxies for different views.Yet she did note one writer, standing out from the herd - one who impressed me on Q&A, too:
Instead, there was smugness. Ironically, the very same smugness explored a few days earlier by Shriver during an intelligent discussion with broadcaster and journalist Caroline Baum. When talking about humour, Shriver said she doesn’t care for the clubby nature of most political satire where it is assumed you are all on the same side. “It’s what annoys me about liberals in general. Conservatives, as a type, do not assume when they meet someone that you’re a conservative . . . Liberals are presumptuous and especially if you seem like a half-way decent human being. The assumption is, of course, you are wildly left-wing.” Everyone is regarded as being in the same club. It’s “very self-congratulatory”, Shriver said.
===
Leading academics? Quiggin? Hamilton? Langmore?
Andrew Bolt
Sounds superficially impressive:
A GROUP of 20 leading academics and economists has backed the Rudd government’s mining tax, saying the sector should hand over more of its profits.But first strike is that the joint letter was written by global warming alarmist and self-confessed social democrat Professor John Quiggin, who also backed a great big emissions trading scheme and warned on the consequences of man-made warming:
Our world really will end.Another sign that perhaps Quiggin’s letter hasn’t been signed by 20 “leading academics and economists”? It’s also signed by climate catastrophist and hairshirt preacher Clive Hamilton, the failed Greens candidate who believes global warming could excuse a suspension of democracy. Hamilton’s economic views could best be summed up by this statement of his:
Above all, we must abandon our comfortable belief in progress.Well, Rudd’s great new tax on mining should take care of Hamilton’s greatest concern.
Other signatories include Richard Dennis, head of Hamilton’s old Left-wing Australia Institute, whose last claim to the fame of one of our “leading academics and economists” was that he was an Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. Then there’s former Labor MP John Langmore, another warming alarmist who believes we must cut our population to save Nature:
In a significant intervention, the (Langmore-led) Anglican Public Affairs Commission has warned concerned Christians that remaining silent ‘’is little different from supporting further overpopulation and ecological degradation’’.UPDATE
How happy these academics will be to hear that more planet-threatening energy sources will now stay in the ground:
AUSTRALIA’S biggest working oil and gas project, the $27 billion North West Shelf, will fall under Kevin Rudd’s 40 per cent resources tax, in a development its owners say will reduce its value and could cut the amount of liquefied natural gas it will produce… Operator Woodside Petroleum said three trillion cubic feet of gas resources would be left in the ground if the new tax came in.Greens everywhere will cheer from their mud huts.
(Thanks to reader Terry.)
===
Building watchdog muzzled by Gillard
Andrew Bolt
I agree with every word of this mailout by Senator Eric Abetz. John Lloyd is brave and as straight as a die, and the failure to reappoint him is a disgrace:
The Coalition today pays tribute to the Hon. John Lloyd PSM, the first Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, who has announced his resignation after being informed that his employment would not be continued by the Labor Government.Meanwhile, the worst unions are again feeling their oats:
Julia Gillard promised there would be a ‘tough cop on the beat’ and has now effectively removed him.
After failing to emasculate the powers of the ABCC because the Senate would not allow it, Labor is now doing the next best thing by not reappointing Commissioner Lloyd.
Labor’s disgraceful refusal to offer to reappoint Commissioner Lloyd is yet another example of Ms Gillard’s unprincipled determination to go soft on illegal behaviour in the building sector.
Commissioner Lloyd has a remarkable and lengthy history of acting without fear or favour in upholding the rule of law on Australia’s Building & Construction sites.
His dedication to improving the levels of industry harmony and productivity has resulted in massive improvements in workplace practices, ensuring the timely and sound delivery of key Australian infrastructure…
Commissioner Lloyd was appointed as head of the ABCC in 2005, which has since that time:
· Improved industry productivity up by 10%;
· Delivered an annual economic welfare gain of $5.5 billion dollars per year;
· Resulted in lower CPI (-1.2%) and higher GDP (1.5%); and
· Significantly reduced days lost through industrial action to all time lows.
The hallmark of Commissioner Lloyd’s work for the construction industry has been his unwavering devotion to upholding the law in an impartial and bi-partisan manner. He has approached what is perhaps the toughest job in industrial relations without fear or favour.
ANOTHER major project in Victoria has been hit by a union turf war, with the new wholesale fruit and vegetable market at Epping sustaining about $500,000 in delays in less than a week amid allegations of intimidation and vandalism.UPDATE
In a bizarre incident, organisers of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union have been linked to a successful plot to lure feral kangaroos into the site by cutting gaps in the fencing of the site and spreading lettuce on the ground.
There were also claims of intimidation, taken from affidavits read in the Federal Court that a building worker closely followed the car of a Bovis Lend Lease representative when they left work on the $290 million project.
Since last Wednesday a picket has stopped work on the site - one of the Brumby government’s largest current projects. The court heard that this had cost head contractor Bovis Lend Lease $120,000 a day.
The dispute comes after a contractor on the project, Fulton Hogan, struck an agreement with the Australian Workers Union, a rival of the CFMEU. Those two unions were involved in a bitter turf war over representing workers at the West Gate bridge upgrade, which was delayed for three months.
The unions have campaign strongly for Labor to get rid of Lloyd, because of his refusal to take no nonsense:
Building unions have vowed to bring construction in Queensland to a sudden halt if South Australian unionist Ark Tribe is jailed.
Six Queensland unions in the construction industry on Tuesday said they would take “immediate industrial action” if Mr Tribe was jailed after his June 15 trial.
Mr Tribe, a 47-year-old equipment rigger from South Australia, attended an unauthorised union meeting two years ago on safety concerns at an Adelaide worksite.
He faces up to six months’ imprisonment for refusing to be interviewed about the matter by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
===
Amazing that the foreigners let NSW health bureaucrats in
Andrew Bolt
How many overseas hospitals does the NSW Government run?
NSW Health bureaucrats have spent $22.7 million on first and business class airfares in the past two years as businesses waited for hospitals to pay their bills.UPDATE
The Daily Telegraph has uncovered a whopping $114 million spent on airfares for NSW public servants - including $27 million on first-class and business-class flights overseas…
Documents released under freedom of information laws reveal that all but $4.3 million of the total overseas first and business class fares was spent by NSW Health and its area health services…
The highest spenders on international first class/business class airfares were the Sydney South West Area Health Service ($6.35 million in the two years), South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service ($4.76 million) and North Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service ($4.35 million).
In the same period as the heavy spending on international travel (in 2007-08 and 2008-09), more than 70 per cent of invoices were not being paid by area health services in the required 45 days.
Don’t do as they do, but as they say. From the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water’s “Let’s Clear the Air” web page, urging taxpayers to get on their bike instead:
‘Active transport’ like walking and cycling not only improves our health, it also clears our air as it doesn’t generate any emissions.
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Fraser quits Liberals
Andrew Bolt
When did Malcolm Fraser last have a good word to say about his own party?FORMER Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser has quit the party, allegedly because it has tilted too far to the right.In fact, when precisely did Fraser quit the Liberals? It sure doesn’t seem like it was just yesterday.
Mr Fraser resigned in December, shortly after Malcolm Turnbull was turfed as opposition leader over his support for emissions trading, The Australian Financial Review reported.
He allegedly told friends Turnbull’s replacement, Tony Abbott, was “all over the place’’ on policy and disliked the racist overtones adopted by the party in the debate on immigration.
Mr Fraser, the prime minister from 1975 to 1983, confirmed his decision to quit today, saying the party was no longer a liberal party but a conservative party.
UPDATE
Tony Abbott does the Christian thing:
Mr Abbott said he was not prepared to say anything negative about Mr Fraser.
“I think he was a fine Liberal prime minister,’’ he told Macquarie Radio.
“He was a distinguished leader of our party through some difficult times as well as some successful times.’’
Mr Fraser “obviously’’ had a right to make judgments about where he stood these days.
“I thought that the most interesting thing that Malcolm Fraser’s done recently, though, was declare that the Rudd government was worse than the Whitlam (government),’’ Mr Abbott said.
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Abbott is right: a conservative changes to save what’s good
Andrew Bolt
Caroline Overington is wrong:
(Tony) Abbott also explained his own great big new tax on everything (the maternity leave levy) by saying, ”I am as conservative as anyone in this room but a true conservative moves with the times”, when, in fact, a true conservative does not.As Giuseppe di Lampedusa put it so beautifully in The Leopard:
For things to remain the same, everything must change.UPDATE
Or as Edmund Burke famously put it:
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.(Or the above scene in Italian, alas without subtitles.)
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Rudd does to Israel what Muslim nations demanded
Andrew Bolt
IS there anything Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will not sacrifice to his manic vanity?
Take his decision this week to expel an Israeli diplomat - a reckless over-reaction that has privately outraged key figures of the Labor Right.
And see who, in capitals around the Middle East, is cheering Rudd most, having dangled before him the bribe of a vote his ego craves, but which this country cannot afford.
It is beyond serious doubt that it was Israeli spies who used forged Australian passports in Dubai in January when assassinating the leading weapons buyer of Hamas and co-founder of the terrorist group’s military arm.
That deserved our condemnation, but only on the grounds that Mossad is now so slack that its agents got caught out with our documents in their hands.
The killing itself hardly deserved comment - and certainly should not have been described by Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith as “murder”.
After all, knocking off a jihadist boss on an arms-buying mission is morally no different from what SAS soldiers do every week in Afghanistan, hunting more jihadists there. Or do our soldiers “murder”, too, Mr Smith?
The assassination was also a lot more clinical than we tend to get when an American drone drops a bomb on a group of suspected Taliban in some Pakistani village.
Still, these were Australian documents, so some level of protest was called for. But this much?
In fact, the Israeli assassins also used forged passports of France, Germany, Britain and Ireland, yet only Britain has as yet retaliated as harshly as Rudd has done now, by expelling an Israeli diplomat.
France and Germany in particular seemed content to issue the usual protests, but to then let the matter slide - perhaps because they know they, too, are endangered by the jihadist tide that threatens Israel with annihilation.
And which country, Australia included, doesn’t also have its spies using false passports? Even Smith couldn’t deny that this week.
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Our gatekeepers told to let ‘em in
Andrew Bolt
TWO more federal officials who check refugee claims have come forward to confirm they are under pressure to let more people in.
The two members of the Rudd Government’s Refugee Review Tribunal say they operate under a “culture of fear”, with their jobs under threat if they reject too many claims.
They believe two members have already lost their jobs for being too tough, and more could follow when the next round of appointments (and dumpings) are announced next month.
Here’s yet more evidence that asylum seekers are right to think they have a better chance of staying under the Rudd Government.
Neither member dared to let me identify them, but both confirmed what former RRT member Peter Katsambanis told me this month - that RRT members have been told not to reject too many appeals against Immigration Department decisions to send asylum seekers home.
The members say five RRT colleagues reapplying for their jobs were recently grilled by the selection panel about their low rate of accepting claims of asylum seekers (known as the “set aside” rate).
One was allegedly told: “We expect to see an improvement.”
Both members, like Katsambanis, say the four-man panel which decides on RRT appointments includes a refugee activist with a conflict of interest.
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Queen clings to ther crown so the youngsters can’t flog it
Andrew Bolt
THE longer Queen Elizabeth reigns, the more the next generation proves it’s unworthy to replace her.
Look at the Duchess of York, who married her second son.
What value does Sarah Ferguson put on the crown the Queen has so fiercely protected?
Ooh, about 500,000 quid.
In fact, she drunkenly confided to a reporter posing as a businessman, for a down payment of just $40,000 in used notes, she’d sell the services of her unwitting ex-husband, Prince Andrew.
“Then you open up all the channels, whatever you need, whatever you want,” she slurred, shovelling the cash into a bag. “And then you meet Andrew and that’s fine.”
I’m glad to hear that Andrew, at least, thinks a royal shouldn’t be for hire. He says he had nothing to do with his ex-wife shopping him around for cash for the bailiff knocking at her deeply hocked door.
What a refreshing attitude, but how rare in a generation that seems to know the price of everything in the palace but the value of nothing.
Ferguson we already know for flogging her status as a Duchess to sell books, diets and films. Still, she was divorced - like the first spouses of all the Queen’s four children, bar one - and had to earn something somehow.
But what of her former sister-in-law, Sophie, Countess of Wessex and wife of well-provided-for Prince Edward?
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Four days of warming made all the difference
Andrew Bolt
May 26: Sherpa says climate change is making Everest harder to climb.
May 22: 13-year-old Californian youngest to top Everest
(Thanks to reader JustAThought.)
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Fewer mines, more boat people
Andrew Bolt
Rudd’s super tax could soon give him plenty more disused mine sites to choose from:
UP to 90 asylum-seekers, mainly women and children, may be sent from a packed detention centre to a disused mining camp in remote Western Australia as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees yesterday attacked the Rudd government over a detention bottleneck.(Thanks to readers Watty and Baden.)
The Immigration Department yesterday confirmed it was investigating the use of accommodation at historic Leonora, 832km east of Perth, to house family groups.
On the other side of the country, authorities were scouring Sydney’s suburbs for six Chinese nationals who escaped from Villawood detention centre early yesterday.
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