=== Todays Toon ===
Frederic John Napier Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, GBE, PC (12 August 1868 – 1 April 1933) was a British statesman who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1909 to 1913 and Viceroy of India from 1916 to 1921.=== Bible Quote ===
“I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.”- Psalm 138:2=== Headlines ===
Senior Labor figures face annihilation
SECRET polling shows state Labor is facing a near wipe-out at the next election, with seven ministers and former Premier Nathan Rees among 28 MPs likely to lose their seats. Polls by Labor and unions showed a 15 per cent swing against the Keneally Government statewide. It also predicted the lowest primary vote ever for Labor, at just 24 per cent. The result would leave Labor with as few as 15 to 20 seats in Parliament, meaning much of its experience will be gone. It would spell the end of ministers Verity Firth, Carmel Tebbutt, Kevin Greene, Steve Whan, Paul McLeay and Frank Sartor. Labor's rising stars, Roads Minister David Borger, also risks losing his Western Sydney seat, along with Rees. The polling shows Borger and Rees are narrowly behind in the respective Labor heartland seats of Toongabbie and Granville, sources said. It will mean Mr Borger, who was considering attempting to run for Parramatta and replacing Tanya Gadiel, will stay put in a bid to hang on to the seat, party sources said. - they can still win office. They were in abysmal shape last time too. Maybe if they investigate Hamidur Rahman's issue they can have a breakthrough. - ed.Russian Spies Plead Guilty Ahead of Expected Prisoner Swap
U.S. expected to get four prisoners back in spy swap with Russia after 10 in U.S. custody plead guilty to acting as foreign agents.Coverage Slim on NASA, Black Panthers
Mainstream media nearly ignore recent stories on Black Panther election controversy and NASA administrator's comment about Muslim countries
Ex-Transit Officer Guilty in Shooting
Jury convicts a white former transit officer of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, shown here, on an Oakland train platform
Court Rejects Bid to Keep Drilling Ban
Federal court rejects the Obama administration's effort to keep a six-month drilling moratorium in place
One of the world's greatest minds says he believes there are aliens out there - and he's pretty sure he knows what they look likeBattle to choose baby's gender
WOMAN so desperate to have a girl she is travelling to Thailand to sidestep Australia's laws.
Serious about asylum seekers? Call Nauru
TONY Abbott says impoverished nation would be "happy" to host refugee processing centre.
Pizza delivery boy's prison nightmare
A TEEN charged with murdering his dad bashed after "rejecting an inmate's sexual advances".
Granny hoon caught chasing secret lover
AN 81-year-old woman caught speeding vows to keep driving so she can see her younger lover.
Favourite's shock exit 'will hurt ratings'
MARION Grasby's exit is good for MasterChef's credibility but will turn off viewers, say TV experts.
Bashed in McDonald's over spilt water
A STUDENT was beaten unconscious by an irate man who accused him of spilling a woman's drink at a fast food outlet.
Teens trapped in bungled robbery
TWO teenagers have been arrested following a bungled inner-city robbery earlier this morning.
Ambulance plan is code for secrecy
THE State Government's drive for secrecy and desire to control information has intensified, with the ambulance service to encrypt its radio network next year. When police digitally encrypted their radios two years ago, the media was forced to rely on the ambulance network to learn about crimes including murders, stabbings, riots and serious assaults as they happened. From next year that flow of information will stop. "The decision to encrypt the ambulance radio was made for patient confidentiality and operational reasons," a NSW Ambulance spokesman said yesterday. "But our media unit will continue to give out information on major incidents. The decision was made independent of the police."
ALP Nuttall's daughter evicted in 'vendetta'
THE daughter of former Queensland cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall and four of his grandchildren will be evicted from the home he provided for them. The move comes after the jailed politician struck a deal with prosecutors to return corrupt payments from late mining tycoon Ken Talbot. And to compound the family's woes, Nuttall is set to become the first serving prisoner to be called before the Bar of the State Parliament to explain why he should not be hit with tens of thousands of dollars in additional fines. The moves have outraged Nuttall's adult children - whom he purported to want to help in taking $360,000 in secret commissions from Talbot - and prompted them to break the silence they have maintained since he was jailed a year ago.Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani may not be stoned to death
AN Iranian woman may not be stoned to death after her sentence sparked a global campaign to save her. The Iranian Embassy in London said that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani would no longer face death by stoning, British media outlets reported.
A message seeking comment from the embassy was not immediately returned, and it was not immediately clear if Ashtiani still faced death by other means. "According to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment," the embassy said in the statement reported by Channel 4 News and The Guardian. Ashtiani's face, framed in a black chador, stared from the front page of The Times, while The Guardian carried an interview with Ashtiani's children - 22-year-old Sajad and 17-year-old Farideh - who described the sentence as a nightmare. Protests are planned in front of the Iranian Embassy over the weekend.
=== Journalists Corner ===
The Midterm Campaign TrailWhich Democrats want the president's support and why some are telling Obama to back off!
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Are They High?
The ACLU sues a retail giant after an employee is fired for using pot! Megyn Kelly investigates the case. Plus, why are teens so smitten with today's brooding blood suckers? The Culture Warriors react to the current vampire craze.
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Taking Arizona to Court!
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard responds to the government's immigration lawsuit. Plus, Kenneth Feinberg on what's really being done to compensate oil spill victims.
===
On Fox News Insider
Obama Administration Playing Racial Politics?Can Muslim Peace Group End Extremism?
A Day on the Job at Fox News - Dan Springer
=== Comments ===
Defiant in the face of Labor’s attackPiers Akerman
IN SAM Loxton’s long view, the current Labor Federal Government is the worst he has witnessed in his 89 years. - I am a cricket tragic and Sam was one of my heroes, as was Arthur Morris, who lived down the street from where I lived, growing up in Turramurra. Morris had also gone to my dad’s high school, Canterbury, along with Bobby Simpson and John Howard.
It is tragic the way the ALP have inherited a great economy and tried to trash it. They have done enormous damage, and so things we may have expected, infrastructure (Bradfield scheme?, roads, public transport, health reform et al) has to be shelved or put off. Necessary work for the poorest of peoples has to be delayed. All so Rudd had a headline, or so the ALP could pay their creditors.
Sam’s is a success story that Australians may yet have again. In running for Blaxland, I will face a one term opponent who is the ALP’s future, in Jason Clare. I don’t promise to win, but if I run a good clean campaign, I promise Jason will have had to stand up and make himself accountable .. at the moment it is as if he has been hiding. - ed.
===
Truth About Illegal Immigration Controversy
BY BILL O'REILLY
Last week, Congressman Trent Franks from Arizona made a stunning remark to Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum:
Click here to watch "Talking Points"!
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TRENT FRANKS, R-ARIZ.: The reality is that we still arrest almost 1,000 people coming across the border illegally every day in Arizona. About half of all of the violent crime in Maricopa County is committed by illegal immigrants, and we're having a pretty serious challenge every day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Maricopa County is the Phoenix area, and if indeed half of the violent felonies there are committed by illegals, that is a catastrophe.
So "The Factor" looked into the situation, and here's what we found out:
Right now, Maricopa County is holding about 1,100 illegal aliens charged with committing violent crimes. That is murder, manslaughter, rape, those kinds of things. The suspected felons are being held until ICE can pick them up. Another 300 are being held in Maricopa on lesser charges.
But it's not even close. If the violent illegal aliens comprise about 15 percent of the total prison population in the county, they couldn't possibly commit 50 percent of the violent crime.
"Talking Points" does not mean to diminish the problem in Arizona. Obviously 1,100 illegal aliens accused of committing violent felonies is a huge number. No county in the United States should have to put up with it. It's disgraceful. The federal government should be embarrassed. But the federal government is not embarrassed. It is suing Arizona for trying to protect itself, an incredibly absurd situation.
But the overall point here is that the truth must be told in the illegal immigration debate. Overall, crime has dropped in many border counties because the recession has inhibited some illegal immigration. Fewer available jobs, fewer illegal crossings.
However, the narcotics traffic is booming. And as we see in Maricopa County, there are plenty of bad guys crossing the border doing terrible things to Americans. Once again, the federal government does not seem to be overly concerned with that.
President Obama has made a political calculation. In the first five months of this year, his support among Hispanic-Americans dropped 12 points, according to Gallup. But since he announced the lawsuit against Arizona, his popularity has risen three points among Hispanics. So you can see where the lawsuit might be coming from.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the president is putting his political future in the hands of a minority coalition he thinks he can mobilize. According to the polls, the majority of white voters feel the president is not doing a good job, but more than 90 percent of African-Americans continue to support him, along with a majority of Hispanic voters.
This is not a healthy situation. The president of the United States should not be a victim or a beneficiary of racial politics. Or am I wrong?
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Republicans -- The Party of YES!
By Jon Kraushar
Once again, President Obama is labeling Republicans as “the Party of no.” Last week, in Racine, Wisconsin the president said of the GOP, “They figured if we just keep on saying no to everything and nothing gets done then somehow people will forget who got us into this mess in the first place and we’ll get more votes in November.”
Fair enough. Republicans can counter that they are actually “the Party of yes,” offering an alternative to Obama’s failed agenda.
Republicans can say:
• Yes to consumer-controlled spending and no to government out-of-control spending.The November midterm elections are an opportunity for a new, “yes, we can” formula. For Obama, we = I. For real hope and change, let’s change the formula to we = We the People.
• Yes to stimulating civilian jobs and no to stimulating government jobs.
• Yes to wealth creation by private citizens and no to wealth redistribution by government confiscation.
• Yes to enforcing existing laws and no to forcing new big government laws.
• Yes to free market exchanges and no to government controlled exchanges.
• Yes to tax cuts and tax simplification and no to tax increases and IRS complication.
• Yes to individual responsibility and no to bureaucratic irresponsibility.
• Yes to fair deals in an open labor market and no to sweetheart deals for unions.
• Yes to incentives for growth-seeking small businesses and entrepreneurs and no to special favors for bailout-seeking, mismanaged businesses and government enterprises.
• Yes to free trade and no to trade protectionism.
• Yes to returning America to its Constitutional roots and no to turning America into a European welfare state.
Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net.
===
THEY CAME FOR THE APPLIANCES
Tim Blair
Julia Gillard prepares her household botheration policy:
It is believed it will include tighter restrictions on energy-sapping household appliances such as clothes dryers, with some even being phased out …The government previously threw Harvey Norman vouchers at voters so they could buy household appliances. Now appliances are the enemy. But how will people know if their particular clothes dryers fall short of government standards?
Power companies will go to the homes of customers to give energy efficiency advice, with Ms Gillard pledging to reduce “our carbon footprint as a country” by starting with co-operation between households and energy companies …They’ll have to get inside our houses first.
Power companies will be required to meet tough new efficiency standards by conducting audits of their customers and installing improved technology where appropriate.
Ms Gillard is also expected to announce a rise in energy standards for homes, office buildings and motor vehicles.Australia’s previous leader spoke of the great moral challenge of our time; now we’re reduced to dealing with the moral complexity of fridges. Gillard has given up alarmism for a kind of low-grade bullying prohibitionism. Speaking of which, here’s George F. Will:
The tougher emissions code will also apply to consumer appliances including refrigerators, airconditioners and clothes dryers.
Daniel Okrent’s darkly hilarious “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” recounts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right – and condemned the nation’s fifth-largest industry – in order to make the nation more heavenly. Then all hell broke loose. Now that ambitious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans – from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use – Okrent’s book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences …Let us hope the same is true of Australians. I guess we’ll find out when the energy auditors begin knocking on our doors.
The many lessons of Okrent’s story include: In the fight between law and appetite, bet on appetite. And: Americans then were, and let us hope still are, magnificently ungovernable by elected nuisances.
UPDATE. “What a joke!” comments DB. “ABARE’s Energy in Australia 2010 report shows that residential energy consumption is just seven per cent of Australia’s total energy consumption. This looks like another ‘problem’ that does not need a solution.”
UPDATE II. Some idiot throws an egg at the Prime Minister. Judging by this image, the egger was of the Left:
Note the socialist poley bear (or, as a reader points out, a poley bird).UPDATE III. Public servants may face charges following the government’s collapsed Green Loans scam:
Ms Faulkner’s report says on ‘’prima facie’’ evidence environment department officers deliberately split up contracts signed with a single company so they would fall below an $80,000 threshold requiring a contract to be put to competitive tender …Furthermore: “The top echelon of the environmental department was not aware of the problems in the loans scheme until late last year.” That would be Peter Garrett.
96 per cent of contracts signed for Green Loans did not go to competitive tender and 75 per cent of those were offered directly to just one company.
UPDATE IV. The eggman is taken away. As Sleemol says: “Strange that some are celebrating/laughing at Julia Gillard having an egg thrown at her. It’s assault - coward’s way of protesting.”
===
DOUBLE-EDGED RAZER
Tim Blair
Helen Razer two months ago:
I don’t know what to call the spite, rage and fervour that unfolds every second on Twitter, but I no longer want any role within it.That didn’t take long.
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AT LEAST SHE GOT THE MESSAGE OUT
Tim Blair
Incumbency plus novelty make a potent electoral combination, but it isn’t immune to stupidity:
Julia Gillard’s Dili Solution appears dead in the water, with the Prime Minister yesterday making the extraordinary claim that she had never planned to build an asylum seeker processing facility in East Timor …Oh, yes she did, as Michelle Grattan (and all sentient beings) noticed:
Ms Gillard yesterday said she had never given a commitment to building the centre in any one location.
“Once again, with respect, and obviously happy to be judged on what I say and what I said in the speech [to the Lowy Institute on Tuesday] was not that.
“I did not say that,” she said.
Julia Gillard’s claim she did not announce ‘’a specific location’’ for her proposed regional processing centre is bizarre and a political blunder.And Gillard’s own foreign minister, Stephen Smith, also placed East Timor solely in the frame:
On all but the most Jesuitical interpretation, she did say East Timor was where she wanted it. ‘’In recent days I have discussed with President Ramos-Horta of East Timor the possibility of establishing a regional processing centre.’’ If she was looking at another country, or had no particular place in mind, why would she have put such store on Ramos-Horta?
Mr Smith said it was not fully appreciated that the government was at the beginning of a new “conversation” with East Timor about the regional processing centre.Nice of him.
However, he acknowledged the final decision lay with Dili.
“We are doing things in an orderly way,” he said.Really? That’s not how the East Timorese see it:
Senior East Timorese government members are incredulous that not a skerrick of detail was provided before an announcement of negotiations was made by the Prime Minister. As Mr Gusmao said yesterday, when first asked about the proposed refugee centre, ‘’what plan?’’.Let’s call it the puppet plan:
After the proposal was denounced in parliament, a spokesman for Mr Gusmao’s CNRT party, Aderito Hugo, told The Australian: “We don’t want to become an Australian political commodity based on the fact Julia Gillard is shortly to go to elections. This Australian approach doesn’t consider us as a sovereign nation. Australia seems to regard its smaller neighbours as puppet states.”Such strong words. Gillard would not approve:
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister was talking about “unauthorised boat arrivals” as she banged the drum over border protection. But in Darwin on Wednesday, those same boats carrying asylum-seekers became “irregular people movements”, a gentler description of a situation that gives a sense of the occasional rather than the politically urgent.Gillard has lately been issuing her own decrees:
She said it twice for the description to sink in …
If the PM decides to go completely PC, listen out for her describing asylum-seekers as “clients” rather than “detainees”, a sure sign she’s adopted Immigration Department head Andrew Metcalfe’s decree to all staff.
The Herald has obtained a six-page memo to Labor backbenchers to help them answer questions on the policy.It’s fascinating that they have to be coached to say these things. And after the events of the past few days, I don’t think anybody expects this government to have a “clear and firm policy” on asylum seekers. Which probably makes us all racists.
It coaches them to say ‘’I agree with the Prime Minister that people who express concerns about asylum seekers are not rednecks’’ and that ‘’expecting that governments have a clear and firm policy to deal with a very difficult problem does not make you a racist’’.
(By the way, this potentially election-wrecking issue exploded in the 24 hours after Jill Singer decided border protection had become boring. Now it’s on the front page of every major newspaper in the country. Bored, Jill?)
===
HEMI NO MORE
Tim Blair
Chrysler may be killing the Hemi brand, but you can never kill a Hemi:
(Via Instapundit)
===
HISTORY MADE
Tim Blair
Something never previously said by a Spanish Prime Minister:
I am concerned for the octopus.Or, as Jose Zapatero would have put it: “Me refiero para el octopus. Ahora destruiremos el Dutch. Aaaiiiieeeee!” Or something like that.
===
How to show your greater compassion: assault a female Prime Minister
Andrew Bolt
The Left are violent even to one of their own:Prime Minister Julia Gillard escaped unhurt this morning after a protester (left of picture) threw an egg at her as she arrived at the ABC’s Perth offices.Strange way to show a kind heart.
The egg whizzed past Ms Gillard as she entered the ABC foyer and hit a female security guard before smashing against a wall…
The group was protesting against the Federal Government’s policies on asylum seekers and the environment.
(Thanks to reader Ian.)
===
But if Gillard says it, it’s good
Andrew Bolt
AT least one bit of fakery has been exposed in this boat people debate. And I don’t mean fake refugees.
No, no. I’m thinking instead of Julian Burnside, Jill Singer and other warriors of the humanitarian Left who today brazenly clap what they yesterday condemned.
But let’s look at the positive side: their wild applause for Gillard’s plan to ship boat people off to East Timor will at least help us to teach our children the profound difference between defending a principle and defending a side. A tribe.
So gather round, children, and watch Mr Burnside, the human rights activist and QC, show what not to do.
First, here is Principled Burnside in May, flaying Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, a Liberal, over his plan to ship boat people overseas to Nauru for processing.
“The idea of reopening Nauru as a place of detention is unnecessary, absurdly expensive and morally bankrupt,” raged Principled Burnside.
“It is ridiculously expensive ... It costs about five times as much per person per day to hold asylum seekers on Nauru as it does to hold them in mainland detention centres ...
“Worse than its being unnecessary and expensive, the Coalition’s idea is morally bankrupt ... What Abbott proposes ... is to mistreat innocent people to deter other victims of persecution from trying to save themselves by asking for our help ... I wonder how he reconciles his philosophy of consequentialism with his pretended devotion to Christianity.”
Whew. Hot stuff.
But now, children, observe Principled Burnside this week, applauding Prime Minister Gillard, of the Labor Party, over her plan to ship boat people overseas to East Timor for processing.
“I was, generally speaking, impressed with what the Prime Minister said,” purrs Principled Burnside.
“An important difference between this and the Pacific Solution, of course, is that East Timor is a signatory to the Refugees Convention and Nauru was not ...
“The important element of it is that the processing there should be fair and that the treatment of people while they’re being processed is humane and decent. Now if those conditions are satisfied, well then there’s something to be said about the regional solution that’s being proposed.”
Observe the difference.
Suddenly Burnside couldn’t care less if Gillard’s copy-cat proposal is “ridiculously expensive”, even though her plan actually means building a second detention centre, while Abbott would just use the perfectly good one that John Howard built in Nauru, which now stands empty.
Suddenly Burnside no longer thinks it’s “morally bankrupt”, either, to ship boat people to some other country for processing as a deterrent to others.
Suddenly he no longer considers such off-shore processing “unnecessary”, either.
And suddenly he’s no longer worried about hypocrisy, even though Gillard once claimed to be exactly against what she now proposes.
See how it works? When a Liberal says it, it’s bad. When Labor says it, it’s good. It’s as childishly simple as that.
Oh, and that qualification that at least East Timor has signed the refugee convention? Meaningless to most boat people. A fig leaf. Not even raised as an issue when Burnside trashed Abbott for his Nauru plan.
Children, let me now reinforce this valuable lesson with a second example.
This time I present Jill Singer, the Herald Sun columnist and ABC identity, who likewise praises in Labor what she damned in the Liberals, to defend not her principles but her side. Her Labor tribe.
===
Knock, knock. It’s Gillard’s green police
Andrew Bolt
She’s coming for your white goods, and will have your power company demanding to be let in your house to check you’re green:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard will nail down the final plank of her election platform by taking a new climate change policy to Cabinet within days.This Green Nanny State toughness won’t stop the world from warming, of course, but a lot of busybodies will have fun pushing you around and making you spend more.
But the policy could be bad news for the family hip pockets, with tighter restrictions expected on energy-sapping appliances like clothes dryers.... with some even being phased out, as part of a new policy to make Australia a world leader in energy efficiency....
Power companies will go to the homes of customers to give energy efficiency advice… Power companies will be required to meet tough new efficiency standards by conducting audits of their customers and installing improved technology where appropriate…
Ms Gillard is also expected to announce a rise in energy standards for homes, office buildings and motor vehicles. The tougher emissions code will also apply to consumer appliances including refrigerators, airconditioners and clothes dryers.
UPDATE
Tim Blair:
The government previously threw Harvey Norman vouchers at voters so they could buy household appliances. Now appliances are the enemy.UPDATE 2
Meanwhile yet another of the Government’s green schemes collapses, having (like the pink batts fiasco and solar power scheme) blown its budget and been riddled with rorting:
COMPLIANCE breaches, budget blowouts, poor management and possible staff kickbacks have forced the government to axe another of its environmental programs - the $275 million Green Loans scheme.Why do so many green progams fail, delivering less than promised for more than allocated? It’s because, first, they are government-run, and, second, the air of holiness about them stops people from asking the most basic questions about delivery. And so it will prove with Gillard’s latest scheme, not least the extra help she’ll give to wind, solar and tidal power.
As Julia Gillard prepares to unveil a new climate change policy to take to the election, she is dealing with the fallout from three damning reports into the troubled Green Loans scheme.
The reports, released yesterday, further damage the government’s environmental credentials after the shelving of its emissions trading scheme.
They uncovered a litany of problems with the Green Loans scheme, including deliberate and systemic breaches of the government’s procurement guidelines and weak budget control that led to cost blowouts. This included a logistics contract that blew out by 19 times its original estimated cost from $77,000 to $1.476m…
The Green Loans scheme, which began in July last year, allowed householders to obtain a free environmental assessment of their home and an interest-free loan of up to $10,000 to purchase energy-saving devices.
But it was plagued by problems: assessors had trouble accessing the government’s call centre to book audits; there were long delays in the government sending out reports; and allegations of rorting and shoddy service by assessors…
The report also raised the possibility that staff received kickbacks from suppliers, which is being investigated by the department.
One question. This was yet another bungled program run by Environment Minister Peter Garrett. How on earth has he kept his job?
UPDATE 3
What next from the eco-bullies?
UNDERTAKERS could dissolve corpses in chemicals then flush the remains into the sewage system under plans being studied by European bureaucrats. The controversial method has been hailed as a much more ecologically sound method of dealing with the dead.
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Gillard scuttles her own boat
Andrew Bolt
JULIA Gillard may have thrown away the election in just 48 hours of the most comprehensive bungling.
On Tuesday the new Prime Minister said she’d ship all boat people to a new detention centre, which she flagged would be in East Timor.
But on Wednesday she conceded that, amazingly, she hadn’t even discussed this with East Timor’s Prime Minister, who now says he’s “very busy” and won’t talk to her directly.
And yesterday, with East Timorese politicians saying they hated the idea, Gillard pretended she’d never said her new detention centre would be there.
That’s right, she really thinks you’re dumb enough to buy it.
Here she is on 4BC, denying she’d specifically named East Timor as the site: “ I did not say that ... I’m not going to leave undisturbed the impression that I made an announcement about a specific location.”
This is farcical. Even her Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, has said Gillard’s plan meant that “people, if they arrive in Australia as unauthorised boat arrivals, will be returned to East Timor, will be taken to the centre”.
The East Timor Government also thought Gillard had asked them to host her detention centre, which is why its cabinet met yesterday to discuss it.
And on the ABC on Wednesday, Gillard talked as if East Timor was her first and so far only choice:
Lateline: Is there anywhere else at all where it could be set up?Gillard now won’t say where else her centre could be, and no wonder. There is almost nowhere else that fits her demands - the first of which is that the site must be in a country that’s signed the United Nations refugee convention.
Gillard: Well, I think that is in part a question for the discussions but East Timor has obviously indicated a preparedness to explore this idea further ...
Lateline: So briefly, you wouldn’t rule out the possibility of transferring the several thousand people in Indonesia waiting to get on people smuggling boats to East Timor at an appropriate time?
Gillard: Certainly I wouldn’t rule that out ...
===
Gillard sure fooled her own immigration minister. Or else she lied
Andrew Bolt
Prime Minister Julia Gillard denies she specified East Timor as the site for her detention centre:
I’m not going to leave undisturbed the impression that I made an announcement about a specific location.Immigration Minister Chris Evans specifies East Timor as the site for her detention centre:
People, if they arrive in Australia as unauthorised boat arrivals, will be returned to East Timor, will be taken to the centre.East Timor’s president specifies East Timor as the site for Gillard’s detention centre:
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: ... we are prepared to listen to the details of the proposal on the part of Australia about what would be exactly this processing centre will be, how long it will be on our soil, how many people we would have to accommodate in this centre, who would shoulder the burden of the financial cost of it, all of that.Audio of all three here, here and here.
UPDATE
Is there any plan at all?
While (East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana) Gusmao did not shoot down Ms Gillard’s proposal, he was dismissive about its vagueness, saying: ‘’What plan?‘’The president sure hasn’t seen one:
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: Well we have not even received a letter or a meeting with Australian Ambassador or anyone from Canberra to put forward to us the details of this proposal.
Or is it just shrinking?
While Mr Gusmao’s government will decide the fate of the proposal, he has delegated negotiations to (President Jose) Ramos-Horta, who has set conditions for a facility, including limits on numbers. ‘’You talk about the possibility of thousands coming. I don’t actually think that,’’ he said.Actually, the Gillard Government wasn’t just talking about our own 6000 boat peop[le a year, but a million more unauthorised arrivals besides. Here’s Chris Evans again:
This is not Australia’s problem alone and Australians are gonna see it through the prism of, “We’re the only ones dealing with unauthorised rivals.” Every Western democracy is dealing with this and every country in the region’s dealing with it. Malaysia’s got a million Bangladeshis in its territory.Another no-no from East Timor:
Mr Ramos-Horta indicated last night that East Timor would not take people from existing centres in Indonesia.Which contradicts what Gillard was suggesting just a day earlier:
TONY JONES: So briefly, you wouldn’t rule out the possibility of transferring the several thousand people in Indonesia waiting to get on people smuggling boats to East Timor at an appropriate time?UPDATE 2
JULIA GILLARD: Certainly I wouldn’t rule that out...
Cancel that, says Indonesia:
There were claims the Indonesian Government had expressed strong concern to East Timor about Prime Minister Gillard’s proposal, because it could attract even more asylum seekers to Indonesia to get to the Timor processing centre.
Asked if Indonesia had sent such a message, Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres, busy in meetings, responded with a one-word SMS: “Yes.”
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How Tony Abbott runs Australia
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan on Tony Abbott’s astonishing success::
Abbott is the most influential Opposition Leader since Gough Whitlam.
In his short tenure in the leader’s job, Abbott has destroyed Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. First, he destroyed the emissions trading scheme. Despite the claims of a Rudd autocracy, the former prime minister abandoned the ETS partly because so many backbenchers told him Abbott’s campaign against it was killing them in their electorates. As a result, Rudd adopted Abbott’s policy on greenhouse gas emissions.
Abbott also forced Labor to move much closer to the Coalition on the mining tax, with many of its previously non-negotiable points abandoned.
Now Abbott has forced Gillard to adopt Howard’s policy on illegal immigrants. He has even forced her to describe asylum-seekers as illegal immigrants, as she did in her speech yesterday.
Taken altogether, it establishes that Abbott is ruling the country from opposition, the next best thing to ruling it from government.
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