ALP brand ruined by a bunch of Mad Men
Piers Akerman – Saturday, September 03, 11 (04:22 pm)
Fans of the Mad Men television show will recall the opening sequence - a series of caricatures falling in endless spirals through space.
Those computer graphics are a metaphor for the Labor brand today.
That the government is dysfunctional is a given, is there any end in sight? No.
Over the past four years Labor Party MPs have reassured themselves after every new disaster by asserting that things can’t get any worse.
They know now that was a false hope. The ALP’s own polling shows its support is in a Mad Men-style free fall, the Labor brand is haemorrhaging unstoppably, possibly terminally.
Gillard is the personification of the left, anyone that does not agree is not only wrong but flawed in character, regardless of whether they are in the press or the High Court
Sat 03 Sep 11 (04:59pm)
Sat 03 Sep 11 (06:05pm)
“She’s as tough as (Craig’s) nails.”
Sat 03 Sep 11 (06:15pm)
Gillard is similar to any of many Labor luvvies over the years. Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner, Cheryl Kernot spring to mind. They don’t believe in anything. They feel they are pragmatic in taking actions that are left wing in nature, but they do it badly. So that health or education is ‘reformed’ which becomes code for saying that big pork barrels were rolled through them without touching constituents.
Gillard is also similar to Paul Keating. She is highly lauded and never achieved anything worthwhile. She is like Bob Hawke in being said to be someone who is a keen negotiator and seems to do so with her cards pasted onto her forehead.
I think what she has done has not been because she was made to do it, but because she has wanted to finesses it to make it appear her arm was forced. All of her achievements seem to be what she said she would do when she was a communist. It is seeming, not doing. It is time for this unseemly PM to go.
Sun 04 Sep 11 (12:57am)
Gandalf of Gosford: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn’t constructive. Please don’t equate Ms Gillard to Keating, whose reforms put us in the position of prosperity to when John Howard took over. Also, Hawke was the pragmatic master negotiator that allowed consensus in the caucus. Not frightened rabbits with the cross hairs of a rifle on their forehead courtesy of Rudd.
Fast forward 1997. TV appearances on channel 7 sunrise with Kevin Rudd’s milky bar kid impersonation of all things wonderful for working Australians. Err, sorry about that folks, I’m really a millionare socialist and just wan’t to jet about the globe at your expense solving world problems that have nothing to do with.. err...YOU.
2010, Ms Gillard tells us that Kevin & the ALP had lost their way and she is going to rectify the last 3 years of something she was the chief architect alongside the gang of 4. Lindsay Tanner resign’s with his index finger down throat.
Summary, $40 billion dollar surplus gone, $200 billion accumulative debt, thousands of workers sacked because of grey suits and an unfair free trade agreement that other countries aren’t adhering to.
Look on the bright side. We have Julia & Tim in the lodge for 2 more years, wind turbines running at 30% efficiency with high maintenance cost’s negating their efficiency, power stations being de commissioned courtesy of Julia & Bob, green jobs that haven’t been explained except to school kids...chuckle...chuckle.
Finally, we have Parliament. The Labor front bench spewing out their vitriol & hate to the none believers in their fantasy world that the most imaginative comic writers couldn’t match with all of their collective minds.
No Mr Gandalf, don’t compare Ms Gillard, Roxon, Swan, Plebersick & Albanese to Keating or Hawke. This is just a moment in time that is a mistake............. 
Sun 04 Sep 11 (06:25am)
Well DD Ball, I have to disagree with you on one point about Keating. I hated that man with a passion, just as I hate gillard with a passion, but Keating did have the vision to implement the Superannuation Guarantee to force “savings for the future”, and whilst I was an employer and felt the pinch of the additional costs (I never built it into salary packages as some employers did), I believed then, and still do, that was Keating’s claim to fame. sp to speak.
Otherwise he was a foul mouthed, arrogant individual who, I thought, brought the parliament into disrepute.
A bit like the situationin place now. Labor never change.
Sun 04 Sep 11 (07:14am)
Well said DD Ball. Labor are happy to implement the extreme Greens Socialist/Marxist Progressive agenda because Labor have also moved that far to the Left but they don’t want anyone to know it. When it all goes bad Labor will just point the finger at the Greens and say it is all thier fault. These political freaks are wolves in sheeps clothing and as Garrett said, “Don’t worry about what we say we will change everything once elected”. Lies, deceit, spin its business as usual for the disastrous Labor party.
Sun 04 Sep 11 (07:15am)
Winjan, in a nutshell- thank you.
An experiment gone immensely wrong compounded by an immature group of individuals seeking to stamp their mark in the history books- they will- and for all the wrong reasons.
Sun 04 Sep 11 (04:40pm)
deejay, I get your point, but let me take it further. Keating also gave control of that Superannuation to Union groups so they get management fees and other benefits from the control of that superannuation. But it is true that the 9% was a good thing for the workers generally, and that is something Gillard would never do.
Plotting class warfare
Miranda Devine – Saturday, September 03, 11 (04:11 pm)
Of all the toxic issues Julia Gillard has to contend with, education has been seen as her strong suit.
The Prime Minister has spoken in warm tones about education as “the foundation stone of opportunity”, being “central to my economic agenda”.
Her commitment to transparency via the My School website resonated with people while infuriating the powerful left-wing teachers’ unions.
But an own goal looms even in this friendly territory, one completely of Gillard’s making: a re-run of the divisive attempt to pit government schools against “wealthy” independent and Catholic schools.
The Gonski review into school funding is seen by opponents of parent choice, such as Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos, as a golden opportunity to marginalise non-government schools by stealth.
For them, it is a return to the bitter class envy and sectarian divide of half a century ago.
And of course, the overt agenda of the Gillard government’s coalition partner, the Greens, is to cut funding to non-government schools.
Anything I say will be political because of who I am. If I point out that Boston was the Education Chief who seemed to initiate a smear campaign against me following the death of Hamidur Rahman from apparent school neglect. Boston had spoken at my graduation for a Dip. Ed. from Sydney Uni. His speech was dismal and uninspiring with lots of facts and figures. The fact that Australia needs private schools because they do an outstanding job teaching their students and their parents subsidise the education of the rest shouldn’t be forgotten.
I am also the son of Samuel Ball who championed independent and selective schools as a vital part of the community system. He took the reigns of the Victorian Board of Studies after they demolished their HSC under Kirner. He is dead now, but not forgotten. Bob Carr asked him to take charge of NSW Board of Studies too, but cabinet had other ideas, such are the vagaries of ALP politics.
If you value education you really want to vote for the conservatives. They aren’t opposed to community education, but the ALP are opposed to independent schools.
Sat 03 Sep 11 (06:28pm)
Here’s a letter to the Weekly Standard:
You report that “Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing company much ballyhooed by the Obama administration, declared bankruptcy. The company had received $535 million in September 2009 from a Department of Energy grant program funded by the stimulus” (“Green Jobs in the Red,” Sept. 12).
No surprise here. From Pres. Obama on down, none of the politicians speculating with taxpayers’ funds on “green” business ventures – and none of the pundits spellbound by their own imagined genius at knowing how to improve an unimaginably complex economy such as ours – has any material skin in the game.
Too bad that too few Americans, when presented with the latest Glorious Vision or Beautiful Plan, are as clear-eyed as is the economist Deirdre McCloskey, who writes “If you are prudent and bourgeois, not a romantic aristocrat or a gullible peasant, you say to yourself ‘Why is he telling me this? Why has he not put his money where his mouth is?’”*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux* Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Vices of Economists / The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), p. 103
From Gary Becker’s latest blog post:
Warren Buffett has persuaded 68 other billionaires to follow his example and promise to give at least half their wealth to charities. But why hasn’t Buffett proposed also that the very rich make large gifts to the federal government to offset what he considers ridiculously low taxes on their incomes and wealth? My guess is that he and the others who pledged to give away their wealth to charity would have little confidence in how the government would spend such gifts. Buffett, for example, is giving most of his wealth to the Gates Foundation, not to the federal government, and is relying on how this foundation will spend his vast gift. Given this reluctance to make large gifts to the federal government, why should anyone have confidence that the federal government will spend additional tax revenue in a sensible way?
[HT Joe Swanson]
… is from page 29 of Jim Buchanan’s 1958 book Public Principles of Public Debt:
[I]t is rather strange that it [an "essentially organic conception of the economy or the state"] could have found its way so readily into the fiscal theory of those countries presumably embodying democratic governmental institutions and whose social philosophy lies in the individualistic and utilitarian tradition. The explanation arises, of course, out of the almost complete absence of political sophistication on the part of those scholars who have been concerned with fiscal problems. With rare exceptions, no attention at all has been given to the political structure and to the possibility of inconsistency between the policy implications of fiscal analysis and the political forms existent. Thus we find that, in explicit works of political theory, English-language scholars have consistently eschewed the image of the monolithic and organic state. At the same time, however, scholars working in fiscal analysis have developed constructions which become meaningful only upon some acceptance of an organic conception of the social group.
Slipper sunk, but not walking. Yet
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (06:56 am)
Still trouble on Tony Abbott’s left flank:
EMBATTLED MP Peter Slipper has promised to work with rival Mal Brough on the Sunshine Coast even though it will be “difficult”.
The LNP member for Fisher was yesterday rebuffed by his local branch, who voted for Mr Brough as their next organisational chairman…
The vote was viewed as a “de facto preselection” ahead of the next federal election when Mr Brough, a former Howard government minister, is expected to go up against Mr Slipper.
Mr Slipper last night said he would accept the Fisher branch’s decision not to reinstate his preferred candidate, chairman Greg Robinson…
There were reports yesterday Mr Slipper had written to branch members and threatened to move to the crossbenches if Mr Brough was elected.
He said last night that was not the case, but when asked to rule out walking he did not make a commitment.
“I never said I would move to the crossbenches, I never said I would take action,” he responded.
(Thanks to reader John.)
Sheep wait for the slaughter
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (05:43 am)
Michelle Grattan says Gillard is dead meat:
Julia Gillard is still PM, of course. But, unless you believe in miracles, she’s a dead woman walking, to be dispatched by the people at the election or perhaps by her party before.
Michelle Grattan says Labour should keep her:
The power brokers and caucus need to breathe deeply and put off judgments about leadership for some time.
Honey in the ears of Tony Abbott.
UPDATE
Even on sick leave, Kevin Rudd can mess with Gillard’s mind:
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited ex-PM Kevin Rudd at his Canberra home from 10.10am to 10.50am.
Mr Ban then travelled 2km to Parliament House to meet with Ms Gillard from 11am to 11.40am…
A day earlier his spokesman had told the Sunday Herald Sun Mr Rudd would not be making any public appearances for the media, because he was still on leave after his heart operation.
Snapshots of despair and helplessness:
Labor insiders said the discontent with the Prime Minister’s leadership was deeper with the back bench than it was with the factional leaders.
“The people who put her in are struggling to admit that they made a mistake,” one MP said.
Another MP likened the prevailing mindset among the federal party’s leadership to a cult of denial.
“There is more Kool Aid being drunk up in Canberra that at Jonestown,” one MP remarked.
The MP said that the calibre of the staff in the PM’s private office was a matter of deep concern to MPs.
“The people around her have no political judgment,” one MP said.
“The wattles they wore at the signing with the Greens, the carbon tax, the Malaysian solution ... it just goes on."…The majority of Labor MPs contacted by the Sunday Herald Sun conceded that Ms Gillard could not be assured of remaining as leader of the Labor Party in the long term without a radical reprioritisation of the Government’s policies.
“We’re like a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle, milling around, not quite sure where to go,” one MP said.
“If someone fired a gun, we could all run in the same direction. “Or we could scatter. Something will probably happen, but I’m not sure what.”
Another said: “The mood is black, depressed, resentful, solemn and hateful.
“There is gross disappointment at her performance and the way we lurch from mess to mess.”
SOME of Julia Gillard’s own MPs have declared she is stuck ‘’spinning her wheels’’ and predicted an election rout ‘’in varying degrees of diabolical’’, as Labor’s internal despair spills out into public view…
In what one Labor insider has described as an ‘’end-of-empire’’ malaise, Labor and Liberal sources have confirmed that ministerial offices and other ALP sources are supplying ammunition for the opposition’s attack over the Craig Thomson/Health Services Union affair.
Mischa Schubert:
Speaking to Labor elders outside the Parliament this week, many were utterly bereft of hope. ‘’I feel absolutely despairing about the whole situation,’’ said one. ‘’There’s a fair risk that Julia will turn out to be the double bill of the first female prime minister and the last Labor prime minister.’’
Why won’t someone tip Swan?
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (05:29 am)
Poor guy:
Just 14 months since being toppled, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been named as a possible contender for the Labor leadership in the wake of the High Court’s decision. Cabinet ministers Stephen Smith, Simon Crean, Greg Combet, assistant treasurer Bill Shorten and former Queensland premier Peter Beattie have also been named.
“This sort of media talk and gossip is nothing more than that and it should be treated with distain,” he said.
ABC confirms: it was what Milne said about Gillard
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (05:22 am)
Sacked for something he said somewhere else? This is star-chamber stuff:
VETERAN political journalist Glenn Milne has been dumped from ABC TV’s The Insiders because of a column he wrote in News Ltd’s The Australian.
The column, retracted in full after furious demands from Julia Gillard, made claims about the Prime Minister’s one-time relationship with former unionist Bruce Wilson, the embezzlement of union funds and his eventual fraud conviction.
Milne was told he would no longer be part of future episodes of the program on Thursday evening after a meeting by the ABC’s news management team.The ABC’s head of policy, Alan Sunderland told The Sun-Herald, last night that Milne had not been “sacked ... because we don’t employ him and never have” but confirmed the column had been the catalyst for the decision to cancel his scheduled appearance on the show this morning.
Disgraceful.
The ABC should at least answer this: were any calls made to the ABC about Milne by Gillard, Communications Minister Steve Conroy or anyone speaking on their behalf?
UPDATE
Professor Sinclair Davidson sums up:
UPDATE
Double standards, says Gavin Atkins, giving examples.
Indeed, why is Bob Ellis still allowed to write for and appear on this newly censorious ABC, given his own dishing of dirt?:
That notoriety was dramatically boosted by the case brought by Treasurer Peter Costello and wife Tanya, and Tony and Margaret Abbott, who alleged they were all defamed by a passage in Goodbye Jerusalem. It’s a story supposedly recounted to Ellis by former State Labor MP Rodney Cavalier, alleging that in the distant past of university days, a long-haired Peter Costello, and the young political firebrand Tony Abbott, were both in the right wing of the Labor Party till Tanya Coleman slept with both, married one of them, and induced them into the Young Liberals. The story was completely untrue.
Is the difference that Ellis merely slimed a Liberal politician, while Milne alarmed a Labor one?
Question answered by Sunday Age
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (05:07 am)
Congratulations. With your encouragement, the warmist Sunday Age is forced to answer The Question about tackling global warming.
It asked readers to help guide its coverage, and Jason Fong’s question topped its poll:
The very point of Australia’s carbon tax is to reduce global warming. How much will reducing 5% of Australia’s around 1.5% contribution of global CO2 emissions reduce global temperature by? If the amount is negligible (which it is), then given the present economic turbulence, what is the probability of Australia’s carbon tax inspiring major emitters like USA, China and India to make ACTUAL cuts to their C02 emissions (as opposed to mere carbon intensity) and economic growth? - -Jason Fong,
The Sunday Age today gives the answer:
Victoria University climate scientist Professor Roger Jones has calculated that if the rest of the world did not act and Australia reduced emissions until 2020, then did nothing else, Australia’s policy would knock 0.0038 degrees off the global temperature rise by 2100.
One-three hundredth Not quite one-four thousandth of a degree. Provided the climate really is as responsive to carbon dioxide emissions as claimed.
It really doesn’t seem worth the pain, does it, when China and other giant emitters won’t cut their own emissions?
(UPDATE: Thanks to the many readers who corrected my maths.)
Jackson broken
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (04:58 am)
The abuse, the shovel left outside her front door, the threats to her faction ... All that pressure has finally got to the union official who referred the allegations against Craig Thomson to the police:
Ms Jackson’s partner, Michael Lawler, confirmed yesterday that she had been ‘’put under medical care’’ on Friday and was not capable of speaking to the media.
Mr Lawler, a deputy president of Fair Work Australia, said he believed the breakdown may have been caused by the pressure that Ms Jackson had been under in recent weeks over the Thomson allegations.
And so yet another threat to the Gillard Government is, coincidentally, silenced.
(Thanks to reader CA.)
Demonising dissent
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (12:05 am)
Brendan O’Neill on the sliming of the sceptics:
HAS any intellectual current ever been so disparaged and demonised, so ferociously harangued by the chattering classes, as climate-change scepticism?
Every slur in the book has been hurled at those who dare to question climate-change orthodoxies.
They’ve been compared to Holocaust deniers. They’ve been branded psychologically disordered. They only use their “reptilian brain”, says one eco-author, which means their outlook on climate change is not “modulated by logic, reason or reflective thought”, Al Gore says.
And now, putting the icing on this cake of abuse, Gore has compared climate-change sceptics to racists…
In their pathologisation, demoralisation and even criminalisation of dissent, greens unwittingly expose their deeply censorious, inquisitorial instincts.
(Thanks to reader Tom.)
A smoking ban soon sorts the men from the boys
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 04, 11 (12:01 am)
ASYLUM-SEEKERS claiming to be minors among the group spared deportation this week are so frustrated by a ban on smoking they are considering changing their stories to say they are adults.
Some of the 57 “unaccompanied minors” are addicted to smoking and increasingly irritated by a ban on cigarettes within their detention compound on Christmas Island, sources say.
Asylum-seeker adults are allowed to smoke by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship but this is not the case for the unaccompanied minors, with the department applying Australian laws to the group.
The source, who does not want to be named, said there were some among the males who were clearly children but others who were obviously over 18.
(Thanks to reader Steve.)
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