Voters abused and violated by grubby liars
Piers Akerman – Thursday, October 13, 11 (05:32 pm)
THE majority of Australians have every right to feel violated and abused by the Labor-Green-minority government.
The money to be doled out by the Labor government is to come from the taxes raised by the Labor government - that is, it will administer pain selectively in keeping with the Greens’ anti-business ideology and repay some of those wounded in the dust-up.
Confirmation of Peter Smith’s argument:
For me the defining characteristic of the Left today and that includes the hard left – the Greens - is no longer the achievement of what was called social justice or a more equal society. It is, instead, a more dependent society; a society within which businesses, particular groups, and individuals, increasingly depend on government patronage. Look at the carbon tax. It gives to government the power to take away and to give. It fits perfectly in the worldview of today’s Left.
Dependency produces captive voters, who, in turn, support the careers and ambitions of the Left’s political class, whose aim is to create ever more dependency. Dependency has filled the void created when there was nothing left for the Left to do. There is nothing noble about this. Dependency debilitates the recipients and, in the end result, undermines capitalist wealth creation. It isn’t striving for a light on the hill but a pit of despair.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2011/10/dependency-all-that-s-left
Thu 13 Oct 11 (05:52pm)
Thu 13 Oct 11 (09:30pm)
I think it overstates things to say the dependency is endemic. Australia can lose a lot more. She will, too, as long as the ALP have government. It is a mistake, imho, to say the Greens are putting their agenda on things. I think the current policy direction is exactly what Gillard would have advocated as a 20 year old or so communist.
Australia is a great nation, but even so this ALP experiment with Rudd and now Gillard will leave many poor for generations to come. People will die from neglect. People will die from the policy of Gillard and Rudd. What the Carbon Dioxide tax proves once and for all, without a shadow of doubt, the evidence is in, and no sensible person could doubt it, the ALP do not have one decent good member in the lower house.
Thu 13 Oct 11 (10:57pm)
To Ivan Denisovich -
This is an important concept.
Dependency is a key Left trick.
The Left want you to turn to them to “help” you .. they want you to depend on their “help” ...
It is a trick.
Their helping hand is a python in disguise .. a python that will wrap itself around you and drag you towards slavery to the extent it can.
The Left want to strip men of their independence and manhood .. it wants men weakened, dependent and trapped.
The Left draws you in through seeming to be the good guy -
What were Rudd’s words? “ ... I’m here to help”.
Rudd is a dictator. He doesn’t know what help is. His heart is ruled by darkness.
Rudd is a serpent in a Santa Claus suit.
The Left speaks to the weakness in you, not the strength. It appeals to the part in you (if such is in you) that would like to step out of jungle of modern life and be wrapped up in a soft blanket. There is a catch though - you will lose more and more of one of the most precious things in all of life -
Your freedom.
John Jay.
Fri 14 Oct 11 (08:49am)
It is, instead, a more dependent society; a society within which businesses, particular groups, and individuals, increasingly depend on government patronage. Look at the carbon tax. It gives to government the power to take away and to give. It fits perfectly in the worldview of today’s Left.
To wit:
But even on Treasury’s assumptions, the carbon tax will cost a year’s national income: that is, $1 trillion.
If that $1 trillion saved us from policies that were even worse, it might be worth bearing. But the government is not proposing to scrap the myriad handouts that masquerade as climate change policies: rather, using the proceeds from the tax, it intends to vastly scale them up. And that means we lose twice: first, through the harm the tax causes; and then a second time, by squandering the moneys it collects.
Nowhere is that clearer than with the government’s sop to the Greens, the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The path it will take, of subsidies to renewable energy technologies, is well-trodden, not least by the US government. The recent spectacular failure of Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that received over $US500 million in US government loans, highlights the waste such programs invariably involve.
For this is spending without any sensible purpose. There is no evidence of under-investment in renewables: rather, global investment in renewable energy has reached record highs, with annual outlays exceeding $200bn. Indeed, the concern is that too much money is chasing too few ideas, while on the manufacturing side capacity has expanded ahead of demand. Getting into this activity now is as sensible as the Hawke government’s Multi-Function Polis, which sought to launch Australia into electronics just as the world market plunged into a profitless glut.
The Multi-Function Polis was laughable. The CEFC, in contrast, is plain irrational. After all, our comparative advantage lies in abundant natural resources, including vast reserves of coal and uranium. Were the CEFC investing in stimulating world use of those resources, it might add to our national wealth. But to appease the Greens, it will stay well away from anything that involves coal or nuclear, and actively promote technologies that replace them. So if it works, taxpayer dollars will have been used to erode, not enhance, the basis of our prosperity.
Fri 14 Oct 11 (09:01am)
I agree, the Left’s tool for control is dependency.
As FA Hayek wrote, this leads down The Road to Serfdom.
Fri 14 Oct 11 (03:11pm)
It is amazing how the content changes but the policies of the Left remain the same.
Here is Reagan in the 60s warning against moving to the Left (or down as he put it):
The birthrate paradox
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, October 12, 11 (05:39 pm)
THE birthrate paradox is the phenomenon that the fewer children in a society, the more childishly the adults behave.
Carbon Wednesday - the view from New England and Lyne
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, October 12, 11 (10:45 am)
SO-called Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott might have been basking in the praise of Labor and Greens MPs after the carbon tax legislation was passed in the lower house today, thanks to their votes.
There is now proof beyond a reasonable doubt. No one can think otherwise. The results are in. There is no decent upstanding member of parliament for the ALP in the lower house. Even with Mirabella sidelined it wouldn’t have taken much to upset the apple cart. I am still hopeful that this legislation won’t be in effect in the future. There is no environmental need to tax Carbon Dioxide, or plant food. But I get it that the pork barrels that will result are desirable for the pigs in the trough
Wed 12 Oct 11 (11:34am)
Wed 12 Oct 11 (03:23pm)
DD Ball, you are right. They are politicians first and foremost. The ALP have shown they do not care about the harm, pain and suffering they inflict on their fellow human beings in many ways. And those people who vote ALP are of the same mind. I and many others have suffered as a result of their actions.
Thu 13 Oct 11 (08:20am)
DD ....I’m so gald that carbon monoxide isn’t being TAXED.
Just plant food.
And would those pigs in the trough be the merchant bankers or the dole bludggers… Fine bedfellows for the redistribution of wealth socialist conspiricy theory…
Watch me pull an Aabbit out of my hat…
… is from page 203 of Thomas Sowell’s 1995 book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy:
To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society.”
BOAT MAGNET BLAMES ABBOTT
Tim Blair – Friday, October 14, 11 (11:55 am)
A reminder of how things came to be:
In an interview with Laurie Oakes on June 27, 2007, Gillard said: “I was the substantive authorof a policy paper which became Labor’s policy. It was called Protecting Australia, Protecting the Australian Way.”
That paper, she said, contained “the underpinnings” of the asylum seeker policies adopted by the Rudd Labor government.
We all know how that worked out: hundreds more boats, thousands of new arrivals, many detention centres filled to capacity. But now hear this from the “substantive author” of the policies that led to the current situation:
As a result of the conduct of Mr Abbott, we are at a real risk of seeing more boats.
Wow. Just wow.
UPDATE. The government has barely done a thing about ongoing disputes between Qantas and unions that have caused flight delays and cancellations across Australia. It ain’t their problem:
While thousands of passengers were stranded at airports around the country last night, more than a dozen federal MPs flew home aboard a luxury VIP jet.
The first of the Defence Department special purpose flights, put on to avoid the Qantas baggage handlers strike, flew out of Canberra about 5.30pm after parliament had risen for a two-week break.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd was given his own plane to fly to Sydney where he was to deliver a speech last night.
How was the food, Kev?
UPDATE II. Julia Gillard, brave thinker!
The Atlantic has named Ms Gillard, along with late Apple CEO Steve Jobs and US president Barack Obama, in its list of 21 people who have “risked their reputations” in pursuit of “big ideas”.
Too bad they didn’t get her name right.
SMART MONEY’S ON STEWIE
Tim Blair – Friday, October 14, 11 (11:52 am)
Investigative journalist Wendy Williams probes rumours of a fake Beyonce pregnancy:
She’s either giving birth to a Frisbee or Stewie from Family Guy. Look at the shape!
Well, OK:
THE MARGO INQUIRY
Tim Blair – Friday, October 14, 11 (10:50 am)
Margo Kingston may have retired from her former role as the lone defender of Australian democracy, but she remains a powerful figure. Way back in July the ex-Webdiarist led demands for a government media inquiry:
Murdoch was dead keen on invading Iraq. Maybe he started the war, behind the scenes!Nothing seems impossible to believe any more....
I’ve just signed an online petition asking Gillard to call an inquiry here.
How could the Prime Minister possibly resist? Her work done, Margo returns to a life beyond politics:
To update, I’m a second year nursing student looking forward to being useful.
(Via Chris)
Bolt Report on Sunday
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (06:21 pm)
On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am - our guest is Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
Don’t bank on this tax
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (06:00 pm)
Tony Abbott gives fair warning - which might help to limit the compensation claims afterwards:
TONY Abbott has warned businesses not to buy future-dated emissions permits under the Gillard government’s carbon tax scheme, in a threat branded “reckless” by Labor.
Adding to the uncertainty surrounding the tax, the Opposition Leader said firms purchasing emissions permits should do so in the knowledge the scheme would be shut down if the Coalition won the next election.“We will repeal this legislation. We will dismantle the bureaucracies it has spawned,” Mr Abbott told a Menzies Research Centre tax roundtable in Sydney.
“And we give businesses fair warning not buy forward permits under a tax regime that will be closed down.”
(Thanks to reader Robert.)
Pickering explains
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (05:56 pm)
Cartoonist Larry Pickering on the climate change grants process.... but warning, do not read on if bad language offends…
Faine interviews one of the two Prime Ministers
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (09:59 am)
ABC Melbourne host Jon Faine offended Prime Minister Julia Gillard today by using sarcasm, mockery and derisory language, not least by twice referring to her one of our two current Prime Ministers. Sharp words ensue. Listen here. Isn’t robust free speech fun?
(Thanks to reader Keith.)
Deafness is an ability, and don’t you dare say differently
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (06:04 am)
Our ability to hold a fearless conversation between adults is becoming harder by the preposterous day:
A PROMINENT educator on disabled children is under attack from the deaf community after reports that she described deafness ‘’as a scourge in our world’’ during an awards ceremony.
The remarks by Dr Dimity Dornan, director of Brisbane-based organisation Hear and Say, were made when she was named Telstra’s Queensland Businesswoman of the Year on Tuesday.
Reports of her acceptance speech have enraged several deaf and disability associations. Deaf Victoria and the Deaf Association of New South Wales have called on Dr Dornan to apologise, a FaceBook page called Stop Deaf Cultural Genocide was joined by 465 people in less than a day, andonline petitions call for the doctor to be prosecuted for vilification....Federal Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes said he understood the deaf community’s concerns about the speech but Australia had no disability vilification laws ...
Yet.
UPDATE
Reader Doubting Thomas, made deaf through industrial noise:
Some few years later, I was fortunate enough to receive a cochlear implant in one ear and, last Christmas - 10 years after my first - I received another in my other ear. My hearing is now such that if the technology had been available at all relevant times, I need not have retired until my mandatory retirement age…
What you may not be aware of is that there are (at least) two distinct “ideologies” within the deaf community… Firstly, there are the congenitally deaf. These are those who, before cochlear implants, tended to be educated in special schools and to use sign language between themselves and their families and friends (who are motivated enough and take the trouble to learn AUSLAN). Their degree of deafness ranges from mild to profound, with the former having relatively little difficulty coping in the hearing world, while the latter often find it almost impossible. It is from this relatively small minority (and particularly from their families) that the deaf activists are drawn.
These are the group who tend to see themselves among the “differently abled”. These are the group who tend to see themselves as belonging to a separate deaf culture and, at the extreme, to see Professor Bill Gibson and other otologists involved in cochlear implants as
perpetrators of genocide. (I’m not making this up!) ... . Again, at the extreme, there are “deaf culturalists” - particularly those with several generations of congenital deafness in their families - who oppose any form of therapy or training that will enable or encourage their children to attend normal schools and to gravitate to the “real” world thus, as they see it, undermining their “culture”.And then there are the rest of us - the late-deafened vast majority ranging from those, such as I, who were deafened relatively young by “industrial” noise pollution or by some other disease or trauma cause, through those who became progressively deafer simply through the normal aging process. It is the problems of this vast majority that, I’m sure, motivated Dr Dornan to describe deafness as a scourge in our world. Indeed, I would go further and argue that, for avoidable conditions, it is thescourge of our modern age. The modern trend for young people to immerse themselves in extremely loud music, will result in an entire generation of people with irreversibly damaged hearing who will be forced out of their preferred occupations at a relatively early age....
it’s important that Dr Dornan gets as much support as possible for speaking nothing but the unvarnished and what ought to be the absolutely uncontroversial truth.
UPDATE
From the Daily Mail:
A baby boy was born deaf because that is what a lesbian couple wanted.
Gauvin Duchesneau-McCullough’s parents, who have been deaf since birth, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure their child would share their disability. They have even denied him a hearing aid.In a case which has renewed calls for tighter controls over the creation of designer babies, Sharon Duchesneau and Candy Mc Cullough first approached a series of sperm banks looking for a donor who suffered from congenital deafness…
During her pregnancy Duchesneau said that a baby with normal hearing would be ‘a blessing’, but then added: ‘A deaf baby would be a special blessing. It would be nice to have a deaf child who is the same as us.’…On a website, Duchesneau said their baby would get far more love than most, and would enjoy all the benefits of being deaf.
‘As deaf Americans we get the advantage of experiencing the world in a different way. With an enhanced sense of smell, touch and sight,’ she wrote, ‘Gauvin is not disabled, he is blessed.’
A sympathetic view of this case, from 2002:
Reproduction should be about having children who have the best prospects. But to discover what are the best prospects, we must give individual couples the freedom to act on their own value judgment of what constitutes a life of prospect. “Experiments in reproduction” are as important as “experiments in living” as long as they don’t harm the children who are produced. For this reason, reproductive freedom is important. It is easy to grant people the freedom to do what is agreeable to us; freedom is important only when it is the freedom for people to do what is disagreeable to others.
Not neutral, and thus can’t stay
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (05:54 am)
A cheap stunt, with the Greens colluding with a supposedly neutral bureaucrat to extract more money from unsuspecting taxpayers:
Former NSW premier Bob Carr said yesterday Mr Asher, who wrote a script of questions for the Greens to put to him in a committee hearing in May, had smashed the credibility of his independent office and made it appear he was working with a political party. He also accused Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who asked the Ombudsman his own questions at the hearing, of unethical behaviour for allowing herself to be used.
Julia Gillard was also critical of Ms Asher’s conduct, saying last night through a spokesman that she had “expressed concern” to the head of her department, Ian Watt, about the impartiality and independence of the ombudsman’s office
Chris Merritt nails the issue - that this is a fraud on the public:
THE great tragedy of Allan Asher is that the Ombudsman does not yet realise he has inflicted a fatal blow to his public standing.
His high office is unlikely to recover until it is occupied by someone else.
Asher has shown he was a willing player in a grubby charade....
His secret agreement with the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young means they have colluded to produce a fake exercise in parliamentary democracy… Instead of answering to parliament, which is the purpose of estimates hearings, Asher and Hanson-Young turned the tables and neutralised this important check on public administration.
This shows little understanding of the concept of responsible government. In theory, the executive and its officials are supposed to be held responsible to the will of parliament, not the other way around.
The Seinfeld tax: spending big for a show about nothing
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (05:40 am)
Henry Ergas counts the incredible cost of a tax that won’t cool the planet:
But even on Treasury’s assumptions, the carbon tax will cost a year’s national income: that is, $1 trillion.
If that $1 trillion saved us from policies that were even worse, it might be worth bearing. But the government is not proposing to scrap the myriad handouts that masquerade as climate change policies: rather, using the proceeds from the tax, it intends to vastly scale them up. And that means we lose twice: first, through the harm the tax causes; and then a second time, by squandering the moneys it collects.
Nowhere is that clearer than with the government’s sop to the Greens, the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The path it will take, of subsidies to renewable energy technologies, is well-trodden....(This) is spending without any sensible purpose. There is no evidence of under-investment in renewables: rather, global investment in renewable energy has reached record highs, with annual outlays exceeding $200bn. Indeed, the concern is that too much money is chasing too few ideas, while on the manufacturing side capacity has expanded ahead of demand. Getting into this activity now is as sensible as the Hawke government’s Multi-Function Polis, which sought to launch Australia into electronics just as the world market plunged into a profitless glut.
(Thanks to reader CA.)
No comment
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (05:30 am)
Tamika Chesser, 21, a former contestant of the reality television show Beauty and the Geek, was to have faced Southport Magistrates Court this morning to dispute allegations she struck a police officer after being arrested for public drunkenness back in April....
However, Chesser later made contact with lawyers from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service and the case went ahead in her absence this morning.
She was fined $800 for charges of assaulting police, obstructing police and public drunkenness.No conviction was recorded.
(No comments for legal reasons. Thanks to reader Jono.)
Gillard’s judgment is the issue
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 14, 11 (04:51 am)
I can’t see how any Labor MPs can still have any faith in Julia Gillard’s political judgment:
THERE was silence in caucus as Julia Gillard told her colleagues that she would shelve her pursuit of legislation to allow her Malaysian asylum-seeker solution to proceed.
One MP described it as a “stunned silence”, another described the atmosphere as an “air of resignation. This was an inevitable outcome”....
Labor Party critics were pointing to yesterday’s decision not to proceed with the bill as an indictment on her political judgment or, as one put it, a decision that would “go down like a fart in a lift”. “This will play badly everywhere,” one MP said....
Her critics were incredulous that Ms Gillard continued to push ahead with the bill for weeks despite knowing the opposition would not support it and it faced inevitable defeat in the Senate. By doing so, they say, she had dragged out the issue, made the government look impotent and forced it to reach a decision it would have made anyway in light of the fact that Malaysia was no longer open to it.
“We’ve now had an extra month of being portrayed as incompetent,” one MP said. “And now we’ve been shown to be struggling to get bills through the lower house . . . This has been a total balls-up.”
This self-inflicted wound matters because Gillard’s political strategy is to hang tough after having brought in the carbon dioxide tax and offer steady government while voters gradually realised the sky hadn’t fallen in.
That strategy depends entirely on Gillard being a competent leader who will not only deliver the tax faultlessly, but not make many more blunders.
Yesterday told Labor this was a false hope.
UPDATE
The Daily Telegraph finds the gloom spreading:
Dejected Labor MPs, previously supportive of the PM, last night conceded her leadership was crippled due to her failed border protection policy. They also raised questions about how long Mr Bowen could remain in the portfolio.
But several of Ms Gillard’s backers in caucus sent a warning to MPs who might be considering swinging behind Kevin Rudd to take back the leadership, threatening she would quit parliament and vacate her seat if they tried to blast her out of the job.
UPDATE
There are really three issues of political judgment here. Who is the blame for dismantling the border protection regime that worked? Who is to blame for failing to create a new one that works? And who lost the purely political battle that ended in yesterday’s surrender?
Greg Sheridan is inclined to at least share the blame in answering question two:
The opposition deserves censure for the intensely irresponsible decision to deny the government the legislative tools necessary to enact the Malaysia Solution, and thereby ensure all offshore processing is legal.
But on questions one and three, even Sheridan’s attempt to be even-handed becomes an indictment of Labor in general and Gillard in particular:
The Prime Minister says more boats will come; this is the same as welcoming more boats.
It makes a mockery of the government’s previous position that it is not Australian policy, or pull factors, but the conditions in the source countries, or push factors, that cause this determined illegal immigration.
As Julia Gillard acknowledges, it is Australia putting permanent residency on the table that attracts people, and will likely now attract them in their thousands.
The government’s management measures - quicker processing, bridging visas, community detention - are simply a form of surrender. There is now no disincentive for anyone who wants to live in Australia, claim Medicare, get welfare payments, avail themselves of government schools and all the rest not to jump on a boat. Illegal entry by boats will now be quicker, easier and cheaper than the lengthy process of trying to come here as an immigrant.
No comments:
Post a Comment