Carbon tax is like a stink bomb in a very small car
Piers Akerman – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:37 am)
Despite the kisses, the high-fives, the back slapping and the phony bon homie which accompanied the passage of the Labor-Green-independent carbon dioxide tax last week an overwhelming majority of voters think it stinks worse than rotten egg gas.
Hi Piers, love your work. I agree with you completely on this rediculous tax and so do the majority of Aussies and this is why, the carbon tax is a tax that will be imposed with the intention to combat climate change that does absolutely nothing to combat climate change! I enjoyed your article yesterday and would really love you to do a complete hatchet job on those two morons Oakeshott and Windsor, I really think they’re not copping enough heat for siding with this complete and utter rabble we have the misfortune of having as our Govt. Cheers, Hugh.
Mon 17 Oct 11 (06:20am)
Mon 17 Oct 11 (08:38am)
The other matter that needs exposure is the idealogical base Gillard and her fabian colleagues are pursuing. You know where they are big brother and the animal farm pigs. This is against our constitutional sovereignty and needs to be exposed as we are hurtling down the government controlling everything path.....
Mon 17 Oct 11 (10:59am)
Hold Oakshott’s feet to this hot comment:
“The reason I pulled the plug on our meetings was they were feeding me honey in Canberra and vinegar in my electorate and I believe in honesty in politics, they can either be fair dinkum or they not.”
Which part of this pledge is honest, Rob?
Mon 17 Oct 11 (02:04pm)
While I broadly agree, I don’t feel you need to do a hatchet job. Merely reporting the truth, as you do does more than any spinner does. I note even the Telegraph lets loose with such phrases like “tax opposed despite all the discussion” or “Abbott claims” or any of many other red rags waved to infuriate readers.
Piers, you do a brilliant job and I thank you for not bowing to those who bend the truth.
Mon 17 Oct 11 (03:43pm)
Hugh G, Oakeshott and Windsor for some reason seem to
totally escape repudiation in the non commentary, editorial parts of the media we have in WA. That basically is the West
Australian and The Australian. They are never called to account for crossing their electorates. Under Stokes the West Australian
turned very left in its writings but the Australian editors seem to
avoid anything but generalisations in these circumstances.
The Australian editorial on Saturday showed the problem. It gave a heap on democracy and how good it was in Australia after people say Julia betrayed the democratic process. However, the writer couldnt find a way of justifying the lies within
his/her democratic treatise.
It’s certainty: tax is political death
Piers Akerman – Saturday, October 15, 11 (08:43 pm)
WHEN Julia Gillard told the Australian public she would govern with the aid of the Greens and the independents, she did not say she would govern with the assistance of the Opposition.
Now she says the Opposition and its leader Tony Abbott are to blame for her failure to protect border security.
Truly, she is beyond a joke.
Piers,
It does not make sense because there is another far more subtle game in play. Remember that this legislation is the culmination of at least 20 years of behind the scenes, bureaucratic beavering at an agenda.
While an ETS seems to be the end play, it’s this system which I suspect will be used to replace the fast becoming bankrupt fiat money system globally in use. Paper money is fast becoming worthless, but what to replace it with?
Carbon trading permits?
We have an economic crisis and it is moot whether it was engineered for political purposes or from plain common socialist stupidity; perhaps a mixture of both.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:04pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:40am)
I dismiss it as being nothing more than mere opportunism. The global conspiracy thingy seems to suggest they are much smarter than they are. It is easily explained as wedge politics and dumb politics.
Gillard is not a great negotiator. She is a bully, negotiating from strength into weakness, as she has done, putting Australia in a weaker position. Obama is similar in ability, having managed to alienate or eliminate his supporters in the Middle East while betraying US peoples, Jews and desperate migrants.
I know stories of great negotiators. John Howard was a great negotiator. He met with the leader of the Liberal party, then being Downer, for lunch, and walked away as leader and from his underdog position, took on the vastly inflated Keating and won elections for more than a decade, prospering Australia. Or Richard Milhous Nixon, who negotiated with China when the UN wouldn’t recognise her. Nixon was later invited to negotiate with China again by President Bush Sr. Of course his critics would say his diplomacy was meaningless and achieved nothing. But look at China now and imagine her with the belligerent stance she had had before Nixon visited.
Great negotiation does not have to be recognised and admired. Hawke was, but he wasn’t great, just overvalued. Gillard, and Obama are just not in the same small master class as the others, they are in the big class, marked failures.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:04pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (07:58am)
DD Ball, you are 100% right.
Miss (Junk Negoshiadar) Gillard sold her soul to the Greens and the Independents to get into the Lodge. She was dealing with a combination of greed and vengeance. She had deceit and duplicity on board as well as the support of her media chums. This is not negotiating.
When Miss (Devious) Gillard’s stars are aligned, she can negoshiade (a la the carbon tax) and when push come to shove she can certainly push and she can certainly shove and she can certainly name-call but she can’t negoshiade to save herself (a la the Malaysian Solution, East Timor and the mining tax etc, etc).
Miss Gillard’s negotiating skills are in the same class as her competence. Both have been over-rated. 
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:36am)
Yes, Laura, we haven’t actually seen her negotiate. There is a liberal view of negotiation that says it is anything that allows a transaction, and this is what allows Gillard to say she negotiates. But then there is the classical form of negotiator, a person who meaningfully catalyses transactions, and this is not something we have seen Gillard do.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (02:33pm)
No, she’s definitely not a negotiator, or even a negoshiador.
She is a neg-o-see-ata. Said slowly for us imbeciles, with emphasis on the “see”.
The day can’t come soon enough when I hear the last of that rotten voice. I might even be able to sit through the farewell speech albeit, with bucket between the knees and tissues to mop up the tears of joy.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (02:39pm)
Like most people, when Gillard appears on screen, I reach for the mute button. In this house it is always called the Gillard button. Her monotonous tone, the waving fists punching the air with studied timing, her entire range [small] of performances are sometimes greeted with guffaws. Surely her own party must view her actions with horror. She is a misfit,her front bench and the noddies behind her match her perfectly.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (03:42pm)
Oh Fanny, how could I have got it wrong. I stand corrected. You’re 100% right. The word I should have used is indeed neg-o-see-ata or neg-o-see-ate. Thank you. By the way Fannyare you by any chance Caz? You sound a lot like her. That’s a compliment. 
DD Ball, I suppose the Mafia boss who holds a gun to someone’s head and gives them an offer they can’t refuse is also a good negotiator?
jn, what about Gillard’s head-bobbing/nodding pigeon movements? Arrrggghhh! Every aspect of this woman’s horrible public repertoire drives me demented. I do like your idea of the Gillard button. I also turn her off. Can not cope with her at all, on any level. Someone should design a game where, when you press a button or click on something, Gillard gets dunked in water. Some enterprising person stands to make a fortune. 
By the way for anyone interested, I see Gillard’s grey roots are showing! Hey Timmy, do something, Jules has a wedding this weekend!.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (04:37pm)
Oops, sorry Franny, I called you Fanny by mistake! 
Sun 16 Oct 11 (07:42pm)
David I would not say Keating had any justification to feel vastly inflated. His approval ratings were only at 40% in November 1994. It appeared as soon as Howard became leader in January 1995 he was dead meat.
The majority of the commercial media sided with Howard. Even Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 report gave it to Keating, so did Laurie Oakes on the Sunday Program, Glenn Milne on Channel Seven and many others, except Peter Luck. Paul Keating’s stimulus package One Nation was a joke. Repairing railway bridges in the middle of nowhere no offence to the people of Grafton, Casino or Kyogle. OK if you’re a John Holland contractor, but it did not offer much for the majority in the surrounding area. It came too late anyway there is a great span of time between November 1990 and February 1992 when it was announced.
Personally David, I don’t know what you see in Howard. Back then I thought he was yesterday’s man. I thought the same when he left. It was a pity Malcolm Turnbull did not become the Member for Wentworth in 1993. Good leaders are good orators, Whitlam had this quality. Unfortunately he had nothing else.
IMHO Tony Abbott is superior product to John Howard. His voluntary work with the bushfire brigade and with indigenous people is testament to this. John Howard acted like an accountant from Auckland not so much a lawyer. Please tell me somebody what volunteer work did he do?
True conservative not forward thinking at all. True Liberalism should mean forward thinking. Most recent, if not all American Presidents have these qualities from President Obama back down the historical scale. President Richard Nixon was one of them. He brought an end to the bad situation in Vietnam, he opened dialogue with the PRC. Although the term Liberalism has a different meaning in an American context as many here would know.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (09:11pm)
Hi Laura, sorry I didn’t reply earlier.
No, sadly I’m not Caz, but I enjoy both of your posts.
I’m usually a Bolt blogger but like to pop over to Piers and Blair for a different perspective. Have seen you at Bolt’s too and like your work. Thanks for the compliment.
Cheers!
Sun 16 Oct 11 (10:54pm)
I meant to mention another great negotiator many don’t give credit to. President GW Bush did several brilliant ones, from forging a coalition while being undermined by Gore, Pelosi, Hilary Clinton and the UN. He also got a troop surge against conventional wisdom with a hostile congress. An amazing man whose Presidency will be evaluated favorably with Reagan.
A kindergarten child could see through Gillard’s bizarre logic that Tony Abbott is to blame for the influx of boat people -
Destroying Howard’s successful solution plus bringing in an unsuccessful solution equals Tony Abott’s fault.
This is Gillard’s equation.
She expects grown adults to buy this.
This is one plus one equals three stuff.
Here is another equation -
Gillard’s nonsense plus Australia’s common sense equals political oblivion for Gillard.
JJ.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:05pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (08:40am)
Fully agree with your comments.Worth keeping in ming Pier’s article above(no criticism and spot on) only scratches the surface of the ALP bungling they have inflicted on the Australian people. The untold millions of dollars spent in Malaysia prior to the present situation and the bonus 4000, the chartered aircraft cost’s, the cost of Federal Police and medical availability to the illegal refugees,the cost of Defence personell, the 4 star accomodation motels for the illegal refugees and I would not be surprised whatever figure was shown re. the administrative costs associated with all this mess.Only some of the of the “rest of the story”.I hope Julia Gillard reads this blog and hangs her head in shame when she equates her mess with the less fortunate in our community, pensioner’s doing it tough ,carer’s and the un-named charity organisers who have to battle for every cent just to name a few. Please think about all of this before you support (to use Pier’s analogy)this VACUUM of a disasterous ALP/Greeeen Government.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:37am)
To Mishazoe -
Well said.
What would the entire cost of Labor’s bungling of our border protection be?
Imagine ...
The lives lost at sea .. does Gillard lose sleep at night thinking about this?
What would the entire cost of all Labor’s bungling - across the board - be?
The figure would fall off the edge of the page.
Socialism is self-harm.
Socialism is a path trodden by the naive.
Socialism is bankruptcy.
Socialism is people dying (in roofs, at sea, in beds ..).
Socialism is a power trip for egomaniacs.
Socialism is where people are used by velvet-tongued spin peddlers.
Socialism is a foe of all humankind -
It always was and always will be.
When humanity has learnt her lesson, then will it die.
John Jay.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:42am)
Kindergarten children have an unfair advantage over Gillard. They learn.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (01:13pm)
Just like Kristina Kennealy wants to be seen as the ‘victim’ because Barry O’Farrell will not agree to providing her with a car plus driver etc to do her charity work with.
Kristina Kennealy was never elected Premier, she was slotted in and didn’t even serve the full term, so therefore should not be entitled to any Taxpayer funded benefits. Nathan Rees was not elected either, but it was Kristina Kennealy that agreed that he should have all the perks. That is her decision.
There are many Australians who do valuable charity work without Taxpayer funded perks, without cameras in tow, without making a big public deal of it.
So Barry O’Farrell is being touted as a ‘ meanie’ . Come on, PLEASE! Lets get real here. Just goes to show how ill informed the lefitst media really are. Enough is enough!
Kudos to Barry O’Farrell, a strong and sure footed Premier. Well done and THANK YOU.
Call off the thought police
Miranda Devine – Saturday, October 15, 11 (08:52 pm)
WITH its intolerance and standover tactics, the more militant arm of the gay lobby is shooting itself in the foot.
When do the militants become the movement. The Gay lobby is not alone in being lead by a vocal and at times violent group who neither debate nor promote but abuse and debase. One can list a lot of minorities and find similar issues. Whites, Jews, Africans, Asians, South Americans, Indians, Cambodians, Cubans, Venezualans, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Irish, Burmese, Christians, Islamists, Buddhists, Hindus, Protestants, Atheists, Witches, ..
It becomes offensive when, as with the Bolt case, justice seems to support abuse.
Tolerance is preached but must be practiced. It becomes a verb like compassion. The abysmal joke is the winner of the Sydney Peace Prize in any year.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:18pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (03:45pm)
Marriage is a contract between a man and a woman to stay together long enough to have kids grow to independence. (Maybe to have grand kids too).
Gays cant have kids. There is no impediment to gays living together as a couple, so they should simply invent a name for their relationship. No matter how much you love your dog calling it cat does not make it a cat.
Gays should not adopt kids unless they are absolutely certain the kids are homosexual. A heterosexual child in a homosexual home would grow up totally confused.
There is far too much emphasis on sex. Sex is about producing children. The fact that it is fun is Gods way to encourage people to have kids.
There is a difference between homosexuals and gays. Homosexuals are 2 people of the same sex that love each other, gays are people of the same sex that have multiple partners and love sex.
Gay heterosexual are no better than gay homosexuals at being a parent.
[Wallace wants political leaders to declare “people who stand up for marriage are not bigoted gay haters”.]
Oh come now, Gay people who want to marry each other are hardly attacking marriage - in fact, the contrary. Excluding them is about excluding them (and privileging heterosexuality), not about defending marriage. Whatever our views, let’s be honest and call it what it is without wrapping it in a flag.
[Whatever your view on gay marriage, the debate’s illiberal nature should offend all civilised people. Intolerance does not beget tolerance.]
Indeed. And charity begins at home. I guess we could all ponder that to our benefit.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:32pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (09:29am)
The article is about the abuse and villification dished out by such lobby groups as the homosexual groups in order to stifle debate. If the other side used such tactics they would be hauled up before a court.
The issue is tolerance. This is not the same as pandering to peoples every wish. Polls show that the majority of people in Australia do not support the marriage act being changed but have been accepting of legislative structures being set up which give homosexual couples similar rights as marriage does. This does not suit the lobbyists, however, because they are fanatics. Sir Winston Churchills definition of a fanatic is someone who can not change their mind and will not change the subject. It should be realised that the demands of these fanatics will not stop with this but will simple move on to the next set of “Rights” to be demanded at the expense of the rest of the communities wishes.
I believe that the Government should take these devisive issues to a plebiscite so that the will of the Australian people can clearly be shown.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:28am)
I have no problem with gay civil union. As a person who ran to make legislature I am on record as saying that my sole concern with this issue is that gay marriage being legalised would be abused to force churches to act against their collective conscience and constitution. It is a religious institution and I don’t think the state should rule on the religious, or the religious over the state. I have never had any apologist for gay marriage engage in this aspect of the debate.
Under our Green/Labor government this sort of fascism is acceptable.
Sat 15 Oct 11 (11:58pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:29am)
It still isn’t acceptable, however it is laughable and possible,
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:33am)
It is? Abbott would probably have gays sent to Nauru!
Sun 16 Oct 11 (07:19pm)
Of course Lazlo, the politicians ETC CETERA will always use the PC word gays instead of the proper accurate word which I cannot print here.
Personally, I am sick to death of gay bullying forcing their perceived rights down our throats.
To the best of my knowledge gays already have all the legal rights afforded to heterosexual relationships. Family court recognises de facto marriage, property rights are protected by law. Further, no-fault divorce makes marriage meaningless without children. And they are not getting kids to feel good or inculcate the young into some sort of generational change for lifestyle acceptance.
This minor issue which effects less than 1% of the population has dominated media to the detriment and scrutiny of real issues.
I point out the Gillard’s family law amendments undermine the fundamental principles of Western jurisprudence, namely, the presumption of innocence and penalties for perjury, yet these will pass without one iota of media comment or public awareness.
These effect most of the population with more than half of nations marriages ending in divorce. Decent and loving parents will lose their kids, the redefinition of family violence to be whatever the accuser says it is will result in the mass criminalisation and incarceration of men, an estimated $10B costs for massive increases in welfare and dealing with all the social pathologies of mass fatherlessness, which in turn creates a self-perpetuating cycle of family dysfunction, dependence and abuse.
Yet all we hear about are gays whinging about label abstractions for rights they already have and for which they offer no more meaningful purpose other than to feel good at our discomfort.
What we are seeing here is Gillard’s feminist socialism attack on those who literally embody the hated “patriarchy”: fathers. It is a direct assault on the family at its most vulnerable point. It has already torn apart families by the millions, and unchecked it will destroy the family altogether.
It represents one of the most destructive (and successful) strategies of the socialist Left in recent years: the exploitation of children as political weapons. How often have we heard the Gillard mantra “for our children’s future” – when she has no children.
Children have become the levers by which one forces social change. Such understanding underlies the militancy of the gay rights agenda.
Conservatives and Christians who allow their attention to be monopolized by carbon tax and government financial management and leave family policy to socialists from the Australian Lesbian Party will discover only once it is too late the power of “the hand that rocks the cradle.”
Sun 16 Oct 11 (01:18am)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (07:59am)
Hate to be your lesbian child or gay grandson...what a joke “gay bullying” of the straights...spend a day watching how a gay teenager is treated at school and you’ll stop babbling nonsense..or maybe you would cheer on the attackers…
Sun 16 Oct 11 (09:41am)
[Personally, I am sick to death of gay bullying forcing their perceived rights down our throats.]
If only it was just their rights!! Thanks to the Australian Lesbian Party. Thanks very much.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:32am)
A bit over the top..howard.
Hated patriarchy?? In a Christian sense I suppose, women are servants!
‘The proposed changes were welcomed last night by former Family Court chief judge Alastair Nicholson, who said they were long overdue.
The changes, which are directed at cases involving abusive parents, elevate the safety of children to the top priority in custody disputes
He said the Howard government’s changes to the Family Law Act had not been thought through. “There was too much sound and fury and not enough proper analysis,” he said.’ (The Australian)
Decent and loving parents will lose their kids..wrong! It is about violence toward children. The evidence is considered by a Judge will determine outcomes.
Feel good at our discomfort? Why do you feel any discomfort? It won’t affect my marriage one iota!
‘....Leave family policy to socialists from the Australian Lesbian Party...’? Really? I don’t think so.
Your diatribe is underlined by a stream of distaste and vitriol. Gays have been put down, persecuted, beaten up, discriminated against, and treated as second class citizens for millennia. And I won’t go into the terrible outcomes for many young people because of the bullying etc.
There is a pervasive current of anti-gay sentiment right through many of the articles in today’s press. No one suggests that a ‘happy and good’ marriage is not best for children but that doesn’t always happen. Violence and abuse is rife in many marriages, especially against women.
Homosexuality is part of being human for some, we need to move on and it won’t have any influence on stable happy heterosexual marriages.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:32am)
Very well said. Thank you, Howard
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Capitol Hill
Dear Ms. Lee:
Fred Barnes reports in the Weekly Standard that you refuse to use computerized checkout lanes at supermarkets (“Boneheaded Economics,” Oct. 24). As you – who are described on your website as “progressive” – explain, “I refuse to do that. I know that’s a job or two or three that’s gone.”
Overlooking the fact that you overlook the lower prices on groceries made possible by this labor-saving technology, I’ve some questions for you:
Do you also avoid using computerized (“automatic”) elevators, riding only in those few that still use manual elevator operators?
Do you steer clear of newer automobiles equipped with technologies that enable them to go for 100,000 miles before needing a tune-up? I’m sure I can find for you, say, a 1972 Chevy Vega that will oblige you to employ countless mechanics.
Do you shun tubeless steel-belted radial tires on your car – you know, the kind that go flat far less often than do old-fashioned tires? No telling how many tire-repairing jobs have been destroyed by modern technology-infused tires.
Do you and your family refuse flu shots in order to increase your chances of requiring the services of nurses and M.D.s – and, if the economy gets lucky and you and yours get seriously ill, also of hospital orderlies and administrators? Someone as aware as you are of the full ramifications of your consumption choices surely takes account of the ill effects that flu shots have on the jobs of health-care providers.
You must, indeed, be distressed as you observe the appalling amount of labor-saving technologies in use throughout our economy. It is, alas, a disturbing trend that has been around for quite some time – since, really, the invention of the spear which destroyed the jobs of some hunters.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
….
(HT my buddy Lyle Albaugh)
UPDATE: My friend Wilson Mixon, from over at Division of Labour, e-mails to me this reaction to my letter to Rep. Lee:
The spear didn’t just destroy jobs. It (and even worse, the bow and arrow) dehumanized the whole process. How much more fulfilling it must have been to take on a boar mano a mano (or mano a colmillo). Think of the empathy and respect between predator and prey that the old fashioned way must have generated. No wonder we’re losing touch with nature and with our deeper, truer, fuller self. Ah, the (in)humanity!
… is from page 142 of Capital, Expectations, and the Market Process - a 1977 collection, edited by Walter Grinder, of some of Ludwig Lachmann’s finest academic papers; this quotation is from Lachmann’s 1954 article “Some Notes on Economic Thought, 1933-1953“:
It is difficult to avoid the impression that Keynes introduced expectations whenever it suited his argument, and left them out when it did not. Furthermore, in his Chapter 12 on “The State of Long-Term Expectation,” the famous diatribe against the Stock Exchange, it becomes painfully evident that Keynes failed to grasp the nature of the problem posed by the existence of inconsistent expectations. Instead of studying the process by which men in a market exchange knowledge with each other and thus gradually reduce the degree of inconsistency by their actions, he roundly condemned the most sensitive institution for the exchange of knowledge the market economy has ever produced!
It should be noted that Lachmann was more favorably disposed to Keynes’s economics than are most other economists who are heavily influenced by the Austrian tradition.
PUBLIC SERVANTS LOVE PRIVATE TRANSPORT
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (07:12 pm)
A green-friendly bus service in Canberra is cancelled because public servants prefer taxis:
Among the worst offenders were those from the Department of Climate Change. The bus used to stop right outside their office, but the department could cite only one instance in which the service had been used …
The bus also stopped every half-hour near the Australian Taxation Office, Customs Service, Defence Department and ASIO but, despite offering a low-cost and green ride to the airport, few if any public servants patronised the service.
Deane’s general manager Jeremy Wee said: “Public servants all have Cabcharge. Rather than jump on a bus and save the environment, they’d rather catch a cab.”
Hmmm. How many of these bus-shunning eco-frauds are members of GetUp?
SPARE CHANGE
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (04:28 pm)
This might take a while:
We are peaceful citizens from all walks of life looking to occupy Townsville until change occurs…
Back in Sydney, occupeople claim victory:
Indigo Davis-Sparke spent the weekend at the Sydney protest, and while she will not be able to maintain the vigil this week – she has to return to acting school – the 20-year-old believes the sit-in has already achieved its aim.
If that’s the case, why is Sydney still (semi) occupied?
Many occupiers have gone back to their jobs leaving a core group more than 40 people to hold the fort and engage with a very curious public.
Just like their Townsville comrades, they’re waiting for change. And here it comes:
I’m an investment banker for a major bank. I’m sick of these protesters. Look at them. They are the non achievers in society. I own 3 houses in Sydney and Melbourne. All from my own hard work. I bet they wouldn’t be protesting if they were in my shoes. If I see them on Monday morning as I arrive to work, I will throw them 20 cents.
UPDATE. This Blair’s Law caper is getting out of control:
Nazis and Communists Throw Their Support Behind Occupy Wall Street Movements
(Via Dan F.)
UPDATE II. Dan at RWDB writes:
Somewhere, deep inside Socialist Resistance headquarters, probably in between the archived anti-Bush and Howard puppets and “Land Rights for Gay Whales” placards is a whole section of signage, banners and placards against Israel.
Several of these state “End the Occupation”.
Finally got their wish.
UPDATE III. Oh, no. It’s Crazy Bill McKibben, our favourite enviropath.
LIB LEADER LEADING
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (06:11 am)
Thanks to Labor’s carbon tax, Tony Abbott is currently way in front:
The Coalition’s primary vote has now soared to a crushing 51 per cent, according to a Galaxy poll commissioned by The Daily Telegraph.
It is the largest primary vote the coalition has enjoyed in any poll since 1996 – when John Howard defeated Paul Keating – with Labor now stuck at a morale-sapping 29 per cent.
That translates to a two-party preferred lead of 58 per cent to 42 per cent, scarcely different to the latest Fairfax poll ("the government would be swept away in an election now by a two-party 57-43 per cent landslide"). Put at least some of that down to Australian resentment at being deceived.Errol Simper:
There was something vaguely jarring and irritating about all that Labor self-congratulation on Wednesday after the carbon tax legislation had gone through federal parliament’s lower house …
What was Labor celebrating? It was celebrating the successful breaking of a solemn promise, and it was difficult to shake off this feeling there was something faintly unfortunate about all those smiles and hugs and hand-clapping. What we saw, with respect, was a group of people unashamedly congratulating themselves on doing something their leader had soberly promised us they wouldn’t do.
Simper recalls a humiliating debate over this between the ABC’s Ali Moore and former climate change minister Penny Wong:
Moore: You can’t get much clearer than: ‘There’ll be no carbon tax under a government that I lead.’ Am I getting it wrong? Did I hear it wrong?
Wong: We can get into a semantic debate about that.
Moore: But it’s actually not semantics. There’s no semantics: ‘There’ll be no carbon tax under a government I lead’.
Wong: Well …
Meanwhile, Abbott is beginning to lay out non-semantic plans for progress:
While travelling through eastern Cape York with Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson yesterday, the Opposition Leader said the people of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia’s north had long demanded welfare reform …
Mr Abbott said he was a strong supporter of Mr Pearson’s welfare reforms, which took a “bottom-up” approach rather than the “unavoidably top-down imposition” of the NT intervention.
Abbott would do well to stay close to Pearson’s ideas, which have applications far beyond the Cape.
NEXT VISIT: JOHN EDWARDS
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:17 am)
If you’re accused of cheating on your wife, is it really the right time to attend a Clinton fundraiser?
GOT IT COVERED
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:05 am)
Besides this book’s other potential qualities, check the cover design. Simple but impressive, don’t you think? Now examine possibly the weakest cover in publishing history, assembled and approved by people without eyes or any notion of sales beyond an obsessive political tribe.
For the longest time, conservative publishing was handicapped by poor presentation. The left owned style. This may be turning around.
TIMING
Tim Blair – Monday, October 17, 11 (04:48 am)
Joe Queenan once identified a Time investment guide, based on the magazine’s history of ill-timed coverage:
By the time the world’s most popular and influential general-interest magazine does a cover story about a trend, the trend is just about over.
This week’s cover celebrates the Occupy movement:
You’re free to insult me, Minister insists
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:41 pm)
Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien denies the implication of a story yesterday that I repeated on my blog:
Claims in the Sunday Herald Sun yesterday that the Victorian Coalition Government is protecting the Minister for Gaming personally through amendments to gaming legislation are false and a misrepresentation of legislation before Parliament.
This legislation does not make it a general offence to insult the Minister. There is an amendment in the Gambling Regulation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2011 (at s 3.8.11) which is designed to protect public servants acting on behalf of the Minister for Gaming from serious types of bullying or intimidation in specific circumstances by certain persons relating to the inspection of gaming monitoring systems.
It is important that officials who perform lawful functions under gaming legislation are able to do their work unhindered and free from harassment. The Minister is referred to in these amendments only because the powers under the legislation belong to the Minister but are delegated to public servants to exercise on
his behalf…It is ridiculous to suggest that these laws will in some way personally apply to the Minister or make it an offence to personally insult the Minister.
UPDATE
I wondered why the Minister’s position seemed to be covered by the legislation, too, and whether that meant the Minister was therefore protected from abuse, too, even if the intention was to protect his delegates. The answer is that the amendments only protect the authorised officers (and the minister) only when they are checking out the electronic gaming machine monitoring systems. I’m not sure Ministers do that very often themselves.
Why is baaing so progressive?
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (01:56 pm)
I noted the bizarre group chanting of the Occupy Wall Street movement in The Bolt Report yesterday.
Here’s another mad example, starring warming alarmist Bill McKibben, who sometimes tests his audience’s recall with trickily long sentences:
Can anyone tell me which collectivist thought up this technique, and why we shouldn’t treat it as an embarrassing surrender of independent thought to the mob and its manipulators?
(Via Watts Up With That.)
UPDATE
This group-repeat “human mic” started because no sound systems were allowed at the original Occupy Wall Street protest. But then it became an ideological statement for even guys with megaphones:
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has trouble with the technique, and finally even he sees how stupid it all is - before correcting himself:
The technique allows a speaker to manipulate a mob into saying any damn crazy thought - and in saying it, begin to own it:
One Helen Caldicott sounding like Helen Caldicott is already too many, surely.
UPDATE
Freaky… Kanye West turns up at the Occupy Wall Street protest against “corporate greed” while wearing a huge gold chain around his neck, advertising the wealth he’s earned by making and producing records, opening Fatburger restaurants, releasing his own Nike shoe, and producing his own sneaker range for Louis Vuitton. Blind to the irony, he’s also struck dumb, leaving his friend to talk about his support for the protesters like he’s not actually standing right next to him.
If only their brains were occupied instead
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (11:11 am)
Collectivists of the world unite! Both the Nazi Party and the Communist Party of the US back the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I did say on yesterday’s Bolt Report that the instinct to baa was what united the Left and Right.
This is a movement which claims to speak on behalf of ordinary Americans, “the 99 per cent”. Yet its super-cool members spend most of their time moaning about how ordinary Americans, being a bit dumb, have been “emotionally brainwashed” by “right-wing propaganda"…
What we’re witnessing is not the birth of something new, as the occupiers would have us believe, but rather the death of something old - the death of a principled Left that believed in progress and development and in the ability of “the little man” to change his world for the better.
UPDATE
Mr. Vivona grew up in a working-class family on Staten Island and now lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife and two young children. He ... works “13- or 14-hour days"…
Mr. Hall said that he grew up in New Mexico and that both his parents were politically active lawyers… Mr. Hall said he attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh…
UPDATE
For people who claim to want a kinder, gentler world, they’re kind of ... aggressive:
UPDATE
Once a protest fad makes the cover of Time, does mean it’s over?
(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.)
Seen too much to scare again
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (08:56 am)
Live long enough, and you’ll live to laugh at so many green scares:
AT 73, former CSIRO engineer Denis Whitnall has seen many things—but rising sea levels isn’t one of them.
Looking out over the Pacific Ocean from the back of his waterfront property at Avoca, on the NSW central coast, Mr Whitnall shakes his head as he talks about a grim report commissioned by his local council in 1995 that predicted some houses along the beachfront, including his own, would be subject to flood risk.
“...Twenty feet (6m) of water is supposed to be covering my land (by 2015).”
Hazard lines included in Gosford City Council’s 1995 coastal management plan, obtained by The Australian, forecast a threat of flood for some waterfront homes by 2015, due to a combination of shoreline movement from a rise in the sea level and major storm events.
“The Avoca beach unit as a whole has been assessed as losing sand in the long term. This, together with sea level rise, will lead to shoreline retreat over time..,” the 1995 report says. However, 16 years after the release of the council’s warning, the shoreline remains about 100m from Mr Whitnall’s back door, where it was when his family acquired the property in 1951.
Mr Whitnall said while the 1995 report had been discredited, Gosford was among 55 coastal NSW councils “at it again” by using “flawed” data to warn of possible floods. “The data council is using from the 2007 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report has been shrouded in controversy since its release,” he said.
(Thanks to reader Chris.)
Good news! You’ll have to work for another 50 years
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (06:13 am)
To retire at 65 will seem a reckless indulgence:
THE first drugs that can slow the ageing process are likely to become available within five to 10 years,raising the prospect of people living to 150 or more, researchers say.
Peter Smith, dean of medicine at the University of NSW, said a girl born today in Australia could reasonably expect to live to 100 already, due to advances in medicine, lifestyle and public health.
Also, new drugs to help the body repair itself were in the early stages of development, along with new stem cell therapies.
Would 50 years in a nursing home appeal to many?
Welcome to Her Wetship
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:59 am)
The mayor’s arrival on a rainy day will be worth watching:
AN inner-city council is set to ditch the mayoral car in favour of a bicycle. Yarra Greens mayor Alison Clarke will push for the change at a council meeting tomorrow night.
But does this mean no one fat, old, disabled or unfit will be able to be mayor?
Nee to the Dutch
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:50 am)
A signal in New South Wales’ HSC enrolment figures of how assimilationist the Dutch are:
But it’s also one more sign of how Chinese language has given many Chinese-background students an unfair advantage.
Not fleeing, but overtaken
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (05:34 am)
It’s ludicrous to dress this up as some manifestation of our fabled racism:
A “WHITE flight” from elite selective high schools is entrenching ethnic segregation in Australia’s education system, according to a social researcher.
In a study of student language backgrounds in schools, Dr Christina Ho, of the University of Technology Sydney, found a clear pattern of cultural polarisation, with few Anglo-Australians in high-achieving selective entry government schools. Students from migrant families — mostly from Chinese, Indian and other Asian backgrounds — dominate the enrolments of the schools.
In Melbourne, 93 per cent of students at Mac.Robertson Girls High School and 88 per cent of pupils at Melbourne High School and Nossal High School are from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE), a category that also includes those from non-Asian backgrounds.
In Sydney, nine out of the top 10 highest performing selective schools have similar high percentages of LBOTE pupils, mainly from Asian backgrounds…
“The ‘white flight’ from these schools must partly reflect an unwillingness to send children to schools dominated by migrant-background children, which simply further entrenches this domination...”
Here’s several other possibilities I’d have thought far more likely, especially when I observe how many school orchestras seem to have a high proportion of Asian string players but a relatively lower proportion of, say, singers:
- On average, Asian and Indian immigrants put a higher value on academic achievement than do Anglo-Australian parents.
- On average, Asian and Indian immigrants tend to be more ambitious, as defined by career success. A high proportion, I would assume, are drawn from the aspirational middle class,
- On average, Asian and Indian students come from cultural backgrounds that stress hard work and study. “Australian” culture has for some time tended to consider hard study as too brain-hurty.
Then there are other possible cultural factors, such as differing notions of parental discipline and filial obedience, differing values on friendship over advancement and so on. Racism would be far lower on my list of possible explanations.
Blame her, the ministers cried
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (04:55 am)
Dennis Shanahan on the significance of the leaks that Julia Gillard overruled her Immigration Minister’s recommendation to reopen Nauru:
This cabinet leaking and undermining cannot be put down to Kevin Rudd’s campaign to be become leader again.
The leaks of cabinet differences on political and policy options for offshore processing show that a wide range of ministers are betraying the confidence of cabinet and they are doing so to protect themselves or damage rivals.…
For ministers to attempt to either justify their position or damage colleagues by exposing cabinet tensions not only fuels the impression Gillard is losing control in every area but also suggests senior ministers believe her leadership is terminal.
Part of the positioning over offshore processing policy is to sheet home responsibility to Gillard for the mess Labor is in.
Stephen Smith has all the qualifications. Before entering parliament in 1993 he had experience in the private sector and academe as a solicitor, lecturer and as an adviser to state and federal ministers including prime minister Paul Keating…
Few portfolios are as difficult as foreign affairs and defence but Smith handled both superbly. Always on top of his brief, he never hesitated no matter how difficult the question. He staked a claim as a future PM.
With degrees in mechanical engineering, economics and a graduate diploma in labour relations and law, none were surprised when Greg Combet became a union official in 1987 and secretary of the ACTU in 1999… His successful battle with shipping companies won everyone’s respect. He brought those qualities to Canberra, where as a parliamentary secretary he was an outstanding success. In near record time he became minister in the toughest portfolio of modern times: climate change....
Which brings us to Bill Shorten, former national secretary of the AWU… Like Combet he was elected in 2007 and immediately became parliamentary secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services.
Conventional wisdom has it that Rudd, already fearful of Shorten, gave him a dead-end portfolio. If true, Rudd failed miserably. Shorten, with the help of Jenny Macklin, convinced the government to get the Productivity Commission to undertake a review into potential for a National Disability Insurance Scheme.
UPDATE
The Right’s faction leaders reassure Gillard:
Faction leaders, including Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Sports Minister Mark Arbib, were among a small group who met the PM in her office on Thursday, after two Cabinet meetings where the idea of re-opening the Nauru detention centre was raised.
Sources said the faction heads made it clear their argument was on policy not leadership.
I’m not sure this will win over the voters Labor needs
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (04:29 am)
Chris Kenny is right to doubt that Labor’s abuse of citizens who disagree with it is a winning strategy:
A few dozen, largely middle-aged, protesters rudely interrupted parliament last week with their chant of “no mandate, democracy is dead”. From the floor of the chamber, Parliamentary Secretary and Member for Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, tweeted: “Couldn’t quite hear, thought it might have been something about dental plates and brain dead.”
It makes “let them eat cake” seem like empathising.
Incidentally, Kelly also seems to think that the Government’s carbon dioxide tax - which aims to cut the world’s expected temperature by at best between 4/1000s and 1/20,000 of a degree - has saved the snow in Eden Monaro:
Mike Kelly MP (MikeKellyMP) on Twitter
In air above beautiful EM on board the trusty Baron58. Still some snow on the alps. Glad we have acted to make sure will b snow 4 future
Labor poll axed
Andrew Bolt – Monday, October 17, 11 (04:04 am)
The Galaxy poll should terrify Labor, which partied after Wednesday’s vote on the carbon dioxide tax::
With the government’s asylum seeker policy also in disarray, the Coalition’s primary vote has now soared to a crushing 51 per cent, according to a Galaxy poll commissioned by The Daily Telegraph.
It is the largest primary vote the coalition has enjoyed in any poll since 1996 - when John Howard defeated Paul Keating - with Labor now stuck at a morale-sapping 29 per cent…
On a two party-preferred basis the Coalition now leads Labor 58 per cent to 42 per cent
The Nielsen poll is little better:
The latest Herald/Nielsen poll finds Labor’s primary vote has jumped 3 percentage points in a month to 30 per cent, a small increase but psychologically significant because it is the first time since May Labor’s first preference vote has been in the 30s.
The Coalition’s primary vote was steady at 48 per cent, giving it a two-party-preferred lead over Labor of 57 per cent to 43 per cent.
Stephen Smith is exposed as the candidate the Right wants to just buy insurance from Kevin Rudd - or to block him:
JUST as Labor’s Right faction is trying to rally support around Stephen Smith as the replacement for Julia Gillard, a new poll comes to an emphatic conclusion - don’t bother.
Today’s Herald-Nielsen poll shows that Smith is even less popular than Gillard, attracting 40 per cent against the Prime Minister’s 44 in a one-on-one comparison. And he has less than half the voter support enjoyed by Kevin Rudd.
“I don’t know why they keep bringing his name up,” the Herald’s pollster, Nielsen’s John Stirton, said. “Most people wouldn’t know who Smith was and couldn’t pick him in a line-up.”
...And Heiner’s coming!
Sat 15 Oct 11 (10:03pm)
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:38am)
Heiner could even play a role before the state election if the ALP wish to actually try to win government in Queensland again .. they could use it as a public bargaining chip to show they have changed. But I wouldn’t expect it.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (11:41am)
The day Abbott or any senior member of the Coalition stands up in Parliament or in front of the press gallery and talks about Heiner is the day that anyone will believe that there is any substance to the allegations that have been made about Rudd’s role in Heiner. The last thing I want to do is defend Rudd but I find it hypocritical that Coalition politicians will take Rudd to task over a visit to a strip club and then make no mention of his role in Heiner - which issue do you feel is more important?
reply: The Coalition did stand up for Heiner in the Senate but Labor, Greens and Fielding blocked further inquiry. Nice to see you back in all your ignorance.
Sun 16 Oct 11 (01:35pm)
We hope so. We look forward to the time when good men
at last act to expose those whose actions need exposing to
the cold light of day and public opinion.
Better late than never as the ALP falls domino like around the country
Sun 16 Oct 11 (04:22pm)
Bring it on!
But for the one vote of Senator Fielding on 23 June 2011, we would be now into a full-blown Senate Inquiry into the Heiner Affair.
Look at these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZK6nA-L1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVI3b0JSytI&feature=related
It is highly doubtful that you, General, have ever taken the time to examine the facts of this scandal, let alone ask yourself why would a goodly number of this nation’s most eminent legal minds lend their public support for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate the matter.
Don’t tell me that you are going to say that they are nothing more than right-wing conspiracy theorists!
Perhaps also, the Queensland Education Department is now peddling right-wing conspiracy theories by having the Heiner Affair as now a study matter of its OP syllabus since 2009?
Perhaps it because it stacks up that something is seriously wrong here which tell us all something and which needs addressing.?
Sun 16 Oct 11 (04:47pm)
Piers, the General is another who claims to be a conservative voters whilst constantly attacking Tony Abbott and his party. He and the huge Dick of Londonistan have something in common in that regard. They both have nothing to say about the disaster that has been the Green/Labor abortion but have PLENTY to say about the opposition.
With supporters like that who needs Laurie Oakes?
Sun 16 Oct 11 (07:24pm)
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
PARLIAMENT OF AUSTRALIA
WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 2008 P95 HANSARD
Heiner Affair and Lindeberg Grievance
Mr ABBOTT (Warringah) (7.40 pm)—
What has become known as the ‘Heiner affair’ is a serious blot on public administration in this country and a stain on the reputations of those who have obstructed getting to the bottom of it. In the late 1980s, not only was a Queensland juvenile justice centre systematically mismanaged but its inmates were subjected to sustained abuse, including, in at least one case, pack rape. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the principal victim of the matters investigated by Magistrate Heiner has had her life destroyed.
I regret to say that one of the first acts of the then Goss government in Queensland was to terminate the Heiner inquiry and then order the shredding of the evidence taken, even though that government was already on notice that the evidence could be required in court proceedings. Whatever the case was legally—and there is strong opinion that what the government did was illegal—morally this was an official attempt to pervert the course of justice. Every member of that cabinet has been complicit in a shameful cover-up and they should be man and woman enough to face up to that.
Four years ago, a Queensland Baptist pastor was jailed for destroying evidence of child abuse that might have been used in court proceedings. A man was jailed for doing, more innocently perhaps, what the Queensland cabinet had done. I want to say that an offence is not the less serious because it has been committed by numerous people acting in concert. Normally, in fact, the opposite is the case. So one man does wrong and he is jailed; the Queensland cabinet does wrong and its members suffer no adverse consequences at all.
Is it any wonder that so many people feel that there are double standards of justice even in this country?
Ever since then, a Queensland trade union official, Kevin Lindeberg, has tirelessly sought justice for the victims of this cover-up, and I congratulate him on his efforts. More recently, a prominent Sydney barrister, David Rofe QC, has prepared a compendium of evidence— a case for the prosecution, so to speak—setting out what has been done and by whom. Perhaps he has been too zealous a prosecutor. Even so, it is good that we still have people who burn to see justice done and injustice exposed. I want to make this point: people should not escape scrutiny on the grounds of their eminence.
It is a fundamental principle of British justice that, be you ever so high, the law is above you.
If they have done the same thing, cabinet ministers, premiers, senior public servants and judges should not escape the same punishment that befalls a misguided Baptist pastor. It is pretty clear that serious mistreatment, including sexual abuse, has over the years taken place in Queensland government institutions. The South Australian government has had the courage to face up to this in appointing the Mullighan inquiry, and I call on the Queensland government to also appoint a royal commission, which should, amongst other things, draw on the work of David Rofe QC to ensure that these mistakes are never made again.
Just because this matter happened some time ago does not mean that it should no longer be investigated.
Injustice is injustice, crime is crime, wrongdoing is wrongdoing and this particular matter cries out for rectification
The Heiner Affair - Abbott speech.
Mon 17 Oct 11 (11:25am)
Why is it that resolving the Heiner Affair and holding fresh federal elections is so important for our nation?
Well, they strike at the heart of what a civilized, democratic society is supposed to be about. They represent such serious challenges that if left in their current state they change us into being something which proponents of democracy and the rule of law want us to believe we are not.
The new low is that our vote no longer matters.
In the long struggle over many centuries to achieve representative democracies, the catch-cry, which united the people to fight against those who exercised and abused political power out of the privilege of either wealth or birthright, was “No taxation without representation!”
By achieving a representative democracy, we, the people, were assured within ourselves that any tax imposed by Parliament would have the input of our local Member of Parliament who represents our interests in Parliament, as outlined in a manifesto put to us, the people,before each election.
Once this contract between members of Parliament and the people (sealed by a secret vote) is seriously breached, we inevitably must enter into a dangerous zone of potential major public unrest because confidence in government must be lost.
No mature representative democracy ever wants to lose public confidence in its system of government.
So, when PM Gillard, supported by Treasurer Swan, assured the people before the 2010 federal election that ”There’ll be no carbon tax under the government I lead”, the people were entitled to believe her.
There were no if or buts; it was unequivocal, unqualified.
Last week, her public undertaking (which was in effect a manifesto/contact with the electorate) was breached, and then, as if to add salt to the wound and to demonstrate utter contempt for democracy itself, the ALP Government danced a jig on the floor of Parliament, exchanged hugs, handshakes and kisses because “the sting” had worked.
Only one Federal MP had the endorsement of his electorate to introduce this carbon tax.
Under these circumstances, it is little surprise that many ordinary Australians voiced their protests over and over in the public gallery, despite the Speaker’s pleas to respect Parliament. How could the Speaker expect silence when those who voted in the carbon tax had themselves not shown respect for the parliamentary process?
From the public gallery of our national Parliament, double standards were on display by the very representatives sent to Parliament by the people in the gallery who rightly expected them to act in their interests, that is, the national interest.
How does the unresolved Heiner Affair then fit into this mix?
When power is given to elected sworn politicians over our lives, in particular a Cabinet, we, the people, expect them to respect and comply with the law in all their decisions. We do not expect members of Cabinet, behind the closed doors of the Cabinet room, to conspire secretly to obstruct justice in any matter, let alone in a matter which goes to the very core of the right to a fair trial by willfully destroying public records known to be evidence, and worse, when knowing that those public records concerned the abuse of children in a State institution.
In a democracy, we expect that the criminal law will be applied equally, no matter the status of the person involved in the breach. When this duty is demonstrably no applied, as in the Heiner Affair, it must herald in a fundamental change for society, and again, must dangerously undermine public confidence in government.
It is little wonder that when the Clerk of the Senate recently examined the Rofe QC Audit of the Heiner Affair that she reached the publicly stated view in her Advice No 47 to the Senate Privileges Committee that ”There is no doubt that the subject matter is very serious.”
And yet, the Heiner Affair remains unaddressed in Canberra and Brisbane.
Why?
Dare it remain so if we value our democracy?
These are extraordinary times.
It is to be hoped that the uncharted waters we have entered under the Gillard/Greens regime (where our democracy and the rule of law are under unprecedented challenge) can be navigated by firm hands and hearts who really respect these values, and that we can return to stable waters very soon.