Friday, October 26, 2012

Fri 26th Oct Todays News

Happy birthday and many happy returns Jimmy Bao andTan Nguyen. Born on the same day across the years. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

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Thomson raided. Abbott blamed

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(3:51pm)

On Wednesday, acting on behalf of Victoria Police, NSW Police raided Mr Thomson’s house and office on the NSW Central Coast.  Currently Victoria Police is investigating whether Craig Thomson committed a criminal offence when national secretary of the Health Services Union. Already Fair Work Australia has made findings against Thomson and he currently faces civil charges.  It remains to be determined whether or not Thomson will also face criminal charges.

On Thursday, believe it or not, The Age gave Craig Thomson’s lawyer Chris McArdle the Page One lead with a heading titled: “Thomson lawyer slams Abbott ‘innuendo’”. There was a large photo of Mr Thomson along with a photo of Mr McArdle. McArdle was quoted – in large type – as declaring: 
We will not tolerate our client being condemned by innuendo or ageing student politicians mouthing off…Our client is an innocent man.
How about that? The Age apparently believes that it is Page One NEWS when a lawyer says that is his client is innocent… Moreover The Age believes that it is appropriate to run McArdle’s abuse of Abbott – by depicting him as an ageing student politician – on its front page. Mr Abbott is not a student – and he is not ageing.  Moreover, the allegations against Thomson are not mere innuendo.
Michelle Grattan’s Page One report commenced as follows: 
Craig Thomson’s lawyer, Chris McArdle, has lashed out at Tony Abbott, challenging him to produce evidence if he is making allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the MP or “shut his mouth”.
Here’s a (real) flash. Chris McArdle, Craig Thomson’s lawyer, is not the story.  He’s a hired advocate who is paid to spin for his client, that’s all.  And Tony Abbott is no more an ageing student politician than Julia Gillard, Anthony Albanese and the like.  It’s just that The Age – in its rush to condemn Abbott whatever he does – chooses not to understand this.  The real story is Craig Thomson and his role as a cross-bench parliamentarian who supports the Gillard Government.

As one of MWD’s Melbourne-based reader has pointed out: “This story fits a pattern of The Age’s role reversal.  The Gillard Government stuffs up in some way. The Opposition naturally points this out. But The Age, instead of concentrating on the stuff up – which is the real story – focuses on a critique of Tony Abbott’s position.” 

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Gillard sees green as other investors see only red

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(2:34pm)

Julia Gillard opens a new green business:
AUSTRALIA’S only solar panel manufacturing plant is optimistic about being able to compete with China, which supplies up to 85 per cent of the Australian market.

Tindo Solar? Sounds familiar: 

Mr Ferraretto resigned as director of the company soon after it reported a $10.6 million after-tax profit in June 2010.
The deal comprised an agreement to sell shares owned by a trust fund related to Mr Ferraretto and wife Tania for $5.2 million and a company offer to buy back another $10 million of shares he held privately, according to documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
However, the company went downhill rapidly after he left and receiver Ferrier Hodgson was appointed in September 2010 followed by liquidator Tim Clifton in November, leaving a business sold for about $10 million to cover bank debts and few assets to satisfy $25 million of unsecured creditors....

Mr Ferraretto appeared in the 2010 BRW Young Rich List with an estimated value of $35 million, fuelled by the first sale to Harbert Australia Private Equity, but this year dropped below the $18 million cut-off.

His wealth has since been channelled into his new solar panel manufacturing venture, Tindo Solar... 
(Thanks to reader Howard.)
UPDATE
Reader Dr G:
Now let’s get this straight. Tindo Solar ADMIT the Chinese are cheaper, but have a hunch that they will be dearer in the future. Tindo Solar hopes to get up to 30% of Aussie market. Tindo Solar will borrow money to expand to 100 employees from current 10?

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Gillard promises more of what she won’t deliver and can’t afford

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(1:15pm)

The Gillard Government promises a national disability insurance scheme it can’t afford - but pushes it out to 2018, at least two elections away.
The Government promises a Gonski education “reform” it can’t afford - but pushes that out, too, to the undefined never never.
Now the Government promises a strip farmers of more water to “save” the Murray at a $1.7 billion price it again can’t afford - so pushes much of that spending and the full water buy-back out to 2019, conveniently out of the forward estimates:
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has pledged $1.7 billion over 10 years as part of plans to significantly increase environmental flows in the Murray-Darling river system.

The bulk of the money will be used to make farms more water efficient and remove “capacity constraints”, such as low-lying bridges that limit water flows down the river.
The extra water savings will be in addition to the draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan that recommends 2,750 gigalitres be returned to the environment, taking the new total to 3,200 GL.
But the new plan comes with a five-year delay in the timeframe, meaning the full environmental benefit of the spending will not be realised until 2024.
But wait! The extra 450 billion litres on top of the 2750 already committed won’t be bought until 2019.  So, just on the off-chance that the nation’s most energetic and destructive government ever manages to secure its base and bribe sufficient numbers of people to return it to office, it will not have yet another embarrassing pot of money to leach out of the taxpayer.  What with the mineral tax shortfall, “commitments” to spend big on education, dental health and anything else that tugs the heart-strings of the perpetually unsatisfied even Gillard is beginning to wonder if it all can be paid for.

Of no concern to the government is the effect on farmers’ confidence in their future with all this entails in terms of investing to improve productivity.  In line with the Gillard mob’s view of the economy, production is a given and the only issue is how do we redistribute it between our various interest groups to ensure we continue in office .
UPDATE
That’s taking away water that actually grows stuff:
Much of the water to be returned to the environment will be found through buybacks of irrigators’ water rights. But irrigators say this will destroy rural communities, particularly in southern NSW and northern Victoria.

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Who trusts Gillard? Not McKew

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(12:52pm)

Why should voters trust Julia Gillard when her own party can’t?

In a new book, former Labor MP Maxine McKew calls Ms Gillard a “disloyal deputy” who was directly undermining her leader in the days before she challenged him.
Ms Gillard has always maintained she was loyal to the then prime minister until the day she challenged him.
Who can forget Gillard’s evasions in a Four Corners interview (above)?

In an interview for the program Ms Gillard avoided answering whether she was aware the speech was being prepared.
“Look, I am not surprised that whether it’s people in my office or people more broadly in the Government of the Labor Party were casting in their mind where circumstances might get to, of course,” she said.
Four Corners also cites internal Labor Party polling in the week before the challenge as proof the campaign was building far earlier.
The polling compared Ms Gillard with Mr Rudd, saying she was more popular with voters, and pointing to negative focus group reactions to the then-leader.

When questioned about the polls, Ms Gillard again appeared to skirt the issue, saying she did not have “specific recall of pages of party polling at the time”.
McKew calls out Gillard on that last evasion:
Ms McKew writes that the then deputy prime minister showed internal Labor research critical of Mr Rudd to a senior member of the caucus in the days before the challenge. This Labor member believes that his encounter with Ms Gillard was part of a “conspiracy against Rudd”, Ms McKew says…

“This individual was in the deputy prime minister’s office in the days prior to the coup,’’ she says…
Asked about this, Ms Gillard said that staff commonly prepared for contingencies but that there were two key points: “Number one, I didn’t direct anybody to write a speech [below] for me, and, number two, I made up my mind on the day.”

Ms McKew finds this incredible. “Come again?” she writes.


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A nation’s thoughts are with the former Prime Minister

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(12:41pm)

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UPDATE
Be sensitive in comments. The death of a much-loved pet is no small thing.

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On The Bolt Report

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(12:10pm)

On the show on Channel 10 on Sunday: Peter Costello, Michael Costa and Judith Sloan try to figure how this government managed to run out of money in a mining boom, create a tax that raises no cash and implement a carbon tax that doesn’t change the climate.
Plus boats, bungles, Craig Thomson and something Mitt Romney could teach Tony Abbott.
Some disruption this week to our schedule, thanks to some sports thingo:
SYDNEY: 10am (no encore)
MELBOURNE: 10am (no encore)
BRISBANE: 9.30am (encore at 4.30pm)
ADELAIDE: 10am (encore at 4.30pm)
PERTH: 2pm (encore at 4.30pm)

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Not racist, but worried

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(7:55am)

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These are the first two paragraphs of the report:
PUBLIC hostility towards Muslims is much greater in Sydney than Melbourne — by a factor of two to one — with immigrants far more dispersed across the Victorian capital, according to a social survey.

The findings show Sydney is home to a higher percentage of people born overseas than Melbourne, but they are typically poorer and concentrated in fewer suburbs than those in Victoria. 
Why is it “racist” to worry about a concentrated minority from which we’ve seen violent demonstrations, high gun crime, radical preaching, terrorist plots and rejection of Australian culture? This is not just misnaming a perfectly understandable concern about a lack of integration and a rising security risk, but is also stifling an important debate. 
UPDATE
Odd racists, who in this same survey so strongly support refugees and immigration - of the lawful kind, that is:
Support for immigrants admitted under the skilled and family streams of the migration program remains high, with 77 per cent backing skilled migration and 75 per cent positive about those entering through the humanitarian program.

But the positive attitude towards refugees selected overseas was not matched when asylum-seekers were considered, with less than one in four of those surveyed agreeing that asylum-seekers arriving by boat should be eligible for permanent settlement.

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Condi Rice hyperbowl alert on “war on women”

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(7:49am)

Former US secretary of state Condoleezze Rice is talking about the Obama camp, right? Not Gillard’s?
I’m quite comfortable that those who talk about a ‘war on women’ are not just engaging in hyperbole, it’s far worse than that. It’s condemning people who are reasonable and who are going to take into account the views of those who don’t agree.
What would you think if you were told that the most bigoted, intolerant, hateful, and xenophobic political messages this election cycle are being spread by Obama supporters?

From ridiculing and disrespecting the Mormon religion to spreading secretly taped videos recorded by an Obama supporter in a Mormon church, those on the left are sanctioning this particular form of bigotry because it’s all for the cause: Obama.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the media, where pages upon pages have been devoted to Romney’s religion. Vicious, anti-Mormon rhetoric, ramping up in the final days leading up to the election, has been spread by MSNBC and CNN hosts, the New York Times (they have devoted an entire section of their website to articles about Mormonism), Washington Post, and the Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan, to name a few.

President Obama’s team continued to hammer Mitt Romney over controversial comments by U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock regarding rape and pregnancy in a Web video released Thursday.
The ad opens with video of Romney and Mourdock together, with onscreen text saying the Republican nominee was “making headlines with his continued support for this Republican Senate candidate.”

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Miners pay millions to learn they’ll pay nothing to this inept government

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(7:39am)

First the Government gives us a carbon tax that won’t actually change the climate.
Now a mining tax that won’t actually raise any money. But in both cases, business is still clobbered:

Atlas Iron managing director Ken Brinsden said the Pilbara miner had already spent about $2 million only to determine it will not pay the tax, adding it was unlikely the juniors would have to pay the tax under any scenario.
“Nobody wins at where we are at today,” he said.

“If you love the idea that the mining industry should be taxed, you haven’t won because nobody is paying it, and in the meantime, it is costing us to comply to be a part of the mining tax regime, only to find that we are not paying it...”

A sudden recovery in profits through unexpected coal and iron ore price rises may mean the miners will pay the projected full-year tax of $2bn, but it seems likelier the final three quarters will yield the same or only marginally better revenue for the government. Nor should it be forgotten that the government has spent large chunks of this projected revenue or dedicated it as the source of funds before it was earned.
Just this week Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean was on South Australian radio denying the money he was announcing for local schemes such as sporting facilities had come from the cuts to the baby bonus - it was coming from the “mining tax”.
UPDATE
The Government was warned - yet on Monday was still claiming it would raise $2 billion just this year alone: 

The government is waiting for precise advice from the Australian Tax Office about how much the 22.5 per cent tax on iron ore and coal raised in the first quarter…
“We feared nothing would be raised in the first quarter – you don’t have to be Einstein to join the dots,” a government official said. “It’s also possible nothing would be raised this financial year but we won’t know that until very late in 2013 – it depends on prices, currency and volumes.”

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AWU scandal: second file on Gillard’s correspondence turns up empty

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(7:36am)

 The AWU scandal
First Slater & Gordon couldn’t find the file that would tell us if Julia Gillard misled corporate affairs officials about her boyfriend’s slush fund:

PUBLIC documents that were essential in the fraudulent operation of a union slush fund that Julia Gillard helped to establish 20 years ago are missing from the official file in Western Australia.
The file, numbered 000 748 and titled “Australian Workers Union—Workplace Reform Association Inc”, is held in archives by the State Records Office in Perth.
The file should contain key documents from 1992 when the association, which Ms Gillard described as a “slush fund” for union officials including her then boyfriend, AWU boss Bruce Wilson, was registered by the WA government.
The association’s constitution described it as being dedicated to workplace safety, and omits any mention of it being designed to fund union elections as stated by Ms Gillard. But the government archivist who retrieved the file for The Australian yesterday expressed surprise the file folder no longer held any documents.
He said it was “highly unusual”. It was unclear whether documents were removed before or after the file was transferred from the relevant government department. The documents would show what the WA government was told before it agreed to register the association....
Harry Nowicki, a Melbourne lawyer who is researching AWU history and Ms Gillard’s role in the slush fund, said yesterday it was “very troubling that two files about the same fraud have disappeared—one from Slater & Gordon, and now the other from a State’s official archives"…

The Prime Minister, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, said in August she provided legal advice for the slush fund’s establishment but knew “absolutely nothing about its workings” until serious allegations were raised in 1995.

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Obama - the favorite of every voter who isn’t American

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(7:05am)

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This can only be explained by a media wall of silence that has prevented even a glimmer of positive news about Romney from filtering through to the population in general.
Foreign correspondents tend, like most journalists, to be of the Left. In their posts, they mix with other foreign correspondents just like them and tend to read the papers and watch the TV reports of still more journalists much like them. Take the foreign corespondents posted in New York and Washington. They are already in heavily Democrat cities, reading vehemently pro-Democrat papers in the New York Times and Washington Post. If they watch cable news, I suspect they’d choose the low-rating Leftist CNN and not the high-rating centre-Right Fox News. And then they file their (largely borrowed) take on US politics to audiences back home.
And, of course, foreign editors back home grab the stories about US politics that appeal to their own largely Leftist prejudices. Here is the Sydney Morning Herald’s main report on the US election today:

A Republican Senate candidate’s remark about rape and pregnancy has forced Mitt Romney to confront the emotional issue of abortion, just as the White House challenger hoped to focus on jobs and the economy to keep up his momentum in the last days before the election.
Here is its oped piece, lifted - but of course - from the New York Times:

If Romney gets to the Situation Room, will we see Cipher Mitt, the vessel of the neocons? Or will we see Moderate Mitt, chastising the hawks - who are eager to pick up where they left off bombing, in Iran and Syria - with a variation on the line he used about al-Qaeda at the debate: ‘’We can’t kill our way out of this mess’’?
It’s impossible to know. Romney may have made so many compromises to get the prize that he doesn’t have a true self any more. And that’s the scariest thought of all.
You’d never guess most Americans aren’t quite so easily diverted by side-shows or so scared by Romney. The latest four polls show Romney ahead of Obama: 
Should Romney win, few readers of the Fairfax reporting will understand why. Many, I warrant, will be astonished.
But Kates is right to note that the media bias alone can’t explain the wild support of non-Americans for Obama.
Here’s another factor. Romney, like most Republican politicians, is focussed on grass roots politics, and that means talking directly to Americans - not foreigners. Obama is more the internationalist, seeming to take more heed of the opinions of the rest of the world, and therefore more under “our” control.
And a final factor. The rest of the world doesn’t have to pay the bill for Obama’s wild spending. We can forgive his trillion dollar deficits like few American taxpayers will.

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Callinan: save free speech from the News Media Council

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(6:48am)

What is editorial independence? A myth, I suggest. Is it independence of the managing editor, or the news editor, or the opinions piece editor, or a columnist or some other journalist? ...  I am always amused when I read the grandiose assertion that the Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald or some other paper, says, pronounces, denounces, proclaims, that it is its opinion that X should be the next prime minister, or that some public affair should proceed in a certain way. What does this mean? Have all the staff voted on it? Did the cadet journalist, or the compositor or his contemporary equivalent, or the circulation manager, or the advertising manager, or the major shareholders, have a vote? The notion that the owners, the ultimate funders of the business of a media outlet, should always be denied a voice in news or policy of the outlet is quite frankly preposterous.
Even so, Callinan is strongly against new moves to impose a national media watchdog to “educate” the commercial media:

First, as abused as free speech may sometimes have been, it is true to say that it is fundamental to democracy. Any form of regulation of it is far too risky.
Second, regulation in almost every aspect of national life tends to be overdone. Some regulatory bodies eventually become over-zealous, over-intrusive, over-numerous and expensive…
Third, such regulation of the media as has occurred, and there has been a deal of it, has not in my opinion been entirely appropriate or successful…
A fourth reason is that the establishment of a Media Council is unnecessary… The defamation laws of all the states until recently represented a measured evolution of the balance between free speech and freedom of the press on the one hand, and the reasonable expectations of fairness to the public on the other… [but] I am particularly anxious to see the role of the jury restored....
A fifth reason is, that I foresee that the regulatory model proposed is unlikely to reduce litigation anyway. Its rulings will inevitably be contested in the courts…
A further and sixth sometimes overlooked, and in my view, compelling argument for strong unfettered commercial media, is that there is already a publicly funded media organisation which, particularly in this electronic age, is publishing (electronically) twenty-fours a day. The corporate governors of that medium are appointed by the government. That is more than enough, in my view, for any Executive…

In a sense I have already anticipated the last objection that I have to the regulatory tribunal. It is that despite all the things that might legitimately be said against the media over the years, if strong unfettered commercial media did not exist, society would suffer, and many excesses of power and financial improprieties would go undetected and unpunished. I would want nothing to increase that risk.

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Voters demand plan. Obama prints comic

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(6:25am)

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Rich Lowry on a president who suddenly realises he should offer voters a plan for the next four years - but finds he’s got only enough ideas for a picture book:

As an artifact of the diminishment of President Barack Obama, it is hard to top his newly released pamphlet, “A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security.”
The plan purports, first, to be a plan, and second, to outline a second-term agenda distinct from his first-term agenda. It fails on both counts. It cobbles together his current policies with some ill-defined new bullet points to barely cover 20 pages largely devoted to nice pictures of the president.
Make no mistake: What the Obama agenda lacks in substance, it makes up in graphic design. The pamphlet has as much gloss and as many soft-focus photos as a copy of Playboy. The seriously besotted Obama fan might have to assure friends, “No, really — I only read the Obama second-term plan for the policy details.”
Why would the president wait until 14 days before the election, after the conventions and the debates, to release his plan? And then print 3.5 million copies of it, making the plan a publishing phenomenon to rival “Dreams from My Father”?
It’s the panicked realization that his campaign’s attempted destruction of Mitt Romney hasn’t worked and isn’t enough to win. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this week found that 62 percent of people want major changes in a prospective Obama second term. Four percent — that’s almost down to Obama administration officials and immediate family — want more of the same.

So the president needed someone to get on QuarkXPress to paste together “a new plan” and then run down to FedEx Kinko’s — pronto. 
UPDATE
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Obama turns out to be a divider, not uniter, The racial polarisation has not been this great in decades (although what’s a racial vote to some may be a welfarist vote to others):
The 2012 election is shaping up to be more polarized along racial lines than any presidential contest since 1988, with President Obama [blue on graph] lagging behind Republican Mitt Romney among white voters by 21 percentage points, a steep drop in support from four years ago…

In [the 2008 election], 80 percent of all non-whites supported Obama, including 95 percent of black voters…
In the Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll released Wednesday, Obama wins 79 percent of non-whites, and support for his reelection is nearly universal among African Americans.

But among whites, Obama is currently doing much worse than he did in 2008 [when he] ended up losing white voters by 12 percentage points.

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Army chief warns more budget cuts could be lethal

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(6:17am)

The Gillard Government has stripped our armed forces of every loose dollar - including another $5 billion this financial year - to pay for its mad spending. The army now says “enough”: 
ARMY chief David Morrison will sound the alarm today on Defence budget cuts, saying he wants to ensure troops are not sent to war poorly equipped because of “misconceived strategy or economic stringency”.

In an extraordinary public intervention by a senior serving Australian Defence Force officer, Lieutenant General Morrison warns that further cuts could pose a real risk to the effectiveness of the armed forces and a repeat of “mistakes” made after the Vietnam War.

“The current straitened fiscal climate poses a very real risk to the army’s approved plan for development out to 2030,” he will say. 

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Government fails character test

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(5:53am)

A government which never backs up its threats is one which will never deter boat people:


Just one of seven offenders convicted over the riots had his visa application rejected by Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on character grounds.
Three men found guilty of offences relating to the March 2011 riots - in which accommodation and administration facilities were burned down and rocks thrown at police - have been granted protection visas to remain in Australia…

A month after the riots, Mr Bowen said he was toughening the character test provisions “to make it very clear that anybody who commits an offence, regardless of the penalty, regardless of the sentence, while they are in immigration detention will fail the character test and can be denied a permanent visa”.
UPDATE
The Government’s boat people bungling has cost us $6 billion, and now the Nauru Government is feasting on the fiasco: 

The Australian government has sent 381 asylum seekers to Nauru for processing so far, but the detention centre can hold up to 1500.
Advertisement
The visas could net the Nauru government $90 million over five years, if the detention centre is at capacity.
Didn’t the Gillard Government nail down all costs before reopening Nauru?
UPDATE
What negotiating leverage does this government have when it is not just desperate for Nauru, but has sent boat people there already?
I think we can assume the Nauruans have played an inept Government for suckers:
The Immigration Department has not directly responded to questions about whether the Australian Government would pay the visa fees or whether it has been factored into the deal struck with Nauru. 
UPDATE
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All the big issues are moving in the wrong way for the Government, and none more so than boat people policy:

Results from the Mapping Social Cohesion 2012 survey, due to be published today, show trust in the government has progressively declined over the past three years, mirroring the fall in voter support for the ALP…
The report, written by Monash University researcher Andrew Markus, says the asylum issue has “contributed to widespread disillusionment with government"…

“People of differing political persuasions are close to unanimous in the view that the government is incapable of dealing effectively with this issue of fundamental importance for the nation.”

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Government’s financial watchdog: a Greens sympathiser

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(5:52am)

Brad Orgill is the watchdog Julia Gillard appointed to check her $16 billion Building the Education Revolution, and seemed to go out of his way to defend the waste and to claim the massive splurge saved us from recession - even though most of the spending occurredafter the danger has passed.
Today Orgill reveals his economic vision:

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Gillard’s misogynist is Obama’s bullsh…r

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(5:10am)

Obama, with a record as bad as Gillard’s, tries the same bucket of slop: 

“You know, kids have good instincts,” Mr Obama offered. “They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullsh****r, I can tell’.”

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Carr: my wife’s cheekbones won it for Australia

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(12:13am)

Bob Carr offers the most vainglorious excuse for spending $120,000 of taxpayers’ money in just six months on flying his wife around the world in business class:

FOREIGN Minister Bob Carr has vowed to keep taking his wife on his taxpayer-funded overseas trips, describing her as an ‘’asset for Australia’’…
Mrs Carr was born in Malaysia to Indian and Chinese parents.

Some questions:
- Are Security Council seats truly awarded on the basis that some Foreign Minister’s wife is a good sort?
- If so, why did this Government wasted billions of dollars in aid in trying to buy those votes, instead of just showing the delegates Helena Carr?
- Are the ambassadors of other nations truly so pig-ignorant of the country they’ve just elected to the Security Council that they didn’t even know we were multi-ethnic until Carr showed them his wife?
- Exactly how many of the 140 countries which voted for Australia were first shown Helena Carr?
- How many of the 53 countries which didn’t vote for Australia were shown Helena Carr?
- Does Carr really believe this stuff, or is he just fishing for excuses to keep giving his wife the taxpayer-funded business class travel that few taxpayers can afford for themselves?

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Danby’s grovel: Gillard’s speech like Shakespeare

Andrew BoltOCTOBER262012(12:11am)

Labor backbencher Michael Danby suffers from a serious lack of perspective - and a bad case of grovel rash. His latest press release: 
On the ABC’s Capital Hill program today, Michael Danby, Chair Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade quoted William Shakespeare to express his admiration for the Prime Minister following her now famous speech in Parliament House.

Mr Danby said he felt like the Earl of Westmoreland after hearing Henry V speak before the battle of Agincourt. Danby recited on air Moreland’s pledge in response to the inspiring misogyny speech of Henry V to whom Danby compared to Gillard and he used Westmoreland’s response.
“God’s will! My liege, would you and I alone, Without more help, could fight this royal battle!”
UPDATE
Maxine McKew also thinks of Shakespeare when she sees Gillard, only it’s not Henry V but Lady Macbeth: 

In Tales from the Political Trenches, former Labor MP Maxine McKew says both Mr Albanese and Mr Rudd’s chief of staff Alister Jordan came to the conclusion the night before the leadership changed that “Rudd was the victim of an ambush that had been months in the planning”.
I don’t respect those who play the racist card to dismiss concerns about too-high immigration, but it’s fun to see Gillard speared as she smears others:
McKew, who lost her northern Sydney seat of Bennelong at the 2010 election, accuses the Prime Minister of using a “dog whistle” to appeal to voters concerned about immigration in the seat of Lindsay in the city’s west.

McKew says that, in trying to overturn Mr Rudd’s call for a big Australia, “Gillard’s strategy seemed clear enough. She was substituting policy for a dog-whistle slogan. ‘Where will we all fit?’ It came across as a personal insult...”
In her book, McKew interviews Paul Keating and asks him if Labor could have “regained the moral high ground and altered the national conversation” on refugees. The former Labor prime minister replies, “It’s the job of leaders to protect the country from its prejudice” in a veiled criticism of Ms Gillard. 

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from Larry Pickering .. THAT’S A BIT RICH, COMING FROM “RICHO”

Graham Richardson claimed on Sky News this morning that Gillard had no prior knowledge of plans to assassinate Kevin Rudd. His claim is clumsily defensive and plain wrong, considering proof of Gillard’s staff having written her acceptance speech two weeks before Kevin was knifed. 

The plot to kill Kev was blueprinted prior to his election in 2007, it’s just that “Richo” was well out of the loop.

His reputation relies on his ability to infiltrate Labor thinking. 
But “Richo” is justifiably known as a traitor within Labor ranks and he is privy to nothing. He would be the last to know of Gillard’s treachery. Almost all of Caucus was unaware. Only a small group of conspirators knew and how the hell would the ex-communicated pariah Richardson have known? 

Richo’s claim of “inside knowledge” amounts to nought but concocted bluster.

He survives on an antique reputation of being a one-time ALP headkicker but has more skeletons involving fraud and hookers in his own closet than Craig Thomson, Peter Slipper and Julia Gillard combined. 

In 1994, as an ALP senator, he was forced to hand his resignation to Paul Keating over his involvement in the infamous Offset Alpine printing company insurance fraud. This was about the same time Gillard was being exposed over the AWU fraud. 

Offset Alpine was originally purchased from Kerry Packer by Rene Rivkin. But Rivkin had no interest in printing. He, Richardson and others had far bigger plans for the struggling printing company
Its sole asset, a printing press, was valued at $3.5 million but the company was strangely insured with Richardson’s friend, Rodney Adler, for $53.2 million. 

Soon after in 1993, it was burned down on Xmas eve. Xmas eve was an ideal time to avoid suspicious authorities. Adler’s FAI insurance company hurriedly paid out the $53.2 million and without question. 

Once the stock Exchange became aware of the insurance policy the share price naturally rocketed. But the group including Richardson had already purchased shares at the old price.

Other investors, all friends of Richardson, included: Rene Rivkin, Packer executive Trevor Kennedy, FAI Insurance boss Rodney Adler, Sean Howard of OzEmail, former Labor leader and Governor-General Bill Hayden and television personality Ray Martin
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) commenced an investigation into the ownership of a 38% stake in the company which was secreted in Swiss bank accounts. 

Richardson’s mate Rene Rivkin denied any knowledge of the ownership of the stake, but in 2003 ASIC discovered that Rivkin himself, in partnership with Graham Richardson and Trevor Kennedy, had been using Swiss bank accounts to trade in the Offset Alpine shares. 

Rivkin committed suicide in 2005, before the investigation was completed. 

In January 2006 after a two year legal battle, ASIC gained access to the relevant Swiss banking records. In September the same year it was revealed that Richardson had almost $A1.5 million remaining in Swiss bank accounts and had failed to declare any of it to the Australian Tax Office. 

In 2010 the historically incompetent ASIC, many say due to unseemly political pressure, discontinued its investigation. 

The Offset Alpine fraud was strongly linked to the 1995 murder of model, Caroline Byrne. She was the girlfriend of Rivkin's chauffeur, Gordon Wood. Wood was found guilty of her murder in 2008 as a result of pushing her over The Gap in Sydney. He was acquitted by the Court of Appeals in 2012.

Richardson’s constant denials of Gillard’s treachery and her involvement in AWU fraud is somewhat understandable. 

After all, fraud and illicit lasciviousness seem the norm for Labor... and “Richo” has survived worse than Gillard has, so it seems.
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