Happy birthday and many happy returns Carla J. Pattersonand Tegan Perkins Ftk. 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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US voters need to put Romney in White House
Piers Akerman – Saturday, November 03, 2012 (6:16pm)
TUESDAY will be crunch time for the voters of America and the thoughts of many Gillard government supporters will be with them.
Incumbent President Barack Obama has failed to deliver on his 2008 promises, just as Prime Minister Julia Gillard has failed her 2010 promises.
In both the US and Australia, largely Left-leaning media organisations have played down the failures of leadership and attempted to drive attacks on the personalities of their challengers.
In the US, the Obama campaign has tried to discredit successful businessman and politician Mitt Romney with bitter attacks on his religion and his standing with women.
Ditto in Australia, where Labor has mounted an unprecedented and baseless campaign alleging that Opposition leader Tony Abbott is a misogynist and hinting darkly that his Catholicism affects his judgment.
Both Romney and Abbott have been pilloried for speaking the truth.
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What we can learn from the US election
Miranda Devine – Saturday, November 03, 2012 (2:01pm)
MOVIE director Oliver Stone claims Hurricane Sandy, which hit the north-east coast of the United States last week, was Mother Nature casting an early vote in Tuesday’s election.
And Her verdict? A pox on both their houses.
The storm was “punishment” for President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney because they have not addressed climate change in the campaign, he said.
Ridiculous though the claim is, yesterday’s opinion polls, showing Romney’s momentum has stalled, suggest the storm has been a Godsend for Obama, allowing him to appear presidential, non-partisan, and engaged.
He has edged ahead of Romney, 47.5 percent to 47.2 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls.
Obama has been bounding around in his Air Force One bomber jacket, taking on the role of “First Father”, hugging storm victims in hard-hit New Jersey and being embraced by his new best friend, Republican governor Chris Christie, who Romney supporters accuse of throwing their man “under the bus”.
Romney meanwhile, was sidelined for three days, reduced to organizing canned food drives at subdued rallies.
But where it counts, in the marginal or “swing” states, Romney may already have achieved enough, simply by not being the monster his enemies have claimed, especially to women.
If Obama loses, his “war against women” campaign theme will have been his greatest miscalculation, and one with lessons for Australia.
Of course, it was always going to be a big ask for voters to dump their first black president, halfway through his possible reign.
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Henderson’s dog bites media hypocrites and ABC activists
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(4:04pm)
Gerard Henderson lists the questions put to Liberal frontbencher Greg Hunt by Karina Carvalho, co-presenter of the taxpayer-funded ABC 1 News Breakfast.
Carvalho on the Opposition questioning of how Julia Gillard in the 1990s helped to register the deceptively named slush fund of her boyfriend, helped him buy a house with (unknown to her, she says) stolen funds, witnessed a power of attorney which the donor says was falsely issued and failed to notify police of her boyfriend’s scams when she learned of them:Is it also because your anti-carbon tax campaign has been a failure in the electorate and you’re trying to find something to pin the Government with? And isn’t it hypocritical of Tony Abbott to, on the one hand, say he’ll leave the smear in government to the Labor Party and, on the other hand, continue to attack Julia Gillard over claims and allegations from seventeen years ago?On the carbon tax hurting consumers and small business:But they’re compensated for any increase as a result of the carbon tax.(Not actually true.)On power price increases:Power prices have been going up for years and that’s as a result of more spending from power companies on infrastructure, on poles and on things like that….On opposing the carbon tax:But it’s a bit hard for you to prosecute your case when the lived experience is that people see their power bills and they see that they’re compensated for the rises as a result of the carbon tax, and when you put up as evidence bills in parliament showing huge increases in electricity cost without showing what is as a result of a carbon tax, it really doesn’t help your case, does it?
Brought to you by the taxpayer-funded Anything But Conservative network.
(Note: Gillard says she was not aware of her boyfriend’s schemes and did nothing wrong.)
UPDATE
Of course, this rule does not apply if the person being vilified is:
a) a conservative.b) a woman.
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Bolt Report today
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(10:33am)
Boats, boats and boats:
Eric Abetz, Opposition Leader in the Senate, on the scandal engulfing Julia Gillard. Asked if Julia Gillard was “corrupt”, he said the “jury is still out” on her involvement with her boyfriend’s association, used to rip of $400,000:
I think the jury is out in relation to that issue as to what the Prime Minister’s actual and person involvement is. And the reason the jury is still out is the Prme Minister has not given the Australian people a full and satisfactory explanation.
Michael Kroger and Bruce Hawker on the polls, Martin Ferguson, breaking promises and Tony Abbott. Kroger makes a prediction about Ted Baillieu:
Slippery Pete update:
THE Coalition has suggested Julia Gillard misled parliament over an Australian Workers Union “slush fund” she helped establish for her then boyfriend in 1992.Opposition workplace relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, today demanded a further explanation from the Prime Minister, suggesting Ms Gillard had given incorrect information to the parliament about when inquiries were first made into the fund.Senator Abetz said there was a full 12 months between when Ms Gillard was interviewed by her then law firm Slater and Gordon over the fund in September 1995 and when the Australian Workers Union reported it to police.“The assertion that the Prime Minister made in the parliament does not seem to gel with the chronology on the public record,” he said.“Having said that, I’m willing to give the Prime Minister the benefit is she provides a full and frank explanation to the Australian people.”
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AbbottAbbottAbbott
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(8:40am)
Insiders, a program of the publicly funded ABC, discusses the political week that was. Presenter Barrie Cassidy introduces the topics for panel discussion.
First topic: How Tony Abbott had trouble with wheat deregulation, which could cause real tension in the Coalition.Second topic: How Tony Abbott went too far in fighting the carbon tax, and just exaggerates “all the time”.Third topic: How Tony Abbott was too flip in dismissing the White Paper on Asia.Fourth topic: the Government (at last!) edges away from is promise to deliver a surplus.Fifth topic: what chances of an early election?Sixth: which of the two leaders is the most vulnerable going to the election?Seventh: the Maxine McKew book - just briefly, to show Labor’s Anthony Albanese making light of it.Eighth: Labor’s Greg Combet mocking Abbott. Long grab shown.Ninth: Labor backflipping on asylum policy. Brief.Tenth: Julia Gillard not answering questions on the AWU scandal. The Liberals need a result “or else it starts to get a bit tacky.” Brief. Only Savva comments.
Do you get the impression that the AbbottAbbottAbbott actually runs the country, and gets the scrutiny more approrpriate for a government, especially one as incompentent and deceitful as this?
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Obama: vote for revenge
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(5:05am)
Once Obama was touted as the great healer:
GOP nominee Mitt Romney began his final weekend campaign blitz in New Hampshire Saturday morning, ripping President Obama for telling supporters that “voting is the best revenge.”“Vote for revenge? Let me tell you: Vote for love of country,” Romney said to cheers.
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Not their police, too?
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(4:48am)
Sounds uncomfortably like “touch one, touch all”:
Scores of Campsie and Bankstown police were called to Punchbowl’s The Boulevard where they arrested two 20-year-old men after police clashed with shoppers on Friday afternoon.The mother of the baby, who wants to remain anonymous, told Fairfax Media she has apologised to police for briefly leaving her sleeping one-year-old unsupervised in her car with windows wound down.The violence was sparked by her cousin and brother clashing with police over the “10-minute indiscretion”, she said.“The first two officers were fine; it was another officer who was yelling at my brother and got into a big argument,” she said....Acting Campsie Commander Paul Albury said there was no riot and police acted professionally when coming under attack and abuse from 50 people....Community advocate for south-west Sydney, Rebecca Kay, ... (said:) “The police were saying inappropriate things, racist and anti-Islamic comments...”
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AWU scandal: it seems Gillard misled Parliament
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER042012(12:34am)
Julia Gillard appears to have misled Parliament on Thursday when asked why she did not alert authorities to the fraud committed by her boyfriend and client, union boss Bruce Wilson:
Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Deputy Leader of the Opposition)… Why did not the Prime Minister herself report the fraud involving the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association that she helped establish?Ms GILLARD (Lalor—Prime Minister) (15:05): (EDIT) By the time the matters she refers to came to my attention they were already the subject of inquiry and investigation.
Julia Gillard took part in a recorded Record-of-Interview on 11 September, 1995. It was a secret interview within her partnership Slater and Gordon. None of the information in that interview was available to the national leadership of the AWU. Ian Walter Cambridge has sworn in his affidavit of 19 September, 1996, the circumstances in which he became aware of the existence of the AWU-WRA and the WA Police FOI file explains the timing of the report of the AWU-WRA’s existence to it…Beyond sharing the secret of the AWU-WRA with her partners, no action was taken by Gillard or her partners effectively to advise the national leadership of the AWU of the AWU-WRA’s existence. And there is no evidence anywhere on the public record of any inquiry or investigation into the AWU-WRA beyond Gillard sharing information about it with her own partners.At no time prior to the AWU’s discovery of the existence of the AWU-WRA bank accounts at the Commonwealth Bank was the existence of the Australian Worker’s Union Workplace Reform Association being inquired into or investigated outside the partnership Slater and Gordon.
Gillard has not been specific about what she knew about the AWU Workplace Reform Association in 1995 that was illegal or improper. (That she knew the “slush fund” was improperly registered seems almost certain, despite her denials, but what did she know of the siphoning off of funds?) However, she did acknowledge in her August press conference she knew in 1995 something was certainly improper about the slush fund:
JOURNALIST: Can you be specific about exactly when and how you were informed that it might have been put to questionable use?PM: These matters started to come to attention in 1995 when they became the subject of controversy within the AWU itself. That is the first time that they came to my attention…JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, when the scandal erupted and it became known that this money had been stolen by two shysters, who told you? Was it someone at the AWU or was it Bernard Murphy who’d been told by someone else?PM: Well, I can’t go to matters of privilege, but first and foremost, allegations were being raised and dealt with within the AWU. Those allegations came to my attention. I formed a view that I had not been dealt with honestly and based on that view I ended a relationship I had back then, 17 years ago.
That means 1995. Yet lawyer Harry Nowicki, who has inspected WA police investigation documents, states there was no investigation of the AWU Workplace Reform Association until a year after Gillard’s interview with her partners:
4. The WA Fraud Squad commenced their investigations into Bruce Wilson on the 9 September 1996 and concluded their investigations in about 12 August 19985. In the course of the WA Fraud investigation they sought the co-operation of Victorian Fraud Squad officers as they discovered activities of Bruce Wilson using funds from WA to purchase and sell a property through Ralph Blewitt an associate of Bruce Wilson.
An earlier Victoria Police investigation was into an unrelated account - the AWU Members No.1 Account - and cleared Wilson. At that stage the existence of the AWU Workplace Reform Association, described by Gillard as a “slush fund”, was not the subject of police inquiries and its existence was not known to the AWU itself.
Why should Gillard have gone to authorities when she knew of her boyfriend’s scams? Because it was the law, as former High Court justice Michael Kirby noted in September:
QUESTION from audience: Look, there are plenty of people in the legal profession that seem to have moral compass deficit disorder. If a lawyer naively helps a friend to set up a slush fund, and then subsequently finds that the friend has used it to misappropriate half a million dollars, is there a legal or moral obligation for the lawyer to report that to the police, the knowledge of that matter?Kirby: It sounds as though it’s getting a little bit close to a real live problem and I know it could be presented as hypothetical, but I sort of have got very, very strong antennae and I can sniff out a real live problem pretty well. (Audience laughter). And I’ve gone out of the business of giving legal advice, but generally speaking, in our sort of society, if a person is aware of a serious crime and doesn’t report it to the police, that is what we call misprision of a felony; if there is a felony, you have to report it, it is a citizen’s duty. Now that law might have been modified in Victoria and other states, you’d have to look that up, but that’s the way the law generally operates.
Gillard should have gone to police. She didn’t. She should have told Parliament there was no investigation into the AWU Workplace Reform Association when she learned it had been put to improper use. She didn’t.
To me it seems Gillard on Thursday misled Parliament.
• Given the AWU retained Gillard’s firm, how could any lawyer have convinced herself there was no conflict of interest when her boyfriend asked her to set up a ‘slush fund’ under the name of her firm’s existing client?• Gillard admits she was asked by Wilson for ‘legal advice to incorporate this association’. Precisely what advice was given regarding the adoption of a misleading name, and the fraudulent statement of false objects for the intended ‘slush fund’?• How could Gillard conscionably vouch for the legitimacy of an association which, to her knowledge, was being registered with a deceptive name and specious objects?• Interviewed in 1995, Gillard ‘could not rule out’ the use of association funds for her own property; 17 years later, she categorically affirmed that ‘I paid for my renovations’. Contrary to all human experience, has her memory improved with time?Latham might then address much more intractable questions: how AWU funds came to be used for the purchase of a property in Blewitt’s name where Wilson and Gillard sometimes cohabited; what steps Gillard took, as the AWU’s solicitor, to ensure her client’s interests were protected; and why those steps failed to prevent Wilson making off with the net proceeds, including the AWU’s money, when the property was sold. Was this mere incompetence, or something more sinister?
Morris also criticises Latham’s disparagement of Rebcca Weisser, The Australian’s excellent opinion editor, and particularly attacks his claim that Weisser “grunted” some reply at Latham.
I have done some research on this last topic, asking Weisser yesterday to grunt at me, too. She grunted in a very pretty and engaging way, but I can confirm her technique was so poor as to rule out any possibility that while grunting she could simultanesouly say “Craig Thomson and Michael Williamson want their matters to go away, so Gillard doesn’t want us to investigate her time at Slater & Gordon — it’s all part of the same problem”.
Whoever made grunting noises at Latham could not possibly have been Weisser. He’s been had. And he’s also quit The Spectator.
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