ALP opposition
Shorten still fails and so promotes independent parties. The ALP has said 'no' to almost all government legislation, including legislation the ALP put in place or backed while in office. The result is that minority parties have extraordinary power, but the results are a dysfunctional parliament which upsets the voting public. The government has been relentless, and so a desperate Palmer has pushed his party to fracture when it had every single advantage. PUP could have become a deal breaker, and been credited with bringing in needed reform in Health, Education and Welfare. Instead it has a voting record which closely matches the ALP and a history of being unable to keep its own promises. Even if Palmer himself survives his court cases politically, he has junked his reputation. Lambie, a former PUP, has opposed legislation allowing children that ALP failed to drown out of detention. PUP Lazarus has not opposed that legislation, but has said he found it very confronting. He really wanted those children detained, presumably. Sarah Hanson Young (Green) was appalled that the government would free those children. The media is desperately pointing at polls and hysterically claiming that the government is doomed come the next election. They point to alleged division within government ranks and claim Mr Hockey is to blame for the ALP failing to assert itself. It may well be true that Joe has destroyed the ALP with his budget, but that is not yet widely recognised. Even if an election were called tomorrow, all that would happen would be the public recognition that the ALP have no policy. ABC struggling to come to terms with children they couldn't drown being freed from detention. When the ALP were in government, it was easy for the ABC, as all they needed to do was ignore the issue, or claim there was no solution. Now they report on the problem and blame the government when it was the fault of the previous government. Meanwhile, 7:30 report finished by highlighting thirty years of partisan politics resulting in systemic failure. Quentin Dempster mentioned he had campaigned against Joh Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland before coming to NSW to campaign against the Liberals. He gloated at how he shielded successive ALP governments from criticism.
Quantising ALP debt isn't hard. It is that big. Bolt posts Hekler's suggestions.
Example 1. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we took half of everything earned by every Australian for two years the debt would return to zero.Chris Bowen admits the ALP has no policy. In an interview with Tony Jones Bowen claims he would reinstate cancelled spending by the Libs, but had no way of paying for that promise, beyond extending debt.
Example 2. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we stopped every Social Security payment for three years the debt would return to zero.Example 3. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on health for seven years the debt would return to zero.Example 4. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on education for 14 years the debt would return to zeroExample 5. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on defence for 19 years the debt would return to zero
Left wing fantasy land is built where according to Bolt "Passion trumps truth. Hatred substitutes for an understanding of the other." Bolt lists examples, but that list is not exhaustive.
Other issues
Clive Palmer is failing to stay afloat. He is losing court cases and pursued by journalists and China. Instead of making fiends, he has tried to control people, and so his power is failing. Soon he will be as pathetic as a teary Joh Bjelke-Petersen locked in Queensland's parliament having lost election after following Palmer's advice.
Cuneen vs ICAC. ICAC are desperate to be torn apart before they have to finish investigations into the ALP. To that end they have had an investigation into the conservative NSW government that has not shown any corruption, but has claimed scalps. But the disciplined LNP in NSW has weathered the storm. So the ICAC are upping the ante. Prosecutor Cuneen has been maliciously accused of advising her son's girlfriend to avoid breath testing when she had had no alcohol in her system. There is nothing to investigate. But if the ICAC do investigate, they can fish for things that are irrelevant. Few individuals, no matter how virtuous would stand up to such probing. But the ICAC have been denied their attempt at corrupt investigation. But they are appealing the decision based on principle. They really want to be wound up for corruption before they have to investigate the ALP.
The issue of blacks dying resisting arrest. The US does not have a problem with racist policeman. Two recent celebrated cases show conclusively that the real issue is the pop culture mentality of those resisting arrest. If a policeman detains you, you go do as you are told and let the courts and lawyers settle it. It isn't the job of the police to play with idiots resisting arrest. But then, tragically, the miscarriage of justice with the arrest of Rodney King has it that any idiot can get rich resisting arrest. And they can. But they can also die.
Frightbat's tragic tale of an untouched hand as Blair reports on Clementine Ford's boarding of a train and not having her hand touched. Apparently men are awful.
Historical perspectives on this day
In 65 BC, Cicero gave the fourth and final of the Catiline Orations. In 633 Fourth Council of Toledo took place. In 1082, Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona was assassinated. In 1408, Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reached Moscow. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that deputised Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany. In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haitiand the Dominican Republic). In 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal issued a decree of expulsion of "heretics" from the country. In 1757, Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick II of Prussia led Prussian forces to a decisive victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. In 1766, in London, James Christie held his first sale. In 1775, at Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox began his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.In 1815, foundation of Maceió, Brazil. In 1831, former U.S. President John Quincy Adams took his seat in the House of Representatives. In 1847, Jefferson Davis was elected to the U.S. senate, his first political post. In 1848, California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirmed that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California. In 1865, Chincha Islands War: Peru allied with Chile against Spain. In 1876, the Brooklyn Theater Fire killed at least 278 people in Brooklyn, New York. In 1916, British premier H. H. Asquith resigned from his post. In 1920, Dimitrios Rallis formed a government in Greece. In 1932, German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein was granted an American visa. In 1933, Prohibition in the United States ended: Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment. (This overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States.) In 1934, Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attacked Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city. In 1936, the Soviet Union adopted a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
In 1941, World War II: In the Battle of Moscow, Georgy Zhukov launched a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre. Also, World War II: Great Britain declared war on Finland, Hungary and Romania. In 1943, World War II: U.S. Army Air Force began attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow. In 1945, Flight 19 was lost in the Bermuda Triangle. In 1952, Great Smog: A cold fog descended upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow. In 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged and formed the AFL–CIO. Also, E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, Sukarno expelled all Dutch people from Indonesia. In 1958, Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh. Also, the Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opened to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.)
In 1964, Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war. In 1969, the four node ARPANET network was established. In 1977, Egypt broke diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The move was in retaliation for the Declaration of Tripoli against Egypt. In 1978, the Soviet Union signed a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In 1983, dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina. In 1993, the mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, was injured by a letter bomb. In 1995, Sri Lankan Civil War: The Sri Lankan government announced the conquest of the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. In 2004, the Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership was registered there. In 2005, the Lake Tanganyika earthquake caused significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2006, Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government in Fiji. In 2007, Westroads Mall shooting: A gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska, mall, killing eight people before taking his own life. In 2012, at least 8 people were killed and 12 others injured after a 5.6 earthquake strikes Iran's South Khorasan Province.
2013
Much needs to be done, it is hard to know where to start. One important agenda item is to do with the ABC. It won't be fixed at once, as there is a culture of corruption pervading it from the lowest levels to the top. It is important to have a national broadcaster. It isn't desirable to have a bad one. I believe the news and current affair element needs to be separated. The infotainment that has resulted from the abysmal journalism service has obfuscated all of the most important events of the last forty years. While people would be aware of the role of the ABC in bringing about a diplomatic incident with Indonesia, they would not be aware of how the ABC has protected ALP from corruption investigation. Consider the following Media Watch questions to Tim Blair following the story of a constituent of Nathan Reese having an affair with him. Reese had confessed to parliament his misjudgement and stood aside from his portfolio. Media Watch asked:1. Were you aware at the time of publication that this story had been rejected by two other media outlets?2. Did that give you any concerns?3. Why did you decide it was in the public interest to reveal what several commentators have described as a private matter?4. Why did you not reveal the name of the woman involved, given that the credibility and completeness of her account may be at issue?5. Were you concerned about this woman’s reported connection to people in the NSW ALP?The serious issue involved a shadow police minister and a former Premier. The possibility of corruption and blackmail is strong. It is hard to know under what circumstances it would not be in the public interest to run the story. Now consider my issue in finding a reporter for the issue of dead schoolboy Hamidur Rahman and a bungled pedophile investigation at Campbelltown PAHS. I have, through no fault of my own, been unemployed since July 2007. My life savings is gone. I have been illegally blacklisted. My citizenship evidence was destroyed by Bob Carr. I have been denied legal aid because of my race. I have been harassed for being fat and US born by my equal opportunity employer. I have been paid less than award wage by the government under Gillard's Fair Work legislation. My life has been threatened by a known hit man. I have privately engaged with the ALP on many occasions to get the issue sorted without public fuss. Keep in mind, I have never been allowed to put my position before any court. I gave some information to the NSW coroner, but they ignored it after the police incompetently, or corruptly, failed to examine it.
I know journalists of all ages and descriptions. A former student of mine who was a cadet journalist said they couldn't help because it was 'above their pay grade.' A senior journalist has told me they have been instructed by editors they cannot report on my issue. These questions from Media Watch illustrate why it is so hard for me to get my story told, despite extreme privation and substantial evidence.
The ABC can no longer merely balance their abysmal service. We don't need them to lie about conservatives. We need them to report impartially. They have failed by any measure.
===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed
Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.
===
Happy birthday and many happy returns Alan J Tran, Ilsa Mirza and Pradeep Garg. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
- 852 – Zhu Wen, Chinese emperor of the Later Liang Dynasty (d. 912)
- 1377 – Jianwen Emperor of China (d. 1402)
- 1666 – Francesco Scarlatti, Italian composer (d. 1741)
- 1839 – George Armstrong Custer, American general (d. 1876)
- 1890 – Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, screenwriter, and producer (d. 1976)
- 1901 – Walt Disney, American animator, director, screenwriter, and producer, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (d. 1966)
- 1901 – Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
- 1932 – Little Richard, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor
- 1946 – José Carreras, Spanish tenor
- 1963 – Doctor Dré, American television and radio host
- 1976 – Amy Acker, American actress
- 1993 – Ross Barkley, English footballer
December 5: St Nicholas's Eve in various European countries; The King's birthday, National Day and Father's Day in Thailand (1927)
- 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issued the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, giving Dominican InquisitorHeinrich Kramer explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
- 1876 – Fire engulfed the Brooklyn Theater (damage pictured) in Brooklyn, New York, killing at least 278 people, mostly due to smoke inhalation.
- 1916 – British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigned due to his lack of vigour over the conduct of the Great War.
- 1939 – The remains of Pedro II of Brazil, who was ousted and exiled in a republican coup, were buried after being repatriated.
- 1974 – The Birmingham Americans won the only World Bowl in World Football League history.
Matches
- 63 BC – Cicero gives the fourth and final of the Catiline Orations.
- 633 – Fourth Council of Toledo takes place.
- 1082 – Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona is assassinated.
- 1408 – Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reaches Moscow.
- 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany.
- 1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haitiand the Dominican Republic).
- 1496 – King Manuel I of Portugal issues a decree of expulsion of "heretics" from the country.
- 1757 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick II of Prussia leads Prussian forces to a decisive victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine.
- 1766 – In London, James Christie holds his first sale.
- 1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 1815 – Foundation of Maceió, Brazil.
- 1831 – Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
- 1847 – Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. senate, his first political post.
- 1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
- 1865 – Chincha Islands War: Peru allies with Chile against Spain.
- 1876 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278 people in Brooklyn, New York.
- 1916 – British premier H. H. Asquith resigns from his post.
- 1920 – Dimitrios Rallis forms a government in Greece.
- 1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.
- 1933 – Prohibition in the United States ends: Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment. (This overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States.)
- 1934 – Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attack Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city.
- 1936 – The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic is established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
- 1941 – World War II: In the Battle of Moscow, Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.
- 1941 – World War II: Great Britain declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania.
- 1943 – World War II: U.S. Army Air Force begins attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow.
- 1945 – Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
- 1952 – Great Smog: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.
- 1955 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL–CIO.
- 1955 – E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- 1957 – Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia.
- 1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
- 1958 – The Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55motorways.)
- 1964 – Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.
- 1969 – The four node ARPANET network is established.
- 1977 – Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The move is in retaliation for the Declaration of Tripoli against Egypt.
- 1978 – The Soviet Union signs a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
- 1983 – Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina.
- 1993 – The mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, is injured by a letter bomb.
- 1995 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The Sri Lankan government announces the conquest of the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna.
- 2004 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there.
- 2005 – The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- 2006 – Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrows the government in Fiji.
- 2007 – Westroads Mall shooting: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska, mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.
- 2012 – At least 8 people are killed and 12 others injured after a 5.6 earthquake strikes Iran's South Khorasan Province.
Hatches
- 852 – Zhu Wen, Chinese emperor (d. 912)
- 1377 – Jianwen Emperor of China (d. 1402)
- 1443 – Pope Julius II (d. 1513)
- 1495 – Nicolas Cleynaerts, Flemish philologist and lexicographer (d. 1542)
- 1537 – Ashikaga Yoshiaki, Japanese shogun (d. 1597)
- 1539 – Fausto Sozzini, Italian theologian (d. 1604)
- 1547 – Ubbo Emmius, Dutch historian and geographer (d. 1625)
- 1595 – Henry Lawes, English composer (d. 1662)
- 1661 – Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, English politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (d. 1724)
- 1666 – Francesco Scarlatti, Italian composer (d. 1741)
- 1687 – Francesco Geminiani, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1762)
- 1697 – Giuseppe de Majo, Italian organist and composer (d. 1771)
- 1782 – Martin Van Buren, American lawyer and politician, 8th President of the United States (d. 1862)
- 1803 – Fyodor Tyutchev, Russian poet (d. 1873)
- 1820 – Afanasy Fet, Russian poet and author (d. 1892)
- 1822 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, American philosopher and academic, co-founded Radcliffe College (d. 1907)
- 1829 – Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, French-Canadian politician, 4th Premier of Quebec (d. 1908)
- 1830 – Christina Rossetti, English poet and author (d. 1894)
- 1839 – George Armstrong Custer, American general (d. 1876)
- 1841 – Marcus Daly, Irish-American businessman (d. 1900)
- 1855 – Clinton Hart Merriam, American zoologist, ornithologist, entomologist, and ethnographer (d. 1942)
- 1859 – John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, English admiral and politician, 2nd Governor-General of New Zealand (d. 1935)
- 1863 – Paul Painlevé, French mathematician and politician, 84th Prime Minister of France (d. 1933)
- 1867 – Antti Aarne, Finnish author (d. 1925)
- 1867 – Józef Piłsudski, Polish field marshal and politician, 15th Prime Minister of Poland (d. 1935)
- 1868 – Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist and academic (d. 1951)
- 1869 – Ellis Parker Butler, American author (d. 1937)
- 1870 – Vítězslav Novák, Czech composer and educator (d. 1949)
- 1871 – Bill Pickett, American rodeo performer (d. 1932)
- 1872 – Harry Nelson Pillsbury, American chess player (d. 1906)
- 1875 – Arthur Currie, Canadian general (d. 1933)
- 1879 – Clyde Vernon Cessna, American pilot and businessman, founded the Cessna Aircraft Corporation (d. 1954)
- 1881 – René Cresté, French actor (d. 1922)
- 1886 – Pieter Oud, Dutch historian, academic, and politician, Minister of Finance of the Netherlands (d. 1968)
- 1886 – Rose Wilder Lane, American journalist and author (d. 1968)
- 1890 – David Bomberg, English painter, illustrator, and academic (d. 1957)
- 1890 – Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1976)
- 1891 – Paul Kogerman, Estonian chemist and academic (d. 1951)
- 1894 – Charles Robberts Swart, South African lawyer and politician, 1st State President of South Africa (d. 1982)
- 1895 – Elbert Frank Cox, American mathematician and academic (d. 1969)
- 1896 – Ann Nolan Clark, American historian, author, and educator (d. 1995)
- 1896 – Carl Ferdinand Cori, Czech-American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1897 – Nunnally Johnson, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1977)
- 1897 – Gershom Scholem, German-Israeli philosopher and historian (d. 1982)
- 1898 – Josh Malihabadi, Indian-Pakistani poet (d. 1982)
- 1898 – Grace Moore, American soprano and actress (d. 1947)
- 1900 – Jimmy Dimmock, English footballer (d. 1972)
- 1901 – Walt Disney, American animator, director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (d. 1966)
- 1901 – Milton H. Erickson, American psychiatrist and author (d. 1980)
- 1901 – Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
- 1901 – Marjorie Eaton, American painter and actress (d. 1986)
- 1902 – Emeric Pressburger, Hungarian-English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1988)
- 1902 – Strom Thurmond, American educator, general, and politician, 103rd Governor of South Carolina (d. 2003)
- 1903 – Johannes Heesters, Dutch-German actor and singer (d. 2011)
- 1903 – C. F. Powell, English-Italian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1969)
- 1905 – Gus Mancuso, American baseball player, coach, and sportscaster (d. 1984)
- 1906 – Otto Preminger, Austrian-American actor, director, and producer (d. 1986)
- 1907 – Lin Biao, Chinese general and politician, 2nd Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China (d. 1971)
- 1907 – Giuseppe Occhialini, Italian-French physicist and academic (d. 1993)
- 1909 – Musashiyama Takeshi, Japanese sumo wrestler (d. 1969)
- 1910 – Abraham Polonsky, American director and screenwriter (d. 1999)
- 1911 – Władysław Szpilman, Polish pianist and composer (d. 2000)
- 1912 – Sonny Boy Williamson II, American singer-songwriter and harmonica player (d. 1965)
- 1913 – Esther Borja, Cuban soprano and actress (d. 2013)
- 1914 – Hans Hellmut Kirst, German lieutenant and author (d. 1989)
- 1916 – Margaret Hayes, American actress (d. 1977)
- 1916 – Hilary Koprowski, Polish-American virologist and immunologist, created the Polio vaccine (d. 2013)
- 1916 – Walt McPherson, American basketball player and coach (d. 2013)
- 1917 – Ken Downing, English race car driver (d. 2004)
- 1917 – Wenche Foss, Norwegian actress (d. 2011)
- 1919 – Alun Gwynne Jones, Baron Chalfont, English historian and politician
- 1921 – Alvy Moore, American actor and producer (d. 1997)
- 1925 – Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaraguan politician, 73rd President of Nicaragua (d. 1980)
- 1927 – Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thai king
- 1929 – Madis Kõiv, Estonian physicist, philosopher, and author (d. 2014)
- 1931 – Ladislav Novák, Czech footballer and manager (d. 2011)
- 1932 – Alf Dubs, Baron Dubs, Czech-English politician
- 1932 – Sheldon Lee Glashow, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1932 – Jim Hurtubise, American race car driver (d. 1989)
- 1932 – Little Richard, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor
- 1933 – Gennadiy Agapov, Russian race walker (d. 1999)
- 1934 – Joan Didion, American author and screenwriter
- 1934 – Nikos Kourkoulos, Greek actor and director (d. 2007)
- 1935 – Marise Chamberlain, New Zealand runner
- 1935 – Calvin Trillin, American journalist, author, and poet
- 1935 – Yury Vlasov, Ukrainian-Russian weightlifter and politician
- 1936 – James Lee Burke, American author
- 1938 – JJ Cale, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Leathercoated Minds) (d. 2013)
- 1938 – J. D. McDuffie, American race car driver (d. 1991)
- 1939 – Minita Chico-Nazario, Filipino lawyer and jurist
- 1940 – Boris Ignatyev, Russian footballer and manager
- 1940 – Peter Pohl, Swedish author, director, and screenwriter
- 1940 – Adrian Street, Welsh-American wrestler and actor
- 1940 – Frank Wilson, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2012)
- 1943 – Eva Joly, Norwegian-French judge and politician
- 1944 – Jeroen Krabbé, Dutch actor, director, and producer
- 1944 – Loukas Sideras, Greek drummer and producer (Aphrodite's Child)
- 1945 – Serge Chapleau, Canadian cartoonist
- 1945 – Moshe Katsav, Iranian-Israeli politician, 8th President of Israel
- 1946 – José Carreras, Spanish tenor and actor
- 1946 – Andy Kim, Canadian singer-songwriter
- 1946 – Sarel van der Merwe, South African race car driver
- 1947 – Bruce Golding, Jamaican politician, 8th Prime Minister of Jamaica
- 1947 – Tony Gregory, Irish educator and politician (d. 2009)
- 1947 – Jim Messina, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Buffalo Springfield, Loggins and Messina, and Poco)
- 1947 – Jim Plunkett, American football player and radio host
- 1947 – Don Touhig, Welsh politician
- 1947 – Rick Wills, English bass player (Foreigner, Small Faces, Bad Company, Jokers Wild, and The Jones Gang)
- 1949 – John Altman, English composer and conductor
- 1949 – David Manning, English diplomat, British Ambassador to the United States
- 1949 – Abdullah Senussi, Sudanese-Libyan general
- 1950 – Camarón de la Isla, Spanish singer and guitarist (d. 1992)
- 1950 – Osvaldo Golijov, Argentinian composer
- 1950 – James Knaggs, American Salvation Army officer
- 1951 – Morgan Brittany, American actress
- 1951 – Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Belgian painter and illustrator
- 1951 – Larry Zbyszko, American wrestler
- 1952 – Bobby Barth, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Blackfoot)
- 1953 – Gwen Lister, South African-Namibian journalist, publisher, and activist
- 1954 – Hanif Kureishi, English author and playwright
- 1954 – Gary Roenicke, American baseball player
- 1955 – Juha Tiainen, Finnish hammer thrower (d. 2003)
- 1956 – Klaus Allofs, German footballer and manager
- 1956 – Brian Backer, American actor
- 1956 – Adam Thorpe, French-English author, poet, and playwright
- 1956 – Krystian Zimerman, Polish pianist and educator
- 1957 – Raquel Argandoña, Chilean model, actress, and politician
- 1957 – Patriz Ilg, German steeplechase runner
- 1957 – Art Monk, American football player
- 1958 – Dean Erickson, American actor
- 1958 – Dynamite Kid, English wrestler
- 1959 – Lee Chapman, English footballer
- 1959 – Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, Ukrainian businessman
- 1960 – Frans Adelaar, Dutch footballer and manager
- 1960 – Jack Russell, American singer-songwriter and producer (Great White)
- 1960 – Matthew Taylor, English politician
- 1961 – Ralf Dujmovits, German mountaineer
- 1961 – Sophia Vossou, Greek singer
- 1962 – José Cura, Argentinian tenor, conductor, and director
- 1962 – Pablo Morales, American swimmer
- 1962 – Nivek Ogre, Canadian singer-songwriter and actor (Skinny Puppy, ohGr, Ministry, and Rx)
- 1962 – Samart Payakaroon, Thai boxer
- 1962 – Fred Rutten, Dutch footballer and manager
- 1963 – Doctor Dré, American television and radio host
- 1963 – Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, English ski jumper
- 1963 – Ty England, American singer and guitarist
- 1963 – Carrie Hamilton, American actress and singer (d. 2002)
- 1964 – Cliff Eidelman, American composer
- 1965 – Manish Malhotra, Indian costume designer
- 1965 – John Rzeznik, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Goo Goo Dolls)
- 1965 – Wayne Smith, Jamaican rapper
- 1965 – Valeriy Spitsyn, Russian race walker
- 1966 – Patricia Kaas, French singer-songwriter and actress
- 1966 – Lee Seung-chul, South Korean singer (Boohwal)
- 1967 – Gary Allan, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1967 – Konstantin-Assen, Prince of Vidin
- 1967 – Amanda Lepore, American model, nightlife and fashion icon, performance artist, recording artist and transgender public figure
- 1968 – Margaret Cho, American comedian, actress, producer, and screenwriter
- 1968 – Lisa Marie, American model and actress
- 1968 – Lydia Millet, American author
- 1968 – Falilat Ogunkoya, Nigerian sprinter
- 1969 – Eric Etebari, American actor, director, and producer
- 1969 – Morgan J. Freeman, American director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1969 – Alex Kapp Horner, American actress
- 1969 – Sajid Javid, English banker and politician
- 1969 – Lewis Gordon Pugh, British swimmer and lawyer
- 1969 – Ramón Ramírez, Mexican footballer
- 1970 – Kevin Haller, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1971 – Ashia Hansen, British triple jumper
- 1971 – Kali Rocha, American actress
- 1971 – Kavus Torabi, Iranian-English guitarist (Knifeworld, Cardiacs, The Monsoon Bassoon, Guapo, and Chrome Hoof)
- 1971 – Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, German politician, Federal Minister of Defence
- 1972 – Cliff Floyd, American baseball player and sportscaster
- 1972 – Mike Mahoney, American baseball player
- 1972 – Duane Ross, American hurdler
- 1972 – Angela Shelton, American actress, producer, and screenwriter
- 1973 – Argo Arbeiter, Estonian footballer
- 1973 – Arik Benado, Israeli footballer and manager
- 1973 – Shalom Harlow, Canadian model and actress
- 1973 – Andrei Krasnopjorov, Estonian footballer
- 1973 – Mikelangelo Loconte, Italian singer-songwriter and producer
- 1973 – Luboš Motl, Czech physicist
- 1973 – Danielle Winits, Brazilian actress, singer, and dancer
- 1974 – Charlie Batch, American football player
- 1974 – Brian Lewis, American sprinter
- 1974 – Elbrus Tedeyev, Ukrainian wrestler
- 1975 – Ronnie O'Sullivan, English snooker player
- 1975 – Paula Patton, American actress
- 1976 – Amy Acker, American actress
- 1976 – Xavier Garbajosa, French rugby player
- 1976 – Rachel Komisarz, American swimmer
- 1977 – Peter van der Vlag, Dutch footballer
- 1978 – Pachrapa Chaichua, Thai actress
- 1978 – Olli Jokinen, Finnish ice hockey player
- 1978 – Marcelo Zalayeta, Uruguayan footballer
- 1979 – Matteo Ferrari, Italian footballer
- 1979 – Niklas Hagman, Finnish ice hockey player
- 1979 – Evonne Hsu, American-Taiwanese singer
- 1979 – Gareth McAuley, Irish footballer
- 1979 – Nick Stahl, American actor and producer
- 1980 – Tamara Feldman, American actress
- 1980 – Shizuka Itō, Japanese voice actress and singer
- 1980 – Ibrahim Maalouf, Lebanese-French trumpet player and composer
- 1981 – Leila Tong, Hong Kong actress
- 1982 – Eddy Curry, American basketball player
- 1982 – Trai Essex, American football player
- 1982 – Keri Hilson, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress (The Clutch)
- 1982 – Karl Palatu, Estonian footballer
- 1983 – Cooper Cronk, Australian rugby player
- 1983 – Samantha Lewthwaite, Irish wife of Germaine Lindsay
- 1983 – Tiffany Weimer, American soccer player
- 1983 – JP White, Swedish bass player (Vains of Jenna)
- 1984 – Chris Solinsky, American runner
- 1985 – Shikhar Dhawan, Indian cricketer
- 1985 – Frankie Muniz, American actor and race car driver
- 1985 – Josh Smith, American basketball player
- 1985 – Nico Verdonck, Belgian race car driver
- 1986 – LeGarrette Blount, American football player
- 1986 – James Hinchcliffe, Canadian race car driver
- 1987 – James Argent, English singer, actor and radio host
- 1987 – Tommy Fraser, English footballer
- 1988 – Joanna Rowsell, English cyclist
- 1988 – Miralem Sulejmani, Serbian footballer
- 1989 – Pamela Jelimo, Kenyan middle-distance runner
- 1989 – Linet Masai, Kenyan long-distance runner
- 1989 – Kwon Yuri, South Korean singer, dancer, and actress (Girls' Generation)
- 1990 – Montee Ball, American football player
- 1991 – Jacopo Sala, Italian footballer
- 1991 – Carolin Schäfer, German heptathlete
- 1992 – Ilja Antonov, Estonian footballer
- 1993 – Ross Barkley, English footballer
- 2009 – Ayelet Galena, American child born with Dyskeratosis congenita (d. 2012)
Despatches
- 63 BC – Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Roman politician
- 1082 – Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona (b. 1053)
- 1355 – John III, Duke of Brabant (b. 1300)
- 1560 – Francis II of France (b. 1544)
- 1570 – Johan Friis, Danish politician (b. 1494)
- 1624 – Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist and physician (b. 1560)
- 1654 – Jean François Sarrazin, French author (b. 1611)
- 1663 – Severo Bonini, Italian organist and composer (b. 1582)
- 1749 – Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, Canadian commander and explorer (b. 1685)
- 1758 – Johann Friedrich Fasch, German violinist and composer (b. 1688)
- 1770 – James Stirling, Scottish mathematician (b. 1692)
- 1784 – Phillis Wheatley, Senegalese-American slave and poet (b. 1753)
- 1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian pianist and composer (b. 1756)
- 1819 – Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg, German poet and lawyer (b. 1750)
- 1870 – Alexandre Dumas, French author and playwright (b. 1802)
- 1887 – Eliza R. Snow, American poet and songwriter (b. 1804)
- 1891 – Pedro II of Brazil (b. 1825)
- 1895 – Gall, American tribal chief (b. 1840)
- 1918 – Schalk Willem Burger, South African commander, lawyer, and politician, 6th President of the South African Republic (b. 1852)
- 1925 – Władysław Reymont, Polish author, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1867)
- 1926 – Claude Monet, French painter (b. 1840)
- 1931 – Vachel Lindsay, American poet (b. 1879)
- 1940 – Jan Kubelík, Czech violinist and composer (b. 1880)
- 1941 – Amrita Sher-Gil, Hungarian-Pakistani painter (b. 1913)
- 1942 – Jock Delves Broughton, English captain (b. 1883)
- 1946 – Louis Dewis, Belgian-French painter (b. 1872)
- 1950 – Sri Aurobindo, Indian guru and poet (b. 1872)
- 1951 – Shoeless Joe Jackson, American baseball player and manager (b. 1887)
- 1951 – Abanindranath Tagore, Indian painter, author, and academic (b. 1871)
- 1953 – Jorge Negrete, Mexican-American singer and actor (b. 1911)
- 1953 – William Sterling Parsons, American admiral (b. 1901)
- 1955 – Glenn L. Martin, American pilot and businessman, founded the Glenn L. Martin Company (b. 1886)
- 1961 – Emil Fuchs, German-American lawyer and businessman (b. 1878)
- 1963 – Karl Amadeus Hartmann, German composer (b. 1905)
- 1963 – Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Indian-Pakistani politician, 5th Prime Minister of Pakistan (b. 1892)
- 1964 – V. Veerasingam, Sri Lankan educator and politician (b. 1892)
- 1965 – Joseph Erlanger, American physiologist, neuroscientist, and academic Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1874)
- 1966 – Sylvère Maes, Belgian cyclist (b. 1909)
- 1968 – Fred Clark, American actor (b. 1914)
- 1969 – Princess Alice of Battenberg (b. 1885)
- 1969 – Claudius Dornier, German businessman, founded Dornier Flugzeugwerke (b. 1884)
- 1973 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, invented the radar (b. 1892)
- 1975 – Constance McLaughlin Green, American historian and author (b. 1897)
- 1977 – Katherine Milhous, American author and illustrator (b. 1894)
- 1977 – Aleksandr Vasilevsky, Russian marshal and politician, Minister of Defence for the Soviet Union (b. 1895)
- 1979 – Jesse Pearson, American actor, singer, and screenwriter (b. 1930)
- 1983 – Robert Aldrich, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1918)
- 1986 – Edward Youde, Welsh-Chinese sinologist and diplomat, 26th Governor of Hong Kong (b. 1924)
- 1989 – John Pritchard, English conductor (b. 1921)
- 1989 – George Selden, American author (b. 1929)
- 1991 – Robert Karvelas, American actor (b. 1921)
- 1991 – Richard Speck, American murderer (b. 1941)
- 1993 – Doug Hopkins, American guitarist and songwriter (Gin Blossoms) (b. 1961)
- 1994 – Harry Horner, Czech-American director, producer, and production designer (b. 1910)
- 1994 – Günter Meisner, German actor (b. 1926)
- 1995 – L. B. Cole, American illustrator and publisher (b. 1918)
- 1995 – Charles Evans, English mountaineer, surgeon, and educator (b. 1918)
- 1995 – Gwen Harwood, Australian poet and playwright (b. 1920)
- 1995 – Lisa McPherson, American homicide victim (b. 1959)
- 1998 – Albert Gore, Sr., American lawyer and politician (b. 1907)
- 2001 – Franco Rasetti, Italian-American physicist and academic (b. 1901)
- 2002 – Roone Arledge, American sportscaster (b. 1931)
- 2002 – Ne Win, Burmese general and politician, 4th President of Burma (b. 1911)
- 2005 – Edward L. Masry, American lawyer and politician (b. 1932)
- 2005 – Kevin McQuay, Australian businessman (b. 1949)
- 2005 – Frits Philips, Dutch businessman (b. 1905)
- 2006 – David Bronstein, Ukrainian-Belarusian chess player (b. 1924)
- 2007 – Andrew Imbrie, American composer (b. 1921)
- 2007 – George Paraskevaides, Greek-Cypriot businessman, co-founded Joannou & Paraskevaides (b. 1916)
- 2007 – Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer and academic (b. 1928)
- 2008 – Alexy II of Moscow, Estonian-Russian patriarch (b. 1929)
- 2008 – Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, Romanian politician (b. 1928)
- 2008 – Nina Foch, Dutch-American actress (b. 1924)
- 2008 – Anca Parghel, Romanian singer-songwriter and pianist (b. 1957)
- 2009 – Vimolchatra, Thai princess (b. 1921)
- 2009 – William Lederer, American soldier and author (b. 1912)
- 2010 – Alan Armer, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1922)
- 2010 – John Leslie, American porn actor, director, and producer (b. 1945)
- 2010 – Don Meredith, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (b. 1938)
- 2011 – Peter Gethin, English race car driver (b. 1940)
- 2011 – Gennady Logofet, Russian footballer and manager (b. 1942)
- 2012 – Sammy Arena, American singer (b. 1931)
- 2012 – Dave Brubeck, American pianist and composer (b. 1920)
- 2012 – Geoffrey Clatworthy, New Zealand activist (b. 1939)
- 2012 – Eduardo J. Corso, Uruguayan lawyer and journalist (b. 1920)
- 2012 – Michael A. Gorman, American lieutenant and politician (b. 1950)
- 2012 – Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, Japanese actor (b. 1955)
- 2012 – Sarah Kirsch, American singer and guitarist (Fuel, Pinhead Gunpowder, and Fifteen) (b. 1970)
- 2012 – Elisabeth Murdoch, Australian philanthropist (b. 1909)
- 2012 – Oscar Niemeyer, Brazilian architect, designed the United Nations Headquarters and Cathedral of Brasília (b. 1907)
- 2012 – Yves Niaré, French shot putter (b. 1977)
- 2012 – Ignatius IV of Antioch, Syrian patriarch (b. 1920)
- 2012 – Doug Smith, Scottish footballer (b. 1937)
- 2013 – Fred Bassetti, American architect, founded Bassetti Architects (b. 1917)
- 2013 – Iryna Charnushenka-Stasiuk, Belarusian long jumper (b. 1979)
- 2013 – William B. Edmondson, American diplomat, United States Ambassador to South Africa (b. 1927)
- 2013 – Monte Fresco, English photographer (b. 1936)
- 2013 – Barry Jackson, English actor and stuntman (b. 1938)
- 2013 – Nelson Mandela, South African lawyer and politician, 1st President of South Africa, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)
- 2013 – Danny Matt, German-Israeli general (b. 1927)
- 2013 – Colin Wilson, English philosopher and author (b. 1931)
2014
- Christian feast day:
- Day of the Ninja (unofficial)
- Discovery Day (Haiti and Dominican Republic)
- Faunalia, in honor of Faunus (Roman Empire)
- International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development (International)
- Krampusnacht (Austria)
- The King's Birthday, National Day, and Father's Day (Thailand)
Shorten still throwing our future away
Piers Akerman – Friday, December 05, 2014 (11:32am)
Whatever Opposition Leader Bill Shorten may say about Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Labor policies were responsible for the nation’s perilous finances, and he has no solutions.
He leads a party which could meaningfully negotiate with the government and negate the debilitating effect on public confidence of the truly stupid minority party senators, but he prefers to put at risk the nation’s reputation for good governance for petty political gain.
The disorderly former PUP senator Jacqui Lambie and her cross-bench colleagues owe their disruptive balance of power to Labor’s determination to be wreckers, not builders.
Without Labor, they would be toast.
Australians have been twice warned in the space of a fortnight that they face a deteriorating standard of living.
Outgoing Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson warned last week that unless tough decisions were taken over the next few years, the future is bleak.
‘It’s not feasible to materially reduce spending growth without looking at the largest spending categories … this is health, welfare and higher education,” he said.
They are the three policy areas where the senate has refused to embrace change, areas which Labor has in the past sought to reform but is now rejecting necessary reorganisation.
Parkinson warned: ‘We know what failure looks like. Declining growth in living standards, perhaps even falling living standards, lower wages, few opportunities for our young and, in all likelihood, declining public services and rising personal tax burdens.
‘The implications for fiscal sustainability of failing to take action seem to have been lost in the public debate, as if this does not matter to Australia’s future prosperity,” he said.
Shorten and his team are just sitting on their hands. Yet he was a minister in the successive Labor governments, which constantly failed to produce promised surpluses and presented nothing but deficits, culminating in the $48.5 billion deficit for 2013-14 - $30 billion larger than Labor forecast last year.
Parkinson’s analysis made three specific points.
In addition to emphasising the need to examine the three big-spending policy areas, he said it was better to cut spending than increase taxation, and he stressed the need to act now or face another ten years of budget deficits.
‘This should be understood for what it is,” Parkinson said. ‘A serious warning to us as a nation that unless we tackle structural reform, including fixing our fundamental budget problem, we will not be able to guarantee rising income and living standards for Australians.” In the next fortnight, Treasurer Joe Hockey will deliver the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), setting the direction until next May’s federal Budget.
This opportunity to regain control of the debate must not be squandered. With the ABC and Fairfax promoting the minority parties and generally supporting Labor’s negative approach to any of the Coalition’s budgetary measures, about 90 per cent of the media are working with the opposition to consign Australians to reduced standards of living in the next decade.
Labor has a role to play in opposition but under Shorten it has vacated its authoritative position and preferred to let the nation think crazy cross-benchers are running the country.
It is actively promoting the chaos.
With grotesque hypocrisy, it is actually blocking $5.7 billion of cuts it advocated when it was in office, including research and development tax changes and tax cuts linked to the now extinct job-destroying carbon tax.
Labor has a record of cutting university research funds and promoted an overall reduction in spending on the tertiary sector.
Now it is looking the other way, or actively promoting demented radicals from the noisy but essentially irrelevant Social Alliance organisation and other disruptive fanatics.
The GP co-payment should not be a conversation killer.
The Hawke Labor government backed the initiative more than 20 years ago, New Zealanders have lived with a co-payment without any fuss, and such a market mechanism is universally regarded as a common sense solution to reducing unnecessary demands on an already overstretched public health system.
But Labor, under Shorten, has sacrificed rational and coherent long-term policy objectives that would benefit the nation for short-term, headline-catching negativity.
In his end-of-year remarks to parliament yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott remarked that the fundamental tasks were?national security and economic security.
He said that at least on one of those tasks the government received a great deal of co-operation from the opposition.
With his usual charitableness he omitted the fact that Labor had slashed defence spending when in office and run down our national security capability. Now that parliament has risen for the year, Labor must ask itself if it wants to continue building the reputations of minority party non-entities and cement itself as the party of negativity and destruction, or to take part in our democracy constructively.As long as he stays wedded to adolescent rabble-rousing rather than making contributions to constructive and productive policy, he will cement his identity as a roadblock on the path to a positive, prosperous future.
He leads a party which could meaningfully negotiate with the government and negate the debilitating effect on public confidence of the truly stupid minority party senators, but he prefers to put at risk the nation’s reputation for good governance for petty political gain.
The disorderly former PUP senator Jacqui Lambie and her cross-bench colleagues owe their disruptive balance of power to Labor’s determination to be wreckers, not builders.
Without Labor, they would be toast.
Australians have been twice warned in the space of a fortnight that they face a deteriorating standard of living.
Outgoing Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson warned last week that unless tough decisions were taken over the next few years, the future is bleak.
‘It’s not feasible to materially reduce spending growth without looking at the largest spending categories … this is health, welfare and higher education,” he said.
They are the three policy areas where the senate has refused to embrace change, areas which Labor has in the past sought to reform but is now rejecting necessary reorganisation.
Parkinson warned: ‘We know what failure looks like. Declining growth in living standards, perhaps even falling living standards, lower wages, few opportunities for our young and, in all likelihood, declining public services and rising personal tax burdens.
‘The implications for fiscal sustainability of failing to take action seem to have been lost in the public debate, as if this does not matter to Australia’s future prosperity,” he said.
Shorten and his team are just sitting on their hands. Yet he was a minister in the successive Labor governments, which constantly failed to produce promised surpluses and presented nothing but deficits, culminating in the $48.5 billion deficit for 2013-14 - $30 billion larger than Labor forecast last year.
Parkinson’s analysis made three specific points.
In addition to emphasising the need to examine the three big-spending policy areas, he said it was better to cut spending than increase taxation, and he stressed the need to act now or face another ten years of budget deficits.
‘This should be understood for what it is,” Parkinson said. ‘A serious warning to us as a nation that unless we tackle structural reform, including fixing our fundamental budget problem, we will not be able to guarantee rising income and living standards for Australians.” In the next fortnight, Treasurer Joe Hockey will deliver the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), setting the direction until next May’s federal Budget.
This opportunity to regain control of the debate must not be squandered. With the ABC and Fairfax promoting the minority parties and generally supporting Labor’s negative approach to any of the Coalition’s budgetary measures, about 90 per cent of the media are working with the opposition to consign Australians to reduced standards of living in the next decade.
Labor has a role to play in opposition but under Shorten it has vacated its authoritative position and preferred to let the nation think crazy cross-benchers are running the country.
It is actively promoting the chaos.
With grotesque hypocrisy, it is actually blocking $5.7 billion of cuts it advocated when it was in office, including research and development tax changes and tax cuts linked to the now extinct job-destroying carbon tax.
Labor has a record of cutting university research funds and promoted an overall reduction in spending on the tertiary sector.
Now it is looking the other way, or actively promoting demented radicals from the noisy but essentially irrelevant Social Alliance organisation and other disruptive fanatics.
The GP co-payment should not be a conversation killer.
The Hawke Labor government backed the initiative more than 20 years ago, New Zealanders have lived with a co-payment without any fuss, and such a market mechanism is universally regarded as a common sense solution to reducing unnecessary demands on an already overstretched public health system.
But Labor, under Shorten, has sacrificed rational and coherent long-term policy objectives that would benefit the nation for short-term, headline-catching negativity.
In his end-of-year remarks to parliament yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott remarked that the fundamental tasks were?national security and economic security.
He said that at least on one of those tasks the government received a great deal of co-operation from the opposition.
With his usual charitableness he omitted the fact that Labor had slashed defence spending when in office and run down our national security capability. Now that parliament has risen for the year, Labor must ask itself if it wants to continue building the reputations of minority party non-entities and cement itself as the party of negativity and destruction, or to take part in our democracy constructively.As long as he stays wedded to adolescent rabble-rousing rather than making contributions to constructive and productive policy, he will cement his identity as a roadblock on the path to a positive, prosperous future.
THE HAND THAT ROCKED A FRIGHTBAT
Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (5:26am)
Even the most ferocious Fairfax frightbat is vulnerable to one particularly insidious masculine tactic of oppression. Read on if you dare, as Age columnist Clementine Ford reveals the terrifying power of the untouched hand:
I just boarded a train to regional Victoria. As I was walking down the aisle …
There’s a line she won’t be using again in a hurry.
… I saw a large group of obnoxiously boisterous blokes. One of them held his hand out as I walked past, as if for me to shake it. I ignored it and kept walking, as his friends ribbed him for it.Such a simple interaction and so meaningless. But from the moment I spied them to the point of walking past and then for a few minutes in my seat, I was shaking.
Maybe it’s unfair to give the untouched hand all the credit here. It seems, by her own account, that Clementine’s hypersensitive fembat sonar was all a-jangle from the instant she spotted these “obnoxiously boisterous blokes”. It sent the timid Fairfax writer into a paranoid fear spiral:
Not really from fear for my physical safety, but from realising once again that there is a certain type of man who thinks that the world and everything in it – particularly women – belongs to him.
Clementine took mere seconds to establish this complete understanding of her fellow rail commuters.
I hate that I can be made to feel this way …
She wasn’t made to feel that way at all.
… from annoyance at being wrenched out of my thoughts and into alert mode, to feeling sick at the thought of what minor punishments I might receive if I don’t comply – the possible taunts, the insults and even the potentiality of a 1.5 hour train ride being peppered with harassment.
And?
These guys didn’t follow through on any of that …
Oh. So nothing happened. Nothing. Yet this innocuous encounter was still enough to provoke a full-blown Clementine panic attack:
By engaging in the way they did they caused me to feel vulnerable and unsafe – because so many other men do respond violently when you deny them the attention they feel entitled to, which ultimately means they get away with it because women feel too afraid to fight back. Contributing to culture of male entitlement – even if you think it’s harmless – contributes to the spectrum of gendered violence that targets women in particular.You are not entitled to women’s time or attention. You are not entitled to use us as ego boosts or as props to score man points with your mates. Just don’t do it! Leave women alone!
Er, Clementine? They did.
O CHILLI TREE
Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (2:58am)
===THUNDER AND WEIGHT LOSS
Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (2:50am)
Attention, Twitter users: Sydney enjoyed an entertaining lightning storm last night, not a lightening storm. Spelling issues aside, it was a thriller. One thunderclap was so concussive that it set off car alarms.
On The Bolt Report on Sunday, December 7
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (11:38am)
On the year’s final The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm.
Editorial: Call out the wreckers
My guest: Christopher Pyne, Education Minister and Leader of the House
The panel: former Labor campaign guru Bruce Hawker and Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian
NewsWatch: Sharri Markson, media editor of The Australian.
The real battle and who’s ahead. The Palmer United Senator who could surprise. Is the Senate a time bomb? Who flopped and must go? Joe Hockey in strife.
The videos of the shows appear here.
Hockey undermined
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (11:08am)
I thought Joe Hockey statement to parliament on our finances yesterday lacked heft, although the line of argument was good.
More is needed to shut up the destabilisers:
UPDATE
David Crowe on Hockey’s big moment:
Turns out some Liberals are sabotaging colleagues by peddling untruths. The expenditure review committee actually turned down $10 billion of savings nominated by Andrews, who doesn’t strike me as a Minister who’d flinch from a challenge.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===More is needed to shut up the destabilisers:
SENIOR Coalition MPs, including several cabinet ministers, claim to be losing faith in Joe Hockey’s ability to deliver the government’s message on the economy, as the Treasurer yesterday sought to prove he is still in command…The Liberals are doing a brilliant job in undermining each other.
While Tony Abbott is said to be wedded to Mr Hockey as Treasurer, and would be extremely reluctant to move him, there is a growing disquiet within the Liberal party room for a New Year reshuffle.
There is growing support for Malcolm Turnbull within senior ranks to take over if the government begins next year the same way it ended this one.
“Everyone wants Joe to succeed,” one of his colleagues said. “But to say there is not a problem is barking mad. The backbench wants Malcolm.”
UPDATE
David Crowe on Hockey’s big moment:
The budget update the week after next will be the government’s opportunity to face up to its maladies. The $48.5 billion deficit last financial year — that is the final outcome, not a tricky forecast — will be followed by a deficit of about $40bn this year.And why is the blame Hockey’s alone?
The nation is in denial about the scale of this challenge. Labor pretends the problem is exaggerated; the Coalition struggles to put its rhetoric into action…
It must not miss the opportunity of this month’s budget update to awaken voters to the need for change.
Public complaints about Hockey keep growing but talk of replacing him is misguided. Abbott and his Treasurer stand or fall together. “If you change your Treasurer you’re admitting you’ve buggered everything up from the beginning,” says one MP.
The largest budget saving blocked in the Senate is $9.6bn in welfare reforms. Whose job is it to advocate these? Kevin Andrews.UPDATE
The expenditure review committee had to ask him to nominate bigger budget savings than he initially proposed… Andrews ... rarely says a word to advocate the Prime Minister’s paid parental leave scheme that falls within his portfolio....
The biggest dead weight on the government, the unpopular $7 co-payment, remains policy… Peter Dutton has argued for it in the language of a health policy wonk. At no point have voters been confronted with the pressure on health spending.
Turns out some Liberals are sabotaging colleagues by peddling untruths. The expenditure review committee actually turned down $10 billion of savings nominated by Andrews, who doesn’t strike me as a Minister who’d flinch from a challenge.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
How much longer can the ABC operate as the propaganda arm of the Left?
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (10:38am)
The Australian on the ABC’s indefensible bias:
UPDATE
The ABC is now so huge and so biased that a conservative party finds its future threatened by a massive state monolith that stifles a reasoned debate. Appeals to simply be less biased are doomed to fail. It is in the nature of state-funded media to be of the Left. Ask Britain’s Conservatives:
===THE ABC’s shamelessly partisan performance on the asylum-seeker issue bells the cat for how our cultural institutions and most of the Canberra press gallery are captured by the green-Left of politics. Earlier this week the ABC’s 7.30 program aired a harrowing report about the horrors of the perilous and exploitative people-smuggling trade…ABC host Jon Faine has perfected a brilliant tactic for marginalising and abusing conservatives. He has for some time made it a practice to end interviews with politicians by reading out texts for listeners. Texting, like tweets, is a medium which notoriously skews Left. Add that to the ABC’s carefully cultivated Leftist audience and the result is that conservative politicians interviewed by Faine almost invariably departs the studio with Faine reading out a volley of abuse and scorn.
Casual viewers might not have realised the story was about incidents that occurred under the Rudd-Gillard governments. Host Leigh Sales did say the “surge” of asylum-seekers “reached its peak” under Labor. Reached its peak? No. It started after Labor relaxed the laws and grew until the Abbott government’s policy halted the flow of boats. Reporter Dan Oakes did not name or interview any of Labor’s four immigration ministers but relayed that they “categorically denied” any interference.
The ABC did not run stories like this during the years Labor was in power and boats were arriving, and more than 1200 people drowned. Often its various news arms failed even to report the arrival of boatloads of asylum-seekers. A web page to record all boat arrivals was established only after the change of government — it has been updated with just one vessel arriving this year.
The same program this week covered the Abbott government’s higher education reforms, choosing to interview the only university vice-chancellor (of 39) who opposed the changes. When sister program Lateline spoke to one of the other 38 vice-chancellors, much of the interview was taken up by host Tony Jones running the arguments of the lone dissenter. This looks more like activism than objective journalism, especially from an organisation that justifies its jaundice on global warming by saying its role is to reflect the consensus.
UPDATE
The ABC is now so huge and so biased that a conservative party finds its future threatened by a massive state monolith that stifles a reasoned debate. Appeals to simply be less biased are doomed to fail. It is in the nature of state-funded media to be of the Left. Ask Britain’s Conservatives:
The Conservatives have accused the BBC of “bias” and “systematic exaggeration” after David Cameron and George Osborne launched an unprecedented attack on the corporation’s coverage of the Autumn Statement. ...
One senior Tory MP suggested there was a risk that unless the BBC was scrupulously fair in its reporting it could drive voters “into the arms of Labour"…
Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and other senior Conservative figures criticised two separate television and radio reports broadcast by the BBC within hours of the Autumn Statement on Wednesday.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme compared forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility to “a book of doom” and said that Britain was heading back to the time of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier.
That came hours after BBC Two’s Newsnight broadcast black and white footage of rioting workers over a commentary by its presenter, Evan Davis, comparing the UK’s prospects to the depression of the 1930s. Mr Davis told viewers: “You have to go back to the depression of the 1930s to find a crisis comparable to the one we are in — it is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor both said that the coverage on the Today programme was “hyperbolic” because it exaggerated the economic threat to the UK.
Mr Osborne said the comparison with Orwell’s Britain was “nonsense”, adding: “I would have thought the BBC would have learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened.” ...
Conor Burns, a Tory member of the culture, media and sport committee which scrutinises the BBC’s work, said it was “patently absurd” for Newsnight to suggest “either political party will be intent on taking Britain back to a pre-welfare state, pre-health service Britain”.
Morrison gives government a final win for the year
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:35am)
Another win to Scott Morrison, first stopping the boats and now getting the votes:
How many ministers can boast Morrison’s record of success, including in negotiating? So why the lobbying against giving him a bigger job?
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===The Senate has passed sweeping changes to asylum seeker laws, including the reintroduction of temporary protection visas...<What an unholy alliance in opposition.
The bill was passed 34 votes to 32 in a late sitting of Parliament on Thursday night ... (T)he decision came down to one vote - that of the Motoring Enthusiast Party's Ricky Muir.
The Government secured the deal after agreeing to several requests from the Palmer United Party, including that children be released from detention on Christmas Island.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison will also now increase the annual refugee intake by 7,500 places and give asylum seekers on bridging visas work rights.
The new TPVs grant refugees protection in Australia for three years but could see them sent back to their home countries after that if the Government deems conditions there have improved…
Senator Jacqui Lambie and her fellow independent John Madigan joined Labor and the Greens in voting against the bill.
How many ministers can boast Morrison’s record of success, including in negotiating? So why the lobbying against giving him a bigger job?
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
A policeman can choke a man to death without punishment? UPDATE: I’m wrong
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:34am)
I cannot believe a policeman can choke a man to death without any legal sanction:
A Staten Island grand jury on Wednesday ended the criminal case against a white New York police officer whose chokehold on an unarmed black man led to the man’s death, a decision that drew condemnation from elected officials and touched off a wave of protests…
During the proceedings, jurors were shown three videos of the encounter, and in his testimony Officer Pantaleo sought to characterize his actions as a maneuver taught at the Police Academy. He said that while holding onto Mr. Garner, he felt fear that they would crash through a plate glass storefront as they tumbled to the ground, said Stuart London, his lawyer. One of the officer’s arms went around Mr. Garner’s throat, as Mr. Garner repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”
The fury over the Ferguson shooting was unjustified. But not this.
I accept that Garner was of intimidating size and was resisting arrest. But several officers were around him and he’s dead.
UPDATE
I am not convinced this is the racial issue the usual race-baiters will claim:
Pantaleo who applied the lethal chokehold on Eric Garner was supervised by an African-American female NYPD sergeant. Having that black sergeant in charge of that crime scene takes race out of the equation. As awful as Pantaleo’s actions appear on that video, at no time does that black sergeant order Pantaleo to stop choking Garner.UPDATE
Several readers say I have fallen for the spin, and I’m afraid they are right. Garner was not “choked to death”. Jack Lacton mounts the most persuasive case:
1. The choke hold did not asphyxiate him. He was telling the officers that he could not breathe. You can’t do that if you’re being fatally choked.Reader Craig:
2. The autopsy showed that he had an underlying heart condition and asthma. According to the autopsy report the compression applied to his chest is likely what caused his death.
3. Garner had been arrested some 30 times and knew what to do. For some reason on this occasion he chose to resist arrest. He was aware of his own health condition and should have submitted immediately when asked to do so, repeatedly and calmly, by the officers.
What a sensationalist opening line! Blood chokes (where you briefly compress the carotid arteries so as to effect unconsciousness), as opposed to air chokes (where you compress the windpipe itself, damaging it quite severely while preventing inhalation of 02) is a safe procedure, performed countless times over, not just in law enforcement, but also sport (MMA).The man in question was not choked to death. Had his wind pipe been crushed as your ridiculous opening line suggests, then he would not have been able to speak! Period!
UPDATE
The sanest and most inspiring words about this and Ferguson come from former NBA star Charles Barkley:
UPDATE
Theodore Dalrymple:
More than a quarter of blacks killed by police — about 1300 of 4500 — were killed by black officers; and as black officers represent only a sixth of the force, a black man should therefore be warier of a black policeman than a white.(Thanks to reader Richard.)
(This might not be quite fair, for there would be more black officers in a black area than in the country as a whole.)
How to understand the size of Labor’s debt
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:01am)
Reader Hekler devises a terrific metric for communicating the budget wreckage Labor caused and refuses to fix:
===Hi everyone. It’s been a whole year since I stopped editing krudd.com.... During that year I have sat back and watched and listened.... The government must stop talking about billions of $$$$. Means nothing to the average person. Put it another way. In a way that they understand like…
Example 1. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we took half of everything earned by every Australian for two years the debt would return to zero. Example 2. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we stopped every Social Security payment for three years the debt would return to zero.
Example 3. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on health for seven years the debt would return to zero.
Example 4. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on education for 14 years the debt would return to zero
Example 5. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on defence for 19 years the debt would return to zero
Chris Bowen admits Labor opposes cuts he probably can’t afford to restore
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (8:54am)
Hmm. The ABC has twice this week held the Opposition accountable for sabotaging the rescue of the country’s finances. Last night is was shadow treasurer Chris Bowen’s turn to blather:
Hypocrites. Wreckers.
UPDATE
Bowen at least admits corporate tax rates must come down:
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, John and Jeff of FNQ.)
===TONY JONES: You’ve accused the Government of cutting $80 billion from Health and Education, presumably ... Presumably you’d reinstate that $80 billion immediately on returning to government. Is that correct?Labor is blocking cuts it admits it might not restore, presumably on the grounds that the spending is unaffordable.
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, Tony, let’s cut to the chase of - let’s pre-empt a number of questions that I suspect you might be about to ask me on a whole range of policies. What we will do is we will fight for what we believe in with the proposals before the Parliament as we speak. And then as we develop our policies and announce our policies, we’ll assess the state of the books, we will assess the damage done by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey to the budget and to the state budgets and the family budgets and the budgets of the health and education system.
TONY JONES: Well hang on - I’m going to stop you there. You can’t really have it both ways. You can accuse them of chopping all this money out of the budget for health and education, but if you don’t say yourself that you’re going to reinstate that spending, there must be some point to them cutting it out.
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, Tony, let me make it very clear: both the Health and Education sectors of the Government will be better off under a Shorten Labor government than they are under an Abbott Liberal government…
TONY JONES: But the point is, if you can’t say you’re going to put that money back in, you can hardly blame the Government for taking it out when they think they can’t afford it. And bear in mind, the head of Treasury, Martin Parkinson, has belled the cat here. He’s very simply saying that governments, including yours, presumably, have been writing cheques they can’t cash. Is that right?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I don’t think that’s an accurate characterisation of the ...
TONY JONES: Well he said the current levels of spending are just not sustainable. Do you agree with that or not?
CHRIS BOWEN: Oh, that’s - with respect, that’s not exactly what you said to start with.
Hypocrites. Wreckers.
UPDATE
Bowen at least admits corporate tax rates must come down:
TONY JONES: ... Australia’s corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. Would you lower it or attempt to lower it to create more money for investment, innovation and job creation?But if taxes are too high, then there is only one way to cut the deficit and debt: to slash spending. But that’s precisely what Labor pretends isn’t needed.
CHRIS BOWEN: I’d like to see it lower over time. I think we’ve had 14 years of having the corporate tax rate stable. That’s too long. Over time, I’d like to see it lowered. It is an expensive thing to do and I’m not committing of course tonight to a timetable to that.
TONY JONES: But do you consider it a priority?
CHRIS BOWEN: As the alternative Treasurer, I’m telling you that I think it would be a better thing if Australia’s corporate tax rate was more competitive, yes.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, John and Jeff of FNQ.)
The lurid dreams of the Left: describing the world as it isn’t
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (6:42am)
Many writers on the
Left now feel free to simply imagine the facts. There seems not the
slightest moral imperative to truly understand the arguments of their
adversaries or even to consider them fully human
Passion trumps truth. Hatred substitutes for an understanding of the other.
Four examples from just the past two days.
Example 1 - Steve Dow in The Age on the authors of a review into our school curriculum:
Example 2 - Ruby Hamad in The Age on the multi-ethnic Rise Up Australia:
Example 3 - Jonathan Green of the ABC on the media’s treatment of Tony Abbott:
News flash: the journalists’ union last night awarded its Walkley Scoop of the Year to the ABC for embarrassing the Abbott Government over the actual sins of the Rudd Government. The ABC reported last night: “A joint ABC News and Guardian investigation which angered Prime Minister Tony Abbott and upset relations with Indonesia was named the Scoop of the Year. Reporters Michael Brissenden, Ewan MacAskill and Lenore Taylor were presented the award for their story revealing that Australia’s spy networks were targeting the Indonesian president’s personal mobile phone.” Er, our spy networks under a Labor Government, actually. But the media turned this into a story of how Abbott, who cleaned up the mess, was stuffing up.
Example 4 - Helen Elliott in The Age on Jacqui Lambie, victim of gender and class snobs:
===Passion trumps truth. Hatred substitutes for an understanding of the other.
Four examples from just the past two days.
Example 1 - Steve Dow in The Age on the authors of a review into our school curriculum:
Jesus “was a carpenter and he worked with a saw and hammer”, the late country music singer Johnny Cash once wrote, “and his hands could join a table true enough to stand forever.” Coalition education cronies lamenting the lack of “Judeo-Christian” deference in state primary and secondary curriculums, who are now seeking to curb individual creativity by killing the ambitious arts component of Labor’s proposed national curriculum, would love such lyrics of sustained and unquestioned faith. But they’d probably plump for the chart-busters of the large conservative voting bloc Hillsong over cool Cash.I know Kevin Donnelly, one of the two men Dow mocks. I know what Dow says is complete crap. I know what Donnelly and his colleague argue is that it is as important for Australians to understand the Judeo-Christian traditions and teachings that shaped their society as it would be for Turkish students to understand Islam. I know they wish to open minds and not to close them, and that singing Cash or going happy-clappy is anathema to them. They wish schools not to preach faith but teach culture.
Example 2 - Ruby Hamad in The Age on the multi-ethnic Rise Up Australia:
It’s a clever trick, getting non-white people to spout racist rhetoric… Whiteness is essentially those cultural beliefs, practices, norms and values that are sanctioned by white, western society. Rise Up Australia is an example of how you can share in the bounty of white privilege even if you are not white, as long as you are willing to play by the rules. And one of these rules is to talk about race in a way that legitimises the dominance of white culture.How bizarre to attack a party formed by a Sri Lankan and embracing Pacific Islands, Indians and many others as too racist, too white and the tool of whites. Yes, the party is Christian, and a gratingly vehement expression of it. But Christianity, created by Middle Eastern Jews and followed most fervently in South America and Africa, is not “white culture” but a faith which transcends “race”. Rise Up Australia, as the varied “racial” makeup of its representatives shows, is opposed not to other “races” but other creeds.
Example 3 - Jonathan Green of the ABC on the media’s treatment of Tony Abbott:
That the Abbott Government enjoys a significantly more supportive relationship with the mainstream political commentariat, a commentariat that, faced with that collapse in Kevin Rudd’s popularity, threw the rhetorical switch to “chaos” and “dysfunction"… That sense of destructive certainty, of simple crisis is lacking for the moment in the reporting of the Abbott Government… A more hostile media mainstream, one without the ideological empathy much of the popular and politically influential media has for conservative politics, might invest more in creating a sense of unstable vulnerability; political instability and crisis being good box office, after all.Abbott has a more supportive media than did Rudd and Gillard? That is laughable. The country’s biggest media organisation, the ABC, is more supportive of Abbott than of Gillard? The Age is more supportive of Abbott? The Sydney Morning Herald? The Guardian Australia, Saturday Paper, The Conversation, the press gallery correspondents of the TV channels, The Project, New Daily, The Monthly? Laurie Oakes, Paul Bongiorno, Waleed Aly, Laura Tingle, Phillip Adams, Fran Kelly, Barrie Cassidy, Jon Faine, Mark Kenny and on and on and on?
News flash: the journalists’ union last night awarded its Walkley Scoop of the Year to the ABC for embarrassing the Abbott Government over the actual sins of the Rudd Government. The ABC reported last night: “A joint ABC News and Guardian investigation which angered Prime Minister Tony Abbott and upset relations with Indonesia was named the Scoop of the Year. Reporters Michael Brissenden, Ewan MacAskill and Lenore Taylor were presented the award for their story revealing that Australia’s spy networks were targeting the Indonesian president’s personal mobile phone.” Er, our spy networks under a Labor Government, actually. But the media turned this into a story of how Abbott, who cleaned up the mess, was stuffing up.
Example 4 - Helen Elliott in The Age on Jacqui Lambie, victim of gender and class snobs:
Why is it that Clive Palmer, who revels in gross behaviour, seems beyond serious reprimand? We indulge Palmer: he’s silly, naughty, rude, whacky, one of the boys. But doesn’t he say things just as uninformed, confused, conflicted and dangerous as Lambie? Why is Palmer funny but Lambie coarse? With Palmer there isn’t the class sneer, that curl of the lip that is always present when Lambie does something awkward. Does the noise of a man with money make us all deaf?Clive Palmer is forgiven by the media, and Lambie not? Palmer, who was monstered at the Press Club this week, while Lambie feted as a class hero on The Project? Seriously? Palmer has been the focus of a long investigation by The Australian into his business dealings and has been denounced as a clown and a menace from the very start by me and others. Only the ABC feted him as a critic of Tony Abbott. No, it’s Lambie who is protected. Her irrationality, rages and vindictive abuse would almost certainly be denounced if it came from a man or a Liberal.
The new tribal Sydney
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (1:57am)
Another multicultural festival in Sydney.
We have so many manners police hyper-sensitive to any sign of racial intolerance. So why are they silent about this kind of stuff?
(Thanks to reader Nick.)
===We have so many manners police hyper-sensitive to any sign of racial intolerance. So why are they silent about this kind of stuff?
(Thanks to reader Nick.)
I suspect they will stick it - to Clive
Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (1:32am)
Clive Palmer is unravelling fast:
===THE Palmer United Party leader cut short a press conference in Canberra on Thursday when asked about his dispute with the state-owned Chinese company CITIC Pacific.
CITIC is suing the federal MP over claims more than $12 million was misappropriated by his company Mineralogy… Asked why he was avoiding scrutiny, the billionaire businessman said he couldn’t comment because the matter was before the courts.
When told it was a civil case and he was allowed to comment, Mr Palmer told reporters: “Stick it,” before storming away.
You’re not a real woman to Fairfax if you vote Liberal
Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (6:59pm)
How far to the Left is Fairfax? How absurdly cartoonish is its bias?
It’s women’s pages nominates 36 women for its ”Women of the Year” awards, five of them politicians past and present.
Missing is Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as star of the Abbott Government and our first female foreign minister.
Missing is Peta Credlin, thefirst second female chief of staff of an Australian Prime Minister.
Instead, its nominees in politics comprise two Greens, two Labor and one Australian Democrat. Not a single Liberal anywhere.
Other nominees tell us exactly what’s going on. Tim Blair explains:
More from Fairfax.
The headline:
===It’s women’s pages nominates 36 women for its ”Women of the Year” awards, five of them politicians past and present.
Missing is Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as star of the Abbott Government and our first female foreign minister.
Missing is Peta Credlin, the
Instead, its nominees in politics comprise two Greens, two Labor and one Australian Democrat. Not a single Liberal anywhere.
Other nominees tell us exactly what’s going on. Tim Blair explains:
Look who turns up in Fairfax’s list of candidates for woman of the year:UPDATE
Freya Newman was the brave young whistleblower who leaked information about a fashion school scholarship controversially awarded to the Prime Minister’s daughter.Newman invaded Frances Abbott’s privacy and then sent confidential details of the young student’s financial circumstances to a male-run publication. Following subsequent legal action, she might not even be a willing recipient of Fairfax’s award: “Ms Newman had expressed contrition and remorse for her actions, and had refused to take part in any of the protests that followed the laying of charges against her.”
More from Fairfax.
The headline:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott loses first round in John Setka defamation caseThe copy:
Mr Abbott’s lawyers had applied to the Victorian Court of Appeal to order Mr Setka to immediately pay legal costs incurred over the union official’s failed bid to have part of the Prime Minister’s defence against the defamation action struck out.
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For years this was covered up
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Some are shameless posers. The others are cats
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Aww. Giant turtles are delicious ..
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:nobody listens:
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Love the series .. captures the awkward .. a father mourning his daughter .. a brother asking his brother, whom he betrayed to go treasure hunting with him .. stunning and beautiful===
Post by Matt Granz.
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what you do is your choice ..
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Photo: Kiwis rule http://t.co/3kzPooZupz
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Photo: IQ test .. ask Mary for the answer if you aren’t sure .. http://t.co/1noKreFax5
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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They tear Gillian Triggs a new one...: http://t.co/b1va7PNGnc via @YouTube
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Lucky Old Sun: http://t.co/h6C6Sr6T6c via @YouTube
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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New study finds that human ancestors developed a taste for alcohol 10 million years ago - Happy hour... http://t.co/mD5SfiouCX
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Photo: all-the-ways-things-are: Go to the website HERE. http://t.co/ttEhpDVtHw
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Photo: all-the-ways-things-are: http://t.co/mAyGI3QfW3
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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lefties disappointed children they didn't drown will be freed. http://t.co/NViw0zxxGz
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Australia’s oldest couple sell time warp Mosman home after 76 years http://t.co/5tkGfaZ5eO
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Tragedy I'm researching .. Newborn dies from cold sore http://t.co/S9QRtbROjL via @newscomauHQ
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Prize doesn't cover porn Is this the worst sex scene of all time? http://t.co/y7dFah051V via @newscomauHQ
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Craigslist sex scam: Gold Coast police ‘don’t know how many victims’ hit http://t.co/taNLwglWjN via @newscomauHQ
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Be angry when police do wrong thing. Not right thing. Stewart on racial tensions in the US http://t.co/yXRYL98DY7 via @newscomauHQ
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 5, 2014
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Ana Vidovic - F.Sor Introduction & Variations on a theme by Mozart: http://t.co/YWqZJHo2vb via @YouTube
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 4, 2014
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Harm minimisation fail. Zero tolerance works ..Drug-Overdose Deaths Have More Than Doubled in the U.S. http://t.co/3BzvzFO5JI
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 4, 2014
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ALP and Greens are upset that children they couldn't drown may not be detained come Christmas. http://t.co/7UI6u6EurI via @theage
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 4, 2014
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carolinglick | Sisi is not Mubarak http://t.co/YVGIajdQwg
— David Daniel Ball (@DaOddBall67) December 4, 2014
=== Posts from last year ===
Biased ABC leads a howling media mob
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, December 04, 2013 (6:44am)
THE government has been in office 77 days but the Canberra press gallery has already written it off. Where fault can be found it will be furiously exaggerated. Where success occurs it will be ignored.
It began with the so-called expenses “scandal”, when Tony Abbott’s electioneering at sports events was recast as some sinister attempt to rort the public purse.
Then he was blamed for the Indonesia spying scandal which occurred under Rudd.
On border protection, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been hammered for not divulging operational detail about exactly how asylum boats are being stopped. He revealed this week that November had seen the lowest boat arrivals in five years, but all anyone wants to talk about is his “hostile” attitude to the media. Well, hello. He’s only human.
Education Minister Christopher Pyne is the latest punching bag for refusing to implement the Gonski education funding model, as prescribed by Julia Gillard. Why was that a surprise to anyone, least of all Barry O’Farrell?
Treasurer Joe Hockey is being lambasted over the non-sale of GrainCorp, over which, hilariously, lefties are siding with the free market - anything to beat up on Abbott.
The contrast to the honeymoon period of the Rudd government is staggering. Kevin Rudd was feted as a messiah for more than a year.
At the end of his first three months, he was preferred prime minister over Brendan Nelson by 68 per cent to 10 per cent, according to ABC-TV’s Insiders’ “poll of polls”, which relishes Abbott’s less impressive lead of 44-29 over Bill Shorten.
Rudd’s popularity soared to record highs thanks in large part to all the positive coverage lavished on him and his lame-brained ideas, like the 2020 summit, FuelWatch, GroceryWatch, an ETS, green loans, free pink batts, the end of homelessness, and dismantling border protection.
The media was dazzled, especially the ABC-Fairfax Media axis of love. But even conservatives gave Rudd the benefit of the doubt for too long.
To its eternal shame, The Australian newspaper even named him Australian of the year in 2010. Uh oh.
Rudd’s media honeymoon was so prolonged that it seemed few people were more surprised when his party ditched him for non-performance later that same year than the press gallery.
More than any other news organisation, the ABC gave Labor a free pass over the past six years of calamitous government.
Remarkably, it has run dead on serious crime allegations against senior Labor figures which are currently being investigated by police, while
ferociously hunting down every verbal misstep or stumble by the new government.
ferociously hunting down every verbal misstep or stumble by the new government.
Labor bodies are piling up and stinking behind the doors the ABC refuses to open.
Instead it fires all its barrels at the poor saps who barely have their feet under their desks.
So when Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi launched a scathing attack on the ABC in the Coalition party room yesterday, he was reflecting the opinion not only of his party’s conservative base but of the bulk of his parliamentary colleagues.
The applause he received was a pointed rebuke to his old foe, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who continues to defend the national broadcaster.
“I’m concerned because it’s not our ABC, it’s not my ABC, it’s ‘their’ ABC,” Bernardi said.
“It’s a taxpayer-funded behemoth that is cannibalising commercial media while spreading a message that ignores the majority views of Australians.”
Bernardi told colleagues he does not advocate privatising the ABC since it has a role to play in regional communities.
But the national broadcaster “no longer complies with its charter of fairness and balance.
“It is politically biased, regularly unfair and has priorities completely at odds with its raison d’être,’’ he said.
“Gone are the days when it simply operated TV and radio services. It has a massive online presence providing at taxpayers expense what commercial media operations need to charge for, four television channels and who knows how many radio licences.
“It is out of control and needs to be reined in. It needs to be broken up and returned to its primary purpose rather than the engorged propaganda unit it has become.”
Bernardi is on the backbench because he was marginalised by many in his own party before the election for refusing to maintain a safe, politically correct line. Turnbull particularly targeted him because Bernardi led the revolt against the ETS which ended his leadership and launched Abbott.
Now Bernardi is leading the conservative revolt against the ABC, and again he is on the right side of history.
The ABC’s plan to get tentacles into kids
THE ABC is an enormous beast, with tentacles stretching across the internet and digital TV at a time when other media organisations are struggling to survive.
Its success at enforcing the narrow groupthink of the Left cannot be over-estimated, and not just on obvious flagship programs such as Q&A.
Take its controversial education show Behind The News, watched by more than one million unsuspecting children each week.
With a cheery youth-friendly style, it promotes the soft-left line on everything from asylum seekers to gender equality to big government spending.
Yesterday’s episode of BTN began with a story about Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s “broken promise” on Gonski funding.
Next was “Why sorry seems to be the hardest word over the Indonesian spy scandal”, complete with footage of Kevin Rudd making his Stolen Generations apology. Praise for Rudd was cleverly delivered using Tony Abbott’s words.
“So it seems Tony is a fan of people who say sorry too. Well, he was.”
That is, until the Indonesia spying scandal erupted. No mention that the spying occurred during Rudd’s sainted reign.
At the end of the package the young BTN host, sitting in a school he identifies as Norwood Primary, asks the children around him if they think “Tony” should have said sorry.
It’s no surprise that the majority, about 30 children, put up their hands to say yes the Prime Minister should have apologised.
A scan of other BTN stories this year finds similar examples of loaded commentary: “The new PM Tony Abbott hasn’t repaid some money that he claimed for going to a few running and cycling events. The fitness freak says they were genuine community events, so it’s OK for the taxpayer to help foot the bill.”
Subtle propaganda to children is all part of the ABC’s long march.
MOSQUE ATTACK
Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (2:42pm)
Multicultural mayhem in Melbourne:
Worshippers ran for their lives during a stabbing attack during morning prayers that has left one man dead and two seriously hurt at a mosque in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.Horrified witnesses said the attacker went beserk in the Broadmeadows Mosque.“It was crazy. A rampage,” one man said. “Six people locked themselves in the billiard room when they saw the knife and the president was locked in his office.”Several men claimed the attacker was at the mosque with his sister when he went berserk.“He was asking if people if they were Yahudi (Jewish),” a man said. “He then became agitated and not long after he pulled a knife.”
The billiard room?
FOUR MONTIES
Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (2:25pm)
A certain level of racial hypersensitivity is evident.
SERVANT INSTRUCTED
Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (1:00pm)
A outstanding Adelaide incident, featuring an impressive Adelaide name:
A child pornographer who claimed he was merely “praying” over downloaded images has been dragged kicking and screaming from court and into custody.Andrew Liddington Shore lost all composure this afternoon when District Court Judge Gordon Barrett revoked his bail because he had repeatedly ignored an order to obtain a lawyer.“Unhand me, servant,” he yelled as two courts sheriff’s officers tried to escort him into the cells.
Shore also offered an extremely Adelaide defence:
Shore then said he did not recognise the authority of the court, claiming the charges against him violated several United Nations and international treaties.
Appropriately, the piece is written by City of Evil author Sean Fewster.
SCHOOL OF CROCK
Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (5:49am)
Aspiring reporter Aicha Marhfour reviews her experience as a journalism student, when she was educated by a former Fairfax staffer:
I don’t remember very much of the class I took with Rachel Buchanan in 2010.I do remember that she put her own work on our reading list and (this I will never forget) in our last tutorial read out her honours thesis, a long piece about which I recall precisely nothing – and cried as she did it.
Wow. But there was also a focus on basic journalistic practice:
In Rachel’s class, it took us all semester to write a single feature.
FROM THE CITY THAT INVENTED OBAMACARE
Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (12:12am)
The last time I saw my friend Jim Treacher in DC he was still limping following a years-earlier assault by car. Now he’s been attacked by an enraged DC driver.
And then things only got worse. That city doesn’t deserve Jim.
A promise on free speech we must demand be kept
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:52am)
Professor James Allan:
I do, however, single out Danny Lamm for offering to speak on my behalf. I am grateful to him.
But I believe the Jewish community - or those members involved in public advocacy - should reflect on whether principle here has been trashed for advantage by representatives who should know better.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
UPDATE
Thanks to this oppressive law, my lawyers advise me not to be extremely cautions in commenting further on one particular issue - the rise of a divisive new racism. It is no longer safe for me, I’m told, to say what it is that I’d object to in stories this this one today:
===THIS government’s commitment to repeal at least parts of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the so-called anti-hate speech laws that were used against Andrew Bolt, raises at least four crucial issues.I have been particularly disappointed to be treated as collateral damage by Jewish community leaders and political players who have been demanding these illiberal laws be kept. Several have privately assured me they found the case against me a misapplication of the law or even an injustice. But not one publicly said so. Every one of them knows what a supporter I have been of the Jewish community, not just in print, yet not one publicly protested when a Jewish QC told a Jewish judge in my case something far more foul than anything I had written - that my thinking resembled that of the Nazis who drew up the Nuremberg race laws. That obscene slur struck me as a legally sanctioned defamation.
First, any commitment to free speech is a commitment to allowing people to say and write things you may not like, that you may detest, that you may disagree with and find offensive. If the words spoken are words we all agree with and find congenial, then there is no need for any commitment to free speech…
The next point about the repeal of these existing hate speech provisions is that they were grossly misused in the Bolt case…
The whole Bolt saga was an embarrassment to Australia’s liberal credentials…
Next, there is the democratic issue. Tony Abbott and the Coalition went to the September election with a major pledge to repeal all or most of section 18 of the act. So it is right that, having won a big majority, they do what they promised…
The fourth issue relates to the prudential aspects of running a newly elected government. George Brandis, our new Attorney-General, made plain his commitment to free-speech principles before the election. And he is clear that he will proceed with some sort of repeal… This repeal needs to go ahead. All four aspects of this provision, the ones aimed at offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating, they need to go. A half-hearted repeal would hardly make Brandis or the Coalition defenders of free speech and liberty. Honour your campaign pledge, Senator Brandis.
I do, however, single out Danny Lamm for offering to speak on my behalf. I am grateful to him.
But I believe the Jewish community - or those members involved in public advocacy - should reflect on whether principle here has been trashed for advantage by representatives who should know better.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
UPDATE
Thanks to this oppressive law, my lawyers advise me not to be extremely cautions in commenting further on one particular issue - the rise of a divisive new racism. It is no longer safe for me, I’m told, to say what it is that I’d object to in stories this this one today:
Neil Mitchell could be right to say he taught me eveything I know
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:42am)
Reader Adiboy:
If I’m boring, he did.
===You will be sad to hear that you have become boring according to Neil Mitchell on 3AW at about 11-45 am yesterday. Oh, and by the way, he pompously announced that he taught you everything you know.
If I’m boring, he did.
Strange noises from Clive Palmer’s party of bogans
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:25am)
Palmer United Party Senator-elect Jacqui Lambie has sent people I know surprisingly aggressive messages that suggest a woman rather too full of herself and not one on whom I’d ever like to rely. They may come back to haunt her - as have these strange late-night messages left on the answering machine of former PUP candidate Marti Zucco:
===More problems with PUP politicians, who seem not to realise they really are the bogan party:
Clive Palmer has dismissed the leaking of an internal email from one of his MPs, which described voters as “bogans”...(Thanks to reader David.)
The email, allegedly sent by a Queensland MP in Mr Palmer’s party, Alex Douglas, reportedly describes voters as “bogans” living “empty lives” fueled by a “diet of grease”.
The email was allegedly leaked to the Courier Mail newspaper by former Tasmanian PUP candidate Marti Zucco, who quit the party this week…
Dr Douglas’ email also reportedly says that the world of “bogans” was a “world we see daily and quietly hope will disappear”.
‘’The interesting observation about Boganland is not just how common it is now but how the sufferers just copy one another so quickly with each trend ... It is no longer satisfactory that they will just buy [and wear] ugg boots, watch Big Brother, choke on a diet of grease, dye their bright purple (sic), tatoo (sic) and rejoice in their ignorance,’’ Dr Douglas allegedly said in an email…
Mr Palmer said there was nothing wrong with bogans and people should know that Dr Douglas was himself a bogan… Dr Douglas defected from the Queensland Premier’s Liberal National Party to Mr Palmer’s party late last year and is now Queensland leader of the party.
Former ABC chairman calls for review on its size and possible bias
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:14am)
The ABC has grown too big, as well as too biased.
===FORMER ABC chairman Donald McDonald has called for the board to launch a full-scale review of the broadcaster’s operations and priorities to ensure its coverage is distinctive, high quality and represents a broad range of views…The suffocating size of the ABC and its push into markets served by private media businesses are serious issues - not least for those who believe it healthy to have state media dominate journalism and debate:
“The ABC has to make the case for public broadcasting by making sure what it puts to air is distinctive, is of high quality and - very importantly - is thoroughly representative of a broad range of views,” Mr McDonald said… “The ABC is dangerously down the path of the BBC of wanting to be big for the sake of being big,” he said.
QUESTIONS about the ABC’s activity on digital media platforms are warranted, given the broadcaster is using taxpayer-provided funds to compete with commercial media outlets, News Corp chief executive Julian Clarke says…
“...The first question I would ask is why is a business like the ABC, which is a government-owned and run business, why is it operating in a commercial space?”
He agreed with Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that a lack of advertising revenue was not the ABC’s fault… “But nevertheless the audiences are absolutely fragmented and who knows what is around the corner? ... At some time someone has to say . . . there is a whole industry out here doing it on its own, paying all its own bills with no government subsidy whatsoever and it should be allowed to do that.”
Richard Lindzen: Cool it on the climate
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:59am)
Professor Richard S. Lindzen, arguably the world’s most prominent climate scientist, testifies to the US House Committee on Science and Technology:
UPDATE
Still waiting for more warming. The UAH temperatures, updated now for November:
===I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes.But this is about faith, not reason.
The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such....
Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating. In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.
UPDATE
Still waiting for more warming. The UAH temperatures, updated now for November:
(Thanks to reader fulchrum.)
More Iranian and Sri Lankan boat people sent back than arrive
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:36am)
Why couldn’t Labor achieve this?
UPDATE
From the Immigration Minister’s interview on 7.30 last night:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===THE flow of boatpeople from Sri Lanka and Iran has reversed for the first time in three years, with more being sent back than arrive.One boatload of young men seems to have arrived so far this week.
The net decline in asylum-seekers from two of the biggest source countries in the past three years coincides with the lowest November total for asylum-seeker arrivals since Kevin Rudd repealed the Howard government border-protection laws.
Last month, there were 207 arrivals and 66 people were sent back, including more than 40 Iranians. All Sri Lankans who arrived illegally since mid-September have been sent back or volunteered to return to Sri Lanka.
This month is expected to see more people who have arrived illegally from the two countries sent back than those still arriving on boats…
Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison have both this week cited a reduction in the number of boat arrivals under the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders since September 18 of between 80 and 90 per cent, compared with the last months of the Labor government. The 86 per cent reduction is based on the 5463 illegal arrivals in the last 72 days of the Labor government and the 751 illegal arrivals in the first 72 days of the Abbott government. The decline in illegal arrivals from a peak under Labor began after July when the Rudd government reopened the Howard government’s arrangement with PNG on Manus Island for offshore processing and regional resettlement.
UPDATE
From the Immigration Minister’s interview on 7.30 last night:
LEIGH SALES:...Why, when we do have significant numbers coming by plane, are they treated differently to people who come via boat?Very good performance from Morrison yesterday. Equally good one from Christopher Pyne on 7.30the night before. Tony Abbott is sounding far more the fighter and is being seen more. And Joe Hockey makes a deal on the debt limit with the Greens that costs the Government nothing but cuts out Labor. All in all, an incomparably better week from the government, which I hope has learned some lessons about past communications failures.
SCOTT MORRISON: Well several reasons, Leigh. The first thing is people aren’t dying on planes coming to Australia.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
You didn’t write that
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:24am)
If you have his books you can keep them:
===“I’ve written two books,” Senator Barack Obama told a crowd of teachers in Virginia on the campaign trial in July of 2008. The teachers applauded. “I actually wrote them myself,” he added with a wink and a nod, and now the teachers exploded in laughter. They got the joke: Republicans were too stupid to write their books.Actually, talking about a politician too stupid to write his own book - a politician now known to be a liar - read on. You see:
The only problem, of course, is that Obama did not write either of those books “by myself.” He was as incapable of writing those books as he was of guaranteeing that his eponymous health care system would allow millions of individual policyholders to keep the health care plans that they liked. Still, he had no obvious qualms about deceiving the public in either case.The deception:
As Andersen told it, Obama found himself deeply in debt and “hopelessly blocked” even after accepting a second contract [to write the same book]. At “Michelle’s urging,” Obama “sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”I’ve read The Audacity of Hope. It wasn’t just turgid and platitudinous. The personal anecdotes struck me as formulaic and not particularly resonant or revealing. Now I realise that Bill Ayres couldn’t be a mindreader as well as a ghost.
What attracted the Obamas were “Ayers’s proven abilities as a writer.” Noting that Obama had already taped interviews with many of his relatives, Andersen elaborated, “These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers.”
Bashir quits over Palin abuse - but two weeks too late
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:03am)
The vileness of the abuse is just astonishing. What kind of hate-culture licensed it?
Had it been directed at a woman of the Left by a loudmouth conservative we’d have never have heard the end of it – and it would not have taken two weeks for the resignation:
===Had it been directed at a woman of the Left by a loudmouth conservative we’d have never have heard the end of it – and it would not have taken two weeks for the resignation:
Just over two weeks ago, MSNBC host Martin Bashir delivered a harsh piece of commentary that culminated in the suggestion that someone should “s-h-i-t” in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin‘s (R-AK) mouth. Bashir offered an abject apology on his next broadcast, but a chorus of critics continued to demand action against the host. After a reported “vacation” for the host earlier this week, Bashir announced, in a statement to Mediaite Wednesday afternoon, that MSNBC and Martin Bashir are parting ways.
Save our retailers. Keep taxes here. Impose the GST on on-line shopping
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:55am)
Terry McCrann says the Federal Government must impose the GST to on-line retailing if local retailers are to stay in business:
===The early dismissal of the idea from Treasury and the Tax Office, and so from the federal government, was that the cost of collection would actually exceed the revenue raised.
While that still wouldn’t answer the basic fairness argument: sorry, local producer, wholesaler and retailer, you all have to go out of business, and courier services can thrive, because we’ve got a tax that’s ‘too difficult’ to apply against your foreign competitors…
Except that it’s an argument, that if it ever had validity, no longer does. The spectre of having to employ thousands of customs officers to open every one of the millions of packages that arrive in Australia is a furphy.
Applying the GST on online purchases could be done relatively simply and with the cost born by the foreign seller, in MOST cases.
It’s about these things called computers, bar codes and internet service providers.
Amazon already has to do it for US state governments, adding the state-based US sales tax to sales and remitting the revenue. We ‘just’ require it to do the same with our GST.
It doesn’t want to play ball? Well then, any parcel arriving from Amazon WOULD have to be opened, with the full cost borne by the buyer. Any download emanating from Amazon, would be locked until the GST was paid. For the Amazons and Ebays that WERE prepared to play ball, their parcels, their downloads, would have a computer-scanned or embedded clearance.
ABC-speak shows just what’s wrong with the ABC
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:40am)
A REVOLT against the ABC has caught the $1.2 billion-a-year behemoth by surprise. Liberal MPs demand its sale. Conservatives around the country are not just screaming “bias” but some even “traitor”.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott attacks its “judgment” in publishing our spying secrets and even Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the ABC’s favourite Liberal, doubts it is fulfilling “its obligation to give fair treatment to both sides of politics”.
ABC boss Mark Scott, who this year claimed not to detect the Leftist bias of his presenters, is in denial again about this latest criticism, which ranges from the ABC’s capture by the Left to its suffocating size.
It’s really just a Murdoch plot, he suggests: “There is (sic) some people in News Corp who have a deep ideological opposition to public broadcasting and the ABC.”
Yeah, sure, Mark. The delegates at the Victorian Liberal Party state conference who last weekend voted to privatise the ABC? Just Murdoch minions, brandishing flags stitched together from my collected columns.
There’s plenty wrong and potentially dangerous with the ABC, but here’s one small example of ABC-speak that illustrates the big picture.
(Read full article here.)
How we spent more on schools but got worse results
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:33am)
FIRST the Rudd Government launched the Digital Education Revolution - $2.4 billion to give secondary students computers.
But computers don’t teach.
Then the Government launched the Building the Education Revolution - $16 billion for school halls and libraries.
But buildings don’t teach.
Result? The OECD’s latest PISA tests of 15-year-olds in 65 industrialised nations show our students slipping badly.
Our students were ranked 13th in reading last year, down from 9th in 2009; 19th in maths, down from 14th; and 17th in science, down from 10th.
Billions spent for no result. But the wrong lessons are being drawn.
The Australian Council for Educational Research warned the PISA result showed the Government had to spend billions more as the Gonski review suggested - on “equity”. On helping poor, migrant and Aboriginal students.
But wait.
(Read full article here.)
===But computers don’t teach.
Then the Government launched the Building the Education Revolution - $16 billion for school halls and libraries.
But buildings don’t teach.
Result? The OECD’s latest PISA tests of 15-year-olds in 65 industrialised nations show our students slipping badly.
Our students were ranked 13th in reading last year, down from 9th in 2009; 19th in maths, down from 14th; and 17th in science, down from 10th.
Billions spent for no result. But the wrong lessons are being drawn.
The Australian Council for Educational Research warned the PISA result showed the Government had to spend billions more as the Gonski review suggested - on “equity”. On helping poor, migrant and Aboriginal students.
But wait.
(Read full article here.)
UNICEF: global warming makes children freeze to death
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:28am)
Children die of cold. UNICEF blames the usual bogeyman:
===When we think of climate change we often think of rising temperatures, but children are also affected in colder climates, experiencing harsher winters and declining water resources....(Thanks to reader Dave A,)
In western Mongolia in 2010, heavy snow, strong winds and extreme cold created crisis conditions in over half the country’s provinces… The crisis, known locally as a “dzud”, killed at least nine children in one province...
Was this really sport’s “blackest day”? Wild claims, damaging leaks, private deals and a scapegoat
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (7:55am)
I agree that Essendon’s program of supplements was recklessly and slackly administered. But I remain astonished that 10 months after the Gillard Government staged a dramatic press conference allegeding widespread doping in sport, along with matching fixing and links to organised crime, that not a single sportsman has been charged.
And I am deeply suspicious of the scapegoating of Essendon, the deal-making that the AFL passed off as justice, the strategic leaking by the AFL to favored journalists, and the role of the Australian Sports Commission in keeping a lid on what it surely must want exposed.
From Chip Le Grand’s excellent report:
Sinclair Davidson:
===And I am deeply suspicious of the scapegoating of Essendon, the deal-making that the AFL passed off as justice, the strategic leaking by the AFL to favored journalists, and the role of the Australian Sports Commission in keeping a lid on what it surely must want exposed.
From Chip Le Grand’s excellent report:
It was a Sunday, August 25, the day before Essendon, [coach James] Hird ... [was] due at AFL headquarters to answer charges of bringing the game of football into disrepute…UPDATE
Hird wanted to present his side of a complex story… What soon became clear in [a meeting in AFL deputy chief executive Gillon] McLachlan’s house was that guilt and punishment had been assigned… Hird would be banned from football for a year, no less. It was non-negotiable…
As late as August 21, when the AFL upped the ante in negotiations with Essendon by releasing a 34-page statement of grounds containing the full allegations against the club and its officials… Essendon chairman Paul Little was livid. He publicly accused the league of being belligerent… He called on AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick to intervene.
Confronted with a collapse of negotiations and a Supreme Court writ lodged that morning by Hird’s lawyers, Fitzpatrick ... and Little established their own negotiations, with Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie as intermediary…
The AFL wanted the scandal kept out of open court. Hird’s writ contained allegations that Demetriou had tipped off Essendon about an Australian Crime Commission investigation, potentially in breach of federal law.
Demetriou denies the allegation but any court case promised to be a bruising affair for the AFL and its senior executives. There had to be a deal.
Fitzpatrick ... placed his faith in Wylie, a fellow Rhodes scholar and a close friend…
Within two days, a secret peace offer had taken shape. Under terms proposed by Wylie and Little, Hird would be the face of the scandal but he would be well looked after. The Essendon coach would be fully paid throughout his 12 months on the sidelines, spend part of his year under suspension being educated at one of the world’s finest universities and keep his place in the AFL Hall of Fame…
Both the offer and the email correspondence [from the AFL to Little] make clear that if Hird accepted the penalty, he would not be found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute. In the final settlement on August 27, no Essendon officials were found guilty of any charge, despite Demetriou’s public comments to the contrary…
Throughout negotiations between the club and the AFL, Hird was told that if he didn’t agree to terms, he would not coach in the AFL again, that Essendon would be wiped from the 2014 season and that players would be dragged into a witness box by AFL lawyers. He feared he would never be welcomed back at the club…
The formal charges against Essendon and its officials, publicly announced by Dillon on August 13, were preceded by regular, damaging leaks to the Fairfax press which portrayed Hird as the architect and chief proponent of the club’s supplements program…
The role of Wylie, Australia’s most senior sports official, in brokering a deal between the AFL, Essendon and Hird, will raise eyebrows within the Abbott government, which was nonplussed when the previous Labor administration called sporting, police and anti-doping chiefs to Canberra on February 7 for the release of an Australian Crime Commission report into the links between sport and organised crime. Nearly 10 months later, the report has not resulted in criminal charges being laid in any jurisdiction.
Sinclair Davidson:
It looks like the previous government and the AFL stuffed up so badly and got themselves in so much trouble that they’ve had to pay top dollar to stay out of court.
Waiting for the cuts
Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (7:37am)
The sin with the Abbott Government’s Gonski promise was to have made it in the first place. But that done, it was obliged to honor that promise.
That aside, I tend to share David Uren’s concern:
This means the real test comes in the May Budget. So judgements really need to be suspended until then.
===That aside, I tend to share David Uren’s concern:
THE Gonski backflip brings to $16.5 billion the cumulative damage to the budget bottom line from discretionary decisions taken by the government in the three months since its election.But I think Niki Savva is close to the mark. Each decision taken so far can be rationalised. The trouble is that very few so far - other than, say, axing the green spending and schoolkids bonus - have the stamp of a government seriously concerned by debt and the urgent need to make business easier:
The additional $1.2bn in education spending follows the $8.8bn cash injection to the Reserve Bank, the decision to defer the $5.2bn in public spending cuts and abandoning a series of tax increases at a cost of $1.3bn.
So far, there has been no sign of the political steel that will be required if the budget is to be brought under control. The audit commission has been given sufficiently broad terms of reference to generate recommendations that would restore the health of public finances, and the government has flagged that next May’s budget will be the time for unveiling its response to them.
However, the decisions made to date show the pressures that are pushing public spending relentlessly higher and highlight the government’s susceptibility to political pressure.
JOE Hockey’s decision on GrainCorp could prove in time to be the right one if he uses it as leverage to drive through other tough decisions and reforms.A caveat, though: the Government believes that clobbering the economy now, before Christmas, with deep cuts could clobber the confidence retailers are banking on. The deficit, after all, is easier tackled by getting an economic lift than in simply slashing.
It is up to the Treasurer to disprove accusations that blocking the GrainCorp takeover by US food behemoth Archer Daniels Midland showed he lacked ticker. He can do it by convincing cabinet and Tony Abbott to refuse to give Holden a single dollar more, to refuse going guarantor for Qantas and by taking the knife to public spending, even if it slices into the Nationals’ interests.
This means the real test comes in the May Budget. So judgements really need to be suspended until then.
The daily Fairfax hate
Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (9:06pm)
This extraordinary stream of abuse of Christopher Pyne by a former ABC staffer was deemed fit to print by Fairfax - and featured high on the home page. Had any conservative written the like - with far greater justification - of Julia Gillard we’d have been denounced as shock jocks of print. But this passes for quality:
===...the prissiest, most precious and precocious petal ... his antics ... perpetually juvenile… stunning incompetence ... slapstick performance ... incompetently ... the most incompetent joker in the pack ... boorishly ... startling idiocy ... ridiculous ... perception that he’s shallow, superficial and trivial has now become political reality....
===
No possibility of redemption. Even now, he shields others who are guilty. - ed
===
===
This is important .. and illustrates why it is wrong for Amnesty to over inflate on places like Gitmo - ed
===
I can talk about anything .. but all you guys talk about is politics. - ed
===
An enterprising 11-year-old girl from Oregon who was selling mistletoe to raise money for braces at a weekly market in downtown Portland was told that she couldn't sell the hand-cut greenery without a permit. She was informed by a security guard that she could, however, beg for money on the city's streets.
Is the city out of line? Read the full story and give us your reaction.
===
Burma is rated a top 10 worst country for human rights in the 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, a project of global analytics firm Maplecroft. And yet the US Administration continues to ignore the Burmese government and military's human rights violations in its quest to "support the reform process" and "extend the hand of friendship."
===
Burma listed as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International:
"Myanmar internal corruption, known as “tea money” culture, largely stems from the prevalence of bribery and a lack of a legal framework and political will to confront it.
No one apart from high-ranking government officials knows how much public revenue Myanmar collects. Every level of public official, especially those in departments regulating mining, oil, and gas, have been accused of transferring public revenue to their private overseas bank accounts."
===
There should be a commission first, examining their decision making process. Then, bit by bit, parts should be chopped off. Gotta love a drawn out death scene. Ala Iago in Othello. - ed
Dean Hamstead I like the band aid philosophy... one quick removal.
===
Trippy. This leaves Bill Gates, rockets past Steve Jobs into River Pheonix atmosphere .. ed
===
===
===
It wasn't an accidental capture .. but deliberate. - ed
===
It is appalling what happens when some Jewish women go to celebrate Hanukkah at their temple mount. It is wrong the UN accepts this appalling behaviour. Freedom of worship is a human right. It should not be displaced by a freedom to abuse - ed
===
===
Frank Severino
Atoms are letters, molecules are words, proteins are sentences, bones are structure, organs are chapters, and people are novels. Food is new material, and pooping is editing.Sigh, I seem to have an eternity of editing .. ed
===
I disown them. We have very different faiths. I am Christian. They apparently worship the opposition. - ed
===
“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”” John 8:12 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
"I have much people in this city."
Acts 18:10
Acts 18:10
This should be a great encouragement to try to do good, since God has among the vilest of the vile, the most reprobate, the most debauched and drunken, an elect people who must be saved. When you take the Word to them, you do so because God has ordained you to be the messenger of life to their souls, and they must receive it, for so the decree of predestination runs. They are as much redeemed by blood as the saints before the eternal throne. They are Christ's property, and yet perhaps they are lovers of the ale-house, and haters of holiness; but if Jesus Christ purchased them he will have them. God is not unfaithful to forget the price which his Son has paid. He will not suffer his substitution to be in any case an ineffectual, dead thing. Tens of thousands of redeemed ones are not regenerated yet, but regenerated they must be; and this is our comfort when we go forth to them with the quickening Word of God.
Nay, more, these ungodly ones are prayed for by Christ before the throne. "Neither pray I for these alone," saith the great Intercessor, "but for them also which shall believe on me through their word." Poor, ignorant souls, they know nothing about prayer for themselves, but Jesus prays for them. Their names are on his breastplate, and ere long they must bow their stubborn knee, breathing the penitential sigh before the throne of grace. "The time of figs is not yet." The predestinated moment has not struck; but, when it comes, they shall obey, for God will have his own; they must, for the Spirit is not to be withstood when he cometh forth with fulness of power--they must become the willing servants of the living God. "My people shall be willing in the day of my power." "He shall justify many." "He shall see of the travail of his soul." "I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong."
Evening
"Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."
Romans 8:23
Romans 8:23
This groaning is universal among the saints: to a greater or less extent we all feel it. It is not the groan of murmuring or complaint: it is rather the note of desire than of distress. Having received an earnest, we desire the whole of our portion; we are sighing that our entire manhood, in its trinity of spirit, soul, and body, may be set free from the last vestige of the fall; we long to put off corruption, weakness, and dishonour, and to wrap ourselves in incorruption, in immortality, in glory, in the spiritual body which the Lord Jesus will bestow upon his people. We long for the manifestation of our adoption as the children of God. "We groan," but it is "within ourselves." It is not the hypocrite's groan, by which he would make men believe that he is a saint because he is wretched. Our sighs are sacred things, too hallowed for us to tell abroad. We keep our longings to our Lord alone. Then the apostle says we are "waiting," by which we learn that we are not to be petulant, like Jonah or Elijah, when they said, "Let me die"; nor are we to whimper and sigh for the end of life because we are tired of work, nor wish to escape from our present sufferings till the will of the Lord is done. We are to groan for glorification, but we are to wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best. Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. This "groaning" is a test. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. Some men groan after wealth--they worship Mammon; some groan continually under the troubles of life--they are merely impatient; but the man who sighs after God, who is uneasy till he is made like Christ, that is the blessed man. May God help us to groan for the coming of the Lord, and the resurrection which he will bring to us.
===
Today's reading: Ezekiel 47-48, 1 John 3 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Ezekiel 47-48
The River From the Temple
1 The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. 2 He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.
3 As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. 4 He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. 5 He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. 6 He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?”
Today's New Testament reading: 1 John 3
1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him....
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