=== Todays Toon ===
Frederick John Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon, PC (1 November 1782 – 28 January 1859), better known with the title The 1st Viscount Goderich, was a British statesman and Prime Minister.He was born to the 2nd Baron Grantham and his wife, the former Lady Mary Yorke. After studying at Harrow and St John's College, Cambridge,[1] Robinson entered Parliament in 1806. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1812, and served in various minor positions in the government of Lord Liverpool, including joint-Paymaster of the Forces, from which position he sponsored the Corn Laws of 1815, before entering the Cabinet in 1818 as President of the Board of Trade. In 1823 Robinson succeeded Nicholas Vansittart as Chancellor of the Exchequer. While he held this position he was called "Prosperity Robinson" by the sarcastic journalist William Cobbett. William Cobbett also gave him the name "Goody Goderich" during an economic crisis in 1825.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”- Luke 19:10=== Headlines ===
Crews race to protect Gulf of Mexico's coastline as remote sub tries to shut off underwater oil well that's gushing 42,000 gallons a day from site of wrecked drilling platform.It's All 'on the Table' — Even National Sales Tax
Obama's debt commission goes to work, and many are wondering what will be done to cut deficit
Goldman Execs Grilled on Hill
Sen. Levin rips executives with some salty language in firm's alleged 'unethical' bet on housing markets
Tempest in a Tea Party Back in Class
Oregon teacher who publicly vowed to 'demolish' the Tea Party back at work despite objections from parents
U.N.'s Environmental Housekeeping in Chaos, Internal Report Shows
The U.N. is telling countries how to save the planet, but its own environmental housekeeping is a 'scattered' mess, according to a report by a special group of internal investigators.
Military's Hypersonic Falcon Missile Test a Dud?
On the heels of last week's top-secret X37-B launch, the U.S. Air Force launched -- and ultimately crashed -- an experimental hypersonic glider theoretically capable of hitting Mach 20.
A gardener who claims he was punched at a police station in Melbourne has fought for two years to obtain CCTV footage he hopes will prompt a new inquiryFacebook attack-a-hooker shame
SEX workers targeted in an "evil and sick" game promoted on the social networking site.
Asylum lobby 'indoctrinating' pupils
STUDENTS told to visit left-wing websites for truth about boat people in multicultural lessons.
Mum gunned down while bathing kids
STRAY bullet from gang gunfight pierces mum's neck, killing her as she bathed her daughter.
Chimpanzees grieve just like humans
MOVING video shows chimps comforting pack member - then grieving after her death.
Schoolboy a hero after walkway collapse
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Timothy Latif and three teachers will be recommended for bravery awards after pulling to safety other pupils trapped by a walkway collapse.
Commuter injured as runaway train part goes flying
A COMMUTER was hurt when a metal gate was torn from a moving freight train and cartwheeled down a platform before shattering a station window, it has been revealed. The incident is being examined by the Office of Transport Safety Investigations (OTSI) - the fifth such inquiry already this year by an agency that usually looks into four annually. In a preliminary report, OTSI said the gate on the 29-wagon Pacific National freight train came loose as the train moved towards Woy Woy station on the Central Coast last month. It then slammed into a barrier at the end of the platform, before ripping off and cartwheeling towards commuters waiting for a passenger train. "The gate dislodged from the container and proceeded along the platform for approximately 20m before smashing the glass seating bay windbreak panel," OTSI said.
9/11 retaliation surprised Bin Laden
AL-QAEDA chiefs were overly confident that America's military response to attack on World Trade Centre would be short-lived.
Inquiry into suicide clinic Dignitas after urns found 'dumped in lake'
URNS containing human remains and reportedly bearing the name of controversial Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas were discovered dumped in a lake. Divers found more than 50 urns lying at the bottom of Lake Geneva, which borders southwestern Switzerland and southeastern France, leading to an investigation by Swiss authorities, The Sun reported. Roman Ruetz, who made the discovery, said, "We stopped counting at 50 urns. They're all lying on a heap."
=== Journalists Corner ===
Immigration Law Backlash! Arizona lawmakers are under attack for racial profiling and discrimination ...
Sen. John McCain breaks down the controversy!
Guest: John BoehnerRaising taxes to lower debt? Rep. Boehner explains why Obama's deficit commission has the wrong idea!
===
Stopping Iran!
The White House has a strategy to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, but will it really work? Bret gets answers!
===
New Tax Hikes on the Table?
As Obama's deficit commission decides what to do about our national debt, how much should you expect to fork over?
=== Comments ===
Media Double Standard in Coverage of Immigration Protests vs. Tea PartiesThis is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," April 26, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
LAURA INGRAHAM, GUEST HOST: In the "Weekdays with Bernie" segment tonight: As we told you, thousands of people in Phoenix gathered over the weekend to protest a new state immigration law. The crowds got rowdy at times. Check out this video of protesters throwing plastic bottles at police, or this where a man with a camera was attacked by one of the protest organizes. The mainstream media largely ignored these incidents, a stark contrast to the big headlines made by largely peaceful Tea Party protesters.
Joining us now from Miami, Fox News analyst Bernie Goldberg, author of the book "A Slobbering Love Affair." And Bernie, why are we surprised when we have...
BERNIE GOLDBERG, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I'm not.
INGRAHAM: ...some thugs out there in Phoenix over the weekend causing trouble. And we don't know who is responsible, but there was thuggish behavior. Meanwhile, still hearing about the Tea Parties that were largely peaceful, of course.
===
LANGUAGE CHANGE
Tim Blair
In Ruddlish, “extend” is the new word for “delay”:
The Prime Minister said the government had decided ‘’to extend the implementation time for the introduction of a carbon pollution reduction scheme until the end of … 2012’’.I wonder how the government will react when I “extend” my 2010 tax return. More on Kevin Rudd’s climate change change from Michelle Grattan:
Kevin Rudd has dramatically shifted his position on climate change, declaring Australia will decide the future of its proposed emissions trading scheme when it sees what other countries do.The government is backing down all over the place, but the ETS is particularly reversible. Paul Kelly:
In another big backdown, the government has put the scheme off until 2013 at the earliest – saying it remains committed to it but leaving its timing and detail vague.
As retreats go, they come no bigger than Kevin Rudd’s delaying of his once cherished emissions trading scheme - one of the most spectacular backdowns by a prime minister in decades …Kelly didn’t need those last seven words. Dennis Shanahan:
There will be many words written about Rudd’s retreat but it is simply crystallised: he is a prime minister without the courage to champion the policy that defined him.
After months of avoiding even mentioning an emissions trading scheme Kevin Rudd has formally dumped Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least after the next election, and possibly the one after that.
After months of refusing to defend or promote the answer to the greatest moral and economic challenge “of our time” or to propose an alternative the Prime Minister has simply put it off as an inconvenient political truth and tried to blame the Coalition and the Greens for obstruction in the Senate.Rudd has now reduced climate change from the “great moral challenge of our time” to a non-core “great moral challenge of our time.”
UPDATE. The SMH’s Lenore Taylor:
When the Coalition began insisting on a wait-and-see position, Rudd said it was ‘’absolute political cowardice … an absolute failure of leadership’’.Indeed he has. Mick of Brighton replies:
It would be a ‘’failure of logic’’, because if every nation said it could not do anything until everyone else did, no one would ever do anything.
Now he’s adopted the same position himself.
While you’re banging on about cowardice, Lenore, how about a mention of the Murdoch press in this country, who have systematically spread gross misinformation bordering on lies in respect to climate change. How about good journo’s like yourself doing more to stand up to the likes of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair on this issue? These guys are allowed to run riot while Rudd is left to deal with a populist Opposition and a recalcitrant Senate.Poor Kevin.
UPDATE II. Penny Wong warns of job losses:
The Federal Government has hinted its decision to delay its emissions trading scheme could cost jobs.This sounds bad, until you read on and discover where the threatened jobs are:
Senator Wong could not rule out job cuts within her department as a result of the decision.
===
THIS MEANS WAR
Tim Blair
Evil New Zealanders trick an innocent Adelaide family:
Retiree Mike Eisenblatter and his family from Adelaide have $2.40 in old New Zealand coins, which they say were given as change from places including Te Papa.(Via Mark Steyn)
When they tried to spend the change they were rebuffed because the old larger coins, phased out in 2006, are no longer legal tender.
===
HAIL HER, QUEEN OF ALL CARBONATORS
Tim Blair
A late entrant is the shock winner of Iowahawk’s 2010 Earth Week Virtual Cruise-In.
===
And yet another
Andrew Bolt
Another boatload of people who don’t believe Rudd, either:
THE navy has intercepted a boat carrying 50 asylum seekers in waters off Australia’s northwest coast… It is the 48th asylum seeker boat intercepted in Australian waters this year.And again that lying word “intercepted”.
===
Dr Nelson was right, so why is Rudd the Prime Minister?
Andrew Bolt
This position, taken by Brendan Nelson in 2008, cost him his job as Opposition leader:
There are risks for Australia if we implement an emissions trading scheme before the rest of the world signs up to a new post-2012 global agreement in Copenhagen late next year. Design implementation in such circumstances is critical. We would need to start with a low carbon price and a near flat trajectory.Try to spot the difference between Nelson’s position and the one Kevin Rudd put yesterday:
Unless the nations responsible for the biggest emissions commit to effective plans to reduce them, Australian unilateral action would inflict collateral damage on the wider economy in lower growth and higher prices up and down the energy chain. It would lead to the export of our energy-intensive jobs to those nations that do not take action to reduce carbon emissions, thus worsening the emissions problem. And it would reduce the competitiveness of Australia industry and lead to lower living standards.
The question of acting on climate change is a responsibility facing all peoples of the world. Australian action, combined with international action, is effective. That is why we’ve got to work together with our friends and partners in the world. The truth is, of course, that progress internationally has been slower… And therefore, therefore the appropriate course of action is to, as I said, to extend the implementation time for the introduction of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until the end of the current commitment period, which is 2012. And then, based on the commitments, which are then entered into by the rest of the international community, for the Australian Government to then make its assessment on the implementation of a CPRS following that time.Those in the media who mocked Nelson at the time, and the Liberals who disowned him, might today with profit reflect on the folly, cowardice and injustice of following a mindless mob.
Nelson was right, yet had his career ruined. Rudd was wrong, yet remains Prime Minister.
===
Army harms defenceless geese on ABC
Andrew Bolt
Don’t you often dream of seeing some self-opinionated and wilfully ignorant fool being put in their place? Then thank Brigadier Alison Creagh, director of Defence Force public affairs, and Peter Cosgrove, former head of the Defence Force, who did their fine best on the Q&A in discussing the fighting in Afghanistan:
GERMAINE GREER: The most remarkable thing - well, can I ask you a question? Do we ever kill any Afghans at all?Oh, and for Greer’s enlightenment, here is just some of the information on Afghan casualities she claims we’re never told.
ALISON CREAGH: Oh, listen, Germaine…
GERMAINE GREER: We know when we lose our own because we pipe our eye. If you live in England there’s an orgy of public mourning. But we are never told what the casualties are on the other side. We were never told the casualties in Iraq. We still don’t know to the nearest nought how many civilians died in Iraq and one of the difficulties about modern warfare is its fought against civilian populations. It’s not like old fashioned warfare. It’s not chaps slugging it out in the desert.
ALISON CREAGH: So when you ask do we kill Afghans, are you talking insurgents? Because we certainly kill them.
GERMAINE GREER: Well, I’m not sure how you tell just by looking at them. I mean it strikes me…
PETER COSGROVE: Oh, they’re generally holding a rifle or an RPG or something.
GERMAINE GREER: I don’t think they are. I think that’s untrue. Look, one of the things about what’s going on in Afghanistan is we’ve got a sophisticated army that is being picked off by improvised explosive devices that are laid in public roads. You cannot tell me that you have the support of the civilian population and we’re still losing personnel in this very obvious way.
ALISON CREAGH: I just make the point that the Taliban, with their laid improvised explosive devices actually kill more Afghan civilians than they do coalition forces so…
GERMAINE GREER: I think that’s very likely to be the case, but we are still not being given anything like the whole story.
ALISON CREAGH: I’m not sure what story you think is left to tell, Germaine, and I’ve served over there and I can tell you that there’s parts of the story that are not as robustly told as you would hope, but it’s often the insurgents’ story that is told more strongly than the coalition forces and the coalition story is not well told by the international media.
UPDATE
Peter FitzSimons talks race relations on Q&A:And with my son, not long ago, I was playing chess and I was white and he was black and I was winning and he started crying. And I said, `Why?’ And he said, `Because this reminds me of what happened to the Aboriginal people.’
===
MTR today
Andrew Bolt
Here’s my segment on MTR 1377 today - discussing global warming, Rudd’s cave in on the ETS, the destruction of Bansky’s stencil in Melbourne, climbing Ayers Rock and the Rudd backflips that suggest an early election.
My wife is cross that I sounded a bully in reprimanding Price echoing Rudd propaganda on carbon dioxide “pollution”.
I have a signed copy of my sold-out book Still Not Sorry that I shall give away to anyone who rings me on talback tomorrow and mentions this offer.
UPDATE
I’ll be on Channel 10’s 7pm Project tonight. Subject: Rudd’s ETS.
===
Encore! Enclore!
Andrew Bolt
Will Kevin Rudd return to the UN (above) to give it an update on the plan he once proudly put? Or will he make an ad to update the one he once ran for our education (below):
No more important difference between Rudd and the other guy, he once told us:
The last part of this ad is beautiful:
===
Rat exterminated: Banksy’s grafitti goes the way of all graffiti
Andrew Bolt
As I said to Alexander on MTR this morning, what does it say about this work when cleaners cannot distinguish between graffiti and allegedly great art?
MELBOURNE Council has admitted painting over a piece of CBD street art by world-famous stencil guru Banksy…For all the wailing in the media reports today about the ”unthinkable” destruction of a ”priceless” work by a ”celebrated” artist, not one could show a file picture of the now-dead rat. It seems few, if any, media outlets had ever thought this “priceless” work worth photographing while it was still there to see.
The image of a rat descending in a parachute adorned the wall of an old council building behind the Forum in Hosier Lane.
Council chief executive Kathy Alexander this afternoon confirmed the council had mistakenly ordered ... cleaning contractors ... to clean the wall as part of their regular street cleaning schedule following “amenity issues” raised by residents to councillors. There were a number of graffiti tags near the rat stencil.
Apparently this is the masterpiece now lost:
===Can Rudd claim credit for stopping what he said would never happen?
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s shelving of his Emissions Trading Scheme will save voters lots of money Rudd swore they wouldn’t lose:
The Prime Minister’s decision to delay the ETS will save billions in the May 11 federal budget, while the NSW government immediately said the predicted massive electricity price rises under the scheme would by much smaller.UPDATE
NSW Energy Minister John Robertson said energy price increases would be significantly smaller over the next three years in NSW because of the delay of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Integral Energy price increases would now be about 20 per cent, compared with 46 per cent under the CPRS, and EnergyAustralia’s increases would be 36 per cent compared with 60 per cent…
Mr Robertson’s comments came despite Climate Change Minister Penny Wong saying last month: “Claims that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is driving electricity price rises in NSW from July this year are simply wrong."…
The about-face came as a poll by the Lowy Institute showed most Australians wanted the government to act on climate change but were not personally prepared to pay for it. The poll found that while 72 per cent of Australians agreed that Australia should take action to reduce carbon emissions before a global agreement is reached, 33 per cent were not prepared to pay anything extra on their electricity bill and 25 per cent were only prepared to pay $10 or less extra per month.
Terry McCrann:
Really, have we ever seen a bigger prat as prime minister...?…Paul Kelly:
Barely six months ago, Rudd was demanding that we lock in place our (utterly pointless, yet punishingly destructive) ETS before Coppenfloppen. No waiting to see what the world did then. As it was always going to turn out: nothing…
But this insanity has at the very least been postponed. The other one blunders on: the $43 billion mother-of all-white elephants, the National Broadband Network.
The NBN company CEO Mike Quigley ‘mis-spoke’ a couple of weeks ago when he said it wouldn’t make money ‘for 30 years’. It’d be reasonable to regard that as an ‘optimistic’ projection.
There will be many words written about Rudd’s retreat but it is simply crystallised: he is a prime minister without the courage to champion the policy that defined him…Lenore Taylor:
In truth, Rudd has lost his nerve.... His tacticians will call this smart and they may be right. But it betrays a government weak to its core.
To understand just how far this debate has shifted, think back to poor old Brendan Nelson, who lost the Liberal leadership in 2008 for suggesting the wait-and-see approach that now seems to have bipartisan approval.Chris Uhlmann:
If you really believe that climate change is the greatest moral and economic challenge of our age, then you wouldn’t retreat, would you, because if you did, people might begin to wonder what you actually believe in?UPDATE 2
Weren’t many business weasels once demanding “certainty” and the early introduction of this same scheme?
CORPORATE Australia has broadly welcomed the Rudd government’s deferral of a carbon pollution reduction scheme, saying it presents an opportunity for renewed bipartisan agreement and consideration of other measures to cut emissions.UPDATE 3
Reader Andrew puts it beautifully:
Seems like only Malcolm Turnbull had the courage of Rudd’s convictions.UPDATE 4
Don’t forget, without Family First’s Steve Fielding in the Senate, we might well have Rudd’s ETS today.
===
Spare us your tears, and leave us our Rock
Andrew Bolt
These humbuggers are just looking for an excuse:TOURISTS could soon be banned from climbing Uluru after the recent death of a Victorian man. The 54-year-old man collapsed and died near the base on his way down the 340m-high rock…For the real (and very dubious) agenda, go here.
Parks Australia said the climb was closed for the rest of the day on Saturday “out of respect” for the man and again on Sunday “because of high winds”.
He was the first climber to die at Uluru since 2000 and the 36th to die since 1958.
Traditional owners and Parks Australia want the climb closed in a few years....The climb is often off limits because of heat, rain, wind or indigenous ceremonies. It was open for only 55 whole days last year and 36 in 2008.
And, indeed, the stealthy campaign continues to reverse a solemn promise to let us keep climbing:
The inbound tourism industry has been told international and Australian operators have to be weaned off selling a climb of Uluru as an attraction to visitors.
The managing director of the Australian Tourism Export Council. Matt Hingerty, told Australia’s largest tourism conference in Hobart on Friday the move towards closing the Uluru climb will continue to be slow, but the day will come when people will no longer be allowed to scale the rock.
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Rudd chokes on his own great lie
Andrew Bolt
THE great fraud has been found out, and his country saved - for now - from the greatest of his follies.
Here’s the worst lie that Kevin Rudd, perhaps our most deceitful Prime Minister, once told about global warming and his Emissions Trading Scheme: “The biggest challenge the world faces in the decades ahead is climate change.
“It is the great moral and economic challenge of our time.”
But on Tuesday Rudd decided “the great moral challenge” of our time wasn’t, after all.
It was just “a” challenge, he said. And with public trust falling in his ETS “solution” - a great green tax on gases - he cut and ran.
His ETS would be shelved until at least 2013. Two elections away. Yet only last year this same Government claimed “delay was denial”, and we could not wait to save “our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future”. To stop “700,000 homes and businesses” on our coast from drowning. (Another lie.)
Rudd had his excuses, of course. The naughty Opposition now opposed the ETS in the Senate, and other countries were “slower to act” on global warming themselves.
But it was just more Rudd spin.
For years he’s mocked warnings from sceptics and some Liberals that it was reckless for small Australia to make cuts that almost no other country would make.
===
There goes the neighbourhood
Andrew Bolt
IT was reported as if Sydney should cry and Melbourne should crow, when the truth is all of us should panic.
The news: “Melbourne could overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city by 2037.”
So in just 27 years, Melbourne would have 5.7 million people and stagnant Sydney could go cry us a harbour.
Cry, because the BIS Shrapnel report, commissioned by Australia’s shark-fanged property developers, presented this finding as a kick in Sydney’s manhood. The report’s title said it all: Going Nowhere.
But that “nowhere” may still be better than the somewhere to which Melbourne is now hurtling - and the rest of this clueless country with it, thanks to an immigration policy that’s now wildly out of control.
Fact is, this report is yet more proof that not only is our population growing too fast for our creaking cities, but - more dangerously - too fast for us to turn immigrants into Australians.
I say that because here’s what none of yesterday’s reports on the study noted.
Just five years ago, the Australian Bureau of Statistics predicted Melbourne wouldn’t reach even five million people before 2051, and Sydney then would have only 5.6 million.
Just five years later and we’re told to expect not five million by 2051, but 5.7 million - and 14 years earlier.
That’s more than 1.5 million extra people by 2037 in a city that’s been on water restrictions for eight years.
But as with Melbourne and Sydney, so with the rest of this country that’s lost its brakes.
Our flailing Prime Minister last year said he supported Australia reaching a population of 36 million by 2050 - even though no state government is ready for even a fraction of such growth.
But even that huge target is being overwhelmed by a flood of immigrants unleashed by the Rudd Government.
===
Take your pick
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd says the surge in boat people is not his fault:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Australia was dealing with global ‘’push factors’’ when it came to asylum-seekers.Sri Lanka says it is:
AUSTRALIA’S “lenient” asylum policy, easy access to citizenship and generous welfare benefits are the main pull factors attracting Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, says the head of Colombo’s anti-human-trafficking operation(Thanks to readers CA and Rosemary.)
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The Builders’ Early Retirement rort
Andrew Bolt
More padded fees and deceits. Is there anything you can believe about the Rudd Government’s rort-raddled Building the Education Revolution?
THE Queensland government has been paying tens of millions of dollars in additional, undisclosed fees and charges to managing contractors handling the $16.2 billion schools stimulus scheme.
The Queensland Education Department yesterday admitted that its repeated claims that payments to Building the Education Revolution managing contractors were capped at 6 per cent were wrong, and many were receiving double that amount…
Yesterday, the department’s infrastructure services acting director-general, Graham Atkins, said those extra payments were for “costs” to be paid to managing contractors rather than “fees”.
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Teaching little activists
Andrew Bolt
Victoria’s climate-crusading governor once more plays politics, and many teachers are no better:
VICTORIAN students are being directed to pro-asylum seeker websites and encouraged to create political campaigns in a new multicultural agenda for state schools.
A resource kit urges students to design slogans, badges, bumper stickers and posters for display in classrooms and to question terms such as “boat people”, “queue jumpers” and “illegals”.
It also says schools should display welcome signs in different languages, become involved in events like National Sorry Day and Refugee Week, and invites students to spend quiet time meditating on their core beliefs and values.
The program, dubbed All of Us - Multicultural Perspectives in Victorian Schools, was devised by the Victorian Multicultural Commission and is endorsed by high-profile citizens including Governor David de Kretser…
The Education Department resource kit recommends that secondary students go to websites such as A Just Australia for myths and facts about asylum seekers.
AJA is a refugee lobby group founded by Left-wing broadcaster Phillip Adams that does not support mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
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The greatest reversal of dud policies in our lifetime
Andrew Bolt
Has any Prime Minister had to reverse, delay or repair so many of his own disastrous policies in just three weeks?
April 9:
AUSTRALIA suspended processing asylum applications for Afghans and Sri Lankans as young children wrapped in towels were being brought ashore at Christmas Island after their boat foundered at sea… The suspension of asylum claims came after Kevin Rudd came under increasing pressure to stem the flow of boat arrivals.April 12:
UP to $6 billion in school building funds will be subjected to increased scrutiny after Julia Gillard bowed to pressure and appointed an inquiry into waste and alleged rorting under the government’s Building the Education Revolution program. As the government cleared political problems ahead of a looming election campaign on health, the Deputy Prime Minister appointed former investment banker Brad Orgill to head a taskforce that will have a $14 million budget...April 21:
HUMAN rights groups yesterday accused Attorney-General Robert McClelland of lacking courage after he rejected a proposal for a human rights charter because it was too politically divisive. Mr McClelland denied he had unrealistically raised expectations of a charter by spending $2.8 million on a human rights consultation process.April 22:
TAXPAYERS face a $1 billion bill to clean up the Rudd Government’s botched home insulation scheme, which has wasted 2 per cent of its $42bn economic stimulus package. After months of revelations of dodgy work and rorting of the $2.45bn program, the Government yesterday scrapped it on the basis of an independent report highlighting massive failings in its design and administration...April 22:
THE Rudd government has quietly dumped its election pledge to end ?the double-drop-off? for parents by building 260 childcare centres on school grounds. The Childcare Minister Kate Ellis ... said today the government would finish the 38 it has started.April 23:
COMPLAINTS about foreigners driving up Australian house prices have forced the Rudd government to reinstate a rule it scrapped in 2008 requiring temporary residents to sell their houses when they leave the country… There have been several complaints in recent months about foreign investment in the residential sector, mainly focused on Asian investors outbidding locals at auctions to buy homes for their children studying in Australia.April 27:
KEVIN Rudd has dumped one of the centrepiece promises of his 2007 election campaign, delaying plans for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) until at least 2013.So many disasters, and all of Rudd’s making. The frantic ditching of them suggests an election - and with the BER task force due to report on that disaster wiithin three months, I wouldn’t be surprised by a July election, with the Budget used to frame the issues Rudd wants to fight on.
Oh, and this doesn’t quite fit the bill, but it’s both a broken promise and another sign of pre-election panic:
April 27:
LABOR has reneged on an in-principle agreement to hold an election debate on the Sunday before polling day.UPDATE
Labor MPs worry that this will seem just like it really is:
CONCERNS are growing within the federal government that Kevin Rudd is losing control of the political agenda after a series of policy reversals capped off by the dumping of Labor’s key climate change policy… As the Prime Minister continues to dump contentious and costly policies before the May 11 budget, some Labor MPs fear too many policy reversals and broken promises are being wheeled out in too short a time, creating a perception of panic.UPDATE 2
Dennis Shanahan:
The real problem for the government right now is that it over-promised, under-delivered and is suffering from Rudd’s centralised management…
It is one thing to admit to a mistake and promise to fix it, even to admit to two or three. But if political leaders continually admit to mistakes, voters are entitled to think they can’t competently manage anything, no matter how appealing it may sound.
