Sunday, November 30, 2008
Luca Turin: The science of scent
Luca Turin (1953 - ) is a biophysicist with a long-standing interest in the sense of smell, the art of perfume, and the fragrance industry.
NSW Lib Updates
O’Farrell Congratulates Glenn Mcgrath On NSW Australian Of The Year Award
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today congratulated cricketing Legend Glenn McGrath on being named the 2009 NSW Australian of the Year for his outstanding contributions to the community both on and off the field.
“Glenn has gained the public’s affection through his cricket career, but more recently he’s touched people’s hearts through his advocacy for breast cancer awareness and charitable works,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Poor Pumpkin: More Labor Breakouts On School Travel Tax
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
Two more Labor MPs have broken ranks to criticise Premier Nathan Rees’ stupid plan to axe the free school travel scheme, NSW Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Western Sydney Barry O’Farrell revealed today.
“Here we have two more press release prima donnas from the Labor Party who refused to take up their residents concerns on the floor of the Parliament,” Mr O’Farrell said.
NSW Labor Govt Removes 11 Key Hospital Performance Measures From Official Data:
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Puts Federal Funding In Jeopardy
John Della Bosca and the State Labor Government are jeopardising hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal health funding after hiding vital hospital performance figures in the latest quarterly report, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner revealed today.
“The State Labor Government has removed 11 key performance measures from the published hospital data at a time when increased federal government funding is dependent on providing more information, not less,” Mrs Skinner said.
Skinner To Introduce Vanessa’s Law Into NSW Parliament Today
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner will today introduce ‘Vanessa’s law’ into State Parliament, to enshrine in law the requirement that children admitted to adult hospital wards have their treatment overseen by a paediatrician.
Vanessa Anderson died at Royal North Shore Hospital on 8 November 2005 after being hit in the head with a golf ball. The coronial findings into Vanessa’s death triggered the Garling Inquiry, whose findings were handed down yesterday.
Who Killed The NSW Property Market?
Written by Brad Hazzard MP
State Labor might still be scratching their heads, but homebuyers and the property industry know who killed the property market – the State Labor Government.
“The property market in this State has been on a constant downturn under State Labor to the point where it has effectively been killed,” Shadow Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said today.
Garling Exposes Labor’s Health Lies: 13 Years Of Deception And Incompetence Must Be Remedied
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP & Jillian Skinner MP
The Garling Inquiry has exposed 13-years of lies told by the State Labor Government to cover up their failure to improve and reform the NSW hospital system, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell and Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“This is a damning indictment on Labor’s mismanagement of the health system,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Roozendaal Gambles On $2 Billion Rescue Funds From Rudd
Written by The Hon Greg Pearce MLC
Treasurer Roozendaal today confirmed the mini-budget includes a gamble that an extra $2 billion of revenues will be paid by the Commonwealth to NSW as a result of the current round of COAG negotiations, Shadow Treasurer Greg Pearce said today.
“This is a gamble that Kevin Rudd will come to the rescue of NSW in implementing its mini-budget,” said Mr Pearce.
Performance Figures Manipulated: Internal NSW Health Report
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Internal Health reports have revealed performance figures in at least two major hospitals were manipulated to make the State Labor Government look good, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
The report found the practice of changing patients triage category and falsifying the times they were treated in “constituted data manipulation”.
Garling Inquiry Will Reveal Labor’s Failure But Also Provide Hope If Recommendations Are Implemented
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
The Garling Inquiry provides real hope of improved health and hospital services, but only if the report makes meaningful recommendations that are fully implemented by the State Labor Government, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“Based on the evidence presented at the Garling Inquiry, the findings will reveal the true extent of Labor’s mismanagement of the health system over 13 years,” Mrs Skinner said.
More...
Labor Adopts Nsw Liberal/Nationals Policy To Re-Open Overseas Trade Missions
Nurses Told To Supply Own Pens And Post-It Notes: Labor’s BYO Health System
Rees Must Take Action Against Burton and Furolo Over $7M Grant
Can Labor Get Anything Right? Labor’s Epping To Chatswood Rail Bungle Worsens
Lynch Must Work Harder To Provide ACLO Positions Throughout NSW
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today congratulated cricketing Legend Glenn McGrath on being named the 2009 NSW Australian of the Year for his outstanding contributions to the community both on and off the field.
“Glenn has gained the public’s affection through his cricket career, but more recently he’s touched people’s hearts through his advocacy for breast cancer awareness and charitable works,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Poor Pumpkin: More Labor Breakouts On School Travel Tax
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
Two more Labor MPs have broken ranks to criticise Premier Nathan Rees’ stupid plan to axe the free school travel scheme, NSW Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Western Sydney Barry O’Farrell revealed today.
“Here we have two more press release prima donnas from the Labor Party who refused to take up their residents concerns on the floor of the Parliament,” Mr O’Farrell said.
NSW Labor Govt Removes 11 Key Hospital Performance Measures From Official Data:
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Puts Federal Funding In Jeopardy
John Della Bosca and the State Labor Government are jeopardising hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal health funding after hiding vital hospital performance figures in the latest quarterly report, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner revealed today.
“The State Labor Government has removed 11 key performance measures from the published hospital data at a time when increased federal government funding is dependent on providing more information, not less,” Mrs Skinner said.
Skinner To Introduce Vanessa’s Law Into NSW Parliament Today
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner will today introduce ‘Vanessa’s law’ into State Parliament, to enshrine in law the requirement that children admitted to adult hospital wards have their treatment overseen by a paediatrician.
Vanessa Anderson died at Royal North Shore Hospital on 8 November 2005 after being hit in the head with a golf ball. The coronial findings into Vanessa’s death triggered the Garling Inquiry, whose findings were handed down yesterday.
Who Killed The NSW Property Market?
Written by Brad Hazzard MP
State Labor might still be scratching their heads, but homebuyers and the property industry know who killed the property market – the State Labor Government.
“The property market in this State has been on a constant downturn under State Labor to the point where it has effectively been killed,” Shadow Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said today.
Garling Exposes Labor’s Health Lies: 13 Years Of Deception And Incompetence Must Be Remedied
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP & Jillian Skinner MP
The Garling Inquiry has exposed 13-years of lies told by the State Labor Government to cover up their failure to improve and reform the NSW hospital system, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell and Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“This is a damning indictment on Labor’s mismanagement of the health system,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Roozendaal Gambles On $2 Billion Rescue Funds From Rudd
Written by The Hon Greg Pearce MLC
Treasurer Roozendaal today confirmed the mini-budget includes a gamble that an extra $2 billion of revenues will be paid by the Commonwealth to NSW as a result of the current round of COAG negotiations, Shadow Treasurer Greg Pearce said today.
“This is a gamble that Kevin Rudd will come to the rescue of NSW in implementing its mini-budget,” said Mr Pearce.
Performance Figures Manipulated: Internal NSW Health Report
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
Internal Health reports have revealed performance figures in at least two major hospitals were manipulated to make the State Labor Government look good, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
The report found the practice of changing patients triage category and falsifying the times they were treated in “constituted data manipulation”.
Garling Inquiry Will Reveal Labor’s Failure But Also Provide Hope If Recommendations Are Implemented
Written by Jillian Skinner MP
The Garling Inquiry provides real hope of improved health and hospital services, but only if the report makes meaningful recommendations that are fully implemented by the State Labor Government, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“Based on the evidence presented at the Garling Inquiry, the findings will reveal the true extent of Labor’s mismanagement of the health system over 13 years,” Mrs Skinner said.
More...
Labor Adopts Nsw Liberal/Nationals Policy To Re-Open Overseas Trade Missions
Nurses Told To Supply Own Pens And Post-It Notes: Labor’s BYO Health System
Rees Must Take Action Against Burton and Furolo Over $7M Grant
Can Labor Get Anything Right? Labor’s Epping To Chatswood Rail Bungle Worsens
Lynch Must Work Harder To Provide ACLO Positions Throughout NSW
Headlines Sunday 30th November
The price of tolerating intolerance
Piers Akerman
The involvement of Britons among the terrorists responsible for the murders of more than 150 people in Mumbai last week signals another milestone in the march of multiculturalism and the failure of Western and democratised nations to deal with Islamists. - it is no wonder that young people are so confused about issues. They hear lies and no one is willing to stand up and denounce the lies. So that it may be said that there is equivalence between the terrorist hit on Mumbai and the terrorist shields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, lies are told by the media, in the form of big budget thrillers like "Australia" or in the heat of election campaigns spruiking such madness as global warming coming to end the world. I understand the problem for islamists in that they haven't had a decent protector like President Bush for long and now they are losing him, but it is incumbent on Islamists to denounce the lies of their terrorist 'cousins.' - ed.
===
Net nanny is slow and myopic
Andrew Bolt
Chris Berg is as unconvinced by the Rudd Government’s new net filters as am I:
The Australian Communications and Media Authority conducted tests earlier this year on six filters that could be imposed on internet service providers. Five slowed internet speeds by at least 20 per cent. And two of them crippled speeds by more than 75 per cent.
===
Sycophants paid out
Andrew Bolt
Lovely to see scratch-my-back sycophancy taxed:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has avoided making an appearance at a massive Labor Party fund-raising event to honour his first year in office because of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
===
Going, going…
Andrew Bolt
The crunch is hitting and one effect may be the destruction of the local tradition of the house auction. All that expense, for a 50-50 chance of a sale on the day is starting to make little sense
===
Chilling on warming
Andrew Bolt
As the world’s temperatures and stock markets fall, so does the world’s enthusiasm to spend trillions on not not stopping what might not be bad even if were happening:
There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries’
===
Mumbai still bleeding
Andrew Bolt
Grim finds, as India’s special forces clear the buildings in Mumbai that were stormed by Islamist terrorists:
Mumbai’s chief of police says Indian security forces have found the bodies of five hostages at a Jewish outreach centre… Among the five hostages who died during the operation, was a New York-based Rabbi and his wife…
===
Rudd’s welcome mat
Andrew Bolt
Gee, it doesn’t take long for the people smugglers to smell weakness:
INDONESIAN and Australian police have stopped 14 boats laden with asylum seekers from travelling to Australia this year, including at least three in the past six weeks, as people-smuggling accelerates across the archipelago.
===
Luhrmann’s worst scene
Andrew Bolt
Having just seen Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, I am not surprised it’s flopping in the US:
Figures quoted from US entertainment newspaper Variety said the movie made a paltry $3.4 million on its Thursday opening in the key market.
I’ll review the movie in full on Wednesday. But I just want to describe the one scene in the nearly three hours of this mishmash that perhaps summed up best what made this film not just poor storytelling, with preposterously implausible plotlines and the most wincing cliches, but a ludicrous and nasty rewriting of our history to boot.
Piers Akerman
The involvement of Britons among the terrorists responsible for the murders of more than 150 people in Mumbai last week signals another milestone in the march of multiculturalism and the failure of Western and democratised nations to deal with Islamists. - it is no wonder that young people are so confused about issues. They hear lies and no one is willing to stand up and denounce the lies. So that it may be said that there is equivalence between the terrorist hit on Mumbai and the terrorist shields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, lies are told by the media, in the form of big budget thrillers like "Australia" or in the heat of election campaigns spruiking such madness as global warming coming to end the world. I understand the problem for islamists in that they haven't had a decent protector like President Bush for long and now they are losing him, but it is incumbent on Islamists to denounce the lies of their terrorist 'cousins.' - ed.
===
Net nanny is slow and myopic
Andrew Bolt
Chris Berg is as unconvinced by the Rudd Government’s new net filters as am I:
The Australian Communications and Media Authority conducted tests earlier this year on six filters that could be imposed on internet service providers. Five slowed internet speeds by at least 20 per cent. And two of them crippled speeds by more than 75 per cent.
===
Sycophants paid out
Andrew Bolt
Lovely to see scratch-my-back sycophancy taxed:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has avoided making an appearance at a massive Labor Party fund-raising event to honour his first year in office because of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
===
Going, going…
Andrew Bolt
The crunch is hitting and one effect may be the destruction of the local tradition of the house auction. All that expense, for a 50-50 chance of a sale on the day is starting to make little sense
===
Chilling on warming
Andrew Bolt
As the world’s temperatures and stock markets fall, so does the world’s enthusiasm to spend trillions on not not stopping what might not be bad even if were happening:
There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries’
===
Mumbai still bleeding
Andrew Bolt
Grim finds, as India’s special forces clear the buildings in Mumbai that were stormed by Islamist terrorists:
Mumbai’s chief of police says Indian security forces have found the bodies of five hostages at a Jewish outreach centre… Among the five hostages who died during the operation, was a New York-based Rabbi and his wife…
===
Rudd’s welcome mat
Andrew Bolt
Gee, it doesn’t take long for the people smugglers to smell weakness:
INDONESIAN and Australian police have stopped 14 boats laden with asylum seekers from travelling to Australia this year, including at least three in the past six weeks, as people-smuggling accelerates across the archipelago.
===
Luhrmann’s worst scene
Andrew Bolt
Having just seen Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, I am not surprised it’s flopping in the US:
Figures quoted from US entertainment newspaper Variety said the movie made a paltry $3.4 million on its Thursday opening in the key market.
I’ll review the movie in full on Wednesday. But I just want to describe the one scene in the nearly three hours of this mishmash that perhaps summed up best what made this film not just poor storytelling, with preposterously implausible plotlines and the most wincing cliches, but a ludicrous and nasty rewriting of our history to boot.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Malcolm Turnbull at National Press Club
Malcolm Turnbull addresses the National Press Club in Canberra.
recorded 24/11/08
pt 1
===
Pt 2
===
pt 3
=== ===
I disagree on some points. The apology has poorly served Aboriginal peoples. Signing Kyoto was a bad mistake, given global warming isn't happening. However, Malcolm is perfectly correct to say Rudd has failed on every issue.
recorded 24/11/08
pt 1
===
Pt 2
===
pt 3
=== ===
I disagree on some points. The apology has poorly served Aboriginal peoples. Signing Kyoto was a bad mistake, given global warming isn't happening. However, Malcolm is perfectly correct to say Rudd has failed on every issue.
Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play
http://www.ted.com At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).
Liberal Messages Saturday 29th November
Turnbull Doorstop - Mumbai terrorist attacks, death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan, computers in schools blowout, economic management...
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and their families, of this appalling terrorist attack in Mumbai. We have had confirmation that two Australians have been killed. One of them, Doug Markell, was a constituent of mine and a former Deputy Mayor of Woollahra, and our prayers and condolences go to his family as indeed they go to the families of all those who have been killed or injured in this dreadful, murderous outbreak of terrorism.
Labor's 66% computers in schools cost blow-out driving the budget into deficit
Revelations today of a 66% blow-out in the cost of the Computers in Schools program proves the Rudd Government is incapable of running Education or the economy.
Death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan
Like all Australians I was saddened with the news that an Australian soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan yesterday. My thoughts and prayers are with the soldier’s family, his friends and his colleagues.
Snowy River secure under Coalition plan
Efforts to save the iconic Snowy River have been specifically secured as a result of Opposition amendments in the Senate to the Water Amendment Bill 2008.
Death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan
I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan today. The thoughts and prayers of all Australians are with the soldier’s family, his friends and his colleagues.
Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan
The Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Personnel and Assisting Shadow Minister for Defence The Hon. Bob Baldwin, has tonight extended his condolences to the family and colleagues of a young Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Mumbai terrorist attacks
The Coalition joins the Australian Government in resolutely condemning the shocking multiple and co-ordinated attacks that are continuing in Mumbai, India.
Private capital expenditure exceeds expectations and new house sales rise
New economic data released today indicates that business is continuing to invest in productive buildings and equipment while more individuals are purchasing new houses.
ADF families caught in ABC uncertainty
The men and women of the ADF make an extraordinary contribution and sacrifice to the defence of our Nation. It is astounding that not one of the Defence ABC Learning Centres has been confirmed to remain open in 2009. It is absolutely vital that the Government have a coherent strategy to assist and support those defence families that may face centre closures in the New Year.
Bob Maumill allegations are totally false
The allegations made by Bob Maumill in his blog on the 6PR radio website and on radio this morning are totally false.
Gillard must correct the record on Computers in Schools
The Deputy Prime Minister has been caught out after calling for me to tell a local high school in my electorate of Sturt to ‘send back the funding for their 416 computers’ as it was revealed today they have no funding and no computers.
Pacific Island harvest labour missed the boat
Confusion and inefficiency has dogged the pilot, with the involvement of 3 government departments (DEEWR, DIAC and DFAT) unable to cobble together a program to honour commitments made to desperate Australian growers and at least four Pacific Island nations. The pilot was supposed to commence for this season. It may not even commence next year.
Senate Report into Schools Assistance Bill confirms schools' fears
Diversity and choice are important in education. These are fundamental points that the Labor Party neither understands nor cares about.
Silent Shorten finally speaks out
Senator Cory Bernardi, Coalition spokesman for Disabilities, has welcomed Bill Shorten breaking his silence on the valuable contribution that people with a disability make to the Australian community.
Increasing trend of DVD piracy highlighted but no solution offered
Considering the seriousness of these organised criminal gangs, it is unfortunate that the Rudd Labor Government is not taking the issue more seriously.
Confirmed: Labor’s broadband stops at city limits
Not one of the carriers bidding to build the National Broadband Network will meet the Government’s election commitment to deliver fibre to the node broadband to 98 percent of the Australian population.
OECD delivers a positive economic outlook for Australia
The OECD Economic Outlook report released overnight warns that the $10.4 billion stimulus package will not achieve maximum economic benefit if confidence in our economy is not restored.
Conroy misleads Senate to cover up broadband fiasco
In a media release today, Telstra states in black and white that its “proposal outlines what would be achieved by the fully detailed bid that Telstra has prepared but could not be submitted due to a number of unresolved issues.
Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson makes another hypocritical statement
Martin Ferguson’s bagging of Britain’s extra tourism tax completely hypocritical, when back in the May Budget, the Minister announced almost $1 billion in extra tourism taxes, which have put pressure on Australian tourism operators.
Government survey shows parents don't consider publishing schools finances important
The Deputy Prime Minister’s desire to publish non-government schools private funding sources isn’t considered a priority by parents according to the Government’s own survey
It's all downhill for jobs under Labor
With the OECD’s latest economic outlook indicating 200,000 jobs are forecast to be lost by 2010 in Australia, the outlook for jobs is looking increasingly dire under Labor.
Woolcott confirms what Rudd cannot
Special Envoy Richard Woolcott this morning confirmed what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and their representatives in the Senate have been unable to do – that Australia’s regional neighbours have no interest in forming a new Asia Pacific Community.
Rudd government dismisses business concerns over emissions trading...again
The Rudd Government’s consultation process with business over their rushed emissions trading scheme has been exposed as a complete sham by the fact that the zinc producing company Nyrstar was not even present at a government roundtable to discuss the concerns they have raised.
Labor's Short Selling Bill fails to address key issues
Key stakeholders are greatly concerned about how the disclosure provisions would actually work in practice. This is understandable, as no detail is provided in the Bill as to how the Government would actually regulate covered short selling.
Opposition moves to protect interests of Australian television viewers
The Opposition will move amendments to the Government’s Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill in a bid to safeguard the interests of the Australian viewing public.
Senator Bernardi welcomes decision to grant Moeller family permanent residency
This announcement is good news for Dr Moeller and his family, as well as for the wider Horsham community.
Labor splits to keep the music alive at the Australian National Academy of Music
A delegation of Labor MP’s has come out supporting Coalition policy and is opposing Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s decision to axe funding for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
Public opinion may force Immigration Minister to act (finally) on Down syndrome case, but others languish on his desk
German born Dr Bernhard Moeller’s bid to remain in Australia, serving the Horsham community as their only specialist physician, can now lurch to the final stage, where he can appeal to Minister Evans personally to intervene in his case.
Britain's taxman reaches out to slug Aussie travellers
The new tax announced by the Britain this week is being painted as a new charge to combat climate change but is in reality nothing more than naked protectionism and an attempt to prop up Britain’s ailing economy with a new source of tax revenue.
Telstra bid snub exposes Labor's broadband con
Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, refused to submit a bid because of a number of unresolved issues in the tender documents.
Senator Bernardi supports young carers forum
The Rudd Government must take the opportunity of the Young Carers Forum to implement services to recognise and address the needs of young carers in Australia.
Leader of the Opposition Press Conference with Michael Keenan - Fair Work Bill 2008, bank wholesale funding guarantee, Telstra, infrastructure
We will not oppose the Government’s Fair Work Bill in the House of Representatives but we reserve our right to propose amendments to improve the operation of the Bill following the Senate Committee process without seeking to frustrate the Government’s election commitment to implement its Forward with Fairness election policy.
Labor's arbitrary internet filter plan misguided and deeply unpopular
There is no technical substitute for appropriate adult supervision when it comes to keeping our children safe online and most parents and teachers take that responsibility very seriously and any suggestions to the contrary are patronising and offensive. Labor’s plan to implement a mandatory Internet filter at ISP level has been roundly attacked with valid concerns raised about its likely effectiveness, the adverse impact it would have on Internet speeds and performance and also the precise nature of the content the Government plans to filter.
Swan denies telling Australians to go to Centrelink
Confronted with the reality that thousands of Australians have had their savings frozen as a direct result of the Government’s panicked and ill considered bank guarantee Treasurer Swan told Australians to go to Centrelink.
Fair Work Bill 2008
The Government’s changes to workplace relations come at a very difficult time for the Australian economy. We take the Government on trust that these changes have been carefully considered and will not cost jobs.
The Rudd Government must refuse entry to convicted racist
The Federal Opposition is urgently calling on the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, to refuse any further visa application from British national, Nick Griffin.
Conroy's extraordinary arrogance in relation to broadband bid confirmation
In an extraordinary display of arrogance Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has told the Senate that his Government will not be providing the Australian public with any detail whatsoever regarding bids for his National Broadband Network (NBN).
Tax Laws Amendment (Luxury Car Tax – Minor Amendments Labor Incompetence Correction) Bill
Today’s introduction of so-called “minor amendments” to the Rudd Labor Government’s ill-considered Luxury Car Tax surcharge is a humiliating demonstration of Labor’s incompetence.
Rudd's desperate plan to salvage GroceryChoice ignores the $13 million waste of taxpayer's money
The Coalition has no objection to providing helpful information to consumers but the problem is - this is $13 million of taxpayer’s money.
Freedom of information exposes massive computers in schools cost for States
Freedom of information documents have revealed what the Federal Government has been trying to hide. The $51,000,000 that will be given to the Western Australian State Government for Computers in Schools will cost the state an additional $167,000,000.
Surplus spending puts dent in Nation-Buliding plans
The Nation Building Funds will suffer a tremendous $14.7 billion shortfall due to the Government’s decision to spend the majority of the anticipated surplus for 2008-2009.
Senate plugs the north-south pipeline controversial diversion of Murray water to rest with Kevin Rudd
The Senate last night passed the Coalition’s amendments to plug the North-South pipeline in Victoria from taking water from the parched Goulburn River, Murray River and Lower Lakes.
Coalition seeks to improve infrastructure legislation
The Coalition will be moving a number of amendments to the Government’s Nation Building Funds Bills to provide transparency, guarantee productivity, reveal total costs and to stop revenue gouging by the State Governments.
White Ribbon Day- all sections of the community must take a stand to end violence
White Ribbon Day was an opportunity for all sectors of the Australian community to commit to eliminating the incidence of violence against women.
Nuclear fuel to Russia, still no uranium for India
Should these reports be correct and Australia indeed goes ahead with providing nuclear fuel to Russia, Mr Rudd will need to explain why his Government has chosen to largely ignore India, a country with a safe record of handling civilian nuclear activities.
Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - Debt and unemployment
The key to ensuring as few people as possible are placed under financial pressure is for the Government to focus all its efforts on maintaining high levels of employment.
Coalition acts to protect Communications Fund
Rudd Labor must end its war on rural and regional Australia and guarantee the future of the $2.4 billion Communications Fund.
Leader of the Opposition Address to the National Press Club
Given the strong public finances Mr Rudd has inherited and the growth forecasts we are relying on for next year, Australians rightly regard the prospect of a deficit budget next year as a failure in economic management – an admission that Mr Rudd could not maintain a strong economy and above all could not live within his means.
No mention of that war
Having spent the first nine months of this year focusing on inflation and egging the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates to combat inflation, the Rudd Government made no mention at all of inflation in its self assessment of its first twelve months in office.
Gillard attempts to steal second without touching first
Ms Gillard’s announcement that she is taking the education revolution to the ‘next step’ is a cynical effort to shift the focus from the failing elements of this so-called revolution to date.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and their families, of this appalling terrorist attack in Mumbai. We have had confirmation that two Australians have been killed. One of them, Doug Markell, was a constituent of mine and a former Deputy Mayor of Woollahra, and our prayers and condolences go to his family as indeed they go to the families of all those who have been killed or injured in this dreadful, murderous outbreak of terrorism.
Labor's 66% computers in schools cost blow-out driving the budget into deficit
Revelations today of a 66% blow-out in the cost of the Computers in Schools program proves the Rudd Government is incapable of running Education or the economy.
Death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan
Like all Australians I was saddened with the news that an Australian soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan yesterday. My thoughts and prayers are with the soldier’s family, his friends and his colleagues.
Snowy River secure under Coalition plan
Efforts to save the iconic Snowy River have been specifically secured as a result of Opposition amendments in the Senate to the Water Amendment Bill 2008.
Death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan
I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan today. The thoughts and prayers of all Australians are with the soldier’s family, his friends and his colleagues.
Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan
The Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Personnel and Assisting Shadow Minister for Defence The Hon. Bob Baldwin, has tonight extended his condolences to the family and colleagues of a young Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Mumbai terrorist attacks
The Coalition joins the Australian Government in resolutely condemning the shocking multiple and co-ordinated attacks that are continuing in Mumbai, India.
Private capital expenditure exceeds expectations and new house sales rise
New economic data released today indicates that business is continuing to invest in productive buildings and equipment while more individuals are purchasing new houses.
ADF families caught in ABC uncertainty
The men and women of the ADF make an extraordinary contribution and sacrifice to the defence of our Nation. It is astounding that not one of the Defence ABC Learning Centres has been confirmed to remain open in 2009. It is absolutely vital that the Government have a coherent strategy to assist and support those defence families that may face centre closures in the New Year.
Bob Maumill allegations are totally false
The allegations made by Bob Maumill in his blog on the 6PR radio website and on radio this morning are totally false.
Gillard must correct the record on Computers in Schools
The Deputy Prime Minister has been caught out after calling for me to tell a local high school in my electorate of Sturt to ‘send back the funding for their 416 computers’ as it was revealed today they have no funding and no computers.
Pacific Island harvest labour missed the boat
Confusion and inefficiency has dogged the pilot, with the involvement of 3 government departments (DEEWR, DIAC and DFAT) unable to cobble together a program to honour commitments made to desperate Australian growers and at least four Pacific Island nations. The pilot was supposed to commence for this season. It may not even commence next year.
Senate Report into Schools Assistance Bill confirms schools' fears
Diversity and choice are important in education. These are fundamental points that the Labor Party neither understands nor cares about.
Silent Shorten finally speaks out
Senator Cory Bernardi, Coalition spokesman for Disabilities, has welcomed Bill Shorten breaking his silence on the valuable contribution that people with a disability make to the Australian community.
Increasing trend of DVD piracy highlighted but no solution offered
Considering the seriousness of these organised criminal gangs, it is unfortunate that the Rudd Labor Government is not taking the issue more seriously.
Confirmed: Labor’s broadband stops at city limits
Not one of the carriers bidding to build the National Broadband Network will meet the Government’s election commitment to deliver fibre to the node broadband to 98 percent of the Australian population.
OECD delivers a positive economic outlook for Australia
The OECD Economic Outlook report released overnight warns that the $10.4 billion stimulus package will not achieve maximum economic benefit if confidence in our economy is not restored.
Conroy misleads Senate to cover up broadband fiasco
In a media release today, Telstra states in black and white that its “proposal outlines what would be achieved by the fully detailed bid that Telstra has prepared but could not be submitted due to a number of unresolved issues.
Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson makes another hypocritical statement
Martin Ferguson’s bagging of Britain’s extra tourism tax completely hypocritical, when back in the May Budget, the Minister announced almost $1 billion in extra tourism taxes, which have put pressure on Australian tourism operators.
Government survey shows parents don't consider publishing schools finances important
The Deputy Prime Minister’s desire to publish non-government schools private funding sources isn’t considered a priority by parents according to the Government’s own survey
It's all downhill for jobs under Labor
With the OECD’s latest economic outlook indicating 200,000 jobs are forecast to be lost by 2010 in Australia, the outlook for jobs is looking increasingly dire under Labor.
Woolcott confirms what Rudd cannot
Special Envoy Richard Woolcott this morning confirmed what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and their representatives in the Senate have been unable to do – that Australia’s regional neighbours have no interest in forming a new Asia Pacific Community.
Rudd government dismisses business concerns over emissions trading...again
The Rudd Government’s consultation process with business over their rushed emissions trading scheme has been exposed as a complete sham by the fact that the zinc producing company Nyrstar was not even present at a government roundtable to discuss the concerns they have raised.
Labor's Short Selling Bill fails to address key issues
Key stakeholders are greatly concerned about how the disclosure provisions would actually work in practice. This is understandable, as no detail is provided in the Bill as to how the Government would actually regulate covered short selling.
Opposition moves to protect interests of Australian television viewers
The Opposition will move amendments to the Government’s Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill in a bid to safeguard the interests of the Australian viewing public.
Senator Bernardi welcomes decision to grant Moeller family permanent residency
This announcement is good news for Dr Moeller and his family, as well as for the wider Horsham community.
Labor splits to keep the music alive at the Australian National Academy of Music
A delegation of Labor MP’s has come out supporting Coalition policy and is opposing Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s decision to axe funding for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
Public opinion may force Immigration Minister to act (finally) on Down syndrome case, but others languish on his desk
German born Dr Bernhard Moeller’s bid to remain in Australia, serving the Horsham community as their only specialist physician, can now lurch to the final stage, where he can appeal to Minister Evans personally to intervene in his case.
Britain's taxman reaches out to slug Aussie travellers
The new tax announced by the Britain this week is being painted as a new charge to combat climate change but is in reality nothing more than naked protectionism and an attempt to prop up Britain’s ailing economy with a new source of tax revenue.
Telstra bid snub exposes Labor's broadband con
Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, refused to submit a bid because of a number of unresolved issues in the tender documents.
Senator Bernardi supports young carers forum
The Rudd Government must take the opportunity of the Young Carers Forum to implement services to recognise and address the needs of young carers in Australia.
Leader of the Opposition Press Conference with Michael Keenan - Fair Work Bill 2008, bank wholesale funding guarantee, Telstra, infrastructure
We will not oppose the Government’s Fair Work Bill in the House of Representatives but we reserve our right to propose amendments to improve the operation of the Bill following the Senate Committee process without seeking to frustrate the Government’s election commitment to implement its Forward with Fairness election policy.
Labor's arbitrary internet filter plan misguided and deeply unpopular
There is no technical substitute for appropriate adult supervision when it comes to keeping our children safe online and most parents and teachers take that responsibility very seriously and any suggestions to the contrary are patronising and offensive. Labor’s plan to implement a mandatory Internet filter at ISP level has been roundly attacked with valid concerns raised about its likely effectiveness, the adverse impact it would have on Internet speeds and performance and also the precise nature of the content the Government plans to filter.
Swan denies telling Australians to go to Centrelink
Confronted with the reality that thousands of Australians have had their savings frozen as a direct result of the Government’s panicked and ill considered bank guarantee Treasurer Swan told Australians to go to Centrelink.
Fair Work Bill 2008
The Government’s changes to workplace relations come at a very difficult time for the Australian economy. We take the Government on trust that these changes have been carefully considered and will not cost jobs.
The Rudd Government must refuse entry to convicted racist
The Federal Opposition is urgently calling on the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, to refuse any further visa application from British national, Nick Griffin.
Conroy's extraordinary arrogance in relation to broadband bid confirmation
In an extraordinary display of arrogance Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has told the Senate that his Government will not be providing the Australian public with any detail whatsoever regarding bids for his National Broadband Network (NBN).
Tax Laws Amendment (Luxury Car Tax – Minor Amendments Labor Incompetence Correction) Bill
Today’s introduction of so-called “minor amendments” to the Rudd Labor Government’s ill-considered Luxury Car Tax surcharge is a humiliating demonstration of Labor’s incompetence.
Rudd's desperate plan to salvage GroceryChoice ignores the $13 million waste of taxpayer's money
The Coalition has no objection to providing helpful information to consumers but the problem is - this is $13 million of taxpayer’s money.
Freedom of information exposes massive computers in schools cost for States
Freedom of information documents have revealed what the Federal Government has been trying to hide. The $51,000,000 that will be given to the Western Australian State Government for Computers in Schools will cost the state an additional $167,000,000.
Surplus spending puts dent in Nation-Buliding plans
The Nation Building Funds will suffer a tremendous $14.7 billion shortfall due to the Government’s decision to spend the majority of the anticipated surplus for 2008-2009.
Senate plugs the north-south pipeline controversial diversion of Murray water to rest with Kevin Rudd
The Senate last night passed the Coalition’s amendments to plug the North-South pipeline in Victoria from taking water from the parched Goulburn River, Murray River and Lower Lakes.
Coalition seeks to improve infrastructure legislation
The Coalition will be moving a number of amendments to the Government’s Nation Building Funds Bills to provide transparency, guarantee productivity, reveal total costs and to stop revenue gouging by the State Governments.
White Ribbon Day- all sections of the community must take a stand to end violence
White Ribbon Day was an opportunity for all sectors of the Australian community to commit to eliminating the incidence of violence against women.
Nuclear fuel to Russia, still no uranium for India
Should these reports be correct and Australia indeed goes ahead with providing nuclear fuel to Russia, Mr Rudd will need to explain why his Government has chosen to largely ignore India, a country with a safe record of handling civilian nuclear activities.
Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - Debt and unemployment
The key to ensuring as few people as possible are placed under financial pressure is for the Government to focus all its efforts on maintaining high levels of employment.
Coalition acts to protect Communications Fund
Rudd Labor must end its war on rural and regional Australia and guarantee the future of the $2.4 billion Communications Fund.
Leader of the Opposition Address to the National Press Club
Given the strong public finances Mr Rudd has inherited and the growth forecasts we are relying on for next year, Australians rightly regard the prospect of a deficit budget next year as a failure in economic management – an admission that Mr Rudd could not maintain a strong economy and above all could not live within his means.
No mention of that war
Having spent the first nine months of this year focusing on inflation and egging the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates to combat inflation, the Rudd Government made no mention at all of inflation in its self assessment of its first twelve months in office.
Gillard attempts to steal second without touching first
Ms Gillard’s announcement that she is taking the education revolution to the ‘next step’ is a cynical effort to shift the focus from the failing elements of this so-called revolution to date.
Headlines Saturday 29th November
Crowds cheer as workplaces chained
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly protests:
KEVIN Rudd shouts from the rooftops each day that the global financial crisis has changed the world, but the Prime Minister does not believe his own words.
A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd Government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.
Normally this would defy any test of common sense. Indeed, it would seem the essence of irresponsibility. But it has instead won widespread applause, and its architect Julia Gillard has won almost universal acclaim as a political hero.
===
Aborigines offer to strangle business
Andrew Bolt
Is this the best way for Aborigines to secure their future and advertise their presence - as a deterrent to mass tourism?
The traditional owners of an international tourism drawcard in Tasmania are offering to take ownership of the site to protect it from being overrun by tourists.
===
Mumbai still bleeding
Andrew Bolt
Grim finds, as India’s special forces clear the buildings in Mumbai that were stormed by Islamist terrorists:
Mumbai’s chief of police says Indian security forces have found the bodies of five hostages at a Jewish outreach centre… Among the five hostages who died during the operation, was a New York-based Rabbi and his wife…
At least one militant is still holding out in the city’s Taj hotel, where security forces are struggling to secure the building… The authorities have been more successful in securing the nearby Oberoi hotel, where police have found the bodies of 24 people.
The toll rises again - but I suspect there will be more to come yet, once the hotels are cleared and bodies recovered:
More than 150 people have been killed… At least 370 have been injured.
Pakistanis are implicated, as well as local terrorists:
India’s foreign minister yesterday pointed an accusing finger across the border at Pakistan.
“According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks,” Pranab Mukherjee told reporters ...
More evidence:
According to the public television broadcaster of India, Doordarshan, police arrested an injured terrorist at the Taj Mahal hotel. The terrorist, who police believe is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, has admitted to being part of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group and one of the largest and most active Islamist terrorist organizations in South Asia.
Two other Pakistani nationals captured on Thursday have also identified themselves “as members of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.” Police believe the three were part of a group of 12 “fidayeen” or suicide squads who left Karachi on a merchant ship early on Wednesday.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group for which Australia’s David Hicks fought, and which taught him terror tactics. Yes, that Hicks, now hailed here as a martyr - and by people who now object to these attacks in Mumbai on Jews, foreigners and specifically Americans and British being described as an attack not just India but the West.
===
Labor’s favorite book on Bush
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party has a book it suggests you read. From the ALP website:
In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear; but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.
The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions: U.S.-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.
In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and the US’s place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.
I believe one chapter is devoted to George Bush being such an idiot that he didn’t even know what the G20 was.
===
And what of Guantanamo’s prisoners?
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s promise, to the cheers of journalists:
I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I’ve said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.
Er, but what we he then do with the inmates of Guantanamo?
===
Rolf chucks a wobbly
Andrew Bolt
Rolf Harris is now too old to care if he’s being too blunt:
The London-based expat entertainer yesterday hit out at some people in Aboriginal communities who lamented their poverty and filthy conditions.
“You sit at home watching the television and you think to yourself, ‘Get up off your arse and clean up the streets your bloody self, and why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your garbage, which you’ve dumped everywhere,’ but then you have to think to yourself that it’s a different attitude to life,” he said.
===
Has Baz also lectured Nicole?
Andrew Bolt
Baz Luhrman on the evil of taking indigenous children from their families and making them more “European”:
“The President-elect of the United States is 47,” burbled Baz.
“If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family . . .
“They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European . . .”
Has Luhrmann discussed with Kidman the evil of raising adopted children from other races as “European”?:
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly protests:
KEVIN Rudd shouts from the rooftops each day that the global financial crisis has changed the world, but the Prime Minister does not believe his own words.
A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd Government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.
Normally this would defy any test of common sense. Indeed, it would seem the essence of irresponsibility. But it has instead won widespread applause, and its architect Julia Gillard has won almost universal acclaim as a political hero.
===
Aborigines offer to strangle business
Andrew Bolt
Is this the best way for Aborigines to secure their future and advertise their presence - as a deterrent to mass tourism?
The traditional owners of an international tourism drawcard in Tasmania are offering to take ownership of the site to protect it from being overrun by tourists.
===
Mumbai still bleeding
Andrew Bolt
Grim finds, as India’s special forces clear the buildings in Mumbai that were stormed by Islamist terrorists:
Mumbai’s chief of police says Indian security forces have found the bodies of five hostages at a Jewish outreach centre… Among the five hostages who died during the operation, was a New York-based Rabbi and his wife…
At least one militant is still holding out in the city’s Taj hotel, where security forces are struggling to secure the building… The authorities have been more successful in securing the nearby Oberoi hotel, where police have found the bodies of 24 people.
The toll rises again - but I suspect there will be more to come yet, once the hotels are cleared and bodies recovered:
More than 150 people have been killed… At least 370 have been injured.
Pakistanis are implicated, as well as local terrorists:
India’s foreign minister yesterday pointed an accusing finger across the border at Pakistan.
“According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks,” Pranab Mukherjee told reporters ...
More evidence:
According to the public television broadcaster of India, Doordarshan, police arrested an injured terrorist at the Taj Mahal hotel. The terrorist, who police believe is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, has admitted to being part of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group and one of the largest and most active Islamist terrorist organizations in South Asia.
Two other Pakistani nationals captured on Thursday have also identified themselves “as members of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.” Police believe the three were part of a group of 12 “fidayeen” or suicide squads who left Karachi on a merchant ship early on Wednesday.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group for which Australia’s David Hicks fought, and which taught him terror tactics. Yes, that Hicks, now hailed here as a martyr - and by people who now object to these attacks in Mumbai on Jews, foreigners and specifically Americans and British being described as an attack not just India but the West.
===
Labor’s favorite book on Bush
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party has a book it suggests you read. From the ALP website:
In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear; but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.
The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions: U.S.-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.
In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and the US’s place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.
I believe one chapter is devoted to George Bush being such an idiot that he didn’t even know what the G20 was.
===
And what of Guantanamo’s prisoners?
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s promise, to the cheers of journalists:
I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I’ve said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.
Er, but what we he then do with the inmates of Guantanamo?
===
Rolf chucks a wobbly
Andrew Bolt
Rolf Harris is now too old to care if he’s being too blunt:
The London-based expat entertainer yesterday hit out at some people in Aboriginal communities who lamented their poverty and filthy conditions.
“You sit at home watching the television and you think to yourself, ‘Get up off your arse and clean up the streets your bloody self, and why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your garbage, which you’ve dumped everywhere,’ but then you have to think to yourself that it’s a different attitude to life,” he said.
===
Has Baz also lectured Nicole?
Andrew Bolt
Baz Luhrman on the evil of taking indigenous children from their families and making them more “European”:
“The President-elect of the United States is 47,” burbled Baz.
“If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family . . .
“They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European . . .”
Has Luhrmann discussed with Kidman the evil of raising adopted children from other races as “European”?:
Friday, November 28, 2008
Headlines Friday 28th November
Death in Mumbai
Andrew Bolt
The news for us gets even worse:
Police brought some hostages out of the Oberoi late Thursday night. However, the Indian state department said that at least four Australians and one Japanese national were killed.
I cannot verify that report. And:
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the Government was also working to confirm the possibility that at least 26 Australians were being held hostage.
===
Assimilation makes you healthier
Andrew Bolt
Helen Hughes says figures are being fudged, hiding the difference that counts - and it’s not the difference between Aborigines and the rest:
NEWS that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has been reduced from 17 years to 11 years would be welcome if it were believable.
But longer lives for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have not been achieved by better health or reductions in violence in dysfunctional indigenous communities, but by including in average indigenous mortality rates a larger proportion of indigenous people who work and live in mainstream society like other Australians… As indigenous people move more deeply into the mainstream, the gulf between the living standards of those in the mainstream and those who remain welfare dependent appears to be widening rather than narrowing.
===
Start shovelling, Mr Brumby
Andrew Bolt
JOHN Brumby’s arguments against a new dam are now so bizarre, it’s clear he’s dry of excuses.
As I said on Wednesday, the case for a new dam on, say, the regularly flooding Mitchell River is compelling.
Too little water in Melbourne; too much in the Mitchell - just join the dots.
You’d get three times the water for less than half the price of the $3.1 billion power-hungry desalination plant planned by the Premier.
So what is Brumby’s counter-argument, after years of studying how to stop his capital from going dry? On Neil Mitchell’s 3AW morning show this week, he gave it his best shot.
===
Baz steals a president
Andrew Bolt
IT WAS mad enough that Tourism Australia spent $40 million to promote Australia as racist.
Which tourists was it trying to lure? Members of the KKK?
But even madder are the latest claims of fact-fuddled Baz Luhrmann, who directed the two commercials on which Tourism Australia did our dough, and who now says even Barack Obama could have been “stolen” if he’d been born here.
“The President-elect of the United States is 47,” burbled Baz.
“If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family . . .
“They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European . . .”
So come visit Australia! A country so racist they’d have stolen Obama!
Luhrmann’s ads themselves aren’t the real problem, even though they promote exactly the deserted bits of the country few tourists want to visit.
===
All you changed was the shirt
Andrew Bolt
You mean you really believe in the ”change you can believe in”?
Barack Obama’s campaign credo: Change is good. President-elect Barack Obama’s credo: When it comes to war and peace, maybe wisdom is better.
Obama has assembled a national security brain trust populated by graybeard establishment figures with decades of combined experience and even a few medals. He is entrusting critical wartime management to people with unassailable credentials and low buzz factor....
(Robert) Gates, who has served as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary for two years, will remain in the Cabinet for some time, probably a year, according to an official familiar with discussions between him and the president-elect.
===
The deadlier war
Andrew Bolt
The “good” war is in fact deadlier for us than the “bad” one, which is won:
A ROADSIDE bomb has killed another Australian soldier in Afghanistan during a push against Taliban insurgents. The commando - the seventh Aussie soldier to die in Afghanistan - was on a night operation.
===
I hope Roxon checks medicines better
Andrew Bolt
Health Minister Nicola Roxon’s latest appointments are giving her all the wrong publicity:
DEPUTY Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, chucked a sickie yesterday, missing his first public appearance as a health ambassador…
Mr Mathieson’s credentials to fill an ambassador’s role are unclear, given he has no medical or health expertise.
Staff for Ms Gillard further confused the situation yesterday when they told The Australian Mr Mathieson had not been able to attend the event in Melbourne because he was busy selling hair care products in country Victoria. However, further inquires revealed Mr Mathieson no longer worked for the hair care product company.
Meanwhile:
HEALTH Minister Nicola Roxon has been asked to explain her ignorance of sacked men’s health ambassador Warwick Marsh’s attitudes to homosexuality after it was revealed she shared a podium with him four years ago at a forum where anti-gay views were aired.
Ms Roxon yesterday announced she had dumped the Fatherhood Foundation founder from the list of honorary men’s health ambassadors named on Tuesday after Mr Marsh failed to repudiate “extremely offensive comments” about gay people.
===
An attack on us all
Andrew Bolt
THE slaughter in Mumbai was a barbaric attack not just on India, but on us. On the West.
For the first time in India, Muslim terrorists have singled out Westerners and Jews, and the places they are most likely to visit.
And that makes al-Qaida a prime suspect—either as a partner with local terrorists or prime mover.
From the gunmen’s targets, it seems that al-Qaida or associated Islamist groups may have chosen a new, easier, battleground for their war against the West.
===
Ruin will make us nicer to Mackay
Andrew Bolt
Occasional Fairfax agony aunt Hugh Mackay thinks losing job, house and savings may be just the moral uplift the middle classes need:
In the upper middle class where house prices will be falling, where the threat of retrenchment will be hovering and where the value of investment, particularly stock market investments will be falling, I suspect what is going to happen is as much of a shock as in other parts of society and in particular a shock which won’t be bad probably in the cosmic sense for this stratum of society.
That is, rethinking some of their priorities, and deciding that perhaps the mad materialist binge of the last ten years was a bit lopsided and maybe there’s more to life than all the material things that we were pursuing so relentlessly.
===
The pedophile an artist would love
Andrew Bolt
Donald Friend is yet another artist who could count on the support of fellow artists for behavior that would not have been forgiven had he been instead a plumber, policeman or shopkeeper. As an artist, he enjoyed from his peers a licence to sin.
Andrew Bolt
The news for us gets even worse:
Police brought some hostages out of the Oberoi late Thursday night. However, the Indian state department said that at least four Australians and one Japanese national were killed.
I cannot verify that report. And:
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the Government was also working to confirm the possibility that at least 26 Australians were being held hostage.
===
Assimilation makes you healthier
Andrew Bolt
Helen Hughes says figures are being fudged, hiding the difference that counts - and it’s not the difference between Aborigines and the rest:
NEWS that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has been reduced from 17 years to 11 years would be welcome if it were believable.
But longer lives for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have not been achieved by better health or reductions in violence in dysfunctional indigenous communities, but by including in average indigenous mortality rates a larger proportion of indigenous people who work and live in mainstream society like other Australians… As indigenous people move more deeply into the mainstream, the gulf between the living standards of those in the mainstream and those who remain welfare dependent appears to be widening rather than narrowing.
===
Start shovelling, Mr Brumby
Andrew Bolt
JOHN Brumby’s arguments against a new dam are now so bizarre, it’s clear he’s dry of excuses.
As I said on Wednesday, the case for a new dam on, say, the regularly flooding Mitchell River is compelling.
Too little water in Melbourne; too much in the Mitchell - just join the dots.
You’d get three times the water for less than half the price of the $3.1 billion power-hungry desalination plant planned by the Premier.
So what is Brumby’s counter-argument, after years of studying how to stop his capital from going dry? On Neil Mitchell’s 3AW morning show this week, he gave it his best shot.
===
Baz steals a president
Andrew Bolt
IT WAS mad enough that Tourism Australia spent $40 million to promote Australia as racist.
Which tourists was it trying to lure? Members of the KKK?
But even madder are the latest claims of fact-fuddled Baz Luhrmann, who directed the two commercials on which Tourism Australia did our dough, and who now says even Barack Obama could have been “stolen” if he’d been born here.
“The President-elect of the United States is 47,” burbled Baz.
“If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family . . .
“They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European . . .”
So come visit Australia! A country so racist they’d have stolen Obama!
Luhrmann’s ads themselves aren’t the real problem, even though they promote exactly the deserted bits of the country few tourists want to visit.
===
All you changed was the shirt
Andrew Bolt
You mean you really believe in the ”change you can believe in”?
Barack Obama’s campaign credo: Change is good. President-elect Barack Obama’s credo: When it comes to war and peace, maybe wisdom is better.
Obama has assembled a national security brain trust populated by graybeard establishment figures with decades of combined experience and even a few medals. He is entrusting critical wartime management to people with unassailable credentials and low buzz factor....
(Robert) Gates, who has served as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary for two years, will remain in the Cabinet for some time, probably a year, according to an official familiar with discussions between him and the president-elect.
===
The deadlier war
Andrew Bolt
The “good” war is in fact deadlier for us than the “bad” one, which is won:
A ROADSIDE bomb has killed another Australian soldier in Afghanistan during a push against Taliban insurgents. The commando - the seventh Aussie soldier to die in Afghanistan - was on a night operation.
===
I hope Roxon checks medicines better
Andrew Bolt
Health Minister Nicola Roxon’s latest appointments are giving her all the wrong publicity:
DEPUTY Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, chucked a sickie yesterday, missing his first public appearance as a health ambassador…
Mr Mathieson’s credentials to fill an ambassador’s role are unclear, given he has no medical or health expertise.
Staff for Ms Gillard further confused the situation yesterday when they told The Australian Mr Mathieson had not been able to attend the event in Melbourne because he was busy selling hair care products in country Victoria. However, further inquires revealed Mr Mathieson no longer worked for the hair care product company.
Meanwhile:
HEALTH Minister Nicola Roxon has been asked to explain her ignorance of sacked men’s health ambassador Warwick Marsh’s attitudes to homosexuality after it was revealed she shared a podium with him four years ago at a forum where anti-gay views were aired.
Ms Roxon yesterday announced she had dumped the Fatherhood Foundation founder from the list of honorary men’s health ambassadors named on Tuesday after Mr Marsh failed to repudiate “extremely offensive comments” about gay people.
===
An attack on us all
Andrew Bolt
THE slaughter in Mumbai was a barbaric attack not just on India, but on us. On the West.
For the first time in India, Muslim terrorists have singled out Westerners and Jews, and the places they are most likely to visit.
And that makes al-Qaida a prime suspect—either as a partner with local terrorists or prime mover.
From the gunmen’s targets, it seems that al-Qaida or associated Islamist groups may have chosen a new, easier, battleground for their war against the West.
===
Ruin will make us nicer to Mackay
Andrew Bolt
Occasional Fairfax agony aunt Hugh Mackay thinks losing job, house and savings may be just the moral uplift the middle classes need:
In the upper middle class where house prices will be falling, where the threat of retrenchment will be hovering and where the value of investment, particularly stock market investments will be falling, I suspect what is going to happen is as much of a shock as in other parts of society and in particular a shock which won’t be bad probably in the cosmic sense for this stratum of society.
That is, rethinking some of their priorities, and deciding that perhaps the mad materialist binge of the last ten years was a bit lopsided and maybe there’s more to life than all the material things that we were pursuing so relentlessly.
===
The pedophile an artist would love
Andrew Bolt
Donald Friend is yet another artist who could count on the support of fellow artists for behavior that would not have been forgiven had he been instead a plumber, policeman or shopkeeper. As an artist, he enjoyed from his peers a licence to sin.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Headlines Thursday 27th November
Mass murder in Mumbai
Andrew Bolt
Terrible news from Mumbai:
Over 60 people have been killed and many more injured in several terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday night. Two five-star hotels - Trident and Taj - are under siege and gunmen are reported to have held the occupants hostage.
===
Warming to warming
Andrew Bolt
“Why then ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - Hamlet
A little pragmatism rather than apocalyptis would suit us better, too:
Robert Mendelsohn, an economics professor at Yale University, ... says the benefits of global warming for Canada - from a longer growing season to the opening up of shipping through the Northwest Passage - will outweigh the negative effects....
“If you add it all up, it’s a good thing for Canada."…
===
Now our crime was letting Rau go
Andrew Bolt
Remember Cornelia Rau? Who was paid $2.6 million of your money in compensation because the racist Howard regime hadn’t figured out she was lying when she claimed to be a German tourist here without papers, and kept her in a detention centre while - eventually - treating her?
Here’s the latest:
CORNELIA RAU, the psychiatric patient whose wrongful detention by the Immigration Department stirred a national outcry, has been held in a Hamburg hospital for almost two months after she came to the notice of German police.
Her family is once again blaming officials
===
No deficit of spin
Andrew Bolt
Spin slowed:
AFTER weeks of denial, Kevin Rudd has admitted the federal budget is heading into deficit, blaming the deteriorating global economic outlook.
Or spin sped. Because the media, congratulating itself for forcing Rudd to be honest, will now be more sanguine about the loss of the entire surplus that the Howard Government spent more than 11 years building. Let Mike Steketee demonstrate:
On past experience, the deficit will be larger and more prolonged than the Government is so far prepared to contemplate.... That does not matter, provided government debt does not rise to unsustainable levels...
===
What Would Obama Do?
Andrew Bolt
Slowly building to a WWOD crisis:
Iran has more than 5,000 centrifuges to process uranium at its enrichment plant, its nuclear chief said Wednesday, in the country’s latest defiance of U.N. demands that it halt the controversial program.
===
Watch your money, at least
Andrew Bolt
Shovelling the cash: a list of who got what at the Government’s film finance trough. As you scroll through the endless grants, imagine how beholden the recipients must feel to the system that feeds them, and how obliged to subscribed to the approved values. Note how often the name “Noyce” also appears. And we fed Marieke Hardy? - and no Rumble pictures either .. even though they made a 70 minute feature film that is set for big awards and a bigger audience. - ed.
===
World surprises warmists again
Andrew Bolt
Planet won’t warm, ice won’t melt, winds won’t blow, reef won’t die ... and now the CSIRO learns this:
New research has found the Southern Ocean is more resilient to the effects of climate change than first thought, and still stores a large amount of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Then there’s this ABC story - which somehow omits the telling statistic that counts most:
Levels of climate-warming greenhouses gases rose to record highs in 2007, leading to a 1 per cent increase in the overall warming effect, the World Meteorological Organisation said.
The missing stat that gives the game away? Why, the actual temperature anomaly for 2007 - which shows that greenhouse gases may rise, but the temperature still refuses to rise with them
UPDATE
Barack Obama’s green dream goes brown at the edges:
Forging a new energy future by creating vast amounts of wind, solar and, possibly, nuclear energy is one of Mr Obama’s highest priorities. But enacting that policy depends to a large degree on the ability of energy companies and utilities to finance the massive new investments that would be needed. With many of those companies cutting spending, a lot of those investments are being pared back or eliminated.
Andrew Bolt
Terrible news from Mumbai:
Over 60 people have been killed and many more injured in several terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday night. Two five-star hotels - Trident and Taj - are under siege and gunmen are reported to have held the occupants hostage.
===
Warming to warming
Andrew Bolt
“Why then ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - Hamlet
A little pragmatism rather than apocalyptis would suit us better, too:
Robert Mendelsohn, an economics professor at Yale University, ... says the benefits of global warming for Canada - from a longer growing season to the opening up of shipping through the Northwest Passage - will outweigh the negative effects....
“If you add it all up, it’s a good thing for Canada."…
===
Now our crime was letting Rau go
Andrew Bolt
Remember Cornelia Rau? Who was paid $2.6 million of your money in compensation because the racist Howard regime hadn’t figured out she was lying when she claimed to be a German tourist here without papers, and kept her in a detention centre while - eventually - treating her?
Here’s the latest:
CORNELIA RAU, the psychiatric patient whose wrongful detention by the Immigration Department stirred a national outcry, has been held in a Hamburg hospital for almost two months after she came to the notice of German police.
Her family is once again blaming officials
===
No deficit of spin
Andrew Bolt
Spin slowed:
AFTER weeks of denial, Kevin Rudd has admitted the federal budget is heading into deficit, blaming the deteriorating global economic outlook.
Or spin sped. Because the media, congratulating itself for forcing Rudd to be honest, will now be more sanguine about the loss of the entire surplus that the Howard Government spent more than 11 years building. Let Mike Steketee demonstrate:
On past experience, the deficit will be larger and more prolonged than the Government is so far prepared to contemplate.... That does not matter, provided government debt does not rise to unsustainable levels...
===
What Would Obama Do?
Andrew Bolt
Slowly building to a WWOD crisis:
Iran has more than 5,000 centrifuges to process uranium at its enrichment plant, its nuclear chief said Wednesday, in the country’s latest defiance of U.N. demands that it halt the controversial program.
===
Watch your money, at least
Andrew Bolt
Shovelling the cash: a list of who got what at the Government’s film finance trough. As you scroll through the endless grants, imagine how beholden the recipients must feel to the system that feeds them, and how obliged to subscribed to the approved values. Note how often the name “Noyce” also appears. And we fed Marieke Hardy? - and no Rumble pictures either .. even though they made a 70 minute feature film that is set for big awards and a bigger audience. - ed.
===
World surprises warmists again
Andrew Bolt
Planet won’t warm, ice won’t melt, winds won’t blow, reef won’t die ... and now the CSIRO learns this:
New research has found the Southern Ocean is more resilient to the effects of climate change than first thought, and still stores a large amount of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Then there’s this ABC story - which somehow omits the telling statistic that counts most:
Levels of climate-warming greenhouses gases rose to record highs in 2007, leading to a 1 per cent increase in the overall warming effect, the World Meteorological Organisation said.
The missing stat that gives the game away? Why, the actual temperature anomaly for 2007 - which shows that greenhouse gases may rise, but the temperature still refuses to rise with them
UPDATE
Barack Obama’s green dream goes brown at the edges:
Forging a new energy future by creating vast amounts of wind, solar and, possibly, nuclear energy is one of Mr Obama’s highest priorities. But enacting that policy depends to a large degree on the ability of energy companies and utilities to finance the massive new investments that would be needed. With many of those companies cutting spending, a lot of those investments are being pared back or eliminated.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Headlines Wednesday 26th November
Read Keating on our newest MP - Robertson - here
Piers Akerman
Former PM Paul Keating’s barbed tongue is legendary - I can’t help but feel that if it weren’t for party politics the power co. would have been sold for over $60 billion in the mid ‘90s .. but Carr didn’t want the Greiner/Fahey administration to look good.
In many ways, Keating breathtakingly ignores that he is the one responsible for the problems. - ed.
===
Questions a-plenty on global warming
Piers Akerman
ONE of ABC television’s remaining links to a more intelligent era, The Einstein Factor, ended its season on Sunday, closing with its signature quote from the great physicist: “The important thing is not to stop questioning.” - Andrew Bolt likes to describe the Governments intended action of 2010 on Global Warming as the world’s longest political suicide note. Yet the conglomerate which worked to achieve ALP victory may well achieve the outcome Rudd yearns.
Rudd wants the affirmation that he is popular.
I don’t think it appropriate that the mentally ill be so treated by the public.
We are not so wealthy as to be able to cripple our industry so as to assuage the whims and fancies of such a pathetic creature.
However, let’s imagine for a moment that Rudd is rolled prior to 2010. Whomever is leading the ALP at that time may well stay the course because the ALP are locked into the policy politically. It is a wedge issue. To deny Global warming is to not be ALP.
The ALP have shown in NSW that successive leaders can carry on bad administration. - ed.
===
What’s stolen is Luhrmann’s mind
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama was abandoned by his black father and raised by his white mother. Just a typical candidate for Australia’s “stolen generations” policy, claims fact-challenged Baz Luhrmann, on his crusade to sell Australia as a tourism destination:
AUSTRALIA’S shameful past has again been brought to the world’s attention with filmmaker Baz Luhrmann linking US President-elect Barack Obama and the stolen generations…
“The President-elect of the United States is 47. If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family,” Luhrmann said.
===
Beatty would hate it
Andrew Bolt
A healthy sign - and let’s hope it screens at our own universities:
Russia’s resuscitated movie industry has produced a string of films - several of them major box-office and critical flops - that glorify the country’s past.
But “Admiral” is the first to canonize a figure who fought the founders of the Soviet state.
===
If they can’t predict the next season….
Andrew Bolt
All right, let’s see how good they are at predicting weather just three months ahead:
IT might not have been a warm spring in many places around Australia, but forecaster have said today we should expect a long, hot summer ahead. The Bureau of Meteorology… is predicting warmer than normal daytime temperatures for Victoria, Tasmania, southern South Australia and northern Queensland.
===
Stop the warming! Ban Coke!
Andrew Bolt
Reader J from Melbourne wonders why global warming crusaders still drink Coke. Or beer. Or any soft drink also aerated with carbon dioxide - the gas we’re told is heating the world to hell. Read below the results of J’s fascinating investigation - involving everything from Mentos to the Internet. But some highlights:
(I)f carbon dioxide is so “bad” for the planet then how much is released each day when you pull the ring pull on a can of Coca-Cola? ... One 375ml can of Coca Cola contains 1.4 litres of Carbon Dioxide…
===
Judge by what they do
Andrew Bolt
He’s perfectly right, of course, because how can you talk away the difference between two Gods?
In comments on Sunday that could have broad implications in a period of intense religious conflict, Pope Benedict XVI cast doubt on the possibility of interfaith dialogue but called for more discussion of the practical consequences of religious differences.
===
Bush made him mean
Andrew Bolt
Tobias Wolff is the authentic voice of the Left - a tribalist who accepts no personal responsibility for his sheer nastiness:
When I see someone being rude to a waiter, or blocking the road in a Ford Expedition, or yakking loudly on a cell phone in a crowded elevator, I naturally assume they voted for George W. Bush. And - this is really mean, I know, really unfair and unreasonable and inhumane, and I scold myself for this, believe me, but - when a tornado tears off a few roofs in Texas, I think, serves you right! And I have friends in Texas. That’s some of what the last seven years have done to this writer.
===
Not Thailand, too?
Andrew Bolt
it would be an utter tragedy if beautiful Thailand, too, now slides into the growing list of countries too unstable for mass tourism:
Anti-government protesters stormed Bangkok’s main international airport and gunfire broke out on the streets of the Thai capital overnight as a campaign to oust Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat turned violent. Authorities canceled all flights out of Suvarnabhumi Airport, hub for Thailand’s lucrative tourist industry, stranding thousands of travellers…
===
We need nukes
Andrew Bolt
Ziggy Switkowski says 31 countries already have nuclear power - and Australia will suffer if it doesn’t stop mindlessly opposing the power source of any green future:
Our policy architects suggest there is no future scenario that will require nuclear power in Australia but:
* Deep greenhouse gas emission reductions will almost certainly prove beyond the capability of existing technologies and renewable energy platforms to deliver in the time allowed. The inclusion of nuclear power will be critical to our success.
* Our lights will start to go out as investment in clean baseload energy generation stalls in an uncertain regulatory environment and the nuclear alternative is not validated.
* In a carbon-constrained future, nuclear-powered economies will exploit their cost advantages for clean energy in competing with Australian products newly burdened by embedded carbon costs.
===
Taken for a ride
Andrew Bolt
A Victorian tribunal gives an African refugee a chance:
AN insane killer who stabbed his wife to death has won the right to drive a taxi but passengers are not allowed to know his identity.
===
Healthier statistics
Andrew Bolt
Good news as another statistic used to shame Australia proves dodgy:
The much-cited 17-year difference in life expectancy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people is under a cloud and under review. New estimates put it closer to 11 or 12 years.
Add to that the claims that Aboriginal prisoners were more likely to die in custody, 100,000 Aboriginal children were stolen and many hundreds of Aborigines were deliberately massacred in Tasmania.
===
Join the dam dots
Andrew Bolt
TOO little water in Melbourne; too much in Gippsland. Do I really need to join the dots for the Brumby Government?
Understand at last, guys? Just build that damn dam - and two problems become one cheap solution.
The Government’s water policy always was a joke, but never as big a one as it was on Monday.
On the very day the Government warned Melburnians to use even less water, or else, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a flood warning on the Mitchell River.
===
Ramsay burns his award
Andrew Bolt
GORDON Ramsay has done us a small favour, and deserves a helping in return.
No, the favour he performed wasn’t bonking “professional mistress” Sarah Symonds, or inspiring journalists to invent such a useful euphemism for her kiss-and-sell kind.
The celebrity chef deserves our thanks instead for finally making inedible the fraud that is the “Father of the Year” award.
===
Julia Gillard a Rudd like mistake
Julia Gillard hasn't been tagged for putting a foot wrong since becoming deputy PM and picking up two key portfolios - but she may be in some trouble with her new IR legislation, according to Alan Jones.
Piers Akerman
Former PM Paul Keating’s barbed tongue is legendary - I can’t help but feel that if it weren’t for party politics the power co. would have been sold for over $60 billion in the mid ‘90s .. but Carr didn’t want the Greiner/Fahey administration to look good.
In many ways, Keating breathtakingly ignores that he is the one responsible for the problems. - ed.
===
Questions a-plenty on global warming
Piers Akerman
ONE of ABC television’s remaining links to a more intelligent era, The Einstein Factor, ended its season on Sunday, closing with its signature quote from the great physicist: “The important thing is not to stop questioning.” - Andrew Bolt likes to describe the Governments intended action of 2010 on Global Warming as the world’s longest political suicide note. Yet the conglomerate which worked to achieve ALP victory may well achieve the outcome Rudd yearns.
Rudd wants the affirmation that he is popular.
I don’t think it appropriate that the mentally ill be so treated by the public.
We are not so wealthy as to be able to cripple our industry so as to assuage the whims and fancies of such a pathetic creature.
However, let’s imagine for a moment that Rudd is rolled prior to 2010. Whomever is leading the ALP at that time may well stay the course because the ALP are locked into the policy politically. It is a wedge issue. To deny Global warming is to not be ALP.
The ALP have shown in NSW that successive leaders can carry on bad administration. - ed.
===
What’s stolen is Luhrmann’s mind
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama was abandoned by his black father and raised by his white mother. Just a typical candidate for Australia’s “stolen generations” policy, claims fact-challenged Baz Luhrmann, on his crusade to sell Australia as a tourism destination:
AUSTRALIA’S shameful past has again been brought to the world’s attention with filmmaker Baz Luhrmann linking US President-elect Barack Obama and the stolen generations…
“The President-elect of the United States is 47. If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family,” Luhrmann said.
===
Beatty would hate it
Andrew Bolt
A healthy sign - and let’s hope it screens at our own universities:
Russia’s resuscitated movie industry has produced a string of films - several of them major box-office and critical flops - that glorify the country’s past.
But “Admiral” is the first to canonize a figure who fought the founders of the Soviet state.
===
If they can’t predict the next season….
Andrew Bolt
All right, let’s see how good they are at predicting weather just three months ahead:
IT might not have been a warm spring in many places around Australia, but forecaster have said today we should expect a long, hot summer ahead. The Bureau of Meteorology… is predicting warmer than normal daytime temperatures for Victoria, Tasmania, southern South Australia and northern Queensland.
===
Stop the warming! Ban Coke!
Andrew Bolt
Reader J from Melbourne wonders why global warming crusaders still drink Coke. Or beer. Or any soft drink also aerated with carbon dioxide - the gas we’re told is heating the world to hell. Read below the results of J’s fascinating investigation - involving everything from Mentos to the Internet. But some highlights:
(I)f carbon dioxide is so “bad” for the planet then how much is released each day when you pull the ring pull on a can of Coca-Cola? ... One 375ml can of Coca Cola contains 1.4 litres of Carbon Dioxide…
===
Judge by what they do
Andrew Bolt
He’s perfectly right, of course, because how can you talk away the difference between two Gods?
In comments on Sunday that could have broad implications in a period of intense religious conflict, Pope Benedict XVI cast doubt on the possibility of interfaith dialogue but called for more discussion of the practical consequences of religious differences.
===
Bush made him mean
Andrew Bolt
Tobias Wolff is the authentic voice of the Left - a tribalist who accepts no personal responsibility for his sheer nastiness:
When I see someone being rude to a waiter, or blocking the road in a Ford Expedition, or yakking loudly on a cell phone in a crowded elevator, I naturally assume they voted for George W. Bush. And - this is really mean, I know, really unfair and unreasonable and inhumane, and I scold myself for this, believe me, but - when a tornado tears off a few roofs in Texas, I think, serves you right! And I have friends in Texas. That’s some of what the last seven years have done to this writer.
===
Not Thailand, too?
Andrew Bolt
it would be an utter tragedy if beautiful Thailand, too, now slides into the growing list of countries too unstable for mass tourism:
Anti-government protesters stormed Bangkok’s main international airport and gunfire broke out on the streets of the Thai capital overnight as a campaign to oust Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat turned violent. Authorities canceled all flights out of Suvarnabhumi Airport, hub for Thailand’s lucrative tourist industry, stranding thousands of travellers…
===
We need nukes
Andrew Bolt
Ziggy Switkowski says 31 countries already have nuclear power - and Australia will suffer if it doesn’t stop mindlessly opposing the power source of any green future:
Our policy architects suggest there is no future scenario that will require nuclear power in Australia but:
* Deep greenhouse gas emission reductions will almost certainly prove beyond the capability of existing technologies and renewable energy platforms to deliver in the time allowed. The inclusion of nuclear power will be critical to our success.
* Our lights will start to go out as investment in clean baseload energy generation stalls in an uncertain regulatory environment and the nuclear alternative is not validated.
* In a carbon-constrained future, nuclear-powered economies will exploit their cost advantages for clean energy in competing with Australian products newly burdened by embedded carbon costs.
===
Taken for a ride
Andrew Bolt
A Victorian tribunal gives an African refugee a chance:
AN insane killer who stabbed his wife to death has won the right to drive a taxi but passengers are not allowed to know his identity.
===
Healthier statistics
Andrew Bolt
Good news as another statistic used to shame Australia proves dodgy:
The much-cited 17-year difference in life expectancy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people is under a cloud and under review. New estimates put it closer to 11 or 12 years.
Add to that the claims that Aboriginal prisoners were more likely to die in custody, 100,000 Aboriginal children were stolen and many hundreds of Aborigines were deliberately massacred in Tasmania.
===
Join the dam dots
Andrew Bolt
TOO little water in Melbourne; too much in Gippsland. Do I really need to join the dots for the Brumby Government?
Understand at last, guys? Just build that damn dam - and two problems become one cheap solution.
The Government’s water policy always was a joke, but never as big a one as it was on Monday.
On the very day the Government warned Melburnians to use even less water, or else, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a flood warning on the Mitchell River.
===
Ramsay burns his award
Andrew Bolt
GORDON Ramsay has done us a small favour, and deserves a helping in return.
No, the favour he performed wasn’t bonking “professional mistress” Sarah Symonds, or inspiring journalists to invent such a useful euphemism for her kiss-and-sell kind.
The celebrity chef deserves our thanks instead for finally making inedible the fraud that is the “Father of the Year” award.
===
Julia Gillard a Rudd like mistake
Julia Gillard hasn't been tagged for putting a foot wrong since becoming deputy PM and picking up two key portfolios - but she may be in some trouble with her new IR legislation, according to Alan Jones.
Live Science News Headlines
The Physics of Teardrops
Scientists used computer models to learn how tears travel through the eye and leave as teardrops.
Maggot Therapy Gains in Popularity
Bison: It's What's For Dinner
Our Ancestors Had Floppy, Flexible Feet
Taboo Lifts on Sex in Nursing Homes
Top Features
God and Evolution Can Co-exist, Scientist Says
Gremlins Thought Extinct, Found After 85 Years
The Energy Debates: Wind Farms
Why Women Dig Men with Scars
Video - The Screaming Mummy: Tortured Among Pharaohs?
Video: Change in the Wind - Power From Thin Air?
Scientists used computer models to learn how tears travel through the eye and leave as teardrops.
Maggot Therapy Gains in Popularity
Bison: It's What's For Dinner
Our Ancestors Had Floppy, Flexible Feet
Taboo Lifts on Sex in Nursing Homes
Top Features
God and Evolution Can Co-exist, Scientist Says
Gremlins Thought Extinct, Found After 85 Years
The Energy Debates: Wind Farms
Why Women Dig Men with Scars
Video - The Screaming Mummy: Tortured Among Pharaohs?
Video: Change in the Wind - Power From Thin Air?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Headlines Tuesday 25th November
Kevin Rudd’s crocodile tears
Piers Akerman
MANY Australians were moved by the Hollywood-style apology to Aborigines delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in February. - There is a danger in buying a line of empty rhetoric, even for noble reasons. I agree with the summation that Rudd is wrong regarding the stolen generations .. which would lead me to question the comparative culture view too.
I have aboriginal ancestry (not a certainty, family lore may be wrong) but I have no problems with my European style education.
Politicians of parties that have made big mistakes and wish to cover them up point to the past to obscure aspects. The truth is Howard’s practical care for Aboriginal peoples will show itself to have been foundational for those leading the best of lives a generation from now. Just as current ALP policy will underpin those suffering the most in the future too.
I was speaking to some Iraqi ethnic children today, many who have bought the Anti Bush line and are pro Obama. The truth there is that in ten years Iraq will be a proud independent nation thanks to Bush, and would never have had the opportunity if Saddam was still there .. or if Obama had been President at the time. - ed.
===
Beware man with moustache
Andrew Bolt
The New York Times is so terrified by a global warming sceptic taking the presidency of the European Union that it slips in a few slurs. Spot the worst in this extract:
(Vaclav) Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic - an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache - continues to provoke strong reactions.
===
Beware of Climate Chyange
Andrew Bolt
Mornington residents get a communnica comunnic communnka email from their council:
Greetings all,
In August of this year, Council delivered 12 Q&A Forums across the Shire. Part of the work to continue this enagement with you the residents includes publication of information relating to the workshops, info sessions and other related actions that are to come (and 2009 looks like being a busy year for Grrehouse and Climate Chyange related actions.)
===
Come visit the racists
Andrew Bolt
US Daily notes that Baz Luhrmann’s Australia sells the country as racist and cruel:
As well as showcasing Australia’s rugged landscape and history, Luhrmann weaves in the controversial issue of the “stolen generation” when Aboriginal children were taken from their families between the 1880s and 1960s and raised as whites.
Which is a hell of a way for Luhrmann to sell Australia to tourists, both through his movie and his $40 million Tourism Australia tie-in:
Luhrmann, who has made a series of tourism ads for a campaign screening in parallel to the movie’s release, says he was initially reluctant to widen his efforts to make Australia be an advert for Australia.
Bizarre. So was Mississippi Burning actually brought to us by the Mississippi Tourism Board? Was To Kill a Mockingbird sponsored by Tourism Alabama? Deliverance by the Welcome to Georgia Association?
===
Change we couldn’t believe
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama isn’t even president yet, but Lefitst journalists like the Age’s Anne Davies already feel conned:
HAS BARACK Obama already broken his first promise to voters in his choice of cabinet and White House staff? As candidate Obama, he spent 17 months promising a new vision of politics, a politics that did not divide along partisan lines but would break with the old Washington ways where access to decision-makers was corrupted by donations, lobbyists and a culture of insiders. It would, he said, be a more open politics built along ethical lines.
But so far, President-elect Obama has turned mainly to people who have long histories in Washington and reputations as practitioners of a tough, pragmatic brand of politics.
===
Union powers rise as growth falls
Andrew Bolt
This sounds ominous:
A RADICAL overhaul of workplace laws, to be unveiled by the Rudd Government today, will propose a vastly increased role for unions, venturing far beyond the policy Labor took to the election a year ago…
===
One Crikey smear regretted
Andrew Bolt
Crikey editor Jonathan Green apologises for a despicable slur:
Over the past fortnight Crikey has polled readers to determine their preferred name for Barack Obama’s new White House puppy. In a crunched-down final 10 drawn from reader nominations we included “A mongrel called Trig”. We were wrong to do that. It’s not funny, it makes no positive point. We deeply regret any offence the reference may have caused.
===
IQ beats warming models
Andrew Bolt
What’s the best way to judge the number of polar bears? Here’s a tough choice for a rationalist, and even harder for a Leftist romantic:
Treaties between Nunavut and the federal government make clear that science should not influence decision-making more than “traditional knowledge”, known as Inuit Qaujimaningit, or IQ. Scientists offer statistical projections and computer models; native hunters prefer IQ, which tells them that polar bears are everywhere.
===
They couldn’t say no to Zyklon B
Andrew Bolt
The Holocaust was an unspeakable crime - the deliberate murder of 6 million Jews and some 200,000 Gypsies.
Yet some on the Left seem to think that shooting or gassing helpless men, women and children is much the same as selling them stuff they actually want to buy - including stuff that’s actually perfectly healthy:
FOOD guru Margaret Fulton has condemned genetically-modified produce, likening companies pushing its merits to Adolf Hitler.
===
Father knows best
Andrew Bolt
Some awards are given more to puff the giver than givee. Take the Father of the Year title:
TV CHEF Gordon Ramsay, who revels in his family man image despite his love of the F-word, has been in an affair with a blonde woman for the past seven years…
In 2006 Ramsay was voted Celebrity Father Of The Year and in 2007 the Ramsays were named Celebrity Family Of The Year. - maybe he wanted to be a father again . -ed.
===
Only greens could lack water in a flood
Andrew Bolt
Too little water here, and too much water there. Does the Brumby Government really need someone to join the dots between today’s two water stories?
Problem:
MELBURNIANS will face tough new daily water limits under a State Government move to preserve dwindling supplies.
Solution:
The weather bureau issued flood warnings for six Gippsland rivers, warning residents that major flooding of the Mitchell River was possible...
===
Forecast this
Andrew Bolt
Yet another shift in the climate that wasn’t forecast by these alarmists:
NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the entire staff of the “Forecast Earth” environmental program during the middle of NBC’s “Green Week,”...
===
NSW advises kids: get a good dealer
Andrew Bolt
Your taxes, their idiocy - all you need to turn a “drug awareness” program into a drug advertisement:
TEENAGE school students have been given access to a controversial brochure called A User’s Guide to Speed while attending a State Government-promoted anti-drug and alcohol program.
The 35-page booklet, included among drugs literature displayed to up to 100 Year 8 students and parents during a community information day, contains a section on “tips to avoid getting bad speed”. In it, teenage readers are told: ”If you don’t already have a reliable dealer, try to find one and stick with them.
===
The Right’s plot uncovered
Andrew Bolt
Alan Howe:
THE two holocausts of the 20th century both came from the Right.
Hitler’s ferocious Nazi ambition claimed the lives of more than six million Jews across Europe. The other was engineered by Western tobacco companies, brazen racketeers...
===
Nixon concedes; but Age conceals
Andrew Bolt
Once the Left howled at such arguments. Now, too late, even Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon concedes them:
It has been suggested that society has reached a “tipping point” where the social and cultural developments have come together to create conditions conducive to violence.
The storm that has been gathering for years is upon us. Factors that I believe have led to this include relentless exposure to violence on television, a rise in single-parent families and young people “growing up” too young.
At some stage the cultural drivers of this growing barbarism must be admitted by our culture makers. Then let us hope we have the will and the smarts to turn it around.
===
Decline, not crash
Andrew Bolt
Times business commentator Patrick Hosking says this is serious:
At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age – complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.
But Daniel Gross wants to clock the alarmists who warn that this is the Great Depression all over again:
But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o’clock shadows asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today’s woes look like a flesh wound…
===
We’re “stealing” even more
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd in February:
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country…
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
Oh, really? The news today:
WELFARE workers in NSW are removing Aboriginal children from their homes in numbers far greater than during the Stolen Generations…
Piers Akerman
MANY Australians were moved by the Hollywood-style apology to Aborigines delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in February. - There is a danger in buying a line of empty rhetoric, even for noble reasons. I agree with the summation that Rudd is wrong regarding the stolen generations .. which would lead me to question the comparative culture view too.
I have aboriginal ancestry (not a certainty, family lore may be wrong) but I have no problems with my European style education.
Politicians of parties that have made big mistakes and wish to cover them up point to the past to obscure aspects. The truth is Howard’s practical care for Aboriginal peoples will show itself to have been foundational for those leading the best of lives a generation from now. Just as current ALP policy will underpin those suffering the most in the future too.
I was speaking to some Iraqi ethnic children today, many who have bought the Anti Bush line and are pro Obama. The truth there is that in ten years Iraq will be a proud independent nation thanks to Bush, and would never have had the opportunity if Saddam was still there .. or if Obama had been President at the time. - ed.
===
Beware man with moustache
Andrew Bolt
The New York Times is so terrified by a global warming sceptic taking the presidency of the European Union that it slips in a few slurs. Spot the worst in this extract:
(Vaclav) Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic - an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache - continues to provoke strong reactions.
===
Beware of Climate Chyange
Andrew Bolt
Mornington residents get a communnica comunnic communnka email from their council:
Greetings all,
In August of this year, Council delivered 12 Q&A Forums across the Shire. Part of the work to continue this enagement with you the residents includes publication of information relating to the workshops, info sessions and other related actions that are to come (and 2009 looks like being a busy year for Grrehouse and Climate Chyange related actions.)
===
Come visit the racists
Andrew Bolt
US Daily notes that Baz Luhrmann’s Australia sells the country as racist and cruel:
As well as showcasing Australia’s rugged landscape and history, Luhrmann weaves in the controversial issue of the “stolen generation” when Aboriginal children were taken from their families between the 1880s and 1960s and raised as whites.
Which is a hell of a way for Luhrmann to sell Australia to tourists, both through his movie and his $40 million Tourism Australia tie-in:
Luhrmann, who has made a series of tourism ads for a campaign screening in parallel to the movie’s release, says he was initially reluctant to widen his efforts to make Australia be an advert for Australia.
Bizarre. So was Mississippi Burning actually brought to us by the Mississippi Tourism Board? Was To Kill a Mockingbird sponsored by Tourism Alabama? Deliverance by the Welcome to Georgia Association?
===
Change we couldn’t believe
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama isn’t even president yet, but Lefitst journalists like the Age’s Anne Davies already feel conned:
HAS BARACK Obama already broken his first promise to voters in his choice of cabinet and White House staff? As candidate Obama, he spent 17 months promising a new vision of politics, a politics that did not divide along partisan lines but would break with the old Washington ways where access to decision-makers was corrupted by donations, lobbyists and a culture of insiders. It would, he said, be a more open politics built along ethical lines.
But so far, President-elect Obama has turned mainly to people who have long histories in Washington and reputations as practitioners of a tough, pragmatic brand of politics.
===
Union powers rise as growth falls
Andrew Bolt
This sounds ominous:
A RADICAL overhaul of workplace laws, to be unveiled by the Rudd Government today, will propose a vastly increased role for unions, venturing far beyond the policy Labor took to the election a year ago…
===
One Crikey smear regretted
Andrew Bolt
Crikey editor Jonathan Green apologises for a despicable slur:
Over the past fortnight Crikey has polled readers to determine their preferred name for Barack Obama’s new White House puppy. In a crunched-down final 10 drawn from reader nominations we included “A mongrel called Trig”. We were wrong to do that. It’s not funny, it makes no positive point. We deeply regret any offence the reference may have caused.
===
IQ beats warming models
Andrew Bolt
What’s the best way to judge the number of polar bears? Here’s a tough choice for a rationalist, and even harder for a Leftist romantic:
Treaties between Nunavut and the federal government make clear that science should not influence decision-making more than “traditional knowledge”, known as Inuit Qaujimaningit, or IQ. Scientists offer statistical projections and computer models; native hunters prefer IQ, which tells them that polar bears are everywhere.
===
They couldn’t say no to Zyklon B
Andrew Bolt
The Holocaust was an unspeakable crime - the deliberate murder of 6 million Jews and some 200,000 Gypsies.
Yet some on the Left seem to think that shooting or gassing helpless men, women and children is much the same as selling them stuff they actually want to buy - including stuff that’s actually perfectly healthy:
FOOD guru Margaret Fulton has condemned genetically-modified produce, likening companies pushing its merits to Adolf Hitler.
===
Father knows best
Andrew Bolt
Some awards are given more to puff the giver than givee. Take the Father of the Year title:
TV CHEF Gordon Ramsay, who revels in his family man image despite his love of the F-word, has been in an affair with a blonde woman for the past seven years…
In 2006 Ramsay was voted Celebrity Father Of The Year and in 2007 the Ramsays were named Celebrity Family Of The Year. - maybe he wanted to be a father again . -ed.
===
Only greens could lack water in a flood
Andrew Bolt
Too little water here, and too much water there. Does the Brumby Government really need someone to join the dots between today’s two water stories?
Problem:
MELBURNIANS will face tough new daily water limits under a State Government move to preserve dwindling supplies.
Solution:
The weather bureau issued flood warnings for six Gippsland rivers, warning residents that major flooding of the Mitchell River was possible...
===
Forecast this
Andrew Bolt
Yet another shift in the climate that wasn’t forecast by these alarmists:
NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the entire staff of the “Forecast Earth” environmental program during the middle of NBC’s “Green Week,”...
===
NSW advises kids: get a good dealer
Andrew Bolt
Your taxes, their idiocy - all you need to turn a “drug awareness” program into a drug advertisement:
TEENAGE school students have been given access to a controversial brochure called A User’s Guide to Speed while attending a State Government-promoted anti-drug and alcohol program.
The 35-page booklet, included among drugs literature displayed to up to 100 Year 8 students and parents during a community information day, contains a section on “tips to avoid getting bad speed”. In it, teenage readers are told: ”If you don’t already have a reliable dealer, try to find one and stick with them.
===
The Right’s plot uncovered
Andrew Bolt
Alan Howe:
THE two holocausts of the 20th century both came from the Right.
Hitler’s ferocious Nazi ambition claimed the lives of more than six million Jews across Europe. The other was engineered by Western tobacco companies, brazen racketeers...
===
Nixon concedes; but Age conceals
Andrew Bolt
Once the Left howled at such arguments. Now, too late, even Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon concedes them:
It has been suggested that society has reached a “tipping point” where the social and cultural developments have come together to create conditions conducive to violence.
The storm that has been gathering for years is upon us. Factors that I believe have led to this include relentless exposure to violence on television, a rise in single-parent families and young people “growing up” too young.
At some stage the cultural drivers of this growing barbarism must be admitted by our culture makers. Then let us hope we have the will and the smarts to turn it around.
===
Decline, not crash
Andrew Bolt
Times business commentator Patrick Hosking says this is serious:
At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age – complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.
But Daniel Gross wants to clock the alarmists who warn that this is the Great Depression all over again:
But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o’clock shadows asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today’s woes look like a flesh wound…
===
We’re “stealing” even more
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd in February:
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country…
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
Oh, really? The news today:
WELFARE workers in NSW are removing Aboriginal children from their homes in numbers far greater than during the Stolen Generations…
Monday, November 24, 2008
Headlines Monday 24th November
It was the anniversary of Rudd's first year in office .. and OPTUS cut my phone and broadband for three days .. Happy 747 Rudd, I note you weren't even in Australia at the time .. a hallmark of your administration.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
NSW Lib Updates
Juvenile Justice For The Illawarra Or Half A V8 Car Race? Rees Priorities All Wrong
Written by Anthony Roberts MP
Shadow Minister for Juvenile Justice Anthony Roberts said the decision to close Keelong Juvenile Justice Centre today as part of a $17 million Labor Mini-Budget cut was not just stupid but abhorrent, to the people of the Illawarra in the light of NSW Labor Government spending over $30 million on a V8 Supercar Race in Sydney.
“Juvenile detention centres throughout NSW are already overcrowded, with many young detainees spending nights in police cells due to the closure of Juvenile Justice facilities,” Mr Roberts said.
Paedophile Tillman’s Secret Release Raises More Questions Than It Answers
Written by Greg Smith SC MP
There are serious concerns about the secret release of convicted paedophile Kenneth Tillman and the State Labor Government has to answer the community’s questions, Shadow Attorney General Greg Smith SC MP said today.
“There is genuine concern the State Labor Government were trying to cover up Tillman’s release because they may not have done all that they should have to keep him in detention,” Mr Smith said.
NSW Lib/Nats Support Eye Tests But Urge Govt To Increase Preschool Participation Rates
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today welcomed plans for eyesight tests for preschoolers across the state, but urged the State Labor Government to adopt NSW Liberal/Nationals policy to increase participation rates.
“We supported the program when it was first announced by Morris Iemma during the last election campaign – and that support remains,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Labor’s Inaction Over Railcorp Corruption: $28 Million Wasted
Written by Gladys Berejiklian MP
Shadow Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian said today’s seventh and final Independent Commission Against Corruption report was a damning indictment on the State Labor Government’s failure to address widespread corruption within RailCorp.
“The fact this final report finds 31 RailCorp employees and contractors were involved in 97 corrupt conduct findings demonstrates just how widespread corruption is throughout RailCorp,” Ms Berejiklian said.
NSW Labor Set To Break Health Promises: Feds Won’t Provide Funding Bailout
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
At least 14 health infrastructure projects in NSW will not proceed after the Federal Government indicated it would not provide health infrastructure funding to bailout their hapless State Labor colleagues, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has confirmed NSW will not be able to use the national health infrastructure fund to make up for the State Labor Government’s mismanagement and fiscal incompetence,” Mrs Skinner said.
Growth Centres: Labor’s Levies Raise Nil While Killing Housing
Written by Brad Hazzard MP
It has been revealed that State Labor’s levies and charges on new homes in the NW and SW growth sectors have ensured not a single house has been built and nor has one dollar been raised!
“The revelation that in addition to no houses being built in the growth centres, Labor has raised not one cent from its growth centre levies shows what a dumb lot make up the NSW Labor Government,” Shadow Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said today.
O'Farrell Launches Website to Save Student Travel
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today launched the website www.savestudenttravel.com.au in response to the Rees Government’s decision to axe free school transport for students.
Liberal Members of Parliament and Councillors were at commuter hubs throughout Sydney this morning, speaking to angry members of the community and calling on them to send a strong message to their local Labor MPs.
Tony Kelly Threat And Raising Personal Matters Out Of Line - Rees Must Act
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
Nathan Rees’ failure to take action over Police and Emergency Services Minister Tony Kelly’s behaviour during a meeting with a key stakeholder reveals his hypocrisy over ministerial standards, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said today.
The Australian reports Mr Kelly allegedly threatened to use a Taser against an Insurance Council of Australia representative. He also allegedly raised a personal matter involving a family member.
Schools Set To Cop The Brunt Of Student Transport Scheme Fiasco
Written by Gladys Berejiklian MP
Shadow Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian said today the NSW Labor Government looks set to lump the burden of the collection of fares from parents under the new arrangement for the School Student Transport Scheme (SSTS) on all local schools across New South Wales.
“In today’s Supplementary Transport Budget Estimates hearing it was revealed schools were most likely to bear the burden of administrating and collecting the taxes for Nathan Rees’ plan to charge parents for their children to catch public transport to school,” Ms Berejiklian said.
More...
$120 million slashed from SES AND RFS - Mum and Dad Insurance Policy Holders to pay
Sky High Levies Equals Sky High Rents
Nathan Rees Must Adopt NSW Lib/Nat Plan To Restore Free School Travel
Blackouts To Come As Rees Gov’t Drains Energy Budget
Labor Turmoil Spells Bad News For Community: O’Farrell
Written by Anthony Roberts MP
Shadow Minister for Juvenile Justice Anthony Roberts said the decision to close Keelong Juvenile Justice Centre today as part of a $17 million Labor Mini-Budget cut was not just stupid but abhorrent, to the people of the Illawarra in the light of NSW Labor Government spending over $30 million on a V8 Supercar Race in Sydney.
“Juvenile detention centres throughout NSW are already overcrowded, with many young detainees spending nights in police cells due to the closure of Juvenile Justice facilities,” Mr Roberts said.
Paedophile Tillman’s Secret Release Raises More Questions Than It Answers
Written by Greg Smith SC MP
There are serious concerns about the secret release of convicted paedophile Kenneth Tillman and the State Labor Government has to answer the community’s questions, Shadow Attorney General Greg Smith SC MP said today.
“There is genuine concern the State Labor Government were trying to cover up Tillman’s release because they may not have done all that they should have to keep him in detention,” Mr Smith said.
NSW Lib/Nats Support Eye Tests But Urge Govt To Increase Preschool Participation Rates
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today welcomed plans for eyesight tests for preschoolers across the state, but urged the State Labor Government to adopt NSW Liberal/Nationals policy to increase participation rates.
“We supported the program when it was first announced by Morris Iemma during the last election campaign – and that support remains,” Mr O’Farrell said.
Labor’s Inaction Over Railcorp Corruption: $28 Million Wasted
Written by Gladys Berejiklian MP
Shadow Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian said today’s seventh and final Independent Commission Against Corruption report was a damning indictment on the State Labor Government’s failure to address widespread corruption within RailCorp.
“The fact this final report finds 31 RailCorp employees and contractors were involved in 97 corrupt conduct findings demonstrates just how widespread corruption is throughout RailCorp,” Ms Berejiklian said.
NSW Labor Set To Break Health Promises: Feds Won’t Provide Funding Bailout
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
At least 14 health infrastructure projects in NSW will not proceed after the Federal Government indicated it would not provide health infrastructure funding to bailout their hapless State Labor colleagues, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has confirmed NSW will not be able to use the national health infrastructure fund to make up for the State Labor Government’s mismanagement and fiscal incompetence,” Mrs Skinner said.
Growth Centres: Labor’s Levies Raise Nil While Killing Housing
Written by Brad Hazzard MP
It has been revealed that State Labor’s levies and charges on new homes in the NW and SW growth sectors have ensured not a single house has been built and nor has one dollar been raised!
“The revelation that in addition to no houses being built in the growth centres, Labor has raised not one cent from its growth centre levies shows what a dumb lot make up the NSW Labor Government,” Shadow Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said today.
O'Farrell Launches Website to Save Student Travel
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell today launched the website www.savestudenttravel.com.au in response to the Rees Government’s decision to axe free school transport for students.
Liberal Members of Parliament and Councillors were at commuter hubs throughout Sydney this morning, speaking to angry members of the community and calling on them to send a strong message to their local Labor MPs.
Tony Kelly Threat And Raising Personal Matters Out Of Line - Rees Must Act
Written by Barry O'Farrell MP
Nathan Rees’ failure to take action over Police and Emergency Services Minister Tony Kelly’s behaviour during a meeting with a key stakeholder reveals his hypocrisy over ministerial standards, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said today.
The Australian reports Mr Kelly allegedly threatened to use a Taser against an Insurance Council of Australia representative. He also allegedly raised a personal matter involving a family member.
Schools Set To Cop The Brunt Of Student Transport Scheme Fiasco
Written by Gladys Berejiklian MP
Shadow Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian said today the NSW Labor Government looks set to lump the burden of the collection of fares from parents under the new arrangement for the School Student Transport Scheme (SSTS) on all local schools across New South Wales.
“In today’s Supplementary Transport Budget Estimates hearing it was revealed schools were most likely to bear the burden of administrating and collecting the taxes for Nathan Rees’ plan to charge parents for their children to catch public transport to school,” Ms Berejiklian said.
More...
$120 million slashed from SES AND RFS - Mum and Dad Insurance Policy Holders to pay
Sky High Levies Equals Sky High Rents
Nathan Rees Must Adopt NSW Lib/Nat Plan To Restore Free School Travel
Blackouts To Come As Rees Gov’t Drains Energy Budget
Labor Turmoil Spells Bad News For Community: O’Farrell
Headlines Sunday 23rd November
Counting cost of pennies from Kevin
Piers Akerman
A year in office and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pre-election agenda is in tatters. - I know that there are not any computers that were promised .. not one. The computers I see kids using today are the same as those used before the promise .. there are no extra. Maybe money has been given to a mate to do a job .. but that isn’t a promise kept.
We know about the broad failures in Health, childcare, skills, aged care and so on .. every item on that list.
===
Rudd’s is the hand that signed the paper .. Kyoto and some apology that may result in aid being terminated somewhere. Kyoto is for climate change .. which isn’t occurring. - ed.
===
Obama demoted to merely heroic
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s worshippers are managing down expectations (a tad) to avoid buyer’s remorse:
President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.
No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.
===
Rudd’s first year: the stats
Andrew Bolt
A year ago, I posted this:
Here’s what Kevin Rudd has been left by the Howard Government:
Unemployment rate: 4.3 per cent
Interest rate: 6.75 per cent
Economic growth: 4.3 per cent
Stock market: 6390 points
Australian dollar: US87.5 cents
Surplus 2007 Budget: $10.6 billion
Growth in real net national disposable income per head over the past five years: 16 per cent
Days lost in industrial strikes/action: Lowest since 1913 .. the material Bolt shows is enlightening. Of course, the interest rates being about the same masks the ringer Rudd has pushed everyone through to get there .. ed.
===
What happened to this bold claim of the Left:
MAXINE MCKEW: Well I think Paul Keating got it right, you know, this election has wiped away the toxicity. People are smiling, a sort of sense of, we can get on and do things.
And I think we all want to get on and do things in a certain way, in a civil way, in a sensible way, and get rid of perhaps I think that brutishness that has characterised our politics probably since 2001.
===
Mein link
Andrew Bolt
David Hicks is in one shot .. put together by the SMH
===
A small bow to Australia
Andrew Bolt
Australia starts to work its assimilationist magic
===
Media turkeys
Andrew Bolt
Americans eat up to 300 million turkeys each year. Not until Sarah Palin held a press conference did American journalists realise someone actually had to kill these birds first, and that this was brutal and evil, and that it all proved that Palin was unfit for public office.
===
A debate about nothing
Andrew Bolt
A lesson in how the media can have a furious debate about nothing:
January:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denied that a question about Donald Bradman will be removed from the recently installed citizenship test given to prospective Australian citizens.
“I think the Don is safe,” Mr Rudd told Channel Seven’s Sunrise show.
November:
THERE was never a question about Don Bradman in the citizenship test, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says…
===
Scratching Labor backs
Andrew Bolt
NSW now wallows in this stuff:
A STAR Labor recruit urged his business clients to attend a $15,000-a-table political fund-raiser because it was important for them “to be seen talking to the right people”.
===
How about access to mum?
Andrew Bolt
Maxine McKew, who has never had a child herself, spooks me a bit:
As Professor Frank Oberklaid and Professor Fiona Stanley keep saying, babies come out of the womb ready to learn.
Our job as policymakers is to ensure young children have access to a calm, stimulating environment run by professionals...
===
Don’t ask Kate about Bradman, either
Andrew Bolt
There should be a law against checking if a female minister knows anything about her portfolio:
FEDERAL Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says male politicians get away with sexist behaviour that would be unlawful in a regular workplace… Sports Minister Kate Ellis has been undermined by male Opposition frontbenchers, who shout sports trivia questions during Question Time to test her knowledge.
===
Banning socialists should scare them
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Milne says the Rudd Government’s plan to impose a net filter and ban 10,000 sites with “unwanted” or illegal material is just riddled with unintended conseqences:
When researchers in the UK examined filters and tapped in the word “socialist’’ they were blocked.
Why? Because “socialist’’ also contains the product name “Cialis’’ - an anti-impotence drug, fakes of which are often sold on-line.
Closer to home former Communications Minister Helen Coonan tells a similar story.
The Department has its own filter system for obvious reasons. But when the then minister tried to order some strawberry muffins online she also was blocked.
The filter didn’t like the word “muff’’.
===
To be Australian you must be nuts
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s committee investigating the citizenship test discovers it could be illegal to ask migrants to speak good English:
The committee was told the test could be considered unlawful because of the high level of English in the questions and the resource book for applicants.
===
November snows all over the CSIRO
Andrew Bolt
The CSIRO warns there’ll be little winter snow by 2018:
A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that the resorts could lose a quarter of their snow in 15 years, and half by 2050. The worst case was a 96 per cent loss of snow by mid-century.
Five years later, we’ve had not just great snow seasons in winter, but the snow is now falling in November as well:
At Mt Hotham, the coldest place in Victoria at -2.7C, there was a surprise snowfall. Falls Creek also experienced a November fall, which residents said was the first in five years.
Piers Akerman
A year in office and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pre-election agenda is in tatters. - I know that there are not any computers that were promised .. not one. The computers I see kids using today are the same as those used before the promise .. there are no extra. Maybe money has been given to a mate to do a job .. but that isn’t a promise kept.
We know about the broad failures in Health, childcare, skills, aged care and so on .. every item on that list.
===
Rudd’s is the hand that signed the paper .. Kyoto and some apology that may result in aid being terminated somewhere. Kyoto is for climate change .. which isn’t occurring. - ed.
===
Obama demoted to merely heroic
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s worshippers are managing down expectations (a tad) to avoid buyer’s remorse:
President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.
No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.
===
Rudd’s first year: the stats
Andrew Bolt
A year ago, I posted this:
Here’s what Kevin Rudd has been left by the Howard Government:
Unemployment rate: 4.3 per cent
Interest rate: 6.75 per cent
Economic growth: 4.3 per cent
Stock market: 6390 points
Australian dollar: US87.5 cents
Surplus 2007 Budget: $10.6 billion
Growth in real net national disposable income per head over the past five years: 16 per cent
Days lost in industrial strikes/action: Lowest since 1913 .. the material Bolt shows is enlightening. Of course, the interest rates being about the same masks the ringer Rudd has pushed everyone through to get there .. ed.
===
What happened to this bold claim of the Left:
MAXINE MCKEW: Well I think Paul Keating got it right, you know, this election has wiped away the toxicity. People are smiling, a sort of sense of, we can get on and do things.
And I think we all want to get on and do things in a certain way, in a civil way, in a sensible way, and get rid of perhaps I think that brutishness that has characterised our politics probably since 2001.
===
Mein link
Andrew Bolt
David Hicks is in one shot .. put together by the SMH
===
A small bow to Australia
Andrew Bolt
Australia starts to work its assimilationist magic
===
Media turkeys
Andrew Bolt
Americans eat up to 300 million turkeys each year. Not until Sarah Palin held a press conference did American journalists realise someone actually had to kill these birds first, and that this was brutal and evil, and that it all proved that Palin was unfit for public office.
===
A debate about nothing
Andrew Bolt
A lesson in how the media can have a furious debate about nothing:
January:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denied that a question about Donald Bradman will be removed from the recently installed citizenship test given to prospective Australian citizens.
“I think the Don is safe,” Mr Rudd told Channel Seven’s Sunrise show.
November:
THERE was never a question about Don Bradman in the citizenship test, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says…
===
Scratching Labor backs
Andrew Bolt
NSW now wallows in this stuff:
A STAR Labor recruit urged his business clients to attend a $15,000-a-table political fund-raiser because it was important for them “to be seen talking to the right people”.
===
How about access to mum?
Andrew Bolt
Maxine McKew, who has never had a child herself, spooks me a bit:
As Professor Frank Oberklaid and Professor Fiona Stanley keep saying, babies come out of the womb ready to learn.
Our job as policymakers is to ensure young children have access to a calm, stimulating environment run by professionals...
===
Don’t ask Kate about Bradman, either
Andrew Bolt
There should be a law against checking if a female minister knows anything about her portfolio:
FEDERAL Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says male politicians get away with sexist behaviour that would be unlawful in a regular workplace… Sports Minister Kate Ellis has been undermined by male Opposition frontbenchers, who shout sports trivia questions during Question Time to test her knowledge.
===
Banning socialists should scare them
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Milne says the Rudd Government’s plan to impose a net filter and ban 10,000 sites with “unwanted” or illegal material is just riddled with unintended conseqences:
When researchers in the UK examined filters and tapped in the word “socialist’’ they were blocked.
Why? Because “socialist’’ also contains the product name “Cialis’’ - an anti-impotence drug, fakes of which are often sold on-line.
Closer to home former Communications Minister Helen Coonan tells a similar story.
The Department has its own filter system for obvious reasons. But when the then minister tried to order some strawberry muffins online she also was blocked.
The filter didn’t like the word “muff’’.
===
To be Australian you must be nuts
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s committee investigating the citizenship test discovers it could be illegal to ask migrants to speak good English:
The committee was told the test could be considered unlawful because of the high level of English in the questions and the resource book for applicants.
===
November snows all over the CSIRO
Andrew Bolt
The CSIRO warns there’ll be little winter snow by 2018:
A 2003 CSIRO report, part-funded by the ski industry, found that the resorts could lose a quarter of their snow in 15 years, and half by 2050. The worst case was a 96 per cent loss of snow by mid-century.
Five years later, we’ve had not just great snow seasons in winter, but the snow is now falling in November as well:
At Mt Hotham, the coldest place in Victoria at -2.7C, there was a surprise snowfall. Falls Creek also experienced a November fall, which residents said was the first in five years.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Space.com News
Spacewalk to Mark Space Station's 10th Anniversary
Astronauts to mark the 10th anniversary of the ISS with a Thursday spacewalk.
MISSIONS/LAUNCHES
NASA Shifts Gears: Next Mars Rover to Leave Some Equipment Behind
Star Trek's Deflector Shield Envisioned for Mars Mission
SCIENCE/ASTRONOMY
Cosmic Rays Might Come from Dark Matter
Bursts Spotted at Milky Way's Black Hole
RECENT HEADLINES
Signs of Weather Seen on Dwarf Planet
Moonwalker Stomps on New Space Plan
Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars
Astronauts Watch Space Spiders Weave Wild Webs
COOL STUFF
Image of the Day: Worlds in Collision
Astronauts to mark the 10th anniversary of the ISS with a Thursday spacewalk.
MISSIONS/LAUNCHES
NASA Shifts Gears: Next Mars Rover to Leave Some Equipment Behind
Star Trek's Deflector Shield Envisioned for Mars Mission
SCIENCE/ASTRONOMY
Cosmic Rays Might Come from Dark Matter
Bursts Spotted at Milky Way's Black Hole
RECENT HEADLINES
Signs of Weather Seen on Dwarf Planet
Moonwalker Stomps on New Space Plan
Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars
Astronauts Watch Space Spiders Weave Wild Webs
COOL STUFF
Image of the Day: Worlds in Collision
Liberal Messages Saturday 22nd November
Rudd must backflip on bungled bank guarantees
The Prime Minister and Treasurer have now been delivered a clear message from both the major banks and the Opposition that the Government must fix its bungled wholesale term funding and bank deposit guarantees.
Clarke Report should be released today
The Attorney-General announced this morning that the Report of the Clarke Inquiry (with the exception of sections which will be kept confidential for national security reasons) would be released at an unspecified time in the future, along with the Government’s response.
Kevin Rudd rejects 2010 as year of the Girl Guide
Kevin Rudd’s decision to reject the request by Girl Guides Australia to make 2010 the Year of the Girl Guide, to mark the movement’s centenary anniversary, is a strange way to encourage young women to take part in activities which will help build their self esteem and confidence.
Swan reacts under pressure without checking his facts
Today the Treasurer, Wayne Swan falsely claimed that the Coalition does not support the $1000 economic stimulus payments for families.
Government must secure minimum 6-month extension from GMAC, GE to ease car dealer crisis
The Rudd Government needs to act immediately to address the credit crisis in car dealerships right around the country, which has been exacerbated by their bungled unlimited bank deposit guarantee.
Wong's a water copy-cat in Eden-Monaro
Penny Wong is a water copy-cat in Eden-Monaro after she today re-announced $6.5 million of Coalition Government water projects in the New South Wales electorate.
Labor's broadband tender a farce as bid d-day approaches
Labor’s troubled National Broadband Network (NBN) tender process will be a complete farce void of competition if Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra fails to even lodge a bid next week.
Coalition outlines plan to provide small business relief
The Coalition is calling on the Federal Government to provide relief for Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses to help them manage cash flow and maintain employment levels in the current economic environment.
Grocery Choice a basket case
The Rudd Government should scrap its farcical GroceryChoice website rather than just tinkering with it.
Ford engine plant announcement
Today’s announcement by Ford that they are able to reverse their decision taken last year to close their Geelong Engine Plant, thus avoiding the loss of 400 jobs in 2010, is great news for Geelong, and a ray of hope in Australia’s auto industry.
Turnbull interview with Geoff Hutchison (720 ABC Perth) - HMAS Sydney commemoration, 'Australia', Ord River scheme, agriculture
There are new crops – there’s an ancient Aztec crop that’s being grown there called chia, which is growing in demand, it’s got enormous benefit and Australia is producing a third of the world’s output. So I would say that the thing that encouraged me, that excited me about being up there was just the enthusiasm and the energy and the optimism and the spirit of innovation.
Leader of the Opposition Address at the HMAS Sydney Memorial Service
The man to whom we pay our respects today died in our name. Not only for the Australia he knew, but for the Australia still to come. And that is why we honour him, and all who lie at rest today having served our nation.
Brisbane storm damage
It is heartening to see the large effort under way to clean up damaged homes in Brisbane suburbs which were hit by severe storms this week.
Car package fails auto workers
News that Holden will halve its production schedule for the first quarter of next year – on top of unprecedented production cuts over the next six weeks – confirms that the Rudd Government’s much-hyped “car package” has failed Australian automotive industry workers.
Non-government schools unmask the real Labor agenda
Non-government schools are fully aware that Labor is sneakily trying to prepare the groundwork for the reappearance of the notorious school “hit list”.
New childcare collapse demands action
The Rudd Government must move quickly to reassure Australian parents and childcare industry workers that it has a long-term plan to ensure the future of childcare, following the collapse of CFK Child Care Centres in NSW.
Aged care in trouble
For the first time ever, we have providers going into liquidation, an under-subscription of places, bed licences being handed back and decisions being made at board level not to apply for licences in the latest Aged Care Assessment Round.
Gillard breaks ALP promises to appease union movement
The Minister has broken Labor’s election commitments on compulsory arbitration, pattern bargaining, right of entry and union access to non-union records in her moves to appease the unions.
Rudd's Asia-Pacific EU falls through
Reports that regional nations are underwhelmed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plan for an Asia-Pacific European Union style forum confirms the plan’s lack of forethought and prior consultation.
Opening of Sydney's e-waste recycling plant
The facility will help to make productive use of spent computers and other electronic goods instead of them winding up as landfill.
Building and Construction industry must have a 'tough cop on the beat'
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission has made orders against the CFMEU and various officials in Western Australia after it was alleged they had abused rights of entry.
Paul Bell's service to local government
The Coalition expresses appreciation to Cr Paul Bell for his superb service over the past four years as President of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).
Albanese must release details on council funding package
In the interests of full disclosure and transparency they should back this up by immediately releasing the details of how each of these amounts were arrived at and what the evidenced based policy advice suggests will be the impact of this stimulus package on our economy.
Late Garrett leaves Tasmanian farmers hanging - Again
Environment Minister Peter Garrett has failed to meet a deadline for providing an answer on Tasmania’s application for an emergency release of water for the Clyde River area.
Assistance for the people of South East Queensland
The Federal Opposition strongly supports the measures announced today by the Government to provide financial assistance to the people of South East Queensland affected by Sunday’s devastating storms.
Reserve Bank minutes show Australians can be confident in the economic outlook
Today’s release of the minutes of the Reserve Bank November meeting confirm that economic conditions in Australia are showing signs of decline however the fundamental strength of the Australian economy is providing resilience to the global economic downturn.
Classical music goes silent after Garrett bungles
Questions have to be asked about the process behind the decision to axe funding for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in favour of Labor’s university teaching model announced today.
Schools assistance submissions support Coalition amendments
The Senate Committee public hearings into the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 tomorrow will highlight how the real concerns of non-government schools are being bulldozed by the Rudd Government.
Councils call for ABC clarity beyond Dec 31
The local Councils in Victoria see what Minister Gillard’s clearly doesn’t – that the December deadline is a farce. It is totally unrealistic to think that this can be resolved in 6 weeks.
Selling uranium to India
The West Australian State Government’s reversal of the ban on uranium mining has renewed debate over the Rudd Government’s refusal to sell uranium to India.
Australian motorists call for petrol price action following the demise of farcical FuelWatch scheme
Australian motorists are calling out to the Rudd Government to actually do something meaningful on petrol prices following the death of its farcical FuelWatch policy.
Peter Dutton Daily Telegraph Blog - Rudd's first anniversary
People will only tolerate spin for so long, and much of what they are seeing at the moment they have seen at a state level over the last 12 years. My view is the Australian people will give Mr Rudd “a fair go” and then if they think they are being taken for a ride they will turn on him pretty quickly.
Federal spending on local government infrastructure - A lost opportunity to drive reform
There is an urgent need for COAG and local government to resolve the mish-mash of approaches to tendering, prequalification, procurement, licensing, contract standardisation, and the rest, that characterises disjointed regulation across states, territories and local government.
Arrogant Rudd government setting up Centrelink for failure
With the Rudd Government’s first budget forecasting a rise in unemployment and the global financial situation threatening an estimated 200,000 jobs, it is time the Minister for Human Services moved to ensure Centrelink has the resources it needs to enable them to assist Australian’s facing unemployment.
Navy closed for business over summer
The Australian navy is going on an extended Christmas holiday in an extraordinary demonstration that current recruitment programs are simply not working.
Demise of the BP solar plant: Government's solar policy in chaos
The demise of the BP Solar manufacturing plant in Sydney is a tragedy for Australia’s solar industry. It reflects the fact that the Rudd Government’s solar policy is in chaos.
Macdonald calls for Northern councils to unite
At the North Queensland Local Government Conference in Home Hill last week, North Queensland based Senator and Opposition Spokesman on Northern Australia, Senator Ian Macdonald called for Local Governments across the North of Australia to unite to push for a better deal.
Anna Bligh the last one standing on Labor's narrow-minded uranium policy
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh is now the only impediment to the full development of Australia’s uranium industry, and is costing Queenslanders and Australians jobs and export earnings.
Funding for Local Government cannot be one way street
Today’s meeting of the Australian Council of Local Government must do more than provide an expensive backdrop for another symbolic gesture from the Prime Minister.
Commonwealth must help with Northern dams
Although development of water storages is principally the constitutional responsibility of State Government there is a role for the Federal Government to play.
Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - Tax review and jobs
More than 100 taxes raising only a small part of Government revenue, but with these taxes comes the inevitable red tape from regulation and compliance... If the Review of Australia’s tax system identifies reforms that would provide incentives for job creation or remove disincentives, there is a strong case for bringing forward those reforms and not waiting until the December 2009 reporting deadline for the full report.
Wholesale term funding guarantee
The Rudd Government must immediately present legislation to authorise the provision of wholesale term funding guarantees to Australian banks. Without legislation the guarantees will not be effective commercially or practically.
Australia well placed to meet G20 Washington Declaration objectives
The G20 Washington Declaration provides an opportunity to make necessary reforms to the global financial system by increasing co-operation, establishing common standards and providing greater financial accountability and transparency.
People smugglers try again
This fifth boat that has been intercepted on its way to Australia, once again demonstrates that the Rudd Labor Government may still be guilty of not clearly articulating Labor policy in relation to continuing the Coalition’s excised migration zones and mandatory detention policies.
19% credit card rates spell trouble for retailers
If the Government has any hope of stimulating retail spending before Christmas, it needs to put pressure on the banks to drop their ludicrously high interest rates on credit cards.
Listen to the mayors' calls for water infrastructure funding
Tomorrow's meeting of mayors in Canberra must deliver a commitment to finally unfreeze the $6 billion for water-saving infrastructure works which were provided by the Coalition.
South Australians betrayed by Rudd Labor on broadband
The broadband betrayal of South Australians by the Rudd Labor Government has been exposed on the eve of the Australian Council of Local Government meeting in Canberra tomorrow.
Boys thinking it's OK to hit girls demands ongoing community education
A new study finding 1 in 3 teenage boys think it’s “no big deal to hit a girl” is evidence that the “Violence Against Women: Australia says No” campaign should have been maintained by the Rudd Government.
Reports of whaling fleet departure exposes Garrett's $4 Million diversion
Tonight’s news that the Japanese whaling fleet is reported to have set out for the hunting season reveals Peter Garrett’s multi-million whaling package was rushed out as an attempted diversion.
Remembering HMAS Sydney II
The Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Personnel and Assisting Shadow Minister for Defence Bob Baldwin will attend a Naval service at the Australian War Memorial on Wednesday to mark the 67th anniversary of the loss of HMAS Sydney II.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer have now been delivered a clear message from both the major banks and the Opposition that the Government must fix its bungled wholesale term funding and bank deposit guarantees.
Clarke Report should be released today
The Attorney-General announced this morning that the Report of the Clarke Inquiry (with the exception of sections which will be kept confidential for national security reasons) would be released at an unspecified time in the future, along with the Government’s response.
Kevin Rudd rejects 2010 as year of the Girl Guide
Kevin Rudd’s decision to reject the request by Girl Guides Australia to make 2010 the Year of the Girl Guide, to mark the movement’s centenary anniversary, is a strange way to encourage young women to take part in activities which will help build their self esteem and confidence.
Swan reacts under pressure without checking his facts
Today the Treasurer, Wayne Swan falsely claimed that the Coalition does not support the $1000 economic stimulus payments for families.
Government must secure minimum 6-month extension from GMAC, GE to ease car dealer crisis
The Rudd Government needs to act immediately to address the credit crisis in car dealerships right around the country, which has been exacerbated by their bungled unlimited bank deposit guarantee.
Wong's a water copy-cat in Eden-Monaro
Penny Wong is a water copy-cat in Eden-Monaro after she today re-announced $6.5 million of Coalition Government water projects in the New South Wales electorate.
Labor's broadband tender a farce as bid d-day approaches
Labor’s troubled National Broadband Network (NBN) tender process will be a complete farce void of competition if Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra fails to even lodge a bid next week.
Coalition outlines plan to provide small business relief
The Coalition is calling on the Federal Government to provide relief for Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses to help them manage cash flow and maintain employment levels in the current economic environment.
Grocery Choice a basket case
The Rudd Government should scrap its farcical GroceryChoice website rather than just tinkering with it.
Ford engine plant announcement
Today’s announcement by Ford that they are able to reverse their decision taken last year to close their Geelong Engine Plant, thus avoiding the loss of 400 jobs in 2010, is great news for Geelong, and a ray of hope in Australia’s auto industry.
Turnbull interview with Geoff Hutchison (720 ABC Perth) - HMAS Sydney commemoration, 'Australia', Ord River scheme, agriculture
There are new crops – there’s an ancient Aztec crop that’s being grown there called chia, which is growing in demand, it’s got enormous benefit and Australia is producing a third of the world’s output. So I would say that the thing that encouraged me, that excited me about being up there was just the enthusiasm and the energy and the optimism and the spirit of innovation.
Leader of the Opposition Address at the HMAS Sydney Memorial Service
The man to whom we pay our respects today died in our name. Not only for the Australia he knew, but for the Australia still to come. And that is why we honour him, and all who lie at rest today having served our nation.
Brisbane storm damage
It is heartening to see the large effort under way to clean up damaged homes in Brisbane suburbs which were hit by severe storms this week.
Car package fails auto workers
News that Holden will halve its production schedule for the first quarter of next year – on top of unprecedented production cuts over the next six weeks – confirms that the Rudd Government’s much-hyped “car package” has failed Australian automotive industry workers.
Non-government schools unmask the real Labor agenda
Non-government schools are fully aware that Labor is sneakily trying to prepare the groundwork for the reappearance of the notorious school “hit list”.
New childcare collapse demands action
The Rudd Government must move quickly to reassure Australian parents and childcare industry workers that it has a long-term plan to ensure the future of childcare, following the collapse of CFK Child Care Centres in NSW.
Aged care in trouble
For the first time ever, we have providers going into liquidation, an under-subscription of places, bed licences being handed back and decisions being made at board level not to apply for licences in the latest Aged Care Assessment Round.
Gillard breaks ALP promises to appease union movement
The Minister has broken Labor’s election commitments on compulsory arbitration, pattern bargaining, right of entry and union access to non-union records in her moves to appease the unions.
Rudd's Asia-Pacific EU falls through
Reports that regional nations are underwhelmed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plan for an Asia-Pacific European Union style forum confirms the plan’s lack of forethought and prior consultation.
Opening of Sydney's e-waste recycling plant
The facility will help to make productive use of spent computers and other electronic goods instead of them winding up as landfill.
Building and Construction industry must have a 'tough cop on the beat'
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission has made orders against the CFMEU and various officials in Western Australia after it was alleged they had abused rights of entry.
Paul Bell's service to local government
The Coalition expresses appreciation to Cr Paul Bell for his superb service over the past four years as President of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).
Albanese must release details on council funding package
In the interests of full disclosure and transparency they should back this up by immediately releasing the details of how each of these amounts were arrived at and what the evidenced based policy advice suggests will be the impact of this stimulus package on our economy.
Late Garrett leaves Tasmanian farmers hanging - Again
Environment Minister Peter Garrett has failed to meet a deadline for providing an answer on Tasmania’s application for an emergency release of water for the Clyde River area.
Assistance for the people of South East Queensland
The Federal Opposition strongly supports the measures announced today by the Government to provide financial assistance to the people of South East Queensland affected by Sunday’s devastating storms.
Reserve Bank minutes show Australians can be confident in the economic outlook
Today’s release of the minutes of the Reserve Bank November meeting confirm that economic conditions in Australia are showing signs of decline however the fundamental strength of the Australian economy is providing resilience to the global economic downturn.
Classical music goes silent after Garrett bungles
Questions have to be asked about the process behind the decision to axe funding for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in favour of Labor’s university teaching model announced today.
Schools assistance submissions support Coalition amendments
The Senate Committee public hearings into the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 tomorrow will highlight how the real concerns of non-government schools are being bulldozed by the Rudd Government.
Councils call for ABC clarity beyond Dec 31
The local Councils in Victoria see what Minister Gillard’s clearly doesn’t – that the December deadline is a farce. It is totally unrealistic to think that this can be resolved in 6 weeks.
Selling uranium to India
The West Australian State Government’s reversal of the ban on uranium mining has renewed debate over the Rudd Government’s refusal to sell uranium to India.
Australian motorists call for petrol price action following the demise of farcical FuelWatch scheme
Australian motorists are calling out to the Rudd Government to actually do something meaningful on petrol prices following the death of its farcical FuelWatch policy.
Peter Dutton Daily Telegraph Blog - Rudd's first anniversary
People will only tolerate spin for so long, and much of what they are seeing at the moment they have seen at a state level over the last 12 years. My view is the Australian people will give Mr Rudd “a fair go” and then if they think they are being taken for a ride they will turn on him pretty quickly.
Federal spending on local government infrastructure - A lost opportunity to drive reform
There is an urgent need for COAG and local government to resolve the mish-mash of approaches to tendering, prequalification, procurement, licensing, contract standardisation, and the rest, that characterises disjointed regulation across states, territories and local government.
Arrogant Rudd government setting up Centrelink for failure
With the Rudd Government’s first budget forecasting a rise in unemployment and the global financial situation threatening an estimated 200,000 jobs, it is time the Minister for Human Services moved to ensure Centrelink has the resources it needs to enable them to assist Australian’s facing unemployment.
Navy closed for business over summer
The Australian navy is going on an extended Christmas holiday in an extraordinary demonstration that current recruitment programs are simply not working.
Demise of the BP solar plant: Government's solar policy in chaos
The demise of the BP Solar manufacturing plant in Sydney is a tragedy for Australia’s solar industry. It reflects the fact that the Rudd Government’s solar policy is in chaos.
Macdonald calls for Northern councils to unite
At the North Queensland Local Government Conference in Home Hill last week, North Queensland based Senator and Opposition Spokesman on Northern Australia, Senator Ian Macdonald called for Local Governments across the North of Australia to unite to push for a better deal.
Anna Bligh the last one standing on Labor's narrow-minded uranium policy
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh is now the only impediment to the full development of Australia’s uranium industry, and is costing Queenslanders and Australians jobs and export earnings.
Funding for Local Government cannot be one way street
Today’s meeting of the Australian Council of Local Government must do more than provide an expensive backdrop for another symbolic gesture from the Prime Minister.
Commonwealth must help with Northern dams
Although development of water storages is principally the constitutional responsibility of State Government there is a role for the Federal Government to play.
Julie Bishop Fairfax Blog - Tax review and jobs
More than 100 taxes raising only a small part of Government revenue, but with these taxes comes the inevitable red tape from regulation and compliance... If the Review of Australia’s tax system identifies reforms that would provide incentives for job creation or remove disincentives, there is a strong case for bringing forward those reforms and not waiting until the December 2009 reporting deadline for the full report.
Wholesale term funding guarantee
The Rudd Government must immediately present legislation to authorise the provision of wholesale term funding guarantees to Australian banks. Without legislation the guarantees will not be effective commercially or practically.
Australia well placed to meet G20 Washington Declaration objectives
The G20 Washington Declaration provides an opportunity to make necessary reforms to the global financial system by increasing co-operation, establishing common standards and providing greater financial accountability and transparency.
People smugglers try again
This fifth boat that has been intercepted on its way to Australia, once again demonstrates that the Rudd Labor Government may still be guilty of not clearly articulating Labor policy in relation to continuing the Coalition’s excised migration zones and mandatory detention policies.
19% credit card rates spell trouble for retailers
If the Government has any hope of stimulating retail spending before Christmas, it needs to put pressure on the banks to drop their ludicrously high interest rates on credit cards.
Listen to the mayors' calls for water infrastructure funding
Tomorrow's meeting of mayors in Canberra must deliver a commitment to finally unfreeze the $6 billion for water-saving infrastructure works which were provided by the Coalition.
South Australians betrayed by Rudd Labor on broadband
The broadband betrayal of South Australians by the Rudd Labor Government has been exposed on the eve of the Australian Council of Local Government meeting in Canberra tomorrow.
Boys thinking it's OK to hit girls demands ongoing community education
A new study finding 1 in 3 teenage boys think it’s “no big deal to hit a girl” is evidence that the “Violence Against Women: Australia says No” campaign should have been maintained by the Rudd Government.
Reports of whaling fleet departure exposes Garrett's $4 Million diversion
Tonight’s news that the Japanese whaling fleet is reported to have set out for the hunting season reveals Peter Garrett’s multi-million whaling package was rushed out as an attempted diversion.
Remembering HMAS Sydney II
The Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Personnel and Assisting Shadow Minister for Defence Bob Baldwin will attend a Naval service at the Australian War Memorial on Wednesday to mark the 67th anniversary of the loss of HMAS Sydney II.
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