Jim Chalmers to confirm first back-to-back federal budget surpluses in more than 15 years
Category: ALP Government,
The Prime Minister says he has appointed an antisemitic envoy and will soon appoint an islamophobia envoy, because the population does not understand the complexity and seriousness apparent in a perceived threat to Australia’s social cohesion. But the boot is on the other foot. He and his government have shown an abysmal lack of understanding or perhaps wilful blindness to the causes of misplaced anger with racist overtones. Defacing war memorials and attacking the offices of members of parliament, which I do not condone, are protests against our government for not sanctioning Israel for its gross violations of international law.
The Australian Government has at last grudgingly admitted that Australian-based companies are supplying parts and components to Israel for its F-35 Lightning jets which are systematically destroying human life and buildings in Gaza. But it has not yet admitted that the supply of such components contravenes the Arms Trade Treaty of 2014, which Australia has ratified
Australia supplies Israel with weapons of genocide, breaches law
The Albanese Government is crook. Real crook. Losing its base crook.
Not as crook as the Coalition, mind you, but Morrison’s was the most corrupt government in Australia’s 124-year history — so that’s not really the sturdiest of yardsticks.
Source: Albanese is captured by fossil fuels, just like Morrison before him – The Shot
Multinational defence companies have lined up to fund advertisements which demonstrated their patriotic commitment to AUKUS with the support of the South Australia Government.
Each of the defence companies listed maintains a profitable involvement in both military and civilian projects. The KBR engineering company of Houston emphasizes a benign involvement in Australian civilian engineering projects like the Snowy Mountains upgrade and the Adelaide to Darwin Railway. This company is more deeply involved in the military sector globally.
Source: Australian Futures: Bringing AUKUS Out of Stealth Mode – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The world’s biggest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, has deleted from its website details about Australia’s key role in building F-35 fighter jets, which Israel is using to bomb Gaza.
Source: Lockheed Martin hides Australia’s complicity in Gaza bombings
A CFMEU analysis of Jobs & Skills Australia occupation and internet job advertisements data busts the myth peddled by employer groups that there is a worker shortage which must be addressed through migration.
The vast majority of building and construction-related jobs have an indicative vacancy rate below 1%.
In February, there were just 56 ads for plasters – a profession employing 27,600 people nationally.
There are 30,000 bricklayers and stonemasons employed in Australia, yet only 111 job ads, which indicates a vacancy rate of 0.4%.
Vacancies for plumbers, tilers, fencers, carpenters and joiners, insulation and home improvement installers were all lower than 1%.
CFMEU National Secretary Zach Smith said:
“We have exposed the blatant lie that Australia is suffering from a tradie shortage that must be fixed through migration.
Source: New figures destroy Australia’s tradie shortage myth – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia believes Israel should abide by a top United Nations court’s “binding” ruling that its military assault in southern Gaza must stop, a senior minister says.
Et tu, Mark Dreyfus
If Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’ refusal to drop the McBride prosecution wasn’t bad enough, his cabinet colleague Marles’ concealment of the Afghanistan oversight report is a new low for the Albanese government.
Not only does Marles’ repeated defiance of Senate orders based on non-existent “advice” constitute contempt of Parliament, his obfuscation to the Royal Commission shows a similarly contemptuous attitude towards the ultimate avenue of government transparency available under the Australian democratic model.
All this with the aim of perverting the outcome of a criminal trial that jailed the only person yet to be held accountable for Afghanistan war crimes – the whistleblower.
McBride’s lawyer, Mark Davis, announced an appeal against Mossop’s rulings “on the meaning of duty” moments after his client was marched out of court to jail. According to Davis, “This is an issue of national importance, indeed international importance, that a Western nation has such a narrow definition of duty.”
We can only speculate at this stage what role the Defence Minister’s handling of the Afghanistan war crimes oversight report might play in that appeal.
Source: Richard Marles concealed war crimes report, denying justice for David McBride – Michael West
We’ve had the ‘other‘ budget, the ‘dirty‘ budget, and the ‘inflation-fighting‘ budget, but with a budget surplus of $9.3B, where are the subsidies for households, particularly low-income and rentals to electrify with rooftop solar, air, conditioners for heating and cooling and to get rid of our gas stoves?
Source: Brown Budget glosses over climate as temperatures rise, ice melts – Michael West
It’s time we reckoned with what it means to become a corporatocracy. Our governments exist to enact the desires of their corporate masters. Some of these politicians, like Madeleine King, appear to do so with alacrity, while others appear lost in the perceived demands of party and pressure groups. The end result will be an uninhabitable world.
Source: Corporatocracy – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It will be game on for anti-corruption campaigners and supporters of whistleblowers during the next federal election campaign and we won’t be supporting Labor, the Liberals or the Nationals. But we will be highlighting their lies and corruption during the election campaign and David McBride will be part of that whether he is in jail or out of jail.
Source: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese uses a shotgun to kill a canaryKangaroo Court of Australia
Australia has entered into a toxic agreement that can only leave us – and the planet – worse off than the sum of our greatest fears.
Grassroots anti-AUKUS campaign, Labor Against War, has called on the Federal Labor Government to come clean about just how much it is pouring into US and UK coffers to rebuild their ageing nuclear shipyards, both of which build nuclear-armed submarines.
Our lot is of course four of the current 50 odd naysayers, namely the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It is now over two weeks since Prime Minister Albanese made his announcement that Australia was considering recognition of the State of Palestine. Were Australia to do so, that might just be the trigger needed for others to step up. How much “considering” does Anthony and his team need to do?
Source: “Considering” recognition of the State of Palestine – Pearls and Irritations
With Australian soldiers returning from fighting alongside Israeli forces, it’s questionable if the Labor Government will investigate possible war crimes, writes Bilal Cleland.
WHILE WE HAVE long discriminated against First Nations people, we have been open to those who look like “us”, White European colonists, being somewhat too accepting of backgrounds.
Even the most relative right-wing elements in the ALP should be relatively Left on the broader spectrum. We all need to see ourselves as part of a ‘broad Left’, and in this sense having common cause. Once we agree on this perhaps we can truly ‘move forward together’.
Source: The ALP – Arguing for a Minimum Program – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The process is almost complete. The Australian Defence Force’s integration into the US military to serve the needs of Washington has been announced, albeit without announcement, this week.
Source: Washington Syndrome: Australia’s sovereignty sell-out hidden in plain sight – Michael West
If all goes well for investors the Australian public will end up breaking the corporate code of ‘markets rule’ by keeping unprofitable business functioning and jobs going. That’s the cost of being ‘Made in Australia’.
The moral of this tale? Boards and lenders should treat government predictions as scribble pads and do their own deep-down, on-ground research.
Source: Future Made in Australia? China and Indonesia are listening, nickel and dime – Michael West
While we might still have two older white men in change at the next election, one hopefully will be able to sell policies with positivity and vision while the other still apparently seeks a return to the days and practices of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government. If so, it might be a really interesting contest of ideas – at last!
Source: Remember when they had vision – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Declassified Australia can reveal that the Defence Department has started obscuring munitions-specific export data for Israel that it was previously willing to release. This occurred in its response to the most recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Source: Secrets of the Weapons Trade
The Defence Department and the ADF should keep secrets important to protect our national security. But that doesn’t mean everything they do should be secret. Rex Patrick on the cost of needless secrecy.
Source: The cost of needless secrecy on nuclear. What’s the scam? – Michael West
Government officials are using disappearing text messages to circumvent scrutiny, threatening transparency and risking democracy. Rex Patrick exposes a dangerous practice ignored by the PM.
The senseless and cruel deportation of Australians, many of whom have spent decades with their families here, will be a shameful stain on Albanese’s legacy, Gerry Georgatos writes.
Source: Albanese Government is complicit in the cruel deportation of Australians
How Albanese doesn’t swallow his tongue as he vociferously demands “full accountability” from Israel for the killing of Zomi Frankcom yet remains silent on 32,000 other killings is anybody’s guess. He waved his metaphorical fist at Netanyahu and told of Australia’s “outrage” at Zomi’s death. But Albanese left out the bit about many Australians’ outrage at the indiscriminate killing of 32,000 innocent Palestinians; not just one of our own.
Still kicking around in the rumpus room of their collective imagination, the ALP is content to sit like an eclipse over the uninspiring centre-right blob of small ideas hanging around like a miasma since Howard. Like their major party predecessors, neglecting the same urgent problems, Labor no longer serves in a people-facing capacity, callously ignorant to the public interest, arrogantly self-entitled to the power they covet on the two-party see-saw. And that simply won’t cut it anymore. The electoral reality, with minor parties and independents growing from the grassroots, tells a different story. The events of the 2022 election won’t be an isolated case. Australians now have options to help take their democracy back from the ground up.
Source: A ‘small target’ government in a big moment – The Shot
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is one of several Western leaders who have provided political and material support of the Israeli government and military over the past five months as their bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, but on Monday he became the first to be referred to the International Criminal Court for being an “accessory to genocide.”
Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.
A botched system upgrade has created a backlog of parliamentary expense claims that won’t be made public until later this year, writes Belinda Jones.
Source: Transparency in limbo as MP expense data held from public
Last chance for Julian Assange. It is time for Albanese to put his words into action.
As Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is spearheading the new laws to criminalise doxing, it is in the realm of public interest to dox Mark over his own involvement in doxing.
Source: What’s the Scam with Mark Dreyfus and doxing laws? – Michael West
Does Australia’s government treat Jews and Palestinians differently, both in foreign policy and at home? Defunding the UNWRA is the latest example of double standards and puts Australia at further risk of breaching the Genocide Convention. Farah Abdurahman on aid cuts, false allegations and fake chants.
David Littleproud is in batting for 1.5% of his electorate, and the LNP is fighting for less than 5% and yelling “class warfare”? The Greens say the changes to the cuts aren’t fair enough. Will it pass the test of “he says and she says” in the Senate?
That’s what it is! Nothing but class warfare! Again we see that politics is being played with empty rhetoric, slogans that imply something good is really something bad.
Source: Class warfare! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As the civilian death toll in Gaza exceeds 25,500 Palestinians, at least 10,400 of whom were children, the Australian Government reaffirms its position in a statement almost entirely focused on Hamas that it took two weeks to curate. Farah Abdurahman reports.
. This government can’t pretend it is any different now, it must accept that its actions are motivated by different reasons and must be prepared to face a reckoning at the ballot box by people that watched this Labor government backing a genocide across the grain of public opinion, betraying the proud legacy of its party to deliver something that is against everything we stand for.
Source: Labor’s cowardice on Israel makes a mockery of its legacy – The Shot
In 1948, Australian Labor foreign minister Doc Evatt was instrumental in convincing the United Nations to recognize Israel. Today the ALP continues his legacy by ignoring Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
Source: The Australian Labor Party Has Always Been Loyal to Israel
In 1987, then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke pledged that “by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty”.
Hewson’s final paragraph is:
In commenting on the release of the UN report, Secretary-General António Guterres said 2024 would be a “tough” year, but “it must be the year that we break out of this quagmire”. This should certainly be the case for Australia. It is time to address the hollowness and inadequacy of our democracy and its debate.
How true.
Source: Breaking out of the Quagmire – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Israel was up in arms calling out Foul & Bias why? Senator Wong wasn’t lead around by the nose by Israel. 1) She visited Occupied East Jerusalem 2) She visited the Occupied West Bank. Why has adjective “illegally” been removed from the real descriptive of these territories and by whose order?
Wait till the next election and see the effort Israel’s Lobby puts in to influence our Democracy
Australia has now supplied $46 million in humanitarian aid since the conflict escalated following October 7 attacks by Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the federal government.
Public forests are worth far more for carbon storage and tourism than they are for logging, so why do we log them? It is time to remove the political protection for this dinosaur industry. It’s time for ministers Plibersek and Sharpe to step in to protect threatened species and step up to end this sham RFA.
Source: Recent court decision a travesty for threatened species like the koala
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signed up Australia for another US war on false pretences. Australia’s history is now tainted with the stigma of support for genocide. Michael West with this anti-war oped.
The judgments have effectively turned Australian wildlife protection back to the “dark ages” with decisions relying on assessments allowing current forestry operations undertaken as far back as 1997. Current peer-reviewed published scientific research on exponentially increasing localized extinction and risks can be ignored.
Source: ‘Environmental vandals’: Labor must step up on forest and wildlife loss
In the International Court of Justice in The Hague, South Africa has filed suit against Israel for committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Charges of genocide by South Africa include documentation of Israel’s killing of thousands of women and children, destruction of homes, denial to a population of water, food, power and medical supplies, the expulsion and displacement of citizens of Gaza.
Source: Hypocrisy as Australian Foreign Policy: oppose Russia, ignore Israel – Pearls and Irritations
If Labor fails at the next election – particularly to a politician such as Peter Dutton – there will be little point in Labor arguing that the times were against us. Labor will have – already has – squandered its time and its opportunities. It needs leadership of guts and vision, not timidity, caution and mortal terror of offending anyone.
Source: Plodding Labor will rue its missed opportunities – Pearls and Irritations
Great Deal! That we’d pay was seen coming from the moment AUKUS was first announced by the bankrupt UK and the economically struggling US whispering to Scott Morrison to doublecross the French.
A newly released Congressional Research Service report confirms that Australian funds will be used to support the United States Navy’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine program. The Government has sunk Labor’s nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation pledges. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling explain.
Source: Nuke policy quietly nuked: Australia to fund US nuclear weapon delivery program – Michael West
As Defence Minister, Richard Marles is uninspiring. He’s not across his brief. His recent statement saying Australia will not be taking US or UK nuclear waste under the AUKUS program is plainly wrong and contradicted by his own Department. Rex Patrick reports.
Source: Marles is wrong – Australia is taking US and UK nuclear waste! – Michael West
Migrants are not people to this government or, sadly, this population. They’re a tool. A gold mine. A GDP boost. Pauline Hanson was never smart enough to add that level of “nuance” to her politics, but it is what she always meant. Hanson has always been pro-migration if it’s white people from wealthy countries. In other words, Labor has adopted One Nation rhetoric and is building policy that, while One Nation will inevitably claim isn’t enough, is in the direction that they want to see it.
Migrants are not the problem in this country. They’re not the cause of our economic challenges, the cost of living, or the housing crisis. In fact, they’re quite often all that stands between us and things becoming so much worse.
So fuck Anthony Albanese and Clare O’Neil for seeing their fading poll numbers and actually going with “Fuck off, we’re full.” What utterly gutless, dishonest, cruel and worthless politicians they’ve turned out to be.
Source: Labor is parroting One Nation immigration policy now – The Shot
In October, MWM revealed that the Australian Submarine Agency had spent $15.2 million taxpayer dollars on travel over two years. But wait, there’s more to that story. Much more.
Source: The scam within a scam. US, UK officials are flying high on the AUKUS teat. – Michael West
The emptiness of modern Labor is now on full display: maligning refugees, promoting fossil fuels, tinkering around the edge of social crisis, pandering to the wealthy, condoning mass murder, adopting policies of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.
In the shadows COP28 Climate Summit and mega-merger news from Woodside and Santos, Santos made a secret deal with government to extend emissions
Roll on emissions
The problem with all of this is that the CCS technology that is intended to store carbon emissions from the Barossa Field into the depleted Bayu-Undan field in Timor-Leste waters doesn’t actually work. Gallagher’s letter says as much.
Santos will proceed with the project, not dealing with their emissions. They’ll dangle CCS technology around as a future emissions solution and they’ll also use it to delay expenditure on remediating Bayu-Undan.
And they’ve got the Government captured – hook, line, and sinker.
Prime Minister Albanese has taken great pains to assure Tokyo that Australia would continue as “a reliable supplier of energy for Japan.” It is, he says, “a very good relationship.”
At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai meanwhile, Minister Bowen is in lockstep with the Japanese spruiking “abatement,” which is code for CCS, as the miracle tool that will allow massive carbon emissions to continue in an overheating world.
That Australian Government commitment sets up Santos CEO Gallagher nicely for his merger discussions with Woodside.
Meanwhile, the Earth burns … and carbon capture and storage still don’t work.
olddogthoughts 
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