Category: Australia’s Shame
Bushfires have wiped out about half the koalas living on a coastal reserve in New South Wales, experts estimated on Friday, as a record number of intense fires rage around the Australian state.
via NSW Bushfires Wipe Out Half Of Koala Colony, Threaten More | HuffPost Australia
Has anyone noted there is no mention of Vietnam in this speech in which we blindly followed the US into to fight the good war against “Communism”? China wasn’t involved in that war which we lost and drafted our young men to fight. Did we ever hear the LNP Government say sorry? They took us to Aghanistan, Iraq and Syria all at the behest of the USA. Australia has never been a committed member of our region. (ODT)
The alliance between the United States and Australia is a “mateship,” a relationship that began on the battlefields of France a century ago and continued into Afghanistan, Reynolds said. “But it is a bond that much be renewed with every generation.” in meeting the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Welcome to Australia Morrison’s “Where the bloody hell are you? ” is now ” Philausophy”. “We will make you pay” (ODT)
We have a Minister in Peter Dutton who seems obsessed with sadistically inflicting pain and suffering. The Biloela family could have stayed at home, contributing to the community while all their matters went through the courts.
Instead, two innocent little girls have been treated so badly that we have almost certainly breached our obligations under the UN Convention on Children, while they have probably been as traumatised for life as have the victims of institutional sex abuse.
And the cost to the taxpayer has been exorbitant – certainly more than enough to settle all the excluded refugees in jobs and contributing to the economy!
Australia – the Lucky Country? – I don’t think so!
Australia – the land of the Fair Go? – Only if you are white and wealthy!
via The backlash of change – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Excessive government secrecy and repression of whistleblowers and journalists is on the rise. This is a government which persecutes its citizens for doing the right thing. This oped, written befittingly by Name Withheld for Security Reasons, identifies another target whose name is also withheld for security reasons.
Whistleblowers: Australian intelligence officer in trouble with the law
Right to Know Coalition is run out of News Corp’s Sydney headquarters at 2 Holt Street, Surry Hills, and all its material is authorised by News Corp’s corporate affairs, policy and government relations supremo, infamous former Daily Telegraph editor Campbell “Dead Fish” Reid (note the below).
News Corp only began to express concerns about “press freedom” under the Coalition Government when one of its journalists, Annika Smethurst, had her house raided by the Australian Federal Police in June, shortly after the last Federal election. Now, the “Right to Know Coalition” has sprung into action.
Independent Australia strongly supports press freedom. But it does not support a campaign led by a self-serving, amoral and deeply corrupt organisation. An organisation tightly in the grip of a foreign billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, who has so many unanswered questions about his own opaque behaviour.
So much for “your right to know”.
via Blacking out your Right to Know
Now that’s an editorial banner worth praise and article worth reading (ODT)
The least Australia can do, for starters, is to censure Trump for colluding in Erdoğan’s invasion of Syria; giving the green light to his genocidal plans towards the Kurds. Other nations are already applying sanctions on Turkey. It is imperative we also take a stand against Erdoğan’s invasion before it is too late.
Prevailing on your BFF Donald Trump to resume control of the skies over North-East Syria would be a start while an international peace-keeping team could follow. You can send a team to the Golan Heights on Israel’s border. Surely you can also send a team where it’s needed most.
via Send a peace-keeping team where it’s needed most, ScoMo – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We, Australia, now have a legion of Veterans from the growing list of America’s wars. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. With the exception of the Vietnam War, which had the overlay of the National Service Draft Lottery attached to it, most of the military folk that we sent to that steady treadmill of USA war-making, were volunteers.
While only our Veterans can speak for themselves, I very much doubt that they joined up to fight for America.
We should not have been in Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. We should decline the invitation (order) to involve ourselves with Iran.
The lives of our service personnel are precious, and those lives should not be wasted in yet another possible war that has nothing to do with us.
It is our children and grandchildren of military age who always pay the price. Politicians like ScoMo or Trump and their historical predecessors, never do.
via From Vietnam to Iran: Australian Cannon Fodder? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Such statements would have been accommodated in the Europe of the 1930s, whose obsession with matters of ethnic cleansing did lead to an experiment of mass murder as yet unequalled in the annals of human bestiality.
Such views as those expressed at the Third Demographic Summit in Budapest betray the understanding of men in retreat, desperate figures whose ideas are running out of steam and, in due course, a pulse. Let us hope that their end is not as calamitous as the conditions they are proposing.
Australia the biggest coal exporter is the biggest enabler that’s a plan (ODT)
via Australia to attend climate summit empty-handed despite UN pleas to ‘come with a plan’
This is the context for the man who murdered dozens of Muslims in New Zealand.
The Australian man did so in the name of a fascist ideology. If he had joined the Australian government, perhaps he wouldn’t be in jail. He could support the large-scale murder of Muslims in numerous countries, on a bigger scale. If he used the right words, he could applaud the policies responsible for the mass murder of Muslims in Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, and more. Then he wouldn’t be considered an extremist. He could fit into the mainstream Australian political spectrum. If he had developed a political career where he fought to boost our military exports to Saudi Arabia, he might be able to retire and be considered a “moderate”.
Being complicit in the threatened murder of millions of Muslims is just business as usual in Australia. It is part of the normal political spectrum. As our record makes clear, a basic premise of our political mainstream is that Muslim lives do not have any value.
When the slaughter of Muslims in New Zealand exits the front pages, Australian foreign policy will continue on as it has. We will continue to be complicit in the murder of Muslims. It just won’t be news anymore.
via Murdering Muslims Is Not Extremism. In Australia, It’s Business As Usual – New Matilda
We screwed Timor and are trying to keep it a secret but we can’t stop this well done Australia (ODT)
Big-spending China Inc waits patiently in East Timor, on Australia’s doorstep
via
Also not mentioned: an unusual personal appeal from the president of the Australian Medical Association to Scott Morrison last September to remove families and children from Nauru, preferably to the Australian mainland, to safeguard their physical and mental health.
Guardian Australia revealed Tony Bartone wrote to Morrison because of “a recent groundswell of concern and agitation across the AMA membership and the medical profession about conditions on Nauru, and the escalation in reports of catastrophic mental and physical health conditions being experienced by the asylum seekers, especially children”. The AMA is standing behind the medevac regime, and urging the government to properly fund the work of the independent health advisory panel that provides the advice on medical transfers.
AdvertisementThe fate of the medevac regime rests with one parliamentarian, the Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie, who has told the government she wants the Senate inquiry to play out before she makes a decision. Nobody really knows which way Lambie will jump, but she’s the make-or-break player.
Hearings associated with the inquiry begin next week. The critical vote is expected in November.
Australia accuses China of human rights abuses because of it’s re-education programs yet the Conservatives in the LNP not only want to rid us of multiculturalism are anti- safe schools and are ready to imprison asylum seekers for life. Australia’s shame.(ODT)
Asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea are self-harming and attempting suicide following the introduction of controversial medical transfer laws because they see it as the fastest way of getting to Australia, the Department of Home Affairs has told federal MPs.
via Department of Home Affairs claims PNG asylum seekers attempting suicide after Medevac
We really need to know
Statistics are windows on change. Despite our criticisms, the bureau’s biennial income and wealth survey gives us the best view of inequality we’ve got, but large areas remain foggy.
In research for the Evatt Foundation, we have used data from the Bureau of Statistics, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and national accounts to estimate that, for the first time in more than half a century, the richest 10% of households own more than half of Australia’s private wealth.
The Evatt Foundation’s results seem to stand up well, but governments should really be producing better data themselves.
Inequality and its harmful effects on economic output and stability are growing. We owe it to ourselves to find out by how much.
Closing down Democracy. I think we are turning Chinese and China is becoming more Western and Morrison doesn’t like it(ODT)
Trying on a Trump Morrison is for Captain GetUp’s sexual smearing of Zali but Down on GetUp. (ODT)
China might be using more coal but it’s making the greatest efforts not to. Leaving Australia out in the coal (ODT)
But his hard-line stance during negotiations angered some Pacific leaders, including Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.
He said Australia’s position had weakened the Pacific’s position on the climate change, adding it was “disappointing that we could not achieve a unanimous consensus”.
“While there has been a great deal of agreement, it is clear that there are differences of opinion, emphasis and approach between the island nations and New Zealand, on the one hand, and Australia on the other,” he said.
Mr Bainimarama said he would make attempts to persuade Australia to make a more rapid transition from coal to energy sources that “do not contribute to climate change” when he visits next month.
via Pacific Islands Forum: China’s climate pitch angers Australia, US
“Even though UAP did not win a seat, it is clear the big spending had an important influence on the election outcome, and this is influence not by sheer force of ideas, or mobilisation in terms of people, but by money itself, and I think that undermines the fairness of the electoral contest”.
The Melbourne university professor, who is an advocate for caps on election spending for political actors and third parties, said the case study also pointed to the outsized influence of the fossil fuel industry on Australian elections.
He said it was self-evident that Palmer was a mining magnate, and electoral records show fossil fuel companies are among the largest contributors to the major parties.
via
Australia’s Shame characterised by Alan Jones (ODT)
However New Zealand’s primary renewable energy sources are hydro and geothermal power. About 80 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity comes from renewable energy, compared to about 20 per cent of Australia’s.
The broadcaster previously attracted wide condemnation over his comments about former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, which he later apologised for. He said she should be “shoved in a chaff bag” and that her father had died “of shame”.
Alan Jones tells Scott Morrison to ‘shove a sock down throat’ of Jacinda Ardern
and
Jones continues Ardern criticism despite rebuke from Morrison
Posted
Australia’s Shame Our LNP Government ignores the Knowledge Data and Science and simply change the narrative. It did the same with Asylum Seekers and has redefined thos arriving by boat as”illegals” It has shamed this country as much as the White Australia Policy once did. Removing “climate change Crisis” from the Pacificislands draft declaration along with coal doesn’t change the data or facts but shows Australia is in the business of ideologically politicizing the document to conveniently denying the science and disregarding the lives of the people of the pacific. This government since 2013 has been increasingly distancing itself from our region even NZ and becoming a state of America. The LNP has significantly opened the door to China with their unconcerned approach on the Pacific. (ODT)
“Tuvalu’s prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, told Guardian Australia at a dawn fishing trip on Thursday in the lead-up to the leaders’ retreat that it looked as though Pacific leaders would not be successful in getting the language of “climate change crisis” in the communique, with the draft most likely to describe the current situation as a “climate change reality”.
Australia has succeeded in removing all but one reference to coal on the draft communique of the Pacific Islands Forum, and is expected to be able to get that removed on Thursday as Pacific leaders including Scott Morrison meet to debate the text.
Sources familiar with the negotiations on the communique, which is used for regional policy making, told Guardian Australia that Australia has been working hard during negotiations to soften the language on climate change and has succeeded in many mentions.
Just Cloning Around (OTD)
Much has been written about Andrew Hastie’s idiotic comments this week comparing the rise of China to that of Nazi Germany. Having James Patterson come out in support just added to the Nazi theme with his unnerving likeness to the stereotypical Hitler Youth image.
Tony thinks Jesus is still top dog, backed up by the military might of the English-speaking Judeo-Christian Western world crusaders.
Scott Morrison’s foray into the matter was not helpful when he relegated China to “customer” status.
And they wonder why our relationship with China is at an “all-time low”.
JUMP! HOW HIGH WE CRY? AS HIGH AS WE SAY IF YOU WAN US OIL (ODT)
Key points:
The United States has been trying to convince allies to join an international coalition to protect shipping routes
The requests have come following Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker
Australian ministers vowed to keep the country’s foreign policy relationship in lock-step with the US
The casualisation of university teaching is not a stop-gap solution. It is central to the business strategy of modern Australian universities.
At graduation ceremonies at the end of the year, universities will display their students’ achievements to friends and family and give them an opportunity to thank the staff. Most of the people who have taught them won’t be there.
Adam Goodes has been wronged by this nation. He is a man of calibre. He is a man who can improve this nation — if White Australia listens to him.
Don’t dismiss watching this film just because you don’t follow sport or AFL. It is not comfortable, but it is important.
Adam Goodes for governor-general?
The man nominated by Trump to be the new Secretary of Homeland Security told Fox News that these children are only going to grow up to be criminals so we might as well leave them locked up at the border.
But Trump wants more … and he turns to Australia for inspiration.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton only managed to get three words into a substantive interview on Insiders last weekend before he started talking about the Opposition.
The question was about who had leaked classified documents from his portfolio. But his answer was all about how Anthony Albanese was only asking questions about the leak because he was trying to distract everyone from Labor’s problems.
This would have to rate somewhere between “marvellous” and “magnificent” on the irony-o-meter, since the only thing anyone in the Government seems to want to talk about at the moment, particularly this week, is the Opposition.
You know? The mob that actually lost the election, not the mob who won it and who are supposed to be springing into action with plans to lead the country forward.
The main topics this week have been the Government’s planned tax cuts, the imminent collapse (according to Mr Dutton) of Australia’s migration regime as a result of a Federal Court decision about the legislation on medical evacuations from Nauru and Manus Island, and the ongoing battle over the future in the Labor Party and the trade union movement of union official John Setka.
Imran Mohammed just graduated from high school jailed by the LNP for 5 years in Australia a country that stole opportunity from many people for little more than political self -interest rather than National Interest and pride, Australia’s shame. (ODT)
I thought I’d lost all hope when the Australian government forcibly moved me to Manus Island on October 29, 2013. For so long, my life was controlled. It was not mine. I was not allowed to live the way I wanted. I saw what I didn’t want to see, I ate what I didn’t want to eat. I wore clothes that I didn’t want to wear. I heard what I didn’t want to hear. I slept when I didn’t want to sleep. I was treated in a way I didn’t want to be treated and I lived where I didn’t want to live.
olddogthoughts 
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