Category: LNP
Carbon capture and storage, the prohibitively expensive climate mitigation strategy, is back on the Coalition’s agenda. Yet the facts speak for themselves. Of Shell’s total emissions of 656 million tonnes a year, its two CCS plants remove just 5 million tonnes a year from the atmosphere; the few plants in the world only exist because of huge government subsidies; while European oil companies use CCS primarily as a “feel-good” marketing message. Tim Buckley and Clark Butler report.
via Revisiting failed climate strategy of CCS renders investors speechless – Michael West
It can’t do the same with fossil fuels or for the betterment of the nation (ODT)
LNP has plans to offer superfund management totally to Private Equity firms despite the fact Trade Unions have provided their members with the best outcomes and lowest fees. (ODT)
The Government has grovelled to its billionaire donors yet again, killing a Senate amendment to force the richest Australians to disclose their financial statements. Michael West reports on the crusade by independent senator Rex Patrick to hold the Morrison Government and its corporate mates such as the Packers, Murdochs and Lowys to account while putting property giant LendLease to the sword over its JobKeeper rorts.
American Economy is in Intensive Care (ODT)
But with rates now at zero, money printing — or quantitative easing as it is called in polite circles — is all they have left.
It’s cash that’s being created out of thin air.
And a huge portion of it is being poured straight into stock markets regardless of what is happening out there in the real world.
The graph above tells the story. In the past few months, America’s central bank has bought more than $US3 trillion ($4.37 trillion) worth of “assets”.
These include US government debt, mortgage debt and other debt securities, using cash it has generated out of thin air, simultaneously driving interest rates down and flooding the economy with cash.
It has spent more than double the amount outlaid at the height of the global financial crisis. And, it appears, we’ve only just begun.
The biggest side effect, however, is that wealth becomes more concentrated among the already wealthy.
If you own a house or stocks or bonds, you’ve become rich without even trying.
via The secret behind the booming stock market in the face of the coronavirus crisis – ABC News
The LNP Piss UP sponsored by CH9 needs to be taken off the front pages (ODT)
It’s not easy being a politician. Every day there are challenges that the average punter doesn’t have to face.
Just take the dilemma that Stuart Robert, Dan Tehan and Simon Birmingham had to face last year when deciding whether to go from Canberra to Sydney for a Liberal Party piss up. They had booked their flights and had their staffers book them into an upmarket Sydney hotel when some pesky intern in the minister’s office had the temerity to ask “but who’s going to pay?”
via Heads they win, Tails you lose! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
On the other hand, as China increasingly looks to be more self-sufficient in food and raw materials, Australia will be first in line to disappear from China’s supply chain.
Australia is a country which has little interest in being an independent nation and therefore is in a paralysed state of infantile dependence, incapable of looking after itself.
“Constructive discussions” with Trump is a moronic concept, if not oxymoronic
via Trump and Morrison: A love affair imperiling Australia’s future
Australia needs a strong post-secondary education system. Vocational education and training is under-resourced and ideologically damaged. The starting points for reform need to be with its curriculum and connection with upper secondary education. Employers, employee organisations, and educators together with government need to work cooperatively so that our education sector can contribute to efforts to transition our economy. Policy warriors and slogans are unhelpful.
via JobMaker: sloganeering won’t fix a VET system gouged by profiteers – Michael West
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that both Joyce and Christensen are still in our parliament and were returned with increased majorities at the last election : what does that say about us as a nation !
There have been unsubstantiated rumours floating around that alleged the parents of Hawke’s wife Amelia were onboard the Ruby Princess along with some friends from the Hillsong Church.
Regardless, the growing influence of the Pentacostals in our government is of grave concern, as is their growing influence amongst our young people.
Why was the Colour Conference allowed to continue? Have any cases of coronavirus been linked to it? Who made phone calls to allow the Ruby Princess to dock after initially being refused permission? What charitable works does Hillsong undertake to avoid paying tax? And why are people like Alex Hawke and Stuart Robert Ministers?
News Corp has certainly been fuelling Sinophobia as it did Islamophobia and anti African sentiments yet we have Racial vilification laws and the goverenment simply stands by and watches. (ODT)
Here are some recent examples of racism outbreaks:
people who appear to be Asian in origin being abused at supermarkets;
a Malaysian student being denied rental accommodation;
the Chinese being blamed for the virus;
Chinese restaurants seeing a marked drop off in patronage;
students at some schools being mocked as “Coronas” in the playground (my son has witnessed this personally);
my niece – of Indian ancestry – and another young girl being abused on a train in Melbourne — the abuse was about them “being the problem” that led the abuser to have to take his children out of school;
snide remarks being made to people of general “Asian” appearance; and
talkback hosts allowing these comments to go to air without regard for community outcomes.
But the surplus is the goal screw the journey. New Start and Aged Pensions need to go Josh; (ODT)
The Coalition’s ‘global headwinds’ excuse as wage growth hits 22-year low
The LNP has done nothing for infrastructure since it won power in 2013. It held back funds from Victoris despite the Labor election win. Now the Victorian Liberals are politicizing the work that is in progress. LNP lack of management skills are revealing themselves daily. The reality they are looking extremely bad and increasingly worse for the coming 3 years. Australia why did you simply listen to private media scooping up $80 mill in election advertising? Australis was the 2nd best world economy in 2013 and the the LNP took over. (ODT)
The Morrison government will launch a powerful inquiry into Australia’s migration program, opening the door to further cuts in immigrant numbers and moves to push more migrants into the regions to take pressure off congested areas in Sydney and Melbourne.
Are we on the way to transitioning from a migrant settler nation to a guest worker society? But if there is a shortfall in forecast NOM, what would be the implications for the Prime Minister’s job creation pledge and for its ten-year tax plan?
via Net migration levels increase under Coalition Government
THIS GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO BELIEVE SCIENTISTS AND WE ARE SUFFERING IN CONSEQUENCE!
*In discussing translations of the Bible, Matthew Vines indicates that the sort of same sex union which was referred to as unacceptable in the Bible was in fact pederasty or paedophilia, mistranslated, however, as homosexuality.
via When ignorance is a priority – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Hockey is the only thing different (ODT)
So there it is. Clearly, the economy is sinking, and anyone who points this out, to wit ALP backbencher Anne Aly, will cop it. When she suggested that the economy looked as if it was going into a recession, she was angrily reprimanded by Finance Minister Cormann for making assertions that were: “… recklessly irresponsible and wrong and show that Labor has learned absolutely nothing from the recent election outcome”. Cormann is a verbose master of denial.
The economy is sinking, but where is the lifebuoy?
via The economy is sinking, but where is the lifebuoy? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
So there was a problem a bigger one than they made Peter Slipper face, (ODT)
“Animal Spirits” will be unleashed, ScoMo proclaims, in a dreary rehash of clichés, Monday . The PM copies The Donald, conflating Keynes’ phrase with consumer confidence and laissez-faire economics. Why? “Animal spirits” will roar like a lion when we release the cage of “regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to businesses.” But why so late?
The Coalition has had six years to deregulate. Yet it still can provide no detail. Nor point to any record of success. Perhaps it’s just too modest. In the news currently is Private Security Company, Paladin, awarded $423 million to garrison Manus, without having to worry about an open tender. Or there’s the $444 million quietly slipped to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation a mob of Liberal mates headed up by a former CBA chairman, Dr John M Schubert.
Then there’s Fossil-fuel Energy minister, Angus Taylor, who’s held talks with federal environment officials over an issue at the centre of an illegal land-clearing action brought by the same department against a company part-owned by him and his brother, reports Guardian Australia. We should cheer the healthy disregard for regulation and the way the government appears to back the Taylor family in its alleged quest to bend the rules to help the Taylors to a better life.
Making Students Pay Forward not investing in their future but ours. (ODT)
The Money Managers the LNP
More than 136,000 young Australians are soon to join the ranks of 617,000 former students who are repaying their Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) – formerly known as HECS debt – as the income threshold for repaying the debt is slashed to just $45,881.
‘Repay debt for years’: loan changes to hit 136,000 students
IN CASE THERE WAS any doubt about the ties that bind Australia’s top coal lobbyists with the Federal Coalition Government, former Minerals Council of Australia CEO Brendan Pearson has been tapped as a senior advisor to Scott Morrison.
The appointment, revealed in The Australian on Wednesday, shifts Pearson up in the Coalition pecking order from the office of the Minister for Finance, Mathias Cormann, to Morrison’s inner sanctum.
things remain so dire that there is talk of importing gas, either the Australian stuff on sale so cheaply overseas, or supplies from one of our competitors, Qatar.
Back on the farm, our parents, who knew how to provide without running out of anything, would have been scandalised almost beyond words.
Only one-eyed Coalition supporters could construe the deteriorating state of our economy as somehow acceptable, as having nothing to do with the stewardship of the government. Instead, they will likely insist that the Coalition knows what it’s doing, has everything under control, and that we’re all doing fine. They will extract any morsel of ‘good news’ from the economic data to bolster their conclusions.
They will go on insisting that ‘The Coalition is the superior economic manager’, although the evidence inexorably leads to the conclusion: The Coalition can’t manage money.
via The Coalition can’t manage money – » The Australian Independent Media Network
1. ECONOMY TANKS
2. SECURITY STATE RUNS RAMPANT
3. ABC EMASCULATED
4. NEWS CORP KNIFES OPPOSITION AND AXES STAFF
5. ANGUS MISSES EMISSIONS DEADLINE
6. BARNABY AND OTHER COALITION LNPS IN NUCLEAR WAR
7. THE INDIAN JOB
8. STARTING THE BOATS
9. NO TAX CUTS FOR YOU!
Three long years, three crazy weeks, nine national disasters
The biggest lie during the election campaign was that the economy was strong. Now we know how bad things really are
via The government has run the economy into the ground | Greg Jericho | Business | The Guardian
My guess is News Corp was a False Flag the ABC was the real Target (ODT)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, when pressed about Smethurst’s case, was untroubled. Having played the role of fatherly minder of the Australian nation, he was not going to let any alleged breach of security go by. Currently on a visit to the United Kingdom, he expressed little concern about the morning raid on a journalist’s home: “it never troubles me that our laws are being upheld.”
While News Corp has its demonic familiars (Rupert Murdoch’s influence hangs heavily), it was hard to disagree with the premise advanced by a spokesperson. “This raid demonstrates a dangerous act of intimidation towards those committed to telling uncomfortable truths. The raid was outrageous and heavy handed.”
The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, voicing agreement, considered the police raid “an outrageous move that should concern all Australians who value their freedom in an open society.” With confidence, the statement asserted that it was “in the public interest for us to know of any plan for greater powers to monitor our messages.”
Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor of The Australian, saw the raid as an ominous signal to all investigative scribblers. “Welcome to modern Australia – a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government.” But such an Australia was also chugging along merrily before the raid on Smethurst’s home. (Like the unsuspecting priest living in a dystopian surveillance state, the police finally came for them).
Should Assange ever make a return to the country of his birth, he is unlikely to find peace in this US satellite state, with its flimsy public disclosure and whistle-blowing laws, its mirage-like protections. Hunting publishers, journalists and their sources is de rigueur down under.
LNP policy of JOBS & GROWTH seems little more than a scammers slogan (ODT)
Sadly, the lesson for Labor is that policy formulation in advance of an election is a recipe for failure and it seems that the road to electoral success in this country is a bit like reality show, Married at First Sight ; you scheme, tell lies, defame and revile your opposition and pout a lot. If you can also rely on organised persuasive communication from a compliant media you are almost home. But, under our preferential system, you also need as many dodgy preference swap deals as your conscience will permit.
via Who Needs Policies ? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
A mandate to who the fuck knows they had no plan so the banks are overjoyed by the man who voted against the Royal Commission. The good start looks a concern banks are overjoyed and power prices surged (ODT)
Wholesale electricity prices shot up on Monday following a surprise election win by the Coalition on Saturday. Forward trading prices, which set the curve for future quarterly power costs, rose 13 per cent in NSW and shot up about 7 per cent in Victoria once markets opened. (see graph below)
Wholesale electricity prices account for about a third of power bills. Reducing this wholesale price has been a major focus of the Morrison government, which had pledged earlier this month to slash it by up to a quarter. The Age
He didn’t take much of an agenda to the election, so he can start a new term with pretty much a blank page. His campaign was mostly a demolition of Labor, and not much creation.
Morrison’s campaign tool of choice was the hammer and he wielded it relentlessly against Labor. By contrast, Bill Shorten carried around an Ikea flat pack of policy, assembly required. He’d take out his Allen key and start to fit all the pieces together as Morrison smashed away.
via Election Results 2019: Scott Morrison’s rare opportunity to shape the country
Was that all the Coalition has planned for the years ahead?
Frustrated, I looked again for clues, any clues, that might spell out the Coalition’s story, its vision and its intentions for the next three years. I ransacked the entire cupboard looking for more than the few scraps of paper that I had already found.
The cupboard was bare!
via The cupboard was bare! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia’s Industrial relations has been unique in the world and has lagged behind most EU countries. Germany has been progressive since WW2 as has the rest of Europe yet Australia resists any change. Sally McManus should be on all boards and that would mean real progress. (ODT)
An ACTU spokesman said “Sally is not going to be on every board in the country – that’s impossible and ridiculous”.
“Scott Morrison is running a scare campaign because he is desperate.”
The problem with the Liberals and Nationals lining up with ‘crackpots and cranks’ is it’s not a cost-free exercise
Barnaby Joyce’s outrageous behaviour on ABC Radio National has made a Coalition victory next month even more improbable.
BARNABY JOYCE is not an idiot. He is something far worse. He is a moderately intelligent man who falsely believes he is smarter than everyone else.
The world is full of these sort of men. It would be easy to dismiss them, except somehow these dolts seem frequently to find a way of weaseling themselves into positions of importance. And once there, their unfathomable self-confidence, combined with their manifest ineptitude, invariably causes chaos and calamity.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has strongly rejected the conspiracy theory being peddled by Queensland Senate hopeful Gerard Rennick.
The ABC yesterday revealed Mr Rennick’s unconventional views on pre-school, which were shot down by the Prime Minister.
Federal Labor is now calling for Scott Morrison to sack the candidate from his winnable position on the Liberal-National Party Senate ticket.
Mr Rennick last month accused the weather bureau of “rewriting weather records to fit in with the global warming agenda!”
“Our public servants are out of control,” he said on Facebook.
Billions of dollars of tax cuts to big businesses sound good, but they would have taken even more from the bottom line. As for the idea that they’d stimulate more economic activity, I’m yet to read of any CEO announcing that they would have invested more, but the idea that they’d be taxed at 30% rather than 25% if they made an extra billion, so they decided it wasn’t worth it.
No, when someone tells you that the Liberals are good economic managers, you can remind them of the re-opening of the Christmas Island detention centre, only to announce it’s closure a few months later. Although anyone who still believes the old line about the Liberals being good economic managers will probably reply:
“But they’ve saved over a billion dollars by closing it! Imagine how they’ll be able to spend that…”
This PM has always been an Advertising Man a Persuader not a Aider of or an example of public service. Count the cost he’s spending our money $$$$. (ODT)
Taxpayers foot multi-million dollar advertising bill in final days before election is called
Not only are we seeing “captain’s calls” and Ministers jumping overboard but we are seeing a rush to appoint mates to positions, some favours owed others that will help to trip up any government that just might surplant them. (ODT)
Accompanied by the Liberal Party’s IPA stalwart Mitch Fifield, Morrison approached peak unctuousness as he welcomed Ms Buttrose to the top job.
In fact the appointment is a classic example of the dark art of psyops, practiced by this Government’s finest exponent, the Minister for Communications and Arts Mitchell Peter Fifield.
I assume most of the readers of The AIM Network know the meaning of psyops, but for the uninitiated it is characterised by this definition: “Psychological operations (PSYOP) convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behaviour of governments, organisations, groups, and individuals”.
via Twilight of the sods – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Scamming your money to promote herself? (ODT)
Downer was rightly universally condemned for her actions, but think about what her action suggests. Firstly, she considered taxpayers’ funds her own to claim and present (the novelty cheque clearly said the Liberal Party on it and had her image printed on it as well). This betrays how the Liberals think about taxpayers’ funds — the funds belong to them, not the public. Which is why the Libs loathe welfare. Any welfare payment made is effectively less money in the pool for them to rort.
Secondly, under the media cover of wall-to-wall coverage of Cardinal Pell’s conviction of paedophilia charges, the Liberals quietly changed the rules around how sitting MPs can use their taxpayer-funded office expenses for political advertising in the lead-up to the election. Again, this rule change takes taxpayers’ funds and allows them to be used by the Liberal Party for political advertising, something in the past they’d have to pay for themselves. Given that in the Victoria State Election the Liberals ran much of their campaign claiming that the Victoria Labor Government was corrupt for accidentally using taxpayer-paid office staff for campaigning (the red shirts scandal), this is hypocritical in the extreme.
via Wren’s week: Liberal use of taxpayers’ funds and Pell’s support group
Toby Wright, writing for Nine media recently made a comparison between Mick Young, a Minister in the Hawke Government of the 1980’s and Scott’s Government. Young, who neglected to declare a stuffed Paddington Bear at Customs in 1984, was confronted with his crime and promptly stood down from the Ministry until investigations were concluded. Scott’s Government include Ministers that seem to be connected with a mindboggling litany of unethical actions; the current list includes Ministers Cash, Dutton, Cormann, Wilson and former Minister and current Ambassador Hockey. While some of the current scandals surrounding the government commenced before Scott became the Prime Minister, he is not blameless as resignations or ‘career breaks’ could have been requested or enforced while the facts were determined. Scott in contrast continues with his ‘Everything is Awesome’ routine.
Assuming for a second there are people that really do want to enter Parliament to represent their electorate rather than become one of the pigs in the trough, a piece of advice — Scott is not someone you should attempt to emulate; don’t be like Scott.
via This is Scott – » The Australian Independent Media Network
How many times were we told by this government there was no mistake made on our part it was all Thailand’s fault? We also heard the ALP ignored ASIO’s advice on the Medivac Bill from Peter Dutton on 2GB which ASIO has know declared a lie. The current LNP will do anything to hide Homelands and Peter Duttons incompetance. The worst Health Minister has transitioned to being the worst Immigration/Homeland Minister .(ODT)
The Australian Border Force has admitted “human error” by its officers resulted in police being unaware that footballer Hakeem al-Araibi was a refugee before he was issued with a red notice and detained in Bangkok for more than two months.
ABF commissioner Michael Outram said an officer failed to send a “true match notification advice” to the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Home Affairs, which would have alerted them to the fact that he was on a protection visa in Australia.
That fact, once revealed to the AFP the day after Mr al-Araibi was arrested in Thailand, prompted Interpol to cancel the “red notice” issued at the request of Bahrain. Had it been known to the AFP beforehand, the AFP-based Interpol team would not have issued the notice.
via ‘Human error’: Border Force admits it forgot to send crucial email in Hakeem al-Araibi case
Scott Morrison may believe compassion is some kind of affliction, but I believe it is important – just as I believe its absence is a glaring character flaw. And like anyone with any compassion, I was obviously happy to see the Phelps Amendment passed yesterday.
No surprise that in the aftermath of its embarrassing loss, the government has doubled down on its dishonest scare campaign about the poor victims of its abuse. Enthusiastically abetted by a media – who seems wholly uninterested in the fact that the boats never stopped and record numbers of asylum seekers have entered the country by plane under the current Liberal Government – ScumMo et al took their lies and rhetoric to a whole new level.
Of course that probably would have happened anyway (I actually said a few months ago I was waiting for the scare campaigns and partisan headlines to start properly).
via How did we get here? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
