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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Which is pretty cute, coming from the first government in this country’s history to have comprehensively betrayed Australia and its people. Think Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison; think destruction of the environment, the unprecedented damage done to the country’s essential river systems. Think the results of a Banking Royal Commission whose findings are apparently so dire that Morrison refuses to release them until he and his criminal spivs have had an extra three days to spin the story they will try to put to the population.
Think the decline of living standards for ordinary Australians as wages flatline and fail to keep up with rising prices and costs of living; think the huge increase of labour-hire companies who seem to prefer to have foreign visa-holders on their books instead of locals; think the sacking of Australian seafarers who have been replaced by cheap labour from overseas, and finally think the rhetoric around job creation in a landscape where anyone who works just one hour per week is considered ’employed’.
They never understood it, this mob. Worse, they never understood the difference between truth and untruth, or even why there ought to be any difference.
Mundine changes Parties like he does suits. How close a marriage should there be with Murdoch’s Sky News? (ODT)
The Coalition government gave Warren Mundine’s company $220,000 as a grant for his show on cable TV news network Sky News, BuzzFeed News has confirmed.
Mundine was announced this week as the Liberal candidate for the marginal NSW seat of Gilmore at the upcoming federal election. Mundine had previously been the ALP national president, and had later considered a tilt at NSW parliament with the Liberal Democrats. He joined the Liberal Party this week. Advertisement
Before his return to politics, Mundine had been a Sky News host and frequent commentator on the cable news channel. Mundine’s show, Mundine Means Business, was launched in 2017 as a vehicle for showcasing Indigenous businesses, and aired on weekends on Sky.
The show is partly funded through a Commonwealth government grant awarded to Mundine’s business Nyungga Black Group, through a closed non-competitive selection process, according to the grant information.
The grant, running from June 18, 2018 to Aug. 1 this year is for a total of $220,000. The Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the grant was for Mundine’s Sky News show.
Abbott, the Pillock of the Pacific destroyed Radio Australia with his cuts to the ABC. Radio Australia was the heart beat in the Pacific for over 75 years. Now they want it back and handballing it to the likes of Murdoch or any other commercial enterprise none of who want it or understand what to do about it. (ODT)
The Morrison government is set to hand $17.1m to the commercial networks to provide TV programming to Pacific nations but the TV industry says it did not seek the funds and does not know what content to provide.
While then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Barnaby Joyce was busy building up his “private” media brand enough to rival the Kardashians, under his watch, management of the Murray-Darling Basin was steadily careering out of control.
Perhaps the most damning part of this whole stinking mess is best summed up with this one little detail concerning the chief beneficiary of Coalition Government water policy, Webster Limited:
failure to act on climate change;
the ongoing persecution of refugees;
the destruction of the NBN;
a million dead fish;
rorting politicians;
draconian surveillance legislation;
towns without water;
withdrawal of funding from frontline agencies that offer protection to women and children fleeing violence;
the torment that Centrelink has become;
the rise and rise of the far right-wing;
nurtured politicians whose goal is to incite discontent and xenophobia;
contempt for concepts such as truth, morality and ethics — replaced by religiosity and ideology; hypocrisy in personal lives, masked by the propaganda of “family values” and “traditional marriage”;
a destructive focus on internal disunity and power struggles at the expense of good governance; and
lies, lies and more lies.
“Recent estimates figures again demonstrate that the program is failing young people, with only 2,918 participants finding employment with their host organisation,” she said.
“Not only is the government failing to get young people into work, but it is failing to protect them from exploitation under the program.”
What seems so hard for Liberal politicians and supporters to acknowledge is that it’s the culture of the Liberal Party – so masculine, white, and uninterested in listening to scientists or policy experts, to young people, to women – that has created the current rolling fiasco. Bullying is one index of this. Even in the wake of allegations by Julia Banks, Julie Bishop, Ann Sudmalis, Lucy Gichuhi and others, the party has done nothing to address its “women problem”. It will have even less female representation going into the next election. Candidates in the Liberal Party are selected according to merit? By what standard, though? They can’t even say why Scott Morrison is the prime minister. And yet, he’s exactly what they want: a leader who enacts their brand of paternal condescension while sticking to the same narrow politics.
“Ysaiah Ross: Yes, I think there’s some truth about that. The fact that lawyers are in people’s minds all the time is probably very good for the profession, it probably generates more business. The Howard government, its Cabinet has more lawyers than any other Cabinet in the history of any Australian government. And it’s also the one which is least responsible for human rights. I find that very strange.”
Here we are, more than a decade later, with a parliament full to overflowing with tertiary qualifications. The abundance of lawyers is staggering, as is their mediocrity. It is the most unfunny ‘lawyer joke’ ever told, against which Duddo’s legal advice pales into insignificance.
The Morrison government’s $10bn pre-election budget “war chest” is the biggest in 15 years, two and a half times larger than the Howard government’s surprise cash splash on pensioners and retirees during the 2007 election campaign.
Now, it’s been suggested that one of their members has been travelling overseas to indulge in “sex tourism”.
Nothing illegal in that, of course. I mean, the AFP have investigated and made it clear that it’s not a crime. And there’s no Scott Morrison Tourism Australia promotion for “sex tourism” in Australia where some model asks, “Where the bloody hell are ya?” After all, one could hardly indulge in a seedy Australian sex tour, and that’s not just because the wages here aren’t competitive.
It’s because of fellow Coalition members who support family values.
Members like Tony Abbott, Andrew Broad and George Christensen…
Ok, Andrew Broad looks a bit of a hypocrite at the moment, but nobody could criticise the other two. Well, not without a defamation action, anyway.
Bill Shortens’s announcement of a plan to construct 250,000 new homes over ten years is exactly what is needed. It won’t do much to arrest falling house prices, but it will inject some much-needed activity to help offset the anticipated fall in employment.
What won’t help, is budget surpluses which starve the economy of money. How hard can it be to get this message across? How hard can it be to explain this to supposedly intelligent men and women, successfully?
The one saving factor is that neither Morrison or Frydenberg are likely to realise their overly ambitious forward budget estimates. No prime minister or treasurer over the last eleven years has been able to achieve that.
In all likelihood, the status quo will be preserved. And while a coalition in opposition will see this as Labor’s failure, this time, it will be their credibility that is well and truly discredited.
After the disastrous political reception to its first budget in 2014, the government made no further serious attempt to reduce the budget deficit, instead quietly resolving to wait until the passage of time caused the economy to strengthen and tax collections to recover.
The government’s net public debt has doubled from the $175 billion it inherited in September 2013 to $355 billion this October.
The first politician to show us a projected return to surplus in the next few years was Julia Gillard in 2010. Since then, the Coalition has had to revise down its own projections countless times. We’ve learnt the hard way not to believe any budget number that’s not an “actual”.
When pressed to give examples of religious discrimination today, Scott floundered until Christian helpfully stepped in recounting how a person who had expressed opposition to marriage equality on Facebook got sacked and had to sue for unfair dismissal. Which was kind of ironic as he was announcing the government’s support for religious schools to sack teachers if they express support for marriage equality.
Scott then remembered that someone had been blocked from entering a meeting somewhere because of their religion…then remembered they want to enshrine the right of religious groups to stop people from entering their premises so kind of mumbled something about exemptions.
“I pointed out that in dealing with terrorism, one has to know the causes,” Dr Mahathir told journalists after emerging from a bilateral meeting with the Australian Prime Minister. “Adding to the causes of terrorism is not going to be helpful, I pointed that out. And Australia has not made any decision, they are looking into it.”
Workers lose about $2.85 billion a year from failures to pay their superannuation fairly and in full. This is a conservative estimate from the Australian Taxation Office but there are claims the shortfall could be as high as $6 billion.
That is a real-world problem and it needs faster attention. It is also a useful way to measure the cost of the lethargy in Canberra.
Australians have learned to keep their expectations low when waiting for their politicians in Canberra to act on a problem. There was no sign this week that Parliament will ever move faster to end a disagreement and get something done.
Voters are told the government is not caught up in the “Canberra bubble” and that their political leaders, from all parties, are focused on what matters most in the real world.
The Liberal Party’s candidate for the marginal seat of Yan Yean has quit as the endorsed candidate after a video surfaced that appeared to show her making allegations against Muslims.
As far back as 2005 with the Cronulla riots the biggest enablers of those riots were said to be the shock jocks of 2GB and Alan Jones was singled out back then as one of the loudest Nationalist voices at the time. Scott Morrison in fact saw political advantage to be had in encouraging the ultra-right-wing division of the them and us culture wars. However there were wiser heads than his in the Liberal Party at that time who saw the party and Australia in fact as a broad church.
However that all changed with the coming of Tony Abbott and his Team Australia . Not until 2013 did we see the expanding dark cloud of Islamophobia form across Australia. Despite the miniscule number of domestic events defined largely by the media as terrorist the volume of noise devoted to Islamic hate and Islamophobia come to a crescendo that we haven’t let go of. Abbott took us to yet another war we couldn’t and won’t win, he increased National Security to a level never seen before and now Morrison is amplifying the same providing justification of hate despite the advice of all our experts.
It seems Politicians know better than experts these days on just about everything.. Conservatives have a historical record of drumming up danger that only they claim thay can manage and at times when they are particularly desperate. Wit the assistance of Andrew Bolt who can name 5 cases among 10 million people in Australia’s 2 largest cities as living proof of the danger we are living in. Forget the fact the rest of the world considers those 2 cities as the worlds most livable for their safety. The fact that Morrison 10 pts down in the polls has re-introduced Abbott’s Team Australia, Them and Us onto the front pages of our conservative influencers for profit MSM media indicates one thing the LNP are not only desperate but incapable of managing themselves let alone the country. (ODT)
Tony Abbott, who oversaw a major strengthening of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws as prime minister, on Monday said Mr Morrison was “quite right to say on the weekend that there is a problem within Islam”.
Corman now agrees with Turnbull again but still blames him for the coup?( ODT}
Senator Cormann blamed Mr Turnbull for calling a “surprise” leadership ballot on Tuesday August 21, essentially sealing his own fate by revealing a high degree of support (35 votes) for Mr Dutton.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann – whose shift in support was crucial in the coup against former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – has conceded the Coalition had improved its electoral position just before his colleagues knifed their leader.
Senator Cormann said he had not seen internal party polling showing the Coalition ahead 52 to 48 in key marginal seats – polling Mr Turnbull revealed in his appearance on the ABC’s Q&A program on Thursday night.
The Coalition Government doesn’t seem to be making carbon emission reductions a high priority at a time when it’s needed most, writes Giles Parkinson.
IF THE WENTWORTH and Wagga Wagga by-elections were supposed to send a message to Coalition Governments about the need to act on carbon emissions and embrace renewables, it hasn’t worked.
If anything, it seems the Federal Government has lurched even further to the hard Right, deepened its attachment to coal and declared its outright hostility to making any moves to increase its emissions reduction targets. It has vowed to do all it can to stop Labor from doing just that, should it win power in the next federal poll.
After the ATM Government’s crushing defeat in Wentworth, where to now for the Liberal Party and its propaganda arm, the Murdoch media?
… Rupert Murdoch had helped bring on the coup when he told Seven West proprietor Kerry Stokes a change was needed at The Lodge.
“Malcolm has got to go,” Mr Murdoch told [Mr Stokes]…
… Mr Stokes said a leadership challenge would guarantee a Labor government within a year.
Mr Murdoch replied: “They’ll only be in for three years — it won’t be so bad. I did all right under Labor and the Painters and Dockers; I can make money under Shorten and the CFMEU.”
Population Minister Alan Tudge has suggested that Melbourne and Sydney are experiencing significant pressure from excessive population growth. He’s probably got a point, but his ‘solution’ — forcing immigrants to live in areas with less population pressure for at least five years after permanent residency is granted — demonstrates Tudge’s complete lack of knowledge of the subject matter he is responsible for implementing on behalf of the Australian Government.
The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government has a long history of dog whistling to turn opinions against those who don’t look like them (generally middle-aged to elderly white men). First we had ‘stop the boats’, then the ‘gangs of African youths terrorising Melbourne’ and now the same people are being blamed for failures of politicians over the past 40 years to argue the case for additional capacity when expensive infrastructure is built. Because in the long term it’s cheaper to build it once with some growing room — just like the 2-year old’s new t-shirt.
It’s time to call Tudge’s thought bubble out for what it is — racism.
Last week Peter Costello accused Malcolm Turnbull of failing to develop an economic narrative to unite the Coalition. Turnbull promised this when he challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership of the Liberal Party, but, said Costello, it never came, and the result is a government struggling to manage deep differences over social issues. There was “jobs and growth”, but this is really just a goal without much of a story about how to get there, except for the company tax cuts.
The big question, though, is why the government does not have a coherent economic narrative.
One possible answer is that it has been too preoccupied with social issues such as religious freedom and before that, same-sex marriage, to give the economy sufficient attention. There is something in that.
The reinstatement of the Colonial Spirit. What if an Immigrant manages to escape to the City? Will be labelled a Papillion and the full force of the ABF come after him or her? How about admitting government policy encouraged temporary entry while using infrastructure as a political football against the states holding them to nothing.(ODT)
The Federal Government has unveiled a plan that will settle certain classes of new migrants [to be known as drones] in regional areas for up to five years after their arrival in Australia. These will be required to work as indentured labour and will not be able to leave their servitude until the five-year term of indenture has been served to the satisfaction of their masters.
Minister for Population and Cities, Alan Tudge laid out the plan to bust congestion in Australia’s biggest cities – Melbourne and Sydney – in a speech in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has, so far, been unable to conceal his glee over the ABC’s woes.
First, he contradicted Milne’s suggestion that he, like the nation, had likewise only just been informed of Guthrie’s removal.
Then, he appeared on Insiders to remind the ABC and the rest of Australia who’s boss, telling the ABC, without any trace of irony, that it needs to stop talking about itself and go back to work or “it can expect more attention” from him. He also managed, during this interview, to stick the boot into that pesky Emma Alberici tax cuts article, once again.
And, finally, wildly flaying his arms around and barking in his customary fashion, he informed us all, in case we hoped the issue of political bias may have been addressed, that the Coalition, currently in the throes of finding a suitable replacement for Milne, would not seek bipartisan support for the appointment by consulting with the Opposition.
Of course not. As Mr Morrison keeps repeating, the ABC is, after all, an “independent” organisation — with ever-decreasing funding from his Government, a board appointed by his Government, a selection process overruled by his Government and a Nomination Panel also chosen by his Government. Yep, nothing to see here.
The State Government is blowing up over the Federal Coalition trying to intervene with its donation disclosure laws. The Commonwealth is joining an appeal to try to stop the LNP from declaring contributions of less than $13,500. #TenNews@tegangeorge
For mine, this means we need to be aware of their opportunistic and desperate attempts to make as many changes as they can before they are punted. This is usually in the form of top jobs on Government boards or entities to mates, legislation that looks innocuous but helps the party scam extra power, favours or cash, and of course the signing of heaps of contracts or consultancies to donors and other mates so the flow of Government funds to rent-seeking corporate donors and blood sucking “consultancy” firms are set in stone and can’t be changed by an incoming Government — think Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Foxtel handouts, times a hell of a lot more.
Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger is donating more than $100,000 of his own money to the election campaign as the bitter dispute with the Cormack Foundation, once the party’s most generous donor, drags on.
From Prime Minister Scott Morrison down, Liberal Party men are pushing back against women pressing for cultural change within the party. They don’t want to share power for ideological reasons: conservative men like women to know their place, and that place is not in the House of Representatives or the Senate. This ethos is intensifying as fringe and evangelical Christians make ever deeper inroads into Liberal Party branches and preselection processes.
Respected Liberal women like former Liberal Party vice-president Tricia Worth and former Liberal senator Sue Boyce have poured scorn on the internal party mechanisms proposed so far to deal with the problem. They point out the implausibility, for example, of making a bullying complaint to Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger who denies such bullying exists.
Read more: A ‘woman problem’? No, the Liberals have a ‘man problem’, and they need to fix it
Liberal Party women face an immediate choice. They can be cowed by the “quota girl” sledge of hostile male colleagues, and other unsupportive comments by these men’s female enablers such as NSW Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.
Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne said people were drawn to Melbourne due to its “booming economy and lots of jobs”.
“We’re building for growth with game-changing projects like the Metro Tunnel and the Melbourne Airport Rail Link, and we’re planning for the future with the Suburban Rail Loop, as well as pouring billions into hospital upgrades and new schools,” he said.
“The Liberals did nothing but cut crucial services for four years and Matthew Guy has promised to send a million extra people into the outer suburbs.”
Energy Minister Taylot running in the footsteps of IPA, News Corp and Abbott (ODT)
New energy minister Angus Taylor has launched a new and extraordinary attack against wind and solar, saying they cause “de-industrialisation” and claiming that Labor’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target would send a “wrecking ball” through the Australian economy.
The comments came in an interview on Sky News on Sunday night, and little more than a week after Taylor told radio shock jock Alan Jones that there was already “too much” wind and solar in the grid.
The fact that the right-wingers Jones and Kenny hold such extreme and ill-informed views about climate and energy is well known, and not of great consequence.
But the fact that the country’s energy minister goes on to their programs and agrees with them, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is deeply troubling – for investors and consumers.
These are scare tactics reminiscent of the Abbott and Joyce attacks against the then carbon price – remember the ‘Whyalla will be a ghost town’ campaign, and the ‘$100 lamb roasts’? For a quick rebuttal of these South Australia energy myths, this might be useful.
When can bullies be seen flipping the argument and blaming the other side when they are ultra conservatives. Soon we’ll see them declaring that they are the victims. It’s not a strange practice and is a common ploy when backs are to the wall Corman is doing it here. He was a vote collector for Dutton and it wasn’t a last minute decision on his part as he tried to make out. (ODT)
Cabinet Minister Mathias Cormann, who supported Mr Dutton, said Malcolm Turnbull’s unusual tactics ahead of the Liberal leadership spill added pressure to his colleagues.
“There’s nothing wrong with seeking to convince each other of the merits of our arguments, but it always ought to be done with courtesy and respect,” he told Sky News.
Some of Mr Dutton’s other backers, including young conservatives Andrew Hastie, Michael Sukkar, James Paterson, Zed Seselja, Tony Pasin and Jonathon Duniam, have denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the alleged bullying.
They witnessed ‘Ditch the Witch’ abuse hurled at Julia Gillard by Tony Abbott; they remember Alan Jones’ advice that she should be ‘tied in a chaff bag, taken to sea and dumped’. Liberal males have form in the bullying stakes.
So where are the Liberal women left?
It seems pretty obvious. There will be no apology, no compromise from their male counterparts, certainly no rapprochement.
All they can expect from macho Liberal males is: ‘Get used to it girls’.
Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy has been caught up in a string of controversies involving Liberal party figures, donors or donations, notably in his time as planning minister in the Baillieu and Napthine governments between 2010 and 2014.
Has there been a MP like Dutton whose constantly shown himself up as a fool? Yes, Tony Abbott who became as popular as a fart in a crowded elevator and look what happened to him (ODT)
Is there some principle being applied consistently that accounts for both cases? Or can we now admit that this posturing of law and order, of national sovereignty, of the solemn duty to banish “unlawful arrivals” is just so much bullshit, conveniently dropped for the right kind of people?
I’m not saying this is the scandal of the decade. I suspect this will all soon pass without much cost to Dutton and that’s probably fair enough. But if it passes without a clear verdict of hypocrisy, not just on Dutton but on the way we frame our public discussion of immigration, it will only be because we’ve long since abandoned any approach to the subject that has anything to do with principles.
“I’ve had Jones, Hadley, Bolt, Peta Credlin … insert name of right-wing commentator here … give me free character assessments basically for the past five years,” he said.
“And the last election campaign I think is the best example of what influence they actually have, if you are a shrewd marginal seat operator. It was an eight-week campaign where particularly Alan Jones would offer free character assessments that weren’t too complimentary on a daily basis. And when the state of NSW had a 5.1 per cent swing against (the Liberals) I had a 1.6 per cent to me.”
He said the broadcasters encouraged voters to contact him, with Mr Hadley publishing his official email address.
“I couldn’t thank him enough for that because what it does is it takes those fired-up people — a lot of times based on misinformation and that commentator’s personal opinion and a real personal dislike of me or Malcolm Turnbull — it makes that listener come to me,” Mr Laundy said. “I’ll ring them. I’ve done it thousands of times. And I read my own emails and reply, usually pretty quickly. And it shocks the living crap out of them,” he said.
I can personally confirm this. I emailed Mr Laundy asking him to back up claims he had made about convictions arising from the trade union royal commission. He responded with the details I had requested. And he was right – it shocked the living crap out of me to get a factual response, no obfuscation, from a Coalition MP.
There have been several Liberal party members suggesting that politics is no place for “snowflakes”, intimating that if you can’t cop intimidation then you aren’t up to the game.
Sadly, these people seem to think that being able to endure bullying is more important than being able to formulate, understand, and advocate for sensible policy direction. (Looking at you Craig Kelly for starters)
Political pundits will tell you that it has ever been thus.
Why do Politicians ignore the experts and try to con the public? ( ODT)
But while there is evidence from market analysts and analysis from the government’s energy bodies that renewables has led the price drop because of a big increase in supply contracted into the market courtesy of the renewable energy target, Taylor attributed the recent reductions to the government’s intervention in the gas market, and regulatory reforms, including forcing retailers to be more transparent about their pricing.
While coal proponents in the Coalition declare new coal investment means lower prices, the Australian Energy Market Commission has predicted prices will fall over the next two years because of the entry of 5,300 MW of new generation capacity into the national electricity market – most of it renewable projects.
Peter Dutton’s comments following the tragic death of Laa Chol, a young woman of Sudanese descent, in Melbourne on Sunday morning were not only opportunistic and inaccurate, they also made a mockery of his leader’s tour of Tennant Creek by ultimately undermining the sincerity of the prime minister’s concern for the plight of vulnerable Aboriginal families.
