Fighting Fake News with REAL, 2/3/23; Murdoch, Abbott, Education,
Tag: Abbott
There’s a cult-like feel to today’s Liberal Party, with too many of its MPs meekly following their leader. As the electorate swings to the left, Peter Dutton continues to look to the right – it won’t win back the voters they lost.
It was never the subject of a formal announcement but at some stage in the past few years, the Liberal Party at the federal level seems to have ceased to be a conventional political organisation.
Source: Dutton is driving the Liberals off a cliff – and his colleagues are passengers watching on
Abbott’s single-minded partisan politics of Nope Nope Nope and internal LNP politics of enforcing Abbott’s poisoned NBN chalice on his potential challenger Malcolm Turnbull was a guarantee the new revolutionised Internet infrastructure would fail. The mainstream news and Telcos were behind him in the hope that some positive outcomes would somehow eventuate out of much-needed system change so they remained silent. Murdoch media was a major voice always in support of Abbott no matter his mistakes. The outcome has been a total fail, a waste of money,that left us in a technological backwater. 60th in the world when it came to speed. Finally, an ex-Telstra CEO has the balls to speak out.
My suggestion was to keep the end goal in place, but make changes to the way how to get there. However, with a Prime Minister such as Tony Abbott at the helm, the national interest was replaced with political interest and there was no way for a compromise or for an open discussion on the topic. Reviews were stacked with those supporting the Government.
Source: Former Telstra CEO regrets silence over NBN disaster
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a scathing rebuke of the emerging conservative campaign against a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament, attacking his longtime rival Tony Abbott for suggesting the body would change Australia’s system of government.
Kevin Rudd says Tony Abbott is wrong on the Voice to parliament
Julia Gillard to take ground-breaking misogyny speech to the stage
Ten years ago, Australia’s then-prime minister, Julia Gillard, gave a speech in parliament that would echo long after her leadership came to an end.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not,” said Gillard, in response to the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing her of sexism.
“And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.”
What’s even funnier is Andrew Bolt dreams of retiring on a barge in Amsterdam and writing a novel. Let’s never forget it’s just a dream to placate the guilt of being the most impotent of the above Three Amigos whose only thing in common is being able to talk with their heads up their clackers.
In the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt managed to blame the war in Ukraine on climate activism, saying “Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine if the green movement hadn’t first made Europe look helpless.” The only surprise was Andrew Bolt didn’t also try to blame the Ukraine war on African gangs from Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
Source: The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with “wokeness”, you’re just a right-wing nutjob | The Shot
Suicide is painless
With all of that in mind, if we at the time would have followed Tony Abbott’s advice to kill the NBN altogether, would that have been better? Was Malcolm Turnbull’s alternative of stripping down the fibre to the home (FttH) plan to the Multi Technology Mix (MTM), with hindsight, indeed the better option?
And the NBN is not the only casualty of this level of politicking. The energy policy, climate change policy, electric vehicle policy — all have been delayed by the Coalition Government for a decade. They are now finally followed by one backflip after the other.
Obviously, this also reflects the voters who preferred a conservative government that would not come up with those “scary” progressive policies. We no longer are trying to reach each other at the middle ground. When I (and others) between 2007 and 2012 tried to build broadband bridges between the Labor Government and, at that time, the Coalition Opposition, there was absolutely no interest from the Liberal Party to do this — not on broadband, not on smart energy, not on e-health and so on.
Now, 10-15 years later, all these policies are suddenly being accepted by the Coalition. What a waste of time having delayed progress on these issues for so long.
Source: Tony Abbott’s NBN plan may have been a better option
Twenty years ago, Australian forces followed the US into Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks with a simple mission: to hunt down Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership and remove the Taliban government that had sheltered them. That mission has ended in abject failure. Its costs have been significant: 41 combat-related deaths, 260 wounded, more than 500 veteran suicides, thousands afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and around A$10 billion expended with precious little to show for it.
Source: Owning up: Australia must admit its involvement in Afghanistan has been an abject failure
“Governor Greg Abbott today tested positive for the COVID-19 virus,” wrote Communications Director Mark Miner. “The Governor has been testing daily, and today was the first positive test result. Governor Abbott is in constant communication with his staff, agency heads, and government officials to ensure that state government continues to operate smoothly and efficiently. The Governor will isolate in the Governor’s Mansion and continue to test daily. Governor Abbott is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment.”
Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment is the same treatment former President Trump received after contracting the virus last October.
“Governor Greg Abbott today tested positive for the COVID-19 virus,” wrote Communications Director Mark Miner. “The Governor has been testing daily, and today was the first positive test result. Governor Abbott is in constant communication with his staff, agency heads, and government officials to ensure that state government continues to operate smoothly and efficiently. The Governor will isolate in the Governor’s Mansion and continue to test daily. Governor Abbott is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment.” Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment is the same treatment former President Trump received after contracting the virus last October
Source: Greg Abbott Tests Positive for Covid-19 – Rolling Stone
The lie continues. Abbott didn’t set up a “Trade Deal” with China the ALP did well before Abbott came along, stole it. Our relationship with China today would be significantly better than it currently is under the LNP. Mind you, Tony Abbott was a role model and precursor for Trump teaching him how to run a democracy into the ground with a nope nope nope strategy and which the GOP still employ today. Abbott however, was a backroom Liberal Party puppet whereas Trump stole the Republican Party and leads it today.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has told a British audience that there is no way he would sign a trade deal with China today.
As the NBN rollout continues to suffer from complaints and budget overruns, NBN Co executives have paid themselves millions of dollars in bonuses, writes Paul Budde.
Source: Further problems with NBN as executives paid $77 million in bonuses
As if often the case, Abbott slips up on the issue of what norms undergird his country. Being tenaciously Anglophile, he can still make the specious remark that Australians are distinct in not necessarily wishing to form queues. “Thanks to the pandemic, we’re now told to form orderly and socially distanced queues – as if we were English.” Given the fact that he has been, since the 1990s, a member of governments that insisted upon queues being the natural order of life, not to mention governing war zones, applications for asylum and detaining refugees indefinitely, this seems something of a retreat.
The Mad Monk Strikes: Tony Abbott, Taxi Rides and Coronavirus Despotism – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Scott Morrison’s Grudge Against China Is About Capitalist Competition
Tony Abbott turned his back and faced Europe changing the nature of the region. (ODT)
After riding the coattails of China’s boom for decades, Australian conservatives are now railing against China. They’re not just following a lead from Washington — the Liberal Party’s corporate backers are anxious to maintain Australian dominance in the South Pacific.
After letting its guard down in the Pacific, Australia has found that the superpower whose growth has helped to sustain the Australian economy is now staking its own claim to a region it perceives as its own. Australia’s resource giants have long enjoyed the best of both worlds: a vast Chinese export market and privileged access to resources in the South Pacific. But now both privileges are in jeopardy, and Australia is struggling to formulate a response.
After three decades of a China-fueled economic boom, the bust may have deep and dangerous consequences — especially for Pacific island peoples who find themselves, once again, caught in a game where no matter who wins, they lose.
Scott Morrison Named (ODT)
A former Coalition minister has slammed the federal government’s handling of aged care and called for major structural change in a submission that exposes years of failure to help older Australians.
One of Tony Abbott’s own ministers after the 2013 election, Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, says the government has not had the political fortitude to fix the sector after spurning calls for action when it took power.
She also names Prime Minister Scott Morrison as one of the ministers of the social service responsible for aged care in the federal cabinet during the time she says the government squandered a chance for reform.
via Government squandered opportunity for aged care reform: Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
IPA?Murdoch/LNP the triumvariate of an unhinged and diminished Democracy (ODT)
What are some of the things they succeeded in?
Many of the items can be ticked off, as having been completed, or at least attempted. Most, if not all of them, as reactionary, elitist and nasty:
Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it;
Abolish the Department of Climate Change;
Cease subsidising the car industry;
Repeal the mining tax;
Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states;
Cease funding the Australia Network; and
Privatise Medibank.It seems like the sort of list that very young, privileged brats would produce before they actually encountered some real life. Let us just say it is a work of stupendous lightness and the Liberal Party has been captured by it for nearly eight years now.
There isn’t one thing that would materially improve the life of a single citizen. It is all self-aggrandisement writ large, with not a thought for the weak or the helpless. We have been blaming Abbott, Hockey, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton for a long time, but they are just dupes of three would-be intellectuals, who wouldn’t know what the words mutual obligation meant.
The IPA gave Abbott a plan for Australia and he bought it.
via 
Another bet from a famous conservative caught my eye last week. The Times of London, owned by Rupert Murdoch, announced plans to launch a radio station. It seems likely that Murdoch, whose new station will “target those disenfranchised” by the BBC, is continuing to bet heavily on political polarisation as a major force in media.
It’s also a bet on radio and a prediction that the conservative government will not be kind to the national broadcaster. (It will be interesting to see if Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison follows British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on this, though the ABC’s coverage of the bushfires has made that harder.)
Abbott’s warnings come from an Australian Government with a history of incompetent bribery by our government agencies. Blatant lying in order to justify the invasion and destruction of Iraq along with the bugging of the Timor Leste government’s offices for commercial gain. Surely Keating has a point as does China that in dealing with this Australian government China is dealing with the mindless thugs that invaded Vietnam. (ODT)
In dealing with China, he said that Australia should get over its alarm at the speed of its rise and recognise its achievement in lifting 700 million people out of poverty.
Mr Abbott urged the Australian government to work harder on ties with allies including Japan and the “democratic superpower” of India as the best way to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific while China remains a one-party communist state.
contrasts with a warning from former prime minister Paul Keating on Monday against “pious belchings” from those attacking China when Australia’s long-term interest lay in working more closely with a vital partner.
Paul Keating says Australia must adapt to the rise of China
and
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.
I suspect that part of the angst comes from reviews of internal polling, which shows a bleak picture for Abbott in particular. This is a serious repudiation of the hard right of the Liberal Party, along with their backers at News Corp, 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and elsewhere. But it also shows how precarious the position of the cultural right in this country is. They are reliant on favours and iffy government handouts to do business. They are beneficiaries and champions of middle-class welfare and rent-seeking. They are fanatically committed to outmoded forms of power, both literal and figurative. They are openly bigoted and intellectually barren. They have little to fall back on. No wonder they fear the drop. Here’s to giving them the push.
Tony Abbott? Peter Dutton? Who will lose their seat in election 2019?
First Dog on the Moon
Promoting Abbott in Warringah
“So many things that he does the cameras don’t see,” Tani Rickle says.
Please don’t turn your back on him
He’ll knife you
“These far-left activists want to weaken our borders, make our electricity bills more expensive, and divide our nation with the politics of identity and race.” Abbott
He started TEAM AUSTRALIA all Citizens aren’t included.
Muslims Africans Lebanese, LGBTQIs not Included
When Howard describes Pell as of ‘exemplary character’, of ‘strength’, and ‘lacking in hypocrisy and cant’, the back story to those words must include Pell’s extreme and vociferous opposition to any progressive reform within the Catholic Church. It must especially include his stance in relation to gender equality, to contraception, to abortion and women’s rights in general, and including condemnation of homosexuality, gay and lesbian rights and same-sex marriage.
Writing of Pell’s “strength”, Howard would have known of the Ellis case — of Pell’s attempts to shield paedophile clergy from being accountable and treating victims with arrogant dismissal and scorn.
Abbott has likened what Pell has been convicted of as a “mistake”, saying:
“If I look back on my own life … I’ve made many mistakes, we all do.”
It is amazing to consider that we have a recent Prime Minister who regards paedophilia as insignificant rather than a serious crime.
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