Now he is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should totally be able to make the NBN work. Just turn it off then on again
In a speech at the official launch of his new book last week (10/12/15), Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australia’s Speaker author Ross Jones explains why this scandal won’t go away any time soon.
Source: Why should we be concerned by the destruction of Peter Slipper?
Call me naïve, but I can’t see why Malcolm Turnbull would rush to an election early next year after flagging he will go full term.
Source: The government is considering whether to scrap or delay its tax green paper
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was today reflecting on the occasions he had the opportunity to say Death Cult but didn’t.
“It’s those ‘if only’s’ and ‘what ifs’ that go through your mind,” Mr Abbott told a friend today. “If only I’d found more opportunities to say Daesh Death Cult. What if I’d used 12 flags instead of ten at that last press conference? Sliding doors”.
He said he had considered raising the terror alert level from ‘very high’ to ‘very very high’ in those fateful last few weeks, but became sidetracked with boom mics. “It’s those little things that play on your mind,” he said.
Political analyst Gerard Long said it was natural for leaders to focus on hypotheticals after a fall from power. “For Julia Gillard it was ‘how would’ve things been different without Kevin Rudd?’ For Kevin Rudd it was … actually I’m not sure Kevin is entirely aware he’s no longer PM”.
Malcolm Turnbull’s overthrow of Tony Abbott has ‘set off a civil war within News Corp’, according to the media giant’s conservative commentator Andrew Bolt.
Source: Liberal leadership spill coup sparks News Corp ‘civil war’
‘This guy has got to go, and it has to happen before Christmas,’ Malcolm Turnbull said of Tony Abbott a month ago in conversation with colleagues.
Source: How it happened: Inside the Malcolm Turnbull leadership coup
Saying it was ‘harmless’ and that ‘we should just let him have his fun’, members of the Coalition front bench have agreed to let Tony Abbott keep on thinking that he is running Australia for now.
“He’s been looking forward to this all of his life, so it won’t hurt anybody to let him pretend for a few more months,” said one front bencher.
One Parliamentary staffer said it was cute watching Mr Abbott play make believe. “It is quite adorable really. Seeing him run around, playing with his terror alert metre, telling everyone what to do. We just go along with it and say ‘Yes Prime Minister!’ We’ve even set up his own little office with some Australian flags. It’s all quite harmless really”.
“I have no qualms with it,” said another staffer. “Peta, bless her, still gives Tony his daily briefing. I think some of the guys even set up a mock cabinet meeting the other day for Tony to run. It’s harmless”.
When contacted for comment Mr Abbott said simply, “The adults are in charge now!”
Contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence hopes that the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull to the prime ministership will usher in a better and less brutal form of politics.
No, she’s not chortling into her cornflakes.
Source: Julia Gillard’s response to the latest leadership spill.
The Coalition will today start the painstaking search for a fresh electorate, after it became apparent the current one had become increasingly out of touch with the Government’s reform agenda.
There is no obvious candidate to replace the current electorate.
One backbencher we spoke to, who did not want to be named, said the Government had lost faith with the incumbent voting public. “It’s not just one thing. It’s a series of things. It refuses to listen, it’s stubborn, and it’s made a series of bad choices. It’s time for a fresh start”.
Another MP was more blunt, “quite frankly, we’ve already moved on”.
A Labor Party spokesperson said they had tried many times to find a new electorate when they were in Government, but there was a lack of quality contenders available.
It looks increasingly likely the Prime Minister will face a leadership spill before the year is out.
Illustration by Simon Kneebone For those watching closely this week, Rupert Murdoch’s tweets clearly signposted how the political scenario is likely to unfold over the next six months. There will be a snap election. The trigger for this will arise from either a leadership challenge or a double dissolution. The latter is the more probable of the…
Source: Incoming…! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
EXCLUSIVE: The Abbott administration has dropped a major reform to competition law after big business allegedly threatened an anti-government campaign.
Two Liberal premiers and several cabinet ministers call for action, with Mike Baird saying ‘NSW remains ready and willing to do more than our fair share’
There’s something very unsettling about the prime minister invocation of a fictitious Nazi sense of shame as part of his moral account of the Islamic State
The government’s policy would be a terrible model for other prosperous countries facing huge numbers of people fleeing wars and persecution.
Source: Australia’s Brutal Treatment of Migrants – The New York Times
Like a cat struggling to avoid a bath, Tony Abbott has been scrabbling for purchase; desperately latching on to anything within reach in the hope of escaping his dire situation.
Source: Desperate Abbott struggles to maintain control – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
A furious Tony Abbott has told the ABC he will personally turn off its Twitter at the wall if the national broadcaster doesn’t bring its flagship show Q&A into line.
The demand comes following last night’s show during which a tweet by @AbbottLovesAnal briefly appeared on screen.
“Either you turn it off, or I’ll do it for you,” Mr Abbott is believed to have told ABC staff. The PM was also concerned about the cost producing so many tweets. “I’m told Q&A now produces 40,000 tweets per episode. Someone has to pay for that – we need to draw the line somewhere”.
After a terse phone call from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the ABC has agreed to remove the offending tweet from repeats of the episode, to ensure those who watched the live broadcast are the only people to see the tweet.
“I think through our swift actions we’ve managed to stop this from growing further,” a Government spokesperson said.
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Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his views on joining the 21st Century haven’t changed.
“I think it is inevitable that Australia will one day join the current century. But my views on this matter are well known. And as I’ve said many times before, it’s not something I’m entirely comfortable with, and it’s certainly not going to be something I lead”.
He said there was no need to rush. “Why charge into this unfamiliar era, when we can stay here in the comfort of the 1950s a little longer?”
A spokesperson for the Government said it was important not to make rash decisions. “We certainly wouldn’t want to just charge in and blindly follow what America does”.
Dear Tony Abbott,
I will try to keep this letter brief as I know you have a short attention span and since you’ve never responded to my previous correspondence, I can only guess it was because they were longer than your brain capacity could absorb. The main topic of this letter is to let you know that I think you’re an opportunistic, petty, vindictive creep and that you’re running the country as if you would like to imagine that all Australians are equally as petty and vindictive as you. But we’re not. And you’re not going to win your soon to be announced election because we’re better than that.
Over the last 24 hours, Barack Obama, the greatest President America has ever had and possibly the best leader the world has ever seen, has once again shown what it is to be a visionary, compassionate, highly intelligent, gracious, composed and dignified statesman. He sang Amazing Grace at the funeral of Charleston murder victim Rev. Clementa Pinckney as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to lead the chorus. He celebrated the decision by the US Supreme Court to recognise the constitutional legality of gay marriage by tweeting with hashtag #LoveWins. Obama is a giant of our world, whether you agree with his politics or not. And next to him, your pettiness, your aggression, your predilection for the path of least residence to the lowest common denominator makes you a meaningless flea. A blip that will be forgotten by history as a negative, sloganeering, fear-inducing, mean spirited low point of Australia’s history.
In the last 24 hours, you and your government have shown your true colours. With three terrorism attacks overseas in France, Kuwait and Tunisia, the pleasure in your eyes, the excitement at having a scare mechanism, the opportunity for you to use these events politically, make me feel ill. You’ve said the death cult is coming for Australians. You’re ramping up the rhetoric on threat levels which have absolutely no grounding in reality. You’re using the deaths of innocent people at the hands of barbaric, violent, evil, yet distant, criminals to further your own political cause. If you can’t see how low it is that you enjoy, and take pleasure out of these opportunities to be a scaremonger, let me tell you, it’s unedifying to the extreme. We know you’re only talking about national security because you’ve comprehensively failed to deliver vision, policies, negotiation, competency and functional government in any policy area so far in your dysfunctional term as Prime Minister. You therefore rely on plane crashes, on sieges carried out by mentally ill lone-wolves, and on the tragedies of people in far-away places to make yourself feel better about yourself. To keep your flag collection multiplying. For opportunistic photo stunts. Petty. Vindictive. Creepy.
And of course, everything you do, everything you have ever done in opposition and seamlessly into government is just about wrecking progressive policies with your negative ‘always on’ election campaign. We hear this morning that you’ve already produced negative attack ads about Bill Shorten. Is Shorten the first thing you think about when you wake up? I bet he is. You are the Prime Minister of arguably the best country in the world and all you care about is bashing your political rivals. Of giving jobs to your boys. You want to unpick every good progressive policy this country has ever delivered and take us back to a yesterday that none of us are interested in revisiting. Wrecking health and education funding. Destroying technological advancement. Wrecking environmental policy. Wrecking whole industries and destroying thousands of jobs. Depressing consumer confidence and in turn destroying economic growth. Wrecking social security. Dog whistling about asylum seekers while they are treated in detention centres no better than captives of the ISIS ‘death cult’. Attacking the union movement. Your nasty little thought bubbles on user-pays public education and wielding your wrecking ball into highly successful industry super funds are just the latest of the daily onslaught of terror you wreck on ordinary Australians. And why do you do it? For the same reason as a dog licks his balls. Because he can.
I dare you to go to an early election Tony Abbott. I dare you to believe that Australia wants to give you another chance to do even more damage to the fabric of our community. While you use national security as your play thing, we can see what you’re trying to do. Your leaked memo made that very clear. And when I compare you, the petty, vindictive, creepy flea, to the likes of Barack Obama, I want to cry with frustration. The sooner you give me and the rest of Australia the chance to vote you out, the better.
Yours sincerely
Victoria Rollison
We hear the word “terrorism” in bouts of media hysteria — usually about Muslims — a lot more than any of us would prefer these days.
Devlin, who lives in Vancouver, was watching the news one day when he saw a reporter raise a simple but important question. The reporter asked politician Peter McKay, Canada’s former defense minister, how the government defined terrorism.
The minister’s curt reply: “Look it up.”
(That’s Madonna, not Peter McKay.)
Devlin took it upon himself to find out.
He felt a little hung up on the words “unauthorized or unofficial.”
(Cue laugh track.)
Still unsatisfied, he kept digging for more and found a report released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Canada’s CIA) that lays out all the groups they see as a threat to national security.
Devlin was shocked to see one group in particular that was dismissed as a threat: white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.
According to the report (which you can read in full if you like), the explicitly racist groups “do not overly propose serious acts of violence.”
Devlin goes on to recount one of several horrifying stories that occurred since that report was written. The short of it is that two white supremacists allegedly set a Filipino man on fire … just because. To which he makes a great point:
The video closes with with a seemingly contradictory finding from the Canadian spy agency’s documents — that “lone wolf” acts of terror are more common among white supremacist and right-wing extremist groups than radical Islamist groups.
So what’s up with all the Islamophobic, terror hysteria spread by the government and media?
Devlin’s comedy troop, Shit Harper Did, is exploring this topic and a bunch of other important issues in a new documentary called “Pull the Rug.” Check out their website for it if it interests you.
TALLAHASSEE – (CT&P) – Florida governor and ancient Aztec snake god Rick Scott will be released into Everglades National Park at the end of his second term, according to sources close to the administration.
Aides to Governor Scott said that the decision has nothing to do with the disappearance of three immigrant children while touring the governor’s mansion late last month.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the rumors concerning the governor’s feeding habits or the ugly stories about human sacrifice,” said Sally Chicomecoatl, an aide to Governor Scott and part-time serpent goddess of maize, nourishment, and fertility.
“We just want the governor to be happy in his retirement, and being among his friends and relatives out in the fetid swamps of the Everglades seems like a good start,” said Chicomecoatl.
The rumors and “ugly stories” have been the subject of long-term investigations by journalists at several newspapers in central Florida, as well as the BBC News program Ethel the Frog.
Vince Snetterton Lewis, an investigative reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has written a series of pieces detailing the mysterious disappearances of illegal farm workers from north and central Florida. The disappearances seem to coincide with late-night ceremonies in the basement of the governor’s mansion and torchlit processions in the giant, heavily guarded jungle greenhouse located on the grounds.
“I’ve interviewed dozens of state employees,” said Lewis. “Most are simply too terrified to say anything about their work for the governor, but one, Stig O’Tracy, a former IRA bomb maker and intelligence operative who was hired to sweep the mansion for electronic listening devices, gave me some insight into the goings-on within the mansion, or the ‘House of 1000 Corpses,’ as he calls it.”
“O’Tracy told me that Governor Scott routinely rips open the chest cavities of illegal Central American farm workers and their children so he can present their still-beating hearts to the Aztec sun god Tonatuih, in hopes that he will continue to rise every morning, thus insuring a healthy tourist trade for the state. According to O’Tracy, a side benefit of this activity is that a happy Tonatuih produces a high number of malignant melanomas so Scott’s hospital chain can fleece the unwary with natural ‘cures’ made out of jaguar livers and tapir scrotums.”
So far Lewis and his counterparts in the press have been unable to confirm O’Tracy’s stories because so many of the governor’s former employees end up in the median of Alligator Alley or floating face-down in the Gulf. However, they continue to pursue the story as hundreds of illegal workers continue to disappear every year from Florida’s “Killing Fields.”
“We want to try to nail this freak before he escapes to the swamps of the Everglades at the end of the term,” said Lewis. “Once he gets out there we’ll never find him.”
In a statement issued by the firm of Huehuecotyl, Tlaloc, and Totec, the governor’s lawyer Frank Huehuecotyl stated that the governor would “fight tooth and nail” to refute the unsubstantiated claims, and would “smother them like a python would a baby rabbit.”
Mr. Huehuecotyl is a graduate of the Universidad Anahuac law school in Mexico City and spends his weekends fulfilling his obligations as the Aztec god of trickery and deceit.
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