BREAKING NEWS: In a parting gift three days before Christmas, the Abbott Coalition has defunded Homelessness Australia, National Shelter, Community Housing Federation Australia, and Financial Counselling Australia.
Tag: Abbott
A couple of weeks ago, Mr Abbott suggested that some of his colleagues had a problem with Peta Credlin because of her gender, and that they had trouble relating to a women who was so powerful. He made it clear that her sex was irrelevant to him and that he’d have the same relationship with her whatever sex she was. Some people, however, argued charges of sexism were pretty hypocritical coming from a man who’d only appointed one woman to Cabinet.
In a very exciting development, Abbott has doubled the number of women in Cabinet. One senior Liberal source said this was a welcome development as there’d now be someone else to clear the cups when Julie Bishop is overseas, before hastily adding that this was a joke and that they actually had tea-ladies to do that sort of thing.
Still this Ministerial reshuffle achieves most of Mr Abbott’s aims.
The promotion of a woman to the Health Portfolio – albeit one who doesn’t know how to spell “Susan” properly – should stop those screeching feminist harpies who are complaining that the Minister for Women has only announced initiatives for women with children, while the promotion of Josh Frydenberg rewards young talent.
But the moving of Scott Morrison to Social Services has a twofold effect. If he’s effective, it should enable the government to slash spending in this area, while also reducing Morrison’s popularity and thereby putting a dent in any leadership aspirations he may have. It’s one thing to be popular while holding foreign children offshore, but it’ll be a different matter when it’s Australian children ringing Senator Muir to ask him to please support government legislation so that they can be returned to their parents!
In a move that surprised most keen observers, David Johnston has lost the Defence portfolio. Johnston’s lacklustre performance and canoe comments meant that most thought he was absolutely secure, because once Mr Abbott starts demoting underperforming Ministers, a dangerous precendent may have been set. If Johnston wasn’t safe, then one must also consider that Hockey, Pyne, and Joyce can’t simply presume that hiding in one’s office for three months after saying something foolish is enough to keep one in the Ministry.
Peter Dutton, the mostly invisible Minister for Health moves to Immigration, where he can merely cite “operational matters” as a reason for having nothing to say.
Kevin Andrews – a keen Euthanasia opponent – has been given a portfolio consistent with his views on the sanctity of human life: Defence.
All in all, this looks like a very successful reshuffle and all those screaming about icebergs should just sit back in their deckchairs, order another cocktail and enjoy the ride.
Tony Abbott has seized the opportunity for a significant reshuffle that he says puts “jobs and families” at the heart of his 2015 agenda, as he seeks to “reset and refocus” his battered government.
The changes favour key allies (Scott Morrison and Kevin Andrews), scrape at barnacles (the women issue) and attempt to address some problem areas (the failure in selling messages, poor negotiation with crossbenchers).
The big winner is the highly ambitious Scott Morrison (who, incidentally, is said to be close to Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin). He gets the expanded portfolio of social services, which has had child care added.
Abbott said Morrison had likened it “to being the minister for economic participation”.
“It is very important to have a minister of Scott’s drive and competence in this role because this is about trying to ensure that Australians are having a go,” Abbott told his news conference. Morrison said in a statement: “Getting as many Australians as are able off welfare and into work will be one of my core goals.”
Morrison will be on cabinet’s expenditure review committee, so he will have a hand in budget preparation, access to whole-of-government information, and the chance to participate in the broad economic debate.
He’ll be able to talk tough about welfare cheats and the like to his favourite Sydney shock jock and the Daily Telegraph. He will also be in charge of the families package the government will unveil, including child care and the restructured parental leave scheme. This will give him something positive to sell, complete with plenty of picture opportunities with kids.
Morrison has lobbied and manoeuvred for months for an expansion or change of role and this had not made him popular with some colleagues. For a time the speculation was that he could get a new homeland security portfolio or defence.
Defence became open with Abbott’s sacking from cabinet and the ministry of David Johnston, the big casualty of the reshuffle (the other casualty was Brett Mason, dropped as a parliamentary secretary).
But in terms of the future, Morrison is much better placed in social services where, with other advantages, he will have maximum opportunity for publicity.
It remains to be seen whether he’ll be able to win crossbench support for the budget welfare measures that the government hasn’t be able to get through the Senate. But he was successful in negotiating his temporary protection visas package, and seems to have built a relationship with some key crossbenchers.
In immigration Morrison has been a man with a harsh face. He has succeeded in stopping the boats but seldom shows compassion or any signs of being troubled about the human costs of the policy, preferring to emphasise only the (undoubted) benefit in terms of preventing people drowning. The next year will tell whether he can adopt a more nuanced public persona.
The second most interesting change is Kevin Andrews, who goes from social services – where he has not been able to convince either the public or the crossbenchers – into defence. Abbott said he had worked with Andrews for a long time and sees him as a “very safe pair of hands”.
In defence Andrews will face the difficult issues of the new submarines and the coming defence white paper, but it is likely that the Prime Minister’s Office will be all over these.
Abbott has moved to counter two problems that dogged the announcement of his initial team: he has promoted women and he has designated a minister for science.
Sussan Ley goes into cabinet and replaces Peter Dutton in the health portfolio, where she will have to begin a difficult dance with the Australian Medical Association over the revamped Medicare changes, on which the doctors are arcing up.
Having two women in cabinet is better than one, but the criticism “only two” will replace “only one”.
Two women become parliamentary secretaries. The well-qualified Kelly O’Dwyer will be parliamentary secretary to Treasurer Joe Hockey; Karen Andrews, a former engineer, is parliamentary secretary to Ian Macfarlane who has now had “science” added to his title of industry minister.
Asked why he’d changed his mind after always saying Macfarlane didn’t need science in his title Abbott said, a touch ruefully, “well it seems that sometimes it helps if you do put these things in the titles”.
Dutton, unimpressive in health, gets a decent consolation prize by taking Morrison’s immigration and border security job, which gives him membership of the national security committee.
Josh Frydenberg, who has performed well as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, moves into the junior ministry as assistant treasurer, a post in limbo for most of this year. The reshuffle was prompted by last week’s reluctant resignation from the frontbench of Arthur Sinodinos, who had stood aside as assistant treasurer in March when he was called before the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Another parliamentary secretary, Simon Birmingham (one of that little band of Liberal moderates), moves up to be assistant minister for education and training. His senior minister, Christopher Pyne, has had training added to his education portfolio, with some functions transferred from the industry area.
Former West Australian treasurer Christian Porter becomes parliamentary secretary to Abbott. It’s a pity he isn’t a minister.
Despite its limitations (some notable poor performers are still in their places) and oddities (Andrews in defence), Abbott in his reshuffle has sent the message to his team and the public that he’s listened to some of the criticisms being made.
Woohoo! Unemployment has hit 14 Year High. No need to worry about ‘Work Choices’ anymore, because there will be no Jobs available. #notfittogovern #LNPSociopaths #blockedbybishop
***Blanket exemption from 457 labour market testing for all Korean nationals
Korean Australian Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA)
• Exemption from labour market testing for all Korean nationals in the standard 457 visa program
• Comes a day after unemployment levels hit a 14 year high
• Employers in Australia will no longer have to seek qualified locals to fill vacancies in the skilled trade,
nursing and engineering occupations
• Employers will no longer have to prove none could be found, before 457s are approved for Koreans
• Labour market testing is permanently banned in all other 457 occupations from now on
Our beloved Government had initially refused to tell the public the truth about what it was giving away
in the KAFTA. It’s now been revealed the Government is giving labour market testing (LMT) exempt
status to all Korean nationals in the 457 visa program.
This is another attack on Australian workers’ job security. These blanket 457 visa concessions should
not even be in Free Trade Agreements, they have nothing to do with international trade.
Furthermore, KAFTA is binding on future governments, so no Australian government in the future can
require LMT for Korean nationals in the 457 visa program.
The revelation also raises great concerns that the China FTA will feature similar exemptions.
The Abbott Government won’t come clean on the detail of the China FTA but all indications are it is
headed in the same direction.
It simply beggars belief that with rising unemployment, and thousands of young people looking for
their first full-time job, the Government would make it even easier for employers to bypass qualified
local workers.”
Similar language to describe access by temporary overseas workers has been applied to both agreements.
The Korean FTA uses the term “contractual service suppliers”, and the Abbott Government has said that
the China FTA will give “guaranteed access” to Chinese workers who are contractual service suppliers.
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* The Abbott supporters in the crowd had their Greg Abbott paper fans to keep them cool – Tea-Party yellow with the slogan “Fast Cars, Firearms & Freedom-It’s a Texas Thing”
*** Greg Abbott was appointed as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court in 1995 by then-Governor George W. Bush
*** Won the right to display the Ten Commandments in front of the state Capitol
*** Was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and the ‘Young Republicans’ Club’ (Our Liberals).
*** Abbott became a paraplegic when an oak tree fell on him while he was running following a storm in 1984.
*** He sued the homeowner and negotiated an insurance settlement worth more than US$10 million, resulting in payouts of US$14,000 a month.
*** Abbott later championed laws capping punitive damages to two times the amount of economic damages awarded plus US$750,000.
*** Abbott said that when asked what his job entails, he explains ‘it’s gotten simplified’. “I go into the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.”
*** Justice John Paul Stevens commented upon Abbott’s performance while in a wheelchair, “I want to thank you … for demonstrating that it’s not necessary to stand at the lectern in order to do a fine job”.
*** Abbott has filed suit against various U.S. agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (including challenges to Obamacare), and the Department of Education, among many others.
*** Abbott has said that the state must not release Tier II Chemical Inventory Reports for security reasons, because Texan citizens, WAIT FOR IT>>>> “can ask every facility whether or not they have chemicals or not”. PML
*** Koch Industries has denied that their contributions to Abbott’s campaign had anything to do with his ruling against releasing the safety information. ROFL. Stop Abbott, you’re killing me!
*** In 2014, Abbott argued against a lawsuit brought by the NRA to allow more people access to concealed carry of firearms, as Abbott felt this would disrupt public safety. Boom Boom!!!
Yep, gotta be Tone’s Twin.
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In a nutshell, the Commission of Audit includes plans to:
• End Medicare with a $15 GP tax, a hospital tax, and cuts to the PBS
• Slash the minimum wage by about $130 per week
• Cut pension and family payments, making students and low and middle income earners pay more
We will never lose sight of the fact that Budget policy is an instrument to create jobs, grow the economy, deal with longer-term challenges, and to spread opportunity by investing in important reforms like Gonski and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
• Labor left the budget with a triple-A credit rating and stable outlook from all three ratings agencies, a first for Australia
• Australia was one of only three advanced economies to avoid recession during the global financial crisis
• Labor left a Budget with net debt well below most advanced economies
• Labor understood the need for fiscal discipline and took over $130 billion in responsible savings to invest in hospitals, schools and the NDIS
Hammer this home in every conversation, whether at work or with friends, if people are wondering what’s being proposed you’ll have the facts – and the truth about the “budget emergency”.
If you go to Tony Abbott’s facebook page, at time of writing, you will find six threads about the Martin Place siege and one about the slaughter of innocent children in Pakistan. Four days after its release, you will not find any comment about Hockey’s MYEFO. That in itself should be cause for concern.
Tony Abbott has admitted he has little interest in the “dismal science” of economics and it appears he is hoping that applies to the rest of us. He is sticking to his forte – death cults and shirt-fronting.
Despite telling us all to carry on our lives as normal, he seems determined to class the acts of one deranged individual as a terrorist attack on home soil.
When Australians responded by showing solidarity with the Muslim community through the “I’ll ride with you” campaign, the odious Miranda Devine found a new target.
“Thus it was that on Monday, while real people were suffering at the hands of an Islamic State-inspired terrorist in Martin Place, hashtag activists sprang to the defence of theoretical victims of an Islamophobia that wasn’t occurring.
The meaningless, narcissistic, one-sided nature of this “near silent encounter” perfectly symbolises the leftist approach to Islamist terrorism.
Denial, deflection, projection. They see themselves as morally superior to the rest of Australia, which they imagine as a sea of ignorant rednecks. In their eyes the threat is not terrorism but Islamophobia.”
This view was endorsed by LNP member for Dawson, George Christensen who tweeted
“#illridewithyou is a typical pathetic left wing black arm band brigade campaign, casting Aussies as racists who will endanger Muslims”
The colourful characters who frequent Andrew Bolt‘s blog joined in with a barrage of hate.
Whilst Abbott, Devine, Bolt and Christensen continue to pander to the minority of xenophobic racist rednecks, others have been commenting on the policy direction of this government and none of it is good.
Firstly, Joe Hockey has cost us $28.6 billion in foregone revenue over the forward estimates through his own decisions.
Carbon Tax $12.8 billion
MRRT $3.4 billion
FBT on cars $1.8 billion
Tax on super earnings $313 million
Work-related self-education $266.7 million
Closing corporate tax avoidance $775 million
RBA $8.8 billion (classed as foregone dividends)
Add to that his spending on Direct Action, the “war on terror” at home and abroad, and the extra spending on Operation Sovereign Borders and PPL and we would go close to wiping out his deficit of over $40 billion.
So when you hear the girlinator Cormann talking about Layboor’s debt and deficit disaster, understand you are being sold snake oil by a con man.
Speaking of con men, the G20 leaders must be wondering about our commitment to join the war on corporate tax avoidance which has been shown to be yet another example of Joe “over my dead body” Hockey’s ‘tell em what they wanna hear’.
The head of the Australian Tax Office, Chris Jordan, has described a tax lurk for multinational companies that is being retained by the Abbott government as having been “abused” by foreign corporations at a cost of “hundreds of millions of dollars” a year to the Commonwealth but Hockey, following consultation with the big four accountancy firms and the Corporate Tax Association, which represents the biggest listed companies, decided not to tinker with section 25-90 of the act. And they had the hide to criticise Gillard and Swan for caving in on the mining tax though that was one time I found myself in agreement.
And they will have more pressure coming as the world insists that we take action on climate change.
During an appearance before a British parliamentary committee meeting held early Wednesday morning Australian time, British Prime Minister David Cameron was asked by an MP whether there was hope Australia would do more because “the new Australian government is in denial” on the issue.
Mr Cameron did not disagree and told the hearing there was hope Australia would step up its efforts.
“Australia will respond to international pressure and do more on climate change because it will not want to be seen as the “back marker”.”
The new revised GP co-payment has also been blasted.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has expressed its formal opposition to the Federal Government’s new co-payment model, labelling it a “wrecking ball”.
“That this should be instituted and ready to go by January 19 is, I think, absurd,” Associate Professor Owler said. “Particularly when there has been absolutely no consultation on this issue.”
The OECD was also not impressed with Hockeynomics slamming his budget measures and stating that ‘close monitoring’ was required mentioning everything from changes to Newstart and pensions through to Direct Action, deregulation of uni fees, and choice of infrastructure spending. They were particularly critical of superannuation tax concessions. The overall implication was “you haven’t thought these measures through”.
And as Abbott has his photo taken in front of lots of Christmas trees, presents are being delivered around the country.
Up to 100 ABC journalists have been told they will become redundant and ADF personnel will face rent increases as well as other charges for live in accommodation and meals.
Australia has transformed into the global Scrooge just in time for Christmas, with spending on foreign aid set to plunge compared to other wealthy industrial countries.
An analysis of Treasurer Joe Hockey’s $3.7 billion cut to the aid budget announced on Monday – on top of the $7.6 billion cut in May – reveals that Australia’s generosity towards the world’s poor will fall to an all-time low.
Australia will soon devote a paltry 22¢ cents in every $100 of national income to foreign aid – less than half the amount spent by the Coalition government more than 40 years ago.
This is the news Tony Abbott and his band of elves don’t want you to discuss as they take from the poorest in the world to give generously to wealthy corporations and mining companies. Gina and Rupert should be well pleased.
Australian politics has come to be defined by volatility and cynicism. Case in point: half of Australian voters think it’s unlikely that Tony Abbott will still be Prime Minister at the next election, write Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods.
Out with the old and in with the new. The New Year’s cliché has become the mission statement of Australian politics, with the final Essential poll of the year showing voters have little confidence their Government or Prime Minister will survive beyond their first term.
The reasons for this Government’s dive in support have filled acres of newsprint during 2014. But the ideological over-reach, unsaleable budget, intransigence on global warming, and string of broken promises don’t fully explain the political climate, which is remarkably free of Christmas generosity.
Incumbency, once the trump card of politics, has become a poisoned chalice. While there are always policy and performance explanations for unpopularity, it’s also the case that our politics has come to be defined by volatility, cynicism and a loss of public confidence.
Q. Do you think Tony Abbott is likely or unlikely to still be the leader of the Liberal Party at the next election?
| Total | Vote Labor | Vote Lib/Nat | Vote Greens | Vote other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Likely | 29% | 16% | 50% | 19% | 29% |
| Unlikely | 51% | 72% | 29% | 68% | 60% |
| Don’t know | 20% | 12% | 21% | 13% | 11% |
Half of Australian voters think it’s unlikely that Tony Abbott will be Prime Minister at the next election, while fewer than a third believe he’ll make the distance. Even only half of Coalition voters believe Abbott will remain as leader. Despite the accepted lunacy of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, people expect that leaders who languish in opinion polls will be dumped.
The same applies to government. There is little expectation that a government down in the polls can bounce back.
Q. Which party do you think is most likely to win the next federal election due in 2016?
| Total | Vote Labor | Vote Lib/Nat | Vote Greens | Vote other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labor Party | 46% | 84% | 16% | 66% | 40% |
| Liberal/National Party | 27% | 2% | 64% | 7% | 16% |
| Can’t say | 27% | 14% | 20% | 27% | 44% |
Just 15 months into their first term, over a quarter of voters think the LNP can hold government and nearly half expect that this will be the first one-term federal government in modern political history.
Of course, public opinion doesn’t tell us whether these things will actually come to pass. It’s early days for the Abbott Government – though it doesn’t always feel like that – and the prospect of any party removing a first-term prime minister in the foreseeable future seems remote.
But these numbers do point to a national mood that’s become entrenched during 2014.
The Abbott-led Coalition’s success in opposition has led to a passionate embrace of negative campaigning, across the political spectrum. The take-out from the Gillard era was that undermining trust was the political gold that could tear down a government.
But in honing negativity to a fine art in opposition, politicians undermine public confidence in the institutions of government and create a beast that threatens to consume them in power.
Monstering Labor for ‘broken promises’ and ‘deficit blowouts’ worked a treat in opposition, but created a straitjacket for the Coalition in confronting those issues in government.
The temptation Labor has thus far failed to resist is to return the favour and undermine trust in the government on similar terms. The problem is, if Labor does meet voter expectations and consign the Abbott Government to a single term in office, what then?
When the public discourse is about broken promises and failed expectations, voters tend to see all politicians through that frame.
The dirty secret of political campaigning is that it’s always easier to go negative. But effective governments must plan for the long-term, explain the big problems confronting the nation, and have the courage to change course when circumstances change.
This lesson from 2014 is that governments aren’t only challenged by the opposition facing them in Parliament, but also by the kind of opposition they were on the way in.
And unless our politicians can shift to a contest of values and ideas, rather than brawling over the disappointing behaviour voters have come to expect, we’ll continue to turn on them. One-term governments may not be such a rarity in future.
The survey was conducted online from December 12-15, 2014, and is based on 1,016 respondents.
Peter Lewis is a director of Essential Media Communications. View his full profile here. Jackie Woods is a communications consultant at Essential Media Communications. View her full profile here.
This government’s greatest donor if media support is taken into account is News Corp. This is typical of the support of policy that this media corp provides the LNP. Kevin Andrews welcomes headlines of this nature. In fact Andrew Bolt and other conservative commentators would welcome an even closer relationship, a true propaganda arm of the Abbott government.
APC rules against News Corp over ‘Slackers & Slouch Hats’ article.
Australian voters have rejected Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s “year of achievements”.
The latest polling shows many people believe Mr Abbott is the least competent Australian leader in 20 years. He fares even worse when it comes to being trustworthy, according to a December Fairfax Ipsos poll.
And it is trust and competence that matter most to the public, say political pundits.
It is not unusual for prime ministers to struggle in their first term, says lecturer at the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, Dr Zareh Ghazarian.
Over the past 20 or 30 years in Australian politics it has taken most new prime ministers time to “find their feet”, says Dr Ghazarian.
‘Getting on with the job’“One of Australia’s most successful prime ministers in terms of winning elections was [conservative] John Howard but he had a horrid first term in government,” he says. Mr Howard went on to be the second-longest serving Australian prime minister after Sir Robert Menzies.
“The problem for Abbott seems to be a bit deeper than that and it goes to issues of trust, credibility and competence,” he says.
“What matters is that the government presents itself as competent and is seen to be getting on with the job.”
Mining benefitted from the scrapping of a 30% tax on profits in 2014But after a series of economic and policy stumbles by the coalition government, opposition leader Bill Shorten is now leading Mr Abbott on six of 11 key attributes including competence, trust and having a firm grasp of social policy, according to the Ipsos telephone poll of 1,401 voters. The poll, taken between 4 and 6 December, has a margin of error of 2.6%.
Policy wins and losses for Tony Abbott in 2014
Wins
- Repealing the carbon tax
- Repealing the mining tax
- Stemming the flow of refugees coming to Australia by boat
- Free trade agreements with China, Japan, South Korea
Losses
- Harsh budget cuts across the board; poor hit hardest
- Senate rejection of university fee deregulation bill
- Senate rejection of changes to financial advice laws
- Backing down on generous paid parental leave scheme
- Backing down on A$7 fee to visit doctor
- Expected blowout in May budget
- Increase in an unpopular fuel tax
The government started well. In July, it delivered on an election promise to repeal the former Labor government’s levy on the country’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. It also dumped a 30% tax on coal and iron ore mining profits.
In cabinet, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has delivered on the government’s promise to stop the flow of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. Boats are now turned back and those who make it to Australia are detained in offshore camps with little chance of permanent settlement in Australia.
The government has also kept its promise of reversing most of Labor’s climate change policies. Along with the carbon tax, it scrapped the Climate Commission and plans to halve the country’s legislated renewable energy target.
This week, Australia was rated the worst performing industrial country in the world in terms of climate change in an annual analysis done by two European non-government organisations.
International criticism has had a small impact, with the government finally agreeing to contribute A$200m (£106m; $166m) to a UN-backed Green Climate Fund to help poor nations mitigate the impact of global warming.
But polls indicate the public is more worried about the economy than the environment.
The government’s inability to explain why it delivered such a tough budget earlier this year and its failure to get all of the budget savings through a hostile senate explain the public’s dissatisfaction, says Dr Ghazarian. The government does not have a majority in the senate.
Treasurer Joe Hockey infuriated some Australians with his comments about people on low incomes“I don’t think the government has effectively explained why they have made the decisions they have made, especially regarding economic issues,” he says.
There are rumblings of discontent within the coalition, too. After the Victorian coalition lost the state election in November, former conservative premier Jeff Kennett said the Abbott government was a “shambles” and its performance a major factor in the defeat of the state government.
Coalition members say also that criticism of the government’s own shipbuilding company, which is based in South Australia, by Defence Minister David Johnston, contributed to a 9% swing against the Liberal Party in a recent South Australian by-election.
Treasurer Joe Hockey has also performed poorly. Most notoriously, he said an increased petrol tax would not hurt low-income earners because they “either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far”, a claim that was widely disputed.
But Michelle Grattan, professorial fellow at University of Canberra and one of the Canberra Press Gallery’s most experienced political journalists, says a cabinet reshuffle could be dangerous.
“A reshuffle that was received badly publicly and internally in Coalition ranks would be a disastrous way to start the year,” she wrote in an article for the independent news and analysis site The Conversation.
She said Mr Abbott’s attempts to “reset” his government’s rhetoric – in several instances he has conceded he has broken election promises – could also bring him undone.
“We’re asked to swallow a distinction between his broken promises and Labor’s,” she wrote.
But is all of this enough to make his cabinet colleagues ponder a change of leader?
It proved disastrous for Labor, which ditched Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for Julia Gillard before switching back to Mr Rudd, only to lose the 2013 election. The Victorian government’s leadership switch last year is cited as one of a number of reasons it lost the November election.
They have to tough it out with Mr Abbott, says Dr Ghazarian.
“Parties that change leaders are doomed.”
The Age of Entitlement may be over for pensioners, students, sick people and the unemployed, but it is alive and well for our fearless leader.
Aside from his salary of $507,338 a year, Tony Abbott has claimed $628,736.33 in expenses for the first 6 months of this year.
In April Tony travelled to Japan, the Republic of Korea and China. The trip, which lasted from April 5 to April 14 cost us $219,857.04 with the following breakdown.
Accommodation and Meals $56,881.13
Additional Equipment Allowance $410.00
Basic Equipment Allowance $450.00
Fares $30,813.70
Ground Transport $16,746.81
Minor Official Expense Advance $504.00
Official Hospitality non Portfolio related $58,803.98
Related Travel Expenses $51,813.18
Travel Advance $3,434.24
Almost $60,000 for non-portfolio related hospitality? Party time, drinks are on us.
His trip to Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum from January 19 to January 25 cost us $120,309.22 comprised of
Accommodation and Meals $43,694.63
Additional Equipment Allowance $820.00
Basic Equipment Allowance $900.00
Fares $8,109.36
Ground Transport $43,515.63
Medical Costs $230.32
Minor Official Expense Advance $315.00
Related Travel Expenses $20,426.65
Travel Advance $2,297.63
Switzerland is a fairly small country but their “ground transport” must be hellishly expensive at over $7000 a day.
The trip to PNG for a couple of nights in March only cost us $5,549.63 which included $835.15 Medical Costs plus the ubiquitous Basic and Additional Equipment allowances adding to $860.
On the domestic scene, Tony charges us $558 per night travelling allowance every night he is away from home, on average 5-6 nights per month. No wonder he was so keen to have his photo taken at the cancer clinic before he flew back to Canberra after the private function in Melbourne.
We paid $6,984.86 for the lease and petrol for Tony’s private vehicle on top of the $59,140.27 for Comcars.
It may seem nitpicking to go through the almost $150,000 we spent on office stationery, printing and phones during that six months but the three $15 late payment fees really aggravate me. Not only is it showing disregard for their creditors and our money, they have thousands of employees but they can’t manage to pay a bill on time?
But don’t get used to having access to this sort of information.
After embarrassing details of Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s lavish trip to London and Rome with his wife were revealed by Fairfax Media in September, the Abbott government decided to refuse to release documents detailing the cost and purpose of overseas travel by Coalition ministers, claiming they could “cause damage to Australia’s international relations” if made public.
Mr Pyne’s trip from April 23 to April 30 to the UK and Italy to “conduct a series of high-level meetings, attend ANZAC Day commemorations and represent the Government at the canonisations of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII” cost us $30,661.76.
Taxpayers were billed $1352 to “day let” a room at a swish London hotel before the minister and his wife, Carolyn, flew back to Australia on the same day. More than $2000 was spent on VIP services at Heathrow Airport for the Pynes.
The documents revealed Mr Pyne had got around guidelines that prevent spouses being funded on overseas trips unless in certain circumstances with a special letter of approval by Mr Abbott’s chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin.
Considering the number of junkets that have been exposed and travel allowances repaid, the decision to not release their claims for travel expenses is perhaps not surprising from this “transparent, accountable, trustworthy, adult” government.
In 2011 Joe Hockey said “No qualifications, all the excuses that Wayne Swan talks about – falling commodity prices, a high Australian dollar, nominal growth not being up to standard. Somehow the GFC is ongoing all the time. So yes, we are upset about this … they think the Australian people over summer will forget the solemn promises.”
This week, when admitting that MYEFO will show the deficit has deepened and the promise of a surplus in 2018-19 has been abandoned, Hockey said “We have faced some significant headwinds this year. Obviously the global economy has come off a bit, iron ore prices have dropped dramatically and we have had some opposition in the Senate that has made it harder.”
After rubbishing the Rudd government’s stimulus spending, Hockey now says the delayed surplus was a deliberate measure to avoid dampening economic activity with a sharp withdrawal of public money.
“We want to keep the economy going, we want to keep it strong …we want to keep that momentum going.”
And he isn’t the only one finding governing is a tad harder than bagging out the other guy.
When the Labor government sought a seat on the UN Security Council, Julie Bishop said “There really has been no justification for the benefit that will accrue to Australia by pursuing a seat at this time.”
Then, in a press conference in New York in November, Ms Bishop delighted in taking an extra minute to remind journalists who’d failed to ask about Australia’s achievements on the Security Council of the “successful two years” our membership had delivered.
Julie has rather enjoyed basking in the limelight but she has also had her problems.
In an interview with the ABC in 2012 while in opposition, Ms Bishop said climate change funding should not be “disguised as foreign aid funding”.
“We would certainly not spend our foreign aid budget on climate change programs,” she said.
In an interview with the Australian in November last year, Mr Abbott said “We are committed to dismantling the Bob Brown bank [the Clean Energy Finance Corporation] at home so it would be impossible for us to support a Bob Brown bank on an international scale.”
After a meeting with Angela Merkel in November this year, Tony Abbott said of the Green Climate Fund “We also have a Clean Energy Finance Corporation which was established by the former government and there is $10bn in capital which has been allocated to this. In addition to those two funds a proportion of our overseas aid, particularly in the Pacific, is allocated for various environmental schemes including schemes to deal with climate change. So, we are doing a very great deal and I suppose given what we are doing we don’t intend, at this time, to do more.”
Less than a month later, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government would take $200 million from Australia’s foreign aid budget over four years to put into the Green Climate Fund.
“I think it’s now fair and reasonable for the government to make a modest, prudent and proportionate commitment to this climate mitigation fund,” he said, adding that the $200 million would be “strictly” invested in “practical” projects in the Asia Pacific region, even though he has no part in the administration of the fund.
Keeping up with Christopher Pyne on education funding is harder than working out Dutton’s GP co-payment or Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave scheme.
One thing Pyne has continually stressed is the need to improve teacher quality yet the budget tends to indicate he only wants to do that in private schools.
“The Government will achieve savings of $19.9 million over five years from 2013‑14 through efficiencies in the operations of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) including a refocus on core priorities. This includes savings of $9.5 million over five years from 2013‑14 from funding allocated to AITSL by the former Government for its National Plan for School Improvement.
The savings from this measure will be redirected by the Government to repair the Budget and fund policy priorities.
The Government will provide $4.9 million over two years from 2013‑14 to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership for the continuation of the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP). The AGQTP provides funding to non‑government education authorities in each state and territory to improve the quality of education through projects and activities that offer teachers and school leaders opportunities to develop their skills.”
If I was to try to list all the inconsistencies, backflips, and hypocrisies being committed on a daily basis by this government it would be a full-time job requiring daily updates. And they will be forced into more because their entire approach to governing has been just wrong.
Tony Abbott sees negotiation as weakness and compromise as failure. He is utterly incapable of admitting to being wrong – “We had a good policy, now we have a better one”. He must blame others for any problems because it couldn’t possibly be that he is doing anything amiss, even as we have Hockey now grudgingly realising the benefits of stimulus spending.
Tony Abbott is so woeful even his most ardent admirers are forced to report their disappointment. Fluff pieces with morning show hosts even turn into fiascos as Ben Jenkins reports.
It’s actually just a case of the PM suffering from a phenomenon political scientists call “being extremely shithouse at interviews”.
While Abbott tries valiantly to smash the ship of state through the iceberg of public opinion, it’s easy to forget that our prime minister is, and always has been, a terrible interviewee. His complete inability to change tack renders any interview a stilted exchange with a distressingly sinewy random word generator, in which an answer matching a question is purely a matter of chance.
True, it’s better than his previous strategy of “wordlessly stare into Mark Riley’s soul until he leaves you alone out of pure awkwardness”, but not by a huge margin. Abbott is so unwilling to back down on any matter at all that when he calls David Koch “Chris” for a second time during the interview, the PM doesn’t even acknowledge it, let alone apologise.
When the script stinks and the lead actor is a ham who cannot improvise who is supported by a cast of theatrical sycophants directed by Rasputin in animal print our government is now a farce waiting to become a tragedy.
Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, laughs with Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, during their meeting in Melbourne on Thursday.
Prime minister tells Ukraine’s president exports from Australia could help secure Ukraine’s energy sources
Australia is considering exporting coal and uranium to Ukraine it was announced, as the leaders of the two countries met for a historic state visit.
President Petro Poroshenko became the first Ukrainian leader to visit Australia, after accepting an invitation from the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, to discuss security issues in the wake of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July.
“The MH17 atrocity has brought our countries together in a remarkable way,” Abbott told reporters on Thursday.
“I want to say thank you to you, Petro, for the help and assistance that Ukraine and your government gave to Australia and our citizens in the aftermath of that terrible atrocity. And coming from this tragedy, I believe will be a strong and lasting friendship between the Australian people and the Ukrainian people,” Abbott said.
A permanent Australian embassy is due to open in Kiev in February, and Poroshenko has invited Abbott to Ukraine for a state visit, saying he is one of the most popular foreign leaders in the country. “It’s nice to be popular, even if only in Kiev,” Abbott quipped.
Abbott and Poroshenko attended an ecumenical church service on Thursday to honour the nearly 300 victims of the MH17 disaster, 38 of whom were Australian.
“I should acknowledge the part that faith has played in our culture and in our public life, in the culture and public life of civilised countries,” Abbott said.
“There would hardly be a country on Earth so subject to existential threat as Ukraine is. If the freedom of one country is diminished, the freedom of all is diminished. I have come to know Petro Poroshenko quite well over the last few months. And I want to say that not just Ukraine, but freedom has a great champion in Ukraine’s president.”
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Australia is part of an International Monetary Fund contribution aimed at stabilising Ukraine, which has been in a precarious security situation since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March. Russia sides with rebels in eastern Ukraine, but denies providing them with the arms that brought down the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Abbott and Poroshenko acknowledged the importance of securing energy sources for Ukraine, and said that Australia would consider the export of coal and uranium to the country.
Russia has threatened to take Ukraine to the international court if it fails to pay the more than $3bn it owes the Kremlin in unpaid energy debt. Shipments of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine started again after a six month suspension, ending an energy crisis in the country.
Abbott also announced that Australia would give $2m to the Ukrainian military, but skirted the issue of whether Australia was taking sides in the conflict.
“The side we take is the side of freedom, democracy and self-determination,” Abbott said, adding that he had frank discussions with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, when the leader was in Australia for the G20 conference in Brisbane last month. “We seek freedom and dignity for every person in every country and that’s not taking sides.”
Abbott wants Putin to keep his promises on promoting peace in the region. “I say to president Putin, who obviously I’ve got to know reasonably well over the last few months, that this is an opportunity for him to be a statesman as well as a patriot,” Abbott said. “And I appeal to everyone to heed the better angels of their nature here because… we will all advance together or none of us will advance at all.”
Poroshenko wants those responsible for the shooting down of MH17 to be deemed a terrorist organisation and said Ukraine was “making war for peace” to defend its borders. “The truth is with us,” Poroshenko said. “The whole world is with Ukraine, and Russia stays in isolation.”
Russia has denied sending troops to the eastern parts of Ukraine, saying that Russian fighters stationed there are volunteers who feel empathy with Crimeans, many of whom look to Moscow for leadership.
Australia has condemned the annexation of the area, and has called for tougher sanctions to be imposed on Russia until peace talks are successful.
Privatisation and cuts to respected public services might be the agenda of the Coalition government, but it’s certainly not that of the Australian people
My dad used to make us watch the ABC news every night. As a child, I hated it. It was always with a certain amount of resentment that I watched afternoon cartoons give way to the “youth programming” I could bear, if not understand. But the news was a step too far into a bleak space. Dad was stern on this point. “If you don’t watch the news, Van,” he’d admonish me, as I wriggled and whined, “you don’t know what’s going on”.
In the wake of the extraordinary cuts to the ABC and SBS this week, I can only imagine that the architects of this savage attack on our national broadcasters – the Coalition government, its supporters in the Murdoch press and the conservative “free market” think tanks – were told by their own ideological papas the exact same thing.
My dad plonked me in front of the unbiased, articulate and meticulous news reporting of the ABC because he was educating his daughter in how to be a good citizen. By closing ABC news outlets, firing journalists and nobbling independent journalism, the Coalition affirm not only their preference for corporate news but destroy alternatives to the corporate news worldview. Citizens “knowing what’s going on” in the era of climate change, expenses scandals and “on-water matters” is precisely what the Coalition are trying to head off.
Independent and autonomous by charter, the ABC is consistently recognised as a trustworthy brand. Relentless academic scrutiny of the national broadcaster shows that, even with former Liberal party staffer Mark Scott as director, its journalism is balanced and responsible. The Coalition’s neurotic sensitivity to political criticism have tempted them to believe their own propaganda, decrying responsible journalism as “ABC bias”.
Their language game is the dead giveaway that this is no mere budget cutback: according to Malcolm Turnbull, ABC journalists “who work hard every day to report the news objectively and without partisan bias or self-interest will feel very let down” by Quentin Dempster’s appearance at the weekend’s rally to defend those very journalists’ jobs. Andrew Robb chipped in, too: “The ABC … has been a protected species for a long time, has to make its share and its contribution”.
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Their rhetoric is so egregious because they know the ABC can’t engage in its own political defence.
Of course, the Murdoch papers are cheering on the Coalition’s attacks: Rupert Murdoch’s media baron father Keith was complaining about the competition a national news service provided to his corporate interests as far back as the 1930s. Corporate media serve corporate interests, which are indivisible from the Abbott government’s interests under their “open for business” mindset. They’ve been happy to shed the Australia Network to create a market for a new Sky-owned “Australia channel”, because national broadcasters – like state enterprises, welfare, environmental protection, universal healthcare or accessible education – are founded in community values the Abbott government doesn’t share and is isolating, starving and weakening.
The “budget emergency”, like so many other Coalition campaign slogans, was long ago exposed as a fairytale. The Coalition flagrantly spends on its own preferences: the useless Direct Action pay-the-polluters scheme, the derided school chaplains program, the diesel rebate to wealthy corporations. All are of greater priority to this government than autonomous journalism and sanctioned, independent critique.
It might be the agenda of the Coalition, but it’s certainly not that of the Australian people. Australians oppose the privatisation of services like the ABC. The Coalition’s work is not popular: as we watch the shredding of beloved programs and the sacking of trusted journalists – let alone what’s happening in healthcare, climate policy and universities – the internecine carnage of the Gillard and Rudd years will increasingly look like a bygone golden age.
Bill Shorten needs to articulate the rage and betrayal felt in the electorate. If Labor and the Greens can rise above their inner city gang wars and share a respectful stage the way that Shorten and Adam Bandt did at the weekend’s “save the ABC” demos, there is a chance not only to remove Abbott’s government at the next election, but to serve the interests of the vast majority of Australians. At this point, Shorten barely needs to get out of bed in the morning to provide a more cohesive alternative to the government. With a policy platform that articulates what the Australian community actually wants, he’d be unbeatable.
Abbott lied about cuts to the ABC, SBS and everything else because he would have been unelectable had he campaigned on his true agenda. To pretend otherwise is as disingenuous as the prime minister himself. Save the ABC.
A newspaper poll rates Tony Abbott as more incompetent and just as untrustworthy as Julia Gillard. Is he wondering why?
Tony Abbott and his treasurer clearly believe the government’s problem is not their policies but an uncomprehending public.
Take Joe Hockey talking about the PM’s signature paid parental leave policy (PPL).
“I think if people better understand how important it is and better understand the proposal, then sooner or later they’ll realise paid parental leave is hugely important.”
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That was on Monday, the day after the prime minister flagged the ‘signature’ policy was facing a makeover.
And when you have a closer listen to what Mr Abbott was actually foreshadowing it was scarcely a rethink, let alone a major one. Again, it was ‘trust’, rather than the baby, that was being thrown out with the bathwater. Trust in the sense that the impression he was trying to create and the reality were yet again in parallel universes.
Consider this statement: “We will still have parental leave based on a woman’s real wage. It will still include super. It will still be funded by the 3000 largest companies in Australia.” This was the PM at his ‘roll back’ announcement on Sunday.
He then went on to gild the lily: “… [I]t will still particularly advantage small business that will for the first time have access to a universal parental leave scheme.”
Well, they have one already – the less generous one legislated by the Labor minority government that runs for 18 weeks at the minimum wage.
He came closer to a John Howard-like ‘mea culpa’ when he said he would reverse the budget’s huge cuts to childcare. Labor was quick to point out that the PM was trying to repair the political damage done to the government when it pulled out a billion dollars of funding.
The fact is the team that saved the nation by scrapping the carbon tax on 500 companies is still whacking a 1.5 per cent tax on six times as many to pay for the PPL. And it isn’t backing off.
In a messy manoeuvre, the prime minister has left everyone guessing about how wealthy a woman has to be before she is cut out of the largesse.
Already eligibility has been cut to $100,000 from $150,000. The speculation is it could drop as low as $80,000. Whatever the amount it’s the taxpayer footing the bill for a work entitlement employers would be normally expected to pay, and many already are.
It is government-funded ‘welfare’ by another name. Veteran Liberal senator Ian Macdonald says: “The PPL sends all the wrong messages and has to be postponed until the budget is in order.”
Labor leader Bill Shorten says: “No one believes that Tony Abbott is making his changes because he believes he’s wrong. Everyone knows he’s making his changes because he’s in deep political trouble.”
The latest Fairfax Ipsos poll shows just how much trouble.
Voters rate Abbott being as incompetent and untrustworthy as former Labor PM Julia Gillard at her lowest point.
When David Koch on Sunrise put these findings to him, the prime minister seemed to be blaming the electorate for being hoodwinked by his opponents.
“A lot of these commitments are commitments people have attributed to us after the election.”
He didn’t nominate which promises he hasn’t broken but on the ABC he excused the $7 Medicare co-payment shock as something that “certainly wasn’t ruled out before the election”.
But it was ruled out before the budget back in February ahead of the Griffith by-election.
He was asked if he could guarantee there wouldn’t be a Medicare co-payment. His response?
“Nothing has been considered, nothing has been proposed, nothing is planned.”
It may take more than a beach holiday to help Abbott find his old mojo and a way to restore his government’s credibility.
| Thursday, 11 December 2014 13:31 |
| Fresh from its new Petrol Tax and GP Tax, the Abbott Government has today quietly announced a new $900 NBN Tax as part of its “proposed approach to the provision of telecommunications infrastructure in new developments.”
On page five of the Government’s policy document released today, it has announced that new home owners will now be hit with a new $300 NBN connection fee, while developers will also be charged a new $600 deployment charge for homes which they can pass on to home buyers.
Telecommunications infrastructure in new developments – page 5 This $900 tax will be even higher in areas where NBN Co has no ready access to backhaul. Merry Christmas new home buyers. No wonder the Australian people don’t trust Tony Abbott. Since the election he has broken promises like they are plates at a Greek wedding. This is just the latest. Home prices are already very high. This tax will hit those who can afford it the least—young families just starting out. The last thing new home buyers need is a new NBN tax. This tax is also unfair. It means that if you buy an existing home you don’t have to pay anything extra for the NBN. Your taxes pay for it. But if you buy a new home, you have to pay for it twice. In his first press conference as Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “I don’t intend on making promises that I won’t keep.” That turned out to be the lie that laid the platform for more and more lies. For more information on the Abbott Government’s broken promises visit www.abbottslies.com.au |
Author’s Note:Written by: John Lord
It had been my intention, next week, to re post some of my articles from the many I have written this year. One’s that I felt worthy of a re visit. In light of today’s interview with Lyndal Curtis on the ABC I thought I would bring this one forward.
“Do you really think my chief of staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was Peter as opposed to Peta?” Mr Abbott asked the ABC’s Lyndal Curtis.”
My words:
”Do you really think I would be attacking the Prime Minister in the manner I do if her name was James and not Julia.”
“I think people need to take a long hard look at themselves with some of these criticisms” (Tony Abbott).
The Guardian has judged him as “politically incorrect to the point of dementia”.
New Statesman said Abbott represents “politics at its most crass, exploitative and disturbing”.
UK Labour MP Paul Flynn called him “a bigoted airhead”.
The LA Times called itself “scandalised by his prejudices”.
The Sydney Morning Herald said “Tony Abbott had plumbed new lows in government decency”.
Le Monde thinks he is “sexist and vulgar”.
The influential Huffington Post said “he is simply an idiot”.
In the midst of the New South Wales Premier’s resignation a reporter asked a seemingly legitimate question about corruption on the conservative side of politics in that state. The Prime Minister’s reaction was indeed unfitting of the highest office in the land. His anger at the mere suggestion of corruption from his side of politics was palpable. Lest we forget.
But then his ability to feign indignation is only surpassed by that of Christopher Pyne. The fact that the journalist in question was a young lady, who he addressed as Madam, did nothing to dim his reputation for misogyny.
There are those who say that blogs of the ilk for which I write are simply going through an exercise in character assassination. Not so. I was never a Howard hater like many people. Hating people is repugnant to me. However I do believe that our current Prime Minister is demonstrably unfit for the highest office in the land and therefore open to the most severe examination.
There are three reasons. Firstly he is arguably the worst liar to have ever walked the halls of parliament. A liar by his own admission and by evidence. Secondly he is a luddite of the highest order. Anyone who cannot comprehend science and is dismissive of technology belongs in another time and is intellectually unsuited for leadership in the complex word of today. Lest we forget that he appointed Malcolm Turnbull as the then opposition spokesperson to destroy the NBN. Thirdly he is a characterless man of little personal political morality which has been on display throughout his career. He is and always has been an unpopular gutter politician of the worst kind. Lest we forget.
It is said that when opposition leaders ascend to the highest office they are judged by their performance in it. That their past misdemeanors are of little relevance. I cannot subscribe to that. Lest we forget.
Trying to convert a lifetime of negativity into motivating inspirational leadership has been a bridge to far. To say the least he has been totality uninspiring. In fact I can think of no other person in Australian public life who has made a greater contribution to the decline in public discourse, the lowering of parliamentary standards and the abuse of our democracy than Tony Abbott.
But one should not use the aforementioned language without substantiating one’s claims. So, Lest we forget these indiscretions from his past.
None of these events are in chronological order. They are just as they came to mind and are listed randomly in order to build a character profile.
1 When the President of the US visited he broke long standing conventions by politicising his speech as opposition leader.
2 He did the same when the Indonesian president visited.
3 He did the same when the Queen visited.
4 He could not help but play politics with the death of an Australian icon in Margaret Whitlam.
5 He would not allow pairs (another long standing convention) so that the minister for the arts could attend the funeral of painter Margaret Olley. Another Australian icon. Malcolm Turnbull, a personnel friend was also prevented from attending. There have been other instances of not allowing pairs.
6 He refused a pair whilst the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard was on bereavement
leave following the death of her father.
7 Then there were the callous and inappropriate remarks he made to Bernie Banton.
8 At university he kicked in a glass panel door when defeated in an election.
9 Referred to a woman Chairperson as “Chairthing”
10 He was accused of assaulting a woman at University, and later acquitted. He was defended by a QC and the girl defended herself.
11 Another woman accuses him of throwing punches at her. And hitting either side of a wall she was standing against. He says it never happened but others corroborate her story.
12 He threatened to punch the head in of Lindsay Foyle who disagreed with him on a woman’s right to an abortion.
13 In 1978 a young teacher by the name of Peter Woof bought assault charges against Abbott. Abbott had punched him in the face. The charges never went anywhere. Abbott was represented by a legal team of six and the young man could not afford to defend himself.
14 And he did punch out Joe Hockey’s lights during a rugby match.
15 He established a slush fund to bring down Pauline Hansen and then lied about its existence.
16 He was ejected from the House of reps once in obscure circumstances. Hansard is unclear why, but it is alleged that he physically threatened Graham Edwards. Edwards lost both his legs in Vietnam.
17 In the year 2000 he was ejected from the House along with six others. Philip Coorey reports that he was headed toward the Labor back benches ready to thump a member who had heckled him.
18 Abused Nicola Roxon after turning up late for a debate.
19 Then there was the interview with Mark Riley where he had a brain fade that seemed like it would never end. I thought he was deciding between a right hook and a left cross. Something that I found mentally disturbing and worrying . After all, at the time this was the man who could be our next Prime Minister.
20 Together with Pyne he was seen running from the House of Reps to avoid embarrassment at being outwitted.
21 Being the first opposition leader to be ejected from the house in 26 years because he repeated an accusation of lying after withdrawing it.
22 The infamous “Sell my arse” statement verified by Tony Windsor. Will Windsor ever release the mobile phone transcript?
23 The interview with Kerry O’Brien where he admitted that unless it was in writing he didn’t always tell the truth.
24 And in another O’Brien interview he admitted lying about a meeting with the catholic Cardinal George Pell.
25 During the Republic referendum he told many outrageous untruths.
26 His famous “Climate change is crap” comment and later saying that he was speaking to an audience. This of course elicited the question; “Is that what you always do?”
27 His almost daily visits as opposition leader to businesses with messages of gloom and doom about the carbon tax. None of which have come to fruition. His blatant lying often repudiated by the management of the businesses. The most notable being the CEO of BHP and their decision not to proceed with the Olympic Dam mine. Whole towns being closed down. Industries being forced to sack thousands. The end of the coal industry etc.
28 And of course there is the now infamous Leigh Sales interview where beyond any doubt he lied three times and continued to do so the next day.
29 Then there was his statement that the Aboriginal tent embassy at Parliament House be closed. To call his statement an error in judgement is too kind. It almost sounded like an incitement to riot.
30 He is quoted as saying in the Parliament that Prime Minister Gillard and Minister Albanese had targets on their heads. He later apologised.
31 And of course there is also the lie about asylum seekers being illegal.
32 Added to that is his statement that the PM refused to lay down and die.
I think I have exhausted it all but I cannot be sure. Oh wait. Lest we forget.
33 We should not leave out his insensitive comments about the attempted suicide of John Brogden.
34 And the deliberate lie he told to the Australian Minerals Council that the Chinese intended increasing their emissions by 500 per cent.
35 His “dying of shame” comment.
36 His “lack of experience in raising children” comment.
37 His “make an honest women of herself” comment.
38 His “no doesn’t mean no” comment.
Then of course there were these Tonyisms. Similar ones have continued into his Prime Ministership.
Lest we forget.
39 ‘Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia’.
40 ‘These people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers’.
On rights at work:
41 ‘If we’re honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband … you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he’s employing someone while he is in fact a boss’.
On women:
42 ‘The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience’.
43 ‘I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’.
44 ‘I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak’.
45 ‘What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year…’.
On Julia Gillard:
46 ‘Gillard won’t lie down and die’.
On climate change:
47 ‘Climate change is absolute crap’.
48 ‘If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax’.
On homosexuality:
49 ‘I’d probably … I feel a bit threatened’
50 ‘If you’d asked me for advice I would have said to have – adopt a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about all of these things…’.
On Indigenous Australia:
51 ‘Now, I know that there are some Aboriginal people who aren’t happy with Australia Day. For them it remains Invasion Day. I think a better view is the view of Noel Pearson, who has said that Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage’.
52 ‘Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that…’.
53 ‘There may not be a great job for them but whatever there is, they just have to do it, and if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done’.
On Nicola Roxon:
54 ‘That’s bullshit. You’re being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can’t help yourself, can you?’
The list is by no means complete and I am sure readers could add many more to it. His ludicrous statement about our navy’s problems with navigation and blatantly lying about turning boats around as opposed to turning them back. Lest we forget.
For more Abbottisms go here.
His nasty ill-founded comments continue unabated further empathising his unsuitability for the job. Take this for example:
When Tony Abbott said this what did you think?
“You can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school”.
“There will be no change to school funding under the government I lead”.
Then he said the Coalition will deliver on its education election promises, not on what some people “thought” it was going to do.
Now some time back Tony Abbott told us that the best way to understand the truth of what he was saying was to have it in writing. Otherwise what he was saying was just idle chatter for an audience.
So now I’m a little confused. You see now he is saying that what I thought he said is only a figment of my imagination. That what I think I thought he meant is not what he meant at all. That when he says something and I take it to mean one thing he has the option of saying that what I thought I heard was not what I heard at all. It was only my interpretation of what he meant mean, did he say what he meant or did he mean to say what he meant or was what he meant really what he meant.
I know what I thought and I know what I’m thinking now. Lying deceptive bastard. Lest we forget.
Another example:
When asked in parliament in February whether he stood by his statement of “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS” made the night before the election, Mr Abbott responded:
“Of course I stand by all the commitments that this government made prior to the election. If there is one lesson that members opposite should have learnt from the experience of the previous term of parliament it is that you cannot say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards”
He was still saying the same thing this week.
Convicted of lying by his own words I would have thought. And not a word of protest from the main stream media.
Something truly remarkable is happening in Australian politics. The Australian Prime Minister who was as opposition leader a person devoid of character, is now attempting a personality conversion to rival nothing hitherto seen in an Australian leader. During his tenure as opposition leader he used colorful aggressive language. He was bullish in his attitude to others, particularly to the female Prime Minister of the day. His negativity was legendary. He held in contempt procedures of the House of Representatives and the conventions it upheld. Lest we forget.
Now a few months into his term of office we are expected to believe that he has transformed into a mild mannered, cultured man of some distinction. Walking the global stage as a gentleman with noble intent.
We are expected to put to one side the old Tony Abbott and embrace the new one with unbridled fondness. Lest we forget.
Well I am all for self-improvement. I like to think I have practiced it all my life. But in this instance I will not be conned with this nonsense.
David Marr’s quarterly essay “Political Animal” gives an engrossing even gripping insight into the persona of the leader of the opposition leader Tony Abbott.I made many observations as I read it and I cannot of course comment on everything. I must say though (given Tony Abbot’s statement that he finds gay’s intimidating) that I was a little bemused at how Marr even got to interview him. They apparently spent some time together which must have been excruciatingly uncomfortable for the then opposition leader. And given that Mr Abbott only allowed him to use just one quote I should think he probably wasted his time. Another thing that took my attention was the influence of Catholicism in his private and political decision making. He in apparently finds it difficult to make decisions without referral to his faith. Lest we forget.
Regardless of what political persuasion you are I believe we like to see character in our leaders. Now how do we describe character?
“Character is a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a life, governing moral choices and infusing personal and professional conduct. It’s an elusive thing, easily cloaked or submerged by the theatrics of a presidential campaign, but unexpected moments can sometimes reveal the fibres from which it is woven.”
When looked at in isolation the lies and indiscretions of Tony Abbott, his problems with women and even his negativity could perhaps all be written off as just Tony being Tony. Or that’s just politics. However my focus here is on character and whether Mr Abbott has enough of it to be the leader of our nation. My contention is that because we are looking at a litany of instances of lying, deception and bad behavior over a long period of time he simply doesn’t have the essence of character which is one of the main ingredients in the recipe of leadership. On the evidence thus far the Prime Minister falls a long way short.
Lest we forget.
It is however, in the area of truth that shows the worst aspects of his character. The future of this country is of vital importance. Given his performance of late he would do well to consider these words. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. It’s easy to understand what Abbott says because he only speaks in slogans. The difficulty is knowing what he means.
“As he spoke I expected the very essence of truth but his words came from the beginning of a smirk, or was it just a sneer of deception” (John Lord).
If politics is fundamentally about ideas it is also about leadership. In this piece I have deliberately steered clear of policy argument in order to concentrate on character. On numerous occasions I have invited people on Facebook to list five attributes of Tony Abbott that warranted his election as Prime Minister of Australia. I have never received a reply. And when you look at the aforementioned list, is it any wonder. He is simply bereft of any character at all. He has been described as the mad monk and many other things but essentially he is a repugnant gutter politician of the worst kind. Lest we forget.
“It is better to be comforted with the truth than be controlled by lies” (John Lord).
Author’s note:
The phrase “lest we forget” is generally used as a mark of respect for those who have died in war. It does however have other meanings. One of which is a warning against lying and the perils of self-pride, exaggeration and bad leadership that eventually leads to an inevitable decline in power. It is in that context that I use it.
In February I published an article called But then it was too late which was an excerpt from the Milton Mayer book They Thought They Were Free. It is a chilling account of how the Nazis were able to rise to power, how they gradually habituated the public into accepting their increasingly depraved agenda.
But that was a long time ago and it couldn’t happen here, right?
In the land of the brave and the home of the free, the American Nazi Party still exists as “a Political-Educational Association, dedicated to the 14 WORDS – We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”
They have a party platform and website that outlines their goals, or should I say demands, exhorting patriotic WHITE Americans to rise up.
“Each of us must decide just how far we will let the situation in America deteriorate, before we decide to take action to correct it. If you have had enough, and are willing to join the ranks of your ancestors who forged this land from a wilderness teeming with savages, and to keep it from returning to that state, we urge you to become involved. For your children’s sake, if not for your own. For White WORKER Power!”
Randa Morris has designed a ten question quiz to help modern day conservatives determine just how much of the American Nazi Party platform they agree with. Whilst written for an American audience, the questions apply equally well to an Australian context.
Take the ‘Are you a Nazi?’ quiz.
- Do you oppose immigration and believe that America is for “Americans only?
- Do you oppose feminism, and do you believe that motherhood should be the prime role of women, in order to “strengthen the family unit?”
- Do you support the establishment of a new system of education, which would oversee the “moral development” of children?
- Do you believe that the economy and the government should be debt-free?
- Do you believe that America should be “energy sufficient,” and that we should exploit natural resources, such as land and water, in order to achieve that goal? (Bonus question: Is it a good idea to put ‘fossil fuel-producing corporations,’ like fracking wells, oil rigs and garbage incinerators in economically depressed regions of the country, to stimulate economic growth and create jobs for minorities?)
- Do you support the right of citizens to keep and bear arms? (No, Nazi’s do not support taking guns away, contrary to right wing bullshit.)
- Do you want to do away with the separation of church and state?
- Do you want to see the US government get involved in the “spiritual upbringing” of children?
- Are you a true supporter of “traditional American values?” (The Nazi’s call it ‘traditional Aryan values,’ but we know what you mean.)
- Do you believe that minorities and immigrants are a threat to the traditional United States?
Bonus points if you:
- Oppose labor unions and want to see them outlawed.
- Agree that there is a “war on white people” and that ‘reverse-racism’ is a real problem in the United States.
- Believe that gays present a real threat to “traditional American values” and the “traditional American family.”
- Hate “Communists” and are willing to apply that label to everyone you disagree with politically.
Remind you of anyone?
Randa explains her purpose is not to condemn or to convict, but to expose how the Nazi agenda has gone mainstream and to (hopefully) help some of the people who have bought into this agenda, to realize what they’ve been sold.
The use of religion by the right wing in the US today serves a specific purpose. Followers of the right wing confuse their religious beliefs with their political ideas, and become unable to separate the two. In the same way it did in Nazi Germany, the tactic is used to create religiously-fervent extremists, people who are unable to separate their belief in God from their devotion to a political party or regime.
What Hitler understood is that a man can be persuaded to do anything, as long as he believes that what he is doing is “God’s will.”
Regardless of what perspective you take on history, most people understand that Nazi’s were and are evil. Most people are aware that, in the past, they used mass manipulation to promote their agenda and to get the people to go along with it.
If the same tactics were being used in Australia today, would people be able to see what was happening? Could people go from being kind-hearted, God-fearing citizens to Nazi’s without realizing that their beliefs were being subtly manipulated through a mixing of religion and nationalism?
“the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.” -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
By Jazz Twemlow
Wednesday, 10th December 2014
Following a report released at international negotiations in Peru that names Australia the “worst-performing industrial country in the world on climate change”, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia would be declassified as a country. “In the eventuality that we can’t compete on an environmental platform, we will delete Australia as a country completely,” Abbott explained. “It’s easier this way.”
“By officially ceasing to be a nation, the world would just have to accept that the enormous carbon emissions exactly where ‘Australia’ used to be are now just naturally occurring,” the prime minister continued. “Sure, we’d become a nationless collective of vagrants, but it’s better than being constantly reminded I’m personally responsible for smothering future generations with a carbon pillow. I hope everyone will get on board with Team Nowhere.”
ABC Managing Director Mark Scott is said to be relieved, as it will no longer be possible for the ABC to be un-Australian. Former citizens of Australia are advised, if challenged by foreigners pointing to Australia on world maps, to explain that it is simply a patch of land-coloured ocean. “Hopefully this will also send a strong message to boat people trying to get to Australia illegally,” said Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. “Now that Australia doesn’t exist, it’s hard to imagine what reason anybody might have to come here.”
In other news:
Scott Morrison Begins Disembowelling the Weak and Vulnerable After Senate Grants Him New Powers
In Bid To Cease Promotion of Violence, ‘Target’ Changes Its Own Name
News Corp Poll Finds Minus 37% of People Support Renewable Energy
Obama Announces Drone Accidentally Hit Its Target
When I reflect on what I have written this year it is abundantly clear that the center of my attention has concentrated on two issues. Firstly the subject of lying, or more accurately the Prime Ministers lying, and secondly the state of our democracy. But of course the two go hand in hand.
On the first issue I am wholeheartedly sick of writing an ongoing commentary on the lying of Tony Abbott. I have become frustrated and aggravated by the consistency of his untruth. But it must be revealed.
In the past few weeks he has resorted to telling lies about lies already told in a manner in which one has to question whether he is actually conversing in English or just corrupting it.
In the first instance the best way to turn the profession of politics on its head in this country and create a new democracy would be to demand they tell the truth.
You can shape truth by telling lies for your own benefit and you can use the contrivance of omission to create another lie.
However, the ability to admit you are wrong is an absolute pre requisite to discernment and knowledge. It requires truthfulness. If we are to progress as a country we must accept that there can be much pain in admitting we were wrong but there is no harm in it.
And if humility is the basis by which intellectual advancement is made then it is only on the basis of truth that we attain human progress. Telling the truth should not be delayed simply because we are not sure how people might react to it. It is far better to be comforted by truth than to be controlled by lies.
It is often difficult in politics to distinguish a broken promise from the convenience of a change of mind, but with Abbott there are no shades of hue. It takes courage to change one’s mind for the greater good. It requires the telling of truth. I see no capacity for it in our Prime Minister.
It seems so ingrained in his persona that distinguishing between truth and lies is beyond his private and public morality. He has little trouble merging his faith into his political philosophy but eliminates a cornerstone of his faith, ‘’truth’’, when applied to his politics.
Some recent examples.
Prior to writing this I was watching the ABCs morning news service. The PM was asked about his changes to his Medicare policy.
‘’Did you consult with doctors before making the changes’’
Without blinking (or was that winking) the PM answered ‘’Yes of course’’
It turns out that they were told of 20 minutes prior to the announcement.
But let’s take a step back in time.
In an astonishing feat of deceit and denial Tony Abbott insulted the intelligence of every Australian voter by insisting his GP Tax was not a broken promise.
Tony Abbott – ABC AM – 8 December 2014
Abbott: Well the GP co-payment was very extensively talked about in the lead up to the Budget.
Uhlmann: Not before the election.
Abbott: Well look it certainly wasn’t ruled out before the election.
In fact the GP Tax, and every other tax increase was specifically ruled out by Tony Abbott on numerous occasions.
“The only party that will raise taxes after the election is the Labor Party.”
Tony Abbott – Sydney – 11 August 2013
Even when news leaked the Government was considering the GP Tax Tony Abbott continued to lie, to deceive voters in both the Griffith by-election and the Western Australian Senate election re-run.
Journalist: Mr Abbott, can you guarantee there won’t be a Medicare co-payment?
Tony Abbott: Michelle, nothing is being considered, nothing has been proposed, and nothing is planned.
Tony Abbott – Doorstop – 1 February 2014
Tony Abbott now insists his repeated denials he was planning a GP Tax are evidence it was “extensively talked about”.
At other times he stands before the camera and unequivocally tells the people that every family has benefited by $550 of their power bills with the repeal of the carbon tax knowing that it is a blatant lie.
The other method of lying of course is not to tell, or to lie by omission. The government before the election gave a promise that they would be more open and transparent. A decent leader shouldn’t have to promise something that should be an enshrined component of any democracy’s moral compass.
Not so. Instead of being open about what our politicians spend they are refusing to release ministerial travel costs because it could damage our international standing.
Yes that’s right. The Abbott government is refusing to release documents detailing the cost and purpose of overseas travel by Coalition ministers, claiming they could “cause damage to Australia’s international relations” if made public.
That sounds like an admittance of guilt.
And of course it is pressing ahead with changes to the Freedom of Information regime that will make it much more difficult to access government information.
On top of that the government is now authorised to secretly collect vast amounts of information about its citizens under the new data retention laws passed this year.
And to finish, we find that Christopher Pyne was planning an advertising campaign in support of deregulation of university fees since October. Christopher Pyne says it was a suggestion of John Madigan. Madigan refutes it. Who would you believe? The ad is full of lies or at best misleading information.
If all this means I am saying the Prime Minister and his ministers are pathological liars then so be it. I am. It’s not a nice thing to say about people but we are dealing with truth here. It’s not so much that the PM is a serial offender, he is. I think the electorate has finally woken up. It shows up in the polling. It is why his polling is so poor.
The fact that he lies is easily supported by volumes of readily available, irrefutable evidence. (I can provide it if need be).
And after a long period of protection from the main stream media (the so-called fourth estate) the supposed people’s custodian of truth, it could be that some have seen the light of truthful examination. Could it be that they have realised that telling the truth and reporting it should be more important than creating a narrative where controversy matters more.
In any worthwhile and truly representative democracy truth should, together with governance for the common good, be a first order principle. In fact the first priority in the restoration of democracy in this country should be to insist that our politicians tell the truth.
I would like to think that this is the last piece I will write on this subject but I know it won’t be.
And that’s the truth of it.
Having said that if you believe the polls 48% of the population would still vote for his party and him as leader.
Australia’s insistence on legally binding emissions targets an ‘impossible requirement’ that would drive away the US and China, experts say
The Abbott government has been accused of setting impossible requirements for Australia’s participation in any global climate change agreement clinched in Paris next year by insisting it must include legally binding emissions targets.
Experts say the Paris agreement could require countries to enshrine their new post-2020 greenhouse emission reduction targets in domestic law but that any attempt to include those targets in the legally binding international treaty itself would drive away the world’s two biggest emitters – the US and China – and ensure that the process failed.
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop – who has revealed Tony Abbott knocked back her first request to attend the current preparatory meeting in Lima, Peru, and who is now to be “chaperoned” at that meeting by the trade minister, Andrew Robb – has said a Paris agreement must include binding targets. If it did not it would “amount to nothing more than aspirations”, she said.
“It seems like they are trying to set impossible conditions so that they can portray a successful Paris agreement as a failure,” said Frank Jotzo, associate professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School.
“Legally binding instruments can build confidence that countries will act on the commitments they make internationally. However, the legal form of an international agreement does not determine its effectiveness. The most binding treaty will do little to address climate change if some major emitters like the US and China do not participate.”
The former Labor government’s expert adviser on climate policy, Professor Ross Garnaut, said the government should “forget about” the idea of a legally binding treaty if it really wanted an effective climate outcome from Paris.
“A comprehensive legally binding agreement is not possible because that is not what the US does,” he said. “It is rare for the US to bind itself on anything. Woodrow Wilson was unable to get the US Senate to support membership of the League of Nations that was the creation of the United States.
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“President Obama has made it clear that he will not support US participation in a legally binding agreement, and that instead the US has made a serious domestic commitment to implementing the ambitious objectives embodied in the Xi-Obama Agreement. China will not enter a legally binding agreement if the US does not. So forget about it.
“A legally binding agreement is of no value anyway, as, while it may be legally binding, such an agreement is not enforceable. Look at Canada’s walking away from its legally binding Kyoto commitments … and there is no evidence that countries are more likely to deliver on notionally legally binding than on domestic political commitments.
“Kyoto” refers to the Kyoto protocol which included countries’ greenhouse reduction commitments up to 2012.
The government’s own independent advisory body, the Climate Change Authority, said in a report: “One thing the Paris meeting will not deliver is a universal, prescriptive, enforcement-oriented legal agreement, similar in form to the existing Kyoto protocol. For one thing, such an outcome is not achievable in the short term.
“Insisting on it would likely be counterproductive and lead to more modest global action. The value of the Paris outcome will be its effect on emissions and efforts over time, not its particular legal form.”
The government has unsuccessfully sought to abolish the Climate Change Authority.
The deputy director of the Climate Institute thinktank, Erwin Jackson, said Australia’s insistence on legally binding targets was setting the process up for failure.
“Any agreement signed in Paris will be binding but the individual national targets almost certainly won’t be,” he said. “It may be that countries are required to enshrine their targets in domestic laws, but to suggest the targets need to be part of an internationally binding commitment is to set up an impossible requirement because it would ensure that the United States, China and probably India would not be able to participate.
“The test of a country’s commitment is whether it is prepared to pass domestic regulations to curb its own emissions. The United States and China have done that.
“Australia is going in the opposite direction. Its Direct Action policy contains no binding limits on emissions. This discussion about the need for legally binding international commitments is just a distraction and would be the worst possible thing for a successful global climate agreement.”
The government is also under fire for refusing to make any contributions to the Green Climate Fund, to which President Barack Obama pledged $3bn during his trip to Brisbane for the G20 summit. The government says it already pays for climate adaptation and mitigation through its foreign aid budget. It has not provided figures for that contribution and the budget document on the aid program contains passing references to a program in Tuvalu.
Australia sent no minister to last year’s international climate talks in Warsaw, Poland. It is believed that Robb’s job is to make sure Bishop does not go too far in committing Australia to climate action, and that Bishop is very unhappy at being accompanied.
Australia has said it will unveil a post-2020 emissions reduction target before the Paris talks, but most observers believe the Direct Action policy would struggle to deliver deeper cuts than the 5% reduction promised by 2020.
Under the former Labor government Australia provided about $200m a year to the so-called “fast start” program for climate change assistance to developing countries but that spending has been cut.
The Abbott government is refusing the release documents revealing the cost of Coalition ministers’ travel overseas. Photo: Andrew Meares
The Abbott government is refusing to release documents detailing the cost and purpose of overseas travel by Coalition ministers, claiming they could “cause damage to Australia’s international relations” if made public.
The government-wide clampdown comes after embarrassing details of Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s lavish trip to London and Rome with his wife were revealed by Fairfax Media in September.
In a letter, the government leader in the Senate, Eric Abetz, refused a request to table correspondence between Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s office and ministers concerning approval of international travel by members of the executive.
The blanket refusal has been made despite freedom of information officers in the Education Department seeing no impediment to the release of expense details of Mr Pyne’s $30,000 trip to London and Rome in April.
Mr Pyne came under fire after taxpayers were billed $1352 to “day let” a room at a swish London hotel before the minister and his wife, Carolyn, flew back to Australia on the same day. More than $2000 was spent on VIP services at Heathrow Airport for the Pynes.
The documents revealed Mr Pyne had got around guidelines that prevent spouses being funded on overseas trips unless in certain circumstances with a special letter of approval by Mr Abbott’s chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin.
The request for documents was made in the Senate after the government refused freedom of information requests by the Transport Workers Union to nine different departments, including Health, Defence, Industry, Treasury and Attorney-General.
The Gillard government routinely released travel cost documents, including six separate requests under FOI laws in relation to the travel expenses of then foreign minister Kevin Rudd.
Labor was hit with headlines including the “huge travel splurge of globe-trotting federal MPs”.
In the Coalition’s pre-election policy blueprint, Real Solutions, the then Opposition promised that in government: “We will restore accountability and improve transparency measures to be more accountable to you.”
In his letter of November 24 to Senate President Stephen Parry, refusing Labor’s request to produce documents, Senator Abetz said fulfilling the request would “substantially divert the resources … from its other operations” of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
“The Department also advises that any correspondence that may be identified could include information, which if released publicly would, or could reasonably be expected to cause damage to Australia’s international relations,” Mr Abetz wrote.
Labor Senator Joe Ludwig said Mr Abbott’s claim to greater transparency in Real Solutions could be chalked up as “another lie”.
“This once again demonstrates a government that’s shrouded in secrecy and afraid of the truth. The previous Labor government released this type of information to the public, what does the Abbott government have to hide?” he said.
Mr Abbott was forced to tighten rules around travel entitlements for all members of Parliament last year after revelations by Fairfax Media.
They included Attorney-General George Brandis and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce claiming $1700 and $650 respectively to attend the 2011 wedding of Sydney radio presenter Michael Smith.
Mr Joyce, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Liberal MP Teresa Gambaro claimed $12,000 in overseas study allowance for flights back from an Indian society wedding in 2011 at the invitation of mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
Mr Abbott paid back money he had billed taxpayers to attend two weddings in 2006, including that of former speaker of the House and Liberal Party defector Peter Slipper.
Radio presenter accuses environment minister of lying, and says Abbott is in danger of losing his seat over the proposal to build an aged-care home in the PM’s electorate
Radio announcer Alan Jones has suggested Tony Abbott could lose his seat because of the public outcry over a local aged care redevelopment and has accused the environment minister, Greg Hunt, of listening to “Labor hacks” in approving it.
In an angry 30-minute interview on Sydney’s 2GB, Jones repeatedly chastised Hunt, accusing him of “telling lies to my listeners” and of accepting advice from Labor appointees on the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust about the proposal to build a privately owned, for-profit aged care home overlooking Sydney harbour at Middle Head.
“They are cheering and clapping their hands, they are saying ‘We’ve got Abbott on something else’ … [former prime minister Julia] Gillard appointed these people and they are laughing at you … they are rubbing their hands because Tony Abbott is in trouble with his own people and he may go the way John Howard went in Bennelong,” Jones said. (Howard lost the Sydney seat of Bennelong at the 2007 election).
“You will doom Tony Abbott if you start building an aged care facility there, I am telling you now,” he told Hunt, despite the fact that the prime minister holds the seat of Warringah by a very healthy 15.3% margin. “The prime minister is on the rack.”
In a six-minute, 30-second introduction to the interview, Jones said the Coalition was “on the nose” and this was not going to improve unless they started to listen.
“I am just telling them what the public will do if they don’t change … this is government completely out of control telling the people to get stuffed … and this is in Tony Abbott’s electorate and he has been hopelessly and dishonestly advised … the commonwealth consent authority was signed off by Greg Hunt, every aspect of this is a disgrace, and the minister Greg Hunt is on the line,” Jones said as he concluded his introductory monologue.
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Hunt attempted to explain that his approval had been subject to the views of the rural fire service, and tried to give some history of the decision-making process, but was repeatedly interrupted by the broadcaster, who accused Hunt of lying and not knowing what he was talking about.
A Fairfax Ipsos poll published on Monday showed Abbott’s personal standing falling to levels equal to the lowest suffered by Gillard, and the Coalition at an election-losing 48% to Labor’s 52% in two-party-preferred terms.
But in a series of interviews Abbott continued to deny he had broken election promises on health and education and insisted his government had the “fundamentals” right. He shrugged off leadership speculation by comparing himself with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
“The Howard government, the Thatcher government, the Reagan government all had rough patches in the polls, and I’m not the first leader to be subject to a bit of speculation,” he told Seven’s Sunrise.
Abbott is facing a revolt in Liberal branches in his electorate over the plan to redevelop the former defence site. It has also been criticised by one of his sisters who lives in the area, Jane Vincent.
The locals say the development is another broken promise by Abbott, who said in a speech in April 2012: “Largely at my instigation, the Howard government committed more than $115m to the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust to preserve the natural and built heritage of places like North Head and Middle Head.”
Jones had previously rounded on Hunt’s parliamentary secretary Simon Birmingham over the development, saying it was Abbott’s “Julia Gillard moment”.
It’s repetitive for some to hear, but important for everybody to know: You can’t explain Millennial economic behavior without explaining that real wages for young Americans have collapsed.
American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America’s younger workers, “stagnant” wages shouldn’t sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise.
Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care.
Young People’s Wages Have Fallen Across Industries Between 2007 and 2013
Census: Current Population Survey
These numbers come from an analysis of the Census Current Population Survey by Konrad Mugglestone, an economist with Young Invincibles.
In retail, wholesale, leisure, and hospitality—which together employ more than one quarter of this age group—real wages have fallen more than 10 percent since 2007. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that most of this cohort are seeing their pay slashed, year after year. Instead it suggests that wage growth is failing to keep up with inflation, and that, as twentysomethings pass into their thirties, they are earning less than their older peers did before the recession.
The picture isn’t much better for the youngest group of workers between 18 and 24. Besides health care, the industries employing the vast majority of part-time students and recent graduates are also watching wages fall behind inflation. (40 percent of this group is enrolled in college.)
The Wages of the Youngest Workers (Ages 18-24) Have Fallen, Too
Census: Current Population Survey
There are a few reasonable follow-up questions to these stunning graphs.
First: Why are real wages falling across so many fields for young workers? The Great Recession devastated demand for hotels, amusement parks, and many restaurants, which explains the collapse in pay across those industries. As the ranks of young unemployed and underemployed Millennials pile up, companies around the country know they can attract applicants without raising starter wages.
But there’s something deeper, too. The familiar bash brothers of globalization and technology (particularly information technology) have conspired to gut middle-class jobs by sending work abroad or replacing it with automation and software. A 2013 study by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson found that although the computerization of certain tasks hasn’t reduced employment, it has reduced the number of decent-paying, routine-heavy jobs. Cheaper jobs have replaced them, and overall pay has declined.
Your second question might be: Why have health-care wages been the exception to the rule? One answer is that health care is, generally speaking, the exception to many rules. Demand for medical services is dominated by the government (i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, and the employer insurance tax break), which doesn’t face the same vertiginous up-and-downs as the rest of the economy. So as the Great Recession steamrolled many industries, health care, propped up by sturdy government spending, kept adding workers. What’s more, computerization and information technology have yet to work their magical price-cutting power in health care as they have in other industries, for a variety of reasons. Americans are spending four percent less on food away from home than in 2007; but we’re spending 42 percent more on health insurance. As prices have increased, so have wages for younger workers in the medical field. (Update: Some readers have made the smart suggestion that money which might have gone to higher salaries has instead gone to paying higher health insurance costs.)
Once you account for falling wages among young workers—if you must: “the Millennials”—many mysteries of the economic behavior of young people cease to be mysterious, such as this generation’s aversion to home-buying, auto loans, and savings. Indeed, the savings rate for Americans under 35, having briefly breached after the Great Recession, dove back underwater and now swims at negative-1.8 percent.
Savings Rates Since 2004, by Age
WSJ
Some of these young people could afford to save more, even if it’s a small share of their meager income, since small amounts of money put away several decades before retirement (or an unexpected emergency) can help later. But it’s easier to see why young Americans aren’t saving any more than we used to: Their wages are falling behind the cost of basic goods and many are going into debt to pay for a college degree.
The evaporation of real wages for young Americans is a real mystery because it’s coinciding with what is otherwise a real recovery. The economy has been growing steadily since 2009. We’re adding 200,000 jobs a month in 2014. That’s what a recovery looks like. And yet, overall U.S. wages are barely growing, and wages for young people are growing 60 percent more slowly than overall U.S. wages. How is a generation supposed to build a future on that?
Should taxpayers fund religious training?
Liberal MP Wyatt Roy thinks it’d be no big deal if taxpayer money was used to fund religious training while Labor doesn’t agree.
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Taxpayers would subsidise the training of priests and other religious workers at private colleges for the first time under the Abbott government’s proposed higher education reforms.
As well as deregulating university fees and cutting university funding by 20 per cent, the government’s proposed higher education package extends federal funding to students at private universities, TAFES and associate degree programs.
Religious teaching, training and vocational institutes would be eligible for a share of $820 million in new Commonwealth funding over three years.
Bible studies: Institutes providing religious training will be eligible for government funding under the Coalition’s proposed higher education reforms. Photo: Justin McManus
Labor and the Greens attacked the policy, saying it breaches the separation of Church and State. Earlier this year the government controversially announced it would provide $244 million for a new school chaplaincy scheme but would remove the option for schools to hire secular welfare workers.
In correspondence with voters, Family First Senator Bob Day has singled out funding for faith-based training institutes to explain his support for the government’s reforms.
Eleven theological colleges are currently accredited by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) to provide courses designed to prepare students to enter religious ministries.
“This raises serious questions about relationship between Church and State”: Labor higher education spokesman Kim Carr. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Institutes such as the Sydney College of Divinity, Brisbane’s Christian Heritage College and the Perth Bible College, which currently charge students full fees, would be eligible for an estimated $4214 funding a year each student under the reforms.
The John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, which offers course units including “Theology and Practice of Natural Family Planning” and “Marriage in the Catholic Tradition”, would also be eligible for federal support.
The institute says on its website its mission is “promote marriage and the family for the good of the whole Church and the wider community”.
The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne requires all trainee priests to receive theological training at Ridley College or the Trinity College Theological School, both of which would likely be eligible to offer Commonwealth Supported Places under the government’s changes.
Labor higher education spokesman Kim Carr said: “This raises serious questions about relationship between Church and State. The Church has traditionally funded the training of its own personnel.”
Mr Carr said there was a difference between federal funding for theoretically-focused religious studies courses and courses designed to prepare graduates for the priesthood.
Greens higher education spokeswoman Lee Rhiannon said: “Mr Pyne has gone one step further than robbing Peter to pay Paul – he is attempting to rob Australia’s public and secular university system to pay private, religious colleges.
“Courses that Mr Pyne wants to extend funding to include those teaching prescriptive Christian ideology on sexuality and marriage – is this really the best use of the higher education budget?”
On its core values page on its website the Perth Bible College says, “We believe in the urgent need to reach our broken world with the gospel of Jesus Christ and to train men and women to be effective servants for God.”
A spokesman for Education Minister Christopher Pyne said courses offered by private colleges would have to be approved by the independent regulator to gain access to federal funding.
“Consistent with current practice, the government will not distinguish between faith‑based and secular higher education institutions for registration and funding purposes,” the spokesman said.
Family First Senator Bob Day said, in a letter to a member of the general public, that it is unfair that public universities receive federal funding but religious colleges and other private providers do not.
“The Government’s proposals … reduce the subsidies given to universities, while for the first time addressing inequity by providing significant subsidies for non-universities (but still less than universities),” he wrote. “Some of these non-universities that will receive funding for the first time – if this Bill passes – are faith-based training, teaching, theological and vocational institutions.”
University of Divinity Vice-Chancellor Peter Sherlock declined to comment, but in a recent Senate submission the private university said federal funding would bring down course fees for its students.
The government’s reforms were voted down by the Senate this week but will return to Parliament, with some amendments, next year.
Figures released on Thursday by the Universities Admissions Centre showed a slight increase in year 12 applications on last year despite claims of vastly increased fees under a deregulated system.
Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia. It is one of those things that you know is true but remains incomprehensible. Like the concept of infinity. It’s hard to get your head around.
In most jobs you need to satisfy key criteria to even get an interview. To get a managerial position you must have experience and proven expertise. Along the way your success in meeting key performance indicators will be assessed.
Leaders should be people who inspire others, they should be role models and protectors, they should listen and empower, they should have good people skills and be able to negotiate, they should be trustworthy and able to explain the reasons for their decisions.
Or you can just agree to say climate change is crap, and become the leader of the nation.
But how did Tony even become a contender?
He attended a Catholic boys school where he bemoaned the fact that he was never chosen for the First XV rugby team. Apparently this was not due to a lack of talent but to selectors who did not recognise Tony’s ability.
Tony then went on to study economics/law at Sydney University (for free) even though he never worked in either field and described economics as a boring “dismal science”.
Tony was active in student politics, eventually becoming an unpopular leader of the Student Representative Council.
“During my term, despite my objections, the SRC, continued to give money to feminist, environmental and anti-nuclear groups. I never managed to have the feminist and homosexuals’ slogans on the SRC walls painted over nor to open the ‘Womens’ Room’ to men, nor to make the SRC more accountable by ending compulsory SRC fees.”
Contacts within the Jesuit network secured a Rhodes scholarship for Tony to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford even though he had campaigned fiercely against the Philosophy and Political Economy courses at Sydney University describing them as a waste of resources and a hotbed of Marxist feminists.
The selectors for the Oxford rugby team also failed to appreciate Tony’s talent, dropping him after one game and suggesting that his ability had been overstated.
When he returned to Australia, Tony entered the seminary to train for the priesthood but quickly became disillusioned with a church who had “lost its way” in his opinion.
“Looking back, it seems that I was seeking a spiritual and human excellence to which the Church is no longer sure she aspires. My feeble attempts to recall her to her duty — as I saw it — betrayed a fathomless disappointment at the collapse of a cherished ideal.
In addition, a “cooperative” style of management ran counter to the Church’s age-old hierarchical structure.
The more they played up lay ministry and ecumenism and played down the unique role of the priest in the one true Church, the more the struggle seemed pointless and the more I wanted to participate in worldly activities which were much more to my taste.
l felt “had” by a seminary that so stressed ”empathy” with sinners and “dialogue” with the Church’s enemies that the priesthood seemed to have lost its point.”
Of his time at St Patrick’s seminary, vice-rector Fr Bill Wright wrote of Tony that many found him “just too formidable to talk to unless to agree; overbearing and opiniated”.
“Tony is inclined to score points, to skate over or hold back any reservations he might have about his case.”
Tony had been writing the occasional article for the Catholic Weekly and, when he left the seminary, he began writing for the Packer-owned Bulletin where, interestingly, he instigated strike action over the sacking of photographers.
“When I was at the Bulletin, ACP management one day, quite unilaterally, decided to sack the entire photographic department ….we were all shocked, stunned, dismayed, appalled, flabbergasted – when management just came in and said they were sacking the photographic department. So we immediately had a stop work meeting. There were various appropriately angry speeches made and I moved the resolution to go on strike, which was carried, as far as I can recall, unanimously, and we went on strike for a couple of days.”
Tony only lasted about a year before he was writing to wealthy contacts looking for a job. Through the Jesuit network, he got one managing a concrete plant and very quickly found himself causing a total shutdown through his inept handling of employees.
In a 2001 interview with Workers Online Tony explained what happened. Interestingly, some time between me quoting the article in August and now, it has been removed. I guess we now know what all those people employed to trawl social media are being paid to do – erase history. It is happening to an increasing number of links but it is too late, the information is out there.
“I got to the plant in the morning, marched up and down the line of trucks like a Prussian army officer, telling owner-drivers who had been in the industry for longer than I had been alive, that that truck was too dirty, and that truck was filthy, and that truck had a leaking valve and had to be fixed.
Naturally enough, this wasn’t very popular, and I had been there a couple of months, and a phone call came through one morning from the quarry manager, saying that there was going to be a strike starting at midday.”
Tony then took it upon himself to take delivery and run the conveyer belt on his own.
“A phone call came through at 5.30 the next morning from the senior plant operator saying: “Did you turn the conveyor belt on yesterday?”. I said “Yeh”. He says “Right – nothing moves – this plant’s black – like to see you get yourself out of this little fix Sonny Boy!”
I thought that there’s really only one thing to do, and that’s to beg. So I got over there and I said to the senior plant operator. I said: “Stan I’m sorry. I’m new in this industry. I appreciate that I’ve been a bit of a so-and-so, but you’ve made your point and I will try to be different.”
He said to me: “It’s out of my hands. It’s in the hands of the union organiser.” So I said, who’s the union organiser and what’s his number? I rang him and I sort of begged and pleaded. I said, well, look why don’t we put the old final warning. That if I ever do this again, I’ll be run out of the industry. And there was silence on the end of the phone, and after about ten seconds he said: “I’m putting you on a final warning mate, if this ever happens again you will be run out of the industry.”
Abbott soon quit the job as it wasn’t paying enough money and accepted a position with The Australian as a journalist. When they went on strike over pay and conditions, Tony was by now campaigning on the side of management, arguing in front of six to seven hundred people at the lower Trades Hall in Sussex Street that they shouldn’t go on strike. His speech did not meet with a particularly warm reception and the strikes went ahead.
He continued writing at The Australian until John Howard recommended him for a position as the then Federal Liberal leader John Hewson’s press secretary. Tony was responsible for the infamous line in a Hewson speech saying you could tell the rental houses in a street.
Is it any wonder that Hockey thinks that “poor people don’t drive” and Pyne thinks that “women don’t take expensive degrees”?
In 1994 Tony was gifted the safe Liberal seat of Warringah in a by-election and has been skating ever since.
He has changed his mind on innumerable things, lied and contradicted himself countless times, and then denied lying, even changing his words and removing online links.
He is a man whose convictions are dictated to him by polls and focus groups in marginal seats and by marketing teams. Peta Credlin has increasingly centralized control failing to learn the Rudd lesson.
Tony learns his script but does not bother reading actual reports, relying on others to just tell him what to say. His Star Chamber silence dissent, pay hacks to produce reports saying what they want to hear, refuse to release any that may be critical or negative, while arrogantly and blatantly rewarding their political donors.
Tony is not a leader by any stretch of the imagination.
It is not the Labor Party who is stopping this from being a decent government.
Darren Lockyer, the Pope, Tony Abbott and a school boy were all on the same plane when the engine failed and started to plummet towards the Earth.
They all realised that there was four of them and only three parachutes.
Darren Lockyer got up and said, “I am a sporting superstar and must live so that I can please my fans and continue my career to beat the Kiwis and the Poms in the tri-nations series.”
So he grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane.
Then Tony Abbott got up and said, “I am the smartest Prime Minister Australia has ever had and I need to live to continue to govern the nation.”
So he grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane.
Then the Pope said to the school boy, “I am old and have lived my life so you should take the last parachute instead of me.”
The school boy replied, “No, it’s okay, the worlds smartest Prime Minister took my school bag so there’s one for each of us!”
The Abbott Gov’t and Aspen Medical (Part 2): Aspen, Sandline and the CIA.
Abbott gives $20 mill to a mate’s company Aspen Medical to recruit professionals by a lamp post drive. That is our Ebola response initiative. The company director is up on fraud charges and the story gets worse it has links to CIA activities.
Tertiary education is risk it’s imagination it’s not a guarantee of a meal ticket. The Abbott approach to education guarantees debt but no job. The Liberal Arts are a risk driven by passion and need to be encouraged the drive us forward with their imagination. Those taking up the Liberal Arts often never go on to be financially successful however currently they still have a facility in which to pursue their passion. Turning universities into a product market place will ensure only one thing debt. It wont ensure the availability of the courses or the students because of the increased financial burden.
In a world where who you know more than what you know still predicates professional success. Christopher Pyne is telling pork pies when he claims he is opening a doorway to meritocracy. Sure times have changed but not as much as you think. Reducing tertiary education to system based courses will kill the encouragement of imagination and the investment in youth that drives us foward.
Science Fiction Writer Ursula K. Le Guin Movingly Warns Against the Dangers of Capitalism (Video)
“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope,” said Ursula K. Le Guin as she accepted the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th annual National Book Awards ceremony.
The fantasy and science fiction author “stole the show” Wednesday as she warned the literary crowd against the dangers of capitalism, which has turned writers into producers of market commodities rather than creators of art.
“We will need writers,” Le Guin continued, “who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”
When her short speech was loudly applauded, the bespectacled writer thanked her audience, calling them “brave,” ostensibly for cheering her on in her scathing criticism of the publishing world despite the fact that the literary business constitutes the livelihood of many of those present at the ceremony.
And while the entire speech is well worth watching, the most poignant lines Le Guin spoke are the following: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.”
During the hard times we are facing and throughout those that the author herself foresees, let us never forget Le Guin for her passion, her art, her words and, perhaps most importantly, her truths.
John Howard had his haters, mainly because of his decision to back George W Bush in an illegal war. Spurred on by a hateful media Julia Gillard was loathed by many because of a perceived lie. When people hate politicians, they do so with malevolent intent.
Often hate is attractive to unthinking, ill-informed minds. It is born of trepidation. A fear of not understanding. This can be witnessed in the audiences that people like Bolt, Jones, Hadley and others attract. Or when the Murdoch presses display their detestation, in all its putrid ugliness, on the front pages of their tabloids.
Hate reveals itself in politics, sport, self, jealousy, race, religion, culture and relationship. Hate is simply an outward manifestation of our inner struggles with our faults and flaws?
Hate also expresses itself in leadership. The way leaders conduct themselves is reflected in the decisions they make. On a grand scale leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot displayed hate in all its viciousness.
We all have the capacity for it. A sportsperson out of the blue utters a racial slur, born of hate that is completely out of character. They cannot explain why but usually their hatred is born of ignorance, something they dread, or is foreign to them.
It seems to me that hatred is fear without courage aligned with an inability to forgive. An incapacity to manage past hurts, losses and taught or acquired prejudices.
Fear goes immediately to blame and from blame a desire for vindication or revenge that manifests itself in hatred.
Every day the Abbott Government portrays a sense of loathing. Since gaining power Tony Abbott and his government has shown a hatred for all things Labor that has surpassed the usual transitional norm. At the launch of the Paul Kelly book ‘’Triumph and Demise’’ in which he expressed the view that our democracy was in trouble Tony Abbott said there was nothing wrong with it.
‘’It’s only the people who inhabit it from time to time’’
A clear example of his revulsion of all things Labor.
Another, is his comment on Labor’s environment policy.
It’s socialism masquerading as environmentalism.”
In Opposition Tony Abbott made it abundantly clear that he was there to oppose everything and that’s exactly what he did. He opposed everything with combative belligerence, often using sexism as a means of degrading his opponent. He created a shock and awe mentality of a government out of control. His loathing of a female Prime Minister transferred into misogyny. The media said he was the most successful Opposition Leader the country had ever had. A strange measure of success based on hate.
His Prime Ministership began with a determination to impose his born to rule Neo conservative ideology on the electorate and two Royal Commissions. An unprecedented decision to release cabinet documents as evidence in the commissions showed just how far he was prepared to allow his hatred to go.
The first was into the management of the Pink Bats Scheme. It reached conclusions no different from the previous 8 inquiries. The Government has said it will respond to its recommendations before Christmas. Will it risk more criticism of its already negative public image with more vindictiveness? Secondly it instigated another Royal Commission into Unions. John Howard saw through Abbott’s spite, saying they were a bad idea.
Then an orchestrated campaign of hatred in tandem with Murdoch was launched against the ABC.
Their hatred for asylum seekers is well-known. They have been demonising them for many years. There are now over 600 children locked up in detention centers. 459 are on the Australian mainland and 144 on Christmas Island. There are 186 children detained on Nauru without any chance of being resettled in Australia. What is their crime?
They hate people who worry about ‘’Climate Change’’ and want to do something about it labeling them as alarmists, dismissing science as superfluous to the debate.
Yes they hate science if it transgresses the corporation’s capitalistic agenda. The right to profit from pollution no matter the harm it does.
They hate that everyday Australians consider it unfair for the poor to have to pay $7 for going to a GP while millionaire mothers receive cheques for $50,000 for having a baby.
And they hate trade unions and resent the working people who choose to join them. They hate that young people are objecting to deregulated university fees.
Pensioners are not spared their vengeance either with a deliberate attempt to lower their living standards. If ever one wanted evidence of this government’s hatred of the poor and middle classes one only has to look at the current budget.
Ross Gittens put it this way.
‘’The first and biggest reason the government is having to modify or abandon so many of its measures is the budget’s blatant unfairness. In 40 years of budget-watching I’ve seen plenty of unfair budgets, but never one as bad as this’’
To hate with conviction requires a capacity to lie with unabashed certitude. To legitimise it to the point that people think they are no longer communicating in English.
At his press conference December 1, Abbott was still insisting that ‘’all’’ families were $550 better off on their power bills since the removal of the carbon tax. An unmitigated blatant, deliberate lie.
Nobody lies with greater sincerity than the Prime Minister. As a professed Christian he should know that nothing good was ever built on a foundation of hate.
The Prime Minister and his government has shown an insensitivity to the common good that goes beyond any thoughtful examination. They have hate on their lips and their hate starts with the beginning of a smile.
Those on the left of politics, the progressive social democratic engineers of society, are concerned with people who cannot help themselves. The right, the conservative privileged elitists, are concerned with those who can.
PS I hated writing that.
Why take the blame when you can push it onto others? Expect to see a Coalition reshuffle in which poor performers are demoted and Scott Morrison is given a position with daily access to the news cycle, writes Darrin Barnett.
Tony Abbott may well be in the Hot Seat, but does he really want to be a millionaire?
It’s fair to say that November 2014 was a month of misery for the Prime Minister.
Firstly, the Victorian election result was an unmitigated disaster. Australia’s second most populous state is now back in Labor hands and the Andrews Government, combined with fellow travellers in South Australia and the ACT, will now be expected to push back on a range of cuts to health, education and other social services coming out of Canberra.
Despite the best efforts of senior federal ministers to play down federal issues on Sunday, it is painfully apparent that the Abbott Government’s deeply unpopular May budget sits like a millstone around the Coalition’s neck at all levels.
After the Victorian poll, former federal treasurer Peter Costello said the budget was “clearly toxic in Victoria”, while former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett described Mr Abbott’s Government as a “shambles”.
Disturbingly, the dumping of a first-term government in Victoria for the first time in nearly 60 years means part of the the federal narrative this week and beyond will be about whether Abbott will suffer the same fate.
The Prime Minister’s November woes started at the G20, which turned out to be a global festival of one-upmanship with Abbott always seeming to come out one-down.
A few days later, while heads of state filed through the House of Representatives to say what a great country Australia is and to praise the wisdom and grace of their hosts, the Senate was supposed to sit as a sideshow.
Yet one of the Government’s few significant achievements – the FOFA changes – were knocked off by the end of that week.
The Senate is now no guarantee to pass anything at all, and with Government revenues tumbling, house prices soaring, and wages remaining stagnant – there are tougher times ahead of us than behind us.
Last Monday’s confirmation of cuts to the ABC and SBS clearly and obviously broke an election pledge, and saw the Government’s credibility plunge into free fall.
Christopher Pyne’s ridiculous community petition to guard against ABC cuts in his home state of South Australia when he is a cabinet minister made them look all the more sneaky and foolish.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Defence Minister David Johnston insulted Australians and confused investors by saying he would not trust the Government’s shipbuilder ASC to “build a canoe”.
The $7 Medicare co-payment looked set to be shelved or abandoned altogether – with senior ministers then backing it the next morning – and Abbott’s signature paid parental leave policy is rumoured to be in trouble.
Things are so bad that even the Abbott cheer squad is barracking against him.
They don’t think the Government has convinced anyone of a budget emergency and serious questions remain about the overall communications strategy and lack of core narrative.
“Domestic issues, especially Budget cuts and broken promises, continue to kill the Government,” News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt said.
“The Abbott Government is doomed without narrative,” The Australian newspaper editorialised.
Prominent 2GB shock jock Alan Jones doesn’t think the China FTA passed the “pub test”, while the normally unshakeable Dennis Shanahan opined in the Australian that “Johnston’s remark is part of a pattern of poor public messaging from him that also goes to the core of the political misjudgements of the Abbott government”.
So what to do? Abbott could do worse than call for a Lifeline.
Fans of Channel Nine’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire will recall that you have four options.
The first is ‘Ask the Audience’. This could be done via a double dissolution. Unfortunately for Abbott, the polls are disastrous, ranging from 45:55 in Newspoll (two-party preferred) – in which the Coalition has trailed in 14 consecutive samples – to 48:52 in Essential. Add to that the Victorian result, and it doesn’t look like a good idea if you want to stay in the game.
The second is ‘Phone a Friend’. Well, the shock jocks and News Ltd are out, so what about new BFF Clive Palmer, with whom the Government had done deals on the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) regulations as well as ending the carbon and mining taxes?
Unfortunately, Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir have now formed the ‘Coalition of Common Sense’ and voted to disallow the FOFA changes, which had taken away the obligation for financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests. Lambie is also in direct negotiations with the Government on defence pay, having left her former party behind. In short, Clive no longer has the balance of power in the Senate and it’s now a proper mess.
Could Julie Bishop be the first friend the PM is looking for on the end of the line?
At times during November, Bishop was overseas indulging in easy photo ops and puff pieces while Abbott toughed it out at home – ironically, much like Abbott did to the hapless Treasurer Joe Hockey after the budget earlier this year.
She’s appeared on the covers of both Fairfax’s Good Weekend and Harper’s Bazaar as Woman of the Year in recent weeks, and is now among the most popular Coalition MPs for the leadership. Maybe she’s not quite the mate Abbott is looking for. And as for Sunday’s call by Bishop for domestic nuclear power, at worst this was a senior minister now intent on product differentiation from the leader.
Which leads us to Malcolm Turnbull, who was sent out last week to defend the ABC cuts. If got off to a good start with the Communications Minister arguing black is white and something about so-called “efficiency dividends”.
Turnbull then shifted considerably by arguing that the Prime Minister was in fact clearly not a liar unless you looked at the actual quotes in question. He also admitted that the 4.9 per cent “efficiency dividend” was indeed a cut, with Abbott himself finally forced to concede “of course I made that statement”, and deliver a significant victory to his political opponents.
The next Who Wants To Be A Millionaire option is the ’50:50′. This is a mechanism whereby two of four possibilities are knocked out, leaving a simpler choice for the right answer. Abbott’s office tried to eliminate the $7 GP co-payment and the rest of his party has its eyes on paid parental leave, which would only leave deregulation of university fees and welfare reform in the too-hard Senate basket. But any move on the co-payment hit a speed bump if not a brick wall last week, so this method doesn’t look like the way forward.
Which leads us to the last option (which, for those playing at home, only lasted for a few seasons of ‘Millionaire’ in the mid-00s): ‘Switch The Question.’ And it’s here that one possibility arises. Why take the blame when you can push it onto others? So head for a reshuffle.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, despite his self-imposed exile from the media, remains one of the Government’s best media performers.
While this speaks volumes in itself, there have been rumours circling in Canberra for some time that the Government wants to clean up Morrison’s image by moving him somewhere else, possibly Defence – or even Treasury.
One of the key things Abbott lacks is a head-kicker, a loyal foot soldier to go out and say undiplomatic things that move the debate closer to where he wants it.
John Howard had Abbott. He also could use Peter Reith, Alexander Downer, or even Peter Costello to do some of the heavy lifting as the moment required.
Abbott currently has no-one.
Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard both had head kickers, although they seemingly forgot who the real enemy was. It was much to the Labor Government’s detriment.
But for Abbott, Morrison is that man. He’s not overly liked by the Gallery, but it doesn’t seem to phase him and, besides, he stopped the boats.
In addition to Defence, Abbott could easily add all things terrorism, and suddenly Morrison has daily access to the news cycle.
Treasury would also offer a high-profile, and if the upcoming MYEFO announcement turns Cabinet’s worst fears to public nightmares, Hockey could find himself in a world of trouble.
So just when you thought all was lost, Senator Johnston selflessly placed his head on the chopping block, and he will be gone sooner rather than later.
The fact Abbott has declared his “full confidence” in the Minister is the best evidence yet that Johnston’s time clock is ticking and a reshuffle is imminent.
Darrin Barnett is a former Canberra Press Gallery journalist and press secretary to prime minister Julia Gillard. He is now a fellow of the McKell Institute. View his full profile here.
TODAY Tony Abbott delivered a confessional end to the parliamentary year by confronting the government’s problems and predicting voters would be forgiving.
The Prime Minister appeared to hug himself as he slapped his chest with both hands and accepted any blame: “Obviously I take responsibility for everything in the end. The buck stops here.”
“I haven’t been getting enough hugs lately.” Source: News Corp Australia
Mr Abbott stood before reporters for a 45 minute press conference in Canberra after the government’s difficulties last week, considered one of the worst ever for the Prime Minister.
He put the difficulties down to “atmospherics” and not substance, but did not deny it was a painful week, with Medicare policy confusion, debate over his promises, and outcry over cuts to public broadcasters.
Mr Abbott fielded a wide range of questions, and returned fire with a wide range of facial expressions. Source: News Corp Australia
In what amounted to an admission of jitters within government ranks and a pep talk for the Coalition’s fresh start next year, Mr Abbott:
• Acknowledged voters’ discontent, but said they would better appreciate his policies “over time”;
• Argued that voters know “where the government’s heart is” and would re-elect it in 2016;
• Compared his first year to the “diabolical position” of newly elected Prime Minister John Howard in 1996, and pointed to the Howard victory in 1998;
• Said his reference to “barnacles” last week was intended to foreshadow plans to get policies through the Senate, not to abandon them.
Mr Abbott compared John Howard’s first term as Prime Minister to his own. Source: News Corp Australia
PM abandons cuts to defence allowances
The Prime Minister also pointed to problem areas:
• There needed to be better negotiations with the Senate cross bench to get the government’s Plan A policies through before looking for a Plan B;
• The Prime Minister’s paid parental leave scheme, already changed once, was still facing “a lot of internal and external flak”, but would not be dropped;
• He stood by his personal office after a significant communications mix up last week, which left him “bemused and surprised” to be told the $7 GP co-payment was being dumped;
• He acknowledged the big fall in revenue from declining resource exports, but said there would not be “massive additional savings” to make up for it, although “sensible efficiencies” would be sought.
“They wanted to put baubles this big on that Christmas tree back there, but I held firm.” Source: News Corp Australia
Last week, Mr Abbott took two days to agree that he had, on election eve, promised there would be no funding cuts to the ABC and SBS, having just announced some $300 million in cuts to the broadcaster.
Today he pleaded that there had been a change of circumstances, and denied it was a broken promise.
“Things have moved on. Circumstances are different,” he told reporters.
“Going to that election, the then government was telling us the deficit for that year would be $18 billion. It turned out to be $48 billion.
“I think sensible governments are not only entitled to, but are expected to change when circumstances change.”
“Come on guys. It’s been an interesting year. High five?” Source: News Corp Australia
Despite the confessions, Mr Abbott also blamed the Labor Opposition for the political pain he was feeling.
“I think that the Labor Party are doing their best to sabotage the policy and sometimes the public see the soap opera. They don’t see the substance,” he said.
“But I think we are getting our message across clearly and I think that over time the public will respond more appreciatively than they seem to be now.
Who will take the fall?
The Federal Government has announced backdowns on its university overhaul and defence force pay, after what Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described as a “ragged week” for his Government.
In a wide-ranging press conference, Mr Abbott said he wanted to address “head on” some of the recent criticism of his Government.
On Australian Defence Force pay, he announced that several allowances, including Christmas leave, would not be cut.
“Defence pay and defence allowances are paid out of the overall defence budget,” Mr Abbott said.
“So the $17 million that it will cost to restore these allowances will come out of the defence budget – there won’t be extra money put in.”
But Mr Abbott said service men and women would still get a pay rise of 1.5 per cent, given the pressure on the budget.
But the move has failed to win over former Palmer United Party, now independent Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie who said her pledge to vote against government legislation until defence force personnel were given a better deal still stands.
“I find that a slap in the face when it comes to our defence force personnel – jut another one for them,” she told The World Today.
“So if [Mr Abbott] thinks that half-way measures are going to be acceptable, I can tell you from where I am standing they are not.”
Education Minister Christopher Pyne has also conceded to crossbench demands on his higher education changes, retaining the student interest rate at the consumer price index instead of lifting it to the higher bond rate.
Government ditches university overhaul after ‘ragged week’
The Government has also agreed to a proposal from Victorian senator John Madigan to give students who are new parents a five-year interest rate pause.
And more changes to the university package have been flagged.
“We are continuing to talk with all members of the crossbench,” Mr Abbott said.
“I don’t presume to know what the final outcome will be, but we are determined to deal with this matter one way or another in this final sitting week of the year.”
The higher education changes will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to a budget already sinking deeply into the red.
In a grim preview to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, due in the next fortnight, Deloitte Access Economics has forecast the deficit for this financial year will be $34.7 billion – $4.9 billion worse than Joe Hockey’s May budget forecast of $29.8 billion.
But a senior Government source has told the ABC the figures will be worse, with revenue affected by an iron ore price likely to be written down to around $60 a tonne, roughly 40 per cent lower than in the budget.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann admitted the Government’s plan to return the budget to surplus will be affected.
“There is no doubt that the significant reduction in commodity prices has had an impact on our capacity to bring the budget back to surplus on the timetable that we have previously envisaged,” he told ABC News 24’s Capital Hill.
The May budget had forecast diminishing deficits over the four-year forward estimates, predicting that by 2017-18 the deficit would have shrunk to just $2.8 billion.
However, it appears unlikely that new cuts will be announced in MYEFO.
“Are we going to be looking for massive additional savings because of the downturn in the terms of trade? No,” Mr Abbott said.
I’d be the first to admit that last week was a bit of a ragged week for the Government.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott
The Liberal Party’s loss in the Victorian state election on Saturday capped off a troubled week for the Coalition Government.
Cabinet divisions over whether to persist with the $7 fee on GP visits were revealed, with the Prime Minister’s office briefing that the budget “barnacle” would be dumped only to be publicly contradicted by Treasurer Joe Hockey.
Defence Minister David Johnston also added to the Government’s woes with a “rhetorical flourish” in the Senate, saying he would not trust Australia’s ship-building company ASC to “build a canoe”.
“I’d be the first to admit that last week was a bit of a ragged week for the Government,” Mr Abbott said.
“I know that appearances do count and I concede that the appearance last week was a bit ragged but, in the end, nothing matters more than performance and this is a Government which has a very solid year of performance under its belt.”
Mr Abbott’s handling of the political debate over the Government’s decision to cut the ABC and SBS budgets was also canvassed, with the Prime Minister conceding the decision contradicted his election-eve promise that there would be “no cuts”.
“I accept what we are doing with the ABC is at odds with what I said immediately prior to the election but things have moved on, circumstances are different,” he said.
This week is the last time Parliament will sit this year.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has urged Victorian premier-elect Daniel Andrews to break his promise to scrap the East West Link.
Mr Andrews has started his first week as the leader of a newly elected Labor Government after a convincing win at the weekend.
Labor is on track to win at least 47 seats in the election, enough to have a majority in the 88-seat Parliament, and Mr Andrews will be sworn in later this week when vote counting is finalised.
Mr Andrews said Mr Abbott tried to convince him to go ahead with the project.
“He invited me to break my commitment on East West and I indicated to him that I would not be doing that,” Mr Andrews said.
“We then talked about the many other infrastructure projects that we’ve laid out the opportunities to partner with him on his commitment to the Australian community that he would be an infrastructure PM.
“We’ve agreed to meet face to face.”
Mr Abbott said the Federal Government was still “absolutely committed to East West Link” and he hoped Mr Andrews would have a “change of heart” on the project.
“He is sticking by what he said during the election but obviously he is now in the process of getting his feet under the desk, consulting with public servants,” Mr Abbott said.
“No doubt he will be talking to the Government’s lawyers about the contracts that have been signed so let’s wait and see what happens.”
Mr Andrews said he had sought advice about releasing documents about the toll road project and said he planned to have a discussion with the consortium building the project soon.
Daniel Andrews to do list:
- Release East West Link contracts and business case
- Introduce the Back To Work Act to Parliament
- Increase funding to TAFE in the current financial year
- Set up royal commission into family violence
- End pay dispute with paramedics
- Seek resignations of Ambulance Victoria board and reappoint a new board
- Conduct an audit of hospital beds, headed by former AMA Victorian president Doug Travis
“I have a clear mandate, our team has a clear mandate to end the secrecy on this project and I will deliver in full on the commitment I’ve made,” he said.
Mr Andrews met with state department heads on Sunday and spoke with his New South Wales counterpart Mike Baird about medical cannabis and defence jobs.
Mr Andrews said Parliament would be back to work before Christmas, beginning with the Back to Work Act.
“Pay-roll tax credits for all employers who take on a young person, take on a retrenched worker, take on a long term unemployed Victorian,” he said.
“There are then a raft of other things in that package, things like the premier’s job and investment panel, the regional jobs fund, Start Up Victoria, which is all about the translation of research into the important commercial opportunities that our state desperately needs.”
Mr Andrews said he would also get to work establishing a royal commission on family violence.
“This is going to happen, because more the same policy will mean more the same tragedy, I am convince of that, the data tells you that and I have met with too many people who have lived with the pain of family violence to be in any doubt about that,” he said.
Micro parties could make negotiations difficult: Antony Green
The make-up of the Upper House is likely to be challenging for the new Labor Government.
There could be as many as 11 cross-benchers, made up of the Greens and various other minor parties.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said it was going to be difficult for the new government.
“At this stage there are five Greens elected and six other parties, a collection of the Shooters Party, the DLP and the Sex Party, denying each side of politics a clear run at the Upper House,” he said.
“Labor could end up with as few as 13 seats.
“You could get an unwieldy number of cross-benchers to pass legislation or the Government will have to deal with the Opposition, so it’s going to be a very difficult life for whoever leads the Labor Party in the Upper House.”
Liberals to find new leader, Nationals ponder future
The defeated Denis Napthine said he fully intended to serve a full term in Parliament, after announcing he would step down as leader of the Coalition following the party’s loss.
Dr Napthine has represented the seats of Portland, and later South-West Coast, for a combined total of more than 25 years.
He was one of a few Liberal MPs to increase the margin in their seat.
“They’ve voted for me, they fully expect that I will continue to serve as the Member for South-West Coast, and that’s what I’ll do,” he said.
Former planning minister Matthew Guy and the former treasurer Michael O’Brien were considered the front runners for the Liberal leadership, with a ballot expected to be held in the coming days.
Peter Ryan, who was the leader of the Nationals, announced today that he was stepping down.
Earlier, he said the Nationals would hold talks with the Liberal Party over the future of the Coalition and whether it would continue
The Nationals face the possibility of losing party status if they do not win 11 seats.
Mr Ryan said the immediate concerns were Monday’s pre-poll counting for the seats of Shepparton and Morwell.
Vote counting continues in a number of seats
Sue Lang from the Victorian Electoral Commission said it would continue to sort through pre-poll, absent and provisional votes on Monday.
She said it was still too early to call some seats, with close counts for the two-candidate preferred vote.
“There are still eight seats that have a very slim margin in the two candidate preferred area,” she said.
“There’s 49 to 50 per cent range, and those districts include Bentleigh, Frankston, Morwell, Shepparton, Richmond, Prahran, Ripon and possibly Melbourne.”
Tony Abbott was due to meet with Lambie on the pay issue on Monday, but that meeting has been postponed.
Prime minister says decision not to proceed with changes to defence personnel allowances and entitlements was result of discussion with backbench
The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has announced that changes to defence allowances will not go ahead, but insists the backdown came after discussions with his backbench, rather than the intense lobbying of newly-independent senator Jacqui Lambie.
“We are not going to proceed with those changes to allowances. I want to acknowledge that we are listening to the defence community on this subject,” Abbott told reporters on Monday.
“I have discussed this matter with a number of my parliamentary colleagues, such as Jane Prentice, Ewen Jones, Natasha Griggs and Teresa Gambaro, because they represent seats that have the very large defence component.
“They have lots of defence personnel as their constituents and they certainly have been letting me know that it was important to offer this concession to our defence force personnel given the burdens they carry for all of us,” he said.
Defence personnel stood to lose a number of allowances and entitlements, including a component of Christmas leave and food and travel entitlements, in exchange for a 1.5% pay increase under a deal announced last month. The increase is below inflation and amounts to a cut in real terms.
Abbott rejected the idea that the backflip on allowances was a sweetener for Lambie, who left the Palmer United party (PUP) after vowing to vote down all government legislation in the Senate until a better pay deal was offered to defence personnel.
“We haven’t been able to meet all of her requests and, frankly, this government is not in the business of listening to each and every member of the crossbench in the Senate and saying ‘Of course, you can have what you want’. We’re in the business of doing what we think is best under the circumstances in which we find ourselves,” Abbott said.
Monday is the last day that the government can revise its pay offer with the Defence Force remuneration tribunal. Lambie was due to meet with Abbott on the pay issue on Monday, but that meeting has been postponed.
“I’m actually really disappointed, to be honest,” Lambie said, adding that no reason was given as to why the meeting was delayed and no alternative date had been offered.
She is not impressed with Abbott’s concession on allowances.
“That’s not good enough. He knows what needs to be done and that’s a 3% [pay increase] and all their recreation leave returned to them over the Christmas period.
“That’s another slap in the face, and completely disrespectful to the men and women who wear the uniform.
“It is taking things back to the status quo before the pay rise was announced a couple of weeks ago,” vice president of the Defence Force welfare association, Les Bienkiewicz, told ABC TV.
“The allowances and leave entitlements should never have been traded off any pay increase. It is a nonsense to suggest these so-called productivity increases would pay for a pay rise.”
Bienkiewicz has pledged to keep lobbying the government to increase the pay offer.
“We think it’s letting down the members of the ADF. The members of the ADF aren’t out to make a lot of money when they serve in the ADF but they do expect to be treated fairly. We believe that a fair pay rise would be something in the order of 3% to keep up with CPI and the the cost of living; 1.5% is totally inadequate,” he said.
A petition containing 60,000 signatures was handed to politicians at parliament house on Monday morning, calling for the government to boost its pay offer.
TONY Abbott is desperate to distinguish himself from Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Instead he wants to mould himself in the image of John Howard — a leader he rightly admires, even if I suspect privately Howard has been less than impressed by the job the Prime Minister is doing.
So far, however, Abbott’s government more closely resembles the dysfunction of the Labor line-ups he fought so hard to defeat.
The PM wouldn’t want to talk about removing barnacles too often, as he did in the partyroom this week. After all, his deep unpopularity and predilection for listening to his office’s advice rather than that that of his parliamentary team are the biggest barnacles weighing down the Coalition ship of state.
Abbott would do well to remember his “team” isn’t featuring in an episode of The West Wing; rather, it is operating within a Westminster parliamentary system in which Abbott is merely a first among equals.
Partyroom meetings can be humbling for politicians who are starting to believe their own talking points. After a week of strutting the world stage, Abbott was brought down to earth on Tuesday in a meeting with his colleagues. But was he listening?
When a marginal seat backbencher such as Craig Laundy — who holds a seat the Liberals had never won before last year’s federal election — uses the partyroom to tell the PM “people don’t like verbal gymnastics”, in relation to the denials of the undeniable cuts to ABC funding, the worst response Abbott could give was the exact one that he did: “There’s been no verbal gymnastics,” Abbott responded.
A Liberal and a National — a member of the House of Representatives and a senator — had already called out the stupidity of the PM in denying something he promised in front of a television camera. South Australia’s Rowan Ramsey politely had a go at the PM when entering Parliament House on Tuesday morning. John Williams did it the night before on my program on Sky News.
Does Abbott think his own partyroom is full of fools? He certainly treated them that way in his responses to concerns about his performance. It is bad enough for the leader of a political party to treat the public that way, as Abbott has been doing by denying that he broke an election commitment during question time debates.
The strangest moment of the week came when Abbott, in trying to defend himself against accusations that he hadn’t lived up to the words he uttered previously, evoked the memory of Wayne Swan failing to live up to his repeated promises to deliver a surplus budget. I’m not sure the PM particularly elevated himself by likening his performance to that of a much-pilloried former treasurer.
Parliamentarians want Abbott to admit that he has broken the promise, so that he can move on to explaining why doing so was necessary. The week started with complete denial — stonewalling Labor questions on the subject. By Tuesday afternoon, despite thumbing his nose at Laundy’s comments that morning, Abbott at least was admitting that he uttered the “no cuts to the ABC or SBS” words the night before the election last year. It wasn’t much of an admission, given the camera was rolling when he said them. The previous denials were getting to the point where the PM was starting to be mocked — dangerous territory for a political leader.
But Abbott couldn’t bring himself to take the all-important next step and admit the cuts constituted a broken promise. Why? Because his office is telling him that to do so would give Labor footage for attack ads in a campaign. This is despite the responsible minister, Malcolm Turnbull, owning up to Abbott’s broken promise. Saying sorry is always easier when someone else does it for you.
If the PM’s office were so concerned about attack ads for broken promises being used against Abbott, it should have advised him not to define himself by a truth-in- politics mantra when unpicking Gillard for her pledge of “no carbon tax under a government I lead”. Or if doing so was a necessary evil to win the election last year, then sticking to commitments should have been the No 1 priority for government.
Privately, members of the real Team Abbott (not his office but his parliamentary line-up, including his frontbench) have long criticised their leader’s decision to play the “rule out” game on SBS the night before the election. It gave Labor the same footage Gillard gave Abbott when she appeared on Network Ten on the eve of the 2010 election. It is a delicious irony.
But nothing can be done to reverse that state of affairs now. At issue instead is how Abbott lifts himself and the government out of a quagmire of his own making. I’ll tell you how he won’t do it: by continuing to deny the undeniable; by defending a defence minister who has said he wouldn’t trust Australian shipbuilders to build a canoe when they are completing three destroyers for him; by refusing to reshuffle his frontbench as Rudd refused to do in his first term because he thinks leaving dead wood in ministerial positions avoids the appearance of chaos; by maintaining a centralised command-and-control structure where loyalty to Abbott’s office sidekicks matters more than ability; or by letting his office leak to the media an intention to dump the Medicare co-payment, only to then announce that it is looking at passing the policy via regulations instead of legislation.
Misleading journalists is almost as bad as misrepresenting exchanges with them. And a government should always be prepared to put legislation it ideologically believes in before parliament, even if the Senate rejects the proposed laws.
Labor made the mistake of withdrawing legislation it thought would be defeated in parliamentary votes. There is nothing wrong with Abbott’s government putting its legislation before a Senate that knocks it out.
A good government can sell difficult policies. Howard’s government did it when amending Paul Keating’s industrial laws in his first term, and when legislating the GST in its second term. The Hawke and Keating governments did it ahead of multiple elections they won in the 1980s and 90s, all while modernising the Australian economy.
The political times in which we live require governments to embrace difficult decisions to set Australia up for the Asian century. Reform and free trade must be understood, sold to voters and ultimately legislated.
All the good work done by Trade Minister Andrew Robb in securing multiple free trade agreements won’t matter politically for the Abbott government if the PM can’t get his act together.
After little more than a year as Prime Minister, the question is already being asked: is Abbott up to the job?
Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP is a massive trade agreement between Australia the United States and a host of Pacific Rim countries Abbott is trying to introduce with limited debate and no opportunity for amendments.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership includes investor-state provisions that are likely to hurt poor communities and undermine environmental protections. Instead of being “fast tracked” as is Abbott’s want, future trade agreements like the TPP—and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the European Union and the United States—must be subject to a full debate with public input.
Such agreements must not, at any cost, include investor-state mechanisms. Because trading away democracy to transnational corporations is not such a “free trade” after all.
From the outset, the politicians who support the agreement have overplayed its benefits and underplayed its costs. They seldom note, for example, that the pact would allow corporations to sue governments whose regulations threaten their profits in cases brought before secretive and unaccountable foreign tribunals.
Tobacco companies could sue for loss of profit due to our plain packaging laws. Pharmceutical companies could for the introduction of generic medications.
Ten years after the approval of DR-CAFTA, in Central America we are seeing many of the effects they cautioned about. As a consequence Americas immigration problems have expanded.
One of the most pernicious features of the agreement is a provision called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism. This allows private corporations to sue governments over alleged violations of a long list of so-called “investor protections.”
The most controversial cases have involved public interest laws and regulations that corporations claim reduce the value of their investments. That means corporations can sue those countries for profits they say they would have made had those regulations not been put into effect.They can also prevent governments from making democratically accountable decisions in the first place, pushing them to prioritize the interests of transnational corporations over the needs of their citizens just what mining companies would like to access Indiginious land.
In Guatemala TECO wanted to charge higher electricity rates to Guatemalan users than those the state deemed fair. Guatemala had to pay $21.1 million in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in legal fees, above and beyond what it spent on its own defense.
What’s at stake here is not only the cost of lawsuits or the impact of environmental destruction, but also the ability of a country to make sovereign decisions and advance the public good.
More recently in Guatemala, the communities around San Jose del Golfo—about 45,000 people—have engaged in two years of peaceful resistance to prevent the US-based Kappes, Cassiday, and Associates from constructing a new mine. Protesters estimate that 95 percent of families in the region depend on agriculture, an industry that would be virtually destroyed if the water were to be further contaminated. But the company threatened to sue Guatemala if the mine was not opened. “They can’t afford this lawsuit,” a company representative said. “We had a big law group out of [Washington] DC fire off a letter to the mines minister, copied to the president, explaining what we were doing.”
On May 23, the people of San Jose del Golfo were violently evicted from their lands by military force, pitting the government in league with the company against its own people—potentially all to avoid a costly lawsuit.
Written by: Michael Taylor
Federal politicians have always been quick to point out that party losses at the State level have been, and always will be, because of State issues. Federal politics and personalities play no part whatsoever in the election and the subsequent result; it’s fought on State turf.
Yet . . . federal politicians have also been quick to point out that victories at the State level – for their party – were delivered as a protest vote against the ruling federal party, should of course, they themselves be in opposition at the time.
Or they could go completely overboard – such as Tony Abbott did after Labor’s loss in the Tasmanian State election – and announce that they single-handedly won the election for their State counterparts.
(Mind you, when the South Australian State election didn’t go the way Abbott had hoped, he went to great pains not to comment on suggestions his involvement in the campaign had a negative impact on the Liberals’ result).
News is now in that the Napthine Government has been kicked out after only one term. Already members of Abbott’s Government have distanced themselves from the result. Head on over to Twitter and look at the ‘it wasn’t us’ tweets.
I live in Victoria and this is the first Victorian State election I’ve voted in. However, I haven’t been here long enough to have much of an idea about State issues and what issues the parties have campaigned on. So I went against my ‘norm’ and registered a protest vote against the Federal Government, and in particular Tony Abbott.
I wasn’t alone. Speaking to polling-booth volunteers, the message was the same: people weren’t voting against Napthine – they were voting against Abbott (or his government/Hockey’s budget). In the word of one voter, just to “watch him squirm”. Again, head on over to Twitter but this time look for the ‘it was them’ tweets. They dominate Twitter.
Pre-election it was forecast that Abbott could be the factor that will lose the election for Napthine. It looks to be the way.
But will he squirm? I doubt it.
Either he won’t have the courage or he is so full of hubris that he is blind to the simple fact that he’s totally on the nose. In 2016 he will join Napthine as the leader of a ‘one-term’ government.
Nonetheless, I look forward to what he has to say about the Victorian election result.
Is he in hiding?
- Rossleigh
- “It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.” Tony Abbott, August 22, 2011Ok, you must note that he didn’t say that there was any problem with OPPOSITIONS saying one thing before an election, and something else after!!!!
See, the promise you all thought he made…
Anyway, let’s move on. There’s no point in living in the past. As Tony Abbott will clearly tell you, the adults are in charge, so stop talking about what promises I may or may not have made when the only important one was removing the Gillard government, because – after all – we have to talk about what Labor governments are like. Lets stop talking about the past and look at history.
Anyway, as I said, let’s move on…
Tomorrow, the Victorian Election takes place.
As I pointed out in the title, Sportsbet are paying out already on a Labor win. Why would they do that? I mean, it’s close and the Liberals can win, right? After all, hasn’t Dennis Nap-time been campaigning in seats that the Liberals hold by a margin of up to 7%? Surely that’s a sign that they’re confident of the marginals and he just wants to reward the faithful by his presence! And surely, Tony Abbott’d be down here campaigning for all he’s worth if it was it wasn’t already in the bag for the Liberals…
Mm, am I missing something?
Like the fact that Mr Abbott needs to stay in Canberra and brief the other members of his party about the things he briefed the journalists about a few days ago, because it seems that some of them don’t seem to know that the Medicare copayment has gone the way of the sugar. It’s off the table.
It’s being reconsidered/dropped/negotiated/introduced/slid in via regulation/sent to a tax haven/um, I’ll get back to you on that/let me be very clear/um/I’m backing Tony Abbott and whatever he said is our policy.
>Sigh<
Who thinks that Abbott’ll be replaced before Christmas? Yep, neither do I?
Let me just say this: If Abbott is replaced before Christmas, I promise there’ll be no cuts to trees this year…
And if there are, let me just say that I won’t let anyone stop Christmas or logging and I thought I made that clear when I said that there’d be no cuts!
Tony Abbott didn’t win many friends in America with his less than impressive performance at the recent G20. But he does have one friend in America – Rupert Murdoch – and as in Australia, his media empire grabs any opportunity it can to promote Abbott above his capabilities. Now they are praising his treatment of asylum seekers. ‘Left of Center’ reports from America.
The Abbott Government’s immigration policy is unpopular in Australia, but the friends on the curvy couch don’t believe in facts, they fawn over a xenophobe from Down Under.
To the average Fox and Friends viewer, a man with an exotic accent from the land of Oz is a fine choice to deliver the daily dose of essential fearmongering. Nick Adams, the author of American Boomerang, is a proponent of the incredibly unpopular policies of the Teabagger Down Under, Prime Minister and gaffe machine, Tony Abbott. Australia has its share of folks who are not afraid to tell him what they think.
Tony Abbott’s approval rating is tenuous at best. Recent polls show men were 45% approve/50% disapprove and women 35% approve/51% disapprove. One reporter, when commenting on his xenophobic approach to immigration said,
“He offended the world’s most populous Muslim country and one of Australia’s closest and most important neighbors, Indonesia, over his handling of his policy to turn back boats carrying would-be asylum seekers from countries such as Afghanistan who often depart from Indonesia.”
Fox News and its audience are literally terrified of anyone who looks differently than they do. Naturally, a government that has been criticized and ridiculed for myriad reasons would serve as the paradigm for immigration policy. Abbott’s Australia has been embarrassing especially among people from Nauru who have been treated abysmally.
But none of those human rights issues matter to these folks. Adams explains,
We had a terrible problem. We had tens of thousands of illegal immigrants coming on lots and lots of boats because we weakened our border protection policy. So the Conservative government came in and said, right, this has got to stop. We are a generous and caring people, but we have laws and things need to happen the right way. So we got tough because we know weakness is provocative and things like amnesty only lead to more and more immigration.
Now that Adams has everyone’s attention, it’s time to put them in checkmate for the win. In discussing immigration policy, why not insult Democrats in America to really get the Fox amigos to eat it all up. Adams says,
Well Elisabeth, it’s liberal arithmetic straight from the Pelosi Institute and it’s the last thing America needs…We haven’t had one single illegal immigrant. Not ONE.
Fawning over Adams, Brian Kilmeade asks if there has been any pushback from folks who believe Australia isn’t just for Australians.
So Adams plays the reverse-racism card:
Well, you’ve always got the politically correct types, Brian, the same people who are behind the idea that because I’m a white, Christian (of course), middle-class male, I don’t get an opinion or a voice, but if I was a naked, gay, Ecuadorian wind-turbine engineer that got on his mat and faced Mecca five times a day with a credit line at the bank of Jihad, you know the world would be at my feet.
Right on cue, he admonishes President Obama for fundamentally changing (aka destroying) America and he cautions our nation to be as racist as his country’s leadership. Fox News and Adams prefer a fundamentalist, science-denying, xenophobic white-supremacist who is the ideal leader of a frightened and ignorant population that will soon be in the minority. Thankfully, Australia is on to Abbott’s antediluvian thinking and will close the history books on him as soon as he can be sent packing from Canberra in 2016.
This article was first published on crooksandliars.com.
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