Has MWM and Rex Patrick little or nothing to write about blaming the ALP and the recently elected PM Albanese’s government for not having his finger equally attending to every change on their list of promises? Is Albo the head of this government expected to be the stamp licker, bookkeeper and office janitor as well as the Party and Country’s leader? He’s already changed the direction of the country in the eyes of the world and is turning the ship. He may not be Gough but then MWM and Patrick seem to have taken on the cloak of nitpickers for nitpicking sake alone to keep up their image of “we’ll keep the bastards honest”. Whinging isn’t a substitute for criticism just a haggle over the list of minutia priorities.
In my case they’ve told me my request will cost an outrageous $1,344 to process 179 days displayed in weekly view – that is to process 29 pages of diary. I say that’s ‘outrageous’ having personally made more than 300 FOIs request over the past 5 years and never been charged that sort of money, even for far more voluminous requests.
Transparency builds confidence in our political leaders. Attempting to bury or stall an FOI diary request just does the opposite. It promotes the idea that the Prime Minster is disingenuous in his claims that his Government is transparent, and it erodes people trust in him”.
And when the mud starts flying about, some of it inevitably sticks.
Instead of thinking through and independently acting in Australia’s best interests, Prime Minister Albanese has followed in the footsteps of his discredited predecessors and outsourced defence and foreign policy to the US.
The Whitlam government fostered a great strengthening of the public service and its policy capacity. Sadly, much of that has been lost with the excessive political controls of more recent governments. Can the Albanese Government reverse some of the decline?
The telling question here is whether Albanese will get any purchase with the Washington set. While enjoying a reputation as a pragmatic negotiator able to reach agreements in tight circumstances, the pull of the US national security establishment may prove too strong. “We now get to see Australia’s standing in Washington, valued ally or not,” was the guarded response of Assange’s father John Shipton.
Six months on from the federal election, the survey of more than 1,000 voters indicates Labor is ahead of the Coalition on the two-party-preferred “plus” measure 51.4% to 43.1%, with 5.5% of respondents undecided.
Despite the best endeavours of Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, to put the relationship with China on a more even keel, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seems determined to destabilise it.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Weekend Australian on 4 November, Albanese framed China as a threat, citing aggressive intent toward Taiwan and hostile activities in the South China Sea, he advocated strongly for increased defence spending, at a time of budget cuts.
Has he taken this position to avoid being wedged by the Opposition, LNP, or because he has been captured by the US military/industrial lobbyists?
I was arrested at a visit by then Prince Charles to Alice Springs in 1977 for handing out press statements on Aboriginal living standards. I avoided jail, but the less fortunate Albanese government has been imprisoned by royal protocol and constitutional custom.
It’s been a while since we had a Prime Minister from either side with a decent sense of humour. So, if nothing else we should be able to have a few more laughs during the next three years.
I recorded the above 2 videos myself while watching the parliament live and I think it’s highly unlikely that other media have broadcast those moments which goes to show how much of parliament we never see.
Federal MP Angus Taylor gives himself an uppercut in a question to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Kangaroo Court of Australia
The media and the opposition have made much of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s gall in travelling overseas. Cries of hypocrisy are flying thick and fast around criticism of Scott Morrison travelling overseas during a natural disaster when Mr Albanese is doing the same thing. This piece is intended as a follow-up/piggy-back on a great article on this site called Airbus Albo, which I encourage you all to check out.
Prime Minister Albanese has said that the pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange served no purpose; it is now time to do all in his power to bring him home, writes Dr Binoy Kampark.
The newly minted Prime Minister and his government seem to have learned the lesson from ten years ago. They are not willing to be beholden to the Greens because they know how that plays out. This is not to say that the Greens should be utterly shut out. Some of their policy ideas are positive (expanding Medicare to include mental health and dental care for one). But they should not be allowed to demand their policies be implemented when they received a tiny percentage of the vote. Who do they think they are, the Nationals? More seriously, the lesson of allowing small minority parties to have large influence over policy is not a lesson that Anthony Albanese has forgotten. Long may this strategic competence continue.
The new government’s best-known leaders are Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, two surnames drawn from the deep hinterland of multicultural Australia. Perhaps White Australia is finally on its way out.
Morrison, when told rent was unaffordable said “buy a house”. Now when the cost of living is unaffordable he’s saying “get a 2nd or 3rd job we have got jobs jobs jobs for sale” or simply ” have a meal every other day”. Has anyone noticed the number of Beemers and Porches out there? “We did that”. Has he noticed the number of homeless,underemployed, and increasingly Covid ridden people?
Scott Morrison is advocating for a real wage cut to make a political point. Perhaps that’s why Seven’s undecided voters gave the final debate to the Labor leader
It’s not the lack of experience Scott it’s the lack of competence that’s the yardstick. After 25 years Albanese has shown he’s not lacking and in the same period that can’t be said of your history.
The Coalition and some media are arguing that Albanese’s ALP doesn’t have the knowledge, skills or abilities to form a government, an illogical argument as the only way to get direct and recent experience is to do the job. When Morrison started work in the Prime Ministerial office, we didn’t even get a say in his elevation, as the only election he won was one of his political party’s Members of Parliament. At that time, he too had none of the experience in the job that he now claims is mandatory.
Just imagine the 2nd Debate was between Tanya Plibersek and Scott Morrison and you would seen a Misogynistic Neanderthal v Rationality and Steadiness in an event sponsored by, and in Media’s Side Show Alley. “Don’t let me interrupt you Scott”
Conclusion: Sass to The Max The hostility of the media, along with its total hypocrisy (deficits are now an issue again just in time for a Labor government) is hereby exposed. Your role, Mr Albanese and the Labor team, is to no longer take the crap that media dishes out. Scott Morrison has cowered the media through his screeching about bias when confronted with facts he does not like, and they are compliant lapdogs instead of the watchdogs they are meant to be. Now, I am not suggesting that Mr. Albanese manipulate the press as his counterpart has done, but I do want him to say when confronted with some partisan BS question framed in some crap fashion Nice gotcha question there. Does anyone have a serious question they would like to ask? This is not hostile to the media broadly, but it does send the message ‘serious questions only, folks’. It will be necessary for Mr. Albanese to put the media in their place from the start, because if Labor is elected on May 21st, the media will commence Operation Restore Legitimate Government from May 22nd.
One thing we can be assured of Anthony Albanese isn’t Scott Morrison. Another he hasn’t the production team Morrison has and he doesn’t simply arrogantly say “I’m not answering that” or avoid questions altogether. Albanese is the man you can trust to try to answer every question put to him providing the ALP’s distinguishing difference if not the nuanced details.
With Morrison you can’t as there are no details. He wines, dines, and hosts the commercial mainstream media. Corporate leeches whose business model, “ratings”, depends on him, his government’s generosity, and Morrison being the central white knight for their consumer audience’s attention. It’s a codependent quid pro quo relationship rather than an Independent one as is that with the ABC.
By and large it’s a supportive rather than a critical marriage. The ABCs relationship is more investigative and less able to be manipulated by Morrison. As a consequence, Morrison avoids it like the plague. Particularly so during this election.
Albanese, the ALP on the other hand are the targets of the gotcha questions in the constant hunt for a front-page criticism. Sensationalism for the widest public,to curry Morrison’s favor, improve their bottom line and all in plain sight delivered in the guise of balanced News. Newscorp and Skye no longer even bother to hide the fact that cash for comment is their business.
Scott Morrison is asking the Australian people “Who do you trust?” – a gutsy approach from a man who has earned the sobriquet ‘Liar from the Shire’.
Do you trust the man who draped his arm around his leader, grinning innocently as he proclaimed “I’m ambitious for this guy” whilst his backroom boys were organising a coup?
Do you trust the man who left the country in flames to sip cocktails poolside in Hawaii, had his office deny it, and then excused it by saying he doesn’t hold a hose, mate?
Morrison claims he is the better economic manager. This was initially based on false claims of having delivered a surplus. Instead, we got the first recession in thirty years and debt levels unprecedented outside of wars.
After having said “governments don’t create jobs, businesses do”, Morrison is now claiming credit for creating 1.9 million jobs since they were elected in 2013.
Between September 2013 and February 2022, Australia’s population increased by 2.7 million people so that growth in jobs is basically just population growth.
Morrison also claims credit for an unemployment rate of 4%.
Antipoverty Centre analysis of ABS and Department of Social Services data shows that while the unemployment rate has not been this low since before the global financial crisis in 2008 when it was also 4%, the proportion of working-age people who rely on an unemployment payment has nearly doubled – from 3.3% in mid-2008 compared to about 5.9% today.
It’s a case of the tent preacher leading a ragged bunch of camp followers into town banging his drum promising “miracles” having left disaster behind in his wake. It’s the huckster promising the last 3 years didn’t happen and weren’t his fault that it was the opposition that made him do it. Yes, It’s Morrison the grasshopper leaving our cupboard bare and a bill to pay, and the ant wanting, he, and his team to rebuild it. It’s the hare prancing about like the energizer bunny doing little or nothing while the tortoise has been purposefully moving forward knowing what the race really means It’s not about blind faith or optimism or blind trust but focused rational attention to work changing direction and everyone doing it together for their kids kids.
In a pair of opinion pieces commissioned by The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age four weeks out from polling day on May 21, both men have laid out their visions for Australia’s future – while emphasising the risks presented by their opponents.
My thought for the day Wouldn’t it be good if in our parliament, regardless of ideology, we had politician’s whose first interest was the peoples and not their own. (John Lord )
On Sunday it was Scott Morrison’s turn to come up with a “Freudian slip” – you know, the brain explosion that everyone pretends to dismiss while at the same time believing is deeply significant. Three times at his news conference the Prime Minister addressed the assembled media scrum according to the parliamentary protocol of speaking through the chair. He was wriggling around the issue of who will have specific cabinet portfolios after the election, and said “of course, Mr Speaker” all of the portfolios are important. When interrupted, he started to say it again and after the third time pulled himself up, trying to dismiss the gaffe with a smile: “There you go, I’m back in Parliament”.
Anthony Albanese’s aged care push is smart policy. It’s the right thing to do too, but it does not address the fundamental problem of a privatised system and its profit-takers. The Morrison government tossed some money at the problem, much went to the middlemen. The Opposition, to its credit, is having a go. But is Labor leader Anthony Albanese on the right track? Wherever you look, the failures of privatisation are myriad, often spectacular. Billions wasted on JobActive the privatised jobs service, gold-plating in electricity, privatised prisons, the gutting of the bureaucracy in favour of consultants, the sale of Sydney Airport, Transurban’s taxing toll-road monopolies, profiteers in the home care scheme.
Albanese, even if he never leads Australia, will leave a lasting legacy. His infrastructure will make the nation safer and more prosperous for the next century or longer. Savage will always be honoured for New Zealand’s visionary social security system and for his Government’s low rate of ministerial departures due to corruption, incompetence or scandal. Australia needs another Michael Joseph Savage, a reformist leader who can bring high values to the top job and transform the nation. And, importantly, win an election and stay in office.
We are not ashamed to admit that at our last meeting with the Labor strategist, we were unconvinced that this slow, steady and largely uneventful approach by Labor would reap rewards. It has also sometimes been unpopular with their base. But if it is true that opposition parties don’t win elections but governments lose them and since, more than ever before, Australia’s establishment media fails to hold this Government to account, Labor’s strategy appears sound. Of course, whether it succeeds in unseating the Morrison Government remains to be seen.
Anthony Albanese broke ranks on Labor’s support for the Abbott government’s enhanced national security measures – but whose interests did he really serve by doing so?
Many Labor supporters therefore breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when the opposition spokesman on infrastructure and transport Anthony Albanese broke ranks on the party’s support for the Abbott government’s enhanced national security measures.
Albanese became the first senior Labor MP to voice concern about the lack of parliamentary debate on the nevertheless bipartisan decision to participate in the joint military action in Iraq. More importantly, he cautioned that the new counter-terrorism laws had not received enough scrutiny by the parliament and, by implication, from the Labor party.
Albanese’s intervention has been welcomed, at least in some parts of the Labor camp, and certainly by supporters on social media. This small act of rebellion no doubt reinforced Albo’s standing as the darling of Labor’s left (who incidentally still feel they were robbed when their man won the popular vote for the Labor leadership but ultimately lost out to the powerbrokers of the right who used their numbers in the ALP caucus to install their man Shorten instead).
Whatever strategy Albanese has in play, either in trying to keep the disenchanted left in the Labor tent, or making Labor more competitive by wresting the leadership from Shorten, it’s hard to fault his overall motivation. Whatever his personal ambition, Labor’s fiercely tribal warrior exists mainly to “fight Tories” and see his beloved party returned to government.
But if Albo does hold greater ambitions for his party than he does for himself, he’d do well to remember one thing: there’s only one thing voters will reject quicker than an uncompetitive Labor party, and that’s one riddled with the internecine wars that brought down the Rudd and Gillard governments.
olddogthoughts 