Cabinet, won over with no evident demurral, and previously buttered up by oral reports, approved the measure to commit Australia to another failed military mission of murderous, bungling incompetence. The United States would receive no resistance in getting its pound of Australian flesh for an illegal enterprise, and the Australian public, many of whom had participated in some of the largest anti-war demonstrations the country had ever seen, would be ignored.
The report found more than 70 per cent of people going through Workforce Australia had their welfare payments suspended for breaching compliance regulations. Between 35 and 50 per cent of people whose payments had been suspended more than 10 times were Indigenous Australians.
Research from Anglicare Australia suggested up to 20 per cent of people had their payments suspended even though it was not their fault.
In one case heard by the inquiry, a woman attended an appointment with a service provider but it was not recorded. The following day, she received a text saying her welfare payment was being suspended, leaving her unable to pay her rent.
Source: “The… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
This is the grand outcome of the referendum loss. To the “No” campaign, the vote was never just about constitutional recognition. It was about undoing decades of progressive change. The prize to them is the ability to say aloud every cruel and anti-intellectual thought, to indulge every bigotry and pretend they are doing so on behalf of a country too fearful to listen to the people it dispossessed.”
Source: “There’s a… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
With his sustained presence in the media and during election campaigns, we should remember the parochial and harmful influence John Howard has had on Australia’s political and public life,
Source: Leaders with ‘ticker’: John Howard’s destructive legacy
John Howard opened the flood gates
Moderate Liberal Party members in Victoria will move this week for what they hope is a decisive blow against the party’s infiltration by an ultra-conservative religious network. Andrew Gardiner reports.
It started with John Howard
It was a curiously shallow and unsophisticated Bill, which did not even bother to hide its malicious intent. Each of the recommendations was ‘loaded’ against the elderly, and the Opposition of the time was ineffective in their efforts to mitigate the harm of the Bill, even if they had wanted to. It was led by Kim Beazley, and he was powerless at the best of times, let alone when he faced Howard’s massive majority.
Source: John Howard wrecked Aged Care for all Australians – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The measure of Howard the coward is that he can’t admit that he was wrong. Worse still, he hasn’t got the guts to say in his own country that he still believes that his policies are the right ones for Australia. He has to skulk off to Imperial Capital to be feted by the powerful effete
Source: Ante eulogy for a political pornographer – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Former Prime Minister John Howard says he will combine the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with Easter celebrations this year, with plans to run a special Easter egg hunt that contains imaginary eggs.
Related readings wherein he hasn’t been called a c***:
“if we judge Howard by his own standards as a reformer, there isn’t a great deal to show for his lengthy period in office“. John Winston Howard: The Biography. Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen
John Howard. A study in policy consistency. M.L.Murry. A long read of 355 pages. But interesting.
Where ‘mutual obligation’ began: John Howard’s paradigm shift on welfare. The Guardian
In truth, Labor is the superior economic manager. Craig Emerson Economics
John Howard. A study in policy consistency. M.L.Murry. A long read of 355 pages. But interesting.
Where ‘mutual obligation’ began: John Howard’s paradigm shift on welfare. The Guardian
Source: Ode to a Rodent – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“The election of the Howard government marked a paradigm shift in welfare policy with the implementation of far reaching reforms around the concept of mutual obligation,” they wrote. “Howard’s new welfare paradigm defined welfare as a problem associated with ‘dependency culture’ and linked reforms to specific social groups (single mothers, young unemployed, new migrants).”
“Does the minister agree that, whatever debate there may be concerning the principle of ministerial responsibility, the practice has almost invariably been that a minister resigns when his or her continued presence is causing damage and embarrassment to that government?” John Howard
things remain so dire that there is talk of importing gas, either the Australian stuff on sale so cheaply overseas, or supplies from one of our competitors, Qatar.
Back on the farm, our parents, who knew how to provide without running out of anything, would have been scandalised almost beyond words.
The fact that the Liberal Party consider John Howard some sort of elder statesman with great knowledge to impart, the fact that they wheel him out every election like he has some relevance to the contemporary electorate, shows just how bereft of ideas they are.
The blame for pretty much every problem we have can be sheeted squarely at the feet of the Howard era, exacerbated by his disciple, Tony Abbott.
Poor John Howard is copping a lot of flak this week for his decision to write a character reference for convicted pedophile George Pell. Like a number of Pell’s referees, Howard suggested that Pell was a completely different man in private compared with his public Image. Actually, I thought that’s exactly what the trial had just decided.
Had the ICC aggression amendment existed back in 2003, John Howard would have been tried as a war criminal.
Source: Inglourious Basterd(s): John Howard’s case to answer on invasion of Iraq
Readers take Tom Switzer to task over his column supporting the former PM.
Source: John Howard: Corporate interests were given top billing
Sir John Chilcot’s mammoth report on the second Iraq war is, on an objective reading, damning: the war was probably illegal, the intelligence flawed, the political judgments premature and over-eager. The major protagonists in the United States, Britain and Australia stand condemned. If they were not actually guilty of war crimes, they should certainly be chastened and ashamed: apologies and repentance are the least they can offer.
Source: A lovely war | The Monthly
Former Prime Minister John Howard addressed the media today telling reporters he does not regret his decision to paint his face orange.
Mr Howard said he disagreed with the assertion that he had lied about tanning his 76 year-old face. “There was no lie. There were errors in intelligence but there was no lie,” he said.
“Were there mistakes in the way I applied the tan? Probably. Should I have thought more carefully about instinctively following the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee’s choice in face-colour? Perhaps. But that’s all very easy to say in hindsight. It was the right thing to do at the time”.
Mr Howard said while he respected people’s varying views, he stood behind his decision. “Of course I defend it. I don’t retreat from it. I don’t believe, based on the information available to me, that it was the wrong decision. I really don’t.”
In unrelated news, Mr Howard admitted his decision to invade Iraq wasn’t based on any intelligence at all.
FORMER prime minister John Howard has confirmed he urged Tony Abbott to remove Peta Credlin as his chief of staff and Joe Hockey as his treasurer.
Source: John Howard: ‘I urged Tony Abbott to get rid of Peta Credlin’
I wrote this article 12 years ago. Has anything changed?
Australia is fast heading down a dangerous path. While our stories of history may permit us to see an era of fascism only in some distant place and some distant time, there is no guarantee in this story that the ugly head of right wing extremism will not rise again. Just because we participated in the fight against it, and shared in the spoils of the victory over it, does not remove us from being the constructors of an equally horrific threat. The current rhetoric of patriotism that is circulating within this nation suggests quite clearly that fascist ideologies are gaining prominence once again. And in this land where we claim there is opportunity for all, amidst all the rhetoric of a tolerant multiculturalism, such destructive ideas are starting to appear quite normal.
I’m not saying that John Howard is akin to Hitler. Let’s be honest, he really doesn’t have that much flair. Given a bit more intelligence, and the ability to speak with passionate vigour, and he might be taken more seriously by the masses. As it stands, however, he’s far too feeble and too docile to be such a crowd-controlling force. All too often his slippages and wayward comments have to be reshaped by his publicity machine in order to make them fit the full picture. It’s as if he doesn’t quite have all the pieces there to be able to do it alone.
Today, we fail to see that the Aussie dream, where the voice of the average person on the street is said to matter, is all but dead; that our governments are becoming increasingly distant, wrapped up in their own corporate-style worlds from which they see nothing of the reality of our lives. We just sit back and we trust them. We let them tell us of the fear on our streets and to our borders. There’s something out there, threatening, waiting to get in. Don’t go outside. Don’t question. The foreign—the outside world—is, so we are told, now a danger to our “normal” and precious way of life. But this way of life, this normality of us, is just an idealised way of life. It doesn’t even exist. The people we offend by adopting such a nationalistic and high-and-mighty stance may soon grow impatient with having to appease us. We would do better, therefore, to start recognising our commonalities with them instead of dozily lapping up the rhetoric of right wing ideologies without thought, without concern for the kind of future we invite. But we can only begin this process of communication and understanding when we stop thinking of ourselves as some superior and master, unquestionably lucky race.
Dean Laplonge is a cultural theorist whose research and consulting work explores the relationship between culture and everyday practices. He is the Director of the cultural research company Factive (www.factive.com.au) and an Adjunct senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales.
Howard says Wilkie an ex ADF intelligence officer ex LNP member is wrong despite being embarassed. Malcolm Fraser said it then and is still saying it now.
Independent MP says former prime minister should be ‘deeply ashamed that he lied’ over the 2003 invasion of Iraq
MP Andrew Wilkie “I was shocked to see that John Howard is only embarrassed, almost embarrassed for himself. What he should be is deeply ashamed that he lied to the Australian public 11.5 years ago, and took us into an unnecessary war, a war that has killed countless Iraqis and other people, which effectively destroyed that country and created the conditions for the rise of not just the Islamic State but other groups,” Wilkie told reporters in Canberra.
“Look frankly I’m disappointed that the prosecutor at the international criminal court hasn’t thought to hold John Howard responsible for conspiracy to commit mass murder.”
Howard argued the 2003 invasion did not play a major role in the rise of Isis which now holds large swathes of Syria and northern Iraq.
Wilkie said Howard should have made a “compelling humanitarian” case for dealing with Saddam Hussein in 2003 and told the voters the invasion was about Australia’s bilateral relationship with America, not WMDs.
When asked again if he was suggesting Howard was partly responsible for the rise of Isis, Wilkie responded “I’m not suggesting it, I’m stating it as fact”.
“If we had not gone to war 11.5 years ago, and destroyed that country and created this security vacuum, then the circumstances would not exist for Islamic State to have emerged and to grown strong and to conquer the land that it does. So yes, they are responsible.”
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/entertainment/books/2018/10/13/captain-america-vs-donald-trump-the-rough-treatment-of-presidents-in-comic-books/the_unquotable_trump.jpg)
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