One of my close friends was a flight attendant. I was staying at her place when, late one night, a high-profile sports celebrity rang to say he was in town overnight and would send over a taxi to pick her up.
The classic booty call.
And this is exactly how our government behaves and expects us to be grateful.
You have a crippling drought? They fly in, have their photo taken, offer you a gift which may or may not eventuate, and then head off into the sunset.
Same with bushfires. Ignore you, then turn up wanting a cuddle, before they move on to their next photo opportunity.
Tag: Kaye Lee
We now have Angus Taylor looking to change the rules of the CEFC and ARENA to further prop up fossil fuels. And his ‘hand-picked for previously expressed views’ advisers are giving a veneer of consultation to what is a full-court press to prolong the ‘climate destruction for profit’ policies of Coalition donors.
Righto. So we expect China to be open and transparent but not our fearless men in black. If our own Border Force won’t co-operate then why should another country, particularly considering the accusations being made and broadcast by the Murdoch muckrakers like Sharri Markson who now seems to have become the letter box for US propaganda.
What a joke.
And where is the call for an investigation into the handling of the outbreak in the US and the UK and our failure to stop them importing the virus into Australia?
via Scotty’s shirtfronting sophistry – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Currently, less than 1% of Defence’s budget goes into its innovation funds. There’s no point investing billions in military capability if it doesn’t support Australia’s needs.
The ADF are a highly-skilled, well trained, well-resourced, mobile workforce who are being wasted on war games.
Forty-one Australian soldiers died in Afghanistan. Eighty Australians have died in the last couple of months from the coronavirus.
Perhaps old generals are not the best people to equip us for the world of the future.
via Time to rethink the purpose of the ADF – » The Australian Independent Media Network
He made the following observation about political staffers:
Over the last 30 years politicians’ staff has increased dramatically. At federal level there are now some 17 hundred personal staff to ministers and members. The states probably account for over two thousand more. Add to this the direct political infiltration of federal-state public services and quangos with hundreds more jobs for the boys and girls, there is now a well-established political class.
This has provided the political parties with a career path for members. In many cases it often produces skilled, partisan, “whatever it takes” warriors with a richly rewarded life through local state and federal governments to a well-funded retirement. Unfortunately while this career path, as Tony Fitzgerald states, does include principled well-motivated people … it also attracts professional politicians with little or no general life experience and unscrupulous opportunists, unburdened by ethics, who obsessively pursue power, money or both.
Exhibit A: Alex Hawke; Exhibit B: James Patterson; Exhibit C: Tim Wilson, Exhibit D: James McGrath.
In the name of “Ensuring Integrity”, either political staffers should be accountable to parliament and the law, or the Minister who employs them should take responsibility. The Sergeant Shultz defence is not credible.
via The unaccountable Ministers’ advisers – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We don’t need people with small minds who long for the days of coal, copper and austerity. We need people with imagination about the opportunities of where we are headed and the foresight to start preparing now.
via We need imagination, not hibernation – » The Australian Independent Media Network
After active opposition to action on climate change, rorting on a grand scale in water management, no long term national drought strategy, and a woeful response to the bushfires, ScottyFromMarketing (SFM) is now positioning himself as some sort of crisis leader.
In actual fact, he is finally being led by advice from experts, and luckily able to share the burden with the Premiers, or pass the buck where necessary.
via Lest we forget – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Not laughing now (ODT)
Under the Coalition’s “responsible budget management”, net debt has increased from $161,253 million at 31 August 2013, a week before the election, to $424,164 million at the end of February this year.
Still stuck in slogan land, Coalition language is changing.
We have gone from a “targeted, modest and scalable” response to “targeted, measured and scalable” and now Frydenberg is calling for “quick, strong and co-ordinated action” from the G20 countries.
The self-satisfied smirks, the ridiculing of the idea of well-being, and the draconian persecution of the unemployed have disappeared.
After more than a decade of their bullshit, all of a sudden, “we are all in this together”.
The Liar from the Shire has sunk to new depths – ok, maybe not new – with his ridiculous claim that “Emissions today are 50 million tonnes less on average each year under our government than under the previous government.”
This crap should be used in school maths classes as an example of how data can be manipulated to mislead.
The latest release tracking Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions includes a table of emissions for each financial year.
Emissions to the end of June 2007 were 627.0 Mt CO2-e. Six years later, they were 537.6, and 533.9 a year after that when the carbon price was repealed in 2014.
In the year ending September 30, 2019, they were 530.8.
To save you doing the sums, under Labor policies, emissions reduced by over 93 Mt CO2-e. Since the Coalition “axed the tax” almost six years ago, emissions have reduced by about 3 Mt CO2-e.
But hey ScottyFromMarketing, run with that line if you want. Get Angus to say it too.
Because we ALL know how trustworthy you two are.
Hang the names out so we can see them (ODT)
We don’t want another party vying for a centre that keeps moving further to the right. We want people with integrity who make decisions based on expert advice about the best interests of the nation, not on how to appeal to people who will never vote for you.
Australia’s answer to Margaret Thatcher. Appointing Anne Ruston as Families and Social Services Minister is up there with the sickest of cruel jokes.
At a forum with single mothers discussing being pushed into poverty, Senator Ruston dismissed the idea of raising Newstart in the most callous of ways.
“We can’t just keep on adding money to this bucket, because we’re not making a difference,” she said. “Giving (people) more money would do absolutely nothing … probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.”
“We’ve got to be fair to the people who pay for it.”
Holy shit Batman. Did she not realise who she was talking to?
via Anne Ruston – what a shocker – » The Australian Independent Media Network
But most of all, I hate being lied to.
So no, I don’t feel proud today. I feel angry at how a great country is being destroyed by political hacks whose only goal is to keep their nose in the trough.
Oh you mean like when Labor steered us through the Global Financial Crisis emerging as the strongest economy in the world?
Would it be too much to ask that we drop the “talking points” crap and actually tell the truth about the current situation so we can make a plan that actually reduces emissions without having to resort to accounting dodges and PR spin designed to make it look like you give a shit?
Enough of the lies!
Scott Morrison is trying desperately hard to find the right language to reassure Australians that he believes climate change is “real” but that he won’t do anything that might cost money to address it.
He wants us to be “patient” as he methodically changes his mind about whether volunteers should be paid since they “want to be there”, whether the ADF should be deployed, and whether we might in fact have to bring in some more aerial firefighting assets.
No “knee jerk reactions”… and certainly nothing that could possibly resemble being proactive from our PM.
He talks a lot about the funding that the Commonwealth is handing out. Because we all know we can’t have Labor’s “unfunded empathy”.
The Messiah from the Shire seems a little flustered that people expect him to actually do something – show some leadership maybe?
He keeps saying now is not the time for politics or photo shoots.
But what else has he got?
To quote another pretender to the leadership … he’s a “bit of a weathervane“.
via Do the smoky hokey – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Smoke and the figures in short cook the climate books do nothing cook the MYEFO and do nothing (ODT)
via A couple of quick take-outs from MYEFO – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As catastrophe engulfs us, what is our government doing?
Union-bashing.
Refugee-bashing.
Labor-bashing.
Decimating the public service.
“Refusing to apologise” for blatant misdeeds by Angus Taylor.
It’s business as usual for the do-nothing Coalition sticking to their age-old ideological vendettas.
via Ensuring there will be no integrity – » The Australian Independent Media Network
You will never hear a Coalition politician say we caused this problem, we must fix it. You will never hear them say this approach hasn’t worked, we must change it.
Since John Howard unexpectedly won the 2001 election, wedge politics is the Coalition MO and Scott Morrison is a devotee.
But when you use that approach, you can never take responsibility for anything, as demonstrated so pitiably by the climate change debacle.
Yesterday, Scott Morrison trotted out this old chestnut.
“To suggest that with just 1.3 per cent of global emissions that Australia doing something differently, more or less, would have changed the fire outcome this season, I don’t think that stands up to any credible scientific evidence at all. If anything Australia is an over-achiever on global commitments.”
How Morrison can continue to make this claim flabbergasts me.
via Man up, Morrison – » The Australian Independent Media Network
What we don’t need is to waste hundreds of billions on obsolete weapons of mass destruction, billions on consultants and government advertising, and politicians who think attending sporting matches is more important than their day job.
We don’t need a surplus. We need someone who has a clue about how to invest in this country rather than their own political future.
via MYEFO will be interesting – » The Australian Independent Media Network
A couple of days before the Four Corners investigation, Who Cares, was to air, Scott Morrison rushed to announce a Royal Commission into Aged Care. This was a government turnaround directly in anticipation of the damning ABC expose.
When interviewed for the program about a month earlier, Wyatt had said a royal commission would be an unnecessary move because the Government was already reviewing the sector.
“A royal commission, after two years and maybe $200 million being spent on it, will come back with the same set or a very similar set of recommendations,” he said, preferring to see that money go towards frontline aged care services.
Emails revealed at the RC show a flurry of activity in response to programs on the ABC whilst reports from the department on how to address the problems languished on the Minister’s desk.
Protecting his precious surplus, Morrison is willing to let people die while waiting for help.
Not only that, he wants kudos for calling yet another inquiry into a crisis of his party’s making in its never-ending pursuit of profit and deregulation
via “I called the Royal Commission” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
So this is what we have sunk to – a Prime Minister who wants us all to be quiet and, if we don’t, he’ll make us.
He doesn’t want us to talk about his government’s woeful record on greenhouse gas emissions. He doesn’t want us to talk about reefs dying and rivers drying up and mass extinctions. He doesn’t want us to choose ethical investments in sustainable industries.
He wants to bully insurance companies into insuring unviable projects and he wants banks to lend money to uncommercial ventures. He wants to make our superannuation funds invest in what will inevitably become stranded assets.
The idea that one would get their investment advice from the likes of mummy’s boy Matt Canavan is hilarious.
