Meanwhile the demented idiots on Sky News Kenny and Dean were spruiking that the Conflict Islands, privately owned, are up for sale. “where’s Penny Wong where’s Wong” both screamed. In fact the islands aren’t up for sale and never were according to their owner. It seems Kenny and Dean were demanding Australia buy them and some 800 other islands between us and NG.
These claiming to be balanced news jocks just fall over and over every night for the amusement of the same audience of less than 30k half of which are probably their opposition and the other half sitting with their food trays in their laps with the TV on for their amusement.
In the wake of Scott Morrison and Marise Payne’s disastrous foreign affairs stewardship, Penny Wong jets to Timor-Leste today in what may be another rescue mission to save a Pacific neighbour from China’s expansion in the region. Rex Patrick has long warned the young nation might spurn Australia in favour of Chinese investment.
Now that Donald Trump has gone, what will his ride-or-die supporters in Australian media do? How will they “own the libs” when the libs have their hand at the tiller? Whose ideas will they crib as US conservatism falls deeper into a post-Trump fugue? The recent output of high-profile Australian Trumpists suggests that the solution will be to gradually back away from Trump himself, even as they double down on aspects of the Trumpist movement. That’s necessary because, even for the diehards and the know-nothings, since the 6th of January, Trump the man has revealed himself to be a spectacularly toxic liability. He departed, according to Gallup’s numbers, as the least popular US president in the history of opinion polling: he had the lowest average approval rating over the life of his presidency and, unlike every other president since Roosevelt, he never enjoyed majority approval.
The Australian’s associate editor is the first journalist in 18 months to gain press access to the island – a goal placed out of reach for most immigration reporters
olddogthoughts 