Now, I know that some of you are thinking that – after the years from Abbott to Morrison – it’d be a much bigger shock to find that there wasn’t a liar in the Lodge, but that’s not what I’m finding so perplexing about the latest attempt by the Coalition to gain some political traction.
LNP were the greatest bunch of liars we have experienced as a government employed to serve the Nation. They should never be allowed back. A Public Service on Contract is a Service always under a precarious employment future and readily manipulated to serve the government rather than the people.
A total of 54,000 full-time equivalent workers were consultants, contractors and labour hire staff, while 144,300 public servants were actually employed in the APS. Labor says the blowout in external contractors was because the Coalition was pretending to cap APS numbers to look like it was clamping down on public employment expenditure. Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher said the results of the audit painted a true picture of the APS workforce under the former government.
A recent investigation details a campaign by the car industry to have its (low) voluntary standards on fuel efficiency legislated into national standards. This campaign fits into a broader pattern of lobbying by the fossil fuel industry to hinder effective climate action and highlights the importance of democratic integrity in addressing the climate crisis as well as the urgent need for robust regulation of lobbying.
Two more weeks and they will have lied their way to oblivion.
Fears that the cashless debit card will be implemented for all income recipients across the board, including those on the age pension, appear to originate from the Government’s own information and statements.
The world looks at Australia and says “They are Lying”
The United Nations secretary-general says Australia and other countries intent on increasing fossil fuel production are dangerous radicals. António Guterres made the comment while launching a new global climate change report urging the world to hit the accelerator on the transition to renewable energy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released on Tuesday (AEST), says it’s still possible to meet the objectives of the Paris climate pact to limit global warming to well below 2C, preferably to 1.5C. It sets out viable, financially sound options to keep the 1.5C goal alive, with Mr Guterres saying the pace of transition to renewables needs to triple. “We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed in Paris. Some government and business leaders are saying one thing — but doing another. Simply put, they are lying,” he said.
On August 16, 2010, five days before the federal election, Julia Gillard said “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”. On August 20, the day before the election, she said “I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism. I rule out a carbon tax.” When she announced the market-based carbon pricing scheme on February 24, 2011, the government’s press release said: The two-year plan for a carbon price mechanism will start with a fixed price period for three to five years before transitioning to an emissions trading scheme. Despite these easily verifiable facts, Peta Credlin and Alan Jones decided it would be politically expedient to label Gillard a liar, even promoting the puerile putdown “Juliar”. The fact that the Coalition got rid of a well-functioning emissions trading scheme only to introduce their own fatally flawed emissions reduction fund and carbon offsets scheme shows they are far more interested in the politics than the outcomes. Julia did not lie. Scott, on the other hand – well, how long have you got?
The verdict Dr Chalmers’s claim is a fair call. Although there have been just two periods each of Labor and Coalition governments in the last 30 years, the Commonwealth tax take was on average higher under the Coalition during that time. Tax revenue as a share of the economy was highest under prime minister John Howard. Next was the current Coalition government, elected in 2013, followed by the Labor government of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, then that of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. However, direct comparisons are complicated by, among other things, the introduction of the federal goods and services tax (GST) in July 2000, which one expert explained would have pushed up federal taxes as a share of the economy. Importantly, experts told Fact Check that these tax figures were also subject to factors beyond the control of governments — including resources prices, for example — and were not necessarily a sign of good or bad economic management.
Righto. Angus is on the job. Except … Australia’s largest producer of urea, Incitec Pivot, told the stock exchange last month it plans to close its main urea plant in Brisbane’s Gibson Island by the end of next year. The facility had been unable to secure “an economically viable long-term gas supply.” Paradoxically, Australia’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources said in its Resources and Energy Quarterly released June 28 that the global LNG market is likely to be marked by a surplus of supply over the next couple of years, which will place downward pressure on prices. “Given the large-scale expansion of global LNG capacity in recent years, import demand is expected to remain short of export capacity throughout the outlook period,” the report said. Then I read in the New York Times … Tanker ships carrying liquefied natural gas from exporters like the United States, Qatar and Australia have been steaming toward China and Brazil, drawn by higher prices.
He has some gall. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a person who finds the truth a creature best beaten, shunned and ignored, is now moving into what looks like campaign mode. At COP26 in Glasgow, he sold the world a climate change model that kept company with countries where fumes linger stubbornly, and the fossil fuels burn bravely. He made sure to do it the “Australian Way”, ensuring that emission reduction targets would not so much be met as thoroughly “beaten” without the need for taxes. He spoke of technology unproven and made assumptions unfounded.
Lying in politics is much a statement of fact as rising obesity levels in industrialised states. As that keen student of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, pondered, factual truth is ever at the mercy of the lie made in the name of political power. “Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories, which are produced by the human mind.” In his unsurpassed essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell also reminds us with severity that political language itself “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Today we discovered that no-one knows how many aged care workers have been vaccinated.It seems that we do not know how many aged care workers had been vaccinated, as there seems to be no-one keeping track of who has received the vaccine, and who hasn’t. According to the Department of Health, work is now “underway” to survey aged care workers at the nation’s facilities (read: literally counting heads).
We find a Government lying through it’s back teeth on everything and that’s what Tony Abbott did to secure a win
The Turnbull government’s climate change policy review would have you believe we are well on our way to reaching our international commitment of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030.
Only problem is we are not.
Previously confidential Treasury advice to the Turnbull government found Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policies would likely have a “small” impact on property prices.
The ‘Cut and Paste’ section of The Australian on October 8 had the following headline:
So who’s in denial now about what the science is saying about global warming?
It was followed by the sub-heading:
Here at the sheltered workshop we’re enjoying reading the reports from NASA and the IPCC.
‘Cut and Paste’ was principally devoted to attacking my review of Paul Kelly’s Triumph and Demise. The plain suggestion of the headline and the sub-heading is that I am in denial about what the science is now saying about global warming and that both NASA and the IPCC have joined the ranks of the climate change sceptics.
In the age of the internet anyone can discover the current position of NASA and the IPCC on global warming in a matter of moments.
Here are some statements of the current position of the IPCC, all taken from the Summary for Policymakers of the first volume of the IPCC’s Fifth Report published earlier this year:
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentration of greenhouse gases have increased.
Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any previous decade since 1850…
Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0-700 m.) warmed from 1971 to 2010…and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971.
Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent (high confidence).
And here is the current position of NASA. All of the following quotes come from its website:
Certain facts about Earth’s climate are not in dispute:
Sea Level Rise—Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.
Global Temperature Rise—All three major global temperature reconstructions show that the Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of the warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981…
Warming Oceans—The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
Consensus—Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
It is one thing for The Australian to publish the opinions of dozens of people without scientific knowledge or capacity, like the stockbroker, Maurice Newman, who think they have a firmer grasp on the question of global warming than ninety seven per cent of climate scientists.
This is merely risible.
It is another thing for The Australian to try to lead its readers to believe that the climate scientists represented in the reports of the IPCC or at NASA are now climate sceptics.
This is quite simply an outrageous lie.
It is little wonder that The Australian is now waging a war against the Australian Press Council, the body empowered to expose unethical and unprofessional behaviour of this kind.
Liar
olddogthoughts 
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