Policy making through the rear-view mirror

“We drive into the future using only our rear-view mirror” was one of the many notable aphorisms of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist of the sixties.

If ever there was an image that captures Tony Abbott’s approach to public policy, this is it: driving into the future using only the rear-view mirror.

In full, McLuhan’s maxim reads: “The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” His argument was that our futures are always experienced and frequently determined by a past that few of us fully acknowledge or understand.

On a contemporary note, take Tony Abbott’s approach to broadband, the lifeblood of more and more involved in commerce and industry, in education, health, agriculture, tourism, and in the tech-intensive and service industries. His initial approach was typical of his pugilistic nature. “Demolish the NBN” was his instruction to Malcolm Turnbull. It was a Labor initiative and therefore must be destroyed. Moreover, he knew that if the NBN were stillborn, Rupert Murdoch would be pleased, as that would eliminate a competitor to his TV empire.

Abbott failed. As Turnbull sipped from this poisoned chalice, all the more bitter because it demanded he act contrary to his tech-savvy nature, he realized that demolition was going to be difficult, and in the end impossible, and unwise, as the Government’s NBN unfolded. Whether it was Turnbull’s awareness of the logistic and legal difficulties, or whether he became aware of the growing public support for the NBN, or whether his love of communications technology overcame him, he decided he must dissuade Abbott from his pursuit of demolition. That move carried the political risk of Abbott being seen as doing a ‘backflip’, having repeatedly condemned the Government’s NBN as an obscenely expensive white elephant that the nation could not afford. Of course, Abbott doesn’t do backflips; he changes his mind – ask the media.

Last week we witnessed an unanticipated spectacle – Abbott and Turnbull launching an NBN, the Coalition’s NBN, but an NBN nonetheless. Set against a high-tech background, courtesy of the new Fox Sports Sydney headquarters complete with a hologram image of a footballer, Turnbull and Abbott, looking like snake oil salesmen, with Abbott looking out of his depth at that, launched a cheap, low-tech alternative – dubbed ‘NBN-lite’.

Because it has been done to death elsewhere, even in the mainstream media, it is not my purpose here to compare this and the Government’s NBN, except to underscore the patently obvious fact that NBN-lite is not just inferior, but portrays Abbott’s proclivity to plan for the future by looking in his rear-view mirror, to march backwards into the future.

There was a delectable take on the launch in Brisbane Times Free floppies a policy flop by John Birmingham that makes my point: “The Opposition Leader promised this week that every Australian household would receive a free floppy disk drive and monochrome monitor under an Abbott-led government. Launching the Coalition’s long awaited response to the government’s National Broadband Network program, Mr Abbott denied that providing a floppy drive and monitor without the computing box to plug them into would leave Australian households with a second best solution… If people want more they can easily spend a few thousand dollars to upgrade to a very fast 386 or even 486 computing box.”

That is closer to the truth than its satirical tone suggests. From the outset Abbott claimed that Australia’s existing broadband was fine for him to send emails and for his daughters to download movies. His implicit question was “What more do you need? He was looking in the rear-view mirror to gaze into the future. Commenting on the NBN, even journalists who might usually support Abbott’s position have characterized him as lacking vision. That is not correct. Abbott has vision all right: backward vision.

His broadband vision is restricted to email and movies. He says he ‘needs it for his work’, but has he thought about the almost unbelievable potential of super fast broadband? Has he contemplated the possibility that in the years ahead applications will emerge that have not even been thought about yet? Does he remember that when he was a boy the first mobile phone was invented – the size of a brick and weighing a kilogram – and that since then we have seen the emergence of the extraordinary technology we now have? Has he forgotten that the World Wide Web began only a little over 20 years ago? Has he even thought about the next twenty years and the demands that burgeoning applications will place on the WWW? It seems not. Does he really think the Internet will be the same twenty years from now? Whatever he thinks, he tells us that his NBN-lite is ‘good enough’ for us: "I am confident that it gives Australians what they need." Regrettably, we will never know what he thinks about the future while he looks nostalgically into his rear-view mirror and sees only the past.

Looking backwards is Abbott man’s greatest drawback as a politician and leader.

It’s not just about broadband that Abbott looks back, not forward. How many times have you heard him lament that the halcyon days of John Howard are behind us. How he would love to return to that golden era where mining revenue flowed in a torrent into Howard’s coffers, enabling Howard and Peter Costello to hand out middle class welfare and give tax breaks, especially to those on the highest salaries and superannuation, and still bring in their hallowed surplus budgets. There was no global financial crisis, no recession; there was no dire threat to our economy as they prepared their budgets, no impediment to them handing out electoral bribes come election time. Abbott yearns for those days, and berates Labor because they have not done what Howard did.

Abbott looks in his rear-view mirror, sees the Howard years, sees the ideal fiscal circumstances he enjoyed, ignores all that has occurred globally since 2007 as if it had never happened, castigates the Government for taking the actions it did to protect the economy and employment during the GFC, and pretends that had the Coalition been in power everything would have been better, with surplus budgets as usual. Abbott’s capacity to fix his gaze on the rear-view mirror and look back at the road long past travelled, his faculty to ignore the road ahead, is pathological.

And it goes on. Looking back a usual, Abbott fondly remembers the days of high demand and sky-high prices for coal and iron ore and the revenue that resulted. He still refuses to see how the scene has changed, refuses to acknowledge that as a result Government revenue has fallen by $160 billion, and that the anticipated surplus is no longer possible. His rear mirror view shows him that nothing has changed, demand and prices are as they were, and not delivering a surplus is just ‘another broken promise’.

Of all the rear mirror views Abbott relishes, one of the most cherished is the spectre of how WorkChoices brought the workforce into line, and dampened union power. He also catches sight of how damaging that restrictive and unfair policy proved to be for the Howard Government and reflects on how it was a major factor in its defeat in 2007. He is petrified at giving any hint of its return, declaring it ‘dead, buried and cremated’. But his longing continues for the ‘flexibility’ business demands. Abbott’s IR spokesman, Eric Abetz, is using language that hints strongly at Abbott’s intention. He keeps looking back, pining for those ‘good old days’. But with an election pending, looking forward to reintroducing IR changes is too fraught.

How many times have you heard him insist that returning to Howard’s magic three-legged formula for stopping the boats: offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island, temporary protection visas, and turning the boats around ‘when safe to do so’, would work again just as it did then? By looking in his rear-view mirror, he is able to ignore all the changes around the world in the refugee situation, ignore all the push factors that now operate, and lay blame for the influx of arrivals on pull factors, to Labor’s leniency, to their abandonment of TPVs that the evidence showed were not just ineffective but harmful, and to their refusal to turn boats around, a maritime manoeuvre that is hazardous to service personnel as well as the boat people, one that is considered disaster-prone by senior Naval personnel, and was actually seldom done in the Howard era. Looking into his rear-view mirror Abbott sees the Howard program as ‘the answer’, the only answer: “we did it before and we will do it again”. He yearns for a return to those ‘days of yore’ when the refugee population in detention was tiny.

Take global warming. Despite his affirmation that he believes it really is occurring and that human activity is partly responsible, with his negative behaviour towards measures to reduce pollution by putting a price on carbon, it is not unreasonable to suspect that he still believes that ‘climate change is crap’, that it was ‘hotter in Jesus’ time’, and that therefore radical action is unnecessary. He still believes that planting 20 million trees and paying polluters to stop polluting will do. Again he’s looking into his rear-view mirror at climate in the long past, at the time when Dorothea Mackellar wrote of ‘droughts and flooding rains’, ignoring the constellation of severe adverse weather events that have occurred recently around the world, events that climate scientists attribute to global warming. He is able to ignore the almost universal consensus of thousands of climate scientists that global warming is real, is upon us already, will steadily escalate, and will bring with it untold catastrophes.

Looking in his rear-view mirror, he sees a world that existed before emissions trading schemes began. He still believes, indeed insists that Australia is running ahead of the world, that the trading schemes and pollution abatement programs that abound all around the world, and are proliferating every month, scarcely exist. He can’t see the evidence that is before his eyes, so fixed is he on the past. He repeats his mantra that the rest of the world is lagging behind us in emissions trading, when clearly it is not. His rear-view mirror looks back a long way.

The same mirror reflects back to him the traditional values he embraces so lovingly. During his address at the IPA’s 70th Anniversary Gala Dinner last week, Abbott said this: “Alas, there is a new version of the great Australian silence – this time about the Western canon, the literature, the poetry, the music, the history and above all the faith without which our culture and our civilisation are unimaginable.” Nobody would deny Abbott his beliefs and his values, ones refreshed by looking in his rear-view mirror, but those who are inclined to vote for him should ponder to what extent he will allow those entrenched values and beliefs to intrude on his policy making, to influence him as he fashions policies that ought to benefit all Australians. To what extent is he prepared to look forward, to see changing community attitudes to, for example, abortion, same sex marriage, and euthanasia? To what extent is he prepared to change his long-established viewpoint?

But his value system extends well beyond these emotion-laden issues. Looking back longingly to the Howard era he cherishes Howard’s values: support for private schools to the detriment of public schools that Howard neglected; support for private hospitals and private health insurance even if that disadvantages public hospitals; endorsement of the user pays principle, even if that leaves some behind; support for the privatization of public assets; sustenance of the powerful and the wealthy (Rupert Murdoch and Gina Rinehart spring to mind), even if that means that trickle down economics continues to fail and the gap between the rich and the poor widens.

Indeed, voters need not only to know Abbott’s contemporary attitude to these issues, but to what extent he embraces the Institute of Public Affairs’ list of 75 radical policy changes it is recommending to him and the Coalition? Take a big breath, and read them here. This is what Abbott said about them during his IPA address: “So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a big “yes” to many of the 75 specific policies you urged upon me…! Read YaThink’s response to that.

Abbott is a traditionalist, a monarchist, a Catholic imbued with Jesuit beliefs, and ultra-conservative that hankers for long gone days, days that he gazes at through his rear-view mirror. Even his recently expressed ideas for development of the North, which some rank as ‘visionary’, are a reprise of ideas from the last century, ideas advanced by Ion Idriess seventy years ago.

Look at the people behind Abbott, and you look at relics from the past. Yet he vows to install this team unchanged should he win power. He looks in his rear-view mirror and sees his future ministers.

Abbott longs for the past; he is fearful of any future that threatens his conventional, conformist view of the world. He eschews looking forward; the past is too comfortable and reassuring to abandon.

Yet, this man wants to be the leader of this nation in this unprecedented time of change as it faces the Asian Century, as it faces unparalleled challenges both in its own economic base, and in the global economy. The turmoil ahead demands that our nation’s leader look forward at the evolving landscape and steer our country along a course of prosperity, in harmony with our neighbours and our trading partners, in tune with the evolving geopolitical situation we hear about every day of our lives, and able to align our country with the powers that can give us support and protection and enhance our own defences – a leader who is willing and able to fruitfully adapt to the dynamically evolving world around us.

Tony Abbott, a man whose eyes are fixed on his rear-view mirror, who seems unable see the road ahead, is not that leader.


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14/04/2013Folks This is another piece that questions the capacity of Tony Abbott to fill the role of Prime Minister of this nation, as well as his suitability for that role, one he covets so unashamedly. It builds on a well-known saying of Marshall McLuhan: [i]“We drive into the future using only our rear-view mirror.”[/i] Abbott is a habitual user of the rear view mirror. McLuhan is perhaps most famous for his aphorism: [i]“The medium is the message”[/i], later styled [i]”The medium is the massage.”[/i]. Abbott has learned that saying well. He uses the media of his choice to massage the electorate, avoiding any media outlets where his hollowness might be exposed. This piece paints Abbott as a man without forward vision, habituated to looking backward through his rear-view mirror.

Catching up

14/04/2013Yes, but his mirror only shows the distance past. Way back to the middle of the last century I believe. It is also distorted, to only allow selective memories that are to his liking. Funny,, when I look back, I do not seem to see what he does.

doodlepoodle

14/04/2013Paints the man exactly how he is AA. I hope that last week's release of the LNP NBN excuse for a policy might start to wake a few people up. So many are so complacent and are also looking in their own rear view mirror.

lyn

15/04/2013Today’s Links Renewables can do 24-hour baseload anywhere, anytime by @MarkDiesendorf powerful interests are running a campaign of renewable energy denial that is almost as fierce as the long-running campaign of climate change denial. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/business/renewables-can-do-24-hour-baseload-anywhere-anytime/ Confusion reigns in the LNP by @MigloMT Remember the GFC? ” . . . considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s http://cafewhispers.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/confusion-reigns-in-the-lnp/ Gonskis: University Funding and Education Reforming by Nick Osbaldiston @AusVotes2013 The real question we as voters should be putting to Gillard is why not something else? Why not fix the mining tax? Why not even dump (just a little) middle class welfare http://ausvotes2013.com/2013/04/14/gonskis-university-funding-and-education-reforming/ Tony Abbott’s hidden agenda by Tim Dobson A united campaign by all those opposed to these severe cuts is the only thing that can stop this conservative agenda in its tracks. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53821 What the heck is #AshbyGate? How main stream media (MSM) saw it http://www.ashbygate.com/ Media reform on life-support by @Kevin_Rennie the Centre for Advanced Journalism’s session The Post-Mortem on Journalism Reform: What Happens Now? belied the conventional wisdom that media reform in Australia is dead http://australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/media-reform-on-life-support/ Abbott and the IPA (Idiotic Policy Advisors) by Truth Seeker The Institute for Public Affairs is the mogul financed extreme right wing think tank that has a policy wish list of 75 policies that the LNP seem to be drawing from for one of four possible reasons: http://truthseekersmusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/abbott-and-the-ipa-idiotic-policy-advisors/ Week in Review by @JohnCookAdviser The Prime Minister in China The future of Australia and China’s relationship has been strengthened with the launch of new bilateral architecture following the http://johncookadviser.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/week-in-review-30/ What Tony Abbott will do by @btckr “We will abolish the carbon tax, we will repeal the mining tax, we will stop the boats and we will produce a surplus.” He also guarantees a Liberal government will not change superannuation rules http://thesnipertakesaim.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/what-tony-abbott-will-do/ Statement on Higher Education by @CraigEmersonMP designed to ensure that all Australian school children get a flying start in life. http://ht.ly/k2w1J 5 reasons for the great disconnect by @gemoase The only people who read The Australian are the political/economic elites and a few assorted weirdos http://tradeunion.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/5-reasons-for-the-great-disconnect/ THERE is more than a technological difference between the Coalition’s new broadband policy and Labor’s National Broadband Network. by Crispin Hull, Turnbull, of course, represents a seat in wealthy eastern Sydney. Private telecommunications companies have always served wealthy metro areas lavishly http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2013/04/13/10404/#more-10404 Our choice: Fate or Future by @BushfireBill To deliberately pick a second best option in telecommunications, like #Fraudband, when the best is underway and being built as the NBN, is vandalism of the highest order against the Australian people http://pbxmastragics.com/2013/04/14/our-choice-fate-or-future/ $94 billion not the worst Labor NBN case: Turnbull by @renailemay his statements today have unfortunately only added to the issue of credibility around this already highly contested figure, and have raised questions about Turnbull’s knowledge of the Coalition’s own research. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/04/13/94-billion-not-the-worst-labor-nbn-case-turnbull/ First France, now Spain: Malcolm Turnbull invests again in Fibre to the Home by Stephen Conroy “It is time Mr Turnbull put his mouth where his money is by supporting Labor’s roll out, http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2012/143 High-speed broadband is high on the federal election agenda for the rural health lobby by Melissa Sweet High broadband speeds are crucial for facilitating new and emerging best practice models of health care http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/ The never-ending #NBN story, it's not all about LOL Cats on Youtube by Stephen Neate, @YaThinkN requiring bandwidth now: 1 Desktop PC, 3 Laptops, 1 or 2 Tablets, 2 to 4 Smartphones, 2 Smart TV’s (ie: they can have internet) and at least 1 Gaming/Entertainment device http://yathink.com.au/article-display/the-never-ending-nbn-story-its-not-all-about-lol-cats-on-youtube,65 Renter’s to suffer with Liberal NBN Plan by ajbau6 So basically if you rent and require FttH for your work you could be up for $5000 every year. http://shiftechblog.wordpress.com/author/ajbau6/ Coalition NBN good call for Telstra: Turnbull by AFR coalition government would be able to renegotiate the terms of the $11 billion agreement with Telstra that compensated the company for decommissioning its copper network as http://www.afr.com/p/national/coalition_nbn_good_call_for_telstra_kboiy1AZOGH38sp5uSdcZI Transcript of Joint Press Conference SUN 14 APRIL 2013Prime Minister, Canberra National plan for school improvement; Gonski reforms http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-joint-press-conference-45 The Sun shines on Rebekah..for now: Ex-tabloid editor sips beer on Sydney yacht with the Murdochs ahead of trial by Amanda Perthen Rebekah Brooks, the former tabloid editor who faces trial later this year, soaks up the sun in Australia on a luxury yacht with her husband Charlie http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308727/The-Sun-shines-Rebekah-Ex-tabloid-editor-sips-beer-Sydney-yacht-Murdochs-ahead-trial.html Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 15 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

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15/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

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15/04/2013Catching up, doodlepoodle I agree. I do hope that the public will soon wake up to Abbott's hollowness, his policy paucity, his backward looking approach, and his appalling lack of the foward-looking vision the leader of our nation needs.

Pappinbarra Fox

15/04/2013Problem is, a large portion of the community also hanker after the "good ole days", and that is not just older folk - who tend towards that outlook on life as the years progress but also middle aged and younger people yearn for a past they have only a dim and distorted view of. Business people do the same. Ask any businesser whether they plan for the future for their business and they will say of course, but ask them what that future looks like and most (remember these are businessers not entrepreneurs) will describe a future that looks and sounds amazingly like that rose coloured past when their business thrived, red tape was non existent, taxes were low, business was supported by tarrif walls etc, where employees knew their role and stuck with the same firm through think and thin. So maybe LOTO is selling a vision that people recall through their kaliedoscopic lenses when everything was so much better than it is now and pleople (poor misguided foos) really want that - and he'll get away with it - until everone realises that he cannot deliver - but by then it will be way too late.

janice

15/04/2013Good morning all. You are so right, Ad astra. Abbott and his ilk are stuck fast in the past and want this country to stand still and rot in the past with them. It bewilders me when I hear people (these so-called intelligent spruikers who get on the opinion panels) dismiss the Governments NBN as unnecessary and too expensive. They show their ignorance, their inability to see further than next week, by agreeing with Turnbull that his FTTN is good enough for Australia because it is cheap, and cannot see that in a very short time the decaying copper will be unable to deliver even what it is delivering at this very moment. All of them appear to be arriving at their opinion by thinking only about downloading movies and cannot get their tiny minds around the huge potential the NBN has for this country to compete with the rest of the world, for business to do business competitively, for the education of our children, for addressing our distance problems across this nation and bringing us all together to work for the prosperity of the country as a whole. Now, of course we have the education funding reforms (Gonski) on the table and all the tiny minds are at it again. Of course, the LNP are not enamoured with a highly educated and skilled population - it would mean the days of manipulating and misinforming the population will be over. The Abbotts of this country would have to come up with progressive policies where three word slogans are a no-go and lies and obfuscation do not cut the mustard.

TalkTurkey

15/04/2013Ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy-7VOgBdY Here's a song to keep Tony Abborrrrtt company on his trip.

nasking

15/04/2013 AD, YOU PAINT AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF THE BACKWARD LOOKING TONY ABBOTT. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THO THAT I DON'T THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO MAKE A SIGNIFICANT EDUCATION ANNOUNCEMENT AND IN THE PROCESS DEMAND CUTS AT UNI. I FELT THIS YESTERDAY BUT KEPT IT TO MYSELF...BUT MY WIFE MENTIONED IT THIS MORNING...AS HAVE OTHERS I GOT FEEDBACK FROM. MY WIFE AND I BEGAN UNI IN THE LATE 80s...I WAS A MATURE AGE STUDENT...AND WAS FORTUNATE TO GET ONE FREE YEAR BEFORE HECS CAME IN...STACEY WAS CHARGED FOR ALL HER YEARS. WE BOTH WORKED DURING OUR UNI YEARS AS AUSTUDY WAS LOW...AND ONCE WE HIT THE F/T WORKFORCE AGAIN WE FOUND IT DIFFICULT ON THE LOW WAGES BACK THEN TO BOTH PAY OFF HECS...AND SAVE FOR A DOWNPAYMENT ON A HOUSE. THE FIRST HOME OWNER'S GRANT CAME IN VERY HANDY...AND WE ARE NOW WELL-ESTABLISHED IN OUR HOME...ELEVEN YEARS NOW...AND THE LOWER INTEREST RATES ARE CERTAINLY HELPING TO PAY OFF OUR MORTGAGE DEBT. FURTHERMORE, QLD LABOR UNDER BEATTIE & BLIGH ENSURED THAT TEACHERS GOT A HALF-DECENT WAGE...A LONG WAY FROM THE PALTRY AMOUNT I RECEIVED DURING MY TEACHING YEARS UNDER THE NATIONAL PARTY...AND SADLY ALPer GOSS...THAT WAS A REAL STRUGGLE. WHAT MADE A REAL DIFFERENCE TO US WAS STACEY'S MUM LOANING HER THE MONEY TO PAY OFF THE LAST OF HER HECS...AND GETTING A DISCOUNT FOR IT. OVER TWO YEARS WE PAID HER BACK A CERTAIN AMOUNT EVERY FORTNIGHT. IT WAS SO IMPORTANT FOR US TO GET THAT DEBT OUT OF THE WAY...AND IN THOSE EARLY DAYS OF THE MORTGAGE THAT DISCOUNT MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE. AS DID THE DEPENDENT SPOUSE REBATE WHEN I GOT ILL. NOW, I COME FROM A DIVIDED FAMILY...MANY DIVORCES...AND WAS BOOTED OUT OF HOME AT NINETEEN...SO I HAD TO GET WHERE I AM WITHOUT ANY FAMILY SUPPORT. AS A PAST WORKER WITHOUT A HIGHER EDUCATION I WAS EXPLOITED CONTINUALLY. THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO TO AFFORDABLE UNI MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE TO MY LIFE. MY WIFE COMES FROM A FAMILY LIVING IN BEAUDESERT THAT STARTED EXTREMELY POOR...AND THRU HARD WORK AND SCRAPING AND GOOD CHOICE OF LAND OWNERSHIP THEY WERE ABLE TO SEND THEIR KIDS TO PRIVATE SCHOOLS...AND NOW ONE, STACEY, IS A HOD AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL...THE OTHER STUDYING WHILST WORKING IN THE DISABILITY AREA. EVEN THOUGH STACEY'S FAMILY ARE PRIMARILY NATIONAL PARTY VOTERS...THO THE HUSBAND DOES SWING OCCASIONALLY...BOTH STACE AND I TEND TO VOTE GREEN AND LABOR BECAUSE OF OUR CONCERNS ABOUT RAMPANT MINING, RAMPANT CAPITALISM, MY EXPERIENCES UNDER THATCHER, THE IRAQ WAR, THE RESPECT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE DISADVANTAGED BOTH PARTIES HAVE...AND SO ON. SO ESSENTIALLY WE ARE THE GENERATION THAT HAWKE AND KEATING GAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET OUT OF POVERTY...AND BECOME UPWARDLY MOBILE. SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THEN WHY BOTH OF US ARE CONCERNED ABOUT A LABOR PARTY ANNOUNCEMENT THAT WITH ONE HAND GIVES DESERVEDLY TO PRIMARY AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS... AND WITH THE OTHER TAKES FROM HIGHER EDUCATION...AND MAKES IT HARDER FOR STUDENTS TO PAY OFF THEIR HECS DEBTS. THE ALP HAVE SO MANY POTENTIALLY GOOD POLICIES...I JUST WISH THEY'D ANNOUNCE THEM IN DETAIL WITHOUT ADDING NEGATIVES EACH TIME. IT SURE WOULD HELP SELL THEM. AND BTW, I'M PISSED BIGTIME WITH SIMON CREAN. THE TIMING OF HIS CRITICISMS WAS DESPICABLE...AND UNDERMINED A GENERALLY GOOD WEEK. I HOPE THE ALP SEE MY VIEWS AS HELPFUL...RATHER THAN DESTRUCTIVE. I'M HOPING THAT THE PM AND TEAM DON'T HAVE A TIN EAR. FURTHERMORE...IT IS THE LNP NEWMAN GOVT THAT IS PUTTING MY WIFE'S SIBLING'S JOB IN THE DISABILITY AREA AT RISK DUE TO OUTSOURCING...WHICH IS NOT PLEASING HER NATIONAL PARTY PARENTS AT ALL CONSIDERING HOW HARD IT HAS BEEN FOR HIM TO GET TO THIS POINT OF HAVING A STABLE FAIR PAY JOB DUE TO A LEARNING DIFFICULTY. N'

nasking

15/04/2013 BTW, ANOTHER REASON MY WIFE AND I WOULD NOT VOTE FOR A COALITION LED BY TONY ABBOTT IS HIS PATTERN OF BEHAVIOUR RELATED TO WOMEN IN POWER. WE ARE CONCERNED THAT ANY WOMAN IN A MANAGEMENT POSITION LIKE MY WIFE'S WHO IS NOT AS RELIGIOUS AND CONSERVATIVE-ORIENTED AS ABBOTT AND HIS TEAM WILL BE GIVEN A VERY HARD TIME...AND EVENTUALLY SHIFTED OUT OF THEIR POSITIONS. CONSIDERING HOW HARD MY WIFE AND OTHER WOMEN WE KNOW HAVE WORKED TO GET WHERE THEY ARE...AND HOW BALANCED IN THEIR VIEWS...IT WOULD MAKE ME IRATE TO SEE THIS CULTURE WARRIOR TONY ABBOTT AND HIS PARTISAN AND TOO OFT MISOGYNISTIC TABLOID AND SHOCK JOCK SUPPORTERS DESTABILISE THE JOBS OF GOOD AND CAPABLE WOMEN WHO CARE DEEPLY ABOUT THEIR JOBS AND CHARGES. I CERTAINLY HOPE THAT THE ALP AND THE PUBLIC CAN REACH A COMPROMISE...FOR THE GOOD OF SO MANY WOMEN IN CAREERS ASSISTED BY A WIDE THINKING AND OPPORTUNITY PROVIDING LABOR PARTY. N'

Bilko

15/04/2013AA Another spot on post. Over the last couple of days I have been talking up the NBN to my rusted on senior Liberal living on one side of me and a Labor man on the other side. Like me they both have broadband via Transact. Facts they did not know under the NBN all phone calls local only NO more STD phone charges, NO phone line fees, use to be $16 a month when I was connected to Telstra ears ago, I am sure more now,connection by Skype local, interstate and overseas call costs ZERO . The both have a single pc/laptop and just use it for emails and some internet searchs. We have 21 internet connectable devices ,3x smart tv's 5x computers, 3x laptops, 2x ipads, 2x routers, 2x switchs,2x Xboxes,Sony Play-stations it seems never ending, the devices are in various parts of the house including our grannyflat, converted garage where one grandson and his wife live whilst saving up for a deposit on a house.. I have two grandchildren living with us and we can just cope with 200g/byte monthly download at a cost of $100 per month and that should reduce when my prayers are answered and we get connected to the NBN, having friends in high places has not helped in that regard. AA et all, We are living some of that future you predict and can see where it could lead, also living the present where helping the kids prepare for their future is commonplace. What does Abbott promise nothing but grief and despair. Australia please please please wake up.

Ad astra

15/04/2013Pappinbarra Fox, janice It is hard for many to look forward and to anticipate the future and all the excitement it offers. That is not confined to older people. I can recall how apprehensive some younger doctors were at the prospect of computerized medical records, while we older ones were filled with keen anticipation. Of course, it is now an everyday reality. I suppose there is security in the comfort of the past. But leaders need to be the ones who see the opportunities and grasp them with enthusiasm and determination to see them through. We have a progressive PM who does that, yet much of the public seems unprepared to follow her lead. We have an ultra-conservative LOTO who seeks refuge in the past, who has no vision of what might be; yet, many in the public prefer his stick-in-the-mud approach. How can our nation advance with that as a prospect after September 14? TT If Abbott, Goon-like, wants to ‘Walk backwards for Christmas’, let him, but let’s not allow him to take the Australian people on his backwards walk! narking While I understand your concern that the Government’s Gonski funding is at the expense of some university funding (not critically important funding though), can you imagine the hue and cry if no source of funding was announced. Those who are not in government, such as the Greens, always have smart answers (tax the miners more), but they don’t have to manage the backlash to their suggestions. The universities will complain (they are almost obliged to do so), but the smart thinkers there will see the Government’s rationale and will soon put it behind them.

Ad astra

15/04/2013Bilko Thank you for the useful information you supplied. As you indicate, people are ignorant of what the NBN will do for them, yet make up their minds, Abbott-like, about this great technological advance. How right you are: [i]What does Abbott promise - nothing but grief and despair. Australia please please please wake up.[/i]

nasking

15/04/2013 I'M LISTENING TO THE NEGATIVITY OF SOME OF THE STATE PREMIERS AND CHRISTOPHER PYNE OVER THE EDUCATION ANNOUNCEMENT...AND CAN'T HELP BUT FEEL THE LIBERAL AND NATIONAL PARTY THESE DAYS ONLY SEEM TO BE CONCERNED WITH PRIVATISING, OUTSOURCING AND MINING AND CATTLE IN ORDER TO FEED THEIR MATES AND BIG-END-OF-TOWN SUPPORTERS. HAVING VIBRANT BUSINESSES AND FAIR COMPETITION IS ESSENTIAL FOR ROBUST DEMOCRACIES... BUT MAKING CUTS AND PRIVATISING AND DESTABILISING PEOPLE'S LIVES AND JOBS...AND PUTTING ECONOMIC STABILITY AT RISK JUST FOR PLAIN IDEOLOGICAL AND/OR JOBS FOR THE BOYS REASONS IS DUMB AND IRRESPONSIBLE. PART OF THE REASON THE PUBLIC IS TURNING ON THE NEWMAN GOVT IS THE PERCEPTION THAT THE LNP PUT INTO GOVT SOME VERY CORRUPT AND GREEDY PEOPLE...OTHERS JUST PLAIN INCOMPETENT...AND ARE GOING ABOUT MAKING SEVERE CUTS AND FUNDING SHIFTS TO BENEFIT A FEW MATES AND SUPPORTERS. HAVING PETER COSTELLO COME ALONG AND BE PAID HANDSOMELY WHILST OTHERS LOST THEIR JOBS...JUST TO PROVIDE EXCUSES BASED ON SHONKY ACCOUNTING FOR A JOBS BLOODBATH AND REDIRECTING OF MONEYS INTO LNP PET PROJECTS LOOKS MORE THAN GROTESQUE...AND PREDICTABLE. THERE ARE WORKERS ALL ACROSS THIS STATE THAT WE KNOW WHO ARE NOW FEELING THEIR JOBS ARE UNDER THREAT...THEIR LIVELIHOODS WOBBLING. YET, THE GILLARD GOVT HAS JUST GOT ANOTHER REALLY BAD POLL. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? ABBOTT SHOULD BE WELL BEHIND. IT'S VERY VERY FRUSTRATING. N'

MWS

15/04/2013I've discovered a Chrome extension called "Murdoch block." As it's name suggests, it posts a warning every time you load a site owned by News Ltd or any other Murdoch-owned company. Every time a Murdoch-owned web address is loaded, they benefit financially through advertising, and from promoting the number of "clicks" as their total viewing audience. By using "Murdoch block", you deny Murdoch-owned companies financial revenue and market penetration. This is very useful, as the shortened links don't make the source of information clearly visible BEFORE you click on a short link. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/murdoch-block/moepiacmhnmbiilhpojodnaopndhddpg?hl=en This link also points to a "Murdoch alert" extension for Firefox.

nasking

15/04/2013 AD, IT HAS BECOME EVIDENT TO ME THAT THE GOVT AND CERTAIN ALP SUPPORTERS ARE NOT LISTENING TO THE CONCERNS OF MYSELF...AND MANY MANY OTHERS. FOR THE TIME BEING I'M GOING TO TAKE A BREAK. THAT GOES FOR FACEBOOK TOO. IF ALP STRATEGISTS AND BLOGGERS AT THIS TIME CANNOT SEE THAT OUR CONCERNS HAVE MERIT THEN THERE IS NO POINT PUTTING THE EFFORT IN. I WROTE A DETAILED COMMENT AS TO HOW THE HECS DISCOUNT ASSISTED TWO GREEN LABOUR VOTERS AND THE REPLY WAS, TO SAY THE LEAST, DISMISSIVE. BASICALLY I HAVE BEEN IGNORED ON: MEDIA REFORM NO INCREASE IN NEWSTART CONCERNS FOR WELFARE OF SINGLE MUMS CHANGES TO DEPENDENT SPOUSE REBATE ABRUPT CHANGES TO CHRONIC DENTAL SCHEME NOW THE HECS AND HIGHER EDUCATION CHANGES THE MINING TAX SEEMS TO ME THAT WE HAVE A PARTIALLY GUTLESS GOVT THAT IS SECRETLY CATERING TO THE MSM AND BIG MINERS... AND IN THE PROCESS WOULD RATHER HURT GREEN ALP VOTERS AND THOSE WHO WERE GIVEN OPPORTUNITIES BY HAWKE AND KEATING TO GET OUT OF POVERTY...RATHER THAN FIND TAXES ELSEWHERE. WHAT IS THE POINT OF HELPING THE POOR BECOME UPWARDLY MOBILE WHEN YOU JUST MAKE LIFE MORE DIFFICULT FOR THEM THE NEXT TIME YER IN POWER? I JUST DON'T GET IT. WASN'T IT ENUFF THAT WE WERE STRIPPED OF FREE EDUCATION AND HAD TO SPEND YEARS PAYING FOR UNI? THAT ALL OUR PRESCRIPTIONS ARE FULL PRICE...JUST BECAUSE MY WIFE FINALLY MAKES A DECENT INCOME AFTER MANY YEARS OF STRUGGLING...REGARDLESS OF THE BIG MEDICARE AMOUNT SHE PAYS. SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE BIGTIME. IF WE CAN MAKE CO-CONTRIBUTIONS...THEN THE FREAKING ALP CAN GET THE GUTS TO MAKE THE CORPORATIONS AND DYNASTIES PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE TOO. WE DON'T MIND PAYING OUR WAY...BUT WE EXPECT TO BE SUPPORTED BY THE PARTY WE VOTED FOR WHEN IT COMES TO MAKING SURE THE TOP-END-OF-TOWN DON'T GET AWAY WITH BLUE BLOODY MURDER WHILST ALL OUR BENEFITS ARE STRIPPED. CHEERS N'

nasking

15/04/2013 I WILL REPEAT AGAIN BEFORE I GO: [b]THERE ARE WORKERS ALL ACROSS THIS STATE THAT WE KNOW WHO ARE NOW FEELING THEIR JOBS ARE UNDER THREAT...THEIR LIVELIHOODS WOBBLING. YET, THE GILLARD GOVT HAS JUST GOT ANOTHER REALLY BAD POLL. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? ABBOTT SHOULD BE WELL BEHIND. IT'S VERY VERY FRUSTRATING.[/b] N'

42 long

15/04/2013TOP polititians "SPIN" well. Abbott is proficient in it and "WE" obviously deceive easily, because it seems to be working. Abbott is one of the best polititians money can buy, but the undecieved and perceptive, will pay as much as the easily led, greedy and politically lazy do when the backers of the LieNP (itself a coalition) demand their pound of flesh. Look WHO the BACKERS are and be well AFRAID of what will happen under this terrible, inadequate person.

Ad astra

15/04/2013nasking It is frustrating; no matter what good things the Government does, no matter what our PM achieves (the China visit was a momentous achievement), no matter what great initiatives Labor develops (the NDIS and Gonski), the polls remain negative. You ask why. First, I believe that Abbott’s Goebbels-like rhetoric has had its affect – if you call someone a liar often enough, if you call someone untrustworthy often enough, if you label someone incompetent often enough, like Goebbels’ lies, it sticks in some minds. Next, Labor seems to have uncanny bad luck in as far as adverse events have occurred around the time of key polls more than one would anticipate by chance. The media has seen to it that adverse headlines are around when a poll is in the field. Of course, Labor’s critics would say that there is always some adverse event around to fill the bill, and it was Crean’s outburst that was all over the Fairfax papers when the Nielsen poll was in the field. It seems as if the human psyche is more inclined to be influenced by the negative than the positive. China was positive, Gonski is a positive, even the Coalition NBN-lite launch was a positive for the Government, but past memories and present negatives drown out the positives. With a supportive media, the scene would be quite different, but the negative one we have can drum up adverse articles at the drop of a hat. You and I could easily do the same – it’s dead easy journalism. I know it’s hard to ignore the polls; I understand how discouraging they feel, but ignore them we must, as they are meaningless as predictors. When the public gets a good look at what Abbott is offering and compares it with what the Government is, the contrast will be apparent to those who count – the undecideds, the swinging voter, the thinking voter – they will decide who governs next. If you take a break as you indicate you might, we will miss your thoughtful contributions, so well documented and reasoned. While some may not agree with all your viewpoints, they are always respected. If you do take a break, come back soon.

Frank

15/04/2013Abbott is fully aware of the good things we are doing. But pivotal to his entire strategy is to gain power no matter what. We know already what Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie said about him during those days of critical negotiation. Therefore he has no problem telling untruths on a daily basis because he knows that by repeating them they will eventually be believed.

Pikiranku

15/04/2013Thanks, AA,for yet another thought-provoking post. What an unimaginative, second-rate individual Abbott is. Mr. No, no, no - no imagination, no vision, no overview, no empathy, no compassion. Is conservatism connected to a lack of confidence? All the progressive people I know, the ones who are prepared to enthusiastically embrace change, have confidence in their own ability to survive it and to be enriched by it. Whereas the conservatives that I'm surrounded by here all seem at least a little bit fearful of change, uncertain as to how they'll cope with it. They prefer a status quo which does not challenge them to the prospect of change with its challenges which they fear they may not be able to meet. Not that I'm suggesting that Tony Abbott lacks confidence. I doubt that he really believes half of what he says. He's just an unprincipled, self-seeking opportunist who says whatever he thinks will further his own interests. But he plays on the fears of his audience. However,I'm still optimistic about September, no matter what the polls are currently saying. If the Fifth Estate can have such a telling effect in the USA and Italian elections, why wouldn't it do the same here? Australia has a really high penetration of internet connections compared with the rest of the world so if the Fifth Estate is going to influence election results anywhere, it has to be here. Reith and Turnbull can belittle Twitter all they like, I think they may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Truth Seeker

15/04/2013Ad, great post as usual :-) Nas, I believe that this type of reaction is what these polls are designed to get. I wouldn't be surprised to here Murdoch ringing the polling companies and saying I need a poll that says this, and because he's paying for it, that's what he gets. We had the two previous polls saying a gain for Labor and then another Murdoch bought and paid for poll saying the opposite. The same thing happened at the start of the year, right after Abbott declared that he would reverse the Tax free threshold and take away the school kids bonus and the pension rise, which should have sent his numbers plummeting, but instead he got a boost…. coincidence? In a pigs arse. Keep wel;l mate, and don't give up! Cheers :-) :-)

Ad astra

15/04/2013Hi Lyn What an eclectic batch of links you gave us today. Great reading - informative and interesting. Thank you again. Frank
 Who wouldn’t agree with your assertion: [i]“Therefore he has no problem telling untruths on a daily basis because he knows that by repeating them they will eventually be believed.”[/i] Abbott is a disciple of the Goebbels dictum: ‘Tell a lie often enough, no matter how big, and eventually the people will believe it’.

 Pikiranku
 What insightful words you write: [i]”Is conservatism connected to a lack of confidence? All the progressive people I know, the ones who are prepared to enthusiastically embrace change, have confidence in their own ability to survive it and to be enriched by it. Whereas the conservatives that I'm surrounded by here all seem at least a little bthe it fearful of change, uncertain as to how they'll cope with it. They prefer a status quo, which does not challenge them to the prospect of change with its challenges which they fear they may not be able to meet.”[/i] That sounds right to me.

 nasking
 Apologies for my misspelling of your name. Truth Seeker Thank you for your comment. I agree with you about polls. Just today, while Nielsen was spelling doom for Labor, Essential was on the up, with a primary vote at 34%, TPP at 55/45, and small changes in personal ratings well within the margin of error. So whom do we believe? Answer = any poll that suits! I enjoyed your piece on that frightening IPA list of 75 radical changes. That’s what we can anticipate if Abbott ever gets his hands on the levers.

lyn

15/04/2013Hi Ad, Thankyou for looking after us all again and again, writing another award winning article, Ad Astra you are amazing. [quote] Policy making through the rear-view mirror [/quote] [i]“aware of the growing public support for the NBN,”[/i] I think he or Peta knew/know the NBN was/is popular. Lotto called for “Election Now” a thousand times, he thought her would be Prime Minister by now. [i]“ Turnbull and Abbott, looking like snake oil salesmen” [/i]They sure did Ad in fact they looked dopey: by Phonytonyabbott: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_D8dYxRvc&list=UUa85DcHz93ug5jLfWWHN5Yw&index=1 [i]“ His broadband vision is restricted to email and movies”[/i] He couldn’t have had the time to look at a computer in the past 2 years. The amount of time he has spent, Kissing Fish, Brick Laying, Driving Trucks, Swimming, Running, etc. [i]“Tony Abbott, a man whose eyes are fixed on his rear-view mirror” [/i]He sure loves looking back, evidence everywhere. Fancy believing women should stay home and do the ironing. Wonder does he think married women go to work for the scenery. A petition below that needs signing Marion Groves ‏@MarionGroves Sign petition asking Tony Abbott to clarify which of the IPA's 75 policies the Coalition will implement. https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-leader-of-the-opposition-clarify-which-of-the-ipa-s-75-policies-the-coalition-plans-to-implement?utm_campaign=action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition :):)

Tom of Melboune

15/04/2013People here seem to miss the point. Trust comes first, it a politician isn’t trusted, there is no point in having the most comprehensive policies. People have direct experience with Gillard, they know not to trust her. They may develop the same sentiment towards Abbott, but he isn’t Prime Minister at the moment.

Janet (jan@j4gypsy)

15/04/2013 G’day all. Ad, your new post is a tour de force, yet again. Thank you. [How’s about Ad for President of the New Republic of Oz? :-)] Back to Twittertalk. I do believe folks, public discussion and debate, even some commentary, is focusing on POLICY! Before we reach for the smelling salts, ALP policy – not Coalition policy, of course … That said, one is beginning to see the PM and Govt lining the policy framework up very neatly indeed: NDIS, Asian century, NBN, Gonski … fascinating to watch really. [b]Twitterati[/b] [i]krONik ‏@krONik[/i] .@frankellyabc talking about poor polls. PM Gillard hits it for a six! Nation buliding vs languishing so @BreakfastNews switches off #AUSpol [i][/i]TheFinnigans天地有道人无道 ‏@Thefinnigans Jesuz, please some context. of course David Gonski wouldnt like cut in Uni fundings. He is the Chancellor of the University of NSW [i]AshGhebranious ‏@AshGhebranious[/i] How stupid are you! !Which sector will better attract private sponsorship. University research or primary school research? @BreakfastNews [i]Deborah Brian ‏@deborahbrian2[/i] RT “@Kimbo_Ramplin: It's 'not a cut'. It's a 'reduction in increase'. Sir Humphrey would be so proud. Sigh. #highered” ping @tseenster [i]Rosemary ‏@Puss999[/i] @Qldaah @krONik Don't u think that ppl are fed up with polls? I am? This silly devisive political tool is just a form of brainwashing. [i]wendos ‏@wwwendoss[/i] @SamCD2301 PM would have given up long ago if she worried abt polls. Thankfully she's just got on w the job in China, here. Resilient leader [i]Mari R ‏@randlight[/i] Wonder why every news outlet only concentrated on the Nielsen? All the others Galaxy Newspoll Essential& Morgan all said small small gains [i]Possum Comitatus ‏@Pollytics[/i] It's good to see ReachTEL - the peoples pollster - joining the national polling circle tonight [i]david ewart ‏@davidbewart[/i] You can join the protests after Abbott is elected or ensure he is never elected. Your choice. [i]Phillip Adams ‏@PhillipAdams[/i] Choice of Joyce versus Windsor? The Queen announces she'll campaign for Tony, the most worthwhile of all the Windsors. [i]Mr Denmore ‏@MrDenmore[/i] So according to Hartcher, people are saying 'please keep lashing us with inequity as we may hold the whip one day'? #falseconsiousness [i]Bernard Keane ‏@BernardKeane[/i] I must have missed the memo that said asking high income earners to pay the same tax as the poor is "class warfare". Apologies. [i]David Horton ‏@watermelon_man[/i] Crean passes to Husic passes to Fitzgibbon passes to Howes passes to Ferguson passes to Rudd.... and Abbott scores under the posts. [i]Elizabeth Marr ‏@JmarrMarr[/i] Big tobacco, Big alcohol & Big mining sponsor IPA. [b]Twitterverse[/b] [i]margo kingston ‏@margokingsto[/i]n Bottom line: PM delivers best and fairest way to educate kids to their highest potential. Informative @gabriellechan http://thehoopla.com.au/education-plan-fair/ … [i]Mari R ‏@randlight[/i] http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-price-of-getting-school-funding-to-those-who-need-it-most-20130414-2htrc.html … Very thougtful article on Education [on Gonski: Gypsy pick] [i]grace pettigrew ‏@broomstick33[/i] Gillard's funding plan for schools is sound and worth pushing to the states | The Courier-Mail: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/gillards-funding-plan-for-schools-is-sound-and-worth-pushing-to-the-states/story-e6frerdf-1226620265645?sv=2dcdee68e8f34b3210ed011e07628816#.UWsVGUI3AX0.twitter … via @couriermail [i]Hugh McDermott ‏@hugh_mcdermott[/i] Should universities suffer to pay for school funding? http://theconversation.com/should-universities-suffer-to-pay-for-school-funding-13472 … [i]Jewel Topsfield ‏@JewelTopsfield[/i] The architect of school funding recommendations, David Gonski, laments cuts to unis to pay for reforms http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/premiers-baulk-at-14b-school-funding-plans-20130414-2htte.html … via @jo_tovey [i]Nick Ross - ABC Tech ‏@ABCtech[/i] Interesting 5yr-old article in the Tele by @joehildebrand on the state of disrepair on Teltra's copper network http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/telstras-quick-fix-plastic-bag/story-e6freuzi-1111115429453 … #NBN [i]Mark Enders ‏@Mark_Enders[/i] The NBN fallout continues http://www.townsvillelabor.org/1/post/2013/04/the-nbn-fallout-continues.html … via @weebly [i]sortius ‏@sortius[/i] Tasmania's #NBN advantage http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/04/15/376951_tasmania-news.html … At least somewhere will benefit from @TurnbullMalcolm's myopic plan, but not how you think. [i]vexnews ‏@vexnews[/i] Australians prefer Labor's NBN but is it a vote-switcher? #auspol http://bit.ly/17Avosx [i]cultural diversity ‏@culturaldiversi[/i] Gillard Government empowering multicultural communities - http://www.katelundy.com.au/2013/04/12/gillard-government-empowering-multicultural-communities/ … initiative could lead to local action on social issues [i]John Pratt ‏@Jackthelad1947[/i] Cuts bode ill for tenants. LNP cuts funding for public housing. Tell me again why you're voting for Abbott? #auspol http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/-2htpm.html … [i]Milanka J Sullivan ‏@Artspeakcentral[/i] Australia to force multinationals to disclose tax arrangements http://gu.com/p/3eppa/tw via @guardian #auspol [i]Mark Textor ‏@markatextor[/i] How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Vot... http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060554 … [PS: Is recaptcha demonstrating political bias?: 'and Crean Gr' ! :-)]

Jason

15/04/2013ToM, It's you that misses the point! most of us on here will vote Labor no matter what you say! Why do you think your advice on what any of us should do come the election is wanted and who has asked for it? Tell someone who cares FFS!

Curi-Oz

15/04/2013The major reason people I think people don't trust the PM is because they consume commercial media that has a particular agenda. Nor do most people consume "news" (as compared to "olds") with great attention to detail. In fact, most people rely on "olds" to inform their view of the "news", so that evidence that confirms their already held views is acceptable, while other evidence will cause discomfort and therefore be rejected. Hence the evidence piling up that the LNP is beholden to what is referred to as 'the big end of town' is ignored because a) it is "old news" and b) most people are used to being told over the past 20 years or more that the labouring classes and their so-called representative are feckless and lazy and undeserving ... Now who does that remind me of again? Regards,

TalkTurkey

15/04/2013Hi Nasking. I sort of know what you mean. Some of the time it don't seem worth it eh. Well never mind ~~~ I think maybe, just maybe I am, and each of us is, a horse-shoe nail that if it got lost at the critical moment it might mean the loss of the shoe ... and you know the rest. That makes me personally responsible (because I so choose) to do my best to avert the disaster that I believe an Abborrrrttt Government would be. And there's only one way I know to help Labor, and that is to write my heart out whether it helps or not. And with the way things are, it's so simple to me, Good v Evil, there is no other loudness level to use than with the volume turned up full. So nil desperandum Comrade Horseshoe~Nail, that's what I reckon anyway. If ever we need role models for putting in effort we don't need to go further than our moderator and our lookouts here, or ultimately our amazing Prime Minister.

Ad astra

15/04/2013Hi Lyn Thanks you for your kind words and your pertinent comments. I have signed the petition you presented to us all. The Coalition premiers are making a fuss as expected, but will sign up, except perhaps Colin Barnett. Christopher Pyne is threatening to dishonour the Gonski deal unless all States sign up, but I wonder how the Premiers who stand to benefit most will react to losing all Commonwealth funding if even one Premier doesn’t sign. Unless of course this is the Coalition’s plan for scuttling the whole Gonski plan! Janet Thank you for your generous remarks and your Twitter talk. You gift us with a rich source of additional information. Thank you. Curi-Oz You are right. The Coalition cow-tows to the big end of town. TT Thank you for your continual encouragement. You are an inspiration to us all.

el gordo

15/04/2013'It's you that misses the point! most of us on here will vote Labor no matter what you say!' You mean this is a chat room and not a debating club? I must have come to the wrong place.

Truth Seeker

15/04/2013Ad, thanks for your comment and kind words on my post :-) Yes we have a right to know who's making policy, and who we are being asked to vote for, cos with Abbott you also get Murdoch and the IPA. Now some might say that in that situation you get three for the price of one, but quantity in this case doesn't = quality, in fact the opposite is true. That's why I included the petition link at the end of my post. Cheers :grin:

el gordo

15/04/2013'Take global warming. Despite his affirmation that he believes it really is occurring and that human activity is partly responsible,' That's not true, Abbott thinks AGW is crap and he intends to get rid of that odious tax on a harmless trace gas. He doesn't really believe CO2 causes global warming and in this respect he has been proven correct. Over the past 16 years human induced CO2 emissions have risen by 8%, yet temperatures have remained flat. Abbott also said he will deconstruct the klimatariat and eliminate the green machine, so it looks as though the games up on that expensive folly.

Sir Ian Crisp

15/04/2013[quote][b]ToM, It's you that misses the point! most of us on here will vote Labor no matter what you say! [...] Jason [/b][/quote] JGuy, that surely is your macaca moment. What about the high ideals of The Political Sword: Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword. I might report you to AA for your flagrant breach of the stated purpose of TPS.

Jason

15/04/2013El gordo, Sue me! I'm sure you know someone who will hack me! If not Sir Ian has my address!

jane

15/04/2013Ad astra, another great post highlighting Liealot's lack of interest in the future of this country. If he is voted in, we'll be dragged back 20 years. lagging well behind all our trading partners and becoming the laughing stock of the world. NAS' DON'T DESPAIR. lIEALOT AND THE LIARS HAVE YET TO COUGH UP THE REST OF THEIR HAREBRAINED SCHEMES TO THE RIDICULE OF THE PUBLIC. YOU CAN BE CERTAIN EACH ONE WILL BE AS STUPID AS THEIR 2ND RATE COMMUNICATIONS SCHEME, AKA NO BLOODY NOTION. [quote]I must have come to the wrong place.[/quote] I think you have grodo. Read this and weep, grodo. So much for your claims that AGW is untrue. http://news.sky.com/story/1078276/antarctic-ice-melt-is-worst-in-1000-years

jane

15/04/2013TS, perhaps Labor could run a faceless men ad using the IPA as the faceless men running the Liars Party. A good photo to use would be the wizened foreigner with Liealot kneeling before him getting his orders.

sulphurcrested

16/04/2013And I thought Abbott was bad... http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/04/kill-the-poor.html#more

Curi-Oz

16/04/2013At first I thought that Menzies House link was on the lines of Swift's solution to the Irish Problem a couple of centuries back, but on reconsidering I think the poor chap has it a little wrong. Anglophonic nations did not start to become the great economic powerhouses until their middle classes, particularly the minor entrepreneurs, got going in the late Georgian and early Victorian eras and started spreading the the wealth out from the top echelons of society downwards to those so undeserving of it (namely, us "working class types"). Obviously removing the lower classes will provide an inconvenience to those that really run things, therefore to provide an more appropriate distribution of wealth the IPA, Menzies House and similar organisations need to be more explicit in their desires to remove the middle classes and the possibilities of the lower classes to elevate themselves out of poverty. Then life will return to it's proper role of the basic classed society of conservative rich people and the starving multitudes who will do anything to get a job. Now who does that remind me of? *removes tongue from cheek with difficulty* Regards,

Truth Seeker

16/04/2013Jane, good idea. :-) Something needs to be done Cheers :-) :-)

lyn

16/04/2013Today’s Links Morgan poll shows Government support up for second straight week by @independentaus http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/morgan-poll-shows-government-support-up-again/ LETTER: Reading the body language It was obviously “killing” him that he had to “sell” a system which even a layperson could understand was clearly inferior to the government’s http://www.portnews.com.au/story/1431905/letter-reading-the-body-language/?cs=256 Public Apathy and 75 Ideas to Make You Shudder. by johnlord2013 @MigloMT problem facing the Australian electorate. It has to date been successfully conned by the opposition into believing that the current government is the worst ever http://theaimn.com/2013/04/15/public-apathy-and-75-ideas-to-make-you-shudder/ Some questions hang over Larry Pickering’s latest allegations by @MigloMT So my last question to Pickering is: “Did you make all this up?” http://theaimn.com/2013/04/15/some-questions-hang-over-larry-pickerings-latest-allegations/ My people’s petition for Abbott to reveal his other IPA policies by @cyenne40 It’s not good enough for him to hold all his cards close to his chest and promise that life will be better under his government. We deserve better than that; we deserve to be told. http://australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/my-peoples-petition-for-abbott-to-reveal-his-other-ipa-policies/ Gillard Delivers Cash For Schools by @SquirrelMain @newmatilda Overall, funding will increase by $14.5 billion. That’s $4000 per student. Public schools will receive an extra $12 billion, Catholic schools will get an extra $1.5 billion and independent schools an extra $1 billion. http://newmatilda.com/2013/04/15/gillard-delivers-cash-schools Bridge Over Troubled Waters by @madwixxy Missing in action were the Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party that claims to understand “The West”. http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/04/15/bridge-over-troubled-waters/ In 2013 Australian universities are still predominately the professional training ground of the middle and upper classes while government schools remain the main education providers by @no_filter_Yamba http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/ Coalition rejected: 78% support Labor’s NBN by @renailemay I’m not surprised by the vitriol which has been directed at the Coalition over its rival NBN policy; http://delimiter.com.au/2013/04/15/coalition-rejected-78-support-labors-nbn/ Coalition NBN's bitter aftertaste by Vincent O'Donnell terms high speed, superfast and super high speed are thrown around. Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, announcing the policy even described the proposed NBN as faster: he meant ‘delivered sooner’. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/15/technology/coalition-nbns-bitter-aftertaste#ixzz2QW4PxUo5 Telstra and Turnbull's tricky NBN parlay by @SupratimA Malcolm Turnbull, has again reiterated the message that his $30 billion network won’t be stopped in its tracks by a recalcitrant Telstra. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/15/technology/telstra-and-turnbulls-tricky-nbn-parlay#ixzz2QVyMiRle Turnbull's broadband vision is economic lunacy by Mungo Maccallum it is economic lunacy - vandalism, in fact - and will put the kind of brake on Australia's development and productivity that Kim Jong-un could only dream of. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4628984.html EDUCATION PLAN: BEST AND FAIREST by @gabriellechan In 2012 Gonski Report declared what we all knew – namely that Australia’s school funding system was broken. On the weekend, the Prime Minister released her multi-billion dollar fix. http://thehoopla.com.au/education-plan-fair/ Guest post by Guy Rundle- After Thatcher- A tryptych I’ve been told that Australians are Thatchered-out. Spare a thought for us over here. This has become something other than obsessive mourning: the wall-to-wall coverage is a sort of experiment http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/04/guest-post-by-guy-rundle-after-thatcher-a-tryptych/ Superannuation part 2 battle of the brains by kate ahearne Galaxy assured us yesterday that Mr Abbott’s idiocy and Ms Gillard’s triumph in China have sent Labor further down the Swannee. http://fairmediaalliance.wordpress.com/ Unions back Badgerys Creek for Sydney airport site David Twomey Trade unions in New South Wales have voted to back a second airport for Sydney at Badgerys Creek and want the conservative Liberal-National Premier Barry O’Farrell to drop his opposition to it. http://econews.com.au/news-to-sustain-our-world/unions-back-badgerys-creek-for-sydney-airport-site/ Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 16 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

Ad astra

16/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

lawriejay

16/04/2013The two options for the NBN and the vast differences between the two brings to my mind a talk back radio show some 20 years ago, wherein listeners brought up the nostalgic issue of radio shows of many years before. the Dad & Dave serial was the one that got the most mention and the host of the show said that the library at his station possessed the complete show, it was decided there and then to start playing the show at about 6.40am each morning. The serial started with Dad, Mum and Dave setting off from Snake Gully to attend the Sydney Royal Easter Show ,10 episodes later they still had not reached Sydney. What once was enjoyable entertainment was now so far out of date and boring to numbness was 'canned' 10 shows were enoough. Time, technology and people had moved on. I get the feeling that the LNP will ' can' their 'Dad and Dave NBN' before this years Melbourne Cup and proceed with and complete Julia's NBN Co option. Remember Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Prime Minister of Australia from 1949, did not attend the turning of the first sod ceremony to commence the Snowy Mountains Scheme by Ben Chifley, train driver, and PM before Menzies took over, because among other things he believed the country could not afford it ?? Pig Iron Bob went on to build and complete the project, and be credited with building the iconic scheme. In a broadcast 'Report to the Nation' in May 1949, the Prime Minister, Mr Chifley, declared: "The Snowy Mountains plan is the greatest single project in our history. It is a plan for the whole nation, belonging to no one State nor to any group or section … . This is a plan for the nation and it needs the nation to back it." But there was strong resistance from the Federal Opposition -- a Liberal Party/National Party coalition led by Robert Gordon (later Sir Robert) Menzies. Menzies attacked the Chifley Government for brushing aside the states and for assuming a power which he claimed it did not possess; and for enacting legislation therefore tainted with serious constitutional illegalities. That aside, he admitted the proposed scheme was "bold, comprehensive and well designed". At a function marking an advanced stage of construction at the Tumut Pond dam in 1958 the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, who by now had revised his opinion of the project, spoke of the triumph of the scheme, to which he added: "In a period in which we in Australia are still, I think, handicapped by parochialism, by a slight distrust of big ideas and of big people or of big enterprises ... this Scheme is teaching us and everybody in Australia to think in a big way, to be thankful for big things, to be proud of big enterprises and ... to be thankful for big men."

Ad astra

16/04/2013sulphurcrested Welcome to [i]The Political Sword[/i] family and thank you for providing the link to the [i]Menzies House[/i] article: [i]Kill the poor[/i]. What should we make of that extraordinary article? Do come again. Curi-Oz has an interesting take on the article! jane Thank you for your kind comment and for the link to the ice melt article, another frightening part of the global warming jigsaw puzzle.

TalkTurkey

16/04/2013Lynnie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQDpHYCAdc8 Oh Lyn You're such a wonderful Tweeter! And you sure got a vigilant eye! When you were only tiny With eyes so big and shiny You gave them better use than cry! And when it came to reading your Cornflakes I bet that you knew every last word And when you went off to school You broke every known rule Cos you knew so much it seemed absurd! And now you're such a wonderful Tweeter! And Tweetie,[i] You are Our Bird![/i] Thanks Lyn.

el gordo

16/04/2013'Again he’s looking into his rear-view mirror at climate in the long past, at the time when Dorothea Mackellar wrote of ‘droughts and flooding rains’, ignoring the constellation of severe adverse weather events that have occurred recently around the world, events that climate scientists attribute to global warming. He is able to ignore the almost universal consensus of thousands of climate scientists that global warming is real, is upon us already, will steadily escalate, and will bring with it untold catastrophes.' Russian scientists believe a global cooling tipping point will be obvious in a couple of years and your diatribe is totally out of date. The 'almost universal consensus' supporting AGW is a fraud. The extreme weather events around the world recently are not unusual or unnatural. Abbott has the potential to become one of Australia's longest serving PMs, while Labor and the Greens will become rumps .... a coalition of reactionaries.

sulphurcrested

16/04/2013Thanks Ad Astra, and Curi-Oz. Just so shocked and disgusted by that article, even though it is meant to be humour - I think. It betrays a very ugly mindset, and one so skewed that the deliberate removal of swathes of people for the convenience and further enrichment of the already privileged is a funny proposition. Imagine the uproar if the left wrote such a piece, advocating the removal by death of the upper, wealthy classes. But that would be considered class warfare. This is not like the Australia I've grown up in. Taken together, affairs in this country have become surreal. Thank goodness Julia is still at the helm and for all our sakes still will be after Sept 14.

LadyInRed

16/04/2013Ad sums up Abbott very well...someone who drives into the future looking in the rear view mirror. Its the safe option. Vision is scary, what if you get it wrong? Abbott projects his fears on to the electorate, and in turn makes the electorate fearful. For that reason people like Abbott don't make good leaders. I see Malcolm is out selling more snake-oil. Trying to convince us that its better to have the $10 today to do something that will benefit today, rather than lock up that $10 buying something now we wont need for another 10 years. The truth is Malcolm has no idea where technology is heading, and his fraudband policy will not have the capacity to respond in time. He is getting more and more slippery with every passing day.

TalkTurkey

16/04/2013Do we believe this? Note the words DRAFT DRAFT at the top. But I think it is genuine, or that it will be when finalised. You don't have to like Pauline Pantsdown to reckon she was given a bum rap. No pun intended. :) (Mind boggles) http://www.independentaustralia.net/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IN-THE-SUPREME-COURT-OF-QUEENSLAND.pdf

LadyInRed

16/04/2013Kill the poor. That the rich blame the poor for being poor is not new, this article is just stating what most of them think but don't voice. Ultra conservative, tea party types, truly believe if they (the government with them in charge of course) provide the very basics, a free society (seen through their own prism), stable government, and basic fundamental freedoms like an education (the lowest level possible naturally) and the opportunity to work (for them of course at the lowest wage possible)that should be enough. If you want more go out and work for it (for them of course, for the lowest possible wage of course, with the poorest quality of education we can provide) and so the cycle continues. What's the point of being rich if it doesn't give you power over someone? In this case the poor. So I don't think even the rich would like the policy of kill the poor.

sulphurcrested

16/04/2013LadyInRed, yes power over someone important to the rich and they need an underclass to perform menial tasks. But the confidence of them in publishing such an article. There will be no person or media to hold them to account and they know it. Re education for us serfs, I read a comment somewhere last week that John Roskam, director of IPA, said publicly that he thought public education is welfare. The cycle continues, as you say, but with climate change, food and water resources not meeting demand, death for serfs looks viable, I'm sure, as a solution for the privileged.

jane

16/04/2013LIR @10.15am, Trunchbull is just revealing his true colours again. We got a glimpse of them when he was LOTO during the Grech affair, but people felt sorry for him once Liealot knifed him and have given him qualities he doesn't possess. He is a Liar and cannot be trusted. Totally agree with your comment @10.36am. Ad astra, I thought I should warn you that el gordo has been banned from CW. Migs finally had enough of his/her/its trolling and s/he/it was given his/her/its marching orders. Now I see s/he/it's up to no good at TPS. My advice is to scroll on past, but don't wait on the corner, to paraphrase the song.

bob macalba

16/04/2013the grodo is just baiting folks, a piss poor effort but baiting over crap is all he can do, just ignore the wally

Ad astra

16/04/2013Hi Lyn I’ve read your links earlier today. What an interesting collection. I enjoyed Mungo’s humorous take on the Coalition’s NBN-lite. There’s not much joy out there for the snake oil salesmen. Let’s hope the electorate will remember this monumental blunder on election day. lawriejay Isn’t it ironic that it was Robert Menzies who said (in reference to the Snowy Mountains Scheme): [i]"In a period in which we in Australia are still, I think, handicapped by parochialism, by a slight distrust of big ideas and of big people or of big enterprises ... this Scheme is teaching us and everybody in Australia to think in a big way, to be thankful for big things, to be proud of big enterprises and ... to be thankful for big men."[/i] Pity Abbott is not a big man.

Ad astra

16/04/2013el gordo Philosopher Karl Popper said that while it is not possible to absolutely prove a theory, it is possible to refute it. Climate scientists are aware of Popper’s maxim: [i]”If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.”[/i] This is why they qualify their statements about global warming and talk of ‘consensus’. The consensus among thousands of climate scientists is that global warming is accelerating and that human activity has made a large contribution to that acceleration. Only a tiny handful disagrees. Such a high degree of consensus is unusual in climate science. Almost daily, more supporting evidence is evinced. As pointed out by jane, further evidence emerged yesterday: [i]Antarctic ice melt is worst in 1000 years.[/i] http://news.sky.com/story/1078276/antarctic-ice-melt-is-worst-in-1000-years [b]Please detail the arguments that you believe refute global warming and refute that it is man made.[/b]

2353

16/04/2013bob - elgordo obviously don't understand that on this blog facts are required prior to "facts like his are believed. You gotta feel sorry for him. Why is he here anyway did Migs ban him or did SIC(k) and Troll of Melbourne send for reinforcements?

Ad astra

16/04/2013LadyinRed You are right: [i]”Vision is scary, what if you get it wrong? Abbott projects his fears on to the electorate, and in turn makes the electorate fearful. For that reason people like Abbott don't make good leaders.”[/i] You are also right when you say: [i]”The truth is Malcolm has no idea where technology is heading, and his fraudband policy will not have the capacity to respond in time. He is getting more and more slippery with every passing day.”[/i] There is nothing more unconvincing that Turnbull attempting to sell something in which he does not believe.

MWS

16/04/2013For those interested (especially those with open minds), the "no warming for 16 years" debunked here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm You can also get a free app for android (and iPhone/Pad) to counter all the common arguments deniers use. Anybody with any chemistry knowledge knows that the latent heat of ice melting to liquid water uses 334 kJ/kg, with NO INCREASE in temperature, while sensible heat to heat liquid water is ~4.2 kJ/(kg.K). So when ice is melting, there is NO INCREASE in temperature, even though large amounts of heat are being absorbed by the melting ice. In addition, most of the increase in Earth's heat is going into the oceans, and won't be reflected in surface air temperatures. I'm aware that this will make absolutely no difference to the troll, but I don't want to give visitors to this site the wrong impression that the troll's statements are uncontested.

Ad astra

16/04/2013Talk Turkey What an interesting document! If it is a genuine legal matter, I wonder how Abbott will respond, and how the Fourth Estate will report it?

Ad astra

16/04/2013jane We will soon see el gordo's true nature if and when he responds to my challenge.

Ad astra

16/04/2013MWS Thanks for the link. Let’s see if el gordo has an answer. We should remember though another of Popper’s sayings: [i]”No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.”[/i]

lyn

16/04/2013Hi Ad, I have copied an article by Mark Day in the Australian, it's behind the paywall. Applicable to your piece. Would it be ok with you if I post the whole article. :):)

lyn

16/04/2013Hi Talk Turkey, Thankyou , what a wonderful tribute you have written for me @ 8.35am The golden keep-box is full, so your words go in the Diamond Box with a pink bow on top. Lynnie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQDpHYCAdc8 You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, I must tell you my Dad would love you, he thought I was a beautiful baby. Dad called me Lynnie . Cheers to you :):)♥

Cyndicate

16/04/2013Popcorn! Tony Abbott will take questions from an audience of 'undecided' voters in Geelong this Thursday, hosted by David Speers on Sky News at 7.30pm.

Curi-Oz

16/04/2013MWS I wish there were an app that could pick up and outline: a) policies of all the various parties to the upcoming elections, including lobby groups along with the relevent identification of bias b) funding information for those policies c) lies that are told against the various policies (and yes, I'm sure that the LNP/NP coalition tell the truth on occaison*) To that end, I'm going to enrol for GovHack2013 (http://www.govhack.org/) to see if I can do something. If nothing else, TPS is getting me sufficiently annoyed at things that I'm moving out of my comfort-zone to take a visible stand. *very rare occasions, unfortunately. Cheers!

Ad astra

16/04/2013Hi Lyn By all means, post Mark Day's article in full.

jane

16/04/2013Ad astra, if I remember correctly grodo is quite a fan of Lord Monckton. It's a pity that the "modern" Liars Party doesn't subscribe to Menzies' ideas about visionary public infrastructure programs like the Snowy Mountains scheme and the NBN. Even though they are so backward looking, they obviously have excised such programs as the Snowy Mountains Scheme from sight, no doubt because it doesn't jibe with their current narrow vision. Rather like the mandarins in the court of the emperor Zhu Di, who, because of their jealousy of Admiral Hong Bao, persuaded the emperor to cease all further exploration of the world outside China. The ocean going fleet was destroyed, Hong Bao was disgraced and China looked inward from that time. I suppose it would have been a nasty shock for European explorers to discover they'd been beaten to the wealth of South America and the West Indies by the Chinese. The Abbott Liars and their malignant overlord are just like those mandarins, jealous of Julia Gillard and her forward looking government, doing everything in their power to drag us back into the past.

jane

16/04/2013TT @10.28am, interesting read. I agree that although I found Hanson's politics repulsive, I agree that she copped a bum rap. Hopefully it is accurate and succeeds. Poor old SIC would go into a decline. How tragic.

lyn

16/04/2013Hi Ad, Thankyou, here it is:- [i] Balancing act of the National Broadband Network, by Mark Day [/i]WHEN someone's body language sends a clear signal, it poses a dilemma for reporters. The message might be clear, but you can't quote it. The Coalition's broadband policy launch last week is an example. There were times when the tensions in the relationship between communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull and his political boss, alternative prime minister Tony Abbott, were palpable. [b]They both exhibited signs of extreme discomfort -[/b] Abbott because he was embracing something he didn't understand and Turnbull because he was selling something less than he would wish. This should be no surprise, of course. It was Abbott who tore Turnbull down as leader and it is to Turnbull's credit that he is able to swallow this and still do his bit for the Coalition team. It is further to Turnbull's credit that he was charged 2 1/2 years ago with the job of demolishing the Rudd-Gillard government's National Broadband Network and yet has been able to save it. If all goes according to the Coalition's plan, its NBN will come sooner and be cheaper and slower than the government's longer, costlier and faster plan, but it won't be abandoned. This is Turnbull's first and major achievement. He has been able to convince his non-tech-head boss that the NBN is a worthwhile - I would say essential - piece of national infrastructure and has been able to drag him on side for the policy launch. At the same time he has given himself a series of get-out clauses that, in an optimistic reading of his words, may end up delivering us a fibre-to-the-premises broadband system all but indistinguishable from the government's proposal. He has managed to pay heed to today's political necessity without shutting the door on what will increasingly be seen as tomorrow's national best interest. Politics is the art of compromise and Turnbull has had to subsume his own instincts in order to reach this point.[b] Abbott had declared war on the NBN and made Turnbull his general.[/b] Turnbull has been able to avoid a scorched-earth policy while conjuring up a sufficiently different proposal to satisfy Abbott's political needs. My hope is that he has done so with the intention of engineering an outcome that over-delivers on today's promise because he knows that is the best outcome for him politically, and for the nation. I have been a supporter of the fibre-to-the-premises NBN plan since it was announced. I see it as a future-proofed way to catapult Australians to the front of the race to develop and embrace the social revolution offered by digital technologies and the internet. Leadership in this field is of inestimable value for our future But my view doesn't matter because I'm not in a position to make it happen. In the ordinary course of events we might be tempted to see Labor's NBN policy versus the Coalition's as a key election issue, but with the Coalition at unbackable odds to win the September election, a rational view is we'll have Turnbull's NBN, not Stephen Conroy's. This means we must pick over the entrails of the announcement and Turnbull's subsequent interviews to look for clues about what we might end up with. The key to Turnbull's construct is changing circumstances. When Abbott decreed the NBN plan should be destroyed, it was in its infancy. Now, almost three years later, the big separation deal with Telstra has been negotiated, construction contracts have been let and thousands of households have been hooked up. Sure, it's behind schedule, but it's under way and it is impractical to suggest what has been done should be undone. Circumstances will continue to change and this is where Turnbull has given himself some wriggle room. Essentially, he will keep all the fibre backbones envisaged under the original NBN plan but terminate them in street-side nodes. This, he estimates, will save $17 billion in build costs and enable him to declare his plan is cheaper. It may also be false economy. The copper he plans to use from the node to the premises is [b]costly to maintain (reports put it at $1 billion a year, and rising)[/b] and it will inevitably need to be replaced at some time. Turnbull says his plan is built on "optionality" - that is, when the life span of the copper is reviewed, the NBN will have the option of servicing it or replacing it with fibre. He hasn't said who will make that choice, or the basis on which it will be made, but it's unlikely there will be many supporters of a policy to retain copper when all the advantages lie in an accelerated switch to fibre. The logic of this suggests that we'll all get fibre to the premises eventually, but it may take decades. In this sense Turnbull's claim that his FTTN plan will be [b]completed earlier than the government's FTTP plan is misleading. [/b] His plan is also inferior when it comes to speed. Turnbull offers 25Mbps services which he says is fast enough for most of us. That may be true today. But the government's 100Mbps fibre will enable the faster uptake of myriad services that will demand higher bandwidth. In advanced nations 1Gbps fibre services are now being rolled out. Turnbull says individuals, institutions or organisations with a need for fibre to cater for their services or businesses will have the option of paying for it, thus contributing to the NBN cost savings. The $17bn cost difference between plans is not to be sneezed at, but it is far from certain that it is a wise choice. It amounts to [b]less than 5 per cent of our annual budget - and anyway, it is and will remain an off-budget item. [/b] When it is all boiled down, [b]Turnbull's NBN proposal is cheaper only because he is delaying the last mile [/b]of connection to the premises and putting the onus on us to pay for it. Whether that is good policy is the debate we should be having.

Ad astra

16/04/2013Hi Lyn Thanks for pasting the Mark Day article. It's another interesting take on NBN-lite. Dress it up as many try, NBN-lite remains second rate. Day knows that, Turnbull knows that, Abbott knows that, IT people know that, and the voters do too. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Everyone knows that. I'll now be out for a few hours.

Pikiranku

16/04/2013Sulphurcrested, Fascinating link overnight to Menzies House. I worked up in the Adelaide Hills for over a decade and met plenty of people there who would have thought Toby Ralph's article was funny. You know, the "sool the mastiffs on to the lice-ridden peasant scum" type of people. And then they have the gall to bleat about class warfare!

bob macalba

16/04/2013murdochs got form http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/new-york-post-murdoch-plaything

el gordo

16/04/2013 'I'm aware that this will make absolutely no difference to the troll, but I don't want to give visitors to this site the wrong impression that the troll's statements are uncontested.' I know the argument that the missing heat is hiding in the oceans, probably around the equatorial region. Roy Spencer also acknowledges that Trenberth's theory has merit, but I'm thinking we are looking at natural variability as the cause and not AGW. It now seems apparent that ENSO is a major player in the warming and cooling of the oceans. Here's a light read on weather... http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=4abc39fc-99fe-43a2-a169-9e52a8148a38&k=70647

sulphurcrested

16/04/2013Thanks, Pikiranku. Went for a walk in the bush with a friend this afternoon which has thrown off the horrible feeling that that article gave me. My friend recalled how when she was in high school and b/c of a scholarship attended a private school in Geelong. She said she has never forgotten how one time when in a bus with the private schoolers they drove through a poorer suburb and the privileged kids spat out the windows at school kids there. She learned in her mid teens that "they hate us". This happened late '70's. Curi-Oz "..I'm moving out of my comfort-zone to take a visible stand." Good on you.

MWS

16/04/2013"Here's a light read on weather..." Perhaps you could find out the difference between [b]weather[/b] and [b]climate[/b] before you post here again? #wishfulthinking

KHTAGH

16/04/2013AA A great read about a serious problem in Australian politics these days, Labor gets canned for the faceless men, but not the Lieberals IPA, just because they are rich & influential backed by Rupert & Gina not a word. Abbott looking in the rear view mirror all the time might explain why he doesn't see his fake manufactured grimace he portrays as a smile. Seeing he has been hidden from scrutiny for so long now I feel he is not game hardened to use an Ozzie analogy, even more chance for him to do his normal pull the pin & drop it at his own feet act. Look at the NBN interaction with Turnball, what a horror show, was that a glimpse at his lack of game readiness?.

el gordo

16/04/2013 Here's the first par... 'Ah, the weather. It's cold as hell out there. How cold is it? It's so cold the CBC had to rush to assure all of us that global warming is still a big, big problem. With record snow falls, record cold snaps, the return of sea ice to the north, snow in the Middle East and a deep freeze in China, any sensible person might begin to wonder and even have doubts about global-warming theory and climate change. A little skepticism might begin to creep into the public sphere and threaten to undermine public belief in global warming.'

bob macalba

16/04/2013Look over there the sky is falling....been there already grodo

el gordo

16/04/2013 'Look over there the sky is falling..' Nothing we can't handle.

MWS

16/04/2013Ad Astra, just a warning re "el gordo." Tim Lambert from the "Deltoid" science blog restricted "el gordo" to his own thread as s/he was cluttering up the other threads with inane questions/statements about AGW. Any comments from "el gordo" in any other Deltoid thread would be deleted. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/16/el-gordo-thread/

MWS

16/04/2013I love this el gordo quote: "Tony “I don’t always tell the truth” Abbott is a good Catholic and doesn’t go out of his way to tell fibs, but in the heat of political brawling there is a tendency to speak from the heart and not the head." http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/16/el-gordo-thread/#comment-90248 So Tony Abbott only lies when he's speaking from "the heart," but not from "the head." Sounds like a pretty awful "heart" if it lies constantly. Has he considered a transplant?

el gordo

16/04/2013 Abbott is not a reactionary and his eyes aren't fixed on a rear view mirror, he wants to stamp his mark on history with revolutionary zeal .... infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure

Ad astra

16/04/2013Folks It looks like we have another troll, one who cannot advance evidence to refute global warming or man's role in it, one who will not be convinced by any argument that any of us might advance. Thank you to those of you who warned about el gordo. [b]Let's all scroll over further postings by him/her.[/b]

Ad astra

16/04/2013KHTAGH Thank you for your complimentary remarks. You are right about Abbott: [i]"Seeing he has been hidden from scrutiny for so long now I feel he is not game hardened to use an Ozzie analogy, even more chance for him to do his normal pull the pin & drop it at his own feet act. Look at the NBN interaction with Turnball, what a horror show, was that a glimpse at his lack of game readiness?[/i]”

2353

16/04/2013Do you remember when the LNP - especially the Leader of the Opposition claimed that Slipper and Thomson should immediately resign due to civil cases against them? Well here's an interesting twist for you -> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-16/one-nation-founder-sues-abbott/4633398 Will the LNP now demonstrate the purity of thought that their defenders claim they have by the immediate resignation of the Leader of the Opposition?

el gordo

16/04/2013 'It looks like we have another troll, one who cannot advance evidence to refute global warming or man's role in it, one who will not be convinced by any argument that any of us might advance.' Here's some evidence that the warming at the end of last century was natural and normal. 'In research published yesterday, a large team of scientists used a deep ice core from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide to produce records going back some 2,000 years. Their analysis shown that recent melting in that area, which has caused a good deal of hysteria* in climate alarmist circles, is in fact normal. “If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today,” comments Eric Steig, a senior earth-sciences boffin at the University of Washington and the lead author on the new research.' Lewis Page in The Register

TalkTurkey

16/04/2013Cannabis News‏@CannabisNews I was involved in studies like this in SA in 1977-9 with theSA Royal Commission into the non-Meical use of Drugs. The similarity of the fate of the two studies is *uncanny*.

Bloss

17/04/20132353: furthermore there's even an article in today's SMH: "0ne Nation co-founder suing Tony Abbott". It makes my heart sing :)

lyn

17/04/2013Today’s Links Return of the Mad Monk - Summarising Abbott's religious rhetoric by @newsfliporg Abbott is a politician who senses his superiority in arguments and has given us plenty of fodder with which to mould a model of a man who can not be trusted to http://www.newsflip.org/2013/04/return-of-mad-monk-summarising-abbotts.html One Nation co-founder sues Abbott for $1.5m by abc Legal papers have been served on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott by the co-founder of the now-defunct One Nation party. Mr Abbott's office has confirmed he has received the papers. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-16/one-nation-founder-sues-abbott/4633398 Tony Abbott’s super plan by @MigloMT Dennis Shanahan, in his article titled Labor fails super test with voters he gleefully tells us that: http://cafewhispers.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/tony-abbotts-super-plan/ Tony Abbott Gaffes by Choosing @ch150ch intended to help journos frame questions if and when Tony Abbott fronts up for interviews. His gaffes are more than getting aword wrong, or misremembering a date http://www.scribd.com/doc/133134121/Tony-Abbott-Gaffes Newman and Abbott given clear signals in damning poll by Matthew Donovan The Newman LNP government has wasted record political capital in record time. Matthew Donovan charts the slide since their record victory. http://theaimn.com/2013/04/16/newman-and-abbott-given-clear-signals-in-damning-poll/ A Violent Island by @stublogs No matter who is in power in Australia – Labour, Liberal, Gillard or Abbott – they are pulling the strings and writing the cheques in Nauru http://stublogs.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/a-violent-island/ China Talks: What’s In It For Them? by @nlentern. Julia Gillard’s recent China trip was undoubtedly a success. Even most of her harsher detractors are prepared to concede that annual heads of government talks with the PRC are wholly desirable http://ausvotes2013.com/2013/04/16/china-talks-whats-in-it-for-them/ Labor Turns Gonski Gold Into Lead by @beneltham Pyne says that unless the Gillard Government can get a binding agreement from all the states and territories, an incoming Abbott government would junk the reforms. http://www.newmatilda.com/2013/04/16/labor-turns-gonski-gold-lead The slippery and convenient concept of ‘class warfare’ by @BernardKeane The Australian Financial Review, a reliable critic of Labor under its current management, has run 10 articles that discuss “class war”, aside from reportage, in that period. The Daily Telegraph has run 21 pieces on “class war” during that time. And The Australian has run 77. http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/04/16/keane-the-slippery-and-convenient-concept-of-class-warfare/ I don't know how many times reputable economists have to say it before the Murdoch media will be by @no_filter_Yamba Here is Stephen Koukoulas at Market Economics trying for the xxxxth time to demonstrate the obvious fact that Australia’s public debt is not at a problematic level: http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/i-dont-know-how-many-times-reputable.html We’ve Been Rudded, Rhineharted And Fraudbanded! What’s by @knarfnamduh Malcolm Turnbull (now known as Mendacious Fraudbull) and the gormless Phoney Tony Abbott put forward the NO Coalition’s pathetic proposal for a piece of almost immediately obsolescent broadband http://deknarf.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/graphical-manipulations-30-weve-been-rudded-rhineharted-and-fraudbanded-whats-next/ The “Gospel Truth” of Tony Abbott and Marriage Equality by Critical Thinking Journalists should be capable of calling Tony Abbott out on these issues, but they are either unable or unwilling. http://saynototony.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-gospel-truth-of-tony-abbott-and-marriage-equality/ Turnbull spruiks NBN with pomegranates by @technologyspec http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/4/16/technology/turnbull-spruiks-nbn-pomegranates Really, Mr Abbott? by Jenny Riesz Is Abbott proposing a repeat of this process, at taxpayers’ expense? http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/16/policy-politics/really-mr-abbott#ixzz2QbBCDZ00 Climate Change: A Line In The Sand by @mpbowers Scenes of everyday life in Kiribati, a disappearing country. http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/climate-change-a-line-in-the-sand/591/ Liberal Party misinformation targets low educated anti-migrant Labor Party identifiers in Western Sydney by @mansillo Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party feels it is necessary in its rhetoric to link crime in Western Sydney to the asylum seekers http://mansillo.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/liberal-party-misinformation-targets-low-educated-anti-migrant-labor-party-identifiers-in-western-sydney/ You’re With Stupid Now by @madwixxy they think you are dumb enough to believe asylum seekers and crime rates are related, http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/04/16/youre-with-stupid-now/ An Ode to Abbotts Node by Truth Seeker And the Turd ball is a hypocrite, Of proportions very vast, As he tries to sell a system that takes us, Forward to the past http://truthseekersmusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/912/ News Limited swaps out Telegraph covers for Oz stories in billboard campaign by Brendan Coyne For the next two weeks, daily pointers to The Australian newspaper will be featured on almost 350 billboards across the eastern seaboard in a campaign that sparks curiosity in the breadth and http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews/news-limited-swaps-out-telegraph-covers-for-oz-stories-in-billboard-campaign Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 17 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

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17/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

Tom of Melboune

17/04/2013So our world’s best carbon tax/price is now about 700% more than the European price. Remarkable, that the government still factors the high price into its forecast. It will have to find a way to make up the gap, and I suppose this means it will impose more tax on savings and superannuation. The carbon tax is the highest in the world, its implementation represented a broken election commitment, and it is the single issue that has caused the electorate to lose trust in Gillard.

Jason

17/04/2013ToM, Quite day at Level 3, 104 Exhibition Street MELBOURNE is it?

Jason

17/04/2013ToM, I see your hero is at it again! Broadcaster Alan Jones is facing an online backlash after suggesting on national television that "left-wing radical students" were behind the Boston Marathon bombings and that Australia should reconsider its intake of foreign university students in response. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/alan-jones-suggests-leftwing-radical-students-link-to-boston-bombing-20130417-2hz8y.html#ixzz2QgCzwbv6

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17/04/2013Hi Lyn Your links were informative again. What an interesting piece on Abbott’s religious beliefs. There was another on the same site on ‘class warfare’, as well a good analysis by Bernard Keane on the same subject. The list of Abbott gaffes is a great resource. If our PM had made them they would have been on the front pages of the tabloids, but our Fourth Estate manages to keep them hidden from most of the people. Truth Seeker has nicely captured the NBN-lite saga in verse!

DMW

17/04/2013Informative reading and an illustration that Tony Abbott isn't the only political leader that [i]... drive(s) into the future using (a) rear-view mirror[/i] [possible confirmation bias warning on] [b]Tragedy of Errors - Australia’s shipwrecked refugee policy[/b] Robert Manne @ The Monthly http://www.themonthly.com.au/australia-s-shipwrecked-refugee-policy-tragedy-errors-robert-manne-7637 Medium length read 49,00 words A very informative history, with some interesting facts: [i]Since 1976 fewer than 50,000 asylum seekers have reached Australia on boats. More than half have arrived since the election of the Rudd government; more than a third – over 17,000 – in the past 12 months[/i] ... and some opinions that may be of note: [i]In 2001 the issue helped John Howard win an election. In 2010 it helped loosen Kevin Rudd’s grip on the Australian prime ministership. In 2013 it is very likely to contribute to the defeat of the Gillard government.[/i] psyclaw, if you are out there lurking I would be interested to hear your thoughts given our 'heated' discussions on the my thoughts on 'who was to blame for the refugee problem' earlier this year.

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17/04/2013Folks We are now getting on the road to the South Coast. I'll be back Later.

Pikiranku

17/04/2013Bob macalba Just caught up with your link to the Guardian article on Murdoch and the New York Post. Thanks for that, it was very interesting. Had to laugh at this though: "To say the Post is self-serving would be beside the point. It is the last of the great bully-boy newspapers." I don't think the writer of that has spent too much time in Australia lately! In fact the entire article sounded eerily familiar and could have been written about any number of Murdoch's Australian papers. How many good or great newspapers around the world has Murdoch destroyed? It's just as well they're becoming increasingly irrelevant. If they were all we had to rely on for factual information we'd be in big trouble.

jane

17/04/2013Lyn, I like the logo at the bottom of Migs's post on Liealot's super plan. It would make a great full page spread telling people this is what Liealot reckons is fair. I think the logo is very cool, punchy and succinct, so have posted it. http://cafewhispers.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/fair.jpg Yesterday's link to Mungo's piece in The Drum had me reading the comments far into the night and frothing at the mouth at the rank stupidity, cupidity and technically unsaviness of the barrackers. A recurring argument was that FTTN was plenty good enough for the plebs. If they want FTTP, they should fork out Trunchbull's $5k to help pay for the infrastructure because they'd only use it for downloading movies and porn very fast. My question to these cretins is if made roads ended at the corner and they wanted a rttp, whether they reckon they should have to pay for it themselves; after all they might use the road for a purpose I think is frivolous or unworthy. The other question is why they think it's any of their business what people download or upload. People pay the provider, so they can download and upload what they bloody well like, with certain obvious exceptions, just as it operates now. Then of course there were the clowns who said that because they're satisfied with slow internet, nobody should be allowed to access super fast broadband. Unfortunately, no wag thought to say that as they are perfectly satisfied to drive a model T, everybody should be forced to do the same. I was very impressed with a 70+ woman who weighed in on the side of NBN and put all the naysayers to shame with her breadth of tech and economics savvy.

Tom of Melboune

17/04/2013[i]The New South Wales Business Chamber has told a parliamentary committee looking into the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) that contractors have complained to the chamber over the "extremely poor" rate of pay. "The chamber has, however, received a number of complaints from contractors in relation to the NBN Co cabling tender process, and the poor logistics capabilities of some companies that have signed individual contracts with the NBN Co," the chamber said in its submission[/i] http://www.zdnet.com/nbn-construction-pay-rates-extremely-poor-nsw-business-chamber-7000014047/ So, we have an ALP government program that- • Is behind schedule • Low take up • Well over budget (will it cost $60bn?) …and now the evidence is that it is pays very poor rates! NBN is its current form is unsustainable. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile, Combet is foreshadowing that there will be an budgetary impact from the carbon price heading towards $0. …duh Greg

Jason

17/04/2013ToM, They also said " that the NBN is "a critical infrastructure project" for Australia and a high-priority development" Just no pleasing you!You would've complained about having sex on your wedding night and you've complained every day since.

Pikiranku

17/04/2013Thanks for another set of excellent links, Lyn. You're the nation's great new educator! I thought Bernard Keane's take on the class-warfare meme was interesting, especially the figures on how often articles have been run on this theme. I suppose the association of "class warfare"/"class struggle" with Marxism is enough to make them dirty words in the minds of the privileged, while the implication of divisiveness is supposed to turn off the rest of us. How so-called Labor men like Simon Crean and Joel Fitzgibbon can use this term as a criticism of the current government's reforms, absolutely confounds me. Especially after we've had over a decade with the Howard government funnelling money upwards (though that wasn't class warfare or divisive, of course!). We're well and truly overdue for that trend to be reversed and to see a fairer distribution of wealth in this country. And I congratulate Julia Gillard and,in particular, Wayne Swan for having the courage to oversee that process. Personally, I think my favourite US billionaire, Warren Buffet, said it all on this subject: "There's class war alright, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

Jason

17/04/2013ToM, Something else for you to be "outraged" about and blame the government for! ABC Grandstand‏@abcgrandstand32s Breaking news: Black Caviar has retired. More to follow. #BlackCaviar.

Tom of Melboune

17/04/2013So Swan forecasts a carbon tax/price of up to $60/tonne, and uses this price to factor in to revenue, and align ours with the European Union. But it is likely to be about 10% of his forecast. Great work Wayne.

Marilyn

17/04/2013But Gillard is jailing people for life based on non-reviewable secret evidence, she is jailing people in dangerous hell holes on Manus and Nauru, forcibly deporting them without letting them make their legal claims (which is the same as a push back) and being more racist than any other PM in our history.

Sir Ian Crisp

17/04/2013Good news at last for the TPS’s lachrymists. The bird of paradox has been voted the 4th most popular and competent Australian Prime Minister. Robert Menzies and five others tied for first. Eleven others finished in equal second place. Nine former Australian Prime Ministers finished level pegging in third place and Julia Gillard finished fourth.

Sir Ian Crisp

17/04/2013More on Australia's "CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY". According to the Lib-NP's Fraudband and the ALP's Never-Never Band we were in line to get the best. The Japs have trumped us. [quote][b]Japan launches world's fastest home internet While Australians compare the merits of Labor's fibre-to-the-home national broadband network with the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node proposal, Sony has installed the world's fastest home internet connection in Japan. So-net Entertainment, a Sony-backed Japanese ISP, has launched a fibre-based internet service that reaches download speeds of 2 gigabit per second (Gbps), [u]making it more than 20 times faster than the offerings of both Labor and the Coalition in Australia.[/u] [...] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/japan-launches-worlds-fastest-home-internet-20130416-2hxge.html [/b][/quote]

2353

17/04/2013But jane, FTTN will ensure that the plebs cant afford to get the information they deserve to demonstrate that the conservatives screwed them again. Why would Abbott & Turnbull want FTTP?

Pikiranku

17/04/2013Yet another troll! You must have them worried, AA!

Tom of Melboune

17/04/2013Yet another white person who disparages indigenous people who make their own decisions about how they vote.

Jason

17/04/2013Tom of Melbourne, Can you bring the real one back? You know the green one who always signs off no matter what blog I've seen him on as ToM of Melbourne not Tom of Melbourne!

el gordo

17/04/2013 Could you expand on that, Jason.

Jason

17/04/2013The DM Reporter ‏@DMReporter4m THATCHER FUNERAL: Big Ben workers to have pay docked whilst the clock is silent ‘in accordance with her wishes.'

DMW

17/04/2013The lament of an Aussie Left-Wing Progressive: [b]How the defence of Julia Gillard is hurting the left[/b] simon2013 @ Moonbat [i]I think maybe it’s about time that we sat back and thought long and hard about the point of a left-wing movement in this country. I reckon many of us have gotten it the wrong way round. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure progressive politics in Australia is about shifting us to becoming a left-wing country (and through that a left-wing world). It’s about (amongst others) challenging neo-liberalism at its heart, getting real protection of the environment, fighting for a progressive economic system, and ensuring that everyone has access to high quality essential services, from health and education to a strong social welfare system. It is not about a party. It is about the positions that political parties, and our community, embrace and implement.[/i] http://themoonbat.com/2013/04/16/how-the-defence-of-julia-gillard-is-hurting-the-left/

Michael

17/04/2013I've been away for a week so I have a lot of catching up to do, but while away I saw that lying mining industry ad with the bloke in a blue shirt who sounds like he has throat cancer (great ad for a supposed miner!). Equating "Canberra" with collecting 20 billion dollars of taxes and royalties when royalties are mining states' State Government imposts sums up just how filthy a level of lies the "mining" industry 'authorised by Mitch Hooke', are prepared to sink. Dirty play, dirty work, just plain dirty!

jane

17/04/2013Jason @5.58pm, how surprising. The spiteful old hag is robbing workers from the grave. They should drop rocks on the hearse or just let Big Ben keep on tick tocking. They lost enough while she was alive.

Sir Ian Crisp

17/04/2013When considering the Rollison mother-daughter dyad’s very helpful articles that ‘guided’ our thoughts regarding Abbott the misogynist might it now be proper to invite the Rollisons to correct the record in view of a recent poll result. Not only did the bird of paradox not win over distaff Australia but she has apparently driven many women over to Abbott’s camp. TPS’s board of directors should invite the Rollisons to set the record straight based on facts rather than articles based on their horoscopes. [quote][b]Poll reveals Abbott's popularity post-misogyny speech EXCLUSIVE: Tony Abbott is now more popular as leader among women voters than Julia Gillard. The surprise result is revealed in an exclusive 7News-ReachTel poll, that comes months after the Prime Minister labelled him a misogynist. It was the speech heard around the world; "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not," the Prime Minister shouted in Parliament back in October last year. It was seen as a rallying cry to women voters, and at first it seemed to work. A Neilsen poll a fortnight later showed a spike in support for Julia Gillard among women; 53 percent to Tony Abbott's 38, and leading 48-42 among men. But the 7News-ReachTel poll taken last weekend shows that trend has now reversed. Tony Abbott now leads among women voters 52-48, and he's way ahead, 62-38, among men. "Very importantly and more so for women, people want to see what sort of values, what sort of support base is behind the leader," John Howard's former adviser Grahame Morris said. Liberal strategists have been softening Mr Abbott's image with women. His chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, has spoken of his support for her IVF treatment. While, wife Margie and daughters Frances and Brigette have given interviews rejecting the misogynist tag. Our poll puts Labor's primary vote on 31, the Coalition on 46, and a landslide 57-43 lead after preferences in line with other major polls. And Julia Gillard's not just losing on personality. More worryingly for Labor, the poll also shows, she's losing on policy. Forty-three percent oppose the superannuation changes targeting the rich, just 33 percent support them. And the Coalition's NBN policy seems to have neutralised broadband, with 46 percent supporting Labor's version, and 40 percent supporting the Coalition's. "About the only thing left for the Labor Party to try is a real hysterical attack on Tony Abbott," Grahame Morris said. [/b][/quote]

Jason

17/04/2013jane, I'll keep an eye out for the souvenir toilet paper!

Jason

17/04/2013Sir Ian, As they say the only poll that counts is on election day!

Curi-Oz

17/04/2013Sorry Jane, I believe that particular tidbit about Big Ben being silenced comes under the heading of "joke" But then, twitter has provided some of the best lines for today's funeral ... http://tinyurl.com/dybnvlb Shame. My favourite is that the clock towers in the UK were going to all join a union so they could strike and work at the same time ... Regards,

Curi-Oz

17/04/2013Like the idea of this from @christopherhope [quote] #Thatcher Lady Thatcher's coffin being driven through deserted London streets. No evidence of crowd lining route though to say farewell... [/quote] Wonder if I can find the footage ... because there would be a certain shardenfreude about it *grins unrepentedly* And since you asked, no I didn't like some of what she stood for in the end, and I certainly don't like how her legacy has been continued by both the "left" and "right" of politics. (Mostly because I don't think any of them understood/understands what she was about.)

jane

17/04/2013[quote]Black Caviar has retired.[/quote] I blame Swan, Jason. Snap! 2353.

lyn

18/04/2013Today’s Links Abbott served by Ettridge faces court next month by @independentaus By your own measure Mr Abbott, You have called on others to step aside, exactly when will you be stepping aside as leader of the Liberal Party? http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/abbott-served-by-ettridge-faces-court-next-month/ DRAFT DRAFT, IN THE SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND, BRISBANE REGISTRY DAVID WILLIAM ETTRIDGE http://www.independentaustralia.net/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IN-THE-SUPREME-COURT-OF-QUEENSLAND.pdf Unless you're wealthy, you're not going to like flat taxes by @GrogsGamut the flat income tax war comes. When it does, remember what the fight is really about - the wealthiest paying a lot less tax, and a lot fewer services for everyone else. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4633144.html No one has learned anything by @fakeedbutler News organisations could do little but speculate on the possible suspects (with no corroborating evidence) or run a macabre tally of the dead and injured. http://ausvotes2013.com/2013/04/17/no-one-has-learned-anything/ Thanks to China, our carbon price is here to stay by Maurizio Toscano Any party that promises to kill off the carbon regime may tarnish its credibility http://theconversation.com/thanks-to-china-our-carbon-price-is-here-to-stay-13491 Casting the First Stone Tony Abbott and the Slush Funds, 03/12/ 2012 by @JuzzyTribune @KingsTribune three years after Gillard’s alleged misdemeanour, while he was a parliamentary secretary and later while Minister for Workplace Relations. A Slush Fund set up to bankroll court action http://www.kingstribune.com/index.php/component/k2/item/1643-casting-the-first-stone-tony-abbott-and-the-awu EYES WIDE OPEN- What to make of Gonski Lite- @MargaretClark12 only a tiny minority have bothered to go beyond the media briefings, to analyse the figures and investigate the issues to any extent. This is particularly shocking given how important this proposed new policy is for all Australians. http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/04/eyes-wide-open-what-to-make-of-gonski-lite/ Reader’s poll: Should Tony Abbott stand aside? by @MigloMT If this action had have been against a Labor or Independent politician, Tony Abbott will be screaming that they stand aside. Like he did with Craig Thomson: http://theaimn.com/2013/04/17/readers-poll-should-tony-abbott-stand-aside/ No good reason to change government by @btckr Mr Abbott will take us back to the era of his mentor, the former Prime Minister John Howard, I can only repeat: “There is simply no reason to vote for a Liberal/NP federal government. Not one.” http://thesnipertakesaim.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/no-good-reason-to-change-government/ Key right of journalists under threat by @btckr Protecting the identity of sources is a time-honoured tradition in journalism. Most (particularly investigative journalists) say they could not function if they could not protect their sources. http://truthinmediaresourcecentre.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/key-right-of-journalists-under-threat/ Abbott and Turnbull’s FTTN model prepares path for earlier NBN privatisation by BRW Coalition’s alternative plan for the national broadband network is likely to make NBN Co ready for privatisation sooner than it would be under Labor, according to leading telecommunications http://www.brw.com.au/p/tech-gadgets/abbott_privatisation_turnbull_fttn_WYawkO9EoGwZ0GR0AXKh0O Fraudband Reality Roundup by @sortius Turnbull, with him lashing out at many observers, tech journalists, & ALP MPs alike, denying that the $94b figure is fictitious, that VDSL2 technology isn’t outdated, & that the cost of the Coalition plan will be much higher than suggested. http://sortius-is-a-geek.com/ 2013 NBN Policies Compared by NBN Myths http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/broadband-policies-compared/ NBN blinkers for Australian businesses by Paul Wallbank the way we do business is going to undergo a radical change. It’s time local managers started paying attention to whether they want to seize the opportunity or lament its loss later. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/17/technology/nbn-blinkers-australian-businesses#ixzz2QhdyZjxW Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 18 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

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18/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

Michael

18/04/2013Remember how Shouldabeen, aka Dud Leader, and the Coalition keep telling us business and 'the market' are the engine and the innovators of the Australian economy? This one of Lyn's Links above http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/17/technology/nbn-blinkers-australian-businesses#ixzz2QhdyZjxW displays with absolute clarity how lazy-minded and future-averse Australian 'business' is. Just like Abbott, they want to lead the country backwards by standing still, all the time claiming bogus hairychested status as the muscle of Australia's 'good life', while doing nothing at all to ensure it is anything more than a private-debt driven myth. Australian business hung off Howard's and Costello's teats for so long they thought that was how business is done - sucking freely on government subsidies and hand-outs, convincing themselves they had what they had through their own hard work. Nope, just a whinging capacity (see the mining industry right now) to complain long and loud with their hands held out for more, with both eyes out to any means at all to be paying employees less. And missing the future while they do. Right up Abbott's 'back to the golden age' alley.

Tom of Melboune

18/04/2013Examples of the competence of Wayne Swan - • Forecasts 10.5% unemployment and designs a stimulus plunging us into huge debt • Refuses to change the stimulus when it is clear that unemployment is going nowhere near this • Maintains stimulus at the very time the Reserve Bank is increasing interest rates to curb economic activity • Designs a mining tax to raise plenty • Helps knife his leader when it gets difficult • Personally renegotiates a mining tax that raises close to $0 • Promises a surplus a couple of hundred times • Oversees half a decade of the biggest budget deficits in history …and now- • Uses the carbon tax to prop up a failing budget • Carbon tax to raise about 10% of projections

Jason

18/04/2013Tom of Melboune, If you have said it once you've said it a thousand times, get a new script!

Curi-Oz

18/04/2013I find it strange that there are some folk who are just so disappointed that there are not more people out of work and that those pesky international agencies awarded this country a triple A for financial rectitude/management/risk, and that we are considered a safe place to do business in so many ways. Except that it's been run by the 'wrong sort of people'... I thought that attitude was unaustralian!

Austin 3:16

18/04/2013Wouldn't Thatcher have wanted a [b]private [/b]funeral ? Maybe with corporate sponsorship even, after all having the state pay for her funeral is somewhat [i]socialist [/i]isn't it ?

TalkTurkey

18/04/2013~@TonyAbbottMHR~ Be sure your sins will find you out! Don't hope for help from Pell! Ah! Sweet poetic justice! You're on your way to Hell! The Ettridge suit is quite a dramatic development, in my opinion. Abborrrtt is now facing two such suits, Victorian CFMEU secretary John Setka suing him for defamation in the Supreme Court, while Barbara Ramjan - married to a senior Judge :) - sues Michael Kroger in a case all about Abborrrrtt. Ashbygate will be busted open soon too. David Donovan of Independent Australia intends to pursue the matter legally (because the cops won't!) but wants to collect $50K to cover the costs of the effort. He only needs 999 more like me ... Well actually more like 400, he had already collected $30000 a couple of weeks ago, Hey folks if you have money in your pocket and a fire in your belly it would help strike a serious blow ... As Vince O'Grady‏@vogrady213212h says on Twitter: [i]Consider this Tweeps. The press have failed us, the police have failed us ... time to subscribe to Ashbygate Trust [/i]http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/business/media-2/ia-and-the-ashbygate-trust/ … David Donovan @davrosz The point is, there is now a serious stink growing up around this horrible man. Too much stink. Too poignantly poetically just too, that after his persecution of *J*U*L*I*A* for something 17 years ago, things 15 and 30 years ago should come to haunt him now. Imagine for a moment that *J*U*L*I*A* were the alleged perpetrator of the growing list of bastardry now being sheeted home to PiG~THiNG Abborrrrrtt! The MSM is absolutely in cahoots to magnify every alleged gaffe or wrongdoing by her, while anything done by Abborrrrt is met with [i]meh[/i]. It is outrageous, and it is amazing to me that the MSM can be so much like Stepford Wives, all parroting and giggling from the same vacuous narrative. Not all, at least not all always. Jon Faine and Paul Bongiorno surprise me with their preparedness to tell truth and give the lie to lies, but gee such deviations are such rarities that they are actually shocking! But now there is such a merdey miasma hanging around Abborrrrt that even the most indulgent of his sycophants will have to start holding their noses in public. He will be harried from now on. And exquisitely, on his own criteria, HE MUST STAND DOWN! He won't of course, but [i]we can scream for it [/i]every time he sticks his cowardly head up. Wonder how he'll like dem apples!

Ad astra

18/04/2013Hi Lyn Your links make informative reading. I was particularly taken by Greg Jericho’s lavishly illustrated piece on flat taxes, which we should all read with apprehension. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4633144.html Paul Wallbank’s article in [i]Business Spectator: NBN blinkers for Australian businesses[/i], mentioned by Michael, is important reading. After all the bellyaching from business about this Government’s lack of support for them, the Deloitte Consulting survey of 160 Australian medium and larger enterprises on how they expected the National Broadband Network to affect their business, shows how lamentably 
business is lagging behind in its use of Internet technologies, and how unprepared for the opportunities that the NBN offers. For example: [i]”MYOB’s latest Business Monitor, released last week…found that of the thousand Australian small to medium enterprises questioned only 16 per cent said they use cloud computing and 38 per cent have a business website. While the businesses queried by Deloitte are bigger than those surveyed by MYOB, it appears the relaxed attitude towards the web is shared by Australian firms of all sizes.”[/i] The article concludes: [i]“Regardless of which version of the NBN we end up receiving, the way we do business is going to undergo a radical change. It’s time local managers started paying attention to whether they want to seize the opportunity or lament its loss later.”[/i] http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/17/technology/nbn-blinkers-australian-businesses#ixzz2QhdyZjxW

Jason

18/04/2013MT @leighsales: My guest tonight is the Prime Minister @JuliaGillard #abc730″

Tom of Melboune

18/04/2013Shorter Ad Astra- [i]If only businesses ran themselves the way I think they should, they’d all be so much better off.[/i] ~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile there is nil comprehension of the fact that various contractors and subcontractors to NBN are complaining about- • Very poor and unsustainable rates • Poor logistics • Poor co-ordination No wonder it is over budget, behind schedule, with low take up rates.

Jason

18/04/2013Meanwhile there is nil comprehension of the fact that various contractors and subcontractors to NBN are complaining about- • Very poor and unsustainable rates Didn't these go out to tender ToM? So those that put the low bids and won now expect what?

2353

18/04/2013Good point Jason - there is a point where a contractor should for the sake of their business just walk away. So why is the lack of contractor's business sense the fault of the NBN (except in the minds of the clowns that will never admit the Government does a good job - but accept the waste and recklessness of Howard's Government; where Abbott and half his front bench were ministers).

Tom of Melboune

18/04/2013That’s really interesting, and shows such a dearth of knowledge. The CEPU Communications Division has a specific interest in the telecommunications subcontractor group, many of them are members. They’re not the head contractors that are complaining, it is the small players. The CEPU is seeking release from Trade Practices Act to allow this group of single person operators to collectively bargain with Telsta (for example). I don’t suppose people here actually have a wide enough knowledge of the sector to understand what is going on.

el gordo

18/04/2013 People in the bush want speed and are prepared to pay for it. http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1438714/regional-australians-dive-into-the-nbn-fast-lane/?cs=2452

Jason

18/04/2013el gordo, Enlighten ToM! It seems only him and the coalition have a problem with it!

jane

18/04/2013Jason, perhaps we could market the toilet paper to the 2 Bishops. Better still sell it to the people she shafted so they could wipe their backsides on her vile mug. Michael, I agree with you wrt many businesses in this country. Fearful, lacking in vision with their eyes firmly on the rear vision mirror, just like Liealot. Not all are so backward looking, but they are in the minority. The rest seem to either want the government to spoon feed them or just aren't interested in the future. Curi-oz @10.33am, such is the mindset of the barracker. Austin 3:16, it's very interesting that for people like Thatcher, socialism is only a bad thing if the poor and underprivileged espouse it. However if the wealthy and privileged stick their over fed snouts in the public trough, it's best practice. Thatcher would have refused to pop her clogs if she had to pay for it herself. So much for the "user pays" mantra that we constantly hear from the right.

jaycee

18/04/2013"People in the bush want speed and are prepared to pay for it." There may just be a place for this person and their way of thinking at the location of the next famine disaster in Africa. Hey!...It' the free-market you know?

lyn

19/04/2013Today’s Links Hold the panic over the EU carbon price plunge by TRISTAN EDIS What seems to have been forgotten is the opposition has an even bigger budget black hole. While the government’s revenue from the carbon price will be much, much lower than budgeted, the opposition would see precisely zero revenue http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/04/18/eu-carbon-trading-and-why-gillard-cant-win/ Panic! It’s the carbon price… @macro_business Hockey’s $7 billion figure is basically the third or fourth year of projections if the scheme is scrapped so he is actually discussing the implications of his own policy of abolishing the price http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/04/panic-its-the-carbon-price/ The legal saga against One Nation, and legal possibilities against Abbott by @margokingston1 Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission published a report in 2004. Here we publish its findings on Abbott’s involvement. http://australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/the-legal-saga-against-one-nation-and-legal-possibilities-against-abbott/ Adversarial justice and the Gadarene Swine Fallacy by Evan Whitton @independentaus The public know that justice means truth; the vast majority of voters will support change to a “What happened?” system. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/philosophy/law/adversarial-justice-and-the-gadarene-swine-fallacy/ An Abbott Recession Or Worse? @andrew_whalan 7/4/2013 the present economic policies of the Abbott LNP will have historical long-term economic and social consequences http://andrewwhalan.com/2013/04/07/an-abbott-recession-or-worse/ No Shelter by @madwixxy With the Federal Election campaigns focus on Western Sydney, this is yet again another example of the contempt that the Liberal Party has for those living in the West. http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/04/18/no-shelter/ To sign or not to sign? States' Gonski D-Day approaches by Richard Teese Colin Barnett has been trimming the state education budget over the last few years, and by 2015 will have removed around the same amount of money that the Commonwealth model will put in. http://theconversation.com/to-sign-or-not-to-sign-states-gonski-d-day-approaches-13572 Twitter becomes the unlikely school of politics by @Drag0nista Twitter is not a place for the faint-hearted. But now, many such questions receive meaningful responses and can lead to broad and rich political discussions. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4636592.html Menzies House and Satire by @bencjenkins For my money, it is in the main a bunch of very unpleasant people being very unpleasant – online. http://abafflingordeal.com/2013/04/18/menzies-house-and-satire/ The 112 year war by @adriadf The distinctive feature of this parliament is that Tony Abbott refuses to accept the legitimacy of the government, but that has happened before: after 1975, for example,” he says .http://www.upstart.net.au/2013/04/18/the-112-year-war/ Will We Ever Learn To Love Canberra? by @beneltham As usually happens when Canberra deals with the former colonies, the best weapon generally turns out to be bribery. This is because the states don't raise enough revenue. http://newmatilda.com//2013/04/18/will-we-ever-learn-love-canberra Big Data. The former minister wants it, others not so much By @1petermartin http://www.petermartin.com.au/ Tipping point for climate action- by Brian @LarvatusProdeo The message is plain. The climate has shifted, expect more and more extreme weather and we need to act now http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/04/tipping-point-for-climate-action/ Where to next for EU climate policy? by Anthony Hobley If cost-effective, market-based solutions are discredited because of the current lack of political leadership, the real danger for business is that policy-makers could look elsewhere for a solution – http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/where-to-next-for-eu-climate-policy-51776 Why do we need all that bandwidth? by FTTH Council These “cloud computing” applications are now available for word processing, emailing, automated remote file backup, and a host of business and personal services. All of these applications – and many others we haven’t even dreamed of yet – http://www.ftthcouncil.org/p/cm/ld/fid=50 What Samsung's 'Super TV' launch means for competitors and broadband ABC Technology with a fibre optic-based broadband network, the bulk of Australia will be watching television like this and paying premiums to subscribe to high data usage plans on gigabit-speed packages http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/04/18/3740142.htm Tony Abbott - a look at his behaviour in Parliament over the last 12 months http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upDGAtHzwxg Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 19 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

Sir Ian Crisp

19/04/2013[quote][b]Sir Ian, As they say the only poll that counts is on election day! Jason [/b][/quote] I’m with you on that one big JGuy. Speaking of elections... have you placed a wager with your local bookie? The TPS has a few free-range idiots who have ballyhooed about their bets on the ALP to win the next federal election. I think a couple of bookies are laughing so much they’re wetting themselves.

Sir Ian Crisp

19/04/2013[quote][b]Yet another troll! You must have them worried, AA! Pikiranku [/b][/quote] Worried! I think they're probably have trouble sleeping at night:) Most likely on some type of sleep medication. I can feel their distress:)

Ad astra

19/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

jaycee

19/04/2013I think we should all chip-in to create a sort of “sheltered workshop” for the rehabilitation of those LNP. ministers eg; Hunt, Turnbull….who are obliged to make utter, utter fools of themselves to the point of imbecility, in defending their leader’s policies…so they can slowly, sensitively regain a sense of self-worth in the community. I nominate Sophie Mirabella to work on them!

Tom of Melboune

19/04/2013Ad Astra, how about a thread on “bringing the budget back to surplus” and the consequences of a fixed price on carbon, followed by a market price tied to the EU??!! I’ve missed all your analysis of that.

Jason

19/04/2013A SENIOR Tony Abbott staffer threatened to "cut the throat" of an eminent Australian last night at the gala Qantas party, political commentator Peter Van Onselen has said. Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/tony-abbott-staffer-well-cut-your-throat/story-fncynjr2-1226624063491#ixzz2Qrfl23K7

KHTAGH

19/04/2013I see gray times ahead for those of us who like to watch QT, should the Whinger win we will have the great spectacle of the Ex-minister of kerosine baths(walking frame Bishop)as speaker, end of watching QT for this little black duck I can tell you.

TalkTurkey

19/04/2013Lyn, Your Links are wonderful this morning. I get seduced every day by following your flitterings around people's minds, and I know you have filtered the ones you put there before you put them there ... Your own reading must be prodigious, and certainly unique, nobody does nor has ever done what you do daily. I personally find your dedication and perspicacity hard to come to grips with, and when one looks back on your influence, in the Archives and in your Daily Links over time, what an amazing, never-before-like-this cavalcade of HISTORY you have created! The Bayeux Tapestry recorded the Battle of Hastings when Harold got done by William in 1066 ... It tells the story in brilliant threads, and Lyn I know you are skilled in crochet, I'm sure you can relate to those old artisans ... but how much more is the record you have woven from thousands of chroniclers over more than a thousand of the most turbulent parliament ever in our nation's history! What you have done may day-by-day seem like a convenience to us all, and so it is, but in retrospect it is stupendous, and moreover unprecedented. The existence of the TPS archives adds a new dimension to historical recording, not just in Australia either, I doubt whether anybody anywhere has done anything comparable. And perhaps such a body of work could [i]only[/i] happen in Australia. Dragonista, a well-known blogger who claims a degree of insider status wrt Australian politics, writes with apparent surprise (and rather as if it needed her say-so before it could be true) that Twitter "of all places" is showing (wtte) moral fibre and intellectual leadership. Mmmm? [i]I'm[/i] surprised when I find those qualities in the [i]MSM[/i], and the closer to claimed insiderism, I keep finding, the more distanced from reality, and the more claims those claiming insiderism claim, and the more distanced from reality, and ... It's not the paid hacks of the mainstream that write with the passion and research dedication and variety of viewpoint, and independence, Comrades, It's Us. With Ad astra at our head, what could be clearer? [i]"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls"[/i] said Paul Simon ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6cR5furQac Well Lynnie you have written them through the universe. Bushfire Bill and Grog's Gamut, Miglo of Cafe Whispers and David Donovan of Independent Australia and Peter Wicks of MadWixxy, and so many others, all there set among the stars, indelible, truly! My mind boggles when I think of the headaches you will have given researchers of the dim future, having to look back over trillions of contemporary references. And my friend J**** says we should bring it to *J*U*L*I*A*s attention just how much of your heart you have given to her return at the Ides of September and do you know what, I'm going to do it too!

Pikiranku

19/04/2013TT I'll second that. Every word of it. Lyn's contribution to the edification of this nation is truly amazing.

Michael

19/04/2013So, it comes as no surprise that the threats are already coming, as revealed by Peter van Onselen, from a Coalition and its bovver boys so confident that Australia will be all theirs by year's end. We saw the same behaviour from Helen Coonan when Howard was first elected, and we've heard recently from Abbott's daughters that what national leadership is all about is being "in power". Typical Conservative thinking. Rule, reduce, ridicule. As to those other three "R"s, the ones associated with education, forget them. Conservatives prefer a dumbed-down citizenry, as uneducated people are so much easier to frighten, to anger, to dog-whistle at. "Conservative" is another way of spelling "contempt". If Australians allow ourselves to install Dud Leader and his spiteful crew, post election day we will wake up to a nation without a future, a polity based on nothing but entrenched entitlement and vendettas.

Jason

19/04/2013 TONY Abbott's director of policy Dr Mark Roberts has been counselled after he threatened the head of an Australian indigenous body with the loss of federal funding. An eyewitness to the exchange, at last night's Qantas gala dinner in Sydney, said Dr Roberts had behaved aggressively towards the chief executive of the non-profit educational organisation. The Australian's Peter van Onselen said he heard Dr Roberts say to the man “words to the effect of, `I'll slit your throat in government, I'll cut your funding'.”. Van Onselen said there was “certainly no animosity” on the part of the organisation’s head, and he could not understand what had caused Dr Roberts to make the comments. Mr Abbott today said his staffer disputed the form of words he used, but had since apologised. He said it was “an unfortunate exchange”, and was “out of character as far as the staff member is concerned”. The staff member in question has been counselled and he has apologised,” the Opposition Leader said. MORE TO COME http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-staffer-apologises-for-dinner-clash/story-fn59niix-1226624213359

42 long

19/04/2013The staffer's massive slip is indicative of the thought music of the "Barbarians' who are the LieNP. This grubby outfit will be rewarding it's "monied and influential supporters' and it will be pay back time for those others ( non backers) whose votes don't count and who will be villified. It's already starting. If you think a certain way (like believe in education and justice for all and not more prisons etc) you are the ENEMY.

Ad astra

19/04/2013Hi Lyn TT and Pikiranku are right – you have once again given us a cluster of links that I found fascinating reading. You range wide and far to bring us an eclectic set of articles. The articles on climate change were most informative. I see you have found a new site [i]Macro Business[/i]. http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/04/panic-its-the-carbon-price/ The [i]LP[/i] article [i]Tipping point for climate action?[/i] was good reading. It included the finding of the Climate Commission’s a report [i]The Critical Decade[/i]. Here’s a selection of what they found: [i]Heat records are happening three times more often cold records. Heat waves, not flood and fire, are actually the most significant natural hazard in Australia in term of loss of life. Sea level rise of 0.5m could lead to increased incidence of flooding by several hundred times, up to 1000 times in some places. An increase of 100 times means a 1-in-100 year event happens once a year on average. Ninety countries, representing 90% of global emissions, are committed to reducing their emissions and have programs in place to achieve this. As the 15th largest emitter in the world, Australia has an important role to play. Much more substantial action will be required if we are to stabilise the climate by the second half of the century. Globally emissions must be cut rapidly and deeply to nearly zero by 2050, with Australia playing its part. The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events that our grandchildren will experience. This is the critical decade to get on with the job.[/i] http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/04/tipping-point-for-climate-action/ Contrast that with the appallingly obfuscatory interview of Greg Hunt by Tony Jones last night on [i]Lateline[/i]. If this is what we can expect from the Coalition on climate change we are in for a mountain of lies, deception, misrepresentation, anti-science and lots of Hunt’s favourite preamble to his answers; “With great respect…” [b]Warning to anyone viewing it for the first time: if you value your TV, sit quietly with no missiles nearby; if you value your physical and mental health, take a drink or a tranquillizer first.[/b] http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3740397.htm Then there were the ones about fast broadband: One concluded: “[i]Think about it. Just six years ago, the video site YouTube did not even exist. A large percentage of Americans still used dial-up service. Given how far we have come in just that short period of time with regard to bandwidth demand, is there any doubt that consumers are going to need the almost unlimited bandwidth capabilities of all-fiber networks to keep pace and be able to access state-of-the-art applications?”[/i] http://www.ftthcouncil.org/p/cm/ld/fid=50 The other, describing an new Samsung TV concludes:[i]”So with Samsung's TV launch we have hard evidence that an entire industry is being held back by the lack of fibre-based broadband infrastructure right now and we have strong reason to believe that 100Mb/s is going to feel very slow in a decade's time.”[/i] http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/04/18/3740142.htm And what do we have from the Coalition: NBN-lite!

Ad astra

19/04/2013Jason Thanks for the PvO link – it was on ABC today, but brushed aside by Tony Abbott. But as Michael and 42 long point out, this behaviour of a senior staffer is archetypical of Coalition thinking.

Pikiranku

19/04/2013Great links, Jason. The LNP had better be careful - there's nothing like arrogance and hubris to turn off the electorate.

Bloss

19/04/2013Michael: as Tony Benn (wise old UK Labour Parliamentarian) once said "Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic - see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralise them", and: "An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern".

Ad astra

19/04/2013Bloss How right you are!

Jason

19/04/2013George Bludger's latest photo! http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgebludger/7821182654/

lyn

19/04/2013Hi Ad and Talk Turkey, Thankyou Ad for your post to me. I am so pleased you enjoy the links. The FTTH Council blog article is incredibly interesting. I was intrigued with the Samsung article. I absolutely love technology and once applied for a Technician’s position in the exchange room of then Telecom, but of course those days such positions were not available to females. Talk Turkey what can I say to you ♥ ♥ Thankyou you are such a morale booster you give me so much inspiration and confidence. Thankyou, Pikiranku you are a loyal supporter ♥ Khtagh I won’t be watching question time anymore either if Tony Abbott gets elected. Michael bravo: [quote]Typical Conservative thinking. Rule, reduce, ridicule. [/quote] "Here are some "Cut Throat" articles for you" [b]You haven't won yet Team Tony [/b] by Malcolm Farr From: news.com.au April 19, 2013 12:14PM established that at least one of Mr Abbott's closest advisers believes the Coalition has already earned a victory, five months before the election, and is planning the cleanout of enemies under a Coalition government. http://www.news.com.au/opinion/you-havent-won-yet-team-tony/story-fnh4jt54-1226624295310#ixzz2QsFHllBJ [b]Tony Abbott staffer told eminent Australian: 'We'll cut your throat' [/b]"Abbott’s staffer knew I heard the conversation, bailed me up & offered to be a source inside TA's office if I stayed quiet ... thanks, but no," van Onselen tweeted. Van Onselen, who is "totally disgusted" by what he saw, tweeted there was "much, much more to it", which he will reveal. "I have heard some threats in my time, but nothing like that from an Abbott staffer tonight. Watch this space," van Onselen tweeted following the party. http://www.news.com.au/national-news/tony-abbott-staffer-well-cut-your-throat/story-fncynjr2-1226624063491#ixzz2QsJThI8g [b]Prepare for some pain, says Abbott[/b] by Michael Gordon http://ht.ly/kd0XM [b]Coalition backs down on budget[/b] Peter Martin, Tim Colebatch His remarks are a departure from a commitment he made on the ABC's AM program in January. ''Our commitment is emphatic,'' he said then. ''Based on the numbers published today we will deliver a surplus in our first year and every year after that.'' http://ht.ly/kd0XM [b]Abbott denies 'cut-throat' comment [/b]http://media.theage.com.au/news/national-news/abbott-denies-cutthroat-comment-4204643.html [b]Abbott denies staffer made 'throat cut' threat[/b] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-19/abbott-denies-staffer-made-throat-cut-comments/4639066 [b]Tony Abbott denies staffer throat cut threat [/b]channel 9 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/04/19/10/58/abbott-denies-staffer-throat-cut-threat [b]Abbott denies 'cut the throat' comments Sky News[/b] Dr Van Onselen posted on Twitter that Mr Abbott's staffer had subsequently warned him to keep his mouth shut, in exchange for leaked information from inside the Federal Opposition Leader's office. http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=864829 [b]Abbott responds to 'cut throat' comments [/b]channel 10 News http://video.news.com.au/2380568795/Abbott-responds-to-cut-throat-comments

Jason

19/04/2013Insiders this week Wayne Swan. Panel Phil Coorey Denis Atkins and for comic relief Piers Akerman.

lyn

19/04/2013Hi Ad, After the Abbott Cut Throat [b]denials[/b] comes the Cut throat demotion. [quote]Abbott staffer demoted after incident at Sydney party [/quote]April 19, 2013 - 3:54PM Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has demoted a member of his staff for threatening the head of an indigenous education charity http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-staffer-demoted-after-incident-at-sydney-party-20130419-2i46k.html#ixzz2Qt3S3S3y

Ad astra

19/04/2013Hi Lyn Thank you for your additional links. It seems that hubris is creeping into the Abbott office, and journos are picking up on it - to wit PvO and Malcolm Farr. Abbott and Co will need to watch their step.

42 long

19/04/2013I now have more respect for PvO. Tony never forgives. This (as reported elsewhere) is a revelation of the "cockiness" that pervades the LieNP, it's staffers and advisors( and their (VINDICTIVENESS) They plot and scheme and deceive and smirk. Just imagine the furore if this was on the other side. You are getting the REAL thing here, no matter what excuses are offered. We have plenty of time to learn more about the animal that is the modern version of the LieNP. If we don't care to heed the warnings, we deserve the fate that is surely coming.

42 long

19/04/2013Newman used the term "SHRILL" relating to Gillard today. Pyne and Abbott do too but surely that is as sexist as calling her an 'IT'. Some of these people make me ashamed to be a man. It's all orchestrated and done on purpose, making it more VILE.

Tom of Melbourne

19/04/2013Now, in a week that has - * had our closest neighbour pass marriage equality legislation, but Gillard maintain her politically expedient bandbrake on the issue * seen the price of carbon in Europe tumble to record lows, and Australia’s budget position deteriorate as a consequence …what’s the political discussion here? AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott AbbottAbbottAbbott

jane

19/04/2013[quote]If this is what we can expect from the Coalition on climate change we are in for a mountain of lies, deception, misrepresentation, anti-science.....[/quote] So business as usual for the Liars, Ad astra? [quote]Abbott’s staffer knew I heard the conversation, bailed me up & offered to be a source inside TA's office if I stayed quiet..[/quote] Ah, the stench of undying loyalty in the Liars Party. Perhaps Roberts, Crean, Ferguson, Carr, Bowen and the rest of the malcontents could form their own political party. Wow! Liealot promises to chuck people out of work and make their lives a misery, but be of good cheer, you might be living under a bridge, but it's all worthwhile for Liealot, he's delivered a surplus!

Jason

19/04/2013ToM, Start your own F#cking blog if you don't like what is on offer!

lyn

20/04/2013Today’s Links Media Stockholm Syndrome by @MrDenmore Clearly, the AFR has decided to tailor the newspaper to a single view of the world. That may win them a few friends at the big end of town. But http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/media-stockholm-syndrome.html Hockey. That surplus promise - ditch it, we're not stupid by @1petermartin Mr Hockey’s increased caution puts him in apparent agreement with the Treasurer Wayne Swan who signalled a slower return to surplus http://www.petermartin.com.au/2013/04/hockey-that-surplus-promise-ditch-it.html Cut – Throat Threats and Hubris by @gabriellechan A long election campaign only increases the chances of these sorts of events. But perhaps the Coalition thinks they are so far ahead in the polls it may not matter. http://thehoopla.com.au/cut-throat-threat/ The Last Australian Prime Minister- The Disgrace of the Fourth Estate in the Gillard Years by Uthers Say Australians were being told by their media that they had possibly the worst government in the world, others who had access to data and broader perspective and less agenda adjudicated that the country Julia Gillard was Prime Minister of was one of the best countries http://utherssay.com/2013/04/09/the-last-australian-prime-minister-the-disgrace-of-the-fourth-estate-in-the-gillard-years/ Is Julia REALLY Juliar? by Tom Orren @independentaus media mistreatment may be costing Australia (and perhaps the world) the path to a new, low-carbon future. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/is-julia-really-juliar/ Class Warfare. My Arse it is. by @saint13333 Murdoch press is the major contributor to this supposed idea of a class warfare. The Financial Review has recently run 10 articles on this theme. The Daily Telegraph 21 and The Australian 77. http://theaimn.com/2013/04/19/class-warfare-my-arse-it-is-2/ Real class warfare by @SimonCopland – it is about an ongoing, and systematic attack on the poor. There is a real chance that this campaign could get significantly worse if an Abbott Government is elected, and it is something that deserves real attention. http://themoonbat.com/2013/04/19/real-class-warfare/ State of Play – Western Australia by@DamienCWalker There are no key West Australian seats, there are only Liberal seats and Liberal seats in waiting http://ausvotes2013.com/2013/04/19/state-of-play-western-australia/ Direct Action mysteries remain by Tristan Edis on Lateline last night, Greg Hunt was hesitant to go into detail about baseline setting and refused to provide any indication on the level of penalties that would apply for exceeding baselines http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/19/policy-politics/direct-action-mysteries-remain#ixzz2QtE7k25Y Greg Hunt’s Direct action plan by @1petermcc Greg Hunt tried to show a positive Opposition when it comes to dealing with Global Warming. Lets check out the fails on this 15 minute clip which screened on Lateline last night http://1petermcc.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/greg-hunts-direct-action-plan/ Climate Change Policy in Australia – evading “certainty” – Part 1 by @damianoconnor1 In part 2 I’ll have a shot at how this will play politically over the next two years. God help me. If you’re after certainty, jump out of a plane http://pollcrunch.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/climate-change-policy-in-australia-evading-certainty-part-1/ How low will they go- by Brian @LarvatusProdeo Now the LNP has linked street crime and boat people directly in an ad on Facebook: http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/2013/04/how-low-will-they-go/ Abbott tipped to dump company tax cut for small business by Yolanda Redrup The Liberal Party will abandon its promise to cut company tax by 1.5%, should it be elected, new reports have suggested, disappointing business groups which have long called for a cut in this tax rate. http://www.smartcompany.com.au/tax/055190-abbott-dumps-company-tax-cut-for-small-business.html Abbott’s parental leave policy leaves him open to attacks, but SMEs could win big by BRW Make no mistake about it – Tony Abbott is determined to push ahead with his plan to tax Australia’s top 3200 companies an extra 1.5 per cent to help pay for his Rolls Royce parental leave scheme. http://www.brw.com.au/p/abbott_parental_leave_policy_leaves_H22S9COOjMNzFaC40OQblM Tony Abbott, small target and lower your vision by @minkelCA Carol Ahern Australia’s future are we going to do anything except “Ditch the Witch”? And turn back the boats? Is Australia’s future nothing more than a momentous occasion where it’s winner who takes all? http://cafewhispers.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/tony-abbott-small-target-and-lower-your-vision/ A country is not a business by @btckr Mr Abbott had been trying to win government by destroying the government — typically by attacking the character of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard http://thesnipertakesaim.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/a-country-is-not-a-business/ Turnbull may build more FTTP by @alliecoyne “If the cost of FTTP is considerably lower than what we’ve assumed, maybe we could cost effectively do a larger percent of the build as fibre to the premises http://www.itnews.com.au/News/340483,turnbull-may-build-more-fttp.aspx Dishing the dirt on Coalition's NBN by @SupratimA Quigley can use the committee hearings as a platform to inform the public of the very real risks faced by the Coalition’s technically inferior broadband solution http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/18/technology/dishing-dirt-coalitions-nbn#ixzz2QslDetZq NBN Co to offer 1 Gigabit wholesale broadband service in December Consumers will not need any additional NBN equipment in order to receive the new product. http://www.nbnco.com.au/about-us/media/news/nbn-gigabit-nation.html Welcome to the Coalition's NBN argument clinic by @zyzzyvamedia David Braue Those who have tried to talk logic with Malcolm Turnbull — even an industry that is variously interested and concerned about the policy — have been greeted with a Pythonesque disregard. http://www.zdnet.com/welcome-to-the-coalitions-nbn-argument-clinic-7000014251/ Coalition $90 billion broadband claims shredded by Stephen Conroy @ Senate Estimates “Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co, has demonstrated that the NBN Co Corporate Plan is sound and that the Coalition assumptions about the cost of the project are wrong.” http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2013/052 Parliamentary Joint Committee on The National Broadband Network http://www.nbnco.com.au/assets/media-releases/2013/report-to-parliamentary-joint-committee.pdf Is A Notorious People Smuggler Back In Business? by @AubreyBelford A convicted people smuggler named Hasan Ayoub appears to be back managing smuggling operations in Indonesia. His re-emergence demonstrates the power of reputation in a shadowy and lucrative business. http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/is-a-notorious-people-smuggler-back-in-business/595/ Today’s Front Pages Australian Newspaper Front Pages for 20 April 2013 http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/front-pages.cfm

Ad astra

20/04/2013LYN'S DAILY LINKS updated: http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/page/LYNS-DAILY-LINKS.aspx

DMW

20/04/2013PvO has a cutting sense of humour Peter van Onselen ‏@vanOnselenP 25m Apart from anything else what would have been the point in the director of policy in TA's office becoming a source....nothing there to leak!

Sir Ian Crisp

20/04/2013Ad Astra, I can see a developing story for you to sink your teeth into. We have on our hands a RJL Hawke redux. My father tells me that during the early Hawke years a KGB Officer, Mr VN Ivanov was booted out of Australia because evidence suggested he was cultivating a relationship with former ALP National Secretary and Canberra lobbyist David Coombe. Today comes the news that Chinese businesswoman and ALP donor Helen Liu, a friend of ALP MP Joel Fitzgibbon (she funded his election campaign) and ALP Minister for Foreign Affairs Bob Carr may have done the wrong thing in her efforts to remain in Australia. Her presence in Australia may even be based on fraud. Why was she so determined to stay in Australia? Of all the people she wanted to befriend why did she gravitate towards politicians? During an unguarded moment did Fitzgibbon or Carr disclose highly sensitive information that would benefit China? Why would a Chinese businesswoman sign a false statutory declaration? Has the Chinese government been fed information that would assist in the acquisition of Australian land and business interests? Does China have a well placed female operative in Australia, masquerading as a friend of the Australian Liars Party? Aren’t I silly. Fancy me telling a sleuthhound like Ad Astra how to conduct a thoroughgoing investigation of the Australian Liars Party, Helen Liu, Bob Carr, and Joel Fitzgibbon. Go get ‘em tiger.

Pikiranku

20/04/2013Excellent links, Lyn. As always. Thank you. Great demoliton jobs on the 'class warfare' meme, though that article from Uthers Say was pretty depressing. Btw, did those 1000 people attending the Qantas gala dinner the other night pay for it, or were they just a bunch of freeloaders enjoying the perks of being a "business leader"/"celebrity"/"journalist"?

DMW

20/04/2013I'm in the mood for a conspiracy theory. Some years ago there was a spate of brek-ins in my suburb. Stragely they were in houses next door to ones that had security systems installed. Not long after some guys come knocking asking if we wanted a security system as there had been lots of break-ins in the area. I did one plus one and got three: the security guys were organising break-ins to drum up business. Today in The Age there is this article: [b]Detention contracts worth $1.8b[/b] [i]Private security company Serco's contracts with the government have blown out by $1.5 billion as the flow of asylum seekers has increased. Serco Australia provides immigration detention services and has two contracts with the federal government that have been active since 2009. But those contracts have ballooned from $323 million four years ago to a record $1.86 billion this year. ... An Immigration spokesman said the cost increases in part reflected the larger numbers of asylum seekers detained. On Thursday, 4997 people were being held on the mainland. A Serco spokesman said: ''When we commenced the contracts in 2009, we were caring for 800 people. We currently look after more than 8000, and employ more than 3000 people in immigration services.''[/i] http://www.theage.com.au/national/detention-contracts-worth-18b-20130419-2i5pd.html What if an international company that offered security services in many counties and profitted from the detaining of asylun seekers were to 'assist' some people to move asylum seekers from one place to another? Would that be good for business? One plus one = three, private jailers are in the game of creating customers for their detention facilities by encouraging tougher laws and assisting people to partake in illegal activities. That wouldn't happen would it?

nasking

20/04/2013 AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC. GLAD I LIVE IN AUSTRALIA. HOPE ABBOTT DOESN'T MAKE IT HARDER FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IF HE GETS IN...WE DON'T NEED THE SAME FIASCO: [b]Boston Bombing Hero Who Identified Suspect Resorts To Online Fundraising To Pay His Medical Bills (UPDATED)[/b] [quote]In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday, Jeff Bauman’s image was seared into the American consciousness. An extremely graphic photo of Bauman being escorted in a wheelchair with most of his legs blown off quickly went viral. Bauman’s stock rose even further after reports surfaced that he had looked into the eyes of one of the bombing suspects minutes before the explosion, and that the moment he awoke from emergency care, he gave law enforcement critical information that substantially narrowed their field of suspects. But while police continue to scour the streets for at-large suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 27-year-old Bauman is scouring the internet for donations to help pay for his outsized medical bills. Bauman’s friends created the page “Bucks For Bauman!” on the gofundme.com crowdfunding service. The money raised through donations to the site are meant to help Jeff and his family pay the exorbitant costs of his surgeries, ongoing medical care, and physical therapy. Since Tuesday, when the site was launched, Americans from across the country have poured in $158,294 in donations — over half of the overall $300,000 goal. [/quote] http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/19/1896951/bauman-crowd-funding-medical/?mobile=wt EVEN JOHN HOWARD KNEW NOT TO SCREW TOO MUCH WITH MEDICARE. AND IF THERE IS A DOWNTURN IN THE ECONOMY, DUE TO PROBLEMS IN CHINA AND ELSEWHERE, THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE WILL NEED AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE MORE THAN EVER. PARTICULARLY WITH ALL THE PERSONAL DEBT THEY HAVE. N'

nasking

20/04/2013 THIS TERRORISM BUSINESS IN AMERICA GIVES YOU AN IDEA OF WHAT THE ISRAELIS PUT UP WITH REGULARLY... AND THE RUSSIANS. THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG INSIDE THE MUSLIM FAITH THAT SO MUCH RADICALISM KEEPS POPPING UP... THAT YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN ARE TURNED FROM BEING NICE INDIVIDUALS INTO CRAZED TERRORISTS... THE BRAINWASHING MUST BE INTENSE. THE SENSE OF ISOLATION IS CONTRIBUTED TO SADLY BY EXTREME PREJUDICE FROM SOME QUARTERS... BUT ALSO BY THESE DAMNED TERRORIST RECRUITMENT VIDS ONLINE AND AVAILABLE VIA MOSQUES AND ELSEWHERE. IT'S TIME WE PUT RADICAL RELIGIOUS VIEWS ASIDE FROM ALL QUARTERS...GOT TUFF ON THEM...AND GOT MORE RATIONAL. AND TAUGHT ALL YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT MODERATION AND SECULARISM... MAKE THEM FEEL THEY BELONG... MAKE IT HARDER FOR THEM TO ACCESS WEAPONS. BUT SADLY I THINK THE OPPOSITE WILL HAPPEN BECAUSE OF EXTREMIST SHOCK JOCKS AND THOSE IN THE MEDIA AND POLITICS WHO BENEFIT FROM HATE, FEAR AND SECURITY APPARATUS POLITICS... THOSE WHO MAKE MONEY FROM CREATING DIVIDED COMMUNITIES AND CONFLICT... WHO ARE DRIVEN PARTIALLY BY EXTREME AND FANATICAL RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL VIEWS THEMSELVES... SOME WHO ARE PARANOID CONSPIRACY FREAKS...LIKE GLENN BECK, MICHELLE MALKIN, ALLAN JONES, RUSH LIMBAUGH, SENATOR BERNARDI... [b]THOSE WHO UTTER SOME TRUTHS VEILED IN HYPERBOLE, CONSPIRACY, MYTH AND MISCHIEF.[/b] N'

nasking

20/04/2013 AD, TRUTH SEEKER, JANE, TT... THNX FOR THE SUPPORTIVE WORDS...AND ATTEMPTS TO LIFT MY MOOD. SADLY, I THINK IT WILL BE HARD FOR US TO RECOVER IN THE POLLS NOW DUE TO THE INEVITABLE FOCUS ON "SCARY AND UNPREDICTABLE BOAT PEOPLE" BY THE USUAL SUSPECTS. UNFORTUNATELY THE ASYLUM SEEKER ISSUE WAS ALWAYS THE GOVT'S ACHILLES' HEEL. THE VOTERS HERE IN QLD ARE OBSESSED WITH IT...AS THEY ARE IN PARTS OF WA AND NSW. BUT ABBOTT WILL RUE THE DAY HE LET MURDOCH AND THE FEARMONGERS AND DOG WHISTLERS RUN HIS AGENDA. COUNT ON IT. N'

jaycee

20/04/2013Liar!..: "...My father tells me " So suddenly you got a "father"!

Ad astra

20/04/2013Hi Lyn As I sat up in bed this morning looking out at the swans feeding on the sea grass and hopeful fishermen trying their luck on the inlet, I marvelled at the diversity of your links: Mr Denmore’s astute piece on how the [i]AFR[/i] has sold its soul to big business, (under the guidance of Murdoch man Michael Stutchbury); the amusing about-turn of the Coalition on delivering a surplus (at last they have noticed that revenue is down), and the articles on how Abbott’s policy ‘promises’ may blow up in his face; the pointed articles on class warfare (that in reality is warfare generated by the wealthy worried about losing their privileges); the ‘we’ll cut your throat’ story (which seems to have quickly died in the MSM); the Coalition’s convoluted DAP, (that even Greg Hunt can’t explain); the NBN stories, NBN Co.’s promise of 1 Gigabit per second, the debunking of the $90 billion price tag, (and Turnbull’s Pythonesque explanations of his NBN-lite); the piece on the people smuggler back in business, and the [i]LP[/i] piece on the Coalition’s linking of street crime with asylum seeker boat arrivals, so called ‘border control’. In Emma Alberici’s interview last night on [i]Lateline[/i] with Campbell Newman about the COAG meeting, this same linking came up in this exchange: [i]“Again, we want to reach an agreement but I put this to you: It is very clear, any insider, any inside the beltway people will tell you that Julia Gillard throughout the whole of last year had a policy and her people used to skite about it, that they were going to in the Federal election campaign actually go after Queensland, go after my government, and me personally, and that has been an ongoing political strategy. EMMA ALBERICI: Don't you go after her personally? On the issue of anti-gang laws, for instance, you've conflated the issue of asylum seekers and tackling organised crime. Clearly, that's inflammatory and frankly a nonsense. CAMPBELL NEWMAN: I don't agree. If you can't stop boats and secure our borders and the Howard government did, then how you can be trusted to do more grown up things, if I may be a bit tongue in cheek, like fight organised crime, criminal gangs? You don't know when the next boat is going to appear off Geraldton. EMMA ALBERICI: How are the two connected in any way whatsoever when one involves international networks and other countries, political and economic conflict offshore and one involves national law and order? CAMPBELL NEWMAN: Emma, I'll say this, if I walk down to my Ashgrove electorate tomorrow and talk to people, with the greatest of respect to you, they will see what I'm saying. I know from talking to Queenslanders they roll their eyes about a Government that tries to take powers away from States when they actually can't deliver on the things they're meant to do under the Constitution. They weren't able to roll out an insulation program in people's homes without burning down homes. We still don't have the laptop computers that were promised on all the school desks. We had billions of dollars wasted rolling out school halls because they wouldn't let the right level of government deliver that properly. I mean I could go on. This Government doesn't deliver things well. They should go back and we need to properly define the roles and responsibilities and our Federation. We need to end the duplication, the waste and inefficiency and that is what COAG should be talking about at the moment because it isn't working and I want to make it work. All I'm after is some willingness from the Prime Minister to actually make that one of the top issues."[/i] [b]Note the obfuscation, the bluster, and the reversion to the same tired old rhetoric (the HIP, BER, computers for schools, asylum seekers, street crime). This is what we can expect from Coalition figures [i]ad nauseam[/i] all the way to the election[/b].

Tom of Melbourne

20/04/2013Ad Astra said – [i]”the same tired old rhetoric (the HIP, BER, computers for schools, asylum seekers…[/i] Which is just hilarious! • Asylum seekers…remember when that was an important humanitarian issue to the ALP. Remember how the ALP condemned Howard for the very policies they now advocate, only far, far more punitive? • Remember how the government installed ceiling insulation at a cost of $$$BILLIONS and then removed it at a cost of more $$$BILLIONS? • Remember how the government handed out $BILLION for wealthy private schools to build their performing arts centres? However, PLEASE SCROLL!

Ad astra

20/04/2013nasking Welcome back. Be of good heart. The crumbling of the Coalition is under way. Hubris, stark realization that they can’t do what they ‘promised to do’ (deliver a surplus, deliver tax cuts, and so on), an NBN-lite the people don’t want, a DAP that won’t work and that they can’t even explain, the man who wants to lead this nation still out filling pastry cups (all the available fish had already been kissed), and a drunk ‘we’ll cut your throat’ staffer showing the viciousness of the Coalition’s post-election plans, (always presuming they will win), which Abbott, true to form, ‘denied’, until he was forced to take action and demote the man. How long will people be blind to what they would be in for under Abbott man? Not long now.

nasking

20/04/2013 AD, I AGREE THAT THE COALITION'S POLICIES ARE LOOKING SHONKIER BY THE DAY...AND THE VOTERS ARE INDEED WARY OF THE LIKES OF ABBOTT AND SOME ON HIS FRONTBENCH. HOWEVER, THE GOVT IS GOING TO HAVE A HARD TIME DEALING WITH THE ASYLUM SEEKER, CARBON PRICE AND WEAK MINING TAX ISSUES. IF THAT MINING TAX REVENUE COMES UP WEAK AGAIN...THIS WILL HAVE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES. AND YOU CAN COUNT ON THE MURDOCH EMPIRE, SHOCK JOCKS ETC RAMPING UP THE ASYLUM SEEKER SCARE STUFF OFF THE BACK OF THIS TRAGIC BUSINESS IN AMERICA...FOX NEWS IS ALREADY BRINGING THE NEO-CON SCAREMONGERS LIKE BOLTON OUT OF THE CUPBOARD AND USING WORDS LIKE "WE GAVE THEM ASYLUM" AND FOCUSING ON THE UNI THE YOUNGER CRIM WENT TO....LOTS OF FLAG WAVING...AND "USA" CHANTS...AND OVER-THE-TOP PATRIOTISM THAT ODDLY REMINDS ME OF THE PALESTINIANS. SADLY, THE SAME STRATEGIC BLOCKHEADS WHO GAVE US THE IRAQ WAR DEBACLE WILL BE LET OFF THE LEASH... UNLESS THE BULK OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REMEMBER THE DISASTROUS RESULTS OF "IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE" AND 'EXTREME NATIONALISM'...A LACK OF REFLECTIVE, CALM, RATIONAL THINKING AND ACTIONS... THEY WILL FIND THEMSELVES IN A 'FOREVER WAR' THAT WILL DRAIN THEIR ECONOMY...AND LEAD TO UNTOLD CASUALTIES... GIVING THE ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT... AND BENEFITTING ONLY THE WAR AND SECURITY APPARATUS...AND MEDIA CORPORATIONS... AUSTRALIA MUST AVOID BEING PULLED INTO THIS BLACK HOLE... AND UNFORTUNATELY TONY ABBOTT IS ONE OF THE WORST CHARACTERS WE COULD HAVE AS AN OPPOSITION LEADER... TIED AS HE IS TO THE FANATICS LIKE SENATOR BERNARDI...THE DOG WHISTLERS LIKE SCOTT MORRISON...THE SHIT STIRRERS LIKE ALAN JONES, ANDREW BOLT AND PIERS AKERMAN... THE MEDIA MOGUL AND WARMONGER RUPERT MURDOCH... AND MANY OTHERS WHO INTENSELY DESIRE A PROTRACTED WAR ON ISLAM. OUR COUNTRY CANNOT AFFORD TO PUT IT'S EFFECTIVE ECONOMY AND AFFORDABLE SERVICES AT RISK FOR A WAR THAT ONLY 'THE FEW' WILL BENEFIT FROM... WE ARE HOPEFULLY NOT IRRESPONSIBLE, IRRATIONAL CRUSADERS DUPED BY CORPORATIONS. N'

nasking

20/04/2013 THAT SHOULD BE: OUR COUNTRY CANNOT AFFORD TO PUT ITS EFFECTIVE ECONOMY AND AFFORDABLE SERVICES AT RISK FOR A WAR THAT ONLY 'THE FEW' WILL BENEFIT FROM...

nasking

20/04/2013 BTW, IMAGINE HOW MUCH GOVT MONEY COULD HAVE GONE INTO THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME...OR NBN...OR HOSPITALS...OR EDUCATION...IF HOWARD HAD NOT LET US BE DUPED INTO ENTERING THE IRAQ WAR? AND SIGNING US UP FOR THE SHONKY F-35s. N'

Jason

20/04/2013NASKING, IT'S SOMETHING PRINCESS OF MELBOURNE NEVER WHINGES ABOUT!

Catching up

20/04/2013Wonder what he was demoted to. Surely sacking was more appropriate.

Janet (jan@j4gypsy)

20/04/2013 Hullo again, after an absence I again have to apologise for. Fortunately nothing stalls Tweety Lyn’s links – it’s not just her links that are marvellous; her wondrous discipline of never ever missing a day is equally a marvel (and how nice was TT’s recent salute :-)). Some Twittertalk at last. Mind you, so MUCH is happening on the fifth estate, never mind the fourth, that it’s hard to make any kind of selection. I would point you most particularly to David Donovan’s piece today ‘The Dead Cat Revival’. This is a very significant piece, if what Donovan claims is true: that the PM and John MacTernan have a deliberate strategy to promulgate information, and campaign, through the fifth estate, and pretty much bypass the fourth. (You will instantly say ‘I told you so’, TT :-).) If it is true that this is a written/ unwritten strategy, then it begs the question: are the PM and the Government ready to open themselves up to direct interview by fifth estate media and bloggers and to bring them into press events. By implication, they should be. By further implication, that should include Ad Astra! [b]Twitterati[/b] [i]Julia Gillard ‏@JuliaGillard[/i] “This is all Tony Abbott told Victorians on Thursday: ‘We will do some things that will hurt’. You bet they would” - PM [i]Julia Gillard ‏@JuliaGillard[/i] “The risk of our opponents: who always cut the wrong things and always cut too much.” – PM http://ow.ly/kffe1 [i]Jaala Pulford ‏@JaalaPulford[/i] The achievements of @JuliaGillard and @AustralianLabor are enormous and cannot be squeezed into 140 characters! #auspol #VicLaborConf [i]Craig Emerson MP ‏@CraigEmersonMP[/i] @miamiaman Abbott's new policy director doubtless is his existing policy director - just changed his title. [i]Peter van Onselen ‏@vanOnselenP[/i] Apart from anything else what would have been the point in the director of policy in TA's office becoming a source....nothing there to leak! [i]chris murphy ‏@chrismurphys[/i] Chatting with serious lawyers. Going to take a look at the history of Tony Abbott in the criminal courts. Some serious research.#auspol [i]michael o'connor ‏@michael4781855[/i] “@MrDenmore: Seems the ABC has decided it's not news that Abbott's policy director has been demoted over the throat cutting gesture. [i]Mr Denmore ‏@MrDenmore[/i] Can you imagine News Ltd if a Gillard staffer made a similar threat to a business leader? The Daily Tele would be wetting itself. [i]carol mcallister ‏@carolmcalliste[/i] apart from Waleed, how many Muslims (and Muslim women in particular) work for the ABC? @abcmarkscott How can we expect balanced on Boston? [i]JoeW2024 ‏@JoeW202417 [/i] Cut back on the red tape stifling development, chant the LNP. Tell that to the Nursing home across the road from the Waco fertilizer Plant [i]David Horton ‏@watermelon_man[/i] Every generation, conservatives magically find ways of making the poor vote against their own interests. [i]Craig Emerson MP ‏@CraigEmersonMP[/i] .@Misty__Bella I'm shocked, shocked that Kevin Donnelly would oppose Government's plan to properly resource our classrooms, teachers & kids. [b]Twitterverse[/b] [i]Tim Christodoulou ‏@tim_chr[/i] The Prime Minister of Australia just liked my Instagram photo. I win the Internet. https://twitter.com/tim_chr/status/325468812453494784/photo/1 [i]DavidW2035 ‏@DavidW203[/i] Perfect! Says it all. @moir_alan: MOIR CARTOON sat afternoon.. ABBOTT'S CLASS OF '13 http://www.moir.com.au [i]Geoff Pearson ‏@GCobber99[/i] Labor's achievements at risk, Gillard says | http://thetelegraph.com.au : http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/labors-achievements-at-risk-gillard-says/story-e6freuz0-1226624947969?sv=98fc4aeee3d59e72befc793fa42cc57f#.UXICduly33Y.twitter … via @dailytelegraph [i]Tony Sheahan ‏@TonySheahan[/i] “@davrosz: My new piece on Murdoch media and Australian politics: 'The Dead Cat Revival': http://tinyurl.com/d2robp9 ” #brilliant, on many fronts [Please DO watch the two videos within this article http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HkXuvuDydI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=POoiWt2aAIQ - [i]Gypsy note[/i]] [i]Peter Foster ‏@PeterFosterALP[/i] Hooked on outrage in the Twitter wars http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hooked-on-outrage-in-the-twitter-wars-20130419-2i5a2.html … via @smh #auspol #perspective [i]Kevin_Rennie ‏@Kevin_Rennie[/i] Julia Gillard's Community Cabinet: Policy Sounding Without Fury - http://s.shr.lc/ZyHU8F #auspol [i]visivoz ‏@visivoz[/i] Turnbull costings of Gov NBN based on a lie “@ConroyMO: Coalition’s $90 billion broadband claims shredded http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2013/052 … #fraudband [i]Meta Starostin ‏@Snow_Crash[/i] Game on: NBN Co fires broadband afterburners with 1Gbps services | Delimiter http://bit.ly/17u5QKY via @delimiterau #AusPol #NBN [i]Meta Starostin ‏@Snow_Crash[/i] Copper Wire -- A technology whose time has passed | Fox News http://fxn.ws/10WCjG7 via @fxnopinion #AusPol #NBN [i]Margaret Clark ‏@MargaretClark1[/i] Good article but a very misleading heading http://m.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/class-action-on-gonski-reforms-20130419-2i5gw.html … [i]Susanna Freymark ‏@SusannaFreymark[/i] Gonski fallout. PM to launch into shuttle diplomacy on school funding. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/-2i5kl.html … [i]Leanne Donaldson ‏@BundyFlyGirl1[/i] PM takes Newman by surprise over Close the Gap - http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/pm-takes-newman-by-surprise-over-close-the-gap-20130418-2i35u.html … via @brisbanetimes [i]Peter Foster ‏@PeterFosterALP[/i] How forecasting errors will affect the budget http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/19/federal-budget/how-forecasting-errors-will-affect-budget … via @BusinessSpec #auspol #ausvotes #perpsective [i]ISupportGillardgovt ‏@ISupGillardgovt[/i] Australia poised to keep AAA credit rating: Moody's http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/4/19/australian-news/australia-poised-keep-aaa-credit-rating-moodys … #auspol #ALP [i]Phillip Coorey ‏@PhillipCoorey[/i] Abbott’s parental tax to hit top 3200 companies http://www.afr.com/p/national/abbott_parental_tax_to_hit_top_companies_hwUb8zTvZJmwjDfLr4JK9M … [i]Bill McKibben ‏@billmckibben[/i] Very important big story on the carbon bubble from the UK today, making it clear why divestment is essential http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/19/carbon-bubble-financial-crash-crisis … [i]The Land ‏@thelandnews[/i] Here comes the sun: COMMUNITY solar power initiatives are driving a new wave of alternative energy uptake acro... http://bit.ly/11LMxMk [i]Olivia Illyria ‏@OliviaIllyria[/i] Here we are. A man's life somewhat destroyed just because someone had the biggest dummy spit in history over losing http://bit.ly/118Nvkn [i]Jenny McKinley ‏@mckinj[/i] So people were paid $50 to turn up at the Tony Abbott show in Geelong?? #auspol http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151552988660306&set=o.363930237037368&type=1&theater …

Jason

20/04/2013More bad news for ToM to be outraged about! Australia poised to keep AAA credit rating: Moody's The increasing likelihood of years of federal budget deficits is unlikely to see Australia's top credit rating downgraded, according to The Australian. The newspaper reported that Moody's considered "the risk of a negative rating action to be relatively low despite the Commonwealth budget remaining in deficit for longer than targeted". "Australia has among the lowest government debt levels in the world, especially at the Commonwealth level, but even if you throw in the debt of the states and local entities it remains low on a comparative basis," Steven Hess, Moody's sovereign analyst for Australia, said. Yesterday, ANZ Bank said prospects of a budget surplus in the next four years were slim unless the government makes deep spending cuts or the currency drops sharply. The bank's analysts predicted deficits of $17 billion this financial year and $7.4 billion in 2013-14. Some analysts predict a deficit of $12 billion to $15 billion, against the official mid-year forecast of a $1.1 billion surplus. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/4/19/australian-news/australia-poised-keep-aaa-credit-rating-moodys

Pikiranku

20/04/2013Catching Up I read that he's doing the same job on the same pay, they just changed the name of the position. Took the "Director" out of it. A Clayton's demotion.

Catching up

20/04/2013Pikiranku, when the PM demotes, they walk out of the door. Remember that Australian Day fiasco.

Sir Ian Crisp

20/04/2013Ad Astra, you are known in the blogosphere for having a fearless approach when it comes to investigating politics and politicians. Another meaty story is developing and it is worthy of your attention. It seems that even the ALP states aren’t signing up for the Gonski caper. Why would ALP states reject an overhaul of education sponsored by the bird of paradox? With the promise of buckets of money attached to the Gonski caper why are states reluctant to sign up? Only you can get to the truth regarding this strange development.

Jason

20/04/2013It seems that even the ALP states aren’t signing up for the Gonski caper. Come back and bitch when the June 30 deadline expires!

el gordo

20/04/2013 Nobody will be coming back, Jason. its a lame duck.

lyn

20/04/2013Hi Ad, Thankyou for putting my work in your minds eye with the Swans this morning , how lovely. There are at least 3 broken promises from Loto, but he calls Julia Liar. Bob Ellis has commented : Tony Abbott abolished three of his policies, [b]hoping with some success that nobody would notice.[/b] These were: getting us back into surplus next year; cutting, slashing and sacking public servants to get us back into surplus; and not letting gays marry. These major policy shifts, he hopes, will be cloaked by the latest US detective saga, the presumed guilt of the Queen’s portraitist Rolf Harris and the continuing Murdoch sliming of Craig Thomson (heinous purchaser of choc-tops with the pennies of the poor), but they will be noted, soon. http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2013/04/20/abbotts-end-38-the-final-countdown/ Pikiranku, it has been reported Galaxy Research paid $50.00 per person to attend Abbott’s Forum. Thankyou for your always delightful appreciation. I guess the Liberal Party would have paid Galaxy or Murdoch he owns Galaxy. People in attendance posted on Face Book that they were given $50.00. [quote]Watch the People's Forum with Tony Abbott live[/quote] One hundred undecided voters independently invited by public affairs research company Galaxy will fire questions at Mr Abbott at the forum http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2013/04/18/363328_news.html Here are some Tweets about the subject:- Jenny McKinley ‏ So people were paid $50 to turn up at the Tony Abbott show in Geelong?? http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151552988660306&set=o.363930237037368&type=1&theater … costas BUSTED! People at last night’s forum with Tony Abbott had to be PAID to be there! #AusPol pic.twitter.com/lAB7g1ZFq7 George Word on twitter Galaxy Research paid $50 per person to attend Abbott`s forum last night So is rent a crowd part of LNP strategy? Denise ‏ Oh, so Galaxy provided the rent-a-crowd (again), same mob that did Rooty Hill - chock full of LIB plants. Arioch ‏ Galaxy poll paying people to attend Abbott slag fest now taints their poll results. The #MSMhacks protection racket continues Andrew Watson ‏@ we can presume from this that Galaxy Research is on the #LNP Payroll. Therefore, their Polls are biased & void. Nasking glad to see you with your suitcases packed full of valuable information, just joking. Makes me happy to see you in a much brighter spirit today. ♥ Janie thankyou for your lovely remarks. Thankyou for your work ,what delicious information you have posted. TT he makes me cry you know, writing such heartfelt words Paul Budde raises an interesting question about the Coalitions’ 60,000 street cabinets:_ [quote] Why? Why does the opposition want an NBN? [/quote]the opposition does acknowledge that fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) may eventually be needed. But it raises questions about how it will do this after installing 60,000 street cabinets for the rollout of its fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) version of the NBN http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/why-why-does-the-opposition-want-an-nbn-20130419-2i4fg.html#ixzz2QzQeAn2V

Sir Ian Crisp

20/04/2013Hi Ad Astra, when are the Rollison girls coming back to correct the record about Abbott the misogynist?

Sir Ian Crisp

20/04/2013[quote][b]It seems that even the ALP states aren’t signing up for the Gonski caper. Come back and bitch when the June 30 deadline expires! Jason [/b][/quote] Oh aye JGuy. The bird of paradox is sure to smother the premiers with money; just how much depends on how much the Chinese are willing to lend us.

Ad astra

20/04/2013Hi Lyn Thank you for the Bob Ellis piece – he’s always fascinating reading. Janet Thank you for your Twitter talk – very interesting reading. I did enjoy the Moir cartoon and the one-eyed Class of 2013.

nasking

20/04/2013 CHEERS LYN. TOP LINKS FROM YOU. AND INFORMATIVE TWEETS FROM JANET. GREAT WORK BOTH. JASON, TOM HAS A HABIT OF IGNORING THE ABBOTT TEAM AND PREVIOUS HOWARD GOVT FLAWS. AND THERE ARE/WERE PLENTY. THE COMMENTS AND LINKS ABOVE HAVE MADE ME FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE GOVT...AND IT'S CHANCES IN SEPT. JUST WISH I WAS SEEING MORE OF THIS BY MSM. SOME DO...BUT SO MANY ARE SO DAMN NEGATIVE. ONE THING I DO KNOW BY TALKING TO SOME SWING VOTERS...IF ABBOTT GETS IN THOSE STATE GOVTS WON'T LAST LONG. PLENTY OF THEM DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF HAVING LNP IN BOTH STATE AND FEDERALLY. THEY KNOW THAT LINING UP STATE AND FEDERAL COALITION-WISE WILL MEAN WORSE WAGES AND CONDITIONS FOR MANY...JOB INSECURITY...AND LOTS OF OUTSOURCING AND PRIVATISATION. I SAID TO THEM: "START BY NOT VOTING IN ABBOTT". :D N'

nasking

20/04/2013 JANET, THIS SPOKE TO ME: [b]Julia Gillard ‏@JuliaGillard “This is all Tony Abbott told Victorians on Thursday: ‘We will do some things that will hurt’. You bet they would” - PM INDEED. WHEN I THINK OF [b]THE HURTING[/b] GOING ON IN [b]THE UK[/b] DUE TO [b]HORRID CONSERVATIVE POLICIES[/b] IT MAKES ME [b]SHIVER[/b]. [b]NEEDLESS SUFFERING.[/b] N'

nasking

20/04/2013 Should be; WHEN I THINK OF [b]THE HURTING[/b] GOING ON IN [b]THE UK[/b] DUE TO [b]HORRID CONSERVATIVE POLICIES[/b] IT MAKES ME [b]SHIVER[/b]. [b]NEEDLESS SUFFERING.[/b]

nasking

20/04/2013 SPOT ON: JoeW2024 ‏@JoeW202417 [b]Cut back on the red tape stifling development, chant the LNP. Tell that to the Nursing home across the road from the Waco fertilizer Plant[/b] WE NEED THE FAIL-SAFE OF MORE SCRUTINY. RAMPANT IMPROPERLY REGULATED DEVELOPMENT CERTAINLY HAS ITS CASUALTIES. N'

Gravel

21/04/2013Ad Astra I'm very late to this little party, but another excellent post thank you. I got about quarter of the way through reading the comments when the writing, except for yours, turned to a black background with light grey writing and have had to give up reading any more, which I am very disappointed with. Will try later in the day to see if it works any better. I just scrolled back and it changed on the 16th at 6.55am with Lyn's links about half way through.

TalkTurkey

21/04/2013From Twitter: TAWNBPM‏@TAWNBPM1m Insiders (ABC1 & 24, 9.00am EST). Comments here please >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://fb.me/2OsS9cF9T

Ad astra

21/04/2013Gravel Thank you for your kind comment. I can't explain why the text has changed. It is quite normal on my computers that use Safari. What do you use? I'll ask Web Monkey.

TalkTurkey

21/04/2013Here's that splendid article on http://theaimn.com/2013/04/20/spinach-or-shit/ that everybody should read, pretty well put!

Ad astra

21/04/2013TT [i]Insiders[/i] was pretty tame affair today, with Piers Akerman his usual unpleasant self. I was surprised however to see him can Abbott staffer Mark Roberts so comprehensively, nailing Roberts' attempt to bribe PvO as a serious breach. However, there was no analysis of the extent to which the Roberts outburst represented the mood in Abbott's office, or the extent to which it foreshadowed Abbott's intent to wreak havoc should the Coalition gain power. To me, that is the central issue. Abbott dismissed Roberts' outburst as a 'brain snap', and Akerman attributed it to Roberts being drunk, but what voters need to know is whether what Roberts said is a reflection of talk within Abbott's office, rather than his own idiosyncratic view. I suspect the former. Did you notice how Dennis Atkins corrected himself when he used the word 'Gillard', quickly changing it to 'PM Gillard'. He did the same when he changed 'Abbott' to 'Tony Abbott'. Is this a sign that Atkins feels a little more respect ought to be shown for those in high office? It was nice to see. Of course, we would be naive to expect the same from Akerman, that is Piers Akerman!

Gravel

21/04/2013Ad Astra Just came back in and it is still happening, just here, no other sites that I have been to. I am using Firefox as my browser.

jaycee

21/04/2013The LOTO. is being talked up as “The Great White Hope”…reflecting that other pugalist who failed dismally. After he loses the election, which surely he must, it will see the dismantling of the far-right of the Liberal party and a move toward a more balanced society. The core “strength” of the opposition has been in it’s polarising of the community..a community which has very little to argue about, save semantics! The “going back home” theme of the Liberal Party overlooks the fact that the world has moved on…: NBN. a sure thing…Education via Gonsky..a sure thing…Disability scheme..a sure thing..go back?…To what?…Easy credit?..haphazard education system?…Low-speed computing network?..lost infrastructure?..unfair wage negotiation?…Forget it, forget it, forget it…There is no way in bleedin’ , bloody, bugger me hell we are going to go back to the future with the LNP. !

TalkTurkey

21/04/2013Of course it's not back to the Future! It's really forward to the Past So Abborrrrrt, we're going to boot ya Right up your unsaleable arse!

TalkTurkey

21/04/2013jaycee Loved your 12.36 PM post. That's the spirit Comrade!

jane

21/04/2013Gravel, I use Firefox, but have never had any problems at TPS wrt weird distortions etc. Not being a techie, I can offer no help, but no doubt Web Monkey will.

Tom of Melbourne

21/04/2013Hear Swan on Insiders today? What a duffer, no acknowledgment that the European Union carbon price is about 10% of his. NO recognition that this will plunge the budget into an even deeper hole. Just mouthing the spin. Which is his only competence.

Casablanca

21/04/2013Gravel, I reported this annoying problem a couple of articles back (April 5 @ 06.06 PM - in Ad Astra's article on the Leigh Sales interview). I too was using Mozilla Firefox at the time. My operating system was 32 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. Miglo @ April 5. 2013 08:52 PM said, [quote]Casablanca, your problem is due to the page not fully loading on your computer. Do you have an old computer?[/quote] As you have indicated, the problem was not occurring on other sites. Also, I found that when I used Microsoft Explorer or Mozilla Chrome that the problem on TPS disappeared. I'm not sure what Miglo meant by 'old' but in the end I decided to upgrade my computer in case an unidentified gremlin was the cause. I installed a new motherboard, CPU and Ram. I then did a clean install of Windows 7, Home Premium 64bit on a new hard disk. When I went to Mozilla for a download of Firefox I ended up with Mozilla Firefox Nightly - although it is a test program (designed also for Mobile Android 29MB, Android (ARMv6) 27MB,) it is working just fine. It is available in 34 and 64 bit versions. I got the new parts from the local MSY store http://www.msy.com.au/. No more black matter on TPS! So in summary, first try a different browser and if that does not work upgrade your hardware and software. Hope that helps.

jaycee

21/04/2013no worries TT. It's just the truth and the bleedin' obvious.

Casablanca

21/04/2013[b]Abbott says no need for Gonski funding reforms[/b] April 21, 2013 - 3:19PM Stephanie Peatling Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-says-no-need-for-gonski-funding-reforms-20130421-2i7wy.html#ixzz2R4q2nUmS

Casablanca

21/04/2013[b]PM defies premiers on schools [/b] April 21, 2013. Judith Ireland. Breaking News Reporter. It seems that PM Gillard has wedged LOTO (see above) and has set about to do the same to Premiers & Chief Ministers. [quote] Prime Minister Julia Gillard will bypass the state premiers and write to the principal of every Australian school in a bid to get support for her school funding reforms. After Friday's Council of Australian Governments meeting ended without a state or territory agreeing to her funding package, Ms Gillard will explain to the school principals how the reforms will work. ''I would like principals to consider the funding proposal on its merits and the ways in which it will benefit the whole community,'' she told Fairfax Media.[/quote] Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/pm-defies-premiers-on-schools-20130420-2i72u.html#ixzz2R5JxTia5

Casablanca

21/04/2013Meant to include the following quotes from the Judith Ireland article: [quote]Ms Gillard will travel to Melbourne on Monday and Sydney on Tuesday to talk to parents and citizens groups about the plan, which would provide an extra $14.5 billion for schools over six years . With a June 30 deadline to get agreement on the reforms, Ms Gillard increased the pressure on premiers to agree to the plans in an address to the Victorian Labor Party conference on Saturday. She said four of the world's top five school systems were in the Asia-Pacific region and Australia's was not one of them. She said she had a message for the premiers and chief ministers: ''Do the right thing by Australia. Sign up for better schools.''[/quote] Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/pm-defies-premiers-on-schools-20130420-2i72u.html#ixzz2R5KrlgrE

jaycee

21/04/2013These LNP. premiers are small beer intellectually, compared to Julia Gillard. How do they think she has rose through the ranks of one of the most hard-nosed political parties in the land to become Prime Minister of this nation if not for a keen eye on the political animal and it's moves and motivations? Idiots!!...dumb-cluck idiots...All I could put it down to is that male vanity that they can dominate a woman and bring her down to their level anytime they like.....more the fools they!...Much, much more the fools! The PM. has a solid foundation now of ministers backing her up..and a solid phalanx of supporters backing her up....WE will prevail!

Casablanca

21/04/2013[b]Beaten but not Gonski: the wait for leadership on schools continues.[/b] 19 April 2013, 4.48pm AEST Maxine McKew. Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at University of Melbourne http://theconversation.com/beaten-but-not-gonski-the-wait-for-leadership-on-schools-continues-13615

Ad astra

21/04/2013Folks I’ve just now posted [i]David Marr joins ‘the most successful Opposition leader’ chorus[/i]. http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/
How many umbrellas are there if I have two in my hand but the wind then blows them away?