Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

Does God condone genocide?

By Bert Hetebry Stan Grant points out in his book The Queen is…

As Yemen enters tenth year of war, militarisation…

Oxfam Australia Media Release As Yemen enters its tenth year of war, its…

«
»
Facebook

Abbott takes February too!

A few days ago, I conceded that in the attempt to be ridiculous, Abbott’s action had clearly beaten my satire for the month of January. I have to concede that his press club speech outdid my suggestion for what he would say by such a margin that one would have to declare him firm favourite to win February as well. I read this before I read the transcript so I thought that the speech might be OK.

 

The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan says “Tony Abbott has taken his first step towards restoring order and stability in his Government in a simple, straightforward manner with a speech which was error and surprise free.”

 

Outstanding! Well, that should make all Abbott’s critics shut up. A prepared speech lacking errors or surprises – that must make this the equivalent of Churchill’s war-time efforts or Keating’s Redfern speech. Except, Mr Shanahan – apart from the fact that his speech contained more re-runs than Channel 10 over the summer break – it’s just not true.

I haven’t exactly gone through it with a fine tooth comb, but at a quick glance I found the following errors or points of interest:

  1. “Our problem is not that taxes are too low; our problem is that government spending is too high.” Hardly any economists agree!
  2. “The carbon tax is gone — so every household, on average, is $550 a year better off.” ???? All I can say is some people must have been burning a lot of electricity and be thousands better off, if that average is anywhere near accurate!
  3. “The live cattle trade that Labor closed down in panic over a TV programme is booming again.” Actually I think it was over what was happening to the cattle, not the TV programme, or is he suggesting that, if it hadn’t have been made public like that, there’d have been no need for action?
  4. “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.” Wasn’t there one until July last year? All right, he may have been trying to get rid of it, but it certainly didn’t stop as soon as he was elected; neither did he offer to pay us back our “$550” for the years 2013-2014!
  5. “Petrol prices are nearing 15 year lows, home loan interest rates are low and stable, and the September quarter had the biggest fall in power prices on record.” Is he claiming credit for lower petrol prices? And aren’t interest rates at ’emergency levels’ because we have a slow economy?
  6. “If you’re a small business owner, it’s likely that you’ve mortgaged your home in order to invest, employ and serve the community.” Those incompetent bastards! Going into debt!! People shouldn’t be risking their kids inheritance by going into debt!!
  7. “Every big business started off as a small business.” What? Even those who started off by listing on the stock exchange to raise a billion or so in capital?
  8. “Every new worker is generating revenue — so spending to get unemployed people into work; on childcare to keep parents in the workforce; on infrastructure to get people to their jobs; and on a small business tax cut to create jobs will help to get the budget back towards the surplus our country needs. Economic growth is the best and fastest way to restore the surplus.” Isn’t this what Labor argued during the GFC?

And, he does remind us that everything is Labor’s fault, and if you ever vote Labor it’s because you’re even more forgetful than Arthur Sinodinos, when asked exactly what he was being paid to do, so that’s something that must make us all think that the people of Queensland and Victoria don’t understand the concept of democracy. You’re meant to keep voting Liberal and if you don’t, it’s because you’re just wrong.

And, of course, this isn’t a surprise or an error. It’s just another broken promise, which is par for the course, for Abbott! “So, a bigger parental leave scheme is off the table.”

22 comments

Login here Register here
  1. Gina

    That’s 30 min of my life I’ll never get back. Does he honestly believe that people are dumber than him? He will never be able to smell the coffee because his nose can’t smell the difference between it and denial.

  2. Ricardo29

    None of the commentators/ques, picked him up on the inherited debt. And what about his chortling over the dumb Vic Labor Govt. Facing a bill of 1.2bn if it cancels the EastWest link. Wasn’t that a land mine left by Napthine? I found the speech a boring mishmash of attempted justifications without a promise of change and his tin ear going full bore. Man’s a cretin, sorry insult to cretins.

  3. June

    I cannot watch or listen to Abbott. Budget deficit left by ALP is now stated as $667b? Chaos of the ALP government? Absent minded ALP voters? I’m relieved I didn’t waste time listening to more of his deluded, misguided twaddle. Bill Shorten’s “Bingo Sheet” by contrast, was spot on!

  4. stephentardrew

    Debt servitude for the middle income and poor and enormous wealth and profits for the wealthy.

    But you see you lot must pay off the big bad debt because you are lazy swill and without us you have no jobs or trickle.

    Ah bugger it we may as well reverse the tap without telling the simpletons after all its all ours.

    Ask God.

  5. olddavey

    Shanahan’s just a sycophantic knob-polisher and should be ignored by anyone with more than one brain cell.

  6. Mike

    Can anyone remember or know what that female reporter was referring to when she mentioned being in a trough?

  7. Michael Taylor

    Gina, shame on you for lasting that long.

  8. Graham Houghton

    Ricardo 29 – ‘Cretin’ is derived from the French word for ‘christian’ which presumably implies that rabid christians were mad, bad and dangerous. So, before all reasonable christians take the hump, my remarks are NOT directed at you, thay are directed at mindless ideologues be they economic, religious, political, or whatever other extreme position they take as a substitute for rational thought. Abbott is a classic cretin.

  9. Graham Houghton

    And a psycopath. I’d love to see his brain scans.

  10. Annie B

    Cannot stand much more of this shit – frankly.

    Hey Rossleigh – that is NOT a shot at you ….. you’ve written so well – as usual, with much clout.
    Good onya.

    It’s the crap that goes back and forth about who’s who, who’s up who, and who’s paying the rent. It’s everywhere. Speculation at best. The MSM who cannot be trusted … 2 months ago they were all on the LNP side – now they have turned on them – and they will turn back to LNP if and when it suits them ( or when it suits Murdoch if he still has the intellectual capacity to call anything to do with OUR politics ( which is no longer his right ) , and if indeed it is his business to do so in any way at all.

    Silly old senile bastard.

    …………

    Abbott is ???? …… a nut case ? ….. I was tempted temporarily, to feel sorry for the bastard, but no longer. …. An utter brute, a pretender to a throne that he truly believes to be his, and his alone.

    I figure it will take approx. 10 men in white coats and a couple of strength 100 strait jackets to get Abbott out of his self-appointed God like position – despite the fact that he thinks he was ‘voted in’. Pffffffft ! … he got in on preferences, and most likely on some shifty shufflings of votes as well ( according to some MSM reports at the time ). THAT would NOT surprise me, although – who can trust the MSM ?.

    As for the lower petrol prices …… I waited for that to raise its head – and to be jumped on by this excuse for a human being – ….. lo and behold, he has inserted that into the inferences of his National Press Club speech, as to how bloody great his ‘Government’ is ……. and what it is doing for Australia.

    Ye Gods – he’s doing zero for Australia, except to bring it down to the lowest levels possible. Economically, scientifically, in education, in health, in all good works previously done by people with the less advantaged in mind ( he’s shut down by regulation, soooo many good humanitarian and helpful organisations ) …. and he has the utter GALL to stand up and say ‘ look at me – aren’t I just the greatest ? – we are doing SO well ”

    He inserted a whole lot more bullshit into that speech as well, much of which was covered by Rossleigh.

    All I know is that I will not ever vote for anything that remotely resembles conservative / Liberal again in what remains of my life. I have in the past ( way past ) …. but never again. If the Labor party continues to be right of centre ( I doubt that – I think Labor is playing a very hard political game ) …. then they are out too.

    This leaves me voting heaven knows how …. maybe not at all.

    I’ve had enough.

  11. paul walter

    In view of several recent threads here on economics, I wonder what people may have made of Barnaby Joyce’s various comments and evasions on QA tonight, if they bothered watching?

    Swann wasn’t entirely frank some of the time either, but he was light years in front of Barnaby, as to an actual appreciation of what really has been happening.

    Nowhere during the program were FTAs or defence procurement issues or even asylum seekers mentioned, of course, although Lambie made a fumbled attempt to raise Parliament’s soft treatment of more transparent foreign ownership registers, for a mix of xenophobic as well as fair reasons.

  12. Kerri

    I thought it was a clear sign of Joyce’s incompetance that Lambie was able to slap him down and elicit a blurblr blurble can’t think what to say next from him!

  13. paul walter

    His face was so red a lot of the time that I thought he was taking a stroke..tonight he was forced to go bunny for Abbott , the same fate originally intended for Peta Credlin. Talk about a walloping!

  14. Alastair Craig van Schoor

    I thought half way through his speech that, like in the past, somehow, he manages to appear strong and confident but as u manage to digest the full picture of his jist and where he is coming from the disgust and an appreciation of vulgarity kicks in . The sence of entitlement becomes too overwhelming to consume and one thinks why did I think I was going hear anything redeeming or even mildly palatable. I can’t imagine how people voted for him or that the liberal party thought an attack dog style leader would ever constitute something sustaining. Why is it that even years before the election I concidered him a first class fool an intellectual simpleton and imbecile why was it so obvious to me and why was I afraid that people would buy his tripe ? I think I know for absolute certain that those people are mere husks and voids devoid of a single atom of substance . How they get to enforce a nations progression in the negative but with pride like they have succeeded useing their rights. There is no hope for this nation when they experiment with their own demise. It is not as if they are going to disappear we are all doomed to suffer a democracy in back fire .

  15. Poss

    The Prime Moron’s speech same shit different day

  16. John Kelly

    He also told Victorians that we voted Labor in a fit of absent mindedness. Just wait till he sees how absentminded we will be in 2016.

  17. Kaye Lee

    Whilst I know our debt and deficit are not a problem, I would have thought ONE journalist may have pointed out that our gross debt has increased from about $280 billion when the Coalition took over to over $352 billion now. If they are using the “debt and deficit disaster” as their narrative then it must be challenged at every level including their performance in fixing this so-called disaster. Why does no-one ever mention PEFO and ask if Abbott is calling Treasury and Finance liars? Why does no-one ever call him out on that ridiculous $667 billion figure? Why does no-one ever point out that that figure is using Coalition policies?

  18. Dee

    Kaylee, those were my thoughts exactly. It was predictable that he would bring up this exaggerated Labor debt. All a journo had to do was come with the figures ready and challenge him. That was the biggest lie, and he got away with it. When something like this is not challenged, the public believe it must be true. It was a missed opportunity and would’ve made him squirm nicely.

  19. DanDark

    It dosnt matter what questions the so called journos ask now
    It’s curtains for Tony, and a new leader will not fix the woes of the party, but they can try..
    I had a stall at our local market on the weekend, the hostility towards Tones and the LNP is palpable
    I live in Chesters electorate, a usually safe seat for them, not for much longer though 🙂
    But what do we Victorians know, we are all “Absent minded” according to the worlds greatest authority on nothing our Tones, we all had a brain freeze when we kicked Naptime to the curb,
    ohhhh Lordy geeezuzzz, he is now insulting Victorians because we didn’t vote for the corrupt Naptime,
    Tony needs to shut his gob and keep it shut just for a week….Give us a break from the bullshit I say…..

  20. geekgirlau

    Kaye, I suspect he would just blame that pesky Senate for exercising democratic process – sorry, that should read not recognising his god-given authority to do whatever he feels like.

  21. Gina

    What can I say? I needed reminding on how fucwiticism keeps thriving in the realm of Abbottism. It just made my day, ya know?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

Return to home page