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

Carol is a former teacher (ed psych) and a disability advocate. Carol also studied law at SCU. Although Carol has written a number of articles for The AIMN, she is mainly involved in admin and promotion. She maintains a strong interest in politics, social justice, history, and the arts.

Website: https://theaimn.com/

Operation Sovereign Borders. Doubly Disillusioned.

Over the past several years Tony Abbott has electioneered on two platforms: that climate change is crap and that asylum seekers arriving by boats are “illegals”. Abbott also chose to create a sense of urgency, a sense of fear, the fear of the other and an impression that somehow the Australian people were under threat. The nationalistic name which Abbott conjured up, Operation Sovereign Borders consists of the same overblown rhetoric reminiscent of the Bush/Howard era, and is described in the Coalition’s Policy document as a response to “a national emergency”.

With the coming of Tony Abbott to power, Operation Sovereign Borders was described as “gearing up”, and as endorsed by The Australian newspaper, put into action by immediately “shutting down the flow of information on the arrival of asylum vessels and the transfer of people offshore”:

All requests for information from Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Immigration – on issues ranging from boat arrivals, to detention centre capacity levels, the numbers of detainees on Manus Island and Nauru, or violent incidents in the detention network – are now directed to the mobile telephone of Mr Morrison’s press secretary.

This is of such importance, such an emergency that all enquiries must immediately be directed to . . . a press secretary?

The Sydney Morning Herald hence reports:

The public might never be told whether the Coalition is meeting a key election promise in having the navy turn back asylum seeker boats, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has said.

The above is the entire crux of the matter: we might never be told whether or not Tony Abbott is meeting a key election promise and the very promise which for many, won him the election.

It was 27th April 2012 when the headlines from news.com were ablaze with the following:

TONY Abbott will tell Indonesia that people smugglers “disgorging” asylum seekers are like Australians smuggling drugs into Bali should he win government.

The Opposition Leader today said that, if elected Prime Minister, he would fly to Jakarta in his first week to explain his policy of turning back people smuggler boats.

And he would call a double dissolution election if he can’t get his tougher border security measures, including re-introduction of temporary protection visas, through Parliament . . .

“Every illegal boat marks a failure of foreign policy, a failure of security policy and a failure of immigration policy.”……..

Then Immigration Minister Chris Bowen responded with the statement that Abbott was putting relations with Indonesia at risk by again pledging to turn boats back.

“Mr Abbott’s claim that he will have a ‘Jakarta focussed’ foreign policy is questionable as he rides roughshod over the repeated and clear message from Indonesia that they would not agree to towing back the boats,” said Mr Bowen.

It seems that as a matter of public information this issue no longer exists with the urgency now relegated to weekly information sessions or via Scott Morrison’s press secretary, that every illegal boat which “marks a failure of foreign policy” will be information disseminated perhaps accurately but certainly not in a timely manner. Urgency has drifted to once a week information sessions.

Is it that Prime Minister Abbott has little desire to fulfill his previous commitment to call a double dissolution election on this issue? “Failures” may or may not be known by the public, or even more suspect: Is it that the Abbott government intends to set its own asylum seeker policy up for failure?

By making conditions so onerous and insulting for the Indonesian government is it that Abbott has a ready-made fall guy? The vast majority of Abbott’s rhetoric is that he will tell Indonesia what he intends to do with their country – from turning boats back to their shores, to buying fishing boats (en mass it is assumed) from Indonesians, to setting up “transit ports” on their soil. All rhetoric speaks of infringements against Indonesia’s sovereign rights to do what they want in their own country. For Operation Sovereign Boarders to succeed it needs the cooperation of the Indonesian Government, which has not, and will not be forthcoming. For their failure to comply with Abbott’s infringement upon their sovereignty I can see that they are nicely being set-up as the fall guy.

That is only one are of failure. There are possibly more.

Again from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Under Operation Sovereign Borders two frigates, seven patrol boats and numerous Customs vessels will patrol the seas between Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef and Indonesia.

Anzac Class frigates cost about $207,000-a-day to operate compared with $40,000-a-day for Armidale Class Patrol boats.

Seven frigates at $207,000 a day means that Operation Sovereign Boarders would cost the taxpayer over $520M a year for the Navy’s contribution alone. Then there are the Global Hawke Drones, if he decides to go ahead with them, at a cost of $US218M each. How many might he want? In an environment of a budget emergency, how long before the taxpayers rest a little uneasy about the enormous expense of detecting or intercepting the boats that are apparently going to stop coming?

Then there are other logistics. Officials would conduct health checks on the ship or at the port, and the smuggled people would be taken to nearby airports for charter flights direct to Nauru and Manus Island. They can’t go to Indonesia, of course, because Indonesia have sensibly rejected Tony Abbott’s invasive plan.

And which port, by the way?

So we are now back to where we were at any period over the last six years, but at a higher cost to the taxpayer. However, Tony Abbott can no longer blame Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard so he will directly blame Indonesia. Will this be an excuse to not call a double dissolution? We’ll see.

Operation Sovereign Borders will not only go down as Tony Abbott’s biggest policy flop but one of great expense.

But we’ll never hear about it.

* A post by Michael and Carol Taylor

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

What happened when asylum seekers were sent back to Indonesia: Tony Abbott’s own words

In mid-October 2009, 78 Tamil asylum seekers were intercepted en route to Australia and taken on board the Oceanic Viking. They were then taken to Indonesia. What did Tony Abbott have to say about the matter?

On October 27, 2009 – then an Opposition frontbencher – he joined ABC’s Lateline to discuss the Rudd Government’s management of those asylum seekers that were due to be detained in Indonesia. Here is some of the transcript:

TONY JONES: The diplomatic problems posed by these 78 asylum seekers still onboard the boat Oceanic Viking worsened this evening with the regional politicians saying Indonesia should not be used as a dumping ground for refugees. Is the fate of these people likely to be once again the focus of Question Time tomorrow?

TONY ABBOTT: I think that’s quite likely, Tony, because once they were picked up by that Australian Customs vessel, they became in effect Kevin Rudd’s responsibility. Now, he could have brought them to Christmas Island. He chose to send them to Indonesia. He said he had an Indonesian Solution; well, it looks more like an Indonesian shambles than a solution right now.

TONY JONES: He could have brought them to Australia to Christmas Island. Are you saying that’s what should have happened?

TONY ABBOTT: No, I’m not, but that’s certainly what he has been doing up till now.

TONY JONES: Well, what are you saying should have happened?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I’m not the Government, Tony. I’m here to hold the Government to account.

TONY JONES: No, but I’m asking your opinion. You must have an opinion on what you think should have happened to these people. You obviously don’t think they should have gone there.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, what I think shouldn’t have happened is that Kevin Rudd should not have unpicked the carefully put together policies of John Howard, which stopped the flow of boat people. You see, John Howard found a problem and created a solution. Kevin Rudd found a solution and has now created a problem. And, plainly, his shrill responses, his obfuscation in the Parliament today shows that this problem really is getting on top of him.

TONY JONES: So what do you believe should happen to those 78 asylum seekers now? Should they be brought to Christmas Island? Should they – as the Indonesian regional officials are suggesting? Or should they be taken back to Sri Lanka as they’re also suggesting? What do you say should happen?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, Tony, as I said, I’m not the Government. I’m holding the Government to account. Kevin Rudd said he had this problem under control because he had sorted it all out with President Yudhoyono. Plainly, it hasn’t all been sorted out. At the very best, all you can say is that his Indonesian Solution is a boat-by-boat improvisation.

TONY JONES: So you don’t have an opinion on what should happen to these people yourself. Is that what you’re saying? Or are you not allowed to have an opinion, I mean . . . ?

TONY ABBOTT: No, no, I’m just telling you, Tony, that I’m not the Government. But, if you are going to stop the flow of boat people, you’ve got to have policies in place which deny people the prize of Australian permanent residency. As long as that prize beckons, you are going to have people, understandably, wanting to come in search of a better life in Australia. Now, by closing down the offshore detention centres, by abolishing temporary protection visas and by stopping the occasional practice of turning boats around, Kevin Rudd put out the welcome mat for these people.

TONY JONES: You said earlier that these people became Kevin Rudd’s responsibility when they were picked up by an Australian vessel. Are you saying, indeed, that they are Australia’s responsibility?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, they were picked up by an Australian vessel in the Indonesian search-and-rescue zone. Kevin Rudd said that he had secured an agreement with President Yudhoyono of Indonesia for Indonesia to take these people. Now, whatever Kevin Rudd has done, thus far at least, it hasn’t worked.

TONY JONES: OK. Let’s assume they’re not allowed to go ashore in Indonesia. What do you believe should happen to them?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I think that Kevin Rudd should not make arrangements with foreign leaders that he then can’t deliver upon, and that plainly seems to be the situation tonight.

TONY JONES: So, it seems all so clear that you can’t actually say what you think should happen to these people.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I’m not now in Government, but when I was in Government I supported the policies of the Prime Minister and the Government, which stopped the boat people from coming. You see, the difference, Tony, between John Howard and . . .

TONY JONES: OK, but – alright, I’ll let you finish. Sorry.

TONY ABBOTT: Let me say my piece.

TONY JONES: Yes, I will.

TONY ABBOTT: You know, the difference is John Howard’s policies were tough, but effective. Kevin Rudd’s policy looks like being brutal, but infective.

TONY JONES: OK, if you were to follow the policies of the previous government – the Howard Government, your government – these people would be sent to somewhere in the Pacific like Nauru. Is that what you think should still be happening?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, we’re not now in government and we don’t know what could possibly be done with the Indonesians, perhaps with the Sri Lankans, which seems to be the current major source of boat people. And if we were in government and were able to engage in detailed discussions with the Sri Lankans and the Indonesians, I might be able to say more. But the Australian Government, which is in a position to have these discussions and which apparently has had discussions with President Yudhoyono, even thought it had a deal with President Yudhoyono, hasn’t been able to deliver.

TONY JONES: So, it’s eight days now or more than eight days that these people have been on this vessel. Do you think Kevin Rudd should get back on the phone to President Yudhoyono?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, he’s got to do something, otherwise he looks like a Prime Minister who is both inept and hypocritical. Let’s not forget the high-volume moral outrage, the high-octane moral outrage which came from Kevin Rudd when he was opposition leader, and lots of other people as well. And I have to say, Tony, that those people who furiously denounced the Howard Government but are now silent are exposed as partisan rather than as principled.

TONY JONES: Moral outrage today from several of your colleagues in both the House and the Senate asking if the Government could guarantee that the children on board that vessel will not be kept in detention in Indonesia. Is that confected outrage or is it genuine concern?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, certainly, we do not want anything inhumane to happen to anyone. And the difference between John Howard and Kevin Rudd on this, Tony, is that, sure, the former government put tough policies in place, but they worked. Handing people over to the Indonesians is going to be far more brutal and it’s not going to be effective in stopping the boats.

TONY JONES: As you heard today, the Prime Minister made the rhetorical point immediately this was suggested that this from the former government which put children behind razor wire.

TONY ABBOTT: And let me say this to you, Tony: those camps in PNG and Nauru, that were run by Australians were, I put it to you, far more efficient and far more humane than the kind of things that we have just seen on your program in Indonesia, which apparently is what Kevin Rudd wants to condemn people to.

TONY JONES: OK, let’s get your own reaction to the conditions then. You’ve just seen the pictures, you’ve just referred to them in those detention centres filmed by the Melbourne lawyer Jessie Taylor. What did you think when you saw those pictures?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I think that they are very, very rough circumstances in which to leave people. I’ve got to say they’re not untypical of Third World countries, and if those boat people were in camps in Sri Lanka, I dare say they would be experiencing similar conditions. The problem – the charge that I lay against the Prime Minister, Tony, is two-fold: one of ineptitude in not being able to strike an effective deal with President Yudhoyono, but above all, of hypocrisy in furiously denouncing the policies of the Howard Government, but now implementing policies which look far more tough in one sense on boat people, but which have no real hope of stopping the flow.

TONY JONES: Well, I mean, they’ve levelled the charge of hypocrisy right back at the Opposition for what they did in government, as I said earlier. And indeed it was the Howard Government which put money into the renovations of the detention centre into which these may in fact go on the island of Riau.

TONY ABBOTT: Yeah. But you’re not seriously suggesting, Tony, are you, that the Australian-run detention centres in Nauru and in PNG were anything like the detention centres in Indonesia, which Kevin Rudd wants these people to go to.

TONY JONES: So, your argument is that there is no way that these asylum seekers should be taken to Indonesia, or that Kevin Rudd should encourage the Indonesian Government to pick up asylum seekers headed for Australia and take them back to Indonesia. That, indeed, is the Indonesian Solution.

TONY ABBOTT: No. I’m not saying that, Tony. I’m saying that Kevin Rudd should act like a Prime Minister and he should move effectively to stop the flow of boat people. Now, I’m not saying that that’s going to be easy and I’m not saying that it’s going to be pretty. But nevertheless, John Howard did it, he did it effectively, and I think on the evidence of what we saw tonight, he did it more humanely than Kevin Rudd is proposing to do it.

TONY JONES: Anthony Albanese told us last night that the Government’s Indonesian Solution is quite different to the former government’s Pacific Solution. Do you agree with that?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, yes, because the Government’s – the current Government’s – so-called solution doesn’t work and it looks like being far more brutal than anything that was done by the former government.

Does this mean his commitment to instruct the navy to turn around asylum-seeker boats and return them to Indonesia was nothing but a con job to win votes?

In case you missed it, here’s a summary of what Abbott said:

  • The asylum seekers should have been sent to Christmas Island.
  • To return them to Indonesia was “brutal”.
  • There would have been nothing wrong with sending them to PNG.
  • Australia needs a good relationship with Indonesia to help address this problem.

His words now imply incredible hypocrisy, beyond belief. Meanwhile, Indonesia says:

“We will reject his policy on asylum seekers and any other policy that harms the spirit of partnership and (Indonesian) sovereignty and national integrity,” Mr Natalegawa told a House or Representatives meeting on Wednesday.

Yes, I have an aching suspicion that Tony Abbott has been conning us all along when it comes to any of his policies on asylum seekers. He’s not interested in boats. He’s only interested in votes.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Tony’s women

Jacqueline Maley writes:

Prime Minister-elect, we’ve been through this! We’ve talked about it time and time again and we thought it was resolved. After you made the quip about the ironing and the housewives of Australia, remember? And those tricky historical abortion comments that kept cropping up and you couldn’t quite explain away? And the time you seemed to imply our unmarried female prime minister was somehow living in sin?

With due respect Jacqueline, and while realising that your topic is intended to be ironic, the attitude which espouses all of Prime Minister-elect Abbott’s attitude come from this from the heart remark:

I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’.

Again from Ms Maley:

You pointed out that you are surrounded by powerful women. You brandished your confident, intelligent wife and daughters. You promised us a paid parental leave scheme that – granted – made business blanch with horror, but seemed to show that you did indeed, “get it” when it came to women.

Yet all of these “confident, intelligent” women were given the rider of attractive, hot . . . sex appeal. Which brings us back to Abbott’s original statement that women, in general, do not have the aptitude, ability or interest “to even approach equal representation”.

I should imagine that those who somehow miraculously overcome their burden of the double X chromosome factor, and do have the aptitude and ability are those “door knockers” which Abbott currently is looking forward to – as long as they have ample sex appeal, I should imagine.

Bronwyn Bishop (BB) is, of course, the anomaly being endowed amply with what might be described as matronly dominatrix qualities, plus has the blessing of seniority and a certain upper-class quality; she should do well as Speaker.

BB comes under Abbott’s category of one of those rarest of the species, a woman with both aptitude and ability (although the latter is to be proven – in Opposition she did her best dealing with the lads out the back of the boys’ toilets attitude).

BB we are now told does not believe in Affirmative Action, on a philosophical basis. Or might it be to protect one’s own backside as needed, being one of the only women? BB’s pooh-poohing of Affirmative Action certain decreases the chances of other women entering the field as competition.

Julie Bishop (JB) on the other hand being the serial token woman for no less than three Liberal leaders, and renown for commenting on not very much pertaining to her portfolios, and then when she did made an utter mess of it. JB must then come under Tony Abbott’s category of “sex appeal”. At least it would seem that Abbott thinks so . . .

Apart from The Death Stare, the cat’s claws movement and a penchant for wearing extremely tight fitting and expensive Armani suits, I really do not know what JB’s field of expertise is, remembering that in ’09 she was forced to resign due to perceived incompetence, this coming from her own ranks – in the role of Shadow Treasurer – Hockey took over.

A few months later, Abbott became LOTO and in spite of numerous indications of incompetence such as being hauled up for not less than two reported “please explains” by the Indonesian Ambassador for spouting some Women’s Weekly style nonsense about Abbott’s-turn-back-the-boats, she obviously retained the pleasure of Abbott.

Not once did Abbott do-a-Howard and at least make an apology for this particular Shadow Minister.

As stated by Ms Maley:

To have such a women-poor cabinet is to either say that you deliberately overlook competent women because you are sexist, or to say there are no competent women in your ranks to promote in the first place. If the latter is the case, whose fault is that?

Or as also precisely stated by Annabel Crabb:

(“That’s just how it panned out” is the traditionalists’ defence of organisations that proudly appoint “only on merit” and find, time after time, that an astonishingly high proportion of the really excellent people also have willies).

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Australia Cannot Afford the Coalition

This isn’t an article about economics. This is an article about something far more precious: Culture.

Australia is losing the best parts of itself and at the speed, this slide is happening we’re going to be culturally bankrupt before we get a chance to save the farm.

Things started to go bad during the Howard years. Australia’s most reactionary leader and government sought to unravel the fabric of the social reforms of the Whitlam era, particularly in regard to the rights of women, whose proper station in life had clearly been forgotten.

What he couldn’t achieve in that specific respect he made up for with his own ideas on how to reverse the progressive trend of the Nation’s growth pattern.

He took our famed and admittedly somewhat exaggerated “egalitarianism” and thoroughly trashed it with middle-class welfare programs.

He is the progenitor of the modern illness of a sense of entitlement amongst the not-so-badly-off classes. He is the force behind the demonisation of people seeking asylum in this country.

He took the long-standing and genuine humanitarian impulses of thinking Australians – from all parts of the political spectrum – and threw them into the frothy wake of a ship called Tampa.

He took the children of moral decency and reason and threw them overboard like so much burly and watched the sharks of racism circle.

He ignited the anxieties of the more conservative and insecure elements of our society with jingoistic rhetoric about border control and who should and should not come to this country.

He openly and brazenly traded in fear and loathing.

It wasn’t just desperate foreign people using desperate measures that he sought to demonise. He managed to do it to all sorts of Australians as well.

First, it was single mothers, the perception of whom he changed to lazy sluts (with a lot of help from pathologically sanctimonious media types like Ray Martin).

Single mothers in the worst financial positions (getting little or no maintenance) received less GST compensation than any other families.

During this time single mothers were perceived as a threat to the institution of marriage itself. Not merely symbolically, but quite literally, at least in Conservative terms. Fifties’ Conservatism.

Then there was the welfare class more generally. Howard gave life and breath to a deranged individual by the name of Pauline Hanson, whose single greatest contribution to Australian culture is the sickly pious and demented mentality of “downward envy” – envy and judgement directed at people who get something that you don’t, even if they have nothing in the first place, or as one analyst put it, “The unhealthy desires of some people to ensure that anyone they deem to be lower on the social and economic scale than themselves, stays there.”

The Liberals let Pauline go soon enough, only to enthusiastically embrace the worst characteristics of her social policy and sell them wholesale to a public keen for a cheap deal.

Howard also allowed greedy, profiteering insurance companies all across this country to make it nigh on impossible for community groups to continue with publicly staged events.

Fairs, fetes, festivals, concerts and markets closed down all across the land. Many have never returned. This particular loss to Australian culture is still being felt today.

Far too little has been made of it. It is a hugely significant matter to communities everywhere because it is precisely these sorts of events that make communities; these are the things that bind and unite.

Howard’s complete inaction with respect to insurance company profiteering was nothing less than cultural vandalism. No effort was made to protect communities legislatively.

Then along came Kevin Rudd and a couple of moderate Coalition leaders and it seemed for a second that things might turn around a little.

But by this time Labor had shifted so far to the centre-right that nothing much was going to change. Some of us thought that at least we might have some respite from the cultural and spiritual decline. No such luck.

Tony Abbott and the Mainstream Media were soon on hand to ensure that no such respite was to be had. There was work to be done. There were institutions to sully, minds to manipulate and demons to exorcise.

If you thought the Howard years were an exercise in abject cynicism, you hadn’t seen anything yet.

Six years of incessant Opposition negativity, mendacity, manipulation, backed, promulgated and codified by a sycophantic media, has reduced this Nation’s heart and soul to a lump of cold, dark charcoal.

No-one can possibly engage in such scurrilous behaviour for an extended period of time and not expect that it will have social repercussions. Political apathy is a real problem in this country and it’s been made worse by the political environment of the last six years.

Labor is certainly not innocent in this, but their role is far less sinister than that of the Coalition and the Mainstream Media.

But lack of political engagement is not something any political party has to fear when the media is on your side. In fact, it’s in the interests of such a party to try and increase it. An ostensibly passive audience can be told most anything and have it be believed.

You simply have to be the one in control of the message. The Coalition has offered the electorate what amounts to a policy vacuum and many have been sucked into it.

Over the last six years, the Coalition has debased the Parliament by their actions and behaviour within those very chambers. Labor’s leadership problems were unfortunate (and not entirely of their own making), but they had nothing to do with the Parliament or the Government per se.

They functioned perfectly well on the Government’s side of things despite the dramas happening in the Party Room. The tragedy is that the Coalition will not be punished in any way for their abject disregard for this Nation’s most significant institution.

The deep cognitive dissonance that has been engendered by a long and consistent campaign to demonise successive Labor Governments will likely be successful. They honestly think they are Pavlov and we are their dogs.

Sadly, the bell will toll for far too many Australian electors. Conservatives use demonisation at every turn. They know this taps into the worst parts of the Australian psyche and they don’t care – or perhaps more accurately don’t see it because that’s precisely the realm they inhabit themselves.

Like an emphysemic lung, the soul of the Nation has been gradually darkened by this mentality and the only available oxygen is laced with a toxic blend of Conservative Carbon and Murdoch Monoxide.

Political cynicism and passivity, a rampant sense of entitlement by those who have no cause to feel it, xenophobia, downward envy, loss of charity, loss of our egalitarian spirit, loss of sense of community, loss of trust in important institutions, loss of tolerance.

These are all facets of the cultural decline Australia has been suffering since the Howard Government. They are all consequences of the Conservative mentality.

It seemed for a moment in 2007 when the Nation flushed the Howard Government down the toilet we’d done so in a moment of genuine insight into what had befallen us.

It’s as though we woke up briefly, but have now returned to our default state of ‘somnambulance.’ At this election, we have the opportunity to slow the cultural slide or to add lubricant to it.

Be in no doubt, an Abbott led Coalition Government will be a return to the Howard brand. A Coalition loss would instead see a movement in their ranks to something more reasonable and moderate, with Malcolm Turnbull at the tiller.

Be in no doubt also that a vote for the Coalition will be a vote for nine months of political and policy chaos.

There is no chance that the Coalition can govern effectively given that the current make-up of the Senate does not change until July next year. The Greens have the balance of power in the Senate.

Just how much of the Coalition’s policy agenda is going to see the light of day? Are we headed for a full election of both houses early next year? The Coalition is certainly chest-beating about that prospect. I guess that’s part of their plan to Stop the Waste.

Will Abbott instead back away from his policy agenda and tear up his “contract” with the Australian people?

Will he indulge in the mammoth hypocrisy and contradiction of doing deals with the Greens? No-one knows.

What we do know is one of those scenarios will unfold and nothing resembling stable governance will happen for the first nine long months of a Coalition Government.

By contrast, the re-election of the Labor Government will mean a neat segue from a static carbon price to a floating carbon price, and in most other respects, business as usual.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Coalition Treachery Cannot Stand

Opinion:

As reported recently in various news outlets, including The Age and recounted here at The AIMN by Rossleigh, it is the Coalition’s intention to hand over decisions regarding the provision of information about Asylum Seeker boat arrivals to the military.

”That will be an operational decision, as part of Operation Sovereign Borders, for the three-star military officer,” Mr Morrison said. ”I don’t think those decisions should be put in the hands of politicians … I think those decisions should be made by implementation officers and I’m quite happy to trust a three-star military officer of our armed forces.”

I don’t especially care who you are prepared to trust, Mr Morrison. What matters is who the Australian people are prepared to trust. More to the point, why the hell is “trust” being mentioned at all?

The more you toss the word around, the more concerned I become. Whenever someone says, “trust me” you have to automatically wonder why. Usually, it means something is being withheld.

As things stand, under Labor, we are privy to all pertinent information regarding boat arrivals. That is how it should be. How can the population possibly make any informed decisions regarding public policy without information?

You are deliberately taking this whole matter, an explicitly humanitarian matter out of the public’s hands. That is utterly unacceptable. Your agenda is clear enough. You want to “solve” the issue by neatly removing it from public view. Out of sight, out of mind.

But it is nothing less than scandalous to attempt to remove the public’s ability to have an informed opinion about anything a Government is doing. You are seeking to exclude the Australian public from the political process.

I can already hear the words “We cannot release details of operational matters” resounding in my head. I assure you, lots of Australians aren’t naïve enough to think that a conversation about this hasn’t already taken place between the Coalition and General Three Stars.

Lots of Australians are not naïve enough to be unaware that every moment of the development of Coalition refugee policy has been an orchestrated affair aimed at making the problem magically disappear.

It was bad enough when you started characterising this human tragedy as an issue of “border security”. It got worse when you militarised our entire response to it. But to now go further and hide the thing under the cloak of a pseudo-military campaign is idiotic and gratuitous.

Make no mistake, that is what you’re doing and we know it. You have effectively declared war on persons seeking asylum. You have effectively put us on a war footing.

What is it about Conservatives that makes them unable to function unless they’re waging war against someone? The procedures and approach you are proposing, and what you have already set down as policy, is taking us down the path of turning Papua New Guinea into our own version of Guantanamo Bay.

Now, you may complain that the analogy is hyperbolic, but the parallels are there. You have consistently sought to dilute the legal rights of Asylum Seekers in direct contravention of established International laws and conventions. You now seek to cloud this whole matter in secrecy. You have expressed a preparedness to not only ignore International law and convention but to go so far as to remove this Nation from its status as a signatory to them. No, my analogy is perfectly reasonable.

In my view, this is nothing less than treachery. It cannot stand. This alone is reason enough not to vote for the Coalition. But more than that it speaks to a philosophy that will inform everything the Coalition would do in Government.

That philosophy is one that will send shivers down the spines of any Queenslander old enough to remember. It is the philosophy of, “Don’t you worry about that.”

Well, as it turned out under Joh Bjelke Peterson we had a great deal to be worried about and the same applies here. It’s a breathtakingly patronising, contemptuous and condescending attitude. You use the language of fear and emergency in an attempt to manipulate the minds of the electorate.

You know if you speak and act in such a way as to make people feel insecure, they will turn to those who offer them security. In such a situation you know you’ll get away with almost anything and that people will set aside natural humanitarian impulses, not to mention reason itself. There is, it must be said, no word in the English language that comes close to properly describing how deeply disgusting that behaviour is.

But perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps you really believe in what you’re doing and saying. Perhaps rather than disingenuous, you are just plain imbecilic. Either way, Australians suffer for it.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

An Open Letter to Fairfax Media Limited

To whom it may concern,

A great deal has been said about the media in Australia of late, especially with regard to political coverage. Most of it has been necessarily and appropriately critical. Many Australians feel that the media has failed them and continues to do so. Not even the people’s ABC has been spared, and rightly so. Its coverage of the current election campaign has been little more than a failed social experiment in journalistic sloth. Essentially reblogging stories from other news outlets regarding polls conducted by those news outlets is hardly journalism. Nor is posting Twitter feeds in the place of actual analysis. But you, Fairfax, are not innocent in this or removed from the public’s critical glare. Fairfax News unashamedly joined the Julia Gillard lynch mob and cheered at the gallows. The negativity that the Gillard Government faced from the MSM, right across the board, was unrelenting. Your anti-Labor leanings have noticeably softened with her departure, but there is still a great deal of work to be done if any kind of balance is to be restored to the presentation of political information and opinion in this country. I presume you care about that.

You would be studiously aware, no doubt, that the main focus of the public’s criticism has been News Corp. The reasons for that are as obvious as the glaring and daring headlines, transparent and tenacious as they’ve been in driving the Murdoch agenda to seat Tony Abbott in the Lodge. It’s surely incontrovertible that the Murdoch press has fully embraced the philosophy and modus operandi of the Tabloid Press. Australia has been confronted for too long with the jaundiced jabbering of pseudo-journalists of the Gemma Jones ilk, who would be far more appropriately assigned to writing gossip columns. Mind you, the difference between that and what is presently being offered as news is one measured in yoctometres. That the Murdoch Media Machine has made this choice, taking some of Australia’s most respected print media outlets with it, is plain enough. What may not be so obvious is the potential benefit that exists for Fairfax in this betrayal of all things intellectually and morally credible.

The gleeful abandon with which the Murdoch Press has thrown off the shredded rags of any vestigial sense of journalistic integrity has been most unedifying. Aren’t there laws about disrobing in public? But whilst the journalists of News Limited indulge in their collective streak across the playing field of Australia’s media landscape, a task goes unattended. A void has been created in the news market in this country, as well as in the hearts and minds of politically engaged and concerned Aussies. That void is simply one of reasoned, objective journalism that does not ignore the code of professional ethics governing it, but instead takes pride, both professional and personal, in adhering to it with consistent authenticity. It is that of a media that does not attempt to obfuscate the difference or blur the line between journalism and commentary or opinion; a media that does not set out to manipulate the perspective or emotions of its readers when reporting news; a media that seeks to report news rather than be the news.

I put it to Fairfax News that they have an opportunity to take that market share and fill that commercial and emotional void. Yes, news is resource heavy and doesn’t attract the profits enjoyed by other facets of the media, but no price can be put on the status and pathos afforded a respected and trusted news service. I assert in the strongest possible terms that in what is commonly known as the Mainstream Media, no such news service exists. You only have to look at the social standing of journalists to know this is true. People simply no longer trust you. And that is nothing less than a cultural tragedy – one that we ignore at our peril.

The demand for real, balanced, ethical journalism is alive and well. Australians all over this land are crying out for it – into their beers and into their keyboards, or in some cases both things simultaneously. The market for it is genuine and not just something artificially generated by the ephemeral passion and pandemonium of an election campaign. The significant rise of alternative on-line information sources is testament to this fact. Rest assured that if the Coalition should prevail on September 7 much of the public is excruciatingly aware – and some of it dangerously and naively unaware – that the Murdoch media empire will not provide the sort of scrutiny of Government that the people of this Nation require and deserve. Current circumstances make that patently clear. Neither the Murdoch press nor the Coalition are going to look that particular gift horse of reciprocity in the mouth. If they did, the stench of the halitosis might well render them as catatonic as Tony Abbott in an awkward interview.

This is a defining moment, I believe, not only in Australia’s political history, but also in its media history. Fairfax has the opportunity to capture not only a specific share of this media market, but also a place deep in the spirit of average Australians. It’s an opportunity for Fairfax to reverse, or at least mitigate the trend of cynicism directed at Australia’s media with respect to news and political coverage in particular. This is not hubris, nor is it excess maudlinism. It’s real. The need is real. The demand for that need to be met is real. Can Fairfax enter that reality?

Now, you may feel you already have a place there, and it’s true that to some extent you do, but you must surely also appreciate that the larger market share for real news and real journalism is not a mere abstraction but something tangible and there for the taking. This particular market, made available by Murdoch’s deliberate and seemingly joyous relinquishment of it, doesn’t require capital investment; it requires intellectual and moral investment. All it takes for that market to be in your hands is to heed the calls of the people and to meet their demands for better quality political journalism. I believe Murdoch has handed this opportunity to you on a gold plated, solid silver platter. Even Bargain Hunt couldn’t put an estimate on its value.

You have before you the opportunity to be the news service that Australians trust uppermost. You have the opportunity to return the craft of journalism to a place of respect in our communities. Please don’t underestimate or dismiss the significance of the absence of that trust and respect in Australian society. It has been socially cancerous. Cynicism is cancerous. Who can the people trust? It seems not the politicians. Nor is it anymore those whose brief it is to cut through the jungle of Machiavellian Madness and give us some clear, unbiased and informed vision into that which effects our everyday lives. There was a time when journalists appeared to feel the moral weight of meaningfully and objectively informing the community. There is a certain sentimental yearning running through the Australian psyche right now with regard to that time. You can either tap into that sentiment and become culturally relevant, or you can strip off and let it all hang out with the cavorting clowns of the Murdoch Circus.

As far as I can tell, only one of those options comes at any real cost.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

And The Winner Is …

This is emphatically not an election campaign about policy. Labor’s are mostly already in place and the Coalition doesn’t have any “big ticket” policies that aren’t frankly a total joke or are heartily rejected by conservative commentators and party members alike. Nor is this campaign about political philosophy or ideology.

It is well-nigh impossible to mount a meaningful argument in contemporary Australia regarding the ideological differences between Labor and the Coalition. The seismic shift to the political right in this country has all but guaranteed its impossibility. It was once a chasm, but it’s been bridged in what is really a quite remarkable feat of political engineering.

Nor again has this vote soliciting boot-sale been about facts. Of course, truth and facts are always one of the first casualties in any political election campaign, but this one seems especially unconcerned with them. Indeed facts are an impediment to most political strategies.

One might suggest, however, that the plethora of media “fact checking” mechanisms belies this assertion, but I’m happy to dismiss such things as little more than media stunts.

Perhaps the only persons who are seriously interested in facts are the Labor supporters who’ve been reduced to wretched despair over the almost complete disregard for them.

There may well be some more moderate members and supporters of the Coalition who also bemoan this facet of the campaign and of the unseemly nature of modern Australian political discourse and debate, but if they exist, they’re not saying much. Or they’re saying it in places I don’t tend to visit.

No, this campaign has been about one thing and one thing only, and thus far it is completely triumphal – the winner is prejudice.

Mind you, it cheated a little bit and got an early start. Prejudice was the major cultural force in Australia well before the election was even called. It had its pre-selection victory in the Seat of Sovereignty when it saw off our first female Prime Minister. I believe in some places it’s still doing a victory lap.

There was nothing of fact or policy or ideology in any moment of that unwholesome dynamic. It was all about prejudice and pettiness of mind. It was also about fear, which is the primary fuel of prejudice. Fear of the new (a woman), the different (an atheist), the unconventional (unwed and childless). Gillard was all those things, but worse, she also knew how to be successful. There can be only one form of response to something like that when it’s feared and it isn’t reasoned argument.

By the time the election was called the cultural dry rot had well and truly set in and bits of our Nation’s political, intellectual and moral integrity had already become flaky. We could not, for example, tell the difference between an actual carbon tax and an industry-based static carbon price, even though they are economically distinct things. We could barely tell the difference between a $100 leg of lamb and the Loch Ness Monster. The mantra of prejudice was well and truly established and just about set in the public’s DNA: Labor Brand Tarnished. Never mind that the slogan doesn’t actually mean anything. The great thing about slogans is they don’t have to.

So, why has prejudice become the front-runner for electoral success in this election? Well, the first thing prejudice has going for it is that it’s awfully vocal; it tends to shout a lot, though often with the aid of visual and auditory devices.

It simply never goes unheard. Its voice may be annoying but it resonates like the piercing call of a Pallid Cuckoo cutting through a still, dark night. You just can’t shut it the hell up and no amount of wishing and hoping can make it so. The second and perhaps most significant trait prejudice has in its favour is that it’s remarkably contagious. It’s a sort of lickety-split Leprosy. You don’t know it’s affecting you till one day your brain falls out.

This election campaign began life with an already deeply afflicted populace. Its colic was congenital. But it was to become a near piffle pandemic. This is what happens when certain members of the public refuse to immunize themselves with facts and information. They spread their jaundice germs all over the place and infect otherwise innocent bystanders, who subsequently become subject to feverish bouts of irrationality and rancid rodomontade. If you combine the two main facets of prejudice in their purist, most virulent form you end up with something like Radio Shock Jock Alan Jones.

Another important reason that prejudice tends to prevail so effortlessly, is precisely because it is so effortless. It requires and expresses a minimum of thought whilst at the same time engendering the feeling of absolute genius in the one who evinces it. It doesn’t require facts, nor consistency, nor logic, nor integrity, decency, humility, reason, literacy, education or a driver’s license or even an 18 plus card. Hell, prejudice even has anonymity on its side. No wonder it’s so damned popular!

I’m not going to indulge in a repetition of the oft’ repeated observations about who and what has spread this insidious disease throughout our neighbourhoods, and we must remember they are our neighbourhoods. But I will observe that it’s difficult to avoid the flu when significant social forces are happy to cough in your face and feed you a daily dose of bacilli for breakfast.

It’s simply my hope that sometime between now and September 7, even as late as polling day itself, people will wake from the delirium of this distemper and have just enough moments of lucidity to see things for what they are and to consider what they are about to do. I hope we don’t allow prejudice to prevail in this election. The damage it has already done to our social fabric is serious enough, but if Louie makes it to the Lodge and finds there’s no Mortein, he’ll have a field day.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Careless whispers nothing to dance about

In my years of being old enough to know what an election campaign is, I cannot recall one so inundated with media tales of what unnamed persons have to say.

The number of stories quoting unnamed Party sources, primarily on Labor’s side of the political coin has been nothing short of staggering – nameless “ministers”, “senior party officials”, “party heavyweights”, “senior sources”, “powerbrokers”, “spokespersons” and the rest of that particular journalistic nomenclature.

It’s been incredible. For my part, I’ve been deeply cynical and skeptical about it. It was much easier to believe that a biased media was just making stuff up. Mind you, in truth, there’s no way to show they are.

Then came the Gillard leadership spill of June 2013, about which there had been whispers aplenty.

On top of that, we’ve come to learn that Kevin Rudd has a weaker bladder than Julian Assange. The journalists were seemingly vindicated.

But that leaves me, as a Labor supporter, with a terrible reality to face: Labor personnel are actively undermining their own party. It beggars belief but it seems to be the only alternative to media mendacity.

Has the relationship between Labor and journalists become too cozy, too personal, too endowed with self-interest and ambition to be tolerable? Or is Labor just politically inept?

Of course, the relationship between politicians and the media is a complex and important one, but I can’t help but think it’s become something corrosive to our political culture and especially dangerous to Labor.

Generally speaking, journalists are supposed to report the news, not be part of it.

Brisbane’s Courier Mail ran a story today posing the question of whether it would have been better for Labor to have gone into the election campaign with Julia Gillard.

Now, the story is pure, tabloid schlock, and goes so far as to use a manipulative photo taken from the funeral of Joan Child (Australia’s first female Federal Speaker), presumably just so they could slip in the Slipper.

It’s not the first time that the Courier Mail, or News Limited generally, have disrespected this sombre occasion in their opinion pieces. But the interesting and pertinent thing about the story is that it contains multiple quotes from unnamed Ministers and “powerbrokers”.

Just two months since the Labor Party dramatically switched its leader, some senior members of the Government are now complaining that Ms Gillard would have performed better than Mr Rudd.

The minister said Ms Gillard would have slowly improved Labor’s vote, while under Mr Rudd it soared and then plummeted.

“One of the questions that will be asked is would Gillard have met Rudd on the way down? In the end, we’ll never know,” the source said.

“She made mistakes, no doubt, and she made mistakes under pressure. But she was much cooler under pressure and she coped with a greater intensity.”

If based on recent history, we’re forced to accept that these quotes are real, one has to wonder out loud: what the hell is going on?

Why would senior Party figures be speaking to members of the Murdoch press in such a fashion at a time when Labor is busily pushing the idea that News Limited is out to get them?

Why would they be saying things to journalists that they know will result in damaging “news” stories? Are they mad? I simply cannot fathom it.

I invite readers to offer their speculations and theories. Heaven knows I could use a theory that doesn’t have me catching flies, mouth agape.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Joe Hockey Manages to Smear Himself

The Courier Mail today ran a story revealing that would-be Treasurer Joe Hockey failed to declare a family interest for most of the duration of his Parliamentary life.

Mr Hockey declared the directorship of Steel Harbour Pty Ltd held by his wife, Melissa Babbage, in May last year among a series of “new positions” under spouse declaration rules. But business records show Ms Babbage was appointed to the role in 1998. Pecuniary interest register declarations are supposed to be made within a month.

What was even more interesting than the seeming disregard for public accountability, was Mr Hockey’s response to the story …

“As I become aware of my wife’s commercial interests I declare them, as is appropriate,” Mr Hockey said.

No, Sir, that’s not good enough. Setting aside the question of what it implies about a relationship that one can go over a decade without knowing about one’s spouses’ Directorships, the rules pertaining to the register of pecuniary interests are such that you have an obligation to ask your wife about them. But what’s most extraordinary about Mr Hockey’s response was his utter petulance, nay arrogance in declaring the revelation to be a Labor “smear campaign”.

Mr Hockey said: “The Labor Party has previously engaged in this type of muckraking and then been forced to correct such unsubstantiated assertions. It is a desperate action from a desperate government.”

No go, Joe. I mean, what “smear”? There’s no indication from you the story is incorrect. There’s no concession from you – at least none reported that I can find – that you erred significantly. No apology. No “oops”. Just a pathetic attempt to pass the buck to those who are simply pointing out that you have failed in an important area of public accountability. Is it too much to ask that you acknowledge the failure and offer at least a smidgen of contrition? It’s not the Labor Party asking this of you, Joe, it’s the Australian public (or at least those that think such things matter).

Earlier this year when Liberal heavyweight Arthur Sinodinos was forced to apologise to the Senate for failing to declare a bunch of Directorships, he at least showed some character. Can you, Mr Hockey, match that? Do you share a similar level of concern and regard for the principle of transparency in Government? It would appear not.

Even if were to come to light that you had expressed some sort of penitence it wouldn’t matter, as trying to make the issue about Labor and “smear campaigns” is a pathetic and cowardly way to attempt to abrogate your personal responsibilities. And you want us to support you as a future Federal Treasurer?

What’s also somewhat tangentially interesting about the Courier Mail’s story, is that despite the fact they were revealing a not insignificant failure on Joe Hockey’s part, they nevertheless saw fit to litter the story with photos clearly intended to show him in a positive way. Happy snaps of him and his wife, culminating in a fantastically irrelevant-to-the-story family shot of the couple and their children.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer my news services, when reporting actual news, to not attempt to emotionally manipulate me, and how else is such a thing to be interpreted?

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Abbott loves Murdoch: a reminder

Within hours of my post “Murdoch hates Rudd: a reminder”, where I predicted that the Murdoch media would turn even more feral towards the Government as the election nears, this front page from the Daily Telegraph is splashed across the internet:

Tony Abbott was quick to kick it along:

For his part, Opposition Leader Abbott, speaking just minutes later, pointed to our “robust and diverse media culture” and said some would be in his corner, some wouldn’t, and one had to “take the rough with the smooth.”

Was he smirking at the time, I wonder? After all, we all know who’s in his corner. Someone he loves deeply, apparently. Thanks to AIMN reader Kaye Lee, here’s a reminder of how deep that love is:

TONY ABBOTT’S ADDRESS TO THE IPA APRIL 5 2013

“John Howard has said that Rupert Murdoch has been by far Australia’s most influential international businessman; but I would like to go a little further. Along with Sir John Monash, the Commander of the First AIF which saved Paris and helped to win the First World War, and Lord Florey a one-time provost of my old Oxford College, the co-inventor of penicillin that literally saved millions of lives, Rupert Murdoch is probably the Australian who has most shaped the world through the 45 million newspapers that News Corp sells each week and the one billion subscribers to News-linked programming.

Rupert Murdoch has sometimes changed his political allegiance but he’s never changed his fundamental principles. At least since the mid-70’s, those have been greater personal responsibility, smaller government, fewer regulations and support for open societies that don’t build walls against the world.

For our guest of honour, as for anyone deeply steeped in reporting, experience trumps theory and facts trump speculation. His publications have borne his ideals but never his fingerprints. They’ve been skeptical, stoical, curious, adventurous, opinionated yet broad minded. He’s influenced them, but he’s never dictated to them – as I happily discovered myself in 1989 while writing editorials in favour of the pilots who were trying to ground the airline that he then half owned. As a transgression, this turned out to be far less serious than spelling his late great mother, Dame Elisabeth’s name with a ‘z’ rather than with an ‘s’!

Rupert Murdoch is a corporate citizen of many countries, but above all else, he’s one of us. Most especially, tonight, he’s a long-serving director of the IPA, as was his distinguished and celebrated father, Sir Keith.”

Political brown-nosing of the highest order, don’t you think?

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

 

Murdoch hates Rudd: a reminder

The Fairfax media and the social media have seized on the ‘rumour’ that Murdoch wants to wipe away Kevin Rudd’s chance of electoral success, in favour of Abbott; a win to Abbott would be a win for Murdoch, financially.

The barrage of frenzied attacks on Rudd from Murdoch’s News Limited media over the last few days gives this rumour some strength.

But this isn’t new. The Murdoch media is well oiled when it comes to attacking Rudd.

Let’s go back to September 2009, courtesy of Mungo MacCallum who wrote the following (reproduced below) in his article Rudd and the Murdoch Press.

“The most powerful man in Australia does not actually live in Australia. This, for many, is just one more reason to fear and loathe him. Much of Australia has never forgiven Rupert Murdoch for putting wealth and power above patriotism and deserting his country of birth to become an American citizen.

Political leaders find it particularly irksome. It was painful enough to be called into the media mogul’s Sydney headquarters, worse still to be invited to his rural estate – ‘Cavan’, near Canberra – to don gumboots and compliment him on his livestock. But to be summoned halfway around the world – to New York or, the ultimate humiliation, to one of his executive bonding retreats at Aspen, Colorado – is almost too much to bear.

Almost … but not quite. Those unwilling to undertake the pilgrimage have only to cast their minds back to 1975 to recall the terrible consequences of offending the Sun King.

The campaign waged by the News Limited press against Gough Whitlam during that year’s election was so brutal and single-minded that a number of Murdoch’s own journalists went on strike in protest. It was also overkill; in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of the time, Whitlam was going to lose anyway. But the Dirty Digger’s Blitzkrieg undoubtedly made the result more dramatic than it might otherwise have been.

No sane politician, let alone prime minister, is going to invite an encore. For this reason, various Labor strategists are starting to worry about the simmering feud between Kevin Rudd and the Murdoch empire, concerned that there is a risk of eruption into open warfare.

Rudd and his colleagues have never tried to hide their distaste for the News Limited style of journalism, more than once accusing the corporation of deliberately distorting reports to favour Labor’s opponents. They have long since given up on some of News Limited’s columnists; you might as well try to convert Alan Jones. There is a particular contempt for what insiders describe as the Axis of Evil: Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun, Piers Akerman in the Telegraph and Janet Albrechtsen in the Australian.

When Mark Latham called Albrechtsen “a skanky ho who would die in a ditch for the Liberal Party”, he was accused of bad taste, but he was actually just summarising the general sentiment of the Labor Party. And Dennis Shanahan – working within the press gallery itself – became a standing joke at the close of the Howard era, thanks to his heroic attempts to read hope for the coalition into a long series of disastrous opinion polls.

But all this is par for the course, what Rudd himself might call the “normal argy-bargy of politics”. In recent times, though, the to-and-fro has become more particular and more serious. Rudd has been able to brush off many of the attacks against his ministers and the policies of his government, but when the concerted forces of the Murdoch press moved against his integrity it hit him where it hurts, both politically and personally.

Rudd is jealously protective of his image as a sincere prime minister.

The Opposition, of course – with the help of its cheerleaders in the media – has tried to portray him as a shallow, malleable politician, lacking both principle and conviction: all spin and no substance. But it is clear that the public does not see him that way. Indeed, a recent letter-writer to the Sydney Morning Herald explained Rudd’s longstanding ascendancy in the polls with one word: Integrity.

So when News Limited threw its considerable resources behind what became known as the ‘Utegate affair’, Rudd cracked. The accusation that he had given special favours to the car-dealer John Grant in return for – of all things – a beaten-up truck, was simply unacceptable and, when the email on which the charge was based was proved to be a forgery, he hit back.

Asked during a press conference for his reaction by Matthew Franklin, who had helped to drive the story in the Australian, Rudd responded in terms rather more measured than he had been using in private:

I think, what a number of people have said to me, Matthew, around the place is where have we kind of got to, when you have major papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser running on their front page that the prime minister of the country is corrupt, and then secondly the editors it seems not having sighted any original document in terms of this email, and thirdly, it turns out that, that email is a forgery, I would have thought a few people would want to know how all that happened, what sort of journalistic checks were put in place for that to be the case, or is it simply being sort of airbrushed from history?

 

I think the other thing which sort of comes up is, I mean, the usual accusations when political leaders respond to factually inaccurate reporting in the media, in this case in those papers that I referred to, is to accuse the political leaders in question of having some sort of glass jaw. It may simply be that what people want is just some basic answers as to how that might have happened, that’s a pretty basic thing.

 

The other thing I saw the chief executive of your own news organisation do yesterday was, in responding to this, indicate that somehow the deputy prime minister was raising these matters because she’d felt set upon by your newspaper over the coverage of the Building the Education Revolution stuff. Well, all’s fair in love and war, I mean, you guys will take whatever editorial position you want on the Building the Education Revolution and that’s been the case.

Rudd described this treatment of Gillard as “journalistic retaliation”. In other words, it had gone beyond Utegate: Rudd now saw it as a concerted campaign.

The Australian immediately struck back: one of its less scrupulous hit men, Glenn Milne, devoted an entire column to vilifying Rudd. And the paper’s dedicated sneer column, ‘Cut and Paste’ (which seems to exist purely for the purpose of trivialising or denigrating views to the left of the soup spoon), redoubled its attacks on Rudd and his defenders.

One of the constant accusations was that Rudd did indeed have a glass jaw: he could dish it out but he couldn’t take it. It is true that, since becoming the leader of the Labor Party, he and his staff have seemed both clumsy and overreactive in their dealings with the media. One explanation may be Rudd’s background in the Queensland arena, where the journalists (“the chooks”, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen once called them) are rather less aggressive than the Canberra press gallery.

The current stoush between the PM’s office and what is arguably the most forceful and influential constituent of the fourth estate is not a good sign. Rudd began, as quoted above, by referring specifically to three of the Murdoch tabloids, but later widened his attack to include “the Murdoch press” generally, perhaps implying that the campaign was being led by the man himself.

This is unlikely: these days Murdoch regards his Australian operations as pretty much on the fringe and allows his editors the kind of independence that their predecessors only dreamed of. An obvious example of this, is Murdoch’s support of the use of short-term stimulus packages to combat the global financial crisis, while his Australian economics writers (Michael Stutchbury in the Australian, in particular) have been highly critical.

Also, Murdoch declares himself a true believer in climate change, but the Australian has become a haven for sceptics and deniers. The anti-Rudd push, if it is coordinated at all, is almost certainly locally driven.

This may not give Rudd much immediate solace, but at least he is unlikely to suffer the kind of vendetta that was the fate of Gough Whitlam. Murdoch may well have disapproved of many aspects of the Labor government of 1972–75, but the ferocity of his onslaught was driven at least partly by a desire for payback.

The Murdoch papers had campaigned vigorously for Labor in 1972; indeed, their bashings of the incumbent prime minister, the hapless Billy McMahon, were almost as ruthless as their monstering of Whitlam three years later. And shortly after Whitlam took office, Murdoch appeared on the doorstep, claiming his reward: he wanted to be appointed to the plum diplomatic post of high commissioner to London, with the proviso that he be allowed to continue all his business operations – including running his media empire – from the official residence on the Strand.

Whitlam, outraged by the demand, refused point-blank and shortly thereafter cancelled a coal mining project that Murdoch had underway in Western Australia, on the grounds of “national interest”. The rest is history.

Kevin Rudd may find it inconvenient to have to make the trek to the United States to pay his respects, but he has reason to be thankful that Rupert Murdoch now pursues his insatiable ambitions from somewhere a long way away.”

Author’s comment:

Did Mungo provide a crystal ball for his readers to gaze into the future: September 2013. Unwittingly, it appears he has. Conversely, he has given us some history to reflect upon. History, that over the next month, will be repeated . . . with venom. We won’t need much reminding that Rupert Murdoch does indeed hate Kevin Rudd. Just keep an eye on his Australian media over the next few weeks if you have any doubt.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Black Swans and Narratives

We’re natural story making machines. We like to give our universe a sense of order and reason, so when something happens, we like to create a plausible narrative on this. Of course, sometimes the narrative is just plain wrong, but if enough people repeat it, it seems to make sense.

For example, many people have talked about “that handshake” as being the defining moment in the 2004 election. Mark Latham’s aggressive handshake with John Howard made the electorate think of him as a bully and not controlled enough to be PM. Of course, this completely overlooks the fact that the handshake probably had little effect on the vast majority of the electorate. If a mistake by Howard or one of his front bench had led to a Latham victory, then commentators would be suggesting that the handshake was the moment where Latham defined himself as a younger, more appealing candidate and made Howard look old and past it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “The Black Swan” talks about the dangers of retrospective analysis. He argues “almost all consequential events in history come from the unexpected – yet humans later convince themselves that these events are explainable in hindsight.” That we, for example, respond as though the events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union were obvious and Reagan’s decisions were part of a brilliant strategy.

Apple’s resurgence under Steve Jobs is well documented. With Jobs’ death, Apple may continue to thrive or may be overtaken by a more creative company. Whatever, the narrative may have Jobs as the guru who was irreplaceable, as someone who imposed such a strong culture that Apple continues to thrive or even as someone whose importance was exaggerated. With hindsight, one of those will be an obvious narrative, but which will it be? That’s the interesting question.

And so with Labor’s leadership change. Will the media begin to speculate about a Turnbull challenge if the polls are poor?

A few people have suggested that Shorten has done himself no favours. Of course, that may well be the case. In five years time – if anyone cares – we may be writing that Shorten destroyed his chances of ever being PM when he publicly backed Rudd. But there are many potential narratives. If Rudd goes close or wins (amazing!), then Shorten will be able to paint his “difficult decision” as what saved the ALP from an electoral wipeout. Rather than be the pariah, he can be the “hero” of the narrative. His ambition is obvious, but whether his decision to back Rudd hinders or helps that decision only time will tell.

At the moment, there is a lot of anger from Gillard supporters. Some feel that Rudd’s negativity and treachery shouldn’t be rewarded. I’ve heard more than one person declare that they’ll never vote Labor again. But when it comes to election day, how many will actually preference the Abbott led Liberals above the ALP? Abbott’s negativity or Rudd’s undermining? Mm, if the Greens don’t get a boost, they may as well give up politics and create a real “Direct Action” plan for the environment.

Rudd may not be the messiah. (“He’s just a naughty boy!”) Last night, Michael Kroger was saying that he was the “worst Prime Minister we’d ever had”! (Where have I heard that before?) He also said that Labor all hated each other. No-one asked him if he’d had lunch with Costello lately, or whether he’d like to provide a reference for Jeff Kennett to take over at Melbourne.

But apart from Kroger, the Liberal’s narrative is now looking more inconsistent than ever. “Rudd was replaced by the ‘faceless men’ – outrageous!” becomes “Rudd was restored by the ‘faceless men’ – outrageous!” Except that in recent ballot it was the actual party that voted for Rudd – no suggestion of external union interference. If anything, the unions backed Gillard.

Similarly, the ad that the Liberals have ready, using quotes from Gillard, Latham, Garrett, Emerson and others, doesn’t quite make sense. Aren’t these the people who the Liberals have told us aren’t worth listening to? But how can they work together? Aren’t these people leaving Parliament?

Even the idea that Julia lied about the Carbon tax and needs to be punished is being blunted by the media. Headlines like “Rudd’s Revenge” may actually help Labor. I know that they’re not intended to. But for some, it’ll be Rudd who got rid of “that woman”, after Abbott was too ineffectual to do it.

How it actually pans out is guesswork. I’m sure that some of the comments will tell me that they know that Labor are still heading for oblivion and that others will tell me that it’s all ok, now Kevin’s back in charge. And some people will be right, but beware the retrospective narrative. Beware the “Of course, Shorten had to do what he did – he saved them!” or “If only they’d stuck with Julia – it’d have be ok!” Some people have announced with certainty that Labor would be thrown out on September 14th and the Liberals had a countdown clock – neither, whichever way it goes, will be true. (Unless Rudd does hold it on September 14th, and loses badly!).

Gillard has done an extraordinary job, under impossible circumstances; history should be kinder to her than the media criticism over the past few years would suggest. But then no-one ever points out that Whitlam left almost no Government debt. Or that “Blue Poles” is now worth many, many more times what we paid for it.

History, someone once said, is written by the winners. Actually, it’s written by the writers. Let’s make sure that the “official” version is not the only voice being heard.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Six of the best

We are at that moment in the election cycle (and given that we have a Labor Government, much to the consternation of a compliant right-wing mainstream media) that we can expect the said media to ramp up its attack on how hellish the Government is while promoting Tony Abbott and his team as political deities. Nothing is more certain. Their efforts to date – as toxic as they are – will pale in comparison to the venom we can expect over the coming months.

Those of the Fifth Estate (social and independent media) are also ramping up an attack, collectively, but with the opposing message: the Labor Government has performed extraordinarily well and the possibility of an Abbott led government will deliver dire social and economic consequences, the likes of which this country haven’t seen for many decades. And may themselves take many decades to recover from.

Those people wise enough to follow the writings of the Fifth Estate at the exclusion of the Fourth Estate (the mainstream media) could not have helped but notice the flood of articles holding the current opposition and their media mates to account. Only the Fifth Estate are providing a true picture of what an Abbott Government would mean to most Australian families, while themselves being gobsmacked at the media’s reluctance to actually ask a simple question of Abbott for fear of the (half-hearted) answer deterring the nurtured voters.

Over the last few days some brilliant articles about the reality of the incompetent media and the prospect of an Abbott Government have been published. I have picked six of the best from sites other than those on The Australian Independent Media Network site that deserve, nay, demand wide coverage. They are all a MUST read. They are all a MUST share.

Here they are, in no particular order with some selected, and hopefully, enticing quotes:

The Political Sword: Political hatred: its genesis and its toll by Ad astra who writes:

Abbott has always maintained that he should have been PM, that the Gillard Government is illegitimate, and that he would do everything in his power to bring it down, something he envisaged would be easy and swift, and The Lodge his by Christmas. That was two Christmases ago, and with each passing day his anger heightened and his campaign of vilification intensified.

Before any of you tell me that politics is a rough and tumble business, that conflict is at its very centre, that such hatred is the norm, reflect on when you have previously seen such intense hatred. We all remember the unpleasant things that were said about some of John Howard’s policies, about some of his statements, about some of his ideological positions, about some of his reversals – ‘core and non core promises’ – even about his eyebrows, but can you recall such a level of hatred, such vitriolic hatred, being expressed? Older readers will remember some of Paul Keating’s colourful language, but can you recall him emitting hatred such as has been directed to Julia Gillard?

I have not witnessed such hatred as we now hear in the language that Opposition members and some commentators use, and see in the angrily contorted faces of Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne, Joe Hockey, Julie Bishop and other Opposition members in parliament and in interviews.

The Failed Estate: Damned Lies and Journalism by Mr Denmore:

The sheer volume of this muck prompts one to ask where journalists stand. For instance, we constantly see deceitful scare stories about public debt, devoid of context. In the case of this boogeyman, the News Ltd scribblers conveniently leave out that to ensure a liquid bond market, gross debt will rise if government issuance is kept at a set ratio to the economy (as requested by APRA, the RBA and other key institutions). They ignore that our net debt is among the lowest in the OECD, and they will ritually overlook that, in the eyes of bodies like the IMF, our debt is of no concern at all. These are facts. They are not ‘left-wing’ facts. They are facts.

Independent Australia: The polishing of Tony Abbott by Clint Howitt:

The intrusion of religion into politics runs counter to the traditional separation of Church and State in modern democracies, but Abbott’s statements and actions have already made it clear that his strong sectarian convictions do encroach on his political role.

Given the controversial positions he has taken on the sensitive matters of the status of women, abortion and gay relationships, it must be of great concern to people affected by these issues that the hard-won gains are likely either to freeze, or worst still, wind them back, under an Abbott government.

Again on Independent Australia: Tony Abbott’s 12 biggest budget reply porkie pies, a gem by Alan Austin:

Observers aware of Australia’s extraordinary economy were stunned to hear Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s budget reply speech on Thursday.

Never so many implied falsehoods, bare-faced hypocrisies and blatant lies in the one presentation since … well . . . since Abbott’s speech at the IPA dinner in April.

Would this be the end of Phoney Tony? Could any leader survive the media onslaught after a hubristic homily with such huge hypocrisies?

Well, not only was media reaction completely devoid of fulmination against the fibs, but it seemed none had even been detected. Somewhat bizarre.

Politically Homeless: Manufacturing Base by Andrew Elder:

This is the point where companies are starting to make investment decisions about the next financial year, and to make long-term decisions for the rest of the decade. We’re at the point where the Coalition should start looking like a confident alternative government, rather than like a bunch of chancers riding their luck. Late last year, The Australian‘s Paul Kelly declared that the Coalition had fifty fully-costed policies ready to go: it’s increasingly clear this isn’t the case, and could well be for Kelly what assertions about Iraqi WMDs were to Colin Powell.

On Turn Left 2013: Tony Abbott announces the Oprah Winfrey of budget replies: You can have free money and You and You, the author writes:

What we witnessed from Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott was the Oprah Winfrey of campaign launches. You can have free money, and you, and you, and you…

Unfortunately Tony was pointing to the Gallery, where his family were watching from, and Gina Rinehart, who was also watching.

Tony’s speech was designed to satisfy only 3 people: Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott.

[Correction: Thursday night was a budget reply, not a campaign launch]

The feedback to the Budget Reply was a little like an episode of Orpah – a buffet of everything.

Tony’s plans to scrap the carbon “tax” to save families up to $300 a year in exchange low-income Australians will lose the low-income super contribution as well as the supplementary bonus paid to people on benefits. Makes sense? Perhaps to a Coalition voter. Although, as NSW Senator Doug Cameron points out, the Liberals are far from economic geniuses.

Six great articles among dozens to choose from, and my apologies to those great social media authors and their articles not included – this time. Your turn will come. To all, keep up the great work. You’re all brilliant. You really do give the mainstream media – dare I say it – a caning.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

So you think Tony Abbott’s going to lead you to the promised land? Think again!

There are some opinions of we ordinary folk that just don’t find their way onto the pages of the mainstream media. Need I tell you what these are? Probably not, for we all know that if our opinions run counter to the media agenda then our opinions are promptly suppressed. Try and say something on Andrew Bolt’s blog, for example. The only arena where Cuppa could express his opinion freely was in the social media.

Cuppa, like us, is one of those good folk who don’t believe for one bit that Tony Abbott is poised to lead us to the promised land. Readers of mainstream media are led to believe that he will. Those people need to hear what others are saying. Such as Anomander who commented here the other day and like Cuppa’s earlier comment, is worthy of a post by itself. Here’s what Anomander had to say:

Just because a series of polls and a biased (manipulated) media say one thing, doesn’t make it true. Look how good the MSM’s predictions were in the US election?

This is a war being waged over the very fabric of our society.

Do we want to live as a serfdom for ultra-rich extremists or do we want our country back again?

Do we want to multi-national overseas companies to rape and pillage the land and strip it of all resources, or do we want to protect the environment for us and future generations?

Do we want a society where you are denied an education because you’re born in a lower socio-economic suburb or your parents don’t earn enough, or should all children deserve the right to the same educational standard and a chance at a worthwhile future?

Do we want a society where the aged, poor and infirm are thrown on the scrap heap when they’ve passed their use-by-date, or do we want a society where those in need are cared-for and supported to get back on their feet?

Do we want a country willing to invest in infrastructure that benefits all Australians or do we want to generate surpluses that are squandered on $3 per week tax cuts and hand-outs to the already wealthy?

Do we want a country where our assets are sold-off at bargain basement prices into private hands and we are forced to pay a premium to gain access to them again, or do we want fundamental services, local employment and control over our own future?

Do we want a future where food and asset prices fluctuate wildly based on the whim of an algorithm running on some supercomputer, or do we want regulation to ensure accountability, responsibility and governance?

Do we want real democracy where we all have an equal voice in how the country is run, or do we want powerful psychopaths dictating what we should see, hear, read and say?

Do we want basic rights, protections, a safe working environment and a wage that allows us to work, live and raise a family without having to forego food, shelter and warmth, or do we want an underclass working for $2 a day, unable to feed themselves, let alone consider raising a family?

Do we want a world where a bunch of fundamentalist zealots restrict your activities based on the words of some sky-god and the writings in a 2000 year old fictional book, or do we want a country where two people who love each other are not demonised and discriminated against?

You sit back and passively accept it, if you wish. For me, I know what kind of country I want to live in, and I’m prepared to fight to make it happen.

All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

Now, just try and find gutsy words like that on the MSM.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

So you’re thinking of voting for Tony Abbott? Think again!

One of the more difficult tasks of being writer is actually doing the writing. You know what to say but you can’t put it together with any eloquence or power. Your endless search for the right words bear no fruit. Then you stumble across a comment on social media that says exactly what you were hoping to say, though perhaps with much less eloquence, but certainly packing the punch. Some things are just better when written from the heart instead of the head.

A comment by well-known and popular blogger Cuppa, on Cafe Whispers did just that and his comment deserves to be a post on its own. It has a powerful message to all those planning to vote for Tony Abbott: think about the consequences. Look beyond September 14. Getting rid of Julia Gillard will give you the real Tony Abbott and it might not be the Tony Abbott you voted for. Victoria Rollison summed it up recently with her Spinach or shit article which summarised:

‘Voting for Tony Abbott because you don’t like Julia Gillard is like eating shit because you hate spinach’.

Before quoting Cuppa’s comment, first a little background. Cuppa, among others, have been engaged with the dregs of right-wing social media brigade for a number of months over their preference for the proverbial shit sandwich without any plausible reason why they don’t like spinach. The response has always been the same: “We don’t like spinach”. You can see a sample of their responses collated by Michael Taylor here and summarised as:

. . . parrot-fashion repeats of what we hear from the opposition and the media.

Anyway, on to Cuppa’s comment:

Just remember this, if the swaggering monkey finds himself propelled into the Lodge, it won’t be YOUR victory. You will be among the losers like the other 99 per cent of us.

It will be a victory for foreign billionaire Rupert Murdoch and the richest woman in the known universe Gina Rinehart. It will be a “victory” for the radical right-wing spewing hate jocks of talkback radio, who pretend to be on the side of ‘the working man’, but are in fact orifice greasers of some of the wealthiest, grubbiest, most powerful people on earth. It will be a “victory” for those sellouts at the national broadcaster who sold out their professional journalistic ethics and impartiality, the Institution which employs them, and the whole damn community they’re meant to serve, a victory in the name of toeing the one-way biased media line of Murdoch, Rinehart and international greed merchants.

When the monkey and his misfits start taking the country apart, the howls of protest will be loud and long. When they start siphoning wealth upwards from you, your relatives and neighbours to those who already have more wealth than they possibly know what to do with, you will start waking up.

When the recessions begin, when the interest rate hikes start to cripple home – and business buyers, and the unemployment figures start climbing, you will learn that you did a bad thing.

As the country turns to a Third World shithole – with clampdowns on freedom of speech, scandals and cronyism at the highest levels, degraded public services, declining health standards, rising mortality rates, armies of poverty, beggars on the streets, shanty towns for the masses, gated communities for the One Per Cent, an atmosphere increasingly clogged with dark noxious fumes – as this happens it will slowly dawn on you that you made a big mistake.

It won’t be your victory. It will be your Mistake. And your shame. Your loss. Your regret. And we won’t let you forget it. You will get no sympathy or forgiveness from us. You will get the blame and contempt due for what you, in your stupid brainwashed partisan spite, did to your and our country and all our descendants already here and yet to come.

That’s if we even see you around here any more when the stuff ups start happening. You’ll have so much to defend and make excuses for you’ll run out of Spin, as monkey brains f*cks up in big ways or small every day.

So enjoy your brief hubris, gibbering morons, the onset of agony is just around the corner . . .

It lacks my eloquence, but well said Cuppa.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button