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Category Archives: Rossleigh

Peter Dutton Still Yet To Deny He Has Shares In Coles!

All right, I have no idea whether Dutton has shares in Coles. Actually, he may have shares in Woolworths for all I know but whatever the truth, you can make a lot out of something that hasn’t happened… Still it would be embarrassing if – after calling for the Woolworth boycott – if it were discovered that he did have shares in their biggest rival.

The whole boycott Woolies thing is rather strange. Perhaps the strangest was a headline which told us that Tony Jones was upset about the lack of Australian flag paraphernalia being sold where he suggested that Woolworths should stick to selling food and not get involved in issues… I found this strange because he was upset because they weren’t selling something that wasn’t food.

There’s quite a bit to unpack with this whole “anybody who has a different view about Australia Day is being divisive and should thank their lucky stars that they live in a free country and shut up and never express an opinion that we disagree with”!

I’ve frequently suggested that rather than celebrate January 26th as the day when a whole lot of boats turned up carrying cutthroats, thieves and bullies, as well as a large number of convicts, we could celebrate the Rum Rebellion which also occurred on this date and where Governor Bligh was sent packing back to England. After all, who could object to the day when some of us said that we should decide our own head of state and we could just get rid of the one that was foisted on us by Britain? Ok, lots of people but I do think that they’re only being divisive…

Another idea I had was that we should treat it like ANZAC Day where we remember the fallen. We could have a moment’s silence where we remember all those First Nations’ warriors who perished trying to protect this country from invasion from a foreign power, just like those diggers at Gallipoli who were invading Turkey to keep us safe. We could demand a moment’s silence and get someone to play the last post on the didgeridoo… When I suggested this to someone they said that it was the most offensive thing that they’d even heard… I’m yet to work it if it was because of my total ignorance of First Nations’ culture or my total ignorance of ANZAC traditions. Whatever, I’m suggesting it because I think it’s something that could unite a whole lot of people in that almost everyone would condemn the idea and tell me that I’m making light of some deadly serious stuff!

To which I could respond by telling them all that it’s because of them that I feel that Australia is a divided nation and if only we could all agree about everything, then it would all be great but as long as I’m around, I’m liable to say at least one thing that someone objects to and thereby uniting the nation…

Anyway, back to boycotting Woolworths…

I’d have to say that, as far as good ideas go, they never go far enough to reach Peter Dutton.

There are a number of problems with Dutton suggesting this boycott apart from his condemnation of previous boycotts that were suggested by the left, and apart from the idea that a politician should be telling a company to do something that they don’t believe is in their commercial interests, and apart from the fact that people can get their flag undies and capes from sources other than Woolworths, and apart from the slim possibility that it could lead to job losses, and apart from the fact that if Woolies were to give in to him it would make him look like the sort of dictator that we don’t want running the country, and apart from Coalition rhetoric about governments not interfering in the free market because it’s better left to its own devices and … anyway, you get the idea.

No, the basic problem is the politics.

As I see it, there is a minority of people who whole-heartedly support Australia Day celebrations, just as there is a minority of people who are upset that we celebrate it on the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet, but the majority don’t actually have a strong opinion either way. If they’re asked if they’d like it shifted, they’re more likely to think that it’s a convenient time for a day off and say no, in much the same way that if you asked them if we should shift Christmas Day because we’ve found out that Jesus wasn’t actually a Capricorn and his birth was actually in October, then they’d find probably say that they like it where it is and so what if Jesus is a Libran, Christmas isn’t about astrology anyway…

Whatever, it’s not a hot button issue for most voters and when you jump up and down and call for boycotts over something that most people don’t care about, then you tend to lose them. It’s worth remembering that one of the narratives that the Coalition are trying to push is that Albanese was obsessed with the Voice and he was ignoring the cost-of-living problems facing everyday Australians. Now, notwithstanding the idea that it may well be possible for a government to handle two things in a given year, it doesn’t do your case much good if you call for a boycott on a supermarket chain for reasons other than their prices being too high.

I mean it’s a bit like Tony Abbott suggesting that he doesn’t see why there shouldn’t be Prime Ministerial visits to Taiwan: It tends to make a mockery of the “Airbus Albo” stuff. “We think he shouldn’t be travelling overseas as much as he has but why doesn’t he go to Taiwan? Is he sucking up to China to help our exports?”

 

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Look What Those Marxists Have Done To Our Money!!

In my change today I received a new dollar coin and it had King Charles on it which is just fine. However, those communists in Canberra have him looking to the left when his mother always looked to the right. Obviously this is some left wing plot to suggest that we should all turn left…

Ok, ok, it’s all right! I know that tradition dictates that each new monarch faces the opposite way and the idea that it’s some sort of Marxist plot is so ridiculous that not even Ralph Babet could fall for it… Although when I think about it, he’s had some pretty weird ideas.

Ah, good old Ralph. Someone once told me that it’s often stressful to be the smartest person in the room, so I guess that means that Ralph must suffer terribly if he finds himself alone.

Actually, he did say one thing recently that I agree with: “If you don’t take an interest in politics you end up being governed by your inferiors!”

Maybe the cross benchers in the Senate like him aren’t actually governing us, but still, I can see his point.

Anyway, we’ve reached that time of year when the party which believes in small government and says that it would be great if governments stopped telling people what to do, suggests that there’s something wrong with local councils not holding citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day and, if it were up to them, they’d be forced to not only hold the ceremony but it would be compulsory to wear Australian flag thongs and underwear for the whole day.

Yes, I read somewhere that these local councils were being political. Imagine that, a local council being political! Aren’t they meant to be like the ABC and completely neutral and do nothing except make sure the bins are collected and rubber-stamp any development application from a Liberal donor?

On a side note, I did read today: “There are reports of an explosion in Texas where 10 people were injured by ABC News.” Yes, I know that it’s not our ABC but I do think that the reporters sentence structure was a little ambiguous.

I guess it doesn’t help if you’re expecting consistency from people. Just look at Sky News and the Liberal Party. After years where the Right have called people “snowflakes” and suggested that we should all stop being offended and refrain from calling for things to be cancelled, up pops someone who’s terrified of a badge worn by a Qantas worker.

Harrison Grafanakis – who is apparently not part of the Liberal Party because he removed the Liberal Party connections from his LinkedIn profile after people were pointing it out – was “intimidated” by a female worker wearing a Palestinian flag badge. And he didn’t feel safe because, well, they were doing political activism and Qantas has taken money from the government and done political things in the past and, you know, it’s scary when people take money from the government and express a political opinion…

He must really need a change of underwear when Gina and the miners run ads on television, or when pharmacists go to the public gallery of Parliament and shout, if a badge can have such an effect. Poor little snowflake… Or is that nickname only appropriate if you get upset about racism or sexism.

In what can only be considered anti-semitism, the media pointed out that Harrison wasn’t Jewish. Why anti-semitism? Well, it tends to suggest that he could have been ignored if he was Jewish, doesn’t it? Or why else was this relevant?

Again I wonder why some people want to dismiss people as “activists” when they disagree with them. Well, obviously they’d prefer the opposite: people who are passive and never object to anything they do.

But there does seem an amazing turnaround for all those who complain about cancel culture and want the right to be able to do and say what they like without government interference, when they’re making the commentary, but call for sackings whenever a worker does something they disagree with.

It’s almost as funny as when Andrew Bolt complains about the “outrage industry”!

 

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A Trip Down Memory Lane And Nostradamus Needs To Take A Backseat…

This appeared as one of those links to similar articles and, as it was written about ten Defence Ministers ago, I’d forgotten all about it. You can be the judge as to how much I got right… Ok, not very much, but I’m happy to put be judged on my inaccurate forecasts, unlike much of political commentary we hear…

It’s 2024 And Not A Royal Wedding In Sight

As one gets older, one is immediately confronted by the shock of dates… No, I don’t mean going on them… Although that would be quite a shock too. I mean, the shock of when someone says something like, “When the GFC hit ten years ago…”, you tap your watch and go, “Ten years ago, I’m sure it was just this morning”.

It’s with this thought that I am buoyed by the fact that the Federal election will be held any moment now and next year’s Hot Cross Buns will be appearing.

Of course, the other thing that age does is makes you wary of predictions. As I often remind people ninety percent of everything is very predictable, but it’s that which lulls into a false sense of security and gives us the shock when we actually have that Black Swan moment like Brexit, the election of Donald Trump or the Liberals releasing a coherent policy on jobs.

So, in spite of this, I’d like to peer into the crystal ball and annoy all the rationalists who insist that I have no psychic powers by telling them that I knew they’d say that.

A Peek Into The Future

It’s 2024 and there’s not a Royal Wedding in sight, although there’s a lot of speculation from royal watchers that Prince George may be dating. There’s also a lot of speculation from Republicans that the whole Royal Family idea has already dated, but the recent death of the Queen means that it’s too soon to mention the idea that Australia should hold another referendum on the Republic. Similarly, in Britain, there is discussion about whether the Queen’s death should result in Charlies now becoming monarch or whether they should just embalm her and wheel her out for public ceremonies as Her Majesty is still more popular than Charles.

Meanwhile, in the USA, Kanye West has become President on his platform of eliminating all mention of slavery and the promise to rename the State of the Union Address: “At The House With The Kardashians”.

Australia has just spent twenty billion dollars celebrating the tenth year of Coalition government. The 2018 election was surprisingly lost by Labor after Peter Dutton’s Border Force arrested all Labor candidates as a threat to national security.

The 2024 Budget reminded us all how many jobs had been created and how the unemployment rate had been reduced to zero with the idea that anyone who spent their time breathing could be considered fully employed. The Treasurer repeated the oft-quoted line that “the best form of welfare was not to complain too much” because complaining got you nowhere. In reporting this, no journalist mentioned that – in fact – complaining could get you quite a long way. Deportation, if you weren’t a citizen. Citizens, of course, still had the right to complain so long as they did it quietly enough that nobody reported them for Sedition.

The 2024 Budget also announced measures to counteract poor people forming companies to take advantage of the government’s company tax arrangements. After cutting zero company tax rate to minus ten percent in 2021, some poor people formed companies so that they too could be given money simply for existing. In abolishing this loophole, the Treasurer told us that poor people were only here as a cautionary tale and if they got money for simply existing, then it would encourage more of them to exist. Henceforth, only companies that made a profit would be given money from the government and any shelf companies which existed purely as a scam would be outlawed unless they could show that they were part of a multinational company tax minimisation strategy or had a history of political donations to approved parties.

 

Ok, it may all sound far-fetched, but go back just three years and tell me if you’d have believed me if I”d written Donald Trump will be President, Prince Harry will marry someone in “Suits”, Tim Paine will be Australian cricket captain and the Budget will be in surplus by next year…

 

Actually, that last one still sounds a little dodgy, but Scott Morrison said it so he’d hardly risk looking ridiculous by getting it wrong. Although I guess, he might still think that he could use the old “We don’t comment on operational matters’ that worked so well when he was Minister for Sinking The Boats.

 

Why Climate Change Is Not A Problem!

A lot of people don’t seem to be able to distinguish between weather and climate. The climate is what happens over the long term, whereas weather is short term event. A reasonable comparison would be to consider a tennis player such as Coco Gauff. While she’s currently ranked number 3 in the world, there’s no certainty that she’ll win any individual match. However, it would be reasonable to predict that she will win several matches in the next six months and if she were to lose all of them, you’d have to say that there’s been a significant change in her form. In terms of this analogy, her ranking is like the climate while her performance on any given day is like the weather…

Of course, tennis players do find that their “climate” changes over the course of their sporting lifetime, so the analogy only works in a really limited way so if Ms Gauff doesn’t win anything in the next few months you’d have to say that the climate has changed and that it’s no longer a case of weather/whether she wins or not… which is rather like the way that certain politicians look at climate change.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that climate change isn’t really likely to be a problem, because the real problem with climate change is what it does to the weather and, after years of reading how mankind is too insignificant to affect the climate, I’ve recently learned that we can, amazingly, control the weather.

Yes, a number of people have been posting on social media that the recent storms, such as Cyclone Jasper, were much stronger owing to an alliance between the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO to push the climate action agenda by making these storms worse. Of course, I can’t see it because I’ve been vaccinated, but nonetheless, now that it’s been pointed out to me, I’m happy to surrender any plans I had to get an EV and to buy a Hi-Lux before the legislation that the Albanese government snuck through before Christmas takes away my right to pollute the atmosphere with noxious emissions…

Yes, it does seem strange to me that – after years of telling us that none of our actions could possibly affect the climate – I now find that we have the power to control the weather but I guess that’s probably just my inability to think clearly owing to all those Covid vaccinations which have changed my genetic makeup in ways that I don’t understand owing to my inability to think clearly…

And yes, it does seem strange that Ralph Puppet of the UAP is outraged that the government should bring our noxious emissions into line with the EU because it’s our god-given, 42nd Amendment right to breath in fumes that are definitely no health concern at all even if the legislation refers to noxious emissions because who is to say what is noxious?

But hey, lots of things seem strange to me. As I’ve often said, it’s reasonable not believe everything that the politicians and media tell you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t believe anything that they tell you. For example, when we’re told that Barnaby’s time as a drought envoy cost over $625,000 we can believe it, but if Scott Morrison were to tell us that it was great value for money because of what it saved by keeping Barnaby away from the bar at Parliament House, then we should be sceptical… Note, sceptical, not dismissing the statement out of hand if He of The Many Ministries said it.

I’ve often thought that some people like to believe in conspiracy theories because they’re strangely reassuring. The idea that there’s a group of people with a secret plan controlling things is far more reassuring than this idea that it’s all as random and chaotic as it appears. Ok, they may be evil and self-serving but it’s less of a worry than the idea that people like Joe and George W and Donald and Boris and Scotty and Barnaby and Liz Truss and Vladimir and Benny and Tony and others are really in charge of things. I mean, it’s scary that Peter Dutton was once in charge of Border Force but it’s even scarier that he is the best person that the Liberals have to lead them in Opposition.

Without a shadowy cabal of people both clever enough to take charge of the world – as well as being clever enough to hide it – then this world is a dangerous place and if you know anything about quantum physics, you’d know that the whole thing could just disappear at any moment… ok, just to be clear when I say, “clever enough to hide it”, I mean from anyone who doesn’t actually go on the internet and find out that it was all exposed by the published minutes of some body or other like the UN… Sort of like that moon landing which was shot in Walt Disney’s backyard in Technicolour as a way of marketing something like Annette Funicello or Uncle Jimmy…

Mm, there’s a whole lot of stuff there that needs unpicking for anyone who used to watch the Mickey Mouse Club

Anyway, I don’t know how we can insure for flood damage when water is a natural thing – like carbon dioxide – and it’s necessary for plant growth – like carbon dioxide – and you can never have too much of a good thing so how can too much carbon dioxide be bad for anyone? It’s like suggesting that noxious emissions are noxious…

Maybe the conspiracy theorists have something going for them, after all!

Mind you, when the nurse asked me whether I’d watched “The Matrix” and when I said that I’ve never understood why we had to learn to multiply matrices in school, she asked if I wanted the blue injection or the red one. Then I asked her if anyone can tell the difference after they’ve agreed to their particular injection of choice…

 

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Why Rupert Murdoch Is Not The Devil…

Ok, so this is just an obvious joke which you’ve probably heard:

It’s wrong to call Rupert Murdoch the Devil! I mean he may have done some pretty nasty things but he’s never been as lacking in ethics as Murdoch…

One of the difficulties I have when I look at the current state of the media in this country is working out to what extent that the particular journalist is running an agenda where they don’t care what the truth is, or whether they’re actually as stupid as they appear.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arrogant enough to think that anyone who disagrees with me is ignorant and dull-witted. And, of course, when you have billionaires and multimillionaires owning sections of the media, they will be appointing editors who share their worldview. It’s not necessary for Richie Rich to dictate to Hass Noebbels what slant to give a particular issue. Rich knew that Noebbels supports a small government, low tax, pro-MAGA agenda; he wouldn’t have appointed him otherwise. And, in case you think I’m being sexist with my pronouns there, well, isn’t that just the sort of thing you woke people would say, and that’s exactly why you’re not editing the paper…

It’s no surprise that the editors of the papers owned by the one percent are also owned by the one percent, so, as the joke goes, if Anthony Albanese were to walk on water across Lake Burley Griffin, the Murdoch headline would be: ALBO CAN’T SWIM! The idea that papers push the agendas of big business when they’re owned by big businesses is no more a surprise than if the ACTU bought out a media company that they’d appoint an editor with a pro-union background, rather than Andrew Bolt.

The surprise is that some people don’t seem to agree that the ABC should be more left leaning than media companies that are unapologetically right wing in order to provide the balance that’s in its charter. Similarly, if all the media companies were suddenly taken over by socialists, then the ABC should be more pro free market than the rest of the media. The ABC should be presenting the both the views of the rest of the media AND some alternatives.

So it’s rather strange the way ABC has framed some stories in their news bulletins…

Actually it occurs to me that it’s strange that we use the term “stories” when talking about news items and never take a step back to consider that a story is something with a narrative which is often fictional…

Anyway, the lead is frequently something along the lines of “The Government has been criticised over its announcement/decision/action.” However, when you are given the substance you find that nearly all the criticism is from the Opposition and groups affected by the decision are either ambivalent or mildly supportive. It’s not that the position of the group of Abbott disciples shouldn’t be included; it’s simply that, by making it the lead, it sounds like the government is coming under fire from neutral observers. It’d be like announcing “Breakthrough in male pill condemned as dangerous!” only to find that it was the Pope who is merely reiterating his Church’s position on birth control.

And the lack of pushback from the idea that the Voice Referendum was a “disaster” certainly demonstrates a lack of balance from our ABC. Now if it were the proponents of the Voice pushing that narrative I could understand it. However, the idea that it was failure is predominantly coming from those who opposed it. This only needs a moment of reflection to see how weird it is:

  • Are they opposed to the holding of referendums? If not, why is it a “disaster” when the status quo is maintained?
  • In a time when people are struggling with the cost of living wasn’t the $400 million plus cost of the referendum a good way to put money in people’s pockets? After all, where did the costs go? Workers employed by the electoral commission, printing, advertising and various other things which would have put money into people’s pockets…
  • Or are they saying that it was a disaster because people listened to them and voted accordingly?

Whatever one thinks of the current government, I’m worried about the way that the ABC seems to be going along with the whole politics as a sporting contest thing. You know, we’re not analysing whether it’s good or bad policy, whether what people are saying is factually correct, all we’re interested in is who scored and who’s in front and whether the pitch will respond to spin now that the pace attack has failed to remove the minister.

While it’s not entirely true that the media never look at the veracity of claims, it’s usually done as a gotcha moment. Just like when the politician is asked the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” question. A yes is bad but a no is worse, and the politician has to be on his or her toes to answer without actually saying anything. Even a question such as, “Why have you changed your mind on this?” is loaded with the implication that any human who has discovered new information and decided that a different path would be worth following is far too wishy-washy to be ever trusted, whereas a pig-headed ignoramus who never admits to being wrong is the sort of person that we need. For some reason I just remembered that Rupert has recently hired Tony Abbott…

When Peter Dutton said the quiet bit out loud about how he wasn’t interested in making it easy for Labor to govern, surely that should have been the signal that he’s not interested in working with them to improve conditions for all Australians by mitigating their poor policy. In other words, Dutton was saying that he wants to screw things up as badly as he can in order to improve his chances of being elected. While he may not be the first Opposition leader to think that way, there’s a danger with making it too obvious. You might as well say, “Yes well, this is a great idea and very much needed but we’re going to try and block it because it might make the government too popular!”

 

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A Quick Merry Christmas…

Ok, I didn’t notice quite as many people complaining about Christmas being cancelled this year and aggressively saying that they’d say: “Merry Christmas!” to people whether they like it or not… It may have been because thanks to the fact that Labor is in power, they had so many other things to complain about… like the fact that Labor is in power and the election is still a long way off…

Although Clive Palmer’s ventriloquist dummy in the Senate, Ralph Babet, did send out a Christmas message where he complained about people dividing the community by saying things like “Happy holidays”, and if there’s one thing he can’t abide it’s people who divide us when we all should be one country with one flag and one point of view… which just happens to be the one that he has.

Whatever, I’m going to wish you all a Merry Christmas… even Mark Latham who was X-ing a thought – and I use the word loosely – about the Sydney rain and how this meant that bushfires were unlikely so those Greens were wrong for the fourth year in a row. Of course, he ignored the fact that they were right in 2019 when we had so much of Australia burning that our Prime Minister had to retreat to Hawaii for safety. Still, if you’re going to chastise a political opponent for getting things wrong, it weakens your case to admit that they have occasionally got it right. Either way, I’m not sure that rain in December necessarily means that we’re completely safe from bushfires before the summer is out. After all, the Ash Wednesday bushfires were in February… Still that happened last century and Mark has a way of ignoring anything that happened a long time ago… Like the fact that he was in a different political party… or the fact that he was gloating that he and Pauline were still buddies and all the lefties were wrong and they stayed buddies until Mark become too offensive even for her after being deemed too offensive for Sky After Dark a few years before that.

So Merry Christmas from me, Mark, because I’m wishing everyone that no matter how much of a tosser they are. I’m full of the warmth of the Christmas spirit and I’m not referring to any eggnog brandy or other cocktails… One thing I’ve always said about cocktails is that they tend to be exaggerated so one shouldn’t listen to them any more than one should allow anyone to upset one’s day on Christmas. If your Uncle Brian happens to be telling you how great it was that the Voice was defeated, just smile and nod and tell him that it was defeated so he should just stop using his because we all voted against him speaking… It’s not true but it’ll confuse his argument long enough that you can bring up something like how good it is that Collingwood were premiers which will get him talking about that if he’s a Pies supporter and if he’s not, it’ll annoy him more than anything so he’ll complain for ten minutes how a free kick paid/not paid in Round 16 was the only reason that they won…

Whatever, try and have a good day and if you’ve been good, Santa will give you lots of presents but if you’ve been bad, Matt Canavan will give you a lump of coal.

Merry Christmas!

X

 

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Peter Dutton And Albo’s Special Sort Of Weakness…

Interviewer: Tonight we have a spokesman for Peter Dutton because he wasn’t available so we have Noah Dear to explain what Mr Dutton meant when he complained about our decision not to send a ship to the Middle East and said that it took a “lot of effort and a special sort of weakness and incompetence for our Prime Minister to turn his back on our closest ally, a decision that could only be welcomed by Hamas (a listed terrorist organisation).” Good evening, Mr Dear.

Dear: Good evening. Yes, it’s a shameful decision and a weak decision. I mean we’ve never turned our backs on the United States. Whenever they’ve asked us to be involved in any war anywhere we’ve always done what we were told and anything less is, well, pretty weak, frankly.

Interviewer: But the government says that they’re more concerned about what’s going on in the Pacific. Shouldn’t that be our focus?

Dear: No, our focus should be whatever America tells us is our focus. As Mr Dutton said, it’s pretty weak when you don’t do what your greatest ally tells you to do.

Interviewer: So you’re suggesting that refusing to do what the USA tells him to do makes Mr Albanese weak?

Dear: Exactly. He’s not standing up to the people who think that we shouldn’t be sending a ship to Middle East.

Interviewer: And who are those people exactly?

Dear: The left of his party. I mean there’s never been a war that they supported… If it was up to them we’d have never gone to Vietnam to stop the communists from invading and we’d be overrun by Marxists.

Interviewer: Don’t some members of your party think that we have been overrun by Marxists?

Dear: Yes, so?

Interviewer: Doesn’t that suggest that going to Vietnam didn’t stop them and it was pretty much a waste of time?

Dear: Waste of time? That’s an insult to all the people who died protecting our freedom.

Interviewer: But by sending a ship to the Middle East aren’t we risking the lives of young Australians?

Dear: Yes, great, isn’t it? Give them a chance to die and preserve the legacy of people dying so that we can thank them and say that people died protecting our freedom so how dare you abuse their memory by saying something that we disagree with…

Interviewer: Why did he add the bit about the decision being welcomed by Hamas? After all, it’s the Hootsi pirates that the ship is meant to be warding off.

Dear: Well, they’re all on the same side, aren’t they? Hootsi, Hamas, Iran, university students, China, the ALP…

Interviewer: I see… Leaving that for the moment, I have information that certain people in Defence didn’t want the ship to be sent because of our limited capacity. For example, it would tie up more than one ship because we’d need to have another on its way to replace it and then we’d need a third one to replace that while the first one was returning home. Also the pirates in the Middle East are using drones and we have a limited capacity to protect ourselves against drone strikes.

Dear: Well, I don’t know if that’s true but if it is doesn’t that suggest that the Albanese government has been asleep at the wheel?

Interviewer: But your party was in power until last year.

Dear: Now you’re just spouting Labor Party talking points. I mean the idea that our current leadership team is responsible for anything is just nonsense. Peter Dutton wasn’t the PM, David Littleproud wasn’t the Deputy PM, Barnaby wasn’t paying attention, Sussan Ley was trying to solve the housing crisis by buying up more investment properties, Stuart Robobert was trying ensure that any debts that people owed were paid back whether they owed them or not … None of them are responsible…

Interviewer: So you’re saying that they’re all irresponsible?

Dear: Yes… No… Look, I’m saying that Labor are in power and it’s up to them to fix things and not to attempt to blame others for what they haven’t done.

Interviewer: So it’s Labor’s fault and they shouldn’t seek to shift the blame?

Dear: Exactly. We’ve never tried to shift the blame even though most of things that went wrong are the direct result of Tony Abbott’s inability to accept that he won the election and actually had to get on with governing, or Malcolm’s inability to lead because it was a condition of becoming PM that he promised not to move the party to the centre, or Scott Morrison’s inability to move at all because he was posing for a photo. We’ve just accepted that it’s time to move on and we don’t want to look back and talk about what we did or didn’t do. It’s time to forget the past unless we’re talking about how the Rudd/Gillard years are the worst government we’ve ever had apart from this one and the Whitlam one.

Interviewer: So you’re prepared to take some of the blame?

Dear: Only when it’s actually our fault in some way and, so far, it never has been.

Interviewer: I see. On another matter, in order to clean up all those nasty rumours swirling around on the Internet, why did Peter Dutton leave the police force?

Dear: Honestly, is there no level that you won’t stoop to? He left for personal reasons.

Interviewer: There was a story in one paper that it was because he’d had a car accident and he was afraid to drive.

Dear: Even if that were true, it’s terrible that you’d resort to a personal attack like that…

Interviewer: I was just giving you the opportunity to set the record straight.

Dear: It’s just typical of you lefties! You have nothing to offer so you attack the person. It’s pathetic! It’s weak, just like the PM is weak. You resort to name-calling like when Albanese said: “Sit down, Boofhead!” to Mr Dutton. I mean, he was terribly upset and it took great courage to sit down after that. Mr Dutton is a lovely man and insults hurt him…

Interviewer: Some might say that sounds weak?

Dear: That’s a terrible thing to say. Accusing the leader of political party of being weak is not appropriate…

Interviewer: I was just asking the questions and giving y…

Dear: Well, you should think long and hard about what you’re doing because if we were in power you’d…

Interviewer: Yes?

Dear: Never mind. It’s been a pleasure.

Interviewer: But I haven’t finished…

Dear: You will be once I ring your boss!

 

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While Vegans Go Without Meat, Albo’s Dog Gets It Regularly!

Hopefully that won’t be picked up by someone on Sky and become the story of the week… Or given that the Liberals are going to great lengths to paint Albanese as such, the story of the weak…

Whatever one thinks of the current government, one would have to say that there’s a concerted effort by certain sections of the media to attack them with whatever they can find no matter how ridiculous the beat-up.

So Samantha Maiden breaks the story that Albanese’s dog, Toto, travels with the PM on overseas trips. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with that no matter who the leader was. I think it’s good that politicians have pets to calm them down and – even if they’re prepared to go to war and kill people who are less than human in their eyes – remind them that in any war the pets will suffer too, so I have no problem with anything that might encourage empathy… In fact, I’d have a bigger problem with Toto getting his own VIP jet or being bunged up in some fancy kennel that charges more than some hotels.

Next we have the story about Albanese tasting a $500 wine while on holiday in WA. This has somehow morphed into suggestions that he’s drinking $500 bottles of wine, and this is all paid for by the taxpayer. While I don’t know the actual circumstances of his tasting, I do know that people are often given wine tasting by winemakers at minimal or no cost. Amazingly, I once tasted a bottle of wine that was $85 about twenty five years ago… and in those days, that was enough for a deposit on a house… ok, not a very large deposit but I’m writing this story to make a point and anything misleading I can do to make my point is just good journalism!!!

I get it. The media want to make the point that politicians are out of touch and it’s only by listening to down-to-earth people like Gina and Rupert that we’ll fix this country and that people will be happy to be earning $2 a day because it’s all about getting enough experience that you can work your way to the top by kissing their bottom.

But, honestly!

If you want to attack the Labor government, then pick on them for their inability to simply say to Peter Dutton that they’re not playing his racist games when it comes to immigration policy. Or their approval of coal and gas mines. Or attack them for not raising the payments to the unemployed by enough.

Not things that are just absurd, such as when Labor were accused by the Coalition of covering up when they knew about the cover up that the Liberals did with Brittany Higgins. In the end, in much the same way that I don’t care what a surgeon does in his spare time. I don’t care if politicians are wearing Gucci or drinking expensive wines. What matters is how well they operate and whether the operation makes things better.

If the media were attacking Labor for improving relations with China when we should be doing everything possible to ensure that they stop importing our goods and sending students here, then I could understand it. If they were to suggest that their economic management was terrible because they’ve delivered the first surplus in fifteen years, then it would make sense. Or if they suggested Labor have an unemployment rate so low that it’s putting pressure on the RBA to raise rates, then there’s some logic to it.

But focusing on wine tasting makes no sense unless you compare it to every other politician’s wine tasting habits. Strangely they didn’t criticise Senator Price for actually drinking $300 bottles of champagne on the Voice was defeated.

I know it’s a lot to ask for consistency from people. Just this morning I read something on social media where a climate change denier was suggesting that Cyclone Jasper was being “manipulated” by those people that are trying to push the climate scam… The climate scam being that there is no climate change because nothing we do can affect the climate… The weather is – apparently – a different story.

Just like all those people who are suddenly concerned about marine life and how offshore wind turbines will upset whales when they’ve never worried about such things in the past. Just like people who complain that solar panels and wind farms are “eyesores” but open cut mines and the smoke from coal-fired power stations are things of beauty. Just like those pushing for nuclear power are quite ok with storing the waste while they tell us that there’ll be a problem with storing the solar panels and wind turbines once they’ve reached their use by date.

Can’t wait to see what the next exciting offering from Samantha Maiden will be. Which of the following seems most likely:

  1. ALBO REJECTS TRADITIONAL PUDDING ON CHRISTMAS DAY
  2. TOTO DOES NOT DENY RUMOURS ABOUT HUMPING CUSHION
  3. DUTTON ACCUSES LABOR OF BEING WEAK FOR DOING WHAT HE SUGGESTED
  4. DUTTON ACCUSES LABOR OF BEING WEAK FOR NOT DOING WHAT HE SUGGESTED
  5. ALBO IN SECRET TALKS WITH PRINCE HARRY ABOUT BECOMING GOVERNOR-GENERAL

 

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All Lives Matter But Not Equally…

If you cast your mind back to the Black Lives Matter protests and remember the response from some was: “All lives matter!” and the argy-bargy about how could such a simple statement be racist.

Of course, sometimes it’s not what’s said but the context in which you say it. For example, if a work colleague tells you that they’ve just lost their grandmother, it’s not fine to say: “Yes, it’s been a terrible day all round. The left lane was blocked by road works and it took me an extra twenty minutes to get to work today.”

While what Usman Khawaja wrote on his shoes may seem innocuous enough, it’s the context that matters. I mean, it’s hard to argue that “All lives are equal” and “Freedom is a human right” are controversial statements, the fact that it’s happening at a time when the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza is being debated makes it a political statement and some people get terribly upset when sportspeople make political statements… unless, of course, they’ve just been offered a pre-selection for the party that the person who’d normally object to sportspeople doing anything more than running, jumping and catching balls votes for.

I even saw a couple of comments on social media hoping that Khawaji got a duck in both innings and I have to say that comments like that are so un-Australian that I feel that whoever made them should be deported…

Whatever it’s clear that the writing on the shoes was meant to convey support for the Palestinian people. Clearly by suggesting that all lives were equal, he’s suggesting that somehow Israel’s response to the October 7th atrocities was also an anathema and that killing people is never justified when we all know that the best way to bring peace is to kill a lot of people who’ve done something bad and – unlike you – when you kill people on their side, they are more inclined to just forget the whole thing rather than fight back.

Ignoring the whole Gaza situation for a moment, I’d have to say that I’m finding the Opposition’s recent tactics rather interesting. It seems that focus groups have told them that Albanese is perceived as “weak” by some, and so they’ve decided to hit this button as often as possible.

It may be an effective tactic.

However, there is a big problem with just constantly hitting the same button for two reasons:

  1. The first is that it’s pretty easy to anticipate the tactics and have a counter strategy. If a tennis player has a weak backhand and you always attack to their backhand, then they’ll soon either work to improve it or simply run around onto their forward because they know where the ball is going. If a football or basketball team always pass it to the same player to score, then it’s easier to cut it off. If you keep saying that a politician is heartless, it’s easy to get a puff piece of how they always visit their mother on Mothers’ Day. And if a politician is weak, he simply needs to find some way to demonstrate strength… like doing something heartless which The Greens will attack.
  2. The second is that it ends up lacking nuance and eventually you end up attacking something which most people support or where what you’re attacking just sounds ridiculous. You can suggest that people should do more to help themselves and that you believe in personal responsibility but when you try to suggest that someone who’s lost their leg should learn to stand on their own two feet you demonstrate the same careful thinking that made Tony Abbott an ex-PM…

All of which brings me back to Australia’s vote at the United Nations. To suggest that voting against the USA and Israel and supporting the ceasefire is weak lacks all traction when your friends in the media and you attack it. Added to that the fact that most Australians are tending towards support for a ceasefire, even if they were appalled by the attacks by Hamas.

Don’t get me wrong. Australia’s foreign policy is only partly what we decide and partly what’s decided for us. In the case of the UN vote, it may well be that we abstained a few weeks ago for fear of upsetting certain allies (such as the US), but we were quietly told that it wouldn’t be altogether wrong if we were to come to our own decision and to put pressure on Israel because the US doesn’t want to do that… at least, not publicly.

And so, the Coalition will be attacking Albanese as weak at every opportunity which gives him the great opportunity to say that he doesn’t care what they say because he’s tough enough to ignore what they say and to get on wth the job just like we’ve done at the recent COP meeting where we stood up to the fossil fuel lobby and pushed for renewables. (Ok, the reality of what we’re actually doing may not match the rhetoric but it won’t be Peter Dutton and fiends calling him out on that!!) To suggest that Albo meekly followed the rest of the world in doing something about climate change when our party is suggesting tripling nuclear energy in Australia – which means precisely nothing because three times zero is still zero – is not the winner you think it is.

As I said before, it’s all about context. You may get some traction with some people who care more about sport than politics when you say the two shouldn’t mix. And they may agree that they hope that Usman Khawaja goes out cheaply. But you might find that they don’t appreciate you cheering if he goes out in the fourth innings when Australia was nine wickets down, needing just two runs to win!

Sometimes people may get the impression that Dutton and his band of smiling assassins enjoy it too much when things go wrong.

 

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Marxists, Liberals, Socialists And Education Are A Poor Mix…

Is a Marxist, a socialist? And If the Nazis were the National Socialists does that mean that they were left wing because they had the word “socialist” in their name? And if the Nazis are socialists, does that mean that US Republicans should despise the Liberal Party because of the word “Liberal” in their name and we all know that liberals are responsible for evils like women’s rights and books in libraries? And should we consider that Nationals suspiciously because they share at least part of their name with the National Socialist Party or Nazis?

That’s your essay topic and you need to write it in less characters than will fit on a tweet so you can inform everyone of your opinion and change their mind with a thoroughly explored, reasoned argument. (Just to explain: I saw a comment on The Platform That Used To Known As Twitter before Elon Who Used To Unknown Before He Showed Why Nobody Should Be Allowed To Have More Money Than Functioning Braincells and I know that I can no longer say that I saw a tweet because that is inaccurate and some pedantic person will point out that I shouldn’t have called it a tweet so I’m calling it an X because if Twitter had tweets then X should have Xits and clearly Elon should have an exit but… >sigh<)

Just to help:

Marxism: Surprisingly, not a series of ideas developed by Groucho Marx and John Lennon about how capitalist society was doomed and only humour and music could save it. In fact, it was developed by a German whose family was so ahead of its time that they converted from Judaism to Christianity because they could see the writing on the wall once Wagner, Nietzsche and others wrote the sort of socialist propaganda that suggested that not all men were created equal and various other things that Hitler used to create the idea that the best way to eliminate racism was by eliminating everyone who wasn’t a blue-eyed blonde. Of course, this would later lead to the expression, “You should take a good look in the mirror…”, but Adolph was immune to irony.

Liberalism: A philosophy which argues that people should be free to do anything that person arguing believes to be ok, and that people shouldn’t interfere with the rights of others unless the person arguing thinks that the person doing it has a moral right to do so. For example, I should be able to shit next to your table at dinner but your objection is an infringement of my rights and part of the whole political correctness gone made and cancel culture.

Nazism: A right-wing political movement from pre-WWII Germany which has since been redefined as left-wing because right-wing politicians espousing similar policies, didn’t like being called Nazis.

Education: Something which is meant to be occurring in schools. From time to time it does, but whatever the results, politicians and the media will say that they’re not good enough, and if only teachers stopped asking students to think and told them what to think then we’d all be ok, unless they told them to think the wrong things, in which case they’re Marxists and they shouldn’t be introducing politics to the classroom…

Ok, I saw an X the other day…

Oh, I hope I don’t have to explain the whole tweet/twitter problem again because you weren’t paying attention or because you’ve forgotten it because it was several paragraphs ago…

Anyway I saw a thing on that thing which asked (without a question mark): When did Australia become communist.

And I couldn’t help but wonder how I missed the revolution. I mean I can still remember the Skyhooks singing:

Whatever happened to the revolution
We all got stoned and it drifted away
Whatever happened to the revolution
I think it died just yesterday

Whatever happened to the revolution
We all got stoned and it drifted away
Whatever happened to the revolution
I think it died just yesterday
I think it died just yesterday

Well I remember back in Nineteen Seventy
The army wanted you and the army wanted me
There was a war goin’ on we were out in the streets
Wearin’ our badges and stampin’ our feet

There’s a hundred thousand people all on my side
We didn’t care if we lived or died
Hundred thousand people going to make it come
Hundred thousand people had the man on the run

Everybody thought we could win with a vote
So the band went home without playin’ a note
We forgot about that war but it still went on
I’m alright Jack see you round so long
I’m alright Jack see you round so long

And now today everyone’s a bit older
We’re gettin’ richer but we’re gettin’ colder
We’re lookin’ for somethin’ that just ain’t there
And it don’t mean nothin’ to have long hair
So when you’re ready to make a stand
Open your mouth and raise your hand
When you’re sick of your parties and sick of your sweets
Get off your arses I’ll see you out in the streets

Of course, it’s harder to get out in the streets these days… and I don’t just mean because my hip’s acting up. They’ve got laws that mean you can be arrested for protesting unless you’re wearing black and saying that you’re protesting to make Australia white… seems confusing to me… but I’m finding it hard to understand most things.

Like, why are some people innocent until proven guilty but anyone who was released from indefinite detention who has assaulted someone not being prefaced with the word “alleged”? Is it because we just know they’re guilty or is it because they don’t have the means to sue because they don’t have a large enough income or someone prepared to give them a blind trust…

 

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Nearly Half Of School Students Below Average!

Now, I’m going to divide you into two groups here:

  1. You read the headline and were appalled.
  2. You read the headline and immediately realised that in any large group it’s likely that half will be below average.*

And, of course, it’s not that those of you in the first group lack basic numeracy or statistical skills; it’s that you probably didn’t think before reacting.

This week I read a few articles about our failing education system. These were written in response to the latest PISA results. Actually to be fair, I suspect that many of them were written before the PISA results came out because the conclusions overlooked the fact that Australian 15yo students ranked ninth in the world in reading and science, but a shocking tenth in maths.

In reading the conclusions about our education system I couldn’t help remember the “Herald-Sun” article after NAPLAN results which talked about how the lockdowns had led to devastating results for Victorian students. The only problem was that in nearly every table Victorian students were first or second but in true Murdoch media fashion never let the facts get in the way of a good attack on whatever the latest thing you want to get people all agitated about.

Now let’s be clear here: Education is a complicated business with a large number of KPIs, very few of which are generally accepted by everyone. Schools will be judged on NAPLAN, ATAR, and a whole range of tests which most people know nothing about such as PISA, but then they’ll also be criticised because kids are leaving schools without the necessary skills to make their prospective employer happy. And what about these life-skills that people should be taught at school? Not to mention manners… I mean, those kids on the train last night… Then you’ll have some politician complaining that schools aren’t teaching kids values and every school will get posters of Simpson and his donkey and a list of Australian values, before a couple of years later, politicians complaining because schools are indoctrinating students and the classroom should be values free and politics should be left out of the classroom which is a problem if the subject is Legal Studies or Politics…

Yes, Sally got an ATAR of 99.4 and got into Law but she started using drugs and is now in rehab and Freddy got an ATAR of 99.2 and got into medicine but he dropped out because he couldn’t handle the pressure but they’re still a great success story in terms of the school because no school is judged on what their students do five years down the track, unless it’s one of those exceptional things that probably has more to do with the student themself than anything the school did.

The concerning thing, however, was the great divide between those with wealthier backgrounds outperforming those “less-privileged” families…

It’s a great euphemism, isn’t it? “Less-privileged”… It sort of implies that you are privileged but not quite as privileged as those who don’t have to worry about things like money, food and shelter…

Anyway, this was the cue for “The Australian Financial Review” to editorialise about how tossing money at education had failed and Gonski reforms hadn’t worked and teachers should be taught how to manage classes and go back to all the things the research shows work and it’s all really simple. I could point out that the Gonski proposal to fund all schools to a minimum standard was never fully implemented but, again, let’s not let facts get in the way of the argument we want to make. I could also point out that, generally speaking, most of the things that simplistic editorials argue schools should be doing is what schools are doing. I could also point out that – like all science – when people talk about doing what “the research tells us works”, there’s a lot of research and not all of it agrees with each other but tell me again that teachers are quite determined to ignore what works because they all like being criticised for poor results…

It’s always interesting that any so-called failures in education lead to calls for less funding, but, if the security forces failed to predict a terrorist attack, there’d be calls for more funding. Similarly, if hospitals had patients left on trolleys or not being treated in a timely manner, we’d expect more funding. More road accidents doesn’t lead us suggest that we spend too much on repairing roads and eliminating black spots. Only in education does an “unsatisfactory” performance lead to a call for cuts.

It also interesting that the same politicians who argue that money isn’t important when it comes to education, are outraged if it’s suggested that the private school they went to might be able to do without the third practice room for their orchestra.

So in a similar spirit, I offer this editorial to corporate Australia:

“While some companies have made large profits, some companies have been less-privileged. To those companies I say that the time has come to abandon what you’re doing and to go back to what research says is best for companies which is to do thing that makes you profits and stop all this following the latest fad and asking for tax concessions because just throwing money at the problem won’t work!”

*This is not necessarily always true. Sometimes there can be outliers so large that they distort the figures so that average is meaningless and the median is a much more reliable number. For example, if Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and I were all on a plane, my presence would bring down the average wealth to the point that everyone but me would be above average wealth for the duration of the journey. If Elon Musk were to step out of the plane mid-flight, it would bring down the average wealth on the plane but improve the state of the world generally.

 

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Warning: STRONG DENIALS AND VEHEMENT NUDITY!!

Recently I saw this alert on a film I was about to watch which warned me:

STRONG NUDITY

And I couldn’t help but wonder if there are films with weak nudity…

And if there are, exactly what constitutes weak nudity. Is it people who don’t have abs or pectorals? Or is it nudity where the rudest bits are hidden by appropriately placed pot plants?

Whatever, I immediately thought of this video I saw a few days ago, where Ralph Babet talked about how masculinity was under attack before explaining how the left hate strong males, and I couldn’t help but wonder if someone will ask him if he prefers strong males and we’ll have a whole lot of confusing debates about homophobia and LGTBI rights until Ralph says something which gets him even more publicity.

Words are strange things I also keep reading about Bruce Lehrmann and how he strongly and strenuously and consistently denies what is alleged to have happened…

Now I’m not making any comment about the substance of his denials because he has the right to the presumption of innocence. And if he says that he’s not guilty, well, the law is on his side. And, after all, if you can’t trust a man who’s honest enough to admit that he’s lied to his boss, about the whisky and on the Channel 7 interview, then who can you believe? Certainly you can believe Channel 7 who told us that they didn’t pay him for the interview which is true. The fact that they paid for his rent for a year or so is not the same as paying for an interview so you can certainly trust them when they broadcast the news…

When I was a teacher, we’d occasionally get an email at this time of year reminding us that we couldn’t accept expensive gifts worth more than a few dollars. I suppose I could have reminded my students of this and added that this didn’t preclude access to a holiday house or free use of a car should any of their parents want to ensure that their child received that marks that someone with such caring parents deserved…

Speaking of education, I noticed that a Senate committee expressed concern that the behaviour of some students in schools was nearly as bad as politicians during Question Time.

But back to the way people use words.

What strikes me as weird is the idea that when people are accused of crimes that the denial is strenuous or strong. You know the sort of thing, “Mr X issued a strong denial” or “Mr Y strenuously denied the accusation.”

Like I said before, are there films with weak nudity? Are there times when a media report says: “Mr Smith lethargically denied all charges”? If an accusation gets to court, the defendant isn’t asked if he or she pleads Vehemently Not Guilty, Passionately Not Guilty, Strenuously Not Guilty, Partially Not Guilty or Guilty.

I started to think about this in everyday terms. For example, if my wife were to ask if I drank the rest of the red wine that was sitting on the buffet and I replied, “No, I had a sip and it had definitely gone off so I tipped it down the sink!”. it seems a reasonably response which is quite possibly true. Either way, there’s no proof and unless she finds a way to do extensive forensic testing, then any suspicion that I’m lying is unlikely to be proven that it’s best to assume that I’m telling the truth.

However, imagine if she were to ask me and my response was: “No! I strenuously deny drinking the wine. It’s just not true. There was far too much wine there for me to drink in one sitting and I’m outraged that you’d even think such a thing!”

I can’t see that the passion of my protestations of innocence has anything to do with my guilt or innocence, so I don’t know why people have to add adverbs that have no real meaning into their statements. It’s not like we have a rating system where strenuously is better than strongly and vehemently tops them all.

 

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Why Anthony Albanese Must Go!!

Don’t you just love the ambiguity of language?

I mean it helps so many clickbait articles and while people who read me regularly will know that I never use clickbait and that I’m as honest as the day is long… Although I was born on June 21st which is the shortest day of the year…

(As an aside, I noticed that Piers Morgan denied ringing Camilla regularly. I must say that I believe him because, well, I don’t ring my wife regularly. Sometimes I’ll do it several times a day; other days I may not do it at all. That’s certainly not “regularly”… Language is a wonderful tool for obscuring meaning.)

So when I say that Albanese must go, I am – of course – referring to the various overseas trips that he’s required to take as Prime Minister, not that he must resign.

Still, the “Airbus Albo” thing seems to be gaining some traction. The Coalition are whining that he shouldn’t be going overseas and that he should be staying here to deal with the cost-of-living crisis… which, according to the Coalition, he’ll only make worse by doing any of the things that Labor have implemented so far (cheaper childcare, two months’ worth of prescriptions at a time, attempts to increase bulk billing rates).

This is not to say that the cost of living isn’t a significant issue and it’s certainly something that Labor should do something about. However, it seems that the current Labor government seem to be adopting the strategy of change as little as possible and maybe they’ll be in power long enough to make all the changes they want over the long term…

Of course, in saying that I am reminded of what have the Romans ever done for us? Ok, apart from introducing the anti-corruption commission, establishing a dialogue with China leading to the removal of tariffs and a prisoner being released, giving citizenship to that family from Biloela, increasing subsidies for childcare, tightening the safeguard mechanisms on emissions, and delivering the first Budget surplus in fifteen years, what have Labor done?

Yes, they’re not perfect and, yes, saying that they’re better than Scotty, who’s major achievements included building a chook-shed and stopping a child from scoring by tackling him to the ground is a pretty low bar.

However, there seems to be a strange narrative in some of the media which goes:

“Labor’s decision to (INSERT ANNOUNCEMENT HERE) has been criticised.”

Then you discover that the criticism is solely from the Coalition and not any of the people affected by the announcement who all seem in general agreement. Alternatively, the criticism is coming from people with a vested interest. You know the sort of thing: a company says that they’re not underpaying workers but this decision to investigate whether they’re underpaying workers will cost them millions and possibly force them out of business.

Of course the media should report criticism of the government and hold them to account, but when the lead story is not the announcement itself, but the criticism from the people who would be critical if the government announced a plan to reduce road accidents because of all the panel beaters that will have a reduced income, then the media starts to resemble Fox News at its worst.

Notwithstanding the fact that many people are finding it tough going, the media’s seems to be using the word “crisis” more frequently since Labor got elected. Housing crisis, cost of living crisis, etc. And to be sure, there are many people who need help but at what point does the number of people needing food banks or housing go from a concern to a crisis?

Whatever, the media are all agreed that Labor should do something… But not tax cuts because that’s inflationary. Neither should they give direct help because that’s inflationary. And they certainly shouldn’t spend anything because that’s inflationary.*

Perhaps the fundamental problem is the one I identified in my headline: While the media have an obligation to report the truth and to let us know what’s going on, they also have a need to attract readers, so they consequently spend a large part of their time trying to drum up the sort of story that seems exciting even if the substance is as misleading as my “Why Albanese Must Go!”

I am reminded of the front page headline from “Truth”, a now-defunct paper: “EX-NUN OPENS MASSAGE PARLOUR”. This clickbait from the days before clickbait existed went on to tell the reader on page 3 that the ex-nun was someone who’d studied to be a nun in her early twenties only to quit many years previously. She now worked as a cleaner where part of her job was to open the brothel and clean it.

We should all know by now that the story will rarely be as interesting as the headline and if you see one telling us: “BRUCE LEHRMANN TO DISCUSS APPEARING ON CHANNEL 7’S THE VOICE“, then we should know that it’s probably a discussion between Bruce and whoever took that excruciating video of him singing “I fought the law and Bruce won”… (I wonder who leaked that to The Australian… Mm...)

We should also know that rather than having a mature discussion about the problems associated with Stage 3 Tax Cuts, we’ll merely be discussing whether Labor should break its election promise not to touch them and how risky it will be politically.

And we know that attempts to run power lines over people’s property to connect renewables to the grid will be treated as a political problem and the objections will be treated with more respect than the people who object to fracking.

*Latest inflation figures came in less than expected. I guess this means that the news will either be that the approach is working or that Labor is tanking the economy and we’ll have a recession.

Guess which I’m putting my money on!!

 

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Gina Urges Students To Go To Work; Bullock Urges Dentists To Pull More Teeth…

The actual headline in The Australian Financial Review was

“Send miners to parliament and students to work, Gina Rinehart says”

Now, I can’t help but feel that even they found Gina Rinehart’s speech a little over the top, but it is hard to tell. Anyway, Ms Rinehart did have some pearls of wisdom in her sermon.

Apparently, “Platitudes and press releases move precisely zero tonnes of iron, copper, nickel, rare earths or any other mineral.” An observation that I found less than educational because I already knew that moving such things requires heavy machinery. However, as Gina was talking to a bunch of mining executives, it makes me wonder how out of touch they are.

Speaking of out of touch, did you happen to catch the transcript of Reserve Bank Governor, Michele Bullock’s, latest pearls of wisdom. Inflation is apparently now “domestically driven” and it’s the service industry that’s particularly showing this. To quote the RBA Governor directly:

“Hairdressers and dentists, dining out, sporting and other recreational activities – the prices of all these services are rising strongly…”

She went on to suggest that it was easier for businesses to raise prices rather than increase output. Call me economically ignorant but I fail to see how an interest rate rise will encourage dentists to pull more teeth or hairdressers to take more off the top.

Still, if people have no spare money, they may just decide not to dine out or get their teeth fixed. In the latter case, this may lead to them working less efficiently and losing their job. This would go some way of achieving Bullock’s aim of increasing unemployment to the sort of levels that would discourage workers from seeking pay rises that almost keep pace with inflation and stop them going out to dinner, going to sporting or other recreational activities, leading in turn to more lay-offs and more unemployment. While that seems like a shame, as the RBA head told us, she only has the blunt instrument of interest rate rises and she’s got to think of what’s good for us collectively…

Just like Gina who understands that getting rid of ridiculous red tape that stop people mining wherever they damn well please without having to check whether there’s some reason not to:

“Now I’m suggesting something in addition, encourage and support people from our industry, to put themselves up for parliament. We need strong people in government, not afraid to stand up for common sense, and for mining.”

She urged her audience to spend fifteen minutes a day advocating for mining. I think she could have added that they should also spend a further fifteen minutes praying to the god of production asking him to remove all obstacles to production such as politicians that she doesn’t own and laws that she doesn’t like.

Anyway, she went on to praise Peter Dutton as an outstanding leader, which is odd because all I remember him leading is the failed coup against Turnbull that led to Scott Morrison being elected Liberal leader and the current opposition. (Speaking of Peter Dutton I noticed that he recently argued that, unlike our current PM, Scott Morrison didn’t go overseas when he was needed here… Given that Scotty secretly snuck off to Hawaii during those bushfires, it does tend to suggest that Peter Dutton thinks that Scott Morrison was never needed here… or anywhere!)

She also attacked today’s youth for being work-shy.

“Too often today, youngsters who’ve been to uni don’t want to do work they think is below them, and want to jump into senior roles for instant success skipping the hard metres, perhaps with the feeling that their private education or time at uni means they should pick and choose what work they do. I think part of my success was, despite a private education and, with what was required back then, high enough marks to get into uni that this didn’t give me such an attitude.”

Now I’m sure that a part of Gina Rinehart’s success was having the right attitude. I mean plenty of people who inherit millions from their father and a trust fund worth billions don’t go on to become the richest woman in Australia. And it takes a lot of work to make sure all those politicians kiss your ring… I was going to say something about Gina working her way up from the bottom but maybe it’s the other way round.

 

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The Motion Of Peter Dutton And Other Moving Thoughts!

The other day in Parliament Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton moved a motion which linked Prime Minister Albanese’s overseas trips to the rise in anti-semitism and the High Court’s decision that holding people in detention forever wasn’t consistent with the Constitution. In moving this motion, he made a speech and I’ve been searching for it on the internet but all I could find was the following which – given I found it on the internet – must be in some way accurate. Even if it isn’t I can repeat it because we have no laws about misinformation so nobody should have a problem if it’s not completely true:

Mr Dutton:

Mr Speaker, this is a time for all Australians to band together and ensure that we don’t allow the Labor Party to divide us. Labor, The Greens and those inner-city elites tried to do that with the Voice but we managed to silence them and I’m glad that we stopped something that would have been divisive but our work won’t be done until we’ve rid Australia of every person who would divide us.

Recently, the High Court made a decision and the government has failed to respond it decisively because the Prime Minister has been out of the country. If I were in charge I would have pre-empted the High Court and already had legislation to prevent the Court from making decisions that aren’t in the national interest. People need to be aware that the legislation that the High Court trashed has allowed people who are the worst of the worst to be released from indefinite detention. Their crimes include rape, murder and political activism – these crimes are made worse by the fact that none of them are Australian. Just like those African gangs that made Melburnians afraid to go out to dinner, these people are particularly scary because they’re not your average Aussie criminal like Chopper or Ned Kelly.

And we all know who’s causing the divisions in our society. It’s those people who don’t agree with John Howard. As he told us, unless people are prepared to give up this multicultural nonsense and accept that we are one nation, under God, then Heaven help us because it’s when people disagree with his vision of a united Australia all voting for the one party that we have problems.

So I call upon the Prime Minister to abandon any plans to travel anywhere and to stay at home so that he can deal with the rising antisemitism as well as the rising cost of living brought on by his failure to rein in the crippling inflation or to stop interest rate rises.

I call upon the PM to censure anyone suggesting a cease-fire because that would only help the sort of people that he’s failed to keep under lock and key just because the High Court said that he can’t. If he were any sort of leader, he’d ignore the High Court because if there’s one thing that a Prime Minister should do it’s to punish those who don’t believe in the rule of law. All lawbreakers should be locked up forever unless they’ve donated to the Liberal Party.

Rather than go to some talk-fest overseas, I’d urge the PM to call an urgent meeting of the National Cabinet so that I can complain that he’s trying to circumvent the Parliament.

This motion further calls on the Prime Minister to:

  1. Understand that his role is to heal division by condemning Hamas and banning members of his government from criticising the Israeli response or calling for a cease fire.
  2. Demonstrate strong leadership by introducing whatever legislation we tell him to.
  3. Demand that China withdraw from the United Nations and give their spot to Taiwan.
  4. Reaffirm his support for the Stage 3 Tax Cuts.
  5. Cease reminding people that any on this side of the House were ever in government because it causes division.
  6. Ban the Aboriginal Flag because that’s what the people voted for when they voted No.
  7. Withdrew any legislation relating to misinformation because it will lead to massive job losses in the Murdoch and Nine media companies.
  8. Refuse to pose for any photo shoots.
  9. Appoint Scott Morrison as Ambassador to Israel to prevent any leadership challenge.
  10. Agree to vote with me when I move that the member be no longer heard.

Like I said, we have no misinformation laws, so it doesn’t matter whether that’s what he actually said. Whatever, it’s close enough.

 

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