Stan Grant has made it known that he is quitting ABC television Program Q&A. In a heartfelt piece published by the ABC he said that “On Monday night I will present my Q+A program, then walk away. For how long? I don’t know.”

His time hosting Q&A has not been without controversy as with the time he took the extraordinary step of expelling a member of the audience from the studio after the young man, named Sasha, expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This decision was greeted by cheers from the studio audience and met largely with approval on Twitter, although some saw this as an attempt to restrict freedom of speech and communication on this serious global conflict – you be the judge.

Grant was also part of a panel discussion prior to the coronation of Charles III and some, again on Twitter, castigated him for trying to direct the conversation towards colonisation and the wrongs inflicted on the Aboriginal people at the instigation of the British monarchy.

Stan also has a problem with the ABC for not being more supportive of his situation even though they have registered a protest with Twitter about the amount of abuse directed towards Grant much of which is in the form of racial hatred. ABC Managing Director has also personally apologised to Grant.

But it’s not just Twitter, data obtained by the Guardian from media monitoring firm Streem has found that there were more than 150 mentions of the ABC’s coronation coverage by the Australian and Sky News in the two weeks since the broadcast.

That included 18 mentions in the Australian online, four on Chris Kenny’s program, three on Sky News’s media show, and two each on Bernadi, Outsiders and Paul Murray Live.

Q+A host Stan Grant standing down from ABC show after racist abuse

That coverage included the Australian’s media writer Sophie Elsworth on Kenny’s show describing the ABC broadcast as a “pile-on” and “hate-fest”. Outsiders hosts Rita Panahi and James Morrow said the ABC’s broadcast was “over the top”, “race-obsessed” and a “woke bin fire of self-loathing”.

The ABC did not specifically call out Sky News or the Australian but we know that Murdoch outlets will never miss an opportunity to attack the public broadcaster. Indeed SKY has a media show weekly that seems to be fashioned around denigration of the ABC. A spokesperson for the ABC indicated that the ongoing coverage of the coronation broadcast could “clearly generate or contribute to fuelling abuse” that had led to racist attacks on social media.

Grant, has been the sole host of Q+A since August last year. Before that he had been one of three – alongside Virginia Trioli and David Speers – who shared hosting duties from August 2021, following the departure of Hamish MacDonald, who also cited social media vilification as a factor in his decision to quit.

It was only weeks ago that ABC morning television host Lisa Miller received a barrage of personal abuse on social media evidently related to what she had been wearing one morning. She is clearly a strong woman and took the opportunity to make an on-air statement which read, in part :

“I’d like to take a minute to talk about what went on during the last 48 hours. If you’re blessedly oblivious and you’ve just been getting on with your life – great! – I won’t dwell on it,” she said.

“The fact that what I wore on Monday attracted obnoxious commentary on Twitter – foul disgusting personal abuse that I couldn’t and wouldn’t repeat – was upsetting.”

She clearly found the episode personally confronting as Grant has found the racist comments hurtful but they are by no means the only public personalities in Australia or elsewhere to be personally attacked on social media. As far as this commentator can ascertain, the main delivery vehicle for this abuse is essentially Elon Musk’s Twitter. Whilst the Murdoch media takes every opportunity to attack the national broadcaster, clearly the problem is not just Sky and The Australian. The ABC is used to attacks from the Murdoch minions and is more than capable to fight back. Twitter (and it is mainly Twitter of the various social media players) on the other hand seems to have no effective moderation and since Musk took over it seems that it has taken a deep dive into the global sewer.

So, I pose the question : do we really need Twitter ?

So, we are approaching the anniversary of Arthur Phillip’s epic voyage from England to Australia, arriving in January 1788. He chaperoned eleven ships with fifteen hundred souls onboard, roughly half of whom were manacled, half way around the world. A voyage that, in its dimensions and its impact is up there with those of Columbus and Magellan, even the Mayflower.

“I came upon the prison ship
Bowed down by iron chains
I fought the land, endured the lash
And waited for the rains
I’m a settler, I’m a farmer’s wife
On a dry and barren run
A convict, then a free man
I became Australian”

We know that in August 1770 Lieutenant James Cook had claimed the East Coast of Australia as New South Wales, on behalf of George III : that’s what you did in that era at a time when Britain had very little in the way of ‘possessions’ in the southern hemisphere and there was much competition.

It is rarely recorded that the French, in 1772 planted a flag on the Western portion of this continent in the name of Louis XV. On 28 March 1772, the Breton navigator Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn landed on Dirk Hartog Island and became the first European to claim possession of what is now Western Australia as Australie-Occidentale Française.

In both instances these competing colonial powers realized that you can’t just plant a flag and leave a jar of coins and express a few pompous sentiments to acquire a new possession or colony. You actually had to occupy the land either as the result of invasion or by peaceful settlement with or without the consent of any existing inhabitants.

“I came from the dream-time
From the dusty red-soil plains
I am the ancient heart
The keeper of the flame
I stood upon the rocky shores
I watched the tall ships come
For forty thousand years I’ve been
The first Australian”

The English had adopted the rather dodgy concept of Terra Nullius to justify their acquisition of territories on the basis that the land belonged to no-one – a legal concept used by the British government to justify the settlement of Australia.

As one of Irish heritage I tend to be somewhat ambivalent about being invaded by the English and we probably don’t need to get into whether it was an invasion or a settlement or an uninvited occupation. What is clear is that the colonial powers of the day saw it as their right to seize the land of others, frequently in the name of a monarch and enthusiastically supported by their chosen deity. This happened on every major land mass on this planet, with the Americas and Africa featuring prominently not to overlook the Indian sub-continent and many parts of Asia. At least in Australia, Christian conversion was not the primary driver for Arthur Phillip’s south seas adventure : that came later.

The race for possessions was on and in 1788 it was largely the British and the French who were out to grab their share in the Southern hemisphere : the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch had already ‘settled’ areas of South and central America, the Philippines and Indonesian archipelagoes and whilst the Dutch were very familiar with New Holland as they called Australia, they saw little commercial value in claiming the continent. Joseph Banks, however had convinced George III that Terra Australis represented an ideal location for a convict settlement particularly so now that the North American settlers had demanded independence and America was no longer a dumping ground for British miscreants.

Shortly after his arrival at Botany Bay Arthur Phillip was joined by Comte La Pérouse’s two ships which had arrived off the coast on 24 January 1788, but were unable to enter Botany Bay until 26 January, the same day that Phillip began to move the entire First Fleet to the more hospitable Sydney Cove in the harbour of Port Jackson. The French must have realized that their ambitions on the East Coast were forfeit to the English and La Peruse soon headed out to sea and was never heard from again.

As we approach Australia Day or Invasion Day 2023 and as we anticipate a referendum on an Aboriginal Voice to our parliament it is, in my view, time that we acknowledge that whatever has occurred in the past we are now one nation and in the words of what should be our national anthem :

“We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We’ll share a dream and sing with one voice
I am, you are, we are Australian”
I am, you are, we are Australian”

Here are The Seekers with the full rendition of that anthem :

The Seekers – I Am Australian: Special Farewell Performance (all 5 verses) – YouTube

You may recall how Heracles undertook the task of cleaning the stables of king Augeas in one day. Augeas was king of Elis, and extremely rich in cattle. Heracles, went to Augeas, offering in one day to clean his stables, if he would give him the tenth part of the cattle herd for his efforts. Augeas, believing that Heracles could not possibly accomplish what he promised, agreed, and Heracles took Phyleus, the son of Augeas, as his witness as he commenced his task.

Heracles had thought this through and he diverted the rivers Alpheius and Peneius through the stables, which were thus cleaned in the time fixed upon.

So what has this got to do with the price of eggs you may be saying. Well, nothing but it has a lot to do with the way Newscorp one of the world’s biggest news organisations is run. For some considerable time this media empire has attracted the sort of creatures that swarm on piles of excrement. It was clear that the old ‘coffin-dodger’ who built the empire was not going to clean his own stables so it has been left to the prodigal son (s). It was said a few years ago when James Murdoch was still in the game and after the News of the World phone tapping scandals that the young Murdochs were trying to convince their Dad that they had to get away from the perception that they only employed ‘lecherous old white dudes’ to run their business.

A case in point, Fox News in the US where the two sons combined to flush out the ailing Roger Ailes, a proven serial misogynist (to put it nicely) who exploited young women in his employ and in his thrall.

Fox News a pay TV channel in America was created by Murdoch senior in 1996 to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. Depending on your viewpoint, Ailes was a pioneer in providing a platform for right-wing disaffected Republicans or he was the worst thing ever to happen to impartial and objective journalism in the US. Despite their father’s objections the Murdoch boys conspired to get rid of Ailes and they succeeded but it cost a reputed forty million dollars to get rid of that lecherous old dude.

Then there was Bill O’Reilly a FOX anchor and a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Numerous allegations and an internal investigation at FOX found that multiple women had reported inappropriate behaviour by O’Reilly and he too was flushed but not before advertisers had started to withdraw their support, something that will always get the attention of Rupert : O’Reilly was sent packing after collecting a reported exit fee of some $US 30million.

Back home in Australia, it’s not clear what actually occurred to bring on the hasty exit of Chris Dore, Editor in Chief at The Australian. Reports suggest that senior executives at Newscorp had witnessed highly inappropriate, drunken behaviour by Dore on several occasions, including most recently at a Newscorp function in California which appears to have been the catalyst for him to be shown the door (or as they usually say, the opportunity for him to spend more time with his family).

Meanwhile we had the depressing report of Sky News right-wing presenter and Courier-Mail columnist Peter Gleeson who left News Corp after multiple instances of plagiarism were uncovered. The Courier-Mail announced that after thirty four years with Newscorp he was gone, also it seems with an overwhelming desire to spend more time with his family, although they may not have shared that ambition. Gleeson had his own program on Sky-after-Dark and will not be missed.

His stablemate Chris Smith was next to go. Smith was a broadcaster with 2GB and Sky after dark where he had his own program, Chris Smith Tonight where he conducted predictable right-wing rants and forgettable echo-chamber ‘interviews’ with the usual right-wing suspects.

Smith was sacked by Sky News Australia as well as 2GB after alleged drunken behaviour and “serious misconduct” involving the treatment of women at a Sydney venue after a Sky News Christmas party. Allegedly Smith is a serial offender . In 1998 he was fired from his role as chief of staff at A Current Affair for allegedly exposing himself to four women at a Nine farewell party. Then in 2009 he was suspended by the Macquarie Radio Network (now Nine Entertainment) for allegedly exposing himself to several women at a 2GB function, attempting to kiss a female colleague and allegedly groping a female weather presenter. Both Andrew Bolt at Sky and Ray Hadley at 2GB showed no sympathy for their former colleague as he was flushed away to the reluctant embrace of his family .

Why are so many of these old white dudes getting the DCM (don’t come Monday) in the Murdoch media empire ? Is it something to do with the quality of people Murdoch has attracted and promoted over the years ? Is it only now that Lachlan has taken over that action is finally being taken ? Who knows, suffice to say that young Murdoch still has a way to go until these stables are free of excrement !

Most references to these shenanigans come from sources other than Newscorp and that could be part of the problem, that a news organisation refuses to recognise or record its own failings :

Chris Dore’s exit from News Corp lifts lid on behaviour at governor general’s residence

The only defence that we, the people, have against an arrogant leader who is thumbing his nose at our democratic arrangements is by shining a light into dark corners and ensuring that our democracy has the ability to assert the power of those democratic fundamentals.

Former High Court Judge The Hon Virginia Bell AC has done a thorough investigation into the behaviour of former prime minister Scott Morrison in appointing himself minister of various government departments and then failing to make his actions public, even to the extent of not informing the ministers that were already appointed to administer those departments.

The Report notes at 217:

‘It is a serious deficiency in governance arrangements that Mr Morrison was able to be appointed to administer five departments of State (in addition to PM&C) without notification of the fact of the appointments to the Parliament or the public and in the case of the Departments of Health, Finance, Home Affairs and the Treasury, without notification to the Department or the other Ministers appointed to administer the Department. There is controversy with respect to the responsibility for this state of affairs.’

It goes on to say:

‘… it is unclear that those within PM&C with knowledge of the appointments gave thought to the fact that they had not been made public. It was apparent by 2021 that the mechanism of appointing Mr Morrison to administer additional departments of State had come to be employed for reasons having little if any connection to the pandemic. It was also apparent that these appointments were not being made public, albeit that it did not occur to anyone in PM&C that Mr Morrison was keeping the appointments secret from his Ministers. While it is troubling that by the time of the 2021 appointments, Mr Gaetjens did not take up the issue of the secrecy surrounding them with Mr Morrison and firmly argue for their public disclosure, the responsibility for that secrecy must reside with Mr Morrison.‘

Morrison declined the invitation to give evidence at the enquiry.

Our democracy has the safeguard of our Constitution and inherent in that is the separation of powers but it also relies heavily on conventions implicit in which is the goodwill and the veracity of those we elect to govern us. But, as Morrison was able to demonstrate, if those in power and those serving them wish to subvert the democratic safeguards there is little to stop them.

The Report is here in full together with the recommendations and whilst it doesn’t seek to criticise our Governor General, the King’s representative, it may be that there has been a bit too much karaoke going on in Government House and not enough thought of ‘We the people’.

Well may we ask what’s in a name and if you put that question to our ABC you will get all sorts of responses but not necessarily in a language with which you are familiar.

If you listen to ABC Radio National in the mornings you will hear ‘Breakfast’ presenter Patricia Karvelas announce that she is coming to you from the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation ; I had to Google that as I am – to my eternal shame – not up on the language of the Wurundjeri people. As it turns out, the Wurundjeri people are an Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the traditional owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourne).

So Patricia was broadcasting from Melbourne but, due to a policy on inclusion at the ABC, she was not able to say that she was in Melbourne or Glenelg if you want to be pedantic. Fun fact : The first official name proposed for Melbourne was Glenelg but Governor Sir Richard Bourke overruled this, and on his visit in March 1837 decided on Melbourne – after the then British Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who resided in the village of Melbourne in Derbyshire in the English Midlands. Prior to that, albeit briefly, Melbourne was named ‘Batmania’ after John Batman, who claimed to have founded the city in 1835 – but the less said about that, the better.

Melbourne was just a whisker away from being named Glenelg or perhaps Bourke. Incidentally, Bourke, a town in north-central New South Wales, on the Darling River, was named after the very same Governor Sir Richard Bourke – the township of Bourke is located on Gurnu – Baakandji Country and was home to the Ngemba group of the Wongaibon Aboriginal language group prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Meanwhile back at the ABC : on Saturday mornings David Lipson presents a Radio National program titled ‘This week’ and he tells us that he is coming to us from Gadigal Land. Again, my knowledge of Aboriginal regional dialects fails me so it’s back to Google. It seems that the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the City of Sydney local area were the Gadigal people. The territory of the Gadi (gal) people stretched along the southern side of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) from South Head to around what is now known as Petersham. Although, somewhat confusingly the traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora peoples. Suffice to say, David is broadcasting from Sydney but inclusion protocols at the ABC won’t allow him to mention that ; does inclusion only work one way ?

The Anglo name for Sydney was nominated by governor Arthur Phillip who established the European settlement on the shores of Port Jackson in 1788 and named the inlet “Sydney Cove” in honour of the British Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Lord Sydney.

Visitors to Australia frequently comment on the names the British gave various places in this wide brown land : fancy, for instance calling a highway Bruce (after former Queensland and federal politician, Harry Bruce) or a city Townsville (‘Town’s town’ after Robert Towns, entrepreneur, businessman and occasional ‘blackbirder’, whose ship the ‘Don Juan’ brought one of the earliest shiploads of South Sea Islanders from present-day Vanuatu to labour on his Queensland estates in 1863 – Queensland had only just been formed when separation from New South wales was granted by Queen Victoria in June 1859.

There has been talk of a name change for Townsville but there are many claims for the area comprising the land of the Gurambilburra Wulgurukaba, Bindal, Nywaigi, and Gugu Badhun Peoples. The ABC are still working on that one.

The whole issue of place names and the changing of names is one fraught with attitude, entitlement and ego, with virtue signalling and political correctness frequently evident. There is also a process that needs to be adhered to : you can’t just change the name of a place and say that’s it, from now on everybody must adopt that name, inevitably somebody will have their nose out of joint.

Some changes are not controversial : in 2020, Western Australia renamed the King Leopold Ranges, named after the brutal colonial Belgium monarch, the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, using both the Ngarinyin and Bunuba names for the area. Nobody objected. In 1993 Ayers Rock was renamed Uluru with little controversy particularly as dual naming policies allow Ayers Rock to be maintained as a secondary point of identification for visitors to ‘the rock’.

Most Australian jurisdictions now have dual naming policies, which allow geographical features to be identified by both their traditional and colonial name, as with ‘the rock’. But it can get a bit messy where there is little no consultation. In 1992, the Victorian government renamed the Grampians national park as the Grampians (Gariwerd) national park, but the decision was reversed after a change of government in 1992 and official use of Gariwerd was not reinstated until after the Geographic Place Names Act 1998 (Vic) was introduced. Suggestions that the Dandenong ranges should be renamed with an Aboriginal place name became confused when it was established that Dandenong was in fact a corruption of the original Aboriginal name, Tanjenong possibly and not unsurprisingly, wrongly interpreted by an early surveyor.

Personally I am comfortable with dual naming as being a reasonable compromise in most cases. Back at the ABC, the morning am program is presented out of Tasmania by the very talented Sabra Lane. Sabra without fail will tell you that she is broadcasting from ‘nipaluna, Hobart’. That strikes a nice balance for me.

What do you think ?

Households will be hit by a 56 per cent surge in energy bills in the coming two years according to our Treasurer – this cost impact does not include the petrol or diesel for our vehicles but relates solely to the energy used in our homes and businesses.

On most of mainland Australia we still rely heavily on coal and gas for our domestic energy production. Coal and gas accounted for around 70% of electricity generation in 2021.

Over the last decade, the share of electricity generated by renewable energy in Australia has increased significantly, rising from around 10.5% in 2010 to 29% in 2021.

Tasmania has become the first Australian state to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity generation largely coming from hydro and wind resources. The recently announced Tasmanian Renewable Energy Target will double renewable energy production and reach 200 per cent of current Tasmanian electricity demand by 2040 : the surplus being sent to the mainland by an undersea cable known as the Marinus Link.

Sun Cable in the Northern Territory is planning to export Australian solar energy to Singapore as part of a US$22-billion infrastructure project which will send electricity more than 3,100 miles (5,000 km) to Singapore, via high-voltage undersea cables. Opening in 2027, it will be the largest solar farm and battery storage facility on the planet and will combine 17-20 gigawatts of peak solar power generation and some 36-42 GWh of battery storage. To give you a sense of scale, that’s nearly 10 times the size of the world’s current largest solar power installation and more than 30 times the energy storage capacity of the world’s biggest battery project.

When it comes to LNG, as of 2022, we will export around 87.6 million metric tons. Australia and Qatar are currently the major exporting countries of LNG , followed by the United States, which has an annual capacity of 73.9 million metric tons. But there is something wrong !

Whilst we export equivalent volumes of gas to those coming out of Qatar their government will receive around $26.6 billion in royalties from the multinational companies exploiting its offshore gasfields, whereas, according to Treasury estimates, Australia will receive just $800 million for the same volume of gas leaving our shores.

When it comes to coal – the source of most of our electricity – The 5 biggest exporters of coal are Australia, Indonesia, Russia, United States and South Africa. Combined, those 5 countries shipped 84.5% of the total value of coal sold on international markets during 2021.

Mark Latham found himself a cushy number after he lost the leadership of the federal Labor Party. He nominated himself for a seat in the NSW Upper House, the Legislative Assembly, representing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party : In March 2019, he was elected for an eight year term.

In the NSW Legislative Assembly you don’t actually have to do much apart from appear on Sky after Dark periodically and give the impression of being a man of the people. But Mark’s ambition has been to get more One Nation representatives into the NSW parliament. Not the lower house as they would actually have to be elected, rather the upper house where they aren’t accountable to an electorate. So Mark has come up with a wheeze to get somebody into parliament without actually being elected.

The idea is that with four years remaining in his appointed term, he’s going to resign and create a casual vacancy. Under the Constitution Act 1902 (NSW) the procedure for filling that vacancy does not require a by-election (it’s the upper house you see) but calls for the state Governor to convene a joint sitting of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly to elect a person to fill the vacant seat.

The person nominated for election to fill a vacant seat – and this is where Mark has been doing his homework – must be a member of the same political party as the member he or she replaces at the time that member was elected.

So, Mark resigns and another One Nation luminary takes his place – they call it parachuting – and Mark goes off into semi-retirement somewhere on the NSW North coast ? Not on your Nelly ! Remember, it is Mr Latham’s intention to get more One Nation people into the NSW parliament and this strategy doesn’t achieve that – one out, one in doesn’t work.

This is where it gets tricky as Mark intends to nominate himself again at the state election in March 2023. He’s relying on his name recognition and the ‘donkey vote’ to achieve this. All going to plan, he will be elected for an eight year term next March and will join the person who took his place following his retirement.

This is all legal but is it ethical ? Is it democracy at work ? You be the judge.

The current parliamentary sitting has been noteworthy for the attempts by the opposition to ‘ping’ Labor ministers for being in breach of the new code of conduct. It seems that the opposition have dedicated the time of their staff to combing through ministerial declarations of interests trying to find instances where a minister may be in breach of the new code.

Albanese has gone to some considerable lengths to present a ministerial code of conduct that leaves little wriggle room for ministers and clears up the loopholes that the former coalition government ministers were able to exploit.

In particular, the use of Blind Trusts has been outlawed : who can forget the use of a blind trust by former Attorney General Christian Porter to pay legal costs for a defamation action he launched against the ABC using funds, the source of which has never been disclosed.

The new code requires that: “Ministers will not have any direct shareholdings. Ministers are required to divest themselves of shareholdings, except in superannuation and other broadly diversified managed funds. There will be no ‘blind trust’ arrangements,” under this code.

“Ministers will be personally responsible for their private interests. Ministers won’t be allowed to delegate that responsibility to anyone else, such as in a ‘blind trust’ arrangement.”

This is the full code for those interested.

Probably the only criticism of this code is that, in trying to be proscriptive it can be confusing as Attorney General Mark Dreyfus found in Question Time on Thursday following a barrage of questions over his self-managed superannuation fund : fortunately the code allows for external scrutiny and advice in circumstances where there is ambiguity which seems to be the case with Dreyfus.

On the positive side, it is good that the Albanese government has moved quickly to update the code of conduct for ministers and to address some of the glaring omissions of the past – for instance as was noted in the parliament on Thursday pretty well all of the former governments’ ministers would have been in breach of this code of conduct and several engaged in multiple breaches.

I’m no economist but neither am I a fool. When somebody tells me that inflation has taken off in Australia and that the cause is largely due to an escalation in the prices of goods and services driven by wage and salary increases and the costs of production I start to take interest.

For a start it can’t be spiralling wages as they have been stuck in the doldrums for years while corporate profits have surged and executive bonuses have ballooned. So we need to look elsewhere.

The Reserve Bank of Australia says that they have to dampen down spending because you and I (well not so much me, more you) have been borrowing too much money and spending it on buying up residential land and houses like the much maligned drunken sailor – you have been doing this because money was so cheap that you would be a fool not to do so ; also you were cheered on by successive governments who gave you generous negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions to encourage you in your wanton spending.

Well, on Tuesday the Reserve Bank will take a big stick to us (well, more you than me) and probably increase interest rates by at least half of one percent if not seventy five basis points (that’s the clever way of saying .75%). This will quickly be passed on by the banks and will, they hope, quell your lust for borrowing and all will be well.

My response to that economic thesis can be summarized in one word : piffle !

My normal source for economic commentary and advice is my local IGA manager so I put it to him to explain why pretty well every product in his store had gone up in price in recent weeks and months : he gave me three reasons.

First and foremost was the cost of freight, more specifically petrol and diesel which due to embargoes and sanctions on oil production in places ranging from Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and the Russian Federation has meant that the world is reliant on Saudi Arabia and the UAE for our oil supplies and they are quite content to screw us for all we’re worth while they can – they see the coming revolution in electric vehicles and transportation as impacting their business model so they are getting in for a quick quid while they have a captive customer base – hence fuel is costing a lot more money at the pump and goods are landing on the shelves at IGA with an additional premium.

The second reason is climate and floods mainly impacting lettuce, tomatoes and other fresh veggies : this he says will pass as we move towards spring and domestic production gets back online – who eats salads in winter time anyway ? Oddly in my local area growers have been harvesting and dumping large quantities of Avocado in recent times as there is evidently a glut and it’s not worth taking them to market – go figure.

The third reason is a very human attribute summed up as hopping on the bandwagon. A very cynical approach by some suppliers of goods and services who see prices going up all around and decide to bump up their prices just for the sake of it.

Image from australianunions.org.au

So, the question is will actions taken by the Reserve Bank on Tuesday, by way of increasing interest rates, ease inflation in Australia. My IGA manager, adopting a term favoured by economists, says : pig’s arse they will !

What do you think ?

PS : The captioned photo of Clive Palmer has nothing to do with this article but I couldn’t resist it – this was one of the few occasions, when as a sitting member, he actually made it to the parliament and stayed awake (briefly).

The right-wing nutters on Sky-after-Dark are beside themselves with righteous indignation that prime minister Albanese is spending so much time overseas when he should be visiting flood inundated suburbs in Sydney.

They liken Albanese’s overseas trip to that of Scott Morrison’s family holiday in Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires – a holiday that the opposition knew nothing about and even the Deputy Prime Minister seemed unaware that he was leading the country.

Just how a so called news organisation can equate a family holiday in Hawaii with a trip to war torn Ukraine beggars the imagination.

But then, Sky is not really a news organisation in the traditional mould. Their evening offering is all about confected outrage usually aimed at those they see as Lefties and of course the ABC.

Just to be clear the prime minister has been away for little over a week on official trips to a NATO leaders’ summit in Spain, mending fences with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, rekindling a free trade arrangement with the EU and a high-security trip to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

How dare he screeches Murdoch owned Sky, hasn’t he got a phone? Presumably, according to Sky, if it’s good enough for Rupert to divorce the long-suffering Jerry Hall by email why can’t ‘Airbus Albo’ communicate with world leaders by Twitter

Despite all the trips being official business and in the national interest, Newscorp are not happy that a Labor prime minister is hobnobbing with world leaders when he could be filling sandbags in Parramatta.

On social media some outraged nutters have taken to the hashtags ‘Airbus Albo’ and ‘Where’s Albo’ and others labelled him ‘Anthony Overseasy’.

In my opinion, Albo is a refreshing change and is letting the world know that Australia is back and that we do actually believe in climate change and that we have a contribution to make on global issues and that we will do our bit.