From www.pm.gov.au – an Australian Government web site – today comes a message from the Prime Minister – WA Senate election. Without wishing to further promote what Mr Abbott had to say, here is the message:

Next Saturday, the people of Western Australia will vote in a special Senate election.

We did not want this election, but it is an opportunity to ensure your vote supports policies to strengthen the economy, create more jobs and help families with cost of living pressures.

Only the West Australian Liberal team has a clear plan for this state. (My bold).

We’ll boost Western Australian mining and investment jobs by scrapping the anti-Western Australian mining tax and we’ll reduce living costs and create more jobs by scrapping the anti-Western Australian carbon tax. The average family will save $550 a year and a $626 million a year hit on the West Australian economy will be removed.

We’ll deliver record funding for Western Australian schools – funding that the former Labor government didn’t provide. WA schools will get an additional $120 million from the Coalition in Canberra and we’ll work with the Western Australian Government and build the roads of the 21st century – with over $3 billion in road investments.

Two weeks ago in Canberra Labor voted to keep the carbon tax, last week in Canberra Labor voted to keep the mining tax – and you can be sure that once this special election is over, Labor will be pushing more policies that punish Western Australia. When Labor took office, federally, in 2007 West Australian unemployment was 3.3 per cent and after Labor’s carbon tax and Labor’s mining tax it was 5.9 per cent.

And if you vote for a minor party candidate you just don’t know who you will end up with.

So there is only one certainty in this election – only the Liberal Party has a plan to help Western Australia build a stronger economy with more jobs and less pressure on families.

Only a vote for the Liberal Party will deliver a team that will stand-up and deliver a better deal for Western Australia. (My bold).

Let us have a look at a page on another government site, the Ministerial and Agency Websites. There on the top of this page:

Guidelines for Ministerial and Agency Websites

The Australian Public Service (APS) must maintain its impartial, apolitical, professional nature while maintaining websites. It is important that agencies consider carefully the content of their websites and those they maintain on behalf of their ministers.

There are three categories of websites that relate to this issue:

– agency websites

– ministerial websites maintained by an agency (either directly or through a contractor)

– personal ministerial websites that contain material on a minister’s party political activities or views on issues not related to his or her ministerial role.

While further down the page there is:

Agency-funded websites should not contain material of a party political nature …

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’m not too sure that the guidelines have been followed here. Perhaps someone can help me out with this.

‘A government is only as good as its opposition’.

That old adage has been been thrown around for as long as I can remember and has been cited more times than I would care to count.

And it holds true in Australia’s political theatre.

We clearly don’t have a good government at the helm. This must then imply that we don’t have a good opposition.

Certainly, we don’t.

The Shorten Opposition is so demonstrably soft that I’m half inclined to suggest that the anger and frustration from the March in March should have been aimed straight at them. They are not performing as an opposition should. Simple. The government could (possibly) be a better government if the opposition would be a better opposition. But at the moment they don’t seem capable.

Show me just one Labor voter who is satisfied with their performance.

They have sat back and lazily watched the Abbott Government stagger from one debacle to another. Lies go unchallenged, policy backflips are yawned at, attacks on workers and welfare recipients are waved off as an apparition and they have adopted a ‘ho-hum’ attitude towards Tony Abbott’s gross incompetency.

Where have they been hiding? Why aren’t they saying anything that might hold the government to account? Why is it up to the social media to do all the talking for them? Where were they when people marched in the streets for them?

The political landscape has changed irreversibly since Labor last occupied the opposition seats. It has become meaner, nastier and more viral thanks largely to the previous opposition leader. Labor do not have to go as far as emulating the behaviour of that man – and I hope they don’t – but they certainly need to abandon their wet lettuce approach.

Many have suggested that all Labor need to do is sit pretty and wait for Abbott to fall on his sword (and that fate is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility). The latest opinion polls do not look good for him and Labor no doubt are buoyed by the result, but like every other response to the negative aspects of Tony Abbott; they lack the initiative to capitalise on it.

In fact, in the six months since they ‘won’ opposition they have ignored the chance to take the initiative on any life-line Abbott has gifted them.

They are, collectively, timid in the House and they lack the mongrel outside of it.

As a self confessed Labor voter it’s difficult to sustain my patience. As each Abbott disaster has been left unmolested I reassured myself that the next one wouldn’t be. I took some comfort in the assumption that they might just one day stand up to the wrecking machine. I keep waiting for them to strike, as do most Labor supporters, but I can no longer be tolerant with the constant ineptitude. The tipping point was the dismal interview Julie Bishop gave to the BBC and more to the point; the ‘no comment’ response from the opposition to what was an absolute and monumental stuff-up from the Foreign Minister.

That interview was almost two weeks ago. They’ve had two weeks to respond to what was a massive furphy, or should I say a ‘massive lie’. In the interview she claimed that:

… asylum seekers ”are processed in third countries, and then we look for resettlement in other countries, including in Australia …

That alone should have been enough for the opposition to emerge from their hiding place and shout from the rooftops that her own Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have repeatedly declared the exact opposite. How many times have the government said something along the lines of ‘they will not be settled in Australia’?

On the world stage our Foreign Minister delivers an outright lie and not once (to my knowledge) has the opposition attempted to not only expose that lie, but hold her and her government to account over it. They’ve had two weeks. They blew it.

In six months they’ve blown everything.

Bill, are you listening?

In the past three years there have two significant public protests against the government of the day. There was the failed ‘convoy of no confidence’ in 2011 to protest against Julia Gillard’s ‘carbon tax’ and now we are in the middle of the highly successful Australia wide March in March protests against the Abbott Government.

The media attention to these events has been worlds apart.

The mainstream media ran with the convoy of no confidence stories for almost a week, focusing on both the promotion to the event and the event itself. For example, on August 18 2011, in the lead-up to the convoy The Australian eagerly told us that:

As I’m not a subscriber to The Australian I’m rather fortunate that their paywall obstructs me from reading their daily diatribes. As was the case with a recent article by Janet Albrechtsen; ‘Compassion junkies back on their choice fix’ – which unless you are a subscriber to Rupert Murdoch’s masthead you will also be blocked from enjoying this fine example of journalist integrity. I’m encouraged to assume it’s an absolutely factual article and one of utmost importance because Andrew Bolt refers to it in his sensationally named piece; ‘ The Left prefers to kill 1100 with compassion’. And Andrew has kindly quoted from the article, giving me a glimpse of what was previously hidden from all but that small number of Australians who care to bother what people like Ms Albrechtsen write.

Quoting Albrechtsen, Bolt wrote:

Start with the rank hypocrisy of those who favour emotion over reason. Did the human candle-holders demand a change in the former Labor government’s policies that encouraged the people-smuggling business that led to 1200 tragedies between 2007 and last year? Did these grandstanders call for the resignation of the stream of Labor immigration ministers under whose watch 1200 men, women and children died? …

(At least Andrew trimmed the number down to 1100 while still pushing the 1200 figure of Albrechtsen’s).

Albrechtsen’s article was about the unfortunate death of Reza Berati whose death, she shrilly adds, ‘provided a useful reminder that the so-called intellectual Left is anything but intellectual’. It was a statement seized upon by Bolt. The gist of his own article was an opportunity to rub it in.

But there is something terribly wrong with Albrechtsen’s claim that 1200 people died under Labor’s watch. There is also something terribly wrong with Bolt promoting this claim. Namely, is that figure correct? And if the figure is incorrect, where did it come from?

The answer to the first question is easy: It is not correct.

After the very paper Albrechtsen works for reported in July last year that ‘More than 1000 asylum seekers have perished at sea since Labor relaxed its policies in 2008 . . . ‘ The Conversation produced evidence in ‘FactCheck: have more than 1000 asylum seekers died at sea under Labor?‘ showing this to be incorrect, reporting that:

No official records are kept by any government agency as to how many people trying to reach our shores to seek asylum are dying en route. The most reliable open source data is kept by the Monash Australian Border Deaths Database which “maintains a record of all known deaths associated with Australia’s borders since 1 January 2000”.

And that the data revealed:

Between 2000 and 2007 (the period which includes the introduction of the “Pacific Solution” for asylum seekers travelling by boat under the Coalition government), the database documents 746 reported deaths of asylum seekers. Of those, 363 asylum seekers died at sea while on their way to Australia. As well, 350 were presumed dead (their status is missing at sea with status unknown); 22 died in detention (the majority of those cases were suicide, but there were some deaths of natural causes); and 11 people were returned to Afghanistan and reportedly murdered for being “Australian spies”.

Between 2008 and July 2013 (under Labor), 877 asylum seekers have reportedly died. Of those, 15 committed suicide or died of natural causes in detention centres. So during this period, approximately 862 individuals died trying to reach Australia’s mainland to seek asylum.

Just under 900 deaths (still a tragedy), but it’s a fair way off 1200 claimed by Albrechtsen.

So where did they get that figure from? That is a question I cannot answer. Perhaps they can. Someone has obviously fabricated the figure and the media are quite happy to run with it. It has been bandied about quite freely since Labor lost the election, being used relentlessly by the ‘Right’ in all forms of media to attack the ‘Left’ as being hypocrites for expressing outrage over the death of Reza Berati. (It does not occur to them that the ‘Left’ is also just as outraged about the 877 deaths under the previous Labor Governments as it was over the apparently now-forgotten 746 deaths under the Howard Government).

But I digress.

As was evident at The AIMN yesterday, we in the social media are held to account if disputed information is published. Why not the mainstream media too? Last year it was revealed that The Australian had exaggerated the number of asylum seeker deaths under Labor’s watch and yet, despite publicly accessible data being available to them, they now publish an even more exaggerated and grossly inaccurate figure. Where is the outrage? Information has been pulled out from thin air or an outright lie has been fed to us.

Like I said, not being a subscriber to The Australian I’m fortunate that their paywall prevents me from taking a look at what lies there within. From snippets such as this, it reassures me that there’s nothing credible to see.

The government’s “green army” – further details of which were announced today – will:

… target indigenous Australians, people with disabilities, gap-year students, graduates and the unemployed.

Ignore the program, instead, it is the word “target” which is of some significance. It would suggest that the scheme is directly aimed at singling out these people.

But why?

The answer is simple: it’s electorally popular to “single out” certain groups and in particular Indigenous Australians, people on the Disability Support Pension and the unemployed. It would be electorally popular among the ‘perceptively astute’ millions of redneck or apathetic middle-class voters in our country to see lazy ‘Abos’, people ‘feigning a disability’ or dole bludgers actually being forced off their backsides to give something back to the hard-working, tax paying Australians they suck a livelihood from. The government will rack up a few points for this.

These groups are easy targets and Coalition governments have a history of targeting them or any other minority group they can entice the electorate to turn against.

I recall a Howard Minister once muttering to my department head that “Aboriginal bashing is good politics”. It is a tactic now skilfully employed by Tony Abbott. It was he who said, “There may not be a great job for them but whatever there is, they just have to do it, and if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done”. And it is he who thinks the racist and appalling Northern Territory Intervention didn’t go far enough.

Foreign news sites offer a wealth of information. And they are generally, as a rule, far more entertaining, relevant and intelligent than what is served up here locally.

Fitting the bill is a recent article in The Times of India titled ‘Even with 49Mbps, India to remain way behind in internet race’. India, behold, has an eagerly awaited and soon-to-be released broadband plan. From the article comes this the response to the plan:

India is eagerly awaiting the launch of Reliance Jio’s 4G connection, which promises to offer average internet speed of 49Mbps on the go. This is over 12 times faster than the current average of 4Mbps on the country’s 3G networks. In theory, Reliance Jio’s 4G network will offer maximum speed of 112Mbps.

Environmentalists, and indeed most Australians are still reeling from Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s decision to approve “several massive resource projects” on the Great Barrier Reef which include a new coal export terminal – projects that will see the dredging of 3 million cubic metres of spoil being dumped in the reef’s waters. This approval clearly ignores the evidence from scientists about the impacts of these industrial developments and activities on the reef. He has, quite clearly, “put the demands of the coal companies ahead of protecting the Great Barrier Reef.”

It is simply astounding that an Environment Minister would approve these projects especially amid warnings that the reef, which had already lost half of its coral cover in the past 30 years, would be placed on the “in-danger” list if there were major new port developments. Further warnings note that:

Dredging is a huge threat to the crystal clear waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Seabed and rock is dug up and then dumped in the Reef’s waters. Fine sediments are thrown up into the water and drift for kilometres, ruining water quality and covering seagrass beds and coral.

Just in the past five years, 52 million tonnes have been dredged in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, a recent Senate Inquiry was told.

But Mr Hunt was aware of the serious effects that dredging caused to a marine environment. He wrote an article for the Herald Sun in December 2007 about the dangers to Port Phillip on the proposed dredging by the Port of Melbourne Corporation. Here is his article in full:

Dredging casts dark shadow on beautiful Port Phillip.

Like anyone who has had the privilege of exploring this serene, astonishingly beautiful marine environment, the experience affected me profoundly.

For those Melburnians who live on the perimeter of its vast shoreline, and for the many more who take part in the annual pilgrimage to the summer playgrounds on the Mornington Peninsula, Port Phillip Bay holds an almost sacred significance.

Living on the Mornington Peninsula close to the bay, I am accustomed to the way my home town is transformed each year with the coming of the warmer weather.

A lively parade of young families and individuals enjoying a day on the beach or out on the water are a constant feature of summer.

The warm weather is here once again but this year there is a large and very black cloud menacing the horizon. With the Victorian Government intent on a January start for its plan to dredge 23 million cubic metres of sand, silt and toxic sludge from the bay, there is a growing sense of foreboding on the Mornington Peninsula.

With the local economy, particularly on the southern peninsula, reliant on the tourist dollar, it is abundantly clear that the peninsula will bear the brunt of the negative impact of channel deepening.

The two years of significant turbidity forecast as a result of the dredging will inevitably have an impact on local tourist operators, particularly the recreational dive industry. Two years of diminished returns would be enough to damage many of these businesses irrevocably.

The State Government’s own assessment of the channel deepening project found that dive operators and other businesses reliant on the bay will lose almost $19 million in income as a direct result of the dredging.

Despite this, there is no provision to compensate these small business owners for the damage that channel deepening will inflict upon their livelihoods.

The Mornington Peninsula’s tourism operators will therefore become the innocent victims of a process over which they have no control. To exclude them from any hope of compensation other than via a long and costly court battle is unjust and completely unacceptable.

It is not only the immediate short-term impact of channel deepening that must be considered.

Tourists who experience murky waters and dirty beaches during the years of dredging may never return to the Mornington Peninsula.

The damage to the peninsula’s reputation for pristine beaches and sparkling waters may linger long

after the physical effects of dredging have receded.

While I accept that the project is broadly inevitable, I have written twice now to Premier John Brumby, seeking assurances that the State Government will address these concerns.

I have yet to receive the courtesy of a reply.

I will also write to the new federal Environment Minister — to highlight the deficiencies in the way the State Government intends to dispose of the spoil dredged up during the project.

I am deeply alarmed that the state has moved to give this project the green light without adequately tackling the issue of the disposal of toxic sludge dredged from the mouth of the Yarra.

The Port of Melbourne Corporation intends to dump this sludge — which is laden with heavy metals and other contaminants — in the centre of Port Phillip Bay.

As yet there appears to be no certainty about how the resulting toxic plume will behave and where it will settle.

The main reason given for dumping this toxic sludge in the bay is that it would be too expensive to dump it in landfill. This is utterly unacceptable.

There should be no cut-price option for a pollution problem of this magnitude.

There are also plans to dump spoil at a second site in the waters off Mt Martha.

This site is one of the most important snapper breeding grounds in the bay. It is an important recreational asset for local residents and tourists alike and must not be harmed.

These issues could have and should have been thrashed out satisfactorily during the independent panel’s inquiry into the supplementary environmental effects statement.

Instead, the State Government chose to hinder a full exploration of these important issues by imposing a ban on the cross-examination of witnesses.

As a result, those of us who love the bay can have no real confidence that the channel deepening project will not leave it permanently scarred. The project has not undergone the thorough, rigorous and objective investigation essential for a project of this scale and potential impact.

The State Government must address all outstanding environmental concerns before pushing ahead with dredging.

In addition, it must institute a Peninsula recovery plan to deal with the project’s inevitable fall-out on the Mornington Peninsula.

A starting point could be a dedicated fund with money set aside to compensate local businesses.

It is only fair that these small operators receive some peace of mind and an assurance that they will not be sent to the wall by the state’s channel deepening.

Greg Hunt is the federal MP for Flinders, a seat that includes Mornington Peninsula.

Yes, it is hard to believe that this warrior for the environment is the same man who has now approved the projects on the Great Barrier Reef: Projects that will see the dredging of 3 million cubic metres of spoil. In a word, unbelievable.

The title of this post, The breath-taking hypocrisy of Environment Minister Hunt is aptly named.

But I guess he’s just following orders. This interview with Leigh Sales in December 2009 reveals why, from which I quote:

… But I do enjoy the environment – I’m passionate about it; I believe in the challenges of climate change – but these are matters for Tony.

Great. He wants to do something about climate change yet is happy to leave it up to Tony Abbott – a man who thinks climate change is crap. Remember too, that he had only been sworn in a matter of days and he closed down the Climate Commission and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Wow, what a man of principle.

How does he sleep at night knowing he’s sold himself to the wrong bidder?

Unless your expectations of the Abbott Government were very low, you’d be extremely disappointed. I don’t blame you if they were high; you probably read the Liberal Party’s Policies and Discussion Papers, published in September 2013 – the election month – and were buoyed by all the fabulous things Tony Abbott and his Government were about to do for Australia.

Take, for example, his plans for Indonesia. Or rather, his plans for Australia and the role Indonesia will play. It’s fabulous stuff. They are there for all to see under the section titled The Coalition’s Policy for Foreign Affairs and revealed in The Plan.

Ah, yes, a plan. Being, to Strengthen Relations with Key Partners.

You will need to be sitting down to read this. And do not read it with a mouthful of coffee, or like me, you’ll be cleaning your monitor. It will cause a coffee spray. You’ve been warned. Brace yourself. Here is The Plan:

The Coalition will refocus foreign policy on Australia’s true international interests.

Chief amongst Australia’s relationships requiring renewed focus are:

Indonesia: It is essential to the interests of Australia and Indonesia that we work effectively across a broad spectrum of issues, including regional security, counter terrorism, freer trade and investment flows in East Asia, people smuggling, and action on climate change. The Coalition’s plan to resume control of our borders will help restore the good relationship with Indonesia that Australia previously enjoyed. We will build on the Howard Government’s Lombak Treaty with Indonesia to broaden and deepen security ties and will also aim to improve economic and educational links. We will also do all we can to repair the trade relationship following the live cattle export fiasco and we will also enhance the Australia-Indonesia Leadership Dialogue.

Yes, you did read correctly. It says, I repeat: The Coalition’s plan to resume control of our borders will help restore the good relationship with Indonesia that Australia previously enjoyed. The bullshit is absolutely breathtaking. And you did read that our two countries will work together to take action on climate change. And you did read that Australia will aim to improve educational links. And you did read the Coalition will repair the trade relationship in regards to the live cattle export.

Have you ever read such utter nonsense? If it wasn’t a joke at the time of publication, it certainly is now. It rates high among the list of the most ridiculous aspirations ever strung together by a Government, but not surprising given this is a Government who has absolutely no idea what it’s doing. Look at the Plan again (if you dare) and now look at the facts.

Fact Number One

The Coalition’s plan to resume control of our borders will not help restore our relationship with Indonesia. Well before the election Indonesia had:

… accused Australia’s Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, of promoting an arrogant policy on asylum seekers.

Ms Bishop has been in Jakarta for meetings with top officials including the deputy chairman of Indonesia’s parliament, Hajriyanto Thohari.

Mr Thohari says the Coalition’s policy to send asylum seeker boats back where possible is unfair on Indonesia.

He says he told Ms Bishop that Australian policy on asylum seekers should be more humane and he has accused her of being arrogant in explaining the Coalition’s position.

“In my opinion, that view is a view that is solely focused on Australia’s perspective, without considering Indonesia at all as the country that experiences the negative impacts of the illegal immigrant issue,” he said.

Yet they still went ahead with their ludicrous plan and not two weeks after Abbott won office Indonesia warned:

… that there were no circumstances under which Indonesia would accept Mr Abbott’s boat tow-back policy.

”No, we don’t agree with that. This is, I can say, something like a consensus between the government and the parliament not to agree with the plan which is now being projected by the new Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott,” Mr Tantowi said. (Mr Tantowi is a member of the Indonesian parliament’s ”Commission I”, responsible for foreign affairs).

The policy ”annoys our sovereignty as an independent country”.

”I think the policy will be very offensive and we in the parliaments fully support what was said by our foreign ministers, that we will fully reject the policy,” Mr Tantowi said.

The verdict: Epic Fail.

Fact Number Two

The two countries have not worked together in tackling climate change. They never will. The Abbott Government doesn’t believe climate change is an issue worth even raising an eyebrow over. Climate change is crap. And Kaye Lee reminds us that:

We have been condemned worldwide for our moves to repeal the ‘carbon tax’, our abolition of climate change bodies and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) (even though it’s making a substantial profit), our failure to send a politician to the Warsaw climate change talks and our refusal to provide any funding for the Green Climate Fund. At the Warsaw talks we received 4 Fossil of the Day awards, caused a walkout by other delegates frustrated with our obstruction, and were given the overall Colossal Fossil award.

How did they ever keep a straight face writing this promise into The Plan? Do they believe the rubbish they write? The cold hard fact is, they won’t be helping any country tackle climate change. Not even their own.

The verdict: Epic Fail.

Fact Number Three

The Abbott Government will not aim to improve educational links. As reported in The AIMN recently, the Government’s promised A$4.5 billion cuts to foreign would be detrimental for education in Indonesia, citing the Jakarta Post:

There is fear that Abbott’s measure to slash the foreign aid budget will conduce to Indonesia’s poor education quality owing to the fact that the biggest single portion of Australia’s aid spending in Indonesia goes to education.

The verdict: Epic Fail.

Fact Number Four

The Abbott Government may yet destroy the trade relationship in regards to the live cattle export (as well as other industries). It was recently announced that:

Indonesia is now looking elsewhere for its beef and wheat imports as the fallout from the Australian spying scandal continues.

Some may argue (the Australian media chief among them) that the spying scandal is no fault of the Abbott Government. However, as Jakarta have tried to tell us, their real issue is with Tony Abbott.

The verdict: Epic Fail.

I think the Abbott Government needs to race back to the drawing board . . . their plans for Indonesia definitely need an urgent makeover. And one could hold faint hope that the replacement plan isn’t just more pie-in-the-sky bullshit. I don’t hold any hope; my expectations of the Abbott Government were, and will remain, very low.