Day to Day Politics: For adults only
Saturday 2 June 2018
Introduction
Terence Mills
May 29, 2018, at 9:46 am
Bernard Keane from Crikey sums up Barnaby Joyce:
Barnaby Joyce has always been effective at exploiting the media. He had a product that they lapped up: a confected “authenticity”; the accountant and Riverview alumnus posed as a salt of the earth, true blue old-style Nat, complete with Bjelke-esque gabble. Journalists loved the maverick pose and then when he surrendered that in a quest for the leadership of his party, they loved his “plain speaking” and his readiness to offer a quote on anything. Joyce became the front bar monarch reigning with a schooner instead of a sceptre in the local pub. He was good copy, and he knew it. He and the media existed in a perfect symbiotic relationship.
That Joyce was entirely without substance, a man of poor judgement, a man given to the making extraordinarily damaging statements off the top of his head, a believer in kooky conspiracy theories, rubbish science and half-arsed economic ideas, never troubled the media. Few questioned his rise to the deputy prime ministership; few wondered how good an idea it was that a man of such apparently limited intellect — and little to no common sense — should be a key figure in cabinet. “Best retail politician in the country” we were told, a bloke who could channel rural Australia like one of those overpriced, taxpayer-funded irrigation channels Joyce got for his irrigator mates channelled water.
John Millar
Most people claim to be looking forward to their day in court so they can clear their name..Cash is seemingly aware of the penalties for lying under oath and that her day in court will do everything BUT clear her name. It is already manifestly clear that she repeatedly misled parliament, normally a sackable offence by itself. And using taxpayer funds to defend her unlawfully appointed ABCC chief is unjustifiable in any pub.
That Greg Hunt, like others in cabinet, has not been sacked is but a reflection of the lack of power the Prime Minister has. How Ministerial standards have deteriorated since John Howard came to power.
Controversies
John Lord
Planning a celebration. Taking my wife out for lunch. Good food, a bottle of Merlot.
Good government starts today. We are just so happy.
Paul Bongiorno
We are a sad country when we think indefinitely detaining innocent refugees and their families is a vote winner. Sick, disgusting and immoral.
On Adani
The Turnbull Government has found another way to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the project.
They plan to use government credit agency EFIC to pump the project full of money via the backdoor, handing over huge sums to Adani’s subcontractors.
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope. #HelpOthers
Barnaby Joyce is to receive $150.000 for a silly sordid interview about his moral weakness yet victims of sodomy and child rape are to get the same amount under the redress scheme. Work that out.
Malcolm Farr
It’s always fascinating to hear a debate between Hanson and Mathias Cormann, two people for whom English is a second language.
Barry Tucker
Barnaby Joyce has joined the call for the fed govt’s acquisition of Liddell power station in order to re-sell it to Alinta.
Barnaby says the power station must be used for its intended purpose — which was to burn coal.
Yet another crisis. As I said last week, they come with Trumpish frequency.
Kelly O’Dwyer
After the decision to have the citizenship by-elections on the same day Labor’s National Conference you could hardly describe the Speaker as independent.
Did Bill Shorten give 100,000 dollars to Get Up without authority from the AWU Union?
We are desensitised now. We read these articles and feel weary. We struggle to comprehend why these elected representatives behave so unethically and immorally as we race out the door to catch the train to our casual job.
The Poll Bludger
Top Tweets of the week
Lloyd Bakeley
The softly spoken Greg Hunt, just another nasty Tory Tosser…that is how they speak to one another privately about Wimmin. #got #caught #out #slime #bag
Barnaby Joyce 7/2/18
And so it’s a private matter and I don’t think it helps me. I don’t think it helps my family. I don’t think it helps anybody in the future to start making this part of a sort of a public discussion. So, as much as I can, I will keep private matters private.
Lynlinking
Craig Kelly to cause trouble if Libs dump him.
The Australian
Liberal MP Craig Kelly has threatened to quit the government and be an outspoken crossbencher if he is rolled as the party’s candidate for the federal electorate …
Bill Shorten
This is a must-watch. Turnbull is cutting the pension and forcing people to work until they are 70. Just so he can give big business and banks an $80 billion tax handout. So out of touch.
Best read of the week
A comment by Miriam English on my post “Fairdinkum what a mess we’re in”
On the other hand, many cities in USA are moving in the opposite direction, basically telling Trump and his hyper-religious morons to go screw themselves. They are opting for low energy programs and granting immigrants safety. There is a change around the world, where the mayors of cities meet to discuss how they can benefit their citizens and improve life in their cities.
People all over the planet are getting fed up with political and religious extremists. The extremists seem to be unaware that they’re generating a strong movement against themselves.
Yes, inequality is rising unchecked, but anger against those who are obscenely wealthy is mounting, and there will be a reckoning. I hope it will be non-violent, in the form of crushingly strong progressive taxes against them. That will be needed to pay for the universal basic income (UBI), which I think will be necessary in the near future.
Extreme poverty and starvation are being eliminated at a rate never before seen in all history. The well-being of the worlds poorest is improving like never before and this is seeing population growth rates decline. The spread of the internet on cheap mobile phones and tablets ($50 from China) means education is spreading like never before too. The increasingly expensive educational institutions are becoming irrelevant as their qualifications are no longer much use anyway. We are starting to move to a kind of education where people learn simply because they are curious, instead of wanting mere certificates.
While politicians in Australia, USA, and a handful of countries lie about climate change and try to cripple the renewable energy revolution, it has nevertheless become an unstoppable tsunami. Coal has already lost; its advocates just don’t know it yet. Wind and solar power are already the cheapest forms of power and the market is driving it despite our wrongheaded politicians’ attempts to thwart it.
Cheap 3D printers are coming of age. Even though I live below the poverty level here in Australia, I bought one a while back, and have a much better one on order which includes a 3D laser scanner that lets me put an object on its platter and scan its shape into the computer, where I can modify the shape before printing it out if I wish.
I can publish my novels and artwork and computer programs on the internet for free and download thousands of other ebooks, audiobooks, music, videos, and computer programs for free or almost free. I already have 6 novels, 26 short stories, and 4 plays online and am working to finish 2 more novels right now. We’ve never been able to do this before. How will creativity flower when we have billions of people doing this? It will be a new Renaissance.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting better at an astonishing rate. When it surpasses us in intelligence, as it is certain to do, we will be able to find solutions to our most pressing problems that currently defy us: How do we prevent corruption in politics? How do we fix the broken thinking that causes religion and other magical thinking? How do we build a space elevator? How do we have a net-zero-energy society while living luxurious lives? How do we stop, and reverse, the destruction of the other lives we share the planet with? How do we fix the climate change problem? How do we prevent people identifying with ideas (the main cause of polarisation and conflict), and instead help them simply be themselves?
There are terrible things happening at the moment, but also wonderful things.
Tim’s titbits
On this day 2 June 2016
On Tuesday 31 May 2016 the first debate of the election campaign between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the Leader of the Opposition took place. What follows are my thoughts on it immediately after. Nothing has changed.
The individual can only answer the question of who won the ABC debate and it will depend on his or her particular allegiance to either party. To others with some objectivity, well they may see it as a draw. People from the left like me will score it to the Opposition Leader on the basis of him being more passionate.
My clown of the week
A few contestants this week. On Tuesday I must have had a moment of heightened telepathy when I included these four in my comments about the character of conservative politicians. So, Hunt swears at old ladies, Cash declines, to tell the truth, Hanson loses control of her emotions and her party and Barnaby needs time off to count $150.000.
After much consideration, my weekly award goes to the mild-mannered Minister for Health and lying, who gave a woman of some standing (a grandmother of 71 and Mayor no less) a stream of expletives and then took 6 months to apologise. On top of that, it seems he did the same to the former head of his department.
My thought for the day
“Never in the history of this nation have the rich and the privileged been so openly brazen”
18 comments
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Max Gross
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Ross
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Peter F
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Terence Mills
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Wam
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Ricardo29
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helvityni
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Lawrence Winder @shanewombat)
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245179
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ajogrady
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Josephus
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DrakeN
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ajogrady
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win jeavons
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Sir Scotchmistery
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Glenn Barry
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paul walter
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helvityni
Return to home pageOnly within the LNP could Barnyard Joys have flourished. In the LNP incompetence is its own reward!
Miriam English must realise that once AI surpasses us in intelligence it will no longer have need for the human race that is using scant resources for humans. Humans will become redundant as AI will be able replicate and improve by itself.
For the redhead, two songs :’ It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to’ followed by ‘The Party’s over, time to call it a day.”
Prior to September 2014 Liddell power station was owned by the NSW Government and under pressure from the Abbott government for the states to divest themselves and privatise critical assets as part of the Asset Recycling Program the Liddell power station was acquired by AGL Energy in September 2014 at a knok-down price.
In return, the Abbott government promised the NSW government $1.9 billion in recognition of the highly ideological privatisation program – Queensland missed out on the bribe when they turfed out the Newman government and retained their power generation assets in public hands.
So, the NSW Baird government got a double-bunger effect, they got paid by AGL and by the federal government.
Now, Barnaby wants the federal government to buy [or compulsorily acquire] Liddell from AGL and then sell it on to Alinta.
Just as well he’s not Deputy Prime Minister now !
A great read, jlord,! (with one doubt about describing fay miller as an ‘old lady’ but we know what you mean.)
The tears ‘burst on’ the tv as PHON became PHOless and her grand plans to do her work for the people of Australia was threatened. Such a joke was right up there with trump discussing prison reform with kim kardashian but will only meet the other kim to develop a relationship.
Many little men are threatened by strong women and, feeling cornered, beccome violent. Fay’s memory was the ‘finger’ in the face. I believe she wrote to hunt then the party then trumball but no result till murdoch decided there was a story a published. Wow the apologies flowed like the rivers used to pre-cotton.(wonder if labor has the guts to say no cotton south of the ord and shift the crops??)
ps
I intend to respect barnaby’s privacy and not watch his story.
Apart from being roughly from my part of the world, that ‘old’ woman is a year younger than me. That comes as a bit of a shock. What doesn’t come as a shock is Hunt’s much delayed apology. He is a liar. We used to cyall his father Ralph rhyming-slang. Now it seems appropriate to use that on him.
Poor Hunt, his cover has been blown…he has spent years in effort to look caring…( all those nicely arranged folds on his forehead)…all has been in vain…
‘The bloody Australian sun’ ,( as an Austrian acquaintance used to shout on the hot days ), will age us all prematurely, and being angry and upset about the behaviour of our political leaders does not help either……
So ,let’s choose better next time, and be happy and wrinkle free…
What a sorry tale… The Ruling Rabble in their death throes are mangling every convention they can so that when Labor wins the next election “gloves-off” will just be the starting point for them and their chorus in the Murdoch media.
@LW….don’t be too hasty, the “ruling rabble” will be returned if labour retain shorten. If ALP appoint wong / albo, then all bets are off.
The L/NP have, when in power, systematically sold off profitable State and Federal government services and utilities to private L/NP donors. Another way they direct taxpayers funds is by awarding contracts to L/NP donors. Services that are not profitable but are beneficial to the community are striped of finances with cuts to their budgets. Staff lay offs are the result of the cuts and therefore the service performs badly. To rectify what the L/NP created the service or a large section of the service is outsourced and contracts are awarded to L/NP donors e.g. Indue and Serco. The L/NP are masters at funneling taxpayers money to their political donors. It is a win win as far as the L/NP and their donors are concerned as it allows for the L/NP to remain in power and protect the fraud being perpetrated on the taxpayers. The taxpayers, by stealth, are actually the ones funding the L/NP electoral ambitions and therefore the L/NP electoral war chest.The Main Stream Media is complicit in this fraud. The lack of fundamental investigative journalism that would highlight these massive irregularities is destroying democracy. In turn the L/NP’s attacks on convention,the rule of law, statutory bodies and stacking of the judiciary is destroying the man in the streets belief in the fundamental backbone of our society. When a country like Australia has a Prime Minister that off shores his own tax liabilities rather then pay his fair share of tax knowing that taxes provide all the services and amenities for a safe and harmonious community that he and us enjoy. It is a slippery slope for the rest of our society to believe that it is open slather as respect for the basic and central structures that create a strong and vibrant society are being diminished. The societal fabric and the nation as a whole is being systematically and corrosively trashed by those who are expected to set an example and show leadership.
ajogrady all that is true, but then, why do we elect these monsters? Answer: the rich and selfish control the media. Secondly: not saying all rich humans are selfish, cf George Soros; intelligence and kindness are there or not, so- educate parents…? But who educates the educators?
@ ajogrady
“The Main Stream Media is complicit in this fraud.”
Nor complicit – driving the fraud, the greater part controlled by the scion of one of the creators of the IPA – Kieth Murdoch.
The complex interweaving of the LNP parties, the IPA, the Mudoch media and acolytes and big business lobbyists like the BCA is indeed a “tangled web” – woven with the sole intention of catching the small fry in society in order to feed the predators who create and deploy it.
DrakeN I totally agree. This basic class warfare except one side, the people, do not realise that it is occuring because the Main Stream Media at the bequest of their owners either totally ignore it or at pains to ridicule those who point out the obvious. If we look back through history the majority of the people have always been left out of the schemes that have enriched and bestowed power to the privileged few. As you say the odious IPA have had a major sway over many conservative policies and their outcomes. The GST springs to mind. Rather then the wealthy paying their fair share the GST was introduced and was paraded around by the MSM as “fair” when in actual fact it is a regressive tax system. Below is Americas equivalent manifesto to the IPA’s produced back in the early 70’s. This is nothing compared to what the aristocracy of Britain has perpetrated on the people there for a much longer period of time.
There is more than 1 sort of intelligence. Maybe AI will surpass us some day in intellectual or practical intelligence, but never in emotional intelligence . But then I look at our sad apology for a government and wonder. Dutton, in particular has the emotional intelligence of a dead wombat.
In our town in outback Queensland, Barnaby is famous for appearing at the pub with a couple of his daughters, (I suspect before one of them drive around Tamworth decrying him as a c###), found the toilet signs and proceeded to walk past the publican and half a dozen of his (the publican’s) admirers, toilette the offspring and walked out.
Not a word to anyone until the publican said “hey Barnaby how about your address and next time I’m passing I’ll drop in for a piss”.
Said Joyce was embarrassed into a couple of packets of chips, however these dumb arsed mofos still vote for his party.
Effwits.
Hmm the artificial intelligence development I think is going to take longer than we anticipate – they are currently slamming head first into the reality that we do not have a working theory of human perception and conscious awareness to begin with.
It’s going to be difficult to replicate something without knowing what it is to begin with…
Greg Hunt rhymes with…’nuf said
Re Adani,
here is an example that like media and education dumbing down, tax cuts for the rich, union and welfare bashing, racism involving aborigines and asylum seekers and enviro policy, really offers a perfect example of the utter, anal and outright perversity of this government.
…and Cash rhymes with bash, trash, rash, flash…