As I like to point out from time to time, I’m not a left-winger. Of course, when I’m compared to that famous left-winger, Malcolm Turnbull, I must say that I come across a bit more of a radical than he does. Granted, we both own real estate and shares, and therefore neither of us are advocating ending the concept of private property. Although I suspect that Malcolm’s portfolio is slightly more valuable than mine, neither of us should be lined up against the wall when the revolution comes because of all we’ve done to support social justice in this country. Personally, even if I can’t remember what it was for, I signed an online petition about something recently and Malcolm would be prepared to support a lot of things like human rights, if it was suddenly in his interests to do so.
Whatever, like Malcolm, I don’t just get my news from such uninformed sites as the socialist newspapers or The Australian Independent Media Network. No, I actually read financial pages and look up websites about investments.
And I found this one particularly interesting:
http://ieefa.org/briefing-note-an-overview-of-adani-enterprises-corporate-restructuring/
Ok, I’ll spare you the need to read it. Apart form the first couple of paragraphs which talk about changes in Adani and their decision to reduce in the size of their proposed Queensland mine (bet you didn’t notice that being reported in the mainstream media), the most significant bit was this:
““With Adani Enterprise’s market capitalization reduced from US$11.8 billion to US$2.5 billion, attracting finance for the Australian mine proposal looks remote,” Buckley said. ‘With Adani Enterprises also focusing on two major new solar proposals costing US$9 billion, Carmichael will likely be collateral damage.'”.
Now if you add that to the Indian government’s intention to stop imports of coal, you start to wonder exactly when there’ll be an acknowledgement of what I told you a few months ago, when I told you that Adani has basically already abandoned plans to go ahead with the mine. No, they don’t tell the press that, when asked, but they do tell the market that because misleading the press is ok, but lying to the market can get you into trouble.
Which is not exactly a segueway into the Liberals’ performance over the past few days, unless I suggest that they’ve been somehow inconsistent. Liberals, inconsistent? May a carbunkle grow on my tongue for saying such a thing.
To sum up the past week for the Liberals:
1. Tony Nutt tells the press that Labor’s so-called “Mediscare” was the most immoral thing that had ever occured in an election campaign, but he thought that the “children overboard” lies were ok, and that suggests of $100 lamb roasts and no more Whyalla were just fine, because, well, there was an actual carbon tax and therefore these weren’t lies, there were just opinions.
2. Labor are “frightening vulnerable people” by suggesting that just because some of them have to take their claims to Medicare offices, it’ll be harder for them to get their money back. Of course, suggesting that welfare will cost the Budget $1,000,0000,000,000,000,000,000 by the year 2216, and telling people who have a carer’s allowance that they’re costing us far too much money and it just has to stop, doesn’t qualify as “frightening vulnerable people”.
3. A group of Liberals published an attack – sorry, a civilised set of talking points – telling us that allowing marriage equality would lead to the Safe Schools being made mandatory. However, there was no need to take any action because they weren’t doing this on behalf of the Liberal Party; they were doing this in their own time. Of course, public servants aren’t allowed to do such things in their own time without the threat of being sacked. As for medical staff on Nauru and Manus telling us about conditions there…
But I think my favourite is Simon Birmingham’s attack on Labor’s “corruption” of the Gonski funding. You know, that policy that the Liberals assured us was their policy too before the 2013 election.
4. Simon Birmingham complains that students from some Western Australian schools are currently receiving less than students at a similar school in Tasmania. Without getting bogged down into some of the possible reasons for this and how the Gonski funding wasn’t really going to kick in until the final two years, I’d just like to make the simple point that Barnett refused to sign up for Gonski, even after Gillard offered him extra funding. However, when Mr Pyne became Education Minister, he gave WA funding anyway, telling the public that he didn’t support the “command and control” model that Labor wanted. Mr Birmingham, however, has no such qualms, announcing that the states couldn’t expect to get the money unless they did what he wanted.
Yep, that’s the trouble with the Internet. Someone like me can just find out all these things and share them, even if the MSM forgets all about them.
I guess we’ll just have to introduce tighter controls and use pornography or terrorism to justify them.
