Gimme the details
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was at the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures last weekend. In his speech at the Festival he touched on the failure of ‘The Voice’ referendum and made a commitment to continue to work towards the recognition of First Nations peoples. One of the strategies that was suggested was a ‘truth telling’ and healing process known as Makarrata. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who chose to be elsewhere last weekend announced that a government he would lead would not support a Makarrata process.
Once of Dutton’s concerns apparently was that the details of any Makarrata were not available. His view of ‘The Voice’ referendum was similar. In short, because no one could tell Dutton that at 2pm on Friday 1 May 2026 a certain event would occur, there was no hope of Dutton supporting the initiative. The demand is a bit strange really, as Dutton and his ‘shadow ministry’ are far less forthcoming when spruiking detail of policies they claim they will implement when they return to power in 2025 (because the current government is so bad). When asked for details on where nuclear power plants were intended to go and how much it would cost, Dutton and his ‘energy spokesman’ Ted O’Brien suggested that the detail would be announced in due course.
While, to the great concern and befuddlement of the actual land owners in a number of cases who were not consulted, the Coalition have subsequently announced the proposed locations of the nuclear plants. They have been far less forthcoming on the costs, technology, safeguards and how these plants would operate. So much for only backing initiatives when all the detail was disclosed for all to see.
Dutton’s claims on understanding the current energy transition energy are dubious at best anyway. He won’t even commit to maintaining this country’s commitment to emission reduction. He claims he will announce something after the next election. He could look for inspiration to examples like California with a similar population to Australia. According to this report California until recently relied on gas and nuclear power to supply it’s early evening consumption demands. In April, batteries supplied more energy than gas for the first time. The energy produced was similar to the output of 7 nuclear power stations for a number of hours. While California is known to be one the USA’s progressive states, another US state that is actively developing renewable energy is the far from progressive Texas.
In the same week as Garma, REX airlines ‘capital city’ venture was grounded. There are still a number of speculative claims from all sorts of people with different levels of actual knowledge of the reasons for REX and Bonza’s economic turbulence this year. Various politicians lined up to comment that if REX was to cease flying altogether it would be a disaster for regional Australia (which is probably true enough), but some of them went on to apportion blame to other airlines for predatory behaviours and Coalition Senator Bridget McKenzie went as far as saying:
Labor should have started reforming Sydney Airport slots a year ago, instead of allowing a company majority-owned by Qantas and Virgin to make the decisions on allocating precious slots without any oversight,”
Logically, if the problem existed in 2023 it also existed in the almost 10 years of Coalition government that preceded it. McKenzie fails to mention any measures the former government took to reduce the apparent capacity problem at Sydney Airport. McKenzie, as a former minister, would also be well aware of the timeframes relating to the preparation of proposed legislation to be considered by parliament. Yes, both sides of politics are equally as cupable for selling off infrastructure, such as airports in the past. At least McKenzie isn’t blaming the ALP for that as well.
It is said that arguing with fools only reduces you to their level where they will beat you with experience. Who knows if the Harris for President claim the Republicans were ‘weird’ was scripted or not – but it has worked. There has to be a similar descriptor for a political party that is simply sitting on both sides of the barbed wire fence – demanding detail in the policies of the government but promising ‘don’t you worry about that’ for their own policies and promises. It reminds us of the methods used by the Bjelke-Petersen conservative governments in Queensland. We know how that ended!
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12 comments
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Perry Gretton
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Andrew Smith
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Bert
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Ian Joyner
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Clakka
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John C
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Teiresias
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Max Gross
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Terence Mills
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Teiresias
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leefe
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Teiresias
Return to home page“There has to be a similar descriptor for a political party that is simply sitting on both sides of the barbed wire fence – demanding detail in the policies of the government but promising ‘don’t you worry about that’ for their own policies and promises.”
How about “see-saw” or similar?
Not just Dutton, he seems to be following orders of fossil fuel and mining people and those Atlas-Koch think tanks, to rabbit on about nuclear to delay transition to renewables.
Then the RW MSM (The Guardian is not much better) either dismiss renwables via ‘community concerns’ (eg. a hobby farmer) and as bad, disappear any positive and significant news on renewables offshore, where now in more places they have overtaken fossil fuels.
Similar to all things the ‘other’ and immigration, via related Tanton Network influence on bipartisan political bigotry and RW MSM?
In the past generation since ascendancy of Howard and Murdoch, how often have we seen positive stories about ‘immigration’, never vs. dollops of embarrassing dog whistling and sophistry.
Like UK Brexit and now far right on the streets, after decades of dog whistling immigrants and the EU.
History started the day Labor took office. The previous government left an absolutely clean sheet of achievements, so any problems rthat may have been around before then are not real, It’s all Albo’s fault, just ask Dutts.
Oh, by clean sheet, I could have meant BLANK SHEET.
Notice how Dutton went running to Israel. Liberals raised questions as to why Albo did not go. But then Dutton refuses to go to Garma. They sacrifice our own people to support those involved in genocide. Well same thing I suppose.
Since at least 2020, ASIO has been warning that the most grave and significant threat to Oz community comes internally from ‘white supremacist’ groups and ‘neo-Nazis’ formed by lost and vengeful brutalist young aparatchik boys and men (mainly) networked into their like in America, Britain and Europe.
Like Trump & Vance etc, selecting talking points to rile up the squadrons of armed goons (and the ill-informed) to niggle the ‘us and them’ and destabilize democratic process – vote him in so he can implement autocracy disguising his personal kleptomania and peak plutocracy. Needless to say (as per Andrew Smith’s comment) backed and funded by the desperate and dying FRWNJ’s of the fossil-fuelers and their junktanks, and the neo-religious theocratic evangelists.
Seems Der Spud & Co, the ideas void, losing friends left right and centre, and desperate to maintain its sinecure, has found succour in the bosom of oligarchs, ethical geeing-up from the Oz societies and institutions of small govt and no-details freebooters. Seems it will be less taxing on them all.
Easy-peasy, Der Spud, disguised as mild mannered Clark Kent, really Brainiac in disguise, doesn’t have to do anything but have his strings pulled; the script is already laid out by the Donald (and JB-P). “Don’t you worry ’bout that.”
Starting this article with a photo and a quote from Queensland’s most racist and corrupt ever politican in my lifetime doesn’t sit well! Peace and tranquility? In his corrupt police state?? He has gone down in our history for what he was, a sad pathetic joke, reviled by one and all.
Janet Albrechtsen (12/6/2024) wrote “Without some hard-headed rationality, precautions, safeguards and exitstrategies, idealism is fully on steroids”,
Is that what powers Janet?
“However, when the highly radical activists dominating the Albanese government came up with a ridiculously overreaching proposal that would entrench permanent constitutional right for Indigenous people and forever hobble our government. Leeser and the idealists were unable to get off the bus. they had been hijacked by activists, their idealism ridden ridden roughshod over their common sense.Disaster was inevitable, and so it came to pass”
And who were Leeser and others? They were people under Morrison who wrote a 275-page report, “based on extensive national consultation, about what the legislative voice would look like (I, Chris Kenny, was in that process.) They know more than they pretend,”
Has anyone seen that report? Or only the Coaliiton nonsense published in the Referendum Booklet?
Somebody mentioned Dutton’s junket to “Israel”, sponsored of course by the local Zionist lobby, but rest assured that Labor MPs too have availed themselves of these hasbara excursions. The Zionist lobby stranglehold on Australia’s cowardly and/or complicit politicians is nothing new.
Max
You may well be right but it occurs to me that, when offered a free trip that is supposed to be fact finding and educational it is incumbent on any politician to insist that they see both sides of any issue or dispute : if that is not available then they should not accept the largesse.
In this case Dutton was visiting a war zone and he should have visited with Palestinian officials and perhaps Jordan and Lebanon to get a clear understanding of the situation.
Personally I see Dutton’s trip as being very one-sided but as he seems very reluctant to even talk about it we may never know : just a waste of time and effort as he didn’t even call for talks and a ceasefire.
Janet Albrechtsen continues her “hard-headed rationality, safeguards and exitstrategies.” She knows she is read by people who agree with her about the falsity of Climate Change (see The Loon Pond 10/8/2024)
“Mind Your On Business – Or Brace For Inevitable Shareholder Backlash.”
“Australian companies fawned over the incoming Albanese government, rolling over when the new industrial relations policies were being discussed. Imagine their surprise when they discovered the ALP is indeed a wholly owned subsidiary of the union and was going to do all the union wanted, plus more.”
While Janet does what Rupert wants.
“And who can forget how corporate Australia lined up to endorse the voice even before anyone even knew what the actual proposal was, and doubled down on their negligence when the full radical overreach was known.”
Janet ignores the truth told by Chris Kenny (5/8/2023) that the Coalition ” know more than they pretend” with the 275-page report compiled under the Morrson government of which he and Leeser were a part.
Teiresias:
Ahhhh, that brings a smile to my face. Not because of anything Albrechtsen has said or written, but due to the sheer unbelieveable risibility of Linda Reynolds comment in court that she found Albrechtsen’s writing fair and balanced. This is a disconnect from reality on a par with the looniest of loony conspiracy theorists.
leefe,
you are right, of course. There have been many examples of mis-truths and corruption displayed over several years now, so much of it around an event set in Parliament late one night.
Perhaps some information about that might be seen on tv tonight (12/08/2024) about Channel 7.
Recently, there was a program on SBS about Hitler’s 16,000 book collection of Nazi rightwing politics – which the program claims exists around the world today. We certainly have it in Austraila.
Israel’s Netanyahu is far rightwing and he knows how far righwing Nazis operated.
I have been taking notice of statements by the ICJ making judgements of the war crimes of Israel ans Gaza. In the AIMN appeared a statement “Action Aid welcomes the historic judgement of the ICJ.”
“The court has concluded that the Israel government must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, cease all settlement activity – which is judged to be in breach of international law – and make reparations to the Palestinians affected.”Israel (or Netanyahu will not agree with that.) Are we allowed to?
What does Janet think? She says:
“Last month brought home how misplaced idealism in international law and transitional bodies is is taking us for a ride…Touchingly, many of us have a benevolent view of international courts and international conventions, but events like these [ICJ statements] reveal them as vehicle for activist judges and lawyers to impose their political views on us.”
And right-wing Janet will not be imposed upon. She hates activists.