Now that it’s been established that the Border Force fiasco is all the fault of a few protesters over-reacting and gives the Abbott Government yet another reason to shut down the Internet, we can move on.
(As an aside, I heard one of the best bits of freelance comedy while driving home when a talkback caller to the ABC complained how biased they were. One of his beefs was that they called the Government, “the Abbott Government” and not simply The Government and that the ABC was trying to “personalise” things. Mm, words fail…)
Anyway, as Andrew Bolt pointed out nothing happened and the Border Force was never going to do anything wrong, but thanks to those protesters, the ABF never got to not do anything wrong when they didn’t check nobody’s papers.
Confused? Don’t worry. We have Julie Bishop urging European countries to help bomb Syria, which might seem a little hypocritical when we’re still making up our minds whether we should do it or not.
After all – and please correct me if I’m wrong here – Jules seemed to be suggesting that a few well placed bombs could reduce the number of refugees streaming into Europe. Or rather, “illegal immigrants” as Andrew Bolt prefers to call them. But then he refered to Noal Pearson as an “extremist” the other day so I’m a bit concerned about his understanding of what words actually mean.
“Later in AM follows another kid glove interview with an extremist kicking Tony Abbott, this time Noel Pearson, pushing his astonishing proposal to change the constitution so we have an Aborigines-only council to guide Parliament. Blacks vs whites forever. And every question in the interview is designed to portray Abbott as the problem, not Pearson”.
The Liberal candidate for Canning, on the other hand…
Whoops, Freudian slip there, but it was accidental.
The Liberal Candidate for Canning, Andrew Hastie was no extremist according to Bolt, he was just terribly smeared. Although nobody called him an extremist, even if his father is a creationist who believes that evolution is a fabrication. Still, Mr Hastie isn’t responsible for the views of his father, and this has nothing to do with the terrible way he was treated by the media. Although his defence that he was in a helicopter at the time of the “incident” isn’t really the sort of defence that I’d use given Bronwyn Bishop’s recent fall from grace.
Anyway, I’ve grown tired of laughing at the Liberal Party and I wanted to pick on someone else for a change. I mean how many times can you laugh at the same joke before it becomes stale. Or as somebody said:
“There are only three basic jokes, and now that Tony Abbott has become PM it’s a serious situation and comedians are only left with two.”
This morning I read a news item about a report from The Centre For Independent Studies recommending that schools could become more autonomous if they were run “privately”. It then went on to talk about our “failing” schools and how charter schools in the USA had led to “some” improvements for disadvantaged kids.
Ok, I’m the first to suggest that there are ways in which we could improve education, and I’d be more than happy to debate ideas with anyone. However, it does concern me when a newspaper runs a story without pointing out that The Centre For Independent Studies according to its own website:
“The Centre for Independent Studies seeks to encourage and provide independent, fact based practical research and encourage/provoke debate that promotes liberty, the rule of law, free enterprise and an efficient democratic government.”
So we have a centre for independent studies which wants to encourage free enterprise who have released a report that tells us schools would be better run by private enterprise. Now there’s a surprise. It’s sort of like the IPA telling us that their policies are the ones that work. Or the tobacco companies telling us that plain packaging doesn’t discourage smoking. Compared to this, Dyson Heydon’s conclusion that he’s not biased seems fair and reasonable, because, after all, he didn’t conclude it straight away. He had to have a week or so to consider all the evidence before he found that there was no way that he could consider himself biased and anyone who thought otherwise was clearly one of those unionists on the other side of politics.
While The AIMN occasionally is accused of not being “independent” by people who disagree with some of the writers. Gee, I sometimes disagree with some of the writers. In fact, I often disagree with myself. There is a diversity of views here. It just seems that we’re all the same because we all share the view that if Abbott we’re any smarter, he’d be truly dangerous. But several Liberal frontbenchers hold that view as well, so it doesn’t disqualify us from the “independent” tag.
That’s why I find the CIS job ad rather interesting:
Research Director
The CIS is looking for a passionate, likeminded person to join the CIS team. See details here
Apparently they don’t want people who are too independent.
