Just because we are governed by clowns it doesn’t mean we have to laugh
1 Yet another scandal surrounding the Liberal Party. A Liberal Party donor purchases a parcel of land near the Western Sydney airport for a fraction of its true value and the Auditor General finds it to be a shonky deal.
Then we find out that the company who purchased the land is a donor to the Liberal Party. The Minister at the time, Paul Fletcher, rather indignantly says it’s the department’s fault. If not them, perhaps Labor. Certainly not us. (Just joking of course but the LNP is really laughable at times.)
It’s another one of those pub tests or seemingly corrupt transactions that we are asked to believe without question. It is unfortunate that so many of us do.
I for one ask myself a few of questions. Firstly, how come a transaction that should be worth $1 million of the $30 million his department paid for the land manages to escape the eyes of the minister? Secondly, when he found out that the buyers were Liberal donors why didn’t he abort it?, and thirdly, did any of the money find its way back into Liberal Party coffers?
At the Press Club on 23 September Minister Fletcher’s defence was ignorance. He hadn’t been given enough information by his department so therefore was innocent of any wrongdoing. He felt protected by the auditor. Whatever happened to Ministerial responsibility?
Wasn’t he responsible for making sure he had all the information he required? At the Press Club, despite all the questions thrown at him he never once admitted negligence on his part.
Never, at any time did he question that the $30 million was a lot of money to pay for land worth but a fraction of the price paid.
That being the case then the Minister and the Government showed a lack of due diligence which can only be described as unethical.
Pub test anyone?
2 As one scandal follows another, Justice Geoffrey Flick found that while acting as Immigration Minister Alan Tudge unlawfully deprived an asylum seeker of his liberty, leaving him in detention for five days because he thought the tribunal that ordered his release got the law wrong.
In what could only be described as a scathing decision last Wednesday, the federal court Judge found the acting immigration minister “engaged in conduct which can only be described as criminal.”
This the judge said exposed him to both civil and potential criminal sanctions, including for contempt of court.
Justice Geoffrey Flick warned the minister that he:
“… cannot place himself above the law”, and allowed the Afghan man to keep the visa awarded to him by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.”
Tudge is considering possible appeal.
Justice Flick described the minister’s conduct as “disgraceful.”
“The minister has acted unlawfully. His actions have unlawfully deprived a person of his liberty”.
“His conduct exposes him to both civil and potentially criminal sanctions, not limited to a proceeding for contempt.
“In the absence of explanation, the minister has engaged in conduct which can only be described as criminal.”
Now that’s not a bad put down for another born-to-rule clown.
3 The Angus Taylor speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday 22 September, rather than presenting a road map for our future energy and climate policies, turned out to be an ideological highway to hell.
It has taken the conservatives the best part of a generation – since Abbott’s ill-fated decision to support coal rather than renewables — to finally see the light and admit that it is not the future.
Now we, the more enlightened of our species, find ourselves in a fight over gas. How pathetic they are. When you cannot govern for the common good then you have no right to govern at all.
They just cannot bring themselves to admit that in the time of Tony Abbott they were wrong to dismiss renewable energy as a power source. And this born to rule party with their disbelief in science have advanced us not one iota.
History will judge that they and subsequent governments of the same colour have done our nation a great disservice.
Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)
4 There was a lot of bad publicity for the government surrounding the proposed upgrade to Australia’s National Broadband Network. Labor rightly vented its “we told you so” anger at the government. Do it right the first time and that’s the end of it.
And of course, like an echo around the Grand Canyon as soon as they are finished you can hear the words “it needs an upgrade.”
And those with all the wisdom in these matters will know that the luddites of the Liberal Party have decided, once again on ideological grounds that it will only be the rich and privileged who will benefit from the upgrade.
The ever-reliable fine print tells us that only 4,000,000 connections are expected to be upgraded by 2025.
The government is saying that upwards of six million premises could access speeds of up-to-a-gigabit under the $4.5 billion upgrade.
Don’t be fooled. It will be free to connect but the ongoing charges will be prohibitive for the average family. Try $25.00 per week.
This will of course further widen the digital divide. The rich kids will have an advanced educational tool and the less well-off wont.
So much for all the Prime Minister’s dishonest words of fairness and equality of opportunity. Oh, and did I tell you that if your digs are in an apartment or you live in a block of flats the you may not get it at all?
I’m not joking. It’s true. And they keep on getting elected. Go figure. Someone should write a book about it.
So, it appears that I was right all along and the Coalition have been so lacking in vision that they could not see Australia’s growing technology needs just a few short years ago. Fair dinkum. Give me a Bex – I need to lay down.
One can only conclude that it has been a backflip a decade in the making.
5 Well, having written all this I suppose I should end with something about the world’s greatest clown.
President Trump is one sick individual. Now he is sordidly claiming that the statement released by the supreme court justice Ginsberg’s family was actually written by Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer.
“I would be more inclined to the second, OK – you know, that came out of the wind. That sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe Pelosi or for Shifty Schiff. So that came out of the wind, let’s say. I mean, maybe she did, and maybe she didn’t.”
And the latest is that he is threatening not to accept the outcome of the election before a debate has been held.
He maybe the greatest clown of all. And the most dangerous.
My thoughts for the day
Honesty isn’t popular anymore. It doesn’t carry the weight of society’s approval it once did.
* * *
I found it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a third term a government that has performed so miserably in the first two and has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and corrupt men and women, but they did.
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14 comments
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Ken -
New England Cocky -
Terence Mills -
Phil Pryor -
Bert -
Al -
wam -
Andrew J. Smith -
Johnyperth -
corvusboreus -
corvusboreus -
wam -
corvusboreus -
Al
Return to home page………and guess who was the same government member in charge of the land deal and now is in charge of fixing the NBN !
Such are the consequences of the self-inflicted wound of electing a Liarbral Nazional$ COALiiton misgovernment for the benefit of foreign owned multinational corporations that pay little/no taxation in Australia and pay even less for our natural resources to be shipped overseas for processing and manufacture into valuable products overseas by their populations.
Welcome to the worst third world export economy in the OECD.
And then we have our Pauline, taking One Nation funds and giving them to a dodgy developer and then refusing to say why she did it :
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/26/one-nation-paid-500000-to-company-behind-billion-dollar-development-in-queensland
In the meantime there is still no explanation on how Pauline Hanson came to use a novelty cheque with her face on it to announce a $23m taxpayer-funded federal grant to build a stadium in Rockhampton.
Hanson had used the photo-op to announce $23m for a 16,000-seat stadium that is committed but yet to be delivered through the federal government’s community development program : nothing to do with Hanson but like Georgina Downer before her, she tried to link herself with the federal funding.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/18/pauline-hanson-takes-credit-for-23m-coalition-grant-to-build-16000-seat-stadium-in-rockhampton
We badly need a far reaching, independent corruption watchdog.
We need a far reaching independent watchdog?? Perhaps we have a chronic problem of absolute carrerist arseholes getting into the machine system of political perversion, people so often without brains, decency, no morals, no ethics, no policy attitude except greed egomastubatory posing, fixations on donor requirements so as to have backing and rise up from povery and ignorance to fame and fortune, My local Member, Mr. Paul Farken-Fletcher is such a one, a pommy citizen still on the morning of his pre-selection who had to scuttle off to conform to legality So much for the good old Aussie battler lie. Ley, Mc Kenzie, Joyce, Hanson, Morrison the top turd, Frydenberg that walking memorial to dolts and dickheads, so many, too many.., and there would still be a large queue of bowel droppings awaiting political birth for the glory of conservative careerism. Having seen the rise of a political erection, a Freudian Farce, in Jack Howard, the repulsive servant of conservaive criminality and political perversion in continual dishonesty, it makes any decent contemplation of a good future impossible. The nation is a game, “Fascism for Fun”.
Mr Lord,
“Yet another scandal surrounding the Liberal Party. A Liberal Party donor purchases a parcel of land near the Western Sydney airport for a fraction of its true value and the Auditor General finds it to be a shonky deal.”
A correct description would be “The government purchased a parcel of land from a Liberal donor for 10x the valuation”. I get what you mean but the roles are reversed and I agree with everything else you’ve written. This government is rotten from the head down
John, agree the Liberal Party are luddites butt re their plan to spend more on the NBN, credit where credit is due. Long term there will be savings for the Health Budget as people will be getting less EMF’d by non-ionizing radiation. Fibre or wired connection is the only safe way to move data, not that the govt seems to care much about the health risks posed by RF/EMF.
Found this interesting approach to educators way of dealing with covid @ Gregory-Portland High School Texas – PODS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_1M4R4Bgbc (first few seconds can be skipped, go to the promo video)
Ironically, at least one News Outlets is surprised by low enrollments at Central Texas schools:
Maybe the intention is to make parents accept home-schooling as the most responsible way to educate children. In one way that would make sense. If authorities prefer to sell off school properties, then citing a parental trend to not send children to mind-control centers is a good idea. What must teachers think of their role in this Orwellian drama?
Terence, how do you think the POD system would work in sports stadiums here as a way of minimizing the spread of viruses?
clowns 100 year ago freud described uncanny’ and 30 years ago “Coulrophobia” was coined. These dangers describe what the liberal party has become and it is scary. The kevin andrews staking is dangerous to democracy
Albo has to do something to expose the IPA and christian input.
The extra clown is honest to himself and is less scary:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/24/politics/trump-election-warnings-leaving-office/index.html
Honesty is the skill of the past. It has disappeared from journalism because of the need for money drives the tweaking. Whilst fair play and competition sound good the perception is that labor bashing sells. QED
The corruption has become quite brazen and transparent following in the foot steps of the GOP, Trump, UK Tories and corporate supporters; more like Turkey?
While we have no appropriate anti corruption institution or agency at the federal level, worse, are the enablers whom are voters, MPs, parties, institutions and media at best approving of the status quo by their acquiescence.
On the other hand sub-optimal moral and ethical financial behaviour, although not approved by people they have become desensitised to such behaviour and constant (often false) equivalence that is made, with Labor, Greens, unions etc. are just as corrupt; therefore no point in changing one’s vote.
No coincidence that Australia is influenced by and blindly follows the UK and the US where we have observed the oncoming radical right libertarian tide, submerging institutions, norms and ethics under the guise of ‘whatever it takes’; too often supported by ‘pensioner populism’ and divisive dog whistling (essential for playing up on demographic change i.e. more monocultural upper median age vote made fearful of the younger and diverse lower median age vote and non voters….).
This state of polictics, the nationa and society is now well and truly embedded, helped along by media, as exemplified by the boundary pushing being signalled and actually occuring via the White House, and as practised in great liberal democracies like Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Brazil, Philipines etc. (with Anglo conservatives targeting the EU for criticism?)
Australia has managed to sign itself up for a radical right libertarian revolution aiding the top end of town while the rest of the nation sleep walks….. citizens are not empowered nor acting on behalf of their own society, but for mostly US based economic ideologues promoting ‘whatever it takes’ (in returning to 19th century capitalism, master serf relationships, the pecking order/eugenics, authoritarianism and corruption).
The longer Morrison allows these mp’s to sit on the front bench, then, Morrison will be supporting corruption!!
Terence,
‘We badly need an independent corruption watchdog’.
Agreed.
I would also like a pegasus-unicorn crossed with an ‘eierlegende wollmilchsau’.
wam,
Coulrophobia is a cool fear, but ‘metamfiezomaiophobia’ is more inclusive.
This is fear of not only clowns, but also mimes, pantomimists and others who employ means of facial disguise.
“Take off that ridiculous Guido mask, you are triggering my metamfiezomaiophobia!’
haha, crow my research skill is not up to the job of an eye patch parrotlike you (Kim Pederson sept 2013)but if the cap Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia fits I shall have to bear it.
The other hat was worn 10 years before boobby apologised for his petulant dummy-spit in 2009. I suppose you just swallowed the party line???
ps brandt did well today, if you discount his irrelevance in balancing??
wan
Same old boring crap.
Party bullshit not for me
dying earth, enjoy.
cb, do you know what the fear of muzzles is called? I looked but could not find.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8537489/PETER-HITCHENS-Face-masks-turn-voiceless-submissives.html
And so it runs, Fascists in the UK continue the process of dehumanizing society: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/18/van-morrison-fascist-bullies-anti-lockdown-covid-songs?ref=hvper.com
What hope do children have when subjected to the nonsense in the next video, any teachers out there care to respond to the contents of this video of Gregory-Portland High School Texas – PODS (starts about 7 seconds in):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_1M4R4Bgbc
Dehumanization is what Fascists and Nazis do, no argument there, but why do they have such wide spread support? Seems society has been dumbed down by ToddlerVision to the level where ‘Idiocracy’ is no longer a comical depiction of a possible future society, it’s a current and accurate description of the general situation.