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.
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.
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My thoughts for the day
Honesty isn’t popular anymore. It doesn’t carry the weight of society’s approval it once did.
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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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