Rupert Tweets, The NDIS, and Some Thoughts on That Photo!

“Country (Australia) almost ungovernable with any Senate majority impossible for either side to execute. Bilateral agreement to change urgent if unlikely”

Rupert Murdoch on Twitter.

So Rupert Murdoch thinks Australia is “ungovernable”. Interesting choice of word there. It’s not because Abbott isn’t up to the job, mind you. Abbott remains the “best alternative”. Rupert makes that clear in later tweets. Rather it’s because of those unruly senators that won’t let the best person for the job just get on with things. We should all be working together on “reform”.

Although I can’t help but wonder whether I’d feel good about Rupert’s tweets were I Tony Abbott. Being urged toward an election now reminds me of that time in primary school when my friends in grade one urged me to take on the grade two bully – a boy who subsequently grew to over two metres tall. Thinking back, I’m not sure that they were really on my side…

And stories have surfaced about a lunch between Mr Murdoch and Scott Morrison. But hey, Rupert and Wendy have separated so he’s a free man and he can eat with whoever he thinks is an interesting lunch companion. Still, Morrison has never struck me as the sort who’d be full of interesting bon mots and amusing anecdotes.

So one wonders how long Abbott would actually last if he were to go into Cabinet and announce that he’s taking Rupert’s advice and calling a snap election.

Say what you like about Rupert at least he gives people with memory difficulties a go. That poor Rebekah Brooks has just been re-appointed to run his UK newspaper organisation . As you may remember, her defence at the trial was that she was unaware of the criminal wrongdoing of intercepting voicemails and bribing public officials, and knew nothing of the conspiracy to cover it all up. The jury agreed and she was found not guilty.

Now it seems that Rupert thinks that someone with that level of incompetence should be rewarded by being given a job just a few years after receiving a ten million pound send-off from the organisation. No wonder he thinks wages are too high.

Mm, Murdoch also supports Tony Abbott. Perhaps he sees incompetence as a virtue, not a flaw. Still the jury found that she knew nothing about the phone hacking. And that she couldn’t remember anything else including any conversations she’d had that might have been incriminating. I guess that’s because there were none and that she had such a hands off approach that she just signed the checks and presumed they were for some worthwhile project. Much like the Liberals in Victoria, who recently discovered that one of their own was such a good economic manager that he was managing to siphon funds into his own pocket

Of course, it’s unlikely that the NDIS board will be re-appointed. They were appointed by Labor and there seems to be a fear within the government that they may be competent which would give no excuse to make massive changes. So their jobs are being advertised nine months before their terms are due to expire. They discovered this when they saw the job ads. To be on the new board, one must have “substantial board experience either in a large listed company or a significant government business enterprise”.

With Rebekah Brookes now taken, perhaps someone on the board of HIH would still be around, or we could import some of those executives from those companies that crashed in the GFC, because whatever, they’d have to be better than those put on the board by Gillard!

Now that the NBN is running so smoothly with the Liberal appointments, maybe some of them could help out. All right, I know that some of you are going to argue that it’s blown out to $56 billion, but it would have cost $90 billion under Labor according to estimates done by a couple of Liberal frontbenchers over a lunch using the cost of the wine as a reckoning point. And it wouldn’t even be finished by next year like we promised.

Anyway, this goes back to John Howard’s plan to make sure that anyone in position of influence was put there by the Liberals. That way it would always seem that any “unbiased” observer was against any Labor plan. He managed it fairly effectively over his eleven years in office. Unfortunately it’s left the Liberals with a mindset that anyone who ever disagrees with them on anything must be on “the other side” and therefore not worth listening to. Sort of like people who argue that their faith healer has assured them that all non-natural medicine is an impurity and their fingernails falling off is just one of the healthy detoxing effects of the potion that their drinking as is the itchiness.

However, let’s not forget that while we’ve been talking about jobs and growth – in particular, Tony and Rebekah’s jobs and the growth of things that Tony has screwed up – let’s not forget there’s a decision on Syria to be announced in the coming days. After due consideration, we will be joining the US in air strikes on selected targets. (Where do I get these leaks from?)

Yes, while the world was shocked by the photo of the child lying dead on the beach. Abbott was using this as a justification of his “successful” turn back the boats policy. If the European countries were as successful as Mr Abbott, this boy wouldn’t have been shocking people by laying dead on the beach, he’d have been safely back in Syria awaiting our bombs to liberate him.

Strange that we can be aware of deaths and drownings and all sorts of terrible things and there’s no outrage, but it takes just one photo to make it real for many people. I guess that’s why it’s so important to keep journalists and cameras away from our detention centres. We might actually discover that there are real people in there, with real atrocities being committed.

Lots of bombs were dropped in South-East Asia during the Vietnam conflict, but it was only that photo of a naked distressed girl that made some people aware that bombs have consequences for human beings.

Of course, we’ll have precise targets with our bombs and it’ll help stem the flow of refugees because once you quell those people who are worse than the Nazis, Syria will be safe under the nice Assad government once again, who’ll then stop bombing his own people.

If you don’t believe me, ask Mr Abbott.

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