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The Senate Is “Feral” And Tony Abbott Sure Can Use Words Good!

Photo: Penguin Books

Photo: Penguin Books

Feral
adjective
(especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.
I was going to pick on Tony for his St Patrick’s Day message, but I see that the Irish have already done that. However, I can’t let the occasion pass without at least a passing raised eyebrow at his comment that St Patrick’s Day is “the one day of the year when it’s good to be green”! So it’s not good to be green any other time? Well, of course not, it slows down that friend to humanity, COAL. Thankfully Coleslaw doesn’t contain any green veggies.
And speaking of veggies, apparently Abbott told the joint party room meeting (joint party room? another green occasion?) that the Budget would be balanced within five years in spite of the “feral” Senate blocking all these great barnacles, sorry, savings measures.
So, I decided to look up the meaning of the word “feral”, because I know that someone as educated as Tony would have been using it in its correct sense and not in that I-don’t-like-something-so-it’s-feral sort of way that the common swill use it. Unfortunately, the meaning suggests that the Senate has entered a wild state – possibly as a result of all the PUPs growing up to be their own dogs and snarling at the Liberals in ways not orchestrated by Palmer.
But it was upon reading his desire for his party to be salesmen for Australia that had me worried. Where will we go when they’ve sold it all? I wondered. Then, in spite of the Budget crisis, the Intergenerational Report, the slackers, the backers, the unions, The Greens, the Red Tape strangling us, Bill Shorten and the politically correct sipping their lattes through straws as a lifestyle choice like those who live in communities more remote than Canberra and Kirribilli, he had this to say:
“We have to be full of confidence and optimism for our country’s future,”
I’m not sure if he’s planning to pass legislation to this effect, then check our metadata to find out if we’re accessing too many sites which are negative about Australia or just negative full stop, but I’ve listened to Tony’s message and I find it so hard to be positive when Australia is so full of people who aren’t getting behind him.
Still, when it was mentioned yet again about we must stop using the credit card that I had an epiphany. One of my credit cards gives rewards points which can be used to pay off the balance. Given how often Labor used the “credit card” then there must be a large number of rewards points there. Perhaps we could use them to get the Budget back into surplus.
Or does the government credit card that the Liberals always talk about work differently? If so, then they should probably switch. (And possibly get a special rate on a balance transfer… Haven’t they seen the ads?)
Somebody (who clearly knows nothing about economics) tried to tell me that government debt had an even lower interest rate than my home loan something like three percent. But that couldn’t be right. Don’t they put it on the “credit card” at a really, really exorbitant rate of interest. Otherwise, they could borrow an extra few thousand lend it to me to pay off my house and I’d give them an extra fifty basis points and we’d both be ahead!
Nah, they’re putting it on the credit card. You know, buy now, pay later. (Sort of like the “You pay nothing up front for a Uni degree” ads that Liberals, sorry the Government Bureau of Information was running!)
Thank God we’re paying cash for those jets that haven’t been built yet!#
It’s far better to pay now, and receive the goods later…
Which seems to sum up the entire Liberal philosophy when in government. If we have a harsh Budget in our first year, then you’ll receive the goods in the Budget later. Probably just before the next election.
#(Yes, I know before some pedantic wretch points out we have actually paid for jets yet, we’ve just put in an order… This is hyperbole. Sort of like a Joe Hockey economic explanation, the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a good story!)

24 comments

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  1. Kaye Lee

    Rest easy ross,

    The federal government says it already has the $12.4bn it needs to pay for the 58 American F-35 Joint Strike Fighters it has purchased and that the money will not come out of future budgets.

    “The way we try to run government, and the way successive governments to their credit have tried to do these things, is you know that at some point in the future you’re going to need new ships, new planes, new armoured vehicles etc, so you start putting the money aside now for the major purchases that you need in the future to keep your defence forces effective.”

    “We have been putting the money away, in a line item called air combat capability, and it’s been there, it’s been building up and it’s in the budget.”

    The fighter has been developed by about half a dozen countries, including Canada and Denmark, which are considering not purchasing the fighters because of difficulties in cost and development.

    The RAAF is scheduled to take its first delivery of the F-35 in 2018 and it will begin service in 2020.

    Soooooo….why aren’t we using that money to pay off our credit card while we wait for them to try and build a plane that can fly without falling to bits?

  2. David

    Have news for the UK citizen Abbott (he refuses to deny it) the town of Millstreet in the Parish of Kerry, Co. Cork have made it clear he is not welcome there. I sent my extended family a link to the St Patricks day vid Abbott slapped together and they had already been made aware of it through Irish media.
    To say they are not impressed, is a mild reaction.
    We have a brainless madman in charge, when will it end? What have we done to make the Gods so angry?

  3. paul walter

    Well, when is Labor going to provide an alternative?

    When will it “grow some”, as to resistance to things like Data Retention/Whistleblower protection and secret FTA’s, to name two examples?

  4. Florence nee Fedup

    We elected Abbott into power.

  5. Kaye Lee

    Opposition leader Bill Shorten supports the purchase, saying the previous Labor government believed the F-35 was an appropriate addition.

    “There had been some problems in terms of aspects of the aircraft but it appears that they have been ironed out, so Labor does think that the addition to our air force is the right way to go,” he said.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/tony-abbott-to-spend-124bn-on-fighter-planes

    Ummmmm Bill, the previous Labor government thought having 14 fighter jets was enough. Tony has ordered 58 more and you agree?????

    As to the problems being ironed out….

    The U.S. military has grounded all its new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters following an incident on June 23, when one of the high-tech warplanes caught fire on the runway of a Florida air base.

    “The F-35 is double-inferior,” John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue concluded in their written summary of the war game, later leaked to the press. The new plane “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run,” they warned.

    Minor fixes might get America’s future warplane flying again soon — for a while. But fundamental design flaws could vex the F-35 for decades to come, forcing the Pentagon to suspend flying far too often for the majority of its fighter fleet, potentially jeopardizing U.S. national security.

    http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/07/14/pentagons-big-budget-f-35-fighter-cant-turn-cant-climb-cant-run/

  6. paul walter

    The never ending parade of malfunctioning junk this country gets diddled over.. yet nothing changes.

  7. David

    Florence speak for yourself, we is all encompassing. try I or they or…get the drift?

  8. Florence nee Fedup

    Well someone did. All I know, it was not me. Spent nearly four years warning people. Sadly even I was wrong. Wrong in not seeing how bad this government could be. I said it would be all about demolition, but not to the extreme Abbott has gone to.

  9. stephentardrew

    Kaye love your post about the big glittery jets that get lost, catch fire and still fall out of the sky.

    One day we will get to flying around in the old blunderbuss as the next, even more expensive, model will be peddled for us to purchase at some obscene cost.

    That planned obsolescence is a dream.

    You can trust the military industrial complex just ask Tony.

    Gotta hide the profits ripped from the plebs somewhere in that air combat capability account.

    Stuff the poor, disenfranchised, underprivileged and imprisoned little children.

  10. Bultaco Metralla

    He can’t even do a St Pat’s day message without offending the Irish? isn’t this plumbing the lowest depths of incompetence. He can’t even hire someone to write him a passable speech for the occasion.

  11. Annie B

    So typical that our alleged ‘ally’ would be happy to offload a whole heap of sh*te – – ” 58 x F-35’s” and be opportunistic in doing so – because they ( along with so many of us ) see this Government as …. deficient in the decision making department. ? …. Or in other words, totally inept and bordering insane. ….

    “Ooooh what a big opportunity to rid ourselves of a whole stack of white elephants.” “The Aussies will take them … and pay for them ……. and OMG we don’t want them to come back to us for techie help – its no longer our problem” ?.

    If only Bill Shorten could be more succinct in his wording and phraseology !! Do we KNOW he is in support of 58 of the non-functional, potentially disastrous F35’s, or is he speaking of the 14 that the previous Labor Gov’t supported. …. did he make it clear, or was he cut off at the socks (again ) in any statement he might have made ? ….I would really like to know.

    The entire thing stinks.

    @ Florence nee ….

    Sure ‘we’ elected Abbott into power. …. some % of us that is, enough to get him over the line at the time, and I seriously think it was mainly because many did not want to vote for Rudd. So it was trying to choose between two evils, and ‘we’ went for what we thought was the lesser evil of the two. …. What a bummer decision that was.

    But the ‘we’ was not all of us … and I don’t like to think I might be lumped into that lot – as ‘we’. … I didn’t vote for either of them !!

    No offence intended, by the way Florence ……

  12. Kaye Lee

    Annie,

    The article I linked to showing Bill’s approval was his response to Tony ordering 58 more jets.

  13. Annie B

    Yes Kaye …. Bill Shorten did support – something :

    ….. “Opposition leader Bill Shorten supports the purchase, saying the previous Labor government believed the F-35 was an appropriate addition.”

    A moot point perhaps. …. but he ‘supports the purchase’ ( OK ) … then mentions the previous Labor governments’ belief the F35 was an appropriate addition !! ….

    Thing is, the previous Labor Government only supported purchase of 14 of the damned things …. which is why I asked the question in the first place.

    I just wish Bill could get his mouth around his statements properly, and make it very very plain as to what he is referring to. ….. THIS purchase, or the 14 wanted by Labor ?

    He doesn’t make things too easy, does he.

  14. Criss Poyner

    So we buy useless and broken crap from america, but since when do we need a jack of all trades master of none aircraft? Those who support this have no idea about air combat and clearly didnt hear that our bogeyman, China, has already stole the plans for the Failure 35s and built there own better version. In the end they know its weaknesses and worst of all we think we need planes with stealth? Why so we can bomb other nations not to defend our selves. We should have bought the now decomissined F14 that plane suits our needs better than that pos JSF. It is an interceptor and a defensive plane, has high survivability and has good range and agility. Instead we dummies buy the plane version of a combivan. Oh and the software to operate it wont be finished until 2020 at the earliest unless the sub contracted company finds more “bugs” to fix and need more money to do it. JSFs are going to take a high toll on aussie pilot lives and taxpayer money just to keep them in the air. God help our airforce if someone does come for us since stealtg only works till you open fire then your enemy knows your there. Also we better pray they dont use heat seekers because the 35s run hot as hell, I dont think even a flare will distract it from the engine on this piece of garbage.

  15. rabiddingo

    Regrettably, I am moving toward the view held by many Laborites that Bill Shorten is not up to the job. I think the time is fast approaching when he will have to step aside. It’s not enough to hope that the LNP implode. Too many of the social atrocities this government is committing are allowed to go through with the barest hint of dissent – not just this fighter folly, but the data bills that Beria-Brandis is foisting on us, and I could go on….sorry Bill, you’re a nice bloke, but….

  16. eli nes

    Now Mr abbott has been defeated by the ferals again, his pynenut and his greedy vice chancellors will need to go to work.
    Not with more disingenuous scares but to produce evidence and a picture that can be believed.
    They could take a parcel of courses, across the university sector.
    degrees in:
    arts
    science
    medicine
    mechanical engineering
    teaching
    nursing
    law
    list all entrance requirements, full and partial(drop out rate) costs for fee paying students and hecs students
    Repeat with a parcel of Diploma, VET and TAFE courses:
    list costs for students undertaking bridging, literacy and numeracy courses.
    list any other university costs for students.
    This will give us a consistent and open picture of student costs from which to work.
    ps beauty fervent feral k9 get on to his website and move him tanya could do with a push and wong’s silence over robb(last night 730 was scary that this twit has signed FTAs and now TPP) is worrying. Why no trade on her facebook? Is she not a shadow?

  17. Paolo Soprani

    The F35 is probably quite a good aeroplane. New technology always has bugs. The point about the purchase is, it is not either the government’s or the opposition’s decison to make. It is obvious that in matters of Defence the parliament is told by the powers that be, whoever they are, that this is what is going to happen. I remember how starry eyed the newly elected Bracks government was when they beat Kennett in Victoria and all the changes they were going to make. Two weeks later they were totally different people. They had obviously been advised by the ‘powers that be’ what was allowable and what wasn’t. Hmmm.

  18. Pappinbarra Fox

    Tony Abbott released a presser today that stated: The Government fully supports those members of team Australia that have chosen the lifestyle choice of being homeless by providing shopping trolleys and great big new blue and white striped bags for all their stuff. However the government draws the line at providing 2 shopping trolleys to these life style choicers as that would be greedy and taxpayers should not have to support homeless life style choosers who have too much stuff.”

  19. Annie B

    I only mention this, ( slightly off topic ) as a link was given by ‘bloke’ [ today at 9:29 am ]… to a former AIM article ( May 2013 ) titled “Why are the Right so Feral “.

    Many comments in that article, were about fear, the reactions to it, who are targetted to make them fearful, and who does the targetting – – and why. Many comments resonated with me … but one in particular by ‘Min’ …. who said in that article :

    part of reply to ‘Jane’ – – – “Hence the reason that Bolt and his ilk attack people such as those of Aboriginal descent. It is only those who are fearful (as you have noted), who resort to aggression……..” ( the bolding here is mine ).

    Being occasionally, a bit of a lateral thinker, I have to suggest that those who attack others in such a way – Bolt, Pickering, Jones, all other shock jocks ….. Pyne and our own PM – just MIGHT be ?? the ones who are the most fearful ? ….. and thus they belittle and degrade, and show their easily seen aggression, which is their reaction to fear.

    So – we are NOT to be afraid ….. but Abbott and his ilk, his little mates in the MSM who write prolific anti-everything articles about people they incorrectly believe are lowlier than themselves – are indeed AFRAID. Afraid of what ? ….. Think about it, and feel better for it.

    Just a thought ……

  20. mandyvuk

    And I thought after abutts comment over aid to indo re the executuons,that the money collected may just put us into surplus.

  21. Terry2

    Abbott was obviously aiming his feral comments at the Cross Benches but somebody must have had a word with him and told him that it was a dumb comment – maybe they have somebody in a permanent position doing this – as the government needs to keep the Cross Benches on side..

    So we get: ‘Urr Ummm I was referring to the Labor party and the Greens who have gone feral’

  22. Harquebus

    It matters not who governs. Bill Shorten & Co. will be just as bad. It is ideology that is at fault and that ideology is growth.
    Governments the world over are failing to deliver and going ever deeper into debt. We have reached the limits and any government that pursues a perpetual compound growth policy will fail.
    Trust me, we can not shop our way to sustainability and the markets will not find us another planet Earth.

  23. Sam Jackson

    I have a brain the size of a planet, but my kids just keep on poking me in my eye with a big bright stick.

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