Gillard, Labor, CO2 tax: all likely gone in six months

26 March, 2013 by

Why are you all smiling, you bunch of utter incompetents? You should be hanging your heads in abject shame.

Why are you all smiling, you bunch of utter incompetents? You should be hanging your heads in abject shame.

The Labor ‘government’ of Julia Gillard (in quotes because it isn’t really a government any more, it’s just a rabble) is in terminal decline after last week’s chaotic leadership non-contest. Newspoll puts Labor at 42% and the Coalition on 58% in the two party preferred, meaning Labor would be annihilated.

Half of her most experienced ministers have either resigned or been sacked, leaving the PM scraping the bottom of the cockatoo cage to fill the Cabinet. Craig Emerson [shudder] has been appointed minister for just about everything, including the kitchen sink, and the other spaces have been filled by political nobodies.

So one thing we can be sure of is that the ‘government’ of this country will be even worse than it was before (if that is physically possible).

The Australian reports:

JULIA Gillard’s personal standing has crashed to a 19-month low and Tony Abbott is clearly back in front as the nation’s preferred prime minister after Labor’s “appalling” two weeks of political and policy failure.

Labor’s primary vote has slumped five points to a disastrous 30 per cent after a fortnight ending with an aborted leadership spill and mass cabinet resignations, with one in two voters now siding with the Coalition.

The collapse in the Labor vote has completely wiped out the party’s recovery in the second half of last year, which was built on the back of the carbon tax compensation, and has entrenched the prospect of a landslide vote against the ALP in the election scheduled for September 14. After taking into account preference flows, federal Labor’s support is eight percentage points below its level at the 2010 election, at 42 per cent – a swing that if replicated in September would remove about 30 Labor MPs and could even put Kevin Rudd’s Queensland seat of Griffith at risk.

The Prime Minister said yesterday she was appalled at Labor’s “self-indulgence” during last week’s leadership bid, which was brought on after the party’s proposed media laws collapsed. She declared she wanted to show “self-belief” and that Labor’s “eyes” would be on the “Australian people”. But the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian on the weekend, shows voter satisfaction with Ms Gillard down six percentage points to 26 per cent in the past two weeks.

Dissatisfaction with the Prime Minister rose eight points to 65 per cent, her worst personal ratings since September 2011 when she hit a record low satisfaction level of 23 per cent. There is now more than twice the number of voters dissatisfied with the way Ms Gillard is doing her job as Prime Minister than satisfied after a steady 12-point fall in satisfaction since January and a sharper rise of 16 points in dissatisfaction during the same period.

On the question of who would make the better prime minister, Ms Gillard’s support dropped seven percentage points to 35 per cent, its lowest since October 2011, while Mr Abbott’s support jumped five points to 43 per cent, his highest since September 2011.

Which means, of course, that when the election comes, the disastrous policies of this bunch of losers can be reversed and Australia may, MAY I add, be able to climb out of this enormous hole it’s in.

And we will almost certainly wave goodbye to the mining tax and the carbon tax. All we need is for the independents to do what they should have done months ago and put this government down.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics, Climate Tagged With: ,

Another farcical day in the Gillard government…

21 March, 2013 by

Terminal

Terminal (photo from here)

Rather than trouble themselves with the petty concerns of the lumpen proletariat, the Canberra elite carried off another spectacular day of navel gazing, as Julia Gillard once again called for a leadership ballot after a senior minister, Simon Crean, poked the hornets’ nest earlier today.

Even lefty Lenore of the Silly Moaning Herald can’t say much in Labor’s defence:

One thing the Labor Party is supposed to be good at organising is a political assassination. Even their opponents assumed that.

Before the Labor caucus even met on Thursday afternoon the Liberal Party had released an ad featuring the man who triggered the showdown – Simon Crean – bagging out Kevin Rudd, obviously preparing for the return of the former leader. The tag line… ”Labor, it’s a farce”.

After this debacle, with an election just six months away, the Rudd ”camp” must surely be folding their tents. 

But the Liberals didn’t know the half of it. When the caucus met, the plotters found they didn’t even have a candidate. This wasn’t farce, it was a comedy horror show like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Labor’s political dysfunction had reached levels unprecedented even for a party that has spent much of the last three years tearing itself asunder.

Its dysfunction was so profound it had to scramble on the floor of the House of Representatives to win crossbench support and avoid a no confidence motion – which would have precipitated an early election – all because of a leadership challenge that never happened.

It had to stare down the no confidence motion against the Prime Minister in the Parliament when everyone knew it was considering an internal no confidence motion against her in the caucus room just hours later.

The former leader Crean had to call for the leadership ballot before Rudd had agreed to be a candidate in order to try to sway some undecided votes because the party had been bogged in leadership dysfunction ever since the last showdown over a year ago.

Reversing the normal situation where the incumbent has to be blasted out of the job, in the modern ALP people apparently have to try to blast a challenger in.

This rabble would make a busload of pissed clowns look by comparison like the House of Lords.

An election cannot come soon enough. Time for the cross-benchers to pull the plug – finally.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: ,

Kevin Rudd resigns as Foreign Minister

23 February, 2012 by

Bitter enemies

Our dysfunctional Labor government limps from crisis to disaster and back to crisis again, as Kevin Rudd finally pulls the plug and resigns. Julia Gillard is expected to call a leadership ballot on Monday:

THE Gillard government faces days of uncertainty until Kevin Rudd declares whether he will challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership, go to the parliamentary backbench or even resign from his Brisbane seat and force a by-election.

As government sources last night revealed the Prime Minister would today call a special caucus meeting for a leadership ballot on Monday, NSW independent Tony Windsor warned it was “more than likely” a change of leader would trigger a return to the polls.

And Wayne Swan launched an extraordinary attack on Mr Rudd, saying that “for too long, Kevin Rudd has been putting his own self-interest ahead of the interests of the broader labour movement and the country as a whole, and that needs to stop”.

Mr Rudd’s dramatic 1am resignation in Washington yesterday threw the parliamentary Labor Party into even more confusion and bitter recrimination as supporters of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard blamed each other for the damaging events. (source)

Time’s up. A new election is required. This government has no credibility and no future.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics, Climate Tagged With: , ,

Australian politics update

3 February, 2012 by

Parliament House, Canberra

Primarily for our international readers, I thought it might be useful to review the current political situation in Australia. Why? Because if the present government loses power, our famous (or should I say, infamous) carbon tax will go too.

In August 2010, the general election was so close that it came down to three independents holding the balance of power to determine which party formed government. In the end, the independents sided with Julia Gillard’s Labor party, with two of them, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, betraying their naturally conservative electorates.

Gillard signed a deal with the Greens, effectively buying their support with a promise to take urgent action on climate change. As a result, the carbon tax legislation was enacted and is due to come into force later this year.

Gillard also came to an arrangement with another independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, promising to introduce “pre-commitment” technology on the country’s many “pokies” or slot machines as they are known elsewhere.

However, in the past few months a number of events have occurred which have put Gillard’s minority government on even shakier ground.

Firstly, Labor MP Craig Thomson has been embroiled in a rather unsavoury saga involving allegations concerning the use of a union-funded credit card to procure the services of prostitutes. More of this later.

Secondly, Gillard welched on the pokie deal with Andrew Wilkie, who has withdrawn his support for the Gillard government. Gillard would never have been able to force the legislation through, since pokies are essential to the survival of many Labor-dominated workers clubs in the suburbs. Maybe Gillard forgot this obvious fact when she signed the agreement with Wilkie…

Thirdly, at the end of last year Gillard poached maverick Liberal MP Peter Slipper to take on the role of Speaker of the House of Representatives (a position formerly held by a Labor MP, Harry Jenkins). This added an extra vote to Gillard’s numbers. However, “Slippery Pete” (as he’s affectionately known in the media) has a few issues himself, having been accused of making excessive claims for travel expenses. See Andrew Bolt here for more on this subject.

As for Craig Thomson, allegations are flying that Labor has been involved in delaying the inquiry into Thomson’s actions in order to protect the tiny majority on which it operates. I predict this is going to blow up spectacularly in the next few weeks. Again, Bolt has more here.

Finally, many of you will have seen the appalling pictures of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott being herded out of a restaurant in Canberra by security staff, after a demonstration by occupiers of the “Tent Embassy”, who are protesting for aboriginal rights (and have been for 40 years).

It transpires that one of Gillard’s own staff tipped off the embassy occupiers (indirectly) that Tony Abbott was in a particular restaurant, fanning the flames by claiming that Abbott said the embassy should be removed. What he actually said was that those at the embassy should “move on” from the 1970s mindset, given that so much has been done to improve the lives of aborigines since then.

Gillard (as always) pleads ignorance (she does however sack the staffer concerned), and the Labor spin machine grinds into action with its default response: blame Abbott. No apology, no remorse, just vicious attacks. Except this time it’s not working, and the few conservative journalists we have here are digging deeper and deeper into this sordid little episode.

So the upshot of this is that Gillard’s wafer thin majority may be compromised from a number of directions in the near future. If there were to be an election now, the Liberals (in coalition with the Nationals) would romp home. Currently the two party preferred lead is 54% to 46%, which is huge. Labor is so desperate that there is even talk of bringing back Kevin Rudd, who Gillard knifed in 2010 to steal the leadership!

Tony Abbott has vowed to repeal the carbon tax in government. There may still be hope for Australia.

Interesting times!

 

Filed Under: Aussie Politics, Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Who will Julia alienate next?

26 September, 2011 by

"Pokies"

We’ve had the miners and resource workers with the MRRT, then the truckies with the “Convoy of No Consequence” comment (thanks A. Albanese), and, of course, those understandably concerned about the merits of a unilateral carbon tax (expressly ruled out before the election) being branded as fruitcakes and extremists.

As if that wasn’t enough, Gillard is now taking on real Labor heartland – the AFL and the NRL, who are opposing Gillard’s poker machine reform. But this isn’t as insignificant as it sounds. Andrew Wilkie, one of the independents currently providing a working majority for Labor, has threatened to withdraw support if the reforms are not passed into law.

So despite the fact that everyone is focussed on asylum seekers or climate change, it may be the lowly poker machine that brings down Labor:

THE Gillard government has a powerful new opponent of its poker machine reforms, with a cashed-up alliance of rival football codes to back the clubs industry’s campaign during grand final week.

In a move anti-gambling campaigners are labelling a disgrace, the AFL and NRL are planning to run television advertisements this week against mandatory pre-commitment technology for high-intensity pokies.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and individual club presidents are scheduled to meet tomorrow to map out campaign strategies. (source)

Filed Under: Aussie Politics, Climate Tagged With: ,

Election 2010: Gutless, witless independents hand power to Gillard

7 September, 2010 by

I’m excluding Bob Katter, because, maverick that he is, he did at least support the Coalition (as his electorate would expect him to). The other two wet weekends were blinded by climate change and broadband, the two biggest non-issues of the election, and thereby hand power to Gillard. And did you hear Oakeshott’s self-indulgent speech? What a joke! Even the journos couldn’t stand it – they were groaning in the background. And it doesn’t take long for the real agenda to come out:

When asked by a journalist why he didn’t back the Coalition, Tony Windsor admitted with a grin, “because they’d be more likely to win if they did go back to the polls”.

When asked how he could back a government that’s less likely to win, Windsor stated that they’d “be more likely to be here a longer time if they can’t go to the polls and win in a hurry”, with Oakeshot interjecting, “They’ve got more to lose”.

In other words, Oakeshot and Windsor admit they are defying what the nation (including their own conservative electorates) and propping up one of the most incompetent and unstable governments in Australia’s history, which has been massively repudiated by voters, has suffered a savage swing – in seats, first and second preference votes and its legitimacy – in order to preserve their power for as long as possible. (source)

So, fellow Australians, we can look forward to a rag-bag coalition, the Greens on the levers of power, an NBN cock-up to rival or exceed the BER cock-up or the pink batts cock-up, importantly for this blog, an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax, a mining tax, and god alone knows what other disastrous policies for this country. Good luck, Australia.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics, Climate Tagged With:

BREAKING: Rudd leadership in doubt

23 June, 2010 by

On the way out?

THIS POST WILL BE UPDATED AS EVENTS UNFOLD.

As I watch Sky’s coverage, there is a possible leadership challenge to Kevin Rudd underway in Canberra right now.

It is being reported that the challenge is being pushed by the right factions in Victoria and South Australia. The question is whether Julia Gillard will agree to be put forward as replacement.

2005 AEST: Senior source states that the question being put comes down to whether a Gillard government would be a “better, more consultative government” than Rudd’s.

2010 AEST: Mark Arbib apparently wishes Gillard to run. Gillard and Faulkner are still in Rudd’s office.

2020 AEST: Anthony Albanese and Lindsay Tanner join the party in Rudd’s office. This process will be very damaging for Rudd even if he survives…

2030 AEST: Bill Shorten is “rushing to make himself Kingmaker” ahead of Simon Crean “whom he detests” – don’t ya just love it!!

2040 AEST: Australian Workers Union move away from Rudd – big move.

2042 AEST: AWU now backing Gillard – is it all over for Rudd? All the other right unions will follow suit.

2045 AEST: Labor source: “Rudd’s dead.”

2055 AEST: Meeting still underway…

2100 AEST: Lefty Sky News is running the screen text “SMS to Liberal MPs to ‘totally shut up about the leadership'”

2120 AEST: NSW Right is now behind Gillard (Sky source) – it’s all over for Rudd.

2125 AEST: Nationwide right faction has deserted Rudd.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: ,

OT: Kevin Rudd misleads Parliament on mining tax ads

31 May, 2010 by

Couldn't lie straight in bed

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And there isn’t anyone more desperate at the moment than our Dear Leader, Saint Kevin of Kruddistan, who, not content with bungling the home insulation scheme (resulting in the death of four young men), backflipping on his centrepiece climate policy, wasting billions of your taxpayer dollars on the school building programme, and presiding over the greatest increase in asylum seeker arrivals in history, has now mislead Parliament about the reasons for avoiding his own government’s policy on political advertising.

Rudd sought an exemption from the policy to spruik his mining super-profits tax, claiming, laughably, that the mining industry was behind a campaign of misinformation [well he should know, he’s an expert at campaigns of misinformation]. As Glenn Milne reports in The Australian:

[…] we only need to go as far back as Thursday when Tony Abbott asked the Prime Minister if he would now abandon the mining tax. Abbott cited four reasons; “the collapsing dollar, the falling stockmarket, the suspension of projects and the evaporation of jobs”.

It’s the falling stockmarket that concerns us here. In a lengthy answer, Rudd comprehensively rejected Abbott’s assertion that the government’s tax had had any impact on capital markets.

Let’s go the PM’s own words: “This goes to the other point he [Abbott] has made. I quote him from an earlier remark when he said, ‘Our sharemarket is under pressure because the government has totally mismanaged its proposal of a big new tax on mining’.

“Let us go to the facts of this matter. Share prices around the world have fallen because of the crisis in Greece and the honourable Leader of the Opposition would know that. Secondly, within mining itself he is yet to adduce any data to support the proposition. So on proposition No 1 about the dollar, on proposition No 2 about the share price, on proposition No 3 about employment: wrong, wrong, wrong, against all the factual data.”

Unfortunately the following day another piece of “factual data” surfaced in the form of Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig’s statement that he was exempting the government from its own lily white guidelines on taxpayers’ advertising to allow a $38m assault on the mining industry.

Among the reasons specifically cited by Ludwig for the exemption was the following: “I have also accepted the Treasurer’s advice that, as the tax reforms involve changes to the value of some capital assets, they impact on financial markets.”

So, the day after Rudd tells parliament Abbott’s claims the mining tax is affecting financial markets are garbage, his government uses the same rationale to justify rorting its own advertising standards.

But it gets worse. We now know that Swan first canvassed the idea of an advertising exemption based on market impacts at the time of the budget. So Rudd would have known about that justification since May 11. Then he told the parliament the opposite on Thursday.

When will the Australian public finally tire of this pitiful disgrace of a Prime Minister?

Read it here.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With:

UPDATED: The hypocrisy of Labor and the Labor-loving media

18 May, 2010 by

The media and Labor are all over Tony Abbott this morning after his “gaffe” on ABC’s 7.30 Report in which he rather too candidly admitted that politicians are susceptible to hyperbole in the heat of the moment. Well, knock me down with a feather. Tell me something I don’t know. But Labor are on to it, calling him Phoney Tony, trying to make cheap political capital out of it (always a sure sign of a government in deep trouble), and the media have all got collective “cat got the cream” expressions on their smug journalistic faces.

What short memories they have, and a truly impressive ability to forget instantly the lies, spin and deception of this bankrupt Labor government, which has executed more backflips than a gymnastics convention. Don’t know about Phoney Tony, but I sure know about Rudd the Dud.

Abbott simply told the truth about politics in the 21st century, and was rather too honest about it, but the hypocrisy it has received in response is nothing short of breathtaking.

UPDATE: Some of this simply has to be seen to be believed, as Labor ministers queue up to rubbish Abbott. Nicola Roxon (the worst health minister in living memory?) thinks Abbott is “cracking under pressure” and Penny Wong [who she? – Ed] thinks he “cannot be trusted” (see here). If those same standards were applied to the Government, there wouldn’t be a man or woman left standing. Andrew Robb calls the hypocrisy for what it is:

Those Government ministers who have been out all morning hyperventilating about Tony Abbott are hardly in a position to point a finger considering their appalling track record.

It is the pot calling the kettle black.

Kevin Rudd is the king of broken promises, back-flips and spin and when the going gets tough he goes into hiding, blames others and wheels out junior ministers to take the rap.

In stark contrast, Tony Abbott is a strong leader who is refreshingly authentic and who has the courage to get out there and take it on the chin.

Read it all.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: , , ,

OT: Krudd & Co – schools stimulus spending rorted

20 March, 2010 by

A COLA at Broke Public School

Last month it was the home insulation scandal – four young men dead, thousands of homes possibly electrified, millions of dollars to be spent fixing it up, already accusations of further rip-offs by fixers, Peter Garrett demoted in name only but still draws healthy cabinet salary, no-one with enough decency in Krudd & Co to do the honourable thing and resign, whilst Greg Combet is given the hospital pass of cleaning up the mess – and now evidence of astonishing waste in the “Building the Education Revolution” spending.

Today’s Australian carries the latest in a long line of stories about covered outdoor learning areas, or “COLAs” [how PC and post-modern is that? – Ed] which cost about tuppence ha’penny to build, but on which sums of $1m or more are being spent through the Rudd stimulus package. Basically, a COLA is a roof on stilts, a glorified shade cloth in other words (see pic). How one of these could possibly cost anywhere near a million is beyond belief. But no-one in the government gives a toss. As long as the money’s spent and they can brag about what a great job they’ve done for schools, that’s all that matters. Maybe we should call them Rainproof Outdoor Resources for Teaching and Study, which has the more appropriate acronym RORTS.

These are your tax dollars being frittered away by a government in disarray that thinks it can solve any problem if you throw enough money at it.

So as one scandal exits public consciousness via the side door, the next one is already waiting to burst into the limelight.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics
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