On the count of three, spit those dummies!

What a hilarious sight it was to see five Cabinet ministers (including Penny Wong holding the CPRS flag), solemnly arrayed before the media, bleating about how the nasty Coalition has blocked all their legislation. They claim that the current Senate is the most obstructionist in history, blocking 40-odd pieces of legislation and blaming it all on the Coalition.

As usual, the arrogance of the Rudd government in expecting its legislation to be just rubber stamped is breathtaking. But that’s just par for the course – and we have come to expect it. The real point is that Rudd himself is to blame – he has refused to negotiate with any of the opposition parties, be it Coalition or cross-bench. The Greens and Family first have said the same. And that refusal to negotiate has left them only one option: to block the legislation.

John Howard was in a similar position, lacking a majority in the Senate, but you didn’t see him humiliate himself by whining to the media. He negotiated, and got his policies through.

And if Rudd is really concerned about not being able to get legislation passed, then he has a solution: a double dissolution. But there’s no sign of that happening. For this is nothing more than a cheap attack on Abbott, and unfortunately for him, even the media aren’t stupid enough to fall for it.

As the saying goes, it’s time for Rudd and his cronies to STFU.

Painful reading

Paul Sheehan, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, has some painful home truths for Labor:

When Julia Gillard faced the media outside Federal Parliament in Canberra on Wednesday she looked shell-shocked. She then proceeded to give the most jittery, hollow, nonsensical performance of her career. It was pantomime of the lowest order.

”Today the climate change extremists and deniers in the Liberal Party have stopped this nation from taking decisive action on climate change,” the Deputy Prime Minister said, deadpan, into a thicket of cameras and recorders.

Extremists and deniers. In case anyone had missed the point, she repeated the phrase five times. ”Now [we] have been stopped by the Liberal Party extremists and the climate change deniers. This nation has been stopped from taking a major step in the nation’s interests by Liberal Party extremists and climate change deniers.”

This is clearly going to be the mantra the Rudd Government uses to describe anyone who opposes its pointless legislation on an emissions trading scheme.

Gillard used the terms ”denier” or ”denial” 11 times, pointed words because they carry the connotation of Holocaust denial. The last time that tactic was used in the national debate, after the release of the Bringing Them Home report, it exploded on those who used it.

So this is going to get interesting because the political ground has shifted in the past six months. It is now the Rudd Government that appears to be in a state of denial.

Read it here.