Just don't tell me the debate's over…
Remember Kevin O’Lemon? Now we have a new advert, just in time for Labor’s leadership ballot tomorrow morning at 10am Australian Eastern Daylight Time (11pm GMT): “Lemons never change their spots”:
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All I am hoping for is that whoever wins will be so damaged that there will be a general election and the Coalition can dump the carbon tax.
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.
Finished?
The governing Labor party is in turmoil. Polling shows an election now would sweep Tony Abbott’s conservative Coalition into power in a landslide. Julia Gillard has lost the trust of the public, and her own MPs, after a string of high profile embarrassments.
Labor really has nowhere to go. Some are talking of a return of Kevin Rudd, who was unceremoniously stabbed in the back in the mid-2010. But there is no obvious alternative candidate. If they dump Gillard, there will need to be an election. Australia may still dodge the bullet of the carbon tax, due to come into force in the middle of the year.
JULIA Gillard faced a revolt last night by marginal seat MPs who publicly called for her to resign as Prime Minister.
For the first time, marginal seat MPs including Victoria’s Darren Cheeseman went public with a demand she quit to save the party.
“There’s no doubt about it: Julia Gillard can’t take the party forward. The community has made its mind up on her,” he told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“Certainly, it would be in the interests of the party for Julia to stand down and allow (the) Government to select a strong candidate.”
One of Ms Gillard’s senior ministers also urged her to “resign now”, as Cabinet erupted into open warfare over a leadership showdown.
“For the good of the party, for the good of the Government, she should stand down,” the senior minister, who declined to be named, said.
Some supporters predicted yesterday the Prime Minister might yet be forced to spill the leadership and fight, but this was ruled a high-risk strategy because it would expose Kevin Rudd’s support levels.
But the Gillard camp has not ruled out sacking Mr Rudd as the Foreign Affairs Minister.
The Gillard camp maintains she has more than 65 votes in the 103-person ALP caucus, but even her supporters concede a ballot is high-risk because it is likely to show that more than a third of MPs want her gone.
Her supporters say Mr Rudd has between 30 and 34 votes, while six are unknown.
A Labor powerbroker warned Mr Rudd was destroying the party, driving down the primary vote with relentless destabilisation.
“He’s taken ALP caucus hostage,” they said.
“His message is, ‘I’ll shoot the Prime Minister if you don’t give me the job’.“
But both sides believe Ms Gillard will not resign. (source)
And while Labor fiddles with its own internal wrangling, Australia burns – no direction, no focus, no plan for the future. Time for a grown-up government again.
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!
Totally screwed. Thanks, Labor.
When even the Guardian thinks that you’ve screwed up, you know you’ve REALLY screwed up. Julia, Greg, Kevin, Penny and all you other Labor no-hopers and no-brainers, read this editorial, bemoaning the fact that Durban achieved essentially nothing:
Bold unilateral moves like the Australian carbon tax, due to take effect from July next year, now look like a trip to the moral high ground at the expense of international competitiveness.
Gee, who’d a thunk it? Answer: anyone on planet Earth with a couple of functioning brain cells (which excludes most of the ALP). Even bivalve molluscs washing up on Bondi beach have more intelligence than the average Labor MP and could have worked this out.
Let us all take a moment to despair at the depths to which our great country has sunk. Time to get angry.
Read it here (and weep).
Running Australia
The fact that our present government is run by the Greens hasn’t escaped even the Sydney Morning Herald, as Paul Sheehan documents the Green takeover of the legislative agenda. The article will have the latte-sipping urban-green elite spraying their organic muesli over the breakfast table:
When the Australian people voted in last year’s federal election, most of them did not vote for the Greens nor did they endorse a Coalition government involving the Greens. But that’s what they got.
In the vote for the House of Representatives, where government is decided, 94 per cent of the adult population voted and 88 per cent of their collective primary vote went to parties other than the Greens. Yet in the ensuing 15 months all the big policy shifts by the Gillard government – none of which was put to the electorate – have been towards core policies of the Greens.
The Prime Minister said no to a carbon tax. We have a carbon tax. She said no to open borders. We have de facto open borders. She said no to gay marriage. Support for gay marriage is now Labor Party policy. She put off indefinitely any substance of an emissions trading scheme. The machinery for such a scheme has been legislated. She said little about giving trade unions sweeping new rights. The unions are now acting on sweeping new rights.
Yet another brick in the Green wall was put in place this week when Gillard and her cabinet made a mockery of the tender process, reversed itself again, and wasted millions of dollars again, giving the running of the Australia Network to the ABC, indefinitely.
The Greens, utterly wedded to big government, wanted this tax-funded Australian overseas TV network to be part of the ABC. The Greens will propose legislation seeking to make this happen next year.
It already has, effectively. The network will operate as part of the ABC despite losing the tender process to Sky News and despite the ABC’s dreadful 24-hour news network being grossly inferior to Sky News.
UPDATE: Brian Wilshire on 2GB last night said:
“I’m told that Channel 7 at 6.00 tomorrow night in their news will have an exposé of what the government… has done and shouldn’t have done regarding the illusion of global warming, what they sometimes like to call climate change. They are letting the cat out of the bag tomorrow night, so I am told. I don’t have the details but I will be watching in anticipation.”
[Download the podcast for iTunes here, and skip to 1 hr 5 min 30 secs.]
7 News have just confirmed that they will be running an exclusive on Julia Gillard’s climate policy:
Fingers crossed…
Be sure to tune in!
Your taxpayer dollars
[Jaw hits floor in disbelief at the arrogance and shamelessness of this government]. That’s ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS – in other words, an awful lot of nurses, police and teachers:
A $100 million taxpayer funded advertising and information blitz will be waged to sell the government’s carbon tax, despite promises to slash waste in Tuesday’s mini-budget.
The money will go to creating what the opposition has described as a new propaganda unit in the Department of Climate Change and Energy and to fund lobby groups to help sell the tax to consumers.
The figures, contained in Tuesday’s crisis mini-budget, come on top of the $24 million spent this year by the government on advertising the merits of the tax, and following promises to cut back on government ad spending to help bring the budget back to surplus. (source)
Utterly disgusting.
Where's my Big Oil cheque?
Which puts Big Oil in the shade. It’s a nice cosy arrangement isn’t it? The Labor government hands out millions of dollars to environmental activist groups so they can spread misinformation and propaganda about Labor’s climate change and carbon tax policies. All the usual suspects are represented, the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, all paid for by your taxes.
LABOR has handed $3 million in grants to supporters of climate change action to promote efforts to cut global warming and support the government’s clean energy package as it seeks to head off Tony Abbott’s anti-carbon tax campaign.
A Senate estimates committee hearing has also been told the Gillard government’s multi-million dollar carbon tax advertising campaign has reached almost $24 million, after a $4 million blow-out.
The almost $24 million in advertising includes $16 million on carbon tax advertising – up from $12 million – $3.9 million on developing the ad campaign and $4 million on household leaflets. Details also emerged about a series of ad-hoc grants to green groups.
The groups benefiting from grants included the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Works Australia. Some of the groups have been part of the “say yes” coalition and have backed Labor’s package to fight off the Opposition’s campaign against the policy.
In evidence to Senate estimates today, it emerged that:
The Australian Conservation Foundation received $398,000 to fund a series of [misre-]presentations on climate change from people trained by the movement started by former US vice president Al Gore;
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition received $271,000 for two forums in Brisbane and Perth on combating climate change;
The Climate Institute received $250,000 to produce an independent assessment of the impacts of the carbon price on the cost of living. It is working with ACOSS and Choice on the study;
Climate Works is negotiating with the Climate Change Department for a $460,000 grant aimed at raising community awareness to cut carbon emissions and;
The CSIRO has received $500,000 as part of a program aimed at cutting energy consumption in low-income households. (source)
It’s always the sceptics that are accused of being the highly organised, well-funded denial machine, paid for by Big Oil, when in reality the pay cheques of Big Green are far, far larger.
And with so much taxpayer money being wasted on distorting the message, no wonder Julia and Greg believe the debate’s over!
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So the carbon tax bills are expected to pass through the Lower House today [UPDATE: The Bills passed the lower house at around 9.30am AEST]. In a strange kind of way, I am glad, because it demonstrates to the electorate clearly what principles Labor stands for. None – apart from its own survival.
If any Labor MPs had shown even a trace of any backbone and stood up for the democratic rights of the Australian people by voting against the Bills, it may have lifted Labor’s support in the polls, and made people reconsider Labor’s principles and values. As it is, however, they act true to form, like a bunch of gutless lemmings, more concerned with keeping their own jobs than respecting the wishes of the electorate.
Julia Gillard’s pre-election promise not to introduce a carbon tax was swiftly forgotten when it became clear that the Greens’ support would have to be bought with a commitment to rapid action on climate change. And clearly, in the minds of Labor, buying support was more important than an explicit pre-election promise. Over the next few months, there was much talk of “consultation” with the public about the carbon tax, but in reality it was all a sham. All the inquiries and meetings were simply a pretence, because if they had genuinely listened to public opinion, they would have abandoned the tax.
And Labor have deluded themselves by believing that global action is just around the corner. Only blind Freddy (and Labor) think that – the evidence is clear that the chance of any global deal is retreating faster than an IPCC-fudged Himalayan glacier.
But nothing was going to stop Labor passing these bills and therefore, with the Green’s continuing support, staying in power.
Because that is all that matters to Labor – power. Forget the wishes of the Australian people or the “national interest” (funny isn’t it how Labor uses this term so frequently), what drives Labor is staying in power.
And as a final insult, demonstrating Labor’s contempt for the people it is supposed to represent, they hope that the electorate are stupid enough to “forget” this betrayal, and “get used” to the pointless carbon tax.
Well this voter will neither forget the betrayal, nor get used to the tax. It will be at the front of my mind when I enter the polling booth at the next election, and I hope it will be in yours as well.
Australian Climate Madness 
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