Never underestimate the level of xenophobia in Nations. And the potential for certain media groups to convince gullible individuals that if they vote a certain way they will find the pot of gold. Particularly when times get tough & some are convinced they aren’t getting their share of the goodies. Or their share will be handed over by govt. to someone w/ a BIRTHRIGHT.

Shifting blame is also not that hard when your enablers run the media show. Paul Keating learnt that the hard way. Latham didn’t til it was too late…and then he spit the dummy.

The Corporate media hedge their bets during time of EXPOSURE & CHANGE… but they also know how to use signs, codes & conventions to make the BIG SELL when they & their puppet masters think they’re losing too much.

Particularly when the public become complacent as they “burn out” & are directed to movies & music that tells them their government is a Nanny State…& we know what Nanny does when she “Rocks the Cradle”. It’s incremental, invasive, insidious, malignant…grows like a cancer…& hits you before you know it.

In fact it’s a virus…engineered to create FEVER & BLINDNESS not long down the socio-economic-political road. And Borgs are adept at spreading it.

Some of these delusions don’t damage them much with the general public directly, but living in a culture where you actually believe that Christopher Monckton has a Nobel Prize is not a good way to develop a party that can confront reality, and its pretty alienating to the party members who actually like facts.

I guess the real question is whether a party can get elected determinedly announcing that the sky is yellow. Howard got away with it in 2001, but that was an issue that didn’t touch most voters, and the time was pretty short anyway. I suspect it is a whole lot harder to pull it off when you’re in opposition and have been repeating the fantasy for years.

I am referring to: the intervention in Aboriginal communities; the anti-terrorist legislation with its particular referencing to Aborigines; revoking the archaic law banning “black majic” (which may seem irrelevant today but is really big insult for most religious believers, and most Aborigines, for whom it is an affront to culture, and a step backwards in work to ensure that legislation is respectful of “true law”); and a whole variety of other minor mean nasty legislative changes, which the beaurocracy is only just beginning to bear the full burdens of applying. The gall of Howard to meet with the “Exclusive Brethren” so close upon the election, while they are among those weirdo Christian cults who seem to imagine that they can excuse child rape in any community by blaming Australian Aborigines, just goes to show that the Liberal-National coalition, and whatever it might become in future, were always just too insane to notice what social justice really is.

I vote we let them continue trying to prove that they really do actually know about oppression; from opposition, that is.

on the nose: Exactly; precisely: predicted the final score on the nose.

Adj. 1. on the nose - being precise with regard to a prescribed or specified criterion; “his guess was on the nose”; “the prediction for snow was right on the button”

on the button
precise - sharply exact or accurate or delimited; “a precise mind”; “specified a precise amount”; “arrived at the precise moment”

Adv. 1. on the nose - just as it should be; “`Precisely, my lord,’ he said”
on the button, on the dot, exactly, precisely

(Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.)

Is “on the nose” used in Australia as a colloquial expression for “stinky”?
Just wondering. I’ve lived here on & off for nigh on 30 years but have only heard it used this way recently. Gets confusing. Talk about a living language.

Not trying to be pedantic…I would seriously like to know.

Will resist. Adrien has an important point: “There may very well be talented people at University who adhere to the philosophy but are presently uninterested in politics.” I’m sure this is true, but I don’t know that this will save the Libs. The problem is twofold. Firstly, it gets harder to recruit people as time goes on. When you’re just hitting uni politics can look attractive, at least to put a toe in the water. However, when you’ve on your way up the career ladder, but battling a large mortgage and (quite likely) have a couple of young kids who’d like to see you occasionally heading down to your local branch meeting doesn’t look so attractive.

The people who do take up politics later in life seem to have four reasons that I’m aware of:

1) Some issue really gets them fired up and they decide they have to do something. The more middle of the road Labor is the fewer such issues will arise, although of course there will always be some.
2) You have friends who are involved and persuade you to come along. Trouble is, if 95% of the Lib members in an age group are idiots, its a fair bet the same will go for their friends.
3) You really wanted to get into politics earlier but something stopped you. I seem to recall that Michael Wooldridge made a promise to his wife or parents or someone he wouldn’t get into politics until he had established his career. This happens, but I doubt its common.
4) You’re really sick of your job and a career in politics looks nice. Great way to recruit people who a) don’t understand how much work is involved in being an MP, b) will only serve the party until its clear they’re not going to make it into parliament and c) probably weren’t all that successful at their original career.

The other problem is that even when people with real talent are recruited politics takes time to learn. It’s the ultimate team sport, except it’s even tougher because you often get tackled by your own side. You can’t just pick up a ball and play at the highest level without years of practice. John Hewson strikes me as a beautiful example of someone who had real talent, but crashed and burnt because he hadn’t spent the time learning important lessons others discover on the way up.

(OMG, someone on the internet is wrong!!)

We’ve all been there …

“Christopher Monckton is one of the many UN climate change report writers who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.”

No no no no no!! Monckton is not a ‘UN climate change report writer’ and didn’t connection at all to the Nobel Prize. He’s a British journalist, business consultant and a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and probably Britan’s leading Denialist. Not even close to being a scientist.

And now I will stop. Again, sorry for the OT-itude,

d

One of the outstanding features of the Howard Government was a preference for short-term advantage over long term planning.

Is that an outstanding feature of Howard’s government? I thought that was par-for-the-course for everything nowadays and very much politics. Howard did very much have a obtuse attitude to the environment but then so did (does?) the ALP. The ALP of course see it as an election issue where they can win and of course they must pay it some attention considering the ground they’ve lost to the Greens.
>
However I’m not convinced they’ve put much real policy nouse into the environment (not that the Greens’ve done much better). Spending money’s not the same as good ideas as some of Robert’s excellent recent posts demonstrate (to me anyway). We’ll see.
>
But I digress. I imagine that along with political cycles there are permeatations in talent and attractiveness of this or that part of the political spectrum amongst the youth. In the 30s the Left was fashionable but not so in the 50s. In the 60s a New Left again became fashionable but by the 80s it was on the nose and so on. Likewise the ascendance of the this or that side of the political fence. For the last 2 or so decades the Right have been ascendance. Even labour governments (Hawkeating/Blair) have pretty much adopted neoliberal economics. Now it swings the other way at least here and in America. I have a feeling New Labour’s gotten old.
>
But it’ll swing back. One shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that because the Young Liberals are crammed full of dickheads that that will be the case with the senior party twenty years hence. There may very well be talented people at University who adhere to the philosophy but are presently uninterested in politics. One likewise shouldn’t make the mistake that dickheads are unelectable. History is crammed full of contrary evidence.

His argument for the death of the Libs is that they ignored “climate change” for 11 years. Read Ferel’s own words Kim. I was responding to HIS points, and his subsequent request for information - yeah, none of it sponsored by an oil company.

Buy some of the books by little known Bjørn Lomborg - he talks sense.

“Australian author Tim Flannery recently told an interviewer that climate change is “the only issue we should worry about for the next decade.”

Tell that to the four million people starving to death, to the three million victims of HIV/AIDS, or to the billions of people who lack access to clean drinking water.

Human-caused climate change deserves attention – and it has gotten it, thanks to Gore, Flannery, and others. … much of the developed world believes that global warming is the planet’s biggest problem.

Yet, the world faces many other vast challenges. Whether we like it or not, we have limited money and a limited attention span for global causes. We should focus first on achieving the most good for the most people.

The Copenhagen Consensus project brought together top-class thinkers, including four Nobel Laureate economists, to examine what we could achieve with a $50 billion investment designed to “do good” for the planet.

They examined the best research available and concluded that projects requiring a relatively small investment – getting micro-nutrients to those suffering from malnutrition, providing more resources for HIV/AIDS prevention, making a proper effort to get drinking water to those who lack it – would do far more good than the billions of dollars we could spend reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change.

Carbon reduction activists argue that focusing exclusively on climate change will bring many benefits. They point out, for example, that malaria deaths will climb along with temperatures, because potentially killer mosquitoes thrive in warmer areas. And they would be right. But it’s not as simple as the bumper sticker slogan “Fight climate change and ward off malaria.”

If America and Australia are somehow inspired by the Live Earth concerts to sign the Kyoto Protocol, temperatures would rise by slightly less. The number of people at risk of malaria would be reduced by about 0.2% by 2085. Yet the cost of the Kyoto Protocol would be a staggering $180 billion a year. In other words, climate change campaigners believe we should spend $180 billion to save just 1,000 lives a year.

For much less money, we could save 850,000 lives each and every year. We know that dissemination of mosquito nets and malaria prevention programs could cut malaria incidence in half by 2015 for about $3 billion annually – less than 2% of the cost of Kyoto. The choice is stark.

… even if we could stop global warming right now – which is impossible – we could reduce malaria infections by only 3.2% by 2085. Should we not worry more about the 100% infected now, whom we can help much better, more cheaply, and with much greater effect?

When we look at the evidence, we discover again and again that the best solutions to the world’s biggest challenges aren’t the ones we hear about the most. We could save many more lives during extreme weather events, for example, by insisting on hurricane-resistant building standards than we would by committing to Live Earth’s target of a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. This would be easier, much less costly, and ultimately do far more good. Indeed, the Copenhagen Consensus experts discovered that for every dollar invested in Kyoto-style battling climate change, we could do up to 120 times more good with in numerous other areas.

It’s honorable that the Live Earth organizers are so concerned about the far-off future, but you have to wonder why there is so little concern about the much-worse present.

I don’t want to stop anyone from caring about climate change, only to encourage a sense of perspective. There is a massive amount of good that we can do through practical, affordable approaches like HIV/AIDS education, malaria prevention, and the provision of micro-nutrients or clean water.

This is the message I would like to ring out: we should focus on the best ideas first.”

Thanks.

Monckton concludes:

“My fellow-participants, there is no climate crisis. The correct policy response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Take courage! Do nothing, and save the world’s poor from yet another careless, UN-driven slaughter.”

His full piece here - http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22430

(Dishonest Political Tempering with the Science on Global Warming)

Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”

Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”

Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”

Duffy: “From what you’re saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable …”

Marohasy: “That’s right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer’s interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point.”

http://tinyurl.com/3xangr

Funny how this stuff never ever finds its way onto page one. A muted mention, then vanishes. Plenty of evidence out there, just doesn’t get the PR or media coverage.

Climate change is massively profitable big business, don’t want to rock the boat, hey?

Really? I’d be fascinated if you can back that up with actual peer reviewed evidence, rather than a claim from a blogsite funded by Exxon-Mobile or run by a wingnut. Most of the recent studies suggest the problem is actually worse than we thought, at least if you think that, say Nature, is more reliable than a website paying homage to Lyndon LaRouche.

- This too will pass. Politics is like that.

- So far, the Rudd gov’t isn’t shaping up to be a bright shade of green. Some of their budget announcements were, let’s face it, a little disappointing if green happens to be your color of choice for the rest of the millennium.

- Point to a country - any country - that boomed ahead with “green credentials” in the last 11 years. The Howard gov’t was not the worst of them, in global terms. They were acting pretty much like every other government. Hardly something that will damn them to hell for all eternity. (Oh, and not signing Kyoto doesn’t count for shit.)

- I’ll play devil’s advocate and suggest that “global warming” (latest data - confirmed, with much astonishment by the scientific community - shows that it’s not occurring, as the planet is far more self correcting than previously thought), is not necessarily the dominant issue of the century. (Unless you mean “climate change” - which is true enough, the climate does, indeed, change.)

- Other matters, possibly environmentally related, will be the bigger hits. We’re seeing it already: the fight for basic resources - food, water, health services, safe land to live on. These pragmatic matters will overtake any big picture stuff. The West is already whinging about developing countries ACTUALLY DEVELOPING - wow, how dare they! This was always going to happen eventually (I figured that out when I was just a kid), and its time is now. Rather than the have-nots getting all antzy, it’s the West getting all antzy about the have-nots getting more. The hostilities have only just begun.

Sorry, too tired to go into sensible or detailed argument, hoping you will get my drift, from quick drivel.

The MSM thinks they’re in trouble because Nelson’s making a dill of himself. To my mind this too will pass. What won’t pass are the two problems I point to. If you have a supreme shortage of people under 30 with a vestige of a clue then you’re going to have trouble filling your front bench in 10 and 20 years time. And if Global Warming is the dominant issue of the 21st Century then having taken the country backwards for 11 years in dealing with it, and having a parliamentary party loaded with people who will deny it until the day sea levels are inundating their house is not a good look for your credibility.

The Liberals (or coalition) have been the government of Australia for 42 out of the 64 years of Australia’s existence.

And now every idiot is proclaiming them dead and buried. That’s plain dumb.

Has everyone truly forgotten how quickly and stupidly ALP governments bring themselves undone? (The Hawke/Keating was the uniquely radical exception.)

There is so much hyperventilating wishful thinking behind this whole “the Libs are dead” nonsense. Honestly, write about something that might have a consequence in the real world.