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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
What a cunning plan Carlton has.. let Hawthorn think they have total dominance as suggested by their record of late, then play for real in the finals..
Just so everybody knows, due to some complications with Jacques’ server migration (see previous post) the LP-collective are having some trouble accessing the backend. Until we do, we can’t get in there to curate the moderation queue or the spam bucket, so if a comment of yours is stuck in there right now, it may be there for some time.
Is the Craig Thomson affair Belinda Neal’s revenge?
Here’s an interesting look at the Canberra protests/ The author describes the participants as
so take with a pinch of salt.
http://exiledonline.com/teabagger-dundee-america-exports-libertarian-revolution-to-australia/
One alleged teabagger suggestion for toppling the ALP in three days (just in case it doesn’t do a good enough job of doing it themselves)
tssk: thanks for that link. Absolute ripper writing on the Oz teabaggers. Makes me feel safer that there are people writing mercilessly about these idiots. Someone should give that man a job.
To the person or persons unknown who put me on the CEC email list, again, I say thanks a whole heap you f***r. This has enhanced my life no end – NOT! Here’s the latest from the people who make the Oz Teabaggers look like the latte-sipping elite. “Greenies caused the global economic collapse!” …”The Citizens Electoral Council’s hot-off-the-press New Citizen newspaper exposes the granddaddy of all greenies, Charles Darwin, as a pathetic fraud, who was—and still is—nothing more than a propaganda project run by the British oligarchy to degrade science, destroy Christianity and its central principle that humans are higher than animals, and launch the racist pseudoscience of eugenics which spawned the modern green movement.
The paper’s introduction declares:
“The hyperinflated global financial system has now entered its inevitable, terminal phase of collapse, as long forecast by the American physical economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche. Even more than the rampant financial speculation of London and Wall Street, the single greatest cause of this collapse is environmentalism. Since their emergence in the 1960s, the Greens have systematically banned the application of scientific and technological advances to the world’s physical economy, and thereby collapsed it. The Greens are fascists, who propose and have largely implemented a totalitarian, dictatorial regimentation of society just like Hitler, but even worse…”
There’s no use invoking Godwin’s, this mob are in a permanent state of Godwin’s.
I realise this comment may be in moderation for some time
It’s a lovely day in Melbourne and for those of you inner city latte sippers who might feel like wandering along to the Union Hotel in Union St, Brunswick (not the Union on Maribyrnong road) for a jar or two, Tess Mckenna, Karen Rush and I are playing stuff from Tess’s latest album plus selected other material from 5 to 7. The Union has a lovely vibe and fantastic food too.
We’re taking a break at my parents’ garage sale to have lunch (all the punteers seem to be off having lunch somewhere right now). At least it’s been sunny – last night it looked like we might be huddling in the car port with our wet weather gear on.
And I can log in now! There were only 3 comments in mod waiting for me – everybody else must be enjoying the sun too?
tssk @ 4
“Here’s an interesting look at the Canberra protests/ The author describes the participants as”
Have we found our own left wing teabagger writer?
From the website of the Convoy of No Confidence (http://justgroundsonline.com/
“Anyway more power to the likes of Hadley, Laws, Alan Jones and all the other radio talk back hosts in the other states who are doing an incredible service to the people by giving them the information, they would not be given otherwise, to enable them to make a well informed judgement.”
Where do they get them from?
The rehabilitation of Tippy, a two year old stray cat who has had a surgical knee reconstruction following ligament injury of unknown provenance is proving both less and more stressful than anticipated. A revelation has been the discovery of the online sites dedicated to pet pleasure and health. Meanwhile, the vet promised stem cell joint/ligament treatment in six months awaits.
Well, them Oz Teabaggers aren’t quite Uruk-Hai, tssk. More like second-rate goblins.
Sounds like the sort of farmers that would over-graze their property, whinge for government handouts, then blame the Greens because they’ve created their own miniature dust bowl on their paddock. They’re not nice people.
Ramon Glazov is trying to explain the “Convoy of No Confidence” to a mainly American audience, so some of the connections he makes are a little tenuous. For example, I doubt that they’re real fans of Pinochet – most folk wouldn’t have even heard of him. On the other hand, he has gone to some trouble to investigate the group, which makes him a far, far better reporter than The Australian’s Ean Higgins. Now which one is meant to be the serious journalist?
@ Zorronsky.. It’s a very clever plan. They appear to have stolen it off St George..
Roman Glazov has done a job on them and the peculiarities of him explaning Oz culture to a US readership are endearing, aren’t they? Brave. He puts me in mind of a mate who had the nerve to join One Nation at its peak with the intention, realised, of making a doco about the membership. A cultural squint at who these people. Can’t name her as she’s still very wary of the nutter factor.
Some of these people are real nut jobs and not to be mistaken as merely misguided or quaint. Not for the naive or the faint hearted. Fortunately, they often declare themselves well in advance like the bloke who resides in the rural village to which I am soon moving from Sydney. Its called Wollibhuddha (fictional, too small to name) and one resident is so affronted by the Prime Minister that he has decorated his front verandah with slogans and cartoons denouncing her. This, in a place where leaf blowing and lawn mowing is a Tidy Town civic duty and those who leave their wheelie bins out more than half a day after collection are reported to the community health nurse who goes around to enforce the orders and medication regime.
Wollibhudda, BTW, is an Aboriginal word that means “there never were any Aboriginals here, ever”.
akn
Dig a little deeper into Ramon Glazov. He’s a Nutbag.
Yes, well Jumpy, that’s entirely possible but then my bet is that Oscar Wilde wasn’t the most stable of characters either. Gimme a link to spare the digging?
I would have found it a lot easier to appreciate the Ramon Glazov piece if it were not for the irrelevant sexist fat-hate near the beginning. Makes me wonder what else he has boychick bumper-sticker opinions about.
Looking forward to Arsenal vs Liverpool in about an hour’s time but as a gunner by geography, I have a feeling I am going to be disappointed. Nice day in London.
Feeling a bit sad about Paul Lockyer and crew.
A must-read. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, at least check out the two final paragraphs.
This would be perfect on a London Burning thread, but it will have to go here instead. Personal Responsibility: The IDS Way – “Someone Told Me I Could”.
@dOWN AND oUT
“Though only licensed to keep 6,000 cattle, they seemed to have been squashing nearly 10,000 into their feedlot until Narrogin locals complained about the smell…”
Which govt. report did you find this finding in?
Yes PC, a good read. But Keating should leave out his self loathing as that’s the job of ex-Labor voters.
I noticed that too, PC. Gratuitous much?
I just finished season 5 of Dexter. Awesome.
@sAVVY: Shire of Narrogin, minutes for 15th of May, 2007.
@Down and Out
“He believed that he had been given verbal approval by Officers of the Department.”
So a simple misunderstanding… like we have not all had a misunderstanding ith a govt body…
@Down and Out
“Narrogin Beef Producers want to go to the public with
information on its odour management system. Mrs Thompson then presented a petition that
contained approximately 420 signatures, which had the following wording:
“We, the undersigned residents of the Narrogin district, hereby support Matt and Janet
Thompson in their bid to complete their cattle feedlot development to a capacity of
14,940 head. We appreciate the benefits that this business brings to our community, and
we believe the Thompsons will continue to make improvements which will minimise
nuisance issues.”
So maybe their neighbours do not really think that the Thompsons are
“… the sort of farmers that would over-graze their property, whinge for government handouts, then blame the Greens because they’ve created their own miniature dust bowl on their paddock.”
You seem to have made that all up by yourself eh?
In fact you have labelled people you do not know and have never met as
“They’re not nice people.”
Someone is not nice in this exchange… and I do no think it is the Thompsons.
Yeah, ok savs, you’re claiming that the Thompsons are real cool farmers. They just spend their days off as part of Jonesy’s f*ckhead rally against democracy. You’ve convinced me.
@savvy: you conveniently missed the bit in the minutes where 300+ residents signed a petition to get rid of the smell. Just because 400+ people sign another petition to keep the Thompsons around does not negate their responsibility to de-odorise themselves, or the council’s responsibility to act on complaints.
But hey – take it up with Ramon Glazov – he’s the one that wrote the article.
Out of interest, and respoinding to Jumpy’s remark that Glazov was “a nutbag”, I googled to see what I could find out.
Keeping in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — I found nothing to warrant the descriptor. Yes, he’s a something of a bloviator and clearly has a rather manichean vision of politics, but nutbag is, at least on what I’ve seen, unduly harsh.
While I’d certainly not have made some of the claims he has and couched others differently, I see no basis for calling him a nutbag. I found high rhetoric but no wacky conspiracy claims or even outrageous long bows (though the Pinochet-Australian truckie amalgam does stray in that direction)
Found this image as an offshoot of a search for something else, as you do
http://weheartit.com/entry/2193808
I wonder if it occurs to many of the people who “heart” this image that this woman can’t walk through that landscape in the shoes she’s wearing? She can only inhabit the foreground as a picture.
Helen @6, I’m glad it was/is a lovely day in Melbourne. It’s been an uncharacteristically wet, cold weekend at Brunswick Heads.
@Akn
“f*ckhead rally”
Ah so anyone who attends a rally is a f*ckhead?
Your intellect is really shining through today
Savvy: what, you expect respectful language about the sort of people who attend these rallies at the urging of Jonesy? Jonesy’s conduct as a cottager gives a different meaning to f*ckhead though, doesn’t it? One way or another that mob are f*ckheads.
Describing farmers as anything other than saints is a sin against god akn, in Australia it is not possible for farmers to be anything other than really really nice people. and remember that all that government subsidy they get is different to latte sipping research grants, farmers deserve taxpayers money, nobody else does.
Quite right too Erik Sykes. Forgot myself there. Shall recite some Banjo Paterson by way of penitence.
@Eric Sykes
“Describing farmers as anything other than saints is a sin against god akn”
WHo claims all farmers are saints? Nobody in this forum.
However, in this forum, all farmers are “F*ckheads”
I wonder if you would say that to a farmers face?
Savvy – I don’t think akn was claiming that all farmers are f*ckheads, or that there was necessarily any correlation between farming and f*ckheadedness.
He was claiming that f*ckheadedness is highly correlated with people who listen to Alan Jones. That seems like a self-evident truth to me…
Savvy, I’m only bothering to answer because I’m putting off hanging out the washing. No one referred to “all farmers as effheads” at all. What do you see when you read? What you want to see? Scary. Besides, some of my best friends are farmers especially the cannabis ranchers outside Mullum. They’re the ones with late model 4wd’s, immense houses with pools and no visible sign of agricultural activity on their extensive acres.
well at least we’ve finally got some common sense on NZ apples and we can look forward to extending our seasonal access to fresh crunchy apples rathet than the late season powdery chilled remnants that normally get us through; now can we have some common sense and let in bananas from o/seas as and when we need them to supplement our own product rather than the fiasco we currently have of $15 for poor imitations of cavendish……………….will they be raising this at the people’s forum in Canberra ?
Latte sipping research grants? They have them? Cool! Where do I sign up?
Just so we understand – I’d rather be part of the control group. Make mine a flat white or a Vienna.
Savvy: not all protestors are fuckwits – quite the reverse. I’ve seen Falun Gong protestors quietly demonstrating with dignity in King George Square. I’ve observed rallies in the same place made up of unit owners outraged because Campbell Newman doubled or quadrupled the property tax. I even took part in the anti-Iraq War marches in 2003, with numbers measured in hundreds of thousands. There were lots of granddads and mums and dads in that lot.
But there do exist rallies that are dominated by fuckwits. Just so I make myself clear: the anti-Burqa protesters are fuckwits by definition, and the counter-protestors would have a high amount of fuckwittery as well. Not so much because I disagree with them – I do – but because their tactics consist almost wholly of repeated chanting of slogans over and over again.
Not all farmers are F@@@ Heads but the ones that sponge off the taxpayer, try their hardest to get away with as much as they can, ignore regulations that don’t suit them and have Hadley, Laws and Jones on speed dial most certainly are. This also fits all the other people that do the same.
It’s now do “Whatever it Takes” (Thank you Graeme Richardson for that meme) to benefit themselves and the devil take the hindmost!
@Akn
“One way or another that mob are f*ckheads.”
Can you explain to us why EVERYONE is a fcukhead?
Are there no exceptions?
Are they ALL part of Alan Jones grand plan?
What rally’s in particular are you refering to?
savvy@ 42
“Are they ALL part of Alan Jones grand plan?”
What grand plan with the exception of enriching Alan Jones?
Anyone that thinks Alan Jones understands the tribulations of “Struggle Street” is dreaming.
He merely confirmed what I thought of him (and et al) when he called The Prime Minister of Australia Juliar on national radio. Now I have major issues about where Labor is taking Australia but, FFS, have a bit of respect for the office.
Oh dear. Savvy, anyone who listens to Jones or Hadley or reads Bolt except for purposes of encouraging daily evacuation is a fornicated cranium. There ought to be a law against playing them on radio in nursing homes because the residents are captive and it is elder abuse to expose people to such drivel when they cannot move. Similarly, anyone who attends an anti-carbon tax rally has clearly been dicked in the ear by above broadcasters. Said broadcasters specialise in appealing to miserable, middle aged whitefellas who haven’t got the cash or the respect they think they deserve; they appeal to these sockpuppets because they blame someone else: Greenies, the PM, yoof, w*gs, reff*s for all their own petty failures and dull incomprehension of why their lives are loveless, sexless and cashfree despite their clean hatchbacks, well trimmed beards and totally subordinated wives.
Is that better?
Wantok @39
Cheap imported apples YEH!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_blight
Import bananas WOHOO!!!
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=39345
While we’re at it, send over some “foot n mouth” cattle.
akn
“”"Similarly, anyone who attends an anti-carbon tax rally has clearly been dicked in the ear by above broadcasters.”"”"
If I delete “anti-”, who are they “dicked in the ear ” by?
akn said:
It’s no good for that either because emesis is the more likely response, and who wants that? Maybe a victim of a non-corrosive toxic. You can’t build a market on that audience.
Really, it’s so mind-numbingly vacuous and so calculated to invite speciously the view that one’s fellow humans are scarcely to be considered more worthy than molluscs that all one can do is to deal with it much as one would any other noxious pollutant and cap the source.
As I said in late June, when, visiting to do some IT work, I accidentally encountered some of this rubbish gushing forth from a radio down in the school kitchens I simply yanked out the power cord, swapping the flow of barely intelligible gibbering and atonal noise-making for a pleasant silence and glared at the school assistant who was responsible. She averted her eyes.
Problem solved.
There seems, in the thread above, to be marked lack of understanding of both farmers & farming. Not something that on this blogsite has ever hampered perceptions being disseminated as knowlege.
However I am puzzled by the references to subsidies. One of the features of the agricultural sector in Australia (when compared to the rest of the first world) is the lack of subsidies to agriculture.
Yes Fran, exposure to Hadley/Jonesy at work is an OH+S issue for sure.
@ Akn
Well havent listened to the radio myself for about 20 years so I would not know what their shows are like.
However, let me see if I understand you correctly.
From your post above.
“anyone who listens to Jones or Hadley or reads Bolt except for purposes of encouraging daily evacuation is a *Fcukhead”
“There ought to be a law to *Censor them*”
“anyone who attends an anti-carbon tax rally has clearly been *Skull-Fcuked*”
“Said broadcasters specialise in blah blah *vitriol abuse , rinse and repeat*”
Fran says,
“school kitchens I simply yanked out the power cord….and glared at the school assistant who was responsible”
Nothing like going into somebody elses workplace and intimidating and bullying them.
Nice work Fran.
Did you feel big and proud of yourself?
It seems you are a great role-model for the kids.
School bullying is not just occuring in the play-grounds, it is occuring amongst the staff as well.
Spot on savvy@50
If the Craig Thomson matter continues, we may be treated to further such quaint delights as this [today]:
Dr Craig Emerson (!) expressing empathy (!!) with an MP’s wife (!!!)
Savs, yes you’ve got me absolutely spot on except for a law to censor them. The point to all of this is the article linked by tssk which shows that these broadcasters are shams and hoaxers when it comes to mobilising masses of anti-carbon tax troops because the only people who come out are loonies and the profoundly marginalised. Teabaggers = dills. Despite this the mass media, so called credible information sources like the Oz, continue to suggest that there is a massive movement of opposition to the carbon tax and environmental management generally. I’m sure there is in particular board rooms but if the anti-carbon tax rallies of recent times are anything to go by there isn’t anything like a movement at all. Just a bunch of dills willing to make public idiots of themselves by holding up offensive slogans about the PM and ranting incoherently that ‘we’ll all be rooned’; they do this at the behest of that cottager Jones and the barely-literate Hadley. Attempts to get a Teabagger movement afloat in Oz are laughably feeble and you can’t blame anyone for laughing long and loud aloud.
Down and Out In Saigon, I assume you would be randomized to a coffee blend. Is that research you want to be part of? You could end up being forcefed frappucinos.
“I wonder if you would say that to a farmers face?…” yes, have done on a number of occasions, both at public forums and in private so no worries there Sav. Onward.
Can someone tell me what’s going on wrt to Craig Thompson?
Seems like this could be the end of the road, from the few quick links I’ve looked at. There’s apparently no way out:
how? paid for with a credit card from a public organisation (fraud?)
why? Well, it was an escort agency.
what? see above.
when? it was a credit card, they leave very nice electronic trails.
where? ^^
who? Escort agency was paid with a credit card from Thompson. He says it wasn’t for his use?! If that’s the defense then that’s not good enough, even if it’s “legally” defensible. It’s not going to be good enough. And even if it were to actually be good enough, that would be a terrible blight on our political culture.
So, why isn’t this Game Over, LP-aficionados? The Labor Party needs to fire up and get pretty f%%king angry about this kind of shenanigans. Maybe the entire current NSW-Labor team should just quietly be removed. Better to be safe than sorry with pest extermination. An unbelievable stuff-up. And NSW-Labor pride themselves on their professionalism…
Joe
Shhh on the Craig Thompson thing.
If Thompson goes = Gillard goes = Bob Brown loses power.
It can’t be spoked about here, ssssshhhhhh!!!
Joe @ 52
I wrote this on another thread but got spanked for being off topic.
For god’s sake!
Because a Labor Member of Parliament allegedly couldn’t keep it in his pants (and allegedly paid for it with his union credit card) we are to be inflicted with the Mad Monk (aka the destroyer) as our leader. Not to mention the illiterate Joe Hockey as Treasurer.
Nice way to fcuk us Labor.
Next time check your candidates backgrounds please. Any skeletons in the closet will come out
Our best hope is that the electors in Dobell overwhelmingly vote Green or Malcolm Turnbull succeeds in deposing Abbot.
But the NSW ALP paid his legal bill for the defamation case he used to suppress the news about this excursion into union matters ,from 2009 till just some months ago , he has now declared this cash “assistance ” on his assets statement , someone else used his credit card and repaid $15,000 and they must have expertly forged his signature several times.
And got hold of his licence and returned it without Mr Thomson knowing about it.
All the same , he isn’t bankrupt and hasn’t been convicted of any crime so what’s the problem?
Murph The Surf has it in one. Unless he is bankrupt or *convicted* he doesn’t need to step down, and you can be sure that the ALP will do their best to prevent him from doing so. Given the long list of Howardistas that were given ever-more outlandish excuses for staying on I don’t think that Gillard is going to allow Thompson to go anywhere just yet. They might allow him to unravel when it comes closer to 2013 though.
Well, the problem is the standing of the federal parliament, which is already marginal.
The problem is the effect that another sleazy union-related sex scandal is going to have on the (NSW)-Labor image.
Marisan @54:
There are many advantages to replacing the government.
But that is collateral damage.
It all depends if Mr. Thomson cracks under the strain, or how much more is revealed about his alleged shenanigans.
If he has to leave parliament, or leaves of his own accord, all it means is there will be a by-election in his seat.
In such circumstance it would then be up to the people of his seat. Depends if they feel they have been well served by the current sitting member, his party, & the government, or not.
Gillard needs to act quickly, organise to have Thompson publicly fed to the lions and start preparing for the next election. If she can do this in an orderly manner, she may have some chance against Abbot. If she gets suckered into this holding on to power for as long as possible game, she’ll just give the Libs the momentum in the next election.
There’s more at stake than just the day-to-day politics of maintaining power. Already, Thompson, should have lost the seat due to bankruptcy, apparently. Flaunting the laws, when it suits you, is just anti-social, especially, when you’re in public office.
“There’s more at stake than just the day-to-day politics of maintaining power. ”
Where?
someone somewhere has to start, murph… This is also about Gillard’s legacy.
I wonder if the ATO will view the payment of Thompson’s personal expenses as taxable income, a windfall, or a loan?
The guy should admit to it – at least then the ALP could claim someone in its’ ranks who is at least able to organise a root in a brothel with a fist full of fifties.
I foresee a resignation from the ALP and a move to the cross-benches.
Joe – without a complaint from the union I don’t see it ever becoming a criminal case and there’s no way the union officials would complain about it even if it was true. I’ve little doubt though that the ALP would have dropped him by now if the parliament wasn’t so finely balanced. It will get interesting closer to preselection time – if they dump him without offering him a cushy job elsewhere then he might just quit in spite suddenly Abbott will have a few months of government.
Wantok @ 39, New Zealand apples extend the fresh apple season not one iota as they are in the southern hemisphere and similar latitude to Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, southern NSW and southern WA, where they all grow beautiful crunchy apples without fireblight, apple canker or apple leaf curling midge.
I buy apples all year round bar June, July and August because that is our mandarin season, and January as that is our apricot season. I rarely find a floury apple whether it’s been in cool storage or not.
If you don’t like the price of bananas, wouldn’t it be better to buy another fruit rather than risk the biosecurity of Australian produce. Then there is the eat local argument which is local jobs mean local wealth.
A clear case of identity theft
Occam’s Blunt Razor @ 60
“The guy should admit to it – at least then the ALP could claim someone in its’ ranks who is at least able to organise a root in a brothel with a fist full of fifties.”
Harsh but true. And that’s from a lifelong labor voter.
Chris,
I can’t imagine that the members of the union who paid their membership fees for it to be spent in a brothel (or on other personal projects) are too happy about what’s going on. Labor/ unions sending the business as usual signal must also be making people wonder what’s going on…
There is, so far, one item missing from the Craig Thomson skit. That is a young lady telling reporters, “I’m the prostitute in the case.” *
* famous phrase uttered outside court when Mr Einfeld was on trial.
Helen @ 6.
Unsubscribe from CEC immediately. Do it it in very unsubtle way, eg Fuck off you Fascist Bastards. Take me off your mailing list now.
Otherwise you will be flooded with reams of Larouchean madness on a daily basis. It takes them a while to get the message I found.
They are four sheets to the wind nutters, as I’m sure you know.
savvy said:
At the moment I walked in, it was also my workspace. Yes, I did feel proud, because although I’m neither on the OH&S committee nor the Welfare committee, by simple non-bureaucratic response made a direct contribution to the amenity of the space.
The output from the radio’s speakers, in my view, constituted a potential hazard to the self-esteem and sense of community of anyone within earshot and might contribute to apathy and malaise. I advised the principal of my action and he agreed it was suitable on OH&S, welfare and academic grounds, expressing shock that such offensive material was being broadcast on school grounds.
What Salient Green@67
I persist.
Is there anyone here who is something of an expert on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android?
I’m rapidly approaching the point where I want to junk it. It has a really annoying habit of making up its own mind about its settings, deciding which youtube clips should be downloaded, what wallpaper or widgets should display, and most recently, what keyboard it should have for text input. It currently believes that I’m keen on Korean, even though this isn’t one of the language options in settings. It has also decided that since I’ve been bagging autocomplete that I’m an ungratefule wretch and withdrew it in favour of the chance to enter smiley faces. Perhaps there’s a message in that for me.
More seriously though, there seems to be no way to return the keyboard to the settings that obtained before I put the device into my jacket pocket.
I’ve no problem with artificial intelligence, but it should at least tick both boxes.
It seems slightly unfair that the only Tory pollie facing criminal charges and expulsion from parliament is a senator.
On the other hand, this may be an example of superior Liberal personnel management.
http://www.news.com.au/national/liberal-senator-mary-jo-fisher-arrested-for-shoplifting-assault/story-e6frfkvr-1226100027412
at least then the ALP could claim someone in its’ ranks who is at least able to organise a root in a brothel with a fist full of fifties.
Heh. As horrified as I am at the prospect of Abbott oozing into power, the ALP really deserves all the pain it’s getting and more for the +12 months of idiocy we’ve put up with and the shameless parachuting of candidates without merit into seats without even a cursory background check.
Even though it’s a narrative older than history itself, I am endlessly fascinated at what makes repugnant toads like this assume that a) no one will ever find out, and b) they somehow deserve public office.
Katz,
not only personnel management: $2.5k fraud for sex as opposed to $100 of groceries isn’t really in the same weight class, I would have thought.
And then the foresight of the ALP dimmwits to actually become officially involved in fending off bankruptcy and defending allegations against a major newspaper…
This cannot end well.
$100 PLUS assault of a security guard. That’s tantamount to looting. Was she wearing a hoodie and wielding a Blackberry as well?
Dunno, but I think she was blowing a few raspberries… pftpftpftpft
@54
I wonder if you would dare call a farmer a fcukhead to their face.
“yes, have done on a number of occasions, both at public forums and in private so no worries there Sav.”
Yea right mate.
savvy, you’re on the internet. Give it a break.
Wait a minute, everybody. If Thompson quits or is pushed, is it automatically “Game over man, game over”? Katter said he’d support the Coalition in September 2010, agreed. It’s nearly a year later, and he enjoys being part of the fulcrum, rather than spare change independents. Is he going to jeopardize the situation because he dislikes the ALP more than the LNP?
Good on ya, Fran. I’ve wished to do that a few times when folk were playing B105.
Anyone, going to say 100% this isn’t the f*cking NSW ALP-right protecting the coal lobby? I mean, it’s so blatant. Shaft Rudd, set up Gillard for the fall. The same small-ish group of main players… Sure, nobody could have planned the hung parliament, but the size of the collateral damage isn’t going to be small.
… Abbot will be PM.
Joe @ 81
“… Abbot will be PM.”
And may God have mercy on us.
I regard an Abbott Prime Ministership as still rather less likely than the Gillard being returned in 2013. There’s no reason, short of a conviction for some crime, which seems improbable, for Thomson to go. The Indies are going to be even less keen that the ALP for an election after all.
Thomson was elected by the voters and that really is the beginning and the end of the matter, until at least the next general election, when other matters will determine the fate of the regime. I’m by no means convinced Abbott will be leading them then. Once it has become clear he has peaked and the parties return to parity the LNP will start looking elsewhere for a saviour.
Fran,
so you’re implicitly endorsing Thomson and the Union’s behavior (less than transparent and democratic)? You also believe that someone who is, to all appearances, a liar and a cheat (and who has been involved in criminal behavior) to be a member of the Federal parliament. You surprise me, Fran.
It’s symptomatic that people have lost such faith in the likes of Abbott that they will accept so much to stop him forming government.
Antony Green says
COMMENT: If there is a police investigation launched, and if the police investigation finds evidence that suggests an offence, and if the DPP lays charges, and if the charges pass the committal hearing, and if the subsequent trial finds guilt and if this finding survives appeal, and if the charge is of sufficient severity to constitutionally preclude Mr Thomson from sitting in Parliament, then we can discuss whether there will be a by-election.
The UK legal system may be able to convict people within two weeks, but the NSW Legal System tends to proceed at a glacial pace. I suppose there is a chance the above sequence of ‘ifs’ will take place within two years.
I think it’s unfair to assume that only the NSW Branch of the Labor Party can pre-select and support candidates like this.
Katz provides us with a case study showing that Labor is not the only Party harbouring miscreants, too.
Joe @ 68 – yea the members of the union probably aren’t happy. But there’s no way the union officials would put a Labor government at risk. Well not if they want to keep their own hopes alive of graduating into parliament.
Antarctica’s Glacial Movements
Joe said:
Hardly. I didn’t even cast a formal vote in 2010.
He is a member, under the rules. That’s a fact, whatver I think of it.
I never had faith that Abbott would be other than a mercenary orc, to use Glazov’s colourful phrase, so the statement is misleading. Yet as things stand, however it may appear, we don’t know that Thomson is anything worse than someone who was careless in his duty as a union official. The stakes in play here are considerable. We are on the cusp of losing carbon pricing, the NBN and about $33bn worth of mining revenue from MRRT, when, 18 months from now, these would be for all practical purposes, irreversible. These matters are a touch more weighty in the grand scheme of things that whether some Sussex St spiv is even more spiv-like than we are entitled to think now, and whether the Murdochracy gets to deliver regime change for Twiggy and the Gina Monologues crowd.
Two years from now, if Abbott isn’t PM, the time will have passed, and Australia will have dodged a really serious bullet. The Murdochracy and mining thugs must not be allowed to select two prime ministers in succession both out of cycle. That would be an unalloyed disaster.
Having seen some video of the HSU Conference I can understand why Thompson was outsourcing rather than hitting on anyone in the Executive.
Yes, Occam’s Blunt Razor, everyone knows that women are just meat. You tell it like it is.
Abbott will be in be next month.
And the reason is simple.
Either Thompson is guilty and he must stand down and allow a by-election in his seat. I would be livid if I was a member of his electorate, and even more livid if I was a member of his union.
Or…
Thompson is innocent. And he’ll break under the media asking him over and over and over just to admit his wrong doing. Nothing will undo someone innocent quicker than being accused over and over of something that they are not guilty of.
And this is exactly the sort of thing that gave me cause for concern when Abbott knifed Turnbull.
Howard is going to seem like a pleasant left wing dream compared to Abbott.
As Fran said, if Abbott gets in like this the mining companies and the press will know the truth, they are the kingmakers.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.
It occurred to me that on a site such as this, it’s just possible that our RWDB trucker mates in the crackpot convoy might not get the respect that is their due. Perhaps a little theme song is in order (with apologies to The Firm and Star … Trekkin … across the Universe
It’s nice to know that such an annoying tune still has some application …
lol. But now that damn tune is stuck in my head!!!!
Bonjour Fran,
So, you really like “barely intelligible gibbering and atonal noise-making” after all. Someone should yank out your TV power cord and glare at you.
Don’t forget to avert your eyes . . .
Bon après midi
But shouldn’t the commies be on the port bow?
@97 – au contraire – just think it would be hard to make a deep and meaningful relationship with many of them.
@98 – douibt it.
This will be fought out to the bitter end – Gillard has proven all her life that she will do whatever it takes to seize and retain power and now she is at the pinnacle she will pile up the bodies into a parapet to hold her position. And as has been pointed out elsewhere, the glacial pace of our justice system means that any investigations and court processes will take years.
The best outcome for the ALP would be Thompson resigning from the ALP and stayin gon as an Independent.
Don’t see any down side from here for the Libs – as Keating so aptly put it – do you slowly.
OBR @103, oh, really, noone is going to interpret your comment @96 as being about “deep and meaningful relationships”. At least have the courage of your disgusting opinions if you’re going to spray them about.
“The best outcome for the ALP would be Thompson resigning from the ALP and stayin gon as an Independent.”
Shannahan described this outcome well as a “reverse Colston”.
Grigory M said:
Hey … I was just trying to pitch something at the little truckers that would meet their cognitive needs and do justice to their cause. That it fit into their preferred genre as well was a bonus.
Agree with Dr Cat way upthread about the misogyny of the Glazov piece.
“just think it would be hard to make a deep and meaningful relationship with many of them”
ORLY Razor? As opposed to a deep and meaningful relationship with a prostitute?
Stop digging mate – that was a grossly sexist slur and you ought to cop to it.
I’m not the one allegedly hiring Prostitutes.
Wonder no longer, Pav.
I thought I’d put a (relatively gentle, by LP standards) comment up pointing out that misogynistic comments did his otherwise interesting article no favours. Here’s my comment, edited thusly (his edits in bold):
He’s an excitable lad, isn’t he, and very very unhappy when called on anything. He also appears not to understand what a sockpuppet is, since I commented with what clearly has been my URL for years. Unwisely, it appears. I’d better check the moderation queue for the next few days in case of unpleasant undergraduate droppings. Really, what a precious little snowflake!
Drat. I’ll un-blockquote that last para when I get access to my login tonight.
Re Thompson:
No crime has been alleged by any material parties. No complaint has been sworn by any material persons.
The police have nothing to investigate. Prosecuting authorities have no cause.
Katz, I take it that means Brandis’ grandstanding on the radio this morning will come to nothing.
Katz,
well, I just think this is a very unsatisfactory situation. The allegations should be dis~/proven. Politics already has an accountability problem and this kind of pragmatic approach is, in the long term, regressive.
There are laws, which describe, among other things, the standards that people are supposed to uphold, if they want to be an MP. These standards shouldn’t be ignored or even weakened because they’re not practical in the current situation– they are never going to be easy to accept for the party, which they effect. But the whole system is weakened when they are not upheld.
The same can be said wrt the damage that these allegations can do to the union, of which Thomson was National Secretary. There is a moral hazard associated with turning a blind eye to these kinds of issues and it’s just a mess, when the society gets into a state where justice is very publicly seen not to be fair and equal.
Thomson needs to fess up and go, or someone needs to do a quick and thorough investigation to find out what has occurred (like this hasn’t already happened?!). If it comes to individual members of the union appealing to legal processes because of the misappropriation of mebership fees it’s going to be a public relations catastrophe.
This “new” culture of tribalism, similar to boganism etc. which sees personally identifying with a side as being more important than being a member in a process or anything larger is a step backwards.
I really must take issue with the great defenders of the farming community @49 and 54. As i sit typing this I have on my lap a newborn lamb, abandonded my its mum. The farmer who owns the property upon which I rent a house does not do even the most rudimentary of patrols for his lambing ewes, in fact he avoids them like the plague. Ewes die in the most horrendous manner when lambing, at the moment there are also two dead heifers in the next paddock that were an act of utter neglect. As a person who cannot endure the suffering of a tiny animal I had no option but to collect the poor little bugger, in a well run farming situation this matter would have been the work of the farmer not the mop up of the tenant. And believe you me this farmer has a very lavish lifestyle, but animal welfare does not have a place.
As for the “subsidies” argument, in this joint we call them “drought relief” and any number of other handouts that the farmers of this country have now become so accustomed to that many would go broke without the government handouts.We just don’t call the subsidies.
So give me a bloody break you ignorant frigwits, from what I read of your writings the closest either of you went to a farm is on the website for some drongo climate denier.
robbo @116
Call the RSPCA.
Helen, meanwhile I am absolutely SURE my comment will get through completely untouched. Cause you know, I am so much more nicer.
You’re a class act Robbo. You provide some great screenshots.
A ewe dies lambing (not unknown) ergo all farmers deserve to be called every epithet known to mankind. Interesting thought process there Robbo.
“Drought relief” is not popular with successful farmers, for the very good reason most of them aren’t ever deemed eligible for it. (The purpose of drought relief is to preserve the lives of breeding females, thus ensuring that post-drought the nation still has a sizeable beef/wool herd)
Please name some of these “any number of other handouts” you allude to…….
@robbo
Many sheep farmers don’t pick up abandoned lambs because they are a pain in the arse to look after, expensive to feed and quite often die. Not all farmers have time to have a pet sheep, especially if their kids have grown up or are too little to do the looking after, assuming they have kids. If you are concerned that animals are being neglected call the RSPCA, they will take the farmer to court.
Helen@111: that really, really sucks. It could be Ramon Glazov who did it, but judging by the language I think it’s Mark Ames, the manager of the Exiled. He’s done it on other threads, even the movie reviews. Man’s got form in douchebaggery and misogyny.
Helen and Pavlov’s Cat: just for the sake of clarity as Glazov has apparently written something that you find offensive (PC refers to it as “irrelevant sexist fat-hate near the beginning”) is it the following paragraph that you find offensive in Ramon Glazov’s article:
Just trying to get my bearings here on what it is you don’t like.
@akn: why is the opinion of Glazov that Valmae Beck is “morbidly obese” and a “hippopotamus cow” at all relevant to the horrendous crimes of which she has been convicted?
What makes her a terrible character witness is her crimes of abduction and murder, surely? There are plenty of people who are (perceived as) “morbidly obese” “hippopotamus cows” who never abduct or murder anybody. So why include that in the descriptions of what makes Valmae Beck so appalling, unless it’s to irrelevantly enlist the sociological memes surrounding fat-hate for the purposes of rhetorical point scoring?
For anyone who hasn’t read the link @4, it’s a big long unhinged redneck rant. The paragraph akn has copied & pasted above @122 is typical, though a bit less emotive & a bit more factual than most paragraphs.
If one were to be kind to the author, it could be said the piece lacks gravitas.
It could have been a very good piece, were the author to (a) get the chip off his shoulder, and (b) couch it in more objective language.
I got as far as “bl*wjob” at para 4, line 1, of Glazov’s rant and decided that the rest was not worth reading.
After seeing Helen and PC’s comments I went back and read more of his efforts.
FWIW, I think that Jumpy @15 defined him correctly.
Hi tigtog: not defending Glazov’s characterisation of Beck just trying to get my head around the objection. I guess you’ve answered my question. I had to Google Valmae Beck because I had only vague memories of the crimes. One report about her noted that she was “morbdly obese” and was removed from working in the prison kitchen due to her weight gain. Apparently she died after failed coronary surgery. But enough of Valmae Beck. I found Ramon’s piece refreshingly irreverant in a way that crossed between Hunter S. and National Lampoon. Not to other people’s taste but I’m not so committed to the writing style as to be bothered defending it.
Witchez, I return from the front with interesting news. Now here’s what I said:
Anyway, in a deeply ruthless twist, my comment was published as:
Devastating. Freaking genius. How old are they, twelve?
Ramon, I inter the original comment in its entirety here. I have sewn it back together so that it may rest in one piece. Why don’t you come by and pick up your big shiny medal you evil mastermind of the nets and have a look at the question again?
Pretty hard to defend the little prick at all after that, Casey.
Casey, thanks! I think we’ve established that only boy-admirers can engage with the highfalutin discourse in that little online frathouse. But I think their ramblings are nature’s way of telling me there are more intelligent net spaces I can spend time in.
Goodoh then. All clear now.
Re Brabdeis and Thompson, and Brandeis referring the matter to NSW police. I rgought there was this thing called the separation of powers in Australia, which when you run foul of you end up with a ultra right corrupt government. (remember Bjelke Petersen?) But then again, the Libs have always found thge concept a bit of a nuisance, if their railings against the courts are any indication.
Somehow, if pollies are going tp [rosecute each other for political advantage, I would have thought the Thompson controversy has far more ethical merit than prosecuting all members of the former Howard Government, including those now in Parliament for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Casey and Helen, my apologies for posting the original link. thanks for sticking your necks out, I’ve decided not to on post his link to others on the left and right that would be interested.
It’s a pity, apart from some of the sexist language I thought it was an interesting insight into the convoy but given the childish modifications of the comments you both made I have to wonder about the veracity of the article.
There’s been some movement Paul. According to http://www.smh.com.au/national/police-investigate-craig-thomson-20110823-1j7op.html the police are now looking into it.
@131 – how does the Seperation of Powers Doctrine mean that someone who is not the Governemnt and suspects a crime has been committed is unable to report it to the Police?
If it was someone in Governemnt how would the Doctrine stop them referring a suspected crime to the Police?
Stupid, stupid man.
(Craig Thompson, that is.)
Although I’m a Green voter, words cannot describe how venomous I feel at the moment. My little girl just joined, not quite the Labor party as I understand it, but an ALP-affiliated or something womens group at her uni. Bright-eyed, enthusiastic, wanting to join into the political process. And once she gets there she’ll find… Craig Thompsons.
Ugh.
(And anyone wanting to criticise my voting green as having a deleterious impact on the Labor vote can just go and get stuffed. I couldn’t do better to kill Labor than they’re doing themselves.)
If this did lead to a new election it would be interesting to see what would happen to the Green vote. My gut feeling is that it would increase.
Here’s the ABC report on the Craig Thomas investigations, with more detail.
Helen: ALP staffer Adam Carr said on Poll Bludger that the Greens are like the NDP – being colonised by the left overs of the 1970s far left that refuse to accept the changes of the ’80s and ’90s. He basically said that on non environ policies they “sound like the S-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t Worker’s Party circa 1973″
Yeah, that’s the sort of thing “staffers” say.
I wonder if ALP staffer Adam Carr might have a vested interest in putting down the Greens.
Doesn’t Adam Carr work for the otherwise anonymous Senator Fenney who was part of the brains trust that engineered the removal of Rudd?
No doubt he was telling all and sundry on Poll Bludger what a wonderful idea that was at the time.
From Brian’s article above,
Oh no.
Re: Valmae Beck. Thanks Casey, Helen and tssk for clarifying that it was Ramon Glazov’s depiction of Valmae Beck as a fat woman that so offended you. I didn’t realise that such monstrous behaviour as Valmae engaged in paled into such insignificance that you could find in Ramon’s article anything worse than the mutual admiration that Hanson and Valmae apparently enjoyed. But you have.
Ramon’s intention was to expose the ‘cracker’ mentality of Australian Teabaggers even to the extent that they still find leadership in such a discredited character as Hanson who, to reiterate the point, apparently saw Valmae not as a psychotic deranged murderer but as a genuinely contrite offender. These things do matter, especially up close in small communities where the last victim of Beck and her accomplice lived. This sort of information sheds light on Hanson’s move to Port Sephens in NSW. I’d say she isn’t real popular around Noosa these days with values like that.
For the record: Beck and her accomplice Watts were suspected by Police of sadistically assaulting and murdering other women (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/killer-takes-unsolved-murder-to-grave/story-e6frg6oo-1111116463091) but, like other serial offenders, Beck has chosen to take such knowledge with her unto death.
I found the account of the distress of a woman who noted Watts’ sinister presence on a beach at Noosa on the day that Sian Kingi was abducted deeply moving. She felt Watts’ malevolence, noted it, followed him, noted his vehicle registration and eventually her information allowed for Watts’ and Becks’ arrest. In retrospect she thought that Watts was looking for a victim on the beach that day. Evil, up close, unforgettable. The witness says that she’s never been able to have children for fear that Sian Kingi’s fate could befall her own children; she still feels guilty that she wasn’t able to act decisively enough to prevent Sian Kingi’s abduction, brutal sexual assault and murder (http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2008/05/11/witness-scarred-life/).
But yeah, I see your point about fat as a feminist issue. Terrible. And to think that this whelp Glazov had the temerity to call Valmae a hippo cow. It begs the question, of course, of just what sort of langauge might be acceptable when describing one’s disgust at the genuinely disgusting, but I’ll accept your guidance on that. Me too: who does Glazov think he is? I’m sure all of Queensland and especially the residents of Noosa feel just the way you do.
Vintage sarcasm, AKN, but we’re well aware that Valmae was an evil person. Just that her, apparently, deplorable lack of fuckability didn’t have anything to do with it. Walk. Chew gum.
@120, quite right, but most do not allow said lambs to die slowly from predation and starvation Mindy, they deal with the problem and euthanise rather than allow the suffering.So I fail to understand the point you were making.Do you truly believe that not monitoring lambing ewes is good animal husbandry? Do you not believe that respect for the animals that provide you with a very comfortable living is an optional extra and that you therefore have an obligation to take due care for the animal welfare issues, in fact I reckon if you go and have a look that is your obligation by law.
So yes, i do understand that many do not poddy lambs or calfs but that does not mean that they are absolved of any responsibility.
@akn, Beck’s fat body is irrelevant to what crimes she committed, and the initial comments here noted only that Glazov’s inclusion of this irrelevancy in such derisory terms, as if it somehow contributed to or exacerbated what she did,detracted from the overall point of his piece. Would Valmae Beck have been less monstrous if she’d been thin and glamorous? I don’t think so. Why then mention it at all? People thought the rest of it was interesting/worthwhile, and that gratuitous fatphobic slurs were a distraction from the major point, and that it would have been better without them.
Glazov responded to this being pointed out to him directly by carrying on like a pork chop, to such a point that his lack of judgement in editing people’s comments in such a blatantly offensive manner, with no indication to other readers that these comments had been edited at all, displays such disregard of ethical guidelines that it is difficult to take him at all seriously now on this or any other issue unless he mends his ways and issues an acknowledgement that he has behaved extremely badly here.
Thompson just quit his Committe Chairmanship. I wonder if the ALP will make up the 11% of base salary he just dropped?
OBR@148
Tut tut, thats NSW ALPs business, our Honourable PM said so, remember?
Shorty Jameison is a short psycho killer; Valmae Beck was a fat psycho killer. These are descriptive terms. Short. Fat. It might be the case that Shorty’s shortness made him unf*ckable too but no-one gets wound up about his shortness being a political issue. Maybe that’s because short people don’t want to make a laughing stock of themselves. Or it could be because short people don’t want to associate themselves in any way with defending anything at all about Shorty ya know, like tutt-tutting about calling Valmae fat?
If you think anyone here was defending psycho killers AKN, you’re too hopelessly dedicated to missing the point to ever get anywhere except in endless semantic circles. I really can’t be bothered.
akn, Glazov didn’t just call Beck fat and you know it.
Again, it was Glazov’s choice to use hyperbolically derisory language about this woman’s body that has detracted from his alleged purpose about demonstrating Hanson’s poor judgement in befriending Beck as reported. If those other points are so important, then perhaps he should have just stuck to what is actually relevant, because then that is what we would be talking about.
Also, he behaved like an arse, so now we’re talking about that, too.
Nutbag Glazov was trying to link Beck, through Hanson, to the Convoy folk. That should be enough to expose his low character.
No tigtog, Helen’s right, the differences here are incommensurable. Anyway, Valmae wasn’t unf*ckable – she had six kids. All too f*ckable, it seems.
MARRIAGE ACT 1961 – SECT 26
The Governor-General can form the view that celebrants of certain denominations are no longer qualified to perform functions under the act.
The GG need not explain her reasons for withdrawing that qualification from any denomination.
However, she may form the view that certain denominations no longer represent public policy in various spheres of interest, and act unilaterally on that view.
akn, my objection was to the re-editing and re-publishing of Casey and Helen’s comments. That sort of thing undermines his own writings.
To expand on that would be parroting tigtog’s post @147.
Essentially it negates his points about how the convoy was organised and if someone else now tries to make the same links I’m more likely than not going to dismiss them. If the convoy say they are made of ordinary folk and not astroturfers and ex-Lib party staffers I’m just going to take it at face value.
Anyway I’ve made my apology for offering the link and won’t be discussing it further.
So the Craig Thompson thing. Do we think Gillard is going to lose her government to a by-election or will she roll the dice and go all out for a general election?
I have the horrible feeling by the end of September we will see the might of a fully operational Abbott government.
And you can bet your bottom dollar, if they take power by just one seat either way he, his supporters, industry and the media will count it as the clear mandate of the Australian people.
tssk: ah, to be fair to Glazov I’m aware that contributors to eXiled have no control over the editing of comments following thier articles.
Thommo: as someone wrote on Crikey – we finally get a politician who canorganize a root in a brothel and all he manages to do is bring down an effective minority government. Just gotta hand it to the right of the ALP. I’m waiting for someone to profile this stellar performer’s career profile. I’m presuming a law or economics degree, student ALP member on some campus, factional shenanigans, a union posting, possibly some time on staff in a member’s office but little to no gainful employment in the general economy. If he ever worked in the health industry in any capacity like the HSU members, I’d be absolutely a-mazed.
Thommo’s parliamentary profile:
He seems to be a member of Doug Cameron’s ‘faction’ and Cameron is currently ‘deferring to Gillard’ on the matter (ie, running for the hills). I once heard Doug Cameron being so rude to English anarchist Beatric Campbell, in Australia doing a speaking tour about the surgical effectiveness of Thatcher’s attack on unions, that she responded to Cameron that his “butch and baronial” attitude was exactly the problem with Australian unionism. So it’s no surprise that Thommo is a mate and a cocksman.
The first sentence of Thommo’s maiden parliamentary speech:
hahahahaha.
But Thommo was born in Wellington so maybe the ALP can blame, oh I dunno, Piggy Muldoon or sheep or something.
Tssk, no need to apologise. The fellow exhibits a certain fragility to respond the way he did. So leave him alone I say, he seems quite young. Or something. Speaking as a feminist who in the process of doing a Phd in Literature, comes to look at the discourses which inform writing, what is depressing to me is not some young bloke who can’t hack a bit of criticism, but rather the constant reminder – the shock even – that when you come to speak to people you think are like-minded about how misogyny and sexism is reinforced and privileged through language, what is always a shock to me is how you can then get out and out disavowals and minimisations from folks who in every other respect are your comrades when it comes to exposing hidden privileges of the powerful. Whenever feminists think they are among like company it is never very long before they are reminded they are actually not, or only partially and then with forbearance. That they are accompanied a part of the way, but when that gets too tough or costs too much or too much power needs to be ceded from their fellow travellers for them to continue with them, then they and their aspirations are relinquished. Quickly and easily. I have lost blog friendships over this so it is no light matter to watch people you respect arguing vehemently to maintain the privileges that cost women so much. Toni Morrison, African American Nobel prize winner once said, (I’ve said this before no doubt) that racism will always cede before sexism does. That’s a pretty powerful indictment from a woman who descends from slaves. I always remember it.
“are” reinforced.
I hope Glazov mends his ways. There is much of value in the manner in which he conducted his researches on the Convoy.
I think it’s easy to get carried away by the Thompson affair, and as grubby as it no doubt is, I can’t see how it will bring down the government by the end of September.
Of course the political journalists tell us that it is ‘all Canberra is talking about this’, conveniently ignoring that fact that they have chosen to give it maximum oxygen.
We should expect an impartial media to likewise put some focus on allegations that Abbott used taxpayer funds to promote his book, and the fact that a coalition senator has been charged with shoplifting and assault. But of course we don’t have an impartial media, particularly when it comes to Canberra.
Yes, Casey. It’s that sinking feeling when you come across a throwaway remark by this writer or that writer who you felt was speaking directly to you – that hallmark of good writing – which makes it clear you aren’t the target audience, at all.
This was made very obvious by an interview on RN with Abbott this morning where he kept reiterating that it was very very important for the government to focus on the Thompson affair because the government was simply not capable of governing given the huge DISTRACTION of it all. Not mentioning, of course, the fact that the distraction was being energetically stage managed by his party.
I still reckon it’s eXile proprietor Mark Ames who’s playing silly buggers with the comments, and Glazov may not even know it’s happening. But I may be wrong.
I think you could well be right, D&O. I’d hesitate to attribute the stupid moderation (if that’s the right word) of those threads to the writers of the individual posts.
But Casey, isn’t this just good blog writing? Fat people are funny, obviously, but also bad. (Fat = gluttony). So you might write that Beck was a child-murdering psychopath, but it’s kind of vague without a picture. A morbidly obese hippopotamus cow gives you badness you can picture. You have to give him marks for effectiveness.
Casey, I’m happy to engage with the substance of your grievance in real terms. So when you say:
I can see that these feelings are grounded in reality for you. I’d suggest, though, that issues to do with power embedded within langauge are matters to be negotiated between feminists, the like minded and comrades rather than subject to magisterial condemnation. It’s the sense that accompanies the latter that causes umbrage.
I rekon Glazov got out there and checked out the whitefella convoy in very funny terms and showed them no mercy which is what they deserve. Quite a good voice. So it seemed to me to be rather an overreaction to sieze on this one descriptive transgression around Valmae Beck. Humour is our best weapon in dealing with the Teabaggers and the more we can discredit them in terms that suburban Ozzies understand then the better. The stuff about Beck and Hanson is good value in that sense. I’m left wondering, if fat is such a feminist issue that we have to throw away opportunities for satire and derision against Teabaggers, whether we are fellow travellers and comrades at all.
I doubt it. Even if the police decide to investigate, and charge him with an offence, it would be months before it came to a trial. Thomson is under no obligation to step down unless and until he is convicted of something. No doubt he is feeling the pressure, but I’d imagine that his party and union backers are brandishing every carrot and stick at their disposal to keep him in his seat.
No, its Ames not Glazov who has mangled the comments. The Americans are more ‘frat house’ than an Australian broad left audience would find acceptable. Maybe nihilistic would be a better description than ‘left’ but even then it is understandable given the insane political culture of the US. That’s a place where the centre definitely hasn’t held.
Thommo also thanks the following unions for their assitance in getting bumped: Unions New South Wales, the TWU, the CFMEU mining division, the PSA, the Health Services Union. Good to see that the PSA, with overwhelimingly female membership, threw its weight behind such an exemplary character as a guy who used member’s fees to pay for sex services.
I’m guessing that the word ‘allegedly’ isn’t part of your vocabulary, akn.
Yeah he’s probably less than an ‘exemplary’ character, but it never ceases to amaze me how easily the left buys so easily into whatever confected outrage is the order of the day.
You were similarly outraged about the terrible Grech e-mail and how it would be the end of Rudd etc etc. I take it?
Rudd was done in the end though wasn’t he so I guess the mud stuck. Mission accomplished.
These are just allegations at the moment. If I was a member of any of the named unions I’d be ringing my rep and demanding answers though.
I do have a double standard though. I’m much less unforgiving if a leftie is guilty of corruption because there’s an extra element of hypocrisy there.
And in the end it’s worse if he’s innocent. If this gets brought up as an issue on the floor of Parliament day in day out nothing is going to be able to get done. In which case they may as well hold an election.
That’s nonsense tssk.
Yes, for heaven’s sake, the rabble known as the opposition is always bringing up all sorts of crap in Parliament, and remind me, how many bills have been passed by this government?
adrian, the issues for me are the clouds of greasy stink given off by the NSW ALP. Nothing will change until that mob are purged. The main benefit of the ALP in office at the moment is that it stands as a bulwark against Abbott but if they cannot even sustain that for one term then what is the use of them? I hope Thommo keeps his seat for purely pragmatic reasons but that doesn’t mean that this maggot doesn’t also deserve to have the harsh light of public scrutiny shone on his tawdry behaviour. I couldn’t care less about his sexual appetites but paying for it on a union credit card is i) disgraceful and ii) evidence of him being an arrogant mug as well as a maggot.
@175 1226 bills to date.
That’s the issue Adrian. I’m betting Rudd passed a score of them and I bet Julia passed a load as well.
But without doing some research I can’t remember a single thing they’ve passed. (Apart from the pink batts scheme and I don’t talk about that too much amongst my friends because even the leftest of the left of them believe it’s caused scores of deaths and burnt down houses despite the truth being the opposite!)
It’s the perception that Rudd was doomed that bought down Rudd despite being in a damn strong position. Same thing is happening here.
HSU is referring the matter to the Police.
Your Union working for you – might be 3 years late, but it is working – how very Union.
@175 1226 bills? Is that both Rudd and Gillard terms or just Gillard? If it’s just in Julia’s term what a powerhouse!
That’s a little unfair, Razor. The union referred the matter to the workplace relations tribunal 3 years ago.
@181 – And the Workplace relations tribunal is well placed to investigate fraud and theft allegations?
Oh, workplace relations? So Thommo, as the head of the HSU, was doing OH+S workplace checks in the brothels was he? Yuk. What a mess.
Conundrum for Gillard.
Call an early election or wait for the axe to fall and cede government to Abbott for the remainder of this Parliament?
Yeah Katz, I came to the same depressing conclusion at 156. I can’t believe it’s come to this.
You’re getting ahead of yourself, Razor. There weren’t any allegations of fraud or theft until George Brandis made them a couple of days ago.
If someone uses a business credit card for personal expenditure, it isn’t usual to immediately treat it as a criminal matter, particularly if the money is repaid. Thomson has claimed that the money was repaid. If he’s making that up, he is truly an idiot of elephantine proportions (which is possible, of course).
The media reports don’t give much information on the basis of the union’s decision to go to the police now, other than to say that it is based on ‘new information that has come to light’. The new information may be Thomson’s claim that somebody forged his signature.
If the police decide there’s a prima facie case against Thomson, I’d hate to be the Director of Public Prosecutions. If he decides to prosecute, he’ll be accused of using his office to bring down an elected government. If he decides not to, he’ll be accused of covering up a political fraud in order to protect an unpopular government. I hope O’Farrell is paying him well.
This has a long way to play out before Gillard needs to consider any such thing.
Mind you ‘ceding’ government to Abbott 12 months out from an election may be just enough time for the electorate to realise what a lunatic they have for PM. And with a new Labor leader…
The electorate already has a lunatic for PM.
How much worse could it possibly get with Abbot in charge?
We’d be swapping a clueless & incompetent amoral political bogan, for a ruthless determined conviction politician.
We could not possibly be any worse off.
Gillard shouldn’t wait until Thomson does the perp walk. It seems to me that arranging a loss in a confidence motion leaves Abbott in the most uncomfortable situation. Remember that he would face a hostile Senate way beyond any honeymoon period he may enjoy.
No, never cede. It’ll be taken as a sign of bad conscience (the liar thing, the unrepresentative/no mandate minority government). Make Abbott fight every inch for it.
If I was to use the company business card to buy some office supplies it might be questioned.
For transport or food I’d have to justify it.
But for ‘personal’ services? Even if I repaid the money the very next day I’d be fired on the spot. Most companies that issue company credit cards would spell this out explicitly.
adrian: I’m not sure that an Abbot government will be enough of a disaster for your scenario in your last paragraph, at least not in the first 12 months. All he has to do is do an ok job and his mates at News Corp will make sure that he gets back in. If by that stage the world economy picks up then he’ll be able to run on the old canard of ‘conservatives make good economic managers’, and it’s hello to at least another term of Abbot government, when the shit can really hit the fan.
I hope Gillard fights all the way.
@186 – well, we have Thompson saying someone, some how, used both his phone and credit card including making a very good forgery of his signature and must have looked very similar to him when using his drivers licence as ID – yet an unamed individual subsequnetly paid back some $15,000 to the HSU for personal expenditure on the card.
These claims aren’t a few days old – they are years old and the basis of articles and now dropped legal actions.
@188 – the DD trigger would be pulled ASAP unless the Senate rolled over and played doggo which I strongly doubt.
Of course. It’s highly inappropriate and would be a sackable offence. But not necessarily a criminal offence.
On the timing thing, personally I’m not all that concerned about exactly how long Julia Gillard chooses to hang on, as long as she rams the Clean Energy package through Parliament first.
tssk @ 190 – it still wouldn’t be a criminal matter though would it up until the point of actually claiming it was a work expense when it wasn’t? I’m curious as to why it was referred to fair work australia at all. What is their role in the matter?
The notional Abbott government would have to arrange a DD trigger first. That would take at least 3 months. Given that it would need the support of independents in the lower house, there’s no guarantee it could do it anyway.
“I hope Gillard fights all the way.”
Me too. It’s about time they stopped playing nice guys. This is a war, and when your opponents are without principle you have no other choice.
There are rumours that they have dirt on coalition MP/s – it’s about time they used it.
Chris, I’m also trying to figure that out. The details are scarce but it appears that Fair Work Australia has a brief to investigate the conduct of union officials while in office.
The criminal matter arises out of Thommo claiming that he lost his cc and phone and that someone forged his signature on the credit account. That’s making false statements. If it can be shown that he’s done that, that the signature on the account is his not forged, then they’re stuffed.
Where’s that coming from, akn?
Well, it’s common knowledge that it’s only the Libs who currently have a member facing criminal charges.
Adrian @198. I disagree. They should go down without dishing any dirt. Why should they stoop to their level? (Abbott and co of course get a free pass because I expect no better of them and since I will never vote for them I couldn’t care less how much mud they sling.)
If you become what you’re fighting then what’s the point?
“If you become what you’re fighting then what’s the point?”
If you cave in without a fight and cede power to the most venal opposition leader ever, what indeed is the point?
While I don’t really care what becomes of this shitty Labor govt the reality is they’re nowhere near losing office. As I understand it it’s still far more likely the next election will be in 2013 than anytime soon as Antony Green has pointed out.
I know this is getting abstract but can one still say they one a boxing match if they pull out a pistol? Just because the Libs are breaking (re-interpreting) the rules to their advantage doesn’t mean the ALP should participate in the destruction of the system.
Tim Macknay: apparently at some point in the original investigation, conducted by I know not whom, Thommo claimed that the cc signature was forged. If this claim was made to the Fair Work Commission then it may not be all that significant. If the claim was made to the coppers then he’s in it up to his eyeballs because it goes to gaining an advantage (and the nature of the advantage is ill defined) by giving false information, deceiving, giving reckless information and so on. Which is covered in the NSW Crimes Act. Criminal offence. Whether or not punishable by 12 months I don’t know. But it is more serious than it looks.
tssk – I agree with you. I don’t think that Labor should stoop to mud-slinging, and I expect the Coalition throwing it’s toys out of the cot over the pairing issue will backfire if taken to extremes.
But I think Labor can fight this without needing to sneer back at the Libs over the senator charged with shoplifting etc. As others have pointed out, it’s a long road before Thomson faces any criminal charges, and you can be sure that there will be a lot of stalling in any case that does come before the court, if any at all. I think this may be why Abbot has let Brandis do all the heavy lifting on this one.
Actually, Abbot’s been remarkably quiet about the whole shebang, which makes me suspect that the Libs don’t have anything much. You can be sure that Abbot would be going for the throat if they had anything concrete.
Abbott’s been a bit odd about this and his down key nervous comments did come across as a bit odd. Lucky the ‘left leaning’ media is there to help leverage the issue.
However his timidity was noted even on The Insiders. As one of the couch dwellers pointed out, Abbott is in the same place as Gillard. If he loses someone at the same time as Gillard there’s no advantage and no change of power.
So the idea seems to be to spook the ALP and see if they can pull off the Rudd dposition trick twice in a row.
Has Thomson even spoken to the cops? Given that the matter was only referred to them in the last couple of days, that seems unlikely.
The recent news articles say the matter that the HSU has referred to the police is Thomson’s alleged misuse of union funds, rather than his having made false statements to anyone. If Thomson is charged, it seems more likely to me that it will be something like embezzlement, fraud or larceny, rather than making a false statement. Those offences carry penalties of up to ten years.
But hell, who really knows? It will be clear soon enough.
Helen/adrian – I doubt Abbott is that worried if he loses an MP or two as long as he gets a bi-election in an ALP held seat. And if MJF has to resign the libs get to reappoint another lib to the senate anyway.
That being said I don’t think he wouldn’t be that disappointed drawing this out right to the next election. And given how slow the investigations and court processes can work that may well happen unless the pressure gets too much for Thomson and he quits.
Why & how is Fair Work Australia involved?
The Fair Work Act, while not my most familiar piece of legislation, is one I know quite well.
Fair Work Australia is more than just an Industrial Court.
The HSU is a “registered orginisation” under the Fair Work Act.
Under the Fair Work Act there are financial reporting obligations with which registered organisations must comply.
For whatever reason, at same stage in the past there has been investigation into HSU affairs by FWA. If someone (say Mr. Thomson) told porkies to the FWA investigators, then it is a very serious offence. One can perjure oneself to FWA, perhaps that is what someone (say it was Mr. Thomson) may have done.
I am not certain at this stage if FWA has an obligation to be proactive or reactive in their investigations into financial reporting by registered organisations.
If FWA is obliged to ensure financial reporting is kosher, and has missed something, it could be most unhappy for FWA.
Absolutely, this kind of publicity is money for nothing for the Libs. Abbott just needs to look keen atm.
SATP:
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. Not saying that Thommo has misled FWA, mind you, but that if it can be shown that he has in the matter, for example, of the credit card signature being forged, then it is a significant matter of conduct outside of Parliament going to his fitness to sit in Parliament.
@197 – If I was Abbott and got handed the Baton you wouldn’t see me for the dust before I was knocking on the front door of Yaralumla and getting the writs issue for an election. Even assuming some swing back to the ALP I would almost certainly have control of the HOR but not the Unrepresentative Swill. I’d then make it absolutely clear to the Swill that if they didn’t get with the program it would be round two at the polls ASAP with a DD and the Greens and ALP would seriously have to consider their positions. How much are they prepared to lose on principle?
On the Margaret Olly Funeral issue – I think that it was the wrong call by Abbott not to pair.
Was prostitution legal when he (or whoever) used the credit card to pay for it? If so, it’s just a matter of internal HSU discipline – was the card allowed to be used for personal expenses and then repaid, etc. I think the opposition are beating this very hard not because of the fraud angle (which I bet the police will determine came to nothing) but because they want to associate Thomson with sex workers.
Which, if they were a legal operation in the state where he was visiting, is nobody’s business but his own. And which also raises a very ugly precedent for Australian politics – we aren’t meant to bring down governments on the back of private activity, that’s an American disease.
@208/209 – Abbott would hve seen what happened to Turnbull in the Gretch Affair.
Even if it appears rock solid – best to let others do the knife work.
But sg,
this is a public interest issue, if ever there was one. Thomson is a public figure and people vote for the man because they believe that he is of good character. That the man uses a union credit card to pay for sex interests me a lot. Indicates to me that he’s not to be trusted with public money…
sg @ 216 – isn’t it alleged that he authorised for the union to pay for the credit card charges? And subsequently when queried about it, claimed that someone else was responsible for it and then the money was repaid. Might be too late by then if the union is willing to make a complaint.
Well sg, I know a few HSU members who’ve discovered that it’s better at the macro issues than actually having a union rep turn up and argue their case when they’ve been hung out to dry by the usual workplace bully. They are well unimpressed by Thommo Trousers and his antics.
As a life long unionist I’ll say that this sort of conduct, whether it was Thommo at the business or whether he lost his cc and someone got lucky at the HSU’s expense, is very far from member’s expectations of union officials which is that they are on our paycheck and therefore need to conduct themselves with a high degree of personal integrity. The rot in the ALP isn’t the only issue for the labour movement – this sort of rubbish in the unions is at issue as well.
As a representative of the HSU I do hope it was safe sex being practiced.
chris, I really don’t know.
Joe, since the 1970s the labor movement have been campaigning to make sex work legal and to normalize the working conditions of sex workers. They finally won this victory in the noughties in most states of Australia, and this victory was not only of great significance for Australian feminism (unheralded though it was), for the union movement, and for the public health of all Australians, but it was a huge win for those women who work in the sex industry, foreign and Australian. Non-sex working Australians have generally supported this campaign and there’s little chance of it going backwards.
But you can’t have your cake and eat it. If you think sex work should be treated as a legitimate job you can’t then claim it’s a “public interest issue” if someone visits sex workers. Once it becomes legal it’s no-one else’s business, provided the brothel was licensed. This victory for feminism ensures that the women he (or someone) had sex with were there by choice, in a safe environment. No one should care how Thomson gets his jollies unless it’s illegal.
When you tie party political victory to the kind of anti-sex work message implicit in Abbot’s grandstanding (as he is doing) you set back the goals of feminism and sex workers. Fair enough if he genuinely committed fraud on the public purse, but unions are not “the public purse,” they’re a private organization supported by member’s dues. If members have decided it’s okay for senior members to use a credit card for personal entertainment on a business trip, then it doesn’t matter what that entertainment is – be it karaoke or shag-a-oke – provided it’s legal.
sg: I don’t disagree with your statement at all but, from another angle, you’ve got to see that you’ve just managed to portray Thommo Trousers as a feminist hero. Well done, I’m enjoying this.
And for me it’s not the sex worker angle that’s the issue.
As a voter the only things that interest me are the following.
-If a union rep used the services of a prostitute was it during time he should have been working?
-Did the union rep use the union’s money for these services?
-Did the union rep lie about the above?
I know it’s not public money but when your representing people who have to account for every minute of their work day and have to fight to have rest breaks damn right it’s an issue.
It goes to character if nothing else.
I can’t really see why the legality or otherwise of the brothel is relevant. The union apparently had sufficiently serious doubts about the legitimacy of the expenditure to conduct an internal investigation, then refer it to Fair Work Australia. Would it have been any different if the money had been spent on Go-Kart racing?
haha, akn, I think that would make a troll, wouldn’t it?
I see a tendency for the left to do this hypocritical style where on the one hand people’s personal lives should not be a public issue (e.g. Hawke’s womanizing, Brown’s sexuality), but then on the other hand with certain issues – prostitution and criminal histories related to sexual misdemeanours being especially obvious, but sometimes also the way they earnt their personal wealth – we see them thrown under the bus.
And from a feminist perspective (not that that’s what I think I’m taking here), it seems very hypocritical to campaign on the one hand for sex work to be normalized and then on the other hand to worry about a left-wing politician’s private use of such an industry. There’s an element of guilt by association in such a statement (e.g. Joe’s “of good character”) that says a lot more about the speaker’s view of sex workers than perhaps they realize.
@225 – “Would it have been any different if the money had been spent on Go-Kart racing?” No, but a lot less tittilating.
Yeah sure it goes to character, so what about the ‘character’ of those that orchestrated an illegal war, that demonised refugees through Tampa and other means, were involved in the AWB scandal, paid for mobile phone usage for son through govt expenses etc etc.
Sure I realise that there are different rules for the ALP, but this is getting beyond bloody ridiculous.
sg, the spin thread is over there -> .
If you want to though, you can split that off into another concern and try to run the culture war set move. It is a legitimate perspective, but politically not very astute.
The other issue is really irrespective of how he spent the union’s money. And apparently, he spent quite a bit of it and not only for sex. He also spent it on his election campaign. Don’t be confident because of the apparent Liberal party quietude they have the running on this now and it may just be that they want to ‘do the Labour party slow.’
How many Federal Pollies are married to Journos?
That would make after work small talk as demanding as a Presser every night.
“How was your day love?”
“Well, let me preface this by saying . . .”
The ‘left’ also has a tendency to fight with one hand tied behind its back while shouting, “hit me please, I deserve it”.
But sg the scandal here is not that he allegedly hired the services of a prostitute (at least not among the left) it’s the allegations of lying and misusing funds. We’ve seen where white collar crime and corruption gets us.
Adrian @228. I know what you’re saying about the double standard. But I don’t think the solution is for the ALP to ‘man up’ and become as bad as the Libs at their worst.
And for me it’s simple. I’m not going to vote for the Libs in a million years. So leaving that aside, if the ALP keep doing crap like this (and is the Malaysia solution that much better than Howard at this point?) I’ll just park my vote with the Greens.
@233 – I have voted Labor, twice, but only at State Level so it doesn’t count.
sg,
maybe you haven’t understood what a public interest issue is? A public interest issue is not necessarily an illegal issue by any means. It is merely an issue of interest to the public because it concerns a public figure. In other words, the issue is meant to inform the public about the public figure, who’s success is based on how the public see him.
This has nothing to do with the fact that paying for sex or playing with model train sets are both legitimate hobbies. Some of the voting public may feel different about this and you can rail against that and even attempt to dissuade them, but if they voted for Thomson on the basis that they believed he was not someone who would pay for sex (maybe they’re that type of Christian) then they deserve to know the truth. It is legitimate for these people to remove their support for Thomson and vote for a different federal candidate.
Practically speaking, I think you’ll find that currently, while there is no satisfactory explanation for what has occurred, Thomson’s support in his electorate would be suffering. That’s the reality. He would very possibly lose a bi-election, if it were to be held in the current context and that’s why some people are upset.
It hasn’t got much to do with your normative position regarding the social acceptance of paying for sex.
Disclaimer: I have also always voted ALP and I cannot imagine ever voting for the Liberal party, but I’m really starting to hate the Labor party. I mean, I’m becoming a hater. Why should I support a party full of creeps, who don’t do what I want.
A little back story on the Craig Thomson thing:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/08/16/craig-thomson-david-feeney-parliament-bid/
The HSU are almost duty bound to protect the luvvie and claim that he could spend it on anything he wanted, he just had to fix it up at the end and it’s just an oversight. End of story. Doesn’t matter who’s signature or licence just pay up and it’s okay.
Except if I was a HSU member. If I was I would be livid that not only are the union reps doing the wrong thing but they want to protect him.
By the way sg, well done championing the virtues of prostitution as a viable alternative for women. Well done.
The solution isn’t to become as bad as the Libs at their worst, but to fight back. To fight back doesn’t automatically entail reducing yourself to their level.
Bernard Keane:
I take some of it back. It took the HSU 9 years to grow a pair.
Thanks for that Jacques, I think. And they wonder why yoof don’t join the party anymore. Strewth, with comradeship like that who needs the Libs or Nats?
Fair enough. I’m mildly convinced. Although the amount of time its taken for this to enter the public arena, and Thomson’s apparent certainty that he’s able to defend himself, makes me think that there’s not actually much fishy about the misuse of money. If the police decide it’s not worth pressing charges on, then it will have become just another sex scandal. And I really think they should be kept out of politics.
It seems the HSU (which organised its own investigation) concluded that alleged financial improprieties under Craig T went beyond a liaison with prostitute(s) paid for on a union credit card.
From the Age.. “The union on Wednesday referred the matter to NSW police, based on what Ms Jackson said was “new material that has come to light in recent weeks.Ms Jackson, who is an ALP member, later said Mr Thomson should make a full explanation of his actions to the public and union members.”
I think he’s just been cut loose.
Current Nat. Sec. of the HSU, Kathy Jackson, on Lateline admits that not all of the 100K has been paid back and is making a strong attempt to keep union afloat by appearing to want to clean up the mess. Doesn’t know for sure who spent the money or on what. Refers to her members as ‘the working poor’. Well, she’d know then.
I think the ALP are finished. Watch as a sizable number of votes go to the Greens, and even more sizable number park their votes with the Libs and a big proportion donkey vote for at least the next 30 years.
I bet Kevin Rudd is doing the same thing I am, grinding teeth in frustration how this golden opportunity to fix the country has been wasted for Howard Redux times two.
And you know whose to balme? The ALP themselves, betraying their voters and yet again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Another man dies at the hands of English Police He’d dialled 999 to report a gun threat but was pepper sprayed and assaulted and died in custody.
According to Crikey (today) the funny money that has characterised the HSU for a very long time will be put under serious scrutiny. It is argued that current co-operation by HSU leadership is an attempt to build a firebreak between themseves and members liable to migrate away to other unions or drop off altogether. While they’re at it the funds of the SDA could do with a careful look as well. Or any union run by the mates, for that matter. But the HSU wins the gong, hands down.
So, let’s get this straight.
The PM is totally committed to supporting Craig Thompson who is obviously innocent until proven guilty (unlike the South Australian ALP MP who got the arse for being investigated by the cops – someone explain the difference to me??)
However, Senator Brandis writes to the NSW Police andthen advises the NSW Attorney General he i s doing so who then tells the NSW Police Commissioner by telephone that Brandis is writing to him, which he probably already knew form all the media reports about it and that is obviously corruption at the highest levels and a breach of the speration of powers doctrine and therefore anything the Liberals have to say is totally baseless, untrue, should be ignored, they aren’t fit to govern and did i mention that Fairwork Australia has only been investigatin this for a very very short time (three years) and therefore it would be totlly improper to comment except that Craig Thompson is a very hard working member. . . for his electorate.
Did I miss anything?
My email program launches spellcheck when I hit send.
Just saying.
Yes you did Occam.
You missed the bit where even the most left wingiest of us can’t believe this is happening.
It’s like the ALP decided to stop digging themselves into a hole with a shovel when heavy machinery would do the job so much better.
The ALP has lost government. (And for the most stupid of things.) Their next actions will determine whether or not they’ll be allowed anywhere near the levers of power again this century.
Say what you like about Rudd, he would have cut Thompson free on principle alone.
I mean this is enough to kill unions stone cold dead as well.
Tony must be grinning from ear to ear, not only will he be in the lodge in four weeks he’ll be able to bring in Workchoices without serious opposition.
Can I admit to being kind of curious as to what might happen under an Abbot government? I’d be interested to see just how they would even begin to satisfy their promises without bankrupting Canberra and the nation.
As a Kiwi there’s a certain amount of separation from what Australia decides to do long term, and your politics is a lot more entertaining than ours. A bit like watching American politics implode from the other side of the Pacific.
OBR @249: Almost perfect. You just left out the bit about the only member of the Commonwealth Parliament who has actually been charged with a criminal offence being a Liberal.
Is your email program an MS product?
Funny you should say that. A lot of people I’ve spoken to lately have remarked how sane NZ politics appears to be.
OK…can anyone here think about how the Gillard government can get out of this and retain government? Because last night at dinner some friends and I were wracking our brains and we couldn’t see anything she could do aside from dragging things out for about a month.
@Occam’s Blunt Razor: 5 comments in a row on one thread (just unapproved them) is against the commenting guidelines, even if you are replying to 5 different people. You are hogging the Recent Comments sidebar!
Please combine such brief multiple replies into at most 2 comments when you repost.
tssk @ 255 – they can just let this drag on forever. *Eventually* the public and media will get bored of it. It will have implications at the next election and the opposition will keep bringing it up, but unless he actually is convicted the government doesn’t have to do anything really.
tssk, this doesn’t mean the ALP has lost govt. Just ’cause Thompson is using funny money for funny games and is convicted for it doesn’t mean they’ll lose the by-election. Or that it will even happen before the next election.
What Chris said.
We know the Libs and their media mates will play this for all it’s worth (they were all over ABC radio this morning cunningly disguised as ‘spin doctors’ and political correspondents, but that’s par for the course), but currently the only member of parliament facing criminal charges is a Liberal senator.
Strange eh?
@252 – Jess – now, that is a very interesting point of view – exactly how would they bankrupt the Nation? They are committed to significant spending cuts, or are you ignoring those?
Righto – someone explain to me how the proposed MRRT will fund the increase in Superannuation costs for small business?
@253 – Tim – yes, Liberal Member has been charged with a criminal offence – didn’t take three years for the alleged offences to get referred to the Police after sand bagging in a bureacracy. I note that, unlike the SA ALP, the Liberals have given her the preumption of innocence – explain to me again why the SA ALP had to drop the presumption of innonce for their MP?
Yes – MS.
Hey, Jess, NZ could be enjoying the fruits and costs of the coal boom if they just decided to mine the huge reserves they have. So sad that they handicap themselves and then demand we take their exports of apples.
@254 – do you really think MMR is sane? You must think Italy and Israel are fine examples of effective working democracies.
tssk @251: yes about the unions. We’re already at less than 20% coverage of the workforce except for where unions do a generally good job (in NSW that appears to be, but not limited to, PSA, NSWNA, copper and firies). Anyone wavering, or not in, in the private sector has been given no reason to join. Retail sector membership is such a mess that I wonder how there’s enough funds to even keep a union going. Hospitality is not too bad because the Liquor and Allied Trades Union was always a left union but I daresay its membership could be better.
Thanks grubs of the ALP right for this one. The union movement needs to keep in mind that it and the ALP are different entities.
Yeah, OBR, all that nonsense about national parks when we could take the Australian approach of just excising the bits that are most valuable and not policing the rest.
NZ politics is only boring because the Labour Party over there is in opposition. Their antics are pretty much what you’d get if you made Thomson PM here. Or perhaps Katter. Goff has a talent for shooting himself in the foot while digging that makes Thomson seem quite sane by comparison. Like the ALP they manage to release widely supported policies in a way that makes the electorate dislike them even more. Helped, of course by the “fair and balanced {tm}” media.
No need to get huffy about it OBR – if you were trying to summarise the ALP line on the Thomson scandal, then the spiel about the Lib being the only MP up on charges was the bit you genuinely left out.
On the union’s three year delay, contra to my earlier comment I’ll concede it now looks like there was a significant degree of scrutiny avoidance going on.
Anyway, your question answers itself: Why didn’t the SA ALP give their MP the presumption of innocence? Because it was politically expedient not to.
Why are the Federal Libs giving their MP the presumption of innocence? Because it’s politically expedient to do so.
Why is the Federal ALP giving Thomson the presumption of innocence? Because it’s politically expedient to do so.
See, no hypocrisy – just pragmatic cynicism all round.
FWIW – I can’t see Thompson jumping ship – he needs every dollar he can earn at the moment and unless someone is going to offer him a job at +$100k pa I can’t see him taking a dive even if he wanted to shaft the ALP. He might go Independent but that is about it and there is no way he would ever vote with the Coalition. Nor is he going to be found guilty of an offence anytime before Nov 2013. The justice system is glacial.
And while it is highly unlikely I just can’t see the Independents who currently support Gillard changing their stance as that would be electoral suicide. Even if they changed PM the Independents wont change.
And I’m calling out Wilkie now – the ALP probably will attempt to bring in a bastardised pre-commitment system that won’t meet what he wants but, despite his grandstanding, he will meekly roll over and continue to support the ALP. Bullshit like voting with the Libs on motions that require an absolute majority just don’t cut it for demonstrating independence.
Nothing like a sex scandal to bring out the inner wowser in some commentators. You might think that it is ok to use words like ‘tawdry’ and ‘sleazy’ to describe CT, but you are also implying that the workers in the brothels are ‘tawdry’ and ‘sleazy’, delegitimising them and setting up an atmosphere where it is ok to attack sex workers just ’cause they exist. sad now.
Come again? As Albo explained on 7.30 last night Mary Jo Fisher (currently the only politician in Canberra facing criminal charges) “stepped aside” from her position on a commitee with full pay until it runs it’s course. Unlike Thomson who hasn’t been charged with anything and resigned from the committee he was on.
tssk …
Often your comments are tongue-in-cheek, but let’s adopt some perspective here:
Let us keep in mind that as recently as June 2009, Rudd and the ALP were widely thought to be in an impregnable. Position. Some said the next LNP PM hadn’t been born. Some toyed with the idea that the LNP itself might cleave in two.
At the time, I could see no way in which the LNP could get close in 2010, and yet, the ALP contrived to play their cards very poorly indeed and one year later, Rudd was no longert PM and the ALP went into the election as close as any we’ve ever had in terms of seats.
We are approximately two years from a general election, unless Thomson is charged and convicted of an offence attracting a penalty of more than 6 months imprisonment. Getting to that point will probably take at least 12 months, and perhaps more with appeals, assuming he is charged with anything.
In two years time, a whole bunch of people will have received household compensation which Tony Abbott will need to campaign to remove if he is to abolish carbon pricing. Then the campaign can be run with colours reversed — the ALP calling out the LNP for raising taxes and takinge benefits away from pensioners. The fact that he is promising to rescind carbon pricing will either not be believed or not seen as a fair trade. Then, people will use “the need to do something about climate change” to defend what they have in their wallets. Few will believe that business will reduce prices accordingly, especially when many will have made busienss decisions based on their beign a carbon price.
Abbott would need to promise to compensate business for losses — in effect paying the price for a carbon pricing scheme, with none of the benefits. In practice, he probably wouldn’t be able to even start abolishing it until 2014, and so he’d also be campaigning on extending business uncertainty. Huge wedge there.
Then there’s the NBN, which again, could not easily be unscrambled. Telstra has come to terms with NBN Co and again, Abbott couldn’t simply nuke the game without compensation. Again, he’d be campaigning to take away benefits that even many of his own MPs (like Gambaro) are pushing for. I can’t see that playing well. So in practice, despite all his bluster, he’d have to accept carbon pricing and NBN as faits accomplis. The government, unlike in 2010, could campaign on its record, with programs in health, disability (backed by the opposition), plain packaging, climate change, pokie reform, the MRRT and in circumstances where the scare campaigns that have been run will have been shown to have been nonsense.
I’m far from convinced the LNP will even let Abbott lead them in 2013, much less win.
A lot can happen in 2 years. BHP’s profit announcement yesterday has many people wondering whether the MRRT goes nearly far enough, and whether Rudd wasn’t right to push harder. Just as many assumed that carbopn pricing was a lay down misère in 2009, only for support to become murky a year later, so too, resource taxes and carbon pricing might actually be popular in two years time. And of course this time the ALP will have a relatively friendly senate with which to work — something they didn’t have at any time during Rudd’s tenure.
Don’t forget also that recent events in the UK have cast a cloud over the position of News Limited. The Murdochracy is headed for at best, some pretty choppy seas, and it’s entirely possible that their ability to campaign alongside Abbott for regime change, and have the ABC and other media launder their tat for them may become problematic. They may need to start pretending to be a media group rather than the organising point for crackpot convoys and the like.
Personally, I believe that unless some new unanticipated untoward event occurs, the ALP should win fairly comfortably in 2013, and it will be the LNP who will be wondering how that happened.
Really, the only thing keeping Abbott in the game now is the thought that we are weeks from another federal poll and a change of government. That buys him airtime that oppositions rarely get, and keeps the Gillard regime looking aslightly off-balance, expecially given the explicit support he’s getting from the Murdochracy and the thought that anyone with a whinge is a show of getting his way.
Relax, a number of things have to happen yet for any serious decisions to be made. Worse comes to worst (assuming no 12 month charges, which looks highly unlikely) Thomson could always resign from the ALP, become an Independent and still support a Gillard Labor govt.
This is all about the Libs and News Ltd trying to put enough pressure on Thomson to the point he resigns from politics altogether, forcing a by-election in Dobell and then the Libs possibly winning that seat.
OBR: What, their commitment to an austerity package? How well is that going for the UK?
It seems that the government (Lib or Lab) has two choices – increase revenue or make cuts. I don’t think that underfunding the public service/education system/etc (a la Howard) in the name of budget savings is going to do much good, especially if only to give money back to the miners and generate some more middle class welfare. Why not take some more money from the miners given things are so good for them?
P.S. NZ doesn’t need to export coal – we export milk and import tourists far more efficiently.
Although I’m not sure how well either of those are going at present with the relatively high Kiwi dollar thanks to the insurance payouts after the Chch quake.
Fran – hope is a wondeful thing.
Where does this idea that the Libs won’t let Abbott remain leader come from? What? Do you think the Libs want Turnbull back because he did such a good job?
While you are having a sledge, have a look at the scoreboard, which in this case is the polls. The ALP needs to start kicking some goals sooner or later or the game will be lost.
You obviously think Graham Richardson wouldn’t know if his arse was on fire when it comes to politics. Perhaps you should get your own show on Foxtel and tell em how it is.
@269 – Jess are you comparing UK economic performance or politcal performance? It doesn’t really matter because both are an apples and oranges comparison.
He’s only got his own show on Sky News because they know he’ll bag Labor and the Greens all the time. Aside from that Mr Offset Alpine’s show only gets around 30,000 viewers too (i.e. no one).
Jacques – re your 266 – why didn’t Thomson do what the Senator has done?
Are the ALP calling on her to resign her Committee positions?
And we really shouldn’t mention the fact that legal genius George Brandis contacted the NSW Police Minister as er… a courtesy.
Watch the media pursue this little dead end for all it’s not worth.
He went one better. She’s still getting paid for her position on that committee.
Jacques @ 275 – I believe he only resigned from the chairmanship position. He’s still on the committee (at least thats how it was reported on the ABC yesterday)
@271: OBR: I was thinking of the public acceptance of austerity in the UK. I suspect that people will object to Abbot’s austerity packages because of the direct costs to them with the only beneficiaries being companies demanding compensation from the public purse – pretty much what Fran states in her post @ 267.
Chris, Okay I must’ve misunderstood things. As it stands though Mary Jo Fisher is still on the chair of that Senate committee.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3301471.htm
dylwah: if your referring to my characterisation of Trousers as ‘tawdry’ and ‘sleazy’ it isn’t meant to reflect on either sex workers or their clients but the fact that it was paid for, by whomever was the client, with union money. That’s all.
I’m hoping someone brings up the time Tony Abbott was charged with indecent assault.
He claims it was probably closer to a common assault than an indecent one, but either way it’d be awesome if someone did had a really careful look at what happened on a national political blog (hint hint).
It’d be really awesome if someone brought that up, just to keep things classy.
No wukkers akn, sorry if I mis understood. I prob should have had a more explicit go at tiny dancers classiness up thread as well. And heck, my inner gonzo can take over sometimes and the results are often unpretty.
Jules, you need to read the article that you linked to:
Nothing to see here.
OBR asked:
Abbott’s campaign of “no” and “we wuz robbed” is not sustainable for two years. Once it becomes clear that the election cycle will be typical, the catastrophe that Abbott claims is fantasy and Abbott is just concatenating stunts, most will tire of it and blame him for stinking up the place. Once he admits that there’s no delivering on his promises, the LNP electioneering will look very hollow.
Turnbull would be a less worse bet.
Richardson was an author of the virus that hollowed out Australia’s hollow ALP men and women. He is a malevolent mediocrity not greatly to be distinguished from Howard, and ceratinly someone who these days is sympathetic to the Murdocratic perspective on politics. What drops from his lips is putrefied animus towards anything that might be confused with progressive politics, which is why he’s a regular amongst the journalistic spivs on the ABC/the Murdocratic cesspool.
The day will never come when I’ll even turn up to spit on anything run by Murdoch.
I once called Abbott a prick, quite loudly, while he was opening a ‘wesak’ Buddhist ceremony at Darling Harbour. Not my proudest moment. It was a bad day all around. I was in the process of separating, the Buddhists there were a Chinese mob who queued up to give large wads of cash to monks (buying karma, I suppose), it was hot, there was a nasty piece of Buddhist kitsch, an inflatable Buddha, towering over the scene, the kids didn’t want to be there and anyway, to top off an all round crap moment, out walks Abbott on stage to open proceedings. I had what my mates called a moment of karmageddon and loudly called him a prick. He looked very annoyed and his minders shuffled closer to him. I thought at the time it might have been to prevent him leaving the stage to engage in further discussion with me. I daresay he won’t remember that particular instance of being called a prick in public because my guess is that it used to happen a lot. There ya go.
Just a little note about the awful fire in Slacks Creek. I live in Slacks Creek, a more multicultural and friendly community one would be hard pressed to find. The Sadness is palpable and I have wept myself a few times just listening and reading the story. It is a great shame that the islander communities involved are only ever noticed in rugby or tragedy. The community has contributed so much to Australia, and in Slacks Creek of course their heritage goes a long way back. So I just wanted to note all that and send the families and the community all the love we can muster.
Does Kathy Jackson have a “shovel ready” infrastucture project?
Why else would someone lend her a shovel at 2 am?
Keep on digging OBR.
Should have left a ditch-witch.
Tony Jones was pathetically defensive in his interview with the American academic Jay Rosen on Lateline last night. The Australian press gallery seems to be unable to see past the end of its nose.
OBR @ 286 – sounds like the unions have a few underbelly wannabes! Makes you wonder what the culture is like in those organisations.
Grigory M
I’d like to see someone drag that case over the coals (provided Ms Wilson doesn’t mind it being brought up again). Who were those seven witnesses? If they were standing behind her presumably they were with Abbott, in which case their testimony is already sus. If not how could they see accurately?
He’s already admitted touching her about the level of her belt. This was the 70s not the high pant late 80s. That means he was touching her at or below waist height. Sus as – and if he’s prepared to speculate about someone else’s alleged sexual improprieties lets see how he likes it?
Not to mention he has admitted initiating physical contact with someone because he didn’t like their political comment.
How is that good enough in a potential PM?
Howard was a slime, but no one liked the way Latham stood over him, why should Abbott be any different?
Especially when he is basically doing the same thing to a woman. I don’t care how sexist it sounds, as a man the idea of another man initiating potentially violent contact with a woman isn’t on, especially with a clear and admitted intention to intimidate. Really no one should do it to anyone, but especially that situation – an athlete (contact sport – union) at a political discussion. (By a man with attitudes to women that belong in the 1800s.)
Thats without considering the fact that its pretty clear that men get excessive leeway wrt sexual assault. Look at what just happened in NY. But I’d rather not dwell on that side of this situation.
Its enough that this guy thought it was OK to try and use physical contact to intimidate someone cos he didn’t like what they were saying at a rally. Abbott is a right wing supporter, was against compulsory AUS membership and so this was true, yet he considers a political opponent telling the truth to be “highly critical” and worthy of what verges on an assault to, presumably, get them to shut up or not talk about him.
This points to serious character flaws in a potential Prime Minister.
Do you really want a thug like that running the country?
Yes indeed Tim Macknay @ 289. It was unfortunate that Jay Rosen let the ABC and jones off the hook to some extent. Maybe he felt sorry for Jones, and his ‘it’s not our fault’ demeanour.
They just don’t seem to get it. They spend their working lives judging others, often on the most spurious of terms, but when it comes to self analysis or a bit of honest reflection it seems to be beyond them.
@290 – I have personal insght into what the CFMEU in WA do to insiders who ran against the Leadership. They hate each other more than they hate the Coalition.
I think he sensed that Jones was taking it a little personally, and didn’t want to risk being barred from possible future appearances on the show.
Jules said:
I’m no kind of friend of Abbott, obviously, but you’re massively over-egging this.
It’s entirely plausible that some could innocently seek to get someone’s attention in this way. Personally, I’d consider it ill-advised to make physical contact with someone without something like a clear indication that it was invited or where there was some pressing need to do so — I’ve tapped people on the arm to get their attention after they’ve dropped something in the street — but it’s hardly a serious character flaw.
I don’t regard Abbott as fit to be PM, but my judgement is a political one rather than a personal one, however personally unsuited I might find him to be, if I knew more about his interpersonal ethics.
I once tickled the ribs of a young lady from behind in the UWA library only to discover she wasn’t the friend I thought she was.
Oops.
Yeah probably Fran. I think I’ll keep doing it tho.
Yeah it is, and in a reasonable situation with a reasonable person I’d happily give them the benefit of the doubt. In this case I’m happily letting my dislike of him influence my opinion.
But that doesn’t mean I’m actually wrong. (Although I wasn’t there.) Cos its not like she’d dropped a pen unknowingly. She’d deliberately criticised him at a public debate. I assume she knew he was there to begin with. Which makes me wonder why he needed to reminder her he was.
jules said:
That is what many and very probably most people tend to do with people they don’t like, but one should resist that urge, IMO.
It was very probably a spur of the moment thing — unwise to be sure — but on the spur of the moment, I suspect most of us have done embarrassing things that a moment’s thought and a bit more life experience could have stopped.
The key problem with Tony Abbott is not his interpersonal skills, however poor they are these days in practice. The key problem is that the usages he represents are antithetci to human wellbeing, not just here but, if he gets any real say in Australian policy, on a global scale.
As tempting as it is to take a shot at him on a sub-political level, that’s the kind of nonsense that the LNP/their fan club is doing now over Thomson, and has done in relation to Rudd and Gillard. It’s the triumph of the personal over matters of substance. For a party that lacks the kind of viable and coherent vision that could unite an adequate constituency, it makes sense. What else have they got?
For us to get into that kind of nonsense is really handing them a win on venue. As the saying goes, never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
oops antithetic
Japan’s latest PM has resigned.
Six PMs in five years?
The Japs love Pasta, too.
That is what many and very probably most people tend to do with people they don’t like, but one should resist that urge, IMO. “
Believe it or not I spend most of life doing that, I’ve just given up on Abbott.
The key problem is that the usages he represents are antithetci to human wellbeing, not just here but, if he gets any real say in Australian policy, on a global scale.
Yep. But interpersonal skills, his boxing style and his political history all point to a dubious individual. BTW Most of the time I completely agree with everything you say wrt to acting with integrity and not falling for that stuff. But you know, every now and then you gotta vent.
Apparently, Norway is to go to an election on September 15.
New research suggests that once you control for the (pre-existing) socio-economic status of the students, whether they go to a private or public school makes *no difference at all* to their educational outcomes.
see The Age (Melbourne) Magazine “Private Lessons” (unlinkable without paying, sadly)
That was an ACER study
OBR @ 301:
Surely, you jest.
@306 – nope – dinkum.