I’ve deliberately stayed out of political commentary for some time now. I see little point in commentating on political differences between the two major parties in Australia because essentially there are none. Continue reading »
Apr 122013
Recently John Winston Howard spoke to the Lowy Institute, defending his government’s decision to take Australia to war in Iraq in 2003. This against massive national and international protests against the US-led invasion of the time, which has since proven to have been based on – at the minimum – poor intelligence. At worst, a lie perpetrated for the purposes of regime change in direct contravention of UN Charter Chapter VII. In other words, an international crime.
Today we see yet another retired public servant of that era coming out with her own definitive claims that Howard lied to the Australian Parliament, and to the Australian people. This was long understood to be the case in the post-Iraq epoch, with the focus by those varied politicians of the so-called coalition of the willing changing from Weapons of Mass Destruction to “well look at the changes we’ve wrought in that downtrodden society”. The latter is surely NOT the point.
I for one never trusted Howard. Any politician who prevaricated and obfuscated on the level he did, from describing broken election promises as core and non-core to the never-ever GST to the internal shit fight between he & Costello about who said what to whom about standing aside from the leadership. The man was and remains an inveterate liar. Undoubtedly the reason Senator George Brandis – one of Howard’s own – labelled him the lying rodent.
In my view there is no rationale, no excuse, absolutely none, for taking a nation to war on the flawed pretext of what might be, in direct contravention of the UN Charter to which Australia is an originating, primary signatory. John Howard lied to you, to me to every single Australian, placed lives at un-necessary risk and wasted billions of tax-payer dollars on an ideological adventure demanded by another nation, to which he obsequiously complied. The man is, if nothing else, a low form of life. A wanna-be demagogue whose place in history deserves to remain forever tainted.
Mar 272013
Ladies & gents, girls & boys, it’s time once again to poke fun at the conservative drones who think they have some sort of presence on Twitter.
Continue reading »
Mar 182013
I just had to explain to someone the fuss about the federal government’s proposed reforms to media regulation in Australia. Continue reading »
This is why we, the voting public, refuse to take the main-stream media in Australia any more seriously than the Watchtower we so often find jammed under the front gate or in the letterbox. Frankly, from my perspective, this style of so-called journalism is just about as popular and needed as the ignominious JW’s at the front gate. Continue reading »
Jan 232013
Where has the Australian Labor Party of my youth vanished to? Where is the Party and the people of the 1970′s and `80′s which adhered to time-honoured and honourable Labor dictums like fairness, equality, justice and above all else, that innate sense of egalitarianism?
How can a Labor Prime Minister nominate and effectively pre-select as a Senate candidate, a person who isn’t even a member of her Party? And why should this even arise as a circumstance? Since when does the ALP reside in one person? Where is the Labor Caucus? I don’t care if said nominee is black, white or brindle; whether they represent a minority indigenous collective or the richest most influential people in the nation. There is a process for pre-selection of party affiliated candidates and that process resides with the local branches and the relevant State office. It most definitely does not reside in the Prime Ministers office in Canberra, or in the minds of certain so-called Party power-brokers who fear the on-rushing storm from the political wilderness which threatens to over-whelm the party of government.
I am frankly disgusted by this blatant exercise in political totalitarianism. I am disgusted to think that the Party I have supported all my adult life has lowered it’s sights to the point where sensationalism, parachutes and a sense of ‘whatever-it-takes’ holds sway over Party platform, process and accountability. Today’s Australian Labor Party is more of the ideological, hard-nosed right than of the equally hard-nosed but vastly more ethical left. I am not afraid to say that I lean left, in fact the more I see of the once great ALP in it’s current desperate-to-win-at-any-cost guise, the more left I lean.
The only saving grace I see in today’s Australian Labor Party is the fact that it isn’t as far right as the Conservative alternative, nor as unstable and opportunistic as I perceive the Greens to be. A Party of the people the ALP is most certainly not any more, A Party of and for it’s own continued existence it most definitely appears to be. Were I a member, which thankfully I am not, I would be calling upon the membership and particularly the senior Parliamentary membership to make post-2013 election – whatever the outcome – moves to supplant the Gillard cabal with a more people-oriented, Union-oriented executive. The Union movement is the salvation of the Party, it’s birthplace and its rootstock. The present graft is rogue and needs to be cut out. The current Prime Minister has lost sight of the Party imperatives. Whatever the outcome of any election later this year, she has to go before she damages the Party any further.
Dec 102012
By now, unless you’ve been hiding out on the dark side of the Moon dear reader, you’ll have heard or read about the suspected suicide of one Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse at King Edward VII hospital in London. In case you HAVE indeed been on the other side of the Moon, here’s a link so you can be up-to-date. Continue reading »
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