This Shanahan piece is nothing more than a load of hot cock.
Poor bloody Dennis, feels so damn dirty at having made a personal choice to benefit from the incentive that the government he clearly helped to elect has decided to continue supporting. Bottom line, Dennis, you made a choice to put solar cells on your roof, no-one – absolutely no-one – forced you to do it. You deign to claim that your choice wasn’t for a grubby purpose, yet you feel grubby just the same. Well, poor possum, the world isn’t grandly beneficent, and yes, the little old lady across the street probably can’t afford to do what you’ve done, and for entirely different reasons to those you’re trying to support. Mind you, my dear old Mum is a pensioner residing in a retirement village and yet she opted to have a solar array on her roof that she paid for from her veterans affairs pension and Dad’s estate savings. Some of us can & some can’t. Haves and have nots and Dennis, isn’t that life? Australia is not a socialist state, we can’t all benefit from the communist collective, despite what you try to tell people every bloody day about the state they live within.
And leaving Dennis to wallow in his own self-pity, let’s refer back to what the PM said at the Press club yesterday about writing crap. The Shanahan article, which isn’t news in any way, shape or form, is precisely that. Crap. Jingoism. Playing to the gullible and those wanting their ideology stroked. As Bob Brown opined, we don’t have NEWSpapers we have VIEWSpapers. Commentary and opinion, not simple reportage of fact. That’s why we see day after day in The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Melbourne Herald Sun the same tired commentators peddling the same tired lies. The overt manner in which News Limited rags are going about their campaign of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies is frightening in its audacity. They know they can do it because there is no over-arching regulatory body. Expecting the Press Council to pull these clowns into line is nothing short of expecting Caligula to have had some slight regard for his own family.
Last week, Paul Keating had a bit to say as well along similar lines.
“ Well there’s one thing that’s clear for sure comes out of this and that is self-regulation by the media is a joke. A joke. You know, I notice tonight John Hartigan talking about the Press Council of Australia. I mean, people shouldn’t have a right to appeal about invasions of their privacy to some body funded by newspapers; they should have a right at law.”
“It could have happened in Australia. In fact, your chief executive officer made the very same point in a speech a year or so ago. He – I brought the quotation in, which is a point. He said that – Mark Scott, "With digital surveillance, location tracking and genetic tracing becoming commonplace, there’s a very firm case for the law to allow people to protect their privacy." Correct. Correct.”
“I think it’s beyond doubt. I mean, when the Daily Telegraph yesterday is saying, "Let’s have a national election," why do we need a national election? We have an operating – a clear operating majority in the House of Representatives, it’s a stable majority, the business of the Government is reasonable business, that is the controversial matter is putting a price on carbon. There is a consensus, it seems, in both Houses of Parliament for it. Why should there be an early election, other than the editors of that newspaper believing that were there to be an early election, the existing government would be defeated. So this is why ministers are saying News Corporation is after – or News Limited is after regime change. You know, I think, you know, how can you read it any other way?”
He’s dead right, regardless of what John Hartigan had to say about the Roman Forum he oversees.