But it's hard on their family so they need all those flights, cars and infinite other entitlements on the tax payer........

:-k I'm a mining supporter and even I think this is a joke. I think by 2030 at least 50% of our energy generation should be renewable and even that's probably a weak estimate.

You're being unduly harsh.

Take Julie Bishop for example. Part of her job is that she has to fly overseas. (And with an entourage of staff.) Those flights go on to her expenses total. What's she supposed to do? Not go.

(That's not to say she's entitled to go 1st class or take her husband and kids along.)

One of the constant criticisms of government is that it needs to be run like a business or at least in a more business like manner.

More like a business except the remuneration is comparatively awful, you can't take a business class flight anywhere and you're meant to work 7 days a week.

I'm ok with overseas business class flights to conferences and what not. But if you're flying from Canberra to Melbourne you can put up with us plebs in cattle class for 90 minutes.

I am being harsh but I have a feeling we're on the tip of the iceberg with this story. Spending public money should be done so carefully.

I keep bringing it up but for a country in massive debt, rising unemployment and homelessness, how can our leaders expect to escape the squeeze?

Edited by benelsmore: 11/8/2015 12:50:35 PM

Rekt.

[youtube]-EQ6eHeBrhM[/youtube]

At the end of the day you want the best people running the country not a bunch of no-hopers that think $150k is great money and there's an opportunity to claim everything under the sun.

Not many execs are going to give up his $750k jobs to become a polly and then fly around the joint in economy class. Tone is talking about the claiming stuff in a corporate environment so let them exist in a corporate environment and go business class. (Staffers can go economy.)

Don't forget they wouldn't be paying full rate business class anyway. There'd be a parliamentary travel section, with preferred providers, sorting all of that out.

Double or triple their wages and crack right down on the other shit.

Maybe that's the problem though? If you won't turn to politics because you have to fly economy you should be a million miles from any kind of government responsibility.

I have a hard time accepting that they require business class when how much has just been federally cut from health and education (the single most important pillars of society)?

When I first saw that list I recognised that the foreign minister's travel bill should be the highest by default. Also the PM's travel higher due to the entourage and security.

But in the last few months I've been to Canberra airport a couple of times and on both occasions saw Cruella De Vil AKA Bronwyn Bishop sliding across the airport floor like the Emperor from Star wars with not a single entourage in sight. Goodness knows what she spends that money on.

Also have been on a flight with Mattius Corman who, to his credit, lined up with the rest of us at the terminal with no entourage in sight and sure enough he's not on this list.

Yeah nah.

There's loads of stuff I'd rather be doing than my shit job but would I take a 50% or more pay cut to do it? Not likely.

So the Dept of Finance report into the spending of 3 key ministers is being kept private, I wonder who/why?

-PB

The cover-up smacks of "I won't tell if you won't tell".

Major poli's of both sides covering their arses.

Another nail in the LNP coffin tonight. This won't be popular in my electorate. #pyneOut

Just pathetic. Fucking dinosaurs.

Not just pathetic, completely fucking spineless. Let's just have plebiscites for everything and fuck them all off.

From ABC:

"The ABC has been told that at the end of the meeting Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the assembled MPs the next election was the last the Coalition could go to supporting the traditional definition of marriage"

LOL. Too little, too late. The coffin has been built, the hole in the ground dug, the body placed in situ and the lid closed. The last nail has just been hammered in.

To pyne's credit he was actually for a free vote. And has been pretty scathing of the whole debacle.

They're standing by their principles. Good on them.

I know but it won't help him much. There are a lot of black marks against his name from this term:
1. How they dealt with Holden
2. Sending the submarine contract to Japan (not confirmed but it's pretty obvious it's happening)
3. The "I wouldn't trust the ASC to build a canoe" comment
4. Shitting on the ABC including slashing budgets that has reduced the amount of Adelaide production significantly
5. and now Marriage equality

The recent ship building contract was purely to try and help Pyne keep his job.

Pyne's done a few things himself that haven't been popular but those 5 which are not completely in his control are going to eat into his 8% margin a lot. Hopefully the swing is huge [-o<

:lol: no they're not. They're trying to soften the blow by claiming there will be a plebiscite in the next term. If they're adamant they're against it then just be against it.

One thing is now obvious out of all this - you may not like the bastard, but the only hope for marriage equality now is if Bill Shorten wins the next election.

Tony Abbott's face at the press conference said it all - he was happy. He killed it for another 12 months and saved his leadership by siding with the right wing crazies in his party. I don't believe a single thing the guy says about free votes or referendums. As long as he is liberal leader, he will do everything he can to kill it.

Edited by lastbroadcast: 11/8/2015 11:28:31 PM

Can we get a Bye Tony video now Clive?

Abbott's climate policy the dodgiest in years
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Tony Abbott, with Greg Hunt and Julie Bishop: While environmentalists are horrified that the climate targets are not ambitious enough, there is a more fundamental problem - the policy doesn't add up.
Tony Abbott, with Greg Hunt and Julie Bishop: While environmentalists are horrified that the climate targets are not ambitious enough, there is a more fundamental problem - the policy doesn't add up. Andrew Meares

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by Laura Tingle
As the Abbott government seemingly unravels before our eyes, the Prime Minister has released a climate policy which must be the dodgiest bit of public policy in recent years, possibly since the Coalition's now infamous $11 billion hole in its 2010 election policy costings.

That he would do so as the sense of crisis around his leadership escalates over the same-sex marriage issue highlights just what deep trouble the government is now in. The Prime Minister can't successfully manage the political strategy. His cabinet cannot deliver credible policy.

On same-sex marriage, he was directly challenged on Tuesday by one of his most senior cabinet ministers in the Liberal party room after he chose to back hardline conservatives in an ambush on the issue which sees a Liberal prime minister refusing a free vote to his MPs, a move which sits at odds with liberal traditions.

Instead, in an echo of the "read the fine print" excuses he made to voters about broken election promises, Mr Abbott insisted that the issue had to be decided by a joint party-room meeting, in which conservative Nationals votes would almost certainly see any push for a change in party position defeated.

The nicest thing you can say about the Coalition's policy release on Tuesday is that at least it contains the concession that Australia had to increase its emissions reduction target.
The nicest thing you can say about the Coalition's policy release on Tuesday is that at least it contains the concession that Australia had to increase its emissions reduction target. Alex Ellinghausen
Abbott's stance prompted senior cabinet minister and House Leader Christopher Pyne to make an exceptionally rare and strident contribution to the the debate saying that the Liberal Party should make its own decisions and not be "branch-stacked" by the National Party, according to sources in the room.

The anger and dismay within the party room cannot be overstated, even among people who are not passionately supportive of the same-sex marriage cause.

The move was seen as further eroding the Prime Minister's standing and authority within the party. The fact that Mr Abbott's candidate for Speaker of the House did not succeed in Monday's ballot was seen as another indication of his weakening authority in the parliamentary party.

One MP said "things are getting much worse" with fractures developing not just with the backbench but repeatedly now with the frontbench too.

"He's digging in, just stubbornly insisting on his positions, despite everything.

"There is widespread exasperation with what is now happening".

CLIMATE POLICY 'PURELY POLITICAL'

In this fetid atmosphere, Abbott, along with Julie Bishop and Greg Hunt announced the climate change target it will take to the Paris climate change talks. The focus of this policy is purely political.

Its target is not emissions reduction but the Labor Party. Tony Abbott wants to have cover to argue the government is doing something about emissions reduction. But his focus is on attacking Labor and claiming the opposition's policies will lead to higher electricity prices.

While environmentalists are horrified that the climate targets released by the government are not ambitious enough, there is a more fundamental problem: the policy doesn't add up. As it now stands, it will impose higher costs on Australian business to reduce carbon emissions than faced by competitors everywhere else in the world.

It relies on unspecified technological changes that haven't been invented yet. It will also involve a significant cost to the federal budget, well beyond the $200 million a year suggested by the government on Tuesday.

According to both the Australian Industry Group and the Climate Institute, the figures are truly terrifying: if the proposed reductions were only being delivered by the business subsidies offered through the emissions reduction fund, the cost to taxpayers would be hundreds of millions of dollars a year, possibly hundreds of billions by 2030.

Since this is obviously not viable, everyone assumes that the government will eventually have to fold – that, is, after the election – and allow a trade in international carbon permits in order to bring the price of emissions reduction in Australia down to that faced by companies in the rest of the world. But for now, the government is only saying that it will keep international permits "on the table", purely because it doesn't want to be doing anything that looks like an emissions trading scheme.

Further, most of the forecast reduction is supposed to come about as a result of other policies that are unspecified and undeveloped.

The majority of the emissions reduction, according to the government, comes from a safeguard mechanism (so far unspecified), a "national energy productivity plan" for energy efficiency (unknown) and vehicle efficiency (unknown) and "technology improvements and others sources of abatement".

The government is recklessly trading policy certainty for the business community for a cheap political shot at Labor.

That's after, of course, you get past the whole dodgy process of changing the assumptions and base line on which you set forecasts.

The nicest thing you can say about the Coalition's policy release on Tuesday is that at least it contains the concession that Australia had to increase its emissions reduction target. But the policy does not deliver the sort of certainty investors and business need for such a long-term issue.

It is truly alarming that the government believes that it can get away with such policy rubbish.



Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/abbotts-climate-policy-the-dodgiest-in-years-20150811-giwpfe#ixzz3iboFgjXk
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http://www.afr.com/news/politics/abbotts-climate-policy-the-dodgiest-in-years-20150811-giwpfe

Well well well. Justice Heydon, the head of the Royal Commission into trade unions, just got outed as the keynote speaker at a liberal party fundraiser.

This was the same judge who accused Bill Shorten of being an "unreliable witness".

If there was any doubt left that this is a politically motivated, taxpayer funded show trial, then this is it.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/royal-commissioner-dyson-heydon-took-24-hours-to-withdraw-from-liberal-fundraiser-20150813-giyb30.html

Gay marriage is such a non-issue.

Seriously, who cares? Much more important shit to deal with.

We should just allow it and move on.

A meeting of the national security committee has asked for a list of things they can announce weekly between now and the election.

^ This, got nuffin to do wid me

Edited by condemned666: 14/8/2015 06:02:39 PM

Edit: nice one!

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 14/8/2015 05:57:46 PM

Not surprising that the request was made but it's amazing that it was leaked :lol: