Mad as hell and not ready to make nice


July 13, 2013

Get over it, girl, I am being told. Move on. Accept the new reality. What's done is done and, besides, you can't argue with the polls. Whatever you might think of Kevin Rudd or how it was done, people are saying, (they tend to be Labor people), it needed to be done: he has brought Labor back to a competitive position. Heck, we could even win. So shut up with the gender stuff and the so-called bullying of the former prime minister. We all know she was a dud.

In the 17 days since she was deposed Julia Gillard has been thoroughly trashed. She was "incompetent", wrote Graham Richardson, relying mainly on errors in the 2010 election campaign rather than her record of government for this assessment. "She lacked authenticity and never gained the trust of voters", asserted Troy Bramston, overlooking the years of sabotage, stalking and sledging by the man who now wants voters to trust him. Laura Tingle even referred this week to "the Gillard experiment", implying the ALP won't be going there again. Meaning what? No more women? Or lawyers? Or single, childless, atheist Welsh redheads?

Gillard's three years and three days are now being totally airbrushed from history.

People hated her, I am told by way of justification for Gillard being hounded out of office, just look at the polls. Her party turned against her. OK, so there were only seven votes in it, but winning is winning. Don't jeopardise the chance to stop Tony Abbott by banging on about it being un-Australian for bullying to be rewarded.

I am not the only person who feels a range of emotions from utter sadness to irrepressible rage at how our first female prime minister was got rid of. I have had dozens and dozens of communications from people, most of them women, since June 26, many of them in the wake of reading my interview with Gillard, her last as prime minister. Without exception, these people are upset and angry. They are not ready to move on. Not yet, anyway.

What will it take?

Kevin Rudd is now undeniably back in charge. He is setting a cracking pace as he zips around the country laying on hands, dispensing his "fair dinkum" homilies, soaking up the love and consigning to the grave the "old politics" of negativity.

But while he might be pointing at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott while he talks about "old politics", his sights are in fact set on Julia Gillard. Her three years and three days leading this country are now being systematically either derided and ridiculed or else totally airbrushed from history. It's almost as if it is being suggested that we were not actually being governed for all that time.

Never mind that Gillard served longer as prime minister than Gough Whitlam. Or that Kevin Rudd will have to win the next election if he is to ever exceed her time in office. (And if he does, he could be stuck in there for a very long time under the proposed new leadership rules he sprang on the ALP this week).

On the night he regained his old job, Rudd acknowledged, without any specifics, that Gillard has "achieved much under the difficult circumstances of minority government", but since then a cone of silence has descended.

At the National Press Club on Thursday he referred to the Hawke government, the Keating government and to his own "first" and "second" terms in office.

He did not once refer to Julia Gillard or her government. He paid no tribute to her stellar legislative record: some 590 pieces of legislation passed, despite the hung parliament, and including measures such as pricing carbon and the NDIS that he had not been able to achieve.

If Kevin Rudd wants generosity from those of us who are still upset about the way Gillard was treated, he had better start exhibiting some himself.

He could start by telling the truth.

He did not, for instance, replace "Gonski" with the "Better Schools" program. Gillard had already changed the name.

He criticised her for choosing September 14 as the election date because it falls on the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur.

As if Gillard was not aware of this. She had one of her senior advisers, Bruce Wolpe (who happens to be Jewish), consult Jewish leaders immediately after the announcement. "It was an inconvenience," Wolpe told me this week. "But what made it acceptable was that we gave the community seven months' notice and we pledged additional polling resources in those electorates where it would be an issue".

(In fact since Australian elections are always on a Saturday, it's always an issue for observant Jews. ''That's what postal votes are for," says Wolpe.)

Rudd took credit on Thursday for a paid parental leave scheme that (" 'we' launched", he said) would not exist had Gillard not set the policy in motion by a reference to the Productivity Commission in 2008.

Instead of respecting Gillard's legacy, he continues to throw barbs: "I have never believed in class warfare," he said on Thursday. This of course is code, used by Martin Ferguson and others, for claiming the Gillard government was anti-business.

Nor does he "see things through the prism of gender," he said last week. "I never have and I never will."

Well, no, Kevin, being part of the dominant group, the one that is back running the joint, you wouldn't. It would never occur to you.

But it remains an issue for a lot of us and, especially if you are a woman, it is hard not to see parallels in your own life when a female leader is so brutally felled.

In 2003 a member of the Dixie Chicks, the Texan all-girl group, rebuked President George Bush for invading Iraq. As a result they were told they needed to apologise. No way, the group said. Not Ready to Make nice was their major hit song three years later. "I'm not ready to back down. I'm still mad as hell … "



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/mad-as-hell-and-not-ready-to-make-nice-20130712-2pv9d.html#ixzz2YtPe799j

Again mate, I have to pull you up on using anecdotes in a small part of NSW as nation-wide fact.

What if its a blog that directly refers to statistics & facts?

i am shocked that you can assume that ALL businesses are out there to rape employee's.....i am part of many industry groups, and i can tell you 99% of these small to medium businesses are great people who really care about their employee's and the industry......you are naive to think that we would pour thousands upon thousands of $$$$ into training our tradesmen to terminate fiber, terminated high speed data, program lighting control systems work in a safe method and follow SWMS and OHS procedures on a construction site.....employ and train apprentices to then turn around and take your so called "forced redundancy" as an easy way out, after just investing considerable sums of money in these people?????

i think there are some poor employers but they are more likely to be in specific industries who are not self regulated or regulated at all......

yep........

i laugh....sometimes people refer to books as a reference to an argument and education is largely based on text....but it's only as good as the individual who writes it......just another human being.....who says they are right....

Don't get emotional, I'm telling it how it is.

Just because you run your business with a supposed people first mentality doesn't mean that it's anywhere near a majority mentality. The vast majority of businesses run on profits first, people second... No matter whether it's too the detriment of the economy at large or not.

I'm shocked that you would be so naive as someone that is such a business aficionado.

Even if that blog is attacking labour? ;) o:)

-PB

agree entirely....................100%

some fucktard writes a blog and automatically it holds water.....NOT

Just break that down for you;

http://www.news.com.au/[size=9][size=9]opinion[/size][/size]/rudd-just-can8217t-help-himself-when-it-comes-to-adoration/story-fnh4jt54-1226678320371

-PB

why not the same legislation affected every construction and contracting firm in australia........how is that not a good cross section???????

this x 1,000,000,000,000

this reply is wrong on so many levels..........the only way you will ever get it is to take the risk of employing 20-30 people and do it all by the books as i do.......what you are suggesting is that employers don't care about their employee's.......and we rape them for what we can get out of them........

what a complete load of rubbish......force redundancy....what do you think redundancy is you noodle......there is no bloody work......fuck you make me angry sometimes completely stupid analysis of business owners like me.....

and the comment about forcing companies to find other ways to keep people employed ??????

it's in my/our benefit to keep people employed you fucken noodle....that's what our business life revolves around......FMD you are seriously lost

are you for real......

Thats the point though notor, what your arguing is fair enough in relation to big business, but small business's such as batfink get strangled in the process, hence the argument of small business being strangled by regulation.

I've had to wrap up my small business, not going to go into details other then to say that i'm not blaming the Government for what happened, but what I will say is that it is very fucking hard to run a small business in Australia at the moment, and there IS things Governments both state and federal could do to make things easier...

Edited by RJL25: 12/7/2013 11:44:33 PM

The Left has always enjoyed banning things. Keeps dissent down you see. It's for the masses' own good - who are they to figure stuff out for themselves?

China seeks Australia's help building emissions trading scheme
Date
July 11, 2013
Read later

Heath Aston
Political reporter

Australia has been drafted in to help design an emissions trading scheme for China, the world's biggest polluter.

A deal announced in Canberra on Thursday will see the Australian National University take leadership of a program that will analyse pollution data provided by China and allow Chinese university researchers to examine Australia's experience of the carbon tax and transition to an emissions trading scheme.

China is aiming for a full national emissions trading scheme by 2015.

The program, known as the "Australia-China research program on market mechanisms for climate change policy", will team Australian researchers with those from three provincial universities in China and the Beijing Institute of Technology. The University of New South Wales and Melbourne University will also take part.

Advertisement
The deal comes less than a month after China launched the first of seven pilot emissions trading schemes.

The first, in the manufacturing city of Shenzhen, will cover 635 companies, responsible for 38 per cent of the city's total emissions. Chinese authorities are under pressure to do something about the chronic air pollution affecting public health in Shenzen and across China.

China emits one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases - nearly 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the US and India combined.

The $305,000 program, announced by Trade Minister Richard Marles, will be run by the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, and led by Associate Professor Frank Jotzo of the School's Centre for Climate Economics and Policy.

He said projects would include modelling the effects of emissions pricing on electricity sector investments in China; research on how energy markets can be reformed to make carbon pricing more effective and the design of China's pilot emissions trading schemes.

Professor Jotzo said: ''In the future, China is expected to rely less on command-and-control economic management and more on market-based systems to help protect the environment and modernise its energy system.

''The research under this program will help inform Chinese policymakers about innovative approaches and international experiences,'' he said.

Climate expert and economist Ross Garnaut, a professor at ANU, said the most recent climate science showed a two degree warming of the planet was now a minimum and Chinese leaders understand there is a huge potential impact from climate for that nation.



Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/china-seeks-australias-help-building-emissions-trading-scheme-20130711-2prjh.html#ixzz2YpvChGM5

What else would the Righties use to support their arguments? :-k

We really need to make citing blogs as news references a ban-worthy offence.

You can't use your example as the example of all business.

Legislation that results in what you are referring to is in direct reply to businesses doing the WRONG thing by taking a "force redundancies first, ask questions later" mentality.

By making it more expensive to make people redundant, it makes companies look at other ways to keep people employed and more productive, thus keeping another mouth in employment and off the newstart teet.

Did you see Chris Bowen on 7:30 the other night? He wants to cut the Company Tax Rate to something more like the average of OECD nations.

Pretty disrespectful article, really.

all staged for the gimps who can't see past the smoke and mirrors......

and the rest who are lining up for handouts

what's it got to do with shitkunts???

it's redundancy you noodle

Entirely objective there :roll:

Don't hire shitc*nts?

-PB

have to agree....and it has had a bad impact on some businesses.....

like when tradesmen worked for me they would get all their entitlements and a week of redundancy for every year they worked for me.....it was in the award...

then in our sector it was changed to 1 week for the first year and sudsequent year until year 4 where it ramped up to 12 weeks then 4 weeks for each year of service....with the swipe of a pen my employee entitlements for redundancy increased by $278,000.00 overnight....so tell me how does a business deal with that???

I've always said that FairWork went too far back the other way from WorkChoices.

Needs a nice balance somewhere in the middle.

funnily enough there are about 30 compliance requirements in that piece of legislation alone

New IR policy was the cornerstone of Kevin 07

Edited by notorganic: 12/7/2013 09:25:58 AM

Much the same can be said of Rudd. In 2007 coming from opposition he was light on policy detail.