Got halfway and had to turn it off. Unbelievable that this guy is even in parliament.

Finally seen the whole video. :lol: :lol: Facepalm stuff really. He butchered everything. #-o

Fifty minutes of rolled-gold high dudgeon

August 24, 2012
Tony Wright

.THE emergency lights start flashing in the Prime Minister's office long before dawn. One of her media team arrives at 4am to comb, with an eye to potential improvised explosive devices, the morning's newspapers and media reports.

Julia Gillard gets up early, too, and with The Lodge's coffee pot perking, she reaches for her iPad and the day's papers.

Rupert Murdoch's Australian has been top of the morning pile this week as its sleuths have stretched back to the early and mid-1990s, revealing in mind-numbing detail her early days with the Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon, her relationship with a dodgy ex-boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, the establishment of a legal entity that became a repository for a river of money of dubious origin and even her exploits, assisted by colourful union identities, in home renovation.

As Canberra's rain-soaked morning emerged from an overnight thunderstorm, it was clear to Gillard and her staff The Australian had come a gutser off its own high horse.

Advertisement Amid the printed verbiage was the claim that she had set up a trust fund for her old boyfriend, then a senior AWU operative over-fond of funds not necessarily legally obtained or used.

The money, Gillard later declared in an interview with alarmed high priests from the firm that employed her, amounted to a ''slush fund''.

But she hadn't set up a trust fund for him. As a young solicitor, she'd offered legal advice on establishing a legal entity believing, she maintains, it was to be used to assist union officials' re-election campaigns. And she hadn't signed the documents establishing it.

By 9.15am, she was in her office at Parliament House with a hot phone in her hand. She wanted to speak to the chief executive of News Ltd, publisher of The Australian, Kim Williams. He wasn't available, and Gillard was put through to editorial director, Campbell Reid.

It didn't take long for Reid to discern the awful depth and the potential consequences of Gillard's ire. When a prime minister utters the words ''highly defamatory'', news directors tend to grip the phone very tightly.

Worse, there was dreadful history here.

Only last August Gillard had forced News Ltd to apologise to her and to retract details of an article concerning the same subject. One of The Australian's columnists lost his job over it.

Hardly more than half an hour after Gillard's phone call, Reid had managed to rush an apology, no ifs or buts, onto The Australian's website.

Thus armed, locked and loaded - and aware that no one else had produced a smoking gun - Gillard felt the time had come to call out everyone in the media who still felt lucky.

She would use a technique known to devotees of the TV series The West Wing as the Arnold Vinick Showdown. In a 2006 episode, presidential candidate Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda, exhausted and defeated the US press corps by taking questions for hours after claims emerged that he had supported a nuclear facility that had almost melted down.

Gillard, magnificent in her dudgeon, assured everyone that she would answer every question they had. She had retained her silence for days, despite being defamed and hounded by an appalling and sexist campaign - including shock-horror circulated on the internet by old cartoonist and conspiracy theorist Larry Pickering - and she wasn't going to take it any more.

Here she was, promising to respond to everything.

And so she did, for close to 50 minutes, until the interrogation melted to an impotent silence. What a defence lawyer she might have been.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/fifty-minutes-of-rolledgold-high-dudgeon-20120823-24pes.html#ixzz24SjK10ZU

UN won't work with Labor on asylum-seeker processing on Nauru and Manus Island

by: Ben Packham From: The Australian August 24, 2012

THE United Nations High Commission for Refugees is refusing to work with the federal government to process asylum-seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

The Angus Houston-led expert panel on asylum-seekers said the UNHCR's involvement in registration and processing of refugees from Nauru and Manus Island would be “highly desirable”, and should be urgently pursued.

But the UNHCR's regional representative Rick Towle today said the organisation would play an arms-length monitoring role in relation to the facilities under the refugee convention, but would not play any part in their management.

“We believe primarily that this is a matter for Australia's responsibilities under the refugee convention, working with two other countries that are also convention states,” Mr Towle told the ABC's World Today program.

.“We do not see that the UNHCR has an active role to play in those arrangements.

“Australia may choose to transfer physically people to other jurisdictions, but we believe that under international law very clearly Australia is not absolved of its legal responsibilities to protect people through all aspects of the processing and solutions.”

Mr Towle said the UNHCR had many concerns with Australia's new offshore processing arrangements.

He said it was difficult to make “full and credible” refugee status determinations in such remote locations, and was concerned about the difficulties in delivering adequate health and care to asylum-seekers on the islands.

“We are dealing with very vulnerable populations, particularly women and children (and) unaccompanied minors, and to try and manage all of their needs in a protection-appropriate way in remote places, particularly in the Pacific, has proven to be challenging in the past and we have no doubt it will be challenging again in the future,” Mr Towle said.

Under the government's new “no advantage” principle, asylum-seekers will remain on Nauru and Manus Island for as long as they would have waited for resettlement if they stayed in transit countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia.

Mr Towle said the UNHCR was “fundamentally opposed” to mandatory detention, and believed any arrangements to transfer asylum-seekers to Nauru and PNG “do not involve detention any longer than is absolutely necessary”.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's office said the UNHCR's decision was not unexpected.

Mr Bowen told Sky News last week that he was “not envisaging them being involved in the processing on Nauru or Manus Island”.

“They will be very interested in this; they'll want to provide us with feedback on it, of course.

“But this will be an operation which doesn't require UNHCR involvement in terms of the processing of people.”

-With Lauren Wilson

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/un-wont-work-with-labor-on-asylum-seeker-processing-on-nauru-and-manus-island/story-fn9hm1gu-1226457449222

people tend to get a bit negative towards tax when we have a government who is so wasteful and who borrow vast amounts of money then hands it over to the demographic who supports them......and they continue to spend irresponsibly..... then to fix up their lack of vision and management skills they introduce more taxes to cover the debts......

i have no problems with the principle of taxing but i do think they need to be accountable for the spending for ALL the community.....

When did tax become a dirty word and something to be hated? When did it become a bad thing to be able to pay for public services and when did people's attitudes resemble those of the republican party?
Taxation is how a government makes its' money if you hadn't worked it out, its' how public infrastructure projects are funded, people want more public services but they don't want to pay for it. yes, there are areas where money is wasted, but the complete opposition to taxation merely because of its nature is sickening.

Your assertion that "didn't mention the people in the middle, the ones who are intelligent enough to keep an open mind rather then close off their mind to alternative views" dismisses a key point out of the study that those of left-leaning are MORE LIKELY TO CONSIDER OTHER VIEWS. Unfortunately it has to be spelled out for you!!
That is why I suggested putting up the study.

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Lol ozboy, I'm not getting into an intellectual dick measuring contest with you, I'm fairly confident that my level of education would stand up pretty well with yours regardless.

What I note is that you totally skipped over my point, which ironically enough actually furthers my point...

the brain dead morons running this country....LOL

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You have missed the point of the study.
Since I have access to the entire study, I can post up the Abstract, Results & Conclusion (or the whole lot), if you like.
Warning - scientific papers can be tough reading

Wasn't referring to Hitler, but given you have brought him up, he had a steadfast belief that he was right and everyone else was wrong, which kind of proves my point.

Evil doesn't know left or right.

I also note that your study was only left vs right, didn't mention the people in the middle, the ones who are intelligent enough to keep an open mind rather then close off their mind to alternative views, I dare say they would be the smartest somehow...

Whichever you want to dice it, Hitler was right wing
His extreme racism & prejudice, which came from simplistic thinking, is a perfect example of what is predicted by the intelligence & ideology study I posted

Whichever you want to dice it, Hitler was right wing
His extreme racism & prejudice, which came from simplistic thinking, is a perfect example of what is predicted by the intelligence & ideology study I posted

If only Leigh Sales would interview the Prime Minister or any Labor MP for that matter in the same tone.

Nothing wrong with her manner in that interview provided she applies it to both sides of politics, which history indicates she does not.

[youtube]Fh2pQv_TgaQ[/youtube]

Abbott lies to cover up mistakes

Public isn't as dumb as you think ozboy, but they are easily miss lead.

I'm so sick of your leftish attitude that anyone who disagrees with you is a dumb simpleton, it's the kind of arrogant bullshit attitude that history has shown leads to evil men gaining power.

Public isn't as dumb as you think ozboy, but they are easily miss lead.

I'm so sick of your leftish attitude that anyone who disagrees with you is a dumb simpleton, it's the kind of arrogant bullshit attitude that history has shown leads to evil men gaining power.

If only Leigh Sales would interview the Prime Minister or any Labor MP for that matter in the same tone.

Nothing wrong with her manner in that interview provided she applies it to both sides of politics, which history indicates she does not.

The earliest time that a double dissolution election could be held is late 2014. By then we will have had another 2 years worth of scientific evidence behind anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Additionally, the La Nina phenomenon is ending this year (as forecasted by the Bureau of Meteorology), which has been suppressing the effects of AGW (hence so much rain). We are about to begin another El Nino cycle, which will begin to 'exacerbate' the effects.
Labour/Greens have been gaining in the polls since the start of the carbon tax, once dumb simpleton public realised the sky isn't falling

It doesn't taken much to figure out dumb simpleton public opinion on AGW come late 2014, whose concept of deciding on the evidence of AGW is to stick their head out the window for 5 seconds to form a 'scientific opinion' *snigger*
The only thing the carbon tax could be repealed for is an emissions trading scheme, which is in the pipeline anyway.

(I am guessing what I have just written is too lateral for dopes on here, though)