Rigged game: Labor vote with Coalition to repeal their own pokies reforms

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/clubs-are-trumps-over-lost-hearts/769/

Rigged game: Labor vote with Coalition to repeal their own pokies reforms

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/clubs-are-trumps-over-lost-hearts/769/

I particularly like the if people won more money on pokies the people would gamble less.

Photos from the detention centre in Nauru
http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/dec/06/nauru-gallery#/?picture=424290798&index=0

Shameful :cry:

Geeze...all we need is a couple of gas chambers...

Stop being so melodramatic :roll:

A few grainy photographs and we're almost as bad as the Nazi's.

Stop being so dismissive.

They're hardly 'grainy photos'. It's not like it's a photo of big-foot. It's photos of tarpaulins held together with duct tape!

Keeping them in conditions above the minimum standards mandated by the Geneva convention would be a great start.

All this humanitarian rhetoric :lol:

I'd much rather money be spent on Australians in need then asylum seekers.

You are a prick then.

All this humanitarian rhetoric :lol:

I'd much rather money be spent on Australians in need then asylum seekers.

So would I, so how about we stop wasting millions of dollars:
1. building shanty towns
2. paying contracting companies like Serco to run security and services
3. flights to get them from Christmas Island to there (and then to the mainland when they inevitably get approved)

Vast majority of these people are not dangerous to us and it's costing us way more than keeping them in the community.

Well we do have impoverished people starving on the streets...

All of these asylum seekers had boat loads of cash (no pun) in order to pay their way to get here, some of our locals haven't had anything.

-PB

Abbott and Murdoch: All out damage control
Alan Austin

THE PRIME MINISTERSHIP OF TONY ABBOTT has turned out more of a disaster than his most dubious doubters could have envisaged.

This demands desperate measures from those who promoted him and who will lose on their investment if the government continues to flounder.

In less than three months, Tony Abbott has alienated, angered or altercated with vastly more groups than he has satisfied.

He offended women by appointing 18 men to a cabinet of 19 and 11 out of 12 parliamentary secretaries. He alienated Aborigines with his cynical broken commitment to spend his first week with the Yolngu. He outraged rural residents with backflips on funding. He shocked the education community, including the prestigious Gonski panel, with bizarre policy-on-the-run. And now he has dismayed Liberal and National supporters with his cosy deal with the Greens on debt.

Abbott’s L-plate treasurer Joe Hockey stunned observers with his demand that the debt ceiling be almost doubled to $500 billion — with no explanation as to how this tallied with pre-election anti-debt rhetoric. He has now dumped the ceiling altogether and blown out the budget with $17 billion in unnecessary spending.

Abbott has not stopped the boats, or turned back the boats, or bought the boats. They are still arriving. He is desperately hoping the arrival rate will not exceed the reduced level Labor achieved with its PNG solution.

Overseas, Abbott has set back relations with China, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to the dark days when the hapless Alexander Downer offended virtually all Australia’s neighbours, resulting in diplomatic stand-offs and the deaths of many Australians and others.

Now East Timor is justifiably furious at ASIO’s raid of their lawyer’s Canberra office on Tuesday.

In short, this is the most conspicuous failure in the early days of any administration in the Western world in living memory — with the possible exception of Amintore Fanfani’s 1987 government in Italy, which lasted 15 weeks.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So the forces that manipulated Abbott’s political ascension are now ratcheting up the manipulation to conceal the unfolding fiasco.

Several strategies are being deployed by both the government and the Murdoch media, which clearly sees itself as Abbott’s minder.

1. Denying the disasters

We are seeing scant reference to the deepening debt or the almost certain blowout of the next budget beyond Treasury’s pre-election forecasts. We are seeing few reports of the dismay being expressed across the globe at Australia’s about-faces on refugees, the environment, Palestine and development aid.

The real reason for the diplomatic crisis with Indonesia is deliberately falsified. The Murdoch media consistently refers to this as the “spying scandal” or fallout from “phone-tapping revelations”.

That is simply false. Espionage is routine. Activities in 2009 are clearly not the fault of this government. The real reasons Indonesians despise Abbott are his long-running denigration of Asian countries in his asylum seeker tirades before the election, his arrogant fake apology after, his snubbing of Indonesian journalists in Jakarta, foreign minister Julie Bishop lying about her first meeting with her Indonesian counterpart and, finally, the two week delay in expressing remorse for the historic phone-tapping of the President and his wife.

2. Stemming the flow of information.

Last Monday, The Australian ran a piece headed ‘Coalition just following orders on boats secrecy’.

This advanced the fiction that Bizarrely, The Australian supports this censorship.

Dennis Shanahan welcomed Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s shift in attitude ‘from an arrogant denial to a more positive explanation.’

3. Refusing media scrutiny

Tony Abbott appears on friendly programs, such as Andrew Bolt’s television show, but rarely on investigative programs. This is in stark contrast to prime ministers Howard, Rudd and Gillard.

4. Marginalising members of parliament

Abbott and his chief of staff Peta Credlin are now showing ‘obsessive centralised control phobia’. That’s according to MPs from his own side, including Senator Ian Macdonald.

This list of conflicts between the PM and his MPs is extensive and seems to grow longer each week.

5. Distorting the daily news

Broken promises were a constant theme during the reign of PM Julia Gillard. Yet there were very actually very few. Just one – no carbon tax – was used effectively to destroy her credibility.

Abbott, in fact, broke 13 commitments in his first 50 days and another three since. The Murdoch media are suppressing this. On Tuesday, Dennis Shanahan in The Australian congratulated Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne on their ‘political decision to neutralise education funding’.

Note the weasel wording here: The Australian is desperate to distort the record to keep readers ignorant of the actual number of broken promises — sixteen and counting.

6. Destroying the incriminating past

Tony Abbott’s website, before the election, had links to speeches and opinion pieces going back well before he became Opposition leader. Many have now been deleted. This means countless declarations of principle, broad commitments and specific promises can no longer be easily contrasted with delivery.

7. Minimising embarrassments abroad

Each trip abroad by Abbott and Bishop has generated criticism of their ineptitude in the local press and in Australia. Follies include the unseemly criticism of Kevin Rudd in New York, donating warships to the Sri Lankan regime and the several well-publicised blunders in Indonesia.

Not surprisingly, scheduled visits by other Abbott ministers have been cancelled. A trip planned by trade minister Barnaby Joyce has been postponed indefinitely. Now collaboration with Indonesia on police, military and intelligence matters has been halted for perhaps a year, ministers in those portfolios will not be travelling either.

8. Blaming the media

This is surely the most hilarious defence mechanism given the role the Murdoch media played in denigrating the previous regime — which now appears remarkably statesmanlike in comparison.

The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine laments critiques from the ABC and Fairfax: Not at all, Miranda. The faults are serious and they are many. The media has generally downplayed them, not exaggerated them.

Success will not be ignored when it is achieved. The non-Murdoch media – and the electorate – are waiting, that’s all.

So far, these eight strategies are working. Opinion polls reveal a large proportion of the public have no idea of the damage being done to the economy, the nation’s administration or its international reputation.

The one positive is that Fairfax and the ABC have now put a sliver of daylight between them and the Murdoch press in reporting politics. In a significant shift from the Labor years, the ABC and Fairfax publications now frequently report fairly.

‘Honesty in short supply in backflip’ was the heading in the paper version of The Age over a piece by Mark Kenny in which he did not gild the rotting Coalition lily.

The strong negative is that there is no obvious successor to Abbott should the parliamentary party decide he is a terminal dud. All likely alternatives – Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey – have shown in the early administration of their portfolios that they are no more effective.

What happens next will be intriguing to observe. The strategists must know they cannot deny or conceal incompetence and dysfunction forever.

[youtube]JJwJYZU6pLg[/youtube]

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-and-murdoch-all-out-damage-control,5965

Amazing that after a mere 77 days in office we are already looking at the worst government, in the Western world, in living memory.....

Amazing that after a mere 77 days in office we are already looking at the worst government, in the Western world, in living memory.....

Abbott is failing to live up to his promises - or his purpose
SMH Editorial Date December 10, 2013

EDITORIAL

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's much-touted "first 100 days of action" for his "no surprises, no excuses" government will run out on Boxing Day. As a result the Coalition has its work cut out in the run-up to Christmas. In the 84 days since Abbott and his cabinet were sworn in, they have struggled to find a positive vision for the nation, let alone explain it.

When decisions have been made, many have been underwhelming, confusing or embarrassing. For all the rhetoric about the dire state of the federal budget and the evils of debt, Australia now has no debt ceiling thanks to a deal between Treasurer Joe Hockey and the Greens. It was the correct decision but getting there betrayed an air of hypocrisy.

The same can be said about the 11th-hour reconversion to a stripped-back, unclear version of the Gonski reforms. At least they were decisions.

On other pressing problems there has been a worrying tendency towards misplaced masterful inaction. Prevarication is dogging the necessary decision to keep Qantas in local hands. If Abbott accepts that the national carrier is a special case requiring support, as the Herald does, he must say so now. If not, he must have the courage to explain why and manage the consequences.

Similarly, the government is split over General Motors' exit from Australia. For too long head office in Detroit has held Australian taxpayers to ransom with demands for more untied funding for Holden. Abbott has said he will await recommendations from the Productivity Commission before ruling on more handouts. But if GM has decided, Abbott must come clean and take the political pain. Moreover, he must outline a package of measures to manage the transition for workers and businesses into more sustainable activity.

Politically timidity also marked the foreign takeover bid for GrainCorp, which was rushed through to preserve Coalition unity and avert a farmer backlash. While the Herald believes the decision was in the national interest, the government has struggled to explain it to voters and foreign investors.

Abbott has also made missteps on MPs' perks, repeatedly baulking at reforming a rorted system. On Indonesia, his refusal to offer a quick, diplomatic apology for spying leaves Australia struggling to restore relations and its "stop the boats" policy under a cloud. Faced with the sort of grilling he dished out when in opposition, his government has resorted to secrecy on asylum seekers.

What is more, myriad areas of policy development have been outsourced to scores of inquiries as a means of delaying unpopular decisions on economic and budgetary reform, many of which have already been made. So often when pressed about economic matters - Qantas, the car industry, manufacturing and even sugar - the government's stock answer is "repeal the carbon tax".

The Herald believes Abbott has a mandate to scrap the tax but doing so will have virtually no impact on Australia's economic future and leave it with an untested alternative. It is a symptom of a larger problem.

Abbott was a successful opposition leader, adept at knocking down but not rebuilding; criticising but not explaining. Now he is struggling to find - let alone create - a core vision for the nation beyond dispensing with Labor's legacy.

Making matters worse, Abbott's strategy before the election was to defuse contentious policy challenges by promising them away or pledging to seek a mandate first.

"No surprises" has become Abbott's albatross on Work Choices, cuts to public services, raising the GST and many more issues.

Economic and productivity-enhancing reforms require urgent attention. Implementation will take time but the starting point must be the courage to make the hard decisions, no matter the political blowback.

Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens has warned Australians of hubris about "this myth of 22 years' uninterrupted growth'' and demanded a return to the 1980s-'90s reform agenda of the Hawke-Keating era. Keating, whose government Abbott invokes as a reform benchmark, has bemoaned a "singular lack of urgency" towards economic reform.

Abbott's promise was for a slow, steady, methodical, purposeful government. The suspicion is that his government has yet to find its purpose.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-editorial/abbott-is-failing-to-live-up-to-his-promises--or-his-purpose-20131209-2z1kw.html#ixzz2n1ixSVJa