I gave you many reasons for my opinion, and this is the best you can come up with?
Good lefty policy comrade, when running out of arguments attack the man.

There's no point in arguing with a man who believes that "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant". Here's an experiment for you: take a plant and put it in an environment of only carbon dioxide and see what happens to it

"Global warming is a hoax"

Wait people still think it is not true?

I though we were at the ' we accept it but don't care much' stage.

Some people are like that.

The others are "we accept it, but don't believe it's man made and thus we should keep pumping crap into the atmospheres and water so rich people can make more money".

Wasn't there a climate change a few thousand years ago? Those factories back then were far worse I believe.

Sauce?

-PB

Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, it gives you bubbles in the beer, your theory about plants and CO2 is the same as isolating a human and supply only pure oxygen O, same outcome.

Here are some facts about CO2
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colorless, odorless, non-flammable and slightly acidic liquefied gas. CO2 is heavier than air and soluble in water.
Carbon dioxide also is widely used in a wide range of industries, such as:
•   Food: carbonated beverages. Gasification beverages. Packaging, freezing and cooling.
•   Catering.
•   Medicine: Mixes metabolic.

Wheels are slowly falling of the Climate Change Global Warming cartel, read The Sydney Morning Herald 14.01.14 by Tom Switzer
Kyoto treaty expired a year ago, there will be no EU emission trading scheme, Germany is going back to coal power stations, China and India have no emission targets and so on….
Greens were thrashed at the last election and Labor did not do much better and is left clinging to their Global Warming failed policy.

The Czech Republic with an economy much weaker than ours has probably 10x the amount of re-newable energy as we do. Between Prague and Plzen are fields of solar panels. Literally fields.

People can whinge about emmissions all they want but the bare facts are the cost of implementing them on a large enough scale to matter would affect the left-wing centrelink payments.

The coal system is in place. Australia has lots of coal. Australia has the infrastructure to move coal.

As for Carbon Dioxide, I thought it was inert. I thought it was the carbon monoxides and nitrogen oxides that came with it that were the pollutants?

Don't you mean it would affect your own salary and personal interest, benelsmore?

Hockey sticks and Manbearpig everywhere!

Coalition offers Indonesia extra money to help halt flow of asylum seekers

Scott Morrison promises its territorial sovereignty will never be violated, despite claims that boats are being towed back

Wednesday 15 January 2014 15.37 EST
Lenore Taylor, political editor

Australia is offering Indonesia extra money and help to reduce the number of transiting asylum seekers as the Abbott government maintains silence on the widespread belief that it is towing boats back to the Indonesian maritime border.
At the same time the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has revealed there is still no agreement about what rights, conditions or assistance will be available to asylum seekers sent by Australia to Manus Island and Nauru who are found to be genuine refugees, even though processing has now resumed at both detention centres.
Indonesian ministers have rejected the policy of towing back or turning back boats, but Morrison sought to smooth the reaction with repeated assurances that Indonesian territorial sovereignty would never be violated and with the offer of increasing Australia’s current $40m contribution to the International Migration Organisation to handle asylum seekers in Indonesia and an open offer of further help, including helping Indonesia send asylum seekers back to their country of origin.
“Australia stands ready to further assist Indonesia to manage this resident population as required or requested … will continue to provide the same level of resettlement [under the humanitarian program] as under the former government, and we are open to assist with voluntary and involuntary returns to assist Indonesia,” he said, pointing to a sharp fall in recent months in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Indonesia.
Morrison said the government was “salvaging resettlement arrangements” for asylum seekers sent to Manus Island, having been left a “blank sheet of paper” by the former government, which began the policy of immediately sending asylum seekers arriving by boat with no possibility of resettlement in Australia shortly before the federal election. The government is building accommodation on both islands to house people found to be refugees.
But asked whether those refugees would have work rights or freedom of movement or family reunion rights, Morrison said “they are matters for the PNG government, there has been no conclusion on those points”. He said discussions were continuing between Australia and PNG.
Morrison and Operation Sovereign Borders commander Lieutenant General Angus Campbell continued to insist that their refusal to answer questions about “on water matters” was essential to meet the overriding goal of stopping asylum seeker boats, and said from now on such briefings on the policy would be held when needed, rather than every week because the “establishment phase” had finished.
They also refused to answer questions about reported attempts at self harm and hunger strikes at the Christmas Island detention centre on the grounds that it could encourage more such protests.
Campbell did confirm reports that the government had bought several large lifeboats – apparently to help transfer asylum seekers back to Indonesia – but would not say what they would be used for.
“I am not going to provide information about the potential or actual employment of these lifeboats now or in the future,” Campbell said, adding “clearly a lifeboat is involved in the on water activities”.
Morrison has repeatedly pledged that none of the more than 30,000 asylum seekers already in Australia would gain a permanent protection visa, but the Senate has rejected the Coalition’s alternative temporary protection visas and there are three high court challenges under way to the regulations the government is using to prevent permanent visa claims.
Morrison said he would not “speculate” on the outcome of high court cases, but said he “stood by” the commitment that the asylum seekers would not be allowed to stay permanently.
Campbell said allegations of mistreatment by asylum seekers on a boat allegedly towed back to the Indonesian maritime border by the Australian navy had been investigated and he was “very satisfied with the professional conduct of our people”.
He said this did not amount to a confirmation that the towbacks had actually occurred and that the investigation had not included any contact with the asylum seekers, now back in Indonesia, who had made the allegations.
“I just ask that you might reflect on the question of what might be the motivations behind those sort of claims … some of those claims were quite outrageous,” Campbell said.
Morrison said he had “absolute faith in the integrity of our military personnel” and that the claims had been made by asylum seekers at the urging of people smugglers in order to “undermine a policy that is destroying their business”.
He also denied the towback policy broke the government’s promise before the election that it would not tow boats back. He said it had meant the government would not tow boats back to Indonesian ports, not that they wouldn’t be towed at all.
On October 1, at a media conference in Indonesia, Abbott said "can I just scotch this idea that the Coalition's policy is or ever has been towbacks. Our policy ... is that we reserve the right to turn boats around where it is safe to do so. There is a world of difference between turning boats around in Australian waters and the Australian navy towing them back to Indonesia."
But Morrison explained on Wednesday that “previously before the election … the towback as a policy was explained and … was characterised as boats being towed back into Indonesian waters, or into Indonesian ports … we’ve said very plainly it has never been our policy to violate Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. I think there has been confusion on the semantics of this.”
Both Morrison and Campbell hailed the fact that no boats had arrived for more than three weeks.
"The right policies are in the right hands and they're beginning to get the right results," Morrison said, adding that boat arrivals had fallen 80% since Operation Sovereign Borders began.
Campbell said it would only be able to offer a confident assessment of the success of the operation in March, when the monsoon season was over.
At that point, he said, he might also talk about “past activities” but he would not do that now “lest it offer people smugglers with trend analysis that can be used against us."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/coalition-offers-indonesia-extra-money-to-halt-flow-of-asylum-seekers

Australia's budget is deteriorating, says commission of audit head

Tony Shepherd tells Senate inquiry that audit will be guided by 'fairness', not government orders
Wednesday 15 January 2014 19.11 EST

Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

The business leader appointed by Tony Abbott to rein in government spending has described Australia’s current financial position as “good” but deteriorating and stressed the need to impose conditions to safeguard public services if assets are privatised.
The commission of audit chairman, Tony Shepherd, also offered an apology to a Senate committee after he was accused of misleading it about the extent of government instructions.
Labor and the Greens initiated the Senate inquiry to question the team charged with examining the size and scope of government, finding savings, recommending asset sales and reducing duplication between different levels of government.
Shepherd revealed he might miss the January deadline for the commission’s first report to the government, blaming the disruption of appearing before the Senate hearing. But he said he preferred to get it right than to rush it.
The Coalition promised to spend $1m on the audit to improve the budget after years denouncing Labor waste, debt and deficit.
But Shepherd – the president of the Business Council of Australia – told the inquiry the nation’s key financial indicators were “good” and his concerns related to the trajectory.
“We recognise that our fiscal situation, while deteriorating, is not bad by OECD standards and we have a relatively well-educated, healthy and happy society,” he said.
Shepherd added, however, that his concern was about ensuring the nation was capable of responding to future economic shocks and Australia should not compare itself only with OECD countries. The example of some of those countries showed the need to “be wary of deficits and too much debt”.
In an apparent attempt to counter criticism from Labor and the Greens that the “commission of cuts” would cause pain to vulnerable community members, Shepherd said his team would be guided by “the importance of fairness”, which he said was “important for the country and for our ability to work effectively together”.
Early in the questioning, Shepherd indicated that the terms of reference were the only instructions the five commissioners had been given and the government had made clear it was not imposing “no-go areas”.
The Labor senator Sue Lines asked about the Coalition’s policy of cutting 12,000 jobs. She pointed to comments the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, made in November that the government’s public sector jobs policy would now be handed to the commission of audit.
Shepherd said the commission had not received a specific request, but the commission’s secretariat head, Peter Crone, disclosed the existence of a letter from Cormann and the treasurer, Joe Hockey, “further to the terms of reference … to provide guidance to the commission on the government’s approach to public sector resourcing”. The 21 November letter, addressed to Shepherd, referred to recent advice from the finance department suggesting the former government’s policies were estimated to result in about 14,500 total job losses across the public service, and described those reductions as “largely untargeted”.
“Accordingly, I request that all of the commission’s proposed reforms are based on effective staffing and that these are linked to efficient services,” Hockey and Cormann said in the letter.
Shepherd told the committee he did not regard the letter as a direction and was simply drawing attention to a statement made around the time of the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.
“I apologise for my earlier statement; if that was misleading it certainly wasn’t intended on my part,” Shepherd said.
The letter did not state a specific target for job cuts.
Labor and Greens senators tried to press Shepherd on his attitude to specific proposals, such as a fee for visits to a doctor, increasing the GST and privatisation. But he replied that he could not rule any proposals in or out ahead of the commission reporting to the government.
Shepherd said past privatisations had been “mixed” but generally “successful” and he spoke of the need to impose strong obligations on the buyer to safeguard the quality of services.
“When you do privatise you should ensure that you retain, in terms of public service, the level of services that have already been provided,” he said.
Asked by the Labor senator Sam Dastyari about his previous support for increasing the GST, Shepherd said he came to the commission with an "open mind". Shepherd said his past comments did not mean the five-member team would recommend such a course of action.
The commission has received about 300 submissions but they have not been published in a central location. Some groups have released their submissions but others have not. Shepherd said some organisations had specifically requested confidentiality.
Hockey had earlier likened the Senate inquiry process – initiated by Labor and the Greens which retain the numbers in the upper house until mid-year – to a “show trial”. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Hockey’s comment that he expected to adopt a large number of the recommendations showed he must know what cuts were planned.
The other commissioners are Peter Boxall, Tony Cole, Robert Fisher and Amanda Vanstone. They dismissed claims of excessive BCA influence over the process.
Vanstone, a former Liberal minister, said Shepherd did not have inordinate influence over the commission. “Certainly not. I’m not flying to Canberra to do what someone else says,” she told the inquiry.
Fisher said: “If there’s a secret agenda it’s secret from us.”
Crone, who heads the commission’s secretariat, said he was on a leave of absence from the BCA and he might return after the project was completed. But he dismissed claims of a conflict of interest, saying the commission had received feedback from a wide range of groups and the influence of the BCA submission had been “quite minimal”.
The chair of the committee, the Greens senator Richard Di Natale, stressed the need for transparency, saying the commission's recommendations would feed into the May’s budget and had the potential to hurt people. The Liberal senator Dean Smith countered that the recommendations may also "improve the living standards and real income of Australians".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/australias-budget-deteriorating-audit-head

Are you fucking taking the piss? Seriously....wtf?
Yeah, if you expose a human to too much oxygen then they'll have negative effects...but we're not pumping excessive amounts of Oxygen into the atmosphere. We ARE doing that with CO2. In fact, in the last 25 years CO2 emissions have nearly doubled. And while temperature changes over the last 5-10 years due to a massive decrease in CFC emissions temperatures have steadied there was a SIGNIFICANT increase in the years prior to that, enough to clearly annotate to them being anthropogenic.

Yes, CO2 is used in various processes which are INORGANIC. As in man-made biproducts are going to have an impact on the subsequent environment.

Y'know what, sit there locked in a room and fart for 5 hours and tell me you're better off for the experience.

Not at all. I haven't been to many coal mines. They tend to do things in house these days.

I'm just stating the obvious.

Well, that was an unbiased article I'm sure....

If you're referring to the end of the last great Ice Age around 2000-1500BC then yes, there was climate change but most scientists believe that was down to continental drift effecting the weather patterns. Also being that it was some 3,000-3,500 years prior to the Industrial revolution I don't think factories had much to do with it.

Aid groups accuse Coalition of broken promise after it announces new cuts

All funding for environment programs to end, as Coalition focuses aid on countries it needs to support its asylum policy

Saturday 18 January 2014 12.27 EST

Aid groups are accusing the Coalition of breaking an election commitment after it revealed their funding would be cut mid-year as part of a $650m reduction in the former government’s budgeted foreign aid spending, leaving 2013-14 spending $107m below what was spent last year.
Foreign minister Julie Bishop announced the cuts for the groups as well as a complete defunding of international environmental programs. The government is redirecting a pared back aid budget towards the region and maintenance of spending on countries such as Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Nauru, whose co-operation is necessary for the success of its asylum policy.
Organisations such as Care, Save the Children, Caritas, ChildFund, Plan International and the Fred Hollows Foundation – who have partnership agreements with the government – have had their current year funding cut by about 8%.
They say that means they are losing money already allocated to programs related to water and sanitation, elimination of violence against women, disaster reduction work and small-scale agriculture, among others.
The organisations say the cuts clearly break a Coalition promise not to cut their funding when it announced a $4.5bn cut to the aid budget over the next four years two days before the federal election.
At the time of that cut, the then shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, and shadow finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, said “the Coalition will reprioritise foreign aid allocations towards non-government organisations that deliver on-the-ground support for those most in need”.
“That will also mean putting more money into NGOs who are on the ground and who can deliver aid more efficiently than through AusAID or indeed through some of the multilaterals that we’ve been putting money into in increasing numbers because AusAID cannot handle the increases in the budget,” then foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said.
The government said it needed to redirect the $4.5bn towards domestic infrastructure. The cut was from projected expenditure – with the aid budget continuing to grow in line with inflation.
“Under the previous Labor government, the rapid growth in Australia’s aid budget was neither targeted nor sustainable ... This year’s aid expenditure will be $107m less than last year. From 2014-15 the $5bn aid budget will grow each year in line with the consumer price index,” Bishop said in a statement on Saturday, “confirming” the cuts after they were announced in the Australian newspaper.
She said the government would now consult NGOs and other governments to set benchmarks and stricter reporting standards to ensure future aid spending achieved its objectives.
Julia Newton Howes, chief executive of Care Australia, said her organisation had lost $500,000 from a $20m budget this year.
“This is for aid we had already programmed this financial year. We are now going to have to scramble to work out where we can cut,” she said.
Newton Howes, who is also vice-president of the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) said it was “particularly disappointing that the government is making cuts it promised it would not make before the election”.
The government has minimised cuts for countries in the region and those involved in its asylum policy.
Aid funding to Indonesia is $532m, almost $50m more than it received last year, but about $60m less than promised by Labor. The $448m promised to Papua New Guinea has been retained. Nauru’s funding has also stayed the same.
The International Labor Organisation will now get no funding from Australia and detailed tables show international environmental programs, already pared back under Labor, will now also get no money.
The government has said it believes aid funding was skewed under the former Labor government as Australia made promises linked with its bid for a seat on the UN security council.
The cuts put Australia even further away from meeting the United Nations’ Millenium Development Goal of developed nations spending 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) in aid by 2015. Labor governments had already twice deferred Australia’s target of 0.5% of GNI by 2015. Bishop made no mention of the target in her statement.
She said she intended to “ensure the Australian aid budget is managed effectively and directed to organisations delivering on-the-ground support to those most in need”.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/18/aid-groups-accuse-coalition-of-broken-promise-after-it-announces-new-aid-cuts

So no more regular press conferences for Scott Morrison, just a weekly interview with Ray Hadley :lol:

The 'Ice-age' trilogy ought to suffice. Ray Romano really hits the nail on the head.

He's still a thing?
Have he and Alan Jones gone public about their affair yet?

Dunno are they still around? At least Melbourne's AM radio shock jocks have the good decency to get themselves locked up every now and then to give the public a break.

Have you noticed we haven't had a boat arrival for about four weeks, and yet there are idiots who are trying to argue the policy is failing. Naturally when you try to return an illegal boat that was manufactured in Indonesia and crewed by Indonesians to Indonesia that will piss off the Indonesians because under the previous government they were conditioned to think we were too soft and obsequious to stand up for our own sovereignty, for fear of offending them. And so they facilitated our navy as an escort service to offload asylum seekers out of Indonesia. And now we have the perfectly reasonable approach of returning unwelcome, unauthorised Indonesian built and crewed vessels to Indonesia and the left has somehow spun this as an attack on Indonesian sovereignty, when it's our borders they are illegally entering. Thank god we have a government who can stand up for Australia, and now allow us to kowtow to an economically inferior nation. We give them billions in aid we don't have to give them our borders and navy as well.

That statement is factually incorrect, there have been about six boats, possibly more.

You're a clown Joffa.

http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/sm/2014/sm210881.htm

As far as turning back boats to Indonesia, how many of you naysayers said it that it was impossible, that is couldn't be done, that it would never happen. So far in a matter of months we have turned back at least five, that's five more than people were convinced was even possible. It just goes to show the coalition had it right all along, that they knew what they were doing, and that labor and their poofter drones had no fucking clue.

So there have been boats then?

Not in straya

Really, so your saying the Australian Navy is taking control of boats in international waters and towing them back to Indonesia, without either Indonesia or the the captains permission? Isn't that piracy? And what about invading Indonesian territorial waters, is that okay as well?

Being that there are suppression orders on the media reporting fatalities and successful immigration attempts, and we're getting our news from other countries (which are portraying us as assholes btw), not to mention Indonesia's consistently aggressive language regarding Australia. Yeah, the policy is clearly working.

And referring to the ALP with derogatory terms for homosexuals doesn't add any credibility to you what so ever.

The real outrage is how we seem to waste so much money on this policy when the boat people end up here anyway. If they're going to come, let them come, get them a job paying tax and then we can stop all this nonsense of threats and aggression.

Teach them English, get them a job paying tax and use them to build up rural infrastructure. Kill three birds with one stone.