The welcome mat …

Welcome home, Allyson McConnell …

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And how nice to see our hospitality extended to this poor traumatised soul…

A KILLER has won the right to appeal to stay in Australia as a refugee.

The West Papua man who attacked his defacto in 2000, resulting in her death, won a High Court battle yesterday.

He can now to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in his bid to secure a protection visa with tax-payers to pay his legal bills for his High Court action.

The man was granted a protection visa in 1996 but after killing his defacto and being sentenced to seven years’ jail for manslaughter, the man’s protection visa was cancelled by former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.

Former immigration Minister Chris Evans then determined in 2008 that it was ”in the public interest to allow the appellant to make a further application for a protection visa,” the High Court judgement said.

And an especially warm welcome to all those on the high seas, now arriving at more than 400 a week … just imagine a whole Malaysiafull every week.

The tabloids …

Melbourne’s two daily tabloids were a study in contrasting values this morning.

The Herald Sun was adorned with a picture of the Iron Lady, The Age went for a picture of Gough, the lead story based on the Wikileaks revelations that Bob Carr and Bob Hawke, not to mention Bob McGee, all spying for the Americanos.

Well vale Margaret Thatcher a female prime minister who didn’t need to use her gender as an excuse. I will not attempt a eulogy but let me just direct your attention to the quality of those that are celebrating her demise. She would probably have been quite flattered.

The other big story centres on the low opinion that Hawke and Carr had of the Revered Leader. Well, well, what a scandal. But wait, there’s more … the Americanos made some quite derogatory observations regarding the leader of the opposition at the time.

Malcolm Fraser’s response …

“I think that cable probably demonstrates the incompetence of the American representation in Australia at the time,” he told ABC radio.

He went on to say something about people’s behaviour in private and how they should be exposed. Well, since you insist …

Memphis trousers affair

On 14 October 1986, Fraser, then the Chairman of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, was found in the foyer of the Admiral Benbow Inn, a seedy Memphis hotel, wearing nothing but a towel and confused as to where his trousers were. The hotel was an establishment popular with prostitutes and drug dealers. Though it was rumoured at the time that the former Prime Minister had been with a prostitute, his wife stated that Fraser had no recollection of the events and that she believes it more likely that he was the victim of a practical joke by his fellow delegates.

That of course is from Wikipedia, what a sweet wife …

Plus ça change …

… plus c’est la même chose.

An update to The never ending story. Rupert Wyndham impressed me with his warnings of thermageddon from the past but today I stumbled on a little collection posted by Tim Blair in 2009. I’ll post the link below but I think it far more fun to take the last item first.

All quotes are from The New York Times …

• 2005: “Another melancholy gathering of climate scientists presented evidence this month that the Antarctic ice shelf is melting – a prospect difficult to imagine a decade ago.”

The emphasis, I confess, is mine. A decade earlier would have been 1995. Now a journey back in time with Tim and the New York Times  …

• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”

• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”

• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”

• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”

• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”

• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”

• 1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”

• 1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”

• 1971: “STUDY SAYS MAN ALTERS CLIMATE; U.N. Report Links Melting of Polar Ice to His Activities”

• 1979: “A puzzling haze over the Arctic ice packs has been identified as a byproduct of air pollution, a finding that may support predictions of a disastrous melting of the earth’s ice caps.”

• 1982: “Because of global heating attributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fuel burning, about 20,000 cubic miles of polar ice has melted in the past 40 years, apparently contributing to a rise in sea levels …”

• 1999: “Evidence continues to accumulate that the frozen world of the Arctic and sub-Arctic is thawing.”

• 2000: “The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday.”

• 2002: “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported today.”

• 2004: “There is an awful lot of Arctic and glacial ice melting.”

Cross my heart …

I promise you I wrote simpltons before reading this piece, it is satire, isn’t it? Written by a Liberal Party agent provocateur, surely? Gotta love Grumpy’s comment.

Are Volvo’s cool now? Don’t Domino’s pizzas still taste like cardboard? Clear air … isn’t it polluted with carbon dioxide? Always was … you’re kidding me.

Simpletons …

From the very outset of Gillard’s government, she and her ministers have seen Tony Abbott as an easy target. Let’s face it, he’s stiff and he’s religious, nerdy. It obviously seemed like a good idea to play the man not the ball. Everything was blamed on the AbbottAbbottAbbott. Even the famous misogyny speech was an ad hominem attack … the ball, for those who lost sight of it, was Mr Slipper.

Tony turns out to a bit like an onion. As the attacks took off layer after layer it revealed a fresh, juicy, wholesome interior. Is he a simpleton? How many simpletons were Rhodes Scholars? He graduated with a Master’s degree from Queens College, Oxford. A whole bunch of other things weren’t obvious on the surface, years of voluntary work with aboriginal projects and with the Rural Fire Brigade. He’s the misogynist with a female chief of staff!

You’d think they’d learn. Someone once said “No publicity is bad publicity”, to which Brenda Behan added ” … except your own obituary.” Mr Abbott can thank Julia and Penny for giving him plenty of publicity and as they have done so their standing has fallen and his has done nothing but rise. They are writing their own obituaries.

So desperate are they to land a telling blow on Mr Negative they have not paused for a moment to consider the counter punch. This last jibe is a gift to Abbott, a free kick and fifty meter penalty … Abbott is an economic simpleton, Abbott is a wrecking ball. This from an outfit that had the luxury of being elected with a budget in surplus and have run up a massive debt, and with modestly declining income are determined to spend vastly more. They did promise to get back to surplus and as with all their promises they’ve got nowhere near keeping it.

Do you remember this little interview ... ?

JOURNALIST:  If you don’t make a, get the Budget back in to surplus in 2012-2013, this is a question to both of you, the cameras are on – will you resign?

PM:  (laughs) The Budget is coming back to surplus, no ifs no buts it will happen.

JOURNALIST:  So that’s a ‘yes’?

PM:  Matthew, I know and you know like these questions during campaigns but the Budget’s coming back to surplus.  There’s no credible analysis on our economic plan that it won’t come back to surplus.  I haven’t added a cent to it during this election campaign.  The figures are plain, they’re transparent, they’re from the Budget.  They’re there from the Mid-year Fiscal and Economic Outlook, they’re there from the Pre-Election Fiscal and Economic Outlook.  The figures are there for all to see.  

The figures are there for all to see, simpletons …