Do visit that link, there are some more graphs and some of the comments are spot on. It will show you that it ain’t the income that’s the problem, it’s the expenditure. But if you are going to sustain the expenditure you have to raise the money somehow. Your superannuation looks nice. The Cypriot solution, it’s obvious.
Enter Rob Oakeshott, he thinks it’s a great idea. Remember that he will leave the Parliament (hopefully very soon and with a large boot up his arse) with a nice big super safety net, provided under a completely different scheme to ours.
I have worked hard and saved sensibly for my retirement, reforms by Keating and Costello helped, the frequent changes to the rules did not. The only way we will ever see a good superannuation system is when the pollies are under the same rules as the rest of us.
Meantime, get your hands off my super, you thieving bitch.
Mr Crean does seem to represent all that’s good in the ALP. It’s hard to imagine him spending other people’s money to pay for prostitutes or organising a mining lease to be granted on his farm. Almost out of place really …
I want to thank everyone for their continuing support of me, as just demonstrated in our Labor Party meeting.
I accept their continuing support of me as prime minister and Labor leader with a sense of deep humility and a sense of resolve.
A clear winner in a competition that had much more in common with a game of pass the parcel than a leadership challenge. Mr Rudd didn’t have the numbers, but was he looking for them? Julia and friends have written the script for the Coalition, a script that would challenge One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest. The much vaunted future leader, Bill Shorten, is in no hurry to lead the party to a wipeout. Any volunteers step forward … and Caucus stepped back.
The government has a plan for the nation’s future.
We have plenty of work to be getting on with, and we will be getting on with it in a few minutes’ time.
… just as soon as I find somewhere to put this parcel.
Got back late last night from a quick jaunt to north central Victoria.
First stop was the Warby Ranges. I camped at Wenhams, which has had a bit of a face lift since I was last there, new toilets and some level camp sites. Some space has been lost in the process but level is good … I can only imagine the thought processes of the person who laid out the prior version.
The weather was kind and the birding magnificent. The Warby Range is a granite outcrop on the inland side of the divide, which gives it a lot in common with the inland slopes of New South Wales. Spurwing Wattle and some orchids are found in NSW and Warby but nowhere else in Victoria. Some of the birds too, are hard to find elsewhere in Victoria, Warby is a reliable place for Speckled Warbler. It is also the Victorian stronghold of the Turquoise Parrot. This is an absolutely gorgeous parrot, bright yellow breast, bright blue in the wings. It seemed destined for extinction between 1880 and 1920, perhaps due to competition with introduced stock in times of drought. It may have been introduced weeds that enabled it to recover.
The next day I headed about 30 km north to have lunch in the Lower Ovens Regional Park. This adds a few water birds to the list and it’s a spot that I particularly associate with Dollarbird. No Dollarbirds this trip, they are summer migrants, the adults leave as soon as the young are fledged, the youngsters follow when they can. It’s too late in the year this far south. The Ovens river floods here, the banks are forested with River Red Gums on black soil, best avoided in wet weather.
After lunch another 40 km and you’re in the Chiltern forest. Ironbark country with lots of Red Box and Red Stringybark thrown in. In spring this is the place to find the endangered Regent Honeyeater, not this week though. But plenty of Noisy Frairbirds, Little Lorikeets, White-throated Treecreepers and half a dozen honeyeaters.
Not only the common ones, at Cyanide dam I came across a flock of Black Honeyeaters. This is a bird that seems to be sparsely distributed throughout the arid region and irruptive into adjacent areas at the fringes. Your chances of finding it where it’s supposed to be are never high but if you’re in the right place at the right time you can’t avoid it in places where it may not be seen again for years. Cute bird.
And it’s not all about the rare ones, nice as it was to add Black Honeyeater to my Vic list (now 381) it’s always a pleasure to see old friends …
Newspapers in the UK are facing new restrictions just as our press is. Not all of the papers are rushing to be fitted with their muzzle, more power to their elbows. The impetus for the changes comes from the phone tapping scandal. Lost in the process is the fact that phone tapping was illegal under existing laws and prosecutions are underway.
… hatred of the ‘popular’ press and the ‘mass’ media has always been a thinly veiled code for expressing an elitist fear and loathing of the populace/masses who consume them. Limiting the freedom of the press is about limiting what the people are allowed to see, read, and even think. The ostensible target might be Big Media, but the real one is the Big Public.
bobmcgee 