World’s greatest treasurer …

Peter Costello gives an insight into the performance of the world’s best in the Sydney Morning Herald, the article is well worth reading in full.

Wayne Swan originally announced the 2012-13 budget surplus on May 11, 2010. He has heralded it in each budget and midyear review since. Which makes Monday the sixth time he’s announced it. It’s a forecast surplus of $1.1 billion. Never before in the history of budgeting has so little been promised so often.

We will not know until September 30, 2013 whether this surplus has been achieved. And if it is …

Over four budgets from 2008, deficits have cumulated 12.8 per cent of gross domestic product. Taking this year and the following three budgets, this will be followed by cumulative surpluses of 0.8 per cent (provided the economy grows at trend). Four years of surplus will pay back 1/16th of the four years of deficit. At that rate it would take half a century before we get to the stated goal of “surplus on average”.

As well as the promised “surplus” another of the government’s stated ambitions …

… is to “improve the government’s net financial worth over the medium term”. This measure includes government debt and its superannuation liabilities. Since it decided to set this goal, net financial worth has plummeted. You see, it is not just that the government has racked up debt. The Commonwealth does not even pay the full cost of its staff. It is not paying the superannuation component of public service entitlements. Nor does it count this as a cost in its budget. If a private employer tried to do this they would be prosecuted. It’s the kind of thing that drives the private sector wild. While the government is telling employers to lift superannuation contributions for staff, it is not funding its own superannuation schemes.

Personally, I think Wayne has got Buckley’s of delivering any surplus at all … he’ll be spinning like a top all the way to an election held just early enough to keep the populus from learning the true state of our finances.

Jeff on Julia …

In case you don’t have internet access to the Herald Sun let me share Jeff Kennett’s view of our PM …

WHAT sort of country are we becoming, when our Prime Minister becomes so desperate that she uses her gender to deliberately and personally attack her opponent in the most unbecoming way in Parliament.

To accuse Tony Abbott of being a misogynist, a hater of women, is as irresponsible as one can get.

It is a charge without truth and an insult to Abbott’s wife, Margaret, and his daughters.

But clearly our Prime Minister has no respect for the truth or the office she holds. Life is all about Julia, her interests, her desire to survive…

Julia Gillard and the party she leads have failed every measure of good government.

She now has only personal invective left in her arsenal on which to base her argument for re-election….

Many of you will have heard me on many occasions defend the Prime Minister…

But this latest abuse of her office has somehow broken my spirit.

I have given up… I will never again respect her for the standard of leadership she is providing this country.

It is personal, it is bitter, it is divisive, and it is short-sighted, and it is simply unprofessional.

Julia Gillard is insulting and demeaning the high office she holds.

OneZoom …

Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, a Tree of Life is one way of visualising the process. Like most trees it takes up a lot of space. And by the time you’ve drawn it someone has discovered a new relationship or discredited a supposed relationship and it’s time to start again.

Enter the Open Tree of Life Project …

The tree of life links all biodiversity through a shared evolutionary history. This project will producethe first online, comprehensive first-draft tree of all 1.8 million named species, accessible to both the public and scientific communities. Assembly of the tree will incorporate previously-published results, with strong collaborations between computational and empirical biologists to develop, test and improve methods of data synthesis.

A great project but a few minutes wandering their website will have you wondering if they have any idea how to communicate with anyone but nerds.

OneZoom to the rescue. This gives the non-nerd a very useful means of visiting the tree which is loaded with useful information. The mammal branch is up and running … it is worth enduring the very nerdy tutorial, after that you can play for hours. I am very much looking forward to the Birds.

Burn the witches …

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L’Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter. <BBC>

So the people who convicted Galileo for putting the sun at the centre of the solar system are now punishing scientists for wrongly predicting the next big one in the Apennines, a place that has been shaken by many big ones in the past.

Judge Marco Billi, whom one commentator described as having an IQ below freezing point, found against the scientists and has imposed considerable financial penalties as well as jail time.

Any scientists with an interest in working in The Dark Ages need only apply …

Brace yourself …

$20 billion, what could you get for $20 billion?

Well now, $15 billion will get you a Building the Education Revolution and  pink batts giveaway. You could hand out the other five in cash giveaways.

Or the whole lot would buy you half an NBN.

Actually, you’ll get a whole lot of pain …

Wayne has a surplus of pain.

Once more into the fray …

Back from the Goldfields, with not a nugget to show for it.

But little grapes, tiny little fetal grapelets on every vine. If they can just survive the frost for another month … most promising. The trouble with Victorian country life, though, is the total absence of broadband in my little hamlet. The local telephone exchange is not equipped for ADSL, will not be equipped for ADSL, and even if it were the copper wire is too small and too old to cope and the house too far from the exchange. Mobile phone coverage? Not at my house. Oh for the NBN.

So home  to Melbourne and a rush for the news. Not good so far as the NBN goes …

EXECUTIVES at the company building the national broadband network pocketed more than $600,000 in bonuses in 2011-12 despite the project running a year behind schedule.

The NBN Co annual report shows the company is spending 25 times more on executive salaries than it earned from selling broadband to customers …

The opposition’s communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, said the report, released on Friday night, showed the roll-out of the network was a year behind schedule with 24,000 homes and businesses connected to the national broadband network at the end of last month. <SMH>

Julia, meanwhile calls sexism wherever she finds it …

 

Maybe she went on a bit long about the uranium sales.

She probably yearns for the good old days when the law firm she was working for brought this defamation action …

Concerns among union officials about financial irregularities and the conduct of the then branch secretary were silenced by Mr Blewitt in the Supreme Court defamation action brought on his instructions in October 1993.

The action came six months after Mr Blewitt, who now admits to being involved in fraud, transferred about $100,000 from the slush fund to buy a $230,000 Melbourne terrace for the use of Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend, union boss Bruce Wilson.

Ms Gillard attended the auction for the Melbourne property, helped in the transaction, and witnessed a power of attorney giving Mr Wilson control over the asset.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and said she did not know about the workings of the slush fund. <The Australian ( paywall)>

Taking a leaf out of her book, one of the punters she relies on to stay in power has threatened to sue anyone that suggests he may have had sex with prostitutes …

But the allegations FWA has presented to the Federal Court are detailed and extensive, listing dates and times in which Mr Thomson allegedly called escort services and paid for them with his credit cards. In all, there are 10 occasions where FWA alleges Mr Thomson called prostitute services and then used $9603 of union money on them. <news.com>

and he did sue Fairfax last year … but dropped the matter at the court room door. The Labor Party shelled out to keep him from bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy, there’s a thought, how’s that budget coming Wayne?

 

Rwanda …

Rwanda was a member of the UN Security Council in 1994 …

Back in April 1994, as the massacre of Tutsis rolled out, Rwanda’s diplomat in the UN Security Council, Jean Damascene Bizimana, firmly told colleagues there was no genocide and they agreed. Eighteen years later, Rwanda is back to the 15-member exclusive club. In a secret ballot, the country scooped 148 votes from the 192 cast – way ahead of the 128 required.

The UN did not distinguish itself in Rwanda …

Despite hearing evidence of the targeted mass-murder of Tutsis by interahamwe militias in 1994, the critics say the UN deliberately avoided labelling the slaughter as ‘genocide’. As a result, they avoided being obliged to protect the Tutsis and the genocide continued …  The massacres stopped in July.

On 21 April, while genocide raged, 11 Belgian peacekeepers were killed. As a result, instead of increasing forces, the UN reduced their forces from 2,500 to only 250.

On April 30, under intense pressure, the UN debated whether they should intervene in Rwanda to stop the massacres in Rwanda. The UN debated about the unfolding situation in Rwanda, and whether or not the International Community should intervene to prevent the escalation.  The UN forces on the ground were forbidden to intervene to protect people; instead they had to “monitor” the situation.

Estimates of the number that died vary, somewhere in the vicinity of 800,000 seems about right.

And now we’re bus monitors, too. Let’s hope the bus will start …

 

Misandry …

That debate drew attention to the need to update the definition, said Ms Butler.

“I always think of myself as the person with the mop and the broom and the bucket who’s cleaning up the language after the party’s over,” she told ABC News.

“And in this case it was a fairly big party, and what was left on the floor was misogyny.”

The Macquarie Dictionary will redefine misogyny for the benefit of our viral prime minister.

The Mcgee Dictionary will, henceforth, define misandry as the alteration of the meaning of words, by women, to denigrate men.