Tag: ALP

CFMupU …

The Supreme Court has found that the CFMEU broke the law in orchestrating the outbreak of thuggery in Melbourne’s CBD last year. The protests were intended to bring GROCON to heal. Justice Cavanough found the union guilty of contempt on five separate days in August and September, during which police were attacked and their horses punched. Union boss John Setka, who has a string of convictions was singled out for special mention.

Federal and State Labor politicians are leading members of the CFMEU fan club. The Socialist Left faction welcomed the union back into its ranks earlier this year, it is the faction of the Victorian  opposition leader who has refused refused to criticise the union’s illegal actions, saying, “I’ve not read the judgment”.

Could it be that he is in their pocket?

AUSTRALIA’S most militant union has been quietly underpinning the Labor Party’s finances, donating more than $9.1 million since the start of the Cole royal commission, placing intense pressure on the Gillard government over the future of industrial relations policy.

Analysis of political donations shows the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union has been the biggest donor to the ALP national office since the turn of the century as well as one of the core contributors to the party’s state branches.

As the CFMEU today embarks on one of its most controversial public protests in years, The Australian has obtained a detailed analysis of how Labor profits from the union, explaining the party’s reluctance to distance itself from its at times violent tactics.

John Frum …

On the 21st of December at 10.12pm Australian eastern daylight time the Mayan Calendar came to its conclusion and the world ended.

Well, it didn’t actually, I exagerated. A lot of people thought it would, though, but so far all predictions of the last of days have proven false. So don’t drink the Koolaid.

Not all vacuous predictions are so pessimistic. For all the glass half empty folk there’s got to be the odd glass half full person. In the opposite corner we have the cargo cults. Things have gone bad, they ain’t what they used to be, young people these days … but if we renounce the new evils John Frum will come in a very large aeroplane and deliver all manner of material wealth and we will all be rich, like we had our very own carbon tax or mining tax.

In 1941, followers of John Frum rid themselves of their money in a frenzy of spending, left the missionary churches, schools, villages and plantations, and moved further inland to participate in traditional feasts, dances and rituals. Wikipedia.

That was in the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu. It worked, of course …

… some 300,000 American troops were stationed in the New Hebrides during the Second World War, bringing with them large amounts of supplies, or “cargo”.

And I am sure it will work again, Wayne Swan’s new John Frum is a mining magnate, Wayne’s done the “frenzy of spending” bit, but I’m pretty sure that none of the missionary schools were given new school halls, the churches are under investigation, villages and plantations even factories have been abandoned, we have been urged to move back from the coast. The labor party have indulged in no end of “traditional feasts, dances and rituals” especially, but not exclusively in NSW …

After the war, and the departure of the Americans, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American aeroplanes to once again land and bring them “cargo”.

We must do likewise to bring back the mining boom, share out the wealth, cast out the snakes and carbon pollution …

Pink batts, I am sure, would make excellent symbolic landing strips …

It ain’t the money …

The Gonski reforms are just one of the “spend the future” schemes that Labor is desperate to shackle Australia to before the ALP gets its arse kicked out of government.

This is Greg Sheridan writing in the Australian …

Education more generally demonstrates our almost complete divorce from our Asian neighbours. We are about to waste a colossal amount of money on this Gonski madness. This money will have no measurable effect on our educational quality…

I have spent a lot of time in schoolrooms in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Almost without exception, these schoolrooms are physically less well endowed than their Australian counterparts. The class sizes are bigger, the grounds smaller, the buildings tackier. But the instruction is traditional, the teacher is boss, the school day and year are much longer, kids have to learn and remember a huge amount of content.

The result? The outcomes are vastly better than Australia’s. This is a lesson official Australia never wants to learn. Asian migrants are now bringing this wisdom to Australia, which is why Asian kids do so disproportionately well in our schools. Our society is well engaged with Asia, but at most policy levels our government hasn’t a clue.

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.

Simon …

Leigh Sales asks the tough questions …

Is today’s outcome what you had in mind?

Simon says …

No.

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 …

Julia claims victory …

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.

So keen to censor …

When I was a kid it was quite often the case that an Irishman, a Scotsman and an Englishman went into a pub where various stereotypic scenarios led to a punchline. Better a punchline than a punch.

I recall being told the one about the kids at Bondi being menaced by a shark, a man racing into the water and fighting the shark with his bare hands and saving the kids. A passing reporter races up and interviews our intrepid hero who says something like “Cor blimey, guvnor, anyone woulda done it” thereby revealing his cockney origins.

The headline read “Pommy bastard beats into kids pet”.

What would happen these days? Well the pom would get the sack for a start, when the video goes viral, for being on sickleave from his job in Merthyr Tydfil. What, he was Welsh, you say. Well far to many Welsh people here in Australia. Not on a 457 visa I hope. What about his press secretary.

I digress, the reporter in the New Australia would probably get to keep his job, he’d have more sense than to cause offense to visiting heroes in our roxonised society, he’d play a straight bat (Aussie reporters will learn to do that, no need to worry that the art is dying in our cricketers) he would rush in his good news story. The editor would give thanks, something he could report today without falling foul of Conroy’s latest straight jacket.

What are we coming to? Conroy, you will recall wanted to filter the internet, I guess it would slow it all down enough to warrant fibre to the home. Now it’s a press commissar to licence reporters. All because those newspapers that earn a living selling papers and advertising have had the temerity to inform the community that the ALP have cocked up everything they’ve touched, broken every promise that they’ve made whilst led by a backstabbing, lying virago with a very shady past and a treasurer who thinks a surplus is a minus number, and a tax is a saving.

So my message in response is Get Your Hands OFF Freedom of Speech. And get them off my super, as well.

As for our other Welsh would be hero, the shark was a harmless variety and sick, probably dying, the children were in no danger whatever, Sir, you were not only defrauding your employers but attempting to defraud us too. I will be writing to the RSPCA, Hugh Wirth knows what to do with people who molest our sea creatures.