from Crikey .....

Keane essay: the myth of governmental competence

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

from Crikey .....

A key element of Bob Katter's regional development wish-list presented to the major parties will directly benefit companies owned or controlled by Katter's brother-in-law, and was spruiked by the Member for Kennedy for months in 2009 before Katter acknowledged the conflict of interest.

from Crikey .....

Much of the Coalition's enormous success in becoming not merely electorally competitive but to reach the verge of forming government lies in its successful selling of the idea of competence - Labor is incompetent, we are competent. Simple.

Conservative NSW MP Fred Nile has denied that he has been accessing pornographic websites on his parliamentary computer, saying someone else must have used his log-on.

Mr Nile, from the Christian Democrat party, says reports in today's Daily Telegraph that porn websites have been accessed from his office 200,000 times are impossible.

Mr Nile is well known in NSW for his conservative stance on social issues, having been a long-time opponent of things such as the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

In what would have to rank as one of the most obscene public statements made by any US President, Barack Obama announced the end of America's combat mission in Iraq, notwithstanding the fact that 50,000 American troops & countless "contractors" will continue to occupy the country.

Obama acknowledged that the war had cost America in blood & treasure: 4,400 members of its armed forces killed, 34,000 wounded & maimed: all at a cost in excess of US$1.12 trillion.

"Ending the war was not only in Iraq's best interests but also in America's", he said. "We have met our responsibility; now is the time to turn the page."

Turn the page indeed.

An extraordinary document has been sent to the BBC - a carefully detailed and forensic-like analysis of the transcript of the Panorama programme "Death on the Med", broadcast on 16 August 2010.

Below is the transcript of this programme, together with the resulting dissection and complaint of bias and lack of impartiality which is now in the hands of the BBC.

from Crikey .....

Tony Abbott, Coalition leader, potential Prime Minister, currently negotiating with the four independent MPs in order to obtain minority government, six days ago:

"I make the point that I think we can have a kinder, gentler polity ... I think we can be a more collegial polity than we've been."

Always look on the bright side of life. Stalemate though it is, an election which rids the nation of Wilson Tuckey and the Family First Senator, Steve Fielding, cannot be all bad.

Tuckey is gone, hurrah, the voters of his Western Australian seat of O'Connor deciding at long last that they could stand the oaf no more. A regrettable flaw in the constitution means the idiotic Fielding will pester us in the Senate until next July, but his end is in sight.

War profiteering is defined by Stuart Brandes in his book "Warhogs, a History of War Profits in America," as "a gain in economic well-being obtained as a result of military conflict."

As he shows, there is a long history of war profiteering in the United States and an equally long history of public disgust for it. One of the most quoted expressions of this disgust came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II: "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."

from Crikey .....

Common sense from independents has conservatives deeply unhappy

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

The Coalition has dismissed the complaints of three independents about its election costings and declared it will not be told what to do in return for the numbers to form government.

As the independents expressed anger at Tony Abbott's refusal to have Coalition policies costed by Treasury, the shadow finance minister, Andrew Robb, said there would be no change.

''We don't want to have a fight with these guys but we're not going to be dictated to and not tug our forelock like Julia [Gillard] has on every issue,'' he told the Herald

The Coalition has slapped down a threat by the family First Senator, Steve Fielding, to try to cripple a Labor government, by refusing to endorse him in blocking supply.

Senator Fielding appears to have lost his seat but will sit in the Senate until June 30.

He claims Labor does not deserve to govern the country and if it forms a minority government, he will use his crucial Senate vote to block all Labor legislation, including its next budget.

However, to be effective he would need the support of the Coalition.

A spokesman for the Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, said if the Coalition were in Opposition, it would not block supply.

from Crikey .....

Pearse: Greens should let this government fall and learn

Guy Pearse, Research Fellow at the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, writes:

There should be an informed debate about the country's continued role in Afghanistan, the Australian Defence Association says, with 20 soldiers now killed in the conflict.

The Greens, who want troops withdrawn from Afghanistan, said yesterday that after nine years it was time a parliamentary debate was held on the war. All other 42 nations in the NATO-led coalition had done so.

Two more Australian soldiers were seriously wounded when a bomb exploded in the Baluchi Valley region of Oruzgan province on Saturday, just a day after Private Grant Kirby and Private Tomas Dale were killed in the same area.