Sunday 5th of May 2024
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starting to smell like dead fish in the sun...

 

red herrings

Signs of a twilight war between Hockey/Cormann and Abbott/Credlin grow by the hour, as Liberal MPs ready for revolt over the unaffordable PPL and the new deceit tax.

Pensions at seventy (Hockey) have tanked after private polling, but so have the billionaires’ baby bonus (Abbott), and the Great Big New Tax (Hockey) is now the go — thus proving you can tax your way to prosperity and it well may be that Abbott no longer has any power over policy, any more.

It’s likely, too, that both camps will be dangerously stained by the onrolling “culture of criminality” ICAC show that, in the next month, will start a good few bribesters grassing and more Liberal MPs resigning their party membership. It’s pretty certain Abbott has had a meal or two with Di Girolamo (he’s had a meal or two with me) and pretty likely he’s received, in the past, good money from that thug’s poisoned water hole for one or more of his campaigns, and so ‒ perhaps ‒ has Hockey.

Never before has a government eight months in power had so little authority.

Never before has a Prime Minister looked such a dumb-bum.

No Newspoll, though one is due, came out yesterday. This indicates a precipitous fall in the Lib/Nat vote two-party-preferred in an honest count that has been suppressed and a big surge to Palmer, who now controls eleven seats in various assemblies and will control the Federation, pretty much, on July 1. It’s certain his power will grow and Abbott’s shrink in the next week, and the next month, and the notion that Abbott has power ‒ power over anything ‒ will be out of date by June.

By then, Scott Morrison will be in the searchlights of the Senate and the Governor-General and may be on a slow march to prison for harbouring two murderers and covering up thirty or forty atrocities that it was his duty to reveal to the voters, not to mention his new his “Cambodian solution”. By then, it may well become evident that Abbott has drop-kicked to corporate mates not just the universities’ money but the decade-long search for MH370 in the wrong part of the ocean at a cost, over time, of hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere.

No precedent exists for the present situation, the present crisis in our democracy.

In the Caribbean, in South America, in some former African colonies there have been governments as hated and mendacious as this one. But never here.

It’s likely now that, not just Shorten, but Palmer, and Plibersek, and Albanese, and Hockey, and Turnbull, would beat Abbott in a face-to-face poll as preferred Prime Minister. It’s likely the Liberals’ ‘core’ vote, never more than 32 percent, is down now to 25 or 26, and the party, long-term, is crashing and burning like the Democrats after Meg Lees signed on to the GST.

It’s hard to imagine a worse lead-up to a Budget in peacetime.

And so it goes.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-and-hockeys-twilight-war,6432

 

liberal (CONservative) laudromats....

A SHIVER has just run through the Coalition.

It took a little over two hours for counsel assisting the NSW ICAC, Geoffrey Watson SC, to lay bare the modus operandi of the Liberal Party’s fundraising laundromats.  

Experience says Watson does not make allegations he can’t substantiate with proof to spare.

Here’s a rundown.

On an almost minor, local level, fronts like Eightybyfive sent sham invoices for work not done to outfits who needed a favour:

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/icac-watson-and-the-coalition-slush-funds,6429

incontinent and incompetent liberals (CONservatives)...

 

The Liberal party federal director, Brian Loughnane, has offered “business observers” a breakfast with the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and access to his ministers’ chiefs of staff for $11,000, at the same time as New South Wales Liberal party members face scrutiny in the Independent Commission Against Corruption over influence peddling.

The $11,000 price tag – including GST – is pitched just below the $12,000 threshold at which political donations have to be disclosed to the Australian Electoral Commission.

An email from Loughnane went out to potential business observers on Tuesday afternoon, after two days of hearings in the Icac inquiry into the Eightbyfive slush fund, which, Icac has heard, took banned donations from property developers to fund specific Liberal party campaigns.

The Icac revelations have ignited criticism from inside and outside the Liberal party about influence peddling in NSW, after the former state Labor government was embroiled in controversy over its former ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald and the granting of mine licences.

The federal breakfast offers business people access to senior levels of the Abbott government at the Liberal party’s federal council in June.

“Senior Ministers and party officials will take part in the briefing, which will also include a breakfast on Friday morning addressed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott,” Loughnane writes.

The invitation offers breakfast with the prime minister, a morning tea briefing on the state of the Senate, afternoon tea with ministerial chiefs of staff and a policy lunch, all for a “registration fee” of $11,000.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/11000-for-breakfast-with-tony-abbott-access-to-senior-ministers-chiefs-of-staff

 

Tony is pissing on voters for a hefty fee but showing signs of incompetence as well... We knew that a long time ago, didn't we?... The Prime Minister office and the government should be above "politics", thus above asking for a fee to be seen farting together at a useless-policy lunch... This of course smells of lobbyistic bribery. Tony Abbott should be sent to ICAC immediately, though as usual, I don't think Tony would have a clue about anything... Like Sinodinos', his memory would already be of the verge of Alzheimer's. Like an old man in a hospice, Tony wondles in the dark, incontinently and incompetently pissing on himself... Sad oh sad....

 

free university education does not work...

I know. It's a crazy heading. But when you see all the likes that have benefited from the free education in the late 1970s and early 1980s, you know you have major fucup. Tony Abbott and many of his cohorts were beneficiaries of free university educashum... Tony even got a Rhodes scholarship I believe. You can see for yourself that IT DID NOT WORK AND IT DOES NOT WORK. The Liberal (CONservatives) loonies in Canberra could not organise "a piss up in a brewery"... Really think about it... They had to go and dig some ultra right wing FACELESS MEN to concoct a commission of audits, whatever that is, to make sure people will slash their wrists...

$15 bux to go and visit your doctor who bulk-bills Medicare! May as well die pickled in a barrel... Makes life not worth living when you're sick. I know it's designed to stop you and discover you have a deadly illness like pancreatic cancer. These morons want you to die before you see a doctor... Why not have more police to check and make sure you "don't abuse the system"? That would create employment in the totalitarian sector, would it not?

 

And should you be employed in the public sector, they want to chop about 5 per cent of your mates (or yourself if they can discover in which dark corner you work— and why not a figure like 4.97 or 5.12 per cent which would show that they maximised the study of efficiency of the public service right to the bone). Rich bastards who want you to take the can for their mates who are selling holes to the Chinese...

Yes, if Tony and his loony mates are exemplar of free university, it shows that FREE UNIVERSITY DOES NOT WORK. THESE MORONS never learnt a thing...

idiotville...

 

Tony Abbott is about to vanish in a puff of existential meaninglessness. Sorry if that sounds heavy, but it seems an inevitable consequence on budget night if he goes ahead with this debt levy proposal. “No new taxes” he boomed in the throes of his anti-Carbon Tax blitz before adding ecstatically: “this is my whole reason for being in politics”.

Surprise! Not just for voters, or journalists, but for senior members of Abbott’s very own no-surprises government. “There was no communication from the leader’s office,” revealed one anonymous Liberal. “It’s the biggest f... up we’ve had in a long time.” All of which begs one gigantic question: why? Why would Abbott go anywhere near something so politically dicey, without even consulting his colleagues properly?

Perhaps it might be worth violating a Prime Minister’s self-declared raison d’etre and breaking an utterly foundational election promise if it were they only way to stave off Armageddon. But even as emergency fundraising this doesn’t make sense. On any reading, the levy would cover only a tiny fraction of the country's debt. And that's before you factor in how it might encourage people with money to spend less, thereby taking profits away from businesses, and taxes away from the same government apparently so desperate to get more revenue.

The only feasible explanation can be that Abbott was searching frantically for a policy that hit middle-to-high-income earners. It's one thing to prepare us for budget pain and tell us it's necessary, but it's quite another to convince people that it's fair. To do that, you need to show - and not merely assert - that everyone will bear some of the brunt. And before this week Abbott had very little to offer anyone looking for examples of rich people making sacrifices. Nothing on, say superannuation or private health insurance. And especially nothing on Paid Parental Leave.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-swaps-gender-politics-for-rich-friends-tax-20140501-zr2hw.html#ixzz30VjwzHzb