Bureaucrats insisted they were simply trying to balance the public's right to know with "privacy" issues surrounding Mr Abbott's "beverage preferences".

The blow up over alcohol purchases came hours after it was revealed at the same committee that a marble coffee table in Mr Abbott's suite had been smashed – apparently as a result someone dancing on it during a wild party on the night he lost the leadership to Malcolm Turnbull.

The issue of alcohol purchases centred on a Freedom of Information request submitted by Senator Wong earlier in the year.

Despite a statutory duty to deal with FOI requests within 30 days, the department did not respond for six months and when it did, the receipts of Mr Abbott's alcohol purchases were all but blacked out after officials decided brands of beers and wine favoured by the then prime minister were part of his "personal information".

The receipts show that $7340 worth of alcohol was purchased in a less than two month period between February 9 and April, to supply Mr Abbott's personal functions in Sydney and Canberra.

Holding up one of the heavily redacted receipts, Senator Wong said: "It looks like an exhibit out of Utopia." In a recent episode of the ABC TV comedy, fictional bureaucrats debate all the ways not to release a publicly-accessible document.

"Seriously, you must have run out of toner," Senator Wong observed.

First assistant secretary Pip Spence, who adjudicated on the FOI request, said in her opinion it was not in the public interest to know which brand of riesling the prime minister might favour.

Senator Wong said: "How is that personal information where you choose to spend taxpayer's money? How is that personal information? This is like a Utopia episode all over again."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-alcohol-preferences-remain-secret-as-penny-wong-lambasts-utopia-bureaucrats-20151019-gkd0pz.html#ixzz3p0x1XjIL
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Tony Abbott has announced he will pay for a marble table smashed during a party he held after being toppled as Prime Minister.

Key points:

• Senate hearing heard cleaners found broken remnants of marble table morning after spill night
• Tony Abbott takes "full responsibility", asks DPS to invoice him for the value of the table
• Labor's Pat Conroy says the matter should have been resolved earlier

 

Mr Abbott held the spill night send-off for staff and colleagues after Malcolm Turnbull claimed the Liberal leadership last month.

Parliamentary officials believe the table "may have been damaged by a person standing or dancing upon it".

"During this event, a coffee table was damaged," Mr Abbott said in a statement.

"I have asked my office to have the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS) invoice me for the value of the table.

"It was my event so I take responsibility for it."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-19/tony-abbott-will-pay-for-marble-table-broken-at-his-event/6867634

Here's hoping, because as Q&A made clear, challenges abound. China, mostly. Syria, immediately. Climate change, now and forever.

On China, the debate focused on the broader question of whether Australia leans towards its traditional alliance with the US or strikes a more independent posture, and more specifically on territorial rights in the South China Sea. Sow Keat Tok, of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Melbourne University, had worrying warnings on the latter situation.

The Americans, he said, were "basically playing a game of chicken ... who is going to blink first?"

Left unsaid: what if no one blinks?

Alison Broinowski​, author and former Australian diplomat, suggested Australia needed to re-examine its blind faith in the US alliance. "The idea that we ... are protected by the US from anything and everything is completely erroneous. It is becoming more erroneous now because the US is losing its grip on sole, hegemonic power. It is still enormously powerful economically and military, of course, but it is losing its capacity to fight wars and win them. Don't forget that since 1945 we have fought numerous wars with the US, and we haven't won one. This is not a good look. Even if it was a business, you would have to ask yourself would you go on investing in that, would you go on believing that this is the way to guarantee Australia's security?"

And on Syria, the live and looming war of the moment? Fair to say this assembly of great foreign-policy minds left you wondering where we're headed there given no one among them could summon a clear game plan, solution or predict an outcome.

The message for Malcolm overall: enjoy that honeymoon in the stratosphere, PM, because there's a world full of booby-traps awaiting when you come back down to earth.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/qa-recap-special-episode-on-oft-neglected-topic-serves-as-warning-for-turnbull-20151020-gkd3va.html#ixzz3p3bxq6se
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IF I HAVE TO SEE one more Canberra Press Gallery piece along the lines of "poor Prime Minister Turnbull besmirched by grubby Labor just because he is rich", I swear I will scream.

The phrases “politics of envy” and “class warfare” have been so overused in recent days and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why?

Bitching about Turnbull living in a mansion is apparently the "politics of envy". No. Sorry, raising the issue of your prime minister – the man who ultimately decides on who will be taxed in this nation and how much tax they will pay –choosing to invest in an offshore tax haven like the Caymans is not even close to the politics of envy. It is a shame punters are not aware of just how inappropriate this action by our prime minister is due to the current Press Gallery love fest with Mr Turnbull.

Look, I can understand the relief of the Press Gallery dealing with the likes of Malcolm Turnbull instead of the daily WTF! announcements endured under PM Abbott, but... the thrall they seem to held under with their shiny new PM is getting so embarrassing, the line "get a room" comes to mind.

As it seems most journalists in the Press Gallery have forgotten, I will remind them that it was just over 12 months ago at the Brisbane G20 the participants, including Australia, said they would “crack down on International Tax Havens”. We also had a "budget emergency" back in the day too? Considering our current budget deficit, instead of lauding Mr Turnbull for admitting he is rich – yes they did, go figure – they should be connecting the dots. Perhaps questioning, if due to these "tax haven" choices, could we actually trust Mr Turnbull to crack down on them, making them pay their taxes so ours did not have to be raised to pick up that burden, as we were promised only 12 short months ago?

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/class-clowns-the-press-gallerys-sickening-malcolm-turnbull-love-affair,8277

Remember the laughter that met Malcolm Turnbull when he told the NSW Liberals that there were no factions in the Party? Even more laughable was his claim that the Liberals were not beholden to big business. The removal of the requirement for private companies with a turnover of more than $100 million to reveal the amount of income tax they pay looks to me as being a classic example of the Liberal-National Party government acting in the interests of sections of big business.



Who will benefit from this removal of tax transparency? Among others — Gina Rinehart, James Packer and Russell Withers are all saved the bother of having the company tax their private companies pay revealed to you and me. Russell Withers I hear you ask. Oh, you may know him as the multibillionaire in charge of the 7-Eleven empire in Australia. God and the Turnbull government forbid we know how much his empire profits from the exploitation of vulnerable workers and how much tax his company pays.



...

The first reason the government offered for this change was that criminals would be tempted to kidnap the super-rich if their tax information was released. Evidently these criminals would troll through the ATO site (guaranteed to be almost incomprehensible to those without an accounting or similar background) for information about private companies rather than buy a copy of the BRW Rich List.

It has now become obvious that this excuse was made up by the government to provide a cover for its real reason for the change — to protect its rich mates from the public opprobrium that would arise when we realised how little they in fact were contributing in income tax to Australia. 



So the government came up with a second reason. We members of the public wouldn’t understand the figures and would draw incorrect conclusions from them. Yeah, that is what they really think of us. In their eyes we are just dumb plebs. Nothing to do with the fact that the figures might just reveal how little tax big business pays.



So what can we do? Well, if Labor and the Greens are serious about finding out how much or how little income tax big private businesses pay, they could grill the Commissioner of Taxation for the names and tax details of those companies. If he doesn’t provide them then they could jail him for contempt. Over to you Senator Dastyari.

 

You can follow John's blog enpassant.com.au or on Twitter @JohnPassant.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/turnbull-on-transparency-shielding-the-rich-and-shrouding-gulags-in-secrecy,8284

 

 

 

Malcolm and Lucy are in safe hands.

Paul McGeough, the Herald's chief overseas correspondent and a former editor, gets the last word.

He emailed me four weeks ago from Washington: "What a fabulous piece on Keating/Turnbull. I read it on the porch at our small farm near the Shenandoah. It was vintage Ramsey and gave me a lift of the kind in reading journalism that you don't get too often these days.

"I still dine out on the story of Saturday mornings and keeping an eye on the clock to see how long it would take David Marr to storm thru the door yelling, 'What the f---' as a prelude to a post-mortem about the failings of that day's paper, and invariably, just before or just after David, you would call and launch your own tirade with the same "What the f---.'  Stay well. Paul."

Apologies, But I couldn't resist sharing it.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/managing-malcolms-millions-20151022-gkg7gd.html#ixzz3pQV92a4T 
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As Alan Ramsay tells us the story of Josephine Linden and her family in relation to Turnbull's cash on the Cayman Islands, I cannot forget my past experiences with Polish Jews which taught me that you work hard for their money. This of course could sound racist — a bit like saying that Obama is a white man impersonator — aka Al Jolson.  

Should I leave this slippery slope here, before I get into too much hot water?

Well, this is me being also puzzled by Susan Butler, of the Macquarie Dictionary fame, trying to salvage some explanation for Abetz after he recently called an American Judge a "negro", on the marriage equality issue... Louise's argument seems to be relating to a generational gap in which old farts like me and Abetz fall into. Bollocks I'd say... I am much older than Abetz and I know my political correctness. For example mentioning the recent ancestry of Abetz being nazis could be very indecent of me, would it not? So I won't mention it. 

Being a satirist, one has to find the decency to not say certain things. Drawing them? Well, I could be sick. A compulsive sarcastic loony of the pen and paper. It's a disease.

In fact, I would not be so anti right-wingers if they did not believe that:
Global warming is crap
All people on welfare are bludgers
It's your fault if you are poor
God created the pigs more equal that the donkeys
Money is god
War is good for peace
They are born to rule
... But then that's what right-wing is about... 

And talking about words and meaning, one of the most used word in the Aussie lingo could be "rort"... A very good Aussie word. But then it comes back to politics:

In this case, calling another member a rorter is obviously demeaning. In Australian politics rorting the system is a common enough accusation, implying that quite legitimate processes are twisted to a use that was never intended. The word rort is a respelling of the word wrought, the past participle of the verb to work with the meaning used in metalworking of bending and twisting metal into the required shape. Thus we have wrought iron. The process of working the metal was used metaphorically for the process of working the system, but somehow in the transfer we forgot that we were using wrought from work, and began to respell the word as rort.

In the Victorian Parliament it was probably the repetitive use of the term that finally called the Speaker to act. The game then became to find synonyms for rorter that could be used instead. The first attempt in parliament was fraudster. Others supplied helpfully by the general public were to do with words like dodge and lurk and con.

I suggested that an old Australianism like illywhacker would keep the Speaker puzzled for long enough to get some mileage out of it. 

https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/news/view/editor/article/303/

Yes, I won't call ALL right-wingers bad sorts or rorters... There is 12 shades of grey... That was the gamut of tints in the tray we had when I was doing photo-retouching — including black and white. 

 

See the right-wing glory of the Daily Turdograph here: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/9800

 

PM Malcolm Turnbull is is looking like a goose overseas and a weakling back at home, writes Bob Ellis.

Turnbull’s bad luck continues.

The Japanese have just said they’ll be hunting whales again soon and, although there’s nothing he can do about it, his apparent cowardice on this issue will cost him one or two per cent in Greens' preferences his party won back on Abbott’s fall.

This is on top of the one or two per cent in Greens' preferences that Shorten won back last week with his greenhouse reduction target of 45 per cent — near double Turnbull’s.

Slowly – or not so slowly – the nation’s new leader is being shown to be a wuss; a smooth-talking wuss. On coal; on gay marriage; on nuclear waste; on the superannuation rorts of the rich; on raising or widening the GST, on rape, impregnation, suicide and murder on Manus, Nauru and Christmas Island, he’s been following in lockstep where Abbott once led and refusing to "have a conversation" with the Australian people about what he should do.

Once again, the times do not suit him. A republican beset by the golden glimmer of Wills and Kate; a wealthy tax avoider beseeching the middle class to pay more tax; a smiling optimist in a time of global terror and widening war; he seems shallow and careless and rich, smirking at the crimes on the high seas of Dutton, who this week put fleeing Bangladeshis in danger of their lives andsmuggled them into Indonesia which did not want them, illegally.

More and more he seems to lack substance and want resolve; to be a Peacock-like trimmer, an unrisen souffle, a lazy beaming socialite living off his family trust and banging on at dinner parties; a glittering anti-climax, a waste of space.

Will the truth of this show up in the polls soon? It’s hard to to say. The big lie that 4.5 million want Turnbull as prime minister and are nonetheless voting for Shorten seems to have been accepted by the pundits despite its utter implausibility. The Abbott-Andrews-Abetz insurgency seems to have been ignored. Most polling seems, for the moment, unlikely or insane.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/turnbull-dwindling,8438

 

I personally think there is method in the slow Turnbullic snail pace... When no one is looking, Turnbull will do a lefty move, then go right... He will capitulate gently, when the time is right, on most issues — taking the harden rightwingers to the soft caramello centre of politics. We shall see. But he's excruciatingly taking his time and ours... He is burning a lot of good will capital...