Friday 29th of March 2024

a bugger of a week...

bugger...

 

When Sam Dastyari was promoted to the shadow ministry earlier this year, Bill Shorten was unable, because of the opposition’s salary cap rules, to give him a pay rise.

But now Dastyari can surely apply for a lavish bonus from Malcolm Turnbull, because his stuff up in accepting money from a Chinese firm was the only thing that stood between his stupidity and a week of total humiliation for the government.

It was not only the defeats on the floor of the House of Representatives in the dying hours of proceedings; these were a fitting climax to a shambolic two days in which the Prime Minister was constantly on the back foot, driven by Shorten’s agenda to the extent that his own program – the great political, economic, moral issue of budget reform was barely visible.

And when it was visible, it, too, was a stuff up. When Scott Morrison launched his much-vaunted omnibus bill on Wednesday, it immediately showed a $107 million dollar hole – a simple arithmetical error. In the grand scheme of things this should not have mattered much, but in the circumstances it looked careless, even slapdash – another case of the government desperate to get something, anything, on the table without seriously considering what it was really doing.

And then came Thursday, with Tony Abbott firebombing what was supposed to be a conciliatory meeting with backbenchers about just how the government’s once iron clad changes to superannuation were to be negotiated. Abbott slammed Morrison over the whole package, demanding that not only should the rich be left unscathed, but the poor should be dudded in the process.

It won’t happen quite like that, but it would have made it clear to Morrison, and more importantly to Turnbull, that Abbott was now claiming the de facto leadership of the conservatives, and by extension of the party. There is no overt challenge – yet. But Abbott is on the move; his very public love in with Pauline Hanson would not have improved Turnbull’s mood either. In a horrible week for Turnbull, it was yet another warning that he will have to watch his back, as well as his front and his sides.

read more: http://johnmenadue.com/blog/?p=7609

 

when pauline went to prison...

 

It was somewhere down in Toffsville in a city's smoke and steam,

That a blueblood club existed, called the Oik Exploiters Team.

As a Privatising Greed-Gang 'twas a marvellous success,

For the Members were distinguished by unseen, unscreened largesse.

They had 'economic policies' so nice and smooth and sleek,

('Cos their opportunist owners changed the bastards once a week.)

And they started up for Oxley in pursuit of Anti-votes,

For they meant to (quietly) help these angries hit their angry notes.

Despatched their useful 'Leader' (social-climbing Sydney grub),

 

 

'Ere they started operations on the Anti-Every Club.

 

G'Day. As you read Howard's blather on Hanson today (PM labels Hanson's jail sentence 'severe'), bear in mind that his close mate and political hatchet man Tony Abbott - the bloke who hand-picked the appalling David Oldfield to work in his Canberra office - was involved in destroying One Nation.

Last night's Johnathan Harley Lateline report Hanson's fall the result of long campaign is instructive. Abbott got disaffected One Nation member Terry Sharples a barrister with close Liberal Party connections to mount a civil case against the registration of One Nation and promised Sharples he'd help fund the case. He denied this on the record to Four Corners. When confronted with a document proving his lie, he said misleading the ABC was not as bad as misleading Parliament. We know from the last couple of weeks that misleading parliament is cool these days. Here's an extract from Deborah Snow's SMH feature Absolute Abbott published March 11, 2000.

After One Nation shocked the Coalition by winning 11 seats in Queensland in June 1998, Abbott determined to dig up every piece of dirt he could on Hanson and her associates. He soon hooked up with Terry Sharples, a Gold Coast accountant and disgruntled One Nation candidate.

Sharples had evidence he believed could show One Nation had fraudulently registered as a political party in Queensland. This was potential dynamite. If successful, it could stop One Nation receiving half a million dollars of public money under the State's electoral funding laws, money that otherwise would flow into the movement's Federal election war chest.

Abbott's troubles began with a meeting he instigated with Sharples at the Brisbane offices of solicitors Minter Ellison on July 7, 1998. Also present were the late Ted Briggs, a disaffected former State treasurer of One Nation, and Tom Bradley, a solicitor and a mate of Abbott from student politics.

 

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/22/1061529330032.html

 

a gong from abbott is worth the turd paper it's written on...

The former prime minister Tony Abbott has praised Pauline Hanson as an “honourable exception” to the populism of the crossbench and criticised his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, for “freelancing” when he served on Abbott’s frontbench.

Abbott made the comments in a wide-ranging interview on 2GB Radio in which he called his own possible return to the frontbench an “interesting proposition” and mused that he was not as busy as he used to be.

Abbott said Hanson was a “much more mature politician and parliamentarian” than when she first came to Canberra in the 1990s.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/14/tony-abbott-says-...

 

Meanwhile Hanson is holding fire while Tony is waiting to be hit in the face...