Gus: I hope all the glib attack on Julia's Labor government come and haunt Abbott... When he mentioned "a government for grown ups" in reference to his team of has-beens, my spine shivered. Several (all) of Tony's spruiking comments were equally as bad. And his teams of 'all Grumpy and Dopey —no Snow White" have shown their bilious side beyond what is acceptable.

From Peter Hartcher:

 

Coalition lets it rip but the spray is too ferocious September 11, 2010

Two conflicting urges struggled within Tony Abbott's breast on Tuesday evening as he dealt with the news that Julia Gillard would form the next government.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Abbott began his press conference at Parliament House. "The longest election is finally over. The Coalition won more votes and more seats than our opponents, but sadly, we did not get the opportunity to form a government."

This was the first urge, to frustration and anger, as Abbott promised to hold the government "ferociously to account".

For most of human history, surges of frustration and anger, untamed and untutored, led tribes to kill each other in bloody power struggles as they held each other "ferociously to account".

But primitive passions are constrained by higher calls. Abbott continued: "Obviously, I'm disappointed about that but that's our system and I certainly am not going to let my disappointment at the result blind me to the great strengths of our system, which I will always respect."

This was the second urge, devotion to duty and convention. It was absolutely the right response.

But the rest of the Coalition frontbench apparently missed this point. Abbott's promise to respect the system was comprehensively trashed by his own frontbench. Only 16 hours later, the Coalition let loose the most dangerous accusation in Australian politics since the constitutional crisis of 1975.

The Liberals' deputy leader in the Senate and a former barrister, George Brandis, opened the attack: "Most Australians wanted a change of government. Your government has as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team," he told Labor's Craig Emerson on ABC radio.

At a 3pm doorstop the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, had his turn: "This is an illegitimate government. It is the first time, certainly since World War II, that a party - either Liberal or Labor - with the fewer seats forms government. That is inherently unstable … Julia Gillard didn't win the vote. She didn't have the majority of seats."

...

Yet the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, plainly disagreed by swearing in Gillard as Prime Minister.

And it's no wonder. The constitution is clear. "The constitution doesn't speak to the question of legitimacy at all," says a constitutional lawyer at Melbourne University's Law School, Professor Simon Evans.

The word "legitimacy" belongs not to constitutional law, says Evans, but to "a different domain of discourse." Yes, the way the opposition has been using it, it's about politics and spin and psychological warfare. It's not based in the constitution and it's not based in law.

"There is only one test under the constitution - who has the confidence of the House based on a seat count when it's tested on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"It's not what party people belong to but whether a government can win votes of confidence and other vital matters. It's a very practical and operational test - who can hold the confidence of the House."

And on this test - the only test - the Gillard government has the numbers thanks to the three independents and one Green who have said publicly that they will support Labor on votes of confidence and supply.

With the support of these four, plus the 72 seats that Labor won, the Gillard government will have the narrowest margin possible, 76 seats in a 150-seat chamber, a majority of one.

But one is all it needs. That is the system. To claim that it is illegitimate is constitutionally wrong and legally baseless. It is also deliberately misleading and politically hypocritical.

....

See toon at top...

Kinder, gentler? Welcome back to the nasty old paradigm

September 11, 2010   (By Mike Carlson SMH)

Phew. We dodged the bullet. Only those two doughty independents, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, saved the nation from a Coalition government that would have been the most corrosive and divisive in generations.

Simple maths make the point. Last Sunday Tony Abbott was claiming that "fourteen million Australians have given the Coalition the most seats and the most votes''.

That was a typical Phoney fudge - lie might be a better word. In fact, the nation hung left. In primary votes for the House of Representatives, the two main parties of the left, Labor and the Greens, scored just over three-quarters of a million more votes than the Liberals and their camp followers. The swing to the Greens was about 4 per cent; the Coalition, for all its thumping of hairy chests, scraped up a feeble 1.5 per cent.

Abbott had smuggled a very small budgie. For him to have become prime minister would have been a perversion of the will of the people. Despite all the hoo-ha, he remains as unelectable as ever.

Naturally, there were deafening howls of rage from thwarted Tories. The Gillard government had "as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team'', sneered the Queensland Liberal senator George Brandis. We are going to hear a lot about legitimacy in the angry months ahead.

That yapping poodle, Christopher Pyne, the opposition's manager of business in the house, gave due warning. ''This will not be a parliament where all of its history is turned on its head and we all sit around smoking a peace pipe singing Kumbaya,'' he said. Phoney himself promised to hold the government " ferociously to account".

So much for the kinder, gentler polity. Forget the new paradigm. The opposition will set out, with a vengeance, to spoil and wreck. It's always been the conservatives' last resort when denied their god-given right to rule.

They will do their worst to render government and Parliament unworkable. In the House of Representatives they will behave like bikies in a beer garden brawl, with interminable points of order, shouted abuse, a constant uproar of urgency and no-confidence motions. In the Senate they will rail against every full stop and comma in every bill put before them, with the support of the idiotic Stephen Fielding from the Family First Party.

And on top of all that we will have mad Bob Katter gambolling around the landscape like Henry Lawson's loaded dog.

The lies and the distortions, the hysterics and the duplicity will be on an epic scale. All to force another election as soon as possible. And in this, of course, Abbott & Co will be urged on by their cheerleaders in the media who, if anything, are even more furious at the inexplicable refusal of the voters to obey instructions. [Amen to that]

Oakeshott and Windsor can expect special malice. They will be bullied, traduced, and demeaned. It's already begun.

NE OUBLIE.

 

I have been slightly pleased at the post-election attitude of some of the media in that they concede their influence was virtually the catalyst that confirmed their power over the elected governmnet of Australia.

There is no doubt in my mind that the ABC has become a biased basis for corporation propaganda and has even worsened since the Howard "New Order" did the major reshuffle of all heads of departments including the once trustworthy ABC.

 

I watched the eposode of Lateline some nights ago and I would like to quote just a few influencial admissions from the Murdoch/ABC coalition.....

 

LAURA TINGLE: Leigh, I think that there's been a long history of tension particularly with The Australian with Kevin Rudd, and it was always seen as an issue with The Australian rather than News Limited.

The News Limited tabloids have seemed to have escalated their sort of aggression towards the Labor Party during the election campaign, but I think it's really been the post-campaign push against the attacks on the credibility of a minority government as an idea, the attacks on the independents and the Greens which have made people think this isn't going to go away.

We're not quite sure why this is happening, but we've gotta decide whether we actually confront this or whether we just let it go through to the keeper.

And I suppose the interesting thing is I think there are interesting issues here for both News Limited and for the Government (legitimate adversaries)because there are all these commercial decisions that the Government will have to take which have a direct impact on News, and it's a very big elephant in the room and I think we don't really know how that's going to play out.

And it's also not just Labor; it's the Greens and the independents and we've got Bob Brown now talking about how he's had enough of the way News Limited has been behaving and he's not gonna cop it anymore.

LEIGH SALES: George Megalogenis, I don't want to put you in an awkward position, I'm sorry, but you are a News Limited journalist (and ABC Insider) so I can't let that go without asking you to respond. Do you have anything to say in response to Laura's remarks?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS: Well, the thing I agree with Laura - this was about Kevin Rudd. Kevin Rudd let not just The Australian get into his head, [did he not recognise his enemy] but pretty much everyone.

You know, he had a falling out with our newspaper, (well no Australian elected Prime Minister can do that when his existence depends on his servitude to the Murdoch empire and - because of that) he had a falling out with his department head, he had a falling out with his Cabinet, his backbench and eventually all of Queensland and most of the rest of the Australian electorate, so this idea of a stoush between the newspaper and the Prime Minister, I think a lot more of it was in the Prime Minister's head, the former prime minister's head than it might have been in News Limited's head. Fair dinkum.

The thing that really concerns Labor ministers from what I'm told by some of them (Murdoch license) is not what's in our paper but the fact that the ABC will take a cut and paste and broadcast our line across the rest of the country.

I was keen on the three stooges - Murdoch "slowly turned" and what did he see? Wake up Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

THE ROLE OF THE CROWN IN AUSTRALIA'S CONSTITUTION

Preamble. "Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established."

While it may not be well known or understood, the centerpiece of the Australian Constitution is the Crown. Consider for a moment the frequency of references to the crown and monarchy in the Constitution: the word "Queen" is mentioned thirty-nine times, the words "Her Majesty" eleven times, and the words "the Crown" four times. All this terminology can be safely wrapped into one phrase, "the Crown," since the constitutional emphasis is on the principle of the Crown, not the actual person who wears it. Abbott says that the Australian Founding Fathers were not enamored with the human personality of the Queen, because the charismatic personal Crown of the Middle Ages had long given way to the dignified Crown recognized by Bagehot as the embodiment of people and state (ABBOTT 1997:9).

It is the Crown that stands as the common denominator of the six states in the Australian federation. As the quintessence of the people, the nation, and all aspects of government, the Crown also represents continuity, civilization, culture, and even Judeo-Christianity (note the reference to "Almighty God" in the preamble or study the coronation ceremony and oath). The Crown is above politics and unlike politicians, who represent their party, constituency, or special interest group, the Crown is empowered and duty-bound to represent everyone. As such, it is uniquely qualified to symbolize the unity of the states, the people, and the nation as a whole, something that politicians are rarely able to do.

(Adding a part of an e-mail)

The contention has been put forward that local government councillors hold
> an "office of profit under the Crown" and are therefore disqualified from
> being members of Parliament. If this is right, Russell Matheson (Liberal),
> who has won the seat of Macarthur, Jane Prentice (LNP), who has won the
> seat
> of Ryan, Natasha Griggs (Country Liberals) who has won the seat of
> Solomon,
> as well as George Christensen (LNP), who has won the seat of Dawson, could
> all be disqualified for being sitting councillors when they nominated for
> parliament.
>
COMMENT:   It would seem to me that the Crown still being the all encompassing power of all matters concerning “governance” of the Nation and the States and all such positions of power and trust that require an election to be held should be clearly upheld.

This legislation, approved by the Crown, clearly shows the very intention of the qualification standards to be applied to protect the citizens from being represented by unqualified people.  It appears to me that it is necessary for these protections to be applied without fear or favour or, why have them at all?

 Labor and/or the Greens should apply to the High Court for this matter to be resolved now so that some certainty can be accepted for this government and all of those to come.

 

NE OUBLIE.

 

 

 

Over the years I have wondered at the respect commanded by Ted Mack during his years of political consistency.

It seems to me that this man has the brain that doesn't automatically judge anything.  He calmly thinks reasons and uses logic before he makes a statement.  These statements are usually the type that isn't quite judgemental but because his words they carry some of his charisma and it is easy to agree with him.  He will be a great loss to politics.

IMHO his take on the three independents and their choices was remarkable in it simplicity and logic.  They are probably the most experienced political members of the House of Representatives and not the confused fools portrayed by the Corporation’s media.

I notice that the Murdoch empire’s direct interference in our political considerations have been the worst in my memory and yet – it is only after the event that some people of influence are speaking out against this monopoly and its methods of portraying OPINIONS to appear as NEWS.

The thrashing that Murdoch gave to Kevin Rudd as described by one of Murdoch’s minions on Lateline [Megalogenis] as due to a “falling out with our newspaper” (this is a political death wish in Australia?) and with all other humans in or out of his parliamentary party, he was apparently happy with his unsubstantiated blackening of a brilliant man’s standing with the public in general even though, like the treatment of Mark Latham, it served no useful purpose.

Then, after conning the entire public into believing that Julia was more popular than Kevin and would do better in an election – the Murdoch’s capitalized on the legal and painless removal of the P.M. who had the temerity “not to obey Murdoch” and suddenly painted their previous choice, Julia Gillard, as a back stabber and gave her buggery too.

WHY?  It is my belief and has been since the change in PM’s that Murdoch’s target was the Labor government itself, even if it was led by Benyamin Netanyahu – maybe not that much.

Murdoch had dined and wined with his chosen pigeon Abbott who, on the basis of his disastrous political and civil performances, was about as electable as G.W. Bush in Iraq.

Murdoch, with his apparently well paid and obedient Journalists, tried to solve two of his control conundrums in one go.  Zip Abbott’s mouth and don’t let him answer questions, while painting him as a man who has been born again in the Murdoch mould, that is shut up and do as you’re told.

It worked, with of course a lot of one-sided push in Abbott’s direction, NOT of what HE had achieved but, what Rudd and Gillard had not.

We Australians are entitled to know the news that is proven or at least initialled by someone who is to take responsibility for any suggestion of “some witnesses said”.

If anything, Murdoch has made me more proud of the Prime Minister Julia Gillard than I was before.  The expected Gender surge did not happen so the Labor party’s tendency to support women in politics did NOT receive any significant support from the women of this country who for years have complained about the “glass ceiling”.

While we fair dinkum Australians do what we can to maintain control of our nation, we should lean more and more to the absence of gender; race; religion or colour and, the only way to do that is to force the Murdochracy into obeying the rules of the “Editorial Court Case” as I call it.

Well might we say – did we vote for Murdoch' choice because he was the winner and the rest of us have to sleep with our eyes open against the “ferocious” attacks and lies of the “born to rule” who failed their Murdoch patron.

One of our non-Murdoch economical commentators Ross Gittens, was saddened by the fact that the Rudd/Gillard/Swan government was the only government in the industrialized world that avoided the recession and maintained employment.  This meant that the people out there who believed the Murdoch garbage, betrayed the Government that protected them because – THEY DIDN’T NOTICE IT?  Fair dinkum!

How appreciate the Rose without knowing the thorn?  NE OUBLIE.