In a warning aimed at negative political campaigns, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has aired her concern at the emotional toll faced by Peter Slipper in the fallout from the speaker affair.
After what she admits has been a brutal year in politics, Ms Gillard said she was ''concerned about Peter Slipper as a human being'' caught ''in the eye of a media storm''.
Mr Slipper made some ''grievous errors, including his offensive texts [but] he has a family, he is human, and he has been under stress and strain'', Ms Gillard said in an exclusive interview with Fairfax Media.
Ms Gillard has no doubts about who was to blame for the brutal year in politics, which included the Craig Thomson affair, the asylum seeker issue, the Peter Slipper-James Ashby case and the AWU slush fund.

''All of it was the decision and style of the opposition under Tony Abbott,'' she said. ''They will always go for the negative and go in hard against the individual. I think Australians are heartily sick of such politics, and next year will offer voters a real choice.''

She took aim at the Coalition over the unsuccessful sexual harassment case launched against Mr Slipper by his former staffer, Mr Ashby.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/gillard-worried-about-slipper-20121215-2bgds.html#ixzz2F9tmMBGn

AMONG the commentariat, Niki Savva has an unusual depth of political experience and nous. She has grasped, better than anyone, the nuances of the political shadow play that is now going on in Canberra with the leitmotif of sentimentality. In doing so she has discerned something the leadership group of the Coalition has yet to address: this is a battle Abbott cannot win.

The cleverness of the Gillard campaign is not that it presents positive reasons to vote for her but that it stops many of his counter-moves dead in their tracks. 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/abbott-cannot-fight-gillards-sentimentality

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Only in the merde-och press, one reads crappy articles like this one above... 

I have not seen Julia hiding behind sentimentality, did you?

To the contrary, we've seen the little shit Abbott being protected by a conterie of women and mincing men, like Pyne, as if Tony was a fragile sentimental bloke — but is really a boofhead often hurling pigs inside a china shop...

Thus is introduced another article by Chris Berg who tries very hard to appear partisan-less but does a lousy job of it... He tells us with confidence:

"The former claim inflates the importance of politics. It's easy for the political class to imagine the whole country lives on their every word. It flatters the politicians, who want desperately to believe when the government changes the country changes. It flatters the pundits, who imagine their interpretation of the momentous events of Canberra are of great significance. It patronises everybody else."  

This moderated crap? Coming from a fellow who tells us every second day, with virulence, what we should do POLITICALLY?... Amazing, the ABC has no shame, pushing more of the idotic ideas from Chris Berg, week in week out.

Last week we saw a glimpse of the narratives we can expect to see from Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott in their election bids. While one acknowledged complexity, the other delivered only spin, says Greg Jericho.

Last week the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition both gave speeches at the National Press Club on similar issues, but from quite different perspectives: one saw a complex world; the other, easy solutions.

It's rare for a politician to acknowledge complexity in an argument because it often involves admitting the worth of the other side's point of view and sometimes your own policy's failures.

Thus it was rather stunning last Wednesday to see the Prime Minister begin her speech with, as she put it, "a warts-and-all look at who we are today and the opportunities and risks which confront us".

She noted for example that travel times for workers was increasing "by as much as an hour and a half in the past decade" and that "as many as 1 in 6 workers spend more than an hour every day getting to and from their job".

She also noted that the price of electricity and gas has "increased by 120 per cent in the last decade and 26 per cent in the last two years".

Given the ALP has been in power for half of the past decade and all of the past two years, this is a pretty stunning way to begin a speech in an election year. 

Gillard then acknowledged the two competing realities that "despite low inflation and low interest rates, we still feel these pressures on living standards".

Tony Abbott's speech last Thursday also began by addressing the cost of living, but he saw no low inflation, nor any complexity. He merely noted that, "It's clear to us what you, our fellow Australians, want: you want less pressure on your cost of living." His solution was simple: "The carbon tax will be gone - so power prices will fall."

The reality of course is that electricity accounts for on average 2 per cent of households' annual expenditure; it's just that the bill comes in a big whack so people notice it.

It is an axiom of politics that you can never tell voters that they've never had it so good. But the cost of living figures released last week by the ABS showed that the increase in annual cost of living is currently running significantly below average.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4502492.html?WT.svl=theDrum

The complexity of reality: Tony Abbott is a populist idiot...

Hi Gus.

I don't know where the claim that average household expenditure on electricity is only 2% ... maybe from Jenny Macklin's office?

Anyway, it's certainly a whole lot more down our way, where we are paying an average of $12 a day!!

Putting aside the fact that we have to pump all the water we use (because we are not connected to town water), both inside & outside, the fact remains that we (people living in Cooma, Narooma, Batemans Bay, Griffith, Dubbo & Tamworth) pay 16% more for our electricity than do the people of Sydney & a whopping 33% more than the folks living in Nowra, Wollongong, Goulburn, Bowral or Orange, even though the electricity is supplied by the same organisation.

Dullard's observation that electricity prices have risen by 120% in the last decade belies the fact that they have risen by more than 100% in the past 5 years.

Neither she, nor Abbott, would have any idea about 'cost of living pressures', any more than Jenny Macklin does.

Cheers.

No-one has any idea of the "cost of living" pressure... No-one does... except those who don't have enough and have to spend too much to live and supplement the difference with St Vinnies... And in general things are not going to improve since our financial institution do not include the cost of what we have been doing to the planet, now and later... 

The rising cost of electricity is a sore point, and I believe Greg Jericho made a blue on his 2 per cent... Electricity bill, on average, is about $4000 a year per family of four... The cost of the carbon tax to families was supposed to be around 9 per cent for the rebate to be between 400 and 500 dollars... But electricity cost have soared mostly due to the gargantuan "rewiring" (necessary? Efficient?) that used to be amortised by government deficit in the past. Now in this user pays-within-14-days world, the cost of such are directly passed on by private companies — plus profits to shareholders and bonuses to CEOs  — like the 9 million bucks or so annual bonus to the CEO of AGL... Someone's got to pay for this. 

As well the cost of setting up "alternative energy" has been huge though the running cost are negligible to a point... These costs are also directly factored in, though the carbon tax is design to amortise some of this, while in the past government deficits (or borrowings and bonds as they use to call them) would have been used to absorbed such infrastructure. The rising cost of energy, including electricity, is a world-wide phenomenon.

In the long run, the cost of electricity might plateau for a couple of years when the wiring of the place is finished — and of course a government would take credit for stabilising prices at last — though eventually we will have to switch to total alternative renewable energy — that is dump coal, petrol, car and planes... This should have happened at least 15 years ago. But we're still playing a silly game of double or nothing knowing we're going to get double the troubles by 2100. We know. This is not a fancy fairy tale. It's as scientific as the apple falling on Newton's head.

Cars and/or bicycles will have to become sun driven or pedal powered. Even China after too many days of smog in Beijing, is planning for a reduction of use of coal.

This is the fog of finance for you... It has nothing to do with understanding how the natural balance works on this planet within its own "normal" range of operation — including "outside" forays from this range when cataclysmic events turn up. We are way beyond the cataclysmic conditions with human species trading beads on the surface. Our financial institutions may have been designed to help us at first (help most of us at least, ah-ah) but now they have been modified to rob most (us) and leave us strip naked in the street at the whim of the merdochracy where the word bend-over is writ in the subtext. And we love it. 

The price of kilowatt/hour is thus a sore point. At the moment it oscillates between 26 cents and 44 cents depending on usage and the speed of winds... Industries that depend on high usage of electric power get a discount otherwise they may as well close shop and let swell the ranks of the unemployed — especially with a dollar so high against the Greenback that the tanked Euro, the Canadian pesos and the Japanese roubles are in the same boat as the Aussie dollar. 

Much of the electric deals companies get is "confidential" but let's assume they pay 18 cents per kilowatt/hour or a bit less. 

Julia knows things are crook on this subject and not much can be done since the wholesale has been privatised/corporatised/Statetised/profitised. Like when the GIO (NSW government owned then) was dishing out 39 dollars green slip, insurance companies used to clamour with the help of the mass media that they could provide the same service much cheaper, say 29 dollars... We let them do it because we (not me — I predicted the sting ahead of time) saw a quick savings that soon turned into a massive price hike within a couple of years... At least the switch provided the governments with liberated cash since they did not have to hold reserve to pay for compensation... Soon the insurance industry and their re-insurers had to jack up prices to protect profits and acquire the lawyers to fight compensation cases. Rarely does the insurance industry loose money except during cataclysmic times... AND WE'RE GOING TO SEE MORE OF THESE... Thus insurance premiums are going to go through the roof and/or the governments will have to fork out the difference — while those whose lives have been destroyed will try to find who to blame, especially trying to blame the greenies. 

Should we cop it on the chin?... go back to basket weaving and travel on foot... It won't be a choice but a necessity by 2075, though we won't. Some of us, a small elite of rat-bags will carry on burning fuel in powerboats between Bellevue Hill and our retirement village of Dover Heights (we own the place, don't we?) when the sea level have risen to our front doors... Most of the rest of us will be huddling in caves dug in the canyons of the Blue Mountains — barely daring to get out into the scorching heat and massive electrical storms to go and pick wild genetically modified berries...

Sure I am exaggerating here, but by 2400, things will be very coarse weather-wise... How can we "understand" so far?... Que sera sera? No? Insha'Allah? No... Neither... 2400 is only the same time distance from here backwards to the times of Shakespeare, who understood human nature so well, it has become a sub-model to explain our psychopathic behaviour. 

Our general behaviour is not improving as fast as our home improvements...

But let's plod on through the bad patches. 

While Tony promises to remove the carbon tax of which we pay say 9 per cent on our electricity bills — but most of us get a government discount — this will be offset very quickly by the cost of renewable (solar, wind) and coal rising... Thus the bill will be the same cost, we won't get our government tax compensation as presently, eventually being worse off by say 500 dollars per year on electricity cost under Tony's loony scheme... That might force us to do more saving by turning lights off, but the way the bills are structured, all the supply companies have to do is jack up the rental cost... and they do after having caught your attention with an irresistible discount.. and we will have to run our air conditioning (I don't have one) all day because of the warming. 

So what do we do? In order to dismantle capitalism and minimise its destruction of the planet, we need to get off its teats. But we've got to do it gently efficiently and quietly... Hush... while trying to convince 90 per cent of the people to refrain from fast food outlets... It's a big ask and one can only see failure spelled out in big letters on the horizon... Though it is not doom for all, only to those who cannot adapt to a more frugal life... Like one fellow I know. he used to be the CEO of a big company... From what I understand his marriage tanked, everyone wanted his moneys and the skin of his arse... He gave everything away. Does not have a car, just walks. He lives in a one room rat-hole flat that takes a bit of his pension... He reads books, eats and sleeps well, and he is happy. Would not dream any better. 

But as soon as we try to grow our own or buy more from the organic shop or growers, the system will make us offers we'll find hard to refuse: a 20 cent burger as a promotion, for example, for a NEW taste in a stack of GM pineapple/beetroot between slices of lovely pink ground protein the provenance of which we shan't ask.... Should we bite not, the system will devalue our homes so much, that our equity in them would not buy us a sandwich...

The disparity between country and city electricity is crook... By and large country folks earn less, the value of their homes is less and public transport is sometimes run by retirees between two games of bowls. Thus we city-folks should be subsidising the cost of electricity to the country areas like we're doing presently with the NBN...

We shall investigate... But by and large, Tony Abbott is a populist idiot.