Monday 23rd of December 2024

I believe in santa claus...

santa henderson

 

The Australian body politic is clearly afflicted by the minority obsession - which has been around since Julia Gillard's formation of a minority government in September 2010. It seems likely to remain extant until the 2013 federal election, which is due around August.

For more than two years, a number of poor political decisions and misjudged statements can be directly attributed to the minority obsession's prevalence. Most recently, some of the assessments of the Federal Court in Ashby v Commonwealth of Australia.

Contrary to some politics-inspired commentary, Justice Steven Rares did not make any findings against the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, or indeed the aspiring Liberal Mal Brough, who is attempting to win the seat of Fisher, held by the independent MP and former speaker Peter Slipper. Rares's main criticisms were directed at the former aide James Ashby, who took a sexual harassment case against Slipper, and especially Ashby's solicitor, Michael Harmer.

Rares's finding that ''Ashby's predominant purpose for bringing these proceedings was to pursue a political attack against Mr Slipper and not to vindicate any legal claim he may have for which the right to bring proceedings exists'' is certainly compelling. Even so, the judge got himself into some trouble in providing reasons for his decision.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/minority-rule-makes-fools-of-both-sides-of-the-house-20121217-2bj7s.html#ixzz2FMe0hHlL


Yes, I do believe in Father Xmases, Santa Clauses and the fairies at the bottom of my garden. I love fairy tales...

Gerard Henderson spins a tale of innocuous Queensland LNP fairies having slightly mess up for  little pleasure, in the northern prairies... I would be prepared to believe Mal Brough got involved in the Peter Slipper saga out of self-promotion, but why do this silly caper when EVERYONE IN THE LNP KNEW Slipper would not get the nomination of the party anyhow? Trying to help a distraught soul? Get a life!... The Judge saw through this crappy motive of the caper... Silliness? No...
The federal Liberal (conservative) party wanted to get rid of slipper altogether BEFORE the next elections... to unbalance the minority government... and have an early election... or take over the government...

Peter Slipper guessed that much and thus did the dirty on the LNP BECAUSE the LNP was doing the dirty on him because the LNP boffins wanted Brough to take over his seat. 

Then Slipper was made an offer he could not refuse from Labor, the position of Speaker of the House... In real term this did not make much change to the balance of power, but to a great extend it was a major slap in Tony Abbott's face — considering Tony had been a great friend of Peter Slipper for yonks, including being his first mate at his wedding... As well, Tony Abbott owed his rise to the leadership of the Liberal (conservative) party to Peter Slipper's vote. But Tony behind Slipper's back was pissing on his mate and would have urged his QUEENSLAND Liberal (conservatives) machinists to push a stick up Peter Slipper's arse.... 

The way Gerard Henderson writes about the Peter Slipper affair is as if it had been a small provincial stuff up from Gerard's party of choice, the Liberals (conservatives), rather than, Santa Claus forbid, a conspiracy from the Federal Liberals (conservatives) who according to Gerard may not have "cared as much" about the Peter Slipper saga as some of the media makes out... 

Well for starters, the media made a song and dance about the Ashby/Slipper affair as long as it was going to damage Julia Gillard... Once the smart judge clearly saw the game and explained where this story was coming from, the media got instant amnesia. 

Remember the vociferousness of the Liberal (conservative) geezers who could not stop pissing in their pants with excitement about Peter Slipper being rubbished hourly by either Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Christopher Pyne, George Brandis and a cabal of Liberals (conservatives) asking for the head of Julia and freedom for Abbott to run the government— in the same manner as Jews demanded the death of Jesus and the release of Barabbas, a nasty big crook who may have used his fists at university to intimidate women, instead of his head to learn anything...

Yes Santa Claus Henderson, the shrill from the federal Liberals (conservative) was always in full flight against Julia first... And of course Tony Abbott knowing the game of the Liberal (conservatives) had been exposed to sunlight DOES NOT wish the issue to go any further, because should there be a proper investigation, it would run back up his trousers and spoil his budgies... 

In regard to the dating controversy of a press release, any inspector of computers can be fooled after the facts, because date stamping can be adjusted on computers AFTER THE DEED... Say the department officials inspecting the date on a computer, can be fooled to believe the date was the same six month ago on the computer, when it can be changed in a second if the computer is not networked... But according to the various date stamping on the original press release (how did they offer the Ashby/Slipper affair to the press, anyway?) it had been written the night before, nonetheless.

Father Christmas: "Let it snow job, let it snow job, let it snow..."

 

an out of control thug...

 

The results of the latest Nielsen Poll should send a clear message to Tony Abbott and the Liberals: that Australians will never wear an out of control thug as Opposition Leader — and certainly not as Prime Minister.

Abbott  has successfully – thank God – shot himself in the foot and if those crawling troglodytes behind him had any guts at all, they would be counting numbers right now in preparation for a change.

The public should have already realised what a dead loss Abbott is by looking at the make-up of his front bench.

For starters, who is his right political mind would have promoted the bigoted homophobic Cory Bernardi to a front bench position?

Or who would tolerate the appalling Sophie Mirabella as a spokesperson (of course, Abbott might prefer to call her a “spokesthing”)?

The ancient Bronwyn Bishop is so passed her use-by-date, she is now a waste of time and taxpayer’s money.

The  cold, calculating, craven Clown Counsel, George Brandis, spews endless filth in the Coward’s Castle — that he hasn’t the guts to repeat in public.

Christopher Pyne minces to the Despatch Box to hiss away like a demented matron, making a fool of himself every time he opens his mouth.

Julie Bishop, whose cold eyes literally glisten as she denigrates Julia Gillard about the AWN — and never comes up with a scintilla of credible evidence to support her allegations.

 

I mean, what kind of Opposition leader would see merit in any of these dead losses — the detritus of the once great Liberal Party.

In Bob Menzies’ day, not one of them would have got a look in.

The great man would never, in a fit, have worn the likes of Barnaby Joyce — who, at the end of the day, should get a job in a circus.

God knows, Menzies was hamstrung by the agrarian socialists — who then paraded under the Country Party banner. But at least he was up against a tough man in John McEwen – not a measly weakling like Warren Truss, who won’t even stand up for his own  people.

Where are the political  giants of yesteryear — decent fearless men, who had principles and abided by them?

The adage that countries deserve the Government it gets wouldn’t hold up in the event of an Abbott election win.

The man is a disgrace to his party, to the Parliament and the country.

If ever It’s Time was the clarion call, it is now; right now.

 

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/the-lacklustre-liberals/

liberal units

 

mates of his...

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is continuing to stand by Mal Brough, despite conceding he has not read a scathing Federal Court judgement involving the former Howard government minister.

Justice Steven Rares last week dismissed a sexual harassment case brought against former parliamentary speaker Peter Slipper, declaring it to be an abuse of process and designed to further the political interests of Mr Brough and the Liberal National Party (LNP).

Mr Brough has been preselected as the LNP's candidate for Mr Slipper's Sunshine Coast electorate of Fisher, and has not spoken publicly since the court judgement.

Labor ministers are demanding Mr Brough be disendorsed because of his involvement in James Ashby's failed sexual harassment case, but Mr Abbott is standing by him.

"Mal is a friend of mine. Mal was a colleague of mine (and) I look forward to having Mal as a colleague of mine again," Mr Abbott told reporters in London.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-19/abbott-stands-by-brough-despite-not-reading-ashby-judgement/4435478?WT.svl=news0

Not long ago, Peter Slipper was a mate of "his".... "Peter is a friend of mine. Peter is a colleague of mine (and) I look forward to having Peter as a colleague of mine."

Tony "has not read the text of the judgement"? I bet he read Gerard Henderson's shit column though... The little shit passes stupid comments... and the media let's him get away with it...

mumbling mierda in the murdoch media...

So while former Labor Attorney-General Lavarch narrowly won the electorate twice, he would not have come close under today’s boundaries. He would have received around the votes indicated by the solid orange line.

Lavarch left the seat and went to Dickson in 1993 precisely because a redistribution had turned his 2 per cent margin into a 3 per cent deficit.

If you want to, you can transpose the Beattie state government’s massive landslide results over Fisher to pronounce it winnable for the ALP. It would mean you expect federal Labor to get over 55 per cent of the vote in Queensland next year, as state Labor did back then. Best of luck with that.

Perhaps some fancy internal party polling “shows” Fisher voters are ready to turn. That would just go to show how useless that stuff can be.

There are two certain things about the Fisher result next year: Slipper won’t win it and neither will Labor. The best the ALP can hope for, if voters really are still cranky with the Newman government and dismayed with Brough and James Ashby’s shenanigans, is that it falls to an independent.

But that probably won’t happen. Brough/Ashby will be yesterday’s news by then.

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/a_labor_fantasy/

------------------------

Yes, Tony and Mr Murdoch will ty hard to make sure the Ashby affair is dead buried and cremated by then, and becomes fossilised as a Tony Detritus victory in the mind of the simple folks of Queensland... 

diplodocus ton-sized poop...

Turns out Mayans weren't alone in getting carried away about 2012

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/turns-out-mayans-werent-alone-in-getting-carried-away-about-2012-20121227-2bxt4.html#ixzz2GIHWXWMQ

 

I believe Gerard Henderson is humbly forgetting to give himself a starring role in the Mayan style porkies throughout the year... Not only he selectively points out the "Labor" and associates sins (mostly little bird-like strikes), there is not a pip on the antics of the little shit rat detritus Abbott whose lying turds were more elephantesquial... I mean diplodocus ton-sized poop...  In Gerard's narrow-minded vision (he may need new glasses), Tony is the supreme Jesus who can do no wrong — whiter than snow and ful of the glorious wisdoms of conservatism in which Gerard is himself a priestly spruiker from the ancient time when slaves were slaves and crow entrails were read to predict the next plague of locusts....

this takes the cake...

 

Put it down to the onset of the media silly season. Perhaps. The fact is that, for whatever reason, ABC commentators missed the opportunity to opine about an apparent division within the Coalition between the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and his communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull. Now that is news.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Financial Review shortly before Christmas, Abbott said that ''there is still this left-of-centre ethos in the ABC'' and expressed hope that the managing director of the ABC, Mark Scott, ''continues to address it''. Abbott commented that there is much about the public broadcaster that he likes and admires.
But, while praising ABC presenters Chris Uhlmann and Mark Simkin as ''highly professional, even-handed commentators/reporters'', Abbott commented that ''there is the ongoing issue of bias in the ABC news and current affairs section''.
Then, just before the new year, Turnbull addressed the left-leaning audience at the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland. He delivered his familiar call for higher standards in politics. Interviewed by PM's Alexandra Kirk after the talk, Turnbull called for the establishment of ''an independent and objective fact-checking website or service that can hold all of us to account - whether it is columnists writing about big issues and misleading people in their columns or whether it's politicians doing the same''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-wants-abc-to-flush-out-bias-but-turnbull-does-not-see-its-stacked-deck-20130107-2ccq2.html#ixzz2HbsodpIF

This takes the cake...
The ABC has been leaning to the right since the days John Howard placed Mark Scott at the helm and instituted the "inquisition" within...  For Abbott to say that the ABC is leaning left is indicative of the EXTREME RIGHT position of Abbott... That Turnbull sees no problem with the ABC means that Turnbull is a small L liberal (Australian conservative) who sees no problem with a small L ABC. For me, the ABC stinks of right wing bias. Watch out when Lord Monckton is in town...  "The controversial blah blah blah" will be the ABC news, giving this annoying prick, prominence of being here...
Meanwhile, the Australian media, apart from the SMH — a media trying to drive in the middle of the road and is going to be soon hit by a Gina truck — is ultra conservative, leaning to the right of Gengis Khan propaganda machine, including the fossils, like Gerard Henderson at the zealot rightwingnut Sydney Institute  and the mad boffins at the rabid Institute of Public Affairs — of which Chris Berg (regularly appearing at the ABC like a bad smell) is a big potato...

 

and the prize goes to... the fairy tale and the dog...

fairytale

Gerard Henderson's ability to judge the PM's literary award questioned



Morry Schwartz and Chris Feik say Henderson's appointment 'seriously damages' the award's integrity

 

Two publishing industry figures have questioned Gerard Henderson's ability to judge the prime minister's literary award for non-fiction, arguing that the Sydney Institute director had a "history of incessant and obsessive criticism of leading Australian writers and commentators with whom he disagrees politically".

The director of Schwartz Media, Morry Schwartz, and Black Inc publisher Chris Feik said Henderson's appointment as chairman of the non-fiction award "seriously damaged" the award's integrity.

The pair said Henderson's political targets included many of Australia's leading writers, commentators, historians and journalists.

"He is an ideological warrior whose regular targets include David Marr, Peter FitzSimons, Robert Manne, Elizabeth Farrelly, Margaret Simons, Malcolm Fraser, Virginia Trioli, Mungo MacCallum, Waleed Aly, Guy Rundle, Laura Tingle, Jonathan Green, Fran Kelly, Malcolm Farr, Mark Latham, Paul Bongiorno, Phillip Adams, Tim Flannery, Tim Soutphommasane, Nick Dyrenfurth and Hugh White," they said.

"If any of these writers were to submit a book for the 2014 prime minister’s non-fiction literary prize, Henderson’s history of campaigning against them means they could have no confidence of receiving an unprejudiced reading."

Guardian Australia has sought a response from Henderson, who writes a weekly "Media Watch Dog" blog and is a columnist with News Corp.

An $80,000 prize is given to the winner of each category in the prime minister's literary awards and each shortlisted title wins $5,000. Three judging panels consider the entries and recommend winners and shortlists for each category, with the prime minister making the final decision.

Henderson will chair the non-fiction and history panel, which includes four other members: the former Liberal MP and widely published writer Peter Coleman, the Griffith University emeritus professor Ross Fitzgerald, the writer Ida Lichter, and the historian Ann Moyal.

Schwartz and Feik said their concerns about the politicisation of the award should be addressed with transparency about the entries submitted.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jun/03/gerard-hendersons-ability-to-judge-literary-award-questioned

 

Old toon at top of this comment... See also toon at top.

sitting on a couch like a duck in a shooting gallery...

Sitting on the ABC’s Insiders couch, Gerard Henderson, the executive director of The Sydney Institute, was keen to tell everyone that energy minister Angus Taylor had no case to answer. Despite Labor and the Greens pushing for an inquiry into his meetings with the environment department over endangered grasslands, Taylor had nothing to worry about.

Henderson’s fellow panelist Karen Middleton, the Saturday Paper’s chief political correspondent, disagreed. “It’s a bad look,” she said.

Guardian Australia columnist David Marr, who rarely agrees with Hendo, said it was “looking very messy for Taylor”.

But Henderson was having none of it. Taylor has “a very minute financial interest”; it’s “a very trivial affair … picked up by the leftwing Guardian”, he said. “There is nothing in this and it won’t go anywhere.”

Taylor’s fate is yet to be determined but Henderson soon found himself in an embarrassing position when the ABC had to publish a correction. Henderson, a columnist for the Australian, had failed to disclose while defending Taylor that the minister’s wife, Louise Clegg, is a board member of the Sydney Institute, of which Henderson is the executive director.

Clegg and Taylor hold an indirect interest in Jam Land Pty Ltd, the company which is the subject of an environment department investigation.

“It has since come to our attention that Mr Taylor’s wife, Louise Clegg, is a board member of The Sydney Institute,” the ABC said online. “Gerard Henderson is the institute’s executive director. Mr Henderson accepts that he should have declared this association during the program but says he was unaware of Ms Clegg’s indirect interest in the company at the time of broadcast.” 

Henderson told Beast that when the topic was introduced, Clegg was the last thing on his mind.

“In any event, I had no knowledge about Ms Clegg’s apparent interest in Jam Land Pty Ltd. Why should I? Moreover, as far as I am aware, this has not previously been referred to in the media. For the record, I only referred to Angus Taylor after Ms [Annabel] Crabb, Ms Middleton and Mr Marr had commented on the matter.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/02/unaware-hendo-defends-angu...

 

 

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sympathy from the devils...

....

The night after the ABC report, Mr Bolt appeared to question the seriousness of Mr Kehoe’s crime.

He said Kehow had “hit on a boy, no sex occurred”.

Bolt also asked “how terrible was it really” that the school principal Stephen Russell wrote a character reference for Kehoe after his conviction.

Conservative commentator Gerard Henderson responded: “Well not at all, it was a terrible pile on against St Kevin’s, within the ABC tradition of attacking mainly Catholic institutions”.

Accepting Bolt’s assertion that “every action invites a reaction”, Mr Street asked that Bolt and Henderson check their facts, update their knowledge of what ‘grooming’ meant, and urged them to display greater sensitivity to victims of sexual abuse.

“To have what I was subjected to trivialised on Tuesday night, especially after it was mentioned (and this is assuming you have actually watched the entirety of the documentary), that I hoped telling my story would be the first step to moving on, is inconsiderate particularly when Gerard, you make the comment: “well of course we’re sympathetic to the victim”,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

“If you displayed any sympathy towards me, you wouldn’t be minimising what was inflicted upon me.

“I was invited to jump into a 59 year old’s bed … The Facebook messages he sent me. I was fifteen. He was convicted of grooming me.”

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/02/21/andrew-bolt-apology-...

 

 

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st gerard has been dropped like a right-handed sock...

The conservative commentator and ABC critic Gerard Henderson has been dropped by the revamped ABC Insiders program hosted by David Speers.

Guardian Australia understands its executive producer, Sam Clark, Speers and the ABC’s news executive see no role for Henderson on the Insiders couch this year and are trying new conservative voices.

Sources said Henderson did not sufficiently engage with the issues during the journalists’ discussions. The decision had nothing to do with his conservative views.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/24/conservative-commentator-g...

 

No further comment from this peanut gallery...

 

 

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