...

And it's a disappointment for Australia as well because although the US, UK, Canada and a few other countries are reasonably well run and provide the leadership and civilising standards for the international community, a stronger, liberal, free market Europe is in Australia's long-term interests. A weak and fractious Europe ultimately undermines our security and the common values that underpin our society.

                        http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3996406.html

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The great liar of the Howard years wants to twist your balls with new industrial relations laws and let the market dictate the fate of the earth... Good one Pete... I'm laughing all the way to existential oblivion... Humans have no idea about the balance of nature... We are CANNIBALS...  we'll eat each other till there is no one left under the rule (no-rule) of "free market"!... Thus "free-markets" need REGULATION that by definition do not make them FREE anymore...

Go and play with the kids in your street... you might learn something or get punched in the gonads...

Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered Francois Hollande as a figure of menace. He is "rather dangerous," declared The Economist, which observed that he "genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society." Quelle horreur!

What is true is that Hollande’s victory means the end of "Merkozy," the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a "dangerous" development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn’t and doesn’t; it’s time to move on. Europe’s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent’s best and brightest.

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54063643-82/europe-austerity-european-crisis.html.csp

Here in Australia, we suffer from a different disease... Economists and dung bettles will judge the Swan Budget as trying to buy votes and being a last cynical hurrah... But in fact, Swan is very smart... He brilliantly balance things that are impossible to balance, gives the kids extra pocket money and comes on top with a surplus for a rainy day after raiding the small cash caught below the cushions of the sofa:

From Annabel Crabb:

Of the large stack of impressively-bound books handed out in the budget lockup, Number Two has none of the sweeping grandeur, for example, of Budget Paper One - "Budget Strategy And Outlook" - with its heroic platitudes about the global economy, and its notoriously fallible estimates of what the next 12 months may bring.

Budget Paper Two is more of a nuts-and-bolts affair; it blandly lists the revenue and expense measures settled on by the Treasurer, with nary a raised eyebrow.

This year, however, Budget Paper Two is a revelation. It reads like an orienteering map of the Australian public service, which Wayne Swan has used in his mission to locate the most obscure spenders of Government money, and shake them down for a few mill.

This is a budget in which the search for savings, no matter how small, has left no sofa cushion unpummelled.

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But I am not a cynic... I believe Swan has done the impossible with restraints and NO NANNIES... Just some lollipops and room to move in the family home... Had it been a Liberal (conservative) budget, the kids would have been placed in prison, the parents in slavery and the rich miners would be getting welfare... I know, the philosphy of the rich is that having to defeat harsh conditions teaches you rectitude and gives you the imperative to be ruthless — a prerequisite to do business with the other members of the mafia...

From the master of porkies, Peter Reith...

...

The relevance of this point is that today Minister Shorten is trying to control the union corruption agenda by introducing his legislation to make it look as if he is cleaning up the HSU mess. In response, Kathy Jackson said he is more like Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

For the Coalition, unless they can paint a much broader picture of what needs to be done to really clean up corruption, then they will be largely leaving the issue to Shorten.

The Coalition should not let him get away with it; it would be a big mistake and a lost opportunity not to challenge his approach.

The promise to increase penalties is fine but it is only one element of what is needed. The Coalition needs to demonstrate a strategic approach. It needs to get around and talk to all the interested parties, and work up a comprehensive policy and a timeline for implementation.

It should be putting that policy out soon, not three weeks before the next election. It needs its strategic response to be part of its answer to the Thomson affair and any other union scandal, old or new, that might come along in the meantime. 

The HSU issue has highlighted a huge vulnerability for Labor; it is time the Coalition got on the front foot and made the most of the policy opportunities now presented.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4091386.html?WT.svl=theDrum

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As we know Kathy Jackson is clean as snow white.... I am a cynic... Her relationship with the rite-wing-nuttery is too strong not for her not to have been a plant... Who knows... Shorten is cleverer than he looks and more astute to the dirt being thrown at him while being quite clean...

Yet again we have Peter Reith trying to resuscitate the Work Choices policy that Abbott is trying hard to avoid, because it would cost him some points... At ten minutes from midnight before the elections Tonicchio would mention it, so that when he is elected he would claim it as a "mandate"... 

Beware...

Unions provide a necessary role in a world where business and rich bastard control the setting of society, while giving the illusion of democracy.

A union like the HSU is hopefully an aberration... probably sent haywire by being infiltrated by non-bone fide personnel... Not the first time such stint have been performed... In all of this, I would suggest that Craig Thomson was a lamb sent to slaughter with an ultimate purpose... 

ENOUGH, Peter Reith. It has been infuriating hearing the former defence minister repeat all this week that the Children Overboard scandal was just ''a minor incident, long finished'', just ''a small thing'', a ''bit of a stuff-up'' and that he has nothing to answer for.

While talking about his role in SBS's challenging TV series Go Back to Where You Came From, Reith has tried to both rewrite history and conveniently ignore it, and with his cavalier sidestepping of responsibility he is insulting every Australian who was and still is affected by one of the most shameful and deeply divisive moments in our political history.

As defence minister Reith, as well as John Howard and Philip Ruddock, promulgated the great untruth that asylum seekers had thrown their children in the water. And despite his office learning within hours of his statement that this was untrue, Reith did not correct the record at that time and did not admit he had been told his statement was false.

Let's revisit the facts, as established by two independent reports into the incident - and they include deeply compromising elements that Reith clearly hopes most of us have forgotten. But I haven't.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/reith-rewrites-history-to-hide-the-shame-of-children-overboard-lie-20120831-255u3.html#ixzz25DnNFELA

Peter Reith looks at the year ahead in domestic and international politics and concludes that there isn't a lot to be excited about.

It is hard to be too optimistic about 2013; the international economic climate is clouded at best and domestically Australia needs to do a lot better.

Many economies in Europe are caught in a time warp. None have totally collapsed, but countries like Greece and Italy are a long way from introducing the reforms that will help drag them out their economic stagnation and falling living standards. Whilst the core of Europe's problems is economic policy, the other worry is the likelihood of widespread social unrest.

The Middle East is even more depressing, as usual. Israel's neighbours are not about to moderate in any way and who really thinks there will be peace in our time? In my view, oil was never the major factor in Western involvement in the region, but the newly established gas reserves in the US may lessen, even further, US interests in the Middle East.

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I won't give you the link to this stupid narky article by a known liar and fudger, whose penned diatribes appears regularly like nightly farting dormitory contests, where else but in the Drum at the now extreme right ABC. 

And yes, the thingy that Peter should be gloomy about: there is a strong possibility that his protégé, Tony Detritus Abbotticchio — the man who turns everything he touches into rubbish — will be narrowly defeated at the next federal elections... That would be the cherry on the cake, wouln't it be?...

So what's the gloom about? The destruction of natural habitats? The looming global warming? Extinction of species? The death of reality?.... Nupe... None of that... It's all to do with "markets" being soft a bit like stationed in illusionary quick sands... which under Peter Reith's illuminated guidance should be solidified into rock-solid muck by whipping the workers with thick sticks...

see toon at top...