Sunday 28th of April 2024
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Remember the outrage over John Howard's alleged conflict of interest when his government handed ethanol subsidies to his brother's firm, Manildra? Remember the parliamentary convulsions over Paul Keating's piggery? The accusations were tested in public; the leaders passed the tests.
Sure, the delegation of visitors from China who witnessed the stinging public attacks on the Prime Minister in the house this week might have puzzled over how this can happen, but it is more a strength than a weakness of parliamentary democracy.
In China, it took a foreign newspaper, The New York Times, to disclose the accumulation of $2.7 billion in wealth by the family of the outgoing Premier, Wen Jiabao, during his tenure. Wen, after denouncing the American newspaper, has now asked for a formal investigation into himself and his family.
There is also the perfectly reasonable argument that time spent on scrutinising the private affairs of a prime minister in Parliament carries an opportunity cost - time on this means less time to debate big problems of policy and national affairs.
And that's true. But this is how democratic nations test their leaders and purge their systems. Gillard has survived the test. The long-festering rumours have been put into the light of day and been scrutinised. The opposition has had a full opportunity to make its case and to hold her to account. In the absence of serious new evidence against her, the opposition should now move on to debate the big issues.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pm-lives-to-fight-another-day-20121130-2amng.html#ixzz2DkB1Vrjv

But most of all we should never forget how John Howard lied to take you and me to war against Iraq. That is unforgivable.... That a few shady characters profited a few thousands dollars because of our silly naivety is one thing... Going to kill thousands of people and get away with it is something else...

james for breakfast too...

 

'Sometimes there are moments when a prime minister must keep faith with their convictions," snapped yet another scolding editorial in The Australian on Wednesday. Oh dear. Sometimes a leader writer must keep faith with plain English grammar: tautology, singular, plural, that sort of thing.
Even in quiet times the Oz's Canberra political coverage has a hectoring tone. Obsessive, bombastic, endlessly repetitive, it is a newspaper with Asperger's. Platoons of reporters, columnists and commentators, all grandly titled - chief this, national that - tumble over each other in furious agreement with their proprietor's view that only nice Mr Abbott can save the nation from the perdition to which Labor is leading us.
This week they soared to dizzy new heights. What I suppose we must call the Gillard/AWU Affair whipped them to a frenzy, to page after page of grey print that bellowed and howled like some lunatic chained in a padded cell. It seems every hack on the payroll has lunged into the fray, save for the golfing writer and the food editor so far as I can gather, but sooner or later even they will be expected to join this News Ltd stampede to crucify the Prime Minister. It's the group-think way the joint works. HOPELESS JULIA DOUBLE-BOGEYS 18TH. PM's COQ AU VIN POISONS CAT. With the federal election due next year, the creative possibilities are endless.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/stirring-this-storm-in-a-teacup-20121130-2alxv.html#ixzz2DkFmJwLI
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Meanwhile in the Albrechtsen froth-tub, Sheilas with feminist tendencies should take a hot shower with Mister Bond, James Bond, aka 007...

Foaming feminists need a good hot shower with 007
BY:JANET ALBRECHTSEN
COULD this be right? In the lead-up to this last parliamentary sitting week, the Prime Minister found time to pen a piece in Saturday's The Sydney Morning Herald condemning James Bond as sexist? Overlooking the byline, it sure read like a screed about sexism by Julia Gillard, or her clever minders who dream up and draft these tirades.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/foaming-feminists-need-a-good-hot-shower-with-007/story-e6frg7bo-1226525232299
Read the rest through pay wall at your peril...

 

from the merde-och medows...

 

A CONSTELLATION of competing emotions flitted across the Prime Minister’s face during her extraordinary press conference on Monday.

Was she frightened? Was she angry? Was she nervous? Was she defiant? Was she evasive? Was she irritated?

She seemed to be all of the above, all at once, and as she licked her lips and rearranged her face, she was a fascinating study of a woman barely holding it together under tremendous pressure.

In fact, if you turned down the sound on your TV or just let the words wash over you, the non-verbal information told a more interesting story, one that is off and running in the electorate: that our prime minister appears to be a person with ethical issues.

Whatever is the upshot of the 17-year-old fraud allegations involving Gillard and Bruce Wilson, the married AWU official who was her then-boyfriend, and the legal advice she provided to him to incorporate an association, which she later described as a slush fund, the damage is done to Gillard’s reputation. No amount of spin doctoring will put it back together.

Whatever is the upshot of the various allegations of wrongdoing which Gillard repeatedly has denied, what this story does, fairly or unfairly, in the eyes of some, is to cement an adverse impression of Gillard’s character.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php

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F*&^% me dead... 20 year old story being brought back with fake allegation of fraud and Devine has the gall to tell us "no amount of spin doctoring will put it [Gillard reputation] back together!" 

By the end of her spew, Miranda climbs on the mountain of hypocritical righteousness:

 

It’s not the media’s fault she is mired in this. Nor is it particularly the fault of the opposition, which has come late to the party and has contributed little fresh information. It’s certainly not the fault of “sexists” who can’t stand having a woman in charge, as Greens leader Christine Milne claimed yesterday.

No. In my view it is entirely the fault of Julia Gillard and colleagues who installed her and now are suffering buyers’ remorse.

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Get a life Miranda. I've been told you're not a bad person in real life... So why write infantile crap in your articles?...

The media  — mostly led by the merde-och media,  in which you seek protection and employment —  has not been able to deliver its promise to Tony Abbott of getting rid of Gillard...

So now, unable to attack most of Gillard's poilcies (Murdoch hates the NBN or anything Labor does) — only recently having a small dig at the PM for caving in to cabinet and abstain in the vote for Palestinian rights at the UN, knowing she (officially) fully supports Israel (100 per cent of the Australian commercial media does as well) and not having been able to fully taint Julia with the assassination of Rudd, despite the media's persistence  —  the media has now been stirring a 20 year old non-event with NO PROOF of anything, just innuendos.  Still, the media hopes it will work and you add to it by telling us it could despite being all crap.

So you are an expert on facial expressions? And of course an expert on the certainty of influence that fake allegations can have on people's perception of another person's character?... Say for example that I made the outrageous claim, by looking at your picture in the paper, that you are the sort of person who CAN'T STOP yapping all the time... That would be "my guess" (BUT say that's what a few people might have alleged to me about you as well)... Say that I deducted from this your partner (husband, boyfriend, whatever — who knows) who loves you very much gets the heebee geebees from your yapping non-stop?... You would not be happy and you would have to defend yourself and tell me that I am wrong. 

Am I wrong?...

 

 

I was not going to sit silent...

She had done a little bit of preparation. She is a former lawyer, after all, and knows the importance of briefings. She had compiled a dossier of key Tony Abbott quotes she thought were ‘‘objectionable’’. She had dashed them off as Abbott himself was speaking.

But the sense of righteous anger Julia Gillard brought to Parliament the day she delivered her now-famous tirade against misogyny - that was something she had been working up to for a while.

‘‘I could not, I could not take the hypocrisy of the Leader of the Opposition trying to talk about sexism,’’ the Prime Minister says. ‘‘I was not going to sit silent.’’

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/i-give-as-good-as-i-get-gillard-20121210-2b4p5.html