I love the DT... Just kidding... The Daily (Sunday sometimes) Telegraph, not the delirium tremens that could affect me if was not careful with the red ned... For example this DT hypocritical toilet rag supported Tony Abbott to the hilt... Abbott, before being elected, was farting all the proper noises in regard to the NDIS. Now, the whole thing which COULD BE VERY SIMPLE TO IMPLEMENT AND MAKE IT WORK has been fiddled so much by the Liberal Abbott-Trumble government (not much difference between these two dorks apart that one is a rabid liar, the other lies with elegance — your choice of which one) that the NDIS thingster is not working well. It's actually abysmal. And as the DT says, the "clients" are let down... CLIENTS? Wow... Is the CONservative government a "business" like MacDonald's, now? or is it more like the rebranding of Steptoe and Son?

...

But plenty of people will counsel against settling on the obvious conclusion, pointing to Hastie’s background and personality as the more likely motivations. Hastie isn’t a scheming political apparatchik. He’s a soldier and a patriot who, colleagues say, sees the world in binary and black and white terms (“absolutist”, according to one colleague) – a worldview which could explain the behaviour.

Now, let’s get to the merits of the behaviour. Self-evidently as a journalist I always prefer more information in the public domain than less. It would be pretty bizarre if I argued otherwise – so good one Andrew, the fourth estate salutes you.

But while we can all applaud sunlight and transparency, actions obviously have consequences. Members of the parliament’s intelligence committee have access to a lot of information, and are in the circle of trust when it comes to intelligence sharing with Australia’s major allies.

While the specific information Hastie shared was already in the public domain – at least speculatively, through media reporting that has been denied by Chau and is currently subject to defamation proceedings – the action the Liberal backbencher took was highly consequential.

Hastie has set quite the precedent by taking it upon himself to share confidential information in the public domain which he has obtained as a consequence of his membership of that particular parliamentary committee.

If one chairman can do that, what is to stop other members of the committee deciding to follow his example, invoking the patriotic defence that Hastie invoked on Tuesday night?

While Hastie’s heads up to Asio might have been undertaken with an eye to ensuring the spooks didn’t get a nasty surprise, an effort to mitigate the impact of the precedent, if you like – the example still stands.

It could put a chill in the information sharing, and if it does, that’s problematic. We need the intelligence committee to be well informed by agencies and allies so it can be the informed and clear-eyed watchdog our parliamentary system needs it to be. If information doesn’t flow, the whole system becomes less resilient.

Now, speaking as we were about binary world views, when it comes to managing the Australia/China relationship – the most important foreign policy challenge Australia faces over the next 50 years – binary and cartoonish talk and analysis doesn’t help.

In keeping with the default tribalism of the public square, the conversation about China in Australia sometimes lurches into graphic novel territory, with patriots facing off against the panda huggers.

Binary conversations lack sophistication, and we are going to need both sophistication and wisdom to manage a relationship with a rising power such as China. The bilateral relationship is not now, nor has it ever been, easy. It’s always going to be a bumpy road.

Australia’s security agencies are clearly concerned about the way China attempts to exercise power and gain leverage, both in this country and in our sphere of influence within the region. China’s influence plays are different from the methodologies deployed by other foreign powers; they present challenges Australia hasn’t experienced before.

Given the fundamental, irreconcilable differences between China’s authoritarian political system and ours, our agencies are absolutely right to be vigilant about safeguarding Australian democracy and our institutions.

We also need the entirely valid security concerns to be balanced with Australia’s short, medium and long-term economic and foreign policy interests.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/andrew-hasties-co...

From Crikey Sep 17, 2015:

One of Tony Abbott’s final “captain’s picks” as Prime Minister was to install Andrew Hastie as the Liberal candidate in the Canning byelection, following the death of former MP Don Randall. But with a new, more moderate leader, Hastie might not find the federal Liberal Party the haven for ultra-conservative Christians like him it was under Tony Abbott.

Whether or not Hastie’s preselection will have similar disastrous results to Abbott’s other “captain’s picks” (defending Bronwyn Bishop as speaker, the knighthood for Prince Philip) is yet to be seen. While Abbott is now out of power -- and it looks like the ultra right-wing ministers of the Howard era are also on the chopping block -- if Hastie is elected on Saturday, this captain’s pick will mean that another ultra-conservative MP will enter the Liberal Party’s ranks.

Hastie’s career as a Special Air Services officer has become the focus of Liberal byelection campaigning. However, this has obscured a more intriguing part of Hastie’s CV, namely that he is a Christian fundamentalist.

Hastie grew up in Wangaratta in rural Victoria, raised by religious parents. As Crikey has reported before, his father, Reverend Peter Hastie, is currently principal and pastoral dean at Melbourne’s Presbyterian Theological College, where he lectures in “systematic theology and apologetics”.

Peter Hastie belongs to Creation Ministries International (CMI), which promotes the scientifically ridiculed concept of creationism. The website promotes the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge and the Bible’s assertions are “factually true” and the “supreme authority in everything it teaches”. Furthermore, CMI supporters believe that “the various original life forms (kinds), including mankind, were made by direct creative acts of God”.

Non-believers are subject to “ever-lasting conscious punishment, but believers enjoy eternal life with God”. Andrew Hastie has steadfastly refused to be drawn on whether he agrees with his father and believes in creationism. On one occasion he was asked eight times if he believed in creationism, but he refused to answer, claiming his views are irrelevant to his candidacy.

“There’s no religious test in this country for public office.” He identifies as an Anglican, and his wife has worked as a receptionist at St Matthew's Anglican Church in Shenton Park. But his religious views are relevant, especially as the power inside the Liberal Party finds a new balance.

There are rumours that Senator Cory Bernardi might finally start his own party, disgusted at the spill that brought the moderate Malcolm Turnbull to power. If that were to come to fruition -- and Christian stalwarts like Kevin Andrews and Eric Abetz shuffled out -- Hastie could find himself in a less influential pocket of the party than he might have under an Abbott government. Last week the Australian Christians Party announced it would give its first preferences to Hastie because of his rejection of gay marriage.

Its own candidate, anti-abortion property valuer Jamie Van Burgel, said Family First had received his party’s preferences at the 2013 federal election but the Liberals would be the beneficiaries on Saturday. Hastie’s preferences also go first to the Australian Christians, followed by Family First and the Australian Defence Veterans Party -- his how-to-vote card reads like a list of his interests.

Hastie’s father’s CV is as interesting as his son’s. He previously served on the council of The Scots College, the high-priced private school in Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and Hastie Sr. played a significant role in one of Australia’s most memorable religious controversies when Sydney University theologian Dr Peter Cameron, principal of St Andrew’s College, was convicted of heresy in March 1993 by elders of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.

The Scottish-born lawyer, academic and churchman later described the experience thus: “I never came across such unpleasantness and anger and sheer nastiness as I did in the church.” His “crime” was to preach a 1992 sermon on “The Place of Women in the Church” supporting the ordination of women. He received a positive reception from the 300-strong congregation, most of whom were women.

In Bill De Maria’s book Deadly Disclosures, chronicling the Cameron affair, one woman in the congregation said she was in tears because she feared the retribution he would face from the church hierarchy. Sitting in the front row taking notes was Peter Hastie, then a minister at the Presbyterian Church in Ashfield, who became a prime mover at Cameron’s heresy “trial”. Hastie sent his notes to higher authorities in the church, though they have never been made public. Cameron fell into deeper odium when he defended his views on women’s ordination at a preliminary hearing attended by 50 members of the Sydney Presbytery and argued that homosexuality and Christianity were compatible.

He was found guilty of making “heretical statements” at a “court” that sat at the Presbyterian Theological Centre, Burwood, in March 1993. When his appeal was dismissed by 123 votes to 65, his prosecutor, Peter Hastie, said: “I am genuine when I say I am saddened for Dr Cameron. 

There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final.

The West is flexing its muscle, antagonizing every single country that stands on its way to total domination of the Planet. Some countries, including Syria, are attacked directly and mercilessly. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are dying.

Political and potentially military disaster is simultaneously ‘complemented’ by the ecological ruin. Mainly Western multi-national companies have been plundering the world, putting profit over people, even over the very survival of the human species.

‘Political correctness’ is diluting the sense of urgency, and there is plenty of hypocrisy at work: while, at least in the West and Japan, people are encouraged to recycle, to turn off the lights in empty rooms and not to waste water, in other parts of our Planet, entire islands, nations and continents are being logged out by the Western corporations, or destroyed by unbridled mining. The governments of the West’s ‘client states’ are getting hopelessly corrupt in the process.

Western politicians see absolutely no urgency in all that is taking place around the world, or more precisely – they are paid not to see it.

So, are we now dealing with the thoroughly hopeless scenario? Did the world go mad? Is it ready to get sacrificed for the profit of the very few? Are people simply going to stand passively, watching what is happening around them, and die, as their world goes literally up in flames?

It appeared so, until few months ago.

Then, one of the oldest cultures of Earth, China, stood up and said “No! There are different ways to go forward. We could all benefit from the progress, without cannibalizing, and fully destroying our Planet.”

China, led by President Xi, accelerated implementation of the concept of so-called Ecological Civilization, eventually engraving it into the constitution of the country.

A man who did tremendous work in China, working tirelessly on the Ecological Civilization concept in both China and in the United States, John Cobb Jr., has been, for years, a friend and close comrade of mine.

A 93-year-old Whiteheadian philosopher (and many believe, one of the most important living philosophers), one of the most acknowledged Christian progressive topologists, and self-proclaimed ‘supporter of Revolution’, John Cobb’s is a brave ‘alternative’ and optimistic voice coming from the United States.

We first met on a bus from Pyongyang to DMZ, in DPRK, several years ago, and became close friends, presently working on a book and a film together.

In this difficult, extremely dangerous, but also somehow hopeful time for our planet, it is clear that John Cobb’s voice should be heard by many.

Read more:

https://www.investigaction.net/en/chinas-determined-march-towards-the-ec...

Breaking news: Putin to hold secret meeting with China's Xi Jinping and DPRK's Kim Jong-un

World » Asia 

Journalist Vasily Golovnin published a sensational message in his Telegram channel. The message that has not been confirmed yet, though, says that a tripartite summit with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the leader of the DPRK Kim Jong-un may take place on June 9 in the Chinese port of Qingdao.

According to Golovnin, he received the information from the Hong Kong-based organisation of Chinese dissidents - the Information Center of the Movement for Human Rights and Democratisation in China. The organisation is the unofficial mouthpiece of information about China and has a network of informants. However, official sources do not confirm the information yet. 

The summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, will be held on June 9-10 in Qingdao. Russian President Vladimir Putin is invited to the summit. 

According to Golovnin, the appearance of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the meeting would become "an absolute sensation and a powerful political signal," which, in turn, would strengthen the position of the DPRK at the upcoming meeting in Singapore with US President Donald Trump.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/news/world/asia/31-05-2018/141032-putin_xi_k...

The gold backed convertible Yuan for oil trade that started earlier this year is just one illustration of a radical shift in the financial world.

This is not to say that there are not potential problems. Time permits only a very brief summary, admittedly seen from a lawyer’s perspective.

The BRI encompasses at least four major religious groupings as well as secular societies. There are at least four major different legal systems practised by the participating nations.

Each religious and legal system brings with it its own culture and social expectations. They will not always be compatible.

As a lawyer I know that it will require more than goodwill and mutual respect. Problems will inevitably arise and one of the keys to the resolution of problems is to realistically recognise that they will rise and to have in place a mechanism for dispute resolution.

Unlike the zero sum game played by the West, the aim must be to literally approach potential problems with Mr Xi’s “win-win” philosophy as one’s conceptual framework.

The other potentially huge issue arises from the fact that a multipolar world inevitably displaces a unipolar world. The problem is compounded when the hegemon that has been the centerpiece of the unipolar world reacts to the inevitable displacement of its prime position.

It is further compounded when that hegemon defines itself as the “exceptional nation.” In practice that has meant a disregard for the rights of other nations when they are seen as impeding the exceptional nation’s determination to mould the world in its own image, or to its own benefit.

We have seen this manifest itself in a constant disregard for international law, a point Mr Putin made in his speech in 2007. Notwithstanding this continual disregard for international law, the hegemon and it’s loyal acolytes such as Australia, are loud in their constant reiteration of their belief in the “rules based international order.”  What they mean by this terminology are “rules” and “order” defined by themselves for their benefit.

It would be naïve to assume that the hegemon will lightly concede its previous dominant position. There are already copious examples of trouble making, the primary aim of which is to disrupt the challenge from China and Russia to the unipolar world and to undermine the BRI, which is giving effect to the vision set out by Xi Jinping in Astana in 2013.

Notwithstanding the best attempts of the hegemon and its allies the reality is that the vision of Mr Xi is being given practical effect on a daily basis.

Our goal must be to ensure as far as possible that the “win-win” philosophy is the winner of this Titanic struggle.

* Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at [email protected]

Read from top.

DFAT is now funding about two thirds of the cost of the cable to the Solomons and to neighbour Papua New Guinea, and a $2 million scoping study by Sydney company Vocus has been completed.

Money has been allocated in the Budget, but is being kept under wraps before the project is put out to tender. However, it is believed it could cost the aid budget more than $100 million.

Government sources have told the ABC that Australia's Pacific neighbours should not be left in a position where they only have China to turn to for infrastructure investment.

Australian concerns over Huawei are not new. It was blocked from being allowed to work on the construction of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN), and there are new concerns about its potential involvement in the development of the nation's 5G mobile network.

Mr Houenipwela became Solomon Islands leader after the contract negotiations, and was highly critical of the process.

He was grilled on what pressure Australian officials had put on his government while in New Zealand last week.

"We have had some concerns raised with us by Australia, and I guess that was the trigger for us to change from Huawei to now the arrangements we are now working with Australia on," Mr Houenipwela said.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-13/solomon-islands-undersea-cable-int...

Now "let's hope that Vocus won't use the Chinese as the cheapest contractors"...

When this Baby Boomer was going to elementary school in the 1960s, the schoolyard rule was “Don’t hit a girl.”

Half a century later, that rule, however chivalrous, might strike some as sexist. So maybe we should update it for these politically charged times: don’t use the media to hit a private citizen living a private life.

By now everyone who follows the news is familiar with the harassment of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family and friends. Of course, there have been many other incidents, including the crazed comments from actor Peter Fonda concerning President Trump’s child, Barron. We might pause to note that if any conservative had said what Fonda did, he or she would have been drummed out of public life. As it was, Fonda apologized, and that was that, at least so far as the chatterers were concerned.

In the meantime, the view of the mainstream media seems to be that there needs to be more harsh coverage aimed at the family members of Trump administration officials.

For instance, there’s Darla Shine, a self-declared “happy housewife” living on New York’s Long Island. Just two weeks ago, Mrs. Shine—it seems okay to refer to her as “Mrs.,” given her declared celebration of married domesticity—was minding her own business, blogging about such topics as “canning at home,” “lasagna gardening,” and “tips for grilling,” and penning paeans to children, family, God, and country.

Then, on July 6, Mrs. Shine’s privacy evaporated. Mediaite did a big writeup on her, quoting her conservative and/or politically incorrect views on topics ranging from Barack Obama to autism.

Because Mrs. Shine is so obscure, the Mediate headline had to introduce her as “Bill Shine’s wife.” Darla Shine is married to Bill Shine—that’s the hook for the story. And Bill Shine is now the deputy chief of staff for communications at the Trump White House. And as we know, any news item with “Trump” in the headline will get eyeballs, and if it’s negative, even more eyeballs.

Then, on July 12, CNN followed up with its own story, this one headlined “Wife of top Trump aide had radio show where she said women in military should expect sexual harassment.” Once again, notice the use of the word “wife” in the headline; that is, both Mediaite and CNN realized that few would be interested in clicking on a story about what Mrs. Shine had to say were it not for her marriage to Mr. Shine. If you missed her radio show, don’t feel bad, because it was on an obscure network, and, in any case, CNN reports that it ran only from 2008 to 2009.

Those two stories opened the media floodgates on Mrs. Shine, and, in terms of viciousness, leading the way has been CBS’s Stephen Colbert, who paired a picture of Darla Shine with an image of the Ku Klux Klan and jibed, “racist a hundred years ago, racist now.” That line got a belly laugh from Manhattan Trump haters.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-media-signals-open-s...

Mind you, according to Mediaite:

The wife of Bill Shine — former Fox News co-president who just joined the Trump administration as White House communications chief — has a lengthy history of defending racists, promoting unfounded anti-vaccination conspiracies, writing about “Islamic Insanity,” and making racially-charged remarks on her social media pages.

Darla Shine made these remarks primarily on her Twitter account, @darlashine, which was deleted as soon as the White House announced that her husband was officially joining the Trump administration.

But not before Mediaite took screenshots.

On her personal website, Shine (who, like her husband, did not respond to requests for comment) says that she got her start in media by working as a “TV reporter and producer.” After giving birth to her first child, that site asserts, she opted to leave the office and become a stay-at-home mom while her husband Bill Shine stayed in the news industry.

read more:

https://www.mediaite.com/online/bill-shines-wife-complained-she-couldnt-...

So the lesson here, should you wish to be private:

Be happy, be hidden.

Otherwise be prepared that what you say, and said, will come back to haunt you. 

Former prime minister and treasurer Paul Keating has slammed the planned takeover of Fairfax by Nine, saying the "pus" from the "carbuncle" that is Nine's news culture will infect Fairfax and undermine quality journalism.

In a scathing written response to the announcement, Mr Keating said with a majority stake in the combined entity, "Channel Nine will run the editorial policy".

Speaking to 7.30, he said there had been "no moral compass in the guidance of [Channel Nine's] news management ever".

"Foot-in-the-door journalism, cheque-book journalism, you name it, they've been in it."

In his written statement, he said Channel Nine had "never other than displayed the opportunism and ethics of an alley cat".

"Through various changes of ownership, no-one has lanced the carbuncle at the centre of Nine's approach to news management.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-26/paul-keating-slams-nine-fairfax-ta...

Read from top.

In this dustbin alley there are a few more cats, newscorp included... PROTECT THE ABC from government interference and budget cuts!