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Showing posts from January, 2007

A Justice Minister With a Sick Sense of Humour

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Wednesday, 30th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Justice and Customs Minister Senator Chris Ellison will have a big future after politics as a comedy straight man if judged on his performance yesterday when announcing that Australian is sending two Federal policemen to Afghanistan to combat the illegal drug trade. "This is part of the AFP's commitment to helping other nations in the fight against illegal narcotics," the Minister proudly proclaimed. In his wonderfully understated deadpan style he commented that "the drug trade undermines Afghanistan's security and has been one of areas targeted in Australia's assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan in conjunction with our international partners. It is important for Australia to support efforts by the Government of Afghanistan and the international community to deal with the problem." Meanwhile, back in Kabul this week, the Afghan Government has rejected a United States plan to

Don't Mention the Iraq Word

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Wednesday, 30th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Dick Cheney - "scowling like Jabba the Hutt getting a root canal" A visit by an important American politician would normally be a good way to start an election year. Pictures of a Prime Minister shaking hands with the great and powerful can do wonders for the image. With the visit next month of US Vice President Dick Cheney the evidence is not so clear cut. The Vice President is on the verge of becoming a figure of fun within the political elite of his own country.  I can understand how you might confuse Dick Cheney with Tony Soprano  writes one columnist. Appearing more pained than usual, scowling like Jabba the Hutt getting a root canal  says another. The chief promoter of the war in Iraq is not exactly the many you want to be seen alongside of when public opinion has turned towards supporting a pull out of existing troops rather than supporting the sending of more. Not surprising therefore that Iraq got just o

Judge Slams Premier

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Tuesday, 30th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Jim Spigelman with former boss, Gough Whitlam. Australia would rarely have had a senior judge with more experience in politics and the executive branch of government than Jim Spigelman. The NSW Chief Justice moved with ease through the political ranks as adviser and chief of staff for Gough Whitlam as Opposition Leader and Prime Minister before effortlessly making the transition to departmental secretary running media policy. But for the crass stupidity of the NSW Branch of the Labor Party which refused to find him a winnable seat he might be leading the federal party today instead of heading the queue for elevation to the High Court should it be Labor’s task to replace Murray Gleeson. Justice Spigelman is well qualified to make a comment or two about the way that politicians forget about the medium and long term consequences of their words and actions when it comes to election time. It takes one to spot one, as they say, and

A Long Way from Howard's Battlers

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Tuesday, 30th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Kevin Rudd persuaded Ms McKew to join his staff as an adviser. Maxine McKew is a model of educated elegance – well mannered, well spoken and beautifully dressed. An identikit representative if Labor is trying to present itself to the tertiary educated working women and men of the nation’s central business districts with a keen interest in political events. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd persuaded Ms McKew to join his staff as an adviser and she will surely blend in well with his own intellectual interests. Undoubtedly she will provide a cultured and thoughtful touch to his forthcoming policy pronouncements. Now there is increasing speculation that Ms McKew will graduate from being a mere political consultant to a candidate with Gerard McManus writing in today’s Melbourne Herald Sun that Labor insiders say she could be installed in the Sydney outer western suburbs seat of Fowler Prime Minister John Howard has a different taste i

The Power of the Police

Tuesday, 30th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is certainly a realist. He understands there's not much fun in being a policeman forced to deal with drink crazed violence. He knows too that the patience of Job is hard to maintain when provoked by a drunk throwing punches. And above all he realises that things would be a lot worse in Aboriginal communities if police refused to serve in them. The prospect of just such a police boycott must be giving Mr Beattie more sleepless nights than treated sewage as the Queensland Police Union prepares for meetings throughout the state over the next week to consider industrial action in protest over the recommendation to charge Senior Sergeant Hurley with the manslaughter of Mulrunji Doomadgee as recommended by an independent review of the case by former NSW chief justice Sir Lawrence Street. At least the Premier can be thankful for the  assurance yesterday  by union vice president vice president Denis

With Friends Like Glenn...

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Monday, 29th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Glenn Milne Ardent supporters can be a pest at times and this morning Peter Costello probably puts Glenn Milne in that category. Over the years the Treasurer has basked in the praise of the punchy little columnist for The Australian but now that John Howard is not going, reminders of leadership contests to come are not what Mr Costello needs. Milne's column under the headline  "Turnbull could sink"  will be interpreted in Canberra as reflecting the views of a churlish Costello wishing failure upon his chief potential rival for the Liberal leadership. The column itself suggests that Turnbull's rapid elevation to Cabinet rank is the result not of merit but of Prime Ministerial patronage designed to ensure that Costello has a challenger of substance when the great man finally departs. Heaven forbid but Turnbull recently even "chatted amiably with Janette Howard, the ultimate arbiter of who gets entry i

Rallying the Donors

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Monday, 29th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Brian Loughnane Frightening the potential donors is an essential tactic for those who must take the hat around to finance election campaigns so the Liberal party's federal secretary Brian Loughnane took the opportunity when chatting to Young Liberals at the weekend to pretend that his team would be at a sizeable disadvantage when the next election campaign comes. Labor and its union allies, suggested Mr Loughnane, would spend a combined $50 million while the poor little Liberal Party would have less than $20 million. Both figures should be taken with considerable skepticism but there is no doubt that things are looking better for Labor fund raising than for several campaigns. For the union movement this election is a last stand against the industrial relations changes of the Howard Government. If the Coalition is returned for a further three years there will be little chance of stopping the spread of work place agreem

A High Water Profile Where it Counts

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Monday, 29th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Ownership dispute of the Googong dam is delighting the voters of Queanbeyan. Gary Nairn, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister in charge of water, did not achieve the national prominence of a Malcolm Turnbull but he has shown some skill in using the issue to the advantage of the Coalition in his own electorate of Eden Monaro. Nairn, now Special Minister of State, was involved before his promotion in long running negotiations between the Federal and ACT governments on the ownership of the Googong dam and its water just outside of the national capital. Control of the dam was originally ceded to the Commonwealth to provide an adequate supply to Canberra but the transfer to the local ACT government was not completed at the time self government was imposed. From memory there was some wrangle or other about liability in the event of the dam collapsing but it was always assumed that control would eventually pass to th

What About Water in My Back Yard?

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Friday, 26th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   There is one key political factor about the land through which the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin flow. It is basically solid Coalition territory. That gives Labor an easy and politically advantageous response to the Prime Ministerial water initiative. Let the Coalition worry about water for the irrigators. Kevin Rudd can concentrate on providing water for people in the cities and towns where this year's election will be won or lost. A promise by Rudd that a government he leads will ensure people can once again water their lawns will beat John Howard's concerns about deciding which farmers can have how much water to put on their crops. What is needed, Federal Labor can argue without upsetting its State colleagues, is assistance for the states to invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure the cities never again run short. Getting rid of urban water restrictions should be the first priority. An environmen

The Message in a Name

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Wednesday, 24th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The Master Politician will once again flirt with xenophobia without himself being condemned as an Anglo Saxon racist. It was appropriate that the newspapers were full of Australian flag stories on the day Prime Minister John Howard announced his pre-election ministerial changes. We are going to see a lot of flag waving from now until polling day. Nationalism is going to be the Government's big re-election theme. The change in name announced by Mr Howard provides the clue. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs is dead. Long live the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Get ready as the master politician flirts again with the difficult task of tapping the underlying xenophobia in many Australians without himself being condemned as an Anglo Saxon racist. Mr Howard managed it once years ago when raising fears about the levels of Asian migration and again when he exploited imaginary children being th

A Liberal Nuclear Retreat

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Wednesday, 24th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Peter Debnam welcomes policy debate but does not support the Young Liberals push for nuclear reactors to replace coal burners. The New South Wales Liberal Leader Peter Debnam has given a clear indication that the Liberal Party’s flirtation with nuclear energy has come to an end. Last year Prime Minister John Howard was full of reformist zeal as he had a band of experts prepare a report on the potential of a uranium based energy future for Australia. The timing of the release of the expert's report predicting that nuclear power stations could indeed be practical in a decade or so was the first sign that the Prime Ministerial enthusiasm was waning. News is buried on Christmas Eve and Mr Debnam's comments yesterday suggest why: the pollsters have told the Liberals that the public do not want a bar of anything nuclear anywhere near their own back yard. Mr Debnam will be relieved that his firm opposition to nuclear powe

Leaders Shouldn't Fling It

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Friday, 19th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Kevin Rudd should have left the mudflinging to his assistant Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen (right) Kevin Rudd should have been on holiday this week. Most certainly he should not have been commenting on John Howard’s couple of days of relaxation. Any plus there might have been for Labor from carping about the cost of a VIP plane flight to Broome was undone by its Leader doing the flinging. Australians find mud distasteful and the clever politicians who realize that some of it still sticks find someone else to do the smearing. When it came to John and Janette landing in Broome to spend a few days when returning from a conference in the Philippines, Labor's assistant Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen was well suited for the role of flinger in chief. No none has ever heard of him but his comment that the "Australian people would expect that a holiday should be paid for by the person having the holiday, not by them" help

Germans Take the South Park Line While the British Government Takes the Money

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Thursday, 18th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (as depicted above in South Park) is an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of aliens to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to wreak chaos and havoc today. South Park viewers probably have got the message that Scientology was founded on the belief that evil aliens had been planting irrational thoughts into our heads. The brilliant episode "In The Closet" is worth hunting down on one of those file sharing sites to giggle along as Kyle is brainwashed into becoming a Scientologist and made to believe he is the reincarnated spirit of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.The only criticism, perhaps, is that, while fun is poked at the sexual orientation of Tom Cruise and John Trav

Will the Hydrogen Economy be "The Vision Thing"?

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Wednesday, 17th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Newt Gingrich outlines what he call his Bold Solutions for Energy to Help National Security, the Economy and the Environment With the dawn of an election year the political operatives get down to the task of developing a policy or two with which to try and convince a skeptical public that their leader is something more than a cynical politician trying to preserve his own rewarding lifestyle. Finding "the vision thing" the operatives call it and the purpose is to provide a coating of idealism around the more naked vote buying promises that are the key components of campaigning. Many voters, you see, like to pretend that they are motivated by more than grubby self interest when filling in the ballot paper. It sounds better to tell the workmates you vote Calathumpian because that is the party that will build a better future for your children than to admit that the motive is to grab their promised $5000 child support r

A Cryptic Report

Tuesday, 9th January, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The Christmas and New Year holidays were a newspaper and internet free zone for me so my knowledge of the death by bashing of a young man in Griffith came exclusively from ABC radio. At first it sounded like just another piece of senseless teenage violence that was probably alcohol induced but then there came references that hinted at something more. There was a mysterious "we" involved as in one of the youths doing the bashing saying "This is now we roll in this town." For we listeners, it was as if the ABC was giving a replacement for my missing crosswords. Just that cryptic reference and then the voice of the mayor saying there was no racial trouble in his town. It sounded like the ghost of Al Grassby giving another of those defences of the Italian community to deny that there was any Mafia-like involvement in the death of a boy of good Anglo-Saxon stock. The repetition of the dead man's name, Andrew