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Showing posts from April, 2007

Sunrise on a Receding False Dawn

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Saturday, 14th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Kevin Rudd Do you doubt Kevin Rudd’s Honesty? That’s the question the Sydney Telegraph posed this morning at the end of its story on Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd having told a porky about neither he nor his staff being involved in plans by Channel 7’s  Sunrise  program to stage a "fake" dawn service at Long Tan on Anzac Day. The Tele’s anger is understandable. It broke the story of the Sunrise shenanigans on page one on Sunday under the headline "Rudd's insult to Vietnam vets" and accompanied it with a blistering editorial criticising the Labor Leader for cheapening the Anzac day of remembrance - "a national disgrace" and evidence of "miserably flawed leadership". Vietnam veterans, the paper reported, have been offended by Labor leader Kevin Rudd's request for a "fake" dawn service so he can commemorate Anzac Day live on Channel Seven's breakfast show from Long

Do as I Say Not as I Do

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Thursday, 12th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Kevin Rudd should be hoping this morning that members of the Government really have become reluctant to attack him on personal grounds. For yesterday the Opposition Leader exposed himself as a politician not prepared to practice what he preaches when it comes to the climate change caused by global warming. In short, Mr Rudd showed he is a hypocrite. While outlining plans for the rest of us to change our lifestyle to lessen carbon dioxide emissions he drives himself around in a gas guzzling Ford Territory. According to the assessment of the Federal Government’s Green Vehicle Guide it would be difficult for some one concerned about environmental damage to make a worse choice than the Territory. It rates but 2.5 stars when CO2 emissions, fuel consumption and air pollution are taken in to consideration. The Toyota Prius, which Mr Rudd incorrectly pretended on radio yesterday that he could not get on the government’s freebie motor car

A Jolly Chinese Aid Party

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Thursday, 12th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Annmaree O'Keeffe In Beijing at the end of last month a group of Australian government officials got together with some counterparts from the Chinese Department of Commerce for a celebration to mark 25 years of co-operation. Annmaree O'Keeffe, AusAID's deputy director general and Yu Jianhua, director of the Ministry’s Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs toasted the $1 billion given in foreign aid to China since the first Aussie dollar was spent in 1981. With China now having some trillion dollars in currency reserves and having become the largest lender to Africa, reportedly loaning at least $8 billion to the continent, it might have been an appropriate occasion to mark the end of this aid relationship but it was not so. On the future direction of Australia's programs Ms O'Keeffe told the happy gathering "our partnership will be focused on supporting equity in China's deve

Dysfunctional Defence

Thursday, 12th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The black tie the Prime Minister wore yesterday to announce that Australia will be sending troops to actually shoot their guns in Afghanistan may well reflect a sense of foreboding about giving an increased task to a military when a government report released last week claimed "the current range and nature of military operations is causing stress in Defence, and excessive pressures on senior people." The damning report released late on the eve of the Easter holidays, and thus barely reported so far in the press, certainly warned John Howard that all is far from well in the Department of Defence which was described as an organisation which "has confused its accountabilities." The Labor Shadow Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon was not exaggerating in describing the report of the Defence Management Review as highlighting "the dysfunctional relations between the Minister, his staff and defence planners and m

A Contract to Say Farewell With

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Thursday, 12th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Andrew Peacock, AC Andrew Peacock, the former Liberal Party Parliamentary Leader, Foreign Minister and Australian Ambassador to Washington, retired back in February from his position as President of Boeing Australia. In early March the Minister for Defence, Dr Brendan Nelson, made the surprise announcement of a decision to spend $6 billion with Boeing on a batch of Super Hornet fighter aircraft for the Australian air force. That Boeing should win a major contract is not surprising. The American company, after all, is the world’s leading aeroplane manufacture and a substantial supplier of defence equipment to countries around the world. What has made this acquisition different, and the recent connection of Mr Peacock to Boeing potentially embarrassing for the government, is the direct involvement of Dr Nelson in making it. For the purchase of the Super Hornets is not the result of some orthodox procurement policy where tea

The PM’s Younger Look

Wednesday, 11th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   He might be a New South Welshman but Prime Minister John Howard made sure he was captured by the television cameras on Sunday night in the winning ACT Brumbies’ dressing room with the great George Gregan and not next door with the pathetic losers from Sydney. There was a little light hearted banter about the rugby union world cup to come later in the year and the PM having something else to do around that time but the significance of this rare weekend visit to Canberra by Howard was his dress not his words. For on this night at the football John Howard abandoned his tie. What the gentlemen of the Australian Rugby Union thought of a tie-less guest in their hospitality box is unknown but the casual look is not the normal one for officialdom at this code where even the long haired Canberra coach and his staff wear suits while supervising the pre-match warm up. No one would be aware of the protocol better than Mr Howard who has

A $300 Million Pre-Election Advertising Spree?

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Wednesday, 11th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   ** From budget estimates Based on the experience of the last two years there is a good chance that next month’s budget will see $300 million allocated for spending on advertising by the Federal Government in the coming financial year with most of it concentrated in the period before this year’s election is officially called. From the $46 million paid to media organisations in the first year of the Howard Government, the current budget provides nearly $251 million for putting messages on television and radio and in print. The startling growth in the efforts of Government to manage public opinion through paid advertising is shown in the following table kindly sent to me by a Labor staffer who has updated the figures prepared by the Parliamentary Library I referred to earlier this month. Spending of this kind certainly gives a great advantage to an incumbent government but the published figures understate the actual adverti

Murray Darling Agreement Still Leaking

Thursday, 5th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The spur of the moment decision by Prime Minister John Howard to try and take over management of the Murray Darling River system is looking more and more like one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. At the moment the Victorian Government is still refusing to agree to the Howard plan that was developed without even going to Cabinet and the Secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry, according to this morning’s Australian Financial Review, has given  a scathing assessment  of the Howard government's recent water and climate-change policies. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is the man with the difficult task of rescuing what his leader planned as a key plank in his efforts to establish the environmental credentials of his Coalition Government. Yesterday Mr Turnbull was down by the river in Victoria trying to persuade irrigation farmers to back the $10 billion Commonwealth plan but, as  the Age reported , he w

A Reminder of Catch 22

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Thursday, 5th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Yossarian, as portrayed by Alan Arkin I am grateful to Brian Miller, one of my esteemed readers, for the following extract from Catch 22 where Yossarian was told he could go back home, released from the army, on one condition: Colonel Cathcart: All you have to do is ... like us. Lt Col. Korn: All you have to do is be our pal. Colonel Cathcart: Say nice things about us. Lt Col. Korn: Tell the folks at home what a good job we're doing. Take our offer Yossarian. Colonel Cathcart: Either that or a court-martial for desertion.

Bad News for Unions Not Bad for Labor

Thursday, 5th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Confirmation by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that the trade union membership decline is continuing apace was bad news for union leaders but not necessarily for Labor Leader Kevin Rudd. For a start the union movement knows that the coming election will be a last chance to stop sliding to virtual irrelevance. The return of a Coalition Government would increase the trend which has seen the proportion of Australian workers in a union fall from 35% to 20% since 1994 so there is no point in keeping money in reserve. Every available dollar must be spent by the unions in an effort to get Labor in to office. This should see Kevin Rudd in charge of a record advertising war chest. With the figures on declining trade union power so stark, the Opposition Leader has the opportunity to tailor the Labor Party message on industrial relations law changes to the broader community. He himself looks a lot different from the traditional labour

Waiting for the Positive Ads

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Wednesday, 4th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The biggest electoral advantage of the Liberal-National Party Government is about to unfold and the television industry is looking forward to it with an eager anticipation. The pre-election Government campaigns are now in the final stages of preparation and the spending is about to begin. Advertising managers for the commercial networks expect that the next six months will see a new expenditure record reached and there is no reason to doubt their prediction. Every pre-election period seems to bring a greater need for the public to be informed of government projects than in the pre-election period that preceded it. Accurate figures on government advertising expenditure are difficult to establish but the Parliamentary Library produced the following summary: The Parliamentary Library research found that the 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2001 federal elections were preceded by sharp increases in government advertising outlays: • the b

Listen Out for Healthy Forests While Fanaticism Spreads

Wednesday, 4th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The influence of that little worm Australians were introduced to when the Nine Network started televising political leadership debates is growing. Measuring the immediate public reaction to words is now beginning to dominate the public debate as our leaders embark on their triennial effort to confuse and obfuscate. We can gauge the findings by listening to the daily grabs on television and for the Liberals the latest in word is fanaticism. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull started using it during television interviews on Sunday as in this description of climate change: "Labor is verging on becoming fanatical about this issue in the sense that they do not care how poor we have to become as long as we become pure. I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy." Mr Turnbull was repeating it again this morning on ABC Radio National: "The problem with labor is that they have locked themselves into essential