Favourite Movies Edition.

Who is this Election For?

Some 10% of the voting public you would have to say. The rest of us do not matter.

I would prefer to see much less on the 'tax cuts front' (except those earning under $2o,ooo a year who should pay no income tax) and most available money directed to the struggling service sector and decent infrastructure. Let alone, the work that needs to be done to face up to drought and climate change.

Australia has serious problems to deal with but we are reliant on these 'swingers'. Can you imagine being in a room with these people? The party focus groups must be excruciating. A real window into the psyche of moi, moi , moi.

Would you prefer a tax cut or see your granny on a hospital trolley for 2 days waiting for a bed. "I will take the tax cut because she has health care or probably doesn't want to live much longer anyway". Pass the Pretzels, please.

The system is really broken. We are living in a 'clotocracy'. All policy is filtered through the prism of some of the most dumb and venal. All of them working, at our ultimate expense, for the two major parties, tracking, the only ones that matter.

EAT AT JOE'S declares a fatwa against advertising executives, selling away our democracy, as if it were soap powder.

Mainstream Akubra Man.

Commander in chief Howard triumphantly touched down in Hermannsberg, conveniently close to Alice Springs airport , to make it "very clear" to the community that the Government had a simple aim.

"And that is whilst respecting the special place of indigenous people in the history and the life of this country, their future can only be as part of the mainstream of the Australian community," he said.

"Unless they can get a share of the bounty of this great and prosperous country, their future will be bleak." In other words, if you want some of the funds we have been making from ripping up the ground, our ancestors stole from, you better drop your old ways and do what we say.

He then goes on to spell things out more clearly. "I want to assure you that we haven't come here to take anybody's land or to push anybody around." Directly translated from the Howardish ... "I have come to take your land and push you around".

Adele Horin, from "The Sydney Morning Herald", is about the only journalist to put one aspect of the Howard governments intervention in the N.T. under the spotlight. The end of the CDEP scheme. She identifies in this article how aboriginal employment has been cut by 8000 to fit in with generalised control freakery. As she points out, "It will turn many workers into unemployment statistics, rob communities of vital services, create havoc and potentially deal the death blow to 50 Aboriginal organisations". All aboriginals, regardless of perceived good/bad behaviour, are to have half their payments held, in Howards' new paternalistic world. Adele Horin continues...

"the real reason for the abolition of the scheme is that it is the only way the Government can get control of the money paid to such workers. Ironically, it must convert workers to welfare recipients and replace their wage with an unemployment benefit before it can legally quarantine their money to ensure it is spent on children not alcohol.

Regardless of whether the programs are effective, or the workers are model parents, the Government is moving against them. Will this sledgehammer approach deliver children better lives? We can hope. If it doesn't, the losses will be incalculable".


It is worth popping over to mattjjin-nehen to read a bit about this and the real squanderers of money claimed to be spent for indigenous needs. Also some very ugly propaganda that the government is pedaling in the top end.

Photo by Wayne Taylor.

UPDATE: See this Crikey report for advanced cruelty.

Wink, wink and say no more.

Postscript: Mud will stick. After all the discussion, about this storm in a teacup, organised by Poison Dewarf, the real details came through. Trouble is, the media cycle relys on the next 'big thing'. Which means that there is never a chance to catch up with the truth of the matter. Funny, that!

Leaving this Plain.

All the indications are that Pete the Spiv, will jump early , rather than endure the pain of time in opposition. A golden parachute will be provided, after he has left the plane , for sure , from Saint Alchemist Mal…… who knows better, how to turn bullshit into gold, than The Abbot knows how to turn religion into fuel.

“Comfortable and relaxed, he urged his hosts to call him “Pete”. Pressed to ponder a hypothetical in which he was on a plane about to crash, and told he could offer a sole spare parachute to either Mr Rudd or Labor’s deputy leader Julia Gillard, he was asked to choose.
“So it is me, Julia and Kevin,” he clarified slowly.“You know what I would do? I would jump out!”

See this...

Mr Pork Barrel.

Guessed pretty well, didn't I? Sadly, no cute little piggy tail.
This is a Spooner work, of course.

Get ready for pigs to fly.......

We know they are shadey, shifty and lie....
With a noses like that, they will hoover the trough of any little scrap.

Best grab, any bit you can, and THEN vote these 'bracket creeps' out.

Gunns at Head.

A new touchstone in business efficiency seems to have been achieved in Tasmania with the major logger , Gunns , moving into the business of drafting government legislation. This is a plan that will undoubtedly be applauded by all right minded individuals and think tanks. It has been far too clear, in recent times, that the interests of the voting public are standing in the way of the profit making ambitions of major companies.

Premier Lennons' new benchmark will undoubtedly spread through to all ministries and other states. Companies need merely frame appropriate legislation and fast track it through parliament. None of those fussy, old , hold ups about environmental issues, conflict of interest and health concerns. Or annoying politicians who get in the way of progress. They have fine legal teams that just get stymied by nit picking, long-haired, smelly, dole bludgers. Who gives a stuff about bloody trees, anyway, when they can be cleared and turned into sensible , right thinking newspapers?
And if they don't like it, Gunns have other lawyers to keep them engaged for the rest of their bloody lives. How could those bastards say bad things and eat into shareholder dividends, anyway? Damn it, sense is starting to prevail in this ungrateful hole of a 'country'. Soon to be called Corporation.