Sunday, 21 December 2014

The latest and greatest from the Minister for Women - The AIM Network

The latest and greatest from the Minister for Women - The AIM Network



The latest and greatest from the Minister for Women










Image courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/MsJuliaGillard
Image courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/MsJuliaGillard





This is too good not to share (courtesy of Support the Honourable Julia Gillard Facebook page).

LOL! When our Minister for Women, Tony Abbott, was asked to nominate his top achievements in 2014 in his “portfolio”, he said:


“Well, you know, it is very important to do the right
thing by families and households. As many of us know, women are
particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the
carbon tax means a $550 a year benefit for the average family.”

Tony Abbott said he was “proud” to elevate a number of women in his cabinet reshuffle. Two women in cabinet. AMAZING, right? So praise worthy, right?


Tony Abbott also spruiked his “fair dinkum” paid parental leave
scheme, one that has been revised countless times and remains opposed by
many.


Yep – 2014 achievement as Minister for Women? More money for women by
abolishing the carbon tax – check. More women in cabinet – check. Give
more money to millionaires to have a baby – on hold / being revised /
check back later.


Apart from being too comical for words, I see that he’s still trying
to tell us that by repealing the ‘carbon tax’ families are still $550
better off a year. He’s both a comic and a liar.




Twitt


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Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Tony Abbott's 'reset' can never work because he can't 'reset' himself | Jason Wilson

Tony Abbott's 'reset' can never work because he can't 'reset' himself | Jason Wilson

Tony Abbott's 'reset' can never work because he can't 'reset' himself


Jason Wilson






It’s a popular trick for politicians to “reset” after a policy
disaster, but what happens when the problem isn’t the policy, but the
politician himself?











tony abbott



‘In attempting to rebrand himself in the face of political difficulty, Abbott is following a well-worn path.’ Photograph: AAP


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Tony Abbott’s attempt to “reset”
his terrible political situation has had a forlorn quality. His
government has been trailing in the polls almost since its election, and
his own personal standing has been consistently worse than his party’s.


His first budget has been stoking public anger for seven long months.
His own ministers appear to be briefing against him, and MPs are
grumbling about the control-freakery of his office. In the face of all
this, the best his brains trust could do was pushing him out in front of
the media to promise that he really could change, if only we would give
him another chance. This followed a speech to his party room where he
promised to scrape some barnacles from the government’s hull (an
operation which may soon require a bathysphere).


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In
attempting to rebrand himself in the face of political difficulty,
Abbott is following a well-worn path, which is not trod exclusively by
conservatives. Last month, British Labour leader Ed Miliband, himself
limping in the polls and suffering leadership speculation, offered a “fightback” speech
which was meant to show his nervous colleagues that he had plotted a
path to victory. The Tories helpfully pointed out that this was
Miliband’s 10th attempt to resurrect his fortunes on the stump, each
time with diminishing returns. Like Abbott, he has failed to persuade
anyone that a change in communication strategy equates to a more
fundamental reorientation. Perhaps his failures are more forgivable: his
policies, at least, are popular, and opposition is not a place from
which it is easy to control the political milieu.


Barack Obama’s recent reset may have a better chance of at least
offsetting the problem of his own personal unpopularity. After making
the generic speech where he claimed to have listened to the electorate
(including those who had failed to vote), Obama actually did something
that may energise his base and reassemble parts of his coalition in a
way that benefits future Democratic candidates. By using his executive
powers to allow millions of undocumented migrants to stay in the
country, Obama has banked some support for the future and persuaded core
Democratic voters that some values and courage lurk under his caution
and pragmatism. Unlike Abbott, though, Obama has the freedom that comes
from not having to worry about being either replaced or re-elected.


Abbott’s reset has not changed anything – perhaps it can’t. Part of
the problem is the dilemma that while his government’s austerity
surprise package has alienated the population at large, his base in the
hard right remains unsatisfied. The kind of Abbott supporters present in
the @boltcomments
Twitter feed are motivated by a desire for social and economic revenge
against feminists, migrants, ABC journalists, and anyone else they
associate with an intolerable pluralism.


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Even
if Abbott could turn back time, the unchallenged white patriarchy these
people want restored is a figment of their nostalgic imaginations. This
makes their thirst for vengeance impossible to slake: Abbott can
restrict ABC funding, but not privatise it or shut it down; he can
imprison refugees, but not expel every Muslim from the country; he can
largely exclude women from his cabinet, but he can’t erase the impact of
feminism on Australian life.


Another perennial source of support for the Liberals are wealthy
people who don’t want to pay much tax. A combination of political
ineptitude (he can’t pass the savings measures he has proposed) and his
own instinct towards a paternalistic state mean that he hasn’t been able
to satisfy them either.


Another thing that Abbott can’t change is himself. His attempts to
craft a more sober and considered persona have largely failed, and may
even be feeding into the psychological strain that led him twice to call
David Koch “Chris” in an abysmal morning television interview. The
reason that people like Kochie and Karl Stefanovic feel okay about using
Abbott for sport is that his perennial unpopularity is worsening. Those
disappointed with Obama and even Miliband can at least look back to a
time when they were capable of inspiration. Abbott’s talent — from his
pursuit of Pauline Hanson to the toppling of Julia Gillard — has always
been entirely destructive. No one — least of all women voters — has
failed to notice that he employs these talents most ruthlessly and
enthusiastically against women in public life.


But another problem with “resetting” is that the current crop of
Liberal MPs – a much more right wing collective than even the Howard
majorities were – can’t really comprehend the belief that their budget
measures were unfair. Despite Abbott’s well-known Catholicism, he shares
the secular-Calvinist presuppositions that animate his party, and
provide the core belief of the English-speaking right: namely, that just
as the rich deserve their wealth, so do the poor deserve their fate.


Code-phrases like “personal responsibility” express the belief that
those who have no job, cannot provide for their own healthcare expenses,
or cannot fund their own retirement lack virtues that more successful
people possess. Economic values – efficiency, the necessity for “price
signals” to deter the undeserving – merely give it a contemporary gloss.
It’s possible to stoke the outrage of a minority of Australians with
talk of dole bludgers and queue jumpers, but the failure of Abbott’s
attacks on the most vulnerable shows that Australia is not at heart a
Calvinist nation.


The spellbinding catastrophe that was the introduction of the
Medicare co-payment shows us all of this in miniature. The negative
response to this came not just from those who currently get bulk-billed,
but from those who are already paying more than the scheduled fee and
who were threatened with further price hikes. It also came from the
perception that this was aimed at the most vulnerable members of the
community, whom the government thought should be taught a lesson in
thrift. Rather than tossing it altogether, the government has put GPs in
charge of dishing out the price signals that they think are required to
enforce social discipline. For all the promised changes, Abbott seems
to be back where he started.


In contemplating Abbott’s deep difficulties, the left might consider arguments like John Quiggin’s
in these pages last week – electorates simply aren’t buying policies
premised on “reforming” market liberalism any more, and aren’t willing
to trade the remnants of the safety net for a balanced budget somewhere
down the track. At some point, somewhere, someone will have to say that
the only way to preserve the budget and a decent social safety net is by
raising more money through redistributive taxation. Politicians don’t
think that people are ready for this message, but Abbott’s failed reset
suggests we may be more receptive than we think.






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Friday, 5 December 2014

Sam de Brito on Tony Abbott, our Foxtel Prime Minister

Sam de Brito on Tony Abbott, our Foxtel Prime Minister

Tony Abbott, our Foxtel Prime Minister



Date

Sam de Brito

Say what you want about Kevin Rudd and Julia
Gillard but they tried to be free-to-air leaders, whereas Tony Abbott
governs only for those who voted for him. He's our Foxtel Prime
Minister, writes Sam de Brito.








The buck stops here


The PM dances, 'til he's had enough.
By Rocco Fazzari and Denis Carnahan with apologies to Michael Jackson.


Recommended

When most governments get into power there's an unspoken truce that
occurs where the new leader says something like "OK, OK, I know almost
half of you hate my guts and did everything in your power to see me
humiliated and beaten, but now we gotta pull together. I will govern for
all".

And that's what most governments do - or at least try really, really hard to seem like they do.

With
the Abbott government, we're seeing a change in paradigm, where the PM
and his office is clearly saying to the people who didn't vote for him:
"You're not a part of our plans for three years, so you might as well
avert your eyes, you're not gonna like this."

All smiles: Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, just before the 2013 election.
All smiles: Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, just before the 2013 election. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen



Comedian Chris Rock said recently of former US President George Bush:
"He was the first president who only served the people who voted for
him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean?

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"He's the first cable-television president, and the thing liberals
don't like about Obama is that he's a network guy ... He's trying to get
everybody."

Abbott is our first Foxtel Prime Minister. If you're not a subscriber, too bad..

Say
what you want about Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard but they tried to be
free-to-air leaders. You could get service in all areas. It might not
have been the best picture, but it wasn't a blank screen.

Of
course, the Abbott government will deny this. The unfathomable sequence
of broken promises and denials that they're actually broken promises is
akin to them telling you to squint at the snow of static on your telly
while insisting it's actually MasterChef.

"See! You see that faint outline of Matt Preston's head? Awesome, huh?"

The
thing about Aussies, however, is while some of us are pretty stupid,
we're not as stupid as Americans. There are actually vast swaths of the
US that rejoice in voting against their self-interest; auto workers and
Southern waitresses convinced Republicans care about their jobs because
they also hate immigrants, abortion and evolution.

In Australia,
you might get the odd western suburbs McMansion owner, with $1 million
in the bank, who thinks Abbott cares about his smash repair business.
He'll wake up once his mum has to pay to go to the doctor every week and
he realises his nephews and nieces will never be doctors or lawyers
unless he ponies up that $1 million for uni fees.

We do
self-interest pretty well in this country - something Abbott manipulated
mercilessly while in opposition but seems to have forgotten in the last
12 months.

Right about now, I reckon our PM is feeling a newfound sense of respect for Gillard.

You
know when an assistant coach goes for a head coaching job, filled with
confidence: "It's all me, I'm doing it all behind the scenes," they tell
themselves.

Then they get the big gig and boom!

Reality.
The pressure. Injuries. Players doing stupid things in cubicles on the
drink. Salary cap. The board. Post-game interviews.

Something
like this was probably going on in Peta Credlin's office during the
last year of the Abbott government: "We beat Rudd and he smashed Gillard
(who'd already smashed Rudd) so we're golden. We'll do this on our
ear."

Now? I reckon Abbott's got a sneaky bit of admiration for
the way Gillard juggled someone else's promises (Rudd's), her own
agenda, a volatile crossbench and a bloodthirsty predator (Abbott) in
opposition.
Abbott only has to juggle his own promises, agenda and crossbench, and he's screwing it up royally.

Imagine if he also had to worry about Bill Shorten taking pieces of meat out of him every day instead of gumming him to death?

Make great TV.

You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.
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Thursday, 4 December 2014

Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia - go figure. - The AIM Network

Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia - go figure. - The AIM Network



Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia – go figure.










tonyabbott





Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia.  It is one of those
things that you know is true but remains incomprehensible.  Like the
concept of infinity.  It’s hard to get your head around.


In most jobs you need to satisfy key criteria to even get an
interview.  To get a managerial position you must have experience and
proven expertise.  Along the way your success in meeting key performance
indicators will be assessed.


Leaders should be people who inspire others, they should be role
models and protectors, they should listen and empower, they should have
good people skills and be able to negotiate, they should be trustworthy
and able to explain the reasons for their decisions.


Or you can just agree to say climate change is crap, and become the leader of the nation.


But how did Tony even become a contender?


He attended a Catholic boys school where he bemoaned the fact that he
was never chosen for the First XV rugby team.  Apparently this was not
due to a lack of talent but to selectors who did not recognise Tony’s
ability.


Tony then went on to study economics/law at Sydney University (for
free) even though he never worked in either field and described
economics as a boring “dismal science”.


Tony was active in student politics, eventually becoming an unpopular leader of the Student Representative Council.


“During my term, despite my objections, the SRC,
continued to give money to feminist, environmental and anti-nuclear
groups. I never managed to have the feminist and homosexuals’ slogans on
the SRC walls painted over nor to open the ‘Womens’ Room’ to men, nor
to make the SRC more accountable by ending compulsory SRC fees.”

Contacts within the Jesuit network secured a Rhodes scholarship for
Tony to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford even though
he had campaigned fiercely against the Philosophy and Political Economy
courses at Sydney University describing them as a waste of resources and
a hotbed of Marxist feminists.


The selectors for the Oxford rugby team also failed to appreciate
Tony’s talent, dropping him after one game and suggesting that his
ability had been overstated.


When he returned to Australia, Tony entered the seminary to train for
the priesthood but quickly became disillusioned with a church who had
“lost its way” in his opinion.


“Looking back, it seems that I was seeking a spiritual
and human excellence to which the Church is no longer sure she aspires.
My feeble attempts to recall her to her duty — as I saw it — betrayed a
fathomless disappointment at the collapse of a cherished ideal.


In addition, a “cooperative” style of management ran counter to the Church’s age-old hierarchical structure.


The more they played up lay ministry and ecumenism and played down
the unique role of the priest in the one true Church, the more the
struggle seemed pointless and the more I wanted to participate in
worldly activities which were much more to my taste.


l felt “had” by a seminary that so stressed ”empathy” with sinners
and “dialogue” with the Church’s enemies that the priesthood seemed to
have lost its point.”

Of his time at St Patrick’s seminary, vice-rector Fr Bill Wright
wrote of Tony that many found him “just too formidable to talk to unless
to agree; overbearing and opiniated”.


“Tony is inclined to score points, to skate over or hold back any reservations he might have about his case.”

Tony had been writing the occasional article for the Catholic Weekly
and, when he left the seminary, he began writing for the Packer-owned
Bulletin where, interestingly, he instigated strike action over the
sacking of photographers.


“When I was at the Bulletin, ACP management one day,
quite unilaterally, decided to sack the entire photographic department
….we were all shocked, stunned, dismayed, appalled, flabbergasted – when
management just came in and said they were sacking the photographic
department. So we immediately had a stop work meeting. There were
various appropriately angry speeches made and I moved the resolution to
go on strike, which was carried, as far as I can recall, unanimously,
and we went on strike for a couple of days.”

Tony only lasted about a year before he was writing to wealthy
contacts looking for a job.  Through the Jesuit network, he got one
managing a concrete plant and very quickly found himself causing a total
shutdown through his inept handling of employees.


In a 2001 interview with Workers Online Tony explained what
happened.  Interestingly, some time between me quoting the article in
August and now, it has been removed.  I guess we now know what all those
people employed to trawl social media are being paid to do – erase
history.  It is happening to an increasing number of links but it is too
late, the information is out there.


“I got to the plant in the morning, marched up and down
the line of trucks like a Prussian army officer, telling owner-drivers
who had been in the industry for longer than I had been alive, that that
truck was too dirty, and that truck was filthy, and that truck had a
leaking valve and had to be fixed.


Naturally enough, this wasn’t very popular, and I had been there a
couple of months, and a phone call came through one morning from the
quarry manager, saying that there was going to be a strike starting at
midday.”

Tony then took it upon himself to take delivery and run the conveyer belt on his own.


“A phone call came through at 5.30 the next morning from
the senior plant operator saying: “Did you turn the conveyor belt on
yesterday?”. I said “Yeh”. He says “Right – nothing moves – this plant’s
black – like to see you get yourself out of this little fix Sonny Boy!”


I thought that there’s really only one thing to do, and that’s to
beg. So I got over there and I said to the senior plant operator. I
said: “Stan I’m sorry. I’m new in this industry. I appreciate that I’ve
been a bit of a so-and-so, but you’ve made your point and I will try to
be different.”


He said to me: “It’s out of my hands. It’s in the hands of the union
organiser.” So I said, who’s the union organiser and what’s his number? I
rang him and I sort of begged and pleaded.  I said, well, look why
don’t we put the old final warning. That if I ever do this again, I’ll
be run out of the industry. And there was silence on the end of the
phone, and after about ten seconds he said: “I’m putting you on a final
warning mate, if this ever happens again you will be run out of the
industry.”

Abbott soon quit the job as it wasn’t paying enough money and
accepted a position with The Australian as a journalist. When they went
on strike over pay and conditions, Tony was by now campaigning on the
side of management, arguing in front of six to seven hundred people at
the lower Trades Hall in Sussex Street that they shouldn’t go on
strike.  His speech did not meet with a particularly warm reception and
the strikes went ahead.


He continued writing at The Australian until John Howard recommended
him for a position as the then Federal Liberal leader John Hewson’s
press secretary.  Tony was responsible for the infamous line in a Hewson
speech saying you could tell the rental houses in a street.


Is it any wonder that Hockey thinks that “poor people don’t drive” and Pyne thinks that “women don’t take expensive degrees”?


In 1994 Tony was gifted the safe Liberal seat of Warringah in a by-election and has been skating ever since.


He has changed his mind on innumerable things, lied and contradicted
himself countless times, and then denied lying, even changing his words
and removing online links.


He is a man whose convictions are dictated to him by polls and focus
groups in marginal seats and by marketing teams.  Peta Credlin has
increasingly centralized control failing to learn the Rudd lesson.


Tony learns his script but does not bother reading actual reports,
relying on others to just tell him what to say.  His Star Chamber
silence dissent, pay hacks to produce reports saying what they want to
hear, refuse to release any that may be critical or negative, while
arrogantly and blatantly rewarding their political donors.


Tony is not a leader by any stretch of the imagination.


It is not the Labor Party who is stopping this from being a decent government.


Darren Lockyer, the Pope, Tony Abbott and a school boy
were all on the same plane when the engine failed and started to plummet
towards the Earth.


They all realised that there was four of them and only three parachutes.


Darren Lockyer got up and said, “I am a sporting superstar and must
live so that I can please my fans and continue my career to beat the
Kiwis and the Poms in the tri-nations series.”


So he grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane.


Then Tony Abbott got up and said, “I am the smartest Prime Minister
Australia has ever had and I need to live to continue to govern the
nation.”


So he grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane.


Then the Pope said to the school boy, “I am old and have lived my life so you should take the last parachute instead of me.”


The school boy replied, “No, it’s okay, the worlds smartest Prime Minister took my school bag so there’s one for each of us!”




Twitt

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Monday, 1 December 2014

 
WE MUST ENSURE THAT THEY NEVER RETURN TO GOVERNMENT
 
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Sunday, 30 November 2014

Co-operative, consultative and collegial? - The AIM Network

Co-operative, consultative and collegial? - The AIM Network



Co-operative, consultative and collegial?










east=west link





“I certainly think it’s important that we try to ensure that over
time all levels of government are sovereign in their own sphere,” Mr
Abbott told Sky News.  “And we shouldn’t be bound by commitments that
the former government made that were never affordable.”


Of course, when Tony Abbott made these comments, he was referring to
the slashing of government funding for health and education.


But it’s a different story when it comes to the East-West link in Victoria.


After declaring that the weekend’s election would be a referendum on
the East West Link, Abbott maintains he is determined to see the East
West Link finished – no matter what – and is threatening to withdraw $3
billion of federal funding unless he gets his way.


To satisfy Tony’s wish to be remembered as the Infrastructure Prime
Minister (though I suspect there are a few other things that will stick
in our minds), he is bribing the states to sell off publicly-owned
assets in order to be given billions in co-funding to build his “roads
of the 21st century” (finger number 4).


Similarly, Christopher Pyne said the coalition will seek to amend
school funding legislation to remove parts that allow the Commonwealth
to dictate to the states.


“We’re not for taking over anyone or anything and we don’t subscribe to a command and control philosophy,” he said.


Unless we are talking about school chaplains of course, in which case
you won’t get the funding unless you employ religious counsellors as
opposed to people trained in welfare and youth counselling.


While Abbott can’t tell the states he is going to raise GST, ripping
$80 billion out of agreed future funding and then saying “we don’t run
schools or hospitals, it is up to the states to fund them” is a crass
attempt at starving them into submission.


Abbott swept to power assuming everyone would just go along with his
plans unquestioningly with Coalition governments across the country and a
compliant media.


What he didn’t reckon on was people power as a growing number of the
electorate are shaking off the political apathy that our easy life has
lulled us into.


Abbott’s promise to lead a “co-operative, consultative and collegial” government is proving more ludicrous every day.



Twitt


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Friday, 28 November 2014

ABC sacks Quentin Dempster

ABC sacks Quentin Dempster

ABC sacks Quentin Dempster





Date

Anna Patty

Workplace Editor

View more articles from Anna Patty

Email Anna





Dismayed: The host of <i>7.30 NSW</i>, Quentin Dempster, an ABC employee of more than 30 years, was sad about the loss of his program.
Dismayed: The host of 7.30 NSW, Quentin Dempster, an ABC employee of more than 30 years, was sad about the loss of his program. Photo: Wolter Peeters







When veteran ABC broadcaster, Quentin Dempster, says
"bye-bye" in his Queensland, boy-from-the-bush way next Friday night, it
will be for the last time.



After more than 30 years with the national public
broadcaster, Dempster told viewers on Friday night that he plans to go
out with a "bang".




"Next Friday will be the final edition of 7.30 NSW," he said. 



"I will be leaving the ABC after 30 years to return to the private sector. It has been an honour to work with Australia's great and unique public broadcaster."




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The ABC is abolishing local TV current affairs programs including 7.30 NSW.



"I think the ABC is making a big mistake in axing these shows
and will have to revisit the deficiency in future years," Dempster
said.



Within two hours of ABC managing director Mark Scott's
announcement to staff on Monday that 400 jobs would be lost around the
country, director of news, Kate Torney, called Dempster into her office
to tell him he had no future role at the ABC.



"I will be among 300 staff retrenched in the first round of the ABC's cuts," he said. 



"This is a very emotional time for me.



"I have worked extremely hard for the ABC to faithfully use the opportunity it has given me."



On why he was being "sacked", Dempster says he "only ever
sought to uphold the integrity of Her Majesty's institutions, the
Parliament and the police, in Queensland and NSW." 



"That's not left-wing," he said. "There could be nothing more conservative.



"Why isn't Rupert Murdoch being sacked for phone hacking,
invasion of privacy, intimidating the politicians, his tax havens and
all those tits on page three? Just asking."



In what has been described as a "Hunger Games" approach to
staff culling, colleagues with similar skill sets have been grouped into
small pools and told that some within that group will be among 300 to
lose their jobs by Christmas Eve.



"This has been a brutal and bruising process for all affected people," Dempster said.



"During this week I have been assisting and comforting staff
as they go through what's called a 'pooling' process and made to
scramble among each other for available jobs in skills categories."



Ms Torney confirmed she had met with Dempster on Monday to inform him he would have no future position with the ABC.



"It is with deep regret that we lose someone with the
experience, integrity and reputation of Quentin and viewers and
colleagues alike will greatly miss the enormous contribution he has made
over such a long period," she said.



Dempster, 63, hosted 7.30 Report before it was turned into a national program hosted by Kerry O'Brien in 1997.



He later became a part-time presenter of a program called Stateline at  6pm on Fridays.



"With executive producer Murray Travis [the late Paul
Lyneham's producer] we worked hard to make the program relevant even
with a timeslot which put us up against Brian Henderson's 6pm news on Nine and the Channel 7 news with Ross Symonds," Dempster said.



Stateline moved to a 7.30pm Friday slot in 2001 and was renamed as 7.30 NSW in 2009.  



"Since then the show was seen to make a very valuable
contribution to localism, even though I have been agitating since 1997
to have local current affairs returned to a nightly schedule, preferably
at 6.30pm weeknights [with 10 minutes] of local news," Dempster said. 
"While the ABC acknowledged there was a deficiency the reinvestment
could not be approved because of cost."



In 1992, Dempster was awarded the Order of Australia for
services to the media, "particularly in the fields of journalism and
current affairs". Ten years later, he was honoured with a Walkley Award
for the "most outstanding contribution to journalism".



Dempster started his journalism career in newspapers and was chief political reporter at The Telegraph in Brisbane before joining the ABC in 1984. Within three years he was fronting  7.30 Report in Queensland.



While covering the Fitzgerald inquiry into police and
political corruption, he wrote daily re-enactments and analysis to break
down its complex evidence in a way that was easy for viewers to
understand.



In 1990, after moving to Sydney to host 7.30 Report in NSW, he turned his attention to police corruption in NSW while covering the Wood royal commission.



He is the author of several books including Honest Cops, Whistleblowers and Death Struggle.



An active member of MEAA, the journalists' union, he was also a staff-elected director of the board of the ABC.



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Monday, 24 November 2014

He is Such a Lying Bastard. - The AIM Network

He is Such a Lying Bastard. - The AIM Network



He is Such a Lying Bastard.










Abbott promise





The subject of political lying, since the election of Tony Abbott,
has almost become a permanent point of discussion on main stream media,
social media and the blogosphere.


Why is this so? It’s because the Prime Minister has set a record of
lying both past and present that is unprecedented in Australian
political history. If you think I am exaggerating read “Remembering Abbott’s past”.


Lying is so engrained in his political persona that he knows not the difference between fact and fabrication.


More recently his lie about funding the ABC (and all the others) has
drawn immense criticism. On Monday 24 November he denied in Parliament
that he had broken a pledge not to cut funding to the ABC and SBS,
telling Parliament his government had “fundamentally kept faith with the
Australian people”.


In saying this he used another lie to justify telling the original
one. This is not just wrong but appallingly immoral. To suggest the
first lie was not one is to suggest we are no longer communicating in
English.


And Malcolm Turnbull’s attempt to do the same thing only served to devalue his own integrity.


More recent examples are the PMs Letter of advice on changes to the
pension. What a deceitful document it was. Really his lying knows no
bounds. He fails to mention the way the pension is calculated is to be
changed (If he can get it passed) resulting in a substantial loss of
income. Does he really think we are fools?


Another deceitful lie is the cuts to power bills with the elimination
of the Carbon tax. The resulting drops in charges varied across the
country and nowhere near the $550 he indicated everyone would receive.


Yet another example was when asked about the Green Fund at a joint
press conference with President Hollande the PM said that we already had
a Direct Action fund of 2.5 Billion and a Clean Energy Finance Corp 10
Billion fund. The only thing wrong with the answer was that the first
won’t work and it is a tax not a fund. And its Government policy to
abolish the second.


Unfortunately less informed voters outnumber the more politically
aware. Therefore, conservatives feed them all the bullshit they need.
And the menu generally contains a fair portion of untruths.


People like Bolt and Jones write and comment outrageously on the
basis of payment for lying controversy. Freedom of the press may entitle
them to do so but it is unjustifiable for the Prime Minister to follow
suit on the grounds of a collective desire for honesty in government. It
is however, highly unlikely that this Prime Minister has the decency to
do so.


“Political Lies and Who Tells Them Revisited”.


November 2013


The issue of truth featured largely in the last election. We the
voters were often left to decide who was and who wasn’t telling the
truth. Or who was telling more or less of it. So what is a lie? This
election was different in so much as we saw the emergence of various
“Truth Finder” sites and both sides of the political spectrum were found
out telling full-on porkies, or at least using different shades of hue.


This week lying has again been highlighted with the Government’s
decision to axe the Gonski Education reforms. The troubling aspect of
this decision is that during the campaign Tony Abbot gave a number of
commitments. For example:


“This will be a no surprises, no excuses government,
because you are sick of nasty surprises and lame excuses from people
that you have trusted with your future”.

He also promised a ”unity ticket” with Labor on Gonski funding:


“You can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school”.


“There will be no change to school funding under the government I lead”.

These commitments were totally unambiguous. Unequivocally
intentional. So much so that the average voter on hearing them could
logically assume that they were being told the absolute truth.


We now know that the Prime Minister and his Education Minister
Christopher Pyne were telling blatant lies about this and many other
policies. Policy decisions since the election (as listed in other posts
on this blog) demonstrably attest to this. Their actions have been
universally condemned by all media outlets except those of Murdoch who
has a vested interest in protecting Abbott from criticism.


This all gives rise to the question of the value of the words
politicians use. I for one wouldn’t believe a word Abbott says. There is
ample evidence that he is a liar and he has declared so himself.


But let’s take a look at the broader picture and ask ourselves what is a lie in general and what constitutes political lying.


We know that a lie has three essential ingredients; it communicates
some information, the liar intends to deceive or mislead and the liar
believes that what they are ‘saying’ is not true. And we call people who
use these three principles blatant liars.


When the leader of the then opposition said in July 2012: “The
tragedy of this toxic tax is that it will not actually reduce emissions”
and six months later they fall by 8.6%. Did he actually tell a lie? One
could well argue that he had no facts on which to base his assumptive
statement, so it could not be construed as a lie. It might be just an
opinion. The same could be said about his statements about towns being
wiped of the map and many others. However, if in politics we believe
that lies or statements are made either to deceive or manipulate (and
has the three principles mentioned previously), then you would conclude
that he was telling porkies.


“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no
better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs.
And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the
only thing that counts”.

– Michael Ende, The Never-ending Story


“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”.

– Adolf Hitler.


Conversely, when the former Prime Minister said “I don’t rule out the
possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a
market-based mechanism”, “I rule out a carbon tax”, did she actually
tell a lie? Clearly she showed an intent to keep her options open. As it
turns out we have a market based scheme. She was not trying to deceive.
She was being honest within the uncertainty of the circumstances. And
the MSM never gave her the benefit of the doubt.


I have always felt that when politicians have in their possession
certain knowledge and facts and fail to disclose it then they are guilty
of lying by omission. When you withhold information you are denying the
other person’s right to the truth. An example of this was when John
Howard found out that the children overboard incident was false and
withheld the information for two days prior to the 2001 election. It was
in fact lying by omission. And of course there is the weapons of mass
destruction lie. Did John Howard ever check the facts? If not he
perpetuated one of the greatest lies in history.


“When you tell a lie you deny the other person’s right to the truth”.


– John Lord.

On a more personal level there are what we call white lies where we
deliberately colour what we say in shades of hue to protect the feelings
of others or ourselves, or to avoid argument.


“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is”.


– Barbara Bush.

Consider the case where telling a lie would mean that 10 other lies
would not be told. If 10 lies are worse than one lie then it would seem
to be a good thing to tell the first lie, but if lying is always wrong
then it’s wrong to tell the first lie.


When politicians lie over a long period of time, it only serves to
denigrate the liar and show contempt for the voter’s intelligence.
Especially if the lies are chronic and systemic. The current use of the
term “no direct knowledge” is a lie within a lie pretending to absolve a
person who is fully conversant with the facts.


“Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . . when first we practice to deceive”.

– Walter Scott, Marmion.

Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out
(one researcher has said ‘lying is an unavoidable part of human
nature’), so it’s worth spending time thinking about it.


Why is lying wrong?


There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones
resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.


Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing:
lying diminishes trust between human beings; if people generally didn’t
tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be
trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted – you would have
to find everything out for yourself and an untrusting world is also bad
for liars – lying isn’t much use if everyone is doing it.


Who are the biggest liars? The left or the Right of Politics.


Last year on Facebook I shared a post of an interview with Laurie
Oakes and Tony Abbott (you can see it on YouTube). It is from 2005 and
Tony Abbott is obviously telling lies about the Medicare safety net. At
the time I made the following comment to accompany it:


“People who constantly portray the prime minister as someone who constantly tells lies should take the time to read this”.

It was then picked up by former National Times journalist Alan Austin
and we had a chat about broken promises, telling lies and the current
standard of journalism. He had this to say:


Remember, it was a Senator from his own side who called John Howard ‘the lying rodent’.

And have we forgotten the articles about Malcolm Fraser’s ‘Top 40 broken promises’?


Lies, about-faces and broken promises are as follows:


Gough Whitlam: 7

Malcolm Fraser: 52

Bob Hawke: 4

Paul Keating: 3

John Howard: 41

Tony Abbott (as minister): 17

Kevin Rudd: 4

Julia Gillard: 6


Tony Abbott (as Opposition Leader): 15 and counting. As PM ?


I found this to be particularly revealing so I inquired as to the authenticity of the figures and he replied with the following:


Before your time, John, I wrote a piece for The National
Times in 1977 about what were then Malcolm Fraser’s top 25 blatant lies
and broken promises. The then editor Trevor Kennedy – later to become
one of Rupert’s henchmen – headed it “Malcolm’s battle with the time
machine” which I thought at the time was unduly generous towards Mr
Fraser.

Later, in 1980, I wrote a piece for Nation Review on Fraser’s top 40
lies and broken promises which then editor, Geoffrey Gold, headed
‘Promises, promises.’ Neither are online, unfortunately, but I have them
in my clip file. Since then, I have kept tabs on all Prime Ministers
and would love to write about it.


If I get a publisher, I will let you know. (I am tentatively titling
the piece ‘Lies, damned lies and I support the elected leader of the
party’). Point being that there is simply no comparison whatsoever
between the falsehoods and about-faces of the Conservatives and
Progressives. The ratio is about 8 to 1. Which is why the current
perception that Ms Gillard is ‘Juliar’ is so bizarre from this vantage
point. (I am in France. Which means I read other media than just Rupert
Murdoch’s).


I replied:


Well I do hope you get to do it, Alan. I have been
following politics for around 50 years and it is time we had more
honesty and the standard of reporting is deplorable. However, do you
think there is at times a fine line between a broken promise and a
change of mind? And of course changed circumstances can necessitate a
change of mind. I would also be interested in what you think of the
standard of political journalism in Australia today.

Again, quoting Alan Austin:


Excellent questions, John.

Re standard of journalism in Australia:


http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=27274


Regarding categories of deception, there are at least seven.

Staring down the camera bare-faced lies are Class A falsehoods, like this one satirised here:


This is Tony Abbott lying about a meeting with George Pell.

Promises broken for political expediency with no external factors
forcing their abandonment are Class B Examples are Ms Gillard duding Mr
Wilkie recently. And Mr Howard’s no-GST-never-ever which he abandoned
before the 1998 election.


A Class B broken promise may, of course, be ratified by an election.
If this succeeds, as indeed happened with Mr Howard’s GST, then it
becomes less offensive. Say Class C.


Commitments made in good faith but prevented from being implemented
despite the government’s genuine best efforts – by a hostile Senate or
the High Court or a hung Parliament – are Class D.


Promises prevented from being implemented by changed economic
conditions – such as Paul Keating’s L-A-W-law tax cuts – are Class E.


Promises deferred by changed economic or political conditions – such
as Labor’s no carbon tax – are Class F. (Keating’s L-A-W tax cuts also
turned out to be F eventually.)

Assurances of loyalty to the leader by putative challengers deserve a
special category. Say Class I. (I for inevitable? Unavoidable?)


‘Telling the truth should not be delayed simply because we are not sure how people might react to it’.


John Lord

In the US election Republicans Romney and Ryan took lying to an
unprecedented level. Fact finders alerted the public to 2019 lies by
Romney alone. It is my contention that


President Obama lost the first debate not because he was off his
game, or that he was under prepared, but rather he was taken by surprise
by the willful lies that Romney was telling. The same fascination for
untruth by conservatives has been exported to Australia.


In my view Australians faced the most important election in living
memory. Liberalism no longer existed so what we were faced with was a
political decision between a very sharp turn to the scary right. Or a
party (in spite of its faults) that had the common good at the centre of
its ideology. In our ignorance, or perhaps our naivety we elected a
cohort – an all-male club who insisted they were adults but instead
turned out to be juvenile liars.


“Do you shape the truth for the sake of good impression?
On the other hand, do you tell the truth even if it may tear down the
view people may have of you? Alternatively, do you simply use the
contrivance of omission and create another lie. I can only conclude that
there might often be pain in truth but there is no harm in it”.

John Lord.

Further reading Abbott tells another one.



Twitt

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