Wednesday 19 October

1 The Prime Minister was interviewed by Fran Kelly on the ABC Tuesday. I sat and watched as he tempestuously answered questions about Monday night’s Four Corners program concerning the conditions asylum seekers endure on Manus and Nauru.

I was overcome with sadness that this man could not manage a scintilla of sympathy for their plight. Only the tired well-worn Duttonish words of blame escaped his lips. The same words repeated as if no others existed. Words destined to be repeated endlessly until death do they part, for they have been sentenced to a life of incarceration, and not a crime have they done. He had no answers for the plight of children. Nor did he seem to care.

2 Alan Austin writes that Australia’s net debt has smashed through the $300 billion barrier. Gross debt is now above $450 billion. Both have been met with deafening media silence. In under four months this financial year, the gross debt blow-out has been above $8.0 billion per month. In comparison, Labor’s monthly average was $3.08 billion overall, including through the GFC. But they got it down to $1.19 billion over their last six months. This confirms the Turnbull Government has completely lost control of Australia’s revenue, deficit and debt.

The Labor Herald had this to say:

”Every now and then someone introduces a word into Hansard for the first time. For more than a century the word ”octupled” has been waiting for its day in the sun. This week, Tanya Plibersek could wait no longer and drew attention to the fact that for the last financial year, the deficit ended up being eight times larger than when the Government took office in 2013. The Coalition has failed to take responsibility for “blowing out the 2015-2016 deficit by over eight times… You have octupled it.”

3 Barnaby Joyce is still refusing to release what can only be described as a blatant self-interest decision to relocate an agency in his portfolio to his own electorate. It’s the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. It will cost a lot of money and many of the staff don’t want to go.

As is his want Barnaby couldn’t give a stuff. Barnaby is just one of many Coalition MPs who disregard the facts in pursuit of an argument. The people have a right to know.

4 To buy the votes of Senators to get their ABCC legislation passed Nick Xenophon wants imported building materials to be subject to local building standards and increased protection for whistleblowers, while David Leyonhjelm wants importation of the seven-shot Adler shotgun to be legalised.

Yes you read correctly. Buying votes with banned guns can be very dangerous.

5 I could hardly believe my eyes. A headline on the front page of The Australian. Chris Kenny was demanding more diversity of news from the ABC.

That’s a bit rich, I thought, coming from the most biased news outlet in the land. And then I read that the PM dined at the lodge with Murdoch editors and met with Fairfax Media prior to that. I’m tipping a change to media rules will follow.

6 A tweet from Craig Emmerson:

“If the Government truly believed in needs-based welfare it would withdraw it from the well off. But it won’t because that’s its support base”.

Here is another from Tao der Haas:

“So if I get a few people together & call it a think tank,church or Institute, I’m tax exempt like IPA, Hillsong or Sydney institute?”

7 The latest ACOSS report shows that 3 million Australians a living below the poverty line and that includes 731,000 children. And at a time when the Government is cutting Social Security payments.

The Government reacted by saying that it was very committed to finding ways to encourage people to look after themselves and get people off welfare if they didn’t need to be on it.

An observation.

“The only true measure of a countries worth is what it does for its least well off”.

The Assistant Minister, Zed Seselja, said the “Our opponents on the left have pushed, I think, a welfare mentality in this country,” Seselja told Sky News on Sunday. “We simply can’t go on assuming huge numbers of Australians welfare will just become the norm.”

Bloody marvellous reaction when for every job available there are 19 people wanting it.

8 The Crickey Poll Bludger this week has a combined average with Labor on 52.1 and the Coalition 47.2. 98% thought that the population had gone to sleep.

NewsPoll also reports that Pauline Hansen has also increased her vote since the election and is likely to provide the same problems for the Coalition as do the Greens for Labor.

And yesterdays Essential Poll has Labor 6 Percentage points ahead 53/47

On their weekly questions 55% want a vote in the Parliament on Same sex marriage. 58% Think the Government will be unable to get things done. 79% of voters would be concerned if Trump became President.

9 On this day last week Andrew Leigh achieved what no Opposition member has ever achieved in the history of our Parliament. He had a “second reading amendment” carried.

10 Males get a foot up the bum in a report released by Plan International Australia and Our Watch. It surveyed 600 girls and young women aged between 15 and 19 on their inexperience’s of inequality between December 2015 and February 2016.

The findings, released on Tuesday for the International Day of the Girl, show that more than two-thirds (69%) thought gender inequality was a problem in Australia.

An observation

”The problem is that Australian men have never really grown up”.

11 Did you know that former Tasmanian Liberal MP Eric Hutchinson, who lost his seat at the last election, was given a $200,000 PA job by the Senate President, Stephen Parry?

I’ve said it before, money is no object to them.

12 And did you know that Tony Abbott tried to get Nick Xenophon to support changes to 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. He was met with a resounding nope, nope, nope.

13 There are those who think that Marriage Equality will now fade into the distant horizon never to see the light of day again. It won’t because it’s not a political problem. It is a societal one. One that periodically will raise its head and command attention and in so doing will continue to serve as a reminder of the incompetency of MPs in general.

My thought for the day.

”Some years ago, I was in Myers (A department store) and I held open a door for a young woman who was obviously in a hurry. Oh, she said, You didn’t have to open the door because I’m a woman.Well I didn’t said I.I opened it because I’m a gentleman”.

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