Victoria Rollison is a legend in her own lifetime in Australia’s (and undoubtedly beyond’s) Fifth Estate. We are most grateful to Ms Rollison for permission to republish her work.
Dear News Ltd Journalists,
I’m writing you this letter on behalf of all Australians. That includes everyone who can vote in the upcoming election, as well as those too young to have a say in their own future. I wanted to let you know that your behaviour throughout the election campaign has been appalling. I know you know as well as I do that it’s not the role of a journalist to campaign for a political party. Journalists often justify their bias by saying that opinion pieces can be whatever they want them to be – whether or not they’re biased, unbalanced, untrue, or part of a conspiracy on behalf of your boss to get rid of the NBN, which threatens his business interests. But you’re not just contributing opinion pieces and amateur PhotoShopped front page images, denigrating the target of your smear campaign. You’re also contributing news articles, designed to bring about a certain result, a result you’ve allegedly been instructed to manufacture to help your boss make money. Doesn’t this make you feel dirty? Doesn’t the 17 year old aspiring journalist in you feel even a little bit sad about finding their middle-aged-self behaving in this unethical way? Don’t you care about the impact your work has on the country you live in?
I’m sure many of you justify your blind obedience in the ‘get Rudd’ campaign to the fact that you need a job. You have to do what you’re told so you can keep working as a journalist. I know there’s not many jobs out there for journalists, but this doesn’t justify you doing the wrong thing. There are hundreds of examples throughout history of ‘employees’ doing the wrong thing on behalf of their bosses, and justifying this wrongness by saying they were instructed to do it. That doesn’t make it ok. If Murdoch told you to hit your wife, would you do that too? Where exactly is the line that you wouldn’t cross, no matter what your boss wanted? Is there a line? When you write puff pieces about Tony Abbott, when you do glamorous photo shoots of Tony Abbott’s daughters but don’t actually ask them a question, when you choose not to scrutinise Abbott, and omit news that is damaging to him, when you support Mal Brough’s campaign to destroy Slipper and then ignore the news that you were part of the Ashbygate conspiracy which a Federal Court Judge has revealed, when you cover your front page with blatant propaganda to help Abbott win government, but don’t tell your readers what his real plans are, when you give a candidate a free run and create the misleading impression that the Labor government is unsuccessful, you are failing Australia. Your job is not more important than your responsibility as a journalist. How are you ever going to get another job with this sort of behaviour in your background?
I actually think it’s an absolute outrage that not one of you has resigned in protest during this election campaign. Not one of you has stood up for journalistic integrity and said ‘enough’. Not one of you has said your pay cheque isn’t more important to you than your ethics. And what about all the jobs your readers will lose because of your campaign? You know Tony Abbott has proudly announced that he’ll sack 12,000 public servants. These are people doing important work in our communities. They help people. They support the disadvantaged in society. How is your job more important than their jobs?
No doubt many of you are Liberals yourself, having been hand-picked by your boss to make sure you’re on his side. But even if you think Tony Abbott deserves to win the election, and even if you like his policies and are completely in favour of his plans for this country (assuming you know what these are), don’t you think the Australian people have a right to hear both sides of the story before making up their own minds? Don’t you think it sounds a little bit like Fascism for your boss to decide that he wants an Abbott win, and then for you, his minions, to do his dirty work in the most blatantly dishonourable and immoral media campaign this country has ever seen?
Perhaps you read letters like this, and you are so hardened to the world that you let it roll over you, like water off a duck’s back. But I just hope that somewhere, deep down inside you, there’s a little voice reminding you that you’re doing the wrong thing. If you even have the ability to feel guilty, to feel ashamed, even if it’s just at 3:00am in the morning when you can’t sleep, I hope you feel awful.
It’s also important for you to know that we won’t forget what you’ve done. If your boss gets his way, and you do manage to deliver Australia the most conservative, austerity obsessed, downright mean and selfish government we’ve ever had, it’s very likely most of your readers, especially those in areas like western Sydney who’ve you’ve conned most successfully, will not be very impressed with you. They might ask why on earth Abbott is cutting spending on services they need, like health and education, when they didn’t hear about it before the election. They might be disappointed to hear their work rights are being undermined by the same front bench who came up with Work Choices. And they might be really pissed off when the surplus they’ve been promised is actually a gigantic $30 billion dollar black hole. No doubt you’ll do your best to blame all these woes on Labor, as this is your unthinking knee-jerk reaction to everything. But how long can this work? I know you like your readers dumb, but don’t underestimate how quickly people work out that they’ve been screwed over. I hope your precious job is worth it then. I would have thought your entire industry was in enough trouble without you putting another dozen nails in its coffin through your own arrogance and incompetence.
THE PUB 
Fiona – in my opinion women of taste and discernment would have avoided Mr Howard – but that’s just my opinion.
As fro PM Julia Gillard – it was a pleasure to see the warmth and respect she received overseas-as it was sadly lacking at home.
Maybe in time people will come to realise what a hard working and forward thinking Pm she was- and what she might have achieved. I have nothing but the highest regard for her.
On Newspoll- did anyone seriously think it would be any better? I’m surprised its not worse but they need to keep it relatively credible so close to the election. Am I right that the margin of error is + or -3%?
Yes, the margin of error is 3%, but it’s Rudd’s approval ratings that are the most frightening part. It’ll be difficult for him to win if he’s more hated than Abbott.
Kirksdale – I think the slip in his approval in one week is slightly suspect-where did they poll, Liberal heartland? Or maybe the MSM have sewn it up and people believe what they read?
Oh, the primary results are in.
GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes 16m
#Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 33 (-4) L/NP 46 (-1) GRN 10 (+1) #ausvotes
A big shift from Labor to Other, and a small dent in the LNP vote too.. Still, a primary vote of 33% is dismal.
At least there’s a Morgan poll tonight too, but it’s not got much good news either, 52/48 to the dark side.
GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes 24m
#Morgan Poll Primary Votes: ALP 34 (-0.5) L/NP 43 (-2) GRN 11 (0) PUP 4 #ausvotes
@Catalyst
Possibly both. Although last week was the LNP campaign launch and this one was taken Friday/Saturday with a bit on Sunday, but probably none of them saw the ALP launch today.
I haven’t lost all hope, just maybe enough people will go “Heey, wait a minute, why are they so hysterical and desperate for me to vote Liberal? What’s going on? What’s Abbott up to?”.
But then again the past 4 years of politics has been so utterly dreadful that a toxic PM is probably what a toxic country wants.
Trying to keep the flame of hope alive-as I know the doom is what the ‘dark side’ want.
It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.
William Dean Howells
The deafening blasts of doom are coming from the Murdoch forces.
Never allow them to stop you tilting at the windmills. Even if the wilfully blind can neither understand or see them. The act of hoping, even if it is against hope, will never allow a brave spirit to falter. The justness of your dream can only be reinforced by setbacks. Your dream is just and strong. Never let them take that away.
Over the next 6 days they want you despondent;.. for the only food for their arrogance is your despair. They need it more than we can imagine. Voracious arrogance will turn and devour itself. Beginning with the weak among them. Force them to feast on each other…not on you.
Whatever happens next Saturday is going to happen. None of us will gain much by over analysing what’s said by whom to who.
Best to believe that while you have windmills, dreams, spirit and strength others do as well and all listen to the still, small voice that the soul heeds.
Fiona
[Oh come now]
Very norty!
Thanks for those great words, Ian. There is indeed no point in despairing because that is the very point the propaganda war is driving you to. They are more than trying to remove your hope. The aim is to drive many to the point where they are sick of all the bile and vitriol.
Human response being what it is, people want to end it without necessarily thinking that you don’t end it by surrendering to those making all the noise. One of the worst blows for me was seeing my own brother put a ‘like’ on Tony Abbott’s Facebook site. As I’ve explained previously, there is no accounting for this decision, even allowing for him being a single issue interest person. I can just find nothing to like in Abbott – such a poseur and coward.
When I was young and more passionate, I would have found it hard to forgive my brother for what I would have regarded as a treacherous view, against all the family beliefs and values. But as I am older, I see it just as a view, for which he is entitled in a democracy. The fact that it is not rational is merely evidence that constant propaganda can work, as Goebbels claimed.
If we were to go down, and I haven’t yet accepted that as assured, I would rather that it was under Gillard, simply because she would give such a staunch defence of our values. For all that, Albo and Rudd gave a good display of our values and history yesterday. A lot of it will probably be suppressed or smothered but I am glad that it is out there.
All we can do is give this week everything and hope it breaks through. I think Joe is right that the social media is not quite as strong here as it is in the US. Were it so, and there are some unknowns with it, I’d still be hopeful.
Good (is it?) morning Dawn Patrollers.
Peter Martin on the time bomb Hockey and Co are sitting on.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/gamble-on-playing-budget-office-politics-may-return-to-bite-20130901-2syv0.html
Politifact gives a “Pants on Fire” rating to “Buy the Boats”.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/coalitions-plan-to-buy-the-boats-a-crazy-policy-that-will-not-save-lives-or-money-20130901-2syzu.html
Why did Labor wait so long before making these announcements?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/its-not-over-yet-rudd-20130901-2sz4o.html
Move over folks. Here comes George!
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/church-lobby-in-win-over-charities-watchdog-20130831-2sxqs.html
Section 2 . . .
I have a comment for you Eddie. “Stiff shit!”
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/collingwood-president-eddie-mcguire-says-perth-finals-schedule-is-an-act-of-treachery/story-fnia3z73-1226708547333
Well there is this to look forward to.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/abbott-faces-chaos-in-senate-20130831-2sxqz.html
MUST SEE! Aln Moir on Abbott’s march to our oblivion.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/alan-moir-20090907-fdxk.html
Andrew Dyson with a Rudd before and after.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/andrew-dyson-20090819-epqv.html
Section 3 . .
Another MUST SEE – this one from Cathy Wilcox.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/cathy-wilcox-20090909-fhd6.html
David Rowe and Rudd with a case of the droops.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/cartoon_gallery_david_rowe_1g8WHy9urgOIQrWQ0IrkdO
Pat Campbell tries to understand the meaning of the term “WMD”.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/federal-politics/cartoons/pat-campbell-20120213-1t21q.html
Bill Leak on Rudd’s defiance.
The only poll that matters etc. etc. – and it certainly isn’t Newspoll…
Abbott gets trounced in the debate, again, and suddenly Rudd is on the nose? Bullshit!
Catalyst is right – the message to run with – and run hard – is trust. Abbott wants you to trust him with your vote, but he doesn’t trust you with his costings. You never hide good news, so what exactly is his “plan for Australia”?
Abbott and Hockey’s panel of experts:
And from the Land of the Free –
Some cartoons on Labor Day. Quite sickening really. WorkChoices anyone?
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/09/01/cartoons-of-the-day-labor-day-3/
Montana justice in action.
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/08/31/video-if-i-didnt-know-any-better-i-would-think-you-were-exchanging-your-judicial-robes-for-a-gop-seat-in-congress/
They are bloody mad!
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/08/31/life-saving-med-only-available-in-13-of-us-for-moral-reasons/
Section 2 . . .
Religion gives religion a bad name.
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/chaplain-tries-justify-taking-health-c
Look at these charts to see where Abbott and his puppetmasters want to take you!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/01/1234559/-Here-s-why-if-you-don-t-like-inequality-you-should-support-unions
These guys are a dangereous influence as they insult and manipulate the credulous.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/31/kenneth-copeland-measles_n_3850299.html
George Galloway on the defeat of David Cameron regarding the Syrian response. He is a great communicator.
https://pbxmastragics.com/2013/08/31/an-open-letter-to-journalists-at-news-ltd/comment-page-4/#comment-86015
Thanks for the links, BK. Loved Moir!
The George Galloway one just goes back here.
Did anyone seriously believe that Newspoll would show anything but a drop in the Labor vote? Rupert has to back up his campaign and make us believe all those Daily Smelly front pages have worked. He can’t allow results that don’t support his view. I’m just surprised that he didn’t go a lot further and make it something like 61/39.
Well, in the last three elections, all the polls have narrowed in the last week. Would this be the first time they have widened?
Late on Thursday Abbott will release a dodgy set of costings based on dodgy assumptions that will take days to disseminate so that no errors will be discovered before Election Day.
After the election he will use a Commission of Audit to justify the cuts he has planned.
His plan sticks out like the proverbial dog’s………
Ross Gittins on why taxes would rise under Abbott.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/why-taxes-would-rise-under-abbott-20130901-2sytp.html
And yet another international expert thinks we don’t know how good our economy is and we’d be nuts to change the government.
Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, says –
“In this election, the conservative side of politics has foreshadowed substantial cuts to the government budget. This would be a grave mistake, especially now.”
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australia-you-dont-know-how-good-youve-got-it-20130901-2sytb.html
ONE way Rudd can salvage the election: tonight on QandA say to the electorate at large: Don’t rely on Labor Senators to save the NBN. If Mr Abbott wins big he will have a mandate and so the Labor Senators won’t stand in his way as he dismantles the NDIS, Gonski, sell the ABC to Mr Murdoch. . .etc. . .If you want the NBN, want your kids to have the benefit of Gonski then the only way to get it is to vote for the present Labor government.
Keating did this in 1993 against Hewson, promising Labor Senators wouldn’t stand in the way of the GST, individual contracts etc.
Maybe a few emails to your candidate/MP, Albo etc might see it happen?
Fiona – It’s been around 40 years since I’ve been rounded up by a school teacher. But this morning I’ve been told that the two eldest of my nephew’s children should turn up at the CoL School for Girls on Thursday.
The teacher is a curriculum junky and wants to ascertain if the two visitors are in-front or behind.
I think that I’ll get away with this well.
They’ve been running around in the private gardens and my nephew has been timing the runs; a seven year old knows to record the time split with a colon!
Well, for what it is worth, and I DO put some value in it..I was sitting at a very busy inner city alfresco cafe yesterday and at a table next to me was that Sunday Tele front page pic of Tony etc….I kept an eye out for reactions…only two…and they were snarling lip-curled grimaces as they walked past….other than that..nothing at all….I wonder if it is a case of “…the man doth protest to much”?
Keep your powder dry!
Not even Abbott believes Newspoll. Tones has just said he doesn’t believe the polls and the election will be very close.
I don’t know how many of you are keeping an eye on the weather lately, but the forcast for my area shows successive days of over thirty degrees, and many up in the high twenties…this at the end of winter……!!….tell me it’s not (don’t mention the war!!) climate change.
jaycee
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-01/act-has-warmest-winter-on-record/4927500?section=act
“If Murdoch told you to [hack into someone’s phone], would you do that too?”
An interesting article from the US; similar arguments could be made about Gonski vs. Snobski education reforms:
If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person – A manifesto.
Morning, all.
Now we know what Mr Abbott really thinks of us:
Ian – thank you for your comments and analysis- I am continuing to ‘dream the impossible dream’
and will talk to everyone I know about trust- I tried ‘would you buy a used car from this man?’ about Tony Abbott with my neighbour and got an immediate and automatic head shake. Trust is the issue- and the clip of 7.30 with him saying ‘I don’t always tell the truth’ should be front and centre.
Morning all,
Whose got the stomach to watch the Abbott at the NPC today?
gorgeousdunny are you doing the commentary for the faint hearted?
Catalyst,
mikehilliard
If the NPC is too barf inducing try the Brisvegas Times live Q&A with Rudd at 4:30 Brisbane time.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/brisbane-live/kevin-rudd-qa-live-at-brisbane-times-20130902-2szhb.html?rand=1378078373049
Ian,
I am so glad you visit The Pub. It’s your wisdom, and that of all those who contribute here, that keeps me from despair.
Thank you.
Like TA, KR has a pamphlet to hold up. All about Queensland.
CTar,
What can I say in response to your comments addressed to moi?
😀 😀
Brave Sir Robin runs away AGAIN.
[Tony Abbott retreats from drones pledge in defence policy
The Coalition has backed away from a pledge to spend $1.5 billion on unmanned drone aircraft]
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/tony-abbott-retreats-from-drones-pledge-in-defence-policy-20130902-2szov.html#ixzz2dh1pXclA
Interesting. There was a HUGE late-evening spike in views yesterday. People of a certain persuasion wanting to see how we were bearing up?
So Abbott is playing with Blackhawk helicopters this morning, and Rudd has caught pamphletitis. God help us…
Jon,
Welcome to The Pub, if that was your first comment.
And a sensible one, too. As my parents used to say to me, Would you put your hand into the fire just because everyone else was doing it?
kaffeeklatscher
RE Brisbane Times Q+A, thanks didn’t know about that. Will tune in, is it just audio or do they have a video feed?
The future of the NBN under an Abbott govt.
http://nofibs.com.au/2013/09/01/preparing-abbotts-nbn-twitter-handles/
How will Turnbull live with his conscience ? Probably a better question, does Turnbull have a conscience ?
Just drove past the local pre-polling station. Judging by the length of the queue, you would think it was Polling Day.
For all that Abbott has dumbed down the debate over Syria, I have to say I’ve got to agree with his directness.
We should not be in Syria, and we should not join in any military action against Syria.
As President nation of the Security Council, we should keep our hands clean, act in a “chairman” role and not advocate for one course of action over another.
We have the same ingredients to the Syrian situation as we had to the Iraq situation….
* Secret, anonymous US “intelligence” reports from outside official UN channels.
* Intercepted phone calls (that we’re not allowed to hear for ourselves) between “Mahommad” and “Abdul” types saying wtte,”Shit! If the Yanks find out we used sarin gas we’re for it, mate!”
* A disappointingly belligerent US President who’s talking of using his CIC powers, executive orders etc., even if Congress is against action.
* A real possibility that the gas – if used – has been used by an agent provocateur.
* No guarantee that whoever used the gas in the first place won't retaliate, won't spread it about in the subways of New York, or Sydney (if Australia joins in), as a payback. The assumption seems to be "they wouldn't dare", but no-one can answer why they wouldn’t dare.
Rudd’s words on this subject leave me in total confusion as to just what his attitude is. He says “Words are bullets in diplomacy”, but they are still words. They should have a meaning. Trying to decipher Rudd’s words is an almost impossible task.
At least there’s not much difficulty in deciphering Abbott’s words. He is essentially saying “Both sides have blood on their hands, and there’s probably more than one side, too. They’re all ‘baddies'”.
While Abbott’s way of putting things is adolescent and simplistic, there’s a part of me that would rather have them as expressed, instead of Rudd’s diplo-speak that means essentially nothing.
Rudd is playing the “intellectual” card in this campaign. He speaks as if he’s a smartarsed nerd who looks down on the hopeless Abbott. In fact he revels in this comparison, as evidenced by Albo’s specific referral to Rudd being just that – a “Nerd” – in yesterdays campaign opener.
It worked once, in 2007, but not now I suspect.
Rudd puts that supercilious tone into his voice as if only he has any clue as to what’s going on. His vocal mannerisms shout “Pompous git”. His overuse of “Frankly” and “You know what?” and the ubiquitous “I gotta zip” are annoying to me (who’s voting for him) and must be infuriating to those who aren’t voting for him.
I can’t help thinking that Rudd deserves to lose the election, simply due to his monumental miscalculation that the “enemies of his enemy” would stay his “friends” when they had achieved what they set out to get from him: the total annihilation of the Labor party’s upper power structure. If he can miscalculate about something so glaringly obvious, what else would he miscalculate about?
It comes of course from vanity. It was written all over his face yesterday. Unlike some, I was hugely unimpressed with the show he put on yesterday. It dripped of insincerity. Sure, a reading of the transcript allowed you to think that he was serious about “My job is to save your job” and so on, but the look on his face showed that his real concern stopped at his job, and the rest was collateral to that aim.
I have little doubt that he will abandon Labor if he loses the election. My thinking is that he’ll saying something like, “I gotta zip” and leave the party to sink or swim by itself.
Right back from the Hung Parliament, where his termiting caused Labor to nearly lose the 2010 election, and to be hamstrung for the next three years as a result, and then to suffer even more termiting from him, Labor has suffered at the hands of this man’s ego, and before that, too. Enough is enough!
That’s not to say that Abbott deserves to win the election. There’s no need to analyze Abbott’s character – it’s the pits – and he will cause himself enough trouble over the coming months and years, if he wins. He’ll have to be gotten rid of too. Let us just hope that sober, wiser heads in the Liberal caucus restrain him from some of his more egregious coming excesses (and in the process save us from the consequences of them).
Australia is the Golden Egg that has been fucked up by a succession of second raters – blowing the lottery winnings on baubles and bludging relatives, all in it for what they can get. There’s been little common sense, and almost no preparation for the future.
The public seems to think you can achieve constant record surpluses without raising taxation. Only “savings” are necessary, and those savings never affect them.
We had Nirvana as a nation within our grasp, only to fall out with each other, squabbling over the spoils, fighting over who gets the biggest share. And in the process we’ve frittered it away, arriving back where we started, with empty coffers. The gold dust has slipped between our fingers like sand.
Our feelings of entitlement have not diminished, however. We want more and more from less and less. This has been the con that Abbott has foisted on us. He talks tough, but acts like a fiscal coward.
Both he and Rudd wanted to return us to (in Rudd’s own words) a “Golden Era that never existed”. Rudd’s version has him at the top, and Abbott’s has Abbott at the top as a mean proxy for Howard. Rudd’s goes back 6 years and Abbott’s goes back 10 years, but apart from that slight difference in timeline, they are equally retrograde.
The third complicit party in this triumvirate of self-delusion is the public. They talk big and spout noble concepts to polling companies, but when ti comes down to tin tacks, they are just as venal and grasping as the politicians who seek to lead them.
They sincerely believe that neighbouring countries should bear the burden of the demographic shifts that have cause tens of thousands to head for our shore in leaky boats. This is a moral position, just about. We’re “too good” for “illegals”. Darkies should look after darkies.
Other countries should also look after Global Warming. The idea that we’re in this together is a non-starter in their heads. Once upon a time they expressed belief (again to pollsters, when it was easy) that we should “do our bit”, but as soon as Abbott offered them an alternative, a way out of the moral hole they had dug for themselves, they took it. They convinced themselves that because Julia Gillard “lied” – in one interview, actually in one incompletely reported sentence of one interview (that they have all kidded themselves into believing they not only watched, but that it affected their vote) – then all bets are off on Climate Change.
Rudd put the cherry on top by effectively de-legitimizing the entire past three years of Gillard’s incumbency by “apologizing” to Barrie Cassidy (of all people! Cassidy! Again!) for Gillard’s government acting “without a mandate”, just as he delegitimized his own time in office by grovelling over Pink Batts and sacking Peter Garret a few days later. We were left with a Rudd failure in office and a Gillard failure in office, and nothing more that fluff words about “A New Start” (or whatever) that got shot down in flames in the turkey shoot that this campaign has become.
As bribe after bribe unfolded in yesterdays campaign opening speech I grew more and more morose.
It had come down to this: handing out $12,000 to apprentices, and giving yet more tax cuts to small business. That, and that annoying, plonking tone that Rudd adopts when he’s saying something you just know he doesn’t believe himself. He used it when he characterized himself as a Happy Little Vegemiter on the back bench, “working for the Labor government”, led by a woman whose name he could not bring himself to utter.
That’s why, although I don’t want Abbott to win, I want Rudd to just bloody-well go, to get out of my life and go and bother someone else. Another three years of watching this pompous git lie to the world at large is too horrible to contemplate.
As for the Labor Party, they have lessons to learn too. Lessons about courage under fire and basic decency, ethics and moral resilience. To get rid of Rudd but then to allow him to do what he did to them, and then to reward him at the last moment, stopping the horse and changing jockies with a furlong to go, is almost unforgivable.
This man Rudd has been nothing but trouble for them. You can say “But he got us into office”. Yes, but at what price? And for what lasting legacy if Abbott wrecks it all, as he has promised, taking us back as a country to before, long before Howard even looked like losing office?
Let’s face it Australia has shot itself in the foot. Labor has shot itself in the foot. and the Coalition are about to do the same. It was all there for the taking and we frittered it away in an orgy of self-congratulation and hubris, clinging to the belief that we were somehow better than other countries and that we could continue to pay ourselves above-award wages forever, without earning them.
We have solved no problems, nor have we learned anything in the past ten years. We are still the same culturally cringing, entitlement nation that we always were, hiding under the umbrella of a foreign Queen, to scared to even cut that pathetic tie.
Like cargo-cultists in the highlands of New Guinea we saw an aeroplane fly over our valley once and have been worshipping it ever since, building bamboo replicas, praying to it, sure that one day it will come back and drop the cargo we have convinced ourselves is ours as of right. We’re hankering for something that will never happen.
It’s always been a losing proposition and it always will be.
We’re at the mercy of the world’s climate, of geopolitical events on the far side of the globe and of financial currents we have no understanding of.
Most importantly, we haven’t grown up as a nation, and we never will if we continue to present ourselves with the Rudds and Abbotts of this world as the only two choices available to us and to believe that Australia is a place where you stub your toe on a gold nugget, only to sell it off to someone else who’ll give it value.
I think it is time Rudd backed off re Syria and costings.
It seems every other world leader is putting Syria in the too hard basket so Rudd should stop playing politics and move on.
I doubt a great number of Aussies really care about Syria.
The costings issue is a lost cause shot down in flames by the OM last week. At the very least it is all noise of a “he said/ they said ” standard.
With just 5 days to go more important things for Rudd to worry about instead of being side tracked.
I also found the announcement yesterday re a possible takeover of TAFE by a future labor government rather laughable.
It bought back memories of his promise to stop the blame game re hospitals and a possible Federal takeover of the health system.
That went well for Rudd. Not.
Anyway, 5 days left for both sides to lock in the voters.
Time to focus. The launch yesterday was good by labor but too late I think.
I didn’t know Abbott was doing an NPC, Mike.I suppose I could manage it. BB often takes 2GB – so I suppose there is evidence that you can survive.
I don’t know which is worse. Listening to Abbott with slogans and platitudes, or the tame obsequiousness of the press questions. Laura, Bongo and Lenore might be good for the odd awkward one, but I expect it would be mouthed away, with no follow-up like Bridie did that time.
In a way, I’m sorry that Speers is not in charge. It might be fun to observe how he tried to protect Abbott. But at this point he probably won’t need much protection.
This has just hit my in-tray:
http://ifabbottwinsyoulose.com.au/
Ross Gittins uses a graphic illustrating my oft-repeated characterization of Abbott as the back-alley scam artist:
Turnbull won’t have to worry about living with his conscience. He doesn’t have one. If he ever needs one he will just buy a shiny new one. Perhaps he’ll use some of the millions he’s made investing in FTTH in France and Spain.