The Pub is proud to present Madame Leone’s cautionary tale for our contemplation.
(Image Credit: Perth Now))
The Pillars of the Liberal Party
Chapter One: The Making of a Liberal Politician
(OK, I stole that from Battlelines, but no-one has ever read that so no-one will notice)
Not so very long ago in a city in the south a baby boy was born to well-to-do, well-educated parents. They named their treasure ‘Joshua’ and a grand celebration was held. Two fairy godfathers attended – Uncle Peter and Uncle Alex. They bestowed great and valuable gifts on the infant. He would receive a lavish education, the gaining of which would take him overseas, then he would, of course, become a Young Liberal and one day, if the spell lasted, he would be Prime Minister. Uncle Alex added a bonus spell, Joshua would always have a beautiful head of thick hair and would also appreciate elegant footwear and fishnet stockings. The baby’s parents were overjoyed with these gifts, although they had their reservations about the fishnet stockings.
Young Joshua grew and flourished, becoming a somewhat chubby young man with, of course, a lovely head of hair. He had been sent to the best schools his faith had to offer. He went on to study law at Monash (although his mother secretly longed for him to study medicine), then, as his fairy godfathers had promised, headed off to Oxford and then Harvard. And, of course, he joined the local branch of the Young Liberals, also as promised. Whenever his travels allowed he handed out how to vote leaflets at elections and engaged in occasional Black Ops forays into the less salubrious, Labor-voting parts of the city. In every way Josh was the perfect young Liberal blue-blood.
(Image Credits: Wallace Wong and Steve Dunwell))
But sadly, all that study did not take and it became evident he would never be a lawyer’s bootstrap. One day his worried Papa took him aside for a man-to-man chat.
“Oh Papa,” said Josh, “I already know all that stuff, I went to Oxford, you know.”
“No, son, that’s not the purpose of this talk,” said his no longer very proud Papa. “I have come to a decision. It’s time you found a job.”
“Me! Work?” said a startled Josh. “But Papa, what about my doctorate and what about my professorship, and what about the next young Liberal BBQ and what about……”
“Enough!” roared Papa. “I’ve spent several fortunes already on your education and you are still as dumb as a box of rocks. And not even the smart rocks either, just the very dumb ones. I have decided. You will become a political advisor – no-one will notice your stupidity among that lot. Uncle Alex and Uncle Peter have already found you a position. You will be working for Darryl Williams.”
“Awwwwwww, Papa, noooooooo!” wailed young Josh.
“There will be no moaning, my boy. Go and pack your bags. you are leaving for Canberra tomorrow. Uncle Alex says he might take you under his wing himself if you do well with Williams, so work hard and keep out of trouble.”
(Image Credit: Project Gutenberg))
And so it came to pass. Young Josh took his first unwilling steps towards his eventual glorious future.
Alas, not all the spells cast by his fairy godfathers worked. Much to Uncle Alex’s dismay Josh began to lose his hair, slowly at first, then more and more, until his hairline looked as though mice had been nibbling it as he slept. And he never did develop a fondness for leopard-skin stilettos or fishnet stockings. Which is probably a good thing.
(Image Credit: The Advertiser))
Next chapter – A True Liberal Princess.
THE PUB 
A palm-top gone wrong.
I tweeted yesterday that Mr Fullers death was his own fault. With all respect to his relatives. Some one has to start saying it. I hope twitter picks up on it.
Nice one here.
http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/seniors-blowing-money-luxury-cruises-says-truss/2259246/
Motor mouth muted.
I also said the Fullers’ grief is being shamelessly exploited by the Fibs.
I don’t understand why Chris Pyne used the word c#&t?
Surely he could of called Bill Shorten a dick instead.
I have it on good authority that Pyne has no problems wrapping his lips around that word!
On a completely unrelated note, has anyone seen James Ashby lately??? 😝
Probably asking Peter Slipper for a job.
On a completely unrelated note, Pyne is a grub.
I don’t think Pyne said the C-word at all. It doesn’t make any sense to me. A lot of people watch QT live, and at the time nobody at all commented on what was (to look at the footage) apparently a clear utterance. It’s not the sort of thing you’d miss if watching live. The story came out later, which is just weird.
I think what’s happened is that somebody has dubbed the word over the footage, and then uploaded that doctored footage.
I also think the issue is somewhat of a unicorn. I don’t think the LNP would mind very much if we all looked in that direction for a while. Takes the heat off them generally.
Be interesting to see how hard Bill goes in his In-reply tonight.
While I’m here I might as well say that I’m very ambivalent about the idea of blocking supply on this budget. One part of me says that it’s so awful and draconian that maybe preventing its passage is the right and proper thing to do. And also that Abbott threatening for so long to force a DD if carbon pricing wasn’t repealed does kinda give it the green light. But the other part of me says that the Australian people did vote for this government, and that maybe forcing them to cop the full three ghastly years will teach them not to make that mistake ever again. Or at least for a generation, which would be about how long it would take them to forget.
There’s also the danger that blocking supply would allow Abbott’s people to claim it’s just politics driving it. The conversation may go in directions we don’t want it to go, to the ‘right’ of a government to implement the plan they believe is the ‘best’ one as a result of being given three years’ power. I’d still come down on the side of the ALP on that one, but I’m not sure how the swinging voters would react. The ALP would want to be very careful not to get ahead of public opinion, lest they be seen as driving the division.
It’s a tricky one, and I can understand why they’d want to err on the side of caution.
Aguirre, I don’t think that the word was dubbed over, I do think that it could be misinterpreted by some one watching that tape and hoping to hear Mr Pyne being rude. The fact that he was rude to the Leader of the Opposition is sufficient to explain just how truly juvenile he is, whether he used grub or not. But we knew that!
However, the question having been raised, the video can then be used by both sides of tribal divide. One to observe how juvenile, the other to squee over a naughty word being used against their ‘enemy’.
And Lo, a unicorn is born.
It’s enough to make a real grown up weep *sighs*
There’ll be no blocking of supply, for all Palmer’s bluster.
Tinkerbell will have to wait till tomorrow #ICAC.
Looks like it was Chris Pyne who borrowed Tones’ budgie smugglers.
YES!!…block supply, get the trash out before they do any more damage…young people, old people, vulnerable people are going to die because of this govt’s vandalism…our nation’s infrastructure is being sold off to overseas buyers, our vital utilities are being bought by the highest bidder and our nation will suffer from the breaking up of services…health, social services, communications, welfare and our old age has been sold off to the highest bidder, not to forget the trashing of our Parliament and our democracy…..AND IT AIN’T FINISHED YET!!…..block supply, dump the trash and then drag the entire bunch of them into the streets and horse-whip the bejeesus out of them!
Joe Hockey isn’t short of a quid. He can afford to spend as much as he likes on booze and cigars. He assumes, in his arrogant, born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth way, that the rest of us happily fritter away money on booze and smokes too. I don’t smoke, never have. I don’t drink much either. When I was struggling to raise three kids on welfare payments I didn’t drink at all, except at Christmas, when me mum would send me money for Christmas treats and I was able to buy a bottle of bubbly.
There are thousands in the same position right now, thousands doing it even tougher than I ever did, families finding it impossible to keep up with the basics let alone luxuries like the odd drink. And yet this over-privileged oaf is telling us all that it’s easy to afford the GP tax, all we need to do is have one less drink or a few less cigarrettes. What a bastard!
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/less-than-two-middies-joe-hockey-defends-7-gp-fee-20140515-zrdb6.html
And while we are at it….throw in that slug ; rhinestonehart and the dirty old perv ; murdock !
I think to block supply would be the wrong thing to do. I agree with Aguire that the people voted the abbott and his mongrels in to govt, and deserve all they get for being dumb enough to swallow all the lies they were told. Therefore, I believe Labor are wise to tread cautiously.
Voters really do need to suffer the consequences of their actions and I do not believe they are hurting enough yet to give Labor any thanks for saving their hides from their own folly. By the time the next election rolls around the stupid ones are quite likely to vote PUP but we can hope a majority will have learned that it is a good idea to have a good look at the candidate they intend to vote for and choose wisely.
I’m enjoying saying ‘I told you so’ over and over.
What the government has done is give Labor a huge election campaign. All they have to do is promise to overturn all Abbott’s cuts so far and promise they will not do all the nasty things Abbott has said he will take to that election. There’s a whole election campaign just in the change to pension indexation.
Whether people listen or not or understand what they hear is a whole other thing. The ill-informed masses have already got the GP tax confused. There are already reports of patients not turning up or cancelling appointments because they are worried about having to pay. GP practices are having to send out texts and emails telling their patients the tax will not apply until July next year. This surprises me. I thought the ‘mob’ wouldn’t even know there had been a budget handed down, let alone know what was in it.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/patients-already-stopping-gp-visits-while-experts-warn-of-serious-impact-on-nsw-hospitals-20140514-zrccr.html
Hockey is very judgemental, telling us how to live. No smoking, no drinking.
My turn: Hockey, I wish you wouldn’t overeat and those cigars give you a bad breath!
And Hockey: stop dancing. You look grotesque!
Lyndal Curtis – clearly not a member of the media, by the way she referes to “The Media” – has suddenly got religion on politicians making promises, or more precisely, holding them to those promises…
Just in case youse missed it, the “reforms” are “necessary”. It’s as if we just discovered an asteroid’s going to hit next March.
“Pass the ammunition and damn the promises!” begs Lyndal.
How quaint. I don’t seem to remember Lyndal asking respectful, exploratory, information-seeking questions of Julia Gillard or her ministers, or when doing TV panel show duty, where she jabbered away regardless, with yet other journalists.
It was more like, “Prime Minister, you said ‘There will be no Carbon Tax under a government I lead’. Why should anyone trust you now?” and so on.
It’s alright to go about beating her bosoms over how everyone is so cynical, but I didn’t see Lyndal Curtis holding back on the snark or the unanswerable questions when she had the chance before last year’s election.
Abbott not only made promises, he made promises to KEEP his promises. When asked if he was serious about some of the more ridiculous assurances he gave the punters, he levelled his lizard eye at whoever was asking him the question and said,
“We.Will.Keep.All.Our.Promises.”
We all watched his lips. Yep… they were moving.
Abbott was given many chances to recant and STILL guaranteed the promises would be kept. By the time he got to the election, the lying had become robotic. He’d have promised to cut his own mother’s throat to get elected, he was so “promised” up.
Lyndal Curtis is suggesting that we all turn over new leaves right now, just in time for analysis of one of the most astonishing tissues of lies ever uttered, to wit: the Budget. “Let’s start being all nice about it… now!” she suggests.
Concerning the man who has made it a lifetime’s quest to seek forgiveness, rather than permission, Curtis seems to be advising that we forgive him. Perfect timing!
Let’s all roll up our sleeves and get down to serious Budget examination, like the adults Curtis is pleading with us to be. Oh yes, and the Media too, of course…
Which media?
Why, THAT media, over there, naturally.
Meanwhile, we’d do well to take those promises Abbott and his cronies made, and the promises to keep promises,plus all those “I’m offended” and “How dare you suggest…” tantrums whenever someone suggested his platform was a crock of shit, with the grain of salt Lyndal suggests.
I mean, they ALL lie, don’t they? that’s Lyndal’s message.
Now that Labor’s gone she feels she can tell it like it is. She doesn’t have to be “balanced” nowadays. She doesn’t have to swallow the lines. Liars lie. Get over it, people!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-15/politicians-need-to-be-judged-on-results/5453388
Leone,
Like you, No.1 son is also enjoying telling people ‘I told you so’. He shrugs his shoulders and says “well, if you voted for them you deserve what you’re getting”.
I don’t ever listen to anything Lyndal Curtis says. She hurts my ears. She has a fantastic voice for silent movies.
No, Lyndal, they need to be judged on how their policies match their promises. Simple.
This is an article I put up on the community web-page some time ago…although it refers to environmental connections, it could just as well refer to many of our complaints to those who write of politics…and even to our representatives in Parliament itself.
The “Collegiate and the Fellowship”.
I have been to several environmental themed workshops this last couple of weeks and I have noticed there is a pattern of procedure at each of them.
It works like this…:
You have the speaker / expert and you have the audience. The speaker comes to talk armed with research notes , topic-cred’ and a kind of bestowed authority. The audience consists largely of a group of lay-amateur environmentalists, strangers to each other who attend out of interest or for social connectivity. Some have collected “on-the-ground” statistics and anecdotal evidence.
So when these two disparate groups meet, there is a kind of “disconnect” rather than a “connect” of interest. The clash between the “collegiate” of professionals who have difficulty accepting any anecdotal “on ground” evidence without acceptable research backing….and fair enough. On the other hand you have the lay-people who have witnessed with their own eyes, certain events which are in contradiction to some accepted research orthodoxy….so a conflict of interpretation exists between the “collegiate” of insiders and the “fellowship” of observers.
Usually, the lay people give ground out of respect to the credentials of the experts….but still retain a degree of suspicion that lays dormant till more convincing evidence is forthcoming….after all, one has to believe what one sees with one’s own eyes! Now this, is the moment where a degree of foresight could best be implemented. Foresight to forestall any doubting and disconnect between the parties, because as much as one or the other resents it, each is wedded to the other by necessity…a) the “volunteers” out of a desire to gain knowledge with little cost but maximum benefit to themselves and b) the collegiate out of the need to access, justify and prove the requirements of research grants.
There is a problem arising here with a lack of sympathy on both sides of the “fence”..with the “collegiate”, there is a degree of impatience with what could be seen as time wasting listening to and collecting unscientific and unstructured data that is of little or no use in research or field work. With the “fellowship”of amateurs, there is little understanding of the oversight of the direction, policy and funding of the professionals. That there is a strata of management above the collegiate that has performance-based criteria that they are expected to meet and funding reports expected to be written.
So in essence , there are three strata of persons in the “game”…Higher management..The professional and.The lay-person. The professional is a little like the meat in the sandwich, with demands from above and below. A difficult situation indeed! However, at least they have some power to control procedure within the parameters of research and can have some freedom of movement within certain guidelines. The lay-person is at the mercy of their own intellectual and skills base and with something new to their experience like environmental monitoring, it can become a bridge too far! This is why they attend workshops, to glean some more nous in their observations…to try and target more accurately their subjects. In this there is huge respect for the credentials and authority of the “collegiate”. They are seen as a font of knowledge.
Perhaps there could be more socialising BEFORE a workshop to help the shy or the doubtful get to know more of the intentions and interests of others also in attendance, perhaps breaking into small groups of strangers to each other so as to break the ice and introduce each other. After all, one thing is for certain…all are there for the same reason..; to protect and enhance the environment.
Lyndal is ….
Sorry, I’m still looking for the right word … Never mind, BB said it all.
FWIW, my control group got all excited about the budget for about a day – yesterday morning until last night – but they only really covered two topics:
1. Should higher education be free? And the attendant question – did abolishing Uni fees really change the economic mix of students?
2. GIven the mess the ALP made of the last term, what can we really do about it now?
A surprising number of them are still expressing an intention not to vote at all at the next election. The narrative of the ‘dysfunction’ of the Rudd/Gillard governments struck deep, and is still taken as a given. “The mess they got us in…” gets quite a run, not just there but elsewhere.
The mix has got very weird. Some I was pretty sure were moderates are backing the budget pretty hard (with some minor reservations). Some I thought were rusted-on ALP have been comparing them very unfavourably with the Greens. And a couple of Liberals have just about disowned their party. Not the mindless Libs though; they’re putting forward some very simplistic arguments for their man. On the whole the budget didn’t make any of them angry, but did have some of them very apprehensive.
If I was to guess based on what I saw there, I’d be thinking the budget will be a slow-burn, with a lot of people not jumping off the Coalition until they’re actually personally affected.
Interesting Aguirre. Msm did quite a job on the populace to instil the meme of ‘the mess Labor got us into” – I believe the voters were persuaded by the media that their instincts about the abbott were wrong. I reckon it will take a good dose of pain before they’ll be convinced just how royally they were screwed and it is the reason why I’m feeling the voters should be left to wallow in that pain (even though the rest of us have to suffer along with them).
Too often I’m hearing these stupids crying foul and asking why we can’t just kick them out NOW.
Forcing an election through the Senate, despite the dysfunctionality and deceit of this government, should be off the agenda. The principle of representative government demands that they be made and unmade on the floor of the lower house, Labor showed that they stood for very little when they dumped Gillard and allowed her reforms to be ignored during the election campaign. But they must stand up for that, or they’ll be the victim of fake ‘crises’ and pushed aside by hysterical populism just as Gough and Gillard were.
I have no problem with them opposing specific unjust items such as he Medicare co-payment and the education reneging. Nor to it not yielding on carbon pricing and mining taxes. If the government wants to put that to an election test, fine. But leave governing to the lower house even if it means putting up with Speaker abuse.
Yes, wholeheartedly agree, GD. I keep telling people we’re stuck with the mongrels until the next election rolls around.
Bridie Jabour (remember her, Tone?) examines promises
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/is-tony-abbott-fixing-budget
Really? Who would have thought!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/ipa-founded-group-lobbying-for-forest-world-heritage-delisting
Warning: picture of Grunt.
The ‘kick them out now’ thing is a left-over from the previous government and all the ‘Election now’ garbage we had from shockjocks and their followers.
Labor needs to stay calm and let the government dig their own grave. Abbott seems to be ignoring the advice of his MPs and running with all sorts of lunacy. I’m hoping he gets fed up with his precious tax repeal legislation getting canned in the senate and uses knocked-back legislation as an excuse to call for a DD. Abbott is nuts enough to believe he would win a DD and win with an increased majority. Labor can drag out the debate on various bits of budget legslation for a long time, too. It’s becoming clear that the incoming indies are not going to roll over and vote with the government on everything. We are in for a very interestng time.
Much as I’d like to see a DD next week I know it should not be one brought on by Labor blocking supply. There are other ways. Driving Abbott to do it himself is much better.
Both the abbott and HoJo appear to be rattled that their fabulous budget effort has gone down like a lead balloon. Maybe it won’t take much to drive the insane abbott to do a DD – we can but hope anyway.
When’s the next lot of polls? 😀
http://www.mamamia.com.au/hub/working-5-to-9/reasons-miss-julia/
Dunno Ducky. Wouldn’t it be loverly if the coalition copped a right royal whacking….like 70/30 to Labor? The abbott would explode.
Good grief and sacre beaujolais. Just saw The Rodent saying Tones’ family tax changes as being “in effect a tax rise”.
Ol’ jaycee again reads a lesson (unconsidered) from history…:
“…At the same time of course, with their affectation of knowing better when it was too late and their overwise impracticalities, they proved a perpetual clog to those who were acting ; their daily work consisted in criticising ridiculing and bemoaning every occurrence great and small, and in unnerving and discouraging the multitude by their own sluggishness and hopelessness. While these displayed the utter prostration of weakness, the “Ultras” exhibited in full display its’ exaggerated action. With them there was no attempt to conceal that any preliminary to any negotiation for peace, was the bringing over of Caesar’s head!…”
“The History of Rome”…Theodor Mommsen.
Read it and weep for the history that will repeat…if we think that those bastards in the LNP. and their bastard backers are going to just let themselves get rolled out of office after going to so much trouble and treason, screwing the nation and it’s citizens…then you better believe…Santa Claus does exist!…
The horse..as they say…has bolted!
Who’s next?
Sometimes you wish you could pick those bloody Greens up, give them a good slapping and chuck them in a dark dungeon.
With all the budget angst going on what does Christine Milne do? She decides to push her demand for a federal ICAC before the senate -AGAIN. The damn thing has been there for yonks, no-one is interested. Today Labor voted with the government against a debate. Note that – not against the bill, just against a debate at this time. Milne has been whinging all over the place all afternoon. What about the budget, Christine? Got anything to say about that? Trying to draw attention away from your party’s support of the fuel excise increase maybe?
Fiona
Not a happy looking lot behind HoJo.
I’m completely fascinated that almost any discussion online that starts out making a pleasant comment about Ms Gillard almost as soon as the comments are opened starts to denounce her for all the things that Mr Abbott and Mr Murdock’s papers claim were her failings. Particularly today, it is almost as if there is this great terror that by not backing those claims, people might actually have to face the fact that the Australian public were lied to in order to achieve a particular political and business outcome.
I’m starting to come to the conclusion that Mr Abbott was placed in the position of Prime Minister because Mr Rudd had the poor taste to prevent Australia going the same way as the rest of the world in 2008. We are now to be punished as everyone else’s economies start to recover, so that the oligarchs and carpetbaggers can take advantage of us as they have of other countries.
Seems she is being called Karen Icacnamara.
My OH regularly volunteers to assist in a small unaligned group which takes old ladies stuck in a retirement home out for a small soiree every two weeks. These are old ladies who have no family left locally to entertain them, but are mobile enough to attend clubs or cafes as long as they have some assistance. Today was one such day, and about 15 little old ladies were taken to a café for coffee and a cake, a little entertainment and some conversation with the half dozen volunteers.
According to my OH today it was all about the Budget, and the biggest whinge of all was why were pensioners given a cut when the “bloody fighter planes” didn’t. The second biggest complaint was the GP tax closely followed by the Uni fees thing.
Not all of these ladies are Canberra locals, many of them come from towns up to 100 or so Kms away originally, so they are not necessarily normally left leaning.