Game of Moans

Guest Author Uncategorized

Today’s Guest Poster is Puffy The Magic Dragon. Thank you, Puffy, for sharing – and please don’t hesitate to let us know sometime what you really think of Our Dear Leader . . .

(Image Credit: SBS)

The birds were chirping, the Adelaide sky was a lovely blue with fluffy white clouds floating, a cool breeze chasing away the heat, the next door’s dog was engaged in the usual slanging match with one of my terriers. It was a glorious Sunday morn that greeted my wakening. A sense of unease tugged at my lazy morning comfort. I had the feeling that there was a blemish on the face of the beauty but I could not quite pinpoint it. Did I have a bad dream; were its tendrils displacing my comfort and lassitude?

I am a slow waker. The warmth of sleep and the weight of terriers delay my rising; I rarely leave that cocoon without a twinge of regret. It is very primal, finding a secure and comforting sleeping place, where cold, wet and danger are at bay. I love the sound of heavy rain on a corrugated iron roof while I wriggle further down under the covers, and throw their warmth over my dogs as well.

Then it hit me, that thing, that crawling up the spine feeling of acute embarrassment, much like remembering that you blundered at the vegan dinner by asking if the fantastic roast spuds were cooked in duck fat.

In Lock Down Brisbane there was a knees-up for all the world leaders. The populace displayed great courtesy and grace by deserting the city for the weekend. Restaurants were empty. The brothels worried that the visitors would not make up for the regulars who would stay away. The roads were like a scene from a post-apocalyptic film set. I expected at any time to see a Mad Max rage across the empty roadways. The protesters were polite, refusing to start a riot for our media (won’t someone think of the headlines!) with a few token arrests of people for refusing to give their names to a police officer without being suspected of a crime, or some such right that we have had since the Magna Carta or some such. The police overtime was fantastic, just in time for Christmas spending.

OH CRIPES. Now I remember. Oh dear, oh my, oh NOOOOOOOO! This chance to bring twenty of the world’s leaders to our beautiful country, to showcase our innovation, our commitment to justice, our fair dinkum-ness, our willingness to lead in the face of overwhelming odds in areas of global significance just because it is right and needed, this chance of the decades, was torpedoed. It was blown out of the water by an egotistical, petty, small-minded, weak-willed, inept fool.

This man, who styles himself as a Man’s Man while the Women of Australia Do Their Ironing, The Abominable Shirtfronter, this Theon Greyjoy of Australian politics, whinged, in a stirring reminder of the epithet applied to unwary English migrants of the post WW2 who expressed their separation anxieties through complaining of the shortcomings of their new antipodean home. Jokes about jet engines come to mind. He whinged that the true blues of the Great Southern Land would not accept his ideas of a discredited economic theory. The colonials object to the dismantling of Medicare and university education fee increases that would impoverish a generation.

He boasted, as a school bully boasts about blocking up the school toilets, to the world leaders wondering how to avert a millennium climate disaster, that he dismantled Australia’s earth-saving carbon pollution reduction scheme, and replaced it with a free and unaccountable handout to our biggest polluters, all funded through whatever taxes are left after his expenses for various weddings, bike rides and office fit-outs are paid.

This little man, Tiny Abbott, who prevents people from attending the funerals of their friends, belittled our guests. These very important people, the most powerful in the world to ever visit Australia together, were guests in our country, but Tiny likes to pick leaners and lifters, likers and losers. Like a bad host he made sure some were seated below the salt, visibly so, when an experienced diplomat or dignified wedding planner would have ensured salt cellars at every setting.

How clever to demonstrate to the world that petty vindictiveness and infantile scheming are the heights of one’s skills, and the shallowness of one’s character.

Tony Abbott is a man who believes he is the Imperial Governor of Australia, the man sent to teach the colonials how to live, to put away their grandiose ideas of a peaceful, fair and progressive land that attends to its inequalities and recognises their First Peoples, and strives for something better than all the countries that its immigrants left behind in sadness and hope.

I remembered what was spoiling my pleasant Adelaide morning: that boil under the Australian armpit, Tony Abbott, the Prime Miniature of Australia.

But then, I remembered. Nothing is forever.

(Image Credit: Getty Images)

324 thoughts on “Game of Moans”

  1. gigi

    [t seems silly to compare]

    Not so.

    Going to the other side of the World and suddenly realising you are no longer a tourist and so you need to orient yourself is not silly.

  3. Trouble at t’mill

    Nearly one in three CSIRO staff are “seriously considering” leaving the research organisation after a bruising year of job losses following an internal restructure and a $111m federal funding cut.

    The dire figure emerged in a survey of more than 1,200 CSIRO staff commissioned by the organisation’s board and carried out in late August and early September.

    It found the number of respondents who said they would “recommend CSIRO as a good place to work” plunged 22 points to 58% compared to the last staff survey carried out in 2012.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/18/csiro-one-in-three-staff-seriously-considering-quitting-survey-shows

    Maybe the Minister for Science should say a few words.

  4. Well, I think the jury’s in.

    Bill Shorten has played a blinder. He’s written the text book, or at least Volume I of it, on how to counter Abbott’s maniacal mis-government.

    Shorten is way ahead in the polls now, leaving Abbott behind. Abbott’s shot off just about the last bullet in the bandolier – anti-Red hysteria – along with all the usual suspects – Debt & Deficit, Royal Commissions, Evil Millennial Apocalyptic Death Cult Jihadis (and massive police raids to match, which netted one suspect and a plastic sword), Shirtfronting, Team Australia (heard that used lately?), anti-Obamaism (who ever told him that would work? Australians love Obama!), Dole Bludgers, Entitlement Mentalities, Knighthoods, a poncy “bizoid” comb-over, Blue Ties and has repealed the dreaded Carbon Tax (as well as Stopping the Boats…ho hum).

    If 55-45 to Labor is the result of this, Abbott had better hope that asteroid the Euro spacecraft is on changes course and heads for planet Earth. Because salvation from the heavens themselves is about all that’ll help him now.

    He has no ideas, and no idea that he has no ideas. He’s got a dud in a Treasurer, a Nazi as Immigration Minister, a half passable Trade and Foreign Affairs combo, and dunderheads for the rest of the ministry. Unemployment is up, the economy is in the doldrums (and sinking lower), the dollar is down but there are far fewer exporters to take advantage of it, our telecommunications network is ratshit, R&D is gutted, growth industries are in hibernation and may not ever wake up, and those old 3-word slogans just don’t have the elan they used to have.

    None of the above will create one nett job or put dinner on the table for the unemployed. None of the above will revive a defunct manufacturing industry. Digging holes and milking cows certainly won’t, either.

    Frankly, except for Big Dairy (now substantially owned by another usual suspect, Gina Rinehart), who gives a shit about the Dairy Industry being the big winner from an FTA with China? I mean, who really cares? It’s embarrassing. Other countries do FTAs and hi-tech is the big winner, or aeronautical manufacturing or some other sophisticated secondary industry.

    What do we get?

    Contented cows.

    Good on ’em for trying, and good luck to our tenacious milkos, but it’s hardly the thing that’s going to lead the recovery we need. The Budget is blocked, locked and stonewalled in the Senate with a maddie running around vowing she’ll never pass another government bill until they give the ADF a proper pay-rise (I forgot… so much for our brave troops).

    Meanwhile the Quiet Australian, Bill Shorten, has scored big in the polls without hardly lifting a finger in dispute. He has stuck to Abbott like a limpet, but he’s only stuck to him in things that can easily become unstuck once Labor wins back government. Troops in Iraq? Pull them out. Jihadi Laws? Repeal them. Same for the journo laws. On the latter, once he does that, or even hints at it, will Billy be the darling of the media or what?

    OK, OK, I know that the fearless Fourth Estate is only whingeing about something they’ll never do, and wouldn’t recognize if they trod in it – investigative journalism – but you never know, promising to repeal an anti-media law can’t possibly be a negative, can it? Would even The Australian write an editorial denouncing a freeing-up of reporting on security matters by thundering that what we need now is MORE censorship? Yeah, well, maybe they would, but I don’t think it’d stand the laugh test. And that’s if they have any readers left.

    Where we are now is that the government is coming up to Christmas and a rumoured ministerial reshuffle. Even Bolt has chimed in on that, telling Abbott to clean out the deadwood, with Joe Hockey first up the 13 steps to the gibbet,whimpering “Why me?”

    Why not you, Joe. You’ve done eff-all and wasted our precious time doing it.

    You can’t cancel Christmas – or in journo parlance… “The Killing Zone” – and Abbott can’t squib the hard yards for much longer. One is reminded of deck chairs and the Titanic, for all the choice he’s got.

    This farce cannot go on for much longer. Australia is essentially un-governed. While the Captain is in his stateroom preening himself, hair-spraying that cowlick back off his forehead and adjusting his Windsor knot, working out which side makes him look more statesmanlike, the ship of state drifts rudderless. As does its cargo… the Economy… and its passengers… us.

    Cleaning out the deadwood will be like those guys with a screwdriver and a bleak look on their faces that you get out of the Yellow Pages to come and inspect your floor joists for termites. “Geez mate, it just goes deeper and deeper.” It’s why those other bringers of bad news, dentists, commit suicide so much more than the rest of us: the more they drill, the more rot they find. What’s the point of capping teeth and putting in implants if your paying customers hate your guts and fear you like nothing else?

    “This won’t hurt a bit,” say Tony and Joe.

    “Yeah, sure,” say the voters. “We’ve heard that story before.”

    Elected to govern, Abbott’s mob are not governing. It can’t be put simpler than that. They have a few ideas, but nobody likes them, because most of the ideas they have are either broken promises, or promises they were too gutless to make in the first place.

    The crew have deserted their posts, more interested in running “Best Dressed Sailor” and shuffleboard competitions, rather than actually doing anything. Promotion has triumphed over perspiration. And there’s an iceberg ahead.

    Captain Smith went down with his ship, but you can bet Abbott will be looking for a lifeboat. Unfortunately there are none left. It’s time for Tony to put up, or piss off.

    He wanted the job, and now he’s got to do it. But we know he can’t.

    Exeunt, stage right, Tony Abbott.

    Hello Little Bill Shorten, the man who everyone said was a boring wimp, but who has slain the mighty dragon by essentially doing nothing except staying right behind him, in his blind spot. You have to take your hat off to Shorten. He has shown remarkable cleverness is NOT doing the bleedin’ obvious and is now reaping a just reward for it.

  5. Local mine workers doing FiFo ? That’s not FiFo. This is FiFo !

    several dozen butchers make an epic commute – from provincial New Zealand to rural Iceland – for just two months’ work. It’s at the extreme end of the trend for fly-in fly-out workers.

    Slaturfelag Suourlands, which has factories in the south and west of Iceland, employs Kiwi butchers and has done so for many years.

    “They are professionals and nice people, bringing a lot of know-how and ideas to our production,” says production manager Gudmundur Svavarsson.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29892427

  6. More good news…

    El Nino to bring a hot, dry summer
    The prospects of a hot and dry summer for much of Australia are increasing with “classic signs” of an El Nino event starting to emerge in the Pacific, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

    The bureau on Tuesday raised its estimate of an El Nino occurring this summer to “at least 70 per cent” after temperatures in the tropical Pacific warmed further in the past fortnight.

    “It’s very, very late in the year to be shifting towards an El Nino,” Andrew Watkins, the bureau’s manager of climate prediction services, said. “A classic pattern is starting to emerge.”

    The Pacific Ocean is a major driver of the global climate. El Nino years tend to be warmer than average globally, with impacts ranging from drier conditions in the western Pacific and wetter ones in the east.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/el-nino-to-bring-a-hot-dry-summer-20141118-11p4a2.html#ixzz3JOkjPjx3

    ROYAL COMMISSION NOW!

  8. Katharine Murphy still getting stuck in

    A statement has just lobbed from the immigration minister, Scott Morrison. If you registered with the UNHCR in Indonesia on or after 1 July 2014 – you will no longer be eligible for resettlement in Australia. The Morrison statement says the change is part of the government’s ongoing work in the region to strip people smugglers of a product to sell to vulnerable men, women and children.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2014/nov/18/indian-prime-minister-narendra-modi-to-address-australian-parliament-politics-live

    “We decide who comes to Indonesia, and the circumstances in which they come. The old Howardism is becoming more and more ambitious.”

  10. would it really be much good if the labor party got back into government soon they would only get bashed around by msm etc

  11. ” Have you thought of applying to take over Hartcher’s job?”….Don’t be tempted, BB…even if there may be more money in polishing knobs than lenses !!

  12. I want to see the MSM. check up on how Gina got “lucky” to invest in China Dairy just before the FTA. gets approved!

  16. The Morrison statement says the change is part of the government’s ongoing work in the region to strip people smugglers of a product to sell to vulnerable men, women and children.

    Whoa, whoa, whoa… what?? What’s he implying here, that asylum is a product that refugees might be tempted to buy unwittingly? That all that matters is that they don’t waste money getting to a safe harbour, and that removing the safe harbour as part of that process is good for them? What the hell??

    If Morrison truly believed that piece of double-speak he’d be on board with the Greens and bringing refugees here directly. That’s the way to remove the profiteering. If you’re aware that they’re vulnerable you do something to alleviate it so that the vulnerability can’t be taken advantage of. You don’t just strip them of the only lifeline they have available and put nothing in its place.

    He truly is a monster. To do that, without even putting some work into finding a regional solution, without even pretending that he cares about where they end up or that some form of safe refuge is available to them, it goes beyond immorality. It’s pure evil.

  17. jaycee
    Inside information from Barnaby Joyce seems to be the popular explanation. She bought him his seat, she expects a return on her investment.

    Isn’t insider trading illegal? Isn’t divulging the contents of secret negotiations so someone can profit a serious breach of some sort of parliamentary rule?

  18. In the latest JG sighting

    Gillard slams media focus on her appearance during speech at University of Auckland

    Almost 600 people have turned out to the special evening being held at the Owen G Glenn Building, where Ms Gillard talked candidly about her term as Prime Minister – saying being a female leader often meant she had to deal with gender-based stereotypes and criticism….

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11360605

  20. Can we get BB’s comment above turned into a new blog post header? It would be worth tweeting around in its own right.

  21. None of these are paywalled

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/uwa-fees-based-on-cuts-bradley/story-e6frgcjx-1227126143899

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/reg-toecutter-withers-architect-of-whitlams-downfall-dead-at-90/story-fn59niix-1227127106386

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/inquiry-into-private-colleges-imminent/story-e6frgcjx-1227126125796

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harpers-putin-jab-was-political-genius/article21609730/

    http://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/uk-high-commissioner-morrice-james-on-the-whitlam-dismissal-1975/

  22. From leroy’s link re house of lords reform,
    Using Australia’s constitutional crisis of 1975 as an argument against replacing the house of lords with an elected senate is not really valid. The Upper House in the UK does not have the power to block the passage of budget in the way that the Senate here did. The House of Lords can only delay a money bill for a maximum of one month, after which, even if it has not been passed by the lords, the bill must be given Royal assent.

    http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/parliamentacts/

  23. Who’d have ever thought we’d ever see this ?.

    New Zealand wants to lure thousands of West Australians across the Tasman to fill a nationwide skills shortage.

    A delegation of 30 government officials and major employers will hold walk-in interviews and potentially make thousands of on-the-spot offers to suitable candidates at a two-day jobs expo in Perth on November 22 and 23.

    They’re tasked with finding people to fill 2000 immediate vacancies and persuading thousands more to emigrate with the promise of better job prospects in a booming economy,

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/25521866/new-zealand-seeks-to-snap-up-wa-workers/

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