TOM LEWIS writes:
Damned inconvenient. Cricket on. You’d think they could spice it up a bit by losing the third test just to get the odds up a bit and increase the take at the gate. Yes, a double, m’dear.
Now, where was I? Don’t really know since I died, but what was it I wanted to say to you lot? Oh yes, ran into Jack t’other day and he’s got a few tidbits of a yarn. Apparently that wheat thing’s over. No James, the massage is at 3, isn’t it?
Um, where was I? Ah yes. Well, old Jack tells me he’s got another yarn and I’m s’posed to see him next week to get the guts of it. Dunno, really. There’s a Chrissie party on and were having a memorial for Harold Holt over at the Chinese down the road at the Cheviot Beach Club so we mightn’t get a chance to get it all down before this bloody mob close down for Christmas. Journalists. I ask you. Always the same: never let a good news story get in the way of a holiday.
Anyway, here’s the last bit Jack gave me about the wheat thing. Happy Hogmanay and we’ll be back in the new year or so. Have to rush – the massage was at 2 after all.
Love to all and remember: vote Liberal. They may be a pack of incompetent bastards, but they’re our incompetent bastards. Mud in your eye.
The Chronicles of Nadir
As told from the grave by Tom Lewis
Tale the First
The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet
Chapter The Last
The Final Report
As clouds of smoke billowed around the Teak Table and the bush firefighters were gaining Labor [sic] pre-selection in droves, other momentous portents were occurring in the land of Nadir. While the snow melted and the water rose, rats were leaving sinking ships like a drawn treader and faster than the increasing drought could reduce stock numbers (or even numbats). Little Lucy’s husband was making a concerted push on the water front and had made so many feel-good announcements that she was, victory over the Lady Jadis apart, clearly flushed with success.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Cabinet, Little Johnnie, in a public relations coup the like of which had not been seen since Mrs Petrov was dragged screaming from a Lermontov airliner in Darwin, the coalface had been closed down as a gesture towards appeasing the lunatic fringe on global warming.
AW Board had escaped by the skin of his teeth and had them firmly sunk into the double board shuffle somewhere in the Channel Islands while his erstwhile colleagues slowly committed suicide pending their respective committals.
With the Christmas hols rapidly approaching, the children had spent useful time relieving the tension of their adventures by installing themselves on their respective thrones in the park outside the Goulburn RSL. Although it had caused a bit of a stink at the time, as is the way of these things, like the coalface, time heals all wounds and things are easily forgotten if not always forgiven or vice versa.
Alexander had become both Queen of the Faeries and Foreign Minister as a fully-fledged member of the Inner Cabinet (price $482 plus GST – the modern equivalent of 20 pieces of silver, or, a pound of flesh as it was known in Treasury, the portfolio the now enthroned King Peter had been given and the only kingdom he was ever likely to rule). As a further diversionary tactic a former Jewish journalist, and Middle East expert, Rosie Rosie (always a red’s red) had been appointed as ambassador to the newly created territory of Palestine, a traditional historical homeland the size of Monaco which now sat on a floating island half a kilometer above the ancient land of Brobdignag.
Queen Amanda, for her part, had become, well, slightly larger than she formerly had been in life, and was given extra responsibility as a new Australian Territory in the Great Southern Ocean about 50º 25’ E, 28º 45’S where she was now inhabited by a colony of lesbian sea lions, all of whom had passed the recently introduced dictation test, knew all about mateship, Australian values, bbqing in cold climates, and turkey basting as well as having promised to vote Liberal for the rest of their natural lives. The turkey basting had initially seemed odd and could have been scuttled until it was explained to Jeanette, a well known animal liberationist (after all she had taken Little Johnnie away from his mum) that there were no actual turkeys involved just a long plastic tube and a thing that looked like the business end of a Klaxon horn on a model T Ford. Jeanette had always had a soft spot for the model T and from time to time had fantasies about Corder and a dickie seat. She often had fantasies about dickie seats but that still hadn’t stopped THAT WOMAN getting pre-selection for Southern Highlands.
For Little Lucy, being a Queen was little different to being a Little Lucy really. After all, once one was born to rule, one was born to rule (although there had been a tad of trouble about that combined with being a Roman Catholic in 1688). Still, time heals all wounds, even being thrown over at your fist popular election as Lord Mayor for a bedraggled chook the age of Methuselah with the brains of a herring (and personal hygiene to go with it).
Mr Patel, on the other hand had struck up a clandestine correspondence with Mr Lodhi. Both were planning a break-out known to the law as an appeal. The thin-lipped veinless Ruddock had his eye on them like a, well, not like a hawke, (he, after all, was from the other side) but more like a Caldwell (come to think of it, he was from the other side as well but, it was an old saying: two Wongs don’t make a white and there was no point in playing with a Lodhi weapon.) Of course, every cloud has a silver lining and at least Mr Patel knew he didn’t have osteoporosis – he could now see the bones in his wrists for himself.
So, as the fire gutters and sleep draws on, gathering the loose ends as any good children’s story does, we find the four at the end of their particular adventure, returned from the Land of Nadir, blessed by the Scion and happily ruling over a grateful populace seemingly forever. Yet, while this is a children’s’ story, we live in an adult world with the dangers of war not yet receded. Home by Christmas becomes yet another casualty of realpolitic if not of a terrible war. In fact, in the time it has taken in the telling of this tale, the dangers only increased. ‘Tis but the way of the world (and of tedious, crude, laboured, Christian allegories) that the struggle never ends.
Unbeknownst to them, the children, Little Johnnie, Jeanette, Corder and all their fellow travellers were about to face their greatest challenge since the days of the Communist Party Case.
From the North, suddenly, unannounced, except by himself, had come the threat of Prince Crispian now allied with the Wicked Witch of the South, an evil, fire-breathing, unmarried, childless, whining, grating, gyrating, combinationalist, red both in hair and craw, Jules of the Galliard, who was to Dowland and courtly Elizabethan dancing what the rulers of the Peoples’ Republic of China had been to Tiananmen square. Suddenly, crocodiles were developing Hawke eyes.
Like the endless ebb and flow of the big bang cycle, force against force was aligned and the ever to be repeated battle loomed. Once more unto the breach, the mettle of their pasture was again to be tested: this time it would not just be about wheat.
THE PUB 
From the “Too Cute For Words” files… I give youse, Mum and Daughter, Paula and Petunia Possum.
Before we went away they started invading the house. Once they nearly wrecked the kitchen, clambering over everything in a panic, when they forgot how to get back to the dog door after I surprised them at 4am.
So we blocked the dog door when we went away.
But upon arrival back, the Possums were still there, hungrier than ever.
Last week, bold as brass, Mum jumped onto the table out on the deck where I was eating my dinner in the cool night air. She came right up to me and nearly rubbed noses. It was the tomato soup I was eating, I think. It must have smelled like concentrated possum food.
HI, her motherly instincts kicking in, began feeding them. rockmelon, apples, zucchini and cucumbers.
They didn’t like the cucumber, but cleaned up everything else.
I timidly suggested they might like more “bush-tuckery” types of food. That maybe the sweet stuff could rot their teeth or give them lumpy jaw.
So tonight HI put out carrots and… flowers. Hell, they’ve been raiding our flower pots so much, we thought we’d dish them up a salad.
A so, here is tonight’s picture. taken about 15 minutes ago.
Cute, eh? After polishing off the flowers, they got stuck into the carrots.
Very naughty possums, and quite fearless too.
Fiona
As a callow youth it was WTF. Excel ? . Loved it from the day I met it.
The teacher at the time was a bit of a tech nerd. He had “sold” to the class the notion we buy a Sinclair Scientific calculator as it was the way of the future, At the time ordering more than 10 got a big discount.
He had a Hewlett Packard calculator , the then Rolls Royce of calculators, it used reverse polish notation hence his explanation of it to us.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair1.html
Cute as!
RPN gets rid of brackets.
Nested brackets really are the pits.
BB
So cute. I like possums.
POSSUM UPDATE (1 hour later): Nothing left except… sticks.
International condemnation of our Dear Leader, from the Council on Foreign Relations* –
Tony Abbott Has To Go
http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2015/02/05/tony-abbott-has-to-go/
*About CFR
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher. CFR members, including Brian Williams, Fareed Zakaria, Angelina Jolie, Chuck Hagel, and Erin Burnett, explain why the Council on Foreign Relations is an indispensable resource in a complex world.
Yes, possums are sweet (especially ring-tailed), but I still harbour certain ill-feelings to certain brush-tailed possums of my sort of acquaintance.
Many long years ago I migrated to the guest bedroom – partly because of a series of really bad colds with accompanying really bad coughs on my part, partly because of OH’s back problems that meant his descent into bed was accompanied by shrill yelps and yowls.
So, I thought I’d found peace.
Yeah, right.
Only months after I had changed my abode, I realised that something large and furry had taken up its abode under my bed – to be more specific, in the cavity between my bedroom floor and the ceiling of the music room beneath my bedroom – but still, under my bed.
This furry creature would come home shortly before dawn (i.e., any time between 4am in the summer, and 7am in the winter). Sometimes it would just scuffle around, settle down, and go to sleep (AND snore).
Sometimes, however, it would have invited a lady friend home. Then the action would be fast, furious, and noisy – and would generally start well before dawn. And continued . . .
Occasionally, however, there was an intruder. When that happened, the noises were truly gruesome: combat to almost l’outrance, but never quite, because I was never regaled with the scent of a corpse.
Finally, all this noise was too much for me, so I persuaded OH to shut the possum out. So to speak.
That involved getting up on a ladder and blocking the presumed hole.
Well, OH did that, and I settled down to an undisturbed sleep
until one hour later there was the most appalling noise as something tried to wrench pipes, whatever, apart, in order to exit his nice safe den.
OH was somewhat graphic in his description of the furry body that flew past him once he’d unblocked the hole.
I haven’t had any strangers under my bed since then.
BB how is HI job going?
I don’t have possum woes, I just have 17 denizens in the pencil pine possum palace who always leave a lot of leaf debris on the footpath after rain as they waterproof their nests
Late last year I attended a seminar on health policy at which the estimable Stephen Duckett was one of the speakers. He stated baldly that he had been confounded so much that he concluded the best guide to what the Abbott Government would do in health policy was to assume the reverse of everything they had said prior to the 2013 election. Of course this will scarcely be news to Pub patrons, who would obviously consider it the most accurate form guide for the Government’s actions/inactions in all areas of policy.
I continue to find myself amazed at how unashamedly Abbott, in particular, but virtually all of his Ministers lie so promiscuously. Sometimes it’s possible to identify 4 obvious lies in a thirty second television clip. I have just a smidgin of sympathy (no more) for interviewers because of the numbers of falsehoods with which they are confronted during an interview. You can almost hear them thinking, which of these is the worst which I should challenge?
Having been brought up by parents and other adults who argued that the liar was the worst of people “you can trust a thief, but you never know what to believe of a liar’s statements”, I find such behaviour inexplicable.
I acknowledge that we have all told an occasional lie (of varying shades of whiteness) to cover or defend ourselves, but I am astonished at the compulsive nature of these liars, they lie when to tell the truth would be the easier self-interested course of action.
Oh, PJF,
Where to start?
They lie as fast as a dog can trot.
They lie of and for convenience.
They lie because they can lie.
There will be many others.
I’ll probably put the hex on it when I says this, so perhaps I should fetch a garlic necklace first… it appears we have fought them to a standstill. We are bloodied but unbowed, and unsacked.
We quoted enough of their own rules back at them to let them think maybe we had a lawyer on the payroll.
Sure, they disciplined HI, and they oppressed her. They were bitchy and underhanded, springing unwelcome surprises on her almost weekly at one stage.
But although they would have laughed at our responses – “bush lawyers” (I’m sure they would have said to each other) – our very well-researched, lengthy, detailed and scrupulously documented replies to their lies and innuendos, their abuses of process and their outright bullying, had enough good stuff in them to give them pause to think.
HI hasn’t had any trouble since October. They’ve left it far too late to revive things, in my opinion. You can’t have a three-month disciplinary process that takes 8 months, has less than half the meetings it was supposed to have, is spasmodic, episodic and random, and has had three determinations dates come and go – all because management couldn’t be bothered attending once they realized we were going to put up a fight – and then suddenly revive it as if nothing happened. So we think they’ve given up.
We have been wrong before, but they have never let things slide so long this time – nearly 4 months with no action – that we think we have made our point: “we can read your rules as well as you can”.
The staff shortages they suffered late last year have also not been filled. This leaves HI as the last link with the Golden Age of departmental administration when they could throw their weight around at will. Now they need HI to keep the place together.
They got three preferred candidates for three of the vacant jobs,who turned up, took one look, and fled the scene. The other positions are under-subscribed. No-one so far has been good enough or sufficiently qualified. It’s a mess of their own making. Finally they seem to get the idea that writing emails to each other in the Executive Service is no substitute for dealing with people as people and actually getting the job done of servicing clients (i.e. the public), at which HI excels well above and beyond the call of duty. They couldn’t run the place properly without her. They’re so short of staff it might even close down for lack of interest. They drove their best staff away, except HI, who needs the job.
Funnily enough, although they said they wanted her to leave back in July, they now won’t let her go. They’ve kept their poxy disciplinary citations on the record even though they serve no purpose other then to intimidate, and are probably illegal, or at least against all their own guidelines. These have a sobering effect on other potential bosses within the Public Service. Hi gets lots of interviews for transfer positions – itself quite an achievement in these days of go-for-broke recruitment tactics – but mysteriously never gets the job once they’ve read her record.
HI doesn’t want to make waves about this injustice just yet, so she’s putting up with it until 6 months have passed without any action. Then we may make a special appeal to the Head Honcho to just erase the bad record on account of manifest disinterest by management… the very people who claimed at one stage that the entire service was threatened by HI’s… wait for it… typos.
It is an uneasy truce, but in the meantime she’s working and even prospering. One of these louts who calls herself a manager even offered to buy HI a cup of coffee the other day. It’s gotten that bad. They can’t afford to lose her just yet. So they are sucking up. How long this attitude lasts is anybody’s guess.
Nice one about twitter
Charlotte Credlin?
As usual, so much to see
The subs have sunk Abbotts reboot already.
Another example of him saying anything to get him through till the next day
Just heard the poodle on ABC blaming the subs issue on Labor FFS, when will the give up?
The=they
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
Looks like Hockey’s been on the nose internally for quite a while. Mark Kenny also has some other dirty washing.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-was-approached-about-the-treasury-portfolio-even-before-mondays-spill-20150210-13b2dk.html
David Wroe hosts the government on its own petard over the submarine contract rules.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/confusion-reigns-over-abbotts-submarine-choice-20150210-13b479.html
Goran Roos (who has played a large part in SA’s submissions to the federal government) has his say on the submarine fiasco.
https://theconversation.com/too-much-at-stake-for-weasel-words-on-submarines-37367
Tony Wright lampoons Kevin Andrews’s visit to ASC.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/post-nonspill-submarines-read-my-bubbles-20150210-13azat.html
You have to give it to South Australia. We offer up some crackers of Senators!
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/budget-will-never-get-back-to-surplus-says-joe-hockey-20150210-13b2aq.html
The Adelaide Advertiser on how Andrews and his pathetic blue-tied entourage descended onto high farce. It includes a reasonable cartoon from Valdman (who always has difficulties in getting the faces to be instantly recognisable).
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/defence-minister-kevin-andrews-leads-coalition-delegation-to-adelaide-to-discuss-submarine-project-but-semantics-descend-into-farce/story-fni6uo1m-1227215248200
Peter Martin and Mark Kenny apply the portentous adjective “embattled” to Joe Hockey.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/budget-will-never-get-back-to-surplus-says-joe-hockey-20150210-13b2aq.html
Lenore Taylor writes that the government is showing signs of shifting ground on renewable energy.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/10/abbott-government-shows-signs-of-shifting-ground-on-climate-policy
More from Lenore – the government did not change in its first day of “newness”.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/10/coalition-first-day-good-government-but-message-hasnt-changed
Section 2 . . .
Michelle Grattan on the post-spill hangover.
https://theconversation.com/after-mondays-leadership-binge-came-tuesdays-hangover-37416
This article from Stephen Koukoulas outlines where journos get it all wrong by failing to expose bullshit when it is proffered.
http://thekouk.com/blog/a-fact-sheet-on-government-finances-and-the-labour-market.html#.VNpsHmiUeSo
The 37 worst things the Liberals did yesterday.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2015/02/10/the-thirty-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-193/
Strange. The carbon price is gone yet we stall are paying hugely for electricity. Where’s the “infrastructure PM”?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australian-households-pay-different-amounts-to-access-national-electricity-network-20150210-13b47s.html
David Marr – Abbott has failed to be honest to the one thing that matters – to be fair! It’s a good read.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/tony-abbott-needs-to-make-a-fair-point-rather-than-empty-promises
John Quiggin – Australian voters have learned to distrust reform -and with good reason.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/australian-voters-have-learned-to-distrust-further-reform-and-rightly-so
The veil has been lifted from some long-simmering antipathies in the NSW police force.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/top-cops-left-to-work-together-in-open-warfare-20150210-13b1xg.html
Ross Gittins ponders the value of time.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/if-time-is-money-lets-spend-it-properly-20150210-13ahhb.html
James Massola tries to work out Credlin’s trajectory.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/credlin-slips-into-the-background-but-abbott-appears-to-be-sticking-by-his-fierce-warrior-20150210-13ai2g.html
Judith Ireland – Abbott needs to back off and listen to the back bench.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-must-back-off-and-listen-to-regain-trust-of-mps-experts-say-20150210-13avog.html
They’re shockers aren’t they?
“It wasn’t me sir. It was those nasty working class boys from Labor! THEY stole my homework!”
Every time Pyne mentions Labor he’s giving free publicity to the political party that leads 55-45 on the averages.
Section 3 . . .
Economists say Australia should not attempt to follow the New Zealand path.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-cant-afford-to-mimic-new-zealand-budget-strategy-say-economists-20150210-13b2gq.html
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we don’t like surprises. Abbott and Newman couldn’t have got it more wrong.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/surprise-it-turns-out-voters-dont-like-surprises-20150210-13ac5d.html
Jonathan Holmes laments that the media have given up chasing honesty in politics.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/media-has-given-up-chasing-honesty-in-politics-20150210-13acum.html
Five investment banking skills Turnbull could bring to bear as PM – Malcolm Maiden.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/five-investment-banking-skills-malcolm-turnbull-could-deploy-as-prime-minister-20150210-13agch.html
A great animated simulation of the effects of measles contact in communities with varying rates on vaccination.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2015/feb/05/-sp-watch-how-measles-outbreak-spreads-when-kids-get-vaccinated
The AFL season prepares to kick off without an Essendon.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/essendon-34-wont-play-in-nab-challenge-20150210-13b69i.html
Section 4 . . .
Some cartoons from The Age to flick through.
http://theage.com.au/national/cartoons-for-wednesday-february-11-20150210-13b1ji.html
Alan Moir seems to be suggesting that Abbott has a bit of a psychological problem.
Ron Tandberg with Abbott’s focus on jobs.
Cathy Wilcox suggests tax avoidance is a bit too easy.
Mark Knight with new sponsorship for Abbott’s lycra.
Bill Leak with Abbott’s “new” government.
There’s SO much to see in this David Rowe effort!
John Spooner gets inside Abbott’s sanctum sanctorum.
Oh dear! David Pope seems to think Abbott’s got hard times ahead.
Rod Clement as Abbott ponders a make-over.
Charlotte Credlin?
No. St Peta of ACT guarding King Tony from the advancing malcontents in cabinet. (Note the blue sails on the ship).
Interesting point – Joan of Arc defended Charles VII, an uncrowned king who was regarded by many as not fit for that position, having achieved it after the deaths of all other heirs. It was thought he was most likely a bastard. Poor Joan was abandoned by her king once he had been properly crowned. He made no attempt to prevent her death, although he did order a new trial a few years later – too late – which cleared her name.
Makes you think, doesn’t it.
There’s a lot of talk about blue ties, as if they’re being worn either by coincidence, or as a way of flattering Abbott, or even perhaps as a pathetically childish way of cocking a snook at Gillard’s misogyny speech.
But I wonder whether there hasn’t been some instruction from on-high, making blue ties the official uniform of the Liberals?
There are plenty of precedents. Sporting teams wear uniforms, on and off the field. So do the military. So do schools. Many firms require their employees to wear those ghastly (and cheap looking) polyester knitted polo shirts with the company logo embroidered onto the breast. It’s supposed to beget loyalty and brand awareness.
I worked for one of the latter a few years ago and was regarded as an almost insubordinate rebel, verging on the “unsound”, when I refused to wear the company polo shirts I’d been given to wear. My excuse was that they were uncomfortable and clammy, and that I broke out in a rash when I put them on. But I hated the things. As we only ever worked in a design and project management office, and had next to no contact with clients face-to-face, or even the public, I couldn’t see the point, other than some hokey attempt at inculcating “company spirit” (of which I possessed none… you should have seen the troglodytes I had to work with).
With the Liberal Party, there is SUCH a preponderance of blue ties – yesterday’s shocker of a press conference in Adelaide had a sea of them, and cartoonists (among others) have noticed – that I’m beginning to think there is a deliberate attempt to establish a “Brand Liberal” by requiring the compulsory wearing of blue ties.
Have I missed something? HAS there been such an instruction put out, say from Peta Credlin’s office?
You wonder why Shorten insists on wearing a blue tie fairly regularly.
I must say I only notice blue ties on Libs. So maybe it’s my imagination thinking it’s some kind of uniform.
I’d imagine that there are so many smart looking ties on the market, so many shades and designs but, somehow, they tend to use the most boring ones. Why must only women look chic?
Abbott wears the same thing day in, day out. The boring navy blue suit, white shirt and blue tie, finished off with those damned boots. We can’t see his socks, but I bet they are the same colour every day too. All that changes is the shade of blue in the tie. We know he owns more than one suit, his register of interests mentions donations of suits. Surely he must have bought the odd suit for himself as well. Can’t he have some different suit colours? Or a perhaps he could be really daring and wear a blue shirt sometimes.
Why does he do this? Does it save time every morning, not having to waste a few seconds deciding which suit to wear? Or is he just so lacking in originality and ability to deal with change that he just can’t accept the idea of doing things differently.
We notice what female politicians wear, we might make jokes about their taste in clothes and jewellery, but their choices attract our attention and so we take notice of what they say.
Would we pay half as much attention to Julie Bishop if she was just another bloke in a boring navy blue suit, white shirt and blue tie? I don’t think so.
PJF:
It’s all part of the strategy of surviving until the end of the interview. Their aims are very, very short-term at the moment. And the tactics they have recourse to are getting fewer. I reckon there are only four now:
1. Blame Labor for anything and everything
2. Characterise every single thing they’re doing as somehow ‘paying down the debt’
3. Latch on to any stat that’s half-way positive and thrash the hell out of it
4. Underline Abbott’s authority to do whatever he wants because we ‘voted for him’.
With a combination of those four, any government MP can stumble through an interview and survive relatively intact. And that, at the moment, is all they care about. They can say (with apparent free rein, which disturbs me) any old thing about the previous government nowadays (and it should be noted that all those lies about Labor economic mismanagement were knocked on the head well before the last election, and accepted by the Coalition at the time; they were only muckraking about internal ALP instability, and were running a unity ticket on most policy positions); they can explain away counter-productive ideas like co-payments and uni fees as contributing to ‘paying down the debt’; they can rattle off five minor stats on growth in one particular temporal frame, and creation of jobs, while steering attention away from larger and more disturbing overall statistics; and they can plead for Abbott to ‘finish the job we elected him to do’. Voila! Interview survived.
As a journalist, you can’t knock all the lies on the head. But you need to go in well-prepared with a few facts and a bit of anticipation as to what you’re going to cop. Leigh Sales knows damn well that Labor aren’t running the Senate. That one should have been neutralised immediately. Not just because it’s unfair to Labor, but much more importantly because you can’t have a federal Treasurer making false excuses for not doing his job properly. It’s the country at stake here, not Joe’s ego.
And that’s the reason all those lies need to be chased up and exposed.
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/2874945/bulli-pass-rockfall-the-car-just-exploded/?cs=298#slide=4
Sorry for any eye damage this might cause, but I just can’t resist –
Abbott looks like Jamie Packer in that Clement cartoon!
This good government hing is going really well, isn’t it – torpedoed on Day 1.
Smiling.
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/ashby-must-foot-legal-bill/2540223/
More like ROFL.
2gravel
More than smiling here – much laughter.
I hope Mr Ashby hasn’t spent that $50,000. Maybe his new BFF Pauline will help him out. His former Liberal BFFs sem to have dumped him like a bucket of rotten prawns.
narns
Yes, I though that it was Packer at first, too.
narns, BK
Me too.
There’s only one thing Ashby can do now – write a tell-all book and sell the film rights.
” There’s only one thing Ashby can do now – write a tell-all book… “…and I suppose that would be in the “oral” storytelling tradition?