385 thoughts on “Furry Friday”

  2. PJF
    July 25, 2016 at 11:48 PM

    Bilko,
    Robb didn’t recontest. He was succeeded in the safe seat of Goldstein by (IPA) Tim Wilson, who survived a pre-selection stoush with the daughter of Alexander Downer.
    Robb is already accumulating positions – rewards for services rendered ?

    Thanks PJF missed that during the many weeks sleepover which ended on July 2. TV Ten is crappier than the other FTA channels so it now has another strong hand in its management team to see it go to the wall like Dicky Smith’s enterprise.

  4. For the first time, a baby whose microcephaly can be attributed to Zika virus is born on European soil, in Spain, in Barcelona. Defects were detected on the fetus as early as the 20th week of pregnancy but the couple chose to continue the pregnancy, reports the Spanish daily El Pais. The child’s mother had contracted Zika and dengue fever during pregnancy while traveling in Latin America.

    https://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.lefigaro.fr/&prev=search

    • It does not involve her portfolio, not directly anyway, so she doesn’t get a mention,

  11. For a few days I’ve been watching the septic ‘conventions’ mostly on mute.

    Both are simply ‘hate fests’.

    Sanders is on TV now doing the arm waving thing.

    Our ‘born to rule’ Malcolm does this as well. Bad loser. F’ck him.

  12. You really should have a look at this magnificent and inspiring video promotion for the Rio Paralympics.

  13. C’wealth govt should temporarily repeal the NT Self Govt Act / abolish the NT Leg Assembly, its obvious they are incapable of governing themselves. They are worse than the Councils in NSW that were sacked a few years back for incompetence and financial mismanagement and had Administrators appointed…..

    Except that would give the Libs free rein to do whatever they wanted with their “Northern Australia” policy..

  14. The juxtaposition of puff adder and – is it a post? – is unfortunate, though apt . . .

  16. Caro Meldrum-Hanna was one of the reporters responsible for last night’s four corners program.

    I don’t know why everyone is so surprised – or feigning surprise – at the revelations. Australians have been treating our indigenous people appallingly for over 200 years. No-one has done much about stopping that abuse so far.

    Some background on what has been happening recently in the NT.

    Earlier this year –
    Restraint chairs with cable ties approved for youths in NT
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-26/restraint-chairs-with-cable-ties-approved-for-use-on-nt-youths/7448460

    And
    NT Chief Minister’s plan to dump bail for youth offenders slammed by lawyers
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-17/adam-giles-plan-to-dump-bail-for-youths-slammed-by-lawyers/7421916

    Yet this morning we had Giles doing his very best at pretending to be saddened by last night’s program. He knew all about it, long ago. The abuse shown was condoned by his government and enabled by his government’s own legislation. The Four Corners footage came from his government’s CCTV cameras at Don Dale. Bleeping hypocrite!

    While I’m on this topic –
    Video of this morning’s press conference with Gillian Triggs, Mick Gooda and Megan Mitchell.
    The sound and quality aren’t the best.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-17/adam-giles-plan-to-dump-bail-for-youths-slammed-by-lawyers/7421916

  17. A bit more from Ms Meldrum-Hanna

  24. Libs prepare for by-election as Greens sweat on Senate

    Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made a campaign-style visit to the unresolved seat of Herbert as Scott Morrison indicated the Liberals would take the result to court if the current recount awarded the electorate to Labor.

    With Labor’s candidate, Cathy O’Toole, fewer than 100 votes ahead of Liberal incumbent Ewen Jones in the North Queensland seat, Mr Turnbull effectively began campaigning on Tuesday in anticipation an application to the Court of Disputed Returns will result in a by-election being ordered

    http://www.afr.com/news/politics/libs-prepare-for-byelection-as-greens-sweat-on-senate-20160725-gqdn5v

  25. So what would pique Scullion’s interest? Porn? A pay rise? A tax-payer funded trip to the Bahanas?

    He’s the fracking Minister for Indigenous affairs FFS!

    Previous youth abuse revelations didn’t pique my interest: Nigel Scullion

    Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has conceded that previous revelations about the shocking conditions inside the Northern Territory corrections system failed to “pique [his] interest sufficiently” and that he wasn’t fully aware of the treatment of incarcerated Indigenous youth until seeing the vision aired by ABC’s Four Corners on Monday night.

    Lamenting that “you don’t know what you don’t know”, Senator Scullion said an agitated Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had to ring him and tell him to watch the explosive Four Corners investigation, which has immediately triggered a royal commission

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/previous-youth-abuse-revelations-didnt-pique-my-interest-nigel-scullion-20160726-gqe4ak.html

    • “you don’t know what you don’t know”

      How about “if you don’t care you won’t know”?

      Waffles should sack him immediately for severe dereliction of duty. As if!

  27. Apparently, there is an Essential NSW state poll out. 52-48 to the odious slimebags , and slipping.

  32. Piqueless Nigel’s surname somewhat appropriate

    scullion
    (ˈskʌljən)
    n1. a mean or despicable person

    2. archaic a servant employed to do rough household work in a kitchen

    [C15: from Old French escouillon cleaning cloth, ]

    Collins English Dictionary

    • I’ve taken to giving him the nickname “Rap” on the grounds that ‘rapscallion’ was used in old American folklore as a rascal, scoundrel or rogue.

  33. Some analysis of the poll

    Click to access Essential-Report_160726.pdf

    https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/07/26/medicare-not-the-economy-influenced-2016-vote/ paywalled

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/26/health-and-medicare-the-most-important-issues-for-voters-in-federal-election-poll-finds

  35. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/26/abuse-of-teenage-prisoners-in-nt-detention-how-four-corners-got-the-story

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-26/scullions-interest-not-piqued-before-youth-detention-abuse-video/7662466

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-26/accc-boss-says-privatisation-costing-consumers/7662194

    http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-being-behind-the-dnc-hack

  38. On the polls.
    Has there ever been an occasion when a party was returned to power but polled so low immediately afterwards?

  39. The last booth in Herbert appears to have finished recounting. So unless there are any more declaration votes to be recounted, it seems Labor’s lead is locked in at +37 votes.

    I don’t think that’s close enough to warrant a by-election that easily. It’ll probably go to a challenge with the court of disputed returns like what happened in McEwen in 2007, but they simply looked at the challenged ballot papers and actually increased the margin of victory for the Liberals from 12 to 27 votes.

    Oh and McEwen is also home to an army base at Puckapunyal so it seems there wasn’t a by-election over soldiers serving overseas and elsewhere on training exercises not being able to vote because of that.

    That plus the L/NP is full of sour grapes so obviously they’d be throwing a hissy fit over this.

    • Oh, whoops, I shouldn’t have went off so early. Apparently the official Distribution of Preferences comes next, so there might be some further shifts in the vote coming up. Probably nothing substantial.

  40. joe6pack – it will interesting to see more polling after the full results are declared, usually they hold off for a few weeks or even months. Its just Essential that seems to roll on regardless. But there certainly won’t be a re-election bounce.

  41. Joe and Leroy,

    Leroy: there certainly won’t be a re-election bounce.

    Which, in my 50 years of paying pretty close attention to federal elections, seems indeed to be unprecedented.

    Interesting times.

    • I don’t think the two have met. With the enthusiasm the DNC etc are shouting “RUSSIANS were under our bed !” you’d almost suspect they are tying to take attention away from what they actully did 🙂

    • Although when even Dennis Shanahanahan is suggesting that explanation you’ve gotta wonder a bit.

    • The Russians probably did hack it. There was speculation ages ago about what they may have got when they went after the hacker Guccifer when he tried to hack some Russian stuff. The writer thought the Russians if they tracked him down may just track him rather than close him down.

      Guccifer about to be sentenced in the US. A NYT article from 2014

      .

      For Guccifer, Hacking Was Easy. Prison Is Hard.

      He reveled in tormenting members of the Bush family, Colin L. Powell and a host of other prominent Americans, and also in outfoxing the F.B.I. and the Secret Service, foiling their efforts to discover even his nationality, never mind his identity. ……………….Guccifer (pronounced GUCCI-fer) — a nom de guerre coined, he said, to combine “the style of Gucci and the light of Lucifer” — turned out to be Marcel-Lehel Lazar, a jobless 43-year-old former taxi driver. He had no expertise in computers, no fancy equipment, only a clunky NEC desktop and a Samsung cellphone, and no special skills beyond what he had picked up on the web.

      Viorel Badea, the Romanian prosecutor who directed the case, expressed dismay that Mr. Lazar had gotten so far with so little. “He was not really a hacker but just a smart guy who was very patient and persistent,” Mr. Badea said……..

      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/world/europe/for-guccifer-hacking-was-easy-prison-is-hard-.html?_r=0

  43. Fiona:

    It suggests that, given the way Herbert is going, Turnbull probably couldn’t have timed the election more precisely. Given he was engineering a DD (as pointless as it ultimately turned out to be) and so couldn’t have held it any earlier, he also likely couldn’t have had this election any later without giving up incumbency.

    • Turnbull din’t choose the timing, it was either go on 2 July or forget about an early election. He had to call the election when he did – by 11 July, because any later would have been past the deadline for a DD. The 2 July date was very important too, any earlier and the full senate elected would have had to be back-dated to 1 July 2015.

      Turnbull did not brilliantly engineer an election at just the right time, the date was forced on him.

      There’s another twist – the election results have to be finalised and the writs have to be returned by 11 August or all senators serving as ministers will have to resign.

      Antony Green explains it all here – just keep in mind this was written in March and turnbull, or his staff, would have been well aware of al the difficulties involved in calling the election when he did.
      http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2016/03/senate-electoral-reform-double-dissolutions-and-section-64-of-the-constitution.html#more

    • Oh, I’m not saying he engineered the timing, Leone. At any rate, who could possibly have foreseen the outcome we’ve had and plan for it anyway? I’m just saying it happened to have been held at a time that transpired to give him a one seat majority – which a week or so later he likely wouldn’t have had.

      I still don’t know if that’s good news or bad news for him. It’s bad news for the country, that’s for sure. It might be for him as well. I can’t see the Liberals coming out of this term with their reputation enhanced, and there’s a fair chance it’ll be in tatters. His reputation too.

  45. Seems as though Essential is reflecting a degree of voter regret. ie That voters,convinced that there would be enough swing to unseat the bad guys without their vote, went their usual way and voted for the L-NP and sadly regret it now.

  46. Excellent piece from New Matilda –

    NT Juvenile Prison Abuse: The Most Shocking Part Is That Anyone Is Actually Shocked

    The most shocking thing about last night’s Four Corners expose into juvenile detention in the Northern Territory is that anyone is actually shocked.

    What, exactly, did we think would happen? And why have we been ignoring stories like these for years?

    We had the same reaction when the inevitable revelations emerged about torture, rape and abuse on Nauru. Are our memories really that short? Are we really that naive a nation?

    https://newmatilda.com/2016/07/26/nt-juvenile-prison-abuse-the-most-shocking-part-is-that-anyone-is-actually-shocked/

  47. The NT juvenile abuse story is, sadly, confirming the worst aspects of politics in this country – or most countries I suppose. Those directly responsible for it can’t sidestep it, so they’re going the “it wasn’t my direct responsibility” or “I couldn’t have known” route. Most of their stories are falling apart, predictably, because they were hastily cobbled together about the time these guys realised that something they knew about all along was actually becoming a story. Everyone else in the Coalition is pretending to be shocked and angry. That’ll last about as long as the news cycle, then they’ll all go back to turning a blind eye to it.

    What makes me angry about all this is that they knew, and didn’t care. And their intent right now is to be able to go back to knowing and not caring about it. Especially as they’re so intent on ripping money out of all sorts of welfare and care areas, which can only lead to more of the same.

  48. One can make a joke about certain politicians’ need for a heart transplant:
    Unnecessary, they don’t have one.

    I suspect the same could be said about their need for a conscience transplant.

  50. Elferink was born in the Netherlands and moved to Australia with his parents and older siblings as a three year old in 1968. His family settled in Darwin, and he subsequently graduated from Casuarina High School. In 1983, Elferink joined the Northern Territory Police as a cadet. He subsequently rose to the rank of Sergeant (Qualified to Senior Sergeant), and served in both Darwin and Alice Springs. While in the police force, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Monash University in 1997, completing the course by distance education. In 2008 Elferink graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the University of New England. He was admitted to the bar in October 2009.

    Given the strongly Calvinist propensity of most, if not all, of the Dutch Protestant churches, and I won’t even discuss the Dutch Catholic tradition, it seems to me that Mr Elferink is likely to have had white supremacist views from his birth, plus a highly (male) authoritarian attitude – see his police service.

    I can find it in me – a bit – to feel sorry for him.

    I have no difficulty in having great compassion for the victims of his stance.

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