Memories…

bushfirebill Uncategorized

SIAbbott Turnbull Renaissance
Ah… memories!

Remember how they moved the Budget forward so that the timetable for a DD would fit the Constitution?

Remember how important it was to “reform” the Senate so that cross-benchers couldn’t dominate it?

Remember how vital the ABCC bill was? And how the journos told us that this time Turnbull had a sure-fire election issue? Yep, the Great Reckoning of 2016 was going to be on industrial relations: unarguably a Coalition winner.

(This was after the election was also centered on States rights, income tax, education funding, negative gearing, boats, and of course, terrorism. Turnbull had shown us all “how it’s done”).

Remember how “bold”, “brilliant” and “decisive” Turnbull was? Or so we were informed, breathlessly.

The long election campaign was going to do Bill Shorten slowly. He’d run out of steam by the end of it. Not to worry that the Coalition ran out of steam instead, and Turnbull had to chip in $2 million to buy the party the last fortnight’s worth of telly. “Jobs and Growth” hammered at us from all directions, on all channels, day and night and night and day: that did the trick.

They might have used the $4 million the NSW Electoral Commission was withholding, but Baird would have had to say where their real money came from first (and with so many apartments going up all over and above Sydney, and tunnels beneath it, admissions like that might have caused embarrassment in certain circles).

Remember Mediscare? How absolutely ridiculous it was to say that Turnbull intended to hive it off, bit by bit! Another Labor lie! Geez, that’s all they do! Malcolm got the AFP onto them. But even they yawned.

And at last we’d get some sense on Climate Change! Malcolm had already shown in 2009 that he was prepared to die in a ditch for that. He was sure to do it again, just as soon as he finished slagging off South Australian windfarms, and thenVictoria for closing down dirty brown coal.

We were going to have an exciting Innovation Nation. We’d all be writing apps, or something. With the CSIRO now leaner and meaner after mass retrenchments, how could we fail? When asked by Andrew Bolt to name three things that Turnbull had done, Eric Abetz famously answered: “Innovation, Innovation, and Innovation.” That really meant something to Australians.

While it might look like nothing’s fucking happened in the over a year since Turnbull came along to turn this somnolent nation out of it antipodean torpor with pure excitement, that’s wrong. Hartcher told us Malcolm was really doing: “Simply governing”. “Governing’s” not sexy. “Governing’s” not exciting. But “governing” is what brilliant minds like Turnbull’s do best. A tactical thrust here on State income taxes, a feint there on 18C or The Plebiscite. A bold advance by massed union-bashing tanks to crash through a weak Bill Shorten, flattening a Labor party riven with factionalism. Malcolm would show them The Turnbull Method, and it wouldn’t be pretty. Kath Murphy assured us he was holding back the brilliance, all the better to deploy it with devastating effectiveness: once he’d gotten an opportunistic” and “cynical” Shorten out of the way, and dealt with the Monkey Pod in swingeing style.

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall. Malcolm was the fairest, after all.”

Turnbull Mirror

Malcolm has so many brilliant things to say at any one time, he occasionally appears to be tongue-tied. But that’s an illusion. He simply has trouble figuring out the very best way of putting {whatever-it-is-he-has-to-say} to the simple folk, the little guys like youse and me, so they can share in the inspiration. The hesitancy and what looks like waffling are Malcolm choosing his words carefully.

And there are so many words! There are enough thoughts, bon mots, insouciances, anecdotes and sheer inspirations inside that pumpkin head of his to keep Australia in words for 300 years. We’ll never run out of ’em. If only we could get the Chinese to buy them all, we’d wake up rich and stay that way!

Now that Australia has a sensible Senate with no crackpots, lurk merchants, incoherents, con men, thieves, sleeve-tuggers, gun nuts, tree clearers, religious cranks, CSIRO bashers, spivs, shonks, homophobes, pedophile obsessives, Hansonites, Trump supporters, refugee tragics,  or unelectable slime-bags with less than 100 votes, “simply governing” has become so much easier. Now that Malcolm has his own healthy Reps majority of “1”, and every morning every one of them has to be marked off the roll by Head Prefect Christopher Pyne, can there be any doubt that The People have flocked to his side? Now that Abbott has accepted his lot in life as the Human Doorstop, we’ll have no more aggro from that poisonous little corner, thankyouverymuch. We’ll soon be rid of Gillian Triggs, too. So there.

Now that the Press Gallery’s prediction has come true, and the Ship Of State sails in the right direction, we can get some wonderful, brilliant, exciting things done. Let’s not forget the scribblers were right about Tony Abbott… both times (and all the times in-between). And they were right about Malcolm Turnbull as he dazzled them with charm, brilliance and wit. It’s so so wonderful to have a policy-driven 4th Estate that eschews the temptations of ball-by-ball politics, governance as a horse race and rank partisanship in political coverage, not to say their utter rejection of hero worship. No “Labor Split!” click bait for them! Most of all it’s wonderful to have a press corps that is never wrong, by its own modest (and frequent) admission.

Malcolm is setting us up. He’s getting his ducks all in a row so he can shoot them down with one brilliant bullet. He’s feigning weakness to lull his enemies into a false sense of security. Then he’ll Strike. Etc.Etc.

Pity his enemies now appear to have been those with whom he once travelled in fellowship: gays, Climate scientists, alternative energizers, the Jews in his electorate, IT professionals, human rights advocates and leather coat manufacturers (by the way, what did happen to the leather coats?). More fool them. They fell for Malcolm, hook line and sinker. The only ones who’ve stuck with him are the Gallery and Lucy. Even the cat has left the building.

Any day now we’ll see the Master Plan, from The Master Planner.

  • We’ll learn how Malcolm’s NBN is the best in the world.
  • How Teh Evil Unions have been doubling construction costs so that Bob Day can not pay them even more than he not paid them before. Bludgers.
  • Why 18C is threatening the very fabric of our society.
  • How reducing pensions will toughen up octogenarians and make them more self-reliant.
  • We’ll be ahead of the World in emissions reduction (what am I saying? We’re already out in front! Greg Hunt’s job is done, and he’s done a real job on the environment, that’s for sure).
  • The gulaged in Nauru and Manus will shout with joy as “humanity breaks out” (Kath has a such a way with words, doesn’t she?).
  • Gays and lesbians will fall in love with him all over again, after a peaceful, tender, informed Plebiscite debate has blessed their unions with the traditional generosity towards sexual matters commonly found in key sections of Catholic Church, the Anglicans, the Salvos, the Marists and the Yeshivas, all of whom suffered the little children to be brought to them. And boy, did the little children suffer! The $7.5 million funding to be given out to spread this calming gospel is worth every cent, but only Malcolm Turnbull saw that. After all, the Plebiscite was an election promise, and the Coalition never breaks election promises. Some things remain sacred. Even when Tony Abbott thought of them first. That’s why Malcolm got rid of him. If Labor forces Malcolm to go back on his word (but not, funnily enough, on theirs), you can bet he’ll tell us “They broke a nation’s heart”.

All Malcolm needs now is for the “opportunistic” Opposition to stop Opposing. That’s so 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 (and in the last three they weren’t even the Opposition!). Even Tony agrees. And for the Senate to stop obstructing. And (I nearly forgot) for Tony Abbott to give up the guerilla warfare habits and backstabbing proclivities of a lifetime. Should be easy. The course ahead will then be clear to all, not just the political savants in the Press Gallery. Just all of them stop disagreeing with Malcolm for Chrissake!

Sleepers wake! Our never-been-so-exciting time in the sun is upon us! Certainty has triumphed over brutishness. Civilization over anarchy. We’re playing by Point Piper Rules now. Watch – and weep, doubters – as the well-oiled wheels turn.

Malcolm, the Renaissance Man, is still on his way, but will arriving any day now. When he does, at least there’ll be no need for this type of unpleasantness…

Turnbull potty Complete with Text

862 thoughts on “Memories…”

  2. freefall852

    Thanks. They are ,whatever they are called, a bit of karma. Apparently they came from Seth Effrica with the stolen merinos……………………….or so I’ve been told. .

  3. What Sandgropers call Bindi are a much more benign sort of prickle. Those ‘Double Gs are the devil’s work.

    • Bindi are tiny compared to those big monsters. The big guys will go straight through the soles of rubber things and other flimsy footwear, bindis won’t.

    • Bindii, cat heads, caltrops (a bit flash), double g. Whatever. They hurt when you step on them in bare feet or a pair of Japanese motorbike boots (thongs). Interested to hear what others call Patterson’s curse/ Salvation Jane/ Riverina Blue Bells. The nuisance stuff is growing a treat around here with all the rain we have had.

  4. Just discovered that what is often called bindi over here is also called Onehunga weed. Onehunga being a suburb of Auckland. .Not sure how the name leapt the Tasman Sea. Another name is jo-jo.

  5. The real victims of our refugee policy –

  6. I hope I have got this wrong but the AS news says priority to women and children what happens to their husbands, partners do they go somewhere else if so what an option. America already has millions of illegals if one believes Trump (tongue in cheek) so Turnbull is sending them into servitude and what do we get in return??.

    • Somewhere in all the hot air today someone mentioned ‘families’ along with women and children. I wouldn’t count on families being kept together if thei supposed deal ever happens.

      If Dutton could find a way of sending kids to one country , their mothers to another and their fathers to a third then he would do it without a second’s hesitation.

    • I myself never like the sound of “priority to women and children”. Little consideration is given to husbands/fathers, and men in general.

  7. leonetwo

    The real victims of our refugee policy –

    Praise the lord that Dutton and Scrote worship that they did not die at sea. 😦 Bring on the inevitable RC into what those two bastards were responsible for.

  8. The AS announcement must be a Turnbull iniative policy, Australia is going into the people smuggling business run by Jobson Groth,

  9. http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/4288831/labors-paul-scully-claims-wollongong-byelection-win/

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/the-express/sophie-cotsis-wins-in-canterbury/news-story/1f2065be1c8014576d26c46ee739e3cd

    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nationals-in-open-warfare-as-troy-grant-faces-leadership-coup-20161113-gsoal0.html

  10. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-13/who-might-put-their-hand-up-for-nsw-deputy-premier/8021486

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-on-mend-after-emergency-surgery-20161113-gso7jr.html

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/president-elect-donald-trump-is-about-to-learn-the-nations-deep-secrets/2016/11/12/8bf9bc40-a847-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/13/colombias-government-and-rebel-movement-agree-new-peace-terms

    http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/daily-mail

    • “Treasurer Scott Morrison is on the mend after emergency surgery in the Canberra Hospital”

      Heart insertion?

    • What on Earth made the populace vote against the agreement with FARC?

      I know: revenge.

  13. Thanks to all old friends for those birthday wishes back there and for some really inspiring and flattering comments, particularly that one from ‘gorgeous dunny’ about missing the wit of my polliepomes. I tell myself that these days I can’t see much to satirize about our pollies, especially Malcolm Turnbull. He’s turned out to be such a fatuous fart on the floor of the House, however preferable to Tony he may be to represent us in the wider world. I think his old head has hollowed out after all these years of waiting for this job and now he’ll be hoping to retire with reputation intact. We won’t get any of the fun Abbott both promised as Opposition Leader and then gave in the PM role which he and Turnbull strove over for so long and for which Abbott once (in)famously said he’d sell his arse! Remember that?

    Who’d have thought it would come to pass
    That Labor’s fortunes turned on Abbott’s arse?
    Seems he said he’d be prepared to sell it!
    Desperate words from a religious zealot.
    I thought he’d already sold his soul
    Desperately grasping for his life’s goal.
    So this latest for him was no worse than a lie
    He could later confess to, or even deny.
    Or he could shrug it off as leftie spin.
    Anyway is it really a mortal sin?
    It’s leniently dealt with by Cardinal Pell
    So there’s not much chance he’ll go to hell,
    Which really is a pity, you know, because
    We’d rather that fate for him, than Oz.
    What else has he done what infernal fires
    He risks. Or strike him dumb! Anything! So long as he retires!

    That was in 201l. Even then our current Prime Minister was working hard on his image, as I wrote…………

    Think Badly of Malcolm? Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense!

    So Malcolm Turnbull is hosting a post-budget conference.
    Who is he hoping will attend his forum on finance?
    Businessmen or Liberal party members? Will this help enhance
    His reputation, as Abbott shows too much belligerence
    Which, with dour Robb and Hockey’s bluster, inspires no confidence?
    Didn’t Abbott once farewell Mal, praising his excellence,
    Ironically describing him as ‘man of the renaissance?’
    Here he is, indeed ‘reborn’ with all his former nonchalance…………

    Not that I find him very nonchalant these days. He seems strident almost screeching in the House and hollow too. He’s much the same when he does front up to a mike outside. I guess he’s seen too much activity on the slippery slope to power to ever feel really safe. Even without Abbott still hovering around, surely there’s a scandal somewhere in his past that could jump out at him. Or has Lucy done too good a job?

  14. Ms Patricia WA,

    Scandal? Our lovely PM turmoil?

    Wash your mouth out with Lysol this instant!

    *ahem*

    At least three scandals that I can think of, and there would be a few people who know where the bodies are buried.

  15. Protest? This is protest!

    In Spanish

    Te vi, no olvidare
    Un carnaval guitarra bombo y violin
    Agitando pañuelos te vi
    Cadencia al bailar, airoso perfil

    Me fui, diciendo adios
    Y en ese adios quedo enredado un querer
    Agitando pañuelos me fui
    Que lindo añorar la zamba de ayer

    Yo me ire, tu vendras
    Yo te llevare mi rancho se alegrara
    Agitando pañuelos me ire
    Y en mi vivira aquel carnaval
    Agitando pañuelos me ire
    Cantando esta zamba repiqueteadita

    Volvi, y te encontre
    Toda mi voz le dio a la copla un cantar
    Agitando pañuelos volvi
    Sintiendo tambien mi pecho agitar

    Baile, hasta el final
    Engüalichao baile hasta el amanecer
    Agitando pañuelos baile
    Que lindo es bailar la zamba de ayer

    In English (gogle bad translate but you get the idea)

    I saw you, I will not forget
    A carnival guitar bass drum and fiddle
    Shaking handkerchiefs I saw you
    Cadence to the graceful dance profile

    I left, saying goodbye
    And in that goodbye was entangled a want
    Shaking handkerchiefs I went
    How nice to miss my zamba yesterday

    I will go, you will come
    I will take you my ranch will be glad
    Shaking handkerchiefs I’ll go
    And in me will live that carnival
    Shaking handkerchiefs I’ll go
    Singing this zamba repiqueteadita

    I came back, and I found you
    All my voice gave the copla a singing
    Shaking handkerchiefs back
    Feeling also my chest shaking

    I danced until the end
    Engüalichao I danced until dawn
    Shaking handkerchiefs
    How cute is dancing yesterday’s zamba

  17. The rednecks and KKK are not going to stand by and let Trump go back on his word about refugees.

    Given Turnbull’s propensity for blather, delay and stuffing things up, it would not surprise me if our asylum seekers deal became a cause celebre for the Redneck Right in America.

    Our government has waited so long, put things off so much until all the imaginary ducks are in a row, counted so obviously on Hilary Clinton being a soft touch President, and now look at what they’ve achieved in the context of Trump’s unexpected election.

    It is a recipe for disaster and international tension, a perfectly convenient symbol of what the Trumpistas voted against: 2,000 mostly Muslim desperados (as the rednecks would see them), fobbed off onto an American economy with too few jobs and scant prospects.

    My gut feeling is that Turnbull has (again) been too clever by half and that this people swap has a real capacity to blow up right in his face.

    • The Don is in the exact same situation as was he of the Second Coming, here, when he came.

      And, yes, our Christ is playing Diplomacy without a diplomatic clue. Who is “advising” him?

  18. On a Sunday or even in a jar.. My teen sister and all her mates were hot hot hot for Phil Lynott back then . The heart throb in our little town.
    .
    Thin Lizzy – Whiskey In The Jar

  20. Geez, what a mess –

    Confusion, fear and joy from asylum seekers over government’s US resettlement plan

    “It is good news that the government is now acknowledging that the cruelty of the offshore camps will finish, but the Prime Minister said this had been months in the planning – how could there have been months of planning and no clarity?”

    The Human Rights Law Centre is also challenging the government to clarify the many unanswered questions in the plan.

    “This announcement is full of holes,” the centre’s Director of Legal Advocacy Daniel Webb said on Sunday.

    “No timeframe. No numbers. No detail on what the government will do with the hundreds of innocent people who will be left behind. It’s not a plan.

    “This ugly chapter in our history only closes when every single man, woman and child suffering at our government’s hand on Nauru and Manus is finally rebuilding their lives in safety. No one can be left behind.”

    He pointed to the uncertainty hanging over the heads of more than 300 asylum seekers who had been brought to the mainland for medical treatment, and who had yet to be returned to Nauru. Among them were more than 100 children including 40 babies born here

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/confusion-fear-and-joy-mixed-response-from-asylum-seekers-to-governments-us-resettlement-plan-20161113-gso64a.html

    So – a rushed announcement without any firm agreement from the US government and the real possibility that Trump will bin it all. No plans to announce, no numbers, no details, no nothing.

    As usual, just another stuff-up from the Fizza government, aka ‘Stuff-ups ‘R Us’.

  23. I don’t know if anyone has been paying attention to the protests by Native Americans in Dakota, furious about a pipeline, the Keystone pipeline, passing through their land. The pipeline will deliver bitumen from Canadian tar sands to Illinois and on to gulf coast refineries. Apart from the pipeline, tar sand oil extraction is one of the filthiest and most polluting industries on the planet. It should be shut down, not expanded.

    My Facebook feed has been full of this for weeks now.
    Here’s some information, there’s plenty more out there if you Google.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dakota-pipeline-protesters-arrested_us_58266ebfe4b0c4b63b0cca14

    Obama had put a hold on the pipeline development. Trump says he will remove that and allow it to go ahead.

    Guess what? Trump owns shares in Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline. The company also donated handsomely to Trump’s election campaign.

    BREAKING: Trump To Go Ahead With Keystone Pipeline, Owns Stock In Company Building It
    http://news.groopspeak.com/breaking-trump-to-go-ahead-with-keystone-pipeline-owns-stock-in-company-building-it/

  24. For a lot of Australians the term ‘The Don’ means Don Bradman. I don’t like that name being used for Trump.

    • They both swing a mean bat.

      I have, in my collection, lots about stuff The Don wrote and what was written about him.

      My absolute about him is Brightly Fades The Don by Jack Fingleton

      There is a literary term about naming someone detrimentally with the name of a “loved” one. It is not “sarcasm”: there is a precise word.

  26. gigilene,

    About feedback here.

    I post things that I think others may find interesting. I also post stuff for my own satisfaction. I reply to others when I have something to say; not to tell them they are appreciated.

    The tenor of joe6pack’s blog is that exactly we all do.

    There is so much silent approval.

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