Tag Archives: Controversy

The Two Weeks That Were – January 5 to January 18

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So everyone took two weeks off in political land, and I had a holiday – now we’re back.

First we had Mr Cory Bernardi (a Senator representing South Australia) and his views regarding “non-traditional families” – his definition of “traditional families” appears to be two biological parents (married) and kids. As well as his views on abortion – if you are pro-choice you are pro-death in his view. He’s offended a lot of people, such as Bill Shorten who, it turns out, is a stepfather, and Carrie Bickmore, a presenter on The Project who told Bernardi to “get stuffed”

The Liberals have said this is not their view but haven’t done anything else.

The Australian Navy was also accused of towing at least two asylum seeker boats to Indonesian waters after being detected here. Thanks to the “Operational On Water Matters” cone of silence, it can’t really be verified. We might get the answer though, given the UNHCR has decided to investigate.

Speaking of on the water, the Japanese Whaling fleet is now in Antarctic and/or Australian Waters. While the government did promise to do surveillance late last year, according to the Sea Shepherd, it hasn’t happened yet and at least three whales have been caught. Sea Shepherd says it has got in the way and disrupted some of it, but the government still hasn’t done anything.

Christopher Pyne has announced that he wants to change the education system and focus more on Western civilisation and Judeo-Christian values, which concerns me a little, but they have said that students will learn about all cultures and religions. Hmmm.

Scott Morrison had to apologise to Indonesia because naval ships crossed into Indonesian Maritime territory while carrying out activities under Operation Sovereign Borders – all we got was the admission that the navy screwed up and that they had apologised. They haven’t said much else – again there have been calls for transparency, but I doubt that will happen. Mind you in this saga, Tony Abbott hasn’t been seen at all. It’s been Scott Morrison, Julie Bishop and the military guy in charge, Angus Campbell. Maybe Tony Abbott is off fighting fires in South Australia or Victoria – but we would’ve heard about that.

Back to business next week.

Baddies v Baddies, Nerds and Threats

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Sunday saw the Labor Launch, in which Rudd announced  policies to help apprentices, such as mandatory employment of a certain amount of apprentices in major projects and giving them an allowance to buy their tools. He also announced tax breaks for small business and told people the election wasn’t over until the last ballots are cast. Tony Abbott was mentioned 26 times and Julia Gillard was acknowledged, which I think was nice. Anthony Albanese said that while Tony Abbott can jump through tires, but Kevin Rudd is a nerd. I’m not going to simplify it.

Speaking of simplifying, Tony Abbott is in a bit of a pickle after saying that the issue in Syria was “baddies versus baddies” – the Labor party has jumped on this saying that this shows that Abbott does not have the capacity to deal with international issues – the Liberals disagree. It’s made international news (why is it always the awkward moments?) but apparently both David Cameron and Barack Obama have used the term “bad guys” – in context Cameron said “you’ve got a lot of bad guys in Syria” and Obama said that they don’t “know who the bad guys are” – either way, Tony Abbott probably shouldn’t have said it.

Monday saw Kevin Rudd go to a high school, I’m not sure why, it had something to with him being a nerd…he keeps telling people not to vote for Tony Abbott too, understandable, given that he wants to win – but still, he says it a lot.

It also turns out that the Labor-held seat of Page is very important. It changes with the government, like most marginal seats in the cities. The Nationals and Liberals are fighting for it, given that the seats surrounding it are most likely going to them. The Nationals really, really want it, given that it used to be a safe seat for them. Mind you, people thought some NSW state seats were really safe Labor, and then swung 30% the other way, so anything can happen.

Tuesday saw Tony Abbott threaten to have a double dissolution election if he doesn’t get his way with removing the carbon tax. Labor of course wants a floating carbon price. It will be interesting to see what happens…

It also saw this video of Kevin Rudd go viral:

The Australian Christian Lobby (who lost their site to the Australian Cat Ladies) think he will lose votes, and that is their opinion. It is interesting to note that all of the Christian clergy saying that Rudd would lose votes were Protestant and I think mostly Anglican – not a single Catholic clergyman was interviewed as they refused to comment.

Oh well, Saturday is coming…..I’ll leave you with some Antony Green ranting:

The Week That Was – June 23 to June 29

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Wow. What a week.

It began with Julia Gillard copping flak for knitting the Royal Baby a Kangaroo, despite being a supporter of Australia being a republic. I thought that was nice and thoughtful. It ended with a new PM.

It was entertaining, at least for news and political junkies (much like yours truly), and for once, might have had the nation sitting on the edge of their seats. If you weren’t paying attention on Wednesday night you can read what happened in the links at the bottom of this post.

In short, we now have a new Prime Minister – Kevin Rudd.

Not only that, but many people have decided to resign and leave politics, including Julia Gillard, Greg Combet and Peter Garrett. You can see who is staying and going here on the ABC News website. The media did pretty well, especially the ABC and Sky News.

In his first speech as the new PM, Kevin asked for a ‘gentler’ brand of politics and that politicians be nicer to each other. No such luck. By Tony Abbott’s second sentence, he’d taken a stab at Kevin Rudd.

Before I go, I have to say that the Liberal’s rally in Melbourne on the 29th has a distinctive US feel to it. Here’s a picture.

Personally, I don’t think we should go in this direction – but that’s just me. What do you think?

Oh well, let’s hope that next week is a little less frantic – I have a holiday planned!

Quotes of the Week

“I remind the Leader of the Opposition that he is speaking on the indulgence of the chair, and it is being tried” – Anna Burke, Speaker of the House, the day after the spill. Tony Abbott had started getting a bit too vocal about the previous nights shenanigans. (from Hansard)

“Before I conclude, let me say a word or two to young Australians. It’s clear that many of you, in fact far too many of you, have looked at our political system and the parliament in recent years and not liked or respected much of what you have seen. In fact as I rock around the place, talking to my own kids, they see it as a huge national turn off. Well I understand why you have switched off. It’s hardly a surprise but I want to ask you to please come back and listen afresh. It’s really important that we get you engaged, in any way we can. We need you. We need your energy. We need your ideas. We need your enthusiasm and we need you to support us in the great challenges that lie ahead for the country. With your energy, we can start cooking with gas.” Kevin Rudd in his speech after winning the spill, encouraging young Australians to come back and pay attention to politics, ended with one of his signature quips. (from Kevin’s website)

Tweets of the Week

https://twitter.com/hamishNews/status/349856913917345792

(Context: Leigh Sales was on the ABC from 7pm until about 10:45 (she is normally just on between 7:30 and 8pm). She and Annabel Crabb were talking for a good hour or so, holding the fort while the media awaited a slightly late Kevin Rudd to speak)

Links

6:24pm

6:42pm

6:59pm

7:54pm

9:09pm

Speeches

Part 1 (Gillard and Swan)

Part 2 (Rudd and Albanese)

Part 3 (Abbott)