Nick Leys, the source of Strewths ‘make Howard look bad’ style of reporting waxes philosophically about how the press love Latham. He says it as if it had never occurred to us conservatives that for generations the Journalist departments of Australian universities have been turning out Left Wing little echoes. I’m told by my friends in Academia that UQ were once so embarrassed about their Journalist school that even they downgraded the department.

THE Biff Factor ? Mark Latham’s friendly and down-to-earth approach ? has proved a key difference in campaigning styles between the opposing leaders. Biff’s youthful and energetic team regularly socialise with the press pack, while the Rodent’s people are more aloof. Biff has made a habit of dining with the reptiles once a week in whatever city he is in. Last night it was a Thai restaurant in Brisbane, which pleased some hacks who are sick of Labor’s penchant for deep-fried Chinese. The dinners are off the record and a chance for Biff and the media to shoot the breeze about anything. As one photographer said, it’s a good chance to ask Biff all the really important things, “like why is he a St George supporter when he grew up in the western suburbs”.

Can’t you just picture the camaraderie as the Journos and the Labour hacks sit there drinking chardonnay, eating Thai and giggling like undergrads at the stupidity of the voters who still can’t see their collective wisdom. With every utterance from Howard analyzed to the 6th degree and Latham getting a free ride with minimal efforts to critically assess his promises and throw away lines, the thing that they miss is that the voting public don’t miss the fact that Latham’s promises are still just that – promises from someone who has yet to be put under the hammer.

Terrorist Ivan Molloy gets ALP preselection for the seat of Fairfax (Sunshine Coast).

LABOR candidate Ivan Molloy posed with a machine gun supplied by Muslim extremists and has said Australia should be turning its military on both itself and the US. (the ‘machine gun’ is actually an M16 assualt rifle) Dr Molloy has also claimed Muslim guerilla groups should not be labelled terrorists. The group he posed with in the Philippines in 1983 has recently been linked by Washington to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network

Great picture. Says it all.

Dr Molloy, an academic at the University of the Sunshine Coast, posted on an Internet chat room in April 2002: “I have spent much time in Asia and Central America researching and supporting many popular struggles against oppression.”

Isn’t there a law against people holding public office and supporting the enemy at the same time? Oops. I forgot. The precedent has already been set by the the ALP when Jim Cairns held a seat on the USSR local council and the position of deputy PM at the same time. Guess it’s ok if your ALP. And some people want to give them another chance at government.

Philip Adams does a quick take on Howard’s surplus allocation.

And there’s Howard, acting as if all that accumulated moolah belongs to him and that we should be immensely grateful if he gives some of it back. Moreover, we should express our gratitude by voting for him.

Actually, I see it as Howard acting as if the money does belongs to us and he is allocating it in a manner that he figures will best answer our needs. This is one of the things we pay him to do and if he does it well we re-elect him. He knows that, we know that but Philip has to put a negative spin on it. I thought you guys hated surpluses, claiming that the money belongs to the voters and should be spent on us. Well, that’s what Howard is doing. You don?t have to be a Marxist to take offence but it helps.

My complaint concerns prime ministerial chutzpah — for pretending, for daring to suggest, that it is his efforts, and those of Costello, that have made Australia wealthy. You don’t have to be a Marxist to take offence at this topsy-turvy view of how wealth accumulates in a federal treasury.

Poor Philip. Can’t come to grips with the fact that the Coalition run a good economy. Our economy is in good health due to the efforts of Howard/Costello. If it was a Labour government that had delivered lower unemployment, low interest rates and unprecedented growth over three terms then Philip would be beside himself positively spinning the superlatives. Still, Philip does serve a purpose, even if it is only to underline the thought process of the dark forces.

A Ms Luke joins the Conga line of Fools who blame Howard for Bali. Like Brian Deegan, she lost someone close and in her grief and confusion forgets to blame the people who detonated the bomb, the terrorists.

Ms Luke, who recently joined the Greens and does not rule out a future political career, is just weeks away from completing a degree in environmental science and management. She said she was attracted to the Greens because the party was ethical and had sound economic policies based on sustainable development principles.

and had sound economic policies! Wow!

“I believe in long-term, peaceful solutions such as education, not increasing security out of control,” Ms Luke said.

Don’t we all, but to have education we also need political stability (read democracy) and a clear separation of powers so the clerics are unable to teach hate in their ‘schools’. Nothing the Greens have ever said remotely looks like an answer to that problem. I can only wonder why the editor of the Weekend Australian thought the piece worthy of column space. Maybe he just wants to point out to readers the shallowness of the Greens.

The dark forces have conjured up another Leading Somebody who has an opinion contrary to the PM’s and in doing so expect the voters to instantly connect the Leading Somebody’s opinion as gospel handed down from Mount Kosciusko and the PM as ignoring said gospel.

Aware of the imminence of war based on a false assumption or calculated deceit, a leading scientist tries to get word to the Prime Minister but is thwarted by his own masters. In desperation and in a “personal capacity”, he dispatches his own missive to the PM. Instead of taking heed, the PM proceeds to declare war while the Government compiles a dirt sheet to discredit the scientist should the media learn of his failed attempt to influence the PM. Read like plot of some fanciful, B-grade political thriller about thuggish suppression of dissenting individuals, craven bureaucracy and self-interested manipulation of truth? Depressingly, of course, it is all too real.

Leading Scientist Bob Mathews has an opinion about the lack of WMDs and writes to John Howard telling him so. Instead of taking heed, the PM proceeds to declare war. The hide of the man. The smugness of it all. Fancy a PM not dropping everything, altering our foreign policy and opting out of alliances on the gospel handed down by a scientist. A quick Google for Mathews brings up this;

Bob Mathews is a Principal Research Scientist in the Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defence and Arms Control Section of the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). His main current scientific research interest is the application for treaty purposes of methods for the detection and analysis of organic chemicals, and the development of verification procedures.

So I’ll give him technical expertise, but that’s it. I’ve known scientists who know everything there is to know about a specific subject and yet can’t change a tyre or tell me what’s going on in the world. What does Bob know of el-Quaida? Is he on the Intelligence briefing circuit? Has he studied terrorism itself? Has he been involved in diplomatic briefs from the US and the UK. Is he an expert on the Middle East or has he authored any papers on JI? The sentence;

Aware of the imminence of war based on a false assumption or calculated deceit and ..B-grade political thriller about thuggish suppression of dissenting individuals, craven bureaucracy and self-interested manipulation of truth? Depressingly, of course, it is all too real

does say something about the politics of the author so I get the impression that even if there was evidence of WMDs aplenty he would have come up with some other reason to have this matter brought into the media during an election Have we progressed from a ‘Group of Eminent Doctors/Scientists/ Humanitarians to a ‘Leading Scientist’ program of opinions contrary to Howard?s way of doing things. Is there a Committee to Destabilize Howard somewhere in the Dark Forces HQ with a programme of dissenting opinions that are to be released weekly during the campaign and daily in the last week? I really don’t know, although it looks like there is, but what I do know is most discerning voters acknowledge a PM has to consider all opinions and facts in his decision making process and having done so must decide. He would have had hundreds of opinions to consider before committing to Iraq and so when I hear of one letter that wasn’t listed in the bibliography of the opinions considered, I can only say; So bloody what!

The ALP has announced its defence policy. Mark Latham has vowed to make Australia “impregnable” by expanding the army by one battalion. Well, that’s what it says here They promise;

* a new light infantry battalion with about 750 troops to be based in Townsville * the parachute battalion group at Holsworthy in Sydney to be moved to the Townsville * a new entitlement of reunion travel for non-custodial parents in the defence forces who were posted away from their children, and * A new Australian Defence Force medal for volunteers who had served three years in the ADF since World War II. * In addition, Mr Latham said Labor would encourage regular military exercises with New Zealand to create greater synergies between the two defence forces.

That’s it? Reunion travel – yeah yeah! Kiwi synergies – yeah yeah! New medal – big deal! Moving 3RAR (Para) to Townsville – Why? They don’t walk to the battle zone (para does suggests they fly) …so they’re 90 minutes closer to something. Big deal! Lavarack Barracks is going to get crowded but don’t worry – neither the new battalion nor the 3RAR move isn’t planned for four to five years. I might add that the only reason any-one is talking about more battalions comes from the fact that the ALP have been busy cutting battalions out of the ORBAT for years.

A Labor Government will, as a matter of priority, re-invigorate the critical role of the Reserves.

Great throw-away line. Is there a brigade in the Reserve that is fully manned, kitted and ready to go anywhere? I think not. Yet if Labour plan to have a brigade and a battalion group ready to deploy to different theatres at different times at little notice and the Reserves are going to back them up, then they need to do some more sums. Six months after deployment all the regular troops will be looking for replacement. If the Reserves are being reinvigorated can we have the dollars to do that included in the plan.

Modifications to common induction training to assist in the recruitment and retention of Reserve personnel.

Many years ago the ADF was forced to cut Recruit Training in half because Reserve soldiers had difficulty getting away from their jobs for three months at a time for Recruit and Corp training. The regular army had to ‘half train’ everyone. Standards dropped. Are the Modifications to common induction training heading back down the road of falling standards?

To defend Australia without having to rely on the combat forces of other countries.

That must have been included as a sop to the Left-wing so they can tell Uncle Sam to go jump. Stupid and meaningless. The last time our country needed defending against an incursion we need hundreds of thousands of Americans to help us. The Coalition hasn’t done everything they should either, but they do have a plan and it doesn’t start with a paltry $300 odd million. This sort of insurance policy is big and bottom lines are in the billions.

Mr Latham said terrorism must be dealt with at its source, by eliminating organisations like JI, not by fighting wars on the other side of the world, or by Mr Howard returning to the doctrine of pre-emption.

Terrorism must be dealt with at its source – I agree but if you think that the source of terrorism is in some suburb in Jakarta or Mindanao then you just haven’t thought it through. Neutralizing current JI terrorists will not stop other like minded Moslems heading off to the heart of Islam for training or finance. Berlin and Hiroshima didn’t fall because the US, Britain and Australia made their countries impregnable. They fell because we took the war to them -we attacked their homeland, their industry and their logistics and made it impossible for them to continue the wage war. And don’t confuse the issue with…But, they don’t have a homeland. They do and the US are there now. Fighting In Iraq and Afghanistan and intelligence gathering in Iran and Saudi Arabia. If you don’t understand that basic tenet then get the hell out of the debate.

What began as a benign Sunday morning chat on television between Howard and veteran Canberra interviewer Laurie Oakes has become a religion with John Quiggin, Tim Dunlop and Chris Shiels. What Howard said;

What Howard said in reply to Oakes’ question was quite equivocal, full of “ifs”: “If you believed somebody was going to launch an attack against your country, either of a conventional kind or of a terrorist kind, and you had the capacity to stop it and there was no alternative other than to use that capacity, then you would have to use it.”

At 7:14 this morning John Quiggan posts on the matter.

Call me naive, but I think that on an issue like national security, a government ought to offer coherent policies rather than soundbites. Howard’s statements over the weekend fail this test. On the one hand, he reiterated the view that Australia would undertake pre-emptive strikes against terrorist targets in neighbouring countries. On the other hand, he announced the formation of Federal Police counterterrorism teams to operate in South-East Asia

Apparently having Federal Police overseas, as they are already, and having a last ditch stand of pre-emptive strikes is mutually exclusive. I can’t see why. And if Howard’s quotes are only soundbites what are Lathams -gospel? By 10:30 Tim Dunlop had worked up enough steam to post on the same point making it the Anti-Howard post for the day. Here’s Tim’s Orwellian piece-de-resistance.

If the Howard government loses this election–which is well within the bounds of possibility–it will be this sort of too-clever-by-half manipulation of the electorate that will be the reason. John Howard made trustworthiness the catchphrase of the election–his Orwellian piece-de-resistance–and this sort of flim-flam brings the issue nicely into focus

Two hours later, after studying his negative-spin dictionary ‘Sir Echo’ Chris Shiels attacks. Full of coffee or something worse he lines up Howard – all barrels but no clear sight picture.

Rodent, hoisted, petard, etc John Howard’s pre-emption ploy isn’t dead in the water; it’s alive and imploding within the Coalition. This issue has everything: Howard ruthlessly exploiting national security for domestic political scare campaign purposes, hyperbolic lies piled upon hyperbolic lies, regional contempt (with implicit racism), and now hysterical flip flops and backflips. Yes, we can see the whole wretched form of this most dreadful of Australian governments in full ugly flight, but on this occasion blowing up in its own face. The media transcripts will be here in due course (more at Tim’s and John’s places). If the Howardians don’t change their medication quick smart, they’ll be a smoking ruin come election day.

Imploding, hyperbolic lies, regional contempt, implicit racism and most dreadful of Australian Governments….Wow. ‘Pre-emptive’ has certainly become the currency of left-wing mantra. Guys, all nations reserve the right to a pre-emptive strike just before they are attacked. It isn’t just a recently thought of right-wing swear word – its a last ditch tactic after diplomacy and all other means to resolution have failed. Get over it. At Back Pages a reader comments;

i love back pages. just when i was feeling downhearted and defeatist i read today’s pieces and it’s like someone’s put zoloft in the lemonade.

Zoloft, a cure for depression, social anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder might be better prescribed for Chris. His ‘panic disorder’ needs medication.