Tag: ALP Stuffups

UNION membership across the workforce has fallen to its lowest level, with just 12 per cent of private-sector employees choosing to belong to organised labour. Overall, unions lost almost 93,000 members in the 12 months to last August, with total membership falling to 1.74 million, Australian Bureau of Statistics ­figures show. ACTU secretary Dave Oliver blamed job cuts and changes in the economy and ­labour market for the decline.

“The No 1 recruiter for the trade union movement is Tony Abbott,’’ he said. “Australians aren’t going to stand by while the Abbott government and the business lobby go after their penalty rates, seek to cut the minimum wage every year for 10 years and conduct the biggest assault on the social safety net this country has ever seen

How’s that for a “I’m not paying attention” type of statement.  Union membership plummets, more than likely as a result of it becoming apparent, even to rusted on ALP supporters, that fraud is rampant in the Union movement as their leaders operate for their own benefit and not that of their members. Somehow, in his confused mind,  the fall actually is not a fall at all as he casts Abbott as the No 1 recruiter for the unions.  Abbott recruits but the numbers fall – well done Tony. Thus now we have the ALP/Union movement representing just 12% of workforce and people still believe that a representation of such a tiny part of the workforce entitles them to government. Good luck with that!  

The shouting and tumult dies down as the media have allowed every single person dependant on government largesse to vacilitate wildly and often about the budget.  The attacks aginst the Abbott and Hockey have been sustained and not without some bias.  The ABC did particularly well with Vilma Ward, a Queensland left wing radical activist, being presented as a concerned Pensioner and a sex-line grandmother (there are some sick men out there!) who claims to have been forced into the sleaze business to help pay her rent.  When she come on-line ABC’s Faine smiled at Abbott and he winked back.  The furore from “The Wink” has gone viral as Faine managed to have a convenient video available even though the ABC claim they didn’t know who she was. Bullshit – they always know who their callers are and what they are likely to go on about. They don’t just let anyone call, they must be anti-coalition to get a voice and call-id allows them to select callers who have a proven track record of agreeing with the ABC and it’s self-perceived role as opposition to any conservative government. Glooria, who is actually Judith Power, is a long-time feminist activist and anarchist but insists she has never been a member of a political party, even though Liberal Party twitter accounts claim she is an ALP branch secretary. In an amusing twist, this sex-line elderly anarchist and radical feminist, who by her own background defines sleeze, accuses Abbott of being a sleazy misogynist. The hypocracy! Some sense is rising out of the tumult but there is a lot of work to be done by Abbott and Hockey.  Their efforts at selling the budget have been poor to say the least  and quite a few have been disappointed that they weren’t more savage in their cuts. The fight now is all about getting the budget through the Senate  and the new Senate, due to sit in July, comes with it’s own problems that occassion dispair at the offerings. Particularly dispairing to me is the fact that Palmer’s roll call of Senators in both his party and alligned Independants will have the final say in alot of the budget final make-up PUP senators Zhenya Wang, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazaruswill be part of the balance of power and to look closely at one of them, Jacqui Lambie from Tasmania, despair can easily turn to depression. Jacqui Lambie is an ex soldier and a shallow thinker.

•  She advocates national service as a means to fix youth unemployment.
• believes “hitting welfare” is not the way the Government should be finding savings and the nation needs “other ideas”
• believes the economy is in good shape and the Prime Minister and Treasurer are panicking.
• believes Abbott and Joe Hockey are nothing less than a pair of deceitful, lying political politicians,” 
• believes abuse was an “intractable problem” in the ADF and made such allegations against the ADF that motivated General Hurlley to make an unprecedented intervention suggesting she calm down.

None of which bodes well for civilization. Ricky Muir from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, has signed an agreement to vote along PUP lines but seriously, I always worry about single issue politicians.  Does he have a solid background in business or economics that would indicate some rational thought might be attached to his vote in the Senate? His party claim to want to have a “national conversation” about safer driving but I worry that he  posted a video – subsequently deleted from the internet – showing his eight-year-old daughter driving a car and doing ”burnouts”. Now that’s a good start to have about safer driving….not! Independent senator Nick Xenophon, who is already on record as saying the budget will not pass in it’s current form and adds that the budget itself is unfair, mean and shortsited, doesn’t appear to be thinking about the big picture.  Other that saving a few millions by forcing MPs to travell cattle class he doesn’t  to offer up any solutions to the nations problems. Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm has some opinions that resonate but suggesting a radical plan to charge asylum-seekers $50000 to come to Australia isn’t one of them. I wouldn’t like to comment on Family First’s Bob Day but you could follow the link and decide yourself whether he will help or hinder our recovery The Democratic Labour Party’s John Madigan doesn’t appear to be radical and well may help the situation. Amidst all this is Shorten in denial about the cause of our current financial budget woes and I have still to hear him make any positive statement or suggestion as to how we might alleviate the situation that he and his cohorts created in the first place. It aint going to be easy!

SUPPORT for the Coalition has plunged to its lowest level in almost four years and voter dis­satisfaction with Tony Abbott has jumped to the highest point since he became Prime Minister as the government prepares to deliver across-the-board pain in its first budget. Amazing, isn’t it? The poor bastard has to fix a huge deficit left by the ALP and he is in trouble. Mind you it’s totally expected. With the media, the ALP, every organization that lives off government handouts and the weird left wing screaming about mean Abbott and amongst all that, nobody, least of all Shorten, are calling it for what it is – a budget to try and get us out of the very deep hole the ALP have left us. There is a fair chance the rich are going to pay for it. Bit unfair really because they didn’t cause it and are highly unlikely to have vote the spendthifts in. In a perfect world we would be able to isolate those who did vote them in, particularly the second ALP government, and give them the bill. Wont happen of course. What will happen, what has happened since Whitlam got booted, is that the Libs come in to fix the deficits. Over the first year hard decisions are made and their polls plummet with too many people thinking ME and not the country. LNP management starts to produce results and the polls climb to give them another run at government. The country stabilizes, surpluses appear and productivity lifts after union power is curtailed. Everythin’s rosy, people get complacent and with the memory span of a lightening bolt, forget how bad the ALP is at managing finances and everything else except looking after the unions and they fucking vote them back in. The mysteries of the cycle of life.

A couple of quotes from Abbott.

“This budget is about shifting our focus from entitlement to enter­prise; from welfare to work; from hand-out to hand-up; from our own short-term anxieties to our nation’s long-term opportunities,”

And;

“This will not be a budget for the rich or the poor; it will be a budget for the country.”

Yea, I know, he would say that, wouldn’t he, however I agree with his general thrust but would add that the country needs to pull in its spending to fix the abysmal waste of the Rudd/GIllard/Rudd governments. The telling quote on this matter is from Grace Colliar;

[When we elected Rudd], after 13 years of Howard, our faith in politicians was higher than it is now. We had no commonwealth debt; $45 billion in public savings was burning a hole in our pocket. A nation of relaxed and comfortable gamblers took a punt. Carriage of our precious finances went to the Labor Party. We lost, they won. Rudd turned out to be a vainglorious Trojan horse for Gillard and the unions. Now we have more than $350bn in commonwealth debt. ( From the RBA)

I would say everyone who thought about it were looking forward to savage cuts of ALP schemes and thought bubbles, but that, at present, seems to be stonewalled by the Senate. NDIS, Gonski and the NBN need tightening while every Green initiated programme such as the Carbon Tax and RET, along with the beaurocracies that have grown with them, need to disappear. Green and red tape needs to be rationalized to kick-start the economy and the damage caused by the union dominated ALP will have to be sorted to encourage business to start employing people again. If penalty rates stop businesses opening on public holidays, and it does, then get rid of it. When we are doing it tough at home we cut costs – mince based curries instead of Eye Fillet, or cheaper beers and wines and simplisically it is no different with the national economy. Cut costs! Stop spending! I’m not happy with the talk of a tax levy but it could be a suck-it-and-see exercise. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes or doesn’t. If the budget doesn’t slash ALP extravances and relies soley on a tax that we were promised wouldn’t happen, there will be hell to pay. I can’t see how the ALP can criticise any proposal put up by Abbott and Hockey. Let’s face it, the ALP are responsible for the country’s current fiscal problems. If anything, they should be offering up their solutions to the problem and taking a bi-partisan approach to getting the country back on track. I haven’t heard one positive suggestion from the party that caused the problem. Not one!

The agency in charge of the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) has been likened to “a plane that took off before it had been fully built and is being completed while it is in the air”, in an independent report that questions its ability to roll out the flagship project. The report’s authors, led by former public service executive Jeff Whalan, point to woefully inadequate IT systems, staff confusion, lack of direction and vague terminology in the crucial assessments, such as the key “reasonable and necessary” supports.

The woes of the agency were made apparent as the Public Service Association in NSW stepped up a campaign to “ban work which requires their co-operation with the National Disability Insurance Agency” over its claims that the insurance scheme is being used as a cover to privatise disability services. 

The ALP rushed this to get it out before the last election and it shows. They make mileage out of their “great ideas” but never got on top of actually making them work or financing them. Those minor problems are left to the Libs to fix. And then there is this. LABOR’S most experienced frontbencher, Jenny Macklin, has signed a deal with Melbourne University Publishing to write the inside story on the social policy achievements of the Rudd/Gillard governments. What should be a book of blank pages will wax philosophically about the ALP’s great programmes and NDIS, NBN and Gonski will rate highly in anything she produces. The book should be restricted to programmes that were planned, financed and established in the system which would make Macklin’s job so much easier. But it won’t be.

Shorten demands Morrison should be sacked due to the single death in Manus.  It seems the info Morrison was originally given has now changed and as a result, Morrison has changed his reporting to reflect that. Morrison is doing well considering he has to operate with the media attacking and Traitor Snowden, the ABC and SBS seemingly conspiring to regularly damage ties with Indonesia.  The ABC particularly, is fighting a campaign to damage the government’s handling of the boat people problem.  They had little interest when the ALP were running the show but now their reporting is full-on.  The RAN wandering into Indonesian waters is a case in point.  Don’t they have GPS? and  Aren’t they taught how to read a map? were stupid comments being reported all over the media.  Yes, they do have GPS and can navigate,  but sometimes, for humanitarian reasons, they need to cross territorial waters to save lives. In addition to this, borders aren’t painted on the ocean and the actual location can be up for arguement. When the RAN went into Indonesian waters to save boat people who had phoned Australian SAR when they were only kilometers from Indonesian shores then you had to read The Australian to know that. I note Getup stage a vigil for the guy and cleverly entitled it  “Light up the Dark”.  There was no such light shone on  the thousands previously drowned under the ALP so I guess their batteries were flat then. So, one death under the Coalition and the ALP call for the minister to be sacked.  Thousands under the ALP and  the silence is deafening. Hypocrits!  

The ALP win at Redcliffe is no surprise what with the LNP guy being very unprofessional and Newman being in the part of the electoral cycle where hard decisions have to be made to bring the state out of bankruptcy but seriously is D’Arth the answer. From Catalaxy Files;

It was also Ms. D’Arth, as chairwoman for the Parliamentary Privileges Committee, that cleared Craig Thomson of any wrong-doing in August 2012 and told Federal Parliament that there were “no grounds for further investigation” into allegations Mr Thomson misled Parliament and failed to declare details of his finances on the pecuniary interests register.

I wonder if she gets a guernsey in the Royal Commission into the unions – certainly deserves one.

Melbourne magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg today ruled Mr Thomson had dishonestly obtained a financial advantage by using his union credit card to pay for prostitutes. As if anyone other than Gillard ever doubted he was gulity! He will be sentenced next month.