Showing posts with label elites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elites. Show all posts

Saturday 30 June 2018

Quotes of the Week


"We have, as you know, taken a very strong line on national security and border protection here and when I was speaking with Jared Kushner just the other day, and one of your immigration advisers in the White House, we reflected on how our policies have helped to inform your approach," Mr Turnbull told the president. We are very much of the same mind."  [Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull speaking with US President  Donald J. Trump in early 2017, quoted by the Newcastle Herald, 21 June 2018]

"You ever notice they always call the other side 'the elite'…The elite! Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I'm smarter than they are. I'm richer than they are. I became president and they didn't."  [US President  Donald J. Trump speaking at a Minnesota rally,  The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 2018]

“It's what Labor used to stand for, but no more. This privileged elite opposite wants to keep the workers in their place. I remember when the Labor Party had members that had really worked. I look at this group of university-educated apparatchiks and I don't see any Jack Fergusons there. I see an educated, privileged class that wants to kick the ladder out so that others can't realise their dreams.”  [Malcolm Bligh Turnbull in a moment of political projection, Hansard, 19 June 2018]

Saturday 30 January 2010

The truth revealed? Uncorrected transcript of former British Pm Tony Blair's evidence to the Iraq Inquiry


Evidence taken on 29 January 2010 by the U.K. Iraq Inquiry was a rather pointless exercise at times - for the most part questions carefully walked around a former leader rather than confronting issues head-on.

The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair was allowed to interrupt committee members and drag out his political soap-box at length almost unchallenged.

However, what clearly comes through is the fact that Blair:
(i) was probably heavily influenced on a personal level by George W. Bush;
(ii) was determined on regime change in Iraq;
(iii) held a desire for change which was never predicated on Iraq as a hive of international terrorism;
(iv) was aware U.N. sanctions had effectively 'contained' Saddam; and
(v) presented a supposedly intelligence-driven policy position to the British people in which any identified breaches of U.N. sanctions or allegations of weapons of mass destruction were only the smoke screen behind which the Coalition of the Willing had agreed to advance their invasion agenda.

Full uncorrected 249-page transcript here.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January 2010, British press shocked at Blair's no regrets on Saddam

Thursday 8 October 2009

Snap! The very real rewards of business failure


Two perspectives on Greed Unlimited.

From the Brisbane Times last Monday:

The basic wage of Babcock & Brown Infrastructure's boss has risen by more than $300,000, despite the company's shares losing 90 per cent of their value, a market analyst says.
Jeff Kendrew was appointed chief executive officer of Babcock & Brown Infrastructure in June 2007.
On November 12 last year he was also named executive director.
News Limited says Mr Kendrew's basic wage has risen from $365,000 to $700,000, while shares have fallen from $2 in 2007 to less than one cent.

From Stephen Mayne's email newsletter The Mayne Report on the same day:

Sunday 6 September 2009

A WTF moment for NSW Health


Last week if you were placed on hold by the Maclean District Hospital switchboard, along with the canned Musak you would have heard a voice tell you that this hospital had three rooms with en suite and Austar television available for in-patients with private health insurance.

Now Maclean District Hospital is a public hospital in the North Coast Area Health Service and it is sometimes stretched for beds, so it is not unknown for wards to be culled for people to send home so that new (and sometimes more urgent) cases can be admitted.

Which makes one wonder - if a well-off retiree whose insurance is paying out to the area health service and an old-age pensioner on Medicare were to be assessed in such a cull, which one would be sent home?

If you picked the retiree as the patient most likely to be sent home I suspect that you wouldn't get the cigar - human nature and hospital bottom lines just don't work that way.

These three beds are not a good look for NSW Health and definitely not a good look for a Rudd Government seeking to work cooperatively with the states towards a better public health care system.

Monday 2 March 2009

On the money.........


It seems there is no end to greed in the ranks of the rich in Oz.

Example One:
"ALMOST 400,000 millionaires are receiving the age pension and 51,200 people in the nation's top income bracket also are getting the welfare payment.
As the Government prepares to lift the pension rate for the poorest single age pensioners, it has emerged tens of thousands of people receiving the payment are very well off.
And a key welfare group is calling for a crackdown on the rich receiving the pension, which would include homes worth more than $1 million in the age pension means test.
Research carried out for the Brotherhood of St Laurence has found the age pension system is helping the rich because the means test exempts the family home.
Other very wealthy retirees are able to fiddle their income so they can receive a part-pension.
The research by NATSEM shows 14 per cent of the nation's 2.8 million pensioners have an average net worth of more than $1.6 million when the value of their home is taken into account.
But even if the value of the home is disregarded, 51,200 age pensioners have incomes that place them in the highest income bracket."


Example Two:


Example Three:

Monday 9 February 2009

More grief for 'Truffles' Turnbull

Last Sunday morning during the ABC Insiders program Chris Uhlmann referred to 'Truffles' Turnbull as having "strapped himself to the tracks in front of the gravy train", because of his somewhat silly threat to block the Rudd Government second stimulus package in Parliament when it was obvious to everyone that he couldn't possiblely mount the numbers on this one (indeed it passed through the House Of Reps and is on its way to a Senate vote in the next few days).

But Mal has other PR worries as well this week:
"Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says he is not the only politician to receive campaign funds from a controversial American billionaire.
Mr Turnbull received $76,000 from Fortress Investment Group director Peter Briger, to help fund the campaign for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, The Sun-Herald has reported.
Mr Turnbull previously held shares in the company associated with predatory lending practices in the United States, but offloaded them in 2007.
When asked if he would re-pay the money, Mr Turnbull told Network Ten: "You could well ask that same question of President (Barack) Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because Peter Briger was a prominent supporter and donor to both their campaigns."
According to The Sun-Herald, Fortress is referred to as a "vulture company" because it preys on vulnerable businesses and debtors and picks over financial carcasses....."

This is not the first time Peter Briger has donated to the Libs - in 2007 he gave $51, 000 to the Liberal Party in NSW, but nothing to the other major parties.
And, guess what, Mal me old china?
Yep, you appear to be the only Aussie pollie to directly get money from this Yankee billionnaire and former Goldman Sachs shareholder (along with yourself).

In February 2007 The Street.com said of Briger and other Fortress directors/shareholders (and presumably Malcolm Turnbull):
"When it comes to hedge fund company Fortress Investments(FIG Quote - Cramer on FIG - Stock Picks), one thing's for sure: Chief executive Wesley Edens and the other principals didn't get where they are today by leaving money on the table.
Fortress went public two weeks ago and doubled in price on the first day. But what investors may not realize is that the five principals pretty much stripped the company clean just before the IPO.
I don't mean they cleaned up the balance sheet. I mean they cleaned out the vault. Page five of the prospectus shows they withdrew $446.9 million from the company in "cash distributions" last year.
Plus another $409 million in January.
They collected a further $888 million on Jan. 17 by selling a small stake to Japanese bank Nomura(
NMR Quote - Cramer on NMR - Stock Picks).
Oh yes, and they pocketed a further $22.8 million in the final weeks before this month's IPO.
A table buried on page 94 of the prospectus shows the remarkable facts. Between January 2005 and this month's IPO, the five principals of Fortress -- Edens, Peter Briger, Robert Kauffman, Randal Nardone and Michael Novogratz -- cashed out $1.04 billion. "That does not include the Nomura transaction," adds company spokeswoman Lilly Donohue.
Total withdrawn in the two years before they took it public: $1.9 billion. Most of that was in the final few months.
This isn't just every penny that the company earned over that period -- it's a lot more. By the time the owners opened the doors to the investing public this month, the company wasn't just out of cash -- it had negative book value. Liabilities actually exceeded assets by $507 million........"

Fortress Investment Group key executives as of 6 February 2009.

Saturday 18 October 2008

Most dastardly quotes of the week + The hoi polloi assess 'Truffles' Turnbull

“Obviously we want to work towards alleviating the pressure on the Australian people,” Mr Joyce told 2GB Radio today. “I do have a concern that if you pay people in lump sums it can end up against the wall, and we don’t want that.“People go to work every day to pay their taxes, and they don’t like seeing it end up in poker machines or plasma TVs.”
Senator Barnaby Joyce, Nationals leader in the Senate, quoted in The Australian last Tuesday on the subject of the December lumpsum payments.

But Senator Joyce said the money could be wasted on Christmas presents..."I'm worried about when big chunks of money turn up in one fell swoop just before Christmas, because a couple of weeks later you see a lot of Australia's $10 billion scattered around the floor with 'Made in China' on the back."
Senator Barnaby Joyce quoted in News.com.au on the same subject.


Portrait of the dozy dastard from the National Museum of Australia

What can't Malcolm do?

Not only did Malcolm Turnbull think up "all the good ideas" (October 16) that Kevin Rudd has being putting into action lately, he also invented the internet, Microsoft and Google, put unmanned spacecraft on Mars, walked on the moon, cured cervical cancer and won World War II singlehandedly.
Not bad for a bloke who started out in life as the son of poor black sharecroppers born in a cardboard box on the lip of an active volcano outside downtown Vaucluse.

Ross Sharp of Toowong (Qld) in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday

Saturday 11 October 2008

The True Blue Honour Roll of Academic Freedom

The Sydney Morning Herald published an article yesterday which had the Young Liberals demonstrating the depth of rigorous research that lies behind their finger-pointing before the 2008 Senate Inquiry into Academic Freedom and their listing of a number of 'bad' academics, when national president Noel McCoy pointed out that evidence for alleged teaching bias was basically found by Googling these same academics.

Because of that I was going to call this post; One man's Google or 4633 kilobytes that certain uni students will very likely be ashamed of when they reach retirement.

Then I clicked onto the Senate website and found this group's submission Make Education Fairer, dated 13 August 2008 .
One hundred and five PDF pages of the most malicious drivel I have read in quite some space of time.

Suddenly it wasn't so amusing anymore. This little witch hunt even named an entire university department in what boils down to charges of thought crimes against white, Anglo-Saxon males.

Especially jaw-dropping is the notion found in the submission that this excerpt is apparently considered a biased and unnatural aim:
2.1 1 Schooling should assist in overcoming inequalities between social groups, seeking to produce equal and high educational outcomes for all social groups.
[Australian Education Union, Curriculum Policy 2007]

I invite you to read it all here. Unfortunately at the time of posting this, the hearing transcripts were not up yet for 9 October 2008, when the Young Liberals presented their supposed evidence in person.

Those academics named in the Make Education Fairer submission deserve to be recognised and supported against such nonsense:

Wendy Bacon
Eva Cox
Peter Singer
Catharine Lumby
The entire Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, including Doctors Anderson, Francis-Cranny, Lambert, Murray and Sullivan
Peter Manning
Sarah Maddison
Carol Johnson
Tom Bramble
Jamie Doughney
Carole Ferrier
Martin Hirst
Rick Kuhn
Georgina Murray
Damon Riggs
Anna Szorenyi
Kathleen Conellan
Alia Imtoual
et al

Friday 20 June 2008

How we rate our Aussie politicians

Readers Digest has its fourth annual Most Trusted Poll up online.

Have a look at who rated below 50 - every politician on the 100 well-known people list and a few surprises.
I can understand Sol Trujillo an also ran at 95, Pell logged in at 75 and Keelty coming in at only 52, but Gleeson at 54? Is our High Court considered the realm of used car salesmen now?

51. Naomi Watts - Actor
52. Jessica Rowe - TV newsreader
52. Mick Keelty - Commissioner, Australian Federal Police
54. Andrew Symonds - Member of Australian cricket team
54. Murray Gleeson - Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia
56. Mick Fanning - World Champion surfer
57. Natalie Bassingthwaite - Actor, musician, TV host, So you think you can dance
58. Bert Newton - TV host
58. Karl Stefanovic - TV host, Today
60. Kerri-Anne Kennerley - TV Host, Mornings with Kerri-Anne
61. Bill Granger - Chef, TV Host and Author
62. Kevin Rudd - Prime Minister
63. Chris Lilley - Writer and comedian, Summer Heights High
64. Mel Gibson - Actor and director
65. Keith Urban - Musician
66. Jana Rawlinson (nee Pittman) - Olympic runner
67. Maxine McKew - Former journalist, Federal MP
67. Russell Crowe - Actor, businessman
69. Julia Gillard - Federal MP, Deputy Prime Minister
70. Greg Norman - Golfer
71. Lleyton Hewitt - Tennis player
72. Noel Pearson - Lawyer and activist
73. Therese Rein - Wife of Prime Minister, businesswoman

74. Janette Howard - Wife of former Prime Minister
75. Cardinal George Pell - Catholic Archbishop of Sydney
76. Peter Garrett - Federal MP, ex Midnight Oil musician
77. Lara Bingle - Model
78. Andrew Johns - Former rugby league player
79. The Chaser Boys - Comedians and satirists
80. Alan Jones - Radio presenter
81. Bob Brown - Federal senator, leader of the Australian Greens
82. Peter Holmes a Court - Businessman, owner South Sydney Rugby League Club
83. Glenn Stevens - Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia
84. Lachlan Murdoch - Businessman
85. Bob Hawke - Former Prime Minister
86. Rupert Murdoch - Media mogul
87. James Packer - Businessman
88. John Howard - Prime Minister
89. Kyle Sandilands - Radio personality, TV judge Australian Idol, TV Host, Big Brother
90. Malcolm Turnbull - Federal MP, Shadow Treasurer
91. Paul Keating - Former Prime Minister
92. Peter Costello - Federal MP, former treasurer
93. Brendan Nelson - Leader of the Opposition
94. Tony Abbott - Federal MP
95. Shane Warne - Former cricketer
95. Sol Trujillo - Telstra CEO
97. David Hicks - Confessed terrorism supporter

98. Ben Cousins - Suspended AFL player
99. Wayne Carey - Retired AFL player
100. Rodney Adler - Former director of telecommunications company One. Tel and insurance company HIH

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Are these the nongs who want to set off rabbit hunts at the office?

Yesterday I woke to find that the Rudd Government had lost its tiny mind and finally lurched so far right that it was convincingly lost in a strange black ops forest.
Yep, it had called up the terrorist bogey man to insist that it was fit and proper to let an employer snoop unannounced into every email passing through an office computer or a company laptop being used by a worker while out in the big bad world.
 
So who or what has been whispering in the shell-like ears of our fearless Cabinet members?
After US Homeland Security and FBI, the first Aussie culprit appears to be The Research Network for a Secure Australia, a "multi-disciplinary collaboration established to strengthen Australia's research capacity for protecting critical infrastructure from natural or human caused disasters including terrorist acts" and provide security "commercialisation opportunities", funded by the Australian Government (at least until next year) and administered by Melbourne University.
 
Looking at the Network's management and advisory line up, I am flabbergasted that all these academics and professionals could apparently come up with to 'protect' Australia from cyber threats was a plan to spy on ordinary people.
 
The management committee contacts are:
A/Prof. Priyan Mendis
Reader, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
The University of Melbourne,
Prof. Ed Dawson
Director- Information Security Institute
Queensland University of Technology
Prof. Joseph Lai
Associate Dean (Research)
UNSW @ ADFA
Australian Defence Force Academy
 
Its advisory committee is made up of the following:
Chair:
Mr. Mike Rothery (Director, Critical Infrastructure Branch, Attorney-General's Dept.).
Members:
Dr. Richard Davis (Head, NSST Unit);
Dr. Lynn Booth (DSTO);
Mr. Bruce Howard (Engineers Australia, Security Commissioner);
Prof. Ed Dawson (QUT);
Prof. Peter Anderson (PICT, Macquarie University);
Mr. Jason Brown (General Manager, Thales);
Craig Sharkie (CSL Ltd);
Tony Sleigh (NSW Lands);
Mr. Warwick Watkins (Director-General NSW Lands);
A/Prof Priyan Mendis (Convenor of RNSA);
Prof. Joseph Lai (ADFA);
Ms. Jennie Clothier (DSTO);
Mr. Terry Vincent (Australian Bomb Data Centre).

Advisory Board Secretary:
Mr. Athol Yates (Australian Homeland Security Research Centre)
 
The Australian Homeland Security Research Centre  which gives the advisory board its secretary also has an expertise roll call that makes for interesting reading. An employment background  combination of business, military, embassy and spooks all seemingly looking to sell us something to fight that bogeyman.
 
Of course the bogeyman is just as likely to be an infrastructure company like Telstra who very recently repaired an internet exchange box storm-damage fault with an equally faulty computer card and launched its own 2-day denial of service cyber attack on Yamba customers by bringing down its broadband service.
And in the process actually realising the observation that being struck by lightening is more probable than a terrorist attack!

Wednesday 9 April 2008

Australia 2020 summit not shaping up well

Australia 2020's moral policeman Rev. Tim Costello is in trouble, with the gaming industry pointing to a briefing paper he had prepared for the Strengthening Communities, Supporting Families and Social Inclusion working group which contained factual inaccuracies.
 
The 2020 website now posts all the background papers which disappoint for their lacklustre approach.
 
Longterm Health Strategy - a little gem which describes Australia's health system as "a sophisticated public-private and federal-state blend."
 
Strengthening Communities, Supporting Families and Social Inclusion - Tim hasn't corrected his allegedly faulty statistics.
 
The Future of Rural and Regional Australia - someone discovers that the "agricultural sector is an important source of income in rural Australia" and that "shortages of services and skills exist in rural and regional areas". But the real eye opener is this piece of wishful thinking; "But the agricultural sector is in a strong position to address the challenges of climate change."
 
The Future of Indigenous Australia - has this unique view of Australia's general indifference and underlying racism; "Mainstream attitudes towards Indigenous disadvantage are generally constructive, but the public is not well informed."
 
Governance - sit back and let flawed newspaper polls set government policy, because "Mass media not only relay information to the population. Opinion polls are one way in which they close the feedback loop in providing information about public opinion back to governments."
Understates the number of Australian political blogs - but then it uses The Australian as a source.
 
Full list of available 2020 topic downloads here.