Wednesday, 2 December 2009
It's raining toads, hallelujah?
I should've known better. For months I've been bragging to anyone that would listen that after a three-year war of attrition I had finally rid my yard of cane toads.
Then during that last big thunderstorm when the house guttering was full to overflowing - a bevy of adult cane toads launched themselves from the roof's edge onto my lawn.
A nine foot aerial dash to the ground and away into the flower beds.
Dammit! Where's that lewis gun?
Major Tom
Yamba
A short verbal history of Hon. Tony 'rent a quote' Abbott
According to Open Australia, during the course of the former Howard Government Tony Abbott was; Minister for Health and Ageing (7 Oct 2003 to 3 Dec 2007), Leader of the House (19 Mar 2002 to 3 Dec 2007), Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations (26 Nov 2001 to 7 Oct 2003), Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (30 Jan 2001 to 26 Nov 2001), Minister for Employment Services (21 Oct 1998 to 30 Jan 2001), Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (11 Mar 1996 to 21 Oct 1998).
He then went on to become Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector (6 Dec 2007 to 22 Sep 2008) when the Liberal Party-Nationals Coalition lost government in the 2007 Australian federal election.
This is just a little reminder of the style of (often contradictory) political comment Mr. Abbott's mercurial nature will probably continue to give rise to now that he is Leader of the Opposition.
On July 24 Mr Abbott wrote an article explaining that Mr Turnbull seeking amendments and passing the ETS Bill was "his attempt to save the Coalition from a fight it can't win".
Nov 19, 2009 The Manly Daily
"He is actually managing it rather well," Mr Abbott said in response to Liberal criticism of Mr Turnbull's style.
Dec 1, 2009 The Australian
"No, I won't be challenging for the leadership," Mr Abbott told the Nine Network. "I think Malcolm Turnbull is a very substantial individual. We are very lucky to have him in public life."
Nov 24, 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
"If there is no movement from the [Turnbull] bunker I'll be calling a spill for Monday morning," Mr Abbott said.
Nov 27, 2009 Daily Telegraph
On the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; "We will seek to refer the legislation to [a Senate] committee for further scrutiny. If we cannot get the support for that course of action we will oppose the legislation in the Senate this week," he said.
Dec 1, 2009 BBC News
On the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; "Opposing the legislation in the Senate could ultimately make poor policy even worse because the government could negotiate a deal with the Greens."
July 24, 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald
When Santamaria died in 1998, Abbott wrote an obituary in which he claimed that "the DLP is alive and well and living inside the Howard Government".
Nov 27, 2009 Brisbane Times
Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott doesn't see what all the fuss is about. He says the Dutch have been coping with the same problem for centuries and seem to manage. Alexandra Kirk interviewing Tony Abbott on the subject of rising sea levels.
Oct 27, 2009 ABC The World Today
On reading the Koran; "I'm afraid I got about 70 pages in and I couldn't go any further because, at the risk of sounding a little monocultural, it struck me as the old testament on steroids..."
"When I first came into parliament I was advised that the only response to the question: "do you support the leader?" is "of course I support the elected leader of the party". All parties have leadership issues from time to time, nothing excites journalists more so the usual questions are asked, the standard answers are given and the public draw their own conclusions. I doubt that it will ever be different and I'm not sure that it could or should be different."
Aug 8, 2008 Tony Abbott on his own website at www.tonyabbott.com.au
On Howard Government WorkChoices industrial relations law; "As someone frequently considered "too Catholic" on abortion, the accusation of being "not Catholic enough" on workplace justice was somewhat galling, especially since the Government's aim was to drive unemployment down and wages up. Not that moral kudos was the Government's principal objective. Apart from any intrinsic virtue, success in this area usually helps governments to be re-elected."
July 6, 2007 Tony Abbott on his own website at www.tonyabbott.com.au
Tony Abbott on interjecting during a speech by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard; "Mr Speaker, I said that she was a liar and I withdraw that."
Mar 26, 2007 Hansard
On Kevin Rudd; "What a pathetic cop-out from the Leader of the Opposition! It is slippery, it is fake, but it is so typical of this man, who is the least experienced person ever to present himself for national leadership in this country. He has never even run a local council, let alone a national economy."
Aug 14, 2007 Hansard
On the abortion drug debate; "I certainly share the concerns that many people have about the number of abortions that are taking place in Australia today. We have something like 100,000 abortions a year, 25 per cent of all pregnancies end in abortion and even the most determined pro-choice advocates these days seem to be rightly concerned at the way that the abortion epidemic has developed."
Nov 1, 2004 ABC Radio AM
During the AWB-Oil for Food scandal; "Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. Points of order are being used clearly by members opposite to completely corrupt this question time and to prevent ministers from quite properly answering the questions that they are asked. I really do think that, if the order of the House is to be maintained, these points of order need to be curtailed."
Feb 15, 2006 Hansard
Thirty-eight times in the last three years Hansard recorded Tony Abbott as; "Mr Abbott interjecting."
Feb 15, 2006 to 22 Oct, 2009 in Open Australia
One hundred and fifty-nine times in the last three years Hansard recorded Tony Abbott rising to his feet "on a point of order".
Feb 7, 2006 to Nov 24, 2009 in Open Australia
Feb 15, 2006 to 22 Oct, 2009 in Open Australia
One hundred and fifty-nine times in the last three years Hansard recorded Tony Abbott rising to his feet "on a point of order".
Feb 7, 2006 to Nov 24, 2009 in Open Australia
Tony Abbott gets kicked out of the House of Representatives twice in six months by the Speaker; "The member for Warringah will leave the chamber for one hour..."
Nov 11, 2008 and May 12 2009 Hansard in Open Australia
National's Kevin Hogan - rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief?
The National's candidate for the seat of Page at the next federal election is one Kevin Hogan.
Rather oddly no other bod's put their hand up to vie for this marginal electorate, which leaves me wondering if the Nats think the seat is unwinnable and Hogan is merely being run as a spoiler.
Kevin has been variously described as a small business operator, financial consultant, grazier and former high school teacher or deputy principal of St. Mary's High School, hailing from Clunes in the Northern Rivers region, or all of the above.
Little is known of Kevin on the coast and he will have to rack up the campaign miles if he's to become more than an unknown on the ballot paper in what may yet turn out to be a three-way contest between the major political parties.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Looking forward to Christmas because.......
This November tweet set me wondering about Christmas:
iPhoon
Looking forward to Christmas, a time when all families behave like the Liberal Party. #spill
iPhoon
Looking forward to Christmas, a time when all families behave like the Liberal Party. #spill
The other side of the coin: Usually I don't mind Christmas, don't love it but I tolerate it and look time to spending time with family.
Last year I asked Santa for a baby, I wrote a note and put it on our tree hoping that we may get some kind of Xmas miracle. It didn't happen......
And a final word from a satirical post at Glossy News:
Oh yes, Christmas is coming, just around the corner in fact. The Festive Season of Peace on Earth and Good Will to all Men.
So, are we all prepared for an evening’s visit from our local Church group’s carol singers? Mince pies and mulled wine at the ready, along with a handful of shiny silver coins for the collection tin?
Er – actually no – the Spirit of Xmas, under new E-USSR ‘Scrooge’ legislation and personal household security guidelines, has gone the way of the dinosaur and is deader than the Dodo.
While the sound of carol singers at the door at Christmas is as traditional as stuffing the ubiquitous turkey, since the Treaty of Lisbon has now been ratified and the Brussels bully boys can impose their totalitarian iron will, carollers will be banned from approaching private houses anywhere in the European community.
Householders across the UK are being provided with posters by local council jobsworths that warn carol singers will not be welcome this Christmas because many residents are ‘uncomfortable’ with having groups of strangers knocking at the door of their manky mangers – even if they are posing as Wise Men and bearing gifts of gold, frankenstein and myrrh (WTF is myrrh?).
The posters are to be affixed to windows or garden gates – or hung from a Pit Bull’s collar – informing carol singers that their unsolicited ‘cold call’ intrusion is an assault on privacy and constitutes an act of gross harassment – and further advises that they f*ck off sharpish-like and ply their joyful hymns and festive spirit elsewhere..........
Climate change: how Australia's oceans are faring
The CSIRO has released Marine Climate Change Impacts & Adaptation: Report Card Australia 2009.
Based on the science it is stated with confidence that ocean temperatures have become warmer since the first half of the 20th Century and are expected to become even warmer over our lifetime and beyond, there has been a thirty percent increase in hydrogen ion (acid) concentration in sea water over the last 250 years, sea levels rose 20cm between 1870 and 2004 and are expected to keep rising (with every centimetre of rise expected to take one metre of vulnerable land), ocean wave processes are becoming more variable in certain instances, coastal estuary habitat is starting to change and fish population spatial distribution is also altering, first observations of sea birds beginning to react to changes in temperature and food availability, the East Australian Current is becoming stronger while the Leeuwin Current on the other side of the continent appears to be weakening.
Climate change is happening now.
Report Card PDF download
That's not at house. THAT'S a house!
Largest house in Australia. Share accommodation. Owner seeking new tenants for right-wing suites.Aussies are supposed to be living in the world's largest homes if all you're counting is floor space.
New homes are now averaging 214.6 square metres and free standing houses are coming in at a record average of 245 square metres.
So why are bathrooms and loos still so small in this country if living and sleeping areas are obviously getting bigger?
New homes are now averaging 214.6 square metres and free standing houses are coming in at a record average of 245 square metres.
So why are bathrooms and loos still so small in this country if living and sleeping areas are obviously getting bigger?
Monday, 30 November 2009
Peter Martin takes a hard look at Joe Hockey and Turnbull's approval rating plunges further
Peter Martin writing in his blog of the same name reminds Australia that Joe Hockey has a more than spotty record as a minister in the Howard Government and a mixed record in the current shadow ministry.When one looks at the three candidates (Hockey, Abbott and Andrews) posited as replacements for Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party Leader and thus Opposition Leader, Malcolm almost begins to look an attractive proposition - almost being the operative word.
That he is unpopular with voters is not an issue for the latest Newspoll results show Turnbull's approval rating has fallen to 14 per cent. Yet another nail in his political coffin.
Alternative names for the position of deputy leader are also quite frankly appalling. Peter Dutton for heavens sake - I seem to remember that he was one of those parliamentarians who walked out at the start of the Apology to the Stolen Generation and later he tried to abandon his electorate when redistribution made this seat unwinnable. As the current shadow minister for health and aging he has almost been a non-event when it comes to alternative policy.
None of the Liberal front bench have covered themselves with glory in this political bloodbath and the entire situation only highlights a lack of substance at the heart of the party.
While their Coalition partner, the virtually leaderless National Party, continually exposes itself as belonging to the lunatic fringe, which contains minor political parties on the Australian scene such as the rabidly intolerant Christian Democratic Party.
Today and tomorrow should provide an interesting and at times amusing spectacle, as the amended Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and associated climate change bills come before the Senate.
It is hard to see an overall electoral win for the Coalition at the next federal election unless Labor is involved in a monumental scandal.
Photograph from ABC News
Is this your house? Mapping predicted sea level rise (2)
Before and after a 1 metre sea level rise affecting one of the coastal rural areas within Clarence Valley local government area. Latest official 'worst case' predictions are for a 1.1 metre sea level rise in NSW coastal zones, occurring from2009 onwards and peaking anytime up to 2100.
Click on images to enlarge.
Google Earth now has a sidebar function which allows the plotting of predicted sea levels rises due to climate change.This is a chance to get a visual appreciation of just how your home may be affected in light of the Rudd Government's recent report Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coasts.
Luke Hartsuyker, the Member for Interjections
I know it's not easy being an MP (specially if you sit on the Opposition benches these days) but the North Coast Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker seems to be making light work of it all.
Luke is becoming known for his fatuous one-liners.
Although many of these are lost in general catcalling across the Chamber, some do make it into Hansard.
"Kev wants to be the Pope" was one of the latest interjections in the second reading of those Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills.
Along with "A fine member, too!" on another day and the earlier somewhat obscure "Sydney!"
Riveting stuff Luke!
Still I suppose it had to be all downhill from there once you'd waltzed a cardboard cut-out figure around the floor of the House of Reps.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Monsanto is another word for elitist ethnocentrism
This is Monsanto & Co. on Twitter last week:
MonsantoCo
Even after supplying those who need it this year, the US be able to save 10% of this year's corn harvest for the future. #ThankaFarmer
- It's estimated one-sixth of the global population, about one billion people, are malnourished and going hungry every day. And there are real fears that number will be much bigger by 2050, when the world's population is projected to pass nine billion.
- In Guatemala, over 400,000 families are in desperate need of food due to a disastrous drought and crop failure. Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom has declared a national state of calamity due to extreme food shortages. Hardest hit are young children and pregnant women, who are vulnerable to malnutrition and need sufficient nourishment to grow and fight off disease.
- The number of U.S. households unable to put adequate food on the table increased sharply during the latest recession, reaching the highest level recorded since USDA began monitoring household food security in 1995. Proportionally, increases in food insecurity were greatest in groups that were historically less vulnerable to food insecurity.
Michelle O - stop being such a princess and get a life!
On the 26th November 2009 ABC News online ran with this piece:
"Executives at internet search giant Google have apologised over an offensive picture of US first lady Michelle Obama that appeared high on its list of search results.
The picture was a photograph of Ms Obama that had been manipulated to give her the facial features of a monkey."
Now manipulated images of famous persons have been around for ages and North Coast Voices linked to the site Celebrity Apes in July last year when John McCain and Barack Obama were morphed during the US presidential election campaign.
I asked Clarencegirl and she tells me that from memory movie or pop stars such as Katie Holmes, Justin Timberlake, Madonna and Mariah Carey as well as politicians and nationally prominent personalities such as Rush Limbaugh were being given the ape treatment on this website.
The list also included Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Memory is all anyone can rely on now as the site has been pulled completely by Google.
It seems that Michelle O. has turned into such a princess that she only wants the most flattering images out there in cyberspace and Team Obama is willing to cry wolf to gain her ends.
However censorship has not been as successful as they hoped and Google Images popped up with the Celebrity Ape first lady pic contained in a September 2008 post on FlyLifeStyle.............
Sometimes Internet censorship is so mind boggling dumb.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Animalia......(4)
SMS published in The Daily Examiner on 27 November 2009:
Snake Warning
Beware of red-belly black snakes. Had a heart start while getting washing out of the machine! Found one clean well-spun snake. Snake did find cool space with water.
MB
Swan Creek
Friday, 27 November 2009
Well what did you expect? Turnbull's leadership style grates
Lyrics by Turnbull quoted in Annabel Crabb's essay Stop at Nothing: the life and times of Malcolm Turnbull
To all intents and purposes Malcolm Turnbull's leadership style is decimating the Liberal Party of Australia. Well, what did you expect?
He took a wrecking ball to the Australian Republican Movement in 1998 and 1999 and it is still trying to recover almost ten years on.
After a disastrous national referendum result in 1999, Turnbull waited nine months and then resigned as chair of that organisation, with the rather amusing line in hindsight: Well I doubt whether I'll be remembered in the history books at all.
Oh, I think you will be remembered Mr. Turnbull - your name will probably be written in blood on the pages of future party histories.
Because the reputedly distant to vicious, alternatively overbearing or dictatorial "Bad Malcolm" always seems to win out over the "Good Malcolm".
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