Turnbull makes a goose of himself

There's nothing like Question Time to bring out the snide side of pollies.

This week Shadow-Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull, acting the smart-alec, was trotting out questions about obscure economic terms and asking nervous new Federal Treasurer Wayne Swann to explain.

On reflection, all Turnbull's questions brought to mind in my house was the observation that it was Turnbull not Swann who is currently co-defendant in a court case allegedly involving creative economics and the loss of mum & dad savings.

Swann has 'L' plates, Turnbull has history.

And their words will return to haunt them - transcript of Four Corners 'Howard's End' episode

Like other North Coast Voices contributors, I switched on to the ABC Four Corners program which discussed Liberal Party views on last year's federal election defeat.

If you missed the program or cannot bring up the video, the transcript of Howard's End can be found here.

 

It is worth reading for a chance to revisit such self-serving gems as:

 

"JOHN HOWARD: Mr Costello obviously would like to see a leadership change in his favour before the election. I have indicated to him that, as I've always indicated, that in the end it is the will of the party and the interests of the party that is paramount."

"JOHN HOWARD: It is the very strong view of the Liberal Party, indeed the overwhelming view of the Liberal Party that the current leadership team with me as leader and Peter Costello as deputy leader should remain in place through to the next election."

"JOHN HOWARD: Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do. But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best and misleading at worst…"

 

"ARTHUR SINODINOS: I suspect the view within the Coalition at the time was, well, he's a new leader, he's a bit inexperienced, come out of left-field in one sense, and we'll wait and see what he's like. But I don't think there was a sense of panic when Kevin took over the leadership of the Labor Party."

 

"TONY ABBOTT, MINISTER FOR HEALTH & AGEING 2003-2007: We didn't have the option of providing a fresh face. We could've provided a different face but not a face that was fresh in the sense that Kevin Rudd was fresh."

 

"JOE HOCKEY: Quite frankly when I took over the job I don't think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under WorkChoices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation. And once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of WorkChoices we introduced the fairness test."

 

"ALEXANDER DOWNER: We were doing very badly and we were, John Howard and I were of the view that we might lose the election and I was certainly pretty concerned about it. And after all the election had to be called within weeks, within a very few weeks. And it was a reasonable thing that he wanted to sound out the views of his colleagues as to whether we would be better off changing the leadership and I did that."

"Howard's End": bovver boys put the boot in

The Four Corners program on ABC1 last night, which detailed the Liberal Party response to the 2007 Coalition federal election loss, was a study of collective political denial.
It exposed a folie a deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six...... Abbott, Costello, Downer, Hockey, Minchin, McFarlane.

In Howard's End it is painfully obvious that the Liberals are still telling themselves that they lost the election because they had been in government for too long with the same leader and were not perceived as 'fresh'.
Only Andrew Robb came close to understanding why they lost when he articulated some understanding of the party's failure to listen to the electorate and it's abuse of Senate processes.

In their pathetic attempt to redeem themselves and distance the Liberal Party from its own failings, Abbott & Co. heaped blame on an intransigent John Howard as if he alone was responsible for loss of government.
The plain fact of the matter is that the Howard Government lost power because of the collective weight of SEIV X, Children Overboard, successive ministerial improprieties, its part in the Coalition of the Willing and war in Iraq, Immigration Department unlawful imprisonment and deportation of Australian citizens, AWB Ltd scandal, WorkChoices, failure to ratify Kyoto, abuse of parliamentary processes, excessive government spending on 'political' advertising, new sedition laws, the removal of habeas corpus from certain parts of the C'wealth Criminal Code, suspension of racial discrimination law in relation to the NT Intervention, and the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of its leader and his ministers.
This is by no means the entire list of the 'sins' which irked voters but it does cover those most mentioned in ordinary conversation.

The Liberal Party's ongoing failure to understand why it lost the confidence of voters is reflected in its current boast that it will use its Senate numbers to thwart the repeal of WorkChoices legislation and the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements.

All in all, the bovver boys needn't have bothered - last night's foray into the media did nothing but confirm that the Liberal Party remains unfit for government.

Hartsuyker's terrible timing on petrol prices

The Nationals MP for Cowper, Luke Hartsuyker, attempted a clumsy piece of political theatre yesterday afternoon.

He rose to his feet and requested that the House consider a urgent motion to debate government policy on petrol pricing.

This appears to have been little more than an attempt to disrupt the order of government speakers.

After all, in his first term and as part of the former Howard Government, he did little but ask dorothy-dixers of his own ministers.

But what made this a quirky moment was the fact that, at the time he was being predicably gagged, the online news services were reporting that petrol prices at the pump were continuing to fall. With further falls predicted on the back of a strengthening Aussie dollar.

Rather bad timing eh, Luke.

Ever wondered how the Oz print media is faring now we are all off surfing the Web?

Circulation				Readership
	Oct-Dec 2007	Oct-Dec 2006	% variation	12 mths to Dec 2007	% variation
National
Australian	135,000+	134,610	0.29	485,000	11.49
Weekend Australian	300,000+	298,107	0.64	840,000	1.45
Aust Financial Review	88,247	86,287	2.27	265,000	3.92
Aust Financial Review (Sat)	96,166	92,781	3.65	149,000	– 13.87
NSW
Daily Telegraph	375,000+	3912,832	–4.30	1,177,000	2.79
Daily Telegraph (Sat)	319,000+	341,917	–6.70	975,00	5.29
Sunday Telegraph	670,000+	648,072	–2.06	1,749,000	–1.46
Sydney Morning Herald	211,170	212,300	–0.53	942,000	7.66
Sydney Morning Herald (Sat)	360,000+	360,000+	0.00	1,204,000	2.64
Sun-Herald	500,000+	510,000+	–1.96	1,365,000	1.26
Victoria
Herald Sun	530,000+	535,000+	–0.93	1,484,000	1.02
Herald Sun (Sat)	509,500+	509,000+	0.10	1,418,000	1.58
Sunday Herald Sun	623,500+	615,000+	1.38	1,542,000	1.25
Age	204,100+	202,000+	1.04	767,000	5.21
Age (Sat)	298,500+	298,000+	0.17	949,000	0.96
Sunday Age	226,000+	214,000+	5.61	722,000	0.98
Queensland
Courier-Mail	220,850+	218,648	1.01	622,000	1.30
Courier-Mail (Sat)	305,215	322,188	–5.27	871,000	–2.13
Sunday Mail	581,418	601,357	–3.31	1,440,000	–4.95
South Australia
Advertiser	190,374	191,100+	–0.38	521,000	–6.96
Advertiser (Sat)	262,591	263,843+	–0.10	675,000	–6.64
Sunday Mail	320,684	321,590+	–0.28	753,000	–1.18
Western Australia
West Australian	198,316	200,687	–1.18	588,000	0.17
West Australian (Sat)	344,432	357,030	–3.53	911,000	–4.61
Sunday Times	341,500+	341,000+	0.15	816,000	–3.89-
Tasmania
Mercury	46,654	46,603	0.11	120,000	–6.98
Mercury (Sat)	61,664	61,451	0.35	148,000	–4.52
Sunday Tasmanian	60,225	60,471	–0.41	138,000	–4.17
Sunday Examiner	41,854	42,388	–1.30	103,000	–1.00
Northern Territory
Northern Territory News	20,508	20,431	0.38	44,000	–12.00
NT News (Sat)	30,697	30,605	0.30	44,000	–7.94
Sunday Territorian	21,603	21,773	–0.78	47,000	0.00
ACT
Canberra Times	35,701	35,193	1.4	106,000	–4.50
Canberra Times (Sat)	61,976	63,644	–2.60	166,000	0.60
Canberra Times (Sun)	35,564	34,720	2.45	98,000	1.00

Table in Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter No. 46

House of Reps crib sheet

Image from http://www.crikey.com.au/

Can't find your local member at Question Time.? Here's a guide to the House after the last round of musical chairs.

Click lower right corner to enlarge.

Australia preparing to come in from the cold and support UN declaration on indigenous rights

Yet another sign that Australia may just possibly be putting the neo-fascist Howard era behind it - the Rudd Government is currently doing spade work for the move to support the UN declaration of indigenous rights.

Australia was one of only four countries to hold out against endorsing the declaration in 2007. The others being the United States, Canada and New Zealand. There were eleven abstentions.

As this declaration is a non-binding text, the Howard Government's objections were always on rather dubious grounds.