Macklin concerned about people fleeing her policies

Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin is reported across the media as being concerned at the number of indigenous Australians who are voting with their feet and fleeing the draconian Northern Territory Intervention.

 

Well the only surprise here is that it has taken so long to happen. This current small population shift is bound to grow bigger over time.

Nobody wants to stay in places where government agencies and personnel treat you like second-class citizens. Where everyone is reduced to using a form of ration card, stripped of what little dignity has been afforded them and handled as though they are idiots.

 

Last night Radio Australia told the world that part of the NT population is moving.

Embarrassing for the Rudd Government, but twice as embarrassing for all those who voted for a change in government attitude and behaviour.

 

So what are you going to do now, Ms. Macklin. Forbid people to move out of Northern Territory indigenous townships without a signed pass? Then you will truly earn the title Jackboot Jenny.

 

The NT Intervention used a model and strategies which were bound to fail because they were based on forms of coercion and racism.

The Rudd Government needs to pull out of this approach completely or lose credibility. Not next week, not next month - now.

There are better ways to address the well-documented problems in rural and remote communities.

Canberra show pony or prime minister?

So now the Prime Minister has backed away from his fulsome support of Morris Iemma's daft idea to privatise NSW power supplies.

Rudders, you should never have backed this nag in the first place.

It was wrong to open your mouth (for the sake of a media moment) and put this state's essential services further at risk by supporting privatisation.

Trying to straddle the electric fence now, by telling Iemma he should 'negotiate' with the unions, is nothing but show pony prance.

Mate - it's time you decided if you are going to be a Labor prime minister in the finest tradition or if you are going to be a closet Liberal with a well-to-do wife.

Just to jog your memory a bit. The electorate voted for a Labor man.

Is Obama experiencing donor fatigue or is the race thang starting to bite?

In the space of two days the Obama for America team offered two 'gifts' if I contribute to the senator's campaign.

• To meet this deadline and celebrate our grassroots donors, we've created a special gift. Make a donation of $30 or more before midnight on Wednesday, April 30th, and receive a limited edition Vote for Change T-shirt

• To meet this deadline and celebrate our grassroots donors, we've created a special gift.Make a donation of $15 or more before midnight on Wednesday, April 30th, and receive a limited edition Vote for Change car magnet

I have to wonder if Barak Obama's constant drive for political donations is starting to hit the wall.

Or is the constant race thread underlying Clinton and McCain campaigning starting to bite into Obama's support base?

 

On MSNBC last Sunday.

 

McCain spoke with reporters in Miami Sunday afternoon at a press conference that had been hastily arranged late Friday night. The ostensible purpose of the event was to allow the presumptive GOP nominee to continue criticizing Obama for not supporting his gas tax holiday proposal.

But what was seemingly meant as another chapter in an ongoing series of criticism quickly moved toward the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the North Carorlina Republican Party's continued commitment to airing an ad referencing Wright's comments in connection with Obama. Over the course of an 18-minute press conference McCain used Obama's name an average of once per minute -- many times in response to direct questions but almost every time in a disparaging context.

 

McCain's feeble defence of his covert support of this advertisement reported from a Democrats perspective here.

Has the American Far Right found the Australian Left's perfect storm?

It is a constant source of amazement to find that the topics global warming and climate change can generate such vitriolic nonsense.

Yesterday, American journalist Don Feder in Front Page Mag.

"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society," Walters writes.
The left is incapable of viewing individuals as anything other than polluters, never as producers or innovators -- let alone seeing them in spiritual terms, as manifestations of God's goodness.
Global Warming is the left's perfect storm -- a force to demolish faith, family and freedom. There's no area of our lives that can't be invaded -- taxed, controlled, regulated or obliterated -- in the name of serving and protecting the planet.
Unlike food production and oil reserves, the myth of man-made Global Warming is resistant to factual analysis. The left treats it as revealed truth and skeptics are scorned as heretics and troglodytes -- the scientific equivalent of Holocaust-deniers. Al Gore, the movement's P.T. Barnum-cum-Grand Inquisitor, compares them to the cranks who believe the earth is flat.
If Global Warming didn't exist, the left would have to invent it. In fact, they did. As Nigel Calder, former editor of the British magazine New Scientist explains: "Twenty years ago, climate research became politicized in favor of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the study as the effect of the study of greenhouse gasses. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers."
Still, the evidence is there for those not blinded by dogma. Al Gore's brain is melting faster than the Arctic ice cap, which is making a spectacular comeback.

With a delicious touch of irony, a typical Australian response to the American far-right might be encapsulated in this picture found at Tim Blair's climate change denialist blog.

Mrs. Iemma - do us all a favour and wash your son's mouth out with Sunlight soap

Little Morrie Iemma must be a constant shame to his mother.
His constant ducks and drakes approach to the truth would worry any parent.
It certainly worries NSW voters if the latest Newspoll survey, showing a 56% dissatisfaction rate for the Premier, is any indication.
Here is his latest.

"PREMIER Morris Iemma's office gave written assurances via email to unions three weeks before the 2007 election that it had no intention of privatising the power industry and that it would remain in public hands.
The unions have now released the correspondence to accuse Mr Iemma of lying to workers - and voters - who had no idea the power sell-off was on the agenda ahead of polling day. With only one in eight delegates expected to back the power sale at this weekend's ALP state conference, the emergence of Mr Iemma's post-election switch will further damage his standing. An email from Mr Iemma's senior staff to a key power union in March last year categorically rejected any plans for the Government to privatise the electricity sector, claiming it would remain a "key service" of government."

Meanwhile up in the top paddock.....

According to ABC News yesterday the Commonwealth Public Service Union thinks that "Mr Rudd is sending a clear message that he wants to return to a Westminster system in which public servants tell the Government what it needs to know, rather than what it wants to hear.
"Through a range of means it was made clear throughout the period of the Howard years and with some ministers in particular, not all of them, that it wasn't a career move to give certain sorts of advice on matters that didn't align with the Government's particular philosophy or view," he said."

But is that really what the Prime Minister is saying in his Address to Heads of Agencies and Members of Senior Executive Service in Canberra yesterday.
In a quiet way Kevin Rudd is signalling that tenure remains uncertain for senior levels in the public service.

Smoothing Stephen's career path

Word is that a ministerial staffer has been attempting to organise an 'offensive internet material' complaint-a-thon to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, in order to boost the Rudd Government's case for a national mandatory ISP filter policy.

Apparently when Labor came to power it discovered that the number of complaints received each month was less than impressive for a country with a population of over 21 million and over half of these clicking away on the world wide web.

Is the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy giving this attempt a wink and a nod or is someone being a little too zealous?

Fruit from a poisoned tree may be the death of the Rudd Government

With the latest news on America's treatment of Guantanamo detainees, prisoner abuse and politcal interference, it is time that the Rudd Government addressed the fact that much of the advice it receives on both domestic and international anti-terrorism measures is fruit from a poisoned tree.

The Prime Minister's failure to either rise above the politics of fear or rid the public service of the principal supporters of such fear will result in retention of legislation which breaches international law and erases the common law rights of Australian citizens. 

Federal Labor would do well to remember that, like a person who divorced their spouse, Australian voters having got rid of one government may fairly quickly rid themselves of another when next at the polling booth.

Mr. Rudd, we've broken the political marriage taboo - lift your game or pack your bag.

No-one's willing to tolerate an ersatz Howard Government, except diehard Liberal Party followers and those in the anti-terrorism 'industry'.

 

News.com.au yesterday.

 

AUSTRALIAN man David Hicks should never have been charged with terror offences, according to Guantanamo Bay's former chief prosecutor.

Colonel Moe Davis, who oversaw the prosecution of Hicks, quit the war court last year.

He testified overnight that evidence for the war crimes tribunals was obtained through prisoner abuse, and political appointees and higher-ranking officers pushed prosecutors to file charges before trial rules were even written.

Col Davis was giving evidence at a pre-trial hearing for Osama bin Laden's driver, Yemeni prisoner Salim Hamdan, in a courtroom at the remote Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.

Since the US began sending foreign captives to Guantanamo in 2002, only one case has been resolved - that of Hicks.

 

Tony Kevin writing in New Matilda has it right.

 

But are sections of the Australian foreign policy and national security bureaucracies still living, by force of habit, in a world mainly defined by fear? How much of the worldview so well analysed in Lawrence's lectures still lingers in Canberra? And do Labor Ministers have any idea how to re-jig their departmental executives' way of thinking towards the new direction Rudd is taking as Prime Minister?

It's a little like turning the Titanic around. If there is not a great deal of deliberate hard steering from the bridge, the ship will stay comfortably on its old course.

Take, for example, a recent speech by the Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans. In an otherwise humanitarian speech, sensitive to the human rights of persons caught up in migration and refugee determination issues, he said this on border security:

"The Government is committed to strong border security, tough anti-people smuggling measures and the orderly processing of migration to our country... This Government will continue to look at ways to prevent, deter and enforce compliance to preserve the integrity of Australia's migration program, while treating individuals humanely."

Did Evans really understand what he was saying, or did he just uncritically accept a departmental draft? Does he understand that under Howard, terms like "strong border security" and "tough anti-people-smuggling measures" were policy cover under which the AFP and Immigration mounted questionable covert people smuggling disruption operations in Indonesia? Under which Defence intercepted boats and was in no hurry to rescue people at risk of drowning on crippled, sinking vessels?