"Sh* t happens": Did Tony Abbott just illustrate a lesson never learnt from Viet Nam?

With Tony Abbott’s relaxed and laid back “sh*t happens” reassurance to Colonel Jim Creighton (US sector commander directing military operations in which Australian troops were deployed) making the news recently, one has to wonder if the explanation he so easily accepted that fire support of Australian troops was “more than adequate” should have been explored further.

Given that the American penchant for fudging facts has apparently survived intact beyond the Viet Nam debacle (a war which blundered on from the early 1960s to 1975) and now allegedly rears its head again in Afghanistan in this decade.

The US Center for Public Integrity on 6 February 2011 stated that an investigation found that Civil Affairs reservists tasked with winning the hearts and minds of locals have died disproportionately in Afghanistan and Iraq. The statistics offer a grim picture. Though these soldiers only make up about 5 percent of the Army’s reserve forces, they account for 23 percent of the combat fatalities among reservists in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also found that generals in the field, unable to obtain sufficient Civil Affairs units, sent reservists into harm’s way without hardened vehicles, protective plates for their armored vests, and machine guns. Further, the Army inflated the number of active-duty Civil Affairs soldiers to give Congress the appearance of a fully-staffed division.

NSW pre-election campaign 2011: sometimes it's hard not to laugh

Liberal Party of Australia NSW Branch

Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, it's 2011 not 1911!

In what can only be described as flabbergasting,

the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, backs a NSW law that allows private schools to expel gay students simply for being gay.

Hatzistergos described the 30-year-old law as necessary "to maintain a sometimes delicate balance between protecting individuals from unlawful discrimination while allowing people to practise their own beliefs".

A relic of the Wran era when homosexuality was still a crime, the law exempts private schools from any obligation to enrol or deal fairly with students who are homosexual. An expulsion requires neither disruption, harassment nor even the flaunting of sexuality. Being homosexual is enough.

Read the full report in today's Sydney Morning Herald here.

Grog notices Hartsuyker's underwhelming performance

Nice to know that other bloggers notice the often inane performance of the Nationals Member for Cowper, Luke Hartsuyker during Question Time in the Federal House of Representatives.

Here is Greg Jericho over at Grog's Gamut on the subject last Wednesday........

Late in the session Luke Hartsuyker got up to make sure Hockey’s question wasn’t the dopiest of the day:

Mr HARTSUYKER (2.53 pm)—My question is to the Prime Minister. On 31 March 2009, thousands of residents in my electorate of Cowper were severely impacted by a major flood event. Despite the flood being declared a natural disaster, the government never provided victims with one-off Centrelink disaster payments of $1,000 per adult and $400 per child. Will the Prime Minister now ensure that people who suffered a substantial loss as a result of the floods of 31 March receive those payments and be exempted from the government’s flood tax?

Yep, Hartsuyker wants people whose houses were flooded in a previous financial year to be exempted from paying a levy in the next financial year. And these people who he wants exempted are those who did not even qualify for disaster relief in that previous financial year! Geez, if we let them get out of paying, we’ll be having to exempt people who were around for the 1956 floods in South Australia.

It’s not that such a question is so dumb that is astonishing, it’s that it got through the Liberal’s tactics committee. Unfortunately for Hartsuyker, the Primer Minister had had enough of playing nice, and she danced down the pitch and put this ball somewhere in the upper deck of the stands:

Ms GILLARD—I thank the member for his question and I am very happy to answer it and, as I answer it, to clear up what is clearly becoming a set of misapprehensions on behalf of the opposition which I do not think we should allow to run unchallenged. The guidelines under the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements are the same guidelines operated by the Howard government.

Eww, don’t you hate it when it turns out the Howard Government did the same thing…

They are the guidelines that the Leader of the Opposition called on me just before Christmas to make sure applied to natural disasters this summer. So any question about the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements guidelines we are operating are the very guidelines the Leader of the Opposition called on me to have for natural disasters this summer.

Oops. Nice one Luke, I’m betting Abbott just loves being used as a baseball bat with which to slap you around the head.

I know consistency of purpose is not the Leader of the Opposition’s strong suit, so if he has changed his mind—other than on the question of additional assistance for people in Cyclone Larry that he has raised in parliament today and raised in the Sunday newspapers—generally about the architecture of natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements and he now believes, as the questioning of his members would seem to imply, that they should extend to meeting all losses sustained by every business and every householder then the Leader of the Opposition should say that, we will have it costed for him and he should nominate matching savings. I think he is going to find that pretty hard to do.

Ouch. A question on people being exempted from paying the “flood tax” becomes a tool for Gillard to slap down Abbott for being one to go back on his word. This answer needs a point of order quick smart:

Mr Hartsuyker—Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I would like the Prime Minister to be directly relevant to the question, which related to the Centrelink disaster payments that existed in 2009.

Good of Hartsuyker to ram home the illogical aspect of his question. It was 2009 Luke, let it go!!!

Help the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society shut down Icelandic whaling

SHUT DOWN COMMERCIAL WHALING - HELP US KEEP UP THE PRESSURE! Dear Friend WDCS needs your help to end Icelandic whaling. WDCS has submitted a legal petition, backed by 19 organisations, calling on the United States government to impose trade sanctions on Iceland for its whaling and trade in whale products. The good news is that the US, unlike other countries, can do this if it believes Iceland is undermining international conservation agreements. But to justify trade sanctions the government needs to show that it has public support. That’s where you come in. See below for how you can help. Japanese stockpiles of whale meat are at an all-time high - 6,000 tons - yet the businessman behind fin whale hunting in Iceland still hopes to find buyers in Japan. We want to put real pressure on Iceland via US trade sanctions. Please send an email to the US Secrectaries of Commerce and Interior to urge them to take strong action against Iceland. We have prepared an email for you – it will only take a few seconds of your time. click here to send. When you've registered your protest, tell your friends. Share the link on Facebook, email your friends, help us spread the word. Iceland’s whalers will kill more whales if they can get away with it. We won't let them. Let’s SHUT DOWN commercial whaling. Sue Fisher WDCS Stop Whaling campaign manager Follow Us Urge President Obama to impose sanctions The majestic but endangered fin whale. Icelandic whalers will kill more if we don't stop them. © Cherylle Millard-Dawe SEND AN EMAIL TO THE US GOVERNMENT NOW We've set it all up for you. It will take you seconds but could shut down Icelandic whaling! Click here now.

NSW Labor wants to help you write letters to the editor

The NSW Labor Party Letter-O-Matic, where presumably assisting you with sending an email (and providing you with a list of 'approved' publications) will let the party machine know which way the wind may be blowing in letters to the editor columns across the state in the forthcoming election campaign.

Wonder why the NSW North Coast's Northern Star, Daily Examiner and Advocate don't get the tick of approval from Labor - not all APN publications seen as sympathetic perhaps or do these newspapers cover electorates not considered even remotely winnable in March 2011?

A visual critque of Australia's Federal Parliament and its denizens

From the fertile mind of First Dog on the Moon earning a crust at Crikey