The face of a future discerning voter?

wondog1 BillB

A young girl watching Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott

Champagne corks are popping all over the Clarence Valley today!

The Daily Examiner 5 April 2013:
 
Rob Donges will end 16 years of local government work before June 30....
 
assets manager George Kriflick...has tendered his resignation.....

Cause and effect Abbott-style?

CAUSE?

Democracy4Sale:

Donations to the state branch of the Liberal Party by tobacco companies totalled $588,796 between 2007-2010.

Donations to the Federal Liberal Party by tobacco companies totalled $959,140 between 1998-2008.

EFFECT?

The former federal health minister and Federal Liberal Party Member for Warringah (NSW) Tony Abbott in June 2009:

One cigarette I am told does you damage but it does you so little damage. It is only when you start smoking a lot of cigarettes for a long time that it starts doing very serious damage. So being hard hearted to your kids, not encouraging them to be their best, I think are probably much more serious parental crimes and so I personally would not get hung up on something, in my view, as trivial as smoking while the kids are in the car.

Stranger Than Fiction: In 2012 the Gillard Government tried to protect Tony Abbott's back by amending legislation

 

Last year the Gillard Government quietly attempted to rectify a blunder on the part of the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott stemming from his time as federal health minister.

 

However, the Australian courts remain unimpressed and Abbott’s famed lack of attention to the finer points of law and legislative detail may yet see the Commonwealth held liable.
 
Lee v Napier [2013] FCA 236 (20 March 2013):

 

Conclusion
I therefore conclude (subject to the separate question of whether the amending legislation survives the Constitutional challenge so as to cure the problem) that the purported appointments on 24 January 2005 of Dr Robyn Napier, Dr Rodney McMahon and Dr Huy An to be Panel members were invalid because there had been a failure to consult the AMA about those appointments within the meaning of s 84(3) of the Act. The consultation was still under way when the appointments were made. The Minister pre-empted the outcome. It follows that the purported appointment on 27 March 2006 of Dr Robyn Napier as a Deputy Director of Professional Services Review was also invalid because Dr Napier was not at that time a Panel member. I will list the second separate question for directions on Monday 25 March 2013. I reserve the question of costs.

Brisbane Times 2 April 2013:

 

Dozens of doctors penalised for allegedly rorting Medicare may seek compensation following a Federal Court ruling that the appointments of certain members of the disciplinary panel they faced were invalid.

Doctors suspended between 2005 and 2010 on the advice of the general practitioner members of the Professional Services Review are affected.

Judge Anna Katzmann ruled that these GP members had not been validly appointed because the then health minister Tony Abbott had not consulted the Australian Medical Association before appointing them……

Last year the federal government enacted legislation that retrospectively validated the appointments to the committee, but Dr Lee plans to challenge the validity of that legislation.

If successful, his action would open the floodgates to claims by doctors dealt with by the committee - about 50 a year.

How the Murdoch media spins its web

Crikey 27 March 2013:

The Tele's article invoked some heavyweights to back up its case, including Saul Eslake, who told Crikey he'd been taken a little out of context in the piece. According to Eslake, Rolfe had contacted him to ask if Australia faced a debt crisis. Eslake's reply was that Australia didn't, and he compared us with Canada, which will not return to surplus for some years and will likely have a debt approaching 30% of GDP, compared with 11.5% for Australia. Over time, Eslake suggested, Australia might develop a problem due to the actions of a number of governments, including the John Howard government. This prompted Rolfe to ask how soon it would become a crisis, which Eslake answered by noting a debt crisis can come on very quickly — "the lights don't turn amber, they turn red". This, said Eslake, was portrayed as him saying a debt crisis was around the corner and it was entirely the fault of this government.

Public Forum on Coal Seam Gas, 8 April 2013 at the University of New England Armidale

At this forum supporters of coal seam gas mining and those opposed to this form of mining will be speaking.

The gentler, caring side of Tony Abbott in 1987?

Excerpts from an article by Tony Abbott in The Bulletin 18 August 1987 via Australians for Honest Politics:

*A little earlier, I had been appointed college infirmarian. This post was a legacy from quasi-monastic days and involved supervising the medicine cabinet and ensuring that the ill were not forgotten in their rooms.

But during winter, when up to 30 percent of the college would be down with “flu” at any one time, the infirmarian spent much of his day ferrying food and aspirin to the rooms of the sick. My view was that I knew nothing about medicine and that those too sick to eat in the dining room ought to be in hospital.

Anyway, I thought, most were malingering. So I encouraged “self-service” of medicines and suggested that meals would be better fetched by the friends of the sick. Many deeply resented this disdain for college’s caring and communitarian ethos. And, I confess, I did not have the courage to refuse room service to members of the seminary staff.

*I missed the glittering company of Oxford and the student burly­ burly. But mostly l felt “had “by a seminary that so stressed ”empathy” with sinners and “dialogue” with the Church’s enemies that the priesthood seemed to have lost its point.