The YouTube political ad they couldn't kill

News of this ACTU political advert's demise was greatly exaggerated in The Australian today: "AN ACTU animated video showing two budgies flying into Tony Abbott's bathers has been suspended by YouTube for violating the site's terms of use. The peak union body uploaded the viral ad earlier today, calling it a humorous attack on Mr Abbott's workplace relations stance."
Because it was still displaying on YouTube this evening:

Nationals Kevin Hogan: Is he a political idiot or a political rogue?

Kevin Hogan pictured left

In 2006-07 the Howard Coalition Government had a water policy which included investigating diverting freshwater from Australian east coast rivers and transferring it across the Great Dividing Range and into the Murray Darling Basin river system.

The early 2007 Snowy Mountains Energy Corporation commissioned desktop study and subsequent Senate investigation of Clarence River catchment water diversion proposals confirmed just how wedded Howard, Turnbull and Vail were to the idea of harvesting water from environmentally sensitive coastal rivers.
Rivers to which local communities were culturally attached and on which regional economies were sometimes highly dependent.

Losing government in late 2007 did not result in any serious reconsideration of this policy by the Coalition and, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott recently stated his intention to fully implement the former Howard Government's water policy if elected on 21 August.

Yet in spite of this a spokesperson for the present Nationals candidate in Page Kevin Hogan felt able to make this somewhat curious statement; "If there was river diversion in any of the schemes it would be strongly opposed by not just the Nationals, but the Coalition as a whole.” [The Daily Examiner, 10 August 2010] and Kevin himself said; "There is no plan by anyone within the Nationals or anyone within the Coalition to dam anywhere or anything on the Clarence River" [ABC News,11 August 2010].

It appears as if the first-time Nationals candidate is rather blindly following his leader, as Warren Truss rejects as "absolute nonsense" any thought of a Clarence dam in the future.

Does Mr. Hogan have no understanding of Coalition history? Is he truly ignorant of continued calls within the Liberal and National parties for coastal river water diversion?

In 2008 the Nationals NSW State Conference resolved to "support greater efforts to reduce the amount of eastern water lost to the ocean and campaign for more in-depth investigations into finding ways to turn this water inland" [Tweed Daily News,16 June 2008] and Barnaby Joyce was still telling the media "You can't create water with money. That means you have to think about bringing it from somewhere else, like the Gulf or the Clarence" [The North Queensland Register,13 August 2008].

In 2009 Victorian Nationals MP Peter Crisp called for the Clarence River to be dammed and diverted [ABC News,25 May 2009].
Again in 2009, both National Party member Ian Causley [The Daily Examiner,27 May 2009] and Federal Liberal MP Sussan Ley [The Border Mail, 26 June 2009] wrote in support of diverting water inland with particular mention of a Clarence River dam by Causley.

While on 29 March this year Nationals Federal MP John Forrest described Bradfield and his water diversion schemes as "visionary" [www.nationals.org.au].

Perhaps like his leader, what Kevin Hogan really thinks is that Northern Rivers residents can be told any old version of the truth - that they are merely a flock of foolish sheep prime for fleecing.

2010 Election Campaign Day 27 - There's only one question

Can Australians afford the luxury

of a protest vote

on Saturday 21st August?

GetUp! calls Abbott a welcher and throws down the gauntlet

Excerpt from today's email from the lobby group GetUp!:

Yesterday Tony Abbott sent a campaign email entitled, "We will stop the boats." Ahead in the polls, he's announced that the Pacific Solution will return on day one of an Abbott Government. It seems Tony Abbott has a lot to say on refugees, except to those he promised to meet in June after GetUp members won a charity auction.

GetUp members chipped in more than $16,000 to help secure the winning bid in a charity auction for a surfing lesson and meeting with Tony Abbott. We gave the prize to a group of refugees because we know how powerful human stories are. But his office, having suggested the meeting would occur before the election, have now stopped returning our calls. They are refusing to hold up their end of the deal.

If Tony Abbott won't come to meet us, we've got to go and meet him. That's why today, with your help, we'll begin rolling out (literally - they're mobile!) massive billboards to follow him around on the campaign trail and remind him of his broken promise to go surfing for charity with a group of refugees............

We know it is only fair that Tony Abbott meet with Riz Wakil. After all, he promised to do so. When Mr Abbott's Press Secretary told us that Mr Abbott would like to have the meeting before the election, and that he would ring back to confirm a date, we took him at his word. But after repeated phone calls from us - that his office have now stopped returning - its time for us to up the ante.

With a week and a half left there's still time for Mr Abbott to meet his commitment before the election. That's why with your help we'll take a message to him that he can't miss: massive mobile billboards asking him to honour his commitment and meet with Riz.

You've stood behind Riz before - can you stand up for him again?

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/HonourYourCommitment

Political candidate plays pocket billiards

Letter in The Daily Examiner (11 August 2010)

Because he's so easy to despise.......

...and because I always liked the original song - the now about to go viral YouTube clip:

Political death by coffee bean?

The Bean Poll is back! After successfully predicting the 2007 election, Muffin Break is bringing the poll back for the 2010 election to help sort out the TOPBEANS from the HASBEANS and the WANNABEANS from the COULDABEANS. From Saturday July 31, every Muffin Break store across Australia will be encouraging customers to cast their bean vote in a display unit with cylinders for the Labor Party, Coalition (Liberal/Nationals), Greens or Other.

Serge Infanti, Managing Director of Muffin Break says, We had a fantastic response to our Unofficial Election Bean Poll in Australian in 2007 and in the New Zealand 2002 and 2005 federal elections. Each election, the Muffin Break Unofficial Bean Poll has accurately predicted the outcome.

We may not be as scientific or complicated as other polls, but we think we can get the biggest response and we certainly have fun doing it.

At the end of the first week the national poll was running :

Coalition 38%

Labor 33%

Greens 16%

Other 13%

However yesterday The Coffs Coast Advocate reported that the local store is bucking the trend and Labor is now ahead of the Coalition which does not bode well for Nationals incumbent Luke Hartsuyker.

2010 Election Campaign Day 26 - And then Hughie sent locusts

For all those wondering how Hughie might react to an Abbott victory:

"As early as mid-August, eastern Australia may be hit with the biggest locust plague in more than 30 years."

Fowl business on the campaign trail

On the weekend I cleaned out the chook pen and as usual I lined the nesting boxes with all our old newspapers.

The hens were unusually quiet for two days afterwards, but this morning they were in fine form with loud cackling, squawking and general hubbub.

The chooks it seems had developed a new conspiracy theory. If you don’t have hens you might not know that all fowls are major players in developing most conspiracy theories since they nearly always think the sky is falling.

They were all talking at once and at high volume so I could only make out some parts of the general conversation.

The bit about Tony Abbot being the main people smuggler in Australia did confuse me until I collected the eggs and there in plain sight was a photo of Tony in his budgie smugglers. The hens had misread the paper, but then again budgies are just another race of bird people to the hens so perhaps they were not all that wrong.

There was a lot of confusing talk about chicks overboard, core and non-core promises, Malcolm Turnbull’s emails (the hens had always liked Malcolm - they thought he was a fine cock), Cabinet leaks, no GST and latest polling figures.

I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, so I went off to find Arnold the calf since he had been spending a lot of time grazing around the chook pen and he may have been able to sort the chooks latest theory out.

I found him under a tree chewing cud and he told me that the general thrust of the hens' argument was this; there is a history of the Liberal Party not telling the whole truth to the electorate.

The comments about chicks overboard, core and non-core promises and no GST suddenly made sense.

The feathered theory continued.....

Malcolm Turnbull was brought undone by a false email leaked to him by a civil servant. Who benefited out of that? Tony Abbott since he got to become the Leader of the Opposition.
When the national security committee started leaking the chooks asked themselves; who attends these meetings? The answer was government ministers and civil servants. Who is benefiting from these leaks? Why, Tony Abbott. Or so the polling figures are indicating.

Therefore the chooks reasoned; if a strategy works you are more likely to try it again. So their clucklusion is that Tony Abbott is somehow getting civil servants to leak information to damage the government during the election campaign.

They have already condemned Tony for Malcolm’s downfall and now they don’t like the thought of him as PM - not enough room in his policy package for smuggled budgies perhaps?

Picture from The Ark In Space Image Credit Flickr User Skittzitilby