Do you belong to the Australian Labor Party or are you in Morris Iemma's party?

Do you belong to the Australian Labor Party or are you in Morris Iemma's party? is a question every New South Wales Labor MP should be asking themselves right now.

This week Morris Iemma breached NSW ALP policy by introducing enabling legislation to allow for the privatisation fire sale of the state's power industry.

At the same time the Iemma Government has made a submission to a Rudd Government inquiry trying to convince its federal counterpart that the teeth should be drawn on any greenhouse gas abatement schemes for the power industry.

With enabling legislation before the NSW Parliament, Morris Iemma has headed off for China and begun to talk down the value of those publicly-owned assets he intends to sell.

As some of the corporate wheelers and dealers (who would potentially be involved in either setting up this fire sale or purchasing the state's electricity assets after privatisation legislation is passed) are also found on lists of political donors to the Iemma Government, the whole setup is beginning to sound remarkably convenient for banks, big business and the multinationals.

It certainly is convenient for Labor political bully extraordinaire Michael Costa.

The Prime Minister and his ministers for water and the environment should be very careful of the motives of this state government, which appears to have both forgotten the very real concerns of its electorate and the need to genuinely tackle climate change.

Penny Wong and Peter Garrett in particular need to remember that old adage about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas.

Obama reckons he is only 17 delegates away from wiping Clinton out

According to yesterday's Obama for America e-mail.

Barack Obama is just 17 elected delegates away from a majority -- and you can help get him there.
At the start of this race, there were 3253 elected delegates at stake in primaries and caucuses across the country. After winning 32 of 49 contests, Barack is within reach of an absolute majority.
We believe that the winner of the majority of elected, pledged delegates should and will be the Democratic nominee.
Important primaries are coming up this Tuesday in Oregon and Kentucky. With your help, Barack could win enough delegates to reach this crucial milestone on his way to securing the nomination.
We need to do absolutely everything we can to help put Barack over the top.
Right now, thousands of people in these states are thinking seriously about what they're looking for from our next president -- and one voice could sway their decision.
I'm asking you to be that voice.
Use our simple online calling tool to call potential supporters in Oregon and Kentucky and make sure they vote for Barack:
http://my.barackobama.com/callnow
We've come a long way together in this campaign, and Tuesday could be the day we reach a majority of elected delegates.
Passing this milestone will be an unmistakable signal to the media, the superdelegates, and everyone watching this election all across the country -- the people have spoken, and America is ready for change.
Use our online calling tool to build our support in this final push -- even if you've never done anything like this before. Here's how it works:
When you log in, you'll get a list of 25 names that only you will receive. (If you don't have a My.BarackObama account, creating one is fast and easy.)
Click on a name, make a call, and you'll be led through a simple script, question by question.
If you want, you can even print your numbers and the script and enter your results back into the system later.
Get started making a difference now:
http://my.barackobama.com/callnow
For more than a year, we've relied on everyday supporters like you, reaching out person-to-person to build our movement.
We're close to the nomination -- please keep working to help Barack cross the finish line.
Thank you,
Jon
Jon Carson
Voter Contact
Director
Obama for America

Snap, crackle and 'alcopop'

Spooner cartoon in The Age yesterday.

"All the same, from a political and an economic viewpoint, what Nelson had to say stank. His about-face on the increase in the tax on premixed alcoholic drinks could well turn out to be the decision that cruelled his leadership once and for all.
Here's the fundamental truth of it: you can't say on April 27 that you support a tax increase on alcopops and then declare in a nationally televised prime-time parliamentary speech 18 days later that you're utterly opposed to it and will block it in the Senate, and retain your political credibility.
This is what the Opposition Leader said only a little over two weeks ago, after Labor announced its decision to lift the tax on alcopops by 70%. "While we're not normally supporters of tax increases, increasing the tax on these alcopops, these mixers, that young people are in many cases abusing, if that is going to reduce the abuse of these alcoholic mixers then it's something that we certainly are prepared to support."
How can you go from accepting something as a reasonable preventive health measure to seeing it as a blatant tax grab? When you're desperate, you have no genuine new ideas, your political mortality is so strong you can taste it, and you're still not fully accepting that you've lost power, you'll do it."

Are Costa and Meagher trying to stiff sick and needy in the Clarence Valley?

The Clarence Valley has been waiting for the promised upgrade to Grafton Base Hospital for over a decade now.
The NSW Government had told us on more than one occasion that the money was there and that work was starting soon - then returned to ignoring the health needs of Valley residents.

It took Labor's Janelle Saffin and the 2007 federal election to see another health funding pledge of $18 million.
But the NSW Minister for Health, who has had a departmental master plan before her ever since she took over this portfolio, is yet to supply the Commonwealth with a timetable and schedule of works.

Many in the Valley are beginning to wonder if the Iemma Government is trying to obtain the offered funding without it being tied specifically to a Grafton Hospital upgrade, so that it can plug the gap elsewhere.
Or if it is procrastinating in the hope it will not have to come up with its upgrade funding share for another decade.
Are we to be diddled again?

Journalist and Deputy-Editor of The Daily Examiner, David Bancroft, ran this frontpage comment on Thursday.

WE asked NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher a simple question yesterday: when will work start on the upgrade of the promised operating theatres and emergency department at Grafton Base Hospital?
Her answer was waffle.
She told us that that the Federal Government's announced funding was welcome. Obviously.
She told us that planning had already started. That started more than a decade ago.
She told us that Grafton Base Hospital played an important role in delivering health services. Again, obviuously.
And she told us admissions to the emergency department had increased. Exactly.
What she did not tell us was when work would start and if the State Government would provide additional money needed for the projects to proceed.
We need answers, Ms. Meagher, not platitiudes, and we need them now.

Portraits of a drowning man

Cartoon comments found at:
http://www.nma.gov.au/
http://www.leahy.com.au/
http://www.inkcinct.com.au
http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au/

No wonder John Howard and George Dubbya got along so well

Rumours have never completely died down that former Prime Minister, John Winston Howard's grandfather and father were probably members of a 1930s Australian fascist group which supported Hitler in the early days of his rise to power.

In 2004 The Guardian reported on how US President George W. Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power.
"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

All of which goes some way to explaining the image above (which has been doing the email rounds for years) and why Bush was so eager to create another ethnic bogeyman teh Muslim.

Pity Bush didn't recall the talk about his family when he whaled into Barak Obama this week for his supposed willingness to talk with Islamic nations.
Of course this is another thing he has in common with John Winnie - this skewed view of Obama which Howard also displayed last year.

I wonder what sort of WWII memorabilia Howard and Bush would be swapping if they were so inclined?

Japan's whalers accused of taking whale meat to sell on the black market

According to Asahi Shimbun yesterday.

Greenpeace Japan said Thursday it will seek a criminal investigation against 12 crew members of a research whaling ship over allegations they embezzled a ton of meat from whales caught in the Antarctic Ocean.
The group says the crew members aboard the research vessel Nisshin Maru sent cardboard boxes believed to have contained whale meat to their homes.
At a news conference Thursday in Tokyo, Greenpeace Japan members displayed whale meat they said had been intercepted on route to the home of a crew member. The box contained 23.5 kilograms of coveted whale meat used in bacon.
The estimated value of the meat is between 110,000 yen and 350,000 yen ($1,048 and $3,334), according to Greenpeace Japan. ----
Greenpeace Japan noted that if the 47 boxes sent from the Nisshin Maru contained whale meat, the total would have exceeded 1 ton.

Greenpeace stated yesterday.

Our activists delivered the evidence, including the whale meat, to the Public Prosecutor's office in Tokyo, calling on it to make a full public enquiry into how deep the corruption runs with the whaling programme. We're also calling for an end to the USD$4.7 million taxpayer subsidies for the programme, and for the license of the company operating the whale hunt, Kyodo Senpaku, to be withdrawn.

Photo: Greenpeace Japan whale campaign coordinator Junichi Sato weighs 23.5 kilograms of whale meat stolen by crewmembers of the Nisshin Maru whaling ship. The contents of the box were listed as "cardboard."

Budget Reply '08: I'm big, I'm bad, I'm Brendan Nelson

It was obvious that the Budget Reply by the Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson, was going to be something else when, before proceedings formally began, the cameras sprang the Coalition acknowledging a rent-a-crowd in had positioned in the public gallery.

Nelson's speech was different to the Federal Treasurer's 13 April budget speech on many levels.

The first was that, unlike Wayne Swan's speech, Nelson's monologue was heard out in polite silence by those on the other side.
The Coalition heckling during Swan's speech was a pitiful and petty effort and, it was a relief that Labor MPs were capable of more restraint last night.

The second difference was an amusing phenomenon.
The Coalition frontbench seated behind Nelson were a constant visual distraction as their heads bobbed in agreement like so many car rear-window animal ornaments.
Indeed Julie Bishop appeared almost frenetic at times.
The Labor frontbench behind Swan on Tuesday night were thankfully only occasionally afflicted with this peculiar tic.

However, it was the third difference which had the real impact.
The sheer hypocrisy which saturated Brendan Nelson's speech was almost beyond belief (Wayne Swan may have had a rather boring delivery but at least he sounded believable).

Suddenly Nelson was against policy, procedure and practices which were unchanged from the days of the former Howard Government in which he was first an ordinary MP and then a minister.

The Howard Government never locked in old age pension and carer bonus payments beyond one budget year, but suddenly the Rudd Government was mean and tricky to do the same.

He also decided that taxing 'alcopops' as spirits was unfair and would be resisted, although initially agreeing with the increased taxation proposal and way back in 1996 getting to his feet in the House of Representatives to complain that this type of alcoholic drink was too cheap.

Nelson repeatedly accused the Rudd Government of delivering a high taxing budget and then went on to say that he would oppose the removal of one tax - the Medicare levy for workers earning less than $150,000.

After years of Coalition neglect Nelson also decided to find that education and universities were important and chivvied the Rudd Government for its education policies which actually appear to reverse some of that neglect.

He was scathing about the current government's planned inquiries and reviews. Yet in a 2005 Sydney Morning Herald interview he cheerfully admitted; In the four years since he took over the $23 billion Education, Science and Training portfolio he's unleashed an unremitting stream of inquiries, reviews, reforms and initiatives, and says he has no intention of slowing down.

Brendan Nelson sketchily outlined his 'grand' economic plans for the future (which sounded very like old Howard policy) and his 5 cent solution to rising global petrol prices. Knowing full well that he will never survive as leader long enough to influence Coalition policy in the months leading up to the next federal election.

My favourite line in all this posturing occurred when Nelson accused Labor of the Coalition's biggest sin under the prime ministership of John Howard; punishing those it does not like.

Somewhere in the middle of his spin and unsupported accusations, the Leader of the Opposition decided to continue Howard's culture wars by denigrating university lecturers as social engineers and, somewhere towards the end of his delivery, resolved that Australia should become reconciled with our indigenous history (something that his national apology speech demonstrated that he was incapable of doing himself).

The Leader of the Opposition tried at times to whip himself into sincerity but failed. He declared himself angry with all the emotion of a limp lettuce leaf.

At one point Nelson stated;The government has perpetrated a fraud on the Australian public.
From my perspective this is exactly what Nelson himself was attempting last night.

Brendan Nelson's budget reply here.

Little Brennie Nelson indulges in pots and kettles

Did anyone else notice that during last night's budget reply the politician who was fond of sporting a large, flashy diamond earring had a dig at the Prime Minister's "expensive suits"?
Talk about foolish!