Thursday 25 July 2013
Kevin Hogan appears to have forgetten a basic environmental rule - not a good look for someone with so many coastal communities he is hoping to represent
Hi @KevinHogan4Page Please stop handing out #balloons at stalls? I'd hate to find one in a dead #turtle. pic.twitter.com/gvBjxQQhPd
Wednesday 24 July 2013
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott & Co alienate yet another sovereign nation on Australia's doorstep
Background:
Rudd accuses Abbott of lying about the PNG asylum deal
UPDATE
ABC NEWS 24 July 2013:
Rudd accuses Abbott of lying about the PNG asylum deal
UPDATE
ABC NEWS 24 July 2013:
Mr O'Neill has accused
the Opposition of misrepresenting a private briefing he gave them last week
about the deal for political gain.
"I don't
particularly appreciate being misrepresented by others for their own political
interests," he told the ABC.
"I am disappointed
with some of the debates put forward by some of the leaders in the Opposition
in Australia, in particular statements I am alleged to have made to them.
"They are
completely untrue."
Opposition Leader Tony
Abbott has suggested the foreign aid money would not be spent responsibly and
with accountability.
Mr O'Neill is calling on
the Opposition to show more respect in its dealings with his government.
"We are not going
to put up with this kind of nonsense," he said.
"We are helping
resolving an Australian issue. Try and be respectful when we start talking
about these issues."
Mr O'Neill says many of
the projects involving Australian aid will also be partially funded by the PNG
government.
"So I don't see why
we should be dragged into a debate that is now taking a new twist to represent
individual interest and political interest in Australia," he said.
Clarence Valley Indigenous Art Award 2013 - entries now open
CVIAA (Clarence Valley Indigenous Art Award) 2013
The Clarence Valley Indigenous Art Award promotes contemporary Indigenous art of the North Coast of New South Wales.
Entries are now open for the 2013 CVIAA
Entry form and artworks are due on the Friday 4 October
The Clarence Valley Indigenous Art Award supports the development of the collection of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art held by the Grafton Regional Gallery.
This award is open to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists who reside in the traditional areas of the Yaegl, Bundjalung and Gumbaingirr nations.
Artists are invited to submit up to two artworks within the given size limits for the following prizes an Open Acquisitive Prize of $5000 and encouragement awards for New Media up to $1000.
The winners of the previous CVIAA are:
2011 Frances Belle Parker Yaegl Land
2009 Danielle Burford Wonambi and the Wollemi Pine
2007 Alison Williams Black Cowrie - old medicine
2009 Danielle Burford Wonambi and the Wollemi Pine
2007 Alison Williams Black Cowrie - old medicine
Labels:
arts
Mal Brough defiant - I'd do it all again
The Courier Mail 20 July 2013:
Article 1.
Mal Brough says he has no case to answer over the Ashbygate affair and said he would act the same if he had his time over again.
Mal Brough says he has no case to answer over the Ashbygate affair and said he would act the same if he had his time over again.
The LNP candidate for the seat of Fisher yesterday spoke to the Daily about the saga in what he said would be his final interview on the subject.
Mr Brough was implicated in the affair which led to current Fisher MP Peter Slipper resigning as Speaker of the House of Representatives after former staffer James Ashby brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Mr Slipper.
Federal Court judge Steven Rares dismissed the case as an "abuse of process" and politically motivated. He was damning of Mr Brough in his comments….
Article 2.
Mal Brough's role in the failed James Ashby sexual harassment case against Peter Slipper continues to raise questions about whether the LNP should ever have endorsed him.
Mal Brough's role in the failed James Ashby sexual harassment case against Peter Slipper continues to raise questions about whether the LNP should ever have endorsed him.
It also puts in question Tony Abbott's judgment - and his wisdom and truthfulness in saying Mr Bough had always been upfront about the whole affair.
The issue is not likely to go away…..
If we are to believe the
version of events, as determined by the court, and your initial lies about your
involvement in it, this scandal goes to the heart of your character - and
whether your are worthy of being elected as the man to replace Mr Slipper.
Mr Brough argues he only
wanted to help Mr Ashby after he came to him with claims of sexual harassment.
It is interesting to
note that similar approaches to Sunshine Coast MP Mark McArdle, Julie Bishop
and Christopher Pyne came to nothing.
Perhaps they had better
judgment.
Or was the work
delegated to Brough as an opportunity to put Slipper - his arch enemy - out of
action?.....
Background:
North Coast Voices 14 December 2012:
Justice Rares findings concerning Mal Brough in his Ashby v Commonwealth of Australia and Peter Slipper judgment of 12 December 2012:
135 Mr Ashby asserted to Mr Harmer that his justification for his disloyalty as an employee in providing copies of Mr Slipper’s 2009 and 2010 diaries was that he wished to place the material in the public domain. That was, his assertion went, because he “believed that the conduct was morally and legally wrong and he felt aggrieved that he had been placed in the situation of becoming, as he understood it, exposed to (and potentially implicated in) what he regarded as the wrongful conduct of a public official”: [116] above. The words I have emphasised were ambiguous. If they referred to Mr Slipper’s conduct on the days covered by the 2009 and 2010 diary entries he surreptitiously sent to Mr Brough and Mr Lewis, there is no evidence to support Mr Ashby’s description or that he had any knowledge of particular conduct of Mr Slipper that was morally or legally wrong prior to him or Ms Doane sending the diary extracts to Mr Brough and Mr Lewis.
136 …..Rather, Mr Ashby’s and Ms Doane’s conduct at that point indicated that he and she were anxious to supply information to Mr Brough and Mr Lewis so that they could use it to assemble an attack on Mr Slipper, if they could find sufficient material to do so, using the diary entries and other evidence…..
138 I am also satisfied that Mr Ashby and Ms Doane by about 29 March 2012 were in a combination with Mr Brough to cause Mr Slipper as much political and public damage as they could inflict on him….
141 Mr Brough was unlikely to have been offering to assist Ms Doane and Mr Ashby in seeing Mr Russell QC for advice or looking for new careers out of pure altruism. Realistically, his preparedness to act for them was created and fed by their willingness to act against Mr Slipper’s interests and assisting Mr Brough’s and the LNP’s interests in destabilising Mr Slipper’s position as Speaker and damaging him in the eyes of his electorate…..
142…. Certainly, the nature of the allegations that Mr Brough, Ms Doane and Mr Ashby had provided Mr Lewis in about late March and early April 2012 would have suggested to a political journalist that there would now be more than one news story about Mr Slipper to pursue….
146 Mr Ashby and Mr Lewis had planned that articles about Mr Slipper’s use of travel entitlements would be published shortly before these proceedings were filed. They both knew that Mr Lewis would be able to publish further articles on the subject matter as soon as it was filed in Court in the originating application. Ms Doane and Mr Brough had also discussed the timing and sequence of publication of stories by Mr Lewis. So much is clear from Mr Ashby’s texts to Mr Nagle of 10 April 2012, Glen of 11 April 2012 and Ms Doane’s email to Mr Brough of 10 April 2012: see [82], [90], [86]. The planning reveals that Mr Ashby calculated how he would attack, and use the press to attack, Mr Slipper.
147 Mr Ashby had planned with Mr Lewis, and probably separately with Ms Doane and Mr Brough, the sequence of publications so as to raise the more serious allegations in the originating process, after the stories of 16 April 2012 appeared. The timing of those 16 April stories was linked to when the originating application would be filed. Once Mr Ashby began seeing Harmers and went into “lock down”, Mr Brough and Mr Lewis became anxious to know when the proceedings would be ready to be filed. Hence their strenuous attempts to contact Mr Ashby once he began to act on Mr McClellan’s advice to filter media contact through him. Mr Ashby had emphasised in his text to Mr Lewis on 10 April 2012 that “We need to act fast mate”. And Mr Brough told Ms Doane on learning that, eventually, Mr McClellan would meet Mr Lewis “Everything will be fine”: [94].
196 Having read all of the text messages on Mr Ashby’s mobile phone, as Mr Ashby’s senior counsel invited me to do, as well as the other evidence, I have reached the firm conclusion that Mr Ashby’s predominant purpose for bringing these proceedings was to pursue a political attack against Mr Slipper and not to vindicate any legal claim he may have for which the right to bring proceedings exists. Mr Ashby began planning that attack at least by the beginning of February 2012. As Mr Ashby and Ms Doane agreed in their texts of 30 March 2012 what they were doing “will tip the govt to Mal’s [Brough] and the LNP’s advantage”: [66]. It may be a coincidence that Mr Ashby suggested to Mr Slipper the idea of becoming Speaker just as Mr Brough began to move towards challenging Mr Slipper for LNP pre-selection for his seat and Mr Ashby ended up in an alliance in late March 2012 with Mr Brough to bring down Mr Slipper after he became Speaker….
Labels:
Ashbygate,
right wing politics
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