MH17 and the reason why Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott will trade on the personal grief of so may families around the world

When a Malaysia Airlines plane went down in March 2014 with all passengers and crew lost Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott made the most of the political opportunity that tragedy presented.

With the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 it would appear that he is again attempting to insert himself into the very real grief of so many families around the world:

And this is the reason why he has seized this opportunity:

The Age, Nielsen Poll, 21 July 2014

Things must have beeen going badly for Tony Abbott - he went back to touting his fire fighting credentials

This is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott allegedly taking part in a scheduled hazard reduction burn at Cottage Point in Ku-Ring-Gai National Park on Sydney's north shore.

Cottage Point has an enclave of approximately 52-60 mostly holiday and luxury homes.

Jon Russell of the Cottage Point brigade and Prime Minister Tony Abbott at Cottage Point

One can see in this posed photograph that Mr. Abbott is wearlng the only the only stained uniform of the three people pictured.

In fact the only item of uniform not heavily stained are his protective googles.

Remarkably for someone presumably so smoke and oil affected, Mr. Abbott's face is also almost as fresh as if he was just walking into a media conference in Canberra.

There were reportedly only 27 volunteers attending this controlled hazard reduction which probably took place somewhere within a 352 hectare section of the 154 sq km park - so it was not a large burn.

One has to wonder if Mr. Abbott's media team went looking for an old unwashed uniform and helmet belonging to another firefighter, so that the Prime Minister could be snapped looking as though he had actually been fighting a fire.

Six days later in yet another spin cycle Prime Minister Abbott was able to insert both himself and his daughters into the private grief of so many families:

Snapshots from The Age, 20 July 2014

Peta Credlin said to have denied FOI request re Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's citizenship status

Tony Magrathea‏ who tweets as @dickybeacholdie had this to say on Twitter on 17 July 2014:

My foi request for Abbotts form RN, renounce British citizenship has been denied by Peta Credlin. Home Office [U.K.] still looking.

The form Mr. Magrathea is referring to is here.

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan skites away again

Slipped into letter boxes in the Page electorate in the first half of this year was a leaflet from Nationals MP Kevin Hogan.

In this leaflet Mr. Hogan listed under Kevin Getting The Job Done the fact that he Stopped GST on moveable homes. Reducing the cost of living.

Er, no it was not just your letter Mr. Hogan which saw the Australian Tax Office back down.

It was the Affiliated Residential Park Residents Association (ARPRA) who first went to the media and, it was ordinary people power (combined with the efforts of Jill Hall, Justine Elliot, Joanne Ryan and other Labor MPs) which first placed pressure on the Tax Office.

Aside from the fact that the Tax Office's 20 October 2013 draft ruling concerning GST and moveable homes had invited submissions and that offer was taken up.

By 20 December the ATO draft ruling had been withdrawn and Echo NetDaily was reporting that:

‘Over the past seven weeks, we have been considering a range of submissions from the community and stakeholders as part of our consultation process,’ tax commissioner Chris Jordan said.

‘We have carefully considered the legal arguments and practical implications and decided that we don’t need to change the existing GST treatment of these estates,’ he added.

‘With the benefit of submissions, it is evident that while moveable-home estates have changed, they are still similar enough to caravan parks to receive the concessional treatment. In particular, both involve letting of sites separately to the building, and provide communal facilities to residents.