Canberra is a huge sausage-making machine and, as they say, no one would want to eat a sausage after seeing how it’s made.
Last week, the government finally got its backpacker tax legislation through the Senate. It was excruciating to watch, a form of political torment with every man Jack and woman Jill in the parliament engaging in an unseemly auction.
Ultimately, the Turnbull government sat down with the Greens and came up with a 15 per cent tax on backpackers working their way around Australia. In order to get the deal done with the Greens, the government offered a $100 million funding boost to Landcare Australia.
Full column here.
I guess that’s a dodgy snagger cutting down an ex PM’s swagger, as we stagger towards a two bagger, really ugly for those who don’t know the lingo.
I’m tempted to say that I preferred the original Green Army or Armies – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_armies – not the yet-another-costly-Tony-Abbott-brainfart one.
If this report has any substance to it, then it looks like the sausage factory may not just have got stuck in the machine, but turned outright toxic – http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/government-killed-emissions-scheme-despite-knowing-it-could-shave-15-billion-off-electricity-bills-20161208-gt6v48.html.
The Abbottites look to be antithetical to even reasonable public policy and Turnbull’s cowardice even more so.
it certainly seems counter-intuitive that reducing our cheapest and most reliable sources of electricity, coal fired powered stations, will lead to cheaper power bills.
i read the piece linked to and still have no idea how that works.
dismayed, you can check for yourself if there is enough summer ice for the polar bears,
catch a Cathay direct flight in daytime from JFK to Hong Kong, in summer it is daylight all the way, and i don’t know how much ice there is meant to be but it certainly doesn’t seem to be in short supply, you fly over it for hours and hours,
That white stuff is the window shutter hk jack
lol
That’s funny Darren !
This Green Army you speak of Mr Insider we here at the Blofeld Org. are pretty tuned in to most things going on but we have never seen one of their “soldiers” , spade or anything in hand? Given it was a farcical invention of ex ousted PM Abbott it is no surprise they are so hard to find on the ground, as it were. Silly Abbott had some whacko ideas and this was one of them, people need real jobs with real prospects not just wandering about planting shrubs willy nilly for zero pay! As bad as “Tosser” Turnbull’s “Innovation Revolution” or whatever he called it which went down with voters at the last election like a lead balloon. What hope Australia with these type of pea brains at the “helm” of the Nation!
On something completely different did anybody else hear Tim Fisher make a compete fool of himself on the world today? Tim was raging against loosening the gun laws to allow in the Adler, he wanted the states to stand together to have uniform laws. He was asked what he felt about Barnaby Joyce advocating for the adler; his response? “the states must stand together to have uniform laws”, and then he started rambling on about how it was an agenda driven by the NRA. Asked again later about how he felt about National party members advocating for the adler, he responded; “the states must stand together to have uniform laws”, and again he rambled on about how it was an agenda driven by the NRA.
What a complete and utter tosser? He’s no longer in politics so why can’t he call a spade a spade? Maybe he owes Barnaby money. He still is using the same interview tactic he did as a minister, blurt out a whole lot of statistics. A goose then and now
By the way, I just had a look at the Green Army list of projects. Here are some of the service providers: Conservation
Volunteers Australia, Manpower Services (Australia) Pty Ltd (are these strippers?) and Landcare Australia Ltd, There are a couple of others but these 3 provide maybe 80% of the services in the round four project list https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/697a6383-c7c3-415a-a2bd-5e0f2b6dfeaa/files/green-army-round-4-projects.pdf
Looks like maybe this is 6 of one half a dozen of the other. Just with a lot of unnecessary jiggery pokery around it and a dollop of conscripts.
Bit wrong darrenThe RAAF in the 1970s adopted a uniform where everyone had epaulets on their shirts not only officers
Airforce.
Army.
Need I say more?
Technically, you can only wear epaulets if youre an officer. And Im guessing theres not a whole lot of officer material in the Green Army. Also, JTI, where, you say they are provided with some colourful clothing Im having a hard time imagining that. What colour would that most likely be?
I, personally, am all for taking volunteers out of the system and replacing them with reluctant destitute conscripts. Especially if that means wasting those conscripts’ time in pointless and dreary drudgery that will teach them nothing and actively disadvantage them when they receive their honourable discharges. Its sounds more or less like what I used to do for pocket money on school holidays when I were a lad. And look how I turned out…Anyway, with a bit of vicious mindless and incessant punishment Frederick the Great managed to turn his reluctant (but completely destitute) conscripts into the finest infantry in the world (although most of them did actually die in his wars, but you know what I mean).
Hopefully the Green Army RSL (GRSL) will have more appropriate support services in place when these veterans return to society.
Get Fred’s father to run it. Then you can have lots of kidnapped, shanghaied and press-ganged very tall men marching around and around aimlessly in the name of conservation.
Shanghaied! My favourite word, Rhys. Google it and look at the “news” results if you want a bit of a laugh.
Darren I’m detecting a level of humour in your recent posts. You actually might be a decent bloke after all! Keep it up. It’s great to disagree but have a laugh at the same time.
Cheers!
Anyone else notice that Julie Bishop has gone very quiet. Distancing herself from the walking disaster perhaps?
This article needs to be categorised. My suggestion would be under Oz politics or Sausage. And on sausages, I’ve seen sausages made and it hasn’t turned me off eating them, can’t get enough of them, but it has turned me off getting a penis enlargement.
A pity I couldn’t get some Green army recruits or Landcare foot soldiers over to my back yard.
If I were frydenberg I would be counting the numbers. Turnbull is doomed and Josh is the only one there who seens to have some intelligence – despite being sent out as the scapegoat
Frydenberg is dead Yvonne. The moment he hinted at an ETS type scheme he was gone.