Humble servant of the Nation

Malcolm Turnbull’s ticking clock — Newspoll noose around PM’s neck

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Another year, another polly on the ropes over expense claims. Sussan Ley has been on the receiving end of a media pommeling and the collective wisdom is she’s been a naughty minister. She has been dispatched to Coventry and the view is she should settle down and grow accustomed to her new home.

As an observer of various entitlements farragoes over the years, I think Ms Leys’ spending puts her in exalted company, somewhere between Peter Slipper and the guv’nor, Labor’s Mal Colston. Spending $21,000 in a week or so on transport is extraordinary. I didn’t even think it was possible. With those frequent flyer miles, you can forget about the carrot sticks and chardy in the Qantas club. It’s foot-long lobster subs and Moët by the schooner. Hell, they’ll get you your own plane. Maybe even let you fly it.

The Minchin Protocol always sounded like a bad novel and now as it comes to its denouement, it is about as satisfying as an EH Holden Mechanics’ manual or anything knocked out by Clementine Ford.

Full column here.

966 Comments

  • Rodent says:

    Yvonne 08:51pm.
    That is nothing Yvonne from Bassman comparing to what he called me one night on stage . Think it was Hayride from the Flying Circus .Me hit a wrong note through distraction trying to win this magic looking lady in the audience winking etc .
    He has a way of lifting a slow crowd up anyway possibe this sometimes complex character that sets his target and won’t budge. However , we still laugh about these times like pinching bottles of whiskey at a function at the end of one night , then drank them on the side of the road on the way home.

    • Yvonne says:

      Why can’t we have avoided of you guys on stage? What a hoot!

      • Yvonne says:

        Bloody phone. Read “video” for “avoided” Wish it wouldn’t do this to me. I know what I want to say!!

      • Jean Baptiste says:

        Her ya go Yvonne. Here’s where it all started. And they are still at it. That’s Rodent on the banjo.
        He doesn’t look so flash now, but he didn’t scrub up all that bad then. Kinda sorta.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsC4kf6x_Q0.

        Get a load of Razor.! They called him twinkle toes back then.

        • Milton says:

          I knew what that would be before I hit the punch button. It’s my neice and my wife’s favourite. In fact we both love it.
          Thank goodness the council made us get rid of our new miniature (?) pig as I ain’t felt sooo darn horny for years. Send us ya details JB and we can have us a good ol’ fashion hootenanny. Youse bring the chitlins and cornbread, honey and i’s supplies the rest.

        • Yvonne says:

          2.3million views – don’t think so, JB. but thanks anyway. Good stuff. !

        • Penny says:

          Ah JB, why did I immediately think before I opened it that this would be the clip you’d attached. Great minds think alike…..I’m still tapping my feet as we speak

  • Dismayed says:

    Australia is no longer a tolerant society as the white right Australia policy is promoted to the ignorant. Disgraceful. Australians of all persuasions should be accepted.
    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/vic/2017/01/17/australia-day-billboard-removed/?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170118_TND

    • Yvonne says:

      Look around you Dismayed. Not everyone is intolerant. In fact sometimes it seems that you are intolerant of everyone. Look on the bright side – as our erstwhile Mr DT used to say!

    • JackSprat says:

      Actually Dismayed, the intolerance comes from a sub-section of society that forces young girls to wear the hijab. They are wearing it at a much younger age.
      To many, the dress code, often forced upon Muslim women by their male counterparts, is a symbol of the male dominance in that society.
      The Western ladies have managed to have a world-wide protest against Trump. They are strangely silent in giving any large scale vocal assistance to their sisters struggling for rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran or, for that matter, attempting to bring similar condemnation on the forced marriages of 9 year olds in this country.
      I think forcing the withdrawal of that poster was a good thing because it makes a very loud statement to a minority bunch of crazies in the Muslim world that what they are doing to their young females is not supported by the rest of society. It gives the women an argument for change.
      You really do not think about things, do you !

    • Bella says:

      This government is not serving in the national interests & they make no secret of putting a price on the heads of Australia’s poorest. This cruel Centrelink war they’ve declared on the poorest, the pensioners & now the bloody disabled is nothing more than chattel slavery by the backdoor.
      Shame on all of those rich pr**ks with the power to stuff their bank balances while millions subsist on two pitiful meals a day.
      I challenge those mobsters to work on the frontline of any charity for a week to see & to actually listen to how they ‘adjust’ to poverty in the real world. There are days when I feel weak hearing their stories, knowing I’m luckier, but it never gets into the heads of the people who could make a difference, our useless politicians.

      NB latest victim of Centrelink grab is OA pensioner, an Australian of the Year finalist, wrongly accused & billed $7,600.
      You can’t make this stuff up!
      Bella

      • Razor says:

        This stuff is a storm in a teacup. They are not being billed they are being asked to explain. Considering they are living off the public purse I do not think it is too much to ask.

        • Bella says:

          “A storm in a teacup” ?
          Must be so nice to be able to sit in judgement but I can’t be that person Razor.

          Tell that to those people who have been forced to immediately pay money every fortnight back to this stinking government no matter if Centrelink is wrong. And they ARE proving to be wrong over twenty percent of the time.

          Politicians are living off the public purse, how about they each get a letter of demand for every penny they’ve rorted. The system would crash, but no worries hey Razor, it won’t happen to them cos there’s a whole other set of non-rules for the entitled in this country and it sucks.

      • Dismayed says:

        Hear, Hear.

  • Yvonne says:

    Obama commutes Chelsea Manning’s sentence. Gosh, gutsy last roll of the dice.

    JB: nobody left to refute your moon-landing theories anymore. Have fun……

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      Obama, you little beauty! This will be interesting ! Undo that and I think Obama the ex President will have a lot of stuff to say that a lot of people wont be very happy to hear.

      I think that’s last man to walk on the moon (ahem) Yvonne. Not the last man alive who walked on the moon. (ahem)
      2027 I believe is the year when “additional information” will be released. One assumes they will all have gone to heaven by then.
      I have a good chuckle when I hear moon landing astronauts saying things like. “I can go out of this studio tonight and stand in the street, and look at the moon and say. I walked on that moon.”
      Yeah guess what? So can I. And I wouldn’t be lying.

      Give ’em heaps.

    • The Bow-Legged Swantoon says:

      Actually, six moon-walkers still with us, Yvonne. Not sure about Command Module pilots.

  • Carl on the Coast says:

    BASSMAN
    January 17, 2017 at 12:32 pm

    says: “TOASTER:-It was GENERAL advice..Bonhoeffer is a favourite of mine. Died so young with a brilliant brain. Good to see you have found him. Don’t you get it? Groan!”

    There’s no need to groan Bassy.

    I do get it. And I got it when I saw your initial post to Rodent. It was quite simple. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was making the observation that you appeared to have lifted a whole slab of Bonhoeffer’s work and presented it to Rodent as your own work (i.e it was not ascribed).

    Whilst you now appear to petulantly admit it was not your own work, your claim that it was just your “GENERAL advice” to Rodent is an indication that you are still engaging in a bit of crab walking.

    Know much about the protocols of crediting other authors work, and informal cribbing, Bassy?

  • Yvonne says:

    Seems Greg Hunt will be the new minister for health..
    It always puzzles me when they switch portfolios like musical chairs. Sort of indicates to me that there are no ”experts in their field” running whatever portfolio they happen to have. No wonder it’s usually a stuff up.

    • Penny says:

      Yvonne, Greg Hunts wife was a surgical nurse, so maybe she can give him some “expert” advice.
      I also note that LNP MP Andrew Laming had a shot on FaceBook about teachers being slackers, which was immediately condemned by the PM because his daughter is a teacher.
      Now whilst I think the comment should have been condemned, what if his son was a Union Representative?

  • Dismayed says:

    Government independent auditor has found the Immigration and Border Protection department spent an unauthorised $2.2 billion$ “contracts were signed in great haste to effect government policy”. “In some cases, private contractors tendering for contracts were invited to suggest elements they would like written into contracts, and contracts were signed before agreement on a price” Dutton must go. This is an ongoing disgrace. No surprises.

    • Lou oTOD says:

      Why don’t you tell the whole story, both sides at fault, however the bulk of contracts were established “with great haste” after the Gillard government reopened centres in 2012 in a desperate bid to find a new Pacific solution as the number of illegal boat arrivals climbed.

      The gold medal on waste goes to the department for failing to update its asset register and advise its insurer, Comcover, of new facilities in Nauru worth $75 million. They were burned down in the 2013 riots while uninsured.

      • The Bow-Legged Swantoon says:

        Unfortunately the department is always playing catch up with the politicians, whatever their stripe. It inevitably leads to departmental officers carrying the can when things go wrong while the pollies go off on their next ideological frolic, indifferent to the train wreck they caused.

        The only time the department got on the front foot on enforcement (that I recall) was during Vanstone’s time in the chair when a very considerable amount of effort was expended to improve the integrity and processes of the Compliance, Detention and Border branches. I was a small part of that and it was a notable period of earnest and honest self-examination by the department.

        Then the government changed, another set of political priorities took over, drift and inertia set in and a whole new collection of disasters was put in train. Then the government changed again and now they seem to be determined to make all the mistakes and re-learn all the lessons from the period pre-Palmer and Keelty.

        If you mistreated a dog the way Immigration gets mistreated you’d be arrested.

      • Dismayed says:

        L o TOD: Utter bullshit. . The contract started in October 2012 and after review the findings were not implemented by the incoming government in October 2013. this is directly from the auditors report “Many of the shortcomings persisted in the 2014 contracts, indicating that the 2014 contract consolidation process was not informed by lessons learned from the department’s management and operation of the 2013 contracts.” “As with the 2013 contracts, DIBP needed to establish a risk rating for each performance measure. This process was planned to be directly linked to the timing and extent of any financial abatement for service failure. For Transfield and Save the Children, the first risk assessments were not agreed until late August 2014 and December 2014, respectively. This was five months after Transfield’s 2014 contract was signed.”
        You are unable to accept you and your cons have messed up just about everything they have touched. Your haste to oppose has continued your terrible form almost as bad as S. Marsh’s form, you like him still get another go. You can only improve. HAHAHAHA.

  • Jean Baptiste says:

    Dismayed 9:44 AM

    Now that’s an interesting sociological phenomena. You can boast of talking to God every might before you go to bed and thank him for every meal and if it’s remarkable at all, you are remarked upon as a good and wise citizen.
    If you relate that God has spoken to you then you’re batsh*t crazy! Unless you’re the Pope.
    Must be a demarcation issue.
    They don’t like it up ’em you know. Oh you do!
    Give ’em heaps.

    Trevor Snott

    Yes Carl could be half right. He has the requisite brain for it.
    You probably need a an apple dunking ? was it. What happened to those characters? Anyone? I wonder what their stance is on AGW,
    http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/how-we-know-global-warming-is-real/?gclid=Cj0KEQiAnvfDBRCXrabLl6-6t-0BEiQAW4SRUGzeLDdjwBKwuVivq7_A0LQ1l8B6ar-h2YVtdxFBxRUaAscc8P8HAQ

    Here is your homework. I was looking for something more simple for you. It occurs to me Chilla’s book might not be over your head,

  • Milton says:

    Vale, Hymie. I read that he only made 6 appearances on Get Smart. It seemed to me like more but I’ve watched them many times.

  • Rodent says:

    Yvonne 07:21am
    Ammendment ,..add the son of Martin Luther King on front blog.
    Cheers ,.

  • Rodent says:

    Yvonne 07:21am .
    These dummy spitters such as Martin Luther King on his record , won’t be missed leaving a crowd of businessman filling the occasion as reported coming up .
    These sloppy bigots are only hurting themselves not excepting democracy acting like a child having their toy removed from them next kicking on the ground with tantrums .Why can’t they “grow up”, act like a true American and grow their country instead of sooking and whinging.

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