Let’s face it, Bill Shorten is the only reason Coalition MPs still get out of bed every morning. Without him, they’d be stuck in the foetal position, rocking gently from side to the side, sucking their thumbs.
If we thought the Turnbull government was a broken husk of a government, we’d be right but in the past six months with the intensity building feverishly over the last fortnight, Bill Shorten has reminded us all that Labor, too, is a shambles, caught in a web of its own making.
A brief history of Shorten’s position on the $16.5 billion Adani mine in North Queensland reveals he’s done more revolutions than Che Guevara. Six months ago Shorten gave the mine the thumbs up. Then he dragged out the party line that he supported the Adani mine provided it “stacked up economically and environmentally.” That was two weeks ago. After a whirlwind trip of the Great Barrier Reef, courtesy of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Shorten had a trademark change of heart, followed by another. Last week he threatened to put the kibosh on the mine entirely. This week he says he no longer supports the mine but will reluctantly let it go ahead.
I’m getting vertigo just thinking about it.
Full column here.
Smith, Marsh, Marsh, Cummins and Starc, you would happy to read that in your tour dairy.
It’s all getting very tiresome Jack, want to watch cricket not men behaving badly.
I thought Rabada had one more point to be docked before he got a ban but I’m buggered if I know how the system works.
He’ll lose a bit of money. That’s all.
yes, i agree, i don’t watch it at home, too expensive for starters, i with enough in a couple of pubs, button sound, much better that way.
the carry-on is tiresome.
does no-one say throw a cut lunch or fook off?
Yeah, right. Mooooooo.
Milksops?
Sacred cows?
goodo.. all sorted. ..time for a beer
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1716701
Hmmm, with a name like Smoke I presume you were inspired by the self administration of opiates
hallucinogens hallways hunny
?
The final sentence a masterpiece of understatement!
Cant do his own stents. Wuss!
yup wuss
Yairs, in my day we did it all ourselves with a boning knife, a bag needle and catgut.
Crikey, how old are you?
Er, there’s a bit of leg pulling going on around here Boady. Sure, we did our own stents, but the rest was a joke. OK?
No joke if you were a cat JB……
Mine was meant to be a joke too, JB. I give up with you – just not on the same page of your constant doom and gloom.
All sorted indeed Smoke. Heard a somewhat worrying story this morning from two Danish friends who recently visited WA. They had been in Thailand where the husband picked up quite a nasty case of Dengue Fever. Upon presenting themselves at Geraldton hospital, the emergency Doctor said to his wife “nothing really wrong with him, probably just a case of man-flu, or maybe he’s had a stroke” …ha,ha. Six days later they released him from hospital after all the tests came back from Perth, confirming it was indeed Dengue Fever, in fact a very serious case. Remind me not to get sick in Geraldton.
I am however confident that your hospital visit will be different JTI.
what’s the quack gunna do bout dengue anyhow? Or Ross river , murray riv.encephalitis… Keep your fluids up and 🙏
Tell me about it Smoke. My husband had Ross River for two years and it was a terrible time. Thankfully in Darwin we had doctors who understood it….can’t do much about Ross River except wait for it to go, but with Dengue there is stuff you can do, keep the fluids up intravenously for a start.
Sorry fact is it never goes Penny. Every few years or so it comes back and gives you a little kick in the bum.
I know Razor and makes him crankier than usual….
And did the doctor enquire as to where the patient had been lately Penny? It’s a bit like showing up with malaria in Tasmania.
No, TV, she had to be told. But when told it might be Dengue Fever because of where he’d been, she just flatly refused to countenance the fact. Thankfully there were other doctors there willing to take a blood test. He was pretty sick though and still looked pretty rough yesterday. Didn’t tell him that though, he’s 6’5”.
Well that’s bad form then.
I once came down with something nasty near the next port of call up the coast, Carnarvon. Dragged into town when I could get out of bed and they did some pathology on me. The diagnosis? “You’ve had a bug but you’re better now”. I could have told them that! I wanted to know WTF it was!
dreadful behaviour…costs very little to listen
OK, JB – this is verbatim from the editorial in today’s Hobart Mercury – which I would imagine has a bigger Labor readership than Liberal
“Ms White needs to think hard about how she is going to start winning back those voters who stayed with the Liberals this time – accepting also most were probably never going to shift in 2018, with things being so good.
Ms White needs to acknowledge the truth that allowing an emotive policy issue to suck the oxygen out of your wider pitch to voters is not the way to win government in Australia, not even in ‘naturally Labor’ Tasmania. That’s because at the end of the day people vote based on the economy and services, and how both are delivering for them personally.
…………Ms White should take this setback as an opportunity to humbly learn from the mistakes of Labor’s campaign, adjust her team accordingly and set herself for the four-year job application that now lies ahead”
Which is what I have been saying to you – just written more elegantly here
You’re still stuck on “winning.” There is such a thing as “principle.”
Well elections are all about having a winner and a loser. A governing party and an opposition. As the quoted editorial points out, if Labor had campaigned on some of the other “principles” – and there were a number of them here – they may have won.
When they opened up the pokies issue Hodgman must have thought all his Christmas’ had come at once.
As one disgruntled letter writer
to the Mercury grumbled “No one is going to tell me whether I can gamble or not”
It’s a “principle” that would be best tackled federally imo. Maybe somebody will be more courageous than Gillard was on the issue?
And if Labor had campaigned on “other” issues and won, then tried to get rid of pokies you’d be off your face because they didn’t have a mandate?
The power of vested interests won the election. At least Labor tried.
Tasmanian election bought and paid for by the hoteliers association. No principals sighted except for those who will lose their jobs through more Liberal education cuts. Yvonne you have told us continually it is the unemployed labor voters who play the pokies so how could they have changed the outcome? Principals? cons don’t have any.
As I said it would be from the day Labor announced the policy. Great policy without much strategic thought behind it. I would have voted Labor in Tassy on that policy alone. The only way to win this battle Dismayed is small steps and a long term goal.
I think its something that has to be tackled federally Razor.
Xenophon is going down the same path I see in SA
Yes, it’s morally noble – but it doesn’t win state elections.
Andrew Wilkie still campaigns on it down here. But we still have pokies.
Read what I write. Not what you like to portray or think what I wrote.
You’re quite lost without a cut and paste aren’t you?
I said that Labor voters may have voted Liberal for the first time in their lives because of the mistake Labor made focussing on the pokies. Yes, you are right, there are a lot of Labor demographics that like to play the pokies. Well done.. The liberals got 50% of the vote. Labor would have lost votes to Liberal. They were lucky they picked up the Green voters otherwise they would have looked worse!
I was talking about the ”principles’ that LABOR could have used to try and swing the vote. Pity for them that they didn’t.
Try and open up to reality for goodness sake.
There are times when it is better to lose. Conservatives would never even begin to understand that.
Getting on my nerves with your insipid drivel, JB. You seem to have ignored my latest general comment re personal abuse, too. The question for you is do you want to walk or do you need a little push? Let me know.
Speaking of Labor PM’s! Rhino, it would appear your hero is a fan of the Donald. Any comment?
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/paul-keating-praises-donald-trumps-policy-on-china/news-story/8c38516c893249e826e8c6330d879ab9
Agreeing with one policy does not a fan make.
I’ve been doing some reflection, and before Dismayed busts a pooper valve, maybe we should all give Bill Shorten a break.
Bill’s selection as Labor leader was obviously due to the hitherto deplorable staffing and appointment practices in place throughout our political parties, universities, public institutions, etc that is now widely known and accepted as the “unconscious bias” theory. It’s a simple theory where negative views on societal stereotypes and cultural context adversely affects our judgements and decisions regarding staff selection. Apparently it’s all been fixed up now and every man (person?) and his dog gets a fair dinkum crack at any gig on offer.
So, Bill shouldn’t have to take all the blame and opprobrium for being a square peg in a round hole (or vice versa) just because someone else unconsciously stuffed up.
Hope you’re feeling better now Dismayed.
GROAN!
Bill’s actually doing OK. What we have here in the country is an apparatus so appalled at Truffles efforts it is considered to necessary to undermine Bill at every turn, just in case they cant adequately nail him at the lead up.
In other words Bill has the shakers and movers pooping bricks.
More on Fake stuff-the technology is available where an individual can take a live image of say Trump, Obama, or Hilary, make an audio of that person using his/her real voice, then alter the movie image so that his mouth forms the words correctly. The whole thing then looks as if he is just speaking normally. Imagine the repercussions of this! Film can lie. You can make any person say anything you want them to. Heard a demo of it yesterday.
I’ve thought so for some time BASSMAN. I look at Trump and listen to what he is saying, and I think, Jesus Christ this cant be real can it?
Most corrupt government in Nations history. No surprises.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/liberals-jobs-for-the-boys-mitch-fifield-appoints-former-party-director-tony-nutt-to-australia-post-board/news-story/98539b09d95118d249749e249098b78e
Oh that’s right! Labor don’t do it……..
Standard come back…yep Labor do it but no one comes near the Liberals….when Rudd was 1st elected he gave all these jobs to Looters. Coukld you imagine the Looters reciprocating….never! GIGS TO:-Tim Fischer, Bruce Baird, Brendan Nelson, Alexander Downer,Peter Costello Amanda Vanson, Robert Hill, Peter Reith , Allston, Ian Mcphee(Auditor general of The Commonwealth),John Fahey….Labor appointed former Liberal Leader Brendan Nelson as the Ambassador to Belgium after he was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2008. But the Coalition did not return the favour when it came into government. It replaced former Labor Premier Mike Rann in London with the former Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. It also recalled home Steve Bracks, who was set to begin his term as Consul-General in New York and replaced him with former Liberal Senator Nick Minchin, who was Mr Abbott’s chief numbers man in the party’s 2009 leadership spill.
Bills sort of cardigan cuddly?
Ask Chloe’s ex husband.
I occasionally make the mistake of peeping over the wall, and I could not help but be struck by a comment by ‘Alison’, and I quote “young educated millenials that have never known financial hardship a day in their lives. The sons and daughters of baby boomers who worked to give their children the best start in life of any generation.” As a baby boomer myself, I reckon this is a rubbish statement. It was the generation that were the parents to the baby boomers who gave their children the best start to life, not us. They were the ones who went through the second world war and post war austerity and decided their children should have a better start than they did. By and large, we have been a much more selfish generation and it is our young adult children who often pay the price for that.
Never a truer word spoken NFY. I saw that comment and thought the same. Our parents were the ones that went through hardship to make sure we, the Baby Boomers, were given advantages that they didn’ t have. What have we given to our children and grand children? Not a lot but we sure do have a lot of property to our name, that we can leave them, unless we spend their inheritance first.
Hear, Hear, NFY. The Bboomers prospered on the back of those that went to war. They enjoyed jobs for life, universal health care, universal education and then set up never before seen unfunded concessions and tax lurks across most of the economic areas and the nation continues to pay for them today. The Bboomer generation is the most selfish generation ever in human history. When even a hint of reducing the concession or tax lurks is made the outcry is deafening they begrudge every other generation and are some of the worst bigots walking the planet. Gens X andY ( millennial’s) will be paying for the Bboomers for decade to come just look at the ignorance towards global warming and trying to reduce pollution. apparently it is all a world wide conspiracy that only the Bboomers can see. They long for a time that never actually existed. No surprises.
I’ll go slash my wrists then, ok?
Dismayed says: “Gens X andY ( millennial’s) will be paying for the Bboomers for decade to come ……”
What a load of rot; they’re going gangbusters already with 100’s of new Aussie tech companies providing products and services you’ve obviously never heard of. And all thanks to the cohort who preceded them.
But then again, one may expect a roustabout to perhaps not be across such exciting new evelopments involving startup acelerators, cohort programs, angel investors, etc.
Spot on NFY. In the final analysis, and the final analysis isn’t far away, we , the baby boomers will be the worst generation of homo sapiens ever.
I’m not a boomer sonI agree you filthy communist 😘
“sonl” WTF?
Very well put NFY.
Depending on the definition of “baby boomer” I may or may not be a few years too young to make the cut.
But I can say with certainty and all humility, that I am a generous and altogether terrific person.
Also depends on which Baby Boomer cohort. They say Baby Boomber 1 (coming of age’63-’72 ) had Vietnam, while Baby Boomer 2 (’73-’83) had AIDS as their rites of passage.
“AIDS” Rites of passage? I do worry about you.
You seem perplexed about this “rites of passage” caper JB.
Never experienced, observed, influenced by, or reacted to some of the important transitional defining events/activities of the Baby Boomer period, largely emanating from the US? Kennedy and King assassinations, Vietnam War marches, the Grim Reaper psychopomps, Watergate, etc?
You’re obviously not a BB and I doubt you’d be a millennium, probably part of the post war cohort me old mate, eh.
Gawd help me, how do you do it. No I am not perplexed, “AIDS? Rites of passage? ” No you don’t see it do you?
I worry because I think your unconscious is playing you up Carl.
Of those you list, I cant see any bona fide “rite of passage” unless one actually fought in a war and that was culturally considered a pre-requisite for manhood.
Good to hear that Perentie, I would say the same about myself, but I am a Baby Boomer…..many faults, so little time left to fix them….
Well you must be a boomer then. They all say that.
I have felt this coming for some time, Mr Insider, and posted same. A major breakthrough with the news just out Donald Trump to meet Kim Jong-un by May after pledge to halt missile and nuclear tests. A place of Meeting yet to be set. Bravo both leaders, Peace the way to go.
https://tinyurl.com/y7nwcfxu
Yes, you got it right again, HB. Still it needs to be seen to be believed. I’d like them to meet in a cemetery at midnight. Failing that perhaps poolside in the Whitsundays. And I can envision them both unloading their weapons Get Smart style.