I’ve said it many times before. Australia is the best damned country in the world with the exception of some island nations in the Caribbean with some very liberal banking laws.
For all that Australia can be a confusing place, especially for Australians. There are three tiers of government, all pretty much worthless and in various stages of decrepitude shuffling between inertia, chaos all the way along to abject failure. We have a corporate world blagging its way around a laughably cobbled together regulatory system while trying not to snigger too much. There’s a mutant media that routinely crucifies people, more often that not for no apparent good reason and a taxation system that, frankly, I gave up on a long time ago.
Last week the Turnbull government announced a range of changes to the 457 visa scheme and rounded it off with tightening requirements for citizenship. At a presser and then again in an interview with Leigh Sales on the ABC, our Prime Minister, resplendent in an electric blue suit, equivocated in response to what were some fairly mild inquiries on his thoughts on Australian-ness and what he considered might be Australian values.
Full column here.
Hi JTI, I haven’t posted for some time but I still lurk and noticed you had missed a few weeks. Sorry to hear your bad news and I wish you well in your fight, I certainly will be thinking of you. I noticed a few comments on the C word and would recommend a Billy Connolly video on youtube about this along with his “Jesus Christ I’m nearly forty”.
Fairfax set to toss out (another) 20% of their workforce JTI. The answer from their journos? Why go on strike for all of Budgt week of course. Now there’s Australian values at work, so to speak.
Yep:-even with 20% of their hacks gone they will still sell more papers than The Oz.
But then you add in the Tele and the Hun, as you’re adding all the Fairfax mastheads, right Bass?
Ever visited airports where they give them away for free?
I’ll by your best guitar against my best wine which ones will still be in print five years from now Bassy. You kinda forgot the bulk trashies of News that now rightly are positioned against the Silly Morning Herald and the Melbourne Rage.
False facts has paid the ultimate price for creating its own journalistic vacuum.
By the way, I cannot play guitar, but I do a fantastic red, solo, duo or in a ten piece band.
Meanwhile in the “Sour Grapes Stakes” we see Hilary Clinton leading by a country mile as the field rounds the turn to the post, Mr Insider. She claims she would have won the US Presidency if blah, blah, blah, blah………. But you didn’t Hilary you ran 2nd in a 2 horse race dear heart!
http://tinyurl.com/mlhouhs
Here’s your hero’s latest Executive Order Henry B.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1199528230172713&id=190271334431746
Your grand destructive poohbah now wants to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic but he’ll absolutely have a fight on his hands with this lunacy. What say you now mate?
I say, Trump’s a halfwit.
PM Turnbull in the air on his way to see POTUS Trump as we speak, Mr Insider. Meanwhile on the home front we see 125 jobs to go at Fairfax, money to many Schools being trimmed, electricity set to rise, cost of living sky rocketing and so it goes on. Its “balls to the wind” here in Australia, “when the going gets tough the tough get going”. Maybe its time to bring back Tony Abbott! Strewth!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfJXKG4IB20
Now you’re talking HB …. heh, heh, heh.
Well OT, but just a point about this young woman who is banged up abroad in Colombia. The news is now that some US agency observed that her activity fitted a pattern for drug mules and notified the Colombians. If that’s the case, why not the tap on the shoulder when she arrived? Does Colombia want to house and feed her for the next twenty years or whatever? Wouldn’t it make sense for the the ‘authorities’ to let these people know that they’re being watched, before the pick up the gear? Only the most desperate would do it after that you would think. Or is there some deep agenda going on here that I don’t fathom?
To be sure, she’s our new Shapelle. And Colombia is a loooong way from home, unlike Bali.
Something rotten in the state of Denmark, Trivalve. Surely if it was the US who tipped off Columbia they could have had the decency to tip off Australia only so she was arrested arriving here with the drugs not leaving Columbia? Life in a Columbian jail you would not wish on anyone imho. Schappelle due back in Australia very soon too.
I think I can offer a couple of suggestions. These apply to the Bali 9 case, too:
There are operational considerations. If you tap the person on the shoulder and let them know they’re under watch it may scare them off but then you lose your best lead to intercept the gear; the drugs are still out there and the next courier may well not be on the radar. If you let the person do their run with the intention of intercepting them at their destination, all sorts of things can go wrong which might result in the drugs being lost along the way; baggage can be accessed at any number of points after check-in. It might seem like a straightforward exercise to surveil baggage but it expands the opportunities for error by the authorities. The courier may even just get cold feet and decide not to claim their bag – that wouldn’t stop an investigation and prosecution but it’s a complication; catching them red-handed in possession and in the company of accomplices at an early stage is a much more straightforward proposition.
The other side of it is deterrence. If word gets around that law enforcement will just tip you off when they think you’re up to no good it would hardly deter people from doing it, knowing they could just back out if they were under suspicion. And horrible though it is to say it, the sight of young people with a future facing a huge gaol term or death in a foreign hell-hole is much more likely to make other people think a bit harder than if they were allowed to return home and do a relatively comfy seven or eight years in an Australian gaol.
A last thought on it is that the western authorities might just not care very much about the accused’s welfare. The case of Barlow and Chambers wasn’t far in the past when I joined Customs and was still discussed regularly. I don’t know if it was a universal feeling amongst federal authorities but everyone I spoke to seemed to think they got what they deserved, which they wouldn’t have if they’d been intercepted in Australia.
i think these operations are usually conducted with some input and assistance from local authorities and if our people are trying to build something with their people, and they usually think they are, true or not, then the locals have to get some arrests.
Very true.
If the cops pick up the mule with the drugs then they have a chance of finding the local connections.
Probably they wanted to find out who supplied her with the alleged stuff.
The US surveillance is very far reaching by the looks of it.
Just one thing on the media treatment of this – and it has a parallel with Schapelle Corby. Ever wonder why we barely here a sound about someone on death row for drug trafficking if that person is a Vietnamese-Australian grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City or a Chinese-Australian shop-keeper with bad gambling debts in Beijing?
There’s a bit of this involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II3moizOUM8
Blonde, blue eyes, cute. Notice poor Renae Lawrence never got the same treatment.
I was trying to remember her name. And that says it all.
Agree totally BLS. The cases which get the most publicity are often the good looking (as well as white). E.g. Jill Meagher. Is it the news services who are crass or do they know what we want?
I don’t know much of the ladies details, Trivalve but from my internet peregrinations I get the impression that sth American prisons may be worse than Asian prisons. And I doubt that muchos (?) money will be spent on her from the govt coffers. Guilty, innocent or stupid, I can empathise with her and her situation. Her mind wont be in a good place, and that is a brutal punishment when left to its own devices. In contrast, I reckon a few on here would cop a 20 yr life sentence. And, on reflection, a comparatively, benign life as a sponge on Manus or Nauru, beats the shit out of all the possible alternatives.
As you know, well travelled, Trivalve we are a well intentioned and generous country. We have reached the end of what was the oz you and I knew. The so called “progressives” have taken us so far backwards that a conservative would be considered a radical.
Go Juve !
“In the lead up to this year’s Federal Budget, we are seeing continued attacks on people who are unemployed. The perception created is that large numbers of people receiving social security payments are ‘welfare cheats’, nor are they ‘addicted to welfare’. Finally, the claim our social security spend is blowing out is simply incorrect.”
http://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ACOSS-snapshot_social-security-spending_Final.pdf
Australia’s Welfare Bill out of control Dismayed. Taxpayers are funding 240 million welfare payments a year in the first complete picture of the situation and on track to shell out a historic $190 billion annually in benefits.
No the Old Age pension is out of control, Whatever fruit loops you are on are proving to be mind altering you have No FN clue as to what is going on and obviously cannot read or digest data. Total spend $110 billion. Unemployed and Sickness benefits 10% of total. Get FN grip man you are ridiculous.
Pigs Arse…our welfare bill is about the 6th lowest in the world the last graph I saw. I will add this though. Presently we have 4.5 workers to support each person on a pension/welfare. By 2050 there will only be 2.1 workers to support each pensioner.
There are 753,100 people unemployed & a further 1,114,600 underemployed. Something isn’t right Bald.
Granted there is 1.15% of people happy to live off $255 a week on Newstart plus assorted illegal activities but the majority HATE the struggle to maintain the most basic life and desperately want to work.
I’m heartily sick of folks kicking those at the bottom in the guts whilst ignoring the fact that finding any job is near impossible alongside hundreds of applicants for the same unskilled position.
Perhaps I should’ve told that 20 year old young man I saw last week to just get over his crippling speech impediment and serious facial injuries from a car accident and tell the 15 businesses who knock him back each week every time he opens his mouth. He’s not ‘disabled enough’ to get a pension & only survives with his grandparents help in paying for resumes, train fares & speech therapy.
Seriously, is there not a crumb of compassion still alive in this country with Morrison spouting his lies about welfare.
Regards, Bella
Dismayed, your apparent gullibility is understandable given your chronic propensity to gobble up any inflated blurb you stumble across and seemingly simultaneously regurgitate it without giving it due consideration.
There sure ain’t no slugabeds in your la-la land mate, eh.
Carl Read the link or go to any treasury document . the data is there if you are capable of reading and understanding anything. It is you old age barnacles that are bankrupting the Nation welfare spend. tax fee this concessions on this that and the other and you still want your $20K a year Pension even with $550K of you own capital sitting their earning more interest. All you have is another weak and as usual way off the mark attack on me because you Refuse to accept basic facts. You will now cry victim status and no doubt spill your team because I dare return fire. Your generation were provided with everything on the government tit and do not want any other generation getting the same run. Move along you make me sick.
Dismayed, see below, just in case you missed it.
“Carl on the Coast says:
May 4, 2017 at 7:07 am
Dismayed, re your link, you obviously did not read the bit where the author Van Onselen declares “nothing in-princuple against cracking down on legitmate welfare cheats”. Your over-sensitive reaction to any reasonable comment on your posts appears to indicate you don’t see a problem with those who attempt to fiddle the system, mate. And as for your use of the term “Old Age pension”, it just shows how out of touch you really are.
Do try and keep up.”
Re your other various personal assumptions, your bumbling attempt at psychoanalysis is just plain hilarious.
cc: Me old mate, JB – dipping your tentative toe in the water I see.
And you’ve got a chronic propensity to attack the messenger without ever addressing the content of what is offered.
Have you ever given your MO due consideration or do you simply regurgitate your gainsay habitually? You’re unquestionably wise, just lazy perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUi1PdYn5nk
And only 40% of the taxpayers positively contribute to all of that – not a problem is it Dismayed?
How is your Dr Zeuss reading going? I suggest you read The Truffula Tree – My 4 year old grasped the concept years ago. I suspect it is is within your reading ability but I am not too sure about your comprehension and you will be required to think outside your echo chamber. Instead of Truffula substitute taxpayer. It might make you uncomfortable but just try.
By the way, Socialist France is a lesson for you.
“Over 12,000 millionaires left France last year, according to New World Wealth. In total, the country has experienced a net outflow of over 60,000 millionaires since 2000. ”
Do you getthat type of information in your echo chamber?
JS. Listen for once in your life. I have been advocating for the removal of the Howard/Costello unfunded welfare measures for years. the Unfunded Howard and Costello measures along with the tax cuts from 2003/04 onwards and massive spending and other tax changes and concession of all manner by the same Howard/Costello Government are far worse than anything Swan tried to do during the GFC in terms of the Budget and overall financial position. I have advocated for the removal off all Payments to people over $80K or $100K for years with a subsequent reduction in the tax scales including lifting the tax free threshold to $25K. Why are we subsidising people earning $250K’s child care? Why did abbott provide these people with Nannies? Why are we subsidising the Private Health Insurance industry to the tune of $11 Billion per year while cutting funding to the Public system? Why not broaden the GST to Health and Education services ? 2 growth areas of the economy. An extra 10% on Private schools fees will not stop most from sending their kids to their school of choice, likewise on Specialist and Private health services for people who want choice and don’t use the underfunded Public system. The latest announcement on schools funding is another smokescreen which only reduces the cuts from the 2014 budget. You are concerned about the personal tax of individuals but want to give business a fee ride There is more revenue being funnelled out by corporations than by the individuals in the Howard/Costello unfunded transfer system, but each and every change put forward to address the corporate tax minimisation is knocked back by the coalition and it supporters.
WTF does the French situation regarding millionaires have to do with Australia. By the way did those millionaires move to tax havens?? If so why shouldn’t they if it is legal?? Man get some oxygen into your echo chamber the vacuum like conditions have altered you cognitive abilities.
1. Howard/Costello stuff was funded. The Press were screaming loudly that they should share the bounty of the large surpluses. However, I agree with you that they should have been withdrawn years ago – but Labor had 5 years to do it and did not. Once an idiot decision is made, future generations are stuck with it because all politicians share one attribute – they lack the guts to overturn anything that night cause flack.
2. Rudd introduced tax cuts – he got conned by Howard in the election but the left just labelled them Howard’s tax cuts and kept calling them that.
3. Lifting the tax free threshold gives a tax cut to everybody.
4. There are lots of assumptions in your statement that I am concerned about tax to individuals etc. I was pointing out that one cannot keep taxing the 40% of individuals who contribute positively. They will just leave.
5. The GST should be increased – not broadened – however it is a lazy tax. Reduce corporate tax at the same time. This would stuff Amazon’s model.
6, The exodus of the French Millionaires is and example as to what will happen if you keep increasing tax. The wealthy will just get up and leave. the English found this out way back, China is getting the same lesson – not because of tax but uncertainty.
7. As to corporate tax – we are paying the penalty now for flogging off profitable companies
to foreigners who then merely transfer cost here to eliminate or reduce tax. I would not tax miners profits – I would just slam on a royalty – that way they cannot cheat the system. The mantra is threat the ATO can police this but history shows that they are highly ineffectual at this. Also there is a history of political intervention watering down the ATO initial findings.
8. I can’t argue against some of your other stuff – every time the Government increases a subsidy, the price goes up accordingly. In this age of all manufacturing going overseas, the service industries are getting very adroit at sucking money out of the Government…
Did you really write this post or get help from Propaganda Central?
Brilliantly stated Jack as usual…I cannot agree that Howard Costello stuff was ALL ‘funded’. He left Rudd/Abbott/Tbull a $90billion structural deficit when Costello stuffed up his 2007 forward estimates.
Crikey! How many years ago exactly was it that your 4 year old grandson grasped the concept? Now be fair JS, the kid’s a prodigy! I wasn’t constructing sentences till I was three months old.
12,000 millionaires left France, in one year? Out of 1.8 million millionaires? First, how many new millionaires were minted in the same year? And second whether or not the exodus is a big deal depends on where they have their loot stashed to begin with.
Daughter actually and it was some time ago. She was speaking in sentences at 3 and could read and write before she got to school. I will get in first – she must have gotten it from her mother 🙂
Might be a stretch that she understood the plight of the Truffla Tree at 4 but I think it might have made a lasting impression.
As to France and its millionaires – an indication of uncertainty. China is the next highest on the list. We are receiving a lot. The trend could reverse if we get to many politicians like Andrews and that idiot Weatherill.
Definitely from her mother I would say, if it as you say.
Millionaires are leaving? Big deal, if they’re avoiding paying tax they are not much loss anyway.
Henry Blofeld Esq.
Trump in his profoundly misplaced self belief failed to factor in the frappe nucleaire card in his miscalculation.
Big boats with big guns always worked fine for former Presidents and Prime Ministers.
I would guestimate an 85% chance that North Korea will come out of this with a guarantee that that they will never be attacked by South Korea or the USA, in return for dismantling their nuclear program.
Which to be fair it is possible thats what Trump knew all along, there’s nothing like putting the wind up your plebs and appearing to be their saviour of the world. Or he could be the idiot he appears to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunboat_diplomacy
I say, Mr Baptiste, I think you have about nailed it with that post. Yes I have to agree with your thoughts on the outcome and a win win situation for all, culminating in a trip to the White House for Big Kimmie to see Donald, the new best friends. Whoda thunk it? As you well know I am a great admirer of both POTUS and FLOTUS Trump. Those 60 missiles Donald “deposited” into Syria and the Big Bomb he slipped in to Afghanistan certainly got the attention of the miscreants they were meant for and a lot of “respect” flowed form same am sure. Big phone call yesterday to Donald’s good friend Vlad Putin and don’t be surprised to see him at the White House soon too! But lets not steal our own dear PM Turnbull’s thunder as he makes his way to see Donald next week. Whoda thunk it? Cheers
Funny way of expressing respect Enery, ‘Pull your big boof head in Donald?”
The Vikings were experts at ‘gunboat diplomacy’, even without the guns.
Trump may have a drop of Nordic blood in his veins?
Not all Vikings were “expert” Carl. The Trumpet might well be, like Harald, the end of the epoch.
Or he could get his hide nailed to a door somewhere.
It’s Teutonic, near enough
Be washing your mouth with soap.
Or Trump Tower, Pyongyang.
A small but reassuring whiff of bowel as I stepped from the sack this morning Jack. Good to be alive I say.
Don’t forget to put a mark on the back of your hand Justin. In a forgetful moment you could flush the wrong part down the khazi.
khazi ? brassco my dear boy.
Academic my dear Mack, it appears Justin has joined wild blind mullet mob.
Malcolm Turnbull seems determined to stay PM at any cost and that includes pandering to the hard-right elements of the LNP with this latest immigration issue. Still, he’s not half as bad as Tony Abbott, who’s making it clearer every day that Australia dodged a bullet when he was ousted as PM.
We’ll see what a hard nosed conservative pragmatist Turnbull is as time goes by TO. He is the consummate actor.
Big promises for the plebs in the run up to the next election. He knows his stuff, whose pocket to piss in and when to piss in it.
And who is he pandering to with Gonski Mark 2, the ALP?
Smoke screen only reducing the cuts from the 2014 budget.
Australian Values, Mr Insider, and never presented better imho than this Dick Smith Australia Day ad from a couple of years ago. Covers nearly every “ism” there is. What might a newcomer to Australia make of the line “dead dingos donger” we do wonder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7y6iE0aB5s