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.
A stunning patriotic and stirring speech by POTUS Trump, Mr Insider, in welcoming and acknowledging the Australian and US friendship, with PM Turnbull in the audience. Took place onboard that historic US Warship the USS Intrepid in New York. Speech in full linked., worth a full listen imho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyXNHAGrMMo
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a16995
JB,
Hello from Ol Blighty! The true reason for my trip can now be revealed. Phil wanted to run his plans past his old mate Razor prior to the big announcement.
Over a few beers, topless waitresses and some German ‘movies’ he decided to retire.
He passes on his regards and apologises for not including you in his deliberations but still considers your relationship with old Joe Stalin in the 30’s a bit off putting.
Give em heaps
Razor
The old kraut is full of it Razor. He avoids me like the plague. I know who his real father is and he knows I know it.
Re the Newyorker cartoon you linked JB, you’d be the one in the foreground sitting around a wood fire, still adding to the carbon footprint, belching out CO2.
Tsk tsk, you recalcitrant polluters will never learn.
Christ on a bicycle! Finally, it’s got through your thick skull that we are destroying the planet with fossil fuel burning! Hallebloodyluya! What happened. Did someone drop a brick on your head?
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/great-greenland-meltdown
Could um ah ahbut abbott but have won the 2016 election? Computer says NO along with the Australian election study. What a missed opportunity for the Nation. If only Malcolm Trump had not come along and saved the coalition.
http://insidestory.org.au/could-tony-abbott-have-won-the-2016-election
The PM is speaking from the USS Intrepid. Not bad for Turnbull. Commercial networks all ignoring it.
And have just posted POTUS Trumps full speech too Dwight onboard the USS Intrepid.
The USS Intrepid, Mr Insider, the venue for the meeting between POTUS Trump and our PM Turnbull is one amazing ship. Now a Museum docked on the Hudson River in New York it saw battle action dating back to WW2 including Japanese Kamikaze attacks. I also note Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, this time round pronounced Turnbull’s name correctly! Progress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Intrepid_(CV-11)
the intrepid is an excellent way to spend a morning in NYC
Thanks Jack will be on our to do list next visit for sure. We love the USA.
Just had a look online. What a place! I’ll add it to my list of “when-I-win-Lotto” destinations.
Early estimates show SA will lose $230 million in education funding in 2018 alone under the coalition latest stuff up. I am all for the Private sector overfunding being reduced but it clearly looks like anti Labor state politics at its worst. SA state treasurer already saying he expects very little from the budget for SA. A federal government elected to lead a Nation is beyond the capabilities of the ideologically driven cons. Oh and young guy doing a double degree has done the numbers on the latest price hike on Uni fees aimed squarely at dissuading people from lower social economic positions from taking on debt and trying to make themselves better more productive members of society . The young lad doing the double degree after 4 years will be $100K in debt to start being paid back at $42K so after tax the $42K if he gains a job, goes to $35K after rent of say $300 a week that leaves less than $20k to eat, pay bills, pay for transport and save for a home loan? But don’t worry the corporate tax cuts are still in the pipeline for big business. the multi $billion dollar subsidy of a non viable coal mine is still on the cards and being spruiked by mad barnaby and his National Socialist Isolationist the Regional rorts with 90% of money being spent in coalition held seats continues unabated not to mention the $% billion Northern slush fund and various other National Socialist Isolationist party slush funds for Dairy and sugar. The coalition again showing they have no FN clue.
Trying balancing a state budget when it is about to lose $1 billion in GST revenues next year as is going to happen to NSW.
If it was paid on a per capita basis, the good folk of SA and TAS just might have to drop some of their idealist attitudes, be welcomed by the real world and live within their means.
As a person whose rates are about to go up by 20% , I would rather the billion dollars being spent locally than subsidising the living standards of other states.
Everybody is screaming about the cuts and increase in education – I am not too sure who is right or wrong.
I think the uni fees are all wrong – the soft degrees seem to be cheaper than those that will actually produce a person who will contribute to the wealth of the nation like science engineering etc. Double the rates on Political Science, “Communications” etc and subsidize the others.
That should be 10% increase not 20%
Prince Phillip announces his retirement from all Royal Duties, Mr Insider, and at age 95yo I say a solid innings for him indeed, well done.
http://tinyurl.com/lfp24sw
As a big fan of our esteemed Acting PM Barnaby Joyce, Mr insider, I note he has taken to wearing a big wide brimmed Aussie hat, very Australian. Barnaby earlier this year did have a few sunspots removed from his face and now is taking full precautions from the hot Aussie sun. Bewdy Bonzer Barnaby, keep on keeping on.
I keep telling you guys hydrogen power is coming. SA and Vic. leading the way. Within a decade businesses and homes will have their own hydrogen power units. But wait, some here want more coal. Even though the Qld Environment department has found their sediment levels are 8 times over their allowed levels at the release site during the cyclone at Point abbott.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/csiro-on-brink-of-breakthrough-in-enabling-hydrogen-fuel-cell-supplies/news-story/0f9d16e123f28b7e7536b881ee7d6952
An in the meantime who is gong to keep the lights on?.
Planning seems to be sadly lacking in the labor states of Vic and SA
More than enough gas, reports last week showing plenty of Gas until at least 2030. The failing is and has been the Government, AEMO and the AER failing to control the cartels. Man seriously, do some research instead of reading Gotti.
Always somebody else’s fault.
It must be a state trait for SA.
How’s Dr Zeuss going?
Australia is the world’s 12th largest economy. We’re close to being the world’s largest exporter of coal, iron ore and gas; and the third largest exporter of education. We’re one of the world’s top re-settlers of refugees; and, as the Prime Minister often reminds us, we’re probably the world’s most successful immigrant nation. We enjoy a combination of freedom, fairness and prosperity that rightly makes us the envy of the earth.
We are part of a civilisation which has exported scientific learning, material prosperity, and concepts of democracy, justice and freedom to the entire world. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, creed or gender. We do our best to judge people by the content of their character. Taught by faith and instinct, we are convinced that every human being has God-given equal rights and responsibilities; and our basic rule of conduct is to treat others as we would have them treat us.
The modern world is unimaginable without this legacy of Western civilisation.
You takin’ the piss bloke?
YOU SAY:- We’re one of the world’s top re-settlers of refugees….NOT SO Bald. That is what the Looters have conned you to believe and they are good at selling their story.
The UN Resettlement Program accounts for less than 5 per cent of all refugees who seek protection so let us address the facts. Of the refugees recognised, registered or resettled, Australia is ranked 25th overall, 32nd on a per capita basis (the measure the Looters like to use except when talking about climate change or pollution levels!) and 47th compared with our GDP which is our ability to fund refugee settlement. When compared to the total refugees under the UNHCR mandate, we are 81st on a GDP basis – a lousy record for one of the wealthiest, most multicultural countries in the world.
You realise Green Left Weekly isn’t a credible source of information, don’t you?
BASSY
HK Jack is correct, we are one of the world’s top re-settlers of refugees.
The following was sourced from the UNHCR’s Global Trends report 2015:
“At the end of 2015 there were 107,000 resettlement places offered – representing just 0.66% of the 16.1 million refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate.
Within this small number of resettlement places, Australia offered 9,399 refugees the chance to be resettled in Australia – less than ten percent of permanent global resettlement places but ranking third overall in resettling refugees, behind the US and Canada. In terms of per capita, Australia fell from first to fourth for the resettlement of refugees from their country of asylum, being passed by Canada, Norway and Liechtenstein.”
It’s the same source you used for your cherrypicked negative commentary. Note we ranked No.3.
You trying to compete with Dismayed and me old mate JB, with your bagging, nagging snipes about Aus, mate?
Shame on you!
Read BASSMANS post again. It’s not about the numbers it’s about taking a fair share determined by the capacity to do so. And I daresay a moral obligation to take responsibility for our part in complicity with the nations that waged wars on and destroyed the social structure of the countries from whence many of the refugees come.
Your simplistic jingoistic insularity is sad and weak.
Can’t you read?
Read it again or enrol in remedial reading
Don’t get up on your high horse, perhaps you should read the complete UNHCR’s report BASSY, and it you intend to cherry-pick stats, make sure you pick them all, mate.
these are not my words, they are from a speech made by Tony Abbott,
nevertheless, his facts are right and i don’t disagree with his theory, i was simply curious as to how folks wold handle something Abbott said without his name attached.
I agree with most of it, with two major caveats.
Among the defining features of the “civilisation” he’s talking about are reason and secularism, so his claim that “we” believe human rights are “God-given” and “[t]aught by faith and instinct” is an attempt to impose his own values where they don’t belong.
As for non-discrimination, that is a very recent and incomplete addition to Western values, and in so far as it exists, it has been won through political struggle, resisted at every step by his side of politics. Ironically, he continues that resistance (e.g. against SSM) even as he pays lip-service to those ideals.
yes, i would edit out the faith and god bits of the second par as well.
i agree with his general point that we should spruik the importance of Western Civilisation much more than we do.