Reviewing the Wreck of 2016

Shane... in the rubbish.

G'day Possums,

some pics of visitors and a small selection of favourites from the year.

Well the Ides of March are getting another workout as the media speculate whether Truffles will be rolled in either April or March of 2017 after presiding over a self- induced calamitous 2016.

The political ineptness and venality Truffles displayed back when he thought Godwin Grech a good bet was again showing on the night of his near-death election  "victory." He not only railed against the people who had supported Labor, whom he said, "had lied" about the Liarbrils dismantling Medicare  ( they are, incrementally) but he also failed to mention his own members who had lost their seats due to his ill advised electoral shake-up. 

All the areas where previously Truffles has been seen publicly as a centrist, Climate Change action, Marriage Equality, Taxation Reform, patronage of the Arts, the tolerance of genuine Liberalism, have all been subsumed to his kow-towing to the Neanderthal right wing of his party.

Bestiality Bernardi, Fat-Boy Christensen, Cap'n Catlic Andrews, Rabid-the-Hun, Vichy Abetz, Handy-Andy Hastie and the fabulously Boorish MacDonald have all stamped their collective foot at one time or another to have some legislation dropped, ignored, overturned, perverted, sidelined because it would upset their thuggish fascist sensibilities. 

Bestiality after what was for him, an epiphany seeing Trump dis-unite America, now Messianically sees himself as the saviour of the conservative side of down-under politics and is incoherently mumbling about setting up his own soviet. The Red-Terror, Hanson thinks he would be an asset to her shrinking One Notion kindergarten group.... which it probably would be by keeping all the fruit-cakes in the same box.

Faux Attorney General, Bookshelves Brandis has been no help in slowing Truffles' slide into oblivion, making a complete corrupt mess of "advice" to the W.A. ruling rabble and losing a Solicitor General into the bargain;  and then  appointing unqualified party apparatchiks to senior legal positions has not gone unnoticed.

It's temping to detail the rest of the players in the disaster that is this federal ruling rabble but this link  will be more than worth the read:  http://www.echo.net.au/2016/12/thus-spake-mungo-malcolm-muddle/

The economy which under Labor was said to be in "Emergency" is now 8 times worse but not in emergency!  And negative Gearing is not a problem: lack of houses is.

Pensioners are about to find out that they and people requiring medical attention are about to fund tax cuts to business's who actually pay no tax.

We are about to build submarines that when constructed will have nothing secret (their details have been compromised) and will be out of date, too. 

But we will still buy the F-35 Lemon which even Trump thinks a dog!

Falling behind in literacy and numeracy will be solved by cutting public education and making university more expensive.

Advertising will not solve the NBN shambles of dropping to 60th in the world for speeds to keep The Ugly American Murdoch happy but replacing the failing copper wire with fibre optic in twenty years time will ....but at horrendously unnecessary expense.

Climate Change and the destruction of The Great Barrier Reef will be stopped by producing more coal... but we wont be here to see it.

Wind energy is dangerous to the electricity grid and solar power is not useful....

Unemployment will be assisted by allowing more 457 workers into the country  and the economy will thrive when wages and penalties are cut to third world standards.

As you can see, cognitive dissonance is about the only thing the ruling rabble is really competent at .. and ...oh... making sure their entitlements are fully utilised.

Hoo-roo Petals,

see you all next year....

Shane

Idiots Anonymous Imploding Everywhere

Shane being strangled by Tinsel

G'day Petals,

Mal-Addled Roberts, One Notion's chief clown has addressed a cabal of other right-wing nutters and climate change deniers in the Un-united States just before it was announced that under the ruling rabble the country's emissions are rising.

Birds and feathers, getting up with fleas, bent twigs, Kangaroos loose in the top paddock, sandwiches short of a picnic and pots calling kettles black-bum immediately come to mind.

"A leader who personally sees off drug dealers? And the problem is?" said the Obese Far North MP,  Titanic Christensen, demonstrating his moral and ethical base by praising Philippine murderer and President, Duterte's direct action model of drug mitigation.

Yep, the malaise this ruling rabble has fostered and is furthering is eating the heart out of the nation. Troubling times ahead as this feckless country implodes on itself unless a group with an articulate vision can inspire change.

 

Hay Bales, Myrniong

Happy-Clapper God Bother-er, hypocrite and incompetent Treasurer  Scummo Morrison delivered the news in childish language that there is good debt and bad debt and that being  8 times more in debt than Labor was in 2013 wasn't a "Budget Emergency"  but sound fiscal policy if you didn't look at the details and the AAA ratings.

 I loved his little rant on Hissy-Fit Sales' propaganda-for-the-right, platform "7.30" when he called Labor's stimulus package which sailed Australia through the GFC undamaged as "burning down houses and erecting unnecessary school halls..." What an ugly, incompetent, bullying piece of work he is... and a clown, to boot.

Right-Winger Lyle The Martyr Shelton, front man for the dubiously named Aussie Xtian Lobby has smirkingly blamed left wing MP's and their "incendiary language" for a cars exploding gas bottles that slightly damaged his Canberra offices. Notwithstanding that ACT police had found that the injured driver  "...was not politically, religiously or ideologically motivated," The Martyr Shelton who was obviously feeling that Christ was getting too much attention for this time of year chose instead to beat-up the story into a hate crime and wasn't heard in interview to express any concern for the vehicle's driver who is in a critical condition; which is pretty funny as this faux Xtian thinks that marriage equality and the Safe Schools Program are comparable to the horrors of the Holocaust!

In a word, a WANKER!

 

Hay Bales, Myrniong

Another wanker, Matthew Boofhead Canavan  went on what has been called "a bizarre rant" about the ABC spreading fake news about the proposed Adani Coal mine. Although it's not unusual for this pot-headed Far North Catlic (another one in the ruling rabble) to make silly statements, when the news services are calling it bizarre it must have been a beaut.

Apparently attempting eight times to get Senator Canavan to answer questions on the Indian government's investigation into the company behind the controversial project  Senator  Boofhead instead opined that the view from his North Queensland domicile is one that "makes you thank God that you were born in Queensland".

(?)

The only questions not asked of Boofhead were whether it was true his vehement rant defending Adani and his slagging off at the ABC were proportionate to the amount of monies his Far North chapter of the Liarbril Party and the ruling rabble had received from Adani and whether the house is negatively geared?

Notice, that all mentioned above are what are erroneously termed, Xtians?

Upstanding Xtian yep, one more;  "intellectual" Bestiality Bernardi (read: total boring wanker and deluded nincompoop) from the far, far right of the ruling rabble and "leader-in-his-own-mind," is being touted as going to jump ship from the foundering rust-bucket, SS Liarbril to start his own cabal of "Rightness, Uprightness, Goodness, Niceness" all wrapped in the calming quality of a 1950's ultra-Conservative miasma.

The malodorous rise of The Red Terror's One Notion stocks in opinion polls is terrifying the ruling rabble who see their constituency of deplorables ebbing away by finding the solace of being racist, sexist and stupid far easier in the values bereft One Notion.  Which, is to say that the ruling rabble pretending to have values is really not much different, only more confusing.

Faced with a united Labor, a fairly solid Greens movement and being seen by all as mishandling what they historically but mythically believe their core attribute, financial acumen and beset by internal division, the ruling rabble have been for a decade a visionless policy vacuum except for the input of thought bubbles from the pretend Ayn Rand club, the IPA and have now been hoist on their own Petard, sinking into the mess they for years have falsely projected onto others.

Truffles is being seen by some as incompetent as Big-Ears McMahon was in the early 70's and there is not one of his ministers who seem to have a handle on what they are doing.

So at the end of 2016 Australia is adrift financially, a laughing stock morally and a bad joke environmentally.

Hoo-roo Possums, enjoy Saturnalia,

Shane

Pulling the Pin on Baubles of Bodgie Cheer

G'day Possums,

'Tis the Silly Season and the insanity surrounding us is becoming worse.

In the Un-united States a Happy-Clapper nutter (is there any other sort?) has foretold of the Apocalypse happening at the end of the year when Jesus is to return. 

Given that the Anti-Christ seems to have recently arrived early in the fractured States and that Death, Famine, Conquest  and War have been their stock in trade for the past 70 years, I don't think he's much at prophesy... but just in case the nutter is correct, I'd advise Jesus to A/ get a nose job, B/ blonde his hair and C/ bleach his skin a tad as people of Middle Eastern appearance are now less than welcome in Western Democracies and he might well find himself  banged-up in Guantanamo Bay doing a re-education course for having the temerity to think he could ever compete in the god stakes!

Belonging to  the Party of Individualism and Libertarianism, Liarbril, Stephanie Ross (a Pro-Life campaigner ) has announced that there are limits to others freedoms and that women should not be allowed abortions, even in cases of pregnancy through rape ... that the raped women "will-get-over-it-through-the-love-of-the-child".  How this childless young woman knows this apart from "divine conversation" as she prepares to knock off the sitting member of Narracan, is anyone's guess but it is nice to see the Liarbril Party eschewing it's C19th attitudes and returning to its more natural home of C12th medievalism.

With Australia about to lose its AAA credit rating due to the deficit growing eight-fold under the incompetent "stew"ardships of  Eleventy Hockey, Horse-Shite Cormann, Kelly Shadduppa-Ya-Face O' Dwyer and Scummo Morrison  many are asking why there is no longer the "Budget Emergency"?

Well, there is but it's not being reported with the same rabid fervour in the Ugly American Murdoch's media that we saw when Labor were in charge. 

In fact, most attention seems to be on a couple of Labor premiers who are actually "doing things" for their respective states instead of the shambles we see in the ruling rabble at a national level. 

Apart from being the most practiced of liars the ruling rabble's other finely honed skill is the "Look-over-There" diversionary tactic.

With Fictions Frydenberg, Minister for Coal-Mines and Banning Alternative Energy making the mistake the other day of announcing that a Carbon Tax might be looked at again and after copping the ire of Bestiality Bernardi, he looked even more foolish in his pathetically craven retreat when it was announced that a carbon tax would lower electricity bills by some $15 billion over the next ten years and when a Dr Ottaviano from a pioneering wave power company in SA said that because of the climate policy chaos and bumbling from the ruling rabble they would not provide the predictable power available from tides but build their first commercial plant off the coast of Cornwall in England where the policy support for renewables is more solid. 

No wonder this IPA led Australia has become a joke internationally.

Truffles', You-Beaut-3rd- Rate-Copper-Wire-NBN is about to miss it's promised targets of being finished by the end of 2016 and being cheaper than Labor's state-of-the-Art  Fibre model. In fact there is talk that, against the advice of their own expert panel they are going to slug another tax onto regional districts in order to defray costs on this world ranked, 60th in broadband speed.

Ahh... are we seeing examples of how shit rises to the top? 

Liarbrils who constantly spread the myth that they are a low tax party.

People ask what they have done in 5 years other than destroy?

Awww... come on, be fair. They have set remarkable new lows morally, ethically, economically and artistically that would be really difficult for anyone else to emulate other than having Rabid-the-Hun back with Bestiality Bernard or Vichy Abetz as deputy.

Another of Truffles more idiot choices being Michelle Guthrie, who is dismembering and disembowelling the ABC... the other day in response to journalists who wanted to know how they would do "hard" news with all her cuts Guthrie responded that she would have liked the piece on refugee children in the Manus concentration camp to have shown more "... happy children!" ??????

Isn't the Parallel-Universe of the IPA a wonderful place?     Guthrie's Gotta Go! 

And this is not fiction

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

With Santa to the Barricades

Shane with the Eureka flag

G'day Possums,

a few days ago I ambled up to Ballarat for the Eureka Stockade commemorations. 

Hosted by Joe Toscano since 2002, the Eureka goldfields rebellion of 1854 was the first and last insurrection against the then colonial government of Victoria and although bloodily put down, eventually achieved many of its aims and is now noted as a seminal event of Australia's then developing democracy.

Anne Beggs-Sunter 

Arriving with others at the site on Bakery Hill I met one of the speakers, local historian and lecturer Anne Beggs-Sunter who as a primary activist 20 years ago was responsible for the preservation of the facades of the Victorian edifices opposite the Hill which now house that arch nemesis of healthy eating, a well known hamburger purveyor who was eventually stymied in building its standard visual pollution.

Attending too, were Garry from Brisbane and Melbourne City Councillor Jackie Watts as well as a sprinkling of Australian Indigenous, West Papuans, Unionists and Black flag wielding Anarchists. 

Like the miners of 1854, a motley crew, but still welded to the same Chartist values of solidarity, representation and the principle of a fair go for all.

Garry

These values are still being threatened with extinction by the addled libertarian devotees of individualism and particularly from malign cabals like the Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe, (the IPA) one of whose prime mentors, Gina Our-Biggest-Miner Rinehart is apparently suing the Victorian Government and thence the citizens of the state for loss of potential profit because the insanity of "Fracking" has been banned in what was once the Tardis State, Where All-Goes-Backward.

The attacks by these Dinosaurs on the Premier Daniel Andrews and his Labor crew are increasing week by week because unlike the previous Liarbril mal-administration infrastructure that is actually useful is being built, social justice issues are being addressed, education, Law reform and health are also being prioritised and there is a palpable sense of the state generally moving forward: a situation of positive community development which the right-wingers mentioned, hate as it's the antithesis of their selfish individualism.

Eureka, Joe Toscano

Federally, the Ruling Rabble of Truffles Turdball  is in such a shambles it's almost impossible to know where to start.

The Attorney General, Bookshelves Brandis made another monumental mess of his portfolio when it was revealed in a West Aussie paper that he had allegedly directed the since resigned Solicitor General to usurp the Law and "not mention" certain facts to the High Court, having allegedly "done a deal " with the financially struggling WA Liarbril ruling rabble to advantage them instead of the Commonwealth. 

Ahh... For Whom Bell Tolls.... it was fascinating looking at the face of Horse-Shite Coorman sitting behind Bookshelves in the senate who was droning on about his brilliance and legal purity attempting to divert attention from his "bentness".  Horseshite's  eyes darted furtively around all the opposition benches with that worried look of "Have they got the killer question coming soon?"

This mongrel ruling rabble are a bloody disgrace.

 

Garden

Then there were the verbal gymnastics attempting to "contextualize" Dodo Dutton's racist rant that previous PM Mal Fraser was wrong to let Lebanese refugees emigrate here some 30 years ago; Truffles  showing as much spine as a jelly fish in not slapping this Far Northern moron down.

Others from the Far North went swimming to "prove" that the Great Barrier Reef  is in good health. 

Why The-Red-Terror Hanson and others of her feeble minded One Notion Club would want to pollute almost pristine waters is beyond me but unfortunately they were all dog paddling 1000 km south of where the very next day marine scientists announced that between 30 - 50% of the Northern reef is dead or dying.  With  Mal-Addled Roberts of One Notion always wanting "empirical" evidence of global warming having an effect on the planet, one assumes that this might be it?

 

Garden

In a minor Eureka moment  members of Whistleblowers Activists and Citizens Alliance super-glued their hands to the visitor gallery railing in parliament House.  WACA spokesperson Kat Moore said. "We are here today to tell the Australian Parliament they are all complicit in the murder, rape, torture and child abuse of refugees."  They also turned the water feature in front of parliament into a bloody pool, representing deaths from turn-backs at sea, with signs reading 'Turn-backs Are Murder' and 'Blood On Your Hands' and turning up again the next day abseiling down the front of parliament  with banners saying ,"Justice for refugees."

Needless to say the right-wing went hysterical, frothing at the mouth hypocritically about respect for democracy, parliament and the sanctity of our borders whilst ignoring the values of free-speech and ordering a 2.5 metre fence to surround the lawns which encircle the parliament  building.

Well known human non-rights activist and ex Liarbril Mandy Il-Patrone, Vanstone (remember Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau?) print mangled yet again another comment piece condemning such behaviour and how it somehow discredits democracy, makes life uncomfortable for supine aspirationals to consider others and that she prefers to keep company with the IPA mafia... or something like that!  The snarling, negative and destructive utterances of this IPA controlled ruling rabble are indeed a far cry from the "elite" standards Liberals once pretended to embody, now they decry and vilify, anyone who opposes them. They will lie, spread false information and muddy the waters of any contrary view calling it un-democratic and a threat to stability when their selfish, limited, individualistic world view is threatened.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin

 

Garden

And therein lies their demise. Faced with the inevitable on climate change and that their "policy"  bastard of paying/wasting money paying big polluters, Josh Fictions Frydenberg  (another IPA apparatchik masquerading as a democrat) had the temerity to announce that a Carbon Tax should be looked at again!

Well, colleague Cory, Bestiality Bernardi, recently arrived back from his "born-again" experience of Trumpism exploded into a rabidly frothy rant  worthy of a canine Vesuvius at this arrant bout of sensibleness. How dare anyone think a scientist knows what's going to happen in Dogs world? What an arrant presumption to limit the march of capitalist expansion by husbanding the planet for all and not for profit!

Fictions, next day pathetically climbed back under his rock where both he and his leader Truffles denied ever expressing  such heretical sentiments.

 

Garden

Remember when the press  well, the majority press, the Ugly American's Murdoch press howled about the dysfunction of Labor under Rudd/Gillard/Rudd?  Well Possums, it was nothing, absolutely nothing like the shambles we have at the moment. Policy free since Rabid-the Hun in 2013; we now have an economy about to enter recession, these self proclaimed economic gurus have increased to debt 8 fold, the AAA credit rating is on the brink of going south, Oil and Gas companies are paying a pittance of $800 million in tax when Qatar receives $28 Billions in revenue for the same amount of product, the mis-management of the education system bearing its alarmingly poor fruit, millions of dollars being rorted by our politicians, every social benefit like the Arts and the ABC under attack (as per the IPA wish-list) monies are being promised to overseas miners to destroy what's left of the Barrier Reef, Tax breaks for big business that will do SFA for the economy as a whole whilst real tax reform is just a conversation topic and a wink and a nod is given for banks to continue over-exploiting their customers.

Remember Eureka, bring out the Tumbrils, and sharpen the guillotine blades Petals,  2017 is going to be an interesting year.

Hoo-roo,

Shane

The Travesty Implodes.

G'day Possums,

It's been an interesting  fortnight with the whole world seemingly reacting with real concern that a sexist, racist bigot and crook has become the American President after not winning the popular vote.

 With more earthquakes in Japan near the leaking nuclear facility of Fukushima and paralleled with another large disturbance off the North Island of New Zealand, it seems that "The Rapture" so beloved  and anticipated of the holy-roller-happy-clappers, just might have arrived.

Jesus better not come back, though.

Bearded men of Middle-Eastern appearance are not particularly popular with Western  Xtians anywhere at the moment.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ruling Rabble mk#2 are quietly shitting themselves over Trump. He’s about to blow their democracy cover, big time. 

As Rabid-the-Hun and his chorus line of IPA storm-troopers (including the four Ning-Nongs from One Notion) celebrate Trump's every disastrous move, it may become more obvious to the wider electorate that the Emperor there, like the minor Barons here, have no clothes.

 

Approaching Storm

In an muddled attempt to sound plebeian, Truffles sallied forth from his multi million dollar Point Piper pile to inform us he was not one of the elites.

“The people with power and influence in this country are out of touch and not representative of the nation as a whole,” intoned the $200,000,00.00 worth ex member of Goldman-Sachs and Cayman Island and 7/11  investor.

Truffles saved his harshest criticism for the ABC. “You switch on the ABC and all you see is elites,” he told the ABC’s 7:30 in an extensive interview, whilst allegedly looking in a mirror.

“When will it be my turn to have some influence over this country?” asked the winner of the 2001 Centenary Medal for services to the corporate sector  14 months into his incompetent "leadership" of this nation.

It seems that the global political elites are now blaming people like themselves for the problems they have denied existing which are really created by the poor who don't actually exist!

Kookaburra

Trump’s ascendancy is America’s eclipse but is not Trump’s fault.  As J.K. Galbraith, the late American polymath, observed 30 years ago, political leadership almost exactly reflects the people who vote for it.

As it does here... and leading fascist of the ruling rabble Bookshelves Brandis has further embarrassed his own thuggish storm-troopers by privately opining over an "open microphone" to Tardis state apparatchik Bulldog Kroger that the Liarbril opposition in The Deep North is "mediocre" and that his own federal rabble is more than a bit concerned with not only One Notion's growing popularity amongst the deplorables but that his own side isn't travelling so well either.

Jeez.... that wouldn't have anything to do with your serial incompetence, would it Bookshelves?

 Isn't it wonderful how the ruling rabble only really see themselves in others?

In NSW, Liarbril Fuhrer Pretty-Boy Baird has succeeded in legislating a limit to ICAC's effectiveness and to stall the handing down of findings on "Operation Credo" that would show the Ruling Rabble to be a as corrupt as many suspect.

If there was any doubt that the Liarbril Party is corrupt to the core then this action is the proof positive.

A Royal Commission into this dysfunctional political group needs calling as soon as possible.

From the refuge for the untalented, unimaginative, third rate intellect came the thought bubble from The  IPA’s Aaron Lane who said there was a ‘‘moral case’’ to abolish minimum wages to allow people to experience the ‘‘dignity of work’’.

‘‘Our position is an ideological one and we don’t shy away from that,’’ he said. ‘‘This position can be seen as heartless and wanting people to work for a low wage.  But it’s about empowering individuals in being able to choose their own employment.’’

A sort of "This will hurt me as much as it will you" attitude of Victorian, patriarchal irrelevance.

I had said in my blogs Petals, a full year before Rabid-the-Hun and the Ruling Rabble Mk#1 were inflicted on us, that things had gone from Orwellian to the Kafka-esque.

It's nice to know that the septic tanks with their "Trumphant" Tea-Party are in a similar place too.  We wont stand out as idiots, as much!

Kookaburra

Then there was the final episode for the year of QandA  where Indigenous playwright and actress, Nakkiah Lui utterly demolished Vichy Abetz on his IPA inspired plan to abolish 18C, and Chinese Australian, Benjamin Law made much more foriegn policy sense than The Ugly American's minion, Almost-a-Jesuit, Sheridan.

In wiping the floor with them, Lui and Law made Vichy Abetz looked like the tired old Dinosaur he is and Sheridan a hysterical catlic schoolboy prefect. Labor's Terri Butler spoke well, too particularly when she wasn't cut off or interrupted by host Jones or Murdoch minion, Sheridan.

I particularly enjoyed that Abetz looked so uncomfortable but was angered that he again verballed  Triggs, misappropriating and misquoting one of her comments as did Sheridan.... neither of these right-wingers can be trusted in any way except for their deviousness and duplicity.

Hoo-roo Possums,

do you get the feeling that with the budget deficit 8 times larger than when ruling rabble Mk#1 started mismanaging finances, that Truffles' NBN is a shambles and costing more and more to do less, unemployment is growing ,wages are static, manufacturing is in decline, ex pollies are rorting entitlements and free speech is really under attack.... all is imploding?

Shane.

Libertarian Follies on QandA

Shane with Brushes

G'day Possums,

some more pics from the Archibald which impressed me and a little rant about two amusingly pathetic performances on QandA.

Ohh,  my goodness....  who in their right (sic) mind(s) decided to place two of the most inept, cant driven and lightweight  proselytisers for the Fascist State into public display on national television?

On QandA (7-11-16), the panellists displayed for all to savour were Don Watson, (probably best known as a speech writer for Labor PM Paul Keating) whose droll understated sharpness of wit empathised with the clinical mind of celebrated Canadian social shit stirrer, Noami Klein who was in turn was supported  by Labor leftist, Anthony Albanese.

Clara Adolphs, Terry Serio

This formidable trio were pitted against two of the most inept lightweights ever to spill from the Coots-With Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe, (IPA) kindergarten, the newly minted (and probably one only term) senator, Jimbo, Pasty Paterson  and the (ever present, on ABC, at least) false hope of the Downer political dynasty and failed candidate for the federal seat of Goldstein, Georgina, Gorgon Downer. Both, who seemed determined to adhere as instructed or brainwashed to spout the IPA script much of which sounded borrowed from the both the Ugly American, Murdoch's press and the equally dysfunctional "Tea-Party" currently dismembering the American electorate. These two social vandals conclusively proved for the public that the IPA must be a place only inhabited by the most intellectually barren and empathy deficient individuals. (It's worth noting that the science deficient climate change denier, Mal-Addled Roberts from the One Notion Party is also a member and has received funding from them to travel overseas to imbibe more nonsense to dull his already limited perceptions.)

Guy Maestri, Shattered (Griggs)

Uncomfortable at being pulled back to relevance to answer audience questions rather than tangentially delivering their rote propaganda pieces, Pasty's impassive face only showed some emotion as a smug sneer split it when Klein correctly called into question his professed  belief in climate change as a lie and that he and his right-wing think-tank ilk were more than happy to stall any progress toward alternative energy than closing down the polluting fossil fuel industry in attempting to save the planet. Gorgon Downer on the other hand, when eventually able to launch into her interminably mangled and stumbling answers gave me the impression that she would be a perfect dinner party guest to close it down through utter, utter boredom.

India Mark, Day at the Gallery with Dane Taylor

As Jane Caro tweeted, this pair's "confected outrage about freedom of speech and 18C" was also shot to pieces by Klein, who observed that the attacks on Gillian Triggs were very similar to those by other right-wing groups in both Britain and the U.S. who see any restraint on their libertarian ability to smear at will an affront to their rights and also that their faux dismay at Trump's proposed wall against the Mexicans was nonsense and in fact was already in place at the Manus and Nauru refugee concentration camps.

John Wolseley, Peter Wegner

This pair of Cuckoo's in the nest also avoided the obvious reason as to why so many places are in political turmoil. Their adherence and promotion of a capitalist system badly in decline, that disadvantages the majority and is causing the death of the planet not only indicates their limited imagination and lack of social responsibility but also their real fear, that of community.

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

Sam Harris, Zoe Young

Toni Zeltzer, Sinead Davies

The Art of Lifting and Leaning...

Shane between the Lifter and the Leaner

G'day Possums,

Mrs Wombat and I toddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery the other day to see the  finalists of the 2016 Archibald Prize.

This year the prize was awarded to Louise Hearman for her portrait titled "Barry." 

Unusually, being behind glass has added to the diagonal depth this finely handled depiction of satirist and artist Barry Humphries. 

Barry, Louise Hearman

A work, like many in this show, of  modest proportions and it's C17th Dutch heritage playing a Baroque space, to project the head  to the front of the picture plane where it is isolated by dual light sources as on a darkened stage. Wearing  a white coat and shirt belying his more outrageous characters you are allowed to concentrate on the slightly bemused but intense look Humphries returns to the viewer.  The bare board in the "unfinished " lower parts of the figure seem to indicate the artifice of both Humphries and the artists professions.

Annie Smithers, Daniel Butterworth

The title for this blog entry came from juxtaposition of the over life-size and adjacent portraits of Annie Smithers and Josh Frydenberg.  Smithers is the chef/owner of du Fermier restaurant just up the road from our burrow in Trentham; and in admirably succinct and honest utterance declared to artist Daniel Butterworth that "...the bottom line for her was that all her hard work ends up down the toilet." 

No such profundity from Frydenberg, though. Smugly comfortable depicted in his blue-tied banality, Camillo De Luca's portrait aims in its materials of charcoal and wood with copper frame to indicate his ministerial position of Resources and Energy with a white halo apparently symbolising his outstanding achievements. Just what these achievements are, I can't think which is perhaps why it's so small. He, Frydenberg, belongs to the ruling rabble which is systematically destroying the country's economy and degrading its social contract so effectively that we are becoming a pariah nation. This "rising star" of the Liarbril Party is painted on two sheets of plywood making a square which not only approximates his dullness but by being split down the middle is probably closer to the truth of his real aspirations than the artist intends.

Polymath, Camillo De Luca

The rawness of the ply was to signify a work in progress though I think it more indicative of the conceptual and policy vacuum that is forcing Australia into the abyss. That he considers Frydenberg a Polymath is  more cynical than I can bear. This is  a person whose public function is to support the most nasty, brutish, right-wing rabble this land has ever seen and whose ex-IPA members even advocate dismembering the arts and stopping any funding for it. A place now where any frank advice is met with being attacked, sacked or publicly denigrated and practising the near criminality of rorting entitlements is the order of the day. 

Smithers on the other hand, actually produces food. She prepares food and feeds people. She is depicted streaming with her own sweat and the steaming  rivulets of the kitchen and is seated in the exhausted quiet at the end of a very long day.... whilst mentally preparing for the next. 
Unlike the "Leaner" Frydenberg,  Smithers' is a "Lifter" whose productivity is real, not just "spin."  "du Fermier" 42 High St Trentham  Ph: (03) 5424 1634. French Garden to plate, excellent food but be prepared to book well ahead.

Wandering through the gallery later we came across Patricia Piccinini's  "Graham" but the surreality was not the film prop sculpture but the people standing around listening into head phones.

Plastic Arts

One more to finish off,  Alice by William Rhodes a lovely little quiet piece of intimacy.

Alice by William Rhodes

Hoo-Roo petals,

Shane