Down the Slippery Slope

Shane at Geriwerd

G'day Possums,

Oz slipped further into the abyss of fascism this week and in true Aussie long weekend fashion, few noticed..... so we'll intersperse a  few pics from Geriwerd, aka The Grampians to keep the "long-weekend" mood which is a lovely bit of country to visit as long as you bring buckets of insect repellent.

Bookshelves Brandis has added another scalp to his trophy cabinet having, with support from two boorish Deep Northerners, bullied the Solicitor-General into resigning. 

Brandis has lied to parliament, lied about "consulting" the SG and blames Labor for this resignation when in fact it's what Bookshelves wants.  He wants a lap dog Solicitor General and to control any legal advice being sought. So instead of having impartial advice, Brandis wants the certainty of his own right-wing political thinking.

Lake Fyans

It remains to be seen which less than suitable IPA apparatchik will get the nod for this  $750,000.00 per annum job.

Near Silverband Falls

Deputy Prime Miniature and Johnny Depp tragic, Barnyard Joyce, after prevaricating to the tune of $80,000.00 about its release, has been embarrassed by the contents of a letter the Head of  the Agriculture Department, Paul Grimes sent to Joyce 18 months ago pointing out the minister's lack of integrity in blaming public servants for his Barnyard's own incompetence and misleading of parliament. 
Grimes was later sacked after refusing to be cowed.

Both of these cases warrant the removal of the minister but nothing like this will happen..... in fact a more ludicrous defence cannot be seen than that of Arfah, Da Spiv Sinodinas, (he of 18 times uncertain memory about which banned developer paid whom, what, when he was fundraising treasurer for the liarbrils and get's a "not proven" verdict in a corruption enquiry) blathering on about what a great party, a broad church the Liarbrils are and how Both Barnyard and Bookshelves are beaut blokes!

Truffles, running backward, has announced that there should be laws to stop people protesting and stalling the continued degradation of the environment by quoting his loser of a predecessor, Rabid-the-Hun that Coal is good for us and renewable energy doesn't really work.... except in Spain, Denmark Germany, Sweden, Finland and Norway but we don't want or need to know about that.

Which could be seen as a distraction to the polls which indicate that Truffles' popularity is worse than that of Rabid's which was one of Truffles salient arguments of why 12 months ago, he needed to replace him.

 

Kangaroo's Sparring

A special rapporteur from the UN has criticized Australia's poor protections for Human Rights and its creation of "an atmosphere of fear, censorship and retaliation."  Plastic Attorney General, Bookshelves Barndis replied briefly with what seemed to amount to a, "F***k- off!"

 

Camp-Site, Grampians

Liarbril Party Protection Squad, the Australian Federal Police have decided that there was nothing at all to see in Slipper-gate and that Slippery Pete, Chicken Thighs Brough,  Sleaze-Boy Ashby and Chwissie the Whyning-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect Pyne are all good chaps who don't deserve investigation. Right! 

Do I hear faint echoes of The Horst Wessel?

 

Bunjil and his two Dingoes and the protection required from heritage conscious visitors . 

Ex Liarbril, IPA apparatchik and HR Nicholls devotee and Family First Senator,  Bob-the-Shonky-Builder, Day has decided that he will stick around parliament long enough to make sure he can  crucify the Building Unions he hates by supporting the ABCC legislation.  Regardless of the alleged $32,000,000.00  of liabilities, the $12.5 Millions owed to sub contractors and tradies  and the more than 200 families without the homes they have paid for, Senator Shonky- Bob would prefer to maintain the theoretical and narrow-minded  ideological stupidity that has landed all who have dealt with his business in such a mess rather than actually admit how wrong economically this IPA inspired de-regulated nonsense is.

Silverband Falls

Someone preparing a PHD looking into the actual outcomes of applying right wing ideological  theory to real life situations would find a trove of evidence in studying the malign prognostications of the IPA have had on various business' over the years.

When the law of the nation is trashed for narrow, sectional party political interests can the law then be ignored?

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

....are we there yet?

Shane in a Hole

G'day Petals,

It's a truism that five minutes into a long car journey children will often ask, "Are we there yet?" And there's an old metaphor saying that if you're making a situation worse you are "...digging a hole for yourself," and that the best way to minimize the problem is to stop digging.

But this is Australia, in which the ruling rabble Mk2 is digging us all into social and economic oblivion.

It has come to light that these genii who tout themselves as the best of economic managers actually fall way short of their myth-making hyperbole.

In 2021 Qatar will make royalties of around $26.6 billion from shipping some 100 million cubic metres of LNG. Australia on the other hand, shipping around the same volume, will receive $800 million. Even after the Henry Tax review of 2010 warned that The resource Rent tax "...fails to collect an appropriate and constant share of rents from... projects"  ...and that... "the uplift rates are over-compensated for..."   Now, let's hear again what fine models of economic management they are.

Trentham Falls

A new chapter in the race to the bottom has also been seen with Senators MacDonald and O'Sullivan reprising the thuggish, boorish untermenschen roles last performed when the duo attempted to pillory Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs in a past senate enquiry.

This time their victim was Solicitor General, Justin Gleeson who not only had the temerity to disagree with the Ruling Rabble's faux Attorney General, Senator Bookshelves Brandis but also point out to him that he couldn't agree to changes in the law without consultation.

 Gleeson, also objected1/, to Brandis using his earlier opinion – that a particular bill would withstand high court challenge – when the bill had been changed since that time and 2/ , that Bookshelves be the only person who, first, should be asked for permission before anyone sought advice of the Solicitor General.

This is the definitive  Brandis: an oily, slippery, mendacious and dictatorial bully-boy from the Deep North whose overweening ambition is best seen in his scant regard for the national good and his corralling all power to himself.

It's interesting that Brandis is so inept both politically and as Attorney General. He not only keeps getting caught out but in the ensuing fracas of his own making he serves only to further highlight  the unbelievable incompetence of the Ruling Rabble Mk2.

Trentham Falls

"So, we artists are not “legitimate students.”
Our profession will not “benefit Australia economically”.
You want to “encourage students to study”….by taking away opportunities for the next Hugh Jackman, Jackie Weaver or Tony Sheldon, to name a few?"

Writing in his blog,   AbStar921 – Musical Critic    takes acute aim at un-education minister Flappy-Head Birmingham's proposal that the best way to have an "innovative and agile" nation is to 1st, make Uni fees so high only the wealthy could attend and 2nd to make every course business/work related... so... 
F***k the Arts! 

Taking a leaf from Pastie Paterson's IPA inspired drivel, Flappy-Head exposed his truly Neanderthal lack of cognisance of culture as the basis of civilization because, as he sees it,  there's "no economic benefit in the arts."

I did warn years ago Petals that the Huns were at the Gates.  http://shanewombat.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/viewing-nice-things-and-huns-at-gates.html           
Well, they've well and truly arrived.

Trentham

And speaking of Holes...ex-Maj. Gen. James Molan architect of the "Turn-Back-The-Boats" policy last week exposed his... right between his ears.

With a truly disturbing Goebbels-like performance, patronisingly batting away or ignoring any dissenting or alternative opinion, Molan claimed that even though he hadn't been there, our refugee concentration camps on Nauru and Manus "....you will find the most extraordinary medical facilities that most Australian towns would give their right arm for.....”  and, "...we are so far ahead of refugee camps throughout the world that it is not funny.”

He is one who will never admit his view is not the most considered and correct one. His world view is, it seems, is the only view and one part of his rationale over the Iraq war (and ignoring the false reasoning for going there in the first place,) was that, "there were more Iraqi's alive when I left  because of what I did than there otherwise would have been."

We can only be thankful perhaps that this blinkered vision of aggression was an unsuccessful senate candidate for the ruling rabble in 2016.

It's a pity the Ruling Rabble Mk2  can't concentrate on running the country instead of attacking Conroy's replacement in the senate.. oohh, hang on, they are.... into the ground!

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

From Farce to Perfidy and Back

Shane in his Budgie Smugglers

G'day Possums,

once upon a time there was a quaint notion that being a government minister your behaviour was to be exemplary, sober, considered and beyond reproach, at least in public. 
Although the "truth" offered as policy might be modified, twisted, compromised and adjusted to fit changing parameters from its original utterance, it would still have a kernel of its original intent and could, in most cases, be defended. 

There was an expectation too that ministers had the welfare of the nation at heart before all else, particularly personal profit.

Ahh, the Good-Old-Days...The Golden Past!

Last week I mentioned  the storms that brought South Australia's power grid down and the fact that  the event was used by Truffles and his ruling rabble Mk#2 to try and belt-the-bejesus out of renewables in favour of ..in favour of...ah...er.. I'm still not quite sure.

Fictions Frydenberg then had a meeting with all the state energy ministers and re-iterated that their targets of around 40-50% renewable energy by 2050 were too onerous, and too costly (to the coal producers and fracking lobby) to be really attainable in a real world scenario and the states would be better off limiting their designs downward to the federal target of 23% by 2020. "Ya see," he said, "re-newables can't provide energy security the way coal can!" Fictions then  failed to offer an explanation of what this "secure energy source" was going to be and how the electricity from it would be distributed when the cheap steel in the Chinese supplied pylons bent and allied with the apparent lack of suitably robust foundations, fell over when hit simultaneously by both a breeze and a waywardly suicidal Orange-Bellied Parrot.

 

Lorikeets

Not to be outdone in ludicrousness, up popped Uncle Otto's Tasmanian progeny, Vichy Abetz who...in...his...faux...measured...nasally....monotonally ...high...pitch offered his peculiar brand of wisdom in that Nuclear would solve all our problems ...and then some.

That a nuclear plant would probably take 20-30 years to start producing power seemed to escape the ken of this endangered Tassie species.  By which time, the once pristine waters surrounding him would probably be well and truly irradiated from contaminated material still pouring out  into the Pacific at 300 Tonnes of  per day from the broken Fukushima plant, so we wouldn't have to do that ourselves.

 

Which is a good thing because we can't do much anyway.. oh, coffee; we're good at making that.... cars.... manufacturing, nahh.  The Ruling Rabble Mk#2 have been as quiet as cat-thieves as Ford produced its last vehicle and General Motors is about to fold, leaving what many expect to be 200,000 more unemployed to be added to the nearly 800,000 looking for the 165,000 jobs available nationwide. It was interesting to note that the figures of workers being made redundant at Ford seemed to get smaller with every hourly news service, particularly on the ruling rabble's new tabloid propaganda vehicle, the ABC where the numbers went from around 1500 to less than half that by days end. It was almost as if the ABC were being told to test which number was most popular.

 

Lorikeets

Now, I'm not accusing the ruling rabble of "spinning" this disastrous legacy from the Ruling Rabble Mk #1 of Eleventy Hockey and Rabid-the-Hun.

They wouldn't  do that would they...would they?

Well, not unless the UNHCR produced a report on our refugee concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Islands which showed that 88% of these refugees (yes, they are refugees, not "illegals") are suffering from depressive anxiety dis-orders and PTSD! .

Then you might find that Dodo Dutton's Department of Non-Immigration is bleeding the taxpayer of around $8,000,000.00 a year with its 82 "communications" staff, 22 of which are apparently being trained on camera and in other media to obfuscate "controversial issues" like inadequate health facilities, education, and care standards less than what is expected in a maximum security prison.

That it would cost the nation much less to allow these refugees into the country, house them and maintain them back to mental and physical health than all the billions of dollars this cruel  ideological bullshit is costing us at present really makes you wonder what brand of ethics this ruling rabble have inculcated?

There are two sorts... the first example was on show at the Malaysian Grand Prix where  Branden Stobbs, 29,  Edward Leaney, 25, Nicolas Kelly, 27, Thomas Laslett, 28, Thomas Whitworth, 28, James Paver, 27, Adam Pasfield 25, Timothy Yates, 29, and Jack Walker who in a coarse display of crude, culturally insensitive humour, undressed to reveal the Malaysian flag emblazoned on their jocks!  Of these expensively privately "educated" boys (note the ages) one was a diplomat's son, another, the last named is, or should we say hopefully, was a staffer for one of the most incompetent ministers in the ruling rabble, Chwissie the Whyne and Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect, Pyne. Given Chwissie's asinine pronouncements of being "the fixer," we wait with baited breath to see his solution to his latest ethical dilemma. And it hasn't gone unnoticed just how fitting they seem for each other.

The second example was the dilemma for the ruling rabble's private security detail, the AFP in finalising its tardy investigation into who "lifted" Slippery Pete's Diary in order to bring down not only him but also the Gillard government. Despite the admission on TV by Chicken Legs Brough that he advised The Sleazy Ashby to do the deed, the AFP have decided that there is "insufficient evidence" to bring charges.  
Kathy Jackson must now feel a palpable sense of relief at the looking-the-other-way-ed-ness of this Aussie F****d Police.

Brandis as Napoleon with apologies to Ingres

A third example was a conglomerate of perfidy by Bookshelves Brandis. who seems to have a bad case of wood-rot and embarrassed himself being caught lying to parliament over what he didn't do and what he said he did. This excuse for an Attorney General is a bloody disgrace to the position; from getting Credlin off a drink driving charge that would have seen most of us lose our license and possibly gain a jail term, employing the underqualified and overpaid IPA clone Timmy The-Twat Wilson as Freedom of Speech Commissioner so he could fund his run at Goldstein, to "offering" Gillian Triggs a sinecure if she "bailed" as Commissioner, to stacking judicial posts; and now this sphincter mouthed piece of duplicity is trying to eliminate the Solicitor General from providing any advice to government and empire build his Fascist nest. He should be sacked.... but this is not the old days

Jimmy Paterson, Cosplay

The other ethical sort was on parade t' other day. Jimmy Pastie Paterson, another IPA mutant shoe-horned into the senate, rocked his favourite hobby horse out of the IPA playground in a remarkable demonstration of much movement and no travel.

Pastie, seen here in what is probably his most appropriate cosplay outfit, trotted out his best party piece: that all government funding to sports and the arts be cut. 

He has suggested that the ANG's "Blue Poles" by Jackson Pollack should be sold as it has accrued 270 times its original cost.  

It's worth noting that back in '74-5 that the $1.3 Million paid, as well as the work too was heavily criticised by formalist ilk similar in taste and perspicacity to the arid personality strutting before us now.

Is the young, smug and inexperienced Pastie, (28 yo) the definitive proof of cynicism: One who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing? 

Would that he had been around to advise Lorenzo D'Medici, Katherine the Great, G. van Swieten, Belyayev, John Soane or Peggy Guggenheim.  Why, he even could have disagreed with Churchill who decided not to cut the Arts during WW2, because, as Churchill then said, "That's what we are fighting for!"

How much he would have saved ! How much more pleasure we all would have had fingering our accounting machines and entering our debit and profit ledgers.  I'm sure that when his one hand is clapping Pastie is imagining stimulating dollar signs. 

You can see dear Petal or two, what  a warm encompassing and open visage we have in our representative, young Pastie. 
How can this desiccated Dickensian mind ever possibly imagine it could lead anything?

Hoo-roo petals,

Shane.