..but Sir, the dog ate my homework....

G'day Petals,

it's been I think a watershed week of major events .. none of which auger well for Oz's future.... a future where corruption, bribery and lying will be endemic and the rule of law will only be for those administering it.

Pics are the backyard on a frosty morning.

A chink in the armour of democracy has now widened with the most incompetent health minister (voted by doctors) in 25 years and now a lying, cruel, devious and fascist non-immigration minister, Dodo Dutton being handed a single department to oversee the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Border Force and the policy functions of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Dodo will have the power to overturn tribunal decisions he doesn't like (which is a lot) and if anything needs investigation he will do it.

What could go wrong with that?  Consider: he thinks refugee advocates should be jailed and he's also not one to back away from incarcerating Australian citizens, too?  A tradition, you might say with ruling rabble immigration ministers going back to Mandy "Il Patrone" Vanstone who cost the taxpayer $4.5 Millions with her wrongful treatment of Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau.

Bookshelves Brandis was nearly in tears at the "presser" announcing this "super ministry" folly, as he has had his areas of incompetence diminished, losing oversight of our spies at ASIO and the AFP; and unable to really explain why something not broken needs fixing, Prime Miniature, Truffles Turdball re-iterated his cunning survival philosophy of keeping friends close and his enemies much closer by giving Dodo enough rope to eventually hang himself.

The subtext of this is that "Immigration" is now called "Border Protection"  and fear of the Outside and Other, now has it's own department called "Homeland Security".

Orwell would love it and Kafka would appreciate its participants.

A FOI search for the documentation of the $30.000,000.00 "gift" to Foxtel,  allegedly for the promotion of women's sport has found that no documentation exists. Yep, Nought, Nada, zip, Ingen, Puudub, Hi, Aucun, gornit, Ninguna, Egyik sem, Keiner, Nessuna, Dim!

Fi-fi Fifield, the Minister, irresponsible, has refused to be interviewed on the interesting topic of the judicious and transparent use of public money and  also, 1/ Why was it given to a private Ugly-American-Murdoch media body? 2/ What if any were the particular obligations attached to the gift? 3/ Why wasn't it put out to tender? 4/ Why was the cash-strapped ABC not given the taxpayer's money? And finally, 5/ where was Arfah, Da Spv Sinodinas and his brown paper bag when all this was taking place?

Bribery and corruption?

Ahh.... it's what the ruling rabble seem to do best and just about the only thing we can rely on them for!

But gifts to Foxtel are small beer when you can rip-off the public to the tune of $13 Billion.

It is strongly alleged that two major cotton growers are being aided and abetted by the ruling rabble State Government of  NSW and its bureaucrats to steal environmental water in the Murray-Darling basin. We say alleged but there was nothing alleged in the phone message of one bureaucrat's phone call to a lobbyist telling him that he could provide "de-badged" government documents on sensitive water decisions and nothing alleged about the film of high powered pumps working over a river with low levels or the film of a couple of the protagonists attempting to bullshit their way out of their carving up crown land for their private use.

Barnyard Joyce, minister allegedly responsible ( and this is a REAL allegation, that he's a responsible minister) went into hiding and pushed out his deputy to obfuscate a response. But to be fair to Barnyard, he did have a bit on his plate, with his boof-headed side-kick, Matty Mumbles Canavan resigning from cabinet for discovering his dual citizenship.

Notice: not resigning from parliament like the two Greens who recently found a similar fault in their senate candidature status (and pettily and roundly castigated by Truffles as "being sloppy") but only from cabinet where he explained that, in lieu of blaming Labor for his situation, it was his mother's fault!  ( She may have voted Labor back in the 70's) When she decided to become an Italian and signed him up too...and didn't, at age 25, tell him!

Anyone outside Oz, reading the above:  all this is absolutely true!

Our ruling rabble is the most corrupt, venal, hypocritical cabal of neer-do-wells ever to pretend to govern this country, having systematically torn up the social contract, been regressive in dealing with refugees, women, environment, education, indigenous people, and human rights and now they further lower standards of parliamentary behaviour. They are the pits these IPA lickspittles!

Poor fellah, my country.

hoo-roo Possums,

Shane