Mood:  accident prone

Mmm, funny how the front page today of the Murdoch owned Sydney Daily Telegraph has sanitised the Sydney skyline by airbrushing the typical brown smudge of smog.

Could it be the smog is an inconvenient truth about promoting more motorways and hence more traffic on said tarmac? The fact that literally 1/4 to 1/3 of the Sydney landscape is already dedicated to motorised transport whether it be roads, garages, carparks, and probably other land tenure doesn't seem to rate. But the truth is that's alot of valuable real estate quarantined for cars and trucks and arguably quite excessive already.

Indeed we recently went to NSW Dept of Health website and noticed  their figure up to about 2009 or so that premature deaths from smog in Sydney is now running at 640 to 1,400 people a year. Putting aside the rather large statistical spread of those figures, it is clear that smog is a killer "right here, right now" as one federal politician Greg Hunt is prone to say.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph articles today are prominent in their support for the M4 East and M5 road expansions, but NO ONE believes they won't just choke up like Parramatta Road in a few years unless there is substitution off the roads. 

We understand Australians buy 1 million cars a year, and a great many of them are in Sydney right here, right now. 

There is token reference to the North West rail line in the SDT package of stories but it's a left over really. It seems the package is all about building the next road. And given head of infrastructure Nick Greiner is a road builder one doesn't have to be a genius to know who the Coalition aligned newspaper is barracking for.

No wonder the public are cynical about the Murdoch media, not just politicians. How about addressing the smog Mr Editor? Like supporting conversion to bicycle based transport for short trips? 

It seems to us fundamental change to transport in Sydney is just too big an ideological problem for an editor who is prone to bashing the current Mayor of Sydney who actually supports bicycle based infrastructure. 

Posted by editor at 12:00 PM NZT

Updated: Friday, 12 July 2019 12:09 PM NZT

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Mood:  d'oh

Interesting to read Laurie Oakes in a News Corp lead opinion piece this weekend with a comment that only a twisted mind would view Tony Abbott's recent words as suggesting a tear down of  Aboriginal tent embassy.

Oh really?

Wikipedia carries this entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tent_Embassy

"There have been a number of suspicious fires at the site, with the most devastating being the loss of 31 years of records when the container burnt down in June 2003.^[8]"

Reference: "^ Yaxley, Louise (19 June 2003). "Aboriginal Tent Embassy burnt out". The World Today. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 31 May 2010.

We say Oakes is suffering amnesia, and not just about suspicious fires during the halcyon days of the Howard regime served by Tony Abbott. We note David Oldfield nurtured his bigoted One Nation party in Tony Abbott's electorate office.

Fact is Tony Abbott is sitting on the fence on constitutional reform in favour of the Indigenous and is part of the former racist regime on native title.

We say Piers Akerman gave the true version of Tony Abbott's views on the Aboriginal Tent Embassy today in the Sunday News Corp tabloid - an honest form of racism, if you like. To quote the bloated one:

"The 40th anniversary of this monstrosity should be it's last."

 Or in colloquial terms - tear it down.

13 years ago Tony Abbott's current mentor, then PM John Howard, delivered bucket loads of extinguishment of native title.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Including the lazy big media giving a shallow view of political reality.

Posted by editor at 6:46 PM EADT

Updated: Sunday, 29 January 2012 6:55 PM EADT

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Mood:  d'oh

The Greens and the Left in effect believe people have the right to die trying to be free in Australia. And not persecuted when they succeed in their marathon trek.

The Right in effect, like Gerard Henderson today, and some others who should know better, prefer people die in silence in a theoretical queue in the country of persecution, or a living death in a hostile intermediate country, away from the Australian public eye - in equal or greater numbers.

These folks from the Right are the ones who read down say 650,000 deaths in the Iraq war, to "tens of thousands" or "over one hundred thousand" deaths in the news reports last week. Raw numbers of death of innocents is a very slippery concept for these types - like Henderson.

There is alot of talk about derisorily low numbers of boat people swamping the 13,500 annual refugee intake figure. But the treaty on status of refugees doesn't refer to arbitrary limits, it refers to "fear of persecution".

Fact is Australia is lazy. Henderson is lazy. The ALP and the Coalition are lazy.

And dishonest - boat people are a scapegoat for the 250-300,000 economic immigrants that apparently Australia has no trouble accomodating every year not least for cheap labour for big business. I don't remember Henderson, Morrison or George Pell for that matter saying we should hypothecate economic immigration to refugee lives? That is less of the former and more of the latter.

When they start talking about that we might start listening to the alleged moral analysis of the authority figures. Until then we will do our refugee duty in the legal sector.

Posted by editor at 7:27 AM EADT

Updated: Wednesday, 21 December 2011 2:01 PM EADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

SAM Editor's view of the withdrawn Australia Network tender:

 1. Rudd was keen either when PM or after to trade support for the government for Murdoch's greed, with the price being sell down of ABC turf. A logical if amoral bargain. 

 2. Now post NOTW scandal cabinet make a very different political calculation that they can buck the Murdoch regime, and maybe they can too (no disrespect to the Sphere who writes for the Daily Liberal Party tabloid).

3. The sabotaged tender keeping Aunty in the "soft diplomacy" business, charter of independence notwithstanding, suggests to this punter and probably quite a few more in the beltway and general public land (?) that the ALP are masters at the fix, same as it ever was.

4. Item 3 above is inconsistent with Laurie Oakes' theory that the sabotaged tender will evidence incompetence to the public as the resonating message. Au contraire - that's not our experience, in NSW where funny things happen too often to be random.

5. Rather all this evidences the jaded reality of national politics where good process and good policy outcomes are disconnected from political economy and careerism. Same as it ever was (refer Giuseppe De Lampedusa's awesome novel The Leopard for a beautiful case study in the context of the Sicilian aristocracy).

Posted by editor at 12:07 PM EADT

Updated: Sunday, 11 December 2011 10:34 AM EADT

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Mood:  accident prone

We've managed to flush out the defensive Peta Credlin profile from the flagship of the Liberal Party media machine, namely The Weekend Australian, via their colour supplement and teaser on page 1 main paper.

It's a grasping the nettle sort of situation for the Liberal Party and the newspaper itself so heavily invested in that side of corporate politics.

The opening line is priceless, referring to those "swirling rumours".

We posted this on facebook, last week, complete with politician network, as follows:

Tom McLoughlin

I think it's time to acknowledge the rumour swirling around the Canberra insider club aka beltway. The rumour, even if false, is that the leader of the opposition is having an affair with his chief of staff. I've heard this rumour exists, from two independent sources now in the last 4 weeks, the latest political in Canberra. Even if it is not true it is swirling. Abbott's family values platform may be up for review in an election. Wednesday at 2:31pm

Of all the verbs journalist Kate Legge could have chosen in her opening sentence, it turns out to be an echo of "swirling". We used the same word on a Crikey thread last week also.

And the two independent sources of the rumour "swirling" in Canberra are real.

Four years ago at the outset of this SAM blog we nailed Abbott for being a student thug in the 1970ies.

Now we offer these comments on Credlin:

1. For a West Winger fan she missed the one about Josh Lyman ("joking lie man"!) and the imperative of the chief policy adviser staying out of the spot light - "it's not what we do" he laments.

2. Seems her husband and no doubt herself are interested in two things out of this story, given it had to be written, with social media closing in:

(a) to harvest the profile position for her own career ambition to be the first conservative female PM, if and when Abbott crashes (as predicted by the real political journalism today by ... Laurie Oakes in the sister SDT), that is some insurance post Abbott;

(b) to get ahead of the social media curve and control the story of those dirty laundry rumours.

3. But what the Liberal Party can't publish are updated pictures of happy families - the Abbott marriage, the Loughnane-Credlin marriage, in contra distinction to the Happy Couple PR image of PM Gillard and partner at CHOGM recently over in Perth - under byline of Gemma Jones of the Sydney Daily Telegraph in the belly of the conservative beast, so to speak. That sort of says it all.

 

4. Credlin and her allies may want to note (unkindly) this story leads the soft and gossip section of the newspaper with not one reference of substance in the main newspaper. That's an expendable kind of PR perch there. Most serious colour mag profiles have a cover article in the main press too.

5. Despite clumsy metaphors about dirty laundry and washing of Abbott's lycra, the article ominously did not meet or even attempt to address the real "swirling" rumour and by ramping Credlin's attractive 40 year frame can only intensify the swirl, so to speak. Is this indeed the infamous News Ltd turning of the rack on Abbott's DLP economics and a warning of corporate big brother to get back on script re the IMF funding etc? One does wonder. If so, it highlights the danger for Ms Expendable in a much bigger game of real politik thuggery internal to the Coalition over 'pure' free market economics after the GFC made it look like the mumbo jumbo it really is, and of course, IR ideology etc.

And what we noticed about alleged bright burning brain Credlin in my google research last night, pre The Australian story, was this quote with clumsy, awful grammar, of a so called lawyer of words amongst mere mortals, courtesy of the Sacred Heart Women newsletter:

 "wouldn't be able to have achieved the things I have ...." Whoa, stop, help, give me oxygen, grammar crime underway! Passive, not active, repetition of word choice, excess length.

That ain't no Ainslie Hayes talking there (badly hazed Ainslie - everyone's favourite conservative on West Wing show, and the hilarous Gilbert & Sullivan episode with the dessicted hate flower delivery, saved by gallant Sam Christ Born err Seaborn).

And note the confusion over hair colour - seems some therapy may be called for contrary to the 'happy in her self' cliche from Ms Legge. Perhaps via the First Bloke known for his hairdressing and listening skills?

Posted by editor at 3:06 PM EADT

Updated: Saturday, 5 November 2011 3:42 PM EADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

We've met one or two in our political activist career, both nominally same side and opposition. The truism about the enemy being behind you tends to apply.

These short arses can be quite recalcitrant about their own central and special power role. They won't compromise. They will push and push and push until yes, metaphorically they magically grow another 12 inches from 5 to 6 feet as properly befits their status in the world.

This is the psychology the Australian people are dealing with in Joyce, who as smart and plausible as he is, assumes above all democracy that he must know best. That is, an attack on democracy itself aligned to corporate executive self interest.

Napolean is th exemplar, who famously spent human lives as a daily allowance of cannon fodder. 

No doubt union hard cases have another psychology again, of ideological rejection of individual talent and profit above the group interest.

Pre GFC the corporate free trade mantra might have been valid, but those days are gone, well gone. Govt intervention is highly necessary including nationalisation of the carrier again.

Posted by editor at 9:17 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 30 October 2011 9:19 AM NZT

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Mood:  accident prone

Really.So what the hell is the point of this post? You work it out, smarties. Caio, caio.

Posted by editor at 11:24 AM NZT

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Mood:  down

Chris Uhlmann's spouse is an ALP politician which is well known in the belt way of insiders, but not to the general ABC public audience. 

Here is a beltway report of same:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/05/06/chris-uhlmann-a-pro-says-abbott-but-is-there-an-abc-double-standard/

Uhlmann runs his pompous jaded cynicism against The Greens tonight on the 7.30 Report. We think it's projection of his own flaws.

His concluding punchline is that the Greens are just like any other political party by failing to criticise Asher, who has quit the C'th Ombudsman role. 

Wrong.

Wrong for failing to disclose his own ALP family connection.

Wrong on the merits because anyone in said beltway knows that no one else at the Senate Select Committee from the major parties was ever going to pursue the questions that needed to be asked, other than the Greens, regarding the desperate plight of asylum seekers and broken detention policy.

Asher in effect voted with his morality and his heart to save peoples' lives, which both major parties have abrogated with extended mandatory detention, not least in the face of Dept of Immigration senior bureaucrates saying the system is broken.

Which by definition makes the Greens a political party, granted, by cooperating in asking critical questions the answers of which the public has every Right to Know.

But it also makes the Greens a very different kind of political party to the lazy, arrogant born to rule characters in the two major parties. Including said ALP spouse.

And Uhlmann appears to have deliberately airbrushed out the role the Greens played in embarrassing Gillard on her failed Malaysian solution as an obvious grounds for subjective bias in the quotes from Senator Faulkner. The only real news indeed in the story was that the two major parties are bullies against the Greens and free speech. Nothing new about that. 

What Asher has done is basically verified what most thinking voters already know. That the two major parties stink with inflated self interest and have no ideals or convictions and only the Greens fight against injustice. Because if Asher had given the dorothy dixer questions to other parties to ask you can be sure the chair of the committee would have shut him down real quick.

But Uhlmann prefes sophistry to reporting the obvious real politik? Conflict of interest have anything to do with that Chris?

Posted by editor at 9:17 PM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 20 October 2011 9:20 PM NZT

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Mood:  quizzical

Unreasonable people change the world and society. Lee Rhiannon is such a person, no doubt. I find her unreasonable no doubt.

But then we have puffer fish (they are poisonous too) Graham Richardson pontificating on talent pool and sanity of elected officials. 

Which might play pre GFC but a wise person said: The definition of madness is doing the same thing - read doing the same kind of politics and business - and expecting a different result.

That's Richo in the frame there. A dinosaur mendicant to big media and corporate interests including the business donation base of the ALP and broader corporate interests.

One notes that Rhiannon's greatest achievement is the promotion of the Democracy4Sale research of such assistance to journalism. 

Even to the extent of a backlash on herself regarding donation to Survey by a foreign nominally hostile power under Gorbachev. The irony.

Mmm. What could Richo tell us about cash in brown bags I wonder? The man has a vested interest. Even if it is ovetaken by the parental career instinct nowdays.

As for talent pool of the Greens 'dropping off' after Brown and Milne'. Not according to reports (Crikey) of the green think tank behind the climate change committee. 

And the WA green senators are superb speakers and thinkers. No problem with talent there. Hanson Young will mature and is already a raw beauty in the political talent stakes that any major party would be proud to annexe, but won't.

Qld practicising lawyer. Medical doctor from Victoria. 

Indeed how deep is the talent in Richo's old mates network, you know, deeper than self interest and Keating's most cynical of philosophy that ushered in the dregs of the middle class?

People in glass houses Richo, will not prove to be a sustainable provider. Understand?

Secondly the deification of leader Bob Brown, admirable as he is, and courage beyond measure, has his human failings. Failing to publicly stand up for Alec Marr would have to be a big one, duly noted. Especially with Garrett's mates behind the unravelling of Marr. More irony.

Posted by editor at 9:21 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 16 October 2011 9:33 AM NZT

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