Mood:
rushedTopic: election Oz 2007
Why would Minister Nelson raise Pine Gap in a boring speech to cruel the scheduled 2pm question time of the last day of the last parliament before the election in 2007? To cruel the radio and web based ratings for the Opposition in their last attack perhaps, while the ABC tv perversely prefers senate question time? To symbolically show who's still boss? To try and wedge peace nik Peter Garrett MP again?
Nelson is fillerbustering as we speak, with a compulsory response by the Opposition Minister to confirm support for the Australia US alliance. More bleeding of listener numbers.
Picture: Peter Costello as PM heir apparent looks very worried about colleague Defence Minister Nelson crashing the scheduled start of the last question time of the last parliament of the Howard 2007 govt. He smells perhaps a very damaging final question time, which indeed has turned feral as we write.
In our press media catchup today we noticed some other startling political lurches in this "feral" last week of parliament as World Today's Eleanor Hall has called it today.
Notice Malcolm Turnbull getting a semi snub here from the sainted Al Gore, while Turnbull is outed by Miranda Devine seeking to display her inside knowledge of serious Liberal Party hierarchy, as Janet Albrechtsen was seen to do from her perch at The Australian recently by calling for Howard to stand down as PM.
We also noticed that this latest of several recent tub thumps by Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegaph today about the shredder in the Heiner affair from back in 1990 is about to become a whisper. A whisper? How so?
Meanwhile the big boys in the News Ltd broadsheet The Australian, yesterday noted a senior Liberal figure with high legal standing and the editorial both junked the Heiner scandal as in any way relevant to the suitability of Kevin Rudd as alternative PM. There goes that tactic in the Big Conservative press.
But Akerman runs it anyway next day in the sister Sydney Daily Telegraph desperate for an arrow to hit, while Gary Linnel formerly a 9 news chief, and other new chum to the SDT Steve Lewis but an old hand in the News Ltd stable has been sent downstairs from The Australian, to both do political reporting there. Get the picture? Akerman, Linnel, Lewis all in on the one national affairs bench at the SDT along with Malcolm Farr who regularly posts front page stories.
That's too many fat *rses for one bench we suspect, well due for a generational change in the age of handover?
Methinks Akerman should assume the position and brace, as the wheels fall off his last pro Howard gambit on the old desperate Heiner matter, a tragedy no doubt but also long gone history.
And thus it seems wiser heads have realised a new attack on Rudd was needed, so switch to the health of Rudd's ticker as here?:
Rudd forced to defend his ticker
and
I had same heart op as Arnie: Rudd
10:55am | Kevin Rudd likens himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger, following revelations about a heart operation 14 years ago.
Sure enough this govt on its last legs is fast expiring, are getting nasty and dangerously wild as per this confusion of Iraq war legal service and Nazi death camp guards:
AM - Labor seeks Phelps sacking for Nazi comment
Picture: Rudd makes his 'I have a ticker' speech with great vigour, rival Tony Abbott desperately tries 'relevance' points of order, as Rudd quotes the Phelps Nazi slur story above. The damaging question time Costello feared at the outset?
The cartoonists are noticing the strange factor too with a growing vivisection/mutant theme first Moir, now Leak here
Now Anthony Albanese as 'leader of Opposition business' has been named and evicted for 24 hours from the last question time after going for broke calling the chair "an embarrassment" for allowing another speech by PM Howard for 10 minutes in their question time, and thus 'reflecting on the chair' as the jargon goes. More precious question time lost but maybe running a little interference on the PM's choreography too.
And now John Howard PM has the floor virtually quoting chapter and verse the old Karl Rove Republican method of puting up a smear at your own guy (allegedly smear of Rudd over his heart operation by his own ALP) and then blaming Howard's side for dirty tactics. The allegation by Howard he's the victim of such a Karl Rove trick does sound a bit neurotic. It sounds like a bit of a projection of his own side being quite interested in such trickery. A complex confusing mind game well understood by wonks but not the general public.
Here is an example via google of presumably a right wing attempt to do 'a Karl Rove' on lefties at indymedia alleging Howard's old man was a Nazi who fought in WW2, which obviously he was not. For a start he fought in WW1:
The Truth about John Howards Dead father | Sydney Indymedia
The story has been 'hidden' by the editors but might be found (?) in their hidden archive? We posted on that story string before it was hidden, hence the memory of it, saying it had an iffy Rove like nature to it and factually totally baseless. The bare google listing can be found with search terms "howard father nazi indymedia" proving it did exist once.
It was posted on the 'IMC' from memory about the time Dr Peter Phelps got in deep doo doo for his desperate Nazi allusion directed at ALP candidate for Eden Monaro Mike Kelly at a public meeting. An attempt to run interference to save Phelps? To road test a 'Karl Rove' on the Left or ALP via indymedia in Sydney? Who really knows. These mind games are so vexatious.
And then it was all over, and the MP's were off to defend their seats at the election?
