Weekend Meltdown

Greetings and welcome to our Weekend Meltdown.

Gosh, that brings back memories. As many would know we are in a good portion ex-Blogocracy via Tim Dunlop.

One thing that Tim instigated was his Midweek Meltdown, which caused many of us some angst as all talk of politics was banned. Come on Tim, ban politics for a whole entire day!

From Tim on his Midweek Meltdown September ’08:

Our usual midweek open thread on which all talk of politics is banned.

Stratfor Global Intelligence on Assange Sexual Assault Charges

I posted this on Wednesday: Wikileaks: Stratfor on Motives for Julian Assange’s Arrest It had sparse traffic until the last 24 hours when it’s gone viral. Well nearly 1000 hits is viral for my little blog.

From Wikileaks’ Stratfor Global Intelligence Files:

Charges of sexual assault rarely are passed through Interpol red notices, like this case, so this is no doubt about trying to disrupt WikiLeaks release of government documents. While it’s possible that Assange’s arrest could disrupt the long-term viability of WikiLeaks, it will not stop the release of cables in the short-term and governments will now be concerned about what the organization may release in revenge.
RE: USE ME Re: Discussion- Assange Arrested

Interesting!

I’m surprised that this gem has not surfaced in the mainstream media as it took only minutes to find on the Wikileaks website. Anyway, at least some netizens have stumbled across it.

Independent Media Inquiry

Media Release

Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate
Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Digital Productivity

---

Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, today released the Report of the Independent Media Inquiry.

The Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation was undertaken by Former Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, Mr Ray Finkelstein QC, with the assistance of Dr Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Journalism at Canberra University.

“I’d like to thank Mr Finkelstein QC and Professor Ricketson and their team for their efforts. I would also like to thank all the individuals and organisations that contributed to the Inquiry,” Senator Conroy said.

The Report has been forwarded to the Convergence Review Committee for its consideration.

“The Government will take a considered approach to the Inquiry’s report in conjunction with the Convergence Review before responding,” Senator Conroy said.

The Convergence Review is taking a broad look at range of regulatory issues across the broadcasting, telecommunications and radio-communications sectors and is on track to present its final report to Government by 31 March 2012.

The Inquiry’s Report is available at: www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry

Date: 2 March 2012
Contact: Suzie Brady 0408 258 457

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry

There is much to read about the Media Inquiry so I’ve posted it to a separate page here without comment as it’s a very long read.

Has Speaker Slipper A Strategy For A Surfeit Of SSOs?

Reformer? Or snake in the grass?
Watch Peter Slipper kicking ass,
And doing it with gravitas.
In Oz speak that means ‘bit o’ class.’

It isn’t just the way he’s dressed
In long black gown and fancy vest.
What has onlookers most impressed
Is the end of uproar and unrest.

Members are no longer hostage
To shouts, insults, bad language.
More legislation now has carriage.
That’s not something to disparage.

The Chamber fills no more with cries
Of outraged members screaming,  “Lies!”
Simply saying,  “You fantasize.”
Does not shock.  Nor does,  “Porky pies!”

What of time wasting SSO’s
Used by Abbott against his foes?
Some forty two so far of those.
More still?  Only God,  or Slipper,  knows!

Will Prissie Pyne,  when censured,  use
‘Time Out’ to find the Members’ loos,
Fearing the Speaker may refuse
To let him rise to make more POOs?

For Liberals he’s a mystery.
Slipper?  Reformer?  This Tory,
Now handing Labor victory,
To be praised one day by history?

Acknowledgement:  That delightful cartoon is by Chadwick in the Global Mail.

Explanatory Note:   An SSO is a motion for the Suspension of Standing Orders!  A POO is a Point of Order!

NOTES:   Today’s uproar in the House of Representatives with yet another defeated motion for Suspension of Standing Orders from Tony Abbott  has prompted me write this pome about the 27th Speaker in the Australian House of Representatives.

Peter Slipper’s accession to the Speakership was a controversial one, the result of a brilliant play by the Prime Minister.    Apart from its impact on the balance of numbers in our hung Parliament it promises huge changes in that House as he brings it back from the chaos wrought by his own party,  the Coalition,  as a strategy to bring down the government.   Lenore Taylor discusses the likely impact of Slipper’s appointment as Speaker on Tony Abbott’s war of attrition against Julia Gillard.   I love the baleful look on Abbott’s face in the picture there of Slipper being dragged in the traditional Westminster ceremony to the Speaker’s Chair.

I’m pretty sure that Slipper,  smarting though he may be from his treatment by the Liberals,  has no conscious intention to support the Labor Party.  I think he’s fascinated by the idea of himself in the role of Speaker and determined to make a very good job of it.  He seems to me more perfectionist,  even vain,  than vengeful.  Be that as it may,  I wonder how much more of an asset than one more precious vote the Prime Minister anticipated her new Speaker in the Lower House might be.

There’s a good overview of Australia’s history of parliamentary pomp and ceremony by Mike Seccombe in the Global Mail and the likely impact of the new speaker and his love of it all.

Midweek open thread: punctuation is important

Greetings and welcome to our midweek open topic. It ‘s been a very long few days in politics where friendships were strained, however with good will; and a vision for the future; and a passion that this old world may it become a become a better place, it seems that we’ve all survived.

It has been pointed out to me that punctuation is important. Well not usually so, but sometimes it is. The one that comes to mind is the Cole Porter song:

What is this thing called love.

Clearly a comma, an apostrophe and a question mark is of utmost importance, as the sentence becomes:

What’s this thing called, love?

On the subject of language, and the intricacies thereof, one of my passions has been the evolution of the English language. The bare bones of it aren’t much more than a history lesson: the language which we now call English being a blend of many languages, even the original Anglo-Saxon was already a blend of the dialects of west Germanic tribes living along the North Sea coast – the Saxons in Germany and the eastern part of Holland, the Jutes, and the Angles, and northern Franks from southern Holland.

It has within all of our lifetimes that language has had cultural implications: French, being the language of diplomacy and romance; Latin, being the language of the Roman Catholic church; Greek, the language of philosophy and science and medicine. Added to this were many other idioms from native peoples including our own – Aboriginal words are in our everyday language in place names mostly, which give recognition as to who were the original inhabitants, words from the Indian subcontinent, from native American, Mexican words. There are so many words which we speak every day and yet we do not realize their ethnic origin.

Our borrowed words which are mostly from the 16th Century include: giraffe, tiger, pyjama, turban, chocolate, orange, admiral, parliament.

For those who may never have studied Chaucer here is late 14th Century English, from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”:

I find this fascinating, that after all this time, with a little concentration and a little imagination that we can understand exactly what people all those years ago were saying. I do hope that our descendants will be as fortunate.

Rose of Cimarron

Our theme songs are back. First we had animals, then places, now we have names. But because we might easily run out of names it’ll be fine to post songs with he, she, him, her, mine, I etc in the name.  Here’s one for starters.

Do you know who our PM is?

I believe most do not.

Many do not know her, but they all know she is bad, sly and a liar.

If that is not enough, she is a bitch and cares for none.

She also rigid and unfeeling.

I forgot to add, treacherous.

To add insult to injury, she does not know how to dress or talk.

No one wants her.

The hate seems stronger among the young and Labor voters.

The hate from the young amuses me, as when you see her around young people, the PM appears to interact well.

Prime Minister, Interrupted: Why One Year After the Election Voters Still Don’t Know Who Gillard
The mud maps of our most recent prime ministers might go as follows: John Howard – solid, middle-class type. Bit awkward. Social conservative, sticks to his guns. Strong. Kevin Rudd – hardworking. A bit nerdy. Modern family. Knows about foreign stuff. Labor, but not much into unions. Keen to do something about climate change.

But what does Julia Gillard’s story tell us? It’s an interrupted affair, and this is at the heart of her continued struggles as prime minister. Her life story, as it appears broadly to voters, looks a bit like this: Redhead. Political lifer. Pretty feisty. Likes football. Seems a capable deputy. Whoops! Is suddenly the prime minister.

And the period encapsulated by the “Whoops!” element of the above synopsis is precisely the period about which the prime minister can give us no further information. In June last year, the deputy prime minister became the prime minister, for reasons that were not immediately clear to most outside the Canberra area. Stories are important in politics. And the gap in this story is grievous.
and
It’s nearly a year since Julia Gillard decided that a good government had lost its way, and issued the request for Australia to “move forward”.

But not everyone is moving forward.

“I don’t trust her, after what she did to Rudd.”

“She’s a puppet.”

“Shafting Rudd the way she did was appalling.”

“There is no direction”.

“She lied to us on the carbon tax.”

“People have to a large extent tuned out to Gillard, and they find her to a certain extent embarrassing,” is Scales’s assessment of the public mood. “There’s not much in the way of positives about her at all.”

One of the exercises Scales does with these groups is to ask them to divide a sheet of paper into two columns, and list down the left side all the things the government has done well. On the right side, they list the not-so-good things. “For some people, the left-hand column is just a blank,” Scales says. “Or, you find they’re reaching back to Rudd government stuff – the cash handouts or the pension increase. This is one of her major problems: People can’t find anything to argue for her. There’s not much people can point to that they [the government] have actually done.”

and

“The only people I see who have any idea who Gillard is are people in the western suburbs of Melbourne,” says Scales. “But no one else can ever give me a description of what they think about Julia Gillard as a person. And that applies as much in the other suburban areas of Melbourne as it does in Perth, or anywhere else.”

and

Prime ministers never like being asked about why they’re having trouble getting through to people but Gillard isn’t especially prickly on the topic, fortunately. “I think that that’s true,” she responds, equably, to my ventured suggestion that her silence on the manner of her assumption of the prime ministership is hampering her ability to communicate. “And I’m conscious of that. But it’s hard to explain all of that without being … you know … without being disrespectful to the efforts of the former government, which did achieve, even with all these fetters and constraints, did achieve all these remarkable things. And, more particularly, the efforts of the former prime minister. And even though it leaves a gap, I think it’s the better and more respectful course to create that gap than to do the alternative.”

http://www.themonthly.com.au/why-one-year-after-election-voters-still-don-t-know-who-gillard-prime-minister-interrupted-annabel-c

What we do know: Those who know her personally and are close, have nothing but praise for her guts, ability and loyalty.

Gillard 71, Rudd 31.

Nothing in the media at this stage.  We will update the thread later.

11.09am: David Speers on Sky News says he has just got a message saying they are still counting inside the caucus room. Could Rudd be demanding a recount?

11.21am: Again from Sky News – the final tally is Gillard 71, Rudd 31.

11.30am: David Speers, “This gives Julia Gillard a firmer hold on the leadership”.

From The Age:

Michelle Grattan says this result is an overwhelming endorsement of Julia Gillard by her party.

It has basically said we are going to stick with what we’ve got and this means it is unlikely Kevin Rudd is going to have any sort of resurrection later on.

We will hear a lot of talk about unity and that will come from both camps. What’s important is how Julia Gillard settles down the government.

Memory Serves

Follow @madwixxy

Sitting down to write this, slurping away on a White Russian (shut up it’s after midday) one thing has become clear…. there is more infighting in Parliament House at the moment then there ever was in the Big Brother house, celebrity version or not….

We watch on with morbid fascination as Gillard and Rudd, once the dynamic duo, try to verbally tear each other’s limbs off. We see them fail at this, and only end up tearing apart Australia’s strongest political party as they battle it out….

With all of this going on, it is important to look at the other side of the house, the opposition, a motley crew made up by the dysfunctional marriage of a few political parties that can’t make it on their own.

Who? Why? II

As we are rapidly approaching 500 comments on Who? Why?, time for Mark II of Who? Why?

We know two things.

There is going to be a leadership spill in the Labor camp and Tony Abbott would win an election if it were held in the near future.

Kevin Rudd, it appears, doesn’t have the numbers to topple the Prime Minister. But by announcing that he’s the only person in the galaxy who can beat Abbott he is perhaps hoping to win over a few late votes.

It’s a pity that it boils down to who can beat Tony Abbott. I would have hoped it was about who could best lead the Party and the country.

There are a dozen things we don’t know. Will the shoot-out be between Gillard and Rudd or will there be other hats thrown in the ring? Will Wayne Swan still be the Deputy Prime Minister on Tuesday night? Will it be Roxon, Shorten or Crean? If Rudd wins, will he see a lift in the polls or if Gillard wins, can she turn the screws on Abbott?

So these are a couple of questions I’ll throw open to you. Who? Why?