This pic isn't really here to bag out Howard, but jeez, that's the best pic of Rove that I've ever seen. 

Crazy John Threatens Legal Action:

Opposition Leader Mark Latham today said he was unaware of a threat by mobile phone retailer Crazy John's to take legal action against Labor if it did not stop using its name.

Crazy John's yesterday accused Labor of ripping off its brand name and image and giving an incorrect impression that the retailer was associated with the ALP.

The accusation came after Mr Latham seized on the company's name to attack the $6 billion election spending spree announced by Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday.

Mr Latham accused Mr Howard of embarking on a reckless spending spree, labelling it "Crazy John's end-of-career clearance sale".

Crazy John's said it would seek legal injunctions against the ALP if necessary to stop the party using its name.

But Mr Latham today said he was unaware of the legal threat.

"We can assure Crazy John's there is no way he would be as reckless as Mr Howard in the spending stakes," he told Brisbane radio station 4BC.

Election 2004 | Day 31 | Roundup (or Suckup)

9 DAYS TO GO.

$1.40 Coalition, $2.70 Labor.

I scored yet more crap in my letterbox today from Kezza. This is the fourth piece of junk I've gotten now. And I got a whole one piece from Ptolemy a few weeks ago. What's the deal?! Serious lack of advertising here. Kezza also took out nearly a half page ad in the local paper, whereas Ptolemy had about a 4cm one. Seriously Ptolemy, sell your car or something and advertise more.

Extra Labor Savings Found:

A COALITION push to discredit Labor leader Mark Latham was derailed yesterday when Treasury said Australia would be $133 million better off under Labor savings policies.

Shafted.

Here's something to cheer up anyone thinking the Coalition might win it - Chris Sheil confidently predicts an ALP win.

More Polling Stuff
Award for worst wording of a sentence ever when regarding percentages:

After transfers are taken into account, the poll puts support at 51 per cent for Labor and 49 for the Coalition, though 12 per cent of respondents said they were still undecided, leaving the election wide open with nine full days of campaigning to go.

It also seems that vote buying doesn't really work, and that two thirds of people will have Iraq on their minds when they go to vote.

I'm Ready To Lead, He's Ready To Leave
ALP campaign launch was today. And did the olds ever score or what! If you're over 75, all your medical stuff is covered. That was the biggie. Others were quarterly pension adjustments, allowances for grandparents with custody of their grandkids, and other stuff.

The Australian Health Association, Catholic Health Australia, Australian Nursing Federation, Health Services Union, veterans, and the ACTU reckoned the Medicare Gold policy rocked. So did my grandma (but she's fiercely pro-Labor anyway).

But there was still one old fart that didn't like it...

"Mr Latham's speech is completely devoid of any plan to keep the economy strong into the future and interest rates low."

- Guess who?

Yes, good old Johnny. Funny how he can say that when his only "plans" to "keep interest rates low" in his speech were "we run strong budgets" and "Labor's IR policy is the spawn of Satan." WOW! I FEEL INSPIRED!

He's going to be hanging around Melbourne tomorrow, so hopefully Ms Fits will flash her panties at him. Or hit him with a brick. Either way.

Bob had this to say about the speech:

"I must say I think there is a freshness about the Latham package which will win points with the electorate. There is a flavour of that emerging in the campaign, that there's a little bit of staleness about the government and about the prime minister."

- Bob Brown

• SMH: Latham: I'm Ready To Lead
• News Ltd: Pensioners Win Big With Latham
• ABC: Latham To Do "Whatever It Takes"

The Daily Telegraph doesn't like Latham, but I think they were impressed.

Lozza reckons Howard will be gone within a year if he wins this election.

And in closing, a chunk of a longer interview where Howard makes himself look like a tossbag.

JOURNALIST: How have you changed the psychology of Australia and Australians during your eight-and-a-half years of government?

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, that is an incredibly sort of reflective question to ask me on a day like this. I mean, perhaps, you know, over a cappuccino or a latte or something or other you might like to…you could bring all your friends along as well. I think Australia is a more self-confident country now than it was in 1996. I think it has a greater sense of belief in its own separate identity. I don't think it agonises over its cultural identity. I think it just thinks it's in pretty good shape. It certainly has a sense of wellbeing but it retains its traditional commitment to a fair go and a sense of compassion but that we are a fortunate prosperous country and the dominant decision people have got to make is, who is better able to keep it that way. Who is better able to maintain that prosperity, not take it for granted, not assume that we'll always be there, but who's better able to maintain that prosperity and to keep their interest rates low. I think those things do play on the minds of Australians and so they should because you can't take these things for granted.

The Ando Zone: Episode 1

I made a pretty little banner, as that other graphic was just too big.

Unfortunately, all has been extremely quiet on the Ando front...

Except today he managed to call Tony Windsor a coward for going to the police over his claims that someone had bribed him with a diplomatic posting to get him to stand down.

"I am singularly unimpressed by what I see as an act of cowardice."

Go Ando! To hell with those chickenshits that believe in integrity in government!

And then he continued:

"Who in the National Party, apart from me in consultation with the PM and foreign minister, could have offered somebody a diplomatic posting? It could only have been me."

Awesome! Case closed then.

He also claims that water reforms are the nation's greatest environmental breakthrough. That's right, refusing to sign Kyoto sort of killed a lot of competition for this prestigious honour.

"So who was it that provided the greatest environmental breakthrough in the last Parliament? Me and the Nationals."

I know every time I brush my teeth, have a shower, take a dump, the first thing I think of is my undying gratitude for John Anderson. Then I think "I wonder where I'll be in 118 weeks time."

Pregnant Sex Scandals is the topic on Jerry Springer on Fox8 tonight. I'm wondering if we'll see a certain politician on.

Major News

In Latham's entire campaign address today, he said "ease the squeeze" once. Looks like he's winning the battle against addiction to bad catchphrases.

Compare this to Howard saying "interest rates" 19 times in his.

Church Party Won't Support Three Liberals:

FAMILY First, the party backed by the Assemblies of God, has confirmed it will not swap preferences with lesbian Queensland Liberal candidate Ingrid Tall or parliamentary secretary Warren Entsch, who supports gay marriage.

However, Family First said it would swap preferences with Ross Cameron, the Liberal MP for Parramatta who last week moved out of his family home after publicly confessing to an affair while his wife was pregnant with twins.

Insert lots of question and exclamation marks here.

Well, looks like I was way off about the election reasons. Rob says this:

This is not a double dissolution. The G-G has the power to dissolve the House of Reps, and does so on the advice of the PM. He can do this whenever he likes, but practical considerations (for example, keeping Senate elections in line with HoR elections) limit the time available to do it.

And Nomes goes into more detail:

This is not a double dissolution election, but a half-Senate. This is the usual state of events - to enshrine state rights only half the Senate goes at once. As each Senator has a two-election term, there is little turnaround, which causes a certain stability. A double dissolution is truly a shake up.

Double dissolutions were a big feature of the Fraser years and the Hawke Government years but seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs because the Howard Government has been too frightened to use it. You are right that when supply is blocked the Prime Minister can seek a double dissolution from the G-G, and hope to remove the blockage that way, but it's politically risky.

Why can Howard call an election when he wants to? Strictly he doesn't - he asks the GG to dissolve Parliament, and has to persuade the G-G that is is necessary and desirable. Clearly however the GG usually does what the PM wants - except for Whitlam. Three year terms are merely a convention. Fraser went twice in two years.

Thanks for clearing that up, people.

Election 2004 | Day 30 | Roundup

10 DAYS TO GO. Start counting down!

Centrebet has the Coalition at $1.28 and Labor at $3.30. Bah. Someone also put $200,000 on Howard to win today. That's gonna be painful. :P

As far as ordinary polls, I give up. So does the SMH.

To MeggieMacGroovie, regarding "how come the PM can call an election whenever he wants?": This is from the murky depths of my memory, from back when my school did its Year 6 trip to Canberra in 1994, so it's most likely wrong. There is a set term of 3 years for a party to be in office, however, if the Senate knocks back a bill twice that the House Of Reps tries to pass, then the government has the right to call a double-dissolution election. Which is what this is. Howard could have done it ages ago, but opinion polls have constantly shown he would get his arse kicked. His back was up against the wall at the end of last month however, due to Mike Scrafton and the truth coming out about Tampa and everything, so he called the election to dodge the Senate inquiry and possibly get utterly drilled (otherwise the election would be in November sometime). That's my entirely skewed and uninformed perspective on it however. You should probably be asking someone who studies politics or whatever.

"The Australian Constitution provides for a bicameral system, that is, proposed laws must be agreed to by two differently constituted houses of parliament, as a safeguard against misuse of the law-making power. The Constitution also provides a method for resolving deadlocks which might arise in the event of a disagreement between the two houses. If the Senate twice fails to pass a bill from the House of Representatives, under certain specified conditions, the Governor-General may simultaneously dissolve both houses, in which case elections are held for all seats in both houses. This double dissolution procedure is the only exception to the rule of fixed terms for senators. If the deadlock persists after the elections the Governor-General may convene a joint sitting of the two houses to resolve the matter."

- Senate Briefs

Read more stuff here.

Note that I'm seriously not 100% sure on this so don't take it as gospel.

My Head Is Full Of Bacon
Unfortunately Pauline Pantsdown's I Don't Like It (first song to be left off the Hottest 100 due to legal action) doesn't look like it'll be unbanned. Oh well. If you pick up the Rock Against Howard album, there's a song on the second disc where John Howard gets the Pauline Pantsdown treatment. It rocks.

Interest Rates
Regarding 14 financial institutions unanimously saying the government made no difference whatsoever when it came to interest rates:

"They are not always right. With great respect to those people, they haven't been right in the past and I'm not certain they're going to be right in relation to this. They're just asserting something. I'm pointing to field evidence."

- John Howard

Field evidence = interest rates under Labor back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Sure beats all that mathematical trickery!

In other news, the ALP wants to save the dolphins, and Howard is being a bastard. Tomorrow is going to be really interesting.

Howard bailed on the Kyoto Protocol, citing that it'd cut Australian jobs. How? I thought it'd create more jobs as companies would need to employ more people for R&D, etc.

And what an utter fucking joke this site is. So bad that whoever wrote it was too scared to attach their name to it. Whois info:

Domain name: mayorlatham.com

Registrant, Administrative, Technical, Billing Contact:
TAAML
Domain Admin (info@mayorlatham.com)
0000000000
Fax: 0000000
UNKNOWN
UNKNOWN, UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
AU

...Which I'm fairly certain is technically illegal.

Still on the hunt for Andoisms... All is quiet.

Attack Of The Killer Religious Right

Piers Akerman reckons Family First are TOTALLY AWESOME. That's reason enough to be worried.

Net filtering is currently a voluntary act, the decision being made by the consumer. The Carrie's Mum Party want to make it mandatory.

CONSERVATIVE political newcomer Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level.

From Family First Seeks Net Gag.

Wow! Internet censorship! I thought this got shot down as a fucking stupid idea back in 2002?

Election 2004 | Day 29 | Roundup

Athena Starwoman New Polling Consultant
Okay, I seriously don't know what the deal is with polls. Roy Morgan did one the other day that put both majors 50/50, now News Ltd are putting Labor ahead. This follows polls from like 3 days ago that said the Liberals had their biggest majority since 1975 or something.

So if poll results fluctuate this massively over such a short period of time, what the hell is the point? Why not call the psychic hotlines in New Idea and ask them instead? Or decide it over a daily game of two-up? I have a magic eight-ball, we could use that!

Greens Stuff
For possibly the first time in history, there is a pro-Greens editorial piece in a newspaper. Amanda Lohrey of The Age asks Are Brown's Greens Really Feral?

Bob was in Brisbane today, launching the Greens' state campaign.

Bob also announced that the Greens had preferenced Pauline Hanson above Family First, because she's the least insane of the two. Unlike those silly Democrats. They're really up shit creek without a paddle right now.

Abbott Smells
Someone ran out of toilet paper today, so they decided to use the front of Tony Abbott's campaign office instead.

"You wonder why people would want to express themselves this way when there are perfectly acceptable ways of expressing themselves at the ballot box."

- Tony Abbott

I dunno, 11 days is a long time to hold a turd in.

Boom tish.

Australian Council Of Trade Unions
They've been slagging Howard's spending spree recently (so have Labor). Firstly over Howards plans to spend $289m making Australian Technical Colleges (why not just fund TAFE more?).

"He's too desperate, too dishonest to admit that a skills crisis has been created on his watch, so his answer is 24 technical schools, 7,000 students and performance contracts for principals. It's a joke."

- Sharan Burrow, ACTU President

And then on childcare plans, Shazza had this to say:

"Millionaire parents who can afford a full-time nanny that qualifies for in-home child-care benefits and carries out domestic chores including cleaning and ironing and shopping, stand to gain more than $200 a week in tax relief under the coalition's childcare rebate proposal At the same time, the majority of families with children in family day care or a child care centre will get as little as $6 a week extra."

Labor also announced childcare plans today, $1.6b worth of them. The main part of it is that families will score about one day's worth of free childcare a week. And he said "ease the squeeze" again. Gah.

No other big announcements from them. They're waiting for the formal campaign launch on Wednesday for all the cool stuff.

Voting Kicks Off
The first votes in Australia were cast today in Wallace Rockhole in the NT- and they went to Labor. The AEC has 379 remote polling stations, so people in the middle of nowhere can do their votes. The catch is they have to do it over a week earlier than everyone else, because of the distance factor.

And overseas voting also kicked off in London.

"I think the Howard cringe factor comes into effect over here," said Scott Plimpton, campaign manager for the ALP UK branch.

"Once Australians get out of the country and they see how we're viewed from afar they see the Howard government is an embarrassment internationally.

"Before I came overseas I was quite insular as to Australia's place in the world. The only things you tend to see of Howard in the press over here is him kow-towing to Bush, strutting around with the Queen."

Taken from World View On Overseas Votes.

Costello

"I'm not going to retire from politics."

Damn.

Interest Rates

"He spent $6 billion in one hour. He's the six billion dollar man, a bionic vote-buying machine."

- Mark Latham

While I still think this whole interest rates thing is a load of shit, it's good to see Labor using the Liberal's bullshit against them, saying Howard's spending will push up interest rates. And Ross Gittins says Labor Isn't A Big Economic Risk.

Questions
Is it just me, or has there been a slight shift away from bias towards the Liberal party in News Ltd-owned stuff in this past week?

And whats with Ando not making a goose of himself recently? I've made this pretty Ando Zone graphic and everything, and now I can't find anything to use it on. "Salinity isn't as bad as we thought!" doesn't cut it. Maybe someone's pulled him into line?

Finally: A funny piece on the whole pre-emptive strike fiasco. And also an article debullshitting Howard's campaign speech.

The Ando Zone

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as Kim Beazley's gut and as timeless as John Howard's ideals. It is the middle ground between ignorance and stupidity, between science and religion, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his limited knowledge. This is the dimension of unprovoked criticisms. It is an area which we call...

John and Pete about to pash on. 

Howard spends another day campaigning. 

Election 2004 | Day 28 | Roundup

Wow. So it looks like the NRL GF will be a non-event. Eastern suburbs tossbags versus a team that's brought the NRL into disrepute more times than any other team I can remember (and did that rape case ever get solved?). After Penrith got the arse last night, I was hoping North Queensland would do a fairytale today, but alas, it wasn't to be. Bah, who to cheer for now... It's like choosing between Family First and CEC.

Centrebet odds for the Coalition are $1.33, Labor $3.00 again. I blame that poll.

On a day where I thought not much happened, it turned out that a shitload did. Now to hammer through all these open tabs...

"My Husband Is Not A Liar"
So says Howard's wife. So if he's not a liar, what is he? Utterly incompetent? Which gets to be the subject of the new ALP ad:

"Have you noticed that when there's a crisis, a mistake, a backflip, misleading information, missing information, a blunder, an inquiry, a failure, an oversight or a cover-up... John Howard is never to blame? If John Howard isn't aware of what's going on, that's terrible. If he is, that's worse."

Sounds fun.

Open-Letter Writing Fever
Around about 380 academics from virtually every university in Australia sent Howard an open letter regarding Iraq. Headlines most likely will read "PM Rejects Iraq Letter" or something like that once again. But that's not all! Twenty medical experts are gearing up to send another open letter, demanding changes to the FTA with relation to the PBS. Ugh. Goddamn FTA.

And a bunch of musos have taken out ads in Drum Media and other mags, speaking out against Howard.

While we're on the subject, here's what Bob Mathews wrote to Howard 3 days prior to the Iraq announcement.

Can you remember the last time so many people were this pissed off with the government?

Time To Go John has also launched - which is a set of anti-Howard short films.

Liberal Campaign Launch
In amongst mentioning interest rates 19 times in the one speech, Howard made with the non-core promises at the formal campaign launch today. There's an arseload of stories around so I'll just put a list up of a few:

• PM in $6bn help for families
• What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
• Latham labels Howard's speech a $6bn vote grab
• From the book of John, hymns for the disciples
• Now $6 billion for Howard's heroes
• Howard falls back on some ugly old reliables
• Spree puts interest rates under pressure
• Drunken spender giveth and giveth ... but not with a glad heart
• PM's spending spree will push up rates: Labor
• Message pushes right buttons
• Crazy John's gone reckless: Latham

Costello
He's said that he's contemplating leaving politics after Christmas, if he can't get leadership. So who would be next on the list? I'd like to see Tony Abbott as the Liberal leader, but in opposition, and with him having to step down before an election. It'd rule. He's such an utter twat; it'd be the most interesting government term ever, with Latham as PM and Abbott being an utter dick. But have him step down before he could do any actual damage.

A Tale Of Two Treasurers
Finally: Costello gets grilled on Sunrise. It rocks. Crean had a chat on the Insiders. Not as interesting but still alright.

And so ends this badly cobbled together post. I'm going to bed.

What the fuck? Talk about making a complete goose of yourself.

Election 2004 | Day 27 | Roundup

TWO WEEKS TO GO.

Nic: Yes, I realise 99% of religious people aren't like this. I just don't want Carrie's mum to be in any position of power.

Bob Mathews And John Howard
I wrote a tiny bit on this last night. Bob Mathews is the national expert on WMDs (says SMH, not me), and kept trying to tell Howard prior to the Iraq war that it was a bad idea. His superiors kept blocking him from seeing Howard, so three days before the decision to go to war, he ended up writing a letter and sending it not as a government official, but as a concerned citizen. Obviously Howard gave it a lot of thought, because we luckily didn't get involved in Iraq, and aren't partially responsible for the fucking over of an entire country and the deaths of thousands.

Latham Launches Pre-Emptive Strike On Downer

"He's made a lot of errors in recent times as foreign minister, I just don't think he's fit for the job. I find it horrifying that the foreign minister would be publicly talking about circumstances where it is understandable if another country attacked Australia."

- Mark Latham

That's Latho, predictably calling Downer an idiot, for commenting that it's perfectly fine for other countries to come over and bomb us.

Poll Fallout
So we still have this Herald poll showing Howard could win easily if the election was held this week. I really don't get it. He has performed like crap since the election even began, could possibly lose his seat in Bennelong (go Darp go!), yet all of a sudden the Coalition is ahead of Labor? No idea. Back Pages went into it.

Latham Visits
Latham spent yesterday hanging around Seven Hills, helping launch Ed Husic's campaign.

As far as Latham is concerned, no one is more of a westie than he. "You can say it's a political experiment, it's a political novelty, but I've always called it home ... I hope it says something about western Sydney and also the Australian Labor Party that if you can grow up in a public housing estate and get put through a government school and [have] a family that cares, years later you can be running to be prime minister."

So awesome. *dreamy girlish sigh*

"We're not in a campaign where we wander around to Penrith Stadium and drop money out of our pockets to marginal seats."

- Latho

Campaign Launches
Both major parties are formally launching their campaigns. Coalition tomorrow and Labor on Wednesday. Read more at The Age.

Oh For Fucks Sake...
Libs have announced $50m for the rollout of broadband. Wow. And to think we have Richard Fucking Alston, the former Liberal Greatest IT Minister In History, to thank for the current shitty rollout of it. Plus the whole Telstra monopoly thing that the ACCC never properly investigated thanks to him. I should devote a post to all of his fuckups and dodgy deals.

And The Rest
Labor announced $48m to improve cancer treatment. News Ltd are saying $112m though. *shrugs*

Howard is freaking out over delays in Labor approving their anti-terrorists advertisements. "Goddammit Labor! Look what you've done! If only those fridge magnets were out a day earlier!"

The Dems are scared that the Coalition could own the Senate. I think I'll vote Dems, then Greens, then ALP, then the rest for my Senate vote. And for the House of Reps: ALP, Greens, Dems, indie, and I'm not sure whether to put the Liberals in front of the crazy religious parties or not.

News Ltd are reporting the ALP wants to review Woolies/Coles and their petrol dockets.

And one of Howards kids is helping Bush get re-elected. Friends in high places, hey?

Umm. I really can't think of a caption for this. 

John Howard appears to continually use the Tampa crisis, the Children Overboard saga, the war in Iraq, the Bali bombing and most recently the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta as reasons why we can’t afford to get rid of the Coalition - after all, who do we trust more? A Government who has been through such crises and who will undoubtedly know what to do during future incidents, or a new and naive Government, led by unproven upstart Mark Latham?

This strikes me as incredibly daft. It’s like me telling you all that I’m a great driver and that as my passenger, you have nothing to fear as I have been involved in fifteen smashes, thus I obviously know my way around a crash site. Therefore, I should continue being designated driver since I am the most experienced at being behind the wheel during an accident.

I love Jess.

Election 2004 | Day 26 | Roundup

Interest Rates
Oh this is beautiful.

The world's leading financial houses have rejected the Government's scare campaign against Labor on interest rates, predicting a change of government would make absolutely no difference to future rate moves.

A survey yesterday by Reuters found that all 14 financial institutions prepared to forecast future interest rates said the peak level of rates in the next three years would be the same whoever was in power.

I hope this makes front page news tomorrow and Labor runs with it. It'd be the best way Howard could go out - completely defeated after basing his election campaign on a lie. Forever to be remembered like that. Here's hoping anyway. I mean there's been a lot of stories showing why his claim is full of shit, but to have 14 financial institutions say the same thing, well, it has a heap of weight. Robert Corr digs into it more in a great post.

Nationals Fuckup

"There should be no reason why a very well resourced and high profile and highly resourced public school should not be able to charge some sort of fee to attend it."

Unfortunately, that wasn't Ando. It was Kay Hull, making a fool of herself for the National Party. She denies she embarrassed the party. Oh well, try harder next time. News Ltd has a nice roundup of insane education policies the Coalition are looking at.

Cameron Gets The Boot
Ross Cameron, Liberal MP for Parramatta, has been kicked out of home, after recently admitted he was boning another woman while his wife was preggers with twins. I sort of feel sorry for him with all the crap he's going through, but on the other hand, there's some things you just don't do, and he deserves everything thrown at him. The Chaser have been giving him lots of shit over this whole thing.

Coalition In Cahoots With Crazy Religious Party
Following on from my bitch about Family First, we now have the Coalition doing preference deals with them.

"I think that it's a watershed moment for Australian history that a new party can have influence even prior to the federal election going ahead," Family First SA Senate candidate Andrea Mason said.

I think its a fucking scary moment in Australian history. Name one country that hasn't gone down the shitter whilst under the power of a religious party. The SMH has an interesing/scary writeup on Family First.

Downer: Idiot

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it would be acceptable for another country to launch a pre-emptive strike on terrorist networks in Australia if Australia did not take action itself.

Enough said.

The SMH has scored a letter that Bob Mathews (apparently Australia's leading expert on WMDs) wrote to Howard prior to the Iraq war. Check it out.

The latest SMH poll puts Howard in an election-winning position, which goes totally against every other poll. Dunno if they've fucked up, or if it's something to be concerned about. Back Pages usually dissects these things nicely, but I think Christopher Sheil is most likely asleep right now.

Penrith Star, Page 5. 

The Prime Minister, John Howard, was asked yesterday to name one independent economist who supported his claim that rates would rise under a Labor government. "I don't need to invoke names," he said.

That's because there are none.

That's from PM Without Mates On Rates Claim. News Ltd is also running a story where the Reserve Bank states that falling house prices and rising mortages will be a problem, no matter who wins the election.

Election 2004 | Day 25 | Roundup and Religious Rantings

The problem with The Chaser Decides is that it goes by so fast. They started wrapping up, and I thought to myself "what the hell? It's only been going 5 minutes." The clock disagreed with me. Have to wait till next week now.

Howard is doing the vote-buying thing with regards to stadiums, this time down in Melbourne.

Today was quite slow. News Ltd's election page is basically the same as it was 24 hours ago. Aside from Ando opening his mouth, nothing really interesting has happened.

Idiotfactor Ten Billion
Although I think Alexander Downer made a stupid comment. That's what he's all about though, isn't he?

SOUTH Australian AFL teams had a better chance of winning premierships under a coalition government, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.

Enough said.

An old lady told Latham to bring back the biff... and yeah, that's pretty much it.

Attack Of The Killer Howard
Here's how the rest of the world sees Howard's pre-emptive stance:

• Howard's anti-terror teams rejected (New Zealand)
• Malaysian FM urges Howard to exercise caution on pre-emptive strikes (China)
• Campaign rhetoric heats up in Australia (China)
• Alex Downer plays down 'hairy-chested' comments (Taiwan)
• Aussie pre-emptive strike plan just an election ploy? (Singapore)
• Australia Won't Conduct Anti-Terrorism Strikes on Asian Allies (USA)
• Howard terror plan gets brush-off (Britain)
• Howard unveils anti-terror plan (Taiwan)
• Australia says Asian anti-terror allies not targets of pre-emptive strikes (all of Asia)
• Security row fires Australian poll (USA)
• Howard vows to base anti-terror teams in Asian nations (Taiwan)
• Malaysia warns Australia over pre-emptive strike threat (Asia)

Freaky Minor Parties
I'm poking through the list of candidates for my electorate. Aside from the usual Labor/Liberal/Greens/Democrats, there's four other parties and one indie. How come each of these four other parties seems completely insane? Why is it only complete nutcases seem to want to register new parties? Do the Big Four parties satisfy everyone's needs for normalcy? I have:

The No GST Party. Its founders are former One Nationers David Oldfield (who used to work for Tony Abbott), and David Etteridge. I can't find any information on them on the net, but seriously, a party that has a policy as the name of it can't be mentally stable.

"What's your policy on immigration?"
"Well, we won't charge them GST."
"Tasmanian old-growth logging?"
"So long as it doesn't involve GST."

And so on.

The Family First Party. There's been a lot written about these people in the news and on the net lately (Crikey, Daily Flute, policies lists). Basically because they're TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. They also have links to known musical terrorist, al-Guy-Sebastian. Religion and politics mix about as well as kerosene and orange juice. Religious parties should be completely banned outright.

Citizens Electoral Council. Go browse their website. It sounds like the crazed rantings of a uni student protester, mixed with the crazed rantings of someone who lives in a bomb shelter. Take this paragraph picked at random:

If mankind is to survive the death of globalisation, it must take inspiration from the greatest periods of renaissance in the past, to establish a new worldwide renaissance. This new renaissance will accompany and inspire the establishment of a new, just world order, a New Bretton Woods international monetary system. Lawfully, the most enlightened cultural periods of past Western civilisation each reflected a renaissance upsurge within the three great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is from those renaissance highpoints in each religion, that one finds the profound ecumenical basis so urgently needed to avoid the present drive toward a "Clash of Civilisations". The basis of such true ecumenicism among the "children of Abraham", is their shared belief that all mankind, man and woman alike, are created in the living image of God, by virtue of the unique, cognitive qualities of the individual human being, creative capabilities which no animal possesses. If God is the Creator of all, then only mankind, which alone among living creatures possesses its own divine spark of creativity, is in God's image. To the extent that all human beings, of whatever colour, religion or cultural origin, view themselves - and therefore each other - in that way, then we will have established the basis for solving the present, existential crisis in which mankind finds itself.

OH. MY. GOD.

And lastly, the Christian Democratic Party. Wow, alarm bells are going off already. Here's their policies. While probably the least insane of the bunch, religion is flowing strongly and their preferences are going to Family First. Plus Fred Nile's eyebrows look suspiciously like Howard's, but bleached. Check out the blurb down the side of the main page from Robert Moyes, particularly this crazy attack on the Greens:

They decry the Christian faith, they advocate stopping all funding to non-government schools, they would force schools and churches to employ homosexuals, they would legalize euthanasia, abortions, same sex marriages, ecstasy, speed and heroin, reduce the water held in dams, ban new jails, attack the RSL, allow pornography, unrestricted brothels and so on. In most of these matters the Australian Democrats join with the Greens. Senators from both parties include homosexuals living in sexual relationships.

So sick of this hypocritical bullshit. They want multicultural laws that "unite and not divide," meaning they're nice and tolerant of whatever race/gender/whatever you are, but if you're homosexual (being that people have a choice in the mattery, like how they can choose what race, culture and gender they want to be) you will go to hell and burn for eternity!

And so concludes my badly written writeup on whacked out religious parties, finishing with an attack on the CDC that I feel wasn't harsh enough, but I'm too tired to go researching more stuff.

Politics should be based on what is happening today. Not off a 2000 year old book. Says me anyway.

More On ADI Site Related Stuff

"We secured from the Government a commitment at the last election that they would not sell off government-owned land without consulting with the local community. Now we find... they have their fingerprints over a secret deal, which the community would not have been even made aware of, had we not been able to uncover this information at the eleventh hour."

- David Bradbury, Penrith Mayor + Federal ALP Candidate

That's taken from Cranebrook Sell-Off Broke Promise: ALP.

Hmm. The land was sold off by Airservices Australia (they do air traffic control stuff), to Infracorp. Airservices Australia is a government-owned organisation, yet the public wasn't told about this at all. Double hmm.

Infracorp sent a letter to the ASX on the 30th of July, announcing that it bought the land and intends to develop it. Sounds like a lot of public consultation went on (yes, that was sarcasm).

The Labor candidate for the seat of Lindsay, David Bradbury - who is the current Penrith mayor - said the sale of the Cranebrook site, and the revelation of the in-house environmental report on western Sydney lands - smacked of secrecy, and suspicious upcoming deals.

"As the Cranebrook example shows, there may well have been some consultation with developer interests, but there has been no consultation with local community interests," he said.

The member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, broke her silence on the issue yesterday and called on the council to block any efforts to rezone the land.

"I will continue to fight against over-development for the people of western Sydney," she said.

So Jackie at last speaks! The question is, why did she only speak now, given that she most likely would have known all about this back in July (and is supposedly against all this type of stuff)?

Infracorp stands to make a shitload of cash if council rezones the land.

And finally, Ian Campbell, Liberal Minister For The Environment, says a report finds that only 4 out of 28 sites in Western Sydney are worth saving.

He said that despite a council report suggesting the site had threatened species and rare woodlands, the Government's environmental assessment had uncovered no evidence to support such a conclusion.

The report still hasn't actually been released to the public.

This election has been so entertaining to follow. I really can't see why so many people can be so indifferent. 

Bah.

Mark Ptolemy had to take down his blog, thanks to people abusing the comments system and filling it with porn links and insults. Bored Year 7 students, or something far more sinister (Young Liberals)? We'll never know.

If Australia Was Iraq, What Would It Be Like?

Interesting reading.

Ando Update

Ando (apparently now a security expert) is at it again! This time saying it's possible that the Virgin bomb scare hoax was done by trade unions.

The Pilots Federation IR manager, Laurie Cox, had this to say:

"The Deputy Prime Minister has made a statement which I believe is highly irresponsible at this point in time. [I] think it [is] about time the Government had a fair look at it's aviation policies. It is completely out of control, we've seen that on airspace, now we have stupid statements coming out like 'this is a union stunt' to do something about security."

I'm going to make a little The Ando Zone graphic and stuff when I get enough free time.

The Chaser Decides

Don't forget! The Chaser Decides starts tonight at 9 on the ABC, after Kath & Kim!

Election 2004 | Day 24 | Tax and Roundup

Firstly, a bit of an update on Costello and arithmetic.

Peter Costello stepped up his attack on Labor's tax and family plans, but it might backfire.

The Treasurer claimed Labor's tax policy is underfunded by $2.7 billion, even though he has not seen all the documentation behind its calculations.

Many of the figures he disputes are not simple arithmetic errors but involve complex economic assumptions, open to debate and interpretation.

Labor was dismissive.

"Mr Costello's claims are desperate and they're untruthful," said the shadow treasurer, Simon Crean.

And Costello's attack is high stakes. He is now at odds with two of the most respected economic modelling experts - the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - which did the numbers for Labor's policy.

Oh I'd love to see this explode in his face. There's some more stories - Dodgy Figures Claim Denied By Labor, Crean Defends Policy Costings, Costello Finds "Raft Of Errors" In ALP Tax Plan, Labor's Sums "Wrong By $700m," Costello's $700m Tax Debate Backfire.

Wheee. The two organisations that went through the plan with a fine-toothed comb have also done work for the Treasury in the past.

And the rest in short because I need to sleep:

Mark Ptolemy is pissed off over the anti-Greens leaflet distributed by the Liberals.

Both Labor and Liberal returned all their donations from James Hardie, into funds for asbestos victims. Labor did it a month ago, Howard preferred to wait until the court findings were handed down.

Labor wants to put $1b into hospitals, but the funding will come from the states. There's a mixed reaction.

Todays Telegraph reported that the whole branch-stacking allegations was a load of crap (remember though, the Tele reported it), and there was a big editorial piece on it too. Can't find it online though.

Finally, Howard announced vouchers of $800 for each apprentice so they could buy tools. Umm. Yeah. The ACTU reckons its stupid and does nothing to fix skills shortages.

The ADI Site

I haven't really followed the million year long story of the ADI site fight, so if I get my facts wrong, feel free to kick me in the head.

Firstly, I would like to write the answer to the question that has been plaguing me since I ever heard about this all those years ago:

Q: What does ADI stand for?
A: Australian Defence Industries.

Thankyou Google. Now I can at last sleep at night.

So, the ADI site story goes like this: There's 1545ha of bushland near St Marys, playing host to all sorts of plant and animal life, including but not limited to kangaroos, cockatoos, frogs, echidnas, emus, falcons, snakes, koalas, and all sorts of other stuff. So it's a heap of bushland, not unlike what you see in national parks and whatnot. It is publicly owned land... but Comland and Lend Lease want to knock it all down, develop 5000 houses, and stick an industrial area in it. Lovely. There's been big fights going over this for ages, and they're still continuing. Read more about the whole deal over at the ADI Residents Action Group.

Lagoon inside the site.


One side ADI, the other side St Marys.

The lovely Naomi (who from here on I will call Nomes, due to my habit of giving everyone either one syllable nicknames, or ending them with "o" or "za") gave me a heads up on this story the other day, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the net and ended up forgetting about it. Counter Spin gave it an airing, and linked to an article. Jackie Kelly backflips over this each season, so this latest development is interesting. Here's whats going on:

A huge parcel of redundant government land next to the controversial ADI military site has been sold to an undisclosed buyer for a secret sum - with the deal likely to be settled days before the federal election.

The federal agency responsible for air navigation and safety, Airservices Australia,confirmed yesterday it had reached agreement to dispose of the 181-hectare site, at the edge of Cranebrook.

It is opposite the 1545-hectare ADI site, scene of a decade-long environmental challenge which has failed to stop the planned construction of 5000 homes in one of Sydney's biggest urban developments.

Airservices sold the Cranebrook lot as it is, meaning the prospective owners will inherit some disused sheds and a few broken-down communication towers. On face value, it could be a lucrative subdivision prospect. But, like the ADI site, environmental studies have suggested the land has at least two vulnerable species of plant, as well as rare forest and woodland traces.

How intriguing! This land is right next to the ADI site and features a few of the same characteristics, and has been sold off - but strangely enough nobody knew that it was sold until today. With the level of scrutiny that goes on regarding this place, you'd assume that it would have been front page news in the local papers for the past month. But no, absolutely nothing at all, until today. Surely good old Jackie would have known about it, and brought it up, seeing as though she loves the environment so much? Surely she'd have something to say?

Sink me! For days Mike Carlton, 2UE's breakfast announcer, had been desperately seeking Jackie Kelly, the Liberal MP for Lindsay, to break her silence on the secret sale of Commonwealth land near Cranebrook. He was at it again early yesterday, indulging in a little theatrics for his listeners, lamenting how Kelly had become suddenly so invisible.

That's from today's Election Diary.

What to make of all this? Who knows. Something is definitely up though. The Penrith Press (and Penrith Star) will no doubt feature a heap of coverage on it as of the next issue, so I'll find out more then.

Costello: Makes Pythagoras Look Like An Idiot

The Simon Crean of the Liberal party (except Costello has no balls) today claimed that Labor's tax policy was wrong by $700m.

(now watch me put the spin on this, this site is Completely Biased after all)

Is this a case of pot kettle black, considering Costello's budget surplus turned out to be $3.5 billion off his predictions, or that $3 billion in GST revenue had "unexpectedly" appeared? That's like $6.5 billion out of whack, yet he's claiming Labor can't add?

It shits me that News Ltd will report evil doings against Liberal candidates, but when it's anti-Greens or anti-Labor, nothing gets said.

The Ando Files

Hack Watch has suggested doing a John Anderson special. It isn't a bad idea. Could have a whole post devoted to Andoisms. Maybe a new term could be introduced into the English language! "Getting Andoed" - where someone makes wild and stupid unprovoked statements, damaging their own reputation and pissing off a whole group of people.

"You know what?! I cheated on this exam, and I think you're a shitty teacher!"
"Oooh, he's just Andoed himself/done an Ando."

Anyway, latest on the Ando trail is that he's said he'll step down as leader of the Nationals if they lose seats. Why?! He could have merrily gone on his way acting like a tool and nobody would have said anything, but now he's gone and created a condition for himself that'll most likely see him looking for another job after October 9. Stupid, stupid man.

Election 2004 | Day 23 | Roundup

Centrebet have the Coalition on $1.33 and Labor on $3.00 once again.

If you absolutely hate yourself and enjoy playing really bad Flash games, The Bulletin have one up called Election Invaders.

The ALP have all their TV ads online in MPEG format. My favourite at the moment is the education one.

Half the Liberal party site doesn't work in Firefox/Mozilla properly (ie. the links up the top). It shits me. I thought all government websites had to follow standards or something?

Time Magazine has a good article that delves into interest rates and the economy, and is worth a read.

Howard The Gymnast
Howard has been backflipping and imploding and everything over this whole pre-emptive strike. Today he's telling south-east Asia that no, what he meant about pre-emptive strikes is that he wouldn't be doing them without taking Labors route first.

"I wasn't saying that we were going to launch an attack against another country."

- Howard

Really? Because yesterday I got the impression you were fully prepared to attack another country if something happened.

Best line from this ABC article?

Mr Howard insists he would not attack another country without its cooperation.

"Yeah, hang on a sec, I think we have some nukes out the back here that you can bomb us with, it's all good."

Labor's foreign affairs man, The Ruddmeister, had this to say:

"Now, what we have revealed is that Foreign Minister Downer at the same time is privately, in diplomatic conversations in Canberra, telling the diplomatic corps, including Indonesian and other South-East Asia representatives that don't worry, the Howard government is not serious about this. What the prime minister has done in the election context is come out sounding very hairy-chested, I presume in his belief that this is electorally appealing to the Australian community but at the same time is doing continuing foreign policy and national security policy damage in terms of our relationship in the region."

Downer and Howard don't appear to be on the same wavelength with regards to this whole thing. Could this be the issue that costs them the election? Probably not, but it is a monumental fuckup.

Schools
The Australian has a stupid editorial, titled Lessons In Division Don't Add Up. It attempts to break down Labor's private schools education policy into insiders vs outsiders, then says its stupid and full of contraditions, and you just can't do that kind of thing with policies.

Us = Insiders.
Refugees = Outsiders.

Worked pretty well for Howard there.

Teacher's unions are urging parents to vote for non-Liberal parties, as basically every single one of them has a better policy than Howard.

Anderson Again
He's now claiming Labor is "salivating" at the thought of governing with the Greens. Yes, of course, you moron. I'm sure they start slobbering uncontrollably at the thought.

Ca-Ching!
Indie MP Tony Windsor says he'll name who tried to bribe him into not running for re-election, but only if he's asked to do so in front of an inquiry. Centrebet should have a thing going on which party it was.

TV Stuff
Labor wants to bring the World Cup back to free-to-air TV, as Foxtel bought all the rights to it when the Liberals changed the laws earlier this year to allow them to do that. They also want to change the anti-siphoning laws so that FTA sports that networks decided not to screen (say hi to Channel 7 and rugby) could be shown on pay TV. Plus $105m for the ABC (including funding for a digital kids/youth multichannel! Imagine a Triple J-esque version of Channel V! The return of Behind The News! Introduced legislation to remove any bias from the ABC!), getting Telstra to get rid of its stake in Foxtel, and the fourth FTA TV network is on the cards still! Woo! Most of the details on the ABC/film policy are on the ALP site. I'm just getting giddy thinking about all the multichanneling possibilities.

I want to sleep now. Read about the chaos that is the electorate of Wentworth (more here), then wonder how come this feels like the most badly written post I've made on Blogger.

This is the third piece of glossy crap Kezza has sent me in as many weeks. Interestingly enough, Jackie Kelly's junk follows the exact same format and colour scheme. Is this the same for all Liberal junk mail around the country? 

Election 2004 | Day 22 | Yeah, You Know The Drill

I seriously have to write this earlier in the evening instead of just before I go to bed each night. It's wrecking my sleeping patterns and all the news is stale by now. Argh.

I have been searching through the Australian Bureau of Statistics site trying to figure out how many people in Australia are in a single income family, making under $35,000, with three kids (one under five). It just seems like such an obscure statistic that I want to know what percentage of the population is in it. Can't find it anywhere at all on there though. That site is like a giant mirror maze.

Western Sydney Bribes
Mushroom asked me what I thought about the Panthers Stadium upgrade. I think it is a complete load of crap and something that Panthers and the NRL should be involved in, NOT the government. It'd be like Howard announcing funding to stack another level on the Plaza or something. It isn't as if Penrith Stadium even needs the money. Not only does the biggest leagues club in the southern hemisphere run the place, but virtually every game this season has been nearing capacity crowds, and sponsorship is on pretty much everything.

"These funds, that's the $10 million, will enable the playing surface to be replaced..."

- Howard in Penrith on Sunday

I fail to see how someone can spend $10 million replacing dirt and grass.

Possibly it'll go towards increasing the capacity, which leads to more business for the NRL and Penrith, and once again is something that the government should have no involvement in whatsoever.

And don't get me started on UWS again. But while nobody did, I've just gotten myself started on it by mentioning it.

UWS has had to axe degrees whilst students are halfway through them, sprawl subjects over campuses, bury books, and do all sorts of other shit because the government has been raping them with regards to funding for the majority of this decade. A UWS degree should command ten times as much respect as other universities as you'll have to endure a whole lot more bullshit and hardship to get it. And now, lucky us! Election time comes and they want to fix it all. Will people believe them after almost a decade of shitfights with the Uni? It shrieks "non-core promise" to me.

The Daily Telegraph reckons all of Western Sydney will continue to vote Liberal. Apparently we really are that stupid. Although anything the Telegraph publishes should be held under a blowtorch for a week before it can be believed as fact. Newspolls released today said the ALP would have won the election if it was held yesterday.

Bomb The World
Ooh! I was waiting for Piers The Fuckwit to write a piece slagging Latham for not willingly launching pre-emptive strikes on other countries, and he has! Sometimes I wonder if he personally disagrees with what he's writing, but has to fill a quota of pro-Howard articles or something.

Since Beslan, though, Russia has declared it will fight terrorists wherever they are. Surely this is the position that must be adopted if international terrorists are to be eliminated.

That's a brilliant idea Piers! That way everyone on the planet can go about their lives living in fear of being nuked not by terrorists, but by other countries that suspect we have terrorists! Fuck it! Why stop there?! Let's just bomb some random countries we don't like! I'm sure launching a few at Indonesia, with a population nearly 6 times the size of us, wouldn't carry any consequences whatsoever! I'm sure there's some American terrorists that don't like Australia too! Let's shoot a few bombs over there! That'll show them who's boss! Japan had a few submarines over here in World War 2 - they could be planning something else. Let's flatten Hiroshima again! I don't much like New Zealand either. Those sheep are probably planning something. I think our only option is to sink it. The Teletubbies came from Britain, and they're pretty funny looking. Definite terrorist material. Back to horses and carts for you!

Oh this is awesome. Bomb the shit out of other countries and don't expect anything worse in return. Howard truly is the smart option. Thankyou Piers, you have opened my eyes to the stupidity of my left-wing ways.

Australians can't afford to risk their security by taking the Latham option on defence.

Defence or Offence?

Kimbo also had a go at Howard on the pre-emptive strike thing.

"Why doesn't the Prime Minister pre-empt? Why doesn't he attack them? It's known now where they are and he can attack them, but the point is he doesn't do that - he doesn't do that because it would poison our relationship with them [South-East Asia] permanently."

So would that make Howard a (shock horror) liar?

Malaysia also told Howard to get stuffed. And then Latham did it as well!

Scandalous!
What other shit happened today? Oh! Two stories. The first being claims from someone that hates Latham, that he was involved in branch-stacking a few years back. Odds are this is probably true, as while unethical, it is frequently done within all political parties. The second being Tony Windsor, an independent in New England with nothing really against any party, was offered a diplomatic posting if he withdrew himself from running for re-election in his seat (totally illegal). The seat was previously held by right-wing parties for 82 years, until he won it in 2001. A spokesman for Howard said "no such offer was made with [the Prime Minister's] authority or knowledge." Which, let's face it, as this excuse has been used so many times before for anything that goes wrong with Howard, basically confirms Howard had everything to do with it.

The Rest
And other shit:

Labor plans to completely phase out plastic bags by 2007.

And they want to freeze line rental costs with Telstra for their first term, check out SMS pricing (it costs about half as much in the rest of the world than it does here), put in a cooling off period for buying a new mobile, and, best of all, bring in a do-not-call list for telemarketers. OH GOD YES.

And lastly, the sky is blue, water is wet, and Tony Abbott is still a dickhead.

Bahahaha!

Go Barto!

Even inanimate objects think so! 

If I'm deliriously happy on October 9, do you reckon Howard will announce his retirement in his concession speech? He might as well; there's no point sticking around as Opposition Leader for 2/3 of a term.

Election 2004 | Day 21 | Doing The Roundup Thing

Yeah, I'm a lazy disappointment: I slept in and sorta kinda missed the whole Howard bribing the commoners scene at Penrith today, unfortunately. No doubt he'll be back in a few weeks pretending to support businesses on High Street when the Plaza expands, or some other lie. It'll be interesting (and possibly incredibly depressing) to see if everyone around here will fall for this shit or remember the ADI site, UWS (remember the book burying scandal last year?), Badgery's Creek, etc.

"If the people of Parramatta want their interest rates low, they should vote for him."

- John Howard, somehow under the impression that Ross Cameron runs the Reserve Bank

PM Cutting And Running On Family Payment Crap?
The ABC seems to be the only news source running this story (update: the SMH has caught onto it too):

The Federal Opposition says a leaked cabinet document shows Prime Minister John Howard only agreed to a $600 per child payment to families as a short-term political fix, in the lead up to the election.

Interesting! Howard doesn't actually deny it, just dodges the accusation.

The John Anderson Show
Deputy PM John Anderson once again damaged the Coalition campaign by making stupid comments, this time telling everyone that voting for independents was a waste. Seriously, I'm waiting for him to claim that all Australians are stupid fuckwits or something similar.

Howard The Warlord
Pre-emptive strikes. Howard supports them, Latham doesn't.

So, are you willing to bomb/invade/whatever other countries because intelligence reports (which have been oh so reliable under Howard) say a terrorist threat is imminent in Australia? If this was the case, wouldn't the terrorists be in Australia? If you knew something was going to happen, wouldn't you probably know what it was going to be and therefore be able to stop it. And what right do we have to go bombing other countries at all? Does this mean we can then expect other countries to come invading us if they think we're plotting anything (because it'd only be right for them to respect us as much as we respect them)?

"Isn't it better to say that you'll do things in co-operation in a proper fashion, work collaboratively with our neighbours to ensure we deal with these threats?"

- Latham, leaving violence as the last option instead of the first

Howard is all for even more insane anti-terrorism measures, instead of providing funding and education to poverty-stricken areas, in an attempt to kill root causes.

Howard Acts Predictably
Here we go, claiming his attacks on Latham's time aren't personal.

Mr Howard said everything he or Mr Latham did in public life was up for scrutiny, but he would not indulge in personal attacks.

Because indulging in personal attacks would just be low, wouldn't it? The media is also obsessing over where Latham is planning on sending his 3 year old kid to a public or private school.

Here's one to cheer Clare up: Protest May Unseat Abbott, stating Bigears is in danger of losing his seat to pissed off voters.

And that's it for tonight.

"Bill Gates is an exemplar to the capitalists of the world."

- John Howard, referring to a man whose company dominates any market they choose to enter, not by competing, but via unethical business tactics and leveraging of an illegal monopoly

"Zeig heil!" 

Read about Darp's experiences over the weekend.

Get angry.

And do something to get the Liberals the hell out of power.

Election 2004 | Day 20 | The Greens And Labor

Right. Firstly.

Latham Pulls The Chicks
A week ago, the Herald Sun (hi News Ltd) ran a story that said women have deserted Labor. Today the SMH ran a story saying women were progressively moving towards Labor. Which one to believe?

And today's big story...

The Greens/Labor/Liberal Love Triangle
Firstly, The Daily Telegraph are running a story saying "Howard Won't Do Deal With Greens." Isn't it meant to be the other way around, Greens Won't Do Deal With Howard? Or would that put Howard in a negative light? Or have I just been awake too long?

So the big story anyway, Labor and the Greens did a preference deal today. The Greens will preference Labor after the Democrats, but before the Liberals, and Labor will preference the Greens before the Democrats, One Nation, and the Liberals. None of this applies to Tasmania. This slightly increases Labor's chances of making government.

John Howard - If You Can't Tell The Truth, You Don't Deserve To Run A Country
The Liberals, never above lies and mudslinging (ever), intend to start slagging off Latham at the start of this upcoming week. So expect a lot of ads bagging him for his job as mayor of Liverpool Council (of which, under his leadership, was named the most successful reforming council in the state in 1995, according to findings by a Wollongong Uni study). Howard has never run a council, so he'd of course know what he's talking about.

Liberals Hope Riff People Are Morons
And this just fucking pisses me off. Howard is going to the Riff tomorrow to announce a bunch of fucked up funding promises in a cynical attempt to bribe Penrith's voters.

First off, I went to UWS for a year and a half and basically hated it. Other than the Liberals, it's my favourite thing to bag. However, just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it isn't for everyone. I have had friends that have stuck through and done the courses, some across three campuses due to subjects being dropped thanks to the Libs and funding cuts.

The Liberals have let UWS rot in shitty administration and massive underfunding for 8 years, now they want to buy some votes by throwing $20m at it - which makes you wonder why they cut all the funds in the first place.

Now, let's take a look at a few of Jackie Kelly's (Liberal MP for Lindsay) greatest hits:

• UWS cuts: Liberal MP Jackie Kelly fails to do her job
• Statistics at 50 paces as the professor and politician war over uni funding
• Ptolemy attacks UWS cuts
• UWS rejects government's IT sledging
• The aspirations of Jackie Kelly MP
• In Kelly country, fear and not much loathing
• UWS accuses Jackie Kelly of smear campaign
• UWS Staff Stop Work Targets MPs
• $50 fee to park (relating to funding cuts)
• University of hard knocks

Get the picture? Here's some choice quotes:

"Not a chance. Over my dead body. Never."

- Jackie Kelly, on UWS funding, just a few months ago

"No one in my electorate goes to uni."

- Jackie Kelly, proud of her city (2019 students at UWS are from Lindsay)

And funding for Penrith stadium? I mean, what the fuck? The biggest leagues club in the southern hemisphere is sitting across the street, run by the same people, and Howard is handing out funding?

Argh! Giving special treatment to marginal seats just seems so fucked up.

I was going to drop down to the Plaza tomorrow to pick up the Spazzys album, so I might stop in at the Joan Sutherland Centre with some eggs.

Centrebet odds for the Coalition have dropped again - $1.28 compared to Labor's $3.30. Who are these invisible fucking idiots that keep swinging towards Howard?!

OH MY GOD, I'M SEEING DOUBLE. 

Election 2004 | Day 19 | Roundup

I spent the entire afternoon/night upgrading my car audio system from a broken tape deck and speakers that suspiciously look like they're made out of paper, so I haven't really been following what's happening. Gotta get up early tomorrow too so this'll be a quick one.

I was just thinking, if Howard actually wins this election, what'll we do? There's so much riding on it, more (in my opinion) than any other election I can think of. So what if he wins? Will there be riots? Mass suicides? End of the world? It'd be like Skeletor beating He-Man, Dr Claw beating Inspector Gadget, the bad guy killing James Bond and getting away with his plan. I don't know how we can take another three years of Howard. Really, I don't. Imagine Australia in 3 years time under him, considering the point we're at now. Health care could be entirely user-pays, public schooling would be non-existant, only the rich would go to uni, a total lack of Australian content on TV, News Ltd owning every newspaper in Australia. And if we're stupid enough to vote him in this time around, what'll stop us voting him (or some other equally evil bastard running the Liberal party at that time) next time? Will you have any faith in humanity left? Will we continue on this road of... fuck, I don't know what to call it.

Centrebet odds have dropped for the Coalition again, $1.33 to Labor's $3.00. Apparently they're never wrong. They're also betting on whether or not Pauline Hanson will get in the Senate (leaning towards no at the moment).

An SMH poll shows support for Howard is on the increase. HOW?! I don't understand how the hell a weeks worth of promises that'll be broken can make up for 8 FUCKING YEARS of screwing everyone around. I think of people like cattle more and more every day. Or maybe goldfish.

Costello conveniently announced an "unexpected" GST windfall of $11.8b, most likely to defuse the shitfight going on with the states over water. So we have this massive intake of cash, plus the massive budget surplus, I dunno, it sort of seems to me that he's either extremely cheap when it comes to spending on Australia, or he's a shit treasurer if all this completely unexpected money keeps appearing.

Okay, and now for the most pointless waste of ink ever today - this story, courtesy of The Daily Telegraph:

Liberal MP for Robertson Jim Lloyd yesterday cut the ribbon on a dishwasher.

And stupidest person of the day goes to Ralph Hahnheuser, running for Senate by refusing to eat for three weeks. I'm sure he'll make a good impression meeting voters after two weeks.

And as far as goddamn whinging about reallocation for private school funds: boohoo, 111 get reduced funding. 2500 get increased funding. Yet there's a backlash.

While most people have forgotten about Afghanistan by now, Counter Spin linked to an article which is utterly shocking. Is this what you get to look forward to when America invades your country to establish "democracy"?

And this Liberal/Greens preference deal is bullshit, and always has been. News Ltd are the only ones that keep persisting with stories of it.

Finally, the ABC has a gigantic list of every candidate running. Unfortunately it's in alphabetical order, but you can click the links to your electorate and it'll have a list of everyone running in there. Or you can poke around the AEC site, but it's much less neat.

Some more sites that've popped up:

• 105reasons.org - 105 reasons not to vote for John Howard. Well, there's only 41 there at the moment, but you can submit your own if you want.
• End The Lies - This one is is for a nationwide rally on the Sunday before the election, calling for an end to the Howard government.

Mark Ptolemy finally updated his blog with a big slagging out of the Liberal party (re: the anti-Greens junk mail and other things). Go Mark!

Election 2004 | Day 18 | Giving You Today's News, After The Day Is Over

Does it seem that the Liberals have done pretty much jack shit in the way of policy announcements this election? All they seem to do is wait for Labor to announce something, then bag it out four hours later.

Murray River Stuff
Latham said Labor would give $500m to get more water flows for the Murray, to return 450GL of water back to the system within three years. And then they'd invest another $500m in the Murray Darling River Bank, which is an organisation in water infrastructure, catchment management programs, and private sector efficiency. Howard's response? "Too vague."

More Water Stuff
The state premiers have sent Howard a letter telling him how much of a dick he is for his plans to fund his water policy by cutting state funds. Thrilling. No doubt he'll reject it tomorrow.

More On The Anti-Greens Junk Mail
The Greens themselves have issued a press release denouncing the piece of crap that the Liberal party put out. New Matilda is also going into the whole thing, and so have Crikey apparently, but I'm not a subscriber or anything so I dunno for sure. Counter Spin have been doing a lot of work on it too, speaking to Scott Morrison about it. Hopefully this whole thing has backfired in the Liberal's faces.

In other Greens-related news, News Ltd are at it again, claiming the Greens want to abolish all the states.

"How on earth can you even contemplate removing the states? What will they call state of origin rugby games?"

- Tasmanian Minister Bryan Green.

Last time I checked, the ARU weren't running State Of Origin.

This story, amazingly enough, is exclusive to News Ltd. I should start scanning shit from The Daily Telegraph. Howard got on the bandwagon today too, urging everyone not to vote Green.

Mmmbop
Howard bagged out Pauline Hanson's policies, magically knowing what they were all even though she only applied to the AEC today. Latham stated that they wouldn't do a preference deal with her. Howard hasn't ruled it out.

Howard Sticks Fingers In Ears Again - Re: UN
Howard reckons UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is wrong on his claims that the invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law. Because an utter bastard of a PM, in a country of 20m, surely knows more than the Secretary-General of the UN.

"I haven't seen that report but the legal advice that we have, and I tabled it at the time, was that the action was entirely valid in international law terms, and that was a legal opinion that we obtained from the relevant people in Australia."

- John Howard, claiming the UN is wrong without actually bothering to read what they said

Dickheads In The Media
Piers Akerman has written his second article that makes him look like a fuckwit this week. Okay, so they always make him look like a fuckwit, but you know what I mean. I've never followed Victorian news but apparenly you people get a fuckwit called Andrew Bolt doing his thing. Who ever knew a gigantic walking penis could write? Hack Watch is keeping track of all these wonderful contributors of our society, and many more!

Howard's End are looking for the best possible slogan to stick on a fridge magnet. The best entry gets printed onto 5,000 of them, and distributed freely to people in Howard's electorate. Slogan Of The Day:

Young and free? Our PM's 65 & we lock up refugees.

Some crazy protester went and confronted Howard today. Does this shit actually work? Do people listen to them, or automatically write them off because what they're doing to get attention?

And the rest in brief:

• Labor wants to bring in a directly elected national indigenous organisation
• Latham says a 66% pay rise to Qantas directors is "pretty crook"
• Howard wants to hand out an extra $20m to local communities to fight crime

Plus a heap more things on private schools blah blah. It's dominating the news so you shouldn't have to look here for it.

Unrelated To Politics, It Was Just Pissing Me Off When I Was Writing This
And finally, this is unrelated to everything, but I just had to say it - The Daily Telegraph and the SMH are bitching that the Australian Idol fuckwits have only been nominated for unit sales, and not for album of the year or artist of the year in the ARIA awards. NEWSFLASH, DICKHEADS: If cardboard could sing, it'd have a deal with Idol. Their generic flavour of music brings nothing whatsoever to the industry except for TV ratings and CD sales. The day premanufactured bile from the popstar machine wins album of the year over actual talent is the day Australian music has gone to the shithouse (no, Delta doesn't fall in this category). Imagine a major art award. Could it be won by someone with a team of market researchers, concept designers, case studiers, someone sourcing everything, drawing the actual work up, then getting the artist to paint it, whilst having their hand held by a producer, then getting the work touched up by someone else? No, unless it was a postmodernist piece on raping away artistic merit for the sake of fast sales.

The Worm Speaks. I found this a few days ago surfing the net, dunno who to credit for it, but if you made it, tell me. 

Election 2004 | Day 18 | More Scanned Junk

These are of pretty much no interest whatsoever to anyone outside of Macquarie, but I've scanned them anyway, because I said I would. Nothing incredibly interesting here.

Kerry Bartlett's gigantic bit of glossy junk.

Mark Ptolemy's non-taxpayer-funded black and white affair.

Election 2004 | Day 18 | Some Pics

Latham finds a ladder of opportunity.


Deputy PM John Anderson outlines what you'll get if you vote the Coalition in again.


Peter Costello not only doesn't know how to wear a helmet the right way around, but promotes irresponsible bike riding by not doing up the straps. And also looks like a tool.

Election 2004 | Day 17 | Roundup

I was looking at News Ltd's election page, whilst thinking it was the SMH's. "Jeez, SMH is really bagging the hell out of Labor today. Wonder what's going on?" Then I realised it was News Ltd. Bah.

The Daily Telegraph is currently in its sixth day of flogging the hell out of this Indonesian-girl-in-embassy-bombing story on the front page. Surely they're running out of photos from the family album by now.

Off With Their Heads
The 225 Australians that the government knows are in Iraq have all been accounted for. So it looks like the hostage thing was a hoax. Well, given that they gave 24 hours then there was no news of anything happening after that, sort of did it. Maybe they kidnapped two Austrians and spelt the note wrong. Oh, and Labor cracked the shits over being left out of the loop over the whole thing.

Labor + Schools = OMGZ EVIL!!!1
More Schools Will Lose Under Latham, screams a lovely headline from News Ltd, who got their completely unbiased facts from Peter Costello, John Howard, and the principal of the Kings School (where the only school facility missing is an international airport).

Howard bagged out the schools policy some more, and The Australian decides to get in with the whinging. For other examples of bitching about this crap, consult your local News Ltd newspaper.

Hanson Runs For Senate
Pauline Hanson announced that she plans to run as an indie in the Senate tomorrow. Wonder if Tony "Righteous Man" Abbott will secretly fund an organisation to drown her in litigation again?

The $35K Lady
From talkback radio, remember? Her name is Melinda Poor. Whether or not that's an alias, I just don't know. And guess what! She's a Liberal party member. And she believes her political ties are irrelevant and shouldn't have to state them. I wonder if Scott Morrison feels the same way when he sends out anti-Greens bullshit?

Liberal Party Stick Fingers In Their Ears - Re: Hicks
An independent report has found that the military court hearing process for David Hicks is flawed, and he doesn't have a hope in hell of getting a fair trial. Philip Ruddock's reply was essentially "...shut up." Hack on Triple J (the best current affairs program you're ever going to find on radio - the website also has each day's program for the past week online in streaming audio) played some of what his reply was. I can't remember the exact bits but it went along the lines of him admitting that they'd given up a heap of rights so that evidence could remain confidential, and that seemed fair enough. Err, okay. Hack also stated that something like 5 out of the 6 people on the tribunal had no legal qualifications whatsoever.

Howard reckons it's impossible to get Hicks and company home. Because I'm sure he's tried.

In Other News, Sky Found To Be Blue
A Roy Morgan poll has found that 86% of people surveyed believe newspaper journalists are biased. That is dead-set fucking shocking that we happily accept media bias (having said that, I have to admit that I love to watch Fox News, but only for the entertainment value). There should be an indication of bias on all newspapers and stuff. Like a little graphic of a scale that is tipped to the right or left a certain amount, decided by an independent team of moderators or something. That way newspapers could still be as biased as all hell, but wouldn't be able to pretend not to be, so you could factor in bias when reading stories before you wanted to take it for gospel. It's interesting to see that Fairfax Digital are listed in "biased internet sites," but there's no mention of News Ltd.

The Labor party guy came around to our house today and nailed a big sign for Mark Ptolemy into the front yard (result of me driving to Katoomba last week). Wonder how many days it'll stay up for before it gets vandalised.

And lastly, Triple J have an excellent election information site up, for us awesome youth, with info on how to vote, how vote counting works, how to run for parliament, some stories from Hack, and kickarse MP3s from Today Today (I particularly like the Chronicles Of Ruddock).

Mark Latham confuses a football with John Howard's head.

Election 2004 | Day 17 | These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

From PM's Forecast Error:

WHAT was the Prime Minister thinking?

Introduced to an Adelaide woman with her child on Monday, the Rodent got a bit clucky over the kid – as pollies do during an election.

He cheerfully asked the mother, "And you've got another one on the way?"

Umm, no, actually – the woman wasn't pregnant at all. Our hapless PM was left with both hands over his mouth.

And this is a really good read relating to Howard's interest rate scare campaign.

Election 2004 | Day 16 | Roundup

Local Stuff That Nobody Else Will Care About
David Bradbury, who is the mayor of Penrith, decided a while ago to run for federal parliament, for the ALP. The arsewank Liberal members of council (Jim Aitken and Ross Fowler, if you must know) went ballistic over this, claiming that he used his term as mayor to boost his profile and all this shit, even though he's spent less on public appearances than the previous mayor in the same amount of time. All the council's figures add up, yet the Libs still want to bitch. He has since resigned from position of mayor (isn't Clover Moore both the mayor of Sydney and a state indie MP?), and is now running against Jackie "Nobody Goes To Uni In My Electorate" Kelly (whose sanity I question more and more with every public statement she makes) and others for the seat of Lindsay. GO FOR IT DAVO! No links for this story unfortunately, as the local papers aren't online.

The Anti-Greens Flyers
Seems there's a big shitfight brewing with this, if you follow the Counter Spin blog over at the Sydney Morning Herald. It'll be interesting to see if there's a big backlash over it.

Blah Blah Blah Tax
Okay, so a "concerned mother" called in to talkback bitching that she'd be $461 a year worse off. Doing the math, it's about $8.80 a week. Apparently she was a stay at home mother, whose husband made $35,000 a year, and send one of her kids to a private school. Does it reek of bullshit in here or what?

Now, I would really like to know what percentage of the Australian population are insane enough to have 3 kids if they're earning $35,000 a year with no additional income. Would this caller have been to afford a telephone to call talkback radio? Would she have been able to afford a computer and Internet connection to download the ALP tax policy, then run the numbers? And how the shit could she afford to send her kid to a private school?

$35K a year is around $670 a week. Can you pay rent/mortgage, water, electricity, petrol, groceries, nappies, health insurance, whatever else, and support three kids on that? Maybe, if you siphoned petrol, used candles, drunk from the toilet, took the rotten fruit out the bins of IGA, and lived in a cave.

The whole idea of the tax policy fits into the good old "ladder of opportunity" crap (which pisses me off, but not to the extent that "ease the squeeze" does), which is what Latham has been all about since, well, ever (pick any biography). The whole thing is about seeking to improve your life, taking the opportunities you get, and not sitting back wanting someone else to solve your problems. If you're on $35K a year with 3 kids, you shouldn't be happily living in poverty with nothing better to do than call up talkback radio, you should be looking for a decent fucking job ("Honey, I'm home! Where's my dinner?", or get off your arse and go to work (or your spouse).

Gurgle
Howard slagged off the states that complained about his water policy diverting funds from health/education.

"I would have thought the public of Australia would rather that money be spent on water reform than on other commitments."

- Good old Johnny.

Tony Abbott Acts Like Moron
The Liberals aren't interested in health reform, claims... well, I'd put an insulting nickname in here for Tony Abbott here but I can't be arsed going through his biography to find something. Yes, you heard him say it, TONY ABBOTT LOVES MEDICARE AND TOTALLY DOESN'T WANT TO RAPE IT AWAY. I like this bit:

The Opposition intended to make "vague and unspecified reforms" that would make Medicare look more like Britain's much-criticised National Health Service, he said.

WOW WHO CAN TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT SENTENCE? How would he know Labor intends to make Medicare look like Britain's National Health Service if he says Labor's reforms would be vague and unspecified?

Private Schools
Here's a list of private schools that will have funding cuts, and the money redistributed to more needy private schools. While this is all good, I can't really give a shit as I'd rather hear what's happening to state schools, as I went to them, and both my parents are state school teachers, and I'm selfish like that.

David Wenham Reckons Labor Is Awesome
Labor announced some arts funding today. $50m for Australian movies. $10m for low-budget movies. $10m for Internet and possibly digital TV. Looks like everyone gave it the thumbs up too.

Other Stuff
The deadline for the hostage thing seems to have passed without anything happening. If I was an insane conspiracy theorist, I'd say that Howard is covering up the identities of the two that are kidnapped, as it's the only safe way to get out of this situation without any electoral fallout (let them die, you cop shit, pull out of Iraq, you cop shit, but if it isn't confirmed any Australians are involved, no-one cares). But while I think he's a total bastard that'll say/do almost anything to get re-elected, that'd be pushing it way too far, even for him. I wouldn't put it past Bush though.

The Liberals seemed really quiet today; no big announcements or anything to take seriously. Maybe tomorrow.

Don't forget to read Piers Akerman's weekly "I'm A Fuckwit" column.

Guess who's back? The Chaser Decides will be on Thursday nights at 9PM, from next week.

Election 2004 | Day 16 | Latham's Lament

The totally awesome/beautiful/rockin' Jess from ausculture.com wrote and recorded song about Mark Latham. Sounds very Katoomba. She should give Lindsay McDougal a ring.

howard's a scrote
so give mark your vote
won't you please?

Oh I love her.

In other news, if you really hate yourself, you can play Donkey John just like the old days.

Election 2004 | Day 15 | Roundup

Wow, we're over 2 weeks in already.

If you follow those evil virgin-sacrificing baby-eating Greens, musewhipped's LJ has been doing election coverage with bias towards them. She's actually gone out and stuff instead of just sitting around on the net mostly, so it's good for a first-hand impression of stuff.

More Debate Fallout
60 Minutes has the transcript of the entire debate online. I've saved it to my hard drive as I think they'll probably take it offline or make you pay for it in a week or so. Latham was feeling quite cocky today, claiming he wanted to take on both Howard and Costello in a debate at the same time. Idol outrated it though. *sigh*

Blah Blah Blah Tax
Thanks to nicwhite86 - Howard is overjoyed that he has something to bitch about the ALP over: According to Jann MacFarlane, member for Stirling (buggered if I know where that is, WA I think), Labor was investigating areas of disadvantage within their tax policy. Howard immediately started jumping up and down and shouting "backflip!" and clapping his hands. Yeah, woo, you dickhead.

In all seriousness though, Latham, please SHUT THE FUCK UP when it comes to "easing the squeeze." The people of Australia will thank you for it.

Howard's Water Plan
He's announced a "Water Smart Australia" fund. While water is going to become a major problem (I can't stress it enough) over the next three years if this drought doesn't end, I'm not sure what to make of it. News Ltd is reporting it as a positive, and the Sydney Morning Herald as a negative. Read both and make up your own mind.

Latest Polls/Odds
The latest poll basically has Labor and the Coalition on 50%. So who knows where it's going. Centrebet odds have dropped for Labor after last nights debate (they were previously $3.20, now dropped to $2.75). The Coalition's have lifted, from $1.35 to $1.40.

Shameless Commercialism
The ALP website is selling election merchandise. Umm... yeah (?). Or you could pick up something non-suck and actually funny at Polichicks.

Oh bloody hell. Two Australians seem to have been kidnapped in Iraq. IT NEVER ENDS.

"The idea that we suddenly became a terrorist target because of Iraq is false."

- John Howard, last fucking night

Election 2004 | Day 15 | Junk Mail

Because Blogger apparently has unlimited photo space, I thought I'd scan all the electoral junk mail that I get sent, and post it here. The second piece of crap I've gotten is the following (the first was a letter from Kerry Bartlett that I received the day after Howard called the election, and I've since thrown it out)...

"My God!" I exclaimed. "The Greens indulge in secret ritual sacrifice of virgins and like to drink baby's blood?! Those bastards!"

Notice how all the news quotes there are from News Ltd papers, who are renowned the world over for quality journalism (and are in no way currently involved in a smear campaign against the Greens)?

This bit of crap was apparently authorised by Scott Morrison, all the way over in East Sydney (I thought if they were from a party, they had to say what party?). I'd never heard of him before, so I poked around on Google, no doubt expecting him to be some unbiased, concerned resident with no ties to any political party whatsoever.

And here we have Scott Morrison, State Director for the NSW division of the Liberal Party! I would never have guessed! He looks like he belongs on the League Of Gentlemen, if you ask me.

But unfortunately, I can't dig up any real dirt on him, short of helping the PM to spam his own electorate, siding with Malcolm Turnbull in the King/Turnbull fight, and having this ironic comment to say when denying Liberal members had been punching on amongst themselves:

"This sort of behaviour has no place in the Liberal Party. We are a very diverse party which accommodates a broad spectrum of opinion and beliefs and that's one of our party's strengths.

Oh, and he's a Crazy Religious Fucker too.

Election 2004 | Day 15 | More Debate Stuff

ABC Radio has stuck the audio of the debate online. You can listen to it (and most likely fall asleep, it is quite boring without the visuals) in either RealAudio or Windows Media.

Election 2004 | Day 14 | Debate Fallout

I watched the whole thing again at 10 on the ABC, because I'm a sad, sad person with nothing better to do. I really hope to see Latham with a hangover tomorrow, coz he just plain rocked. He bent Howard over the bonnet, inserted an umbrella, opened it, then spun it around. And what the shit was with Howard's closing speech? The entire thing was about money. Great way to win votes there. Read Latham's thoughts on the night if you want.

I was surprised at how Latham handled the national security thing - I thought Howard would have caught him there, but he was kickarse there too. And he used my favourite Medicare high-wire quote. How awesome. And the "parent's wallet" remark over uni degrees. And the whole section with him questioning whether Howard would stay a whole term or not. And public/private school funding. So, so awesome. If I was a teenybopper I'd be jumping up and down, screaming and asking him to autograph my boobs.

Clare was right about the green haired guy - people over at Dickheads Incorporated have already started ranting at how it was rigged and all this other bullshit. For another unrelated example of whacked out fuckwits at work, try here.

So how did News Ltd manage to spin this around to make it look good for Howard? By continually asking people until one said Howard won.

"Oh I'm glad the worm doesn't have a vote."

- John Howard, after getting his arse handed to him tonight

The SMH has some good quotes from the debate (each quote showing Latham kicking Howard up the date), and for some more debate related stories check:

• Latham Accuses Howard Of Running From Leadership (SMH)
• A Clear Advantage For Scrapper Who Accentuated The Positive (SMH)
• Playing On An Away Ground, The Challenger Wins (SMH)
• Latham Wins Battle Of The Worm (SMH)
• Three Hot Minutes That Shattered A Truce (SMH)
• Blow By Blow, But No Killer Punch (SMH)
• Pledge On Hospitals Lifts Latham (SMH)
• Worm Signals A Defeat For Howard (SMH)
• Latham Puts Iraq On The Election Table (WebDiary)
• One Too Many For Howard (The Australian)
• Leaders Debate The Big Issues (News Ltd editorial where they refuse to admit Howard lost, The Australian)
• In The Margins First Timers Pick Latham (which seems like an utter waste of space of an article, The Australian)
• Howard And Latham Slug It Out (Herald Sun)
• Leaders Square Off In Debate (ABC)
• Latham Wins The Great Debate (The Age)
• Latham Finishes Ahead, No Wriggling Out Of It (The Age)
• Howard Short On Confidence, Warmth (The Age)
• Labor Campaign Back On Track (The Age)

There's a shitload more, but I'm sick of writing <li> tags. Check Google News for some more.

Note that there's no Daily Telegraph ones in that list, as they either haven't updated their website or are choosing to completely ignore the outcome. The majority of those articles are from Fairfax for the simple fact that they've got a heap more online right now.

Onto other stuff...

Anderson Shoots Himself In The Foot
Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, conceded that Australia is more of a terrorist target due to Iraq. I suppose he doesn't cop a massive bitchslap from Howard for disagreeing with him, because technically he isn't in the Liberal party. *shrugs* But he's been saying a lot of things lately that are either a) completely mental or b) damaging to their re-election chances. Maybe he's losing it?

Liberals And Greens Hand In Hand?
Yeah, I don't believe it either. The Daily Telegraph are reporting it (along with fifty seven billion anti-Greens stories), but I strangely enough, can't find it reported in any other newspaper. Their anti-Greens editorial is also suitably insane, although I have to give it points because it says that NRL is better than AFL. I haven't been following Greens news much, but musewhipped over at LiveJournal is covering the election with bias towards them.

Digital TV
News Ltd are reporting all of the FTA networks are in a shitfight with how to proceed with the uptake of digital TV. Just imagine, this wouldn't have happened if Richard Alston was actually a decent minister before he conveniently scored a job with a company he dealt with, and didn't put restriction after restriction on things just to keep Foxtel happy.

ADSL Bribery
Hendikins has been looking to upgrade to ADSL for ages now, and his exchange has finally been enabled. The interesting thing is that not only has this happened around election time, in an unsafe seat, but the info thing now mentions that ADSL has been now brought to you thanks to your awesome lovely friends in the Federal Government (mine never did when we got ours). The Luminosity blog goes into much more detail over this.

Finally, the awesome Andrew Bartlett gives Howard a hammering over at his blog.

Election 2004 | Day 14 | Howard Reamed In Debate

Well! That was interesting.

If you missed it, the ABC are running a replay of it at 10PM tonight.

All of Howard's rule changes in the end made no difference - Latham pretty much hammered him on every issue. That, of course, is my completely unbiased opinion. :P

The winner, as determined by The Worm, was Latham, with 67% of the vote. Let's hope election results will be similar.

My friend Clare had this to say:

when it comes, it will come to you says:
     predictable
when it comes, it will come to you says:
     i think channel 9 put the green haired dude behind the woman talking all the time so that their viewers dismissed the fact that latham wins hands down

Election 2004 | Day 13 | Taking A Break

Nothing at all really happened today. I checked overseas news sites to see how this bombing rates as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and it pretty much gets no mention at all. Other than that, absolutely nothing has happened.

Sidney Jones has an article that News Ltd should read.

Four Year Wait To Unite Family Ends In Cruel Separation, from the SMH. It's harshly ironic that she wouldn't have been at the embassy if it wasn't for our immigration policies.

I'd like to delve more into this Peter Costello being a religious freak story, thanks to some comments made by Hack Watch (a good site, exposing dodgy journalism, by someone far smarter/more experienced than me) a few posts ago. Maybe tomorrow.

Don't forget - 7:30 tomorrow night.

And here's some of that evil, evil hip hop that Peter Costello says is responsible for society's moral decay:

i don’t understand the whole reason why
you tellin’ us all that we need to unify
rally round the flag
and beat the drums of war
sing the same old songs
ya know we heard ‘em all before
you tellin’ me it’s unpatriotic
but I call it what I see it
when I see it’s idiotic
the tears of one mother
are the same as any other
drop food on the kids
while you’re murderin’ their fathers
but don’t bother to show it on cnn
brothers and sisters don’t believe them
it’s not a war against evil
it’s really just revenge
engaged on the poorest by the same rich men
fight terrorists wherever they be found
but why you not bombing tim mcveigh’s hometown
you can say what you want propaganda television
but all bombing is terrorism

we can chase down all our enemies
bring them to their knees
we can bomb the world to pieces
but we can’t bomb it into peace

First person to name the song wins... nothing.

Okay, this is the level of stupidity that most of NSW is being exposed to. You're looking at the top half of pages four and five of today's Daily Telegraph. I just had to scan it for the full impact. 

Election 2004 | Day 12 | Shameless Advertising + Roundup

you're australia's national shame
stand up and take the blame

That's Toekeo singing John Howard Is A Filthy Slut. Which is on the second CD of the Rock Against Howard compilation, that I picked up from the Plaza this arvo. Yes, totally full of evil lyrics that will no doubt corrupt our youth and incite mass riots. Speaking of which, fuck News Ltd for calling Magic Dirt "obscene." That really got me riled. Magic Dirt have done a shitload more for Australian music that any Channel Ten sponsored reality popstar with a short-term career ever will.

Anyway, half the songs suck my arse, the other half are alright. Senator Andrew Bartlett provides a track on it which proves that he should stay the hell in politics. But it's the thought that counts. All profits go to refugee charities, and at $20 for 34 tracks it's pretty good value. There's a more comprehensive review over at channel c. An interesting point raised over there is something major must've happened if people are pissed off enough to start releasing compilations like this (or this).

Oh! Howard gets the Pauline Pantsdown treatment too!

Media Generated Hysteria
Doing the rounds today, I came across an editorial by Greg Sheridan of News Ltd's Australian, titled Proof We Are A Prime Target.

"Ooh," thought I, "someone has researched what the motivations were for this attack! Now I'll finally know!"

But alas, it was just a whacked out editorial that in no way approaches anything level-headedly. I then turned my attention to The Daily Telegraph, knowing I could at least count for them to say something stupid. And, amazingly enough, I found this brilliant piece called We Are Left With No Option But War. I shit you not, that's what it's called. It kicks off like this:

In the aftermath of yesterday's latest terrorist attack – this time a car bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta – the normal response of rational people is to ask why.

Why are they doing this? What is it that they hope to achieve? To what cause do they believe they are committed? Are they fighting against something, or for something? And who are they?

Which are good questions! But unfortunately this article goes on to make a heap of speculations, contradicts itself...

But in a sense, the ideological associations of the perpetrators of this murderous attack are not important.

...then goes on to advocate war.

Peter Hartcher, for the Sydney Morning Herald, seems like someone who isn't itching for us to blow something up. He wrote a good editorial that unfortunately has a stupid title, Terrorists Win if They Destroy Friendship.

Brian Deegan, dad of one of the Bali bombing victims, reckons we should negotiate. While I reckon he shouldn't have said "negotiate," as it automatically means everyone will ignore his opinion, I think some sort of an understanding should be reached before any action is taken.

"He [Alexander Downer] should speak to the head of JI and ask him: 'Why? What's the problem?'"

There's two sides to every story. I think we should at least try and figure out what the hell the motive and purpose of this is before we stick our heads in the sand and let the military deal with it.

And meet the unfortunate girl that will be centre stage in a story that'll be flogged to death.

Money Related Stuff
The Treasury has released a "pre-election economic and fiscal outlook 2004." If you enjoy staring at lots of numbers until your eyes roll back in your head, then go for it here. Here's a summary here. Buggered if I know what it all means, but there was twice as much cash lying around as they expected.

And other than that, Day 12 has been fairly quiet!

Election 2004 | Day 12 | Mass Debating (har de har)

I checked the 60 Minutes website after seeing the Channel 9 ad for The Debate (well, after the footy ended anyway - Craig Gower is SO COOL):

In a special edition of 60 Minutes... the great debate between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Mark Latham, live on Sunday night at 7.30pm. The commercial-free debate will feature questioning of the leaders from a panel of five senior political correspondents and journalists representing television, radio and print media. It will be followed immediately by an analysis of the debate featuring the movements and verdict of Nine's "Worm", the on-screen graphical display of the views of 90 uncommitted voters, judging the debate live from a separate studio at Nine. The journalists selected for the debate panel represented the cream of the nation's political journalism and commentary: Laurie Oakes (Nine Network), Michelle Grattan (Fairfax), Jim Middleton (ABC), Neil Mitchell (Radio 3AW) and Malcolm Farr (News Limited).

Okay!

The 11th Commandment was:

There will be no "worm" or broadcasting of an audience response.

What I think that means is that the worm is not to be used during the debate. So 9 have done some dodgy loophole finding, and are measuring audience responses during the debate, but not broadcasting them until the end of it, where they'll no doubt do a recap and highlights reel.

Does anyone know where each of these journalists stands with regards to bias?

Election 2004 | Day 12 | The Debate

What's going on? I just saw an ad for The Debate on Channel 9 just then, and they said, and I quote, "the worm returns!" Rule 11 said they couldn't use the worm though...

Election 2004 | Day 12 | Would Jesus Vote Liberal?

WHEN Treasurer Peter Costello started preaching the message of the Gospel to 800 worshippers at the Scots Church in Melbourne earlier this year, he urged a spiritual fightback against the forces of moral decline in the nation.

Just days after handing down his ninth budget, there was no mention of tax cuts, baby bonuses or an inter-generational threat to Australia's fiscal outlook. Instead, he declared the answer to Australia's problems was to be found in the Ten Commandments.

His simple message had the crowd in a state of rapture. Worshippers were rising to their feet, applauding the Treasurer, before singing How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace.

"We do not have to look far to see evidence of moral decay around us," Costello told churchgoers. "We see it and hear it in entertainment like rap music, in songs that glorify violence or suicide or exploitation of others.

"Drugs break up families and marriages. Many addicts end up in prostitution or burglary. These outcomes are the very antitheses of all values set out by the Ten Commandments about how to order society."

Holy shit.

Real the full article at The Australian, then wonder what planet we're living on. To balance this out with a religous person not being insane, here's an article where the Bishop of Parramatta acts awesomely.

And to finish off, here's Jerry Springers final thought (okay, so it wasn't):

"A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."

- Justice Black, US Supreme Court, 1962

Read this. So good. Check here if it asks you to sign up to read it.

Election 2004 | Day 11 | One Month To Go

Okay, I realise that the previous two posts make me look like an inhumane turd. My apologies, and hopefully the fuckstains that did this will get caught.

The Embassy
I was looking at doing a story on Jemaah Islamiyah* (which will be referred to as JI from here on, as its a total bitch to spell) tonight, heavily exploring the why (ie. what are their motivations and aims), because that part of the story is almost always left out in the media, but I just can't. There isn't enough unbiased information out there that goes into detail, I have no informative connections whatsoever, and I just don't have the time. It's a shame because I reckon it'd be a story that'd be interesting.

The only three reasons I (thanks to Rat and his knowledge of world events, plus a few random websites) could find for directing a bombing at us:

1. JI wants a gigantic Islamic state that spans right across south-east Asia, to have a population of 420 million. It was rumoured that northern Australia was to fit into that too, but that has never been confirmed and was probably made up to sell newspapers, so it's probably bullshit.
2. They're pissed at our involvement in East Timor a few years back.
3. They see how our PM sucks more presidential dick than Monica Lewinsky, and wanted to send a message. Which is just plain stupid because it'll increase the likelihood of him being around after October 9.

As you can see, I was quite limited for research material.

Counterspin raises some interesting questions.

All of the attacks on Western targets since 9/11 have taken place on Howard's watch. How does this make him the strongest candidate on national security? Mr Downer might also like to start thinking about "root causes" - if he wants to help bring this to an end. Mouthing off about the evil and barbaric people behind these attacks helps no-one.

Although I wouldn't blame Howard for an increase in worldwide terrorism, he might as well be blamed for it if he wants to claim responsibility for interest rates and other things that are beyond his control.

Now, onto other stuff.

The election is going to be put on hold tomorrow for the people killed in the bombing, and on Saturday as it marks the third year since the world went insane. On Sunday it will resume again - don't forget Sunday night will be the night of the "debate." I am hoping Latham smacks Howard over the head with a steel chair. Looks like Ray won't be the special guest referee that inadvertantly gets punched out though, as he's pulled out.

Do Something
Today I got so annoyed with Howard (he just pisses me off the same way reality TV does) that I drove all the way up to Katoomba, accidentally locked myself out of the car (and I swear, at 5PM wearing only a t-shirt and pants standing around in the Upper Mountains for an hour... it's something you don't want to do - I couldn't grip the steering wheel properly for the first ten minutes driving back due to the strength being gone from my arms), and went to Mark Ptolemy's campaign office and put my name down as a volunteer. This isn't to say I'm going to be ranting about how awesome the ALP is (although you have to admit, Latham kicks arse) - I'm still all for Greens, Democrats and whatever non-Liberal party/candidate you want, but Howard needs to lose something like 12 seats to get out of power, and Macquarie might as well be one of them. Ptolemy looks like the best chance against Kerry "Invisible Man" Bartlett, so I'm going to help out with letterbox drops and election day stuff. If anyone else has the time, please go and volunteer to help out the non-Liberal candidate of your choice in your electorate. Maybe it'll be us that makes the difference.

Now wasn't that all inspirational? Feels like it should go in the end of a sports movie.

Anderson Tries Another Whacked Out Scare Tactic By Claiming Latham Eats Babies

DEPUTY Prime Minister John Anderson today accused Opposition Leader Mark Latham of wanting to change the Australian flag.

Launching the campaign for Nationals candidate Trevor Khan in the regional NSW seat of New England, Mr Anderson said he was intrigued to discover that Mr Latham thought the Australian flag should be changed.

Mr Anderson said country people were very strong defenders of the flag.

"(Mr Latham) actually had a proposal, which I have never seen him repudiate, that the Eureka flag would make a good replacement," he said.

"People in the country believe very strongly in the flag.

"They would like to know what their leaders think about the flag."

That's taken from Latham "Wants New Flag," over at trusty old unbiased News Ltd (I wonder if we'll ever get a Fox News of our very own, if only to keep some whacked out shitburgers happy?) While yes, Latham mentioned this ages ago, I don't see what the hell it has to do with anything in this current election whatsoever. I'm also for a new flag anyway. Maybe when the republic thing comes around again.

Howard Does The Hyprocritical Liar Dance Again

LABOR'S claims it would treat the budget surplus responsibly were almost obscene considering the ALP could not deliver surpluses when it was last in government, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Weird. I was under the impression that the budget wasn't being controlled by the exact same people as 8 years ago and that Labor hadn't learnt anything. Read more here. Followed by this:

"Bob's right in saying we're not going to engage in a reckless spending spree," Mr Latham said.

"That's a ridgy-didge, dinky-di, fair dinkum commitment."

True blue, bonza ripper alright Vegemite, unreal banana peel.

I was looking for the history of the terms left and right wing. Encarta says this:

At the French National Assembly of 1789, members of the "first estate"--the conservative clergy--sat on the right side of the king, while members of the "third estate"--the commoners, including Jacobin radicals who sought to change the political regime--sat on the left side.

Apologies for lots of crapping on and not much news in this post; it's just that not much has happened due to the election being put on hold for the next few days.

* don't forget to mention "possible links to al-Qaeda" in story somewhere, because it's a standard media thing if you're referring to terrorism

Election 2004 | Day 11 | Danger Danger! High Voltage!

News Ltd are running the best panic inducing headline with Bomb An "Attack On Australia."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it was "clearly a terrorist attack" that was "directed towards Australia".

*insert heavy sigh here*

Mr Downer said it was "dangerous" to speculate on whether the attack was purposely timed to occur during the Australian election campaign.

That's right, speculate on this and you're flirting with death!

I sound like a heartless bastard don't I? I don't know. Sorry. All my compassion seems to have been overridden with cynicism, as I just know how this is going to be exploited.

The Australian embassy in Jakarta has reportedly been bombed.

SHIT.

This is the exact thing that Howard needs for this election. He'll have a field day fearmongering over it.

Note that it hasn't been confirmed that the embassy was even the target for the bombing, but I unfortunately doubt that'll factor into it.

Latham and Garrett. I didn't want to gush or anything, but they both just look totally fucking awesome there, don't they? Pic nicked from News Ltd's photos.

Election 2004 | Day 11 | Howard Offers Bribe For Olds

Looks like he buckled under pressure for a response to Labors pack. From the SMH:

Prime Minister John Howard today announced a new $1 billion tax offset for mature age workers.

The tax break will be available to people over the age of 55 and will provide a maximum annual rebate of $500.

Note that this equals a maximum of about $9.60 a week if you want to report it in other ways.

Mr Howard said he estimated 750,000 mature age workers would benefit from the measure.

The government predicts it will cost the Budget $1.04 billion over the next four years.

"We are committed to providing enhanced opportunities and greater choice for mature age workers," Mr Howard said.

"Their skills, experience and ongoing contribution to the labour force are vital if we are to secure our future economic strength."

The measure takes effect from the start of the 2004/05 financial year and will be available to workers earning up to up $63 000 a year.

Other World-Dominating Economic Powerhouses That Have An FTA With The US

• Canada
• Mexico
• Jordan
• Chile
• Singapore
• Israel
• Morocco
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Costa Rica
• El Salvador
• Guatemala

And ones that eventually will:

• Dominican Republic
• Bahrain
• Panama
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Peru
• Thailand
• Botswana
• South Africa
• Lesotho
• Swaziland
• Namibia

Oh I just can't wait...

Election 2004 | Day 10 | Tax

I scored a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald's election blog! Woo! Thanks to Jess from the entirely awesome ausculture.com for the heads up.

Current Election Odds
Centrebet odds for the election now have the Coalition at $1.45 and Labor at $2.60. I really can't figure out where all this Coalition support has come from; every single person I've spoken to in the past two weeks (without telling them my voting intentions first) has stated they're going either Labor or Greens. Do Coalition voters live underground and only appear on election day? What's going on? Or is it something people are ashamed of and don't want anyone knowing?

Tax Tax Tax Tax Tax: "Ease The Squeeze" Current Catchphrase Of The Day
Labor released their tax policy yesterday, and basically, other than prisoners getting high off redback venom, it's the only thing the media have been focusing on today. I've avoided it really; there's too many figures involved and a lot of it just confuses me. If you want to read the policy, it's on the ALP website and you can make up your own mind. Personally I think we shouldn't be so obsessed with how much money we'll get back under each government and more obsessed with what they're going to do with the money they take.

In yet another fine example of irony, Costello accused the ALP of being misleading. Apparently single-income families with three kids, on less than $30k a year will be worse off. You'd have to be insane to have 3 kids if you were making that much money in the first place. And remember, while there's bitching about lower income earners not getting as much of a tax cut, they don't pay as much tax in the first place.

As for cigarettes costing 29c extra a pack...

Boo.

Fucking.

Hoo.

I work at Target, so I get to see where the $600 One-Off Payment gets squandered. I highly doubt a newborn is going to enjoy a new TV and Xbox, or 27 new bras. Or a stupid amount of makeup.

"I say to any Australian family who might think they could gain under the package, just remember that a rise in interest rates will more than wipe out any advantage you might get under that package."

Howard, still running with the big Interest Rate Lie. He then went on to say that terrorists would blow up the Reserve Bank if Labor was elected, causing interest rate rises. Okay, he didn't but might as well have.

ALP's "27 Lies" Document Now Has An Additional Eight
I haven't checked up on this since it was released, but poking around the ALP site now whilst looking at the tax thing, it appears that an extra eight lies have been added to their Howard tally. Their subjects are:

• Health care
• Welfare
• Overpayments
• Breaching of Parliament guidelines
• Non-independence of the Speaker
• Length of Parliament sittings
• Reforms for Government legislation
• Tax stuff

Open Letters
News Ltd is running an article by David Penberthy, which slags off the open letter by medical professionals, and open letters in general. I thought it was insulting to many, but is still a damn funny article. I especially love the first few paragraphs, they would've taken a while to think up.

Fifty-six of the nation's leading optometrists have written an open letter accusing the Howard Government of having a short-sighted foreign policy and no vision for a fourth term.

Fifty-six cardiologists believe the Prime Minister is heartless, vain and driven by arterial motives. Fifty-six eminent physiotherapists say Howard doesn't have a leg to stand on, while in other news, 56 influential proctologists said simply that they knew an arsehole when they saw one.

As the open letter fad sweeps the nation, patients are following their specialists in issuing public denunciations.

Some of the country's best-connected amputees are up in arms at the prospect of Howard's return. A coalition of leading obsessive-compulsives is releasing an open letter every three minutes, while noted Tourettes sufferers issued a letter so florid in its vituperation that I'll have to show it to you later.

Other Stuff
Web Diary has undergone a revamp, with new stuff appearing at last. The second new article on it is a letter from a farmer to her local MP, outlining her reasons for not voting Liberal. It's brilliant.

There's a good article by Alan Ramsey on the SMH as well, about Howard then and now.

Things I'd Like To See Next Week

• Latham announcing plans for a new TV station featuring all-Australian content
• John Howard just flat out using racial slurs
• The republic brought forth again
• Latham's taxi driver advocating him
• The Debate held inside a steel cage, with Ray Martin as the guest referee

Blogger appears to have imploded. Shit.

Seen at Malvern Station, in Melbourne, and has been doing the rounds on the net. No idea who to credit for the photo. 

Open Letter From Medical Professionals

I finally found it in its entirety! Here's the letter part below, with the names of the signatories chopped off to save space, but if you want to know who signed it, check the link.

STATEMENT FROM CONCERNED REPRESENTATIVES OF THE AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL PROFESSION.
released 5 September 2004

We are members of a profession dedicated to healing, saving lives and the prevention of human suffering.

We believe it is our duty to state to the Australian Government and the Opposition that we are deeply disturbed by the ongoing war in Iraq. The war is causing horrific injuries and loss of life to Iraq’s people, particularly children. It has destroyed essential infrastructure, including the health system. Yet it shows no sign of ending.

The horrors of the last century have shown more than ever that war is so devastating to human lives and society- both short and long term-that it should only be waged as a last resort. It is thus immoral for governments to declare war before all peaceful processes have been truly exhausted; and before there has been a full public debate by a truthfully informed people; and before there is a full and clear mandate from the United Nations under international law.

It is now clear that the Howard Government broke all these conditions in committing Australia to join the U.S. in its invasion of Iraq.

There was no mandate from the UN under international law for this war. The United Nations’ peaceful processes of weapons inspections negotiations with the Iraq Government were terminated by the decision of the Bush Administration to invade.

The reasons the Howard Government gave to the Australian people for joining with the U.S. in invading Iraq have proved to be false and misleading- particularly the claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was allied to global terrorism.

We call on the Howard Government or an elected Latham Government to meet its moral responsibility to make amends for this tragic mistake of Australian Government policy. This must include re-directing Australian resources, civilian and military, to work only within the ambit of the U.N. for the civilian reconstruction of Iraq. The restoration of the health system is an urgent priority, and we urge the Australian Government and people to give all the necessary financial assistance.

Election 2004 | Day 9 | Roundup

I just found that one of my local candidates (Mark Ptolemy) has started keeping a blog. Blogs are popping up all over the place!

In my net searching, I still haven't managed to come across the open letter to Howard from doctors. The ex-military letter was on the net on the same day it was released, how come this one isn't? And what's with Web Diary going all quiet?

The Greens
According to the Greens-bashing News Ltd, the constant bagging of them by the Coalition, and in particular, John Anderson, has driven voters to them. About 1 in 10, but still, support is rising. Good for them. Maybe next election they will be the third major party.

Medicare
Do you think a health care system run by Tony Abbott would be in everyone's best interests? Even when he says insane things like this? Julia Gillard (who is awesome at fighting with Tony Abbott), said this in response:

"Latham and Labor will be rebuilding Medicare in government because the Howard Government has tried to destroy it. The person in Australian political life who's never believed in Medicare and who has always wanted it destroyed is the Prime Minister, John Howard."

Howard reckons the ALP health plan "will split Australia"... then went on to accuse them of sending Australia to war on a lie, selling out the country, and lying about children overboard.

The Age also has a good editorial running, featuring this nice bit:

At election time, one of the key differences between governments and oppositions is that the worth of a government's promises can be weighed against its policy practices in office. That can be an advantage, when policies have worked, or a disadvantage, as is the case with the Coalition's record on health. The Howard Government may have spent more than $20 million on advertising its claims to have "fixed" the system, but this week's developments suggest not even the Government believes its own propaganda.

Ït goes on to attack both parties over their solutions for Medicare, and is worth reading.

Interest Rates Lies
I was digging around the ABC's Lateline website, trying to find the transcript of where Tony Abbott said "anti-American" 7 times in one interview, and I found this piece from the start of August, where the Reserve Bank claimed that interest rates were going to rise in the future, probably around December. Note that this story occurred three weeks before Howard called the election, and almost an entire month before he started claiming interest rates would rise under Labor but not under Liberal.

Bagging News Ltd
I like (okay, I love) to do it, but there's someone that does it way better than me, and also picks apart the Liberals' Medicare package while he's at it.

The Gay Marriage Thing
The Liberal candidate for Brisbane is a lesbian. Normally I wouldn't give a shit either way what her sexuality was, but I just find it interesting that she'd want to represent a party that is so anti-gay. And now the Nationals are bagging her. I thought Nationals and Liberals were meant to be friends? Or have they run out of things to hate that they've now started turning on each other? I'm all for gay marriage; I don't see how it's going to result in the destruction of the world or anything whatsoever. Unlike other things.

The Debate
News Ltd has a nice anti-Howard piece running for a change, on Channel 9's decision to comply with the governments demands that there will be no recording of audience reaction to statements made during the debate on Sunday. It also delves into why Howard changed the debate rules and comes up with some interesting conclusions.

Bob Hawke Is Awesome

"If Australians were to return Howard, you would be defining Australia to rest of the world as saying 'Australia is no more a proud, independent country, it's just the 51st state of the United States.' I genuinely believe that this election that we're into now is one of the most important in Australian history. This election is going to define Australians to themselves and it's going to define Australians to the rest of the world. Our reputation is not what it was. We are no longer seen as the great, warm-hearted humanitarian country."

You can read the whole article here or here (both are exactly the same). He rocks, and it's very quotable, but I'm going to try and avoid pasting the entire article here.

Question: Is the Lyons Forum (also in much more depth here) still active within the Coalition? There seems to have been no reporting done on it at all within the past 6 years.

And lastly, ROCK ON.

Herald Sun Employs Genius As Editor

Holy shit, check out this editorial piece from the Herald Sun:

THOSE seeking the fair treatment of alleged terrorists David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib do not suggest they should escape trial.

Certainly, if it were established they were linked to the murderous fanatics of al-Qaida then they deserve the full force of the law.

But it is the process of establishing their guilt or innocence that has been causing concern in Australia.

In what is a remarkable and unprecedented situation, two Australian citizens are to be tried by American military commissions that even in the US are regarded as having dubious processes and questionable status.

This has prompted many Australians to keep prodding the Howard Government to either bring the pair home for trial or, failing that, ensure they get justice.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said yesterday the US had already acted on Australia's concerns over issues such as the presumption of innocence and the withdrawal of the death penalty, but more had to be done.

``Following our observations of the preliminary hearing, it appears that some improvements are required to ensure that understandings on procedural fairness are met in practice,'' he said.

And now for my favourite part of this whole story, the final three sentences that have nothing to do with the preceding parts and make no sense whatsoever:

The West faces a brutal, fanatical foe who detests our commitment to political and religious freedoms.

Our democratic system, which they so loathe, has at its heart the rule of law and the right of all citizens to a fair trial.

We cannot afford to let the terrorists bully us into abandoning these precious rights.

...What?

While I admit that I too will frequently go off on tangents whilst writing (none as stupid as that though) stories, my excuse is that I don't run a major newspaper, nor am I employed in the journalism industry in any way, shape or form.

Election 2004 | Day 9 | Labor Announces Tax Policy

Quick! Get it while it's moderately warm! Labor announced their long awaited tax policy in the past hour. Go read the (both unbiased) stories at news.com.au and the SMH for info on all of it, before the facts get skewed (I give it another hour), and make up your own mind. Then vote in News Ltd's poll that reaffirms their status as the most professional news organisation in this country and asks the big questions - who you reckon would win in a fight between Crean and Costello.

The Case Against John Howard.

Even though this article is almost two months old, it still matters.

Election 2004 | Day 9 | Coalition Scare Campaign On Interest Rates Shown To Be Load Of Crap (in 501 words!)

Nats Unleash The Sum Of All Fears, by Matt Day. I read this in the paper at lunchtime today; it's a nice debunking on Howard's recent biggest lie.

Election 2004 | Day 8 & The Start Of 9

"...you only need a safety net if you turn the health system into a high wire act..."

- Mark Latham, April 15 2004

That's an ooooooold quote that I found in Latham & Abbott, by Michael Duffy. I like it, even though it has little to do with the contents of this post.

Now for random thoughts.

What I find interesting about far right fuckwits is that they will consider certain races and cultures to be superior to others. And they themselves are always invariably part of that superior, more intelligent and richer culture/race, and know what's best for others, even if they're talking out of their arse 99% of the time. Imagine if it worked the other way around. I wonder if there's right wing Iraqis going "it's a good thing those Americans are bombing the shit out of us and inadvertently killing civilians, as we're one hell of an inferior race of people compared to them. I mean look at us, we don't even have cheese in a can for fucks sake!"

Anyway, today's news... well, bugger all happened really. Latham won the NRL tipping contest that he's in, and it made headlines. That's what kind of a day it was.

Medicare
Todays (real) news... Howard and Latham both bullshitted over Medicare. Yes good old Howard... I mean they've been slowly raping Medicare to death over the past 8 years, then announce that they're going to improve shit. And hand out tax cuts/bribes too. This'd be one of those non-core promises I'd say. Howard apparently announced this when he was down in Penrith (down the road from here) today, with Tony "Fuckwit" Abbott and Jackie "I Slag Off The Electorate I Represent" Kelly. I would've gone down to the Riff and paid them a visit, had I known they were all going to stroll around there.

I'll believe Latham's aim of 80% bulk billing however. I don't think they'd manage to raise it that high if they got in, but I just think they'd at least try. The whole Medicare arguing today didn't really interest me much, it feels like both Latham and Howard will have forgotten everything they said about it by the end of the week.

Cow Farts vs The War On H2O
I'm not sure what my favourite craziest story of the day was. Either this...

War could erupt over water resources just as it had over oil, Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett said today.

Senator Bartlett said unless the Howard Government gave a stronger commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions it would face not only worsening climate change, but a less stable global security situation.

"Increased competition for resources such as water and agriculturally productive regions has global security consequences comparable to terrorism," Senator Bartlett said in Brisbane.

Or this (can also be found on page 6 of the SMH)...

The Cattle Council of Australia demanded reassurance from Labor that it would not introduce a so-called fart tax.

The fart tax, known in polite circles as an animal emissions tax, has been considered in other countries, most recently New Zealand.

The aim is to cut the amount of methane, a greenhouse gas, produced by cattle and other ruminant livestock by changing what is in their feed or switching to less gassy breeds.

Cattle Council president Keith Adams said a fart tax on Australia's 27 million bovines would be a tragedy that would do little to help the environment.

Peter Costello - "Mr Speaker, I'll uhh, Mr Speaker, do whatever my uhh, Mr Speaker, boss tells me to do, Mr Speaker"
It's rumoured that if Howard wins government again, Costello will be taking over in two years. Peter Costello... Like Simon Crean, he has no charisma whatsoever. Unlike Simon Crean, he also has no testicles whatsoever. I think the Liberals will be fucked (not fucked as they are under Howard, I mean fucked as they'll be fucked like Labor were under Beazley/Crean) under him.

Downer Realises Something Everyone Else Knew 3 Years Ago
And now onto the Hicks/Habib saga. You all know the story. Two Australians are captured by the US, accused of being terrorists, and are locked away for three years without a trial. What does the Australian government do? Fuck all. It'd require Howard getting out of the doggie position with Bush, running the risk of getting pink socked. The issue of whether they're guilty or not doesn't come into this. Bring them home and trial them here. If they're guilty, whoop de doo, they go to gaol. No harm done. If they're not, wow, at least they didn't have to unfairly spend 3 years in a military prison when they were innocent! It's good to know that your government will stick up for you when you're Australian. Oh wait...

Anyway, now that election time has come around, the government has "vowed" (non-core promise) to bring them home if they're found not guilty. The trial has kicked off, and Alexander Downer, his eyes miraculously opened, comes to this conclusion:

The United States military commission trying David Hicks had proceeded with ill-defined rules which neither the prosecution or defence completely understood, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

Mr Downer said the Government would raise objections with the US about the military commission process trying terror suspect Mr Hicks for attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy.

"Oh yeah, look, it's a sailboat."
"You saw it too? Damn it!"

Sorry. This whole situation just reminds me of that for some reason.

The moral of the story: If you're going to go overseas and end up caught in a Bangkok Hilton-esque situation, MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS AROUND ELECTION TIME. Otherwise you're basically fucked, because your government doesn't give two shits about you.

For more information on this story, check Government "Playing Politics" Over Hicks, Government Lied: Hicks Lawyer, Hicks Move Just Politics: Labor (all from news.com.au).

Murdoch Press Uses Logical Paradox As Headline
And the latest (yes I've been whoring news.com.au quite a lot today) stupid thing I've heard: Faith In Howard, Trust In Latham. How can you have faith in someone you can't trust? That just makes no fucking sense.

The Kyoto Protocol
Lastly, Kyoto. It's meant to be a global pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions, so the planet can start to recover from the fucking over we've all given it. Howard pulled out of it, and so did some other leader that's a puppet of corporate America. Can't remember his name right now. You know, that idiot guy?

It is needed. Even Bob Carr thinks so, which is quite surprising, as Bob Carr is quite a dick, and I didn't think this'd be an issue he cared about, what with him sitting back and not really doing anything as we slowly move towards running out of water in Sydney within 3 years. But good on him for caring!

Enrolments End Tomorrow
Remember to somehow magically get your enrolment form to the AEC by 8PM today (posting it tomorrow won't cut it). As Wil Anderson said on Triple J last week, if you had the opportunity to vote and didn't, then you have no right to bitch about the outcome.

This is awesome

Says Howard (August 30th, only found this today):

"I have said that I will remain the leader if the Australian people are good enough to elect me."

Am I good enough? Or am I an inferior voter?

Election 2004 | Day 7 | Liberals Talk Down Doctor's Letter (how totally unexpected!)

I have been digging around all afternoon trying to find a copy of this magical mystery letter. All I can find is the Liberal's responses to it:

"I respect their right to have another view, this is a democracy. I don't agree with their view and I would have thought as doctors they would have taken account of the fact that spending on public health after [former dictator] Saddam [Hussein] is 60 times greater than what it was when Saddam ran Iraq."

So says the man with the eyebrows. I'd like to look into that "60 times more" statement a bit more later, when I dig up some more stats. Maybe 60 times as much is being spent because 60 times as many things are being blown up. But I need to research more.

Peter Costello said this:

"You've got those doctors who are making their statement, they're entitled to do so but I actually believe that Iraq will be a better place for the downfall of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein."

Now I'd like to juxtapose this with the latest news on Iraq:

Violence left 44 dead in Iraq yesterday in one of the bloodiest days since the new Iraqi government took office, as hopes slipped for two French journalists held by a radical Islamic group and saboteurs hit oil pipelines in the north and south of the country.

Election 2004 | Day 7 | Stupidest Statistic Of The Day

My favourite one at the moment, coming from We'll Vote Labor But We Like Howard, Says Young:

And if a group of young western Sydney voters have anything to do with it, Mr Howard is going to march back into power.

Despite these new voters' school - All Saints Catholic Senior College, Casula - being in Mark Latham's electorate of Werriwa, the signs are not good for the Opposition Leader. Five of the seven year 12 students said they planned to vote Liberal.

5 out of 7 Year 12 students at All Saints Catholic Senior College are planning to vote Liberal. STOP THE PRESS!

And in other major news, five out of the seven empty cans in the recycling bin are Pepsi Max. I'm currently in negotiations to sell this story to the Herald.

National Pride

This article has been written by Bill Condie, for The Guardian, a pommy newspaper. I copied/pasted it here for those of you too lazy to click a link.

Why I've Fallen Out Of Love With Australia
September 5th, 2004
by Bill Condie

It could have been all so different, and for a time it was. Like young Australians for generations, I left home as soon as I could - in my case, 1983 - to see what the world had to offer. While it was a great place to grow up, as adulthood beckoned, everything big seemed to be happening elsewhere.

I went to London to work as a journalist, and thought little about home until I took a holiday back there in the late Eighties.

I was unprepared for what I found. Australia had grown from an insular backwater into a vibrant, sophisticated, cosmopolitan society.

It had achieved remarkable success in assimilating people from all round the world, who left old animosities behind to embrace a distinctly Australian openness.

Whereas a few years earlier they would envy you a London life, now they pitied you. 'Why the hell would you want to be there when you could be here?' they asked.

Looking round the great cities of Sydney and Melbourne, they had a point. Everything was cleaner, fresher and more vibrant down under than in Europe.

The beach was there, of course, but more sophisticated pleasures had been added. The arts were flourishing. Australians were coming to terms with their sometimes unattractive past. There was general agreement that there must be reconciliation with the long-suffering Aborigines. There was growing enthusiasm for an amicable break with the monarchy and a belief, even among older Australians, that a republic was a positive step.

In the early Nineties, I moved to Bangkok. There I discovered another dimension to the new Australia. Paul Keating's high-profile drive to engage with Asia was attracting attention - and not just in the business community. High-profile projects such as the Australian-funded bridge across the Mekong were well-received. Taxi drivers would smile and say with some surprise, 'Australia number one. Australia likes Asia.' American journalist friends would eschew US embassy briefings for Australian - not just more informative but a lot more fun.

It was remarkable. I began to feel it was time to return to take part belatedly in this remarkable renaissance. My timing could not have been worse.

I could not wrap up affairs in Bangkok until after the 1996 election punished Keating for his arrogance and swept Howard to power in a rancorous campaign which saw race become an election issue for the first time since the White Australia Policy began to be dismantled in 1958.

It was the election that brought One Nation Party leader Pauline Hanson to parliament on a ticket of anti-immigration, anti-Aboriginal aid and anti-globalisation.

My first inkling that something was going wrong came in Bangkok at a meeting of the Australian business community addressed by the new Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, on a stopover to London - his first official trip overseas.

In front of the embarrassed Australians - many his own party's supporters - and baffled Thais, Downer claimed that Australia under Keating had concentrated too much effort and rhetoric on Asia. This had distracted us from our older friends in Britain and there would be a rebalancing of priorities.

Back in Australia, Hanson, who said she represented the 'white community' and everyone, 'apart from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders', had just made her maiden speech attacking her favourite targets. Howard refused to condemn her, instead turning his venom on 'political correctness' and adding: 'I thought some of the things she said were an accurate reflection of what people feel.'

Howard's support rose overnight and the atmosphere of Australia changed almost as quickly. An emboldened Howard moved on with his mean-spirited agenda, refusing to officially apologise to Aborigines for the generation of children taken from them by the state. The republican cause was canned.

Howard's brutal policy on asylum seekers, pursued with indecent relish by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, kept Australians fearful of an invasion - although the numbers, some 3,000, were laughably small. Hundreds of children were imprisoned, along with their families, in desert detention centres.

Australians, who a few years before had apparently relished ethnic differences, became more openly racist. Polls showed racial intolerance, especially against Muslims, growing. A cardiac surgeon, during Australia's 'friendly' Olympics, told me in a Sydney bar that if it was up to him he'd 'drop the big one and turn the Middle East into a glass car park - that'd stop the bastards coming'.

For me, the final straw was the so-called 'children overboard' affair. On the eve of the last national poll in October 2001, a group of 200 desperate asylum-seekers, mainly Iraqis, jumped with their children from a sinking boat off the Australian coast.

Within hours, Howard and Ruddock were relaying a very different version of events. There was no mention of sinking ships. Australians were told the 'illegal immigrants' had thrown their children in the sea to force a nearby frigate to pick them up.

Now, back in Bangkok, there are no briefings for US journalists at the Australian embassy, and taxi drivers tell me: 'Australia. Same, same America.'

This is the sad kind of Australia we live in now. Howard expects all kids to salute the Australian flag, sing the national anthem ("or your school won't get additional funding!"), and be proud of our country.

Why should we be?

Election 2004 | Day 7 | 56 Of Australia's Top Doctors To Send Howard An Open Letter On Iraq

I'm about to go to bed, but this just appeared. 56 of Australia's top doctors are sending Howard an open letter about misleading us into war in Iraq. Yes, this is basically the same deal as the 43 retired military servicemen that Howard fobbed off because they were retired. It'll be interesting to see how he's going to play this one down.

Election 2004 | Day 7 | Everybody Loves Howard

Technically Day 7 anyway, it's gone after midnight. I wish I had more time to research this, and could write as well as I used to. There's so many other blogs out there that cover this better than mine. But I'll keep bitching anyway.

Howard has been copping quite a lot of shit whilst out campaigning. Everyone's probably seen/heard of the cheese thing in Tweed, which, well, while it was admirable that the guy stood up to Howard and told him off, the whole cheese thing was a bit shithouse.

"On behalf of the working class people in the Tweed I'm going to present this cheese to you because you and your mate are past your use by date and you'll be looking for jobs. Go Labor."

That makes about as much sense as my rants on here. Good on him for doing it anyway.

Howard copped quite a bit of shit whilst campaigning in his home seat of Bennelong yesterday. Maybe everyone was pissed at him being stupid enough to resort to spamming people (no, really) via email, or maybe it's because he's a dick. Anyway, some of the highlights:

• Andrew Wilkie (now Greens, resigned from position of public service in disgust at the war in Iraq) and friends surrounded Howard and his Young Liberals, shouting "truth!" and waving placards.
• One person asked Howard why he bailed out on the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty aimed at reducing global warming. His response: "As far as Kyoto protocol is concerned, if we sign it in its present form, we will disadvantage industries and export jobs to other countries." Disadvantaging industries by making them invest money into their R&D to improve environmental efficiency.
• He copped some more shit from someone else, with this beautiful quote being yelled at him: "You claimed the lives of thousands of men, women and children just to get rid of one stupid, guilty one, Saddam Hussein. I do not accept the policy of killing the innocent to get at the guilty and that is a policy that you accepted and that is despicable."
• Another woman called him a "steaming pile of dog excrement."
• An elderly man criticising Howard on not listening to Australians: "I suffer from deafness, prime minister. Yours is a deafness of convenience."

Oh how I love this. There's a big campaign in Bennelong at the moment, kicked off by Margo Kingston's book, Not Happy John. You can read all about it at the Not Happy John Campaign site.

Election 2004 | Day 7 | John Anderson Decides To Be A Hypocrite and Current Election Odds

John Anderson, deputy PM and leader of the National Party, has decided to crack the shits over Latham's labelling himself as a "hater" a few years ago. Here's what Anderson says:

"As an Australian, I completely and absolutely deplore the concept that we could have in The Lodge a man who actually claims as a core value that he is a hater. Hatred tears our world apart. It's an entirely inappropriate value. Our great problem is that we hate our maker and we hate our neighbour."

This man is part of the government that played on xenophobia and hatred to win the last election. This is the government that encourages people to dob in their neighbours if they suspect them of doing anything remotely suspicious. This is the government that locks people up in detention centres indefinitely.

The Latham quote he's referring to:

"I'm a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them. I hate their negativity. I hate their narrowness. I hate the way, for instance, Howard tries to appeal to suburban values when I know that he hasn't got any real answers to the problems and challenges we face. I hate the phoniness of that."

And current Centrebet odds are sitting on the Coalition at $1.50, and Labor at $2.40.

Bush praises PM's wise counsel

United States President George W Bush has praised Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in his address to the Republican National Convention in New York.

I don't know what's funnier. That we're so desperate to be internationally recognised* that Bush giving Howard a passing mention constitutes major news over here, or that Bush actually remembered Howard's name.

Or that Bush spoke a whole sentence without fucking it up.

* for more evidence of this, try and find any mainstream Australian interview with an overseas personality, that doesn't feature the interviewer asking them what they think of Australia

Howard. He is so hot right now. 

Election 2004 | Day 5 | Web Diary's roundup of Week One

Margo Kingston (SMH journalist, author of Not Happy John and Off The Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip) is awesome. So is SMH's Web Diary. Constant reading of this spurred me on to actually do something this election, instead of sit back bitching and moaning. Well, I mean, this site is all about bitching and moaning, but I mean I'm going to do something more active when it gets closer to October 9.

Anyway, she's written a roundup of the first week of the campaign. Read now.

The Joke That Is The War On Terror

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

- George W Bush, 5th August 2004, thanks to DubyaSpeak.

I can't believe people vote for this moron. At all. I can't believe he got one vote at all, let alone a few million. Although I did like his recent admission that the War On Terror is unwinnable (NBC Today, August 30). There will never be a victor.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't constant bombing of other countries, locking people up without trial, creating international hostility, and severely raping citizens rights away lead to an increase in terrorism instead of eradicating it?

Nobody seems to want to figure out WHAT CAUSES TERRORISM and solve the problem where it begins (I have a feeling foreign policies that involve killing people and crippling nations most likely has something to do with it), they'd just rather arrest people for making potential attacks.

In this post-September 11 world, terrorism seems to be everywhere in the media, yet the world looks pretty much the same as it always has, aside from stupid amounts of paranoia, leading to such incidents as this:

What really happened? My brother forgot to bring the fire extinguisher in from the shop where he works when it was closing time, where it was subsequently stolen, and the contents sprayed all over the place, including into a mailbox. Someone saw it, called whatever the fuck number is on those stupid fridge magnets, and Jack Bauer and friends from CTU rushed out to save the world from dried up fire extinguisher foam. The postie was scrubbed down (in the street, in the nude), quarantined, and held for something like 48 hours afterwards, all thanks to everyone assuming the worst. "Holy shit! A bag of flour just fell on the ground! Evacuate!"

I'm not saying completely ignore it when this happens, but seriously, how many million times have you read about instances similar to this in the past three years? Why do we always assume the worst these days?

Now... Was it September 11 that has put the constant fear of terrorism in our minds, or is it the media and politician's constant coverage and sensationalism of anything that has anything remotely to do with terrorism putting it there? The threat will always be there, just like it always has been. And I believe the only thing making the threat larger is people constantly trying to eradicate it by silencing opinions and dropping bombs.

The last ten billion times I've heard Howard refer to the threat of terrorism and that an attack on Australia (because apparently the rest of the world actually gives enough of a shit about us to hate us) is imminent (Bali was not an attack directed specifically at Australia), it has reminded me of a parent telling their kid to eat their vegetables otherwise the bogeyman will attack them in their sleep. It's a stupid, idle, empty threat designed to play on people's paranoia and lean them towards his pathetic excuse for a government.

Who believes this crap? I thought we were smart.

How cool, Senator Andrew Bartlett keeps a blog. So does Meg Lees, but hers is boring as shit.

And I found that that fuckstick Piers Akerman has a section on the Daily Telegraph's site. Now I can get pissed off at him without even having to leave my chair!

Election 2004 | Day 5 | Interest Rate Bullshit

While trying to distract my eyes from the image of Jennifer Hawkin's bum in a g-string, I came across an interesting opinion piece by Peter Hartcher. It deals with Howard's claims that interest rates will go up under a Latham Labor government, as he's been meeting with gypsies that can accurately predict the future by reading tea leaves. Cutting to the most interesting part in the article, Hartcher mentions this:

Howard arrived at his claim of Labor's $960 a month by taking the average prevailing mortgage interest rate during the Hawke-Keating years of 12.75 per cent, and applying it to the average new mortgage today. If you run the same exercise with the Coalition, applying the average mortgage rate under the last Coalition government of 10.78 per cent to the average new mortgage, you arrive at an increase of 3.73 percentage points over the existing average rate.

That means Howard would add $621 to the monthly payment on an average new mortgage in his next term. Besides, Howard's claim has failed the preliminary lie detector test. The stockmarket hit an all-time high on Wednesday. Investors plainly do not anticipate any serious blow-out in the deficit or any serious interest rate response.

Latham already has plans to keep interest rates down. He even signed a stupid giant cheque to illustrate the point yesterday, of which pissed the happily Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph off. Ahh, the Daily Telegraph. Remember a few months back when they considered it front page news that Latham had once been booted off his universities' cricket team for bagging out the umpire, which happened over 23 years ago? I wonder if Howard had hair then.

Anyway, back to the point. Which was? Damn, I forgot. Oh wait, Howard's a dick.

• Foreign debt when Howard won office: $194 billion.
• Foreign debt now: $393 billion.
• Howard in 1995: "I can promise you we will follow policies which will bring down the foreign debt."

That nice statistic was courtesy of Tony Jones' interview with Howard on Lateline last night. Wait, I'm meant to be going on about interest rates here.

In closing, more stuff nicked from the Hartcher article.

...the futures market is showing that investors expect that the interest rate on 90-day bills, a proxy for official interest rates, will be 5.5 per cent a year next June. Today's rate is 5.25 per cent. Again, investors are betting real money that there will be only a very modest increase in interest rates.

What's more, the Reserve Bank publicly has told us that it expects that it will have to make this modest increase by the end of this year to contain inflationary pressures that are already building. Implicit in this is that it will be regardless of who is in power.

I'm betting the arse will fall out of our economy when/if the FTA goes through anyway.

Reasons You Will Hate Me: Australian Politics For Beginners

Election 2004 | Day 4 | The Debate

Crikey is reporting that there will be one televised debate, held on Sunday the 12th of September. So not this Sunday coming up, but the one after that. The rules are as follows:

1. The debate is to be opened with a two-minute opening address by both Leaders.
2. The moderator will ensure both Leaders are given equal treatment and time, and that the discussion flows.
3. The independent journalists will ask questions alternately of the Leaders, but be able to follow up the responses of the Leaders. The moderator will also allow each Leader to respond to the points made by the other, if they wish to do so.
4. There will be no strict time limits, but both Leaders are asked to restrict their answers to less than two minutes (the moderator will ensure both Leaders have equal time).
5. The moderator will intervene to prevent either person from talking over the top of the other.
6. The debate will finish with the moderator asking a general question to both Leaders to sum up.
7. A coin will be tossed to determine who will make up the first opening statement. Whichever Leader makes the first opening statement will be the first to be asked the wrap-up question.
8. The Leaders will use standing lecturns.
9. A clean feed of the debate will be made available to all broadcasters, with no station identification on the set.
10. The broadcast should be commercial free.
11. There will be no "worm" or broadcasting of an audience response.
12. The debate must be broadcast live.
13. The Leaders may have a pen and paper to make notes, and may arrive with whatever documentation they wish (not to include props).

Aside from those rules, the only major change (aside from the rather questionable rule 11 which denies an audience response gauge) is that Ray doesn't get to do all the talking - he'll moderate, but there'll be five journalists asking questions (if any of them are Piers Akerman, I swear I'll punch my TV).

This set of rules seems more or less reasonable (which is surprising), but I can't help wondering why Howard would change them from previous years. Especially usage of the worm. Hmm.

Mike Scrafton & Phone Calls

While everyone seems obsessing over the fact that his second mobile call with Howard was 51 whole seconds (because it surely takes longer than that to say "yeah, that videotape is inconclusive and doesn't support your claim that children were thrown overboard"), they seem to be skipping over the part where the first call was around 10 minutes long.

UPDATE: From Libs Under Pressure To Release Records...

"I think Mike Scrafton's version is much more credible than the prime minister's because what we know from those telephone records was there were 10 minutes of conversation," Mr Latham told ABC radio.

"The prime minister says the only subject of conversation for 10 minutes was to find out that the video was inconclusive.

"Well I've just said that and it took about 20 seconds."

Election 2004 | Day 4| $100,000+ Uni Degrees

This was reported yesterday, but I've only gotten this blog now so I'll write about it. Mmm, money talks, especially when you're Liberal.

PM fails $100,000 degree test
Samantha Maiden
The Australian, September 01, 2004

STUDENTS will be charged more than $100,000 for university degrees in almost 50 courses from next year, despite John Howard's pre-election promise that it would never happen.

Mark Latham has accused the Prime Minister of misleading the Australian people and has promised to ban the full-fee degrees. But vice-chancellors and business groups warned yesterday that the Labor leader's plan could leave universities worse off.

The Howard Government's $100,000 degrees are available to students who miss out on marks but can afford to "pay their own way", increasing the total number of places available at universities.

On first appearance, you'd assume old Johnny Boy was planning to drive up HECS fees yet again to ridiculous heights, but this isn't the case, although odds are they'll probably jump within the next year.

What it means is that the standard ways of getting into university still apply, but people that didn't get the marks, yet can afford an ungodly sum of money can gain entrance, regardless of how stupid they are. Is this right?

Should ordinary students have to work their arse off for two years to get a decent UAI/TER, or try and boost their chances through a STAT/RET test, a bridging course through TAFE, folios for early acceptance or subject themselves to all sorts of other intelligence tests to get in while rich fuckers can idle on in thanks to daddy's wallet?

Let's kick off then...

Australia if John Howard wins again.