Thursday 25th of April 2024
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from Crikey …..

Have you watched that speech from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam having a go at Tony Abbott yet? It's had almost half a million clicks on YouTube, but as several people have noted, few senators bothered to sit in the chamber and listen to it. A reader asked us this:

"Is there any way of finding out where all our truant senators were when Scott Ludlam made his recent speech? Individually? Like where were they and can we have our money back if they did not have a legitimate excuse for their absence?"

Well, the sad truth of Parliament is that most of the time there are almost no MPs sitting in either chamber. Many visitors to Canberra are surprised to enter the chamber and find a handful of bored MPs playing on their smartphones, as someone drones through a long, obscure speech.

There are even party rosters to force a few MPs to sit in there at any one time - it's called "chamber duty". That's because Parliament is a charade in which MPs are tightly bound to their party line on everything so there's no point actually listening, debating or sharing information. It's just empty theatre. That's Ms Tips' view, anyway.

 

the mumble from limited news...

 

Greens' Senator Scott Ludlam has hit a chord with the Australian people with his scorching speech about Tony Abbott ― and that is something News Limited simply won't allow. George W. Bludger unpicks the confusingly amusing Murdoch fightback.

ANY TIME I READ an article under a News Limited masthead, I always walk away thinking:

“But what does this have to do with the price of fish?”

It no longer surprises me the way journalists and opinionistas who work for Murdoch can take a specific event and mince it into a contorted mess of spaghetti logic.

In the end, it always serves two purposes:

  1. to divert you from the crux of an event via confusion and straw-man arguments; and, ultimately,
  2.  to dismiss it altogether.

Take for example Peter Brent’s latest in The Australian:

ON Tuesday, West Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam delivered a speech to a near-empty chamber that went, according to some reports, “viral”.

Right off the bat, Brent dismisses Ludlam’s speech by focussing on how many other Senators were in the chamber at the time and, in case you’ve already heard any buzz on the speech, by placing the word “viral” in inverted commas.

And yes, it went “viral” in the true sense of the word ― unlike anything Brent’s ever written.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/limited-news-on-scott-ludlams-speech,6255

 

There is little doubt that most of the dung beetles at the merde-och press "hate" the Greens. Anybody who has the temerity of pointing out a different view of politics than their esteemed regime leaders, Tony Abbott and Uncle Rupe, will be quartered. This is in line with the continuing bias at the merde-och press also blatantly experienced 14 years ago when the Rabbitohs were being kicked out of the league.

When 80,000 people protested in George Street in 2000(?)— from Town hall to half-way down to Central Station — this news item, which, as it should have, made all the front page and first news of all the bulletins that day, the merde-och press only had one "dismissive" paragraph on page 44 of its "Daily Terrograph" about the protest. Of course , the OUTRAGEOUS bias was blatant, as Uncle Rupe troops were involved with the "restructuring" of the Rugby league and especially the ousting of the Rabbitohs — a founding club of the league. Most of the placards held during the "protest march" were not very complimentary of Uncle Rupe and his involvement in the deed...

Same here... So far, 546,343 people have hit the view button for the video of the speech made by Ludlam. When Peter Brent "reported" on the "viral-ity" of the video it would have been seen by at least 250,000 people. It would have cost nothing for Brent to check the viewed status of the video, even without being counted, but he chose to dismiss its viral-ity by writing "according to some report". This is lazy journalism. This is lazy shock-jockery...