gold plating the illusion and having a party... but not every dude is happy...

gold plating

Yesterday (or was it it the day before?) article by Andrew Bolt in the daily Telegraph was not very flattering... He could not come to terms with having to cuddle Turnbull. So like a lot of other in shock shock-jocks, he pointed out that Turnbull was a turncoat, an untrustworthy rat and not worth the use of a toilet brush... Well, he did not use these words but that was the spirit of the column. Meanwhile our not so left wing Maxine of the Labor Party (is she still a member or has she defected to the Vaucluse Club?) is giving us a whiff of the enlargement (!) for all of us... I get some emails about little blue pills daily and the housing sector is about to tank apparently... Here is Max:

I'm all for democratic capitalism, but it has to work, and has to be seen to work for everyone. Australia is fortunate in that it has nothing like the high unemployment rates and resultant disaffection of Europe. And courtesy of our booming housing sector, enough Australians still feel wealthy due to asset inflation, so we've largely avoided the desperation of the declining middle class in the United States.

But who doubts that we are at something of a tipping point? Too many of our institutions have failed us, the political environment remains febrile, and the self-interest of particular sectors trumps the national interest almost every time.

Of all our recent crop of PMs, Turnbull has the greatest capacity to reclaim the sensible centre of politics and in so doing, restore the faith of the mainstream in our democracy. We know that he is an engaging and thoughtful individual. His own instincts and temperament embrace agility and change. For the sake of the nation let's hope Turnbull can marry these concepts with the idea of a generous enlargement for all.

This article has been co-published by DemocracyRenewal.edu.au.

Maxine McKew is a Vice Chancellor's Fellow with the University of Melbourne. She previously served as the Member for Bennelong, following a career as a journalist.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-12/mckew-can-turnbull-make-us-excited-about-democracy-again/6846064

Hey Smeghead, you had Julia beforehand doing a better job at democratic (slowly going democratic socialist) capitalism but you cooked her... because you like Rudd better... Meanwhile a former right wing advisors tells us that Abbott has been embraced by Turnbull — which does not make sense. Why take Abbott out, then? Good question, if it's only a question of wrapping paper...

---------------

To his great credit, Turnbull redux has started his prime ministership positively by embracing the Abbott supporters and conservatives in reconstructing the government. Colleagues who suffered through Turnbull's opposition leadership have been genuinely surprised by his more consultative and engaging nature, and are hoping that, like John Howard before him, Turnbull has learned the lessons of his failings and failures, and is determined to put them right.

But if he continues to run ahead of his party in terms of personal popularity, there may be no holding him back and, like Labor in the Kevin Rudd years, MPs will have to strap themselves in for the ride, not knowing where it might take them.

If Turnbull was hoping to go to an early election riding on a wave of popularity, today's Newspoll, just like Saturday's heckling incident, is a reality check. The results may vindicate him, but if Turnbull wants to take support from Labor and the Greens, in many ways his natural constituencies, he must also do everything he can to keep his own broad church together and win over the centre-right as much, if not more, than the centre-left.

The Newspoll message for prime minister Turnbull is to keep going in the consultative and inclusive way you've started with your colleagues and your party, and don't let your personal popularity go to your head. The deal with the electorate is far from sealed.

Terry Barnes is a policy consultant, former Howard government adviser and a regular contributor to The Drum and The Spectator Australia. Twitter: @TerryBarnes5.

The real question is not about a party but about a whole. Repackaging shit with gold might bamboozle a few people but the whole thingster needs a complete revamp... AND GLOBAL WARMING has to feature far more prominently. It is the future of the entire planet that we decide here...

By Gus Leonisky at 13 Oct 2015 - 11:36am
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equanimity is just too difficult...

It was a Reinhold Niebuhr kind of a day in federal parliament. He was the theologian who wrote the prayer that graces a bazillion tea towels; “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

It was all forced serenity on the backbench where Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey sat, side by side, Abbott’s first parliamentary appearance since his demise. For the most part their faces were resolutely inscrutable. Occasionally they resorted to studiously signing things when the questions apparently made equanimity just too difficult, like when Bill Shorten recited Malcolm Turnbull’s fulsome praise of Abbott on the weekend and asked if that was all true why it had been necessary to oust him.

Meanwhile, at the despatch box, Turnbull continued to use his oratorical skills to cover the fact he is still deciding where to wisely draw the line between courageous change and accepting the policies of his predecessor that many in his his party think should stay as they are. Most of the manoeuvring in Canberra at the moment is designed to influence those decisions.

By Gus Leonisky at 13 Oct 2015 - 11:38am
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You can't get more visionary and long-term than that...

Ever since Malcolm Turnbull became PM we have seen politicians prepared to plan for the long term. And it's not just the Libs - Labor and even the Nationals are now setting out policies for the future, writes Mungo MacCallum.

As we all expected it would be, the verdict was swift and unequivocal.

According to Newspoll, some 62 per cent of voters thought the replacement of Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull was a good thing. Even among Coalition supporters, said by the Abbott clique to be on his side, the vote was 56 to 36. There was simply no margin for error.

The result may not have brought instant euphoria - when respondents were asked about the next election, the figures are still lineball - but it cannot be denied that there is an overwhelming sense of relief. At long last politics can settle down to something like what we believe is normal.

For the six years of the Abbott regime, both in opposition and in government, it was all about threats and crises: we were constantly warned that we were about to become broke and destitute, that we would be murdered in our beds. Now the screaming is about to abate.

This is not to everyone's liking: the tabloids and shock jocks insist that the killing of police worker Curtis Cheng by a teenage extremist should have had Turnbull frothing at the mouth, not restraining his outrage with remarks that could be called sensible and constructive for some, but never to the zealots. But the overall tone has given the rest of us a chance to catch our breath, and perhaps even to consider our future, rather than just reacting to the latest manufactured emergency.

There are many challenges ahead for Turnbull and his reformed Government, but one of the most important is breaking away from the demands for instant gratification from the relentless media cycle and to begin planning for the longer term. And the encouraging news is that he is apparently making a start.

The first indication was the convening of what he insisted was a meeting, not a summit (with all the confected drama that headline implies). A wide-ranging, but carefully selected, list of participants from various areas of the economy and the wider polity gathered for what was essentially a peace conference. Leave your weapons at the door and smoke a quick peace pipe where we can sort a few of the apparently irreconcilable differences out. Only then will it be possible to decide what is politically feasible and what is not - a distinction that Abbott seemed to refuse to countenance, to his ultimate discomfiture.

But there was more. Abbott had extolled the various trade agreements concluded in his tenure as successive bonanzas that would flow through the government coffers into the pockets of every taxpayer; you would be carting the loot off in wheelbarrows.

But when Turnbull applauded the hard-working minister Andrew Robb for helping put the Trans-Pacific Partnership together, he was much more muted: the yet-to-be-ratified deal was not a source of undreamt of opulence, an invitation to max out the credit cards before Christmas. The TPP was a foundation stone. A large and significant one, certainly, but there would be much shaping and building to be done before the construction was completed, the ribbons cut and the dividends began to arrive. No dancing in the streets just yet.

And there has been a similarly considered approach to infrastructure. Like Abbott, Turnbull has announced that he wants to be an Infrastructure Prime Minister. The two men are both Rhodes scholars, but in Abbott's case he decided the title should be spelled Roads: he would, he proclaimed at every opportunity, build the roads of the future. But in fact there was nothing futuristic about them. They were still the same old stretches of concrete and macadam to accommodate the endlessly increasing gridlock of cars, trucks and road trains of the private sector.

For Turnbull, infrastructure crucially includes public transport and facilities, part not only of his better cities agenda but, it is to be hoped, a model for the country at large. It won't be quick; it will involve planning and co-operation with both the states and industry. But it could be visionary in the way that Abbott's short-term sloganeering could never be.

And the long-term germ may even be catching, infecting the other side of politics: Bill Shorten had also foreshadowed a serious infrastructure program transcending party politics. There will be arguments. Shorten has already made up his own list of priorities, which can and will be criticised as picking winners. To be fair, these are not Abbottese captain's picks, short bubbles designed to shore up seats in the next election; most of them have been Labor policies for years. It has more to do with unfinished business than pork barrelling.

And even in the National Party, that hardline agricultural warrior Barnaby Joyce seems to have caught the bug. His reaction to the continuing problems of the Murray-Darling Basin has not been to call for more dams, more irrigation and to hell with the environment and the greenies; he has moved to revive the idea of an audit, so we can try to find what is really going on before we jump to the old kneejerk fixes.

There is still a lot of calming and therapy to be achieved; good government, like Rome, will not be built in a day. The Abbott legacy, which its eponymous founder seems determined to preserve, has been one of style as well as substance, and will not easily be dismantled. But it is undeniable that the mood has changed: already we are getting less of the announceables, the photo-ops and the silly hats that were the hallmark of the last administration.

And if you need a symbol of the switch away from the age of immediacy, look at Julie Bishop's statement of intent to pursue another United Nations security council berth for Australia - not before the next election, or before any of the four after that, but in 2029. By then, she says optimistically, Wyatt Roy will be prime minister. You can't get more visionary and long-term than that.

Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator.

The TPP is a piece of shit...

By Gus Leonisky at 13 Oct 2015 - 3:40pm
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legal but unfair...

Malcolm Turnbull has personal investments in Wall Street hedge funds based in a Caribbean tax haven, including two registered at a Cayman Islands address described by US President Barack Obama as "the biggest tax scam on record".

The Prime Minister's investment portfolio was raised in Parliament on Wednesday when Labor Senator Sam Dastyari linked Mr Turnbull's offshore holdings to the Coalition's move to exempt wealthy business owners from new regulations forcing them to disclose how much tax their companies pay each year.

According to Parliament's register of members' interests, Mr Turnbull has invested in two hedge funds since July last year – Zebedee Growth Fund and MSD Torchlight Partners – and both list their address as Ugland House, George Town, Grand Cayman.

More than 18,000 companies incorporated in the Caymans - where the corporate tax rate is zero - use the five-storey building as their registered business address.

In 2008, as he campaigned for the presidency, Mr Obama lambasted global companies using Ugland House.

"You've got a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 corporations. That's either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record," he said.

On Wednesday, Senator Dastyari told the Senate: "Ugland House on Grand Cayman Island is one of the most pre-eminent addresses in the world for tax minimisation.

"There is one reason people invest in the Cayman Islands – so they don't have to play by the same rules as the rest of us. This isn't fair. And it's not right."

"Why is it that this Senate can't pass legislation to improve tax transparency? Why is it that we can't crack down on multinational profit-shifting? Why have we seen Coalition senators refusing to ask companies earning over $100 million to declare how much tax they pay?

"Why is it that the Liberal Party will go to the ends of the earth to protect big business? How is it appropriate that the Prime Minister of this country thinks it is acceptable to have his investments sitting in the Cayman Islands?"

Senator Dastyari acknowledged the investments were "all legal and disclosed" but asked "is any of it appropriate?".

By Gus Leonisky at 14 Oct 2015 - 3:02pm
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lying through their golden teeth...

The Somali refugee who says she was raped and impregnated on Nauru has flatly denied claims by the Minister for Immigration that she changed her mind about ending the pregnancy after being flown to Australia for an abortion.

The rebuttal comes as family planning and legal experts said the Immigration Department had potentially breached its duty of care by allegedly refusing requests from the woman – known by the pseudonym "Abyan" – to see a counsellor or doctor.

That could leave the federal government up to a civil claim for damages on the grounds of negligence.

After a public campaign, Abyan – who was 14 weeks pregnant – was flown to Australia last week to have the abortion but suddenly returned to Nauru on a chartered jet on Friday.

njunction by her lawyer, George Newhouse, to prevent her deportation failed because Abyan was already out of the country.

In a statement released on Saturday, Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton said Abyan had "decided not to proceed with the termination" and lawyers and advocates making claims to the contrary should be "ashamed of their lies".

But, in her first comments since her return to Nauru, "Abyan" has said Mr Dutton's description of events – backed by Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – were false.

If this letter is genuine, then Dutton and Turnbull are complete arse-holes...

By Gus Leonisky at 18 Oct 2015 - 9:15pm
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