Thursday 28th of March 2024

a minister that invents facts and figures...

angus is a liar...

Naomi Wolf has reignited her row with Australia’s energy minister, Angus Taylor, publishing a recording of a heated phone call with his office.

On Thursday morning the US author said she called Taylor’s parliamentary office requesting a “formal correction” to the Hansard record of his maiden speech, asking that Taylor “tell Parliament please that I was not campaigning against Xmas in any way?”

She tweeted several excerpts before publishing the 29-minute recording in full.

In 2013 Taylor referred to Wolf in his maiden speech to parliament while recounting an anecdote about “political correctness” and a dispute about a Christmas tree at Oxford University in 1991, when he was a Rhodes scholar.

When Wolf was alerted to the speech on Monday she pointed out that she was not at Oxford in 1991 and accused the minister of “antisemitic dogwhistling”.

In the call with Taylor’s staffer, Wolf repeatedly requested that his office issue a public correction to say she was not at Oxford at the same time as him, and that she was not part of a group of people campaigning against Christmas.

In his 2013 speech Taylor said: “It was 1991, and a young Naomi Wolf lived a couple of doors down the corridor. Several graduate students, mostly from the north-east of the US, decided we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended. I was astounded.

“In our times, the world over, the foundation of democracy – free speech – and the foundation of capitalism – property rights – are being chipped away by shrill elitist voices who insist that they know what is best for people who are not remotely like them.”

The anecdote was repeated in a 2014 profile in the Australian Financial Review. Taylor’s staffer told Wolf that was the AFR’s reporting, and not a claim sourced from Taylor’s office.

Wolf said on Monday she was “long back in the US” and no longer at Oxford by 1991.

“I was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford 1985-88,” Wolf said. “Angus Taylor recalls me in a fever dream at Oxford in 1991 among those warring on Xmas. I was in NYC. Plus I love Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa. Flattered to be on this mythological hate list.”

“Catch that anti-Semitic dogwhistle – elitist people ‘who know what’s best for people who are not remotely like them.’ Referring to Jews like me whom Angus Taylor imagined to be among the warriors against xmas in Oxford in 1991.”

Taylor rejected the accusation he was antisemitic, with a spokesman noting that his grandmother was Jewish.

His office insisted Taylor recalled seeing Wolf at Oxford, although they clarified the minister’s speech was not referring to Wolf as one of the graduates who campaigned against the Christmas tree.

Taylor is the subject of multiple controversies, including a NSW police investigation after his office provided a doctored document to the media as part of a political attack on the lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore.

A Senate committee this week found Taylor “consciously used his position as an MP and minister” to try to influence an investigation into clearing of grasslands at a property he and his family part-own, and recommended the prime minister order an inquiry.

Taylor’s office has been contacted for a response to Wolf’s claims.

It is not the first time an Australian federal minister has sparred with a US celebrity. In 2017 the then deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, made international headlines after he threatened to have Johnny Depp’s dogs put down when the actor bypassed customs to bring them into the country. Pistol and Boo were flown home before Joyce’s deadline.

In June, Wolf’s latest book release was cancelled in the US and future versions corrected in the UK after she admitted live on air that it contained at least two errors.

In an interview on BBC Radio 3, broadcaster Matthew Sweet pointed out that Wolf had misunderstood the historical term “death recorded” while writing her book Outrages.

While Wolf believed it meant an execution, Sweet said it was a term that allowed judges to record a death without carrying out an execution. Wolf has said she was thankful for the correction, that it only affected two pages and did not affect the thesis of the book.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/05/naomi-wolf-angus-...

 

an ugly spat from an ugly government...

The last hour of parliament was as ugly as a crocodile pit awaiting the handbags manufacturer, as to whom would get the knife first... and now:

 

Angus Taylor has doubled down on his assertion he saw and met the American author Naomi Wolf during his time at Oxford University, while demanding she apologise for accusing him of antisemitism.

In a rowdy and rancorous final question time for 2019, the embattled minister for emissions reduction shrugged off a request from Wolf that he formally correct the Hansard record of his first speech, where he recalled the author living “a couple of doors down the corridor” at Oxford in 1991, and also recounted an anecdote about graduate students, mostly from the north-east of America, “deciding we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended”.

Wolf insists she did not live at Oxford in 1991, and was not part of any move by students to cancel Christmas. The author contacted Taylor’s office on Wednesday night in an effort to extract a correction.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/05/angus-taylor-dema...

 

he's an arseholes' scholar, you know...

The Minister for the Environment and Energy, Angus Taylor, seems to have a problem with numbers, whether it’s the Sydney City Council’s travel budget or what year Naomi Wolf was at Oxford. 

His latest figure fiddling though is much bigger and more serious than either of those embarrassments. 

And it’s possibly more absurd. 

At the COP25 climate summit in Madrid last week, Mr Taylor was pushing the government line that Australia would meet and exceed its Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 – “in a canter”, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

But all the while, Mr Taylor had a graph from his department showing the claim was, shall we politely say, “false”. 

Without much fanfare, the Department of Environment and Energy earlier this month published its annual emissions projections.

At the core of the report is the accompanying graph of Australia’s emissions of millions of tonnes of CO2-equivalent from 1990 projected out to 2030.

Blind Freddy can see the government’s forecast reduction from nearly 600Mt in 2005 to 511Mt in 2030 does not represent 26 per cent. 

It’s actually less than 15 per cent. 

But with Mr Taylor’s talent for figure fiddling, the sun rises in the west, bears no longer defecate in the woods, and somehow less than 15 per cent is turned into more than 26 per cent. 

Because he says so. 

The government attempts this particular distortion of reality by claiming “carry-over credits” from overachieving in the previous Kyoto agreement reached in 1997. 

(That ‘overachievement’ was totted up primarily in LULUCF – “land use, land use change and forestry” – an area particularly prone to creative accounting as it involves such things as promising not to clear bush at some stage in the future.)

How inconvenient that the government’s graph, including buying some for LULUCF, goes back to 1990 and shows our emissions reduction from then, or from the 611Mt peak in 2006, is still less than 15 per cent. 

The government’s claim is an international joke. 

What’s worse is that the Madrid meeting was supposed to be about moving the needle on from the Paris agreement. 

Salient nations were supposed to be able to feel the heat, smell the smoke, see the glaciers melt and therefore work to achieve more than Paris. 

Instead, Mr Taylor led Australia as one of the recalcitrant countries sabotaging that reasonable aim

And claiming black was white, or at least that coal isn’t a problem, wasn’t the Environment Minister’s only fiddle. 

He also declared that Australia is backing an unprecedented wave of clean energy investment. 

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2019/12/16/angus-taylor-emmissions-numbers/

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I apologise for the misprint at top... I meant to write "he's a Rhodes' scholar, you know" but the keyboard would not let me... Economics is an art format, not a science. Economics relies on the illusions that often follow an ideology (a stylistic movement which tends to make you paint "kings on horses" or revolutionary "turds on sticks" depending on your politics). Below is an example illustrating art appreciation:

movement

The answer is simple: Movement du cloaque to use a French artistic vernacule. It translates as "Movement du bird-shit". Economics alla Angus Taylor is on the same window pane...