Simon Birmingham is a South Australian Liberal senator and for mine is one of the smartest brains in the Coalition or, for that matter, the Senate, and the sooner the party leadership makes uses of his talents on the frontbench the better.
Last night he rose to speak on the package of CPRS bills and gave [...]
The world of politics, policy and public life
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Simon Birmingham talks sense
November 19, 2009 – 1:52 pm
Misleading Parliament: care factor?
November 17, 2009 – 4:49 pm
Malcolm Turnbull, it seems, just can’t help himself. After Question Time yesterday – immediately after - he called a press conference to accuse the Prime Minister of misleading Parliament over whether the Oceanic Viking deal was “preferential treatment”.
You’d think, after THAT business earlier in the year, that Turnbull, or one of his staff, would have [...]
The Heathrow queue for the Eskimos – and the Australians – is getting longer
November 16, 2009 – 2:41 pm
If memory serves (and Google, on this occasion, does not), Paul Keating once said that it was hard to get sentimental about Australia’s relationship with Britain when you had to queue with the Eskimos at Heathrow while EU citizens sailed straight past you.
Gordon Brown’s recent speech on immigration raises many issues, but so far as Australians are [...]
Lessons from the Traveston dam veto – if you love the bush, then learn the joy of a bush pee.
November 16, 2009 – 2:03 pm
Well, my summer is looking a whole lot more straightforward since Peter Garrett overruled Anna Bligh, vetoing the Traveston dam project. The idea of having to camp out near Gympie with a bunch of irrititing hippies really didn’t appeal, but such is my love for lungfish and turtles that I would have gone to any [...]
And then there’s Steve Fielding
November 16, 2009 – 1:19 pm
Senator Steve Fielding has revealed today that he was sexually abused as a child. One instinctively feels sympathy and anguish for Fielding, as one does for anyone assaulted by someone charged with their care.
But quite why Fielding felt the need to reveal this today, on the morning when hundreds of representatives of the Forgotten Generation [...]
“In the bag” to “no done deal” in four hours
November 15, 2009 – 4:12 pm
Volume 316 of how the press routinely just makes stuff up.
This morning came the improbable story that a CPRS deal was “in the bag” because the Government had agreed to the Coalition’s demand for exemption of agriculture. “Australia is likely to have an emissions trading scheme locked in by the end of next week,” we [...]
Bob Carr PIR galah
November 14, 2009 – 11:56 am
God it’s shite finding yourself on the same side as Bob Carr. The sinister little gollum is in the Oz today, whining about the PIR campaign he helped lose.
A director of Dymocks and the ‘face’ of their front-group the Coalition for Cheaper Books’, Carr lost to a motley bunch of basketweavers and it shits [...]
Done in our name
November 14, 2009 – 7:17 am
There’s nothing special about war damage in the Balkans, but most of it is what the locals have done to one another over the years. This isn’t:
It’s in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999, during Kosovo’s war of independence. Most of it’s been repaired or rebuilt, but there’s a few things like this [...]
Copyright © 2008 Private Media Pty Ltd, Publishers of Crikey.com.au. All Rights Reserved.
Independent news, blogs and commentary on politics, media and business.
Editor: Jonathan Green.
Publishers: Eric Beecher, Diana Gribble.
Level 7, 22 William St, Melbourne, 3000. Ph: 1800 985 502 Fax: (03) 8623 9975