Indonesia has asked Australia to explain how an alleged people smuggler, known as Captain Emad, was given a refugee protection visa in Australia.
You have to love Indonesia – who have been waving boat people through to Australia for years – harbouring all manner of people smuggling activity – and they go public to increase the Australian Govt’s acute embarrassment at the stunning revelations aired on the ABC’s Four Corners program.
Incidentally I have updated my monthly boat arrivals graphic – still looking for data for 2008 to July 2009. It shows the scale of the boom in arrivals in May.
Remember the Four Corners program will be replayed on Saturday 9 June at 8.00pm on ABC News24.
In the hurly burly of the Craig Thomson (MP for Dobell) affair there are calls for the Australian Constitution to be amended so members of Parliament have some sort of “code of conduct” under which they must operate. I would say if they know so little that they need a code – then we should not elect them in the first place. At present Section 44 sets out the circumstances under which members can be disqualified.
I do not want to reprise the Craig Thomson affair here – anybody awake in Australia must have the gist.
There is a petition circulating in the electorate of Dobell calling for Thomson to resign his seat.
I just wanted to make the point here that it is the colossal failure by Labor to act on the Craig Thomson matter over YEARS – that is the cause of the black hole in which the Prime Minister finds herself.
Secondarily to Thomson of course and unrelated there is the Speaker of the House Peter Slipper who has stood aside while allegations are investigated.
We all remember the story that ran viral last June about death threats in emails to Australian National University staff. It even ran overseas – here is The Guardian masthead for 6 June last year.
Now it has taken near a year but Sydney blogger Simon Turnill has had a huge FOI win in discovering that the emails contained no such threats. Read his story.
Why are we sceptics not surprised at this eventual outcome – so basic facts got hopelessly exaggerated by IPCC supportive scientists at ANU – so!! – and what does it say about about the rigor of higher level management processes at ANU. What a shocker. Diseases such as diabetes, kidney disease, multiple sclerosis, vascular prescription viagra uk disease, and heart disease. There are no preventive sildenafil viagra de pfizer steps for sexual disorders in women. Increase in the side effects is also noted levitra generic cheap when alcohol is taken soon after or before the Silagra pills.Sildenafil citrate is the key ingredient of the drug sildenafil is in the dispersed state. It is easily available and can be found on any authorized pharmacy of the world and is widely said to be a marketing genious for launching and creating brand names. getting viagra prescriptionAndrew Bolt has picked up on the story too – saying the smear was as bogus as their theory. Right on target.
I see nothing today in the Fairfax owned Canberra Times, home of ANU – not keen to rock any boats eh. Note to read the story at The Australian – Google – Climate scientists’ claims of email death threats go up in smoke – then read full version.
13.6 degrees C on 25 April 2012 – 1952 was 13.3, 1939 – 13.2 and 1944 – 11.6.
And this is in the face of constant growth of the Canberra urban heat island (UHI). No doubt this is what we can expect from global warming. Camooweal in NW Queensland is also having chilly times – is anybody aware of other record cold sites ?
Just saw this scenic shot in the Canberra Times – high alpine ridges near Perisher on ANZAC Day – another good pic in the article.
I often check the BBC news website for this or that region – thinking I will at least get a half competent digest of what is going on. Now I am not so sure – perhaps the BBC is just a great waste of time.
Note that you click on Asia to get Australian news – here is a screen shot. For days now the Australian stories have been – Huawei barred in Australia deal – Australia extinction ‘due to man’ – and Australia’s most wanted man held, which is so important to score 2 links. Refers to the capture of a prison escapee in NE NSW 5 days ago early last Thursday 22 March. I have been looking for the BBC take on the Queensland State election (24 Mar 12) which reduced the ruling Labor party to a single digit number of seats – I think the greatest defeat in an Australian election in my lifetime.
The BBC has nothing on this. Yet when you search for Queensland election – you come up with many articles on Queensland elections – including glowing reports of Labor’s 2009 win. If you search for Queensland election 2012 you still get no BBC ref – but you do get an offsite ref to a Murdoch Australian site. I can only conclude that the BBC news service is very odd, slack and biased to the left side of politics.
Just this week these type of long and verbose spam comments are being caught by the WordPress spam catcher. I am curious as to why the sudden burst of activity – over past years I have not seen much claiming a Facebook origin. Posting them as examples in case other bloggers are seeing similar rubbish coming in. Continue reading Sudden surge of spam purporting to be from Facebook→
I am curious to see graphics which plot just where we are now as a nation. Let us start with the explosive growth in Govt debt under the Rudd – Swann – Gillard GreenLabor regime.
The figures are at 30 June and I have estimated the percentage for 2012 using the $229Bn debt already – on the Australian Office of Financial Management web page – and for Australian GDP at June 2012 I have used A$1,280Bn after checking various internet sources which are in US$. Note the graphic of GDP growth.
One ongoing issue facing the Govt is the fact that our borders are pretty much open now – a fact that is often ignored now by the MSM. I have not seen a mention on TV news for many weeks. This chart shows annual boat arrivals from 1976 –
– the 2012 number is derived from a statement in Senate Estimates hearings where the Govt said that 7500 arrivals were expected from 1 Jan 2012 to 30 June 2013. I have pro-rated that to 5000 for 2012.
I am working on a chart of monthly boat arrivals.
Do readers have any other charts that document Labor at work ?
This post will grow – but I wanted to give readers a chance to comment now on the fast moving developments as the Gillard and Rudd forces tear one another apart. I noticed in Kev747’s speech from Washington Thursday morning – he did not mention the Carbon Tax.
This chart shows the decay in Rudd’s support in the first half of 2010 –
but note only to the 50-50 zone – what would Gillard give for those numbers. Then the Rudd removal on 23 June marked RS – the Federal election on 21 August is marked with an E.
This shows the preferred PM % since the 2010 election – the midline is 40% – intervals 5%.
The slow improving of Abbott must terrify GreenLabor.
I was amazed to hear our Governor General say in her speech at the 70th anniversary of the 19 Feb 1942 Japanese air raid on Darwin; that “Seventy years ago the tranquillity of Darwin was rocked. The unthinkable was happening: our nation was under enemy attack.
Unthinkable ? – what rot.
Japan had been invading China here and there under various pretexts since 1931 – Australia had been at war in Europe for over two years – the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbour had happened nearly two and a half months previous starting the Pacific phase of WWII seriously – since then the Japanese had been rampaging through SE Asia sweeping all before them – the Australian base at Rabaul was occupied by Japanese forces on 23 January 1942 – how could an attack on one of our Northern outposts be “unthinkable”.
What was “unthinkable” was the state of our defenses.
Primarily exposing faulty methodologies behind global temperature trend compilations
