It’s time for an early start on the weekend open thread.
I’ll update with weekend wonk TV as it comes to hand, but feel free to have a chat about anything that takes your fancy, for example, who here is going to the Dubbo City Motor Show this weekend?
Okay, so maybe the accurate interpretation of this graph in Wednesday’s Herald Sun is straightforward to Mr Bolt’s audience, but I must confess it leaves me a little confused:
Right, well, there are grid lines. There’s an apparently big number in complete isolation and with no context. There’s a date. There’s a line which squiggles a bit and then LURCHES DRAMATICALLY UPWARDS – almost vertically, according to whichever scale of what I assume is time is being used for the “x” axis and whatever number of people are represented by each mark on the “y” axis.
Perhaps I’m just not as “with it” as the target audience, but I can’t quite make out the detail of what this graph is actually revealing. Read More
More from the ABC just repeating Liberal Party press releases desk:
Mining tax may be unconstitutional
…LNP Senator George Brandis has confirmed the advice with the chief executive officer of the Australian Government Solicitor, Ian Govey.
“The Australian Government Solicitor advised the Australian Government that there was a risk that the RSPT was unconstitutional,” he said.
How? Why? On what basis? Seriously, if you’re going to report this as news, could you make some effort to explain in what way the RSPT “may be unconstitutional”? Otherwise this story is nothing more than vacuous name-calling. Obviously the Coalition wants the bad word “unconstitutional” associated with an ALP policy, but it’s not your job just to repeat their epithets – it’s to inform your readers. And this article only does the former. Read More
There has been a lot of comment recently surrounding the three Australian soldiers who are to face a court martial over an incident in Afghanistan last year, indeed it seems to have become the cause de jour for some commentators of late. Piers Akerman has weighed in on three occassions, claiming that:
the military and Government appear to have fundamentally abandoned these men.
Alan Jones, while interviewing Tony Abbott, described the Prosecutor Brigadier Lyn McDade thusly:
This woman was given unchallengeable power, greater power than the military command, by the Rudd Government as the quote, unquote “new form of military justice”. This is where it has brought us. Shouldn’t you then be saying to the Parliament that there must be a revision of the kind of power this woman has?
These sorts of statements make me uncomfortable, and I think many other people feel the same way, while I want to believe that Australian troops act properly at all times, I also want to know that there are processes in place to hold them accountable if this isn’t the case and that those processes won’t be politicised. The Australia Defence Association seems to feel the same way.
A new week, a new opportunity to participate in discussions unhindered by the holy internet rules of on-topicness.
Talking of holy, and you might have missed this as it was a piece of obscure religious news that received an appropriately low-key level of coverage, a long-dead Australian woman has now been declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. From the reception by believers and our political representatives alike, it appears that this was no arbitrary administrative decision of the Vatican that makes no practical difference to anyone but the most fervent believers. No, there must be more to it that I’m missing – perhaps now that she’s a saint, the late Ms McKillop (or, as news.com.au is referring to her on the front page, “Saint Macca”) will be free to cure more people of cancer than the claimed two in a hundred years. Or something like that.
“Saint Macca”, seriously
Anyway, so that’s a thing we could respectfully discuss.
Meanwhile, there are floods in NSW, inconveniently confusing those who think a bit of rain cancels the need for any kind of reform of decades of over-allocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin. Which long-standing Liberal-National-Labor bipartisan maladministration is apparently all the Greens’ fault. Gosh they’re dastardly.
And the dollar’s reached parity!
So many things to talk about.
It’s Friday, lunch has been consumed, it must be time for a new weekend talk thread.
If you haven’t already signed up for it, take a few minutes to register for Crikey Weekender, it’s free, and well worth devoting some weekend reading time to.
On the televisual side of things this week, Insiders has Water Minister Tony Burke chatting with Barrie, Annabel Crabb, David Marr and Gerard Henderson in the comfy chairs and Fiona Katauskas talking pictures.
In really important news, Round 16 of the Moto GP World Championship takes place at Phillip Island this weekend. Tune in early for the 125cc and Moto 2 categories before the main race to see why people become such passionate fans of motorcycle racing.
Avagoodweekend.
The Herald Sun’s parliamentary standards specialist, Andrew Bolt, is not happy with the conduct of the new Deputy Speaker, Liberal MP “Labor’s little mate” Peter Slipper.
So this is the man Labor thought would be useful as Deputy Speaker and enforcer of parliamentary standards?
Did Labor know about the investigation into Slipper before it sought to make a deal with him over the Deputy Speaker’s position? If so, how did that influence its decision – and his?
Oh Andrew.
Read More
A quick rundown on the morning’s Bolt wackiness (one thing you’ve got to say for the guy, there’s no criticism that can be made regarding the quantity of his output):
Anyone wondering why the election campaign went the way it did, check out the current headline at ABC News online:
Journalism is so much easier when you just repeat Opposition talking points regardless of whether there’s any substance to them or not, isn’t it?
Pity they won’t quote me. I’ve got several choice expressions I’d be happy for them to repeat about Tony Abbott. I can’t necessarily back them up, but apparently that no longer matters.
The News Ltd tabloids have been heralding the return of Miranda Devine to their ranks for a few weeks now and in addition to writing a couple of columns a week she’s taken to the blogosphere as well. This is how Devine is described in her profile.
Miranda Devine
Miranda Devine is a hard-hitting journalist who writes for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
So what did the “hard-hitting journalist” serve up to us this weekend?
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