Senate Rejects ETS – Would The Democrats Have Improved and Passed this Law?
The dogs have been barking for some time – the Senate has now rejected the Rudd government ETS legislation. This sets in place, should the Rudd government choose to take it, a double dissolution trigger. Rudd can call a general election for the House of Representatives and all the Senate. Pundits are calling this for early March, others for August. In reality, it could be just six weeks away.
Liberal senators Sue Boyce and Judith Troeth voted with the government, but this support was far short of a Senate majority. The Mad Monk Tony Abbott, practicing as he does the “withdrawal method” when it comes to all things not conservative, forced the rest of the Liberals to vote NO despite minister Wong’s previous efforts to negotiate the bill’s passage.
The Greens voted NO – as is their custom on every piece of legislation before the house and the rest on the cross benches followed suit. Their eternal purity makes them politically irrelevant and a parliamentary menace. But politics isn’t about holiness, it is about securing the best possible outcomes, something the Democrats never, never forgot.
But what would the Democrats have done?
The ETS is not an ideal piece of legislation. The Democrats would have negotiated for improvements in line with our own policies. Fairer more equitable solutions, while not appealing to major polluters, would reduce the impact any climate change mitigation legislation would have on the overall economy and on the poor. Our view differs from The Greens’ “Put the oxy torch to all industries emitting a kilogram of CO2, dude!” economic vandalism.
We would have worked, as we always have, with the elected government to secure the best deal possible for the Australian people with a bill that, while limited, is a step forward. A step the Rudd government, despite having a fresh and clear mandate for it, will not now take.
That was role of the Democrat for 30 years in the Senate – negotiating. Ensuring the elected government functions, keeps its word and doesn’t cave in to sectional interests. That we are needed to do this line-by-line work is demonstrated by the failure of the ETS. A serious piece of legislation about a serious subject, one that ensures Australia’s future – from economy to environment – has been flagrantly reduced to petty party-based squabbling. John Howard must be laughing behind his hand as he eggs on the newly-anointed High Priest of Climate Denial – Tony Abbott.
Bob Brown is likewise congratulating the troops on a job well screwed with the rest of the cross benches looking for a pat on the head – from somebody or anybody!
Well done all! You’ve succeeded in reducing our federal Parliament to a circus. A national joke; a joke on the heads of the Australian people. Thanks a bunch!
I urge those entitled to vote in the Higgins by-election to send a message to Canberra. Use your ballot paper and the preferential system to its fullest. Vote 1 Australian Democrats – David Collyer, and if you’re a Liberal voter and feel so compelled then (and only then) send your second preference to those who have failed you: the Liberal Party of Australia.
Scott Kane
It’s Time The Territories Got State Rights – An Issue For The Gay And Lesbian Community?
The Rudd government is set to follow – again - in the footsteps of John Howard’s ultra conservative government. Rudd and his administration are considering, we are told, overturning the recent legalization in the ACT of same gender marriages and rights.
The moral zealots are working overtime in Canberra pushing to see the gay and lesbian same sex union laws buried yet again.
This couldn’t happen if the ACT had the same standing as the Australian States – the responsibility and right to make binding laws on behalf of its citizens. The ACT and the Northern Territory risk a Federal veto on any legislation a majority of parliamentarians may pass. It’s way past time the territories were given the same constitutional standing State governments – and voters – expect and enjoy.
This disparity between territories and states means those living in the ACT and NT do not participate in or receive the same democratic freedoms the rest of Australia takes for granted. This must change. It will take a referendum to do it too. Surely this is a referendum that would command a majority of votes in a majority of states, one Australia would pass. The people in the territories are Australians too, after all.
Gay And Lesbian Rights
Naturally it follows, once the territories are given the same respect – and recognition and autonomy – as the states, we will see laws such as for gay and lesbian marriages in the ACT proclaimed, out of the hands of the moralising minority that somehow manage to populate the federal parliament.
We’d see it taken out of the hands of the conservative crusaders who claim to be christians (none of this newfangled compassion nonsense) shuffling around the corridors of parliament pushing one eyed, “our size fits all”, depraved, dishonest and dissolute doctrines.
I suggest to the gay and lesbian rights movement that to achieve their goals, autonomy for the territories would be the vehicle they need to accelerate their freedoms. This is common ground for their community and the heterosexual majority
This is a broader set of rights. At the end of the day, we all win.
Scott Kane
ETS Lynchin? Better Ask Minchin!
The temperature is rising across Australia this week.
The barometer and the thermometer are peaking out to red. The forecast – FAIL.
Suburban Melbourne faces the first SEVERE fire weather warning on Thursday under the new system. We follow the Weather Bureau’s predictions with our hearts in our mouths.
From Canberra, the news is even more serious.
EPIC FAIL!
- The Australian Greens are campaigning on Climate Change in the Higgins by-election while steadfastly refusing to negotiate with the Federal government in or out of the Senate chamber.
Five (5) Australian Greens Senators in the Senate. Five!
Negotiation? Discussion? Nil, Nix, Nada, Zero, Zilch.
What a waste of activist energy and tax payers money The Greens experiment is proving to be!
EPIC FAIL!
- The federal Labor government knows if they don’t get the Liberal/National Coalition on side their ETS bill will earn a “Catastrophic” forecast too. The ETS faces the same future as PM Rudd’s Grocery Watch scheme. Will we once again have politicians hiding behind “core” and “non core” election promises – as famously coined by John Howard? “Not happy Jan!”
EPIC FAIL!
- The Liberal/National Coalition, currently undergoing the worst ignominy a conservative political party can endure – opposition – are lurking in dark party corners with razor sharp knives for the ritual Seppuku of their leader Malcolm Turnbull.
EPIC FAIL!
- The Coalition opposition are flipping and flopping with contradictory statements of victory in respect of negotiating amendments to the ETS while simultaneously trying to torpedo it.
Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has reportedly said:
He’s kidding right? Has Heffernan a future career as a stand up comic at the Melbourne Comedy Festival? He must, because on the same day Senator Nick Minchin states:
A “whole range of other coalition amendments”? Reads like “Our way or the highway” to me. This is not a process of negotiation – it is politcal castration being performed by an absurd and out-to-lunch far left (The Australian Greens) and a medley of Climate Change deniers within the Liberal/National Coalition.
EPIC FAIL!
- The Labor government’s Senator Wong meanwhile takes the fine art of saying nothing while implying new heights, when asked if the Federal government would be “willing to dump other sectors from the ETS to appease the coalition.”
Is that a yes, a maybe or are you just being contrite Senator?
EPIC FAIL!
And it’s not even Summer yet.
Scott Kane
Warning Graphic Images. Australian Liberal Party’s Nuclear Agenda; dirty politics = radioactive environment
The CPRS legislation is before the Senate and the Liberal/National coalition, with the predictability of a summer bushfire, have heaved out their old files supporting nuclear power.
They are in a bind, with 10 coalition MPs steadfastly and publicly opposed to the carbon pollution reduction scheme. So Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop has dusted off the nuclear power issue and brought it forward with the justification that “19 of the G20 countries already relied on nuclear power…”
One can only assume that if 19 of the G20 countries announced they were going to jump off a cliff into the ocean tomorrow Julia Bishop would don a new bikini (no pun intended) and join in.
We’ve got big problems with carbon based power. The science condemning it is beyond question and the need to act is urgent.
But nuclear?
Consider the images above. These are “survivors” of Chernobyl. These are people. The only difference between them and us is we wear hats with corks to keep away the flies, play cricket and Australian Rules or Rugby and prefer beer to vodka.
I could write paragraphs about the half life of various nuclear isotopes. The centuries upon centuries it takes for them to be rendered inert. But why? The images of the “survivors” of Chernobyl speak louder than words…
Warning Graphic Images Click to Zoom In.
Scott Kane
The Model Is Barely There – Disgraceful And Debasing Portrayal Of Women.
The fashion industry, notably the Ralph Lauren company, is out of control.
For years now society has demonstrated it does not find the ultra thin bodies preferred by the fashion world attractive. Authoritative research has proved these thin models we are all familiar with have a destructive psychological impact on women, particularly young women and teens, and can lead to psychological disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
The data has been collated, analysed, charted and presented. The verdict of public opinion is well and truly in.
What is Ralph Lauren’s response? To release a clearly Photoshopped image of a model whose head is larger than her pelvis. (If you click on the image you can zoom in)
Arguably both of the images, side by side, have been Photoshopped. But look closely at the one on the left. Her skin is a superfluous accessory. This lady, through image manipulation, has been rendered skeletal. Not that she was in any way large or even average to begin with. One female model – again a mere slip in stature and weight – Ms Hamilton, said Ralph Lauren did not renew her contract because she was “too large.”
This is a disgrace. Business has a responsibility to not only sell its wares, but to also operate within what is socially and culturally acceptable. This cynically modified image is neither. To display a full grown woman – after tricking it to proportions no woman could stay alive with – purely to create an ideal based on the “desirable body shape” of somebody with a lot of problems (Ralph Lauren?), is bizarre, socially unacceptable and sick.
I usually hesitate long and hard before advocating government regulation of business. But living people must come first. My own daughters are exposed to this moral deception – every hour of every day. Your daughters, girlfriends, wives and mothers are dismissed and denigrated by an industry that has no respect for the health of the people they are selling stuff to. It is no better than the tobacco companies selling poison and death by the packet.
Ultimately, we pay for the mental anguish and health care costs of our loved ones that are caused by the deliberate excesses of companies whose moral and cultural compass has been sent to orbit Pluto.
It must change. Legislation if necessary. Clearly, they are not going to yield on their own.
But then I wonder “Why portray women like this? What happened to you people as children?”
The rights of women as individuals have come a long way. But this kind of imagery demonstrates how much further there is to travel.
What can we say, except maybe: “ET go home!”
A remarkable similarity.
.
Scott Kane
Hey Hey We’re Racists! Shame Channel 9, Shame Daryl Somers.
Just when our politicians are streaming back from places like India after reassuring their opposite numbers that Australia is not racist and that the violent ingrates who steal phones and iPods are color-blind or at least not choosey, Daryl Somers’ “Hey, Hey” program confirms the Indians’ worst fears.
From London to Washington the international press is giving Australia a beating today. Gee – thanks Daryl!
Guest on the show Harry Connick Jr, rightly pointed out that it would not have gone to air – or would have been pulled – in the United States and managed to extract this apology broadcast at the end of the show:
Well Daryl, it’s a poor, wimpy and disconnected apology – and here’s why.
It’s offensive to our citizens. To indigenous peoples, to ethnic communities, particularly after the scurrilous recent targeting of members of the Sudanese community including severe racially motivated beatings.
This isn’t the 1980’s or 1950’s, Mr Somers. Stick to conversing with hats on broom sticks and pink ostriches – where your major talents appear to lie.
It is disgraceful that you, the producers and channel 9 television are unaware of the devastating consequences of such infantile “entertainment”.
It’s offensive because our Indigenous peoples are still under the thumb of the “Great John Howard Intervention”. Considered doing something “positive” for them instead?
A challenge, Daryl Somers: do a show to highlight the plight of our indigenous people under the intervention. Through comic wit, highlight our pathetic political leaders who introduced and continue to enforce it and the truck loads of “consultants” bleeding it dry without anything being done on the ground for those affected. Restore some of your credibility. Do some good. Strike a blow for humanity, for our indigenous peoples.
I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.
That the amateur “actor” involved in the skit was partially of Indian decent is irrelevant. Commercial television comes with sound and picture – not a genetic indicator with which to divine “ironies”.
There is funny and funny. Maligning people on race, religion, gender, gender alignment or any of the multitude of other damaging “jokes” we’ve heard since the year dot is no longer funny.
The Australian public are better than that.
Shame on you, Daryl and Channel 9!
What message do we want to send to the world in this age of mass global communication? That we are a nation of racist hillbilly hicks?
We can – and must – do better than this.
What’s next?
A revival of the 1947 statement by ALP politician Arthur Augustus Calwell: “Two Wongs don’t make a White?” Because your “humour” is no better, mate.
Don’t think so? There is a reason Pauline Hanson failed to be re-elected. Australians are above xenophobic “jokes”. Channel Nine should be excrutiatingly aware of that irony! Hello 60 Minutes?
Put “Hey, Hey it’s Saturday” back in the archives, seal the door and throw away the key if “nostalgic material” like this is all it can do.
Scott Kane
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