Short Leash

I am pretty much in agreement with Mark Latham about the joke that's journalism.

It seems to me that most of us will be pushing up daisies if we were to wait for our various governments to take action to clean up our dysfunctional media.

In the UK Leveson looks to be dead in the water, in AU Finklestein has already been buried and in the US they won't even bother with an enquiry.

Because government has long since lost any desire to act in the interests of their citizens.  These days politicians - even so-called progressive ones - are all about encouraging monopoly, shafting people and sucking up to warmongers.

And that's when they are working to a plan - most of the time they just meander about in a policy daze - trying to second guess an equally thick opposition.

And the truly scary thing is that most of us haven't even noticed yet.  We will soon enough.

We need to rebuild our democracy and introduce some strong, interactive and two-way engagement between the people and their politicians.

Citizen initiated referenda and recall elections are good places to start.  Just so we can keep them on a very short leash.

Strategic colony of the United States

I find it fascinating that our Labor government and its key ministers seem happy to crawl up the United States' back passage.

It's like they know that they are going to get trounced at the next election - and so they act as though they want to piss off as many people as possible between now and then - just to show us all who's boss in the here and now.

That's a very clever strategy - one that will hopefully keep Labor in opposition for decades to come ;-)

The Assange and Wikileaks nastiness is all about sucking up to their US masters - who are trying to destroy Julian because he has exposed illegal, corrupt and arrogant US behaviour.  Now this is not news but our dickhead government thinks it is cool to pick on whistleblowers and abandon an Australian citizen - when given instructions from Washington.

I hope that Gillard, Carr and Roxon never find themselves on the receiving end of similar treatment ;-)

They want to destroy Assange and Wikileaks and send a strong message to anyone else who might attempt something similar.  It might once have worked when people were fully employed and had bought into the "debt until death" syndrome promoted by the "politico - media - housing" complex.

But most young thinkers have seen through that BS game and have other priorities now.  Give us another decade of political mismanagement - like the last one and it will likely be the politicians who are languishing in exile - or behind bars.

And - In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with WL Central, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has accused the current Gillard government of acting as though Julian Assange "doesn't exist, that he's not an Australian citizen." Mr Fraser slams the existing relationship between Australia and the United States as "far, far too close" and claims Australia is "a strategic colony of the United States, under current circumstances."

And yet aside from Fraser, the few senior thinkers who do occasionally have something to say about our polity are silent on this subject.  They like to talk tough when there is no personal risk - but they avoid comment when there is.

Phooey to you lot then.

Some serious sh*t is about to happen

I have spent the past few days exploring a little seaside village.  Or more correctly - a collection of villages - that are within an easy 2-3 hour drive of an Australian capital city.

And I think that "some serious sh*t is about to happen" there.

Because what has evolved over the past 30 years or so is that *shark* developers have locked up the coastal land and created many thousands of new residential blocks - upon which they and their mates have built many thousands of McMansions.

Which they have since on-sold to middle aged bogans contemplating an idyllic seaside retirement.

These developments are located near or in golf courses or adjacent to marina developments and their developers have spent large percentages of their funds on *marketing* them to gullible city-based bogans.

You know the ones - they used to work in manufacturing and live in suburbia - but they have lost their "job for life" and the wife wanted to retire to the seaside.

So far - so good.  Just a couple of minor problems.

Firstly, these thousands of McMansions aren't near any important community facilities.  The developers failed to provide any commercial space to accommodate supermarkets, post offices, medical centres, Centrelink offices or anything else that said bogans need access to on a daily basis.

Because as we know with our *free enterprise* system - that is always someone-else's problem.

And that is possibly OK when you are semi retired and still have a car and a driver’s license.  But what happens when you lose your mobility as you age?  How do you then get to the supermarket and medical centre that is 10km away?

And the second problem is related.  What about when the entire complement of McMansion owners have lost their mobility - and they all decide to move nearer to important facilities or to the retirement village?

What happens when they all try to sell their thousands of McMansions into a market that doesn't want them?

Five Big Issues

Now that the Opposition have demonstrated their complete incompetence after two days of irrelevant questions in the Parliament - do you think there is a chance for the Parliament to get back to looking out for the nation and the people?

No - didn't think so.  Jeez Australia we seem to have acquired an Opposition with no skills or policies and no idea and a Government that talks big but delivers small.

Really how is it possible for example to talk incessantly about Gonski - and then have no plans to fund it?  Nothing can get done while both the Government and the Opposition focus on those magical powers of a "Budget Surplus".  Look I know that weird conservatives think a surplus is mandatory - but what is Labor's excuse?  How did we end up with this circus?

In the absence of any leadership or focus on the big issues - I thought that I would bring my own.  So here are five things that I reckon we should have an adult conversation about in the lead-up to the next election.

Just watch as politicians duck and weave around them.

* The US Alliance - Firstly what is it - what are we Australian's committed to - and who committed us?  When we understand those things then we need to have a proper conversation about what we want it to be and how we can get it there.  If you want to see a politician squirm then ask them these questions.

* Climate Change - It's very clear that our feeble attempts to date are not enough.  We need to get serious about this issue and actually do something of substance.  It won't matter if the next Government is Labor or Liberal - both will need to step up and take the people with them.  Trouble is neither of the current political leaders have the neurons or the cojones.  The carbon tax is here to stay - and it probably needs to get bigger soon - regardless of the views of the fossil fuel industry.  Watch as your politicians run away from this one.

* War Initiation - I am personally not going to handle it very well if either Abbott or Gillard were to commit us to another half-arsed war - without any discussion or approval by the Parliament.  All Members of Parliament should take a similar position - why wouldn't they? We citizens need to fix this - because it appears that our politicians won't - they will send your kids off to die but they won't discuss it with you beforehand.  Remember that when next you vote.

* Our Expectations of Government - Government's can't do very much because they have offloaded important assets and outsourced major services.  But they won't ever acknowledge that.  It's all part of keeping you in the dark and fed maximum BS.  So we need to take the lead and have a proper conversation - about what we expect from Government.  And when we have agreement then we ought to instruct our politicians.  Or if they like they can participate - but we the people should set and drive the agenda.

* Fixing our Media - Lord leveson is about to report on Uncle Rupert's unpleasant little fantasy in the UK.  Instead of tripping around the issues here - we need to take a proper stand and make our media accountable.  No if's, no buts, no maybe's.  Just do it.

If we had a political class who were genuinely interested in looking out for our nation - then we wouldn't need to raise these things.  But we don't.

Julia Gillard

I don't have much time for Julia Gillard.  Not because of her gender or her state of origin or her history as a lawyer for the union movement or even her time as a political staffer.  It's not personal with me.

It's because I don't believe she is up to the job - I just don't think that she is a genuine leader or that she even has the interests of the nation or the people at heart.  She simply doesn't have the experience or the political nous that the job requires - and she demonstrates that almost every day.

And no amount of "tough as nails" talk will change that.

I think she is just a junior politician who is out of her depth - along with most of the rest of the Federal Labor crew.  Which pretty much explains why she and her party are on the nose with large numbers of voters.  Smarter folks than I have analysed the problem and even written books about it.  Perhaps she should read one of them.

Her political judgement has been so poor that for two years now she has been chasing Abbott and the opposition down every nasty little rat-hole that they can find.  As if that was ever going to be a path to glory.

If she isn't damaging the economy by pursuing a "Budget Surplus" then she is damaging people by incarcerating them on Nauru.  Or sucking up to the US and shafting Assange.  What on earth were she and the Cabinet thinking?

And now the Libs smell blood and think they will nail her over events from her union days.  And the entire media circus are on the case because they think the Libs might be able to pull it off.

The reason that Abbott and the Libs have adopted their "Batshit Crazy" approach to opposition is because they know that Gillard will steal the juicy bits.  She does that because she has no "intellectual argument" of her own to offer voters - all she can do is chase after the same racist and pig-ignorant voter that Abbott has targeted.

And by stealing the Libs "Batshit Crazy" agenda - what she has actually done is destroy her own credibility.

Like I said a junior politician - out of her depth.

Bogan hunting day

Today must be bogan hunting day.  How else to explain why both Abbott and Gillard have ramped up the rhetoric and are continuing to beat up on asylum seekers.

Abbott is still calling asylum seekers "illegals" and wants them to join the "work for the dole" scheme to stop them acquiring a "welfare" mindset while they spend 5 years waiting to be re-settled.

Gillard doesn't yet know what to do with them because she hasn't yet read the Libs nasty new plan - and the morons on the Labor right haven't yet told her what to say.  But when she does say something you can rest assured that she will try to outdo Abbott.

These two gutless wonders are a national disgrace.

Abbott is just an opportunist - who thinks that he can weasel his way back into Government with the help of the dogwhistle and the dimwitted.  And Gillard is just not up to the job.

Their lack of international experience is how they got us into this mess in the first place and also why they don't understand how their behaviour damages our nation.

The sooner we are rid of them both - the better.

It's a sick little state Virginia

So what do you do when your personal circumstances change and your income reduces?

Do you slow your spending a bit - look for smart ways to trim expenditure and seek out clever ways to make your dollar go further?

That is what most of us would do - but it's not what some Australian State Governments are doing.

After living high on the hog for much of the past decade - creaming it in with ever increasing GST and Stamp Duty charges - those State Government revenue streams have flattened and their growth has slowed.  Because much of it was driven by the *unmentionable* housing ponzi.

So what have the various States done to accommodate their new circumstances?  Well in South Australia they have gone after new revenue.  And very creative they are too - because there is really only one way for them to capture new revenue.  And that is by taking it out of your pocket.

So Government fares, fees, fines and other charges are growing - at a rate that is way beyond reasonable.  Plus they are manufacturing new rules and laws that result in you wearing new and excessive costs.

I have had a couple of personal experiences recently that left me gobsmacked - their revenue grab is way out of control.

This particular state has no shame.  If the Opposition were even half competent they would already be in power.

Question: "What are we citizens supposed to do when the Government is milking us and the Opposition thinks the solution is to slash and burn Government services"?

It's a sick little state Virginia.