Australia Loses Half Its Wheat Crop To Drought



How would Australians cope if such a staple food source as bread rose to $8 or $10 a loaf?

I'm not talking a handmade rye sourdough, but your basic white or wholemeal loaf of bread. With warnings of further inflation to come, and the stunning news that Australia's projected wheat crops for 2007 are down by almost 50%, a $10 loaf of bread might not be such an unthinkable reality in a few years time. If the drought continues, and there's not many climatologists or scientists out there claiming its going to end any time soon. In fact, it's more than likely to get worse.

The problem with wheat shortages, or vastly more expensive wheat, is how those costs soak into the price of nearly everything in your fridge, from milk, yogurt and ice cream, to steak and eggs.

More here :

Wheat is a hardy plant. But without essential follow-up rains the crops were devastated. The country's official forecaster has now slashed the year's wheat production from the 22.5 million tonnes projected in June to 12.7 million tonnes.

In a further blow to farmers, the optimistic start to the season meant many sold their projected wheat crops on the futures market for the security of a fixed price.

When the crops failed, they were left without the means to pay back the advance. To make matters worse, they have to repay it based on the current wheat price, which has skyrocketed given global shortages.

"There are blokes that owe a million bucks and they've got no crops," Duncan Lander said.

The wheat price advance deal discussed above is stunning, and clearly someone is making huge profits off it, but it's not the Australian farmers.

Here's how it works. Say you're a wheat farmer who did it tough last year, and the year before, after years of drought and huge financial losses. Your family's under pressure, your mates are taking their own lives and your local town is breaking apart as more and more people walk off their farms, sell up and head to the cities, or to the mines, to find work.

Earlier this year, you get some rain, and there's talk that there will be more rain to come. Probably.

You take the gamble. You'll give your wheat farm one more season. You decide to sell the wheat crop you're about to put in for, say, $260 a tonne. You score an advance on that crop, at $260 a tonne. You'll owe the bank, or an international wheat broker, a decent amount when you harvest that crop, with all the interest, but you figure you'll make some money. You might not get too far head of the debts from the previous three or five years worth of losses, but it will be a step back onto the road towards something close to prosperity.

You get the advance, you put the crop in, the rain keeps falling, your fields start to turn green. There's money coming in from the government as well, to help people cope with 'The Rural Crisis', so you start thinking about buying that new farming equipment you should have brought a few years back.When you drive to the bank to talk about about a loan for new machinery, the roads are flooded. You laugh.

But then, a few weeks after you walked through those green fields of young wheat, the rain stops falling. The heat hits. In ten days your crop is dead.

But there is still more pain to come, because the wheat crop failures, and shortages, are now worldwide. So the price per tonne is rising, as the second half of 2007 unfolds. $280 a tonne. $320 a tonne. $360 a tonne. $400 a tonne.

You don't have a crop, so you can't cash in on a 12 month 40% increase in the price of wheat anyway. If you'd been flush, or flush enough, and not needed to borrow so big, and if you'd put that crop in and if the rains had kept falling...if, if, if...

But you don't have a crop and now have to pay out that loan. That $260 a tonne advance for a crop now worth $400 a tonne. You know farmers in other states who put in crops and got the rain they needed. But like you, they pre-sold their wheat crops for $260 a tonne. They harvested their crop, they sold it, but they didn't get rich. They barely broke even. But the international broker who lent them the money made $140 a tonne profit in just a few months.

Mind-boggling.

Between 50% and 60% of all the land in Australia that was farmed for food - for wheat, for sugar, for fruit, for vegetables - in the late 1990s is now ravaged by drought. Wheat crops died, and now fruit trees are being bulldozed because no rain means those farmers can't afford to pay the increased prices for water access.

It's mind-boggling to even think about, let alone live. Which is why so many people in Australia's cities have such a hard time getting their heads around what is going on 'out there.' There are more farmers blowing their brains out in their sheds today than there are leaning on a fence, tilting back their hat and admiring the sunset.

What happens to a country when half of its primary food production capability is lost?

What happens when it loses 70% or 80%?

The drought continues...

Drought Causing Long Term Price Rises For Food

January 2007 : Monster Floods Bring Smiles To Drought Devastated Country Towns

Australian Anti-Terror Official 'Attacked' By Undercover Police In Indonesia

This story is about two weeks old, but there's some interesting differences between how the story was originally reported, and then later 'corrected'.

Here's a report from November 29 from the Associated Press, which appeared in The Age :

Police are investigating an armed attack on the Australian head of an anti-terrorism school in Indonesia.

Lester Cross, director of the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation, was unharmed when three men riding motorcycles fired at his car on Sunday after he refused to stop, local police chief Doddy Sumantyawan said.

They hit his bulletproof window and a tyre, but caused little significant damage, he said.

"We strongly believe it was an attempt of violent robbery," Sumantyawan said, adding that Cross was with his family when the attack occurred in the Central Java city of Semarang.

Nine days later, on December 7, the story changes dramatically, in this report from the Australian Associated Press :

An Australian Federal Police agent shot at last week was attacked by Indonesian police, authorities in Java have revealed.

Lester Cross, the head of a joint Indonesia-Australia anti-terrorism school in central Java, was not injured when his vehicle was shot at on November 25.

Central Java police chief Dodi Sumantyawan today said the shots were fired by Indonesian drug squad officers, who mistakenly thought Cross was dealing drugs.

Four Indonesian police officers fired on the vehicle after receiving a tip off a drug dealer was in the area, he said.

The police had seen the driver of Cross' vehicle stop and speak to someone, and believed it may have been the drug vehicle.

When the car started to move again, the police fired three warning shots, and then shot in the direction of the vehicle twice.

Cross and his family had been on the way to a friend's wedding, when they stopped and asked a passer by for directions.

And there's this version, which also appeared on December 7, from the Associated Press :

Undercover officers opened fire on a bulletproof vehicle carrying the Australian head of an anti-terrorism school in Indonesia after mistaking him for a drug trafficker, police said Friday.

Four police officers, acting on a tip from an arrested drug dealer, had been lying in wait for a vehicle believed to be carrying narcotics, Central Java police chief Maj. Gen. Doddy Sumantyawan said.

Police initially said they believed the attackers were robbers or terrorists.

"It was a big mistake by our members, who were not aware Cross was inside the car," Sumantyawan told reporters. "I met Cross to apologize and he fully understands that it was an accident."

So what happened to the guys on motorcycles who supposedly carried out the shooting? Three guys on motorcycles pull up alongside a car carrying an anti-terror official and open fire. No wait, it was undercover police, lying in wait, who opened fire on the vehicle.

It sounds like an attempted assassination.

But then, if that's what it actually was, you can understand why they'd want to bury the story. Or least change 'the facts' a few times to add to the confusion.

The story doesn't appear to have been mentioned in any media since December 7.

It should be noted that both of the very different version of events came from the same Central Java police chief.

Australia Will Send Navy, Air Force After Japanese Whalers

Some forty years ago, tourists used to descend on Byron Bay to watch Australian whalers haul their massive catch onto the shore and then carve the mammals up.

Now tourists descend on Byron Bay to watch the whales swim serenely by, with more protection afforded to them than many Australian children.

The Rudd government is so serious about its promise to protect whales from Japanese harpoons while they're in Australian waters that they're now preparing to deploy the navy and air force :

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will announce details next week, but said the military could be used to gather damning evidence against Japanese harpooners.

He said his Government took seriously Australia's international obligations to protect whales from unauthorised killing and would look at measures to fortify any future case to be brought before international legal tribunals.

Japan does not recognise a huge whale sanctuary Australia has declared in the Southern Ocean.

This is not simply an issue of morality, or whale rights. Nor is it a cynical move by the Rudd government to keep happy the millions of Australians who are disgusted by the annual slaughter of whales by the Japanese.

Whale spotting, that is whale tourism, is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian tourist economy. It is a boom industry, and the more whales Japanese harpooners kill, the less will will make their way along Australia's coastlines, delighting boatloads full of tourists.

Fossil Record Confirms Ancient Dreamtime Legend Of 'Galloping' Kangaroo



For thousands of generations, Aborigines have passed down the story of how kangaroos that once ran on four legs were 'cursed' to hop along instead.

Now scientific research confirms that the ancient Dreamtime legend of Bohra was, in fact, true :

The dreamtime story of Bohra the kangaroo says the animal once ran like a dog before it was punished for joining a corroboree and forced to hop for eternity.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales say they now believe a dog-like skeleton, found in north-west Queensland, is from an extinct kangaroo species that once galloped rather than hopped.

Indigenous expert Michael Connolly says he has no doubt Aboriginal people were around to see the species.

"The Aboriginal people were always here, as far back in time as people can [say]," he said.

Mr Connolly says his ancestors used the dreamtime story over thousands of generations to record the animal in history.

"The Aboriginals had no books, so it was always by ear and by mouth and by art. These stories were told and passed down from generation to generation, so that was our storyline, that was our Bible that was everything," he said.

You Can Read A Story Of Bohra The Kangaroo Here

More Stories From The Dreaming Can Be Watched And Heard Here

Howard Finally Concedes Defeat

How Maxine McKew Won Her History-Making, Victory In The Battle For Bennelong


An excerpt from a photo by Brendan Esposito. Full image is here.

He waited as long as he possibly could to concede defeat, but former prime minister John Howard has finally turned up to congratulate Maxine McKew for winning the seat he had held for more than three decades. So much for McKew winning a "narrow victory." She romped home, scoring some 2400 more votes than Howard.

In the wake of the history-making election win by Kevin Rudd's Labor government, the stunning victory of former journalist Maxine McKew over John Howard in Bennelong has quickly faded from the headlines. To Howard's chagrin, however, it will feature prominently in every book written about the 2007 Election, and every biography to come of the former prime minister.

Maxine McKew quit her gig as the host of ABC's Lateline barely 12 months ago, and managed to defy history, and the mocking of Howard lackeys, to win the seat that Howard was supposedly going to own until his retirement.

The story of how McKew pulled off her amazing victory is already legendary in Labor circles, and is being studied intensively by Liberals, who still can't believe she actually did it.

A new book, The Battle For Bennelong by Margot Saville, explains how McKew and the Labor Party pulled off their history making, and history defining, victory :

...it was due largely to a clinical targeting of Bennelong's above-average number of non-English-speaking, foreign-born and predominantly Asian voters.

McKew and her minders did not want want the usual suspects among the legion of volunteers who offered their services. "Very early on her volunteers were carefully screened to remove all rude, aggressive Howard-hating types," Saville writes.

McKew's campaign, like Rudd's, was methodical and positive.

Labor headquarters sent into action a "crack team" of "Chinese- and Korean-speaking twentysomethings" to liaise with the Asian communities. Saville told the Herald the operatives were groomed through the Young Labor movement and worked the party's Electrac data system incessantly to target Asian voters with emails and visits.

McKew's campaign office secured a phone number that ended in 888 because many Chinese believe 8 to be a lucky number.

Thousands of how-to-vote guides in Chinese and Korean were printed and delivered, as were testimonials from prominent members of the Asian community.

Rudd's own affinity with China, evidenced by his command of Mandarin, was pivotal, as was Howard's earlier attitude to Pauline Hanson's One Nation and his controversial 1988 comments on Asian immigration.

On the last day of the campaign, (Chinese language newspaper) Sing Tao's front page carried the story of the race-hate pamphlet scandal in the seat of Lindsay. Next to it was a story mentioning Howard's 1988 comments.

Go Here For The Full Story

Howard knew the Lindsay pamphlet scandal was going to finish him off in Bennelong. That's why he got on the phone himself to try and stop the Tony Abbott approved spin that the pamphlet was nothing more than a "Chaser-style prank" from reaching the media.

But Howard failed, and the absurd claim that the virulently inflammatory pamphlet was but a joke guaranteed the scandal's place as the lead news story for the last two days before the election, and a front page position on nearly every newspaper in the country.

A fitting end indeed for a prime minister who knowingly, and enthusiastically, stirred up race hate throughout his political career, and did it with a knowing smile.

A chunk of a much larger, and more spectacular, piece of digital art from Cream Studios.

Go Here For The Full Image

Another Page Of Excellent Digital Art And Art Advertising From Cream Studios


Cream Studios also contributed art to a collection depicting events from the Bible, as they might have been viewed had Google Earth been around two to eight thousand years ago. You can see those images here.

Bloodnut Runs The Country



Today, a tiny, long mocked, down trodden, disrespected minority of Australians will be celebrating that one of their own has ascended to the heights of acting prime minister. No, not women. Redheads. The most cursed of all humanity's bizarre evolutionary mutations.

Deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, is now acting prime minister while Kevin Rudd is in Bali emitting about emissions. She rules the land until Thursday night :

"I think it's probably a moment that many Australian women will probably stop and reflect on...I think if there's one girl who looks at the TV screen over the the next few days and says 'I might like to do that in the future', well that's a good thing."

Australian politics needs more Julia Gillards and less Tony Abbotts.

Annabel Crabb celebrates a victory for Australian women, and redheads :

It's a brief luxuriation in the seat of power that will top off what has undoubtedly been an incredible year for the Member for Lalor.

After all, it is only six years ago that Julia Gillard was a little-known bit player in Labor's dispirited opposition, a red-headed backbencher with a penchant for loud suits and a voice that would strip the enamel off a refrigerator.

She readily lampoons her own paltry housekeeping skills, and confesses privately that her polished wooden dining table has never been the same since she tried to spruce it up with oven cleaner in 2003.

And her favourite thing about the Australian people, she says, is their larrikin sense of humour.

"I was standing out at a street stall in my own electorate on one very windy winter's morning, and when you're campaigning at a street stall you stand next to a corflute sign of yourself, you know - a big poster of yourself.

"And so there I am, windswept and looking a bit bedraggled, and this old bloke comes out of the supermarket, and he looks at me and looks at the sign, and looks at me and looks at the sign, and then finally says: "Taken on a good day, wasn't it, love?"

Ladies and gentlemen, for 2 days only: The acting Prime Minister.

According to the rabid right of the commentariat, Julia Gillard should now be sacking Rudd and installing union thugs in every position of power across the land. Didn't they spend millions of dollars of your money warning us that Gillard was only one empty fruit bowl away from Red China Communism? Didn't they spend most of the year telling us how Gillard wouldn't even wait until Christmas before she sank the knives into Rudd's back, staged a coup and began transforming Australia into a socialist utopia?

Surely, the demented right couldn't have been so wrong? They're usually so bang on the money. The Iraq War. Climate Change. Dr Haneef is a crazed terrorist. The economy will be the election maker and breaker...

Oh, that's right. Gillard was only Chairman Mao and Karl Marx's secret hybrid clone child until all those union thugs stormed the Liberal Party bastille and staked the black heart of Howard in the November 24 election.

Now, the demented right can't find enough positive words to praise Julia Gillard.

Here is but one example, the Herald Sun's dribbling Andrew Bolt :

...her discipline, her very polished projection...warm, principled and human...Gillard will be PM.

What was that about a "conga line of suckholes?"

You need no more proof that the John Howard era of 'boys club' politics is dead and buried than to see Julia Gillard in charge of Australia. Briefly, but deservedly so.

Paris Hilton Has Sex With Britney Spears While Levitating Outside The White House After Bigfoot Found Dead Following Roswell Alien Confession

News.com.au claims it has an extraordinary 250,00 or so unique daily visitors, which is more than the Drudge Report (who presents every page load as a 'visit'). The vast majority of news.com.au readers are Australians, and Australians living overseas, so it's fascinating to see what stories were the most popular of the year.

Sex and violence rules. New prime minister Kevin Rudd was obviously far more interesting to readers than boring old John Howard. The Iraq War capture no headlines in the Top 100, but American gun massacres and natural disasters and mass death events were as popular as any other year.

A thorough perusal of the list shows that while Sex Still Sells, merely the words "found dead" in a headline is worth a big audience, even better if it's a celebrity that's been "found dead", like Anna Nicole Smith.

Australians clearly love the celebrity pap, but they like their weird stories as well, with headlines about Bigfoot and Roswell aliens powering into the Top 20.

Here's the Top Ten most visited News.com.au stories of the year :

10. Spoiler : how Harry Potter ends

9. Treeman has experts baffled

8. Chihuahua puppy born with loveheart pattern in fur

7. Singing salesman makes Cowell’s jaw drop

6. Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

5. Man levitates outside the Whitehouse

4. Britney attempted rehab suicide

3. 15-year-old girl jailed with 20 men

2. Federal Election “Vote-a-matic”

1.Paris Hilton loses inheritance


My personal favourites for just the headlines alone :

Man murdered parents with axe for laughing at cat’s death

Sex with robots not far away

Men to be spanked in new town

Crocodile vet speaks about having arm bitten off

Nutbags : Sinners Causing Drought

This idiot has no right to speak on behalf of God :

A radical Christian group with the ear of prominent politicians has blamed "sinful" Australians for the nation's record drought.

Catch the Fires Ministries, which has links to several prominent politicians including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has hired Festival Hall so 5000 of its followers can pray for rain on Australia Day.

Leader Danny Nalliah said moral decline, not climate change, was responsible for the drought.

"Australia has turned away from Almighty God ... the sinful condition of mankind has contributed to the stem of rainfall," he said.

Is this guy allowed to drive a car or operate heavy machinery?

Australians are turning away from the churches where the so-called Word of Almighty God is preached because of idiots like Nalliah talking absolute twaddle, instead of inspiring people.

According to Nalliah, lots of prayer will take care of the drought problem.

"When John Howard called the nation to pray for rain, and the church enthusiastically responded in united prayer, the heavens opened," he said.

Well, not really. There were increased rainfalls in some parts of Australia, but it took a couple of weeks. Maybe God had a backlog of prayers to sort through.

"Since that historic prayer gathering in our nation's capital, Australia has experienced unceasing drought-breaking rain."

Parts of Australia have received rain, but nobody is claiming these have been "drought breaking". 80% of New South Wales is still in the midst of a crippling drought, and as summer comes on, it's likely to get worse.

It's interesting to note that Nalliah, who was sued for vilifying Muslims, and has been known to claim that the Koran is the work of the devil (or words to that effect), sounds an awful lot like Muslim cleric Mohammed Omran :

This year Sheik Omran preached the drought, climate change and pollution were due to Australians' lack of faith in Allah.

"The fear of Allah is not there. So we have now a polluted earth, a polluted water, a wasteland," he told a meeting.

God and/or Allah were both unavailable for comment.

Yo Yanks, We Love Your Movies, But Your Food And Foreign Policy Is Bogus

Although the vast majority of Australians express a profound dislike of American foreign policy, we still thoroughly enjoy its movies and music, and admire its scientific progress. But we're not too keen on American fast food or its attitude to climate change.

Mored details here :

The survey of 1213 Australians revealed our love/hate relationship with US popular culture. "People and popular culture" ranked as both the thing Australians most liked, and most disliked, about the country.

...Undertaken by the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre, the survey found 77 per cent of respondents were worried about US foreign policy while 71 per cent were concerned by its fast food culture.

Certainly, confidence in the US among Australians has slipped over the past 21 years, perhaps influenced by the Iraq war and the botched rescue and reconstruction effort after Hurricane Katrina.

While 62 per cent had a favourable view of the US system of government in 1986, only 49 per cent felt the same way in 2007.

In 1986, 56 per cent of those surveyed said they were confident the US could deal wisely with its social and economic problems. In 2007, 44 per cent of respondents concurred.

How John Howard's Ego Suicide-Bombed The Liberal Party Into Oblivion

The longer the Liberals stay out of federal power, the more they are going to hate and vilify John Winston Howard. The man with an ego so enormous, that even when he knew that refusing to handover the leadership would destroy the party he claimed to have loved so dearly, he still refused to go, for little more reason than that he would not be granted the exit of his choosing. That is, the departure from the leadership that would look the best in the history books.

Howard knew for almost a year that he would go out a loser, and his government would lose the election, but he wasn't going to let his party shove him aside, despite his continual lies that he would stay on only as long as the Liberals wanted him to be there. When they didn't want him to be there, he demanded they force him out, so he could tell historians "they shoved me out, I never quit".

Being a loser for John Howard was far better than being remembered as a coward :

...what will outrage those who believed the government might have survived under a Peter Costello prime ministership is that Howard also knew that he was running on empty, but decided to stay on anyway, wilfully consigning the Coalition to what could be a decade in the political wilderness.

And the reason Howard chose this road to the abyss? In a verdict that will frame the 2007 defeat as the ultimate act of indulgence on Howard's part, Downer says it was because those Costello supporters agitating for change in late 2006 were "f...ing rude" to the former prime minister.

According to Downer, it was Howard's intention to hand over to Costello in 2006, until he felt pressured to do so by the treasurer's supporters. "If after the 2004 election, all of the Costello team would have just said, 'Howard's done well, he's won the 2004 election, we'll just wait till he hands over', then John Howard would have handed over at the end of last year."

Howard would have handed over if it had not been for quite a sustained campaign to force him to hand over. "John Howard is not uncivilised and if you ever want anything from John Howard apply the old (saying) that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It's funny when people are f...ing rude to you, they are then surprised when you don't like them."

"The prime minister's view was actually that he didn't think it would work, that we were in deep trouble, but we could do even worse if we changed. And it was also his view that, and I think it's important to understand this, he would be remembered, that had he voluntarily stood down, he would be remembered as a coward, who ran away from a contest in his seat and who ran away from a national contest when he was behind in votes, that people would remember that he ran away."

Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, eh Mr Howard?

So fuck the Liberals, right? After all, what did they ever do for you?

Earlier in the year, Howard reportedly told his cabinet members "You're nothing without me." Which was true enough, considering his favourability ratings were so high, particularly when compared to Costello, who spent most of 2007 being about as popular as open running pus sores.

Like George W. Bush is now to Republican Party, so John Howard will eventually become to the Liberal Party. The leader who screwed up, who refused to listen to the changing tide of opinion amongst the people that he ruled, whose ego was so enormous that he was willing to trash his own party and damn them to perhaps a decade in opposition, and whose name will be rarely mentioned, soon enough, amongst the more betrayed feeling Liberals without these introductory words : "That fucking bastard..."

Depopulation And The Black Triangles Spraying

From the online novel ED Day, telling the story of life in Sydney after the bird flu pandemic :

The phones were down, the electricity was out. Most of my neighbours had fled by then, and those that were left were burying their wives, husbands, children, in the back yard. I’d been helping a neighbour down the end of the street bury his wife and his dog earlier in the evening. I came back home, drank some warm beer, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d put away about five warm beers when I saw the black triangle swoop overhead at about 11pm.

I saw two black planes fly over the next night, March 18, and more web-like threads fell across my garden, my house, my street.

On the third night, I was fully alert and waiting for the planes. I was up on the roof of my place, lying back, and I saw them coming in from the west. I saw the mist the black triangles were spraying. The mist caught the moonlight and glistened as it fell across thousands of homes, hundreds of streets, dozens of suburbs.

The next morning, March 20, I rolled through the talkback radio stations that were still on air. There wasn’t one word about the black triangle planes, or the stuff they were spraying. Like it didn't happen. Like it hadn't happened three nights in a row.

On one station, an old man was talking about his garden, on another station a young woman was complaining about how hard it was to meet “decent men” in Sydney and that she was thinking of going back to Melbourne. The third station I tuned into delivered an argument between the usually fiery host and a young man who said because his rock band would earn millions, and he’d end up paying plenty in taxes, so the government should be paying him now to dedicate himself full time to his music.

But it wasn’t just banal conversation, completely removed from the reality of Sydney that day. None of the conversations sounded right. The old man talking about his garden sounded like an actor reading from a script, pretending to be an old man, faking losing his chain of thought, and apologising for it. The woman complaining about the men in Sydney didn’t sound annoyed, she sounded bored, like she had rehearsed her words too many times before.

The big news of the day, if I remember rightly, was the prime minister rambling on about how the worst of the bird flu pandemic had been contained. But it was the third day running for this story. No new news on it. Just more reassurances. It didn’t sound real, or live, like they claimed the broadcast was.

I thought then that if I went to the radio station studio, there’d be no-one there, just a bunch of pre-recorded CDs and digital hard drives pumping out the music and words that were supposed to calm, or distract, the masses from the horrific reality settling over the city.


Go Here To Read The Full Chapter For Free

Go Here To Read The Novel ED Day From The Beginning

They're Not Laughing Anymore

A recap for our international readers who do not know who Bernie Banton was, or what it was that he did that made him an Australian legend :

Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Wednesday hailed as a hero a man who won billions of dollars in compensation for workers from a multinational company.

He was speaking at a state funeral for Bernie Banton, 61, who died from an asbestos-related disease he contracted while working for building products company James Hardie.

Banton's dogged campaign ultimately led to the establishment of a 4 billion dollar (3.5 billion US) compensation fund for victims of Hardie's asbestos products.

James Hardie's asbestos products were widely used in the Australian housing and construction industry before the dangers of the material were fully appreciated.

As a result, thousands of workers and homeowners contracted diseases such as asbestosis, in which asbestos fibres scar the lining of the lungs and cause slow and painful death.

Banton himself died from the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma last week.

"Bernie Banton was a great Australian hero," Rudd told thousands of mourners at Sydney's Acer Arena. "A hero in an age when we had all become so cynical that we didn't believe there could be heroes. He was an Australian hero with an extraordinary heart who lived an extraordinary life."

Rudd, whose Labor Party ousted long-serving conservative prime minister John Howard in elections on November 24, said Banton had asked him to publicly recognise the role unions played in the campaign.

"I salute the roles of these unions in bringing justice to working people," he said.

Amen to that.

The following chunk of transcript is from an interview with Bernie Banton by Andrew Denton in 2006. The disgusting way he was treated in his early days of battle with James Hardie, to get compensation for those who will die terrible deaths from exposure to a product the corporation knew for decades was deadly, drove Bernie on through five years of hell :

BERNIE BANTON : ...Tens of thousands. The figures about people with asbestos-related disease, early in the fight were assessed at, by university figures from Western Australia, that 53,000 more people, by 2020, would be affected with an asbestos-related disease. 13,000 of those people would die of mesothelioma. So we're talking tens of thousands of people being affected. This fund was only ever a rouse. It was never going to have enough money to pay victims into the future. This was what we kept harping on, that it will run out of money. Finally, the New South Wales Government set up a Commission of Inquiry.

ANDREW DENTON: I want to go back to those first couple of years, sitting across the table from Hardies when they were saying there's enough money.

BERNIE BANTON: "We don't owe you anything." That was their line.

ANDREW DENTON: They laughed?

BERNIE BANTON: "We don't owe you any money either morally or legally."

ANDREW DENTON: They literally laughed?

BERNIE BANTON: They literally laughed. Their PR people just laughed at us. Whenever we tried to bring this before them and confront them with it, they laughed at us. They thought we were a mob of ratbags and that we'd go away. Well I think we proved them wrong.

He sure did.

One of the more disturbing elements of the Howard government's scare campaign about the unions before and during the recent election, and all the Liberal Party media supplicants who chimed along, is that without the support of the unions, and their numbers in the years of street protests, James Hardie very likely would never have offered up the money they now claim will help look after the tens of thousands of people they knowingly poisoned.

Bernie Banton is a true Australian hero because he sacrificed the last years of his life for what he believed in, and he did it for his mates, to pay due honour to his dead mates who died like him from exposure to asbestos, to help his fellow Australians, and to make those who had knowingly committed thousands of Australians to a terrible death pay at least something for their appalling and inhuman behaviour.

You don't need to search further than Bernie Banton for a perfect example of what it means to be Australian. He took no shit, and he never stopped fighting.

A Family of 1500 At Bernie Banton's Grand Farewell

Massive Emissions Cuts? Not So Fast

It appears there was a 'misunderstanding' in how prime minister Kevin Rudd appeared to be backing international calls for Australia to meet cuts to greenhouse gas emissions of 25-40% by 2020 :

The Australian delegation to the United Nations climate talks in Bali has indicated it supports the target as the basis of negotiations in the next round of the Kyoto Protocol.

But Mr Rudd says he will take advice on whether the targets are workable.

"We will be determining, based on the merits, and based on the advice that we get through the... commission of inquiry, the interim targets which are appropriate for Australia," he said.

"The reason for doing it in a methodical way which we've outlined is to ensure that those targets are meaningful environmentally, and responsible economically."

Howard And Downer Were Full Of "Cut And Run" Lies On Iraq

Troop Withdrawals From Iraq Will Have No Negative Impact On Australia-US Alliance

Another bunch of foul lies of John Howard and former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, exposed for the dirty propaganda that they were :

(Former) prime minister John Howard condemned Mr Rudd's proposed timetable for a troop withdrawal as abandoning an ally and providing encouragement for terrorists.

But a senior US State Department official, Nicholas Burns, said the US appreciated what Australia had done in Iraq...

Mr Burns, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs in the US State Department, delivered a strong message of support for the Rudd Government from the Bush Administration.

Yesterday Mr Rudd described the US as "an overwhelming force for good in the world" and Mr Burns said he was impressed with the skill, knowledge and professionalism of the new ministers.

Both Mr Rudd and Mr Smith have been invited to visit Washington as soon as they can.

For more than three years, Howard and Downer railed in Parliament and ranted across the media about how the Labor position of withdrawing combat troops from Iraq would have massively negative impacts on the Australian alliance with the US, and would be "cutting and running" on the US, the Iraq government and the Iraqi people.

All of those claims from Howard and Downer were nothing but worthless rubbish :

Mr Burns has told ABC TV's Lateline he has been very impressed with the new Federal Government.

"Allies should treat each other in a friendly and respectful way, particularly when a new government comes in, so there's a lot of goodwill in Washington towards Prime Minister [Kevin] Rudd and towards his fellow members of the Australian Cabinet."

Mr Burns says the US administration understands the Labor Government's stance on Iraq.

"What all those Australian men and women have done in the Iraq effort, as well as Australia is doing in Afghanistan, we're grateful for it," he said.

"But we understand that Australia has a right to make its own decisions, we respect that."

The desperate deceptions and propaganda of the former Howard government over Rudd's plan to "cut and run" from Iraq and to "abandon its allies" aggravated officials in the US State Department, who always saw the continuing US-Australia alliance, and positive relationship, as vastly more important than whether or not Australia kept 500 combat troops in Iraq when the primary missions Australia was tasked with, such as training the Iraq Army and police, were clearly coming to an end.

Rudd Announces Massive Emissions Cuts By 2020

Australians To Feel Full Force Of Economic Fight Against Climate Change

A few hours after telling the United States that they had to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and getting knocked back, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would leap headfirst into setting a world standard for cutting carbon emissions with a stunning declaration of up to 40% cuts within 12 years.

Only days before the election, on November 24, Rudd was still refusing to announce Australia's interum greenhouse gas emissions target, that would fall between now and his announced target of 60% cuts by 2050. Rudd said he would wait until he received a report on how emissions cuts would affect Australian business and the economy before announcing a 2020 target.

The announcement that Australia will aim to cut emissions by 25 to 40%, by 2020, came after both China and Indonesia demanded that all countries who have ratified Kyoto (as Australia has just done) must meet the targets agreed to in an "understanding" earlier this year :

Last night Australia publicly aligned itself with the nations under the Kyoto Protocol that have agreed to consider these cuts, distancing the new Rudd Government further from the US position. Saying Australia "fully supports" the position, the delegation said Australia was, "happy to proceed on this basis".

....when (Rudd) arrives in Bali next week he will face international expectations from Europe, China and Indonesia to make Australia's position clear whether, having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it is committed to its own deep cuts.

...China, Indonesia, India and most of the poorer nations speaking at the Bali conference yesterday made their views clear that rich countries, including Australia, must commit to deep cuts to their greenhouse gases within 12 years, by 2020 and keep the model of the Kyoto Protocol in the new climate agreement.

"It is a successful model and we should persist with it," the Chinese delegate told the talks.

Yvo De Boer, head of the United Nation's climate team, who are hosting the Bali talks, has told Rudd that if he serious about "bridging the gap" between developing and industrialised countries on climate change, he should get himself to Bali immediately, and not next week as originally planned.

If Australia is to meet emissions cuts of 25 to 40% within twelve years, we are really going to feel it. How exactly Rudd intends to get Australia to make such massive cuts, in such a short space of time, is unclear but it will obviously require some drastic measures, or Australia will face huge international fines, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Paying Papua New Guinea to preserve some of the last great expanses of ancient rainforests left in the world today, to act as carbon sinks, will probably figure to a large degree in Rudd's plans, as will the rapid roll-out of solar, wind and geothermal energy.

China and Indonesia are obviously playing hardball, and Rudd might have spoken too quickly about his plans to 'bring the world together' on climate change, now that he has decided such a move will be his Look What I Can Achieve mission in the next month.

While China and Indonesia will obviously want the so-called 'roadmap' on climate change under discussion at Bali to benefit them financially, they may only push so far, as it is unlikely they will want to embarrass Rudd, who they view as an important and beneficial ally, so early on in his leadership.

But then again, this is international politics, and international economics.

Rudd may be about to receive one very nasty wake-up call to how the rest of the planet, including China and Indonesia, really view Australia, and its place of importance in the world today.

It should also be noted that Rudd has many of Australia's largest corporations, including mining companies, backing his announcement of a 2020 target. They're ready to dive into the new global economy of carbon trading, and work emissions cuts and carbon credit values into their business plans and profit projections for the next few years. Something they were unable to do, and were growing increasingly annoyed about, under the Howard government.

Australian Middle East Commander Declares Iraq Army Is "Ready To Stand On Its Own"

Major General Clears The Way For Troop Withdrawals From Iraq

The United States has officially accepted Australia's decision to withdraw more than 500 combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008, and now our top commander in the Middle East, Major General Mark Evans, has declared the Australian Defence Force's mission to train up Iraq's Army to take care of itself has been completed.

On Wednesday, US Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, met with Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

Burns was told that the Rudd government was moving ahead with plans to withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq, and Burns confirmed that this move would in no way damage the Australian-US alliance, or friendship.

Burns lobbied the ministers for Australian troops to remain in Iraq, and continue to help rebuild the country and its political system.

Major-General Mark Evans is quoted in the Melbourne Age as saying :

"I think the situation in (the provinces of) Dhi Qar and al-Muthanna is quite stable..."

"It's not without its violence … but it's certainly at a level now that both the governors of Dhi Qar and al-Muthanna would be of a view that they are well placed to manage most things."

"I'm pretty satisfied that the support we've given has enabled them (the Iraqis) to stand on their own two feet."

He said the Iraqi army was in a position to train its own forces, but Australia could play a role in training recruits and officers.

While Australia's troops in the south of the country will be gone by mid-2008, hundreds of other Australian military personnel will remain in and around Iraq.

The navy guards Iraq's oil platforms, commandos in Baghdad guard Australian diplomats, RAAF patrol planes guard road convoys and transport aircraft carry freight around the war zones.

More than 1000 Australian air force, navy and army personnel will remain in Iraq and neighbouring countries through 2008.

Earlier in the year, Kevin Rudd proposed that Australia could help to continue the training of Iraq military and police in Jordan, outside of the war zone.

Rudd To Bush : It's Time For US To Ratify Kyoto

Bush Official Tells Rudd Government : Not A Chance

On the eve of major climate change talks in Bali, during which he hopes to "unite" the world in fighting global warming, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has called on the US to join the world's major industrial powers and ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Within hours of becoming prime minister last Monday, Kevin Rudd undid a decade of obfuscation and global warming denialism on the part of the Howard government and signed Australian up to full Kyoto ratification. Less than 48 hours later, Rudd has called on the US to do likewise :

"Our position vis-a-vis Kyoto is clear cut, and that is that all developed and developing countries need to be part of the global solution," Mr Rudd said.

"When it comes to developed countries, we need to see our friends in America as part and parcel of that as well. "And therefore we do need to see the United States as a full ratification state when it comes to Kyoto."

But earlier today, during the first official meetings between the Bush administration and the new Australian government, Kevin Rudd was told by US Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns that the US would not ratify Kyoto and was instead looking to a post-2010 deal on carbon targets that would include China and India.

MORE TO COME

I Can Unite The World On Climate, Says Rudd

Redundant

There were no great surprises in seeing what were the most popular words or people googled in Australia in the past year. All the usual suspects : Paris Hilton, EBay, Facebook, MySpace, Britney Spears...

But how weird is this?

The fifth most popular word Australians typed into the Google search engine was, err, 'Google'.

There's plenty of us still having a bit of trouble getting our heads around this whole intertubes thing.

Googling Google is the internet equivalent of the old, confused people who wander into post offices and start shouting "How do I get to the bloody post office?"

2008 Could Be Casualty Heavy Year For Australian Troops In Afghanistan

How would prime minister Kevin Rudd deal with a somewhat steady flow of killed and injured Australian troops coming home from Afghanistan? Would he pull out Australian troops if local opposition filled the streets of our cities? Would he send in more troops to show the Taliban they cannot win?

Rudd is already preparing to withdraw all 500 or so of our combat troops now stationed in Iraq by mid-2008. But he may increase the number of Australian troops in Afghanistan, where our soldiers are now being specifically targeted and killed by the Taliban.

Experts fear that Afghanistan will become only more bloody next year, and with the Taliban moving in on Afghanistan's cities, and seemingly gaining strength by the month, the risk of greatly increased military casualties will surely rise as troops engage an enemy growing in number and confidence.

From NPR :

Michael Fullilove, head of the Global Studies Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, says that Afghanistan is likely to be the big issue for Australian forces over the next year.

"We haven't tested public opinion as to how Australians would react to larger numbers of casualties than we've suffered to date," Fullilove says.

That test could come sooner than the new prime minister may want, White says. The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and some allies are wavering on their commitment there, he says. White says that Rudd has mentioned sending in more troops to replace departing ally troops.

"Once he looks at what's actually happening on the ground there, in what has, I think, in Afghanistan, been a very grim year, he'll need to think very carefully whether it's sensible to send young Australians on dangerous missions where the chances of success are so low," White says.

The Afghanistan War has not divided Australia in the same way that the Iraq War did. But with three Australian troops killed in only a matter of weeks, and more than a dozen seriously wounded in 2007 alone, the vague disinterest many Australians have towards what is going on in Afghanistan may soon become organised opposition.


Australian Commando In Afghanistan Gave His Life To Save His Mates

20% Of Australia's Heroin Comes From Afghanistan - Rudd Sends Cops To Burn Crops

The New Liberal Mantra : John Howard's Rule Was A "Golden Age"

After writing more than 20 columns for the Sydney Morning Herald on how relentlessly crap the Rudd Labor opposition was throughout 2007, Tony "Too Raw" Abbott has now turned his kitten killing gaze onto his own kind :

As the reality of defeat sinks in, the Coalition has to accept that it made serious mistakes in its fourth term of government but should never concede that it can't win the next election. That will be hard, especially over the next few months, when the best way to get a headline will be to engage in self-criticism.

Almost certainly, the official post-mortem will attribute defeat to the poor politics of Work Choices, which was "sprung" on voters after the government unexpectedly won control of the Senate; the difficulty of marketing voting for Howard but electing Peter Costello; and the comparative lack of big new policy initiatives to justify giving an 11-year-old government a fifth term. Still, the former government could not help its biggest problem: age. Unless the opposition is really hopeless, the normal life even of good governments seems to be about three terms.

Abbott also takes time to unveil the new mantra that you will hear falling from the lips of every member of the opposition government when the slightest thing goes wrong for RuddInc :

If the new Prime Minister can't conjure lower interest rates, petrol prices and grocery bills; if he can't make the states lift their game on health, education and disability services; and especially if he can't keep unemployment down and economic growth up, the Howard era will soon seem like a golden age.

The fact that the Howard decade was not a "golden age" for many millions of voters is one of the fundamental reasons why his government was given the boot. They believed Howard's lies, and then felt like they'd been fleeced.

But that won't stop the legendisation of the so-called 'Howard Golden Age'.

Abbott doesn't seem to understand that this will have the same effect as Howard telling millions of poverty-level Australians that they'd never had it so good. And we know well that went down with the voters.

Liberals Defy The Australian, Nelson Pays The Price

Curse Of The Newspoll To Badmouth Libs Until Turnbull Takes Over

More Coalition Supporters Prefer Rudd As PM Than Nelson And Abbott Combined

By Darryl Mason

The Australian newspaper's editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, told the election defeat-shocked Liberals that Malcolm Turnbull was their man, and the only person who could lead the party out of the swamp of Howard-era policy failures, "we don't say sorry" stupidity and climate change ignorance.

But the Liberals dared to ignore Kelly, and the Murdoch media's cheerleading for Turnbull, and chose Brendan "I've Never Voted Liberal In My Life!" Nelson to lead the party instead.

So now it's time for the New Liberals to pay the price for such insolence :

The Liberal Party may have chosen the wrong man as its new leader, with Brendan Nelson only half as popular as beaten rival Malcolm Turnbull among voters.

Brendan Nelson had only given his first interview as the New Liberals leader mere hours before the poll was taken. He hadn't even been leader for 48 hours!

A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend also found 61 per cent of voters named Kevin Rudd as their preferred prime minister, with Dr Nelson rating only 14 per cent.

The poll showed almost as many Coalition voters believed Mr Rudd would make a better prime minister as Dr Nelson.

...the Newspoll - the first since polling day - found Mr Turnbull was the most favoured Liberal Party figure.

But of course!

Thirty-four per cent of the 1125 respondents named the millionaire former banker and environment minister as the best person to lead the Liberals. Dr Nelson scored 18 per cent. West Australian Julie Bishop, who was elected as Dr Nelson's deputy last Thursday, scored 14 per cent.

Former health minister and Howard loyalist Tony Abbott won the support of 9 per cent of respondents...

Tony "Reasonable People Skills" Abbott only scored the tick of 1 in 10 people?

How can that be? The poll must be rigged. Even on pure entertainment value alone, Tony "Too Honest" Abbott would have to score higher than Nelson.

The Newspoll found that Mr Rudd, now Prime Minister, held a commanding lead over Dr Nelson in the preferred leader stakes.

You can say that again. 61% to 14%

But with Nelson in charge, the Newspoll humour continues regardless :

...in further bad news for the Liberals, Mr Rudd was also the preferred prime minister among 27 per cent of Coalition voters.

More Coalition voters think that Ruddley Do Right makes a more preferable PM than Nelson and Abbott combined. And Rudd hadn't even been sworn in as PM when the poll was taken!

Fantastic!

The rest of the 'Nelson Really Sucks' story from The Australian guts the Liberal leader like a pig and throws his entrails around the room, churning through the embarrassment of Nelson getting teary in his 'victory speech' to shellshocked Liberals and copping a "verbal bollocking" from Turnbull for giving a speech that was as exciting and inspiring as any you might hear at a funeral.

Not surprisingly, Brendan Nelson is not so happy at the continuing 'Let's Make Front Page Stories Out Of Our Polls' paradigm in force at The Australian, which scatters it's 'Liberals Are Really Shit Now' headlines and data across the entire sprawl of Australia's Murdoch newspapers, which grabs a market share of more than 70% of all the newspapers published in Australia, and in turn creates news stories for the wire services, all the network and cable channel news programs and virtually all the ABC News broadcasts.

Oh yes, Turnbull will be leader of the Liberals. Sooner than Nelson thinks.

Here's Nelson going nuts about the Newspoll assassination attempt. Sorry, did we say going nuts? Of course we meant "laughing off" :

"It's day five, I mean, gimme a break," Dr Nelson said.

"I think the average Australian out there is saying `I might see if I can get to know this guy'.

"I think again the average Australian will say `look, fair go, let's just find out what the bloke's on about first and then make your own judgment'."

This is Nelson going nuts :




UPDATE : The Australian knife job story on Nelson appears to have been hastily rewritten, with this introduction now disappeared into the void :

The Liberal Party may have chosen the wrong man as its new leader, with Brendan Nelson only half as popular as beaten rival Malcolm Turnbull among voters.

The intro still shows up in Google Search for a Courier Mail listing, but a click only leads you to the story where Nelson "laughs off" the Newspoll results.

Fortunately, we saved an image of the knifing from news.com.au. The photo of Nelson was not chosen in his favour :



I particularly like the readers poll. Forget who the Liberals chose to lead the party. Who do you think should be leader? Vote now, and we'll turn the results into yet another story tomorrow saying news.com.au readers "overwhelmingly" prefer Turnbull to Nelson.

Your free media and democracy in action.

21 Million Australians And Counting

I actually thought we'd hit this figure last year, but there you go. Australia now lays claim to
more than 21 million people, with immigration at near records levels and Australian women pumping out babies like never before:

An extra 315,700 people in the three months to June 30 pushed Australia's population growth rate to 1.5 per cent.

Immigration accounted for 56 per cent of Australia's growth, while 272,900 births minus 134,800 deaths made up 44 per cent of the increase.

Western Australia was the fastest expanding of the states and territories, recording a 2.3 per cent growth rate.

Australia's fertility rate is on the rise, with 272,900 babies born in the year to June the highest ever annual number of births.

Some other stats of interest :

One new Australian is born every 1 minute and 56 seconds.

One Australian dies every 3 minutes and 59 seconds.

We gain one new international migrant every 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

In 1788, there were an estimated 350,000 settlers and convicts. At the time of first settlement, there were an estimated 500,000 Aborigines broken up into some 500 tribes, or nations, speaking hundreds of languages.

In 1901, the population had swelled to some 3,788,000 Australians.

In 1931, there were 6,526,000 of us.

In 1971, there were 13,00,000 Australians.

In 1991, there were 17,00,000.

Although we have two square kilometres of land per person, much of it is arid desert. We are one of the world's most highly urbanised populations, with more than 91% of us living in urban areas. The vast majority of these urban areas are close to the coast.

There are more than 850,000 Australian citizens living abroad.

One in five Australians cite "no religion" when given the choice on census forms.

Nelson's Liberals : Sorry, We Still Won't Say Sorry

With the 'New' Liberals me-tooing on gay rights, canning the election-losing bits of WorkChoices, ratifying Kyoto and acknowledging that Australians had stopped listening to John Howard's ideas, about the only key issue they've got left that separates from Rudd Labor is the Nelson-led objection to saying "Sorry" to the Aboriginal people for past crimes and injustices.

Nelson's explanation that they shouldn't have to apologise for something they didn't actually do, because none of them were born during the worst of the Aboriginal land-stealing, massacres, rapes and slavery, is both sad and bizarre. That Nelson's Liberals won't say "Sorry" because they fear an onslaught of compensation claims is cold, calculating and downright offensive to most Aborigines.

The "Sorry, No Sorry" position now hangs over Nelson's Liberals like a curse. During the 2004 election, an Aboriginal elder pointed a bone at Howard, cursing him. It clearly took a few years for the curse to come to fruition.

But it will keep acting on Nelson's Liberals until they follow the will of the majority of Australians and make this modest, and painless, gesture of reconciliation.

Philip Adams points out here that you cannot claim the 'Feel The Pride' parts of our generations-past history, Gallipoli for example, and then refuse to claim the dark and ugly parts as well :

The brave bits of history, the proud moments belong to us all and we collectively bathe in the glory. It's the nasty bits of the past we don't acknowledge. They had nothing to do with us. They were no part of our business.

This is a lopsided view of history. Let us share in past glories while shunning past guilts. Moreover, we will do our best to deny that they happened. Enter the historical revisionism of a Keith Windschuttle. Massacres of Abos? Where? When? Show us the documents! Show us the receipts for the corpses! If there's no paperwork, it never happened. Oral histories of Aborigines? Vivid, detailed accounts of slaughter and atrocities can be discounted. They're not worth the paper they're not written on. No need for sorries there.

Howard's classic cherry-picking of 'We Own This' bit of history but 'We Don't Want That' should be left behind with the (hopefully) old Liberal Party, and its blinkered view of this nation's history, he led to such a shattering defeat ten days ago.

More from Adams :

(Howard's Liberals) want to choose the bits where our ancestors behaved decently, bravely, selflessly, and turn them into mythology, sentiment and, from time to time, the worst sort of patriotic pap. Look at us! Look who were are! In the same breath they turn their backs on our shames and crimes. They've got nothing to do with us. We weren't there. We hadn't been born. Sorry, Brendan, but that's not on.

Britain has to live with the potato famine in Ireland, Germany with the Holocaust, Japan with Manchuria, Turkey with the Armenian genocide and the US with slavery. You may be able to mount a convincing case that Australia's history, colonial as well as recent, in regard to Aborigines hardly compares. But the atrocities and tragedies occurred and continue to affect Aboriginal lives and Australia's sense of itself. And saying sorry is such a small thing.

Greener Than Green

Paul Sheehan strips some bark off The Green's Bob Brown for his tireless, and tiresome, attacks on the new Australian environment minister, Peter Garrett, during the election campaign.

Some of Bob Brown's dozens of prominent media blasts at Garrett, mostly because he refused to say that he opposed the building of a new pulp mill in Tasmania, on his way to seizing control of the government's environment ministry :

"Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull will get together and say more uranium mines," Brown postulated on ABC Radio's PM on October 15. The previous week, he told a rally: "Peter Garrett claims he is 'perfectly comfortable' with the pulp mill … Peter Garrett, we're not perfectly comfortable with you!" (October 7)

"This is the Labor hierarchy gagging Peter. Labor [including Garrett] … needs to get a backbone." (Bob Brown media release, September 7.)

"I can't see Peter Garrett at all. Where is he? Peter used to be such a defender of Tasmania's forests … but he is missing in action," Brown told ABC Lateline on August 29.

"Peter Garrett must not stand on the sidelines while the environment is trashed." (Media release, August 23.)

"He [Garrett] hasn't affected the Labor Party one iota; but the Labor Party machine has taken him over and turned him into an anti-Green campaigner," Brown said on ABC's Background Briefing on March 4.

Sheehan points out that Brown nearly gassed himself on his own hyperbole, and probably did some damage to the Green vote in the election :

This is all pretty rich, given Garrett's long track record of effective environmentalism. Garrett did not respond to Brown's hostility, he just won the war. As of this morning, Garrett sits in cabinet, as Minister for the Environment, with the confidence of the Prime Minister.

Brown, in contrast, has squandered one of the greatest political windfalls given to any political party in Australia since federation. At the 2007 federal election, climate change, global warming and water shortages were part of the mainstream debate for the first time, along with a prime minister who appeared incapable of understanding the critical political importance of these issues to a new generation of voters.

When Garrett emerged as a threat to Brown's power base, he was subject to a steady stream of claims that he had "sold out". Brown dismissed him as Little Red Riding Hood. Now, just three years after entering Parliament, Garrett sits in federal cabinet with his hands on the machinery of policy and power. He has always practised the art of the possible.

If anyone has sold out in this contest it is Brown, for using the environment as a screen for other obsessions, and for failing to grasp the enormous political opportunity presented by the 2007 election.

It hurts, but it's also true enough.

Global warming, protecting the environment, renewable energy - all these things were vote-changing issues at the election. 2007 should have seen The Greens make massive leaps and bounds, and they should be easily in control of the Senate. But they didn't.

Garrett has gone from radical conservation activist and wild rock star in the early 1980s to Minister For The Environment in 2007.

You won't see them say it in print, or in press conferences, but there are legions of old right-wing conservatives, and anti-Garrett old schoolers, whose jaws are still hanging to the floor today at what Garrett has achieved.

What he does with his new power remains to be seen. But it's a shocker that Bob Brown has not been cheering Garrett on, and celebrating his extraordinary win.

The conservationists and pro-environment crowd have won. And one of their own is now in a real position of power in the federal government. The highest position of power, short of prime minister, that any of them who were lashed to logging trucks and protesting uranium mines in the early 1980s could have ever dreamed of achieving.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if mere jealousy was the main reason Bob Brown went on the Garrett attack all the way through the election campaign.

TheArtzzzz : Show Us The Money

Peter Garrett is the new Minister for the Arts. Well, he officially becomes Minister for the Arts today, when he is sworn in. To celebrate, the Sydney Morning Herald runs a nice big fat story on how the Artzzz community is already antsy and impatient with the new minister for not spelling out how much moolah they'll be getting :

Peter Garrett talks about the arts like a therapist staging an intervention. In his first interview as arts minister-elect, the language is positive but short on detail - building confidence before the rehabilitation, it seems.

"Labor's starting point is to recognise that the arts are as big and as broad and as deserving of support as the country is," he says. "It's certainly a signal that from the prime minister, right through the whole of the government, the integral role that the arts plays in our society will be recognised, encouraged and applauded."

Garrett is not prepared to commit to funds allocated in the May budget, and will not use his position to influence the states on support for the arts - as has been promised in areas such as health.

"The role that the national government has is to ensure that the responsibilities in relation to film, to the administration and direction of the Australia Council [are met] … I'd expect to work closely with the states where there are shared programs for delivery," he says.

"I think the critical thing is to be unabashed about recognising the absolutely critical role that the arts plays, in all its branches, in all its forms of expression," Garrett says. "I'd use an expression such as opening up the shutter for a whole new landscape of possibilities."

WTF?

Now the election is over, is Peter Garrett actually going to start talking like a human being again, anytime soon?

Though they will cut out their own tongues before they freely admit it, most of the Australian arts communities did very well, funding-wise, under John Howard's reign.

Neither Kevin Rudd, or Peter Garrett, have given any indication whatsoever that they plan to fund Australian Arts beyond the levels outlined in Peter Costello's May budget, or even match those Howard government allocations.

Might be time to mulch up some paper-mache in preparation of building some Rudd and Garrett big puppet protest heads, just in case.

The New Liberals Slash And Burn Howard-Era Ideals

Kyoto? "Me Too!" Gay Rights? "Me Too!"

We've already seen that the new Liberal leader Brendan "We Went To Iraq For The Oil " Nelson believes symbolism on Kyoto is important, mostly so they won't be totally isolated from the majority of Australians, but now Nelson wants to drape his 'revitalised' party in pink and come out for gay rights :

Brendan Nelson has backed equal legal rights for same-sex couples in a move that immediately distances the new Liberal leader from the conservative social policy of the Howard era.

"...I believe in addressing the social and economic injustices affecting homosexuals the length and breadth of this country.''

You can now toss the issue of the Liberals & Gay Rights into the flaming cauldron of dissent and chaos already blazing away over what stance they should be taking on WorkChoices and the whole "Sorry" issues.

Nelson also neon-signs what he clearly hopes will be the underlying philosophy of his New Liberals :

"We must have social and human ideals, which are the ultimate objectives of our economic development.

"I've sometimes said that, even if all our economic problems were solved, all our fundamental questions would remain unanswered.''

The New Liberals should consider a coalition with The Greens. Then they could isolate Labor as being out of touch and "Howard-like" in their conservative approach, under Kevin Rudd, to Australia's problems.

Nelson has also pledged not to just listen to what Australians have to say, but to really, really listen :

"I say to all Australians … to the men and women of Australia in every walk of life: My commitment to you is to provide you with an inspiring alternative government and a liberalism you can identify with," he said.

"I will work my damndest to see that I and my colleagues have earned your vote in three years' time."

The Opposition Leader agreed that the party needed a fundamental ideological rethink and promised to travel the "width and breadth" of the country seeking the views of ordinary Australians.

Let's hope he does a better job of it than John Howard, who, when confronted by those who opposed him or challenged his views, often had his security muscle them away, or instead became snappy,robotically recited mantras and took on the appearance of someone who was being forced to sniff a fresh dog turd.

It sounds like Nelson wants to reshape his party philosophy based on what the Australian people have to say. Which is certainly better than the way Howard shaped his political Liberal philosophy - by listening to histaliban of extremist and ultra-conservative media hacks, lackeys and Quadrant fetishists.

Speaking of which, rehabilitated Howard hugger Miranda Devine shows she knows how to go with the new flow with her rapturous praise of Brendan Nelson's performance as the New Liberals leader, only two days after he won the top job :

"He would make a wise and compassionate prime minister if ever he had the chance."

Nelson can rest assured that Devine will do everything she can to make sure Nelson gets that chance.

Troops To Withdraw From Iraq Within Months

Prime minister Kevin Rudd will keep his election promise and begin withdrawing Australian combat troops from Iraq in the new year. The last of the troops are expected to be home by July 2008.

Next week PM Rudd begins discussions with the American ambassador to sort out the timing of the troop withdrawals.

The United States is planning to withdraw a substantial number of troops from Iraq in the first half of 2008. It doesn't have a choice. They don't have enough troops left to keep up the current numbers of more 160,000. The British are pulling out its troops. The Danish contingent is also withdrawing.

Some defence industry watchers now claim that regardless of whether Labor won, or the Howard government was returned, in last Saturday's election, the results for Australian troops would have been the same : withdrawal of most of the combat forces, and a new emphasis on training Iraqi troops and police.

The Iraq War is over?

More on all this from ABC's PM here.

Oooh, Tough Talk From Costello The Big Quitter

Costello Blames Howard For Losing The Election, But Some Liberals Blame Costello

Look out, Peter Costello's tossing blame around for the Howard government's humiliating election annihilation, and he's claiming he could "neutered" Kevin Rudd.

Well, that's what Costello claims he could have done, if he hadn't been such a big coward, and if he hadn't cut and run from the leadership of the Liberal Party, that is.

So why didn't he challenge Howard for the leadership? Not enough support. How did Costello know this? His colleagues told him so. Of course, with the full backing of the Murdoch media behind him, if Costello had actually challenged Howard last year, or even earlier this year, there would have been such a wave of momentum and excitement around mounting a fresh front to fight Kevin Rudd, Costello would have found himself enormously popular with his colleagues, who were growing more desperate by the week as the polls sunk into the sewer.

According to now ex-foreign minister Alexander Downer, they knew they were not going to win with Howard in charge for most of 2007.

If Costello had tried to push the old man aside, of course the party would have rallied behind him. They wanted to win the election.

So why didn't Costello make his move? Why didn't he finally take a crack at the golden ring after pissing on year after year after year about how Howard wouldn't give him a go, like he promised?

John Howard wouldn't let him. The big meany :

The Liberals were continuing to play the blame game last night as Peter Costello handed John Howard responsibility for the party's massive electoral defeat.

The Treasurer, who aspired to be prime minister, was denied his opportunity after Mr Howard refused to retire despite diminishing support in cabinet.

Costello's first post-election interview with Lateline is now up here. Very wussy. He blames Howard, without saying "John Howard" and says they would have had a better chance with a "fresher face"...Costello is talking about himself? That battered, hang dog old mug of his is a "fresher face"?

Was he planning on hitting the Botox harder than Howard?


After spending a week blaming John Howard for losing the election, other Libs are now turning on Peter Costello :

A senior Victorian Liberal has hit out at former federal treasurer Peter Costello and his "factional henchmen", accusing them of stacking the party with yes-men and women...

Senator Judith Troeth said the faction, led by Mr Costello and his close friend, Melbourne businessman and former Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger, was a "cult of personality" devoted to "Peter's ascension to the Lodge".

She said now that Mr Costello had decided to quit politics after last Saturday's devastating election loss, Victorian branch members should rise and rid the party executive of the Costello-Kroger henchmen.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

So much time wasted on their petty little internal brawling.

No wonder so many young people show absolutely no interest in getting into politics. Life is too short.


Here's here's Costello talking tough about what he woulda, coulda, done to the Labor Party :

"We could have neutered that appeal of Labor..."

Sure you could have.

Did it ever occur to Costello that one of the reasons why the Liberals were falling out of favour with the public was because of his ranting, sneering, smug head yelling all over the news from Parliament every couple of days?

Costello's antics might have made for big laughs in the former boys club of Parliament House, but it's no stretch to imagine that his yelling, and yawning, was pissing off more Australians in their living rooms than it was entertaining.