Barnaby Joyce: Abbott Is Like Churchill, Kennedy

Nationals comedy relief Barnaby Joyce has claimed prime minister Tony Abbott is a lot like Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy. Sorry if that made you spit coffee all over your screen.

The Australian Financial Review treats this claim by Joyce with the respect it deserves, by running the Winky Abbott pic on the story:

From the Australian Financial Review:

"I'm not going to get too grandiose about the budgetary situation, but if you look back through history to the people we admire, they're not the ones who were initially popular but the ones who foresaw a problem and dealt with it," Mr Joyce said.

"You look at the Churchills or if you look at the Kennedys, you look at the people ... as people of great worth.

"They're the people who made hard decisions ... not the people who sort of oscillated and sort of rolled around in the paddock like political tumbleweed."

A 'political tumbleweed'. He's probably going to regret putting that image in peoples' minds when they think of Tony Abbott.

'Abbott like Kennedy' is almost as absurd as the time Andrew Bolt declared Peter Costello was "the people's Messiah".

Almost.

Meanwhile, Abbott has demanded Liberal Party MPs get out there and do a better job of selling the most hated Budget in four decades. Good luck with that:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called on his coalition colleagues to step up their defence of the budget.

The government has faced public demonstrations, angry talkback callers and a drop in opinion poll support since the release of its first budget last week.
Coalition MPs have also publicly and privately expressed concerns about aspects of it.

"It is the job of every coalition member and senator to level with the Australian people and listen to them," Mr Abbott told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

Rumours abound that Treasurer Joe Hockey hates his own budget, and that many of the harsher financial attacks on pensioners, the elderly, the disabled and the unemployed were 'forced on him.' Well, of course he would want people to think that. He still believes he could be Liberal Party leader, or even prime minister, one day.

But it is interesting that most Australians, and the media in general, seem to refer to Budget 2014, as 'Abbott's Budget' not 'Hockey's Budget'.

Hockey is no doubt very happy that is the case.

Murdoch's Daily Telegraph Exploits War Heroes To Demonise Disabled

By Darryl Mason

So desperate is Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph to distract from the chaos and madness of their beloved Abbott prime ministership, they're now willing to insult thousands of disability support pensioners, and use injured war veterans to do so.

The tactic is old, cliched and dangerous in the extreme: try to turn public anger on the poor and helpless so they have less energy to rage against a government that's already plummeting in the polls.

Here's the disgusting front page of Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph today:

It should be noted that the WW2 image on the right is copyrighted by the Australian War Memorial, so it can't be used in political campaigns or advertising. A more gruesomely foul commercial use of this image (to sell papers) has never been seen in Australia. The image on the left of people queuing is a stock image, and it's of able-bodied Americans, not 'disabled slackers'. The inherent deceit is jaw-dropping.

Incredibly, this 'More Disabled Pensioners Than Veterans Injured In War' bullshit isn't a new story. It's completely recycled from this Daily Telegraph 2011 story:

It also happens to be a complete lie. Of the most disgusting kind. The numbers of people signing onto the disability pension, as a percentage of population is not rising. Proof:

Graph via @TomWestland

Seriously, what kind of fucked-up people use injured war veterans to demonise disabled people? It's incomprehensible.

Also interesting that PM Abbott has defunded the disability discrimination commissioner, allowing the Daily Telegraph to viciously target disabled pensioners with appalling front pages like the above, and face far less retribution or accountability:

Five members of the Australian Human Rights Commission have lashed the government for ripping $1.7 million out of the organisation and defunding the disability discrimination commissioner role.

The commissioners' show of unity came as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten personally intervened in the matter on Tuesday by writing to Prime Minister Tony Abbott urging him to reconsider the decision.

Mr Shorten accused Mr Abbott of distorted priorities for axing the disability discrimination commissioner position after appointing former Liberal Party member Tim Wilson to a new $389,000-a-year ''freedom commissioner'' post last year.

Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker is ultimately responsible for that gruesome and lie-soaked front page. He also happens to be a good friend of PM Abbott. Here they are laughing it up over drinks on the night of the 2014 Budget, which Whittaker's Telegraph has given stunningly-biased levels of support and spin:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and close friend Paul Whittaker, editor of the Daily Telegraph

The DT's shit-kicking of the poor has been ramping up since Abbott was elected PM last September. This is a recent example of what they think of their readership:

A tweep has today altered the Daily Telegraph's masthead for accuracy purposes:

The Daily Telegraph's ongoing attacks on the poor, 'dole bludgers' and the disabled has come at a great cost. The DT's circulation has plunged by more than 60,000 in just two years. It is losing thousands of readers a week. People are literally abandoning the newspaper, which used to be the second most read in Australia.

They can hardly be blamed for doing so.


And on a personal note, my older sister is on the disability support pension, she's also been employed at a disabled workshop for four decades, working full-time, earning a tiny income to supplement her pension. SHE IS NO SLACKER  She also buys the Daily Telegraph for the train ride to work. Well, she did.

The Daily Telegraph has insulted her and all the disabled people who work so hard alongside her. Plus war veterans! What the hell is wrong with these people. It's just appalling, absolutely appalling.

As a former journalist, and newspaper editor, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope it's true that Western Sydney is boycotting the Daily Telegraph and its advertisers. Hopefully the financial punishment will wake them up they will will treat people with respect and stop this vicious, ongoing  demonisation of the poor and disabled of Sydney and NSW.\

UPDATE: That lie-soaked Daily Telegraph front page has been updated on Twitter. Much better, and far more truthful:
 

Image via @KieraGorden

Great job.

Student Protests Erupt Over 'Pay To Learn' - 3 Police Needed To Carry Away One High School Girl

Headline altered/improved by @SpuriousReasons

 Thousands of students took to the streets of Australian cities yesterday to protest Budget 2014 education cuts and deregulation of universities that will result in many of them paying $10,000s, or in some cases, more than $100,000 for university degrees.



Nearly all student protesters were non-violent, there were scuffles with police, but they were in the vast minority. In some cities, there were no confrontations with the police at all. PM Abbott predicted "a riot" and it didn't happen.

The Daily Telegraph is its usual balanced self:

Meanwhile, the Herald Sun served up some outrage at female high school protesters, but gave them the chance to speak, which they did well:

Teenage schoolgirls were carried away by police and more than a dozen people were arrested when a rowdy city protest against the Federal Government’s Budget changes to higher education turned nasty.

Thousands of angry demonstrators choked city streets, blocking traffic and forcing the suspension of tram services for several hours on Wednesday.
Police had to move in and remove a group of protesters - some teenage schoolgirls in uniform - from tram tracks outside State Parliament.

The group had defied several police warnings to leave the Spring Street sit-in before officers acted.

Fellow protesters had also urged them to leave.

Victoria Police’s Inspector Paul Binyon ­expressed his disappointment at the clash, saying protesters hadn’t kept to an agreement about how they would behave.

“I was surprised at the age of some of them,’’ said Insp Binyon.

“One demonstrator’s parents actually turned up and took their child home.”

Probably this one, from the Herald Sun front page:

 Education Minister Christopher Pyne did his best to mock and insult the students, and stir them up even more:

“They (the protesters) should be buying a big bunch of flowers and a box of Roses chocolates, and finding a household near where they live where there’s nobody there with a university degree, and knocking on the front door, giving them the flowers and the chocolates, and saying, ‘Thank you for paying for 60 per cent of my university degree, so I can earn 75 per cent more than you over my lifetime’,”

“I take all their protests with a pinch of salt,” he said.

What an idiot.

The students speak.

Camberwell High School student Tallulah, 15:

“The budget cuts are wrong, I want to go to university and I don’t want to pay through the nose for it. If these fees get too high, I may not be able to go to university, which I want to do for my future and for my family’s future.”

One said there were as many as 30 students from her Footscray school at the protest.
“By the time we go to university, how are we going to pay for it?” she said.

Williamstown High School student Simona, 16, turned up with several schoolfriends.

“I think that whatever university a student decides to turn to should be purely based on their entrance (score), should be purely reliant on their score, as opposed to how much money they have,” she said.

“Education is a right. It’s not a privilege, it’s a right.”

Her friend Alice, 17, said: “I am here today because currently we are under the reign of an oppressive, ignorant, idiotic government.”

The Abbott government changes are hardcore. Universities can charge what they like for degrees, and graduated students will have to pay their government loan debts sooner, and with rising interest. Abbott and Pyne will also slash funds the universities get towards paying for certain courses.

It's the long road, of short steps, towards greater privatisation of Australia's education system, and the students know it.

La Trobe University student union president Rose Steele:

“I think it’s really important that secondary students are here, because secondary students are going to bear the ­absolute brunt of the deregulated system,’’ Miss Steele said.
“They are going to be the ones who will be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.

“We will be coming out again and again.”

Reaction from student protesters on social media after the protests was jubilation, excitement and empowerment. They'd also had a lot of fun. They felt they had achieved something, the protests were mostly non-violent, in videos the police came across as rougher than the protesters, and they have what seems like the vast majority of the public on their side. Comments pouring onto news sites through the night were about 90% in favour of the students taking action to protest the Abbott government changes to the price of getting a decent education in Australia.

Melbourne #May21Protest, image via @RedDragon1917

And to close, Never Ask A Studio Protestor In A Live TV Interview What Her T-Shirt Says

15 year old student protester Tallulah, quoted above, gets targeted by Murdoch's Herald Sun. They're going after teenage girls who criticise Abbott now? Despicable.

The Herald Sun's frantic attempts to disparage the student protesters reaches a new level of absurdity. They are utterly gormless:

The students were protesting because they want to get degrees, and believe Abbott and Pyne's changes to university fees and deregulation will make it much harder for them to do so.

Murdoch sure employs some morons these days.

More To Come