Labor, state and federal, are extremely worried about The Greens, and their ever-growing popularity. The anti-Greens campaigning by Labor, in the lead up to the federal election, has begun.

Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner kicks the campaigning into gear :

The Greens are not some benign group loosely allied with Labor. They're not a middle-ground party. They're not idealistic activists changing the world. They're just another political party, no less cynical or manipulative than the others. They feed off Labor's need to make compromises to marry progressive reform with majority government. Their energies are directed to attacking Labor, not the conservatives.

It might seem like a good idea to support those who yell the loudest, but it's unlikely to produce good outcomes. Labor is the only worthwhile option for achieving progressive change through parliamentary politics. It might be a bit piecemeal and gradual, but it beats the hell out of doing nothing.

While he doesn't say it directly, Tanner is pushing a mantra that declares if you vote for The Greens, then you are also voting for the Liberal Party, whether you intended to or not. It sounds surreal, but it's a line Labor will continue to push, perhaps hoping that opposition leader Tony Abbott will come to The Greens defence, which would allow Labor to brand them as radicals, extremists, or worse.

It won't happen anytime soon, but Labor clearly understands that if a new generation of Liberals find much common ground with The Greens, that is a mid-decade Liberals-Greens coalition, Labor will be in big trouble.

Incredible :

Donald Ritchie, who has lived opposite The Gap for nearly 50 years, has shown what can be done when you have the chance to intervene. He and his wife have talked many back from the brink, with a few kind words and the offer of a cup of tea. Honoured with an Order of Australia, Ritchie has talked more than 160 people out of taking their lives.

Malcolm Turnbull on The Gap, where some 50 people every year jump to their deaths.

Suicide remains the leading cause of death for Australians under the age of 44. More than 65,000 Australians try to take their own lives every year, more than 1880 succeed.


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Photos By Darryl Mason

The Northern Territory News always delivers :

Aliens could be the latest to weigh in on the nuclear waste storage debate after UFOs were spotted near the proposed Territory facility.

How can you not read the story after that intro?

In the NTN, even storms have a local crime-related angle :




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"We Know What You Are Against, Now Tell Us What You Are For"




It's hard to see this as some kind of prelude to war. Gone is the talk of 'Axis Of Evil' and the 'War On Terror'. Obama could not sound anymore reasonable, which no doubt infuriates his most fevered critics, who aren't used to, and do not like, reason after eight years of BushCo.

NeoCons and anti-Muslim warmongers can shriek all they like about 'worldwide threat' posed by Iran getting nuclear energy, demanding the UN "do its job!" (despite usually claiming the UN is utterly useless), but Russian and China will not back tighter sanctions, they've moved on, nor will they allow the US, or Israel, to attack one of their biggest trading partners.

It's not going to happen.

And President Obama knows this.

He Really Liked Peter Costello

The glory days of the influential, hard drinking, extremely well paid political journalist are over.



Glenn Milne is one of the last to fall :

The automated email response from News Limited gallery hack Glenn Milne delivered the news: “Please be advised that as of the 13/03/2010 I no longer work for News Limited Sunday Papers, I still work for The Australian.” Milne is directing correspondents to a Gmail account, presumably because his role at News is now as Australian column contributor only.

Interesting. So Glenn Milne gets sacked from the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun for being a very expensive and all but useless inventor of quotes from anonymous 'senior Labor officials', but will still be writing columns for The Australian? Presumably the rate of publication of his columns in The Australian will fall off as he eased out of the way in time for serious election coverage.

Unless he writes them for free, of course.

VexNews :

Warned late last year after being summoned to a gathering of the Sunday newspapers’ editors that he had to pick up his game, the axe finally fell this week.

Milne is believed to have been on a package well in excess of $250,000, a number considerably in excess of most of his bosses. They compared their own productivity to his poor performance as a Gallery lounge lizard and found him wanting.

Frequent complaints about Milne included his lack of current political connections, his failure to generate exclusive stories of the kind he frequently promised and his tendency to share with editors “his stories” that were not much more than prevailing gossip around the water-cooler in the Gallery.

Exhibits from Glenn Milne's Hall Of 'Journalistic' Shame & Hilarity. 1) :

....more Australians have died as a result of the Rudd government's home insulation program, "administered" by Environment Minister Peter Garrett, than lost their lives in the Iraq war.

2) Glenn Milne announces Tony Abbott's friends should tell him to quit politics and go home to his wife :

...watching Abbott's disintegration you have to ask whether the strength of those convictions was ever viable in an environment where the electorate increasingly likes its politics "lite" in all respects, including when it comes to values.

In some senses, Abbott is simply too honest and too raw for modern politics...

3) My favourite :

Peter Costello will take over a decimated Coalition unopposed as Opposition Leader, knowing he would have been able to mount a stronger fight against Kevin Rudd and Labor.

There is unlikely to be any credible challenge to Mr Costello when he formally stands as leader at the first Liberal Party caucus meeting.

Previous contenders - Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull - have all faded under the weight of their own mistakes.

Glenn Milne used to get paid $250,000 a year to come up with stuff like that?

Just another example of the amazing excesses of 20th century corporate journalism. How could such a business model do anything but fail as the decades long decline of newspapers ran headlong into endless free comment and content from the internet?


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Democracy Hater

By Darryl Mason

How much does Rupert Murdoch's most prominent Australian opinionist, Andrew Bolt, hate democracy? So much it makes him seethe at the free election choices about to be made by Tasmanians.



He's trying to claim, yet again, as always, that people who exercise their democratic rights in a way that displeases him are mentally ill.

If you don't like the free and fair democratic vote we have in Australia, Mr Bolt, why don't you go live in North Korea?

Love it or leave it, democracy hater. Love it or leave it.


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One of the first movies to be filmed in Australia is believed to have been made as a "Fuck You!" to the early international movie-making competition.

....it was seen as too risque for Australian audiences although it proved popular in European cinemas.

It was produced in 1896 by French filmmaker Marius Sestier, who was dispatched to Australia by a French film company in a bid to introduce cinema to the colony.

The newly-restored film contains the 19th century equivalent of a well-known gesture of contempt, as the rollerskater lifts up his coat to show the camera the imprint of a white palm on his posterior.

The Video Is Here

@TwitterHype

Politicians are calling Federal Election 2010 'The Twitter Election', apparently :

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming told a parliamentary seminar discussing the "Twitter election" that politicians could use the social networking site Facebook as a powerful tool to phish phone numbers.

Yes, a federal member of parliament does appear to be lavishing praise on a form of digital identity fraud, at least according to this headline :



From the Courier Mail :

"There is extraordinary capacity there to create non-political pages and harvest and phish huge numbers of not only emails but mobile phone numbers," he said.

"And once you have a mobile phone number . . . they don't have to follow me, I phish them and can sort of harvest huge numbers of mobile phone numbers and then I just drop them onto a single piece of software and I can SMS hundreds if not thousands of people directly when I choose."

Yeah, that'd work great. If people didn't furiously mind getting spam messages from politicians on their phones and want to punch the sender in the face, or the nuts.

What's the thinking here?

And if it really is going to be 'The Twitter Election', what should we make of the massive gulf in Twitter followers when it comes to the main event?






There's no denying the incredible power of a politician being able to reach thousands, or tens of thousands of voters through Twitter updates, free of media filtering or re-interpretation.

So far on Twitter, Rudd (and/or his team) is making Abbott look like an amateur.

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From imagery by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, twin tropical cyclones over the South Pacific on March 15:


(click to enlarge)

More On The Cyclones From Earth Observatory

The twin cyclones hit the Solomon Islands and Fiji hard. Cyclone Tomas has been hammering Fiji for four days. Dozens of homes were damaged in the Solomon Islands. The death toll is rising in Fiji.

UPDATE : Tourist resorts off the Queensland coast are now being evacuated.



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Two Believers In Old Superstitions Battle For Leadership Of Australia

What in all fuck?

Kevin Rudd has taken on his arch-rival Tony Abbott on a heavenly question - whose saintly namesake is the best?

At a dinner in Brisbane to mark St Patrick's Day, attended by both leaders, the Prime Minister jokingly contrasted his namesake - St Kevin of Glendalough - with Italy's St Anthony.

Mr Abbott (said) "...the PM is trying to be more Queensland and more catholic then he really is."

Sticking to the Irish-Catholic theme, Mr Abbott joked that Archbishop John Bathersby said that Mary Mackillop's second miracle was to bring him as leader of the opposition.

Can you both step into the 21st century, please?

The Full Story Is Here

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Baby Monkeys Wonder Why They're No Longer The Cutest

If Mr Shuffles dies suddenly, or even worse, gets sick and dies slowly, there will be uncontrolled weeping in the streets of Sydney. And probably a state funeral.

In this downright adorable vid, the elephant calf's mother moves into action, it seems, only when she realises he can't get out on his own, and the elephant on the far right is concerned enough to at least drop his pole, for a while anyway :



Yeah, dunno if a baby elephant taking its first dip qualifies as a "close call". Have they never seen an elephant swim?



Inevitably, Mr Shuffles has a Twitter account. When he's not trying to escape, he is busy lobbying to stop a competition being held by Taronga Zoo and the Daily Telegraph to change his name.

Whatever his new name turns out to be, it won't be as memorable as Mr Shuffles.

Tony Abbott is continuing to use the term "All hat and no cowboy" to describe prime minister Kevin Rudd. So I'll repeat what I wrote here on March 8 :

Last night, Abbott also attempted to unleash on prime minister Kevin Rudd.

"It is pretty clear he is a guy who is all announcement and no follow through. He is, to coin a phrase, 'All Hat And No Cowboy'."

Abbott didn't coin the phrase. It's been in common usage in Texas for decades :

"It is not a compliment in West Texas to be referred to as 'All hat and no cowboy'. It is a term of derision used to indicate the person has little real character beneath the very thin veneer of appearance."

It's a good line, but it doesn't sound very Australian.

There is argument that the correct West Texas historical phrase is actually "All Hat, No Cattle", which certainly sounds more local.

Or perhaps Abbott knows this phrase, too, and decided not to use it to attack Rudd, because it has been popularly attached to George W. Bush since the late 1990s.

Abbott will stick to "all hat and no cowboy". He won't allow himself to be seen comparing Rudd to Bush. Ever.

John Howard, his unofficial adviser, wouldn't let him.

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"They Think I'm A Fucking Dickhead! I'm Fucking Not!"

The return of the angry, angry, angry Australian. Warning, this audio clip contains Level 5 Rage & Swears :



He sounds like some supremely unhinged relative of Kenny.

(via @Benjamint)
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Two year old Cohen Stone, from Perth, has achieved international fame the easy way, by crawling inside a lolly machine and getting stuck.



His mother took the photo. She claimed he was upset. Note the little thief is so upset he's trying to pacify himself with lollies. The family walked away with an apology and a $50 voucher.


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New Zealand : It's There For The Taking

We cannot wait for New Zealand to become a threat to Australia's national security. They vigorously deny pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but information leaked to The Orstrahyun, by various defence industry lobbyists who are worried that a winding down of the War On Terror will result in a reduction in profitable war industry contracts, say that while New Zealand currently does not have nuclear weapons and is not actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, the intent to do so at some future point in time is a possibility, and the dream of New Zealand becoming a dominant nuclear power in the Pacific is more than likely being discussed, if not in an official capacity, then at least between a few people at a pub on a Friday night.

Enough is enough.



UPDATE : Reader Damien points out that, while New Zealand appears vulnerable to invasion, the presence of Corporal Willie Apiata hasn't been taken into consideration :


Photo by Philip Poupin

Invasion cancelled.

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Heart Full Of Hate

Miranda Devine, yesterday :

"....the internet has made it possible for people to express that hate before their better instincts kick in, before the instant rush of blood to the head dissipates and is forgotten. Their primal viciousness is captured and congealed in digital form."

It sure is. Miranda Devine, February 12, 2009 :

If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Miranda Devine, December 2006 :

When commentators describe the deteriorating situation in Iraq as "satisfying" because it gives them an opportunity to score a point against rivals who supported the 2003 invasion, they reveal an addiction to Schadenfreude so profound it has alienated them from moral reality.

When challenged, Devine could not produce one example of any commentator, in Australia or elsewhere, stating they found car bombings in Iraq "satisfying".

And here's Miranda Devine, on the victims of Cyclone Larry, which included mothers who waited in long queues for two or three days in the rain, to get food and clothing for their
infants :

"....as much as we will miss their avocados and bananas on our supermarket shelves, we can live without their whingeing."

Primal viciousness, indeed.

There's not a lot of tourist attractions around Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia.

But there is a decorated termite mound :


Photo by Eliot Garvin

This radio ad from the UK takes Australia's old "Alert, But Not Alarmed" campaign into disturbing new realms of suburban paranoia and neighbour loathing :



Presumably it will be only a matter of time before we get identical ads here.

Probably closer to the election....