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

Treasurer Hockey Sues Fairfax Media - 'Freedom Of The Press' Storm Doesn't Erupt

Flashback: Hockey was so close to winning Liberal Party leadership, this story was published online, a bit early

By Darryl Mason

Treasurer Joe Hockey wants people to know that just because he attends dinners at the North Sydney Forum, where 'regular people' can pay $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or even $50,000 to get varying levels of access to the man who controls the nation's purse strings....

 ....that doesn't mean that decisions made by him are in any way affected by the demands of those who've paid big money to get his attention, or that he is 'For Sale.'

Of course not.

That would be an outrageous level of corruption. And would demand Hockey immediately resign.

So of course he's upset by this Sydney Morning Herald front page:

 
And he's upset by this image box that went with the stories in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that go into detail on how the North Sydney Forum and those 'fees' work:

 So upset, he's launched defamation proceedings against the Herald publisher Fairfax:

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey is suing Fairfax Media for defamation over a series of articles about a fund-raising forum that offered access to the Treasurer in exchange for donations of thousands of dollars.

Mr Hockey claims that, as a result of the articles, published on May 5, he has been "greatly injured, shunned and avoided and his reputation has been and will be brought into disrepute, odium, ridicule and contempt".

He says Fairfax Media's "over sensational, extravagant and unfair presentation" of the articles indicated an "intent to injure" him.

He is claiming damages, including aggravated damages, interest and costs, although the amount of damages is not specified.

So aggrieved by Fairfax's claims is Hockey, he even tweeted that Kevin Rudd was known for doing the same. Or not the same, because Hockey says he doesn't do that. And to tweet something like that about his old mate Rudd, if he was actually doing the same, would be intensely, insanely, hypocritical:

 
Get the feeling Hockey is going to really, really, really regret tweeting that when, or more precisely, if, the defamation case gets to court, and is pursued to the end.

Anyway, that's for later. Right now, Treasurer Joe Hockey is facing a monumental public backlash, from all strands of Australian society, over the brutal Budget 2014, which leaves pensioners, students, the disabled, the unemployed, all worse off than the wealthy. Oh but, says Joe, we've introduced a 'debt levy' that will mean the wealthy will have to pay up as well. Yeah, not exactly....

One immediate problem for Hockey is he doesn't even know detail of his Budget 2014 you'd expect to be front and centre in his mind. He keeps making mistakes, "bloopers" or is simply 'lying through his fucking teeth' if you want to use the general opinion of many on Twitter:

Embarrassing bloopers by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have revealed they don’t understand who will be forced to pay their controversial new $7 GP fee.

And their mistakes have undermined the government’s attempt to sell a tough budget to angry voters.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Melbourne radio listeners yesterday an average person would only have to pay the $7 GP fee ten times and then they would be bulk billed.

In fact the government has put no limit on the number of times an ordinary worker will pay the $7 charge, however, there is a ten visit safety net just for pensioners and children.

The Australian Medical Association accused Treasurer Joe Hockey of also getting it wrong when he says the chronically ill won’t be hit by the $7 GP fee.

The Treasurer told Korey Gunnis who suffers from eight chronic illnesses on Monday: “You wouldn’t be hit by the so-called Medicare co-payment. You wouldn’t be affected.”

Mr Hockey, on the ABC’s Q&A program, went on to say: “No, you wouldn’t, because you’d be on a care plan with your doctor. Obviously you’ve got a number of chronic diseases. In that situation you are not affected by the co-payment,”

And he was wrong.

Hockey, and his fellow politicians are meanwhile copping it in the throat because after all the talk of 'The Age Of Entitlement' being over and everyone having to "do the heavy lifting" it keeps looking like the only heavy thing Joe Hockey is lifting is silver cutlery:

But oh, says Joe, pay rises for politicians have been frozen (after across the board pay rises in recent years of up to 40%)...for a while. Nobody really buys it, or cares.

What is odd, though, is just how quiet the Liberal-allied, or conservative-focused, media and columnists and radio hosts have been about Hockey suing Fairfax.


Isn't this an attack on the Freedom Of The Press?

Doesn't that make them outraged and angry and disgusted?

Apparently not. It's tumbleweeds out there on this lawsuit.

Couldn't this be seen as Hockey using lawyers to have stories he doesn't like, or disagrees with, disappeared from the internet?

Of course.


Funny, our 'Freedom Commission' and the usual chanters for press freedom have been curiously quiet on their favourite subject of 'Let Media Freedom Reign!' since Hockey launched his lawsuit.

Very quiet indeed.

And on the subject of Joe Hockey, dug up this piece of 2009 gold from Andrew "I'm Usually Wrong On Nearly Everything" Bolt, where he predicted Hockey would win the Liberal Party leadership because, in his words, Tony Abbott was "unelectable."




From the archive:

December 3, 2008: Joe Vs Julia - Hockey Smells Blood In The Water

Does Joe Hockey Mean Wilson Tuckey Is About To Drop His Pants And Start Singing Cold Chisel Songs?

Feb 13, 2010: The Joe Hockey Experience

Stop Laughing At Joe, This is Serious

Murdoch's Australian Admits Defeat In War On Twitter

How galling it must be for The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell to finally have to admit that the newspaper and its online website cannot survive without Twitter action and attention, links and new readership from social media.

Here's excerpts from The Australian's new ad for a Social Media Editor:

As we approach our 50th birthday, we continue to look for ways to build a wider audience for our journalism.

We seek an experienced professional to lead The Australian into the next stage of our engagement with social media platforms.

Situated at the heart of the newsroom, the Social Media Editor will help drive our news coverage, sourcing stories from social media and engaging with our audience.

You will promote the use of social media throughout the newsroom and keep your colleagues up to date with latest techniques to help develop stories.

Your previous roles will have equipped you to source and develop stories through social media news gathering and build positive and active social communities with consumers of The Australian's journalism on social media.

Chris Mitchell used to think social media, like Twitter, was the worst thing to happen in pretty much the entire history of media:

Like swine influenza, technologies such as Twitter race around the world before spluttering out. And when they do, the news is reported via a technology that is robust and portable, one that is information rich and never crashes - the platform for the online information age you are reading now.

And the story it tells about the latest online fad is always the same.

Like diseases that must mutate to infect ever more hosts, transitory technologies have an enormous impact until people build up resistance - which is what is happening to free social messaging service Twitter now. Certainly Twitter has generated a pandemic of popularity, but it appears many people quickly decide Twitter is tedious, with 60 per cent of new users becoming ex-users in a month.

Anybody who has used it knows why. Twitters in the information industry - journalists, political staffers, publicly funded issues activists - think Twitter is terrific because it allows them to all but instantaneously agree with each other on the issues of the hour. But in their enthusiasm, they confuse the medium for the message.

Twitter's 140-character message format is a content-killer, leaving most tweets with the compelling content of those "I'm on the bus" mobile phone conversations impossible to avoid on public transport.

The same obsession with the instantaneously ordinary occurs in mass market entertainment.

While Twitter may be fun, it is free. Online video site YouTube chews through vast amounts of bandwidth and more money because advertisers understand people do not pay attention to low-involvement media. Nor is there any evidence anybody wants to pay to watch those YouTube staples, videos of garage bands practising.

And the cassandras at website Crikey, who predict the end of print, perhaps because they see it as the only way to attract an audience and advertisers, miss the point about newspapers - they create and maintain communities. 

Now The Australian needs, is all but begging, for a social media enthusiast to maintain an online community for the newspaper, now the print edition can no longer do so.

August 14, 2013: The Australian's Obsession With Twitter Gets Plain Stupid

Andrew Bolt - I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But It's Freedom Scares Me

The Great Twitter Myth - Working Class People Don't Tweet

Howard Faced Gun Owners, Abbott Hides From Students

Foreign minister Julie Bishop confronted by student protestors in Sydney last week

 When prime minister John Howard introduced new laws to restrict ownership of certain firearms, in the wake of the Port Phillip massacre, he at least had the guts to stand his ground and face down protestors. Even if he did wear a bullet proof vest at a public event where protestors converged.

John Howard faces protestors in 1996, pic by Ray Strange

Prime minister Tony Abbott is pushing a budget that will force students to incur huge debts (with compounded interest) for even the most basic degrees, laying the ground for the eventual near full privatisation of Australia's universities. But Abbott cuts and runs when he has to face students unhappy with this decision.

The Prime Minister cancelling his trip to Geelong over security fears was a ploy to make students look like spoiled brats, the National Union of Students said.

Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne were due to visit a research facility at Deakin University today -- but cancelled on advice from the Australian Federal Police.
“I think the Prime Minister and Minister Pyne are trying to make it look like students are violent rabble rousers who are out to cause trouble and that’s absolutely not the case at all,” said NUS president Deanna Taylor.

Ms Taylor said Mr Abbott was “obviously scared of facing up to students” over the Budget.

A tiny minority of allegedly violent protestors is the excuse for Abbott and Pyne cutting and running. 

Ms Taylor said students protesting today did not have access to the corridors of power and were making it clear they were upset and fearful over the government’s plans.

She said Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne had a “hidden agenda and vested interest in making (students) look like spoiled brats who don’t know how good they’ve got it”.

Greens senator Richard Di Natale said the security fears were a furphy.

“He was a bully in opposition and now he has shown himself to be a coward in government,” he said last night.

“If you’re going to wield the axe so brutally you owe it to the people to front up and explain yourself. The least he can do is put up with a few noisy protesters.”

Abbott claims he didn't want to be part of "a riot":

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he cancelled a visit to a university to avoid what he predicted would be a riot on national television...

Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio it was about not giving the protesters what they wanted, “which is a riot on national television”.

He played down the protests pointing to his days as a student activist at Sydney University when protests and counter-protests were regarded as sport.
“I think they were looking forward to a big rumble today,” he said.

Labor frontbencher Richard Marles, whose electorate covers Geelong:

“security measures can always be managed”.

“At the end of the day this was a decision by the Prime Minister and it is a really disappointing decision that he is not taking up the opportunity of coming to Geelong today in order to tell the people of our city — the people at Deakin University — why he’s deregulated the university system, why he’s going to make fees higher for Geelong students who want to study at their university.”

The Prime Minister was advised by the Australian Federal Police to ditch his planned university visit today after other high-profile Coalition figures were targeted by protesters opposed to the deregulation of university fees.

“The visit to Deakin University has been postponed, based on security advice,” the Prime Minister’s office said in a rare statement about security matters.

Liberal frontbenchers scorned student protests as driven by “socialists” who are “intent on shutting down democracy in Australia”.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne told ABC’s Lateline last night: “The Prime Minister made the decision and his office that it would be wiser to not go and to create that tumult at Deakin University so students can get on with their studies unmolested by the Socialist Alternative, which seem quite intent on shutting down democracy in Australia.”

Deputy Leader of the federal Opposition Tanya Plibersek said students had a reason to protest.

The deregulation of university fees would mean poor kids wouldn’t make it to university and would be denied a successful career, she said.

“This will take us to a two-tier American-style university system where the best courses and the best universities are completely unaffordable to ordinary people,” she told ABC radio. But she condemned the protests against Ms Mirabella and Ms Bishop and said students should rally in a peaceful and democratic manner.

If PM Abbott is going to duck and run from every protest or public opposition to his extreme policies over the next few years, he won't be appearing at many public events.

Meanwhile, former popular Murdoch blogger Andrew Bolt first labels those exercising their democratic right to protest as "totalitarian", then suggests women who don't sympathise with Julie Bishop after she was confronted by students might need be more sympathetic if they were roughed up themselves. Astounding:

 

 Andrew Bolt is out of control.

Mass protest movements against de-funding of schools, universities, hospitals, and cutting incomes of families and elderly pensioners - protests that kicked off with 100,000 attending the peaceful national March In March, and grabbed media headlines with last Sunday's March In May -  are only just beginning.

Many are already likening the protests, that are bringing together Australians from almost every social and economic background, to something like the start of an 'Australia Spring.'

Daily Telegraph: "Revolting Ferals" Are Anyone Opposed To Abbott, Apparently

 

 By Darryl Mason
 
I find it absolutely bizarre that the Daily Telegraph would slam March In May protesters in Sydney as "revolting ferals." It's very clear what the headline and image is implying. Protest against PM Abbott, and you're nothing more than a Feral.

Uni students, and 'anarchists', or ferals if you want to go that far, made up a tiny percentage of the 15,000 to 20,000 marchers in Sydney last Sunday. 5 per cent at most, probably less.

I stood near the entrance to Victoria Park at the conclusion of the march and watched more than 10,000 people walk by over an hour. Families, elderly people, disabled people, 'Mosman Mum's', lots of people from western Sydney, it was more like a crowd at the Royal Easter Show than a traditional 'Lefty Students' protest. There were at least 1000 kids, many with signs they'd made themselves. And most of the protest signs I saw were funny, or heartbreaking, very few were insulting to Abbott in any way. Most just asked variations of 'Why Did You Lie To Us? Why Are You Punishing Us? What Did We Do?'

The Daily Telegraph's "Revolting Ferals" front page seems to have pissed off and disgusted many of the families who turned out for March In May. Not surprisingly.

Image via @NewsAustralia

And some more of the "ferals", as claimed by the Daily Telegraph:

Reaction on Facebook and Twitter is absolute disbelief, and disgust, and strong feelings of betrayal, that the Daily Telegraph would brand them as "revolting ferals" simply because they are opposed to Abbott government lies, budget cuts and backflips on very clear election promises. People were carrying copies of the Telegraph under their arm to read in the park. Then they get called "Ferals" on the front page the next day?

Seriously, talk about burning your readership.

Who does the Daily Telegraph think will buy the paper when they trash families from Western Sydney?

Just bizarre. But it does show just how out of touch the Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker is with his dwindling readership.

Here's Whittaker laughing it up with Tony Abbott on Budget Night, before his newspaper gave Budget 2014 mostly glowing coverage and headlines:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker, Budget night 2014

Perhaps sucking up to the prime minister is more important to Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker than fairly representing his readership? Or putting into print their overwhelming shock and disgust at the deceptive way Abbott ran his election campaign, and the brutal punishment of families in his first budget.

More At Mumbrella

Why Did Police Suddenly Change Their Mind About Investigating Bondi Brawl By Packer And Gyngell?

Australia's richest man and the CEO of a top-rating TV channel shame themselves

By Darryl Mason

UPDATE: Australia's richest man James Packer and Channel 9 boss David Gyngell want their ugly Bondi Bash to go away, fade from view, but it won't. As an example of how international this story now is, Taiwanese animators have immortalised the brutal street violence and police investigation:

For someone trying to maintain casino licences in Asia, and score new ones, this is about the worst headline you could get on the BBC, short of being accused of murder:

Headlines and opinion pieces in Asian business media are unanimously negative about James Packer, it doesn't seem to matter that he may not have started the fight. Anti-casino campaigners couldn't have dreamed of a better way to attack Packer's character and ability to control himself.

Police investigations are underway in Sydney, and the pressure is on.

Previously, May 6:

Last night, police were not going to investigate the brutal street brawl between Australia's richest man James Packer and Channel 9 boss David Gyngell. The following screengrab is of a NSW Police message to a Twitter account that tweets on media issues, there were a number of others who asked why police had not launched an investigation and police responded with the same tweet:

NSW Police: "As we have not received any reports regarding this specific incident there is no current investigation,"

It seemed odd that after all the media and police campaigns to stop Sydney street violence, they weren't going to do anything about two men violently smashing the shit out of each other on a Bondi street on a Sunday morning, an event captured on cameras, and blasted across the media.

But procedures are procedures.

Someone had to call it in.

So what happened overnight?

Australians on Twitter learned that the street brawl had to be officially reported to police, Bondi police station's phone number appeared on Twitter and people started calling in reports, and tweeting reports, of the street fight to Bondi police and the official NSW Police Twitter account. The disgust from a handful was palpable. Why should these two get away with it? Why shouldn't they have to live by the same laws as the rest of us?

This morning, while Ray Hadley on 2GB, Karl Stefanovic on The Today Show, and virtually every other friend or associate of Packer and Gyngell in the Australia media tried to dismiss and talk down the seriousness of this street violence - "just two mates biffing" "just a bit of slap and tickle" - police dramatically announced they were investigating the incident and went out and started doorknocking in Bondi,

Some media commentators could hardly disguise their disbelief. But the police said last night they weren't investigating!

Yeah, that was last night.

I know all this because I was following Twitter accounts that were talking about it, and posting under #PackerGyngell. There was anger, people expressing disgust that Packer and Gyngell "were going to get away with it:". Should rich people brawling in Bondi be treated differently to suburban kids fighting in the streets of Penrith or Kings Cross? Most of what was posted was true. So they took action, and began encouraging each other to report the Bondi street fight. I saw a whole series of such reactions unfold on Twitter late last night, and early this morning, and it was remarkable.

This was the real power of Twitter in action. People saw what they believed was an injustice, they learned what they had to do to try and set it right and they moved into action.

And by 9am, with police officially investigating, suddenly the media couldn't pretend this street brawling wasn't a big deal and the whole thrust of coverage changed. Well, some of it. Panelists on morning breakfast shows, including formerly avid campaigners against street violence, were still cracking jokes and trying to convince viewers Packer and Gyngell's Bondi Brawl was "no big deal."

But it was clear, once police began investigating, and once the possible repercussions for Packer and Gyngell's business interests, and their jobs, started to be examined, the Bondi Brawl began to look very, very serious indeed. And it was serious, it is serious. The tweeters were right. If it was Aboriginal youth videod brawling on a Bondi street, or Muslim teenagers, radio shock jocks would have demanded their community leaders denounce their appalling behaviour.

If the same media personalities who shed tears on TV over coward punches and ugly street violence earlier this year weren't shocked and disgusted by these two men punching each other out in broad daylight, then, seriously, what the hell was the whole anti-street violence campaign about?

But be sure of this one thing - if people on Twitter hadn't rallied and taken action to make sure even James Packer and David Gyngell are dealt with by police the same as the rest of us, and have to live by the same laws, their media pals, and employees, who were talking down this brutal act of street violence and pretending it was meaningless and "no big deal" would have won, and no police investigation would have begun today. Or at least, it would have been far less likely to have begun.

The prominent media identities who used to determine what events the mass public should be outraged about, and which events should be quickly forgotten, would have beaten down any and all opposition to calls for police action this morning. We probably would have seen Packer and Gyngell's political mates hitting the airwaves to hose down any public anger.

The script would have been shaped and set. Those demanding something had to be done about an ugly, offensive street brawl, by two men who should know better, would have been dismissed as "whingers" and "haters" and "jealous of rich people" and all the other garbage lines used to try and steer people without power and influence from making sure those with power and influence have to play by the same rules.

This story has a long way left to run, and serious implications for both men seem to be piling up by the minute. But there are only two people to blame for what is now happening to James Packer and David Gyngell, themselves.

They did what they did, and now they have to live with the results of their actions.

Just like you and I have to.

A detailed timeline of the Bondi Brawl and its repercussions will be posted here later tonight

MORE TO COME

Paul Woseen's 'Bombido' And His Attack On The Angels Over Doc Neeson

By Darryl Mason



The Screaming Jets Paul Woseen is grabbing some attention for his debut acoustic album 'Bombido', released on my label Misty Mountains Music, and available here. Sadly, he's also grabbed a few headlines for attacking The Angels, who are now fronted by The Screaming Jets lead singer Dave Gleeson.

First the piece on 'Bombido', by Danielle McGrane for AAP:

It took just 12 hours for The Screaming Jets bassist Paul Woseen to record his solo album Bombido.

"Pretty much every song on that (Bombido) is one take, the first take," he says.

Woseen did some metaphorical time travelling to achieve what he wanted with the album, which comprises new solo tracks alongside hits he wrote for the Jets.

"I did it the way I wanted to do it, I had in my mind of how they used to do singer/songwriter records `60s/'70s style - come in, sit down, play the songs, record it and that would be it - and that's just how I approached it," he says.

"I recorded it in two six-hour blocks."

The Screaming Jets fans who have come to check out Woseen's shows have been surprised by Woseen's voice.

"They don't expect it (the voice) to come out of the head they're looking at ... such a rough head," he says.

"Singing and sitting around writing songs is a pretty good way to earn a living," he says

It's every musician's dream.

You can hear an exclusive short preview of Paul Woseen's 'Bombido' album here:




 Woseen is also attracting mainstream media attention for diving headfirst into a horrible pile-on over over Doc Neeson's serious illness, and how members of The Angels, the band that made Neeson famous, and are now fronted by Woseen's friend Dave Gleeson, have supposedly had 'no contact' with Neeson since he was diagnosed with cancer, after The Angels parted in 2011 and then formed two separate line-ups in recent years.
 
The Doc Neeson line-up, 'The Angels 100%', announced their 2013 tour after 'The Angels with Dave Gleeson' had a solid run of sold-out shows and scored huge gigs on the Day On The Green tour.

But Neeson's 'The Angels 100%' had to cancel their tour in early 2013, which would have seen the two line-ups of The Angels in the same cities in the same weeks, after Neeson was diagnosed with brain cancer.

I've been told there has been contact between the The Angels founding members, Rick and John Brewster, and Doc Neeson, but because the Brewsters haven't been public about the contact, and because they chose not to take part in the recent Australian Story episode on Doc Neeson, they've been absolutely slammed on social media, and elsewhere, by people who don't know what's really going on.

People like Paul Woseen:

It's all very unfortunate, and ugly, and the Brewsters will hopefully clear the air soon by talking to the media. It's just wrong that they have to do so.

Some background:

As any old fan of The Angels know, Rick and John Brewster formed the earliest line-up of The Angels with Doc Neeson in 1974, and they then played thousands of shows, and recorded more than 14 studio and live albums together, before Doc announced he had to leave The Angels in 2000, due to a back injury.

They reunited for a tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their mega-multi-platinum Face To Face album in 2008, and split again in 2011, when Doc Neeson decided he didn't want to record another album with the band, and pursued a solo career instead. A dispute over who owned the name of the band then erupted. Again.

Original members Rick and John Brewster and bassist Chris Bailey (who died of cancer last year) brought in The Screaming Jets singer Dave Gleeson and recorded the Take It To The Streets album, toured, and released a second album with the new line-up, Talk The Talk, earlier this year.

So, yeah, the bassist of The Screaming Jets, Paul Woseen, is attacking members of The Angels, who are now fronted by his long-time friend and bandmate, The Screaming Jets' vocalist Dave Gleeson.

Rock n' roll can get pretty stupid and ugly sometimes.

More To Come....

DOC NEESON TOLD HIS BRAIN CANCER MAY PROVE "FATAL" IN THREE TO SIX MONTHS

Devine Intervention

By Darryl Mason

It took almost a decade before conservative pundits turned on prime minister John Howard and helped hound him out of the Lodge.

PM Tony Abbott hasn't even clocked up one year, and the knives are out, the wolves at his door. 

Here's Miranda Devine, of Murdoch's Telegraph, with nothing but praise for Abbott just before the election:

I won't quote her talking about Abbott's musky odour and brutish manliness as reasons why she thought Australia had to make him prime minister. It might still be breakfast time where you're reading this.

And here's Miranda Devine blasting 'lefties' for being mean and horrible for calling Abbott distrustful and a liar who would do anything to get elected:

 But when news breaks that her and her six-figure and seven-figure earning colleagues and friends may have to pay more tax to help Australia cope with the "budget emergency" treasurer Joe Hockey has been fretting over, LOOK OUT TONY!

So soon, Miranda? He's only just getting started.

This is too good not to quote at length:

NO wonder Tony Abbott fled to Melbourne straight after his pre-Budget speech to the Sydney Institute on Tuesday night. He would have been cold-shouldered if he’d stuck around.

The income tax hike he has proposed on workers earning over $80,000 cast a sour note in The Star casino ballroom. It was widely condemned as “moronic” by business people, journalists and politicians in heated discussions into the night.

The Prime Minister who promised no new taxes, and whose campaign was based on the deceit of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax, has scored the most inexplicable own goal on the eve of the May 13 budget which will define this term in office.

No one expects instant miracles from Abbott and Joe Hockey but nor did we expect extra spending and strategic leaks about a “great big new tax” in their first budget.
 
Of course Abbott calls it a “deficit levy”, is coy about whether it will be in the Budget, and claims he hasn’t broken a promise because it will last only last four years. And after letting speculation run for three days about the new tax, late yesterday the hoses came out. Now the tax isn’t even a “levy”, the government has told Simon Benson. “It’s a temporary change to the two top income tax thresholds”.

Good grief. Voters are sick of that kind of rank sophistry from politicians. We overdosed on it during the Gillard years.

Let’s hope that the public outcry has put the kybosh on the whole idea.

But it’s disturbing to have a supposedly conservative government even considering playing Labor’s tax and spend game.

The problem with the economy is not too little tax. It’s too much government spending. Abbott understood that before the election. It was the basis of his campaign.

This proposed “deficit levy”, in its latest incarnation, equates to a one percent hike in income tax for those earning over $80,000 and 2 percent for those earning above $180,000.

If your income is over $180,000, you currently pay 45 cents in the dollar, plus the 1.5 percent Medicare levy. The new tax hikes your tax rate up to 48.5 percent.

The potential harm to an already fragile economy of increased taxation is obvious. You are reducing discretionary spending, which is the amount of extra cash the biggest spenders have to spend.

Unlike the government, real people don’t keep spending when their income goes down. They tighten their belts, maybe give up a restaurant meal, stop buying takeaway, postpone the family holiday, spend less on the child’s birthday party, buy fewer clothes, cut back on grocery bills.

When they went into the voting booth last September and ticked the box to put Tony Abbott into office, they weren’t voting for an income tax hike. The Coalition won the election because voters knew spending was out of control and had to be reined in.

A temporary new tax is just a lazy fix. It’s easier to tax people more than do the grunt work of running the red pen over every government program, line by line.

Who hurts most from this thriftiness? Small business. The engine room, the people who depended on the ­Coalition to rescue them from Labor.

When they went into the voting booth last September and ticked the box to put Abbott into office, they weren’t voting for an income tax rise.

The Coalition won the election ­because voters knew spending was out of control and had to be reined in.

Most people would consider a workplace right is being able to take your hard-earned salary home without the government snatching it.

Devine was so filled with rage, the online version of this column had paragraphs doubled up, so blinded with betrayal she barely edited it.

Well, she can't say she wasn't warned Tony Abbott might not be entirely trustful.

Maybe it's worth while remembering that Tony Abbott used to be a Labor Party man, and pretty much switched to the Liberal Party because he believed he'd have a better run at getting somewhere. not being in with the unions. Well, that, of course, is just a crazy conspiracy theory.

It's still two weeks until the budget is delivered, and Abbott's conservative cheerleaders are already preparing effigies of him to burn on Budget Night.

'One Term Tony' doesn't sound such a crazy nickname anymore. Not when it's already been shouted from the offices of Liberal MPs as they fend off raw fury from constituents and Liberal Party donors over Abbott's Great Big Huge New Tax.

There's these remarkable quotes from today's Sydney Morning Herald, just for starters:

Senior Liberals have described plans for a possible deficit tax in the budget as "electoral suicide".

Some talked of a party-room revolt and one warned the Prime Minister Tony Abbott would wear the broken promise as "a crown of thorns" if the government decided to go through with it.

"I worry that this is Tony's Gillard moment, when she announced the carbon tax," said the senior Liberal.

Several other Liberals also expressed dismay at the prospect of a government, elected to restore trust to politics, overturning a "crystal-clear" policy commitment of no new taxes, in its first budget.

Incredulous Liberals contacted by Fairfax Media said they had been given nothing to tell voters who were beginning to call electorate offices to complain.

The mood in government-held marginal seats was particularly febrile. One MP revealed that neither he nor his colleagues had been warned about the tax.

One Liberal MP said he woke on Tuesday morning to the news of the tax.

"It's just shock," the MP said. "There was no communication from the leader's office. We're all just scratching our heads. It's the biggest f----up we've had in a long time."

"I can't say anything on the record because it's just too stupid," he said. "If it's wrong, then it's bulls--t, because why would you scare the electorate? And if it's right, then it's even worse because we said before the election there'd be no new taxes."

Another branded Mr Abbott's attempts to recategorise the tax as a levy as "sophistry", calling it "an offence to voters" that was "worse than Gillard's claim that the carbon tax was not a tax".

Wow.

Panic stations.

Doc Neeson's Brain Tumour May Prove Fatal In Next 3 To 6 Months

Image via ABC's Australian Story

 By Darryl Mason

The legendary Doc Neeson, frontman for The Angels for nearly four decades until 2011, has revealed the brain tumour that saw him leave the road has returned and he's been told it may prove fatal in the next 3 to 6 months. He has vowed to keep fighting.

"It was a shock of course when somebody puts a use by date on me," he said of the initial diagnosis, that predicted he might not live 18 months without surgery, "but I still hung on to a shred of hope that I'd get back on the stage at some point,"

Neeson was first diagnosed in late 2012. He had brain surgery, a long period of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and recovery followed, through 2013. His health was looking good. He was hoping to get back on the road. But an MRI in February this year revealed the brain tumour had returned and Doc Neeson has now been told to expect the worst:

"The news is grim, but some people can get through this, and that's the way I try to think about things. So I'm looking forward optimistically to the future."

 Profiled on ABC's Australian Story, Doc Neeson has opened up his battle against brain cancer, his addictions and what he believes were his failings as a father, during the busiest days of The Angels,
when the band would play more than 150 shows a year.

Image via ABC's Australian Story

Here's a great tale, from Australian Story, from Australia's now governor-general, Peter Cosgrove, on Doc Neeson's performance for Australian troops in East Timor in 1999:

"I'm sitting up there with people like Jose Ramos Horta (East Timorese spokesman at the time) and Roman Catholic Bishop Belo of East Timor, overlooking the crowd and they had some alternative lyrics to Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again," Mr Cosgrove said.

"I'll call them ribald lyrics.

"Bishop Belo leaned forward and said to me, 'Mr General, what are they singing?' And I said, 'Well Lord Bishop I really can't quite make it out'.

"Then Ramos Horta looked at me and I could tell that he could make it out!"

I wrote a piece for The Guardian here on that song, Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? and the infamous "No Way, Get Fucked, Fuck Off!" crowd chant that so surprised Ramos Horta.

Doc Neeson's last live appearances were at the Rock For Doc concerts in April 2013, and the Rockwiz live tribute to Vanda and Young, last December, where he performed his new single, a Vanda and Young cover, Walking In The Rain.

The Rock For Doc concerts, at Sydney's Enmore Theatre in April 2013, included friends like Peter Garrett, Jimmy Barnes, Angry Anderson and former members of The Angels. But founding members of the band, Rick and John Brewster, were not invited to play or pay tribute to their friend and former frontman.

Rock For Doc was a fundraiser. There's no superannuation in Australian rock.

"When The Angels were big, we invested a lot of the money that we made into the band itself to try and go overseas again. So there was no kind of money salted away somewhere to fall back on," Neeson said.

"It's a pretty lean time at the moment."

A few weeks after Rock For Doc, which raised more than $200,000, Doc Neeson was presented with an Order of Australia medal by NSW Governor Marie Bashir, who has confessed she is also fan of The Angels.

In January 2014, Doc was profiled in the Sydney Morning Herald, the cancer was in remission, he was hopeful, it had been a hard year, but picking up where he'd left off in December 2012 and taking a lineup of The Angels back on the road was looking like a reality. It had been a difficult journey since his first diagnosis.

It was at Christmas dinner that Doc Neeson's family realised something was wrong with the enigmatic former frontman of veteran Australian rock band The Angels.

"You could see in his face and how he was talking that something wasn't quite right," recalls Neeson's son Keiran.

An ambulance rushed Neeson to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital where the 65-year-old singer had a seizure.

After a CAT scan, he was diagnosed with a high grade brain tumour and told that statistically, he had 18 months to live.

Plans for a national tour were put aside. Neeson's tumour was surgically removed and he began intensive rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

That radiotherapy and chemotherapy did not destroy the tumours completely, it would seem. They have returned, and Doc Neeson is now both preparing for his end, and fighting to extend his life as long as possible.

Very sad news.

I'll follow up once the episode of Australian Story has aired.


This is a video I shot of Doc Neeson leading a protest march through Newtown, Sydney, against the closure of iconic inner city rock venue The Sandringham Hotel.




More To Come....

PM's Office Spent 36 Hours Discussing 'Replace Abbott With Kitty' App

Good to know the prime minister's staff are spending their taxpayer-funded time on important things. Like writing more than 130 pages of correspondence and spending more than 36 hours discussing what to do about a popular app that replaced PM Abbott's face with a cute kitty in news stories.


From The Age:

Developers Dan Nolan and Ben Taylor made the "Stop Tony Meow" browser extension in January. Downloaded more than 50,000 times, it automatically swaps any picture of Mr Abbott encountered online with pictures of cats.
Curious as to what the Prime Minister and his staff thought of the extension, Mr Nolan submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for any correspondence that mentioned the words "Stop Tony Meow".

‘‘There was an issue where the Liberal party website and other sites were slightly modified so the extension didn’t apply there,’’ Mr Nolan said.

‘‘I had a gut feeling that maybe someone had sent an email internally saying that we need to stop this thing from working on our site, what can we do?

‘‘I don’t think there’s going to be any high-level stuff ... but it would be really interesting to see how a government department reacts to these weird new kinds of technology and culture jamming stuff, which previously they wouldn’t have had to deal with.’’

However once the Department had approved the release of 137 pages of correspondence relating to the Stop Tony Meow request, it charged Mr Nolan $720.30 in fees for access.

Charging such huge fees for Freedom On Information replies is obviously an attempt to dissuade the public from making them.

So much for "transparent government."