Nick Minchin exits politics

And his proudest achievement in 18 years of drawing a fat salary from the public purse is...

defeating the 'Yes' camp in the referendum on a republic.

FFS. I think we deserve our money back.

The Australian wets itself over Green-bashing backlash

The Australian has gotten all defensive over the unsettled reaction among its media colleagues and competitors over the way it engaged in open Green-bashing last week. What a complete joke. Seriously, 'tough reporting'? Portraying open calls for the destruction of the Greens as serious journalistic scrutiny?

They're not kidding anyone any more, and it's got them worried.

In Australia we don't even get the pretence of 'fair and balanced'

That fine old mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch, The Australian, has openly called for the Greens to be 'destroyed'. Every person with two brain cells to rub together knew that the News Ltd rags are biased, sure, but for them to be so bold as to actually come out and say it is a pretty scary thing, in my view. They have just called for the destruction of the only party with a humanitarian, non-bigoted policy platform, the only party in favour of free universal health AND dental care. The only party who support an egalitarian system of free public education instead of funnelling money into the pockets of schools attended by the children of people like Rupert Murdoch. The only party who have enough conviction on climate change to actually do something about it. Rupert Murdoch wants them destroyed. Makes me even more glad we signed up as Greens members after the election. That's just incredible. What a bloody hide.

Via Jeremy @ Pure Poison.

Australia just dodged a bullet.

We were *this* close to having a Tony Abbott government. I felt sick just thinking of it. Thank god Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor opted to back Labor. The Mad Katter didn't, but regardless I enjoyed the spectacle he provided and appreciated that he is at least openly and honestly representing his electorate. I think Bob Katter holds some absolutely loony views, but he's not a slimeball. I even hated listening to Julia Gillard's press conference this afternoon, so refreshing has the straight-shooting, spin-free style of the four independents and Greens' Adam Bandt been.

Hopefully politics in Australia is not business as usual from now on.

Hitting karma's sweet spot: Fred Nile's porn 'research'.

Seeing as I'll probably never get around to blogging about it myself, I would just like to highlight the recent, juicy and thoroughly enjoyable spectacle of Fred Nile's did-he-or-didn't-he office porn scandal. And come on, most of us can muster up enough common sense to agree on this one. Mikey made a great post about it, and revelled appropriately in Nile's most discomforting moment in the spotlight. A more deserving person, I cannot think of one.

Abbott angles for a return to the polls.

Here's a pretty good view from the SMH's Lenore Taylor of the latest on the 2010 federal election outcome. Tony Abbott is giving the finger to the independents in the hope of pushing them towards another election rather than having to play nice and make a deal for minority government.

I hope Tony loses at his game, because I think for once Australia might've got the government we deserve, or at least given the big parties what they deserve. And I shudder at the idea of an Abbott government. The 'political love-child' of John Howard should never be allowed to take this country back to the dark ages.

2010 election night wrap-up.

There is no result from the federal election tonight, and it looks like whoever forms government will form a minority government. We are perilously close to seeing a return of John Howard in the form of Tony Abbott. "The Coalition is back in business", he said tonight. Maxine McKew lost in John Howard's former seat of Bennelong.

Gam and I are joining the Greens tonight and are going to contribute our energies to our local branch. We don't want Setri growing up under the zombie corpse of John Howard or the kind of Labor government we've seen in the past few months. Neither of them deserve to run the country.

There are some, few, bright spots tonight.

Family First senator Steve Fielding has lost his seat. Australia had the Labor brains trust responsible for our current mess to thank for his presence in the first place. Seriously, fuck those guys.

Wilson Tuckey, that despicable old redneck from WA, has been turfed out of his seat. Thank god for small mercies.

The Greens look like they may have done even better than securing a senate spot in Queensland. They may have secured a second seat in SA and one in WA, giving them up to 8 seats in the senate. Let's hope they pull through and get them all, for the sake of all that is good about Australia.

Ignoring the contradictions: Election Journalism 101

From The Australian this morning;

While Labor has attempted to separate the population issue from immigration policy, despite overseas migration accounting for about two-thirds of population growth, the Coalition has not been as shy. It proposes to cap immigration at 170,000 a year as part of its effort to ensure Australia does not reach Treasury's projected population of 36 million by 2050.

Argh!!!! One of the things that has annoyed me most during this federal election is the failure of the media to force Tony Abbott to reconcile his scaremongering on population growth with his open support for increasing the 'Australian' (*insert dogwhistle noise*) birthrate. Honestly, does any media organisation employ any actual journalists these days, or just propagandising stooges? There is a very simple, very obvious question to be asked of Tony Abbott here, and NO-ONE is asking it.

Swan v Hockey Debate

wayne starts off with a recounting of the govt. economic record. starts
in on the deficit, [which hockey will no doubt bang on at length].
[public speaking is not wayne's strong suit. fair enough, bloody good
treasurer though.] points out how coalition crap [repeated at length by
know-nothings] that we would be in deficit for decades!!!111 is in fact
crap. points out that debt level is equal to someone on a 100k salary
borrowing 6k. [good point, people seem to forget how to count when you
talk billions. wayne's hitting his stride.]

hockey starts off with some stuff about being positive about australia.
we've suffered by being far from the world [continental drift?]. asia is growing, world is
now divided into timezones not trading blocks [?]. internet. children. the world
wants what we have. the world wants our stability. they want to know we
are stable [geologically?] tony abbott robb and hockey have 20 years of
experience! they have put together budgets, labor debt. labor debt.
incompetence. australia's bounty. blah blah. [where is the point joe? are
you going to get to it?] work for welfare again. paid parental leave -
the one tony was ideolocially opposed to. over 50s off welfare and back
to work. [at 5.1% unemployment you might have to choose between young or
old welfare to work, where will these jobs come from if you cut the spending required to create them?]. tax reform - the libs are the party of tax reform. [other than the gst, what tax reform did the liberals deliver in 11.5 years of govt.?]

question time
chris uuuuuuuulmahn (moderator) - don't the world want our economic position?

Joe - it's because we had a surplus. our competion is asia, not the use. [er joe, do
you know what the OECD is?] asia has lower costs of production [they have
slaves joe, I don't think we can compete with them on that]. debt debt debt. interest rates, govt. will borrow all the available money! [lol.]

wayne - we are 6 v 96 percent debt compared to everyone else. joe pretends the gfc didn't happen.
won't tell us how he would have got through it without a debt. they
opposed the second stimulus package. [wayne wass a uni lecturer welcome to school joe.] hits him for raising company tax, how does that make us competitive?

aap - joe you said you are making truthy promises. economists say you lie
about paid maternity leave. can you guarantee it? wayne, do you think
it's crap?

joe - yes. guarantees it as it stands. blathers on about debt. still
won't submit policies for costing.

wayne - joe pretends there wouldn't be a deficit he he was in power.
where would the money have come from? their plan requires a tax on
groceries and magical thinking on un-costed promises

smh - wayne you say the coalition would have caused unemployment. can
you prove this? joe, if we did what you said we'd
still be in debt.

wayne - the libs opposed the second stimulus package. we had to go past
them to pass it. joe tries to have it both ways. quotes joe. 'the
stimulus package doesn't work!!!1111' he was wrong. occasionally they
pretended to support some stimulus. points out that small, ineffective
stimulus would be worse than none at all.

joe - [tries to have it both ways.] libs put in a bill to raise aged pension (whaaaa?) they then tried to reduce the stimulus. goes on about the now discredited waste campaign. pink batts. [sigh.] pink batts pink batts. shows he knows nothing about the reserve bank or interest rates. [dear god.]

wayne - tell us how much debt you'd accept joe? quotes reserve bank
gov. who agrees with with wayne

joe - govt. is addicted to tax. [I hear long term tax addiction can stunt growth and impair one's fashion sense, ask j-howard]

the opposition orifice [the australian] - uren? what else will you do re: tax reform in a
second term?

wayne - cut company tax, use resource tax to offset, spend on
infrastructure. libs want to jack up the company rate.

joe - accuses the govt. of thinking increasing tax equals efficiency
[whaa?] vote us in and we'll tell you what we'll do.

uuuuuuuuhlman - why no mining tax joe? big money! many shells!

joe - i love miners, they don't want to give us more money so they
shouldn't have to. They are delicate petals and if we hurt their feelings they may take to their yachts and sulk terribly. talks about fast runners and how everyone should be able to
run like in the field of our economy and we don't slow the fastest runner [bloody oath we do if they're making off with the silverware joe!] or some crap.

Question from someone - housing, you've crated a market only for investors, massive tax breaks
for landlords, nothing for first home buyers how will you fix this mess I pretend to care about despite probably having a few investment properties of my own?

wayne - dodges question, dances, pretending he worked to increase
housing supply. passes buck to previous govt. coag will fix everything
and you can rent for life. Studiously avoids henry review's findings on negative gearing. [long story short. till the speculators die, you're screwed, young folk!]

joe - blames the states. cost of supply for builders, can't get finance
and it's so expensive (joe, you know interest rates are at record
lows?). claims if you dich negative gearing rent will go up. [what the
fuuu? get out joe. just get right out.] claims that rates were lower
under coalition. [lol]

wayne - it's all bullshit. the rba agrees with me.

joe, blames labor for banks raising rates to cover liquidity crisis. [holy crap. this is your alternative treasurer australia!]

wayne - interest rates at record lows? tell me what it was when you left office? - forces joe to look up the figures

joe - looks it up 8.something. it's now 7. but it's going to go up! [really? does andrew robb read palms now? - epic fail.]

wayne - joe pretends the govt. controls interest rates.

joe - pretends inflation was low under libs. switches horses midstream and claims inflation was higher under labor instread [by a quarter percent I think. 11.5 year average vs 3.75 year average = statistics fail
]
their abc - what will australia be manufacturing?

wayne - talks about 2 speed economy and effects on currency rate. Talks about pro business stimulus already. talks about infrastructure, nbn. points out libs oppose it. [gee wayne, what if we had a renewable energy industry to talk about?] also tax cuts for business.

joe - in 2013 our company tax will be lower than labor. [someone should make them give that crystal ball to treasury] the world has 3 timezones. [WTF? this timezones crap is sounding like internet crankery] talks about how his govt. would get into currency hedging to help exporters [jesus christ]. how will the mining industry survive a minor tax hike on profits!? woe! woe!

chan ten - what will your debt reduction taskforce do joe?

joe - it will be run by me and andrew robb and will go through previous govt. programs and tell us all of labor are the dirty, stinky, poopy-head liars they really are. [it will be a political creature designed to provide cover for their cuts by means of an endless witch-hunt]

wayne - no costings, nyah nyah! hidden agenda. they will cut services.

joe - costings, we introduced charter of budget honesty [so why hide from it?] we will do it, sometime.

fin review - joe, your savings, you just said they've dropped to 2.8 billion from 40. what happens if this happens?

joe - keeps whining about submitting for costing. labor will never deliver a surplus, they never will. [WTF? So now they're ideologically opposed to budget surpluses?]. whinges about passport fee increase [this must be such a huge issue on sydney's north shore]. attacks states, it's all their fault.

wayne - we will too put into budget into surplus. pinky-swear

west australian - can you tax mining without damaging the industry? Joe your policies make no sense.

wayne - mining will be fine. They are advertising more than ever now and bringing new projects online [they know what demand is going to do, having ripped us off thanks to the mug punters those profits will disappear overseas and into yachts.]

joe - we have an australia first policy. welfare to work, blah blah. grow the productivity pie.

wayne sums up - good debate come on tony, debate julia again [you should have thought about that before adopting your stupid defensive crouch campaign]. we have a plan for the future. rba agrees with me. stimulus saved jobs and businesses. imagine the waste if businesses had failed and people lost jobs. building on strengths over last years. infrastructure, libs will take us backwards.

joe - wayne wants to stand on record. Debt. Waste. Boats. Pink batts pink batts. dumped kevin.
the coalition has experience, we are facing volatility [good of you to
notice]. bountiful future. we could lose our opportunity to be the best.
the govt. is bad. bad i tell you! vote liberal, give us back a grown up
govt. [we forgive you for voting us out, australia, but now it's time for some make up sex]

this wasn't really a contest. It was a debate between someone with a lot of knowledge and someone with just enough to be dangerous. If I were 20 years older i'd be perfectly happy with the idea of another couple of terms with wayne as treasurer, he'd be excellent for me. But i'm not. Joe on the other hand tries his hardest but is clearly out of his depth and ham-strung by the fact that the coalition have no economic policy to speak of. Cutting taxes is not policy. Politically motivated budget revenge inquisitions are not policy. It's a bit scary that voters are seriously thinking about putting robb and hockey in charge of treasury.

Will the real Julia Gillard please... oh don't bother.

I've always thought of the real Julia Gillard as being a brilliant parliamentary sparrer in the league of Paul Keating. A cool, clever lady whose office posted us a bunch of John Howard's WorkChoices propaganda merchandise after Howard was booted out in the 2007 federal election. A great PM in the making, I think everyone took it for granted that Julia's time would come.

But not in the manner that it actually happened. In volunteering herself as a puppet of the Labor machine men, the same ones who engineered Latham's 2004 election disaster and the election of Family First senator Steven Fielding, Julia has lost the respect of her fans and the faith of people who voted for Kevin Rudd as PM at the lst election. We watched her morph into a softer, supposedly more marketable Julia, clad in pearls and dripping with platitudes. Puppet-Julia was a politician who took the easy route on every important issue.

It was Puppet-Julia's job, it seemed, to validate the opinion of everyone from the left of Bob Brown to the right of John Howard on asylum seekers. You're all right, we were told. The right-wingers scoffed with scepticism, already irrevocably aligned with the Coalition on this issue. Those who leaned Left rolled their eyes with disgust and resignation at the latest example of Labor capitulation, many having already defected with their votes to the Greens when Kevin Rudd first began taking Labor down Howard's path. When Gillard proposed a shallowly-disguised rip-off of John Howard's infamous 'Pacific Solution', everyone's worst suspicions were confirmed, every ounce of scepticism vindicated.

Puppet-Julia did what Kevin Rudd failed to do- pacify the mining companies who wanted to continue their looting of Australia's wealth unmolested and unhindered. To some extent she had no choice but to sell out the country. The media, whose conflict of interest in the case has routinely gone unacknowledged, forced her hand. Biased coverage of the issue, heavily influenced by mining dollars lining media pockets, had led to Kevin Rudd's slide in the polls, leading to his knifing by the only marketable alternative leader Labor had. The deputy who had insisted right up until the moment she did him in that she was loyal. The first thing that appeared in the election advertisements spruiking a PM no-one voted for, was Julia's 'achievement' of a deal with the mining companies. That deal turned out to be something of an illusion as the mining companies outside the big 3 banded together to assail what was, at its core, an extremely sound policy. "Tax mining?", the ads bleat, as if Australians taking any share in the loot is a bad idea. Puppet-Julia, it turns out, solved nothing. The real Julia could have torn strips off the mining companies. Labor under Puppet-Julia cowers from the zombie corpse of the Resources Super Profits Tax, unwilling to address the newly resurrected issue after having made massive concessions the first time around, only to be slammed in the media for that, too. To go even further would mean a loss of all credibility. It would mean admitting that Kevin Rudd was knifed for nothing. That Puppet-Julia and the machine-men solved nothing. That, in the end, they saved nothing. Not Australia's share in the wealth, not the Labor government, and not even a skerrick of dignity.

There was no issue too crucial for Puppet-Julia to opt not to take the most wishy-washy stance imaginable. Where Kevin Rudd had lost credibility by abandoning any real policy on climate change, Puppet-Julia went out of her way to go even further. In the same vein as her 'every idiot's opinion is valid' stance on the human rights of asylum seekers, Puppet-Julia's solution on climate change was a forum of 150 Average Joes who would magic up a policy distilled from their collective ignorance. Who needs scientists and 'evidence' when you can have idiots and misguided beliefs? Puppet-Julia can please everybody!

Where regular churchgoer and devout Catholic Kevin the Sanctimonious had disappointed progressive voters and continued the bigoted policies of the Howard era with his steadfast refusal to extend equal rights to same-sex couples and allow them to marry, there was a short-lived hope that Julia the avowed atheist would shine as a beacon of common sense. With a majority of Australians now supporting same-sex marriage, surely someone who didn't personally adhere to a bigoted religion wouldn't adopt the cowardly stance of preserving the status quo? The vocal homophobic minority had nothing to fear from Puppet-Julia. Everyone's opinion, no matter how bigoted, is right, remember! Let's just keep the gays in their place and not rock the boat, eh?

When Julia Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd, I was among the many Australians unhappy with Rudd's leadership. What I thought we would get was a chance to see how Gillard would perform as PM before going to an election. Instead, we're being asked to vote for her as PM after a spectacularly unimpressive election campaign, on the basis that at least she'll be better than Tony Abbott. Puppet-Julia is a policy-free zone, and what we saw over the last several years is not what we're getting now. What we are getting is a product of the worst aspects of the Labor party, nothing more. Julia Gillard is apparently as soulless and spineless as the rest of them. Whatever she needs to be in order to lead the Labor party. What a pity that the qualities required for that job are so at odds with the qualities required to be a great leader of the nation we live in.

The only real ammo Julia has left is the prospect of an Abbott-led government, something that should horrify every Australian with more than a couple of brain-cells to rub together. Such a prospect should appeal only to the bigoted, the religious and the rich. The Labor machine has quite possibly spent too much time trying to make over its newly-appointed leader to appeal to those sections of the community when instead it should have been frightening the living daylights out of everyone else by painting a vivid picture of what life might look like under Abbott. Having left it so late, it's now just going to look like a last-ditch tactic to save a flailing government whose sole redeeming quality is that they're better than the alternative.

Election 2010: Whatever, Julia

This article sums up a lot of my feelings on Julia Gillard and the election campaign in general. Tony Abbott is as vile and unelectable as expected, but if Labor get in it won't be because people liked them, it will be because they liked Tony Abbott less.

Whatever could be said about Kevin Rudd, at least when he was running for PM he gave people something to vote for.

2007 election flashback- Caroline's out of her cage.

Our old pal Caroline Overington has been rehabbed to the extent that she has been permitted by her masters at The Australian to extend herself beyond fluffy, family-friendly articles and cover some election-related material. After a long period in the wilderness it's nice to see Caroline back to her old self. I still get a chuckle out of the events of the 2007 campaign. It's obvious already that this one is going to be nowhere near as exciting.

I slept with Big Mining and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

Headline in The Australian this morning:

Gillard's $7.5bn gift to miners

Did the Labor powerbrokers who dumped Rudd really think the media would relent in its attacks if they gave the miners everything they wanted?

Bernie Fraser (former Reserve Bank governor) was on the 7.30 Report last night saying, essentially, how amazed he was that Tony Abbott was not political dead meat for opposing a tax that took a justifiable amount of money from an extraordinarily wealthy group of companies making billions of dollars from selling resources that belong to all Australians; a tax that would bring billions of dollars into services and infrastructure for the people in this country:

[It] amazes me, frankly, how any alternative prime minister, alternative government can put the interests, the vested interests of big mining countries ahead of the national interests of this country. It's just incredible to my way of thinking. Whoever has sort of devised that line really has rocks in his or her head.

He painted a portrait of Julia Gillard that was almost as unflattering:

To my way of thinking in her haste to get a deal done on this matter to end up with a headline rate of 30 per cent of what are pretty generous profits, but when you allow for the 25 per cent extraction allowance which reduces that 30 per cent down to 22.5 per cent, that's a sell out to me.

Tony Abbott opposes the tax even in its overly-reduced form, which is incredible in itself, but even more amazing is that he is able to do so and survive with the support of a significant proportion of the Australian population. Enough to put him in the running to oust Labor and become our next Prime Minister (terrifying thought that it is). He shouldn't even be in the race- what are Australians thinking?


As usual, stupidity reigns supreme in Australia.

When will Labor learn...

Fancy yourself as the next John Howard, Julia?

That they don't win elections by being racist? Sure, it's probably a strategy to wrap up the votes of latent racists, the ones whose attention can be diverted by real issues such as healthcare or education but would vote for the coalition if the Libs and the media combine to create a sea of xenophobic froth for Tony Abbott to sail to victory on.

Julia Gillard's move shows just how weak Labor perceives itself to be on everything else. They don't think they can win an election on the other issues without attempting to neutralise this one first. Labor's stance on asylum seekers merely serves to highlight just how weak it is on every other issue, and why decent, humanitarian-minded people should vote Green instead.

Julia! Julia! Julia!

Australia today has its first female Prime Minister in Julia Gillard. Good.

There's a lot of things I've been meaning to say about the Rudd government over the past few months, but I've been otherwise occupied. Suffice it to say I wasn't very happy at all with Kevin Rudd's leadership, his treatment of the ETS and asylum seeker issues- particularly the latter. Gam takes a slightly different position on the abandoning of the ETS, but I suppose it's a moot point now.


It's not a bad thing that we're seeing the back of Kevin Rudd as PM, but Julia Gillard is in a difficult position, with less than a year until an election has to be called. Given that the alternative Prime Minister is Tony Abbott, I sincerely hope the Labor Party's fight to retain power has not been compromised by Rudd's spectacular implosion. I also can't help wondering how much of a part big mining interests had to play in taking down a democratically elected leader in Rudd. On that issue, however, Rudd had painted himself into a corner, however sound a policy idea the resources super-profits tax was.

When talk first started of a Gillard leadership takeover a few weeks, perhaps months, ago, I dismissed it as far-fetched. But one of my clearest and most positive memories of election night in the live feed from the tally room in November 2007, the night the Australian public booted John Howard from office in a most emphatic fashion, is of crowds of happy people shouting "Juli-a! Juli-a! Juli-a!". Not "Kevin!". Let's hope the scene repeats itself at the upcoming election.

I'll still be voting 1 for the Greens, however.

The woes of Michael Johnson, MP

I've been rather enjoying the tale of the misfortunes of our former Federal MP, Michael Johnson, member for Ryan. Johnson has just been kicked out of the LNP and disendorsed for apparently being as audacious as he was ambitious, with emails leaked a while back appearing to suggest he sought a $12 million commission as he attempted to broker a deal between coal interests in China and Queensland. His re-election fund also seemed to be the subject of a lot of expenses that had little to do with re-election. For a political party to think that one of their own has gone too far in using their position for financial benefit and their re-election account as a personal slush fund it must have been pretty bad indeed.

What really gave me a laugh, though, was Johnson's claim that he would, like, totally, win a legal challenge to his disendorsement but... he isn't going to make such a challenge because, um, he can't afford a lawyer.

Yep, we're expected to believe that a man on a salary of over $130 000, not including all the pollies' perks and electoral allowances, can't cough up the cash for a legal challenge that would preserve his cushy job.

Johnson has said he will run as an independent in Ryan, but he must know it's futile and both the bluebloods and nouveau riche inhabiting his leafy safe seat will continue to mindlessly place a '1' in the box next to 'Liberal'. Why bother, then, seeing as the move will hardly salvage the little guy's dignity? Apparently running will guarantee him the pollies' comfortable superannuation of $65k when he turns 55. It's not quite $12 million, but hey...

GoCard rant.

More like 'no service'. Arseholes.

Something I was meaning to have a good long whinge about but didn't have the time before I went on maternity leave was the Queensland government's fare hikes for public transport. Essentially they slugged commuters a massive 20% increase if they were utilising GoCards and a 40% increase for those determined to stick with the paper ticket system. It was designed to shoehorn people on to GoCards so they can abolish paper tickets.

I had resisted opting for a GoCard up until the fare hikes, as getting one would not only not save me money, I hated the idea of having to queue to swipe off when getting off the bus as well as queuing to get on (no, really!), and was also pretty sure I'd forget to swipe off and continually get slugged the fine for not doing so. With a paper ticket you can get off any bus or train with the one ticket all day and not have to give a second thought to anything other than where you're heading.

Additionally, I saw the card readers frequently didn't work, leaving GoCard users either waiting for the machine to come back online, waiting in even longer queues to swipe at the lone functioning machine, or getting waved onto the bus by the bus driver with a curt 'machine's not working, just come on'. And presumably then getting slugged the fine by Translink for not swiping on and off properly...

When the fare hikes came in, it was obviously going to be more expensive because of the financial rape the government had conspired to perpetrate on paper ticket users. So, not wanting to blow out my weekly travel budget due to a stubborn refusal to ditch my preferred option of paper tickets, I looked online to see where I could buy a concession GoCard in Moorooka. Apparently you could buy one (er, I mean, fork out the $5 'deposit' for one) online, but given that it was only a few days before I went back to work and knowing Australia Post's record of losing/delaying/misplacing important stuff, I decided against that option, as it would undoubtedly lead to my having to get screwed pay for numerous paper tickets before Australia Post finally decided to deliver.

Except, there was only one single place in Moorooka that sold GoCards at all- the newsagent. What's more, it sold only Adult go cards, not Concession GoCards. In fact, there was pretty much nowhere that sold concession cards. Which meant I'd have to fork out for a paper ticket to work and buy a concession card at Roma St Train Station in the City on my way home.

Strike One. Fancy forcing people onto a card system knowing full well that you haven't ensured that cards are available from the outlets where they should be available. Moorooka has a train station (albeit poorly placed for commuters), but it didn't sell GoCards. In fact, news soon got out that 110 of 144 railway stations in south east Queensland didn't sell GoCards. In addition, neither did most of the major busway stations, nor any of the CityCats. The Bligh government hurriedly said that GoCards would be available at all manned rail stations by March. Funny how the mugging fare increase had been planned and advertised for such a long time, yet they hadn't bothered to address the fact that GoCards were barely available...

So I forked out for a GoCard on my way home from work. I joined the queue at the ticket office at Roma Street and said to the guy manning the counter "I'd like to buy a GoCard please". He laughed at me. "Be honest, you don't really want to buy one, do you?". So bloody true. He was lucky though. The man at the head of the queue next to me was conducting his own version of the Spanish Inquisition into all things GoCard, while the other ticket officer just had to stand there and politely answer all the man's questions while the line behind him grew and grew... I'm sure the extra burden on staff brought about by the actions of an inconsiderate, mercenary government ought to count as Strike Two.

Travelling to and from work with my new GoCard was, as anticipated, a pain in the arse. In general it was a little bit quicker getting on the bus, and a whole lot slower getting off. The journeys were slowed even further by the number of people who weren't regular commuters (little old ladies made up large numbers of those caught in the government's trap) fronting up to the bus driver without enough change to meet the now exhorbitant fare for a paper ticket to the City. Seriously, the amount charged was enough to make me catch my breath. It's not that long ago that the current price for one 2-zone adult return ticket to the City would have paid for just about an entire working week's worth of student 2-zone tickets. Not only that, I would have to clutch my wallet in my hand the entire journey just to make sure I didn't forget to swipe off as I exited the bus. On one occasion I caught the bus, followed by the train so I could make a stop along the train journey and get back and head home on the same route. Instead of simply showing a paper ticket to 1) the bus driver and 2) the ticket inspection people at Roma St station (you almost never need to show your ticket at smaller stations), I had to 1) swipe on the bus; 2) swipe off the bus; 3) swipe on at the train station; 4) swipe off at my stop; 5) swipe back on when I returned to the same stop; 6) swipe off at my final stop. I had put my wallet in my bag (as you do) and forgot step 6, so I got slugged the fine.

FFS, six steps where a simple two used to suffice and the state government had the hide to claim that the GoCard makes everything faster and more convenient and that the large number of GoCards issued in the new year meant people are 'voting with their GoCard' in support of the system (not voting with their wallets to avoid having them molested!). I bloody well wanted to strangle state transport minister Rachel Nolan when I read that quote. The disingenuous, lying fuckers knew only too well why people were streaming to obtain GoCards, and it had nothing to do with how marvellous the system was.

Meanwhile, I'd really like to see an investigation of the extra revenue that Translink picks up in fines from people who forget to swipe off, or who get slugged as if they forgot when a machine fails to work. I really would. Sure I read recently that for commuters on the longest journeys it's actually cheaper to not swipe off and pay the fine, but I couldn't help but being glad that someone has found a way to rort Translink the same way it's rorting so many GoCard users.

Lord knows there are enough reasons to despise the Bligh government, but the GoCard is just a little reminder that more than half a million users get every day, twice a day, to punish those motherfuckers at the polls the next time we get the chance.

Grrrr.

Albrechtsen out of ABC

Woo, good riddance!

Tony Abbott moralises over asylum seeker deaths

Tony Abbott, who has never been averse to flavouring his politics with his extreme religious views, has set his dearly-held Christianity aside for a minute or two to score some political mileage from the drowning of twelve or more Sri Lankan asylum seekers when their boat sank near the Cocos Islands. This from a man whose government faced substantial and inadequately investigated allegations that they ignored the plight of a sinking boat full of asylum seekers in waters patrolled by Australian border protection surveillance aircraft just prior to the 2001 federal election. Of those people 353, including 146 children, drowned. That has not prevented Tony Abbott from accusing Kevin Rudd of being responsible for the deaths of the 12 or so people feared drowned in this latest incident, despite there as yet being no evidence that the government did not act to help as soon as it was aware the boat was sinking.

Don’t get me wrong. The display we’ve seen from Kevin ‘hardline’ Rudd of late has ensured his government will never see another preference vote from me until the day he stands up and apologises to the people he has wronged as part of this despicable political stunt. And given the consummate politician and slimebag he has proved to be, I really don’t see that happening. I don’t wish to defend his recent treatment of asylum seekers (of whom around 99% are inevitably found to be genuine refugees) in the slightest. But watching one of the men whose government was likely responsible for the deaths of 353 innocent people in an even more heinous politically-motivated disregard for vulnerable human lives try and score points off the moderately less despicable actions of the Rudd government just makes my blood boil.

Additionally, I'm glad to see the Rudd government has taken its first real hit in the polls since it was elected two years ago. Part of the reason it was elected was because a significant proportion of the community (albeit, sadly, a minority) was not ok with the further abuse of the human rights of vulnerable people who come to Australia seeking help. Hopefully this shows that they're not all willing to put up with the perpetrators of these kind of abuses no matter what the perpetrator's political stripes might be.

Goodbye and good riddance

It would appear that after 2 years of desperate searching and collecting a taxpayer-funded allowance a hell of a lot prettier than the average job-seeker's payment, Peter Costello has finally found himself a private sector job.

Good riddance to the leech. I heard him on the radio spouting some rubbish about having spent the last 20 years in 'public service', as if he'd been working for a charity. Seriously, fuck off and die.