Winds and tides of political expediency

For the last word on the Antarctic misadventure of the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, perhaps expedition leader Chris Turney might borrow something like the following from Prime Minister Tony Abbott:

On the high seas all sorts of things happen; there are winds, there are tides, there are other things that they’re focussing on. … Even people who are the very best at their job will occasionally make mistakes – test cricketers occasionally drop catches, great footballers occasionally miss tackles.

That ought to silence Turney’s critics, because Mr Abbott’s winds-and-tides dodge certainly seems to satisfy his government’s boosters in relation to the Australian Navy’s “straying” into Indonesian waters. In these days of satellite positioning and radar, it beggars belief that navy vessels could stray so widely, on not one but at least two occasions.

Regarding the Navy’s Indonesian detours, my conjecture is that Abbott was terrified that any embarrassing disasters occurring in the course of those initial tow-backs might discredit his Government’s policy; hence he required the Navy to go all in. The PM seemed quite sanguine today about pre-empting findings of an anticipated inquiry into the incidents – of which the Government may yet deem the Australian people not grown-up enough to be informed of the findings.

Sadly, the Government and its boosters will have no compunction about letting the Navy take the rap for supposedly “dropping the ball,” while Abbott and Morrison duck for cover.

Nor will any alarm bells ring in their heads for a defence service increasingly politicised and subject to the whims of executive government.

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Carbon totalitarianism discerned

The following is reportedly the text of a flyer being distributed by the Opposition to butchers’ shops around the country for display in their shop windows:

The federal government estimates that the carbon tax will increase the cost of energy by 10 per cent in its first year of operation. It will also increase the cost of our suppliers. Higher electricity prices mean it will cost us more to keep our meat refrigerated.

We always strive to keep our prices at reasonable levels but because the carbon tax will make electricity more expensive, our prices will increase. We apologise for these price increases.

This is quite arguably a blatant piece of scare-mongering intended to be construed by shoppers as meaning that meat prices will increase by as much as 10 per cent within 12 months after July 1.

So there is potential there for unscrupulous operators — yep, there’s always one or two — to scare up prices and hit consumers.

But the ACCC will be wielding a big stick to discourage any such profiteering, and

... the Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury, has warned that the Liberal leader has potentially exposed shop owners to fines of up to $1 million each.

Mr Bradbury hit out at Mr Abbott, saying he was improperly giving “businesses the green light to jack up their prices” and warned that shop keepers who put up their prices without due justification were risking large fines from the ACCC of more than $1 million for each infraction.

For this blog’s esteemed Doctor Easychair, Andrew Bolt, all this becomes...

The carbon totalitarians butcher free speech

The Gillard Government, already so hostile to free speech, now threatens to bankrupt butchers who badmouth its carbon tax...

The bit of that article which Doctor Easychair omitted to quote…

Treasury has estimated the average price rise on meat and seafood in a standard shopping basket of goods as around 10 cents a week.

Similarly, an analysis on a Sydney butcher shop with a revenue of $2.1 million per year has shown that the businesses’ electricity bill of around $22, 000 per year – representing about 1 per cent of turnover – would rise by around 0.1 per cent, or $22.

The analysis found to pass on this cost increase, the butcher would have to increase the price of a $11 packet of mince meat by approximately one cent.

Our good Doctor concludes his pastiche with…

Throw these thugs out while it’s still safe to speak.

Oh, and…

(No comments after 5pm.)

Coz that’s when Bolt knocks off for the day the butchering carbon totalitarians come out !!1!!!

As noted by Jeremy at Pure Poison, “when Andrew Bolt talks about ‘free speech’, apparently he means the right of businesses to trick customers with lies.”

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Opposition’s dispositional position posited

Asked whether the Federal opposition will oppose the Government’s ‘school kids bonus’,  opposition leader Tony Abbott has deftly posited the opposition’s equivocal position whilst showing off his Word for the Day:

Well, that’s certainly our disposition. That is certainly our disposition. Our disposition is not to support something which is not fair dinkum, which isn’t honest about its purpose. That’s our disposition, not to support this.

Our disposition is to support some of the other benefits to families...

Thus, Abbott spruiks his politics of dispositional opposition, informed as always by his oppositional disposition.

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likes to poke and torment helpless small things

click to enlarge  —  image source abc.net.au

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