Tag: Tony Abbott
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Sorry Tony, you fail the Turing Test
It’s election time again, and that means its also incoherent-shouting-about-taxes time. Tony Abbott is quick off the block, claiming that “the carbon tax and the mining tax are anti Western Australian taxes.” It’s almost too drearily, predictably inane a comment to warrant analysis. But one of Abbott’s skills, I now realise, is his soul-crushing dreariness, the…
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Pre-emptive fact busting
I have a theory (or, really, two theories) about what goes through Tony Abbott’s mind in situations like this. The context, so as not to get too far ahead of myself, is that Indonesian doctors appear to be treating burns of asylum seekers who claim mistreatment at the hands of the Australian Navy, as they…
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WA election rerun
It’s not decided yet, but the odds look good for a new WA senate election, to clear things up after the AEC’s recount discovered 1375 missing votes. (I gather from Antony Green that the AEC actually knows what these votes were, or at least how they were originally counted, but they can’t be used in the recount…
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Climate Policy and Democracy in 2013-14
Tim Dunlop argues that Labor, having lost the election, should yield to Tony Abbott’s right “to govern as he sees fit”, and help him repeal the carbon tax. According to Dunlop, the “norms of democratic governance” are at stake. I find his reasoning a bit simplistic, but I’ll get back to this. A range of new Senators…
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Carbon tax lies
The word “lie” attracts a disproportionately emotive response compared to other forms of deception. Nevertheless, I will briefly point out that Tony Abbott has told a very succinct lie in the following statement, quoted by the ABC, in relation to electricity transmission costs: The whole purpose of the carbon tax is to raise the price…
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Manoeuvring the boats
In a previous post, I described Labor as the “architects of unconscionable incompetence”, specifically with respect to the Malaysian Solution, at least temporarily defeated by the High Court. This post is motivated by the latest political manoeuvring on the issue. I was about to declare myself wrong over the “incompetence” tag (but certainly not the “unconscionable”…
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Question time psychosis
I read (via the ABC) that our new Greens MP Adam Bandt believes that the hallowed institution of Question Time is in danger of becoming a farce: There is a real risk that we are about to lose one of the key opportunities that Parliament has to hold the executive accountable and to ask ministers…
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Leader of the second bureaucracy
Abbott on Gillard’s decision to establish a “rebuilding inspectorate”: By putting in place this new body, this new bureaucracy to oversee the flood and the storm spending, they have accepted that the public don’t believe they can be trusted with money. You should not need a second bureaucracy to ensure that the first bureaucracy spends…
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Abbott’s contribution
There is something terribly misanthropic about this sentence: PS. Click to donate to help our campaign against Labor’s flood tax This is the flood tax intended to pay for the rebuilding of Queensland’s public infrastructure, and the sentence appeared in an email sent by Tony Abbott. I know it’s your job to oppose things Tony,…