Will the last one out of the parliament please remember to turn the pie warmer off at Aussie’s Cafe? The worst thing we can have now is a fire. Although I accept some cynics believe putting the parliament to the cleansing flames might just be our last best shot at good government.
Ten senators have moved along since this parliament commenced, most frogmarched ignominiously from the big red room, told to pack their belongings into two small cardboard boxes, before their parliamentary lanyards were twain in two with a cutlass and escorted to the front door by two burly security guards.
We no longer have a Deputy Prime Minister, or at least we won’t for a month or so. The Senate President, Stephen Parry resigned and shuffled out the door yesterday. And now, the Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg is under a cloud.
This brings about the delicious prospect of wait staff at the parliament sidling up to the Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia with a plate of party pies.
“Hungry, minister?”
“No thanks. I already am one.”
Boom tish.
Full column here.
I just luurrve the way Dutts responds to interviews re Manus.He always starts with a huge spray against Labor like Big Arnie….then he ends with….WE DIDN’T PUT THEM THERE. Not one hack has EVER responded with…..well where would YOU have put them…..Dutts knows quite well where they would be ………right where they are now Bald. It has always been Looter policy to keep the asylum solution as far away from voters and hacks eyes as possible clouded in secrecy just in case mortals like us may shed a sympathetic tear.I still have a faded newspaper clipping from when Howard started all this where he instructed his people to never portray asylum seekers as “humane”…..he portrayed them as terrorists, carriers of disease and “illegals”. All lies.All untrue. All for votes. Nothing to do with boats.
You do carry on at times Bassy. Ever thought there may not have been any to put anywhere.
You really should take a deep breath occasionally before you put your brain and keyboard into action mate.
Manus – wasn’t that Rudd Labor’s election winner?
You went so close, Jack, but I’m glad you didn’t reference ‘House of Cards’. Kevin Spacey – eeeeyeww!
We bailed out halfway through Ep1 of Season 5. Too weird, too evil. Sure, I kept hoping someone would drive a stake through FU’s chest. Sure, I hoped Ms FU would trip over in her tight skirt & stiletto heels. A tiny ray of hope, or redemption, would’ve helped. But, Nah!
I enjoyed the original. Never watched the remake. Looks like Netflix is shutting Spacey down.
For some reason I never liked Kevin Spacey, don’t know why, but what confuses me is the fact that Netflix weren’t going to go beyond the sixth season anyway, so to take the moral high ground now is hypocritical.
There’s another Netflix film starring him in post production that has been withdrawn apparently.
Keyser Soze?
I’ve got seasons 1 and 2 of the Spacy one sitting on the shelf unwatched, I bought them ages ago.
Ian Richardson was brilliant in the original and I think that’s one of the reasons I haven’t watched the Netflix version, doubt I will now, yet to finish Breaking Bad but it’s excellent stuff, haven’t got to the end of Boardwalk Empire either, so little time.
That’s my take, too. Everyone and their dog has urged me to watch the remake but I couldn’t be bothered. In other news I binge watched The Good Place on Netflix and it is very good. Anything with Michael Schur’s imprimatur on it (The Office, Parks and Recreation) is worth a look.
There you go, I didn’t even know that Spacey’s was a remake. I’ll automatically assume that the original was British. Whether or not, I always find it irritating that successful shows from other universes must be remade for American audiences. If they are so unable to cope with other cultures, concepts and accents, how come Monty Python was so successful there?
It was. Ian Richardson plays the Spacey character in and around No.10. It was a beautiful statement on Tory politics in the post Thatcher period. It’s rare for the American remakes to be better than the UK original. The Office comes to mind. The cast members of the US Office were initially fearful they would not hit the same mark as their British counterparts but they exceeded it and by some margin.
The original was great and I didn’t mind the US version for the first couple of seasons. Only got thro8gh half the first episode of this season. There’s some great stuff out there. If you haven’t seen it yet people sit back and watch the series ‘Rome’. Generation Kill would have to be one of my all time favourites though.
Razor. Damn shame. It does get a bit over the top, doesn’t everything?, but once you get your head around what the makers are trying to do it is very very thought provoking. Don’t watch it if you don’t like being moved out of your comfort zone.
There is some great dialogue and the acting is brilliant especially most of the minor parts.
Without stuff like ancestry.com none of this would be possible.
A note re the last blog about Annie – like a couple of others (e.g. Robin) she simply never transferred across when this site opened.
Nah…she had had enuff of of personal attacks which in my view were unfair. I hope she revisits.
Bassy what has happened to Ratus Ratus a.k.a the Rodent?
He emails me every day
Busy with his guitar collection
Still does not believe in global warming
A huge fan of Lomberg, Plimer, Malcolm Roberts, Judith Curry, Bolt, Alan
Says all of the graphs on global warming and sea levels are fake (!)
Believes Trump will save the world
Wants Tones back as Leader of the Looters
Will vote for Hanson at next election
Believes Dutts will be the next PM because he is so popular (gulp!)
Believes everything Alan and The Dutchman say on EVERYTHING
His only references for discussion are The Terror, 2GB, The Oz, Jones @ Co
Wants the ABC torn down (strange coz he never watches or listens to it)
Believes everything the Looters say on Terror and believes we will be wiped out
Following from this-all Muslims must go
All asylum seekers whether processed or not are “illegals”-must all be forcibly sent home
Says Manus is a tropical resort and the “illegals” should be happy campers
Other than that, he is having a great time munching on apple turnovers and deafening the neighbours!
Did one of those big speakers ever fall on his head?
Let him know I have Elvis first ever guitar, a home made one his uncle Bobby Cyril built for him from a “Tennessee Tiger” cigar box as a third birthday present.
Fully authenticated. He can have it for twenty grand, yeah I know it’s worth a million bucks any day of the week, but I have a soft spot for Rodent.
Christ, he’s not still flying is he? No don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.
Always liked the Rodent, one of the most erudite, renaissance type contributor we’ve had on here. Send him my best Bassy.
Good one, Bassy!!
Yeah, the Rodent is one of a kind. He has an amazing way with words.
Yes! He flogs them into a state of blind panic and pandemonium .
Maybe she got too old TV, or is too busy running her horse ranch, looking after her 10 grandchildren, going to the Ekka and mixing with those old bushies, fighting fires, fighting with her academic daughter-in-law, shooting crocodiles in Kakadu, supporting her recently retired husband who was a QF 747 or was it an A380 captain.
Then of course she started that exclusive school in Macedon. Oh and let’s not forget the smuggling of the poor unfortunate Indian orphan into Australia…..I wonder what happened to the child?
Sorry but I think “Annie” is absolutely no loss to this blog
Agree
Of course – she’s probably off in India running that orphanage, raising little IT consultants.
I think she stopped before then Trivalve. I hear she’s babysitting Bassman’s 17 kids.
Correct Triv, she wasn’t bullied anywhere, but that doesn’t fit with the victim narrative does it. My posts disappear each time I point out that it takes two, and to me it is all distasteful. But, there you go.
I remember a comment Annie made when Jack flagged he was setting up the new blog, that she wouldn’t be joining it.
She certainly was a character, though. I remember when she talking about her insider status on the Lindt siege because she had an ASIO mate who was in on the raid. It turned out that ASIO wasn’t there.
I think that she’s a loss, as she was good entertainment value.
It turns out that we might have had a few Walter Mitty characters here. Others that spring to mind are Mr Dry Teat and his mate Ezza, who were also very entertaining (but much more realistic).
Who could forget the terrible accident that took Mr DT. Unfortunately it didn’t take place on that autobahn he was driving on in the Ukraine when he managed to marry the love of his life in full Cossack gear whilst under fire!
I thought Mr DT died of pneumonia and was buried in only a shroud on his property. Not long after of course Pebbles gave birth to a girl having been told she could never have children. Oh and Ezza was right there in the birthing suite.
And who will ever forget the photos of not only the car crash in the Ukraine but the magnificent yacht he managed to buy for only a couple of million.
Whatever happened to Burke and Hare?
They were good fun – and had us all sucked in, well and truly!!
Annie did reappear very briefly under another name I believe as the heroine or hero helping out the Brisbane coppers. Laid it on a bit thick. The MO and syntax strongly suggested “Annie” anyway. I doubt Annie was female, or at least more than one person was involved.
I have a strong suspicion Dry Teat and Ezza are still up and about. Realistic? Did you ever see the face book page? And an old bloke doing 300 clicks down the straight at the Isle of Man! Faster than Guy Martin! What a legend!
Great pair of characters, FOS and wonderfully entertaining.
Remember that one well JB. I believe The Guv may have picked her/ him up on the impossibility of it all.
How goes life anyway old bean. Coat shiny, teeth fine, hoofs shoed?
Razor, I think it was an acquaintance of the Guv who picked Annie up on the ASIO thing.
JB, I didn’t think to visit Mr DT’s facebook page. Sad to say, I actually believed him at the beginning, particularly after we swapped soldiering stories. I’m pretty sure that he was actually in the military at one time.
PS “Annie” took the fall of Tony Abbott very badly, and the smug satisfaction of some of the posters here, not me of course, was probably too much. If Abbott were still PM I’m sure “Annie ” would still be around.
Geez, JB, although it seemed ridiculous at the time, I sometimes think she may get the last laugh re an Abbott return. Nothing would surprise me the way things are these days.
What could be better! Annie and Tony Abbott! They are as funny as one another.
I don’t think that Malcolm Turnbull will make it to the next election, as resilience doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.
My guess is that he will voluntarily leave Parliament.
As to who will take over as PM, I have no idea.
Electioneering is not his strong suit either TO.
I don’t think the Government is going to last 2 years TO – with or without Turnbull. If it was a horse we would demand to have it shot to put it out of its misery..
When factions in parties decide that it is better to destroy the other faction rather than compromise and produce a united front then it is all over.
The Libs are looking more and more like Labor when the DLP split off.
One must feel very uneasy when one has to share a room, where a confidential discussion is going on, with the likes of Whiney Piney. Interesting that his little effort at using GetUp has disappeared from the media.
“If it was a horse we would demand to have it shot to put it out of its misery..”
Hmmm, I recall coming across similar sentiments to the one above quite recently jS.
Speaking of horses, here’s a recent well-managed Coalishun strategy meeting:
https://www.facebook.com/pegasebuzz/videos/970552076352937/
Spotto TV. That’s a tremendous shirtfront Abbott puts on the Senator! Get that up ya jumper!
JS, I don’t think that Malcolm Turnbull has been involved in the factional brawling. It all appears to be one-way attacks from Abbott, Andrews and Abetz (a very apposite abbreviation, since they deserve a triple A rating for mayhem). The only one from the other side who’s fighting back seems to be Pyne.
However, I agree that it’s all very unedifying and bad for the country.
I think something has to happen, TO. Perhaps this citizenship thing will he the last straw.
I can’t see them recovering from a change in leadership though.
An election early next year maybe?
Boa, I can’t see an early election happening, given the current state of the polls.
An early change of leader, though, is something else, again. It worked a treat for Milton’s sweetheart. Who knows, we might see a three-way coalition, the Conservative One Nationals, with Peter Dutton as PM, Barnaby as Deputy and Pauline as Foreign Minister carrying the Aussie flag overseas.
If history is any judge TO, what normally happens in Australian politics when a government is failing is they hand over to a female. My bet is JB will get the gig so she can wear the blame for the ineptitude of her male predecessors.
I meant JB as in Julia Bishop not our much loved and very own Jeremy Corbyn.
???
Jean Baptiste TV……
I don’t recall this much outrage about s44 when it was just Scott Ludlam who had to step down.
I think of this part of the Constitution as a form of natural selection that sorts out those MPs who’ve fulfilled their due diligence requirements from those who haven’t.
Both good points. The first, beware unintended consequences, especially operating under the mistaken premise that thou art more holy as a birthright.
Two. You are quite right , the country will flourish under the stewardship of dinky di, true blue Aussies, not watered down pretenders.
Let us all rejoice!
And whats more, I’ve always suspected some of our politicians have been fifth columnists embedded as servants to the interests of foreign powers and their commercial interests.
Give ’em heaps.
Never a truer word spoken! I well remember Menzies as a 5th columnist for the Brits. (Although i thought that columnists were the 4th estate? Maybe it was commu mist?) I also recall his gushing, embarrassing soliloquy to our sovereign in her heyday, she who has now been unmasked as a world class tax rorter!
Also, calls for salaries to be repaid notably absent this time around.
I agree JOH the silence on that point has been deafening.
Jesus H Christ, Mr Insider, this would have caused consternation: “POTUS Trump’s Twitter account has been taken down by a rogue employee on their last day of employment, remaining offline for 11 minutes.
Twitter has confirmed the cause of the outage and says a review is ongoing.
Trump’s account, which has 41 million followers, was down at about 3.50 pm on Thursday, and returned by 4 pm.
The message that surfaced on Trump’s account, however, wasn’t the one that typically surfaces when an account is suspended for a terms of services violation.
Twitter initially said that the take-down was caused by “human error.”
Trump IS a human error
Hear Hear, Trivavle, Hear Hear.
11 minutes? tis naught, it is calculated that it would take 45 minutes to increase the collective IQ of the USA by any significant amount.
Right on queue sweet Jean with your anti USA rubbish, come on buddy time for that old “uppercut” in front of the mirror. Cheers
That’s right on “cue” Henry, but the “queue” to bag Trump is a long one. Funny thing is most USA citizens don’t approve of their predatory moronic President either. What do make of that Enery? Ae they “anti USA” too?
Think it through man.
This witch hunt started with a look in the ancestry of some Green Senators.
Does anybody know the genius who did it?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/senator-scott-ludlams-whistleblower-revealed-as-wa-barrister/news-story/d830a47dfbec5e2caf0469fa97e32404
You’re welcome…
This guy: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/expect-more-mps-to-fall-says-lawyer-behind-barnaby-joyce-downfall/news-story/a72522ef58f39f16097c73bd9b89b193
Mr Cameron, who has a keen interest in constitutional law, said he began digging in 2011 but wasn’t able to gain traction until several years later. He started with then Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott.
“When I started I was after Gillard and Abbott but I wasn’t having much joy getting the evidence; or I wasn’t getting much joy in the high court accepting the evidence that I had from the British border authority,” he said. Instead Mr Cameron turned to his home country of New Zealand for information and the “low lying fruit” that was Senator Ludlam.
I wonder about how many more we could all sing ‘You Oughta Know’ about (or ‘You Oughta Have Known’)? They’ve also certainly got one hand in our pockets as well.
In slightly more seriousness, this whole politics malarkey looks soon to be getting beyond a joke the way things are going. Turnbull, for all that’s going for him, looks to be almost trying to shift Billy McMahon off the bottom or second-bottom of the list of worst Prime Ministers this country’s ever had, namely by running a government of similar levels of farcicality (ironic (?) that his father-in-law was Attorney-General under Gorton and Silly Billy McMahon). I suspect it can only get worse. Maybe not as bad as the US, UK, or Spain, but I’m not exactly optimistic.
Doing a little research on Alanis Morissette, it turns out that many of her other album titles are also apposite here.
Jagged Little Pill didn’t have a bad track – a very good album.
Yes mid 1995 I remember it well the album was released while I was doing a 45 day hitch offshore in the Bass Strait working 18.00pm to 06.00am, did not see the sun the whole time I was there. A time when Australia was enjoying REAL leadership from the man who should have become President of Australia for life. Mr Keating, Unfortunately we were then subjected to over a decade of stagnation and diversion under the cons.
Couldn’t help yourself could you? A comment about a song becomes a segue into a political statement.
Yes Music stirs memories. Which lead to Memories of this Nation once having a great leader and leadership not seen since Mr Keating.
Billy McMahon was a hopeless PM, Rhys, but a shrewd businessman worth a fortune. He also was a fabulous Local Member for his seat of Lowe in Sydney. He knew down to the very Booth how may votes he had come election night. His weak PMship though was the springboard for Gough Whitlam and Labor to come to power in 1972. McMahon died of cancer aged 80yo in 1988. Cheers
Whitlam achieved more in 2 years then the previous 20 odd years of conservative government. He actually tried to Progress the Nation unlike the cons constant need to stagnate the Nation. No Surprises.
Havoc and Bright Lights or Under Rug Swept?
Can anyone tell me why in the case of Barnaby Joyce, why the second runner in New England was not offered his seat when his Kiwiness was discovered? A by-election just smooths it over. How he was able to act as PM whilst under that cloud is truly bizarre (almost as weird as the man himself).
“Kiwiness”, love it Trivalve great wording indeed. Good point too lots of questions being asked about Joyce’s situation. Cheers
Because he’s in the lower house.
Constitution doesn’t allow it TV. Those provisions only apply to the Senate.