Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Creep me out! Watch the Howards at work on a disabled kiddie (not one of those messy underprivileged ones, though, must keep the blouse nice) in PM's YouTube 11 November 2007.

Crikey! Isn't that Turnbull's turf? It's a good thing baboons aren't in danger.

Is there anything left in the barrel, other than simians?

Here's a warning to Huggin' Howard from Lawson: 

We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

Don't hold us too tightly, John, we don't want to go down with you. 

...

There's a full account of the funeral service for Peter Andren at the ABC website.

George Megalogenis seems to have struck a chord with his Boom-time blues:

The paradox is Rudd, like Howard and Costello, needs to first consider what China means for the economy today. For the second time since federation, Australia’s quarry is feeding an Asian neighbour’s rise to the status of economic superpower. Australia failed the capture the true value of the Japan-led boom in the ‘50s and ‘60s because it used the cash to build a self-defeating tariff wall. The danger is that whoever wins on November 24 is already on course to repeat the error by pampering voters beyond the point of prudence. 

He seems to be saying the "wealth" created by digging stuff out of the ground has been spent on useless baubles and tragically inflated real estate prices. I guess we won't hear any of the partisan leadership opening up discussion of what will happen when the Bubble pops.

Michael de Angelos:  "We had 13 years of a Labor government before Howard's rise and life was pretty good under them."

It might have been for you because you had a job, but there were 100s of thousands that did not. Howard got the docks moving again, or would you rather go back to the days when business could not get containers off the wharves? With Rudd in power, you are kidding yourself if you don't think it will be pay back time for the union thugs. The ETU will be at the forefront.

Look David, they had the power of final say-so over rate increases, but handballed to the Reserve whilst on an ideology binge.

They encourage the housing bubble with every pork-barrel policy they could think of, then abdicated their responsibility, deserting their victims at the psychological moment. Yet they demand loyalty from the very same people they kicked in the guts and continue to insult up to this very moment. They created a bloody mess, than got up and walked away like true pathologs, leaving their victims to stew.

For further explication, refer Cloud's comment!

Did anybody else notice this in the Oz on Friday?:

Car Firms Plead for PM's Help

THE Australian motor industry has warned the Government that the viability of "two, or even three" of the nation's four car-makers is in doubt, threatening the long-term jobs of at least 7000 workers in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Toyota, Ford, Mitsubishi and GM Holden warned the Government last month that head offices in Tokyo and Detroit were under financial pressures and reluctant to commit more investment to Australia.

They wrote to the Government demanding a "serious review" of the $3 billion car assistance plan, the freezing of tariff cuts and "real assistance", including a rebate to develop hybrid "green" cars.

A confidential submission on the car industry to John Howard from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, dated October 3, warns that the reaction of "stressed global parents" of Australian operations "could see the exit of Mitsubishi (in Adelaide) some time in 2008 with serious question marks on Ford being able to survive (as a producer) in Geelong and Broadmeadows (in Melbourne)".

However, despite Labor's pre-election promise to review the pace of tariff cuts, the car-makers said they feared conditions for the industry could deteriorate under a Rudd government. The companies said they were deeply nervous about the possibility of pattern wage bargaining and more militant unions emerging if Labor rolled back the Government's industrial relations laws.

Australian car executives told the Government the prospect "of 'union trouble' or higher wage costs would be a 'poison arrow' for a regional Australian operation ...".

"It is clear there is a deep nervousness about the possibility of pattern bargaining, despite public assurances by the alternative government to the contrary," the PM&C submission says.

"The proposed abolition of AWAs is not really an issue for the industry as few employees are covered on the shop floor, but the possibility of wage outcomes being set without regard to the economic capacity of the individual enterprise to absorb is a real concern," the report says.

Accompanied by this:

Rudd a Job Killer: Howard

JOHN Howard has recrafted his economic pitch as an appeal to battlers, warning that a Labor government would destroy 400,000 jobs as the cost of a restoration of power for trade union bosses.

Pleading to voters to allow him to complete his transformation of Australia "from a welfare state into an opportunity society", the Prime Minister has also mauled Kevin Rudd's "new collectivism" as a job killer and inflation driver.

The full-blooded Coalition attack came as the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed unemployment was 4.3 per cent in October - up from 4.2 per cent in September but still near 33-year lows. The figure came with jobs and the economy already running hot as a campaign issue in the wake of Wednesday's 25-basis-point rise in interest rates to 6.75 per cent - the first increase made by the Reserve Bank during an election campaign.

While the Government believes the renewed focus on the economy has finally given the Coalition a point of attack against the popular Mr Rudd, Mr Howard said economist Richard Blandy had estimated Labor's plan to abolish Work Choices would destroy between 200,000 and 400,000 jobs.

"Labor is the anti-jobs party in this election campaign," Mr Howard said at a Melbourne press conference. "They are prepared to give away jobs to bring back union power."

And then this from The Age:

Car Industry Pulls Rug Under Report

The Australian motor industry's peak body has categorically denied a report which Coalition heavyweights have used to cast doubts about its future under a Rudd government.

The report, on the front page of a News Ltd. newspaper, stated that the viability of "two, or even three" car makers was in doubt, threatening the jobs of up to 7000 workers.

The Federal Treasurer, Mr Costello, told reporters today: "This should strike a chill into all Australians because business is starting to worry about union militancy under a Rudd government."

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says Labor's industrial relations policy would be "a poison arrow" for Australia's car industry

Mr Downer said the ALP returning more power to unions would increase industrial action in the motor vehicle industry and result in productivity declines.

"The motor vehicle industry in Australia are saying the prospects of union trouble or higher wage costs would be a poison arrow for regional Australian operations trying to convince a parent company to invest hundreds of millions of dollars of capital in new car models," Mr Downer told reporters in Adelaide today.

However, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries refuted the claims in a statement from its chief executive, Andrew McKellar.

"These claims and other claims made in the article about the industry' s representations to Government are wrong," he said.

"No such letter exists, nor has there been any industry discussion on industrial relations matters as suggested in The Australian's story," he said.

Margo: hmm, Dennis Shanahan, eh? Anything in the Oz today standing by the story or correcting? If the denial is true, there's a smell of dirty deeds like the Liberal Party scam on Labor in the last week of the 1996 camapign. Remember that? Starring Ralph Willis. Watch carefully for Liberal Party dirty tactics from now on.

Mary j Shepherd, today we learn that over 100 children die in NSW because of the incompetence of DOCS and NSW Labor. Do I hear you ranting and raving about it, NO. Today we learn that the T-Card has been cancelled in NSW and has cost the taxpayers $64 million, more incompetence from Labor. This week Reba Meagher spent goodness knows how much money cleaning up the grounds of the North Shore Hospital prior to the enquiry, but hospital waiting lists are still long.

This sort of thing is going on in every State, and will give you some idea of what will happen if Labor wins on 24th November. The working families are in for a tough ride and I feel sorry for them. Rudd has promised a technical school in every school in the country. How long do you think it will be before that is achieved? Where is he going to get the teachers from? He has promised to cut waiting lists in hospitals: how long before that is achieved? Carr promised to do it in NSW and nothing happened. All that will happen is that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, but you will have a Labor government. Anybody care to predict which union pull the first really big strike as they flex their muscles – the building unions perhaps.

I really have no idea how you are going survive three years of Labor, Mary j.

I guess he got older, Eliot.

Besides, 'Get off oil addiction': Greens.

Trevor, it pains me to say it but, on the issue under discussion, Howard is right and his detractors are wrong. Expressing sorrow is not the same as apologising. Getting bogged down in a (losing) semantic argument does the opposition no credit. Let them and the commentators take him to task on failing to apologise when he should, if they want to; let them stop wasting time on this nonsensical debate on whether or not what he said was an apology.

PF, did you catch up with the Richard Ackland article about the hidden-away so-called debate between Ruddock and Ludwig?

No national  TV audience for that debate. Anyone else puzzled at that?

PF Journey: "Peter Costello – for telling the Melbourne radio announcer John Faine in an off-the-record conversation recently that "there will not be a rate rise in November, take it from me" [my emphasis].

Jon Faine is adamant that Mr Costello's "punt" that there would be no November interest rate rise took place in a conversation that, while it happened after their on-air interview, was never expressed to be "off the record". I think, also that Barrie Cassidy (who was appearing on the show a little later that day) backs Faine's version of the event.

I would have thought that Mr Costello, after Michael Brissenden et al.'s disclosures regarding his (Costello's) revelations at that infamous dinner, would be more cautious about claiming "off the record" status.

I must also say that, in the many years that I have listened to his program, I have formed the view that Jon Faine is a person of considerable integrity.

To use the language applicable to the Spring Racing Carnival, it's all a matter of form...