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Showing posts with the label Australian politics

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

It amuses me to think that the Liberal Party have had two different leaders since the departure of Mr Howard from Parliament. Although that glorious occasion is rapidly dissolving into the gloomy fog of history, there remains trace elements scattered around the greater Hobart area to remind one of the event. This is but one. Indeed, Mr Howard, LOL!!

The best view of Canberra is from the back of a departing train.

So this title is a cutting little remark made by Percy Deane, the Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, in 1928. To continue the tale, after an extensive search, the present site was chosen! Although people claim that it was chosen halfway between Melbourne and Sydney, the dodgy pastoralists of corrupt and amoral New South Wales managed to wrangle and extra 230 kilometres closer than their more cultured and classy southern rival. Thus, utisiling nefarious means to marginalise the exceptionally superior states, the NSW government ceded the new Australian Capital Territory to the Commonwealth Government in 1910. In that same year, setting the scene for the kind of funsville that Canberra would go on to be, the ACT became an alcohol-free area ! A soulless patchwork of streets sprawled out over a flat and barren landscape, Canberra is truly the Michael Buble of Australian cities: clean, neat, polite, inoffensive and completely and utterly lacking in any character, charm or sw...

Dolly Downer is exiting the building...

I can’t really be bothered to enter too much into Alexander Downer’s latest theatrical outburst as he exits Australian politics, as I am more than aware that he's playing the same old kind of politics that he always has. That said, it is nice to see him go out as big a hypocrite as he has been throughout. His quote: "If Mr Rudd doesn't run a candidate in Mayo, well then he's slinking away in a cowardly way and he should be prepared to face up to the judgement of the people of Australia whenever that judgement is called to be made. I think they're treating the people of Mayo with contempt if they're not prepared to run a candidate when they're the Government of Australia." So let me get this straight, the guy who contested (and won) the seat of Mayo in the 2007 election, but whose party lost miserably and looks set for a good stretch in opposition. Perhaps understandably, he doesn’t like the taste of opposition so he bails out early, forcing a by-elect...