News That's Fit To Punt - 08/Dec/2015

The Nile Runs Deep Here

That's the thing about Tony Abbott - reality has no bearing on his thinking. This led to many a comedic moment. One certainly does not wish him back as Prime Minister, but he was always good for a gag. And so today we learn that he thinks that he would've beaten Bill Shorten's ALP at the next election.

Tony Abbott has fired a broadside at the plotters who brought him down, defiantly declaring he would have led the Coalition to a victory at the next election. 

The comments came in an interview in which he flagged an intention to stay around in Parliament; called on Malcolm Turnbull to spend a week in an Indigenous community each year; advocated a more robust defence of "superior" Western values in the struggle with Islamic extremism; and said his first budget was fine.

As they say, pigs may pilot A-380s into Heathrow high on acid.
Uh... no.

Yet, that's not the most crazy thing in the SMH today. It's Lord Monckton, king of the climate change denialists who thinks Abbott's Prime Ministership was cut short thanks to the UN.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott was brought down because of his anti-global-warming views and would have pushed back against plans to form a world government at the Paris climate summit if still in the job. 

These are the views of leading sceptic Christopher Monckton who, in an interview with Fairfax Media, also said Australian institutions such as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO were being examined by "a formidable team of scientists and lawyers" for possible fraud over manipulating their climate data.

There's stupid, and then there's utterly retarded, and then you have Lord Monckton who thinks there is a global conspiracy surrounding climate science. And of course, he likes Tony Abbott, anode course he thinks it's a big plot with Malcolm Turnbull colluding with the UN - led by Ban-Ki Moon - who rolled Abbott to bring in a world Government when the easier explanation is that the UN had absolutely nothing to do with it. Malcolm didn't need Ban-Ki Moon's bidding to roll Tony Abbott, he just needed Tony Abbott's outlandish incompetence to open the door. 

Seriously, this wasn't the Dismissal. It was a routine party room coup. Abbott & Credlin were nutty-stupid. They had to go. Any suggestion that it went deeper than the 30 losing polls in a row needs to come forward with documented evidence. 

The Point Is To Fuck Upwards

An old bit of advice I heard in LA had it that the point of working your way up in life is to fuck upwards. If you can do that, you'll find your career on the rise. 

I don't know, it's harder to do than it sounds. But then there's Joe Hockey who clearly fucked up, and for his troubles is going to America as Australia's Ambassador. Hockey says had he stuck around in politics, he would have been consumed with thoughts of vengeance. 

If he's saying politics beat him, then he's saying he fucked up; and now he's getting a golden handshake. That sure sounds like a form of fucking upwards to me. 

This Is Not My Beautiful House

Ah, tax reform. Music to the ears if you're a certain kind of bureaucrat. Martin Parkinson, our top mandarin thinks this is a 'Once In A Lifetime' opportunity to enact tax reform.

Former treasury secretary Martin Parkinson has warned that Australia's living standards have started to fall and the country has a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to pursue serious tax reform, which must touch all levels of government. 

Dr Parkinson, who was recently hired as the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, says he likes the leadership styles of British Prime Minister David Cameron, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and NSW Premier Mike Baird because they treat the public like "adults" when explaining the need for tax reform. 

He says Malcolm Turnbull has a similar style to those leaders, and we have a good chance of getting serious tax reform in Australia with him as leader.

At a certain level you'd think that Malcolm Turnbull has a cult of personality going. 

Of course, what he's proposing to do is to raise the GST. 

At least they are considering widening the GST base, which would actually be preferable to raising what's in place. People get snarky about education being included in such a package but really, if people are willing to pay $28,000 p.a. for a private school education for their kid, that looks like something that should be hit with a GST to make things fairer. Especially in the context where the Federal Government does dole out money to private educational institutions, and won't stop this inequality-increasing policy. I'm sure all the politicians who send their kids to private schools would put the kibosh on such a move, so it's not likely, but yes, tax those private schools properly.

And tax the churches. And the businesses owned by the churches...