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Welcome to Election Day 2019 in Australia
LOOK OUT for die-hard skeptics David Archibald running for the Senate in WA (Fraser Anning), also for Malcolm Roberts in QLD (One Nation). For Australian Conservatives (Cory Bernardi’s Party) Jonathan Crabtree, WA.
For smaller government or skeptical policies, check out Liberal Democrats, Australian Conservatives, One Nation, Yellow Vests Australia (was ALA), Australian Christians.
Find your electorate at the AEC and see who is running. Will the biggest pork barrel win?
— Jo
The brilliant Speedy (aka Mike Miller) lets rip
It’s been a while, but he’s back! Speedy satirizes the satirists — he once wrote a Clarke and Dawe satire so good it went viral and people thought they wrote it and had “seen the light”. Click to see Speedy’s past posts.
____________________ The Greens National Anthem
(Music: P. McCormick. Lyrics: R. Di Natale)
I’ll save the whale,
I’ll save the trees,
My plastic bag will save the seas;
I’ll save the carbon from the air,
And save the cuddly polar bear –
Which, by the […]
This election has been run on the lowest base primal tactics in Australian history. National policy has become a cult-like hate campaign. Which moderate centrist politician do we despise the most? The Alinsky-ite targeted smear campaign doesn’t attack a party, it isolates individuals, reducing voting to Good person: Bad person. The marked men and sole woman are those who question any part of the permitted agenda, especially on climate change. GetUp trashes their reputations with raining hate, manufactured scorn and lies that get cynically get “retracted” but never undone. GetUp also target the young and uninformed — using children as political activists. It only works because most of the Australian media repeats the toxic lines, and edits out the most informed views of half the electorate to be aired and debated. To be sure the ABC will seek out the odd conservative truckie or farmer (and the odder the better), but they won’t ask Australians with doctorates who disagree with their own political ideals.
Perversely if GetUp succeeds in outing the strongest skeptics from Parliament, they may become the core of a real centre-right force after the election, and freed from the Establishment grip, they may find their feet uncensored. […]
How much do Australians have to pay to change the global weather?
….
First, Bill Shorten called those who ask “dumb”. Then when that was described as his Hillary “Deplorables” moment he changed the insult from “dumb” to “liar”.
Here’s Bill Shorten in the third leaders debate:
“I accept the cost question is not a dumb question, …it’s a dishonest question.
The idea that you only look at the investment in new energy without looking at the consequences of not acting on climate change is a charlatans argument, it’s a crooked charlatans argument.”
-Bill Shorten, May 8th: iview, 2 mins 30 sec.,
Do you want to discuss the cost benefit ratio of a $500 billion dollar scheme the Labor Party is proposing to stop droughts and hold back the tide? Shorten doesn’t have an answer, instead he claims you shouldn’t even ask the question. You, sir, are a conniving cheat and a liar.
The definition of Charlatan:
A charlatan (also called a swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick or deception in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some […]
Suddenly there’s a whole lot of independent candidates running in Australia looking to copy the Kerryn Phelps success in taking the blue-ribbon conservative seat of Wentworth. They all say they are independent, but they are all sworn to climate action and GetUp supports most if not all of them. So if and when they say they’ll support a Liberal National Coalition government, ask yourself if GetUp is being fooled, or are Australian voters?
New party is born, Abbott says, as go-it-alone candidates join forces:
Brad Norington and Alice Workman, The Australian
“If they band together to promote their cause, they’ve effectively created a new political party,” Mr Abbott said.
“It’s a climate change party — it’s essentially a small-‘g’ green party. But because in seats like these the Greens would not get elected, they’re pretending to be something else in the hope of removing Coalition members of parliament.”
“It’s absolutely crystal clear in this electorate: vote Steggall, get Shorten. And around the country: vote independent, get Labor,” he said. “All of their protestations to the contrary are bunkum, absolutely bollocks, and the fact that GetUp is supporting nearly all of them, I […]
The Climate Cult wears the Fake Badge of Science, but when people don’t agree with them, they give up persuasion and just throw insults and eggs. Yesterday Dr Brian Fisher’s home was targeted after Simon Holmes a Court (son of one of the wealthiest men in Australia once) published Dr Fisher’s personal details on twitter.
Dr Fisher used to manage ABARE — The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics. He’s also been an IPCC reviewer, and served under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments as a chief adviser on climate policy. He released modelling of costs of both Labor and Liberal climate proposals in February, accusing both sides of politics of “engaging in a dishonest debate“.
Climate economist Brian Fisher’s home egged
Rosie Lewis, The Australian
An unnerved Brian Fisher is considering walking away from future independent economic modelling after his analysis of Labor’s climate policy led to his family home being egged when prominent clean energy activist Simon Holmes a Court posted his address online.
The managing director and chairman of BAEconomics, who has worked as a bureaucrat for Labor and Coalition governments, told The Australian yesterday it appeared “extremely difficult” to have rational, […]
Despite all the spin, the non-stop propaganda, a dreadful drought and the two “record” hot years, most Australians still don’t agree with the IPCC. This is exactly the same as it was in 2015 when the CSIRO last did a serious climate poll.
The IPSOS Climate Change Report
So we sit, a nation of majority skeptics, with no major party to vote for and hardly any TV media, academics or politicians making the case that the IPCC might be wrong and the Paris agreement might be a waste of time. No one is allowed to discuss it and national leaders stay cowed in silence for fear of being called petty names.
There is little to crystallize or focus this sentiment that doubts the experts, yet it exists, even in surveys designed by a team who appear to be doing their best to find and amplify the “believer” vote.
The IPSOS survey suffers from the the usual flaws: loaded questions, ambiguous terms and one sided analysis. Respondents are asked magical pie questions about solving problems as if they only need to wave a fairy wand and it shall be solved. They’re not asked how many dollars they personally want […]
The Australian Greens are actually proposing an end to thermal coal exports and coal plants and a ban on new internal combustion vehicles by 2030.
Their policy plan: Renew Australia 2030
The Greens policy blueprint suggests Australia would become a “renewable energy superpower”, with coal exports to be replaced by clean hydrogen, and the construction of a $6bn taxpayer-funded energy grid upgrade to develop new renewable energy zones.
— Ben Packham, The Australian
Coming soon, the Greens will ban planes, holidays and jokes…
Greens set 2030 cut-off for coal exports and coal-fired power stations
The Greens will propose 2030 as the cut-off point for thermal coal exports, and the shutdown date for Australia’s fleet of coal-fired power stations, in the party’s new climate and energy policy heading into the federal election.
— Katharine Murphy, The Guardian
Current thermal coal exports bring in $25 billion dollars each year. That’s a lot of money and taxes taken out of our economy. Which hospitals will the Greens close? (Maybe all of them, especially at night time). We could just ban people from getting sick?
Closing our 23GW of coal fired […]
The flipping of Wentworth just marks a the morphing of the two major parties which started long ago.
The Labor Party now represents the rich and the welfare dependent. The Liberals represent the Deplorable worker and what’s left of the Middle Class and there aren’t many of those in the seat of Wentworth. Turnbull was the perfect fit for the seat as it transited from being a safe Conservative Seat to a safe Collectivist-Virtue-Signalling Seat. He was the Labor-guy badged as a Liberal. Kerryn Phelps is the “ideal” replacement — the Labor-Green candidate badged as an Independent. This made it easier for doctors-wives, lawyers and journalists to vote for an option which was essentially Labor-Green, but had the appearance of being “smarter” and above all the riff raff.
Kerryn Phelps essentially stands for a Get UP approved Labor Green Christmas Wish List: More renewable parasites, death to coal, pandering to collectivist UN committees, a ban on fossil fuel donations (but no ban for government cronies who take big-government funds and donate it to big-government parties.). She wants to restore funding to The ABC because $3m a day is not enough. Heck, they lost 5% a while back.
The vote […]
Australia considers keeping some industry, mining, lights…
In a radical move, an Australian PM stands up for Australia (somewhat).
Finally, for the first time since Tony Abbott was PM we see Australia not rushing to adopt everything a foreign unaudited committee tells us. The IPCC has overreached — the economic neophytes and b-grade scientists are calling for the fantasy wipe-out of Australia’s main source of electricity, one of our top two export industries and a 100% write off of a resource that could last for the next 300+ years.
This appears to be a government wide policy — not only Morrison, but the Treasurer, and Environment minister, all in agreement. It’s a good but minor sign. There would have been a mutiny if the conservatives kowtowed to the UN.
We still have an obscene 26-28% target for the reduction of CO2. (And we still have the UN and anti-Australian ABC). But at least, no more “nonsense” money poured into climate conferences and “that big climate fund”. We live in hope.
IPCC push to dump coal-fired power not for us, says Morrison
Graham Lloyd, The Australian
Scott Morrison has rejected a rapid global phase-out of […]
From the headlines you might think Australia is going to stop giving free money to Renewables shareholders from 2020:
Australia abandons plan to cut carbon emissions
Scientists say this move amounts to walking away from the Paris Climate agreement.
— Adam Morton, Nature, Sept 2018, vol 561, page 293
Australian energy policy vacuum beyond 2020 officially confirmed
An energy policy vacuum in Australia beyond 2020 is now looking inevitable, with the baseload-focused reliability guarantee the sole remaining piece of the shelved National Energy Guarantee the Coalition government is hanging onto.
–PV Magazine Australia
My reading is that this is wild exaggerated spin (and that Nature used to be a science journal). Remember that Kevin Rudd signed away $7 billion dollars in a flick just before he left Parliament. He extended the RET subsidies to keep drawing from your electricity bills til 2030:
Electricity customers face an extra burden of between $3.8 billion and $7.5bn in “windfall” subsidies for renewable power generators in the next decade because of the stroke of a pen in the last months of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. Against advice from consultants, energy companies and […]
Australia’s new PM, when pushed, is a mini-Turnbull. The RET is the toxic renewable energy target, the guaranteed gift to unreliable, uneconomic performers. It’s the cancer on the system that makes the cheap generators die. At it’s best, the RET is theft through electricity bills to support industries in China in the hope that storms will be nicer in 2100.
RET is safe, says Morrison
Scott Morrison has assured key crossbenchers he will not dump renewable energy targets as he hedges against the possibility of the Coalition losing the Wentworth by-election and finding itself in minority government.
Morrison’s hand is forced thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, because of the Wentworth byelection to be held October 20th. Turnbull didn’t have to resign in a one-seat majority government, but he did. When you look at how well his resignation works for the Labor Party and the green-freeloaders, how could he say “No”? Thanks to Turnbull being such a bad choice as PM, he lost so many seats he could barely form government, so every byelection now means the entire government is up for grabs. His “safe” seat is no longer safe. Labor are well ahead in the polls there on Wednesday. […]
Viv Forbes sums it up brilliantly. — Jo
Politicians again show “Real Genius”.
Welcome to Futility Island
A British observer [in 1975 or so] noted “Any fool can bugger up Britain but it takes real genius to bugger up Australia.”
Australian politicians are again showing real genius.
Now, we have incredible tri-partisan plans to cover the continent with a spider-web of transmission lines connecting wind/solar “farms” sending piddling amounts of intermittent power to distant consumers and to expensive battery and hydro backups – all funded by electricity consumers, tax-assisted speculators and foreign debt.
We are the world’s biggest coal exporter but have not built a big coal-fired power station for 11 years. We have massive deposits of uranium but 100% of this energy is either exported, or sterilised by the Giant Rainbow Serpent, or blocked by the Green-anti’s.
Australia suffers recurrent droughts but has not built a major water supply dam for about 40 years. And when the floods do come, desperate farmers watch as years of rain water rush past to irrigate distant oceans.
Once, Australia was a world leader in exploration and drilling – it is now a world leader in legalism, red tape and […]
Wow. Australia may dump the RET — the renewable energy target — and stop trying to use our national grid to make global weather nicer for our great grandchildren? This would be legendary.
“Lowering prices will be more important than lowering emissions”
Don’t break out the Moët yet. Note two caveats.
1. The Daily Telegraph “understands” this to be true. Not definitively announced. Not passed through cabinet. Is this just testing the water to see how hot it is?
2. Australia will still try to meet our pointless Paris agreement some other way. Sure.
Will those big complex winner-picking, market fiddling schemes go?
Daily Telegraph
RENEWABLE energy subsidies and emission-reduction targets will be replaced with a focus on lowering electricity prices under the Morrison government.
New Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the federal energy policy has been “a mess” and says the fact prices have soared while blackouts persist means something has “gone terribly wrong”
The complex schemes Mr Taylor refers to are understood to be the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET), which subsidises the development of renewable energy.
The Daily Telegraph understands emission-reduction […]
UPDATE: Scott Morrison won 45 to Dutton 40.
Hours from now the Liberal Party members will decide whether Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison or Julie Bishop will be PM. Dutton is aligned with Tony Abbott, but Morrison seemingly and Bishop definitely, with Turnbull. I doubt Bishop has a chance. Morrison has not pinned his colors to the mast on climate change but the ABC is pushing for him according to Andrew Bolt — so we know who threatens the most sacred cows. Go Dutton.
Likewise, Fairfax are telling readers not to vote for Dutton: “In sunny Kooyong, Liberals find the thought of PM Dutton ‘appalling’“. So they managed to find a few people who don’t like him and turn that into a story.
Malcolm Turnbull is, as usual, being statesmanlike, thinking only of the Party:
Malcolm Turnbull promises a scorched earth for his Liberal enemies
He’s promised to resign and force a byelection in his seat. Tossing bombs as he leaves. On the plus side: no more Malcolm in Australian politics. Not unless the member for Goldman Sachs joins the Labor Party.
Will the new leader of the Liberals take the easy and obvious winning path of Abbott, Trump Dean, […]
Abbott is an incredibly powerful man. From the backbench he’s creating disunity, stopping legislation, ruining careers, and bringing down Prime Ministers, all just for the fun of it.
This has nothing to do with the 54% of Australians who are skeptics.
Turnbull has lost control of government. He cannot get legislation through the lower house. But hey, if only Abbott wasn’t there, Australians would be happy to buy expensive electricity. It would take a ‘miracle’ to save Malcolm Turnbull
Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald
“Turnbull thinks people will fall on their knees and say hallelujah!
Turnbull’s supporters are angry and frustrated at Abbott. But among many in the conservative faction of the Liberal Party, there is glee. Turnbull has been humiliated. And, to the conservatives’ great satisfaction, he has been humiliated over what they consider his pet fetish – climate change and carbon emissions.
“Turnbull is obsessed with this issue,” says a leading conservative MP. He thinks it’s a “‘greatest moral challenge of our time’ type of initiative”, a reference to the Kevin Rudd description of climate change. It was a challenge that Rudd failed because of an internal insurrection and now Turnbull […]
Good news for people who like political drama. Turnbull lives on, as does the lack of unity, purpose and meaning of The Australian Liberals.
Malcolm Turnbull wins partyroom ballot against Peter Dutton 48-35
The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has won a leadership ballot against Peter Dutton in the Liberal partyroom by 48 votes to 35 and Peter Dutton has resigned to the back bench.
Dennis Shanahan:
Malcolm Turnbull’s victory in the leadership ballot has solved little for the Liberal Party.
It has also shortened the odds of an election before Christmas and confirmed the rebellion against the Prime Minister is far wider than just a few malcontents.
9.9 out of 10 based on 58 ratings
Turnbull braces for leadership challenge
Simon Benson, Geoff Chambers, The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has lost the confidence of half of his Liberal Party cabinet colleagues as the Prime Minister’s backers admit they are bracing for a leadership challenge from Home Affairs Minister and leading Queensland conservative Peter Dutton.
As the leadership crisis engulfs the government, sources close to the Prime Minister were yesterday briefing that they were expecting a leadership challenge as early as today. Liberal MPs last night claimed that Mr Turnbull had begun calling colleagues to shore up support.
Mr Dutton’s camp believed that it could get to the required 43 votes to roll Mr Turnbull…
Peter Dutton may be ineligible to sit in Parliament. His lawyers say clearly no. Other lawyers say “Maybe”.
Anne Twomey, The Conversation
Section 44(v) says that any person who “has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” is disqualified from sitting as a member of parliament.
Dutton, as recorded in the parliamentary register of interests, is the beneficiary of a discretionary family trust. This trust, through its trustee, apparently owns two childcare centres […]
An imminent train wreck that has been coming a long time…
Supporters of an overthrow of the Australian PM are phoning in, numbers are being tallied:
by Simon Benson, Dennis Shanahan, Joe Kelly, The Australian
The leadership crisis engulfing Malcolm Turnbull has deepened, with cabinet ministers privately accusing the Prime Minister of cobbling together his plan to cap retail power prices in a last-minute bid to save his leadership.
The Australian is aware that a number of MPs called Home Affairs Minister and leading Queensland conservative Peter Dutton at the weekend to pledge support should he seek to challenge Mr Turnbull.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott told a Tasmanian Young Liberals meeting at the weekend he was looking forward to serving under a “Dutton government”.
Even PM’s allies ask: what use is he to us?
Simon Benson, National Affairs Editor, The Australian, says the word is that the challenge is “inevitable”.
Malcolm Turnbull is in full capitulation mode. In the face of a possible and increasingly likely challenge, he has buckled to rebel MPs, and in the process surrendered the future of his leadership to the demands of a few.
[…]
Too little, too late, not enough
Turnbull has to go.
Faced with a possible and imminent challenge from Peter Dutton, a limping Malcolm Turnbull has done the barest minimum just to stay in power. He has capitulated, and won’t try to mandate the Paris agreement through law, but he still wants the nation to meet the Paris agreement. If he had pushed it through Parliament he would have faced a leadership challenge for sure, and pundits are saying it’s still likely. How long will Liberal lemmings allow him to lead and give up the easiest, well trodden and winning election strategy?
Tony Abbott is leading the nation from the back bench.
When will the Liberals grow a spine and dump the Paris agreement completely?
Most of the party is too afraid to even talk about how much warming humans may be causing lest they be called a “denier” for doubting that it is not exactly the same as an unaudited, unelected and unaccountable foreign committee says. The nation can’t even have a sensible public discussion on climate change.
As Andrew Bolt says Turnbull’s leadership is now terminal. His clumsy gambit to present the NEG as a done deal too early […]
Normally a governing party, especially with a margin of “one”, would consult with its own members before it consulted with the opposition. Turnbull’s gambit appeared to depend on sneaking the plan past the conservatives and libertarian skeptics.
Turnbull in bid to quash NEG rebellion
Simon Benson, Joe Kelly, The Australian
It emerged last night that Labor had been given a copy of the NEG legislation, another move that has angered Coalition MPs who are yet to see it. A Liberal rebel told The Australian it was “disgusting” that Labor had the legislation but they were being asked to sign off on it sight unseen.
To forestall a revolt, Turnbull is said to be giving ground on all kinds of things, like ways to stop the big retailers gaming the market, but not “Paris”?
However, senior ministers have told The Australian this would not be enough to prevent Coalition MPs crossing the floor if the 26 per cent Paris emissions reduction target was not dumped or “decoupled” from the NEG.
The move to cauterise the growing threat of internal revolt came as the Prime Minister’s most senior conservative minister, Peter Dutton, suggested there […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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