Australia

Julia Gillard is in terrible trouble in Australia. The knives are sharpening and the men are meeting in the smoke filled rooms:

Julia Gillard - Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

This will be a long, cold autumn for Prime Minister Julia Gillard. With polling at rock bottom, an appalling run of bad press, blunders and deep rumblings among her backbenchers, the sound of knives on whetstones is growing louder.

While most talk of a coup is from anonymous MPs, former Labor leader and Regional Development Minister Simon Crean was moved to publicly warn Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd off any move to take back from Gillard the leadership he lost in 2010.

Other senior ministers, including those considered most likely to contend any leadership ballot, have equally as loudly rejected a challenge and have pledged loyalty to the beleaguered Prime Minister.

But nothing can stop the speculation. There have been some suggestions that Gillard should herself declare the leadership open for ballot within the next few weeks in the hope of catching Rudd before he musters sufficient numbers, thereby sinking his chances.

But most observers believe the danger period for Gillard will come between the March 24 Queensland State election and Parliament’s May budget session.

The Sunday Star-Times has the facts on farm sales to foreigners:

Fears that China is gobbling up New Zealand land are misplaced, official figures show.

Americans, Canadians and even Liechtensteinians are buying far more land.

Figures released by the Overseas Investment Office show that of the 872,313 hectares of gross land sold to foreign interests over the past five years, only 223ha were sold to Chinese.

People from the landlocked principality of Liechtenstein had purchased 10 times more land than the Chinese - 2,144ha in the same period.

The top buyers were the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Israel. The United States had 194 purchases for a total of 193,208ha.

Even when you add the Westpac farms formerly owned by the Crafars China is still lagging behind the round eyes in land investment in New Zealand.

Where was Labour’s concern as all the land sold in the previous 5 years to non-Chinese? Where was Winston Peters as seppos, canuks, poms, ockers and the evil Juice stole or birthright at market rates?

Oh that’s right…those sales are ok because they look like us.

The thing that galls me is that everyone opposed to these sales thought nothing of the fact that they were privately owned, and were like any other private sale sold to the highest bidder. I suspect that those who cried the loudest had the least.

Labour now has a bizarre policy that sales to foreigners are ok if they live here…and after all the racist outrage over the past month you have to wonder why any rich lister Chinese investor would even bother.

The missing component in all this is the fact that if a Kiwi buyer bought the farms…oh I don’t know…someone like Michael Fay…the purchase would be highly leveraged and the “profits”, such as they are, would flow offshore anyway to the Aussie banks that financed the purchase.

As for the facetious arguments that Chinese buyers of land won’t spend money in new Zealand…well just where are they supposing they are going to vet services from, or fencing supplies, or mechanics for their farm implements, or tankers to pick up the milk, or drivers to drive the tankers?

Be Gina Rinehart for a start, she seems to have a happy knack of pissing off pinkos:

LIKE many people who write about her, I don’t know Gina Rinehart. But I think I would like to. A person who can stir so much passion and debate would, I think, be stimulating company.

The mining magnate, Australia’s richest person, appears to be someone whose mere name spreads alarm throughout the left. Among the cadres of sometimes complacent and compliant journalists, she is deemed to be a right-wing ogre.

It seems that by taking a substantial shareholding in Fairfax Media (which owns this newspaper as well as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review), this one person is going to tear down society – and the media will be a tool, putty in her hands, to do just that.

The left try to tarnish her because her views are not in accord with their own.

Rinehart’s views, according to people who don’t know her, are on the ”far right of the political spectrum”, as academic and former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton told readers of this page yesterday. Rinehart has been vilified because she appears not to share the left’s concerns about climate change and because she is advocating turning the north of Australia into a special economic zone with tax breaks.

Nothing new in that; it has been advocated for years.

Apparently she knows the businessman Hugh Morgan, who was instrumental in setting up the H. R. Nicholls Society, which advocates workplace relations reform. And Morgan, we are told, is also close to the – shock, horror – Institute of Public Affairs, which supports liberalism and a free market.

It is clear Rinehart must be a fiend, albeit via association.

And some sections of the media are quick to snap up this ”conspiracy”. According to some reports, Rinehart has ”extreme views” on Australia’s economic direction and her raid on the Fairfax share register is about ”wielding influence and gaining political access in the corridors of Canberra”, rather than being the action of an investor.

Watch the video assessment…I’m a fan already…she apparently has a very low opinion of journalists, politicians and believes in small government.

A massive scandal has broken out in Australia over union donations:

The Health Services Union shelled out more than $600,000 in political donations to the ALP during 2010/11 despite amassing debts of almost $19 million.

The lion’s share of the cash-strapped union’s donations went to the NSW branch of the Labor Party to the tune of $300, 000.

The federal branch received just over $160, 000 in donations from the former union of the MP Craig Thomson.

The details of financial disclosure returns from political parties, associated entities, donors and third parties who incur political expenditures was released publicly today, revealing the extent of the HSU’s financial position.

As of June 2011, HSU East had amassed debts of $18.8 million.

The details were revealed as the national secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson, called for an immediate inquiry into Fair Work Australia over its investigation into the alleged misconduct of union officials, including Mr Thomson.

She said  the investigation – first flagged in 2009 – was taking far too long and raised the explosive possibility of government interference into the process.

I wonder of any unions here have been making donations despite mounting losses?

Tim Blair outlines the misrepresentations of Tony Abbott’s words by media and Labor flunkies. This misrepresentation led to a near riot.

Last Thursday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was asked this question by an ABC interviewer: “Mr Abbott, today is also the 40th anniversary of the tent embassy in Canberra.

Do you think it’s still relevant, or should it move?”

Abbott’s complete reply: “Look, I can understand why the tent embassy was established all those years ago. I think a lot has changed for the better since then. We had the historic apology just a few years ago, one of the genuine achievements of Kevin Rudd as prime minister. We had the proposal, which is currently for national consideration, to recognise indigenous people in the constitution. I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian, and, yes, I think a lot’s changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that.”

Those are the exact words that Tony Abbott used. What ensued was nothing short of a media, Labor party and Aboriginal beatup of a non-story. Manufactured outrage based on lies.

The trouble began on Thursday afternoon when word reached the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra, not far from where Abbott and Gillard were at a restaurant function, that Abbott had said something bad about the embassy. According to the PM, Hodges contacted Unions ACT secretary Kim Sattler, who then circulated the line among protesters.

Sattler, Hodges and Gillard all now claim that the message passed on was exactly as Abbott gave it on ABC-TV. That’s clearly not how protesters heard it, however. The impression they were given was that Abbott wanted the embassy to be torn down.

Remarkably, nobody in this scenario apparently sought to check Abbott’s actual comments. Hodges reportedly got his information from journalists at the restaurant. Sattler received her version from Hodges. The protesters heard from Sattler. Then all hell broke loose. As Sattler put it on her Facebook page (before changing her story): “Tony Abbott just announced the Tent Embassy should be closed down and a huge crowd from the Embassy went to greet him and he had to be rushed away with a police escort!”

If someone in this chatter-chain had paused to review Abbott’s gentle comments, perhaps trouble might have been avoided. Well, maybe not in the case of the tent embassy’s more excitable inhabitants, who would probably be provoked to screaming rage by the opposition leader quoting Enid Blyton. But what excuse can be offered by relatively senior political operatives, with their access to the latest devices?

Some media have been caught pants down too:

The media have even fewer excuses. A YouTube clip shot by tent embassy supporters last Thursday shows Ten reporter Amanda Hart at the protest being advised by an activist: “Don’t forget to say that Tony Abbott asked for the tent embassy to be shut down.”

Sure enough, on Ten’s 5pm bulletin, Hart’s piece included this line: “The protest was launched by Aborigines from the nearby Aboriginal tent embassy, sparked by Tony Abbott who said the embassy, now in its 40th year, should be shut down.”

Remarkably, the piece also carried a brief extract from Abbott’s ABC interview in which he didn’t say the embassy should be shut down. The authority of third-hand claims from some muppet at a protest is evidently superior to words direct from the source.

AAP’s first account of Abbott’s interview incorrectly summarised: “Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says it is time to move the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra. It was time it was disbanded, he said.” News Ltd isn’t blameless. A pointer on News’s PerthNow site over the weekend carried this inaccuracy: “Tony Abbott has defended comments about the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra that sparked pandemonium.” Wrong. It was sparked by invented words attributed to Abbott.

PerthNow also ran this: “Gillard brave as Abbott incites protest.” Again, wrong. And easily proved so.

Any kudos Julia Gillard had by ensuring Tony Abbott was looked after in the scuffle with protestors evaporated after it has been revealed that one of her staffers notified the Aboriginal protestors to the location of Tony Abbott.

An Australian Prime Ministerial staffer has been linked to yesterday’s ugly protest incident in Canberra, forcing his resignation and acutely embarrassing PM Julia Gillard.

In an early evening statement, the Prime Minister dismissed as ‘false’ claims that one of her staff had spoken to people at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy prior to yesterday’s angry protest that temporarily trapped her and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

But Ms Gillard acknowledges that a member of her media unit ‘did call another individual yesterday and disclose the presence of the Opposition Leader at the Lobby restaurant. This information was subsequently passed on to a member of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.’

The Prime Minister says the media officer did not ‘suggest or encourage violence’ but that his action ‘was an error of judgement. As such, the staff member’s resignation has been accepted.’

He is Tony Hodges, one of four press secretaries working in Julia Gillard’s media unit.

Now the story shows a Prime MinISter in a distressed and vulnerable state, photographed tripping up, and it was all caused by her own staff.

Julia Gillard is caught on camera telling police they can’t leave Tony Abbott behind when they extract her from a crowd of angry abos.

Abbott has spent years demonising Gillard. And she still has the compassion to want to rescue him.

Lucky she wasn’t wearing Manolo Blahnik’s for the dash to safety.

Julia Gillard isn’t one to hold back with her opinions and her opinion on Europe and their mass credit downgrades was that they had it coming:

THE Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has rubbed salt into the wounds of European nations reeling from weekend credit downgrades, declaring they had it coming for avoiding tough decisions.

Speaking after Standard & Poor’s stripped France and Austria of their AAA ratings and downgraded Italy, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia, Ms Gillard said the moves were the “price to be paid” by governments that had put off reforms.

“For too many years, European governments have deferred the nation-building, productivity-enhancing reforms which Australia has made the foundation of our dynamic and resilient economy,” she said yesterday.

“In stark contrast to Europe”, Australia had strict fiscal rules that would return it to surplus in 2012-13. European leaders should “swiftly undertake structural reforms to boost their economic potential and lift growth”.

The Maritime Union is worried about jobs, they should look to encouraging their $91,000 per annum container movers to seek jobs in the mining industry in Australia. There is a massive shortage of unskilled labour in Western Australia.

In the remote mining hub of Dampier, shipping company manager Gary Bawden sees the red-hot demand for workers first hand. From this month, he’ll be offering $120,000 a year to people looking to work as a deckhand.

The only qualification needed for the 26-week-a-year job is to have finished school and completed a seven-day safety course. The work is tough, with most staff flying into the West Australian town for five-week stints away from their families.

Average temperatures can be well above 30 degrees.

But more than anything, the generous pay packets reflect the chronic shortage of workers in the nation’s resources hot spots.

And while the jobs market may be slowing to a crawl in much of Australia, Bawden, who manages the port services division of boating company Bhaghwan Marine, has few doubts the shortages will intensify.

Activity in the business has nearly doubled in the past three years, and he thinks the rapid growth will continue.

”The only thing that’s going to stop it from growing is the lack of infrastructure,” Bawden says.

”It will probably keep going like this until about 2013-14, then we may see a drop-off.”

Bawden needs to offer such high pay to compete with offshore gas companies, which can pay a deckhand $160,000.

Of course they might not like having to actually work for 43 hours in order to get 43 hours of pay rather than the 28 hours they have to do currently.

The article highlights the folly of the Greens and Labour for opposing mining in New Zealand:

Scenarios like this are being repeated around the country’s mining hot-spots, raising growing concerns that labour shortages could become critical this year.

The Australian Mines and Metals Association, for instance, says the sheer volume of projects under construction in the new year will start to stretch the market as work begins on even more projects.

Citing figures from Pit Crew Management Consulting Services, it says the total pipeline of approved and unapproved projects is worth a staggering $588.5 billion.

But in a sign of just how much the boom is concentrated in states where most people don’t live, some $231.5 billion of confirmed projects are in Western Australia, with a further $75.1 billion of certain projects in Queensland.

The lobby group says demand for construction workers alone will accelerate to peak at 83,000 jobs early next year, while the operational workforce will not peak until it reaches 85,000 in 2016.

So while we are forced to build cycleways to create a few hundred jobs because the Greens and Labour oppose mining Australia meanwhile is creating 83,000 jobs by digging up their mineral resources.

National really should adopt those graffiti slogans of the election. Drill it, mine it, Sell it, Create Jobs!

Australians are increasingly seeing a clear difference in the main parties. The Liberals have clarity of purpose and focus on policy whereas the labour party is currently fighting off the perception they are deeply corrupt, fighting off scandals, out of touch, and desperate to stay in power.

Check out this speech by Brian Loughnane, the Federal Director of the Liberal Party:

Julia Gillard and Labor are obsessed with Tony Abbott. A typical Julia Gillard speech makes no mention of policy, provides no leadership or direction for the country but makes endless references to Tony Abbott. We must expect this to continue and to be a central part of Labor’s campaign as they try to avoid any scrutiny of their record, their internal divisions, their complete lack of policy and their alliance with the Greens.

As we all know, Labor is trying to pressure Tony Abbott and the Coalition to change course, to “understand” just how difficult minority government is and to support everything Labor does.

Again this sounds very reminiscent of our very own Labour party who have suffered and some still suffer from Key Derangement Syndrome. Julia Gillard’s increasingly shrill focus on personality politics is leaving voters with a bitter taste in their mouths.

The contrast with Tony Abbott could not be clearer.

Just compare his speech to the Liberal Party Federal Council in June last year to Gillard’s National Conference speech. Tony Abbott’s speeches are publically available on the Party’s website. In 2011 he made over 20 very significant speeches setting out the direction, priorities and policies for the economy under the next Coalition government. I invite any interested Australian to read them and compare them with Julia Gillard’s speeches over the same period and ask which Party really does have the policies, direction and leadership to grow our economy and improve the lives of all Australians.

In those speeches, Tony Abbott made clear the Coalition’s central objective is to restore hope, reward and opportunity for all Australians.

We will do this by growing our economy and strengthening our nation. We will help families get ahead by scrapping Labor’s damaging carbon tax to put downward pressures on rising prices, especially electricity, gas and fuel prices, to help reduce the cost of living pressures. We will reduce pressure on inflation and interest rates – by ending Labor’s waste, and paying back Labor’s debt and we will make sure the Government again lives within its means. As a result we will get taxes lower to help small businesses grow, create more jobs and build a bigger, stronger economy.

We will stop the boats and strengthen our borders. We will deliver better government and provide better services to families in health and education. We will help hard working Australians and small businesses to get ahead, and build a better life for themselves, and their families.

In his speeches Tony Abbott has made clear the priority for a Coalition Government will be to get the Budget back to surplus by ending waste and unnecessary spending so government debt can be reduced to take unnecessary pressure off interest rates. He has promised to help families and restore business confidence by abolishing the carbon tax and the mining tax. We will make a real practical difference to the environment with a 15,000 strong Green Army, we will restore local control of public schools and hospitals, and we will build national infrastructure based on proper cost-benefit studies. We will protect private health insurance, and reduce red tape to help small business grow.