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Tag: independents

Independents Betray their Electors

October 22, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Our Federal member (for Mayo) has been in Wentworth over the last week campaigning for Kerryn Phelps, safe-schools supporter and promoter of the early sexualisation of children.

Now it is looking likely Dr Phelps will be returned, Ms Sharkie has formed an alliance with her and Cathy McGowan, and despite having promised not to support any no-confidence motions, now says she will do so unless a list of demands are met.

What exactly are these three blackmailing the government to get? Better conditions for their own electorates? Cheaper electricity? More attention to schools, the disabled, veterans?

Nope, nope and nope.

They want “action on climate change,” which will achieve no change to climate at all, but will make power prices higher, businesses less stable, manufacturing and processing priced out of competitiveness with Asia, more unemployment, and less tax revenue for the government, which means either higher taxes for everyone else, or less money for schools, roads, hospitals.

Then they want illegal immigrants who have not been able to pass security checks or who simply refused to co-operate with authorities to be settled in Australia. At what cost, in both money and security risks?

These are their two “top priorities.”

What about the people who elected them?

What Oakeshott and Windsor Should Be Saying Now

August 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Andrew Wilkie wouldn’t recognise a pimple on his own nose. But Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor just might. This is what they should be saying:

After the general election I believed the interests of my electorate, and the people of Australia, would best be served by a Labor government.

I was wrong.

This government has been the most inept in Australia’s history. Its major projects and policy announcements have been a series of expensive and embarrassing failures.

Whatever you may think of the carbon and mining taxes as policy, the government has no mandate for them, and in the case of the carbon tax, can only introduce it by breaking a clear pre-election promise.

The government’s reluctance to act over allegations involving the member for Dobell have made it clear that the leadership of the Labor Party is more concerned with holding onto power than with justice, or the rights of ordinary Australian workers.

Anthony Albanese’s description of hundreds of truck drivers and their families and supporters as ‘the convoy of no consequence,’ demonstrated the contempt the Labor Party feels for the concerns and aspirations of Australian families and small business owners.

A government can only function fairly and effectively if it governs with the consent of the people. The Labor Party has lost the right to claim that consent.

As a result, I have to announce that I intend to support the Leader of the Opposition in a motion of no confidence in the government.

Not only would Oakeshott and Windsor be doing the right thing, and earning the gratitude of the entire country, this is the only conceivable way their own political careers have any chance of continuing past the next election.

What The Heck?

September 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The blighters were just playing games when they checked Tony Crook’s intentions.

What was the point of that? Just to prove that they are the big boys now? No one in the playground is going to push them around, cause it’s their turn to do the pushing?

Based on their performance over the last week, these guys will be holding the country to ransom for as long as this dismal government lasts.

I wasn’t fond of the title ‘The Three Amigos.’

But maybe it is not so inappropriate. In the film of that name, the three amigos were really three complete drongos, pretend cowboys in flashy outfits, who were so dumb they thought ‘infamous’ meant really, really famous.

Maybe our three amigos thought the same thing. Except that now it’s the two amigos, Max Hatter having decided to go it on his own and support the Coalition.

Except that a better title would be ‘tushki.’

It sounds like it should mean ‘little arse,’ and that would be appropriate too, but it doesn’t

In February of Viktor Yanukovych won the Ukrainian presidential election with the smallest possible margin, and the support of probably about a third of Ukrainians.

Following that election, 16 parliamentary delegates deserted their own party, and the people who had voted for them, to enable Yanukovych to form government.

They have become known as the tushki. It is a Russian word, used as an insult. It means ‘roadkill.’

As the German political scientist Andreas Umland noted in late March in the Kyiv Post, “Ukraine is now less democratic than it was. . . . With their change of allegiance the tushki have grossly misrepresented the preferences of the Ukrainian voters.”

Welcome to the new Australia.

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