NSW Premier Mike Baird faces three challenges: ICAC’s outing of idiots in his ranks, pressing party reform and an election in six months.He’s only been premier since April, when Barry O’Farrell resigned after misleading ICAC over a $3000 bottle of Grange. O’Farrell was not accused of corruption.
AUSTRALIA has been forced to rapidly recalibrate its response to the threat of Islamist terrorism over the past few months. International intelligence failed to predict the speed with which the extremist Islamic State has swept through parts of Syria and Iraq.
BLAME for the extension of the carbon tax must be laid at the feet of the arrogant and irresponsible Clive Palmer, the ringmaster of his eponymous circus.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard ignored the deaths of more than a hundred asylum seekers but broke her holiday to announce new funding for a car park.How sick are her priorities?Is this what she regards as national leadership?
Prime Minister Julia Gillard wrapped herself in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Bill Shorten jumped to promote it.But no real money was set aside to get it up and running and its start-up date was pushed into the never-never land of hopey-wishey Labor policies.Now, it is revealed that it will not apply to those who become disabled after the age of 65.
The one story which caught the eye today was the account of the recovery of the young girl thought lost in the Boxing Day tsunami two days short of eight years ago.Ripped from her mother’s arms by the surging waves, Wati was believed dead after her village, Unjong Baroh, in West Asia, was obliterated.According to the wire reports, the girl’s mother, Yusniar, had been trying to take Wati and her two siblings to safety but the child lost her grip on her mother’s arm and was swept away by the deadly wave.For years her family thought Wati was dead, one of the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean, killing 250,000 people in 14 countries, including 26 Australians.However, on Wednesday the now 15-year-old walked into a coffee shop in the nearby city of Meulaboh and told staff at that she was trying to get home, according to Indonesia’s Antara news agency.The teenager could not recall her parents’ names but remembered one relative: her grandfather Ibrahim.Locals who knew Ibrahim immediately took Wati to his house, where the teenager was quickly identified as his missing granddaughter.Ibrahim sent for Wati’s mother, Yusniar, and father, Yusuf, who recognised their long-lost daughter from a small mole and a scar above her eyebrow that she received when she was six years old.
There is a discernible unease about job prospects for the coming year.It has gripped small and large business operators around the nation, except those involved in the mining industry.The uncertainty is palpable.The complete distrust of the Gillard-Labor-Green-Independent minority government has fed into the general uncertainty about the economy, triggered in part by the failure of the US and the European Community to show any global leadership.Top research firm CoreData has suggested the number of unemployed people in Australia will jump by nearly 106,000 next year, assuming the labour force grows at its current rate and the unemployment rate rose to 5.75 per cent, as predicted, according to The Daily Telegraph today.
If now is not the time for the politics of boat people deaths, when will it be time for the Rudd-Gillard Labor-Green-Independent minority government and its ABC propagandists to address this lethal policy?Former Labor Opposition leader Mark Latham told Sky News’ Australian Agenda program yesterday that the onshore processing championed by the Greens was a “moral outrage”. He said there was nothing compassionate about encouraging people smuggling. “The boats sinking and families dying is a direct consequence of the co-called compassionate people who support onshore processing,” he said.“I just still find it an amazing disconnect between the way in which the Greens and the Labor Left talk about this issue and the way in which reality deals with it.The Greens don’t care.
Christmas Islanders will today unveil the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard memorial to dead asylum seekers. Residents of the extraordinary little island to the north-west of Australia will be asked to remember the more than 50 dead who died a year ago when their people smuggler boat lost power and crashed into the unyielding craggy cliffs which rim most of the exotic islet.
Even the sleazy, scandal-ridden NSW Labor Party is streets ahead of its federal counterpart when it comes to ethics and morality. Hard to believe, isn’t it? NSW Labor has seen lying politicians, paedophile politicians, drug-using politicians and now it has taken steps to suspend former Labor minister Ian Macdonald in the wake of corruption allegations. The move followed a request from Opposition Leader John Robertson, whose own involvement in the Labor Council’s Currawong holiday resort scandal has yet to be fully explained. Yet Robertson, who was also deeply involved in the abortive sell-off of the State’s power industry, has now taken a principled position on Macdonald.
The Gillard government has been working hard to destroy every reform that made Australia prosper under the Howard government.Now it is killing off the Australian Building and Construction Commission.The ABCC was formed following a Royal Commission which found widespread corruption among construction unions.
The Gillard Labor-Green-Independent government has massively overreached with its new mining tax.Labor will be everywhere today boasting about its new slug on miners, talking up the funds that will flow to the Commonwealth, after buying off the Greens and the Independents to get the main mining tax Bill through the Lower House early this morning.But thinking Australians should take the time to consider the implications of the legislation before applauding the government.
Original URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/piers-akerman/page/141