Keating, Kennett, Kerry speak out, Waleed Aly ignores own advice

Plus comedy capers with Kerry O’Brien as Clive Palmer reveals: the truth is out there.

What Paul Keating said. Bill Shorten, doorstop, yesterday:

What Paul Keating said is that a 15 per cent GST is fiscal folly.

What Paul Keating really said. Fairfax, yesterday:

To simply give the commonwealth cabinet, any cabinet, another $30 billion to spend at its discretion is fiscal folly in the extreme.

More of what Paul Keating had to say:

If the public were to agree to give the political system such a load of money, the political system would simply go and spend it.

And more:

The aim of policy should be to make the private sector larger, not to ­restrain it with a burgeoning public sector.

What Jeff Kennett said. The Herald Sun, Tuesday:

Can I warn very strongly against hypothecating any increase in the GST to specific government expenditures ... It is a short-term, diluted fix … Any increase in taxation removes from federal or state governments the pressure to adjust their own levels of spending … It is not good enough for the states to be demanding more money from Canberra before they have demonstrated not only restraint, but a reduction in their own expenditures. In the same way, it is not fair for the commonwealth to raise taxes ­before they have demonstrated a genuine reduction in their own expenditures.

What Waleed Aly said in a five-minute segment on why we shouldn’t say anything about “neo-masculinist” “Roosh” Valizadeh. The Project, Channel 10, Tuesday night:

This man-beast is … focused almost entirely on one thing: increasing his public profile.

More of what Aly had to say on the importance of saying nothing about Roosh in the mainstream media:

Once the mainstream media takes the bait, Roosh trolls the public ... revelling in the free publicity and extending the life of the news story

Perhaps he was virtue signalling with all this moralising on the terrible consequences of doing exactly what he did. Aly concludes:

Having manufactured this outrage, Roosh uses the spotlight on him to sell books, and no doubt plan his next speaking engagement, where he will entertain his audience with an arrangement of words that would not be out of place were they scrawled, misspelt, on the back of a piss-soaked broken public toilet door.

Someone’s been watching The X-Files reboot. Clive Palmer, Twitter, yesterday:

The #Liberal Switcharoo. @TurnbullMalcolm elected for Election. @TonyAbbottMHR to replace him after. Turnbull implements all Abbotts policies.

While someone else seems to be hinting at older, uglier conspiracies. NSW MLC Shaoquett Moselmane on Sharri Markson’s report in Tuesday’s The Australian on Labor and Israel, Twitter, yesterday:

Susan Mackay: @Shaoquett will you respond to Markson’s piece?

Moselmane: Her article is exactly the kind of power Lobby group have over some people.

Nice to see Red Kez cracking a joke at his own expense now that he’s retired. Kerry O’Brien, ABC News website, yesterday:

I think some people regard gladiatorial interviewing as good interviewing, and I never did.