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Four-time Walkley Award winning political commentator and Churchill Fellow, has returned to the fray over concern that the integrity of news dissemination is continually being threatened by a partisan media.
The AFP drug haul of a record three tonne of ecstasy (MDMA) and ice (crystal meth) was successful in “keeping billions of dollars worth of dangerous drugs off our streets”. If only that were true. Actually, the only success achieved was that of an AFP public relations coup.
"This is a win for the unions", said Premier-elect Daniel Andrews. It wasn’t a phrase he used during the election, but it was immediately after, and it could spell disaster for the Garden State. It also means a severe migraine for Abbott and don’t expect Andrews to offer him any Panadol or assist with his proposal for GST reform now that Vic seems determined to join SA and Tas on a disability pension.
Victorians’ short memories have enabled Labor's Dan Andrews to start a hot favourite in today’s poll. In a late rush Denis Napthine has closed the gap but it may not help him because at least one quarter of the ballots have already been lodged as pre-poll and postal votes.
Although he had little lapses in confidence Phil Hughes was capable of tearing a world class attack to pieces and it was exhilarating to watch him in full flight. But somehow you knew he was gone before he hit the ground at the Gee... and the players knew it too.
The Lebanese CEO of Australia Post, Ahmed Fahour, earned (that’s probably the wrong word) an unprecedented $4.8 million last year. It made the ABC’s Mark Scott’s $800,000 look miserly and made him the highest paid postman in the world, ten times higher than the top US postman who runs a business 20 times larger. Not bad for a public servant.
The timing is out, there’s little spark and what there is is retarded, the mixture is all wrong and it has a compression ratio of 2:1. Where’s the verve, the moxie, the passion from a vintage Party that was swept to power in record numbers? Where’s the ex-boxer with the guts to get up off the canvas, wipe away the blood, get on the front foot and start swinging?
Most fair-minded Aussies would expect the ABC, when facing cuts, to look first at its own payroll consisting of those outrageous salaries it went to extreme lengths to cover up. Half its yearly budget of $1.2 billion is spent on paying staff it can obviously do without 400 of.
Islamic organisations are now fighting back to protect a billion dollar industry that thrives on labelling Australian products as “halal certified”. Now that the extortion racket has been exposed, Aussie shoppers are shunning the “certified” products to the dismay of Australian manufacturers and processors.
In 2012, the Cole inquiry's findings led to a court case that found the Australian Wheat Board, between 2001 and 2005, had circumvented UN agreed sanctions on Iraq and paid millions to the Saddam Hussein regime to secure wheat contracts in a food-for-oil scam.
When a political Party is swept to power, as Abbott’s Coalition was, it seems undemocratic that it is prevented from enacting its legislation, no matter how odious it may be, by a rag-tag unrepresentative Senate... half of whom were elected in another political age.
But over in the US it is the coldest series of winters in living memory. "I can't remember and I don't think anyone else can remember this much snow falling in this short a period," said Mark Poloncarz of Erie County in Buffalo New York.
