And being paid and superannuated while they wait for their next outing.
Top men.

And women…one reportedly on $900k, which I find astonishing.

Roger, ours was a bit of a Young Ones house. My room was taller than it was wide. We had a couple of student nurses who ended up marrying guys who were playing for Carlton at the time. My mine source of nutrition was the NAB staff canteen on Collins St at lunch time.

Probably not steam – the départment de Paris banned steam trams in 1895.

Now, can we please get back to offal?

Only if it is steamed tripe.

Skeletor and Cormann’s main role was ensuring the flow of WA mining donations flowed through their respective offices.

File that with other media myths:-

Yep, you would have to be a J School grad to be believe any of those.

Indigenous voice risks perpetuating a long history of failure
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

12:00AM March 4, 2023
118 Comments

In Noel Pearson’s recent article in The Weekend Australian, “Conservatives eat their own words on voice” (25-26/2), he argues the concept was born from constitutional conservatives who he now describes as characteristically “fickle”.

The concept may have begun in 2014 as a collaboration between constitutional conservatives and Indigenous leaders but with the help of a senior adviser on the voice committee, Marcia Langton, it has morphed into an entity she argues should compel government to listen to it, otherwise it would be a “toothless tiger”.

Contrary to Anthony Albanese’s suggestion that it wouldn’t have the power to challenge government in the High Court, Langton is adamant that is exactly what it should be able to do. No constitutional conservative in their right mind could now support such a concept.
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Pearson might find it cathartic to attack conservatives he claims once backed the concept of the voice, but his comments fail to argue what he perceives to be the merits of this gargantuan race-based constitutional change.

He once supported my fight to maintain the cashless debit card for vulnerable Australians – now abolished by the government he supports on the voice. He has since publicly denigrated my opposition to the voice.

At least the conservatives he has expressed disappointment in provide a sound argument to the dangers of the Yes vote; as opposed to making personal attacks.

Contrary to the argument by voice proponents that Aboriginal Australia has been “voiceless” and needs an overarching entity to hold parliament and executive government to account, Pearson himself is among those who have had a seat at the table for decades.

He has been a key player in the Indigenous policy space since the early 1990s. Through the establishment of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership during 2011 to 2016 alone his efforts have attracted more than $47m in government funding for the design and implementation programs to advance communities.

Pearson has had the ear of many prime ministers of both Labor and Coalition governments over the decades. His has been a prominent voice to parliament, despite never taking the opportunity to run for a seat himself.

Another proponent of the voice, Pat Turner, who is currently the head of the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations – a body many would consider is a voice to parliament – has also in her own words, “held senior leadership positions in government, business and academia for more than 40 years, and had extensive experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs”.

In fact, over those decades her roles included deputy secretary of the Department for Aboriginal Affairs, deputy secretary for Prime Minister and Cabinet which oversaw the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation; chief executive of the now dismantled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission for four years, senior managerial positions in Centrelink and the Department of Health, and chief executive of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations body since 2016. As head of NACCHO, Turner has been responsible for the delivery of services to the tune of more than $27m in grants funding.

In more recent times, Turner’s influence on federal parliament has ensured a redesigned Closing the Gap process. During the 2023 anniversary of the apology, she presented a fresh set of plans. Addressing the entire senior executive of the Albanese government she exclaimed, “we know that outcomes for our people can be much better when central agencies are playing a leadership role”. With her influence, Turner has convinced the Albanese government to increase investment toward Closing the Gap by $242m.

She has been a vocal advocate for more financial investment into Aboriginal disadvantage despite the more than $30bn investment made year in, year out, regardless of who’s in power.

In a recent interview with ABC’s 7.30 Turner argued that governments fail to invest and that a voice to parliament would, “keep on saying what we’ve been saying for decades, ever since we’ve all been involved because of the lack of investment by governments”.

Turner goes on to say that, “having a voice won’t stop the need for the investment by governments in programs – governments still have to do that”. In other words, the voice is not a new approach to solving disadvantage but simply the current framework of voices that exist in various different “central agencies”, corporations, advisory committees, land councils – and so on – that will be embedded within our Constitution.

These are examples of merely two influential voices to parliament, but there are many more. Within parliament itself, four very senior Aboriginal parliamentarians – minister Linda Burney, senator Malarndirri McCarthy, senator Patrick Dodson and member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour – now argue a constitutional amendment is the answer to Closing the Gap.

What does it tell us that these four members of parliament who have 65 years of collective experience within state, territory and federal parliaments both in opposition and in government as Indigenous Australians now argue a voice to parliament is the only answer?

If we want to make a difference in the lives of our most marginalised, we have to begin by putting a stop to treating Aboriginal Australians differently.

The structures that have existed and failed, despite the billions of dollars of investment, are systems that have been built on the ideological premise that Aboriginal Australians are to be treated differently and separately and are inherently disadvantaged as a result of racial heritage.

The abovementioned powerful voices are clear evidence that any human who can gain an education can take advantage of what our nation has to offer and this is not a determination of race. None of these leaders required a voice to parliament to succeed.

In 2016 the Centre for Independent Studies uncovered that of 1082 Indigenous-specific programs identified in a review of government and non-government programs, only 88
(8 per cent) had been evaluated. And of those programs that were evaluated, few used methods that actually provided evidence of the program’s effectiveness.

On the whole, Indigenous evaluations are characterised by a lack of data and an over-reliance on anecdotal evidence.

I will continue to argue that we need to forensically audit the current systems that have been funded to “close the gap” to determine the successes and discard the failures. As long as an industry exists to “close the gap”, the gap will not close.

Constitutionally enshrining the very voices that exist within the structures that perpetuate the ideological notion that Aboriginal Australians are inherently disadvantaged, is constitutionally enshrining failure.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a Country Liberal Party senator for the Northern Territory.

My mine source of nutrition was the NAB staff canteen on Collins St at lunch time.

Staff canteens…those were the days, eh?

Best value lunch in Brisbane used to be the public service canteen on Anne St as I recall (no doubt Ed will correct me if I’m wrong).

Subsidised, no doubt, but open to the public. Must’ve disappeared some time in the late 1980s/early ’90s.

That Stellar magazine interview with the Stick Insect did come with photos. One of them on the Daily Telegraph website now. I invite you to have a look.

Erm…no thanks.

Vicki Campion:

It’s no MONA but Australian art going under a wrecking ball will have a massive say in setting the political future of NSW. The Liberals will destroy sea-splashed memorials in paint – an impromptu public art gallery of the thoughts and joys of families who have holidayed at Port Macquarie over decades.

As well, Norfolk pines shade and a world-class surf break will also be lost – all for a new bike path.

This – and an unsuspecting constituency more than 400km from the bellwether seats of western Sydney – will determine the next NSW premier. And it’s not just a choice between Dom Perrottet or Chris Minns.

The rapidly growing coastal city of Port Macquarie – a conservative stronghold that threw out National-turned-independent Rob Oakeshott after he backed the Gillard Labor government – must choose between National-turned-moderate Leslie Williams, who criticised her leader on the way to the Liberals’ partyroom, and a strong businesswoman and popularly elected mayor, Peta Pinson, who has the tenacity to talk back to bureaucrats.

The wall that creates the unique surf break is symbolic of Port Macquarie. The bike path is symbolic of Sydney transport policy. Both are symbolic of bureaucracy ignoring the community.

While Williams backs Transport for NSW bureaucrats in ripping out the breakwall to put in a 5m-wide bike path, Pinson supports three-time world champion bodyboarder Damien King and small businesses who raised more than $8000 for an independent analysis so that the breakwall, shade and surf can remain untouched.

Pinson stands to return Port Macquarie to Nationals territory. Williams stands to insert the lab-grown-meat-munching republican-in-name-yet-giddy-over-King-Charles-on-a-$72,000-taxpayer-funded-trip, methane-taxing, woodfire-banning, wind factory-building, utter disaster for the regions Matt Kean as the next premier.

Toxicity is alive and well between the Coalition partners.

Pinson, Port Macquarie’s first female mayor, was secretly blocked by the Liberal Left, who publicly espouse how essential women in politics are, from attending the same business chamber event where Premier Dom was guest speaker.

A prime spot was reserved for Williams, who used Nationals volunteers, smarts and sweat to take the seat of Port Macquarie 12 years ago, only to quit the Nationals less than a year after she failed to win the grand party title of state chairman.

As the turncoat former Nationals candidate cosies up with her Labor opposition in posed photographs, a slew of Moderate Liberal ministers have been landing at Port Macquarie Airport flashing cash.

Liberals should focus on seats in Sydney’s west but, instead, find themselves wandering around a conservative centre they have never won in their own right and barely have a branch in.

In Kean’s Treasury office, any Nationals requests for funding for election promises in Port Macquarie drag on, with local volunteers ordered not to say anything that will upset Liberal chances.

As Perrottet is out fighting the Labor Party, one particular faction is fighting him. With his wife in hospital, the dad of six has been hauling his little ones on the campaign trail across NSW, leaving his self-interested colleagues to learn the hard way that the state election is more than a factional game.

Port Macquarie is not the only three-cornered contest in the upcoming election. It’s not even the only regional Liberal seat, but it is the only one where the Liberal candidate is a vote for Kean as the Liberal leader.

Polling predicts a narrow win for either Labor or the Coalition across the state. While Perrottet is trying to win NSW, Kean is trying to win the Liberal leadership. Kean has been tone-deaf and blind to regional Australia.

There is not one regional issue he has championed, instead forcing us to pay for intermittent power under his Renewable Energy Zones, which explains his notable absenteeism from Port Macquarie, where he is electoral poison.

A Kean-led Liberal Party could not rule NSW, simply because the majority of real Nationals – not Lib-turned-Nats political careerists or Nat-turned-Libs political opportunists – could ever form a happy coalition under his direction.

Many in regional areas would consider Minns if the alternative is Kean. Under the burden of Kean’s one-eyed climate policy, a Nationals team would struggle in a Coalition where regional people do not want transmission lines or wind towers over their land, or to lose their jobs in power stations and coalmines, and who are not interested in his global peacocking on climate change.

Instead of doorknocking Sydney’s west to win the election, his pod of moderate nobodies thrust a crazy agenda fed by a Tiffany-teal urban minority on Wauchope and remain deaf to the soaring frustration of NSW politicians outsourcing their decisions to bureaucrats.

Which brings us back to the break-wall. Be it that or communities across the Renewable Energy Zones rallying against wind factories, ignored by the ministry and the mainstream media, a wave of white-hot anger is growing.

Where Pinson stands with the community, Kean’s Port Macquarie puppet blindly follows a nameless bureaucrat’s advice.

Where NSW Nationals leader Paul Toole, the Bathurst boy who is also a former mayor, vowed to stop it, the Liberals were quick to undermine them, quickly issuing a department statement that the development would proceed.

Who exactly are the Liberals fighting here? They still need a candidate in eight seats where they are supposed to be fighting Labor.

Unless the Liberal moderates work out how they will keep their backsides on shiny leather, they might win Port Macquarie but will lose the election.

They can spend the next eight years in opposition, patting themselves on the back at their semi-secret selective moderate club.

No one but Kean’s clique is counting moderate seats on election night.

Just more on this fu.king misanthrope craig stanbury, PhD wanker from monash, espousing rank misanthropy so tastefully:

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-baby-planet-collapses-big-ethical.html

Here are his ethical reproduction questions for everyone:

Five big questions
For a person wanting children, this means it’s no longer enough to only ask questions such as: can I be a good parent? Do I have the means to support a child?

Anyone with the means to control their fertility now has an obligation to also ask themselves the following five questions:

1 Will my child have a high-emissions lifestyle and will this mean others must live in poverty? If so, is this justifiable?

5 Does satisfying my parenting desires in other ways particularly apply to me if I already have one biological child?

I bet the chunks were asking these 40 years ago with the result their gender imbalance is the highest outside a few muzzie nations where male babies survive and females don’t.

I’d like to strap the two of them to wind turbine blades and leave them to spin around. Spinning is obviously something they like to do after all.

A violent image for a peaceful bloke BoN; but one I entirely sympathise with.

The grudge and hatred will persist for centuries. It will be volcanic, on the scale of Mt St. Helens, Krakatoa and Tambora combined.

Don’t forget Santorini.

calli says:
March 4, 2023 at 11:46 am
Sorry. Not Fair Shake.

Real Deal.

It’s enough to know you are thinking of me.

My Vic Liberal membership renewal reminder came thru on email during the week. I duly Forwarded on to my junk mail folder. The Libs may well win Federally next time as Tennis Albo and co charge into the abyss. But the Libs agenda is not mine and there is no sign of them returning to their base in my lifetime. They are not referred to as SFL for nothing.

Just when you think all dramas – pandemics, floods etc are over – along comes another threat.

Just heard that around 40 degree heat + NW winds up to 40kph expected on Monday! We have slashed most of the paddocks around the house and other paddocks still green. But some absentee landowners adjacent have grass almost waist high and heavy scrub.

We have 3 major fire hoses & reels around the house and two others attached to water near a distant barn and a neighbour’s boundary. Will fill the 1,000l tank on a trailer & get the Onga pump ready.

Ironic that the bore pump failed only a couple of weeks ago & we have just had a new one installed & commissioned.

cohenite says:
March 4, 2023 at 5:14 pm

Riccardo Bossi on Dean Mackin. He seems to make sense. What was the flack bout him before?

He’s blaming Ukrainian Jews for supposedly instigating the war. That’s a start.

It’s all very well being a Pitt Street/Collins Street hobby farmer, but farming the land for a living as you do is no place for rich city hippy blow-ins.

Well said! Hobby farmers are the curse of agriculture!

Book titles for the jaded:

The Book of Music for Shy but Eager Virgins: great hits to lose it by: Fools Fall in Love, so let’s just screw; All I wanna do is just give it to you; California Girls do it surfing.
The Ladybird Book of Virginity: and how to lose it: new words to look for: flirt, condom, boner, orgasm, pregnant, abortion.
The Ladybird Book of Reality: Snow White, the Married years: new words to look for: impotent, dysfunctional, divorce, promiscuous, sexually transmitted, emotional breakdown.
The Ladybird Book of taking Mum to Rehab: new words to look for: prescription, barbiturates, alcoholism, addiction, psychiatrist, sectioning.

I just love the chutzpah of Republicans.

Kim Beazely as State Governor of Western Australia..

And they are never around when the place is alight.

Cite you the “hobby farmer” that was there, when his place was alight. The local volunteer brigade turned out.

Chastised for his lack of preparation, and the standard of his fire fighting plant, the reply was
“Well, if there is a fire, you fellows come along and put it out. What’s the problem?”

Vicki, ring them and threaten them with legal action over their negligence.

Re: the “green” hobby farmers:

During the big drought of 2017/2018 we had very little on the ground and were spending a small fortune in keeping our special breed herd alive by buying in feed. When our local ag supplier told us he didn’t have any more supplies we asked our absentee neighbour if we could put our herd on agistment in his empty paddocks which still had some dry feed. We even offered to buy his place – which he only visits once or twice a year. No – to both offers! He refused the agistment offer because he worried that they might eat some of the saplings!

We eventually obtained feed from another ag supplier and nursed our herd through the final year of drought. But to say we would never have a good word to say to that man is an understatement.

CFMEU declares war on McGowan Government, calls for ‘extraordinary meeting’ of every union boss in WA
The West Australian
Sat, 4 March 2023 1:02PM
Comments
Josh Zimmerman

The CFMEU has called for an “extraordinary meeting” of every union boss in WA as it declares war on the McGowan Government over its exclusion from a working group designed to explore reforms to the State’s teetering construction industry.

Commerce Minister Sue Ellery on Wednesday announced the Department of Finance was partnering with the Master Builders Association WA to examine a range of recommendations put forward by the peak construction lobby for “structural changes” to the way government projects are contracted.

In a blistering letter sent the following day to Premier Mark McGowan — and every other Labor MP — CFMEU state secretary Mick Buchan wrote he had spent years “sounding the alarm” over “predatory tendering practices” from major builders that had left the entire industry on the “brink of non-viability”.

“Major building companies have been quoting at or below the actual cost of production to win work and then cutting corners on production standards, wages, safety, and working conditions to try and turn a profit,” he said.

“In practice, this means big builders and developers have been using subcontractors and workers as an unofficial line of credit and divesting their own financial risk down onto local contractors and individual workers.

Trouble at mill……

A few WA builders have already exploded and the real storm hasn’t really hit. For once the unions aren’t the main problem.

A few WA builders have already exploded and the real storm hasn’t really hit.

Domestic and commercial building approvals down to 2012 levels and the rate rise impact is only just being felt on that front. The RBA is going to drive us into a recession.

Dean Mackin is a pro Trump, anti AGW, anti woke, anti abortion, anti Voice DJ on 2SM on Sat and Sun arvos. Some nutters do get on there and I have talked to him about the fringe ratbags negating his genuine and unique media presence.

He’d fit in here.