I think someone upthread may have called it:

Victorian taxpayers will be left with a $380m bill for the Andrews government’s decision to cancel the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

The government confirmed on Saturday morning it had reached the figure following negotiations with the Commonwealth Games Federation and Commonwealth Games Australia.

All disputes over the cancellation of the games have now been settled.

“The parties also agreed that the multi-hub regional model was more expensive to host than the traditional models,” a joint statement said.

“The settlement was supported by the mediators.

“The terms of the settlement will otherwise remain confidential.

“The settlement finalises all matters between the parties.

“The parties are legally bound not to speak further regarding the details of the settlement.”

Following the decision to cancel the games, former New Zealand Judge, Kit Toogood, KC, and the former Chief Justice of the WA Supreme Court, Wayne Martin, KC, were appointed as joint mediators.

Premier Daniel Andrews on Saturday said the Games settlement meant the government could proceed with building houses in regional Victoria.

He said the $380m settlement was the best outcome and that challenging a “break fee” would have risked a lawyers’ picnic.

“And who knows what the ultimate number would have been.

“Who knows who wins and who loses in these sorts of matters, together with the inevitable appeals and appeals on appeals,’’ he said.

“We can focus on delivering thousands of houses and other sporting infrastructure across regional Victoria.’’

I won’t continue with the article but according to Andrews, spending close to $400 million to not hold an event is the best possible outcome from this debacle. FMD

Abbott pandered to every man and his dog.

This is a conventional accusation but not sure it is correct. He was polite to people rather than antagonistic. Howard was ready to attack people but that was his style. Question is whether Abbott have in to contrary demands. Or was it horse trading. Or whatever else. What instances of pandering are you thinking of?

If the PM doesn’t have enough power what is the point.

Not sure what to say to this. It is the Westminster system. The Prime Minister is merely the first minister. We know that even Churchill had to deal with ministers and members. It is great when the PM and the party are on the same side, and that would usually be the case, but turns out Abbott did not enjoy that.

Even Fatty Trump was beleaguered by a swamp that was deeper and wider than he imagined. Certainly I had no sense of just how malign and perfidious US state institutions have turned out to be – by which I only mean that what I suspected turned out to be was worse – and the more pessimistic idea Trump would have had (enough to spur him to run for President) was also revealed to have been too optimistic. It bespeaks to layers beneath layers beneath layers of malfeasance. It is tortoises all the way down.

I have never heard of anyone who has met Abbott and come away saying he is two-faced, opportunistic, conniving, gutless, or a Tartuffe.

But I do recall people saying that if you were determined to hate the guy the last thing you should ever do is meet him.

I have not met him. (Although I have many fond memories of drinking various scotches within 100m and eyesight of his office in Manly – which must count for something.) But I persist in my belief that he is a good man who did the best he could, perhaps better than most, of the opportunity offered.

But, no matter what else, and to paraphrase Rick from Casablanca, I will always have those Speyside scotches*.

* I prefer Speysides in warmer weather.

Question is whether Abbott have in to contrary demands.

Gave in to.

I blame auto-correct, which is completely unfair but shifts blame from me.

Perhaps I have a career in politics.

Well sure, you’d think there’s a limit to cheating, but these indictments are meant to frighten anyone who raises questions.

Here’s an example of the other problem. Who is their right mind would go or be allowed to scrutinize the count in Philly without being killed (and the murderer is subsequently found to be innocent as a result of self defense?).

Who is going to question the voting machines after Fox settled a defamation suit for almost US$800 million?

I’m generally an optimistic sort, but can’t see a way through this.

Lizzie, from last night.
Might I respectfully suggest that studying “Geographical Distribution of Socio-Economic Urban and Regional yada, yada” in the 1970’s or 1980’s would give you no more insight into the meth-riddled pockets of our society in 2023 than anyone else.
Respectfully.

On the other hand, remote living has its advantages. Husband and I just had coffee and cake at our local farm gate cafe and greeted locals. Then went for a long drive around the upper reaches of our valley. Magnificent scenery on this clear, sunny & windy day. Paddocks showing signs of greening and sun shine on the sandstone cliffs.

On the other hand, the Screech has instigated some venomous comments on the valley’s Facebook pages. There is no Eden on this earth.

Go TERFs!

On the bingo card of strange occurrences in 2023 there is one happy granny out there gleefully crossing out “Conservative men and Feminists team up”.

I have never heard of anyone who has met Abbott and come away saying he is two-faced, opportunistic, conniving, gutless, or a Tartuffe…………
I have not met him…… But I persist in my belief that he is a good man who did the best he could, perhaps better than most, of the opportunity offered.

You are definitively right, Mother Lode, in the last comment. He is, indeed, a good man.

I confess I thought he was a disappointment as PM. It seemed to me that he fell victim to the syndrome of so many well-meaning pollies (and there are some!) – he tried to satisfy as broad a section of voters as he could. And this satisfies no one.

I see him intermittently at our local cafe on the beach in Sydney. Recently I thanked him for his help given to our local RFS a few years ago when a fire threatened local properties. As I said – he is a good man.

BTW we all blame a local wag for causing the incident in parliament with Julia Gillard. At the cafe one morning this lovely, elderly lady said to Tony, “Don’t you worry about her darling – she’s a “piece of work”! Some of the locals reckon that it was that fateful expression – murmured under his breath – that caused Juliar to go into a paroxysm of rage & cry “abuse of women”!

If you were a member of any other cattle breeding society (Herefords, Limousin etc) you would be furious with your guys sitting on their hands whilst the Black Angus mob have stolen a march and branded (pun intended) themselves as something elite.
The average consumer seeing “grass fed black Angus” on a menu thinks they are buying premium.

You are right, Sancho. The marketing campaign which established the Black Angus as the premium meat at your supermarket was nothing short of genius. They destroyed the status of the Hereford – which is a far better cut of meat – in my humble opinion. But then – Galloway meat is also a fine cut of beef – as are many other breeds. Our own Belted Galloways produce a very marbled cut which rivals the much prized Wagyu – although few people realise this.

The very large grazing property adjacent to us market the progeny of Angus cows covered by Wagyu bulls. They command a premium at the saleyards, and some of the better beasts have actually been exported to the home of Wagyu – Japan.

the progeny of Angus cows covered by Wagyu bulls.

So, a breed that insists it skirt cut should be called a kilt, moo (or low) with a long rolling ‘r’, and if you can convince them they have lost they will kill themselves.

Both sides of their ancestry love a drink too.

Not sure if you should bring them to the table on a plate, or on a chair so you can sit around with them, eat lamb, and get pissed.

Mother Lode

Aug 19, 2023 1:59 PM

What is it with nurses and mass murder?

It is in a secret part of the recruiting documents for nursing – I saw it at one of the sites Indolent links to.

They’re not hard to spot.
The red shoes are a dead giveaway.

Apparently to overcome the natural revulsion to the sight of blood and guts they tell nurses that they can take out their emotional angst on the patients. Just happens some nurses have inexhaustible issues.

Preach it, brudder.

Dover

Forget about Hiden. He’s not running. The only reason he’s not gone yet is because of the laughing hyena issue.

They’re trying to figure how they get rid of him asap but don’t want to be screwed with her as president.

Eventually the nominee is likely to be Oldsom.

As for Centrelink for his seniors card… haven’t even tried.

Seniors card comes from State gummint not CentreLink … NSW info ..
https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/apply-for-a-nsw-seniors-card-or-nsw-senior-savers-card

Important article posted by Jo Nova on the rapid increase in bio weapon research in the USA – particularly under the watch of Fauci. When this was actually contested by the government in the last few years the research was transferred OS to places like Wuhan & in labs in Ukraine.

https://joannenova.com.au/2023/08/rfk-jnr-were-developing-bioweapons-with-36000-scientists/

Biden will be running. And if he doesn’t my argument still stands.

What argument? I thought we were having a chat.

All this talk about Newsom, what are his polls like in the mid-West and East Coast? Last I saw he was doing worse than Harris countrywide.

Let’s just for the sake of argument say you’re wrong. You never are, but lets be hypothetical. Other than Oldsom, who do they have? They’ll cheat RFK out of it. I can’t see what other establishment leftwing tool there is. Kamala is out.

Albo reaching fever pitch early:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on Labor true believers to campaign like they’ve “never campaigned before” in a bid to supercharge the Yes campaign ahead of the impending Voice referendum.

Mr Albanese and his government has used the last day of Labor’s national conference held in Brisbane to mobilise the party’s base ahead of an anticipated mid-October referendum, with the union campaign machines expected to back in the Yes23 movement.

Published polls have consistently showed slipping support for the Voice, with the no vote particularly strong in Queensland.

Mr Albanese, addressing the party faithful, said “no one pretends winning a referendum is straightforward”.

“But just as the Uluru statement from the Heart places such emphasis on leaving base camp, we joined the Labor Party to scale the peaks.

“This is not a journey that began with us, but it is a journey we have been given the great privilege of joining.

“And a part of that privilege is a responsibility to make sure that all Australians hear the words that the authors of the Uluru statement wrote that we invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

Mr Albanese said attempting to change the country “for the better in way that outlasts all of us is a bold undertaking”

“But we take on these things because that has always been the Labor way. We take them on not because they’re convenient, but out of conviction,” he said.

Australians, in the first referendum in 24 years, will vote on whether or not they support formally recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first inhabitants of the nation and putting in place a constitutionally-enshrined Voice.

If established, the Voice will be an advisory body to parliament and the federal government, providing input on policy matters affecting First Nations peoples — including health, education, and economic disadvantage.

Shorter Albo:
“Vote yes to save my arse!”
I wonder if the spittle increased with the soaring oratory. A hideous individual.

Waller’s first Group One win came in 2008 Tom. 10 a year, T J Smith’s record could well be under threat by the time he’s done.

Really, people should read the NYTimes, it’s there in open splendor to witness leftwing insanity and it’s fun. I read it most days to see what’s going on, on that side of barbed wire fence.

Here’s astra, a “filmaker” thinking she has something to add to inequalady.

By Astra Taylor

Ms. Taylor is an organizer, a filmmaker and the author of the forthcoming book “The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart,” from which this essay is adapted.

Aug. 18, 2023

Since 2020, the richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth globally — almost twice as much money as the rest of the world’s population. At the beginning of last year, it was estimated that 10 billionaire men possessed six times as much wealth as the poorest three billion people on Earth. In the United States, the richest 10 percent of households own more than 70 percent of the country’s assets.

Such statistics are appalling.

The richest 1% own assets such as homes etc that aren’t in the middle of Mogadishu.
They also own financial assets, such as stocks etc that aren’t listed on the Mogadishu stock exchange. In other words the 1%ers have their wealth residing in places where the chances of a bomb going off and blowing away a couple of limbs is unlikely. These people became rich because stocks they own were given a very high valuation for other investors.

Astra thinks it’s appalling, but she ought to be appalled at what’s going on in these very poor countries that make them poor.

Argument doesn’t mean the discussion is bad-tempered.

You’re talking to head prefect: a man among men, of the highest manliness; it’s a matter of honour.

STFU Cronkite.

Part of the task of stoking missionary zeal in the hearts of women to drive them into prestigious professions has been to tell them that there is a special female kind of leadership which is needed to balance out the failings of the male kind.

That it should be nurturing and compassionate was a way of latching into nascent maternal instincts of young women starting out and seduce them to the idea that these natural impulses could be answered by becoming lawyers and judges (and so on) as motherhood, with the bonus of being independent of nasty nasty men.

It is the young women who pay.

Australians, in the first referendum in 24 years, will vote on whether or not they support formally recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first inhabitants of the nation

Why do I have the nasty feeling that “recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first inhabitants” will only set off another round of demands for reparations and compensation?

Excellent reports Cassie and Lizzie.

Steve Price on the renewable energy push that is killing farmland:

The northeast town of Glenrowan in Victoria is best known as the location of bushranger Ned Kelly’s last stand.

On June 28, 1880, Kelly was captured after a siege at the Glenrowan Inn and the rest of his gang including his brother Dan were killed.

The gang had murdered three police two years earlier at Stringybark Creek. Ned was tried for murder and executed.

Since then, the Glenrowan community has traded on the history of the Kelly gang and its demise in their town.

Today Glenrowan might yet again become the modern- day example of a last stand, this time not by a criminal gang but by Australian farmers.

Glenrowan is about two and a half hours northeast of Melbourne up the Hume Highway. As you approach the off-ramp to Glenrowan going north as I did this week and look to your right you think your eyes are deceiving you.

A paddock that would normally be home to sheep or maybe cattle is instead a construction zone that’s well advanced.

The paddocks across an area of around 323 hectares — or nearly 800 acres in the old measurement scale — are well on the way to becoming home to 373,000 solar panels arranged in rows like a wheat crop.

To describe this as a shock to see is an understatement. Known as the Glenrowan West Solar Farm it’s owned by a company called Wirtgen, a German-based road construction outfit with assets in Brazil, China and India.

Wirtgen started out making road building equipment and now is heavily invested in renewable energy projects.

Like many foreign outfits they have realised Australia’s new Labor Government, and its aim for a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 (seven years away), is a profit goldmine too tempting to ignore.

The pots of sunny gold and windy profits are set to flow into the hands of mainly foreign-owned corporations.

The Kelly country solar panel farm is just an obvious example of what this unhinged rush to renewable energy is going to do to rural Australia and its landscapes.

This week we witnessed in the Melbourne CBD a simmering protest movement that is going to run head on into foreign-funded renewable companies that see wind and sun power as the new goldrush.

Farmers from regional Victoria trucked their heavy equipment to the city fringe, unloaded the tractors and then unloaded on AEMO – the Australian Energy Market Operator – that wants to assist in the construction of massive towers and transmission lines across the state.

The no-nonsense food producing farmers, like the Kelly gang, are up for a fight and those of us who live comfortable lives in the city and nearby regions need to support them.

As the former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel wrote in a recent book on the issues of getting to net zero, we will see forests of wind farms carpeting hills and cliffs from sea to sea.

He warned us to think about “endless arrays of solar panels, giant factories building wind turbines and the sobering observation of “endless kilometres of transmission lines to connect it all.”

Finkel – an electrical engineer and neuroscientist — made the accurate and blunt point: “We’ve, after 30 years, shaved off 4 per cent of emissions and now need to shave off 83 per cent.”

It’s these grim but accurate warnings that should make us all realise what a pipe dream and dangerous folly our state and federal governments are embarking upon.

Are Victorians OK with massive swathes of country Victoria being carpeted with kilometres of solar panels?

Do you really want to be that selfish suburban Greenie comfortable with the knowledge your hot water is being produced by giant wind turbines that slaughter native bird life in their thousands? I hope not.

Is net zero worth destroying food producing grazing and cropping land, owned by hard working generational farming families forced to open their farms to giant transmission towers?

As the Spring St protestors from farms across the state pointed out this week, their small businesses and their lifestyles are to be brutally destroyed by this fanciful green dream.

How is it that major transport links like freeways or airport extensions, even housing estates, can be held up by some endangered bird or lizard and the State Government steps in but if its wind or solar it’s open season.

Farmers I spoke to on Sky News this week were on the edge of tears. One was standing on his back porch near Donald and looking at the view, imagining it obscured by a 10-storey high wind turbine.

Asked if he would stop it and lock his gate and refuse money for access, he didn’t hesitate in saying he would fight to the end.

Up until now the green dream pushed by global warming warriors has been an ambitious wish list selling sun and wind as our net zero solution.

Now that the giant turning blades and acres of solar panels are sprouting like the farm crops of old, it’s time to back our farmers.

I hope these monstrous things were also discussed at CPAC ladies. There’s a discontentment around the place which is turning to visceral anger.

I hope these monstrous things were also discussed at CPAC ladies. There’s a discontentment around the place which is turning to visceral anger.

Yeah, I’ll believe that when CPAC gives its talks on the steps of parliament and then moves in a la Jan 6; minus the CIA agitators.

Same with what, until a few months ago, used to be America’s most successful and profitable TV network, Fox News. The third-generation Mudrock kiddies are destroying the business because, to them, the idea their father coined with the late Roger Ailes was just a marketing idea.

Steve Hilton was a loss.

cohenite

Aug 19, 2023 5:35 PM

Gutfeld on The Five and his own show recently has been as good as any media person I have seen in my 115 years of life.

Billing out 450,000 hours in your working life does not make you 115 years old, right?

Except Joe Manchin isn’t your regular run of the mill Nancy Pelosi Demonrat. Omission is also just misinformation and fakenews.

Fox Corporation executives have poured money into Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s reelection campaign, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Several executives have reportedly collectively spent tens of thousands of dollars in support of Manchin. Manchin is one of the few Democratic senators to appear on the network and warn the nation about the federal deficit and spending proposals brought forth by President Joe Biden and Democrats.

This is really the only sensible answer

Deep state is trying to goad us into an unnecessary war with China due to our alleged dependence on Taiwan semiconductors

We effectively engineered this very “dependence” as an excuse to entangle us in a war

Really Dover. That is the only sensible answer, is it? No other possibility could be entertained and only that there are people who deliberately set up, or had manufacturing plants set up in Taiwan as a diversion in an attempt to stoke a war with China.

Pizzagate new sounds almost like a remote possibility. Bring back USSR!

While it brings on a warm inner glow, one needs to ask what influence it may exert on the wider political landscape.

Rub and tug is smarter than his spittle would indicate. The screech may go down this time but with the mis and dis bill in force – the gutless lnp will not oppose it in any meaningful way – the screech will reappear again after the sheeple have been softened up.

They sacked the on-air talent singlehandedly responsible for around 15% of Fox’s annual profit.

The Mudrock children are expensively educated idiots. They would have learned more about business running a farm.

You may have seen it in corporate life. Tucker is great, but he’s potentially a very loose cannon. Corporations don’t like loose cannons and there’s also, I think, the accounting behind the decision. Tucker was very successful in attracting viewers but advertisers hated his show, which meant it wasn’t earning anywhere near potential. If you figured out his ad revenue, it would have resembled a poorly followed program. You have a great show (high viewer interest) with little ad revenue and a potential for another voting machine fiasco. I would’ve fired Tucker in that situation and I generally like what he had to say.

JC
the laughing hyena issue

Nailed it.

miltonf
Aug 19, 2023 6:12 PM

So much US electronic and auto component manufacturing moved across to Taiwan during the 80s.

And the Taiwanese built an incredible business out of it and scaled massively. But, it could have been a CIA front in order to goad the US into a fight with China. 🙂

Dot.

Can you come on there and try to explain to some economic illiterates how markets work. You’re quite good at it and I have to go to a party this evening and will be out of action.

Just to give you a little history, as someone mentioned just before, Taiwan has been in the microprocessor business since the 80s and they took it to commanding heights.

If price, reliability and customer satisfaction are the prime motivators, where would customers shop for chips. I’ll leave that to you to explain market dynamics.