Cranky Queenslander

Anyone who thinks Julia will be able to ensure kids go to school by harassing the local soccer club is living on a planet far far away. This has to be the low point in policy announcements, surely?

For a start, you will have to make some effort to find out what kind of family situation is in effect for each truanting child. Are the parents doing their best to put the kids into school, and are they working with the school? There’s a big difference between a kid left to their own at 7am as the parents shoot through, and the kid who is dropped at the front gate by their parents at 8:20.

If the parents are a big part of the problem, then the intervention should be directed at them. After all, they are their kids, their responsibility, and if they aren’t doing everything they can to ensure their kids get an education, shouldn’t they be on the end of the big stick, not the local footy club?

How exactly are you going to ensure that kids who miss school don’t play footy anyway? Are you going to setup a public register of truant kids and legislate for every footy and netball club to check it before letting kids play on Saturday? Really? You must be joking.

And finally; What about the kids who truant, and who do not play sport. They get a free pass do they?

Honestly, this is a half baked and stupid idea, and Julia will eventually have to wake up to it.

$2000 for people to trade in old cars seems like a poor policy choice to me; Firstly, wouldn’t it be better to simply look at reducing taxes on cars at the very low end of emissions scales?

The other key point is that people with pre 1995 cars generally have them because they can’t afford a new car, and $2000 isn’t going to radically change that financial picture.

This is clearly a throw away policy designed to gain a few votes, but in reality, going to do nothing for the country.

I was just watching ABC News 24, and they featured a report on Refugees.

They had the UN High Commissioner for Refugee’s on, who said;

Every year, about 70,000 refugees are resettled into all the countries that take refugees.

Then, it was said that Australia takes about 13,000 every year.

Then, they trot the UN High Commissioner again, who says our burden is much less than everyone elses.

It baffles me if we are taking 18% of the worlds refugee’s, why anyone thinks we aren’t doing enough.

Facts on refugee intake.

How does the media justify this ridiculous attack on the opposition over industrial relations laws? It seems to me that many in the media have been reading from the Labor party play book, and are recycling this issue on a daily basis because they know a large number of voters aren’t going to see through the scam.

Labor came out on day 1 and said the coalition would reintroduce Workchoices.No matter how many times Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey come out and promise not to do so, the media somehow manage to believe that there is a story to be told around this issue. It’s just crap, to put it plainly, and the media should be ashamed of themselves.

After hammering Tony Abbot to give guarantee after guarantee on the issue, the media then turns their argument on its head, and start saying that because no changes are going to be made, the opposition has no policy for IR! Seriously!

So the reality now, is that the opposition cannot win, because whatever they say, the media will argue the opposite case, even though in the end, the media is arguing against itself!

Kerry Obrien on the 7:30 report last night continued to drive the most stupid point, that changed rules about union secret ballot elections is somehow a change in Industrial Relations laws. Lets be honest about it Kerry, while the law in question may have been shoehorned into the IR package by the Labor party, nobody in their right mind believes that asking Unions to pay for expenses they incur from the taxpayers is in any way related to the working conditions of Australians.

Kerry proved he was just grinding an axe, when after wasting much of the interview waffling on about lawmaking technicalities, he said;

“But the point I’m making has nothing to do with amounts of money, or about making savings, it is, that you are using one act, to change the nature of an aspect of another act, that you are saying you are not going to touch” – Kerry Obrien.

Exactly Kerry; Why are you not talking about things that actually affect voters; Interest Rates, Federal Government debt, standard of living. Why?

If the people of Australia let this issue decide the next election, then we will certainly have got the government we deserve.

Kevin '07

The talk of the town recently is that Julia Gillard is hatching a plan to appoint former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to a plumb job at the UN, thus removing him from parliament and shipping him off to New York.

When you add to the speculation the fact that during Kevin’s campaigning yesterday he said almost nothing, other than he would only be commenting on local electorate issues, and I think it becomes pretty clear that he knows he’s going after the election.

And all this begs the question; Why is he still running for re-election? Are we to understand that Julia will impose a by-election on the voters of Griffith within months of the current federal election?

Maybe people voting in Griffith should save them the trouble and vote for someone else.

The Greens are already deciding how they can upset things after the election, when they are expected to hold the balance of power in the Senate. Andrew Bolt reports that the Greens have said they will insist the mining industry pay much higher taxes going forward, scuttling Julia Gillards compromise deal struck before the election was called.

Now we look to the Labor party to tell us what their plan B. is, in case the Greens manage to get the balance of power and refuse to support plan A.

People or Sardines?

News this morning that two more rickety old boats have turned up overloaded with asylum seekers, and still the Labor party twiddles it thumbs in response.

Just take a look at one of the boats, on which over 40 people were crammed for the ocean journey. Does anyone really believe this is a good thing?

The reality has always been that the people profiting from shipping people like sardines over to Christmas Island should be stopped, before more people are killed.

Seriously dodgy stuff reported by the ABC today. A labour candidate has suggested that Tony Abbott is causing suicides by his own thoughts.

Read more about this grub here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/21/2960486.htm?section=justin

I saw an argument on twitter today where one party argued that private schools should not get any government funding at all. I find this idea quite repulsive;

Every child in Australia should be educated, and that education should be, to a standard, some might argue basic, level, by the federal government. There are only a few things I think the government should handle, and this is certainly one of them.

There is no reason why private schools should not exist. For the most part, they are religious in nature, and cater to parents who wish to send their kids to a school that provides  a specific type of environment, usually, one with God.

Now I am an atheist. So before you jump on me, I am not pushing a religious agenda here.

So the parents are free to choose a public school, with its particular environment, or a private school, with whatever points of difference it offers.

The fact is, the parents in the latter case DO pay for the privilege of what they would argue is an improved environment for their kids. They pay the school quite large fees.

That does not mean that the federal government should not give that school the same per child amount of funding as it gives a public school.  It most certainly should. Kids that go to a private school are not second class citizens, and should not be short changed.

The idea that the government is somehow subsidising private enterprise when it gives money to private schools is ridiculous. It is simply passing on education funding for the students those schools are taking care of. Lets be honest, if we closed every private school, those kids would be at public schools! There is no reason not to fund their education.

The Stooge

News earlier this morning that the red speedo wearing fool that confronted Tony Abbot recently was in fact a Labor Party stooge.

On the one hand, I have no problem with real people with real concerns having a crack at politicians. If I had the spare time, I’d certainly track down a few make some noise, but I prefer to rant on this blog and leave it at that.

But when members of policial parties go out and stir up a ruckus, they are being deceitful, and casting a pall over their parties credibility.

So take note people, if you are a member of a political party, or worse still, like this guy, actually work for one, then you stay home and mind your business. Leave the stunts to people with a real claim to protest.