Tag Archives: kevin rudd

How To Proclaim That You Are A Moral Vacuum Too

31 Aug

JIM HACKER MP: What is the purpose of government if not for doing good?

SIR HUMPHREY: Government isn’t about good and evil. It’s about order or chaos.

JIM HACKER MP: It’s in order for Italian terrorists to get British bombs?

SIR HUMPHREY: *shrugs*

JIM HACKER MP: You don’t care?

SIR HUMPHREY: It’s not my job to care. That’s what politicians are for. My job is to carry out policy.

JIM HACKER MP: Even if you think it’s wrong?

SIR HUMPHREY: Almost all government policy is wrong, but … frightfully well carried out!

JIM HACKER MP: Have you ever known a civil servant to resign on a matter of principle?

SIR HUMPHREY: I should think not! What an appalling suggestion!

JIM HACKER MP: For the first time, I fully understand that you are purely committed to means and not ends!

SIR HUMPHREY: As far as I’m concerned, and all my colleagues, there is no difference between means and ends.

JIM HACKER MP: If you believe that, Humphrey, you will go to hell.

SIR HUMPHREY: Minister, I had no idea you had a theological bent.

JIM HACKER MP: You are a moral vacuum.

SIR HUMPHREY: If you say so, Minister.

*****

SIR HUMPHREY:  What’s the matter, Bernard?

BERNARD:  Nothing really, Sir Humphrey.

SIR HUMPHREY: You look unhappy.

BERNARD:  I was wondering if the minister was right.

SIR HUMPHREY:  Very unlikely. What about?

BERNARD:  About ends and means. Will I end up as a moral vacuum, too?

SIR HUMPHREY:  Oh, I hope so, Bernard.  If you work hard enough.

– Yes Minister, “The Whisky Priest” (1982)

On a long journey home passing through south west Sydney yesterday, I was startled to see giant billboards on the M7 sternly warning that, “If he wins, you lose”:

politifact-photos-youlose_1

You see, I have been avoiding the mainstream media — especially TV — even more than usual during this election campaign. Frankly, it turns my stomach.

So I was not aware that our governing political party — the one whose former leader recently returned to the leadership, and pointedly pontificated from the heights of his self-erected moral pedestal about ending the “politics of negativity”, with “A New Way” that would transcend “3 word slogans” — had proclaimed to the world their complete and utter moral vacuity, by launching a 100% negative attack advertising campaign:

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My opinion?

If you cast a ballot in favour of a political party that is so clearly and repulsively hypocritical, that is so obsessed with ends that it is no longer capable of distinguishing between means and ends, then perhaps you are well on the way to becoming a moral vacuum too.

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À la folie … pas du tout (He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not)

6 Aug

Poor widdle Kevvy.

That awful Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire backed him for PM in 2007 …

Crikey, November 2007:

The biggest surprise is the strong support for Labor in the Murdoch press — a marked difference from 2004. The Australian, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail and The Mercury are all throwing their support behind Kevin Rudd.

… is not backing him to remain PM in 2013 –

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À la folie … pas du tout.

He loves me. He loves me not.

Grow up. Take it like a man Kev.

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Leading Social Democrat Answers Rudd’s Question On AAA Rating

5 Aug

titanic-7

Kevin Rudd has made much of his being — according to him — a Social Democrat.

He has also made much of Australia’s AAA credit rating.

Interestingly, another leading light of the so-called “Left”, who also sees himself as a Social Democrat, has a rather different view about Australia’s AAA rating.

Indeed, Professor John Quiggin — someone with whom I agree on many topics — says that he agrees with Shadow Finance minister Andrew Robb’s recent observation; one that was much ridiculed by Labor, and its many Cyclopsian supporters:

Which politician, holding a senior frontbench economic position, made the following sensible observation

“I remind you that Lehman Brothers, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which started this global financial crisis, on that very day, they still had a AAA credit rating. What does a AAA credit rating really amount to? What I’m saying is you can’t place enormous store in the rating agencies. They do get things very badly wrong, and they totally missed those major firms and economies that were driving and the reason for the GFC.”

The answer to Kevin Rudd’s arrogant challenge on why Australia still has a AAA credit rating “from all 3 ratings agencies” is, ironically, the very same argument that Labor has been using to proclaim how great a job they’ve done managing the economy.

Relativism.

Relative to the other basket-case economies in the Western world, Australia’s ability to service the $16 billion a year interest payments on its public debt, is still considered “AAA”.

For now.

As always, the truly important point is what the politician does not tell you.

That the ratings agencies have issued several stark warnings about our AAA rating.

If the Federal government cannot demonstrate a credible “path to surplus”, then our AAA rating is in jeopardy.

One look at Labor’s revised Economic Statement released on Friday, is sufficient to tell anyone with half a clue that Labor does not have a credible path to surplus.

Far from it, in fact.

The “major economic parameters” for the newly revised “projections” in that $33 billion black hole Economic Statement, have holes you could drive a truck through.

That is, if you could afford the fuel, after Rudd includes transport fuels for heavy on road vehicles in his CO2 trading scheme from 1 July next year.

And Labor’s sole idea for how to “manage the economic transition” from a collapsing mining boom — one they predicted would give us a period of “unprecedented prosperity” “stretching to 2050” — is to copy Cyprus and Iceland.

By turning Australia into a “financial services centre to the region”.

Brilliant. We know how well that grand plan panned out for the Icelanders and the Cypriots.

As your humble blogger observed on Twitter last evening:

Australia’s AAA rating simply means this:

We are 1st class passengers on the Titanic.

#gfc #lasttodrown

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If You Don’t Support An ETS, You Are “Ungodly”: Rudd

28 Jul

Ring of Solomon 01

Two standout observations, for mine, regarding today’s Kevin Rudd interview on Channel Ten’s ‘The Bolt Report’.

First, Rudd’s defence of his failed border protection policy introduced in 2007 was to, in essence, blame the Australian people. How so? By pointing out that we are a “democracy”, and arguing that he was following the “democratic mandate” given by the people at the 2007 election.

Apparently, his designing and spruiking of that policy as a reason to vote for him, before and after the 2007 election, is irrelevant. If enough people were stupid enough to vote for the ALP based on that policy, then its failure is the peoples’ fault.

Second, in defending his planned move to an ETS ahead of schedule, Rudd argued that the reason an ETS failed to be legislated much earlier (in 2009), was due to “an ungodly cabal” of conservatives and the Greens.

Apparently, if you do not support CO2 emissions trading, you are “ungodly”.

Makes one wonder which “god” Rudd serves.

And reminds one of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s claim, that bankers are “doing god’s work“.

Videos of the interview will be available here.

See also:

Scrap The ETS: Growing Global Movement Calls On EU To Abolish “Major Obstacle” To Emissions Reduction

EU ETS Myths Busted As Carbon Price Collapses; “Should Not Be Replicated”

TIME: Carbon Markets May Be Finished

Infographic: Visualising The Size Of Australia’s Carbon Derivatives Time Bomb

The Financialisation Of Nature

UPDATE:

From the transcript –

ANDREW BOLT: They’re snowing you, Prime Minister. To finish off, in 2007, Labor under you promised to turn back the boats. It promised to stop reckless spending. In 2010 Julia Gillard promised no carbon tax, and a budget surplus. This year all of those promises and a lot more were broken. What are you going to do to make people trust your promises now?

KEVIN RUDD: The first thing I would say is that climate change, building on where we’ve just been in this discussion, is real. It requires action, putting a price on carbon. What I put forward was a floating price way back when – rejected by an ungodly cabal of the Liberals and the Greens. And subsequently, Julia Gillard at the beginning of the last parliamentary term – or this parliamentary term.

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IMF Says Rudd’s Depositor Guarantee Scheme “Increases Moral Hazard Greatly”

25 Jul

It’s yet another Rudd Labor disaster, just waiting to happen.

According to the IMF’s November 2012 technical note, Australia: Financial Safety Net and Crisis Management Framework, page 26, not only is there an “extreme concentration” in our banking system; the Financial Claims Scheme (FCS) introduced by the Rudd Government in 2008 “increases moral hazard greatly” –

Australia: Financial Safety Net and Crisis Management Framework. Source: IMF (click to enlarge)

Australia: Financial Safety Net and Crisis Management Framework. Source: IMF (click to enlarge)

Why so?

The IMF says that, unlike “most” similar schemes elsewhere, the Rudd scheme does not require the banks to make any contributions towards pre-funding of the guarantee. The responsibility for funding it, falls on the government. Meaning, the taxpayer.

Indeed, the IMF points out that the government may need to increase the public debt limit above the present $300 billion ceiling, if payouts under the scheme became necessary –

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

The IMF’s suggested solution to this “moral hazard” problem, is to make the banks pay “premiums” towards a “reserve fund” that could be used to support payouts under a depositor guarantee. However, the IMF also notes that even if a requirement for premium contributions was established, Australia’s banking system is so highly concentrated that “it may be difficult to establish a fund of sufficient size that the deposit guarantee would seem credible” –

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

When you pause to carefully think this through, merely forcing the banks to pay a premium contribution towards a depositor claims reserve fund is really a rather ridiculous non-solution to the highlighted problem of moral hazard. It is analogous to charging an insurance premium for a policy that promises to pay for the ticket if the banker gets caught speeding –

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We have recently seen the evidence in the Portfolio Budget Statements (page 134) for Budget 2013-14 that the government is now well-advanced in preparations for a Cyprus-style “bail-in” of our banks.

We have also seen the recent warning by Moodys ratings agency that our banking system has the world’s highest exposure to mortgages, and so is vulnerable to collapse if house prices fall.

Combine this with the IMF’s warning about Rudd Labor’s rushed and bungled depositor guarantee scheme that “increases moral hazard greatly”, and it is increasingly clear that I will soon have to redraft the debt trajectory chart on the masthead of this blog.

It only goes up to $300 billion.

See also:

The Bank Deposits Guarantee Is No Guarantee At All

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Get ‘Em Naked – Rudd’s Deal To Buy Youth Access

17 Jul

Next, a revival of his 2009 proposal to lower the voting age to 16?

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Labor Party’s advertising agency has been offering “exclusive” interviews with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in exchange for free pro-Labor advertising and editorial on youth websites.

The deal, which also encouraged journalists to produce “entertaining content on the theme of the inadequacy of the Liberal NBN plan”, had been rejected on ethical grounds by Fairfax Media’s popular culture website, TheVine. Two other youth-focused websites – Vice and Pedestrian.tv – have received the same brief.

The deal was being spruiked by Naked Communications, the online and youth-focused advertising agency for Labor’s campaign.

Labor’s national secretary, George Wright, who is in charge of the election campaign, said he had never seen the advertising-for-access deal, despite the document carrying Labor Party branding…

Earlier a spokeswoman for Mr Rudd had said: “The actions of Naked Communications were conducted without the authority or knowledge of the Prime Minister, or his office.”

However, emails obtained by Fairfax Media suggest the Prime Minister’s office was informed of the negotiations.

After being told his deal for access to Mr Rudd was unethical, Naked Communications executive Nick Kavanagh discussed a compromise arrangement with TheVine’s editor, Alyx Gorman.

“No news from the [Prime Minister’s Office] as yet but we’ll keep you updated,” Mr Kavanagh wrote.

Politicians.

P . R . E . D . A . T . O . R . S.

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Raising The Ruddy Standards

8 Jul

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What. A. Total. Wanker.

7 Jul

tumblr_lpax8yxyFy1qip14mo1_500The Ego has landed:

Mr Rudd said today he was happy to be returning to Indonesia, where he’d been on at least 10 previous occasions both as “a somebody” and “a nobody”.

“I’m back to being a somebody,” he said.

Oh, right.

I get it.

Unless you’re the PM, you’re “a nobody”.

Thanks for letting us all know, Kev.

*cough* WANKER! *cough*

I wonder why your PMO staff neglected to include that bit in the official transcript of your speech:

FRI 05 JULY 2013
Prime Minister
Jakarta, Indonesia

In 2007 – less than a month after I became Prime Minister – Indonesia was the destination of my first overseas visit.

Today, in 2013, I am pleased to return here once again in my capacity as Prime Minister and to meet again with my counterpart, and good friend, President Yudhoyono.

In these five-and-a-half years, I have been to Indonesia ten times.

This is a beautiful country.

Thérèse and I love this country and its people.

And it is good to be back again.

UPDATE:

Yes, he really did say it (ABC Lateline video here):

TRANSCRIPT

TOM IGGULDEN, REPORTER: There was a touch of triumphalism about Kevin Rudd’s trip to Indonesia.

KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: I’ve been back here 10 or 11 times, in one capacity or another. As a somebody and as a nobody, and back to being a somebody.

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Aussie Jobs For Aussie Workers? Not In Our Capitalist Corporatocracy

2 Jul

From Tim Colebatch at The Age:

Rudd’s efforts to reach out to business have got nowhere. Some groups made impractical demands for Labor to withdraw its legislation to stop rorting of section 457 visas – which, as I reported earlier, has meant that in two years Australian-born workers have gained just 34,000 new full-time jobs. Brendan O’Connor as minister deserves credit for trying to restore the integrity of the system so that it operates as intended.

See also Colebatch’s earlier article, The books are being cooked on 457 visas –

Last month Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor announced new reforms to stop alleged rorting of section 457 visas. Prime Minister Julia Gillard then beefed up the issue by telling western Sydney the reforms would stop ”foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back”.

Since then Gillard’s opponents have claimed she is out to destroy the 457 visa program, which allows business to import temporary workers at will if they cannot find suitable workers in Australia. And at the other extreme, some tell us the whole 457 program is a rort allowing business to bring in foreign workers to undercut wages and save firms from the need to invest in training their own workers.

So far Gillard seems to be losing the debate; but then, she usually does. What do the figures show?

They show that while demand for section 457 visas had declined in most sectors with the slowing economy – visa applications from mining companies are down 15 per cent so far in 2012-13 – that is outweighed by surging demand in other industries that seems at odds with what we know about how they are faring.

For example:

Until mid-2011, few firms used 457 visas to import cooks; in 2010-11, just 45 visas a month were issued for skilled kitchen staff. Yet by January this year, 1690 cooks had been granted 457 visas, 240 a month. Cooks have suddenly become the biggest users of section 457 visas.

Why? It’s not because of any surge in demand. The Bureau of Statistics estimates that spending in hotels and restaurants fell 1.1 per cent last year, as Australians economised on discretionary spending to avoid more debt. Where is the labour shortage that requires us to suddenly import thousands of foreign cooks?

It’s not just cooks. This year alone, the number of chefs, their superiors, entering on 457 visas has shot up 150 per cent to almost 90 a month. Imports of cafe and restaurant managers have quintupled, from 27 a month to 134 a month. Does anyone smell a rat here?

Digging right down to the true root of the problem, I blame usury.

The central evil in our wonderful world of “capitalist” “competition”.

It means the “survival of the fittest”, you see — another pernicious doctrine.

The “fittest” are those most willing and able to borrow and then repay the banks their debt “money” … plus usury.

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“On Tuesday I Will Blow The Bloody Show Up!”

14 Jun

From The Daily Telegraph’s Simon Benson:

Bill Shorten, who is doing the dance of the seven veils, says publicly he still supports Julia Gillard.

But he will only support her until he doesn’t. And that could be very soon.

Shorten’s choice of words this week was telling.

When asked if he thought Gillard would still be leader by the time of the election, he said: “I believe so.”

These are not the words of a powerbroker confident in the survival of his leader.

As The Daily Telegraph revealed, Shorten is now counting numbers. And those numbers are falling Rudd’s way.

The mood even among many of Gillard’s supporters is bleak. And, after this week’s performance, their support is said to now be soft at best.

One senior Labor MP said that, unless something happens, he was prepared to walk into caucus on Tuesday next week and challenge the PM himself.

“I’ll blow the bloody show up,” they said.

Do it.

Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it.

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