Tag Archives: paul howes

“Sympathy Does Not Vote These Days”

21 Jun

Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times:

With merely one week to go in this Parliament, a party based on politicians from the school of union organisation cannot organise the numbers either to effect a change in leadership or to dispel the prospect of one. In the final fortnight we have had a rolling Labor soap opera, which will do little to endear Australia to the party’s management potential.

It is as if the Labor Party has frozen in the headlights of the nation’s gaze, unable to extricate itself from either the Gillard-inspired coup or the relentless Rudd retaliation. The result is a bitter, personal feud that has festered into a full-blown brawl.

…

Three years ago Paul Howes, the head of the Australian Workers Union, decided that he was ”the Australian voting public” and he went out and unelected the elected Prime Minister on Lateline. A few months later he said ”it was probably an error”. Just then, Paul ”The Australian Voting Public” Howes popped up on Sky News to tell the Australian people that his Prime Minister must stay there.

I have come to the conclusion that instead of voting for the Prime Minister, I should be voting for whatever office Paul Howes occupies. The problem I have got is that this ballot is stacked. Now this is starting to sound like a Joseph Conrad novel; it’s certainly not the Australia that Mum and Dad told me about.

…

This week brings the shortest day of the year for the lowest ebb in our Parliament, and from here we head to spring, where we’ll see a new Parliament, new members, regrets and recriminations. The batting order is going to change and the tenants of the parliamentary offices will be shuffled and dealt. The next week is going to be crucial for Labor.

It will be certain political decimation to stay the course and the reality of the Queensland and NSW elections will be the fate of federal Labor if they cannot break out into adulthood in the next month. If you grasp for the bitter end, it is bitter; sympathy does not vote these days. It is like expecting greater attention from students five minutes before the end of school.

Read the whole article here.

Tags: , , , , ,

Paul Howes Is A Right Extremist

12 Apr

Remember when Barnaby Joyce was subjected to a torrent of daily abuse and personal ridicule by everyone – the PM, the Treasurer, the Assistant Treasurer, the Finance Minister, the Treasury Secretary, the RBA Governor, and of course, the mainstream Australian media – for his “extremist” warnings about rising US and Australian debt levels, and his calls for Australia to reduce wasteful spending and prepare a “contingency plan” for further financial turmoil impacting us from abroad?

Double standards alert.

From the SMH:

THE Australian Workers Union wants the government to expand its minerals resources rent tax to slow the mining boom, lower the value of the dollar and alleviate the worsening crisis gripping the steel and manufacturing sectors.

The proposal to embrace the original and more comprehensive resources super profits tax is among several controversial ideas, including pegging the dollar to another currency, aimed at depreciating the dollar contained in a report by the AWU national secretary, Paul Howes.

…

The proposed ”potential policy options” to lower the value of the dollar also include pressuring the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates by between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage points. This, the AWU argues, would not be large enough to cause an inflation outbreak but would bring the cash rate closer to those of other nations and help depreciate the dollar.

Debatable.

The AWU also argues that by pegging the dollar to another currency, it would ”move up and down relative to the performance of other currencies”.

Our biggest trading partner (China) does it.

That traditional paragon of financial virtue Switzerland has now done it too, when faced with exactly the same problem Australia has (speculator-driven international “hot money” driving up the currency, thanks to endless central bankster money printing in the USA, UK, and EU … which they are doing to prop up their insolvent banks and drive down the value of their currencies!).

The RBA, and our Labor Government, and the Coalition, have all explicitly and steadfastly refused to do the same.

With no serious critical analysis of that entrenched ideological policy position by journalists.

&^#$%@! the lot of them.

In particular, &^#$%@! all of the &^#$%@! in the so-called “Left-leaning” mainstream media, who delight in labelling, criticising, and tearing down so-called “extreme Right” politicians such as self-proclaimed agrarian socialist Barnaby Joyce and Bob Katter for their advocating so-called “protectionist” policies.

Question.

Will the likes of Laura Tingle, Stephen Koukoulas, George Megalogenis et al, and all the “political heavyweight” journalists like Paul Bongiorno and similarly nausea-inducing arrogant imagine-they-know-it-all &^#$%@! now tear strips off the star of the union movement Paul Howes, label him as “extreme Right”, and ridicule his intelligence for daring to advocate a classic form of “protectionism”?

Of course not.

I have a brief message for all the purveyors of rank double standards and exemplars of “extreme” cognitive flaccidity in the Australian Parliament, Treasury, RBA, and especially, the media:

……………………./´./)
………………….,/¯../
…………………/…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`¸
………./’/…/…./……/¨¯\
……..(‘(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
………..\………….. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\
……………\…………..\
…………….\…………..\
……………..\……………\

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: