Submitted by rickeyre on
John Howard admits that his election ad about record low interest rates in 2004 was a porkie (pie, not barrel). But, but, there are excuses...
Another excerpt from Howard's interview with one of his favourite radio interviewers, 3AW's Neil Mitchell. With friends like these...
Submitted by rickeyre on
"I didn’t think I was being cranky. I was passionate and emphatic."
- John Winston Howard, when asked by 3AW's Neil Mitchell whether he was a "cranky old bugger" during last Sunday's debate, 26.10.07
Eleven years ago, he wanted everyone to be Relaxed And Comfortable.
Not long now, John... not long now.
Submitted by rickeyre on
We live in a truly golden age of politics.
An federal election contest in Australia between Me-One and Me-Two. A state government in New South Wales where the treasurer knows more about fictitious conspiracy theories than he does about economic globalisation. In New Zealand, when parliamentary debates get boring, they step into the foyer for a bit of biffo. And of course there's America, where the President creates a whole new language to speakify in, and inventorates whole new meanings for existicated words such as "torture".
Submitted by rickeyre on
It got windy in Wellington on Wednesday. Nationals MP Tau Henare sledged Labour frontbencher Trevor Mallard on the floor of parliament about his personal relationships. Mallard invited Henare to step outside. The rest, as they say in the classics, is history. Though not, sadly, quite history in the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton class.
Submitted by rickeyre on
If there's a better election pisstake done on Youtube this year, I'll be very surprised!
Submitted by rickeyre on
Michael Costa's bizarre and geopolitically ignorant response to a question in State Parliament on Tuesday about Chinese investment in New South Wales was not the end of that particular matter.
Submitted by rickeyre on
You don't have to be a rocket surgeon, or even a brain scientist, to understand the People Republic of China's role in that Maoist Johnny Howard's strong economic management of Australia. And you might even be aware of the Chinese government's new-found interest in foreign corporate investment. However, the New South Wales Government's leading parliamentary economist, treasurer Michael Costa, is none of the above.
It seemed reasonable enough in Question Time in the Legislative Council on Tuesday, when John Kaye of the Greens put the following to Costa the Coster:
Submitted by rickeyre on
Go Australia! The federal election is making it onto the US cable news channels.
Submitted by rickeyre on
The leader of the Greens wasn't invited to the Leaders Debate, so he organised his own. Not a debate as such, but a forum held on Sunday night concurrently the Diet of Worms. Organised at short notice, with the promise that parties other than the Greens will be invited next time, this was essentially the Bob Brown and Friends Show.
Intended as a live stream which failed, it was posted on Youtube in chunks progressively during Sunday night. I've assembled the eight videos into a playlist which runs approximately 53 minutes.
Greensblog, the official blog of the four Greens senators, did live blogging of the People's Forum, which is handy to follow as the sound quality on the video is not crash-hot at times. Also included in the live blog was reportage of the Kevin 07 v John Ol'55 contretemps.
Submitted by rickeyre on
While you were watching Australian Idol or National Bingo Night, channels Nine, ABC and Sky News were holding their own contrived talent quest/game of chance.
Kevin Rudd won last night's debate, and in my view won it quite comfortably. John Howard started well and was best when he was delivering set pieces, but increasingly he sounded more and more cranky and defensive, and repeatedly side-stepping questions he didn't want to answer. Rudd kept his cool, however he was surprisingly weak at handling the climate change questions.
