The Australia reports Michaelia Cash withdraws ‘name names’ threat against Bill Shorten
Jobs Minister Senator Michaelia Cash and previously Minister for Women (clearly a bad choice) had to withdraw a slur against a young woman in Bill Shorten’s office. It was based on rumours that have been circulating for some time she said. It was also done in a Senate Estimates Committee.
It was a pretty dumb thing to do. And very public given terminals call for higher ministerial standards.
Apparently she got pretty emotional when questioned by Bob Cameron. He simply wanted to know the name of an appointment to her office. But she really lost to her cool.
As she has on a number of notable occasions.
Her tantrums must give her boss the heebie-jeebies
The Communion of the Water People takes a number of forms and can happen in many places. But it is always a silent and solitary experience. It is a special form of bliss found in water.
I remember my first time. It was at the long-gone Karori swimming pool.
My mother took me there when I was about your age. I still remember it.
I have taken you to the Richmond pool after Monday kinder twice now. On both occasions, there has been no one else in the pool so we have been alone in the pool.
I sit on the steps of the pool and watch you.
You walk into the pool. You spread your arms and trail your fingertips across a surface of the water. Delicately.
The surface luminescent. Everything silent. You walk around tracing a large circle. You come back to me and place both your feet in my hands so I can help you glide out into the centre of the pool where you submerge.
There are shapes we can make in water. Today you will find some more of yours.
I sit and watch you. You do not need me to help you find your shapes. You find them on your own as you sink beneath the surface to explore.
Sometimes, you return to where I am sitting at the edge of the pool. You touch me and you’re gone. Sometimes you place your feet in my hands and then you glide off into the middle of the pool. It’s the shape of gliding. We both know that.
Later, you walk around pool singing to yourself, making incantations, telling stories. I do not know what these songs. incantations and stories are and you have not told me. They will remain a mystery forever, part of the Communion of the Water People.
Even later, kids will arrive, will be jumping and splashing, wrestling, fun, you will be in your element.
I will watch you as you trade your diving sharks for some toys you covet.
I marvel at you. It took you about a minute to affect the negotiation with the kids who must’ve been at least a year older than you. I watched their father who couldn’t believe his eyes as this little three-year-old talked his children out of the toys they had brought to the swimming pool. It looked as if you then explained to him how you did it because he shrieked with laughter. Marvellous stuff.
National Party hot air balloon MP George Christensen has refused to apologise for comments and a post
he made saying “it was only a joke.”
The thing about jokes is that they are only jokes if someone laughs. They are not jokes if the person who makes is the only person who thinks they are funny. That’s the thing about comedy. Someone has to laugh.
George doesn’t understand this.
That’s a problem with George. He doesn’t understand very much at all.
SMH reports Nationals MP George Christensen has called for the end of the Coalition, after the scandal engulfing former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce threatened to tear the partnership apart.
If the Coalition agreement were to crumble George could be, at the very least, in Opposition if re-elected.
However, his constituency might hold him responsible for having the coalition thrown out of government and decide not to re-elect him.
areWhich would mean he would be unemployed. Fitting.
The Beetrooter has only gone to the backbench where he will join Tony Abbott so we can expect the two to be giving Malcolm Turnbull plenty of stick.
I was worried that I might have lost a plentiful source of ridicule if Barnaby had decided to to depart Parliament altogether, but no, with Turnbull holding a one seat majority, Barnaby will be constantly in the limelight. It was an opportunity to good for him to turn down.
And now there is Clive. He says PUP is going to stand candidates in every Federal seat. The potential for political shenanigans is immense.
You can come the survivors of the last PUP on the fingers of the leprous hand.
How he is going to find 150 candidates to stand in the next election staggers the imagination.
Perhaps his nephew, Clive Mensink, will come back to Australia to help out.
We all judge films from some perspective based on our own experience. Recently, I reviewed Postand Darkest Hourboth which deal with subject matter I am familiar with. I also think they are both excellent films.
So I should start my review of Lady Bird with the disclaimer. It’s a film about a teenage girl growing up, it focuses on her relationship with her parents, particularly her mother and her relationship with her friends. I have no experience of bringing up teenage girls so I am unable to comment from an informed basis as I was with Post and Darkest Hour.
There are critics who think that Lady Bird will be the best film of 2018. I am not one of them. But then I did not have a teenage daughter.
I found the film extremely boring because it’s full of clichés. The main character, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, played brilliantly by Saoirse Ronan, is a nightmare child, with almost no redeeming features.
That’s probably a bit unfair she is a very good friend to Julianne “Julie” Steffans played by Beanie Feldstein.
But for the most part, she is a fairly unsympathetic character. She lies about where she lives to impress the prettiest girl in class, she lies about her maths grades after she has stolen the maths teacher’s gradebook.
Much of her life seems to be stereotyped and clichéd and if you create a character Made up of enough clichés, many teenage girls are likely to identify with her, similarly her relationship with her mother seems to be a cliché as well.
And then there are the nuns, wise, humane, forgiving, understanding of the wayward young teenager.
And then there’s the ending. The wayward teenager realises the errors of the ways, goes to church, realises her parents were right all along. Hallelujah.
US President Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that arming teachers could help prevent massacres such as last week’s mass shooting at a Florida high school.
By the time you have teachers shooting at mentally disturbed ex-students armed with assault rifles who are roaming the corridors of the school shooting innocent children, it’s too late.
The mentally disturbed ex-student should never have had an assault rifle in the first place.
So now, under this dingbat idea from the dingbat President, the curriculum for training teachers will include Firearms Training and Target Practice 101. That should do marvels for teacher recruitment.
From The Age Andrews government minister John Eren will allege to parliamentary authorities that Labor factional powerbroker Adem Somyurek threatened him with a butter knife during a heated dispute in parliament on Wednesday evening.
The allegations are denied by Mr Somyurek but will plunge the Andrews government into crisis.
Adem Somyurek. Photo: Jason South
Labor factional powerbroker Adem Somyurek is the State equivalent of Barnaby Joyce but lacking Barnaby’s charm wit and flair.
The Age reports: Barnaby Joyce and his pregnant partner Vikki Campion claim they have been hounded out of their rent free apartment.
He revealed this in a joint interview, actually Vicki didn’t say much, (strange for a Senior Media Advisor) the Beetrooter did most of the talking.
A newly domesticated Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce in the kitchen of the Armidale townhouse he is living in with Vikki Campion. Photo: Peter Hardin
They are both worried that their son will somehow be treated differently from other children, a statement that many of the people who commented on the interview found strange coming from from someone so vehemently opposed to marriage equality.
If the Beetrooter is certain about his support in the Parliamentary National Party, (which we should remember includes that bloated waste of space George Christensen) he will find that support in direct contrast to the comments on this interview.
There were 83, every one of them negative.
A recent Newspoll found 65% of Australians thought Joyce should either resign from Parliament or go to the backbench.
The Age reports: George Christensen has been reported to police by a Queensland environmental activist after the outspoken Nationals MP posted a photo of himself with a handgun on social media.
Mr Christensen on Saturday posted a photo of himself aiming a gun to Facebook with a post saying “You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, greenie punks?
The post comes just days after 17 people were killed at a shooting in a high school in the US.
It time for Malcolm Turnbull to make a stand on this kind of clownish behaviour. It’s also time for Barnaby Joyce to discipline George Christensen, publicly and firmly.
Most Australians, with the exception of the worst kind of redneck, will find this kind of behaviour absolutely repugnant.
The reason that Barnaby Joyce is leader of the National party is that the rest of the party appears to be made up of people like George Christiansen so the choices are limited.
The Age reports: During his press conference on Thursday Malcolm announces the ban on ministers having sex with their staff
“Barnaby made a shocking error of judgement in having an affair with a young woman working in his office. In doing so, he has set off a world of woe for those women and appalled all of us,” the Prime Minister said in a late afternoon address.
“Barnaby knows he made that shocking error of judgement. He knows that he let down his wife and daughters and he has apologised for that and to them.”
That’s what the Prime Minister said of the Deputy Prime Minister. No wonder he looked a bit peeved.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce in question time on Thursday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
But there are a whole lot of other issues: The continued employment of the staff member in various senior National party members offices, Joyce’s acceptance of free accommodation from two business associates, his acceptance of the salary while contesting his New England seat.
Underneath all of this is the question of how much of this the Prime Minister actually knew about.
It seems that the only reason that the National party is keeping Barnaby Joyce in his leadership position is that they’re not going to let the Liberal party told them who their Leader should be.
As Peter Hartcher wrote in The Age“By agreeing to take leave, Joyce has conceded that he can no longer fulfil his official responsibilities.
If the Deputy Prime Minister cannot act as Prime Minister in Malcolm Turnbull’s absence overseas, he is not doing his job.”
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