(Miscellaneous debris)

[fish]

How come Jones Ratings have increased along with the cost per minute for advertising on the show?

No idea Sojourner - surely people want factual information about climate change.

[Gozu]

OUTSPOKEN billionaire and LNP donor Clive Palmer has compared members of the party's hierarchy to Nazis in an insult likely to inflame an already tense situation.

Internal divisions in the LNP deepened yesterday as the mining magnate took aim, and Gold Coast MP Alex Douglas dragged Premier Campbell Newman into the fray by demanding he intervene in a dispute between MPs.

Mr Palmer's LNP life membership was suspended on Friday following a blistering attack in which he called for the removal of Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney and Treasurer Tim Nicholls and claimed "crooks" in Cabinet had cooked the books to exaggerate the state deficit.

Mr Palmer said his suspension was punishment for lodging a complaint with the LNP just hours earlier against Mr Seeney.

http://www.news.com.au/national/billion ... 6514345865

[Jimmy_041]

KEATING URGES AUSTRALIA TO FOCUS ON INDONESIA
ABC November 15, 2012, 1:03 am

Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia needs to dramatically improve its relationship with Indonesia and stop being subservient to the United States.
Mr Keating delivered the Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last night, with a speech titled "Asia in the new order: Australia's diminishing sphere of influence".
Before making the speech, he spoke to Lateline, and said Indonesia should become Australia's most important strategic relationship.
He said the current relationship had no structure or coherence and was full of transactional issues like live cattle exports and refugee management.
"Our natural stamping ground is South-East Asia," he told Lateline.
"The effort we should be making is with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In fact, I'm suggesting in the speech we should be a member of ASEAN.
"We should be redoubling our efforts on the bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Where Indonesia goes strategically, so go we, in which case the rise of that great state is centrally important. Our strategic bread is entirely buttered in the Indonesian archipelago.
"This is at our neighbourhood, this is at our doorstep - rather than simply trying to second guess the Americans and the Chinese about the South China Sea or North Asia."
Mr Keating says Australia will always be friends with the United States, but the strategic power of the west is diminishing.
He argues that Australian acquiescence to US foreign policy demands during the governments of former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has damaged Australian independence and hurt relations with Asia.
"I think that we are far too deferential to what we see as the proclivities of US foreign policy vis-a-vis our own," he said.
"Not knowing when to strike out on your own, not knowing when to map out your prerogatives and where the lines are all blurred with their own. Howard described himself as a deputy sheriff, remember this, in Asia.
"In the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
"And of course we had President Obama make an aggressive anti-Chinese speech fundamentally in our parliamentary chamber, the so-called pivot speech.
"We're in the lee of the great whoosh of American policy making for good or for bad - we have been. Now, we're entitled to pick the eyes out of it. but we should not expect to be taken for bunnies."

This from the hypocrite who once said Asia was there to fly over on the way to Europe, yet now claims to be an “Asian expert”.
More re-writing of his own history

[Sky Pilot]

Nothing that Keating says or writes has an ounce of relevance. He is a king rat with a large chip on his shoulder. One of the reasons I can't embrace Republicanism is because he would be a front runner to be anointed as our inaugural president and that would be the end of sanity in our little part of the world.

[The Sleeping Giant]

No chance in hell of Paul Keating being the first President of Australia.

[bulldogproud2]

How come Jones Ratings have increased along with the cost per minute for advertising on the show?

No idea Sojourner - surely people want factual information about climate change.

They fell in every age group but the over 64's though.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/10/30/too ... r-scandal/

[Gozu]

How come Jones Ratings have increased along with the cost per minute for advertising on the show?

No idea Sojourner - surely people want factual information about climate change.

They fell in every age group but the over 64's though.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/10/30/too ... r-scandal/

They also went up in the 10-17 age group. A nice mix the people who can't vote and the people who shouldn't be allowed to continue voting

[bulldogproud2]

KEATING URGES AUSTRALIA TO FOCUS ON INDONESIA
ABC November 15, 2012, 1:03 am

Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia needs to dramatically improve its relationship with Indonesia and stop being subservient to the United States.
Mr Keating delivered the Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last night, with a speech titled "Asia in the new order: Australia's diminishing sphere of influence".
Before making the speech, he spoke to Lateline, and said Indonesia should become Australia's most important strategic relationship.
He said the current relationship had no structure or coherence and was full of transactional issues like live cattle exports and refugee management.
"Our natural stamping ground is South-East Asia," he told Lateline.
"The effort we should be making is with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In fact, I'm suggesting in the speech we should be a member of ASEAN.
"We should be redoubling our efforts on the bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Where Indonesia goes strategically, so go we, in which case the rise of that great state is centrally important. Our strategic bread is entirely buttered in the Indonesian archipelago.
"This is at our neighbourhood, this is at our doorstep - rather than simply trying to second guess the Americans and the Chinese about the South China Sea or North Asia."
Mr Keating says Australia will always be friends with the United States, but the strategic power of the west is diminishing.
He argues that Australian acquiescence to US foreign policy demands during the governments of former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has damaged Australian independence and hurt relations with Asia.
"I think that we are far too deferential to what we see as the proclivities of US foreign policy vis-a-vis our own," he said.
"Not knowing when to strike out on your own, not knowing when to map out your prerogatives and where the lines are all blurred with their own. Howard described himself as a deputy sheriff, remember this, in Asia.
"In the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
"And of course we had President Obama make an aggressive anti-Chinese speech fundamentally in our parliamentary chamber, the so-called pivot speech.
"We're in the lee of the great whoosh of American policy making for good or for bad - we have been. Now, we're entitled to pick the eyes out of it. but we should not expect to be taken for bunnies."

This from the hypocrite who once said Asia was there to fly over on the way to Europe, yet now claims to be an “Asian expert”.
More re-writing of his own history

Paul Keating never made the statement you attributed to him. He was always trying to get Australia to make closer ties with Asia. Please refer to this article from 2003:

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/conten ... 967546.htm

It appears to be you, not Paul Keating, who is attempting to rewrite history!

[southee]

I wish Keating would just crawl in a cave and disappear!!

Awful human being!!!

[Leaping Lindner]

KEATING URGES AUSTRALIA TO FOCUS ON INDONESIA
ABC November 15, 2012, 1:03 am

Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia needs to dramatically improve its relationship with Indonesia and stop being subservient to the United States.
Mr Keating delivered the Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last night, with a speech titled "Asia in the new order: Australia's diminishing sphere of influence".
Before making the speech, he spoke to Lateline, and said Indonesia should become Australia's most important strategic relationship.
He said the current relationship had no structure or coherence and was full of transactional issues like live cattle exports and refugee management.
"Our natural stamping ground is South-East Asia," he told Lateline.
"The effort we should be making is with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In fact, I'm suggesting in the speech we should be a member of ASEAN.
"We should be redoubling our efforts on the bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Where Indonesia goes strategically, so go we, in which case the rise of that great state is centrally important. Our strategic bread is entirely buttered in the Indonesian archipelago.
"This is at our neighbourhood, this is at our doorstep - rather than simply trying to second guess the Americans and the Chinese about the South China Sea or North Asia."
Mr Keating says Australia will always be friends with the United States, but the strategic power of the west is diminishing.
He argues that Australian acquiescence to US foreign policy demands during the governments of former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has damaged Australian independence and hurt relations with Asia.
"I think that we are far too deferential to what we see as the proclivities of US foreign policy vis-a-vis our own," he said.
"Not knowing when to strike out on your own, not knowing when to map out your prerogatives and where the lines are all blurred with their own. Howard described himself as a deputy sheriff, remember this, in Asia.
"In the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
"And of course we had President Obama make an aggressive anti-Chinese speech fundamentally in our parliamentary chamber, the so-called pivot speech.
"We're in the lee of the great whoosh of American policy making for good or for bad - we have been. Now, we're entitled to pick the eyes out of it. but we should not expect to be taken for bunnies."

This from the hypocrite who once said Asia was there to fly over on the way to Europe, yet now claims to be an “Asian expert”.
More re-writing of his own history

The quote that has been attributed to him is "The best way to see Darwin is from 35,000 feet on your way to Paris." Not Asia.

He also stated in 1994 when PM “No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete”.

Re-writing history indeed.

[Jimmy_041]

Now the Australian people are idiots according to him
He is the almighty one

PAUL Keating believes Australians were wrong to vote him out of office in 1996 as the electorate was given a clear warning about life under a John Howard-led Coalition government.
"The country can't say that it wasn't told," Mr Keating said. "The point is that countries make mistakes and they get things wrong."
His comments, made in a series of frank interviews with past Labor prime ministers and opposition leaders, are included in a new collection of political speeches.
Mr Keating, prime minister from 1991 to 1996, argues that in his speech to the National Press Club on the eve of the 1996 election, he accurately predicted how Mr Howard's government would unravel many of his government's policies, particularly on workplace relations, Medicare and the environment.
"It was very much about the new order," Mr Keating said, reflecting on his government's economic and social reforms at the end of 13 years of government. "(That speech) said more about Australian public life and where we had come to than anything else," he says in the book.
In his speech, Mr Keating said he had been able "to tell the people about the need for changes, to tell them why, to try and describe the kind of country we want".
But at the 1996 election, he argues the media did not adequately scrutinise Mr Howard's election policies or his political intentions.
Mr Howard, he said in the speech, sought the prime ministership with "a grab-bag of promises driven by a polling agency and an advertising agency". Nevertheless, in the speech, Mr Keating's warning to voters was: "When the government changes, the country changes."
He believes this was confirmed by the actions of the Howard government, despite promising few policy changes.
In the speech, Mr Keating forecast that a Howard government would remove industrial protections, abolish the no-disadvantage test, weaken the industrial umpire and diminish collective bargaining. The speech predicted Work Choices, Mr Keating argues.
Mr Keating says his government did not get enough credit for economic reforms, which granted to the Howard government a period of long economic growth.

[Chuck Wepner]

I reckon he's right.

[Jimmy_041]

KEATING URGES AUSTRALIA TO FOCUS ON INDONESIA
ABC November 15, 2012, 1:03 am

Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia needs to dramatically improve its relationship with Indonesia and stop being subservient to the United States.
Mr Keating delivered the Keith Murdoch Oration in Melbourne last night, with a speech titled "Asia in the new order: Australia's diminishing sphere of influence".
Before making the speech, he spoke to Lateline, and said Indonesia should become Australia's most important strategic relationship.
He said the current relationship had no structure or coherence and was full of transactional issues like live cattle exports and refugee management.
"Our natural stamping ground is South-East Asia," he told Lateline.
"The effort we should be making is with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In fact, I'm suggesting in the speech we should be a member of ASEAN.
"We should be redoubling our efforts on the bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Where Indonesia goes strategically, so go we, in which case the rise of that great state is centrally important. Our strategic bread is entirely buttered in the Indonesian archipelago.
"This is at our neighbourhood, this is at our doorstep - rather than simply trying to second guess the Americans and the Chinese about the South China Sea or North Asia."
Mr Keating says Australia will always be friends with the United States, but the strategic power of the west is diminishing.
He argues that Australian acquiescence to US foreign policy demands during the governments of former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has damaged Australian independence and hurt relations with Asia.
"I think that we are far too deferential to what we see as the proclivities of US foreign policy vis-a-vis our own," he said.
"Not knowing when to strike out on your own, not knowing when to map out your prerogatives and where the lines are all blurred with their own. Howard described himself as a deputy sheriff, remember this, in Asia.
"In the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
"And of course we had President Obama make an aggressive anti-Chinese speech fundamentally in our parliamentary chamber, the so-called pivot speech.
"We're in the lee of the great whoosh of American policy making for good or for bad - we have been. Now, we're entitled to pick the eyes out of it. but we should not expect to be taken for bunnies."

This from the hypocrite who once said Asia was there to fly over on the way to Europe, yet now claims to be an “Asian expert”.
More re-writing of his own history

The quote that has been attributed to him is "The best way to see Darwin is from 35,000 feet on your way to Paris." Not Asia.

He also stated in 1994 when PM “No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete”.

Re-writing history indeed.

Funny, Mungo Maccallum says he said it in his book
Plus it's in his book of sledges
That's what Keating wants - to delete, and alter, his history.
Keating was subservient to Indonesia
And, was that before or after he called Mahathir a recalcitrant? Is Malaysia not part of Asia?
But, then again, Keating has always had a problem with people who had an education because he had none.
So, in typical Keating fashion, he tries to belittle those that embarrass him, because they have done, what he could not, or have something he has not.

[bulldogproud2]

Contrary to the last post, Paul Keating is well educated, maybe not so much by formal qualifications as by the 'school of life'. He is currently a Professor of Public Policy at the University of New South Wales. He also has three 'honorary' law doctorates. He is also an investment banker and on the board of a numbe of banks. As for wanting things that others have, why did he refuse to accept the Companion of the Order of Australia then??

Also, you can't have it both ways, Jimmy. First you state that Paul Keating tried to ignore Asia, now you state he was subservient to it!!

[Jimmy_041]

Contrary to the last post, Paul Keating is well educated, maybe not so much by formal qualifications as by the 'school of life'. He is currently a Professor of Public Policy at the University of New South Wales. He also has three 'honorary' law doctorates. He is also an investment banker and on the board of a numbe of banks. As for wanting things that others have, why did he refuse to accept the Companion of the Order of Australia then??

Also, you can't have it both ways, Jimmy. First you state that Paul Keating tried to ignore Asia, now you state he was subservient to it!!

I dont dispute the guy is intelligent, but his open contempt for anyone with formal education who disagrees with him is laughable.
And, honorary degrees, pfft, I have 15 degrees from the Pacific University sitting on my wall - they cost me $100 each
He is not an "investment banker" he is an adviser to one
He refused the AC because it is offered to all past PMs - Keating is far better than that, and wants one granted on merit, otherwise people would say he never earnt it. The man's ego and arrogance is unsurpassed in history. His current comments that the people got it wrong because he was dumped in one of the biggest landslides in history is indicative of his contempt for the Australian people. Give me Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke or even Kim Beazley any day.
He was contemptuous of Asia other than Indonesia whom he pandered to at every opportunity. It is not having it both ways - I said he was subservient to one country in Asia, not Asia itself

[Gozu]

Former ALP power-broker Eddie Obeid is embroiled in a corruption scandal that could rival the Fitzgerald Inquiry in scope and impact. It's a disaster for federal Labor, writes Ben Eltham

http://newmatilda.com/2012/11/15/obeid-bring-down-labor

Obeid is accused of benefiting from decisions made by the former resources minister, Ian Macdonald, to open the Bylong Valley for coal mining. The Obeid family, it turns out, owned farms in the Bylong Valley. They also owned shares in a mining company, Cascade Coal, which was granted coal exploration licences by Macdonald. When the Obeids sold their properties in the exploration area, they made $13 million. When they sold their shares in Cascade, they made $60 million — for an initial outlay of only $200,000. It’s nice work, if you can get it.

[Gozu]

Clive Palmer quits the LNP

CLIVE Palmer tonight quit the LNP after a dramatic few hours in which the outspoken life member, who had been suspended from the party, was reinstated.

The Courier-Mail understands lawyers for the LNP and for Mr Palmer exchanged letters tonight, ending the billionaire's tumultuous relationship with the party he has been associated with for more than 40 years.

In two surprise moves, the party reinstated Mr Palmer who then resigned.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/nation ... 6522355647

[dedja]

pity, they deserve each other ...

[Jimmy_041]

Maybe Cory Bernardi wasn't that far off the mark:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/germany-to-ban-sex-with-animals-report/story-fnddckzi-1226524544281

[dedja]

The Kiwi government had better put out a travel advisory then ...