On the plus side, voting in this year’s federal election just got a little easier.
AN Abbott government would buy three unmanned spy planes to use as weapons in its pledge to turn around illegal boat arrivals.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the Global Hawk surveillance aircraft – costing between $40 million and $100 million each – would provide early detection of asylum seekers.
Because that is the rational thing to do. Spend $300 million on planes to catch leaky boats. In fact why stop at planes? I think we need surveillance satellites, the full resources of the navy and the air-force and the army and while we’re at it LET’S BUILD A GIANT WALL!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: What happened to political discourse in this country where refugees are talked about like pests?
This year will be the first federal election where I will be able to exercise my democratic right to decide if I’d rather a turd sandwich and a giant douche, and I feel like it is a really bad election to pop my voting cherry with. I would have liked the 2007 election. Government change, revolution, excitement. Howard lost his seat after almost 12 years. Sure, the man we replaced him with turned out to be a giant douche, but we didn’t know that for sure at the time.
But this year, we have Rudd vs Abbott. We have seen them both in government before and they both stink. Hooray for democracy!
Also in that same story: Abbott can’t think of any reason not to sell uranium to India.
#1 by Jeremy on 25 April 2010 - 8:52 am
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At least you can vote Green. The more people who do that, the better the chance of one of the major parties actually standing up for lefties. And if they don’t, then at least you’ll have a minor party MP representing you.
Imagine living in the US, where because of the lack of preference voting you don’t really have even the realistic option of voting for a third party.
#2 by Toaf on 25 April 2010 - 11:05 am
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Tony should explain how a Coalition gumint will be able to afford to spend money on Global Hawks when the Labor gumint only recently decided that Australia can’t afford them.
My bet is that (a) Tone thinks we’re too stupid to ask any difficult questions like “how will you afford it?” and (b) the mob who makes the Global Hawk – miffed after the gumint pulled the pin on the purchase – has being doing some lobbying.
#3 by BLL on 25 April 2010 - 4:32 pm
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Abbott is a prize dick. Those boat people don’t carry any guns and present themselves to our heavily armed navy. How this is a defence issue I will never know. Using Anzac day to push this bullshit is genuinely scarey. The more frightening thing is the media’s total innability to call the opposition leader to account for his idiotic statements.
And lest we forget the first anzAc day was a military disaster against a country that in no way threatened us.
#4 by BLL on 25 April 2010 - 4:40 pm
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And what exactly is abbott going to do if he got his way and the drones detected a siev? He might not have noticed that every time a ship has been turned back or given unusual treatment it has ended up in a high farce. Has any journo actually asked this follow up question? Fucking lazy cunts just copying and pasting last years Anzac waffle and then pissing off to the footy for more nationalistic claptrap.
#5 by Clubwah on 25 April 2010 - 5:43 pm
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The boats are being detected before they get to Christmas Island. Any sooner they’d still be in Indonesian waters – does Abbott want to explain to the Indonesians what $120 million spy planes are doing over their turf?
#6 by Idlaviv on 26 April 2010 - 10:00 am
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Nice point by Clubwah at #5.
I wonder if the charming Peter Reith has anything to do with this current lobbying:
Shortly after leaving politics, Reith took up employment with Tenix, a major Australian defence contractor. On 27 February, 2002, Prime Minister John Howard denied media reports of links between a decision to supply five police runabout boats to Indonesia and any discussions with Reith on behalf of Tenix.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Reith
#7 by Toaf on 26 April 2010 - 6:23 pm
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Idlaviv, not sure what Reith is up to at present. Since he joined Tenix it has been sold to BAES, so presumably he’s moved on or joined BAES. Either way, the Global Hawk is produced by Northrop Grumman, a US company, not BAES.
#8 by David Irving (no relation) on 27 April 2010 - 4:24 pm
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I don’t think Reith lasted too long on the Tenix board (it was a family-owned company). I don’t recall any mention of him when I started work for them.
Maybe his contacts didn’t translate into actual contracts.