Posts Tagged Tony Abbott

A “Sorry” Variation (Sincere Regrets)

Nov 2

Posted by Ross Sharp in Politics, Society | 1 Comment

Groupthink is proud to announce a brand new set of lyrics with a local and contemporary flavour set to the tune of Tex Williams’ “Some, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette)” …

“SORRY, SORRY, SORRY (SINCERE REGRETS)”

Now we’re a country with a heart of gold,
Or at least that’s what we’re taught and told,
The kinda place that’s the envy of the world.

But there’s some things that ain’t too thrillin’
Like “The X Factor” or seam gas drillin’,
That when I hear about, do make my toes fair curl.

We’re very sorry for Pauline Hanson,
She can’t wash a car and she’s shit at dancin’,
She ain’t much superior to anyone.

Sorry for whinin’ and fallin’ to our knees-
Whoops! Here’s a boat from Indonese!
Run for the hills and don’t forget the guns!

(CHORUS)
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sincere regrets,
Sorry for all the things we’ve done, and the things we ain’t done yet.
We’re so sorry it makes us cry,
Sorry that our planes don’t fuckin’ fly,
Sorry for the floods and the levy and the flies and the sharks and the pests.

Alan Jones is sorry for his choice of language,
I wish he were the meat in a gay leper sandwich,
Alan Joyce is sorry he’s brung The Troubles.

We’re sorry ‘bout the price of bananas,
And Coles and Woolies fuckin’ over the farmers,
But I still shop there, ‘cause the other places cost me double! (Sorry)

We’re sorry about Andrew Bolt’s pity,
The sook could be heard from city to city,
But old Andy, he ain’t sorry ‘bout much at all.

“My freedom of speech is under threat!”,
And, “Ordinary folk can’t place a bet!”,
“These Muslims and ni**ers gonna rape and kill us all!”

We’re sorry for climate change,
No doubt these scientists are all insane!
You can predict the climate from the entrails of a chicken!

And we’re sorry for Katter and Barnaby Joyce,
Add Angry Anderson and you’re spoilt for choice
For candidates with the brainpower of a kitten!

And we’re bloody sorry for Julia Gillard,
And for Kevin Rudd, whom she doth spill’ed,
Poor dear went off his Iced Vo-Vo’s for a month.

But we’re mortified by Tony Abbott,
In his budgie smugglers with his budgie’s scabbard,
I’m sorry, but I’m about to lose my lunch!

Tags: Alan Jones, Alan Joyce, Andrew Bolt, Angry Anderson, Barnaby Joyce, Bob Katter, Julia Gillard, qantas, sorry, Tony Abbott

An Important Message from the Australian Pharmaceutical Industry

Oct 27

Posted by Ross Sharp in Corporations, Media, Politics, Society | No Comments

Our Fellow Australians,

We of the Australian pharmaceutical industry and its related interests and concerns are alarmed at the Federal government’s recently announced policy intentions seeking to introduce mandatory dosage recommendations on prescription and non-prescription medicines and medicinal products.

It is our firm belief that introducing such restrictions on products that are legally and freely available to any Australian within current age regulations will seriously impact on the ability of the Australian pharmaceutical industry and its related interests and concerns to continue operating on the level of profitability necessary to viably invest in much-needed further research into the medical, scientific and pharmaceutical fields that are vital to the continuing health, well-being and welfare of not only all Australians, but people throughout the world.

Our independently conducted research has concluded that the introduction of such mandatory dosage restrictions and recommendations may potentially cost the industry upwards of $13 billion in lost research and development investments per annum, which carries with it dire implications for the average Australian citizen’s health and their ability to treat their health issues and concerns responsibly and independently of government interference. By restricting such current freedoms, the government also fails to grasp the enormous cost and pressure such a policy of restrictions will place upon the national health care system as more and more people, unable to responsibly self-medicate will, potentially, consume the time and attentions of health professionals on relatively trivial matters that would be best served on those far more serious.

The Federal government’s current policy intentions signify not only an interference in an individual’s right to choose their own treatment regime as their needs may dictate, but a breach of confidentiality between the recommendations of health professionals and their patients. Therefore, it is our most sincere intention to continue to aggressively protest the introduction of such a policy by the current government as we believe it represents not only a highly unfair and discriminatory imposition on our industry and its related interests and concerns, but a violation of every Australian citizen’s right to live and make decisions about the course of their lives unhindered by government intervention and restrictions.

It is down paths such as these that the seeds of totalitarianism are sown.

Sincerely,
The Australian Pharmaceutical Industry and its Related Interests and Concerns

Tags: Andrew Wilkie, Anthony Ball, Clubs Australia, poker machine limits, poker machine restrictions, Tony Abbott, Tony Abbott sells his arse

We are all Bill Murray now

Sep 8

Posted by Ross Sharp in Immigration, Media, Politics, Society | No Comments

5.30 on Channel 9′s “Today” show this morning opens with the headline story, “They’re here! More boats headed for our shores carrying potentially hundreds of asylum seekers and they could be here as soon as today!”, it’s Groundhog Day, I punch the mute button on the remote and wait for it to go away.

Lordy, lordy, won’t you help me please, for I was about 41 or 42 when this conversation about refugees became the Australia’s Cup of political footballs, and I am almost 53 today, and this conversation continues, and it surely does exhaust my tired ol’ mind sumfin’ awful and wearies my chalky ol’ bones to the marrow, yes’m, indeed it do, amen to that and praise this day.

For I have worn out my last pair of rubber underpants and peed my last panicked puddle of despair over the dire straits of it all, I can pee and squeal no more, I’m plum all peed and squealed out, looks like they’re here and they’re here to stay and they’re coming, more of them, every day, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of whacked-out dingbats in bomb-laden dinghies to blow us all to that great brick shithouse in the sky, fuck our sheep and fill our pies with felafel.

By God in the almighty heavens above our tender heads, it is a sad truth today that the fabric of our society is indeed a torn and ragged rag of a thing now.

Yes, Sweet Jesus, it is but a pair of ol’, piss-streaked y-fronts on the spindly and spotted frame of an 80 year old digger with its arse all hangin’ out to buggery, and the people of this fair land ain’t havin’ none of it no mo’, they’s a souffle of social unrest a-risin’ in the heartland, all angry cheese and righteous dustings of outraged flour over the changing state of this nation and these seemingly endless series of vile upheavals that have seen our shores swarm with murderin’ beards and their murderin’ ways, smokin’ hookahs and bakin’ flatbreads and those little jelly sweets that are dusted with sugary shit, I quite like those and I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth.

…

Sorry, where was I?

Oh.

Yes …

Tags: asylum seekers, Channel 9, Groundhog Day, refugees, Tony Abbott

Groupthink Caption Contest: dead animal edition

Aug 17

Posted by Spock... in Caption comps | 22 Comments

Blogging may be dead, but low brow humor isn’t.
Have at it.

Tags: pig arse, Tony Abbott

Spock’s half-arsed Mediawatch – Budget edition.

May 11

Posted by Spock... in Media, Politics | 7 Comments

Well.. not so much media-watch as getting shouty at the awesome coverage over at The Australian that needs some attention.

First up we have some whiny white people…

Balancing act makes for some hard choices:

An angry Ms Allardyce last night said this budget would make her reconsider her vote.

“She is a woman and I thought she would understand the pressures in the workplace,” she said of the Prime Minister. “Maybe Gillard should have a child.

Oh, the “Gillard don’t have kids” crap surfaces again. Go fuck yourself.

“We have made the choice to better ourselves. When I came to Australia I worked my way up and sacrificed a lot.

We grew here, you flew here Ms Allardyce. Why do you hate Australia. Adapt to our way of life. You can’t expect handouts. Go back to where you came from. etc…

The Allardyces both work full-time and together earn about $200,000 a year. That makes the Dutch-born working mum rich according the federal government. She doesn’t feel that way.

“Food, clothing, gas electricity — it all adds up. The more money you earn, the more you have to do for it. It is not as if I have a cushy job.”

I can juggle all that AND a sizable drinking habit on around $400 a week, I think juggling it on $200,000 a year shouldn’t be hard.

So whiney wealthy white people aren’t happy with the budget and The Australian is giving them space… moving on.

Tony Abbott attacks ‘class war’ budget and says Coalition may oppose some welfare cuts

TONY Abbott has signalled he may oppose middle-class welfare cuts, branding Wayne Swan’s fourth budget an attack on aspirational Australians.

The warning came as the Greens also said they would reserve the right to seek changes to some budget measures.

The Opposition Leader said the raft of cuts to families earning up to $150,000 were a form of “class war” that hammered everyday households.

“up to” has a very different meaning to “over”.

“I am instinctively against these budget cuts to families,” Mr Abbott said.

Because Abbott is PRO-family.

“Why is this government always targeting people who want to get ahead? Why is the government against the aspirations of people?”

If you’re earning $100,000 a year, I think they are well past the “getting ahead” stage of aspiration. Besides, we’re not talking about taxing them more. We are talking about welfare. Money given to them by the government! Not exactly class warfare. But on planet Tony, cuts to welfare for upper middle class families is akin to communism. I think if you’re earning $100,000 a year, I don’t think it is unfair to expect you support yourself. Just putting it out there.

Milking the rich in postcodes of affluence

WAYNE Swan is taking money from the folks in the nation’s wealthiest postcodes so Labor can look after its traditional supporters and keep on side those middle-income families who determine elections.

Put the budget vibe on a T-shirt and it would say “Milk the rich, lift the poor, tickle the middle”.

If you are living in postcodes 3944, 2027, 6012, 4007, 5006 or 7005, the Gillard government has put a big target on your back.

Now who’s turning this into a class war?

Tags: rich selfish cunts, The Australian, Tony Abbott

Brown people: expensive

May 9

Posted by Spock... in Immigration, Society | 2 Comments

The Herald Sun is being outraged at brown people again:

Taxpayers to shoulder Julia Gillard’s ‘Malaysian Solution’

Taxpayers will fork out more than $50,000 for every refugee the Federal Government plans to bring to Australia from Malaysia under its new plan to stop illegal boat arrivals.

But they will have to pay more than $90,000 for every asylum seeker the Government now rejects.

I’m already have one cost cutting suggestion…

Sue Bolton from the Refugee Action Collective has another,

The costs of processing asylum seekers could be reduced, Ms Bolton said, by allowing some low-risk applicants to live within the community while they are assessed rather than mandatory detention.

So let’s say 5000 asylum seekers arrive by boat, 90% are accepted so 500 are found not to be refugees. Using the Herald Sun numbers if we just let to 500 found not to be refugees stay in Australia anyway, I just saved the Australian government $20,000,000. I imagine another several million could be saved by allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while being processed too.

Economic management!

Of course Scott Morrison was available for comment,

“Labor’s open borders and rolling detention crisis is consuming staff and resources at an insatiable rate, with taxpayers forced to write a blank cheque to underwrite the Government’s failure,” said Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison.

This was, and never will be, about money, Scott. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did I am sure the deepest, darkest circle of it would be reserved for you.

And Gillard is spending money to stop Asylum Seekers coming to Australia! (Outrage, etc…)

Australia is using Prime Minister Julia Gillard to spearhead an international advertising blitz with the slogan “don’t do it”, telling people smugglers and passengers in Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan about its new plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, where there are 93,000 people already in the queue.

The PM’s warning – “the truth is if you spend your money, you get on a boat, you risk your life, you don’t get to stay, you go to Malaysia, and you go to the back of the queue” – has been translated into Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Arabic and Bahasa Indonesian, and already broadcast.

As fellow Groupthink-er, Brides said on Twitter this morning,

s_bridges
Looked for the back of the immigration queue down the back of the couch. Found 20 cents and a crust of toast.
9/05/11 11:01 AM

And don’t forget the poll:

YES/NO

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ILLEGAL REFUGEE, YOU FUCKING IGNORANT AND/OR DISINGENUOUS ARSEHATS!

In Herald Sun, Julia Gillard just can’t win. She spends money to stop Asylum seekers coming and she is criticized. She spends money on allowing them to come, she gets criticized.

This isn’t about money, it was never about money. If it was about money Tony’s plans to drag boats back to wherever they came from would have caused more outrage than anything. This is just the Herald Sun using not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia to play dirty politics.

And all the while the public debate in Australia forgets that there are real people, with real lives and genuine fears for their life fleeing to Australia in the hope of a new life.

This is a fight the ALP can’t win. Torn between their progressive base and the conservative votes they need to win seats in NSW and Queensland. No matter how “tough” they talk on “illegal immigration”, Tony Abbott can (and does) talk tougher. No matter what crazy, expensive and inhuman scheme Gillard concocts to discourage asylum seekers traveling to Australia via boat, the News Ltd tabloids find a negative way to frame it as being too soft on Asylum seekers, or too expensive to the tax payer.

With the terms of the debate being set by Tony Abbott and the News Ltd outrage machine, Gillard doesn’t stand a chance.

But the alternative is to present a vision which cuts through the agenda driven ‘journalism’ of News Ltd, which seeks to inspire and educate. N0t to just cater your policies to the lowest common denominator of Australian society, but to present a compelling and persuasive vision that can win the hearts and minds of voters.

And I gave up on Australian politics providing anything like that a long time ago.

Tags: asylum seekers, Herald Sun, Julia Gillard, refugees, Tony Abbott

The break-up

Apr 14

Posted by Ross Sharp in Media, Politics | 15 Comments

The federal government announces a policy. The opposition says the policy is bad, will ruin us all and we’ll be worse off than Haiti by lunchtime next Tuesday.

An increasingly partisan media chime in with a “Yay” or a “Ya-boo sucks” courtesy of a hyperactively rabid clutch of so-called “opinion” writers (my, there’s a talent – having an “opinion” – the world reels in awe), for whom “gotcha” moments and the barely-there policy brain farts of political pissants spell weeks and weeks of dramatic copy.

This is the current standard of what passes for political debate and discussion in this country. It’s the equivalent of saying “Your mother wears army boots and your dog smells”, but that’s about as good as it gets.

Now we have both government and opposition attempting to convince us all that there are vast zombie hordes of deliberately unemployed welfare cheats out there ripping hard-earned dollars straight from our poor little wallets, sentencing all of us “decent, hard-workin’ Aussie families” to a lifetime of deprivation and penury, while they, the unemployed, live life to the hilt with nary a care in the world.

The intellectual and ideological vapidity of the cliché-ridden mediocrities who now purport to represent us is such that, after 34 years of casting a vote in every state and federal election since I became eligible to do so, I will not be casting another.

I’ll turn up to get my name crossed off but, as far as the major parties are concerned, if this is the best the both of you have to offer, you know what you can do with your ballot paper from here on in.

After which, you can all just fuck off and die, the whole goddamn lot of you.*

*The author would like to apologise for the total absence of humour in this post. The author is in a snit.

Tags: I don't like you and I don't like your dog, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott

Humanitarian Tony

Feb 8

Posted by Spock... in Politics | 4 Comments

The people of Queensland were suffering. Tony saw.

Many suffering Queenslanders had lost their homes, businesses, crops and even the people they loved. Tony saw.

Infrastructure was demolished: roads, schools, hospitals all lay to ruin by mother nature’s fury. Tony saw.

Tony saw that the people were in need, Tony was going to help.

Tony is a humanitarian like that.

Tony saw that the people of Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, The ACT and the Northern Territory were suffering financial hardship. Some people could only buy the 32″ when they really wanted the 50″. Some were forced to drink home brand milk and wipe their arse with single ply. Gerry Harvey was hurting. The Miners were hurting.

These Australians could not be burdened by the people of Queensland and Tony saw.

But Tony is a humanitarian.

The people of Queensland needed to be helped and Tony knew that only one group could possibly be called on to shoulder this burden:

Mr Abbott’s proposed savings include slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from Australia’s foreign aid budget to Africa, and winding up the school infrastructure stimulus plan.

Because Tony is a humanitarian.

Tags: Brisbane floods, flood levy, Foreign Aid, Tony Abbott

Gillard, Abbott, Brown. OH WHY

Feb 3

Posted by cosmicjester in Politics, Social etiquette | 19 Comments

There is a common view that Australia is an over-governed country and it’s usually the state government that critics point to as an unnecessary tier. It’s doubtful that there are many people in Queensland with that view now. Throughout the continuous snafus that mother nature kept hurling at us, the Premier and the government has done a stellar job of keeping the public informed and managing the situation. And this is from an unpopular Premier that just a few months ago was expected to be destroyed at the next election if her own party didnt knife her first.

Compare this with the performances of the Federal leaders and I don’t think anyone would be thinking that we would be better off if Canberra was calling all the shots during the drama.

Yesterday Julia Gillard was the invisible woman. Tourists must have presumed that Anna Bligh was this nations leader if they compared the performances between the two. Whilst Anna Bligh gave hourly, informative press conferences, Gillard only popped in once that I saw and just spoke some generalities and cliches about mateship. Over-prepared and with all the sincerity of a hallmark greeting card. There was nothing particularly wrong with her performance but she lacks the empathy and common touch that Kevin Rudd and John Howard used to connect with the public during previous national tragedies. She comes off as more of an auditor in chief as she pushes her cuts and flood levy to rebuild Queensland rather than something higher that a national leader should be.

But Julia comes off pretty well compared to the woeful performance of Tony Abbott over the last few weeks. The problem with Abbott is that he is an attack dog who can’t take off his partisan hat no matter what the occasion. Tony has fine form, back when Kevin Rudd got the Labor leadership Abbott thought he would have a go at Rudd over the conflicting reports over just how long childhood Rudd spent in a car after his family was kicked off his farm. During the floods, before the peak hit Abbott thought it was a good idea to use the floods to have a go at the NBN and then after that launch a full scale assault on the flood levy. I’m not suggesting that a natural disaster means the opposition should automatically support everything the government does in response to the disaster, but Tony has clearly been more interested in using the disaster to trash the government than supporting the rebuilding and recovery.

Instead of doing the right thing and urging his supporters to give generously to the Premiers flood appeal, he pushed the line that you may as well not bother with charity as the government is gonna tax you anyway. And whilst North Queensland was bracing itself for the worst yesterday, Tony thought it a good time to ask for donations. Donations not for Queensland but for his campaign to stop a levy designed to rebuild Queensland. His entire performance can be summed up as more ass than class.

And then there is the Greens. Since Black Saturday their standard reaction to natural disasters is to try and link it to climate change. First Bob Brown comes out after being quiet during the floods and makes a spurious link between the floods and coal mining. And then yesterday Christine Milne links the cyclone to climate change. Its fair enough to say their is a link between the natural disasters and climate change, but it looks unsympathetic when that is the only thing you talk about. People who have lost everything and have seen their towns destroyed are more interested in the here and now, the rebuilding and relief rather than arguments about how much effect climate change may have on these natural disasters. It makes the Greens look like one trick ponies who aren’t all that interested in the day to day troubles of flood and cyclone victims.

They say we get the politicians we deserve, but I don’t see what we did to deserve these woeful leaders.

Tags: Bob Brown, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott

Here we go again …

Jan 20

Posted by Ross Sharp in Politics | 10 Comments

This post first appeared on my own blog in October 2009. Considering the dreary debate that is currently gearing up about the “cost to the economy” of the Queensland and Victorian floods, I felt it appropriate to repost it here …

THE ECONOMONOTONY

At this very moment in time … (and not that other moment in time, the one back there, to the left and up a bit … no, up a bit, next to the fridge … yes, that one, no, not that one, that’s the one we’re not talking about … ) … (… fucking retard) … tens of thousands of Australians are engaged hard at work, heads bowed, brows knitted and lightly beaded with sweat, the tips of their little pink tongues poking through their thin, pursed and pale lips, furiously scribbling and calculating and postulating and wondering, extrapolating this from that, and that from this, pulling a conclusion from here, and a conclusion from there, a theory, a probability, a series of infinite possibilities arising from said probabilities, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling away, furiously concentrated on pulling, and what are they doing in there we ask ourselves, what are they building, what are they cobbling together and why, for what purpose and in pursuit of what are these sunken-chested and sallow-faced individuals engaged?

They are calculating the “cost to the economy” of “stuff”.

Here is a heresy …

Fuck the “economy”.

Fuck the “cost to the economy” of “stuff”.

Fuck your Footsies and Tootsies and Hung Low Sweet Chariots and Dowser Johnson’s and Cheese-Faced Bitch Indexes. Fuck your “market analysts” and “economic experts”, “forecasters” and “advisors” and their endless booga-boo voodoo predictions of wrack and ruin and hand-wringing predilection for doom and gloom.

Fuck the “market reports” that clutter up the daily and nightly news reports with obtuse bullshit dribbling from the mouths of bullshit-artists, shills and shell-game shysters whose sad, denuded lives comprise little more than spewing out utterly worthless speculations about the possible “cost to the economy” of this and the estimated “cost to the economy” of that, the rise of this and the fall of that.

Here is an immutable truth …

Doing “stuff” costs money.

Finding “stuff” out costs money. Making progress, advancing as a civilisation, developing something that may resemble a “culture” costs money. Science, education, health, research and development costs money. Public infrastructure, transport, homes, roads, the basic things we require in order to live a life costs money.

For living a life costs money.

What a fucking shame.

Are you ill? Have you been ill recently? Did you take some time off to recover? Time off from work? …

“You evil cunt, you sickly flyblown shithead, you neoplastic lump of swollen filth, you have inflicted your afflicted self on “the economy” and you have “cost” it. You have cost us, rancid thrush-bucket of congealed ooze that you are”

Are you old? Are you ageing? What’s that? You want to retire? Some time for yourself, you say? …

“Selfish fuck, cunt of all ages, can you not see the burden you place upon us? Can you not die? For the sake of the economy and the “cost to it”, can you not simply shuffle off to the back shed and punch a bullet through your ageing, addled brain? You scum, you spotted arse, you drained and withered harpies’ tit, we need these pennies, we need these pennies you cost us, this fistful of shiny, shiny coin, it clinks, it makes us hard, tumescent, engorged, we could cum a rainbow of riches eternal if it were not for you and your ilk, ulcerous scab on the face of the earth.

“How much have you “cost the economy?

“Let us see.

“Let us calculate, let us surmise, let us pull and pull and pull, let us pull suppositions, let us pull speculations, conjectures, a conjecture from there, a conjecture from here, blessed be our divinations in this, our holy work.”

And so.

On they plod, constantly muttering away in their sour and sociopathic monotones, muttering at us from their sterile and drab little cubicles from around the nation, surrounded by charts and maps and graphs about nothing at all, pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling in the manner of children pulling wads of crusty snot from dusty, cavernous nostrils and saving them up in old jam jars, saving them up for a rainy day, rows and rows and rows of old jam jars crammed with snot, just in case, just in case one day, one glorious day in the hopefully not so distant future, wads of crusty snot may become a common currency.

Fuck the “cost to the economy”.

Fuck it all to Hell.

Tags: bores, Brisbane floods, dullards, economics, shitheads, Tony Abbott