Just before the federal election that put Tony Abbott in power, his soon-to-be immigration minister Scott Morrison said the government may stop telling the public when asylum boats arrive in Australia.
Instead, reporting details about boat arrivals — including numbers on board, their nationalities and whether any are children — would be an “operational decision” of the defence officers in charge of the Coalition's “Operation Sovereign Borders”.
Analysis
Aboriginal Australians awoke on Sunday morning to find they had a new “Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs”, a pledge Tony Abbott delivered during the 2013 election campaign.
One problem — noone, including within the media, ever stopped to ask Aboriginal people if they actually wanted a “Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs”, and in particular whether they wanted Abbott.
As it turns out, they apparently don’t.
Well, turns out some bastards won the federal elections. I knew some bastards would win. I said it beforehand, I said: “Some bastards are going to win this one, you wait and see.”
I was right. I even tried to put some money on some bastards winning, but no bookies would give me odds.
Soft brown eyes flicked furtively towards the guard’s room, then back to the ripe luscious strawberry she had carefully placed on the table’s edge. She waited for the guard’s laconic indifference to blend into the certainty of distraction, then secreted the treasure in her loose pocket.
“For my friend,” she confided, while a hint of defiance momentarily lit up eyes that for most of our visit had spilled out a lifetime of sorrow and loss. “My pregnant friend.”
Socialist Alliance members in Geelong have been victims of a vicious, post-election smear campaign. Federal police are investigating a Facebook page that called for the assassination of PM-elect Tony Abbott.
The creator of the page has not been identified, but they claimed an association with the Geelong branch of the Socialist Alliance and appeared to be posting from Geelong Trades Hall, where Socialist Alliance has its office.
So Tony Abbott is the new prime minister. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments delivered this outcome with the narrow self-interest of its MPs and mafia-like faction heads and its desperation to prove itself as the best managers of the system for the billionaire class.
Western Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett admitted on August 21 that his government faced a tough start to its second term.
The land around Gwabegar, in north-western NSW, is not known for its fertile soil. Locals call it “mongrel” or “heartbreak” country.
Fairfax Media quoted a farmer from nearby saying: “This is scalded country. It could not support the number of animals that would be needed to make a return on investment.”
If the Pilliga scrub is not much good for farming, why did Barnaby Joyce, the National Party Senator now standing for the seat of New England, and his wife Natalie pay $572,000 for two blocks of land there in the space of 18 months between 2006 and 2008?
Peter Boyle is the Socialist Alliance candidate for Sydney. He gave this speech to a rally for single parents rights in Redfern on August 24.
***
Together with Dianne Hiles, the Greens candidate in the same electorate who just spoke, I am campaigning against the cruel cuts to single parent entitlements by the former Julia Gillard Labor government and campaigning for a break from major party rule, from conservative major party policies and from the corrupted, old politics those parties stand for.
While much of the focus this election has been on the battle for western Sydney, noticeably absent from media reporting has been the campaign waged by Greens candidates in the area.
Yet the Greens are not only fielding candidates in every western Sydney electorate, “We are taking active roles in our local communities across western Sydney”, explained David Lenton, the Greens candidate for the seat of Lindsay.
More than that, they have the old mainstream parties running scared.
The two big parties have long considered refugees’ rights forfeit. This election year has been a time of unprecedented sacrifice of refugees, as each “policy” idea from Labor and the Liberals becomes more extreme than the last.
After signing up Papua New Guinea and Nauru to bogus resettlement deals, PM Kevin Rudd has most recently sent families to Nauru and continues to oversee legally dubious deportations.
Fremantle City Councillor Sam Wainwright, who is standing in the seat of Fremantle for the Socialist Alliance, said at a meet-the-candidates meeting that after the election on September 7, Australia will have a government that is "either bad or worse".
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