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HOWARD DECADE NOTED
In this week’s Bulletin ...
* Tony Wright interviews Australia’s best Prime Minister;
* David Frum argues that Australia should re-introduce the death penalty;
* A Continuing Crisis column appears, in which Dr Tim Flannery is invited to take a polygraph test;
* And there’s a bunch of other stuff, too.
UPDATE. Labor’s Martin Ferguson:
After a decade in Opposition we have plenty of storytellers but not much of a story to tell.
UPDATE II. Phillip Adams:
We Howard haters are popping the corks along with the Howard huggers. For at least we’re 10 years closer to Howard’s departure from the Lodge and Kirribilli than we were in 1996.
UPDATE III. Janet Albrechtsen:
For Howard, the intellectual Left is the gift that keeps on giving.
UPDATE IV. Bill Leak:
Howard has reshaped Australia to conform to his own vision. We love the inflated feelings of international self-importance he has given us and we don’t seem to care about all the things he has taken away. Happy to live in an economy instead of a society, we might as well also accept that we are all Little Johnnies now.
Oh the Tookie Williams crowd won’t like David Frum’s article! (go David!!)
Let those who sign up to be part of an anti-death penalty club be the ones to adopt the death row inmates and take them home. I want to know how they feel after five days of being with the criminal.
Posted by Sharon_Ferguson on 2006 02 28 at 09:57 PM • permalinkOh no, you’ve done it now, you’ve put a picture of Mrs. H there as well. For some reason Mrs. H brings out a surprisingly hateful response from many leftists.
One more thing, is it true that Gough and Mrs Gough live in seperate apartments and that he erm, has less mainstream ‘proclivities’? Sounds like a load of cobblers but as I’m not in Oz I get these stories 2nd hand. Just curious.
#1 - white picket fences! They are for woosies! Ours is a soft cannary yellow!
Posted by WeekByWeek on 2006 02 28 at 10:07 PM • permalinkPhilip Adams has printed another diatribe condemning Howard’s Prime Ministership. He has gone into complete apoplexy. If there was a definition of “bitter and twisted” it would have to be a Philip Adams’ column on the PM.
I can only hope that Howard goes on and on. Not only will be continue providing good government, a least compared to his predecessors, he will continue to make life a complete misery for Phil until such time as he gains a bit of prespective.
#5 Nic
I am afraid to say that you cannot even begin to aspire to be a Public Intellectual while you fail to see the supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness that is Mrs Howard.
BTW Those rumours of Gough, Malcolm and the merino lambs are probably baseless.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 28 at 10:14 PM • permalinkBrown is Green, and a portrait of him appeared in last year’s Archibald.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 02 28 at 11:26 PM • permalinkI have long resolved that when P Adams, G Whitlam and K O’Brien die I will sit outside their funerals and shout obscenities much like the filth did resently outside Packer’s memorial speach. I realise it’s a stupid thing to do but Christ it will make me feel good to see the table turned for a change.
Posted by Karl Fidel Adams-Kingston on 2006 02 28 at 11:32 PM • permalinkIt’s great to see Howard rack up his tenth succesive year as PM, but many Australian conservatives would do well to remember that Howard, and his putative successors, are first and foremost political animals whose over-riding concern is (after gaining political control) to retain control, whatever the cost.
For many centre-Right Australians the one great blot on Howard’s record as Prime Minister is his pusillanomous response to the Port Arthur massacre - close to 3 million innocent and law-abiding Australians were labelled as potential murderers and criminals (for the sake of political expediency) with Howard’s Uniform Firearm Laws.
Why Howard sold so many of his supporters down the river is no great mystery. It was the first crisis of his premiership and he was still experiencing the (so-called) honeymoon phase with the Press. Objectively, one understands his response. Had he not acted quickly and decisively, the Opposition and a hostile Press would have crucified him. Notwithstanding, the fact remains that Howard exercised his non-constitutional power over the States with a an unyielding relish which was, at times, palpable and the various State governments are, to this day, exercising, and introducing, quite draconian legislation which constrains the civil rights of large law-abiding sections of the Australian community.
The great irony (and scandal) of this is of course is that many immigrant, ethnic and religious groups treat the respective State legislations controlling the ownership and recreational use of firearms as a huge joke and regard the ownership and use of hi-powered hand-guns and other illegal firearms as a basic cultural right. A right that the respective law-enforcement authorities (at least in NSW) appear reluctant to challenge. It seems to be a sad fact of life that whilst large groups of ethnic and religious activists apparently feel quite safe congregating in public places brandishing a variety of highly lethal military-style firearms and weaponry, without fear of response from the police, that the average bloke, who comes home tired from a day of rabbit-shooting, and, inadvertantly, leaves his his .22 single-shot in the boot of his car, runs the risk of a 5-year prison sentence.
Much of this nonsense can be laid at the feet of John Howard and many of his admirers would do well to remember that, in the final analysis, Howard is a political animal. Machiavelli said it best, “put not your trust in Princes”.Boss Hog - ludicrous.
Semi-automatic and automatic weapons are not absolute requirements for “rabbit-shooting”, which your “average bloke” is still able to do with his .22 single shot, that incidentally shouldn’t be left lying around.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 02 28 at 11:45 PM • permalinkDoesn’t the “man of average height from the Lodge” look tall?
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 12:06 AM • permalinkTexas Ranger,
Ludicrous indeed. Look at your phrase ‘Semi-automatic and automatic weapons’. It is a propaganda term, a piece of masturbation from activists who appropriated the scare factor of sub-machineguns to take away decent people’s rabbit guns.Semi-automatic .22 rifles have been around as long as the automobile, and are excellent tools for rabbit shooting. The forced confiscation that accompanied the National Agreeement on Firearms destroyed 600,000 ordinary sporting arms, mostly rabbit rifles.
Perhaps as many as 25,000 military style rifles were destroyed, but of the 8 Governments involved only one provided a breakdown of the seized arms types. Most of the fully automatic and military rifles destroyed came from the Government, museums and RSL clubs.
As for John Howard, when I met him at a Liberal leaders breakfast I was amazed at the blaze of emotion that welled up in me, a Howard voter since 1976.
He and the latte classes of Australia bought moral credit for themselves by denigrating my good name and the good name of my friends and neighbours.For symbolic ‘goodness’ they loaded us with a maliciously oppressive bureaucracy.
The gun laws look like a good idea to those who have nothing to do with the matter. To the people who live under reversed burden of proof, warrantless search, seizure without compensation, and mandatory sentencing for administrative ‘crimes’, they feel like hate laws.
ChrisPer, i grew up in the bush if that makes any difference, and have culled rabbits and foxes successfullly with my father’s single shot 22. I see no need to own a semi-automatic weapon. “Semi-automatic weapon” and “automatic weapon” are not propaganda terms, they’ve been used to market guns since they became available. They are not loaded terms (pardon the pun).
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 12:29 AM • permalinkAnd the “reversal of the burden of proof” for pragmatic purposes?
Machiavelli would have been proud.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 12:32 AM • permalinkSO PhilCo is now defining a “progressive” victory as “only” holding the Liberals to ten years in power?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 01 at 12:46 AM • permalinkFree NRA membership to anyone who can answer “Who said that?”:
“An armed society is a polite society”
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 03 01 at 12:58 AM • permalinkTexas Ranger, I grew up on a farm too. Just wondering if you would view herbicides and four-wheel-drive tractors as unnecessary because you used to pull a 10 foot harrows behind your Fordson to kill weeds? And did you use the old Lithgow to kill the army worms in the barley, I wonder?
The term of art is the combination of ‘semiautomatic and automatic’. They are bogeyman words. The sweeping category includes big scary modern military machine guns and little sweet 100-year old 5-shot rimfire rabbit guns.
But I am SURE you are a wonderful person who thinks just what s/he ought about guns.
Texas Ranger: “And the “reversal of the burden of proof” for pragmatic purposes?”
Shooters suffer strict liability for certain possession offences. That means if a drug dealer neighbour hides his silenced pistol in my garden I am personally guilty of possession under Victorian law. Of course, this kind of injustice could not happen in Australia.
A policeman needs no warrant to enter my house, because he ‘believes that firearms may be inside’. I have a licence so of course he believes it. I am subject to longer jail sentences for my noncompliance with the NAF than a murderer or rapist would serve for crimes against the lives of innocents.
The National Agreement on Firearms is the product of a moral status auction.
Like Prohibition, like the 1990s panics over satanic rituals and snuff movies; like the child abuse panics and the hysterical media campaigns against the Governor General Hollingworth, it is about moral status display, and the principles of justice were ignored.
It is the only issue when actually knowing something about it disqualified you from participating in the public debate. Moral contamination, you see.
Thanks ChrisPer, I am a wonderful person, albeit brainwashed by chai-drinking inner-city progressive activists.
Sorry about your sweet little 5-shot rimfire rabbit gun. I guess you’re just collateral damage eh?
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 01:21 AM • permalinkYou are “subject to longer jail sentences” for non-compliance with the NAF “than a murderer or rapist would serve for crimes against the lives of innocents”?
A research topic for you - What are the maximum sentences for murder and rape in Australia?
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 01:26 AM • permalinkI’m actually impressed that The Age even included any non-ALP PMs in their survey. Crows are officially an endangered culinary choice at the Spencer Street Soviet.
PS: just LOVE the brave white hunters who need repeating weaponry to deal with bunnies. Just a reminder for them that the Monty Python skit is…gasp… fiction!
Why, thanks for joining in Paul. I have been hunting rabbits since I was seven, starting with traps (now banned) and getting a repeating .22 rifle when I was 15. It is not in dispute that you can kill a rabbit with a single-shot. One.
What is in dispute is that the ‘argument from ignorance’ of the many is better than knowledge and data of the few.Data! Yikes!
Some more of your previously presented facts ChrisPer? That some 25,000 military-style rifles were handed in by civilians from RSL’s (amongst others) NOT currently beating back the Germans from the Eastern Front?
Those RSL clubs must have some serious rabbit problems afoot.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 02:32 AM • permalinkLittle Johnnies? I’d like to take a Little Leak on Bill.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 03:51 AM • permalinkBecause a good economy is a bad thing. Consumerism and all that.
Idiot.
Posted by Texas Ranger on 2006 03 01 at 03:53 AM • permalinkMy God! I’ve been addressing the ONLY individual ever to shoot a bunny!
Tell you what… as we’re both respecters of democratic governance, why don’t we take a vote on it? Whoops - forgot - we already have. And you lost. The world doesn’t think you’re God. Get over it. Even better, stand for Parliament. Persuade enough people of the rightness of your cause and get elected. That way you can still whine on pointlessly but get paid $100Kpa to do it.
1) Texas Ranger, you correctly point out that I have spouted some unsupported rhetoric. Agreed. Nevertheless the data is there.
2) Paul, thanks for pointing out that you and a majority of voters don’t give a shit about my opinion; I have had ten years to get used to it. I repeat myself:
” What is in dispute is that the ‘argument from ignorance’ of the many is better than knowledge and data of the few.”
New Matilda and Bill Leak can certainly draw a funny, clever, literary, and chillingly perceptive crowd of 2; (memo Bill Leak: dont give up your day job)
Posted - 01/03/2006 : 13:17:00
Howard’s ordinariness is a cartoonist’s worst nightmare. It’s a bit like having to draw something that’s not there, says Bill Leak
hannahrachel
Posted - 01/03/2006 : 15:13:35
Gorgeous, Bill! Funny, clever, literary, and chillingly perceptive. How about a cartoon of the PM’s head as a big breast with a weeny nipple to which is attached 5 million closed-eyed suckers diddling apathetically away on nothing but thin air. Don’t give up!Interesting that Bill Leak readily admits he’s on a political campaign. Terrible waste of drawing talent. I’ll have to put him in the display cabinet with George Clooney.
But he does nicely sum up the moral equivalence code of his ilk by quoting Shaw: there’s no good/bad, just interesting/tedious. I guess that ranks Bin Laden over Howard.
I prefer the challenge of hand grenades, but they don’t leave much of the rabbit.
18 T.R.
i grew up in the bush if that makes any difference, and ... I see no need to own a semi-automatic weapon.
Move to Compton and live upstairs from a Korean grocery store, then wait for the next Rodney Kinging.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 01 at 04:56 PM • permalink#7 “If there was a definition of “bitter and twisted” it would have to be a Philip Adams’ column on the PM.”
if therte was a definition of fat it would have to be phat phil….....it’s amazing how many of these latte lefties are such well fed lard arses.
being a socialist means never having to skip a meal.
Socialists of the 21st Century are afflicted with Idol Deficiency.
They hate with abiding passion because they have nobody left to follow.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 03 01 at 08:06 PM • permalinkTerrible news for Hamas. According to Bill Leak:
“It has also suited us cartoonists whose job it is to act as a constant thorn in the side of any government, regardless of its political stripe.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 01 at 08:41 PM • permalinkOf course, there are those who will applaud Leak’s intentions to pillory Hamas and all it stands for, but I cannot count myself amongst them.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 01 at 09:41 PM • permalink
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The white picket fence is a good touch -should wind up the Howard haters no end. They’re having a bad week with Howard’s tenth anniversary and if it wasn’t for the AWB fiasco I fear they would be close to imploding.