Patch work and cobbled stories.

In another demonstration of all spin no substance dear old Kevin Rudd supports a dud minister while trashing the program he was responsible for, throws more money at it, stuffs up the response and still claims that it's a success.

What a completely useless bunch of turkeys we have unfortunately manages to elect. I said on election day that I had the distinct impression that they really didn't expect to win and were surprised and totally unprepared for Government.

Nothing they have done since has convinced me otherwise and they do not seem to be able to get a handle on what they really need to be doing. What they don't rush into without any thought at all they stall forever with meetings and consultation in an attempt to "get it right" as Kevin is keen to repeat ad nauseum.

They have consistently not "got it right" with anything they have done except perhaps the apology to a group of people who has managed to convince themselves or perhaps been convinced that they would have been so much better off if they had been left to grow up in a car or a shanty.

Can you believe that a homeowner who has had insulation installed is going to get a "no that wasn't done right" from the company who installed it in the first place when they check it out? Pigs they will. What dummy thought that was a good idea? Hmmm... I might have a bit of a clue on that one.

As the saying goes, act in haste repent in leisure. After the next election there may well a lot of Labor MPs who will be able to repent in leisure.

Kevin Rudd is as flakey as Gough Whitlam but doesn't have the imagination.

Oh How Generous.

Our illustrious 2IC and part-time Minister for Education has generously donated a whole $7,300 to assist the Indian slum dwellers children gain some education. All about Political spin to appease the Indian students who are now re-considering their options about studying overseas.

...Australian Deputy Prime Minister yesterday as she tiptoed her way good-naturedly over open sewers and smiled at bare-footed urchins to announce a 300,000 rupee ($7300) donation for the purchase of school books.

It would be better, if quite a bit more expensive, to do something about assisting those Indian students to be more secure within Australia. That would have a bigger impact in the Indian media than a small donation.

In the mean time Ms Gillard has managed to arrange massive amounts of money to go to rural primary schools in Queensland that are about to close. One school, with only 1 student, has been given $250,000 for a new library. WTF?

Reference here.

Why would you do something as stupid as that and, almost with the same hand, take away funding for other rural schools so they could build science and language buildings? Incompetence, that's how. A completely ballsed up process based more on ideology than intelligence. A more cynical person might accuse the Government of blatant pork-barrelling.

While a political storm was brewing at home over revelations the federal government had redirected money from some of the country's most disadvantaged high schools to make up a shortfall in its primary school building program, in India at least it was a day of largess.

Source for both quotes above here.

Just like the Auscars assistance program. Put one man in charge who cannot cope, fail to provide any additional help and then wonder why he attempts to crash the government. By the way, a fake email is one which has been written, printed but not sent. As soon as it is sent it is a genuine email. The contents may be true or false but the email is still genuine.

K.Rudd and J.Gillard are micro-managers because they don't understand what they are doing. People who micro-manage are always into the minute detail without ever getting a handle on the big picture, the overarching concerns. You cannot change their path once their minds are made up because their minds are like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set.

Micro-management is the refuge of the incompetent, their shield from reality.

$50 billion Gas Deal with China or just more BS from Kevin?

I another case of inflated self importance and rubbery figures it seems that the Australian Labor Party is still running on fluff and bubbles with no substance.

The loudly trumpeted claims of success for a deal begun long before little Kevvy was even the leader of the Labor Party and while Ferguson was still bullying employers seem to not stand up to the clear light of inspection.

According to this account in the Sydney Morning Herald by Matthew Murphy the numbers just don't add up. How often does that happen with this mob of "financial conservatives"? Most of the time actually. In this case we need to halve their claims and call it a $20 billion deal, these numbers coming from the Governments own financial forecaster ABARE.

To achieve the $50 billion deal the average price of the gas needs to be $1,111 per tonne for the annual 2.25 million tonnes of LNG under the terms of the sale. Living a fantasy world is this Clayton's Government.

Problem with this is that it now isn't the biggest deal ever, it is dwarfed by the deal done by Woodside Petroleum in 2007 which is a genuine $45 billion deal.

In 2007, Woodside Petroleum agreed to key terms for supplying 2 million to 3 million tonnes of LNG to PetroChina, the same customer as ExxonMobil, in a deal worth about $45 billion, according to Woodside's chief executive, Don Voelte.

That means PetroChina potentially would pay $5 billion less under the Woodside deal to receive more LNG. In its latest production report, Woodside received $345 a tonne for LNG during the June 2009 quarter.

I would have thought that any "financially conservative" Government would at least be able to do their maths properly, clearly they can't.

Seems to be an ever increasing theme with the latest BS from Ms Gillard about how the blowout in spending for the unnecessary school building program "just shows the project is successful" despite the fact that there is mounting evidence that the Labor State Governments have been skimming the fund, builders have been overcharging and the Principals have been complaining that they can't get anything useful to the school actually built.

Since in January Ms Gillard, the part time everything, said that every school in Australia would get a new building to now claim that she really meant only 90% would get a new building and now that they have all asked for one it shows how successful the program has been.

They shut down the solar panel rebate because of that same success and the new deal is just a fraudulent exercise to pad the numbers for their greenhouse gas reduction number later.

Add in the additional poor performance and flaky dealings and it becomes increasingly clear that this is a Government which says one thing while consistently doing something else. The words totally incompetent come to mind.

If you needed another example, look at the National Broadband Network. If there was ever a totally incompetent decision this was it. We the taxpayer are now committed to a $43 billion construction project which is almost out of date now let alone in 6 years time if it ever gets completed. There is no plan, there is no money yet, there is no suggestion of cost to use the system, there are no private companies who have put their hands up to join in. All in all, $43 billion for an idea which has no planning is typical of the Australian Labor Parties approach to almost everything they do regardless of State or Federal bodies.

Australia cannot afford them any longer. Remember, you will have to pay the money back. $200 Billion is $10,000 each plus interest for a family of 4 that'll be $40,000, thanks. You both have parents who are not working? Better kick in another $40,000 for them then. You have an unemployed brother and his wife with their two children? Whoops, another $40,000 from you to help them out. So you bill now comes to $120,000 plus interest. See why we can't afford the Australian Labor Party?

Good Luck buying your house or having a holiday anytime soon.

The Lie of Human Caused Global Warming

It seems that the public are finally waking up to the Global Warming Spruikers lies and mis-information. See this article here.

'Yes, another excellent article pointing out the ongoing desire for us to have disasters' we have to overcome.

Assuming there is climate change occurring, and I have no doubts there is, by what arrogant, ignorant stance could anyone possibly believe that there is only a single cause and that " Human activity" is the single cause of that?

Just look at the equation used to calculate and project the 'warming' trend. High School math should have taught you that you cannot solve any equation with more than one variable unless you know all but one of the values for the other variables. Not a range of values but fixed values. The climatologists have no fixed values for any of their variables and therefore the equation cannot be solved.

Science is not about 'consensus', it is about fact, repeatable, verifiable fact. Consensus is what you get when you bully people by threatening to take away their funding if they don't agree with you.'

The Kevin Rudd and Labor party sponsored Emissions Trading Scheme, the ETS, is based on a lie and a fraud. The only effect it will have is to damage the Australian Economy. It will not nor cannot make any difference to the climate. It might make a difference to the air quality but probably won't even do that.

I am standing up here and stating that I believe in Climate Change, I don't believe that humans either cause it or can stop it. That is just plain stupid and arrogant. One of the problems with a scientific approach which has a belief before examining any data is that you will read into the data whatever your beliefs dictate. You are looking for proof not fact and anything which doesn't fit is discarded or explained away as an anomaly.

If you look at the statements by the "true believers" you will see many many statements clearly trying to downplay or eliminate anything which doesn't fit their belief system. This is the behaviour of a religious fanatic, not a scientist.

Guess what "true believers" you have been sucked in by the spin and BS. Open your eyes and research the facts. Think about them, make your own observations.

By the way, 200 websites spouting the same information from the same site is, in reality, 1 site and 199 lazy webmasters, not proof.

2,000 eminent scientists spouting th same story from the same block of information is 1 scientist and 1,999 lazy scientists, not proof.

2,000 scientist with the same story doesn't make it correct, 1 scientist with a different story doesn't make it wrong.

Bring out your proof and facts, verifiable, repeatable, indisputable facts. Only then can we have a proper debate. In the mean time nick off, opinions are like backsides, everybodys got one.

A bit of background for our foreign readers

South Australia has only one significant river, the Murray, which actually begins in the Snowy Mountains, also known as the Australian Alps.  This page in Wikipedia is pretty accurate so click here for more information.

The issue for South Australia is that most of the rainfall in South Australia doesn't run off into the Murray in any form.  What this means is that all of the water which we use for irrigation, stock and human needs that we extract from the Murray comes from and through New South Wales and Victoria.

They have the attitude that they have a greater right to keeping that water for their use than South Australia has.  In a purely selfish way they are right but what they are neglecting to consider is that, by over extracting water in their states for their use they are actually killing the lower reaches of the Murray.

I believe that the real issue is that they have no idea of how dry the Murray is after the last lock because the locks themselves keep the water back and, to them, the Murray seems to be just as full of water as normal.

Our Federal Government has made lots of statements about buying water for environmental flows but most of those statements have been degraded by the release of information, reported here which clearly indicates that there is no plan for the water buyback.  The Federal Government and the State Governments have totally failed in everything but giving away large sums of money for no return.

The article in the Australian points out that most of the water they have bought, 182,000 MegaLitres of a total 397,000 MegaLitres or 45% of their total purchases will only be delivered in a 1 in 10 year flood and then only to the wetlands of the Macquarie catchments.  Almost no chance of ever going into the Murray.  Since there is no reason to suspect that they got it right for the remainder (55%) and that any of that will actually result in flows into the Murray either.

The question I now ask myself is "Is this the result of stupidity, ignorance and inexperience or is is more sinister that that and they are deliberately ignoring the real plight of the Murray because 'it's only South Australia'?"

I prefer to think that Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong, Mike Rann, Karlene Maywald and all those in the Labor Governments of NSW & VIC are just plain stupid because the only other possibility is just too depressing.

The other problem occurs when those in power are questioned about their dumb decisions, they attempt to justify stupidity by reframing the originally stated aims like this 

A spokeswoman for federal Water Minister Penny Wong yesterday defended the selections made in the buyback program, citing a landmark CSIRO audit of the basin which rated the Gwydir and Lachlan catchments as in poor and very poor health respectively. 

She said both included wetland sites that were recognised as nationally or internationally important and provided homes for threatened or migratory species. 

"The water acquired through the purchase program will be managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and delivered to the sites that deliver the greatest environmental benefits at the time when allocations become available to these entitlements," she said. But as of July 3, the Environmental Water Holder had only 64,000 megalitres at its disposal, about a sixth of the 2008-09 buyback total. Less than 10,000ML are understood to have been returned to the environment last financial year.

Since the lower reaches of the Murray are also Ramsar recognised wetlands and probably more important to the overall health of the Murray than the NSW wetlands that argument is completely specious.

No, the real reason they are buying the water entitlements they are choosing is because they are cheap, they want to be able to make big statements about how much water they have bought regardless of how much will actually flow into the Murray to save it.  This is still only about politics, not saving the Murray.

As I see it the real issue isn't about irrigation, environmental flows or agriculture.  It is just about money.  Have a look at this link and then ask yourself the question "if the Federal Government wasn't paying big bucks for water allocations, that have been given out for free, would any company be setting up an expanded irrigation property "in food production plans that defy predictions of a dire outlook for Murray-Darling irrigation" "?

I don't think so.  Where is a solution coming from?  The answer may lie in the understanding that the water allocations are given to the farmers, not sold.  On that basis I believe the Federal Government doesn't need to buy it back, just take it back and pay compensation based on 2 years worth of their average last 5 years primary producer taxable income.

But they need water you say, true, so what you do then is to allow unlimited irrigation with a water meter on every pump to measure the extraction and charge for that water at the same rate as households pay.  Everyone pays the same.  Any properties which have water storage in the form of dams, weirs etc. get their volume of water stored calculated and they get a bill for the volume of water at the households rate.

There you go, totally fair.  Everyone pays the same.  Water should not be traded, all that does is allow those with the most money to own all the water.  That has to be almost the dumbest thing any politician has done for decades.  It is almost as stupid as the Water Board in SA, who had no farmers or country people on the board, determining that all farms in SA would have an allocation of water based on their area, which is fine so far.  But here's the dumb bit, they can trade their water allocation and if they don't use it they lose it.

A farm without water has no value, insisting on every farm using their allocation or losing it generated a lot of money for the companies selling sprinkler systems and boring contractors and also resulted in the water table going down steadily which mean all the boring contractors had even more work as the rural houses had to sink their water supply bore lower as well.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

When will our politicians have the guts to think a position through, ask questions of people who are not paid to give an opinion, listen to the answers from as many sides of the argument as possible and then make a decision?

Many people with the same opinion are not always right, a single person with an opinion is not always wrong.