11 January 2012

Canberra rooned Says Gazza!

| johnboy
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Has Senator Humphries’ office hired Jeff Manny?

The Senator’s latest epistle makes the interesting leap that a decline in building approvals is “confirming that Canberra is becoming less and less liveable”, which seems a bit of a stretch.

He then rabbits on about efficiency dividends reducing the appeal of moving to Canberra, despite his party’s intention to make even bigger cuts.

But this line left me truly confused:

The picture can’t be painted more clearly, yet the government stands back and scratches its head as though it’s looking at a Picasso.

Moving on he finishes with a line that really holds him as a hostage to fortune:

“I call on the Federal Government to stop taking Canberra and our national institutions for granted, pillaging them each time they want a little extra spending money”, Senator Humphries concluded.

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bitzermaloney said :

Sure the guy’s a few nuts short of a fruitcake, but he has a valid point. It’s tim for the Fed’s to stop taking Canberran’s for granted, though the only way that will happen is if Canberrans show a bit of thought in how they vote.

by voting Liberal? The party with the stated policy of reducing the APS by tens of thousands?

We’d be better off with some independants.

bitzermaloney1:31 pm 12 Jan 12

Sure the guy’s a few nuts short of a fruitcake, but he has a valid point. It’s tim for the Fed’s to stop taking Canberran’s for granted, though the only way that will happen is if Canberrans show a bit of thought in how they vote.

Sadly I note the irony that this guy is currently the oposition.

colourful sydney racing identity12:42 pm 12 Jan 12

EvanJames said :

It’s barefaced hypocrisy

When he was a lowly MLA, Gazza was often accused of ‘barecheeked’ hypocricy due to some compromising photo’s of him in his (ANU?) student association days – particularly by Trevor Kaine when he ran off to become an independent.

Are they still doing the rounds?

If Humphries really thinks people are stupid enough to respond to dog-whistle politics, perhaps he knows something. It’s barefaced hypocrisy and yet he’s quite sure he can get away with it and score points.

meanwhile, the underlying assumption that rampant growth is necessary and desirable is worrying.

colourful sydney racing identity said :

VicePope said :

Let’s exclude Jeff Manny, the React Roofing guy, the Magnet Mart guy, David Eastman (even if he were eligible), the bloke on WIN News, Mark Carmody, any superannuated footballers and Constable Kenny Koala. Exclude people associated with either side of politics or with anything weird or extreme.

Doesn’t really leave too many options…

Sure it does! 🙂 [Sexparty link]

Jethro said :

Hewas on 666 this morning going on about how investor confidence is lower in Canberra than any other capital city in Australia and that the main reason for this lack of confidence is uncertainty about future decisions about Canberra that will be made by the federal government.

According to him this uncertainty is completely due to Labor changing the efficiency dividend and nothing to do with the Libs promise to cut 12 000 jobs when they get into power.

Can’t fault him on the first point.

However, on the second…..

Then again, every new government threatens to slash the PS. The punters out there in bogan land love it as they think everyone in Canberra sits on their bums, does nothing and gets paid twice the national average wage.

Whereas, of course, they are the salt of the earth, real Oztraylians, dinkum, etc.

Completely untrue of course, but a perception that sadly will never change.

The Justgrounds demographic.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Gazza.

Hewas on 666 this morning going on about how investor confidence is lower in Canberra than any other capital city in Australia and that the main reason for this lack of confidence is uncertainty about future decisions about Canberra that will be made by the federal government.

According to him this uncertainty is completely due to Labor changing the efficiency dividend and nothing to do with the Libs promise to cut 12 000 jobs when they get into power.

johnboy said :

Are you trying to say picasso is hard to understand?

Not for me. But I think the implication was that a Picasso is not a clear, straight forward representation of reality in the way that a more traditional painting would be.

It’s aimed at the federales.

But I think even the locals can look at Guernica and realise war is horrible.

Well hes called on the Government. Man of action thats him.

colourful sydney racing identity11:03 am 12 Jan 12

johnboy said :

Are you trying to say picasso is hard to understand?

For the ACT Government?

Are you trying to say picasso is hard to understand?

colourful sydney racing identity10:51 am 12 Jan 12

Mysteryman said :

“The picture can’t be painted more clearly, yet the government stands back and scratches its head as though it’s looking at a Picasso.”

Which part of that is hard to understand? It’s hardly confusing.

agreed

colourful sydney racing identity10:44 am 12 Jan 12

VicePope said :

JohnBoy might be an option(!)

suck.

CSRI – the talent is probably in a few pools. There are smart and good people who are or have been in the Commonwealth or ACT public sector, there are some business people, there are some professionals (mostly lawyers), there are academics, there are some in the community sector and there are some media people. Whoever it was would need to developed and marketed to improve recognition across the wider community, and this would need to start soon.
I would have to control a gag reflex before voting for, say, Jack Waterford but would be prepared to do it to get something resembling representation. JohnBoy might be an option(!)

“The picture can’t be painted more clearly, yet the government stands back and scratches its head as though it’s looking at a Picasso.”

Which part of that is hard to understand? It’s hardly confusing.

colourful sydney racing identity10:13 am 12 Jan 12

VicePope said :

CSRI – not sure if I agree. The quota is one-third of the votes, plus one.

Sorry, in my post I should have metioned preferences rather than votes.

colourful sydney racing identity10:11 am 12 Jan 12

VicePope said :

Let’s exclude Jeff Manny, the React Roofing guy, the Magnet Mart guy, David Eastman (even if he were eligible), the bloke on WIN News, Mark Carmody, any superannuated footballers and Constable Kenny Koala. Exclude people associated with either side of politics or with anything weird or extreme.

Doesn’t really leave too many options…

CSRI – not sure if I agree. The quota is one-third of the votes, plus one. The ALP will always go over-quota to some extent, and the Libs have tended to scrape around the minimum (I think they have gone to preferences in the past and may do so again). The possibility is that the Libs fall a few points below quota and a sensible independent could stay in the race while the ALP surplus and the preferences of lower candidates were distributed. Would a high-profile independent last long enough before Sen Humphries got what was needed to fall over the line? If that looked like happening, would an independent stay afloat longer than the Greens?
At the worst, the incumbents might get enough of a fright to remember where they live and represent and that might be useful anyway. Off-topic, though, for whom (running as a Canberra independent)
would people be prepared to vote? Let’s exclude Jeff Manny, the React Roofing guy, the Magnet Mart guy, David Eastman (even if he were eligible), the bloke on WIN News, Mark Carmody, any superannuated footballers and Constable Kenny Koala. Exclude people associated with either side of politics or with anything weird or extreme.

colourful sydney racing identity9:07 am 12 Jan 12

VicePope said :

Is this the same Senator Humphries who had no apparent problems with the Coalition proposal to get rid of c 12,000 public servants, mostly in Canberra? Who shut up when the Howard government induced a local recession for no more than chest-beating (he was in the local sandpit assembly at the time, I think)?
It’s not as if the ALP members are any better. They have been pretty well silent this time. What we need is a credible independent Senator, to replace Gazza or Gonzo or Gasbag or whatever you call him, because his seat is more vulnerable than Senator Lundy’s. Imagine the protection we’d have if whoever was in government needed to negotiate with someone who was interested in the ACT rather than his/her own seat and career. I’m not volunteering (not talented enough), but I’d happily hand out leaflets for someone who had a chance of ending the major party domination.

The problem is that, given we only have two senate seats, you would need to have just over a third of Canberrans supporting an independent candidate – I can not imagine that happening.

Is this the same Senator Humphries who had no apparent problems with the Coalition proposal to get rid of c 12,000 public servants, mostly in Canberra? Who shut up when the Howard government induced a local recession for no more than chest-beating (he was in the local sandpit assembly at the time, I think)?
It’s not as if the ALP members are any better. They have been pretty well silent this time. What we need is a credible independent Senator, to replace Gazza or Gonzo or Gasbag or whatever you call him, because his seat is more vulnerable than Senator Lundy’s. Imagine the protection we’d have if whoever was in government needed to negotiate with someone who was interested in the ACT rather than his/her own seat and career. I’m not volunteering (not talented enough), but I’d happily hand out leaflets for someone who had a chance of ending the major party domination.

This is totally nonsensical.

But: he doesn’t care. Just as long as more words about labor ineptness float out there into the ether then everything is fine.

“The ACT has recorded its lowest building approval level in three years, confirming that Canberra is becoming less and less liveable.”

Is this guy retarded or what? Where do things like credit availability, previous construction levels and demand for new construction fit in to his fabulous analysis?

Oh dear – is this what happens when politicians take on an ANU/UC student on a summer internship over the holidays?

AsparagusSyndrome5:14 pm 11 Jan 12

Unicode notwithstanding, the good senator’s purple prose also appears to concatenate no fewer than four nouns! This makes it an extremely deep and satisfying purple patch – dark clouds indeed.

I, like many others bobbing up and down like lost fishing reel corks at dusk in a vast and unnerving sea of uncritical readers, look forward to a golden day when five or even six nouns can be concatenated like diesels on a really long iron ore train, by a political leader with the vision to pick up his worn but much-loved shovel and dig his own furrow.

Thoroughly Smashed1:26 pm 11 Jan 12

poetix said :

These aren’t in the original, but have snuggled into the sentence like rats finding a good home: %u2019s.

U+2019 is the Unicode for a “Right Single Quotation Mark” (’), one of the many variants of an apostrophe in Unicode. I don’t know whose end caused it to go wrong though.

These aren’t in the original, but have snuggled into the sentence like rats finding a good home: %u2019s.

Well at least it’s amusing. Must be going for some “entertaining blog award” somewhere. 🙂

‘Consumer confidence is down and uncertainty in the Public Service due to the Federal Labor%u2019s efficiency dividend zigzags looms like a dark cloud over the city%u2019s future.’

Oh please…This should be compared with this:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

There is a well-known contest for the worst first line in a fictitious book named after the man who wrote that:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

(Ugly site, appropriately.)

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