15 August 2008

Sonic gets shrill

| johnboy
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The Chief Minister would seem to be a little rattled.

Having just announced that he’s found a spare $97 million under the couch you’d think his only problem would be explaining the pressing necessity to rip the guts out of community schooling.

Instead yesterday we were treated to a plaintive Why would you trust the Liberals?, followed by a screeching “Liberals missing in action (or just on a couch watching the Olympics)”.

Napoleon said “never interrupt your enemy while he’s in the middle of making a mistake”. One finds it hard to imagine that the Chief Minister is giving all this ‘advice’ to his opponents out of the kindness of his heart.

I too am dismayed at the low-content small-target strategy the Liberals are deploying, but to get this reaction it appears to be working for now.

UPDATE: Ooh, another one getting snippy about the quiet coming from the Shadow Ministry.

To be fair he has a bit of a point. The Liberal strategy is not (IMHO) in the tradition of robust democracy and appears to hope to profit from the ignorance, and susceptibility to marketing, of the electorate.

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Gungahlin Al10:32 am 16 Aug 08

I hear you minime.

Fortunately the town centre planning study has recognised some of these issues too and has recommended Gribble and the other side being set up for surface car parking in the shorter term. But I don’t think too many people recognise the profound impact on the town centre that Franklin will have when developed (very soon). We are meeting with LDA next week about the first of the major unit developments there immediately behind the Flemington corridor (yes the LDA approached us to consult – progress!) and preparing a submission on another townhouse DA elsewhere in Franklin right now.

On duplication of Flemington, it is amazing is it not to see how much money is spent on a controlled intersection that is to be ripped up in a few months time? I mentioned it to Andrew Barr last week…Will all the other current works along Flemington also be ripped up shortly? Good question – I saw the tender ad for the duplication a few weeks ago, so it would seem even more pointless than usual.

Mark up your mini-swallowing GDE pothole so we can test out the system – before it becomes a Forester swallowing pothole! BTW someone is squatting on the .com.au domain so we registered fixmystreet.net.au instead. but we’ll only launch it if our mini variant gets some use.

Mr Evil said

Mr Evil said :

Are their financial skills so bad that they really have no idea what kind of income the ACT is going to make each year?

Yes, I can’t see how this happens if they’re running a proper budget. Maybe they’re not running a proper accruals system? It should have been tracked right through, this “surplus” should have been flagged ages ago.

Yes Al, Flemington Road – the second-hand-material arterial, was not made to carry the weight and sheer volume of those construction vehicles. It never was made for the patrons either, rather for the developers to use to build alongside it .. so it was a double blind. I notice the new intersections being built along it for the new massive size downtown Franklin are ignoring the “duplication strategy” width of Flemington. Was not that a rush job to ready for the designated bus lanes? some years back. And now the MINI has to dodge that pothole just west of the Barton Hwy overbridge on the GDE. And when all those Franklin folk DRIVE to Gunghalin shops, they will find all that 15 min, half hour and pissy 2hr parking all around it. Only leaves competition underneath the big boys for all day parking. Where the hell are the consumers going to park when Harvey turns up; or the new pub? Ya gotta drive to the pub! Or you could wait for the 12.15am bus home …. yeah, right. Don’t even me started on Hargreaves.

I hate Sonic for his arrogance. Will vote against Labor even though I like ’em.

The result announcement is a tad premature when it’s only an interim result. I think it’s time that Stanhopeless stops using his chief minister’s press releases for spouting his bullsht about whatever he can think of the day, he should be releasing it on the Labor party site rather than official government press releases when it’s just him bitching to try and get re-elected.

Gungahlin Al4:58 pm 15 Aug 08

“Anyone want to revive a Hargreaves Memorial Pothole thread, with user submissions?
(now with possible Google Earth references)”

Skid: you got me thinking, and Flemington Road is starting to fall apart at a rapid rate the last few days…

So there is now a section on the GCC website called Fix My Street and in case it kicks off, we’ve registered fixmystreet.com.au so we can spin it out into something fully fledged.

dodgybranchopolous4:55 pm 15 Aug 08

Say what you like about Hargreaves, at least he’s releasing new stuff. The only thing missing from the Liberals ‘policy’ website is a tumbleweed blowing across the screen

PM said :

Loose Brown said :

Hmmm I read the CM’s release. The thought of a Steve Pratt as AG does quite scare me.

If the guy thinks cleaning up legal graffiti sites in storm drains is a priority for the ACT – imagine what kind of laws he’d dream up.

I thought Stefaniak was the shadow AG…

He is. Big Bill or Shameless Steve, let’s never say we aren’t spoiled for choice…

Loose Brown said :

Hmmm I read the CM’s release. The thought of a Steve Pratt as AG does quite scare me.

If the guy thinks cleaning up legal graffiti sites in storm drains is a priority for the ACT – imagine what kind of laws he’d dream up.

I thought Stefaniak was the shadow AG…

I’ve been privy to one of Hargreaves profanity laced rants.

How he is a politician is beyond me.

He’s always been a boofhead, so at least he’s consistant!

Hargreaves was something alright this morning – if this is him sober, someone get him a drink! Haven’t heard Ross Solly so flabbergasted!

Perhaps Stanhope should tell HIS peeps to shut up!

barking toad2:11 pm 15 Aug 08

Despite being handed things on a platter by the council to be used to beat said council round the ears, our limp-lettuce-leaf opposition can’t rise to the occasion.

Same at federal level

Hmmm I read the CM’s release. The thought of a Steve Pratt as AG does quite scare me.

If the guy thinks cleaning up legal graffiti sites in storm drains is a priority for the ACT – imagine what kind of laws he’d dream up.

Anyone want to revive a Hargreaves Memorial Pothole thread, with user submissions?
(now with possible Google Earth references)

Hargreaves is nothing but an idiot.

Brendan Smyth has responded with the ‘oh so witty’ How Can You Trust Stanhope With Financial Management?

http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?art_id=334&nav_cat_id=168&nav_top_id=55

“The release of the latest report card on the financial performance of the Stanhope Government shows, once again, that the Canberra community cannot trust anything that the Chief Minister says on financial matters, according to the shadow Treasurer, Brendan Smyth.”

I think my problem is that I look back at the 1993 Federal Election as a benchmark for the intellectual and ideological battle that an election should be. Considering that was a high point for Federal politics in Australia, I can hardly expect it for the ACT.

Still, it’s a nice dream that one day we’ll have a dearth of talent to choose from.

Gungahlin Al1:31 pm 15 Aug 08

There’s an air of fragile tempers developing isn’t there?

Hargreaves’ bullying style on the radio was quite something this morning.

novocastrian1:02 pm 15 Aug 08

There seems to be a new tactic of slagging off the Opposition as the main priority. On ABC radio this morning I heard (1) John Hargreaves responding to questions about the new transport strategy by his usual swaggering rubbish along the lines of “you ask about that, well I’m sure the Opposition will be getting into me soon…”; (2) Cranky Jack (aka Sonic) throwing out a totally gratuitous comment about who would be Minister for what in a Liberal Government. I don’t care about the Opposition (who have problems of their own making) I want to hear what the Government is doing! Hargreaves is the worst offender, always wanting to be a working class hero when all we want is a decent bus service or potholes fixed.

Now he’s blaming God – heard on the Chief Minister talkback this morning!

Turns out the extra money is all God’s fault because it’s all down to the fact that they put some money away in case there was a hailstorm or other Act of God . . . which there wasn’t this year, so guess who’s responsible for that windfall?

(He doesn’t sound very thankful to the Almighty though- could it be that Stanhope is now suffering from a whopping dose of Jiminy Cricket? After all we have been awash with other strange phenomena, such as school closures, cranked up emergency service levies and water abstraction charges . . .)

From the release, it sounds like the projections were off 1% which is fair enough. This is a matter for treasury not the legislature/executive.

As for the rest of it, well never a better example of how ACT politics is nothing more than big egos, small heads, and a council chamber that’s too big for its boots.

Gungahlin Al11:24 am 15 Aug 08

To be fair, it isn’t the MLAs who sit down and crunch the financials – it is staff.

But I note Katy Gallagher saying that the lion’s share of the correction was due to unexpended insurance provisions. I’d guess though that the number crunchers should have known when they were putting the budget together just a few months ago that there were the allowed-for number/size of insurance claims on the horizon – these things do have a rather long lead time after all. Thumper and Evil are right – someones’ game needs lifting.

On Stanhope bristling up – yes he sure does, and has pulled it with me a few times – most recently at the lunch with community council reps, talking over me and diverting from the actual topic to something quite unrelated. And the only way for me to pull it back on topic was to be pretty rude back.

The release talking about “honesty” was interesting given that Mr Stanhope questioned my honesty in the Times after the announcement of the GDE upgrade. At the time Megan Doherty called me to confirm what she’d been told by people from another communiy council that Stanhope said at the above meeting – that all the advice he was being given was that the GDE upgrade wsn’t needed now and wouldn’t be needed for at least 5 years. I confirmed with Megan that this was also my recollection of his statement.

The article as it appeared had me saying this rather than confirmed what someone else said, but then had Stanhope saying “that simply isn’t true”. Even though there are around 10 other community council reps (and a numbr of senior staff) who were there and could confirm it.

Now I’m happy that the GDE upgrade is coming, and no amount of public transport improvements would have negated the desparate need for this to happen.

But if Mr Stanhope wants to make honesty and trust election platforms, he should be a little more careful with his own words – especially when questioning the honesty of community volunteers. I’ll work with whomever is in government to achieve better outcomes for our community, and chose not to pursue the matter at the time. But it’s not forgotten.

DarkLadyWolfMother11:04 am 15 Aug 08

I was much impressed by Zed on the weekend. He approached a man, who was at least in his 80’s, and used the opening gambit of “Have you heard about our small class size policy?”

I’m thinking he needs to target his policies better.

And work on his chat-up lines.

verbalkint said :

Still, building two new schools is hardly ripping the guts out of community schooling.

You are either new to town or have a short memory. There have been many more schools closed by Labor and the communities who no longer have a school are not joyful about it.

So cut stamp duty on houses already, you miserable scrooges. 🙁

When you are comparing something to nothing it is eminently easier to make fun of something. At least you have some idea what the ALP stands for, all Z stands for is that getting his head on tv is a good thing.

Still, building two new schools is hardly ripping the guts out of community schooling.

I’m more concerned about how a Govt keeps ‘finding’ extra money from the budget like this!

Are their financial skills so bad that they really have no idea what kind of income the ACT is going to make each year?

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