Today Barnaby Joyce quizzed senior bureaucrats about who will measure all departments are have the 16sq metre standard space allocation for each public servant, despite the fact that departments' are only funded for this amount of space. While bemoaning his impression that Australia is on the brink of bankruptcy, he decided we needed more public servants whose job it would be to police all departments and measure all the sizes of their spaces. Who pays the public servants? Well, yes, the taxpayers... Was he actually advocating higher taxes to fund a vital public service role of National Director of Public Service Desk Measurement.

Now, there's a real productive, economy boosting job!

This guy is hilarious. Comes from the Sarah Palin school of politics. Petty there are no Moose in Australia. Barnaby will have to stick to pig-shooting.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/a-fateful-decision-changed-it-all-for-tony-abbott-and-the-coalition/story-e6frgczf-1225829868186

In a quintessential Abbott moment of political intuition, courage and regret for the pain he was causing, the man nobody thought could win turned back to the assembled senior Liberal figures, including Nick Minchin, Joe Hockey, Christopher Pyne, Peter Dutton and Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane, and said: "Ah, ah, I think I will have a go, sorry."

And he left.

At that moment, the perfect storm that would envelop the Rudd government had reached maximum momentum, yet it was undetected, unpredicted and yet to break.

I keep hearing the media represent Abbot as a 'conviction' politician and I now wonder what the hell that is.

Every 'conviction' he espoused in his book, he has since reversed his 'conviction' about. That doesn't sound like he has very strong convictions about anything at all. Except, perhaps, sexual abstinence (by others - not him) which smacks hypocrisy and denying access to the abortion pill allowing safer abortions to those Australians who may need them.

He says he's mates with someone, and then stabs them in the back with a boyish grin for political gain. He near-as-be-damed claims Peter Garrett has blood on his hands because independent contractors failed to comply with the law, yet says nothing about John Howard's detention centre policies that caused suicides and self-muitilation. The experts warned him, too, but his ministers kept spinning lies to prevent the truth coming out.

Ah, I get it, he has NO conviction to any policy or principle that does not support his personal, political ambition.

I don't know if everyone else is getting very, very tired of the political pursuit of Peter Garrett. The insulation program was rolled out far too quickly and that had inherent risks to be balanced against the economic risk of rising unemployment.

That every time a risk was manifest, the minister and the department put in place the right responses suggests that the program was being fixed as it evolved. I could compare this to the LibNats detention policy where HUNDREDS of reports, professional papers and exposes showed the inherent risk of detaining unlawful arrivals in central Australian prisons and the LibNats just got up in Parliament and said there was no risk. Lots of people died as a direct consequence of this policy but the LibNats mulishly refused to change anything. Hardly comparable to anything in the insulation rollout.I wish Joe Hockey - the current self-styled defender of the taxpayer - had stood up for the taxpayer when the LibNats built detention centre after detention centre.

If one of my sons had died installing insulation, I would want the employers guts for garters because he failed in his duty of care to ensure a safe working environment. Every time Tony Abbott stood up in Parliament and used my child's death to further his political ambition I would be sick and furious. He does it every day, he is using poor people's grief for his own political ambition. Completely ignoble.

I hope that every insulation installation company and every unemployed installer realises that, but for Tony Abbott's political ambition, their industry would have evolved as it has done over the last year with tightening safety and training requirements and an inspection program to assure quality. No Tony Abbott needed to make that happen.

Remember who to thank for pulling the program abruptly - none other than the BIG businessmen's friend - Tony Abbott. You have to hand it to the LibNut Leader, he's also made it impossible for pesky poor people who don't have $1,000 to get free insulation for their homes! The rich probably lined up first as soon as the scheme started to ensure they got their something for for nothing, for their home, their holiday house and every investment property in their portfolio.

I count this circus as three successes for core LibNat policy - destroy micro/small businesses, take support away from the needy AND prevent ANY action on climate change mitigation. Australia will go far on this kind of success.

Insulated politics wrote:
I don't know if everyone else is getting very, very tired of the political pursuit of Peter Garrett.

I think given the Libs sent us to Iraq and murdered hundreds of thousand of innocent kids.. well makes Garrett look like a saint.

We have tough building industry regulations - the employers should, and will be, slaughtered

yep wrote:
Insulated politics wrote:
I don't know if everyone else is getting very, very tired of the political pursuit of Peter Garrett.

I think given the Libs sent us to Iraq and murdered hundreds of thousand of innocent kids.. well makes Garrett look like a saint.

We have tough building industry regulations - the employers should, and will be, slaughtered

The building industry is well regulated - BUT THE INSULATION INDUSTRY IS NOT.

Garret failed to close the gaps, do the homework, regulate the service delivery of the insulation funds to the state who have authority and control.

Garret is not responsible personally for the deaths he has as Abbott has stated failed to protect their lives because he failed to heed the warnings.

I recap - Retrofitting of insulation has nothing - I repeat nothing to do with the building industry or the building industry code or regulations.

It is basically an unregulated industry and Garret knew that too.

I disagree, wrong. The building industry has many rules that are often flouted or ignored. How else do you explain substandard buildings? Or concrete slabs which are substandard for the soil type? Or builders who build in the expectation that you only need a house to last for 7 years because that's on average how long people stay in a house. Owners are out of pocket because the 'protection' offered against poor tradesmanship is laughable adn expensive. Your assertion that the building industry is well regulated is also a laugh, if you've ever had a problem with a builder. Further the inability of Council to enforce legally specified drainage requirements in Matthews Hill would have transferred the cost of one non-compliant person to a $12k bill for residents who had had no problem in over 50 years. Sorry, in my humble opinion, insulation installers are just another bunch of tradesman in the building industry. I don't have the insider insight to differentiate.

Garrett's department was given warnings. To their immense credit they competently addressed the legal and administrative side at every point, albeit with an elapse of time to initiate those changes. This is in huge contrast to so many programs instituted under the Howard Government, which seems to have become the default 'standard', where the government just denied there was a problem and did what they wanted.

The LibNats political agenda and only their political agenda pushed teh free home insulation scheme into crisis.

It is the LibNats extreme political pursuit alone which has now cancelled the program and put installation companies and workers out of a job. Yes, the shonks and those too ignorant to offer good service for a fast buck must thank the LibNats for putting them out of business before they could do more harm. Pity about the rest.

The only additional intiative I'd like to see is that where government inspectors find the work 'dangerously substandard' that those companies who did the work are taken to court to reimburse the government. It's a basic consumer right that the product is right, I'd think.

In the meantime, I wish that Tony Abbott would immediately stop his ghoulish exploitation of those workplace deaths. His tactics are insensitive, offensive and so obviously aimed to increase his own political standing in 'winning' against the government.

The obscenity of a conniving Tony Abbott exploiting the tragedy of others turns Australian politics into cesspit.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/state-politics/rudd-guarantees-no-labor-stacking-in-local-hospital-networks/story-e6frgczx-1225836723614

KEVIN Rudd has guaranteed he will not allow state governments to stack boards governing proposed new Local Hospital Networks with politically friendly appointees.

The Prime Minister has also vowed his government will not intervene to stack boards with Labor mates or trade union officials.



The Local Hospital Networks would include between one and four public hospitals and would be run by boards appointed under state law.