A Government Gone Mad

In Australia, we are currently governed by a minority left wing government further complicated with a bunch of incompetents leading it and two or three eccentric independents holding the balance of power elected by a minor fraction of less than .2% percent of our population. This is a worry in our prosperous country.

Our country may not remain prosperous much longer with wasteful spending by this Government combined with dirty dealing and a weak immigration policy allowing thousands of mostly middle eastern illegal immigrants whom we have no idea about their background (they destroy all identification), to enter our shores and claim benefits.

We may be brought to our knees as we pay benefits to these illegals and they attempt to dominate us with their culture.

A recent typical incident: a young child was eating lunch at school provided by his mother that included salami in his sandwich. Because it was Ramadan he was badly beaten by Muslim children as it offended their faith.

This happened in our country whereas in their country they permit no other faiths to practice and murder those that are non believers.

Below is a story from one of our respected national newspapers, The Australian, about the latest dirty deal done delivering a further blow to our democracy, to keep a hold on power just days ago:

Labor's costly gambit

• BY:PAUL KELLY, EDITOR-AT-LARGE
• From:The Australian
• November 26, 2011 12:00AM

• ..

Julia Gillard and her frontbench enjoy their tactical victory over the Coalition in parliament on Thursday. Picture: Kym Smith Source:The Australian

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THE political toll extracted to create and sustain the Gillard minority government continues to mount -- a carbon tax in breach of promise, an alliance with the Greens, pledged poker machine laws, multiple funding deals with the independents and now the election of a Coalition rat as Speaker.

Julia Gillard will need to deliver political recovery down the track because the debt being lodged against brand Labor is fearsome. The stakes continue to mount. The risk is that Labor is lighting spectacular fires on the path to its debacle inferno.

In the annals of political rodentry Labor's deal with Peter Slipper is conspicuous yet equivocal. It virtually guarantees Gillard her full-term parliament yet it feeds Gillard's image with the public as an untrustworthy leader with an integrity problem. This is the main reason support had grown again for Kevin Rudd.

Until 48 hours ago Slipper, the new Speaker, had a near-zero recognition with the public, but that will change. Gillard has tied Labor to Slipper. He will become the latest exhibit of Labor's contentious decisions and dubious connections in the cause of its self-preservation.

Slipper's lax attitude towards parliamentary entitlements, a gift story for tabloids and talkback radio, will move to centre stage. Slipper's sins, present and past, are now Labor's inheritance. The Coalition was planning to execute Slipper but Labor voted him as Speaker before any of its own. The full story of the replacement of Labor's Harry Jenkins with Slipper may be benign.

There is no evidence Gillard did anything improper.

It is, however, an old-fashioned fix that reeks of NSW right-wing sleaze with Labor as vanguard of a political class whose goal is power and whose skills are deals to hold power. It is the sort of clever insider politics at which Labor excels. That's the trouble. This manoeuvre exposes Labor at its most vulnerable spot. A frustrated Tony Abbott's ability to incorporate this event into his central narrative about Labor -- the party that has betrayed its own people -- should not be misjudged.

Gillard as Prime Minister authorised this fix. She is beneficiary from having Labor's operating majority increase from one to three votes but will wear the blame if Slipper becomes a public liability.

For Labor, this operation was probably all too easy. Facing certain loss of preselection by his own side and having only the current parliament as his career end, Slipper was primed for seduction. Labor's maestro, Anthony Albanese, cut the deal in early morn without troubling the bartender.

Abbott, who has spent 15 months bragging about his ability to force an election on the floor, has been played for a mug by losing one of his own side. Caught with his pants down, it is an acute embarrassment for Abbott. How could he have been so careless? A certain full-term parliament will demand a major tactical re-assessment by Abbott.

The assumption that another two years in office must automatically assist Gillard is unjustified. That depends solely on Gillard's ability to change Labor policies and resurrect Labor's brand. Neither is easy. There is still little clue inside the party that Labor faces a systemic crisis. More of the same guarantees failure. The idea that another two years of Labor means the public will see the light and forgive and forget is laughable. Yet many ministers and Labor MPs actually believe this.

Labor's triumph confirms the bizarre structure of politics -- Gillard has mastery of minority government and Abbott commands popular sentiment beyond the parliament.

The gains for Gillard are tangible. The threat from Andrew Wilkie to withdraw his support if his poker machine bill is not passed no longer threatens Labor's survival. Gillard now has more scope for negotiation on the scheme.

Similarly, the risk posed by legal action against former union leader Craig Thomson no longer threatens the government's existence. The working majority of three votes purchases Gillard more discretion in dealing with the Greens, a factor that may become pivotal. The extra vote opens the possibility of more legislation being successful -- witness means-testing the private health insurance rebate and a new effort on asylum-seeker laws.

This event shifts the margin of power to Labor. It gives Gillard more authority. It invests minority government with more stability and certainty. It offers Gillard more scope to rebuild her government. Note, however, that Slipper's elevation confirms the polarisation in the system. All the usual elements are in play. Labor, once again, has played the insider politics with brilliance.

Just as Gillard was skilful at forming minority government and getting 254 bills through the parliament, she has now bolstered her floor majority as a minority PM. The rural independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, are getting accustomed to negotiating with Labor. The crossbenchers are more alienated from Abbott today than 15 months ago. His unremitting campaign to force an early election lies broken and beaten. At every point inside the beltway, playing insider politics, Gillard has left Abbott for dead.

She recently got the carbon pricing bills through the parliament. This week her mining tax bill went through the lower house. It took the High Court to throttle her Malaysia Solution and this remains the unresolved policy problem of the big three, carbon, mining and boats.

But at what cost has Gillard succeeded? For every insider success Gillard has paid a price in the wider country. The most recent Newspoll has Labor's primary vote at 30 per cent and a Coalition primary vote lead of 48-30 per cent. The fall in Labor's primary vote from 38 per cent at the August 2010 poll constitutes probably the biggest and fastest voting collapse in Australia's history.

There is something debasing about minority government. Its capacity to make the usual business of governance nakedly grubby is striking. The price of insider success comes with deals and compromises that only damage Labor as the governing party.

The challenges Gillard confronts during the next two years are daunting in the extreme. The world faces a unique and unpredictable economic crisis. The eurozone is engaged in a survival struggle that threatens a European recession. Political deadlock in the US weakens American economic prospects. The patchwork or three-speed Australian economy poses stark risks for Labor. Treasury deputy secretary David Gruen says the 2011-12 budget forecasts imply 70 per cent of Australia's economy will not benefit from the mining boom and will grow at only 1 per cent. Actual results will surely be worse.

The consensus that elected Rudd Labor in 2007 has collapsed. That is proved by the demise of the ALP primary vote. Australia today is a divided polity rent with four profound divisions.

First, an alienated corporate sector openly challenges Gillard Labor which it mistrusts; witness the new Business Council of Australia chief, Tony Shepherd, calling for urgent revision of the industrial laws and hostility from small business to myriad policies, notably having to finance most of Labor's lift in the super levy from 9 per cent to 12 per cent. The rift between Labor and corporate Australia seems unbridgeable.

Second, Labor's institutional ties to the trade union movement constitute a policy and political negative only guaranteed to grow more serious and more obvious to the public. As trade union private sector coverage falls to about 15 per cent, union pressure on Labor policy becomes more overt and damaging. The ACTU has no strategy of governing in partnership with Labor but operates as a privileged interest group, alienating majority opinion and weakening Labor's reform credentials.

Third, progressive politics in Australia is fatally divided long-term between Labor and the Greens. Gillard's formal association with the Greens has poisoned attitudes towards Labor across much of the nation. Labor has no strategy for fighting on two fronts against the Coalition and the Greens. The instincts of senior ministers to distance Labor from the Greens are correct but hard to implement. Greens leader Bob Brown has wedged Labor -- he is perceived as winning concessions from Labor yet able to denigrate Gillard when their policies collide. There is no sign of the Green primary vote falling away.

The consequence is Labor remains trapped in the contracted political centre ground.

Fourth, Labor is bedevilled by policy and delivery failures. There will be no easy relief from its reputation for incompetence. Witness the flaws in its mining tax, the problems in its three-year fixed-price carbon scheme with the rest of the Western world in retreat on this front and the monthly arrival of 600 boatpeople demonstrating that Labor cannot control Australia's borders.

Such points qualify the false optimism that a full-term parliament means the pendulum naturally returns to Labor. Gillard, however, has won a better chance for recovery. This is because Abbott's failure to procure an election must drive a tactical rethink within the Coalition. The truth is Abbott's early election obsession had become a disease. The polls, however, reveal his success and his new challenge is not reinvention. It is about offering more hope, engaging in constructive policy debate and limiting the Dr No image.

Labor knows how much damage Abbott has done to its standing. Given Labor's vulnerabilities its survival strategy during the next two years depends on ruining Abbott. That is the only road back. It is the chance Labor has won for itself.

• .

Yippee! We won a game of tennis

Unbelievable as it may seem, an Australian won a tennis grand slam.

Australia?

South of the equator, nothing to do with Austria dumb ass! Go buy an Atlas.

Aussie, Sam won the 2011 US Open just a day or so ago.

The first time an Aussie girl has won for over 30 years when Aussie Margaret Court was the queen of tennis.

Congratulations Sam Stosur for winning the Women's Open final despite the disgusting poor sportsmanship and behaviour displayed by Williams and her sour faced family, hangers on seated in privileged positions on the side line.

Anyone under 25 would not realize Aussies once dominated the world in this game but got bogged down through complacency, poor management and brilliant, talented overseas competitors. It's totally unlikely we will ever achieve this position again.

Because, brilliant, talented players such as Federer, Djokovic and countless others have taken over

Gotta applaud these talented athletes wherever they come from! Well done!

Aussie politics:.A piss weak government and incompetent leader

In 2011, Our minority Federal Government has lurched from one incompetance to another

Thank you David Pemberthy from thepunch.com.au for the following comment:

Much has been made of the tasteless descriptions of Prime Minister Julia Gillard on placards at anti-carbon tax rallies. Tasteless they are. They are also not really a world away from the descriptions used by our former prime minister Kevin Rudd to convey his toxic disregard for his successor.

Then I'll grab Shorten by the neck and throttle him…Photo: Ray Strange

Since losing the job in a swift and brutal coup just over 12 months ago, Rudd has been less than circumspect in his contempt for Gillard, at times in very public settings where he has gone out of his way to run her down to anyone who will listen.

When Julia Gillard seized the leadership last year, despite the role of the factional heavies, she took personal ownership of the decision to move against Rudd, memorably declaring that his was “a government which had lost its way”. Maybe it had, but in relative terms, it’s hard to see where that assessment leaves her government. A government which has lost its way, both its paddles, and has capsized its barbed-wire canoe in the deepest recesses of shit creek.

For several months now the polls have shown a sustained decline both in Labor’s primary vote and the approval rating of the prime minister. At the same time support for Kevin Rudd as alternative Labor leader has remained solid or grown, reaching its most dramatic illustration with yesterday’s poll in the Fairfax press showing the return of Rudd would put Labor in a position where it could hold off Tony Abbott.

Polls come and go but this one has the potential to be hugely important. It’s the kind of result which seeps into the psyche of politicians, all of whom are motivated at their core by a desire to win. This poll has already got them talking and could yet see them acting.

Yet it is eminently debatable whether Kevin Rudd is the saviour of the ALP. The first challenge the party would have under his return goes to unity. For Caucus to embrace Rudd after dumping him so recently and unceremoniously would set a new standard for collective pride-swallowing. Conversely, given Rudd’s well-documented disgust not just for Gillard but for the so-called faceless men who knocked him off, it is highly likely that Rudd’s return would precipitate a wave of payback in which some of the most powerful and potentially dangerous party figures would be put to the sword.

Fresh from heart surgery, and merrily talking up the quality of his ticker, Rudd can barely disguise his delight at Gillard’s daily awkwardness with the procession of rotten polls. The word smug does not do it justice, and seeing this smugness manifest itself in a round of retribution across the frontbench could set up the party for a protracted bout of public blood-letting.

There is also a live question as to how the public would actually respond to Rudd’s return. That might sound weird given that the polls show he is preferred leader over Gillard. But voters are a funny lot and there is a chance their reaction to Rudd’s return in theory may be different from their reaction to Rudd’s return in practice.

Plenty of voters could change their tune; you can imagine the Opposition having a field day trolling through the transcripts and digging up every quote from every MP about how the government has lost its way last year, not to mention the many narky criticisms of Rudd’s precious and explosive personal style. For an elected government to have gone from Rudd to Gillard and back again in the space of less than 18 months may end up pointing more to desperation than anything, and the polls could swing back in an unpleasant direction.

The other thing which could drive the polls south is Rudd’s handling of the two biggest policy headaches afflicting the Government – the carbon tax and border protection. Given his record as prime minister on both those issues it is extremely difficult to see how Rudd could negotiate a credible path forward, were he to return as PM. The problems Gillard has on these two issues are problems which began under Rudd.

On climate change, we very nearly had an emissions trading scheme to deal with what Rudd was calling the greatest moral challenge of our time. After its failure in the Parliament the ETS was summarily and indefinitely shelved in an act of political cowardice which in policy terms did more than anything to seal Rudd’s fate.

On border protection, Rudd was also seriously guilty of inconsistency, running on a campaign of greater compassion at the 2007 election only to toughen his stand dramatically at the start of last year when he unilaterally froze new asylum applications from Sri Lankans and Afghanis. The lurching from left to right on this issue over the past 18 months has fed into base level support for the Greens and the Coalition. It is hard to see what tack Rudd could take on his return to end the vacillation which started on his watch as PM.

On paper then the return to Rudd is the most sensible option and possibly the least workable, even though the party is currently not just staring down the abyss, but in it.

Australian smoking campaign goes up in smoke

Loved this article from David Penberthy on the tobacco industry campaign against plain packaging of cigarettes in Australia. Australia is about to take a radical step against smoking by introducing law that all cigarettes be packaged in a crappy olive green plain wrapping without branding.

Just a few of my thoughts ...If people want to smoke, cigarettes could be packaged in toilet paper and they will still get them. Prohibition doesn't work. Never has. Just drives it underground and gives money to organized crime. Meanwhile, enjoy this clever article dear readers.

"In the gruesome final scene of Martin Scorcese’s remake of Cape Fear, the sadistic murderer Max Cady has been bashed with a plank, burned with lighter fluid, thrown off the side of a houseboat and is finally drowning in a river. As he sinks into the water he starts speaking in tongues, struggling to keep his mouth above the waterline as he shouts random free-form gibberish before finally drowning.

I laugh in the face of the nanny state.

I was reminded of this scene while listening to a woman from a cigarette company on the radio this week as she put forward the tobacco industry’s arguments, if you can call them that, against plain packaging.

Despite having a long-standing fondness for the gaspers, and a firm belief that adults should be free to do whatever they like, I don’t ever think I have heard such nonsense in my life. This industry, which in essence is in the death business, is itself in its death throes. As it sinks further into the abyss it is thrashing about spouting nonsense in defence of its right to sell demonstrably deadly products.

The industry has been brought to its knees by the cumulative effect of sustained tax increases, extreme and then absolute bans on advertising, and now the most drastic safety packaging the world will have ever seen. The only thing it has going for it in terms of a business model is the terrifically addictive power of nicotine, and the hope that young people will continue to take up the habit as an act of youthful defiance which turns into a lifelong affliction.

Against this backdrop, the tobacco industry’s campaign against plain packaging is quite literally the last gasp for an industry whose products are, in marketing terms, as good as banned in Australia. It can’t advertise, it can’t promote or display its products, save for running a 14-point Helvetica brand name on the front of an olive-green packet, the colour especially selected by crack government psychologists because it makes you feel barfing.

For this reason the tobacco lobby has resorted to an American-style appeal to libertarian instincts with a campaign framed around the idea of personal freedom.

From a public relations perspective it’s been fascinating to watch. Hearing people such as the woman from Imperial Tobacco on radio, you wonder whether they have some perverse intellectual attraction to spinning on behalf of the unspinnable. There are public relations firms which have won awards within this strange industry for helping Union Carbide salvage its abysmal reputation after the Bhopal factory disaster in India, and helping to “rehabilitate” the Argentine military after it spent most of the 1970s chucking university students out of Cessnas and into the River Plate.

Right now the greatest of these “extreme” PR gigs is with a tobacco company in Australia, and no doubt these slick-tongued communications outsiders hope to be rewarded down the track with other high-paying jobs that befit their ballsiness, perhaps spruiking the nutritive benefits of DDT sandwiches, or defending the tweeny brassiere market on freedom of choice grounds.

On listening to the radio interview, it’s not so much that the tobacco industry’s arguments are ballsy, but just boorish and banal. The key points the tobacco industry spokeswoman made were as follows:

1. Plain packaging won’t work because it has never been done to this extent overseas, and there’s no research to show that it will reduce smoking. The simple rejoinder to this is that if the tobacco industry thinks plain packaging won’t work why is it taking out full-page advertisements complaining about it? Every other limitation on marketing or scare tactic has corresponded with a decline in smoking rates. Logic suggests this will be the same.

2. Black market tobacco will flourish under plain packaging, exposing smokers to cheap imported cigarettes which are filled with nasty chemicals.Well, you’ve got to give the tobacco industry marks for chutzpah. This feigned 11th-hour conversion to the cause of healthy living is just awesome, coming as it does from the same people who brought us the Peter Stuvyesant “Miracle Filter” and those special Lucky Strikes which actually cleared your airways of pollutants as you sucked down that sweet, sweet tar.

3. The government is treating us like children and deciding what we can and cannot do. Again, this isn’t really true. If the government was treating us like children it wouldn’t let us have cigarettes at all, it would ban them outright.

Someone should have taped this interview and given it to high school debaters as an example of how not to make out an argument.

Thundering about the nanny state is fair enough. I’d almost count it as a hobby of mine. Clearly this country is appallingly over-governed, and the health wowsers who legitimately hate smoking would indiscriminately apply the same marketing prohibitions and health warnings to everything from bottles of shiraz to bacon and egg rolls. One of their latest fad causes is the possible health risk from wireless broadband. It’s fair to speculate that these scare campaigns are driven more by a desire for continuing funding than a genuine threat to public health.

But the tobacco industry’s use of such weak, spurious arguments in a transparent bid to maintain profits is more of a hindrance than a help to the libertarian cause. These people have been bullshitting the world for almost a century and should just bow out quietly rather than humiliate themselves further. The maxim that we all have to die of something is a sacred rationalisation for the smokers; in the case of the tobacco lobby right now it might end up dying of embarrassment at the remarkably stupid nature of this campaign. Even cynical old smokers are having a wheezy laugh at it"

Even if you have no interest in politics

Politics in Australia is a dirty business and becoming more messy as they follow our American cousins with outrageous lies and promises. Unfortunately, we have a government that barely survived but for the support of a minor party called the Greens and a couple of eccentric independents.

Our Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, whilst electioneering prior to the election, promised she would not introduce a carbon tax but days ago, mere weeks after the election, introduced a carbon tax. Bottom line is, we Australians will pay more for our food and everything else thanks to the influence of a bunch of minorities propping up this current Government

We all agree, she's a liar. Unfortunately, we must tolerate this liar until the next election unless her party dumps her.

I enjoy reading the comments of David Pemberthy. A major commentator with http://www.thepunch.com.au. He sums up our current political situation beautifully...

"Based on simple observations from walking down the street, it’s fair to say that there are a number of people getting around who are as mad as cut snakes. If our democracy is to count for anything, these people deserve to be represented in the Federal Parliament.

The question is whether they are over-represented.

Even if you have no interest in politics, I beg you, as Molly Meldrum would say, to do yourself a favour and type the words Mary Jo Fisher into Google, then sit back and marvel at the South Australian Senator’s remarkable speech on Wednesday night.

This little-known newby senator – who in a former life was a successful lawyer – puts on what’s probably the strangest turn ever seen on the floor of Parliament.

It starts as a serious and shouty rant about the carbon tax. Fisher draws an obvious parallel between Gillard’s carbon tax and Rudd’s Emission Trading Scheme, saying Labor is doing the hokey-pokey on climate change. She says hokey-pokey a few more times. Then she puts her left leg in and her right foot out and her left leg in and shakes it all about. With the gestures and everything. She then declares that Labor is as useful as “tits on a bull” and that we’re in a time warp. It’s astounding, she says. Time is fleeting, she says. And then: “Let’s dooooo, the time waaaaaarp, agaaaaaain. It’s just a jump to the left….” She then starts doing the pelvic thrust, saying that this part of the carbon tax, more than anything, will really drive you insay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ayne.

Just remarkable. If not for the conflict of interest Senator Fisher should be given a government grant and encouraged to perform in a tent at the Adelaide Fringe in her home state of SA. (Adoptive home state, that is – she’s born and bred Western Australian, so let’s drop the Adelaide gags.)

Politics in Australia has officially gone weird, and most of the weirdness has been coming from the conservative side, with a fair degree of tastelessness thrown in.

The Coalition is giddy with excitement at the massive opportunity it has been handed by Julia Gillard through her appalling breach of faith with the Australian people over the carbon tax. This is the very tax which both she and Treasurer Wayne Swan explicitly ruled out during the election campaign, said was off the agenda for this term of office, and which will now be introduced on July 1 next year.

It will obviously be the defining political issue of this term. However well Gillard has been performing in the parliamentary chamber, the debate in the community is wholly focussed on the popular conviction that she has lied. It’s hard to argue that she hasn’t. The best she can say is that circumstances changed, and that other past governments have done similar things. They’re crappy arguments, and they don’t alter the fact that she misled the voters. She also misled the voters at a time when she was talking about a new era of transparency and accountability in this new Parliament, all utterly laughable now.

As a result of all this a number of folks within the Coalition seem to be so over-excited with the sweet taste of prospective victory that they have lost the plot. The weirdness of Senator Fisher has been matched by the tackiness of the allusions several Coalition MPs have drawn between Gillard’s carbon reversal and the conduct of murderous regimes in Iraq and Libya.

Queensland Liberal Peter Dutton is a former policeman. He’s a strong speaker in the chamber and well-regarded by his colleagues as having a fine policy mind. Sometimes he’s got the narky demeanour of the type of copper who would needle a harmless young drunk bloke, and then pinch him for offensive language. He was in ugly copper mode this week when he needled Labor’s Craig Emerson on Sky Agenda, comparing him to Saddam Hussein’s spin doctor Comical Ali for defending Gillard. Emerson – who like Mary Jo Fisher is a bit of an oddball himself and has burst into song at press conferences on at least one occasion – saw no humour in being likened to the chief spruiker for a tyrant who gassed civilians, and promptly went bananas on air.

Shifting things up a gear, the job fell to Liberals Sophie Mirabella and Eric Abetz to liken Gillard to Colonel Gaddafi, whose regime has spent much of the past fortnight using machine guns and aircraft fire on peaceful protesters. As far as comparisons go it’s right off the Richter scale, and Gillard has every right to be disgusted by it.

Political parties are probably like any other organisation where the work environment is set by the person at the top. This makes it an issue for Tony Abbott, who in the past has shown an inability to draw an acceptable line in his statements, be it disparaging the dying Bernie Banton, or accusing Julia Gillard of having a shit-eating grin. If this is the environment he is encouraging or allowing, there’s a risk that many voters will find that their disappointment with Gillard is tempered by a distrust or dislike of Abbott and the rattiness of his team.

On paper, the Coalition under Tony Abbott has never been in a better position than it is now. Gillard has broken an absolute doozie of a promise, yet a significant number of conservative MPs are turning themselves and their party into the story with behaviour which is aberrant or off. If not for the Coalition’s mangled messages on asylum seekers and the public brawling over Scott Morrison’s funeral slur, the internal sledging of Corey Bernardi over his paranoid generalisations about Islam, and this week of madness with singing senators and Gaddafi gags, Julia Gillard would be in very serious strife. But a question mark will hover over the Coalition unless they get off the red cordial and start acting like adults."

There's no such thing as junk food, only junk diets

At least once a week, when I open the newspaper there seems to be some fresh new panic about the tsunami of childhood obesity that is crashing on our golden sandy beaches which a generation or two ago were filled with healthy bronzed young men and women who were either training for the next Olympic Games or about to pull on a pair of battered Dunlop Volley sandshoes, borrow a beaten up old wooden racquet and fly off to win Wimbledon.

Even Ronald was demanding to know the GI rating of his lunch. Illustration: Paul Newman

Yep, every time a politician opens his or her mouth (usually on the way to a four course five star lunch at a taxpayer funded Parliamentary Dining Room) they sadly shake their heads, wobble their double chins and lament the rise of the TV obsessed Generation XXL.

If you ask most people who they blame for this sad decline, they would nominate a man who might be best described as Richard Nixon, Colonel Sanders and Hannibal Lector all rolled into one. I’m talking of course about Ronald McDonald. He’s there, supersizing our kids against their better judgement till their belts burst open.

Now, just as Marge Simpson gets her parenting advice from “Fretful Mother” magazine so we in Australia have organisations dedicated to make nice decent middle-class parents anxious about how they are raising their kids. One of these is The Parents Jury which every year runs an on-line survey asking people to vote on which TV commercials are deceptively peddling the worst high-fat high-sugar food to our kids. McDonald’s seems to win an award every year.

But this year I’ve found a much worse culprit - Junior Masterchef.

A quick visit to the show’s website is shocking. One of the contestant’s favourite dish is tiramisu, a dessert groaning under its thousands of calories. Another prefers the rampant kilojoule-fest that are lemon meringue cupcakes. Yet another boasts of mastering French Quarters Cake with tempered chocolate, whipped cream, strawberries and raspberries.

Another proudly notes that for his 10th birthday, he was “lucky enough to go to his favourite chef, Matt Moran’s ARIA restaurant.” Dear god, Matt, won’t anyone think of the children?

So I’m officially starting the Ban Junior Masterchef Society right now. I demand that Channel 10 take this obscene show off TV today. Because all this high-fat food that is found on our TV screens is directly influencing hundreds of thousands of impressionable young minds. And that can only lead to future generations of obese children, spending their lives gorging on the pure fattening evil that is Chilli Mud Crab with XO sauce, Moroccan Lamb Pie and Ricotta Gnocchi with eggplant sauce.

And so I was pleased to see last week there were once again calls for higher taxes on “junk food”. It was reported that Holly Bond from Monash University declared, “‘Junk foods have the same pattern of misuse and the same social costs as tobacco and alcohol. We propose that a tax on junk food be implemented as a tool to reduce consumption and address the obesity epidemic.’’

Hear hear! And I am sure that by “junk food” Holly had in mind exactly the sort of high-kilojoule meals whipped up in the Junior Masterchef kitchen.

What’s that? You think she was only talking about pizza and burgers? Well, maybe, if you’re thinking about the purist Neapolitan style artisan pizzas where the dough is shaped by hand, the pizza is cooked directly on the wood-burning oven floor and the crust is soft and fragrant.

And burgers? Sure, if you mean a $75 wagyu and white truffle one.

Because right now I have to say, sorry Holly, but you’re full of crap. First of all, every cigarette is bad for you. That’s why the economic costs of tobacco are massive. But junk food? If you were hungry, why couldn’t you eat a hamburger? After all, isn’t it just bread, meat, lettuce, tomato and sauce? Which one of those perfectly normal everyday food items is “junk”? Could it be that every expert that looks down their nose at a Big Mac would regard having a focaccia (containing basically the same ingredients) at a hip café as a cultural experience.

Which brings me back to Junior Masterchef. Of course I’m kidding, it shouldn’t be banned. My point is just that the way we look at food has a strong class-based bias to it. In a nutshell it goes like this – Ronald McDonald, evil; Alain Ducasse, genius.

And finally, once and for all, there is no such thing as “junk food”. There are, however, junk diets. Sure there are some people who don’t have the education and life skills to know the difference between a junk diet and a good diet. So here’s a thought – instead of taxing “junk food” (and remember there’s no way to define what that means) why don’t we work with those people in raising their social capital?

Or is that too much like hard work?

Government limbo

We are now entering the second week since our Federal election and no one's the wiser as to who will govern because we Australian voters have returned the major parties with equal seats.

To gain a majority both sides are wooing the three or four independents to form a majority. Whoever gets the majority will be crippled to a considerable extent when legislating without a clear majority. The demonstrated whims and idiosyncracies of the independents have to be taken into account. This is not a good thing for our country. The best thing to hope for is a re-election. It's possible, but unlikely it will happen.

This opinion from Piers Akerman published in the Sydney Daily Telegraph (Sat, Aug 28) says it all:

"The slow vote count has ensured Australia faces a second week of governmental limbo.

With the score so far at 73 Coalition seats to 72 for Labor, the increasingly pathetic antics of the over-reaching independents should be treated as a distraction until the votes are finally tallied.

Striving for importance, posturing as profound statesmen, the so-called Three Amigos, Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, have all been put in the shade by Andrew Wilkie who appears to have more principle in his little toe than the others can jointly muster.

Caretaker prime minister Julia Gillard has well and truly prostituted Labor with her premature leap to satisfy whatever demands the independents are making.

She has gone well beyond tugging the forelock in a manner quite unbefitting the dignity of the holder of the top office in the land and shamelessly trailed her coat to a group who represent an exceedingly small percentage of the nation as she tries to rescue whatever is possible from what was undeniably a disastrous election from her point of view.

Opening the door to the possibility of a Labor-Greens alliance as posited by Greens leader Bob Brown last Thursday demonstrates the measure of her desperation.

Two polls in each of the seats of Kennedy, Lyne and New England (Katter’s, Oakeshott’s and Windsor’s) taken in the past week have shown that the voters in these electorates overwhelmingly support the Coalition.

With the Coalition and Labor at last count likely to hold 73 seats each and the Greens’ flaky Adam Bandt, who won Melbourne, already committed to supporting Labor, the three independents holding the balance of power would seem to have no choice but to support the Coalition if they honestly wish to reflect the views of their constituents.

If they succumb to Gillard’s flattery and wish to play footsie with the ALP they should be prepared to endure the revulsion of those who have shown them support - for little return - over the years.

They would be seen to be endorsing the worst two governments in the history of the nation (Kevin Rudd’s and Gillard’s), they would be seen to be embracing the most appalling political machine the nation has experienced, and they would be endorsing the suppurating factionalism that has riven Labor.

In what can only be an endeavour to swing the media and public support her way, Gillard is to address the National Press Club on Tuesday, according to the NPC’s website, but she has not yet been able to address the remnants of her own party, let alone conduct a post mortem into Labor’s disastrous campaign.

The appeal to the nation may be an attempt to wedge the independents, but it will not serve as an answer to long-serving ALP members who want to know why the hollow men, the faceless men, the backroom boys, were allowed to trample and dismiss elected leaders in NSW such as Morris Iemma, and, nationally, Rudd.

But perhaps the press club date was proposed by someone who wishes to see Gillard undermined, one of the plotters within the ALP who would like to see this train wreck pushed off the rails and forgotten, because it’s unlikely that Gillard will escape questioning on the election, which will expose her flaws, and about such issues as the Murray-Darling, which will exacerbate the difficulties of further negotiations with the independents.

Gillard went to the election without nominating who would be the finance minister in any new Labor administration, who would be defence minister or what position Rudd would be given in return for his silence and an end to the leaks against Gillard during the election campaign.

The nation is none the wiser - but it does know that Gillard would not rule out giving a Green a position in her cabinet if that would buy her government.

The independents considering their decision should ponder what such an appointment would mean: A certain mining tax, even the possibility of a formal merger between the Greens and Labor, with an assumption that many of the Greens’ lunatic demands, such as the dole for all and the legalisation of illicit drugs, would be legislated.

To his credit, Opposition leader Tony Abbott has been cautious about destroying the caretaker conventions which apply while the government is in limbo. He has shown an appreciation for the political system which Gillard is prepared to ignore.

There is a well-run argument that it’s better to form a government, any government, than be in opposition; Abbott has thus far shown an admirable unwillingness to accept this.

The current demands from the independents for information, much of it available during the course of the election campaign, reflects their disappointing indifference to their jobs.

The bloc’s most mature member, Windsor, served 10 years in the NSW parliament and has spent nine years in Canberra.

Katter had eight years in the Queensland parliament and has been in Canberra since 1993. Oakeshott served 12 years as a NSW MP before going federal two years ago.

They have neither adorned nor disgraced the federal parliament, but they have not contributed anything of note.

Now they are united in their belief in stability in government. How admirable.

But they are making their pitch to a party riven with poisonous divisions at every level.

As they watch Labor audition before them, are they asking the same questions the nation asked just over a week ago?

Are they asking about the improbable cash-for-clunkers car recycling scheme that was proposed, the laughable citizens assembly talkfest on climate change, the failed insulation or wasteful BER programs, or will they suspend disbelief and rubber-stamp the nation’s most mendacious ever administration?

Will they ask Gillard about the damage the mining tax will do the economy?

After epic-level waste and confidence-destroying policies made up on the run by a government controlled by spin merchants, as Labor’s own heroes admit, the nation cannot afford to be delivered into the hands of those who would welcome a new collectivist dark age."